The Summer Sacrifice by Holly Hinton Teaser Tour: Meet the Characters, Guest Post & Giveaway!

Hey and welcome to the Teaser Tour for The Summer Sacrifice! The artwork is so gorgeous, and the story sounds like it will pull you in right away. Today you get to meet the characters, read about the process Holly went through to produce the audiobook, and enter a giveaway!  

Upper middle grade fantasy THE SUMMER SACRIFICE will be available to buy from major online retailers as of June 21st 2014. Available in ebook and paperback form. (Audiobook to follow.)

Click here to read Chapter One of The Summer Sacrifice.

Click here to listen to the first chapter of The Summer Sacrifice's audiobook. 

  Click here to watch Holly visiting Dancing Ledge: the birthplace of The Summer Sacrifice.

Praise for The Summer Sacrifice

"The present world is often terrifying to a sensible adult. Hinton reflects its effect on youngsters in a powerfully imagined world that hums with poetry. In its pages, in the words of Yeats, a terrible beauty is born. Herein lies empathy, barreling adventure and an iconic heroine, Jamie Tuff."

~ Charles Bane Jr., award winning author of The Chapbook, and Love Poems; creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, and nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

Meet Jamie Tuff and her friends:

​Jamie Tuff "I just happen to drop into other people’s bodies now and then, but don’t worry, I can't control it!"   

​
Seveny Brown “Symbol my arse. That is a dead and stinking bird, attached to a dead and stinking snake!”




  George Button “If I go to Askerwell I’ll be dragged down to hell! Can I take anyone with me?”




Max Lively “Did you see me smash it? Blake didn’t know what was coming when I wrestled him to the ground!”



​

Ella Rose Last “Transparent means being honest, rule-abiding, nice and good. I’m all those things, aren’t I?”

Join Jamie Tuff and friends on their adventures through land, sea and sky, in a world where stars walk and Halfhawks fly.

Portraits and group painted by David Revoy.

AUDIOBOOK DRAMA

The actor in me wants to read everything out loud.

Reading The Summer Sacrifice aloud resulted in multiple revisions being made to the book. Voicing the text let me get close to my characters, see the world from outside of my own head, and it helped me gauge flow, pace and tone. Recording an audiobook seemed a natural conclusion to the publishing process. I looked forward to bringing The Summer Sacrifice to life in this way, and was excited about the potential the book would have to reach a broader audience.

When I was researching how to make and produce an audiobook, I found a podcast on The Creative Penn website, a great site for writers created by author Joanna Penn. During this podcast, acclaimed audiobook producer and author J. Daniel Sawyer talks prospective producers through the process of recording an audiobook, from preproduction to distribution.

Sawyer's advice is fantastic. Though he stresses it's a time-intensive and potentially expensive enterprise, he gives clear examples of how to go about creating your audiobook so that neither its quality nor your sanity is compromised.

On his list of things you need, I already had my voice, a good microphone, a basic knowledge of Audacity (an open source sound editing program), a wonderfully geeky boyfriend with a not-so-basic knowledge of Audacity, and a quiet room. I was so excited to commit the story to tape, but on the first day of recording, my preamp broke.

Luckily, my boyfriend gave me a Zoom sound recorder for my birthday. The actual recording was a bit of a learning curve, and it took twice the time I had anticipated. I was much more adept at the process towards the end of recording the book. With the knowledge I had gained, I then rerecorded The Summer Sacrifice from the beginning.

The audiobook has some sound effects and original music. A few of the sounds are sampled from Sound Jay. Most of the sounds are recorded by me. For example my cat Max has a starring role. He can deliver up indignance, joy and "please feed me!" on a sixpence.

As soon as I know when the entire audiobook will be available to buy, I shall shout loudly about it here. Until then, I hope you enjoy Chapter One!

About the Author

Holly grew up in a small, sleepy village in Suffolk. The acting bug hit her at age nine, when she was asked to play Baboushka in the school nativity. That same year she played the lead role of a naughty black poodle in a pet parlour themed ballet, and she thought she had made it. Years passed, but the acting bug didn’t. She went to Goldsmiths, University of London to study Drama, after which she completed her actor training at Arts Ed.

Writing a book was never part of the plan. But life’s full of swerves and surprises and ideas dropping into people’s heads. Holly had an idea drop into hers, and that idea became The Summer Sacrifice, and The Summer Sacrifice became the first book of the Master Game Series.

For more information please visit: http://www.hollyhinton.com

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GIVEAWAY!!!

Holly Hinton is giving away one signed copy of The Summer Sacrifice (Paperback), and a bookmark illustrated by David Revoy. Open Worldwide!

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Teaser Tour organized by: 

Cover Creation Process & Cover Reveal - The Summer Sacrifice by Holly Hinton

Today we are excited to share the cover process via images and the final cover for the middle grade fantasy The Summer Sacrifice by Holly Hinton. The book is scheduled for release on June 21st, 2014.

The cover artist has provided us with the images to show the process of creating the cover.

These three concept images were the first pictures David created for The Summer Sacrifice. Thumbnail A evoked the atmosphere of a mysterious fantasy, B gave the impression of a teenage classic, and C was more poetic in tone. Holly settled on a mixture of A and B as the basis for David to start constructing the final cover.

These drawings were 'speed-painted' by David. They are rough in nature as their purpose was to help decide the cover's general colour scheme.

David drew a detailed sketch of the friendship group. He used this as a guide for the final painting of the group on the cover. He kept the 'camera' low, almost on the floor, to make the characters look more heroic and the serpent bonfire bigger. He worked to get a sense of wind into the image to give it an outdoor feeling and to add dynamism, and also to break up the composition's symmetry.

David paid great attention to working out the many light sources in the painting, and particularly how they would interact with the faces and bodies of the five central characters. There is a strong backlight from the fire, a mix of bounced lights from the environment, and diffuse bluish light from the sky.

This version of the cover is close to the final one. The serpent and the title still required small changes, and David also did some other general polishing, including painting the moon's glow onto the vines and leaves framing the picture, and adding the stars.

This screenshot shows the front, back and spine of the cover from inside Krita, the open-source software David uses to create his work.

The final cover for the paperback.

The final cover for the ebook.

Book Description: 

Three hundred years ago, the Great Goddess sent a storm to destroy mankind. She nearly succeeded. One island survived. 

These days, the Goddess stops the spread of evil by sacrificing the Island’s rotten teenage souls. Or so the story goes... 

When Jamie Tuff survives her Taking, she thinks her worst nightmares are behind her. But then her soul starts wandering into other people’s bodies, and she discovers that the Island harbours a deadly secret. 

Now, she must save her little world from a fate worse than—well, worse than what the Goddess has already done to it. 

Join Jamie Tuff and friends on their adventures through land, sea and sky, in a world where stars walk and Halfhawks fly.

Add to your Goodreads Shelf!

About the Cover Designer:
David Revoy (nickname Deevad), is a french artist living in the south of France.  He has more than 10 years of experience working remotely as a freelancer. His skills and expertise includes illustration, art-direction, concept-art and teaching. In short: he's a 2D artist (he uses drawing, painting, digital painting techniques) and paints custom artworks for books, posters, board-games, video-games and movies. His clients are located all around the world.

Since 2009 he has painted using only free and open-source software. He uses Krita, Mypaint, and Gimp on Linux. This technical choice doesn't affect compatibility with his clients: he still provides industry standards and can work or open any regular files.

He can be followed on Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, or deviantArt.      

Visit him at: http://www.davidrevoy.com/

About the Author:

Holly grew up in a small, sleepy village in Suffolk. The acting bug hit her at age nine, when she was asked to play Baboushka in the school nativity. That same year she played the lead role of a naughty black poodle in a pet parlour themed ballet, and she thought she had made it. 

Years passed, but the acting bug didn’t. She went to Goldsmiths, University of London to study Drama, after which she completed her actor training at Arts Ed.

Writing a book was never part of the plan. But life’s full of swerves and surprises and ideas dropping into people’s heads. Holly had an idea drop into hers, and that idea became The Summer Sacrifice, and The Summer Sacrifice became the first book of the Master Game Series.

For more information please visit: http://www.hollyhinton.com/

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This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.