Author: Val Muller
Genre/Age: Paranormal/YA
Series: None
Publisher: World Castle Publishing
Links: Goodreads
Synopsis: Everyone’s heard the legend of the hollow oak—the four-hundred year curse of Sarah Willoughby and Preston Grymes. Few realize how true it is.
Sarah Durante awakens to find herself haunted by the spirit of her high school’s late custodian. After the death of his granddaughter, Custodian Carlton Gray is not at peace. He suspects a sanguisuga is involved—an ancient force that prolongs its own life by consuming the spirits of others.
Now, the sanguisuga needs another life to feed its rotten existence, and Carlton wants to spare others from the suffering his granddaughter endured. That’s where Sarah comes in. Carlton helps her understand that she comes from a lineage of ancestors with the ability to communicate with the dead. As Sarah hones her skill through music, she discovers that the bloodlines of Hollow Oak run deep. The sanguisuga is someone close, and only she has the power to stop it.
Title: The Girl Who Flew Away
Author: Val Muller
Genre/Age: Paranormal/YA
Series: None
Publisher: World Castle Publishing
Links: Goodreads
Synopsis: No good deed goes unpunished when freshman Steffie Brenner offers to give her awkward new neighbor a ride home after her first day at school. When her older sister Ali stops at a local park to apply for a job, Steffie and Madison slip out of the car to explore the park—and Madison vanishes.
Already in trouble for a speeding ticket, Ali insists that Steffie say nothing about Madison’s disappearance. Even when Madison’s mother comes looking for her. Even when the police question them.
Some secrets are hard to hide, though—especially with Madison’s life on the line. As she struggles between coming clean or going along with her manipulative sister’s plan, Steffie begins to question if she or anyone else is really who she thought they were. After all, the Steffie she used to know would never lie about being the last person to see Madison alive—nor would she abandon a friend in the woods: alone, cold, injured, or even worse.
But when Steffie learns an even deeper secret about her own past, a missing person seems like the least of her worries…
My mind races. My tailbone aches. I’m exhausted and scared. Darkness has fallen, and everything takes on a sinister shape. Car headlights seem to glare at me. Even strangers going in and out of the stores look more dangerous.
I feel alone. I think about going back into the store, explaining everything to the clerk, and asking him to call my parents. I look down at Sally’s dragonfly necklace. I wonder how many times in Sally’s life she must have been scared and felt hopeless and had nowhere to go. If she could do it, then the least I can do is spend a few extra hours trying to rescue my friend. When a police car pulls into the convenience store parking lot, I dash out of the way and resolve to make it to the park somehow.
The park is a half mile up the road. I know it’s difficult for cars to see me now, so I keep way to the side of the road. Before long, I get off my bike and walk. At the entrance to the park, I realize the gate is locked: no one is admitted inside after dark. It’s a chained fence meant to keep out cars, but I’ll be able to sneak in. I leave my bike at the gate and climb over the barrier—and I’m in the park.
Alone.
Doc Brown’s final visit in Back to the Future III. This scene really makes sense in the context of the trilogy as a whole. Throughout the trilogy, the characters travel through time and find that there are tendencies pushing them toward certain things. The Biffs of the world, for instance, always seem to find themselves on the wrong end of karma—literally covered in manure, decade after decade. I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of fate versus free will. After reading plays like Oedipus Rex and books like Tess of the D’Urbervilles, I examined the concept in my novel Faulkner’s Apprentice, in which the protagonist feels pulled toward one particular destiny, even as she recognizes how destructive it is. It’s one of the most frightening things I can think of—even more frightening than being whisked away to a goblin kingdom: the idea that we have a destiny out there that we have no control over. Which brings me back to the scene from Back to the Future. Against all odds, both Doc and Marty find themselves on the path to a happy future, and Doc tells Marty that his future hasn’t been written yet—“nobody’s has, so make it a good one.” That advice has resonated with me since high school, and anytime I’m feeling helpless, I remember those words and think about what I can do to better my situation.
When Jack Skellington finds Christmas Town in The Nightmare Before Christmas. I have two ID lanyards and many shirts dedicated to the world of this film. But this particular scene stands out. Jack has fallen asleep while walking through the woods and awakens at a series of doors, each leading to a different holiday. I love the idea that we can find mysteries deep in the woods. It’s something the Puritans were paranoid about and something the Transcendentalists embraced: the wilderness leads to change. In addition, I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas. I loved it as a kid, but as a grown-up, I tired of the over-commercialization and utopian fairy dust quality of the holiday that seems to ignore the realities of budgets, time, and energy. So I can’t help but get a particular thrill as the king of Halloween adds just a bit of dementedness to the cute little world of ice-skating elves and warm hearths, and then tries to take over the holiday on his own. Juxtaposition is a powerful tool, and it works well in this scene.
In Sleepy Hollow, the first covered bridge scene. In this scene, Ichabod is attacked, but it isn’t the real killer (horseman) just yet. However, the scene truly embodies the style and mood of the entire film. Sometimes around Halloween, I simply put the movie on to build atmosphere. Almost every scene, including the bridge scene, features foggy, gray (or nighttime) skies; bare branches reaching to the sky like claws; clip-clopping of horses; the ominous soundtrack of other animals (in this case, frogs), and ghastly pale characters who are victims of the town and its history. Having come from New England, and featuring New England (and a bit of its haunted past) in my novels The Scarred Letter, The Girl Who Flew Away, and The Man with the Crystal Ankh, this film is right up my alley.
Eowyn standing on the top of the palace at Edoras in Lord of the Rings. When I saw this movie in the theatre the first time (I am fairly sure I saw all three movies in the theatre several times each, always tagging along with whoever wanted to see it), I remembered looking at Eowyn standing atop the cliff in her white dress with the wind whipping at the sleeves and her long hair trailing behind her. In this scene, the wind whips away the banner of her father, ruler of Edoras, which is a visual symbol of her concern over her people’s future. There was so much pain in her character. She wanted to be much stronger than society allowed her to be (because of her gender), and that scene reflected her power. (Later on, she slays an enemy that none of the men were able to kill.) The first time I saw the scene, I told myself: that is the wedding dress I want to wear. When it came time to get married several years later, I still remembered the scene and sewed my own wedding dress, modeling it after Eowyn’s dress.
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Author: Val Muller
Genre/Age: Paranormal/YA
Series: None
Publisher: World Castle Publishing
Links: Goodreads
Synopsis: No good deed goes unpunished when freshman Steffie Brenner offers to give her awkward new neighbor a ride home after her first day at school. When her older sister Ali stops at a local park to apply for a job, Steffie and Madison slip out of the car to explore the park—and Madison vanishes.
Already in trouble for a speeding ticket, Ali insists that Steffie say nothing about Madison’s disappearance. Even when Madison’s mother comes looking for her. Even when the police question them.
Some secrets are hard to hide, though—especially with Madison’s life on the line. As she struggles between coming clean or going along with her manipulative sister’s plan, Steffie begins to question if she or anyone else is really who she thought they were. After all, the Steffie she used to know would never lie about being the last person to see Madison alive—nor would she abandon a friend in the woods: alone, cold, injured, or even worse.
But when Steffie learns an even deeper secret about her own past, a missing person seems like the least of her worries…
I feel alone. I think about going back into the store, explaining everything to the clerk, and asking him to call my parents. I look down at Sally’s dragonfly necklace. I wonder how many times in Sally’s life she must have been scared and felt hopeless and had nowhere to go. If she could do it, then the least I can do is spend a few extra hours trying to rescue my friend. When a police car pulls into the convenience store parking lot, I dash out of the way and resolve to make it to the park somehow.
The park is a half mile up the road. I know it’s difficult for cars to see me now, so I keep way to the side of the road. Before long, I get off my bike and walk. At the entrance to the park, I realize the gate is locked: no one is admitted inside after dark. It’s a chained fence meant to keep out cars, but I’ll be able to sneak in. I leave my bike at the gate and climb over the barrier—and I’m in the park.
Alone.
Five Favorite Movie Scenes
by Val Muller
Note from Dawn: Images added by me!
The scene in Labyrinth when Jareth, the goblin king, transforms from an owl and enters Sarah’s house. Does this have anything to do with the fact that Jareth is played by David Bowie wearing quite a suggestive outfit? I plead the fifth. However, when I first fell in love with that movie, I was much more intrigued with the idea of magic. Protagonist Sarah was stuck at home, babysitting her step-brother because her “wicked stepmother” forced her to. The fact that she could speak “the right words” and summon a magical being to take away the unwanted child filled me with all kinds of ideas. Could I punish an annoying sister that way? But even as attractive as David Bowie might have been in that role, as a kid I was always afraid to even test the words to see if they worked. Although intriguing, entering that world of goblins and mazes and malicious tricks was slightly terrifying to me.
by Val Muller
Note from Dawn: Images added by me!
These are in no particular order (asking me to choose my favorite is sort of like when kids ask which of the siblings is the parents’ favorite, right?)
The scene in Labyrinth when Jareth, the goblin king, transforms from an owl and enters Sarah’s house. Does this have anything to do with the fact that Jareth is played by David Bowie wearing quite a suggestive outfit? I plead the fifth. However, when I first fell in love with that movie, I was much more intrigued with the idea of magic. Protagonist Sarah was stuck at home, babysitting her step-brother because her “wicked stepmother” forced her to. The fact that she could speak “the right words” and summon a magical being to take away the unwanted child filled me with all kinds of ideas. Could I punish an annoying sister that way? But even as attractive as David Bowie might have been in that role, as a kid I was always afraid to even test the words to see if they worked. Although intriguing, entering that world of goblins and mazes and malicious tricks was slightly terrifying to me.
Teacher, writer, and editor, Val Muller grew up in haunted New England but now lives in the warmer climes of Virginia, where she lives with her husband. She is owned by two rambunctious corgis and a toddler. The corgis have their own page and book series at www.CorgiCapers.com.
Val’s young adult works include The Scarred Letter, The Man with the Crystal Ankh, and The Girl Who Flew Away and feature her observations as a high school teacher as well as her own haunted New England past. She blogs weekly at www.ValMuller.com.
Links:
The Girl Who Flew Away:
Free preview + discount code http://barkingrainpress.org/girl-who-flew-away/
Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-girl-who-flew-away-val-muller/1125952688?ean=2940157613525
The Man with the Crystal Ankh:
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