Hello! Thanks for having me! I’m
Caytlyn Brooke, author of the award-winning YA dark fantasy/horror novel
Dark Flowers.
Dark Flowers (published by
BHC Press) is about two friends desperate to escape St. Agatha’s orphanage. When the timing is right, they flee and stumble into a beautiful fairy realm while running through the Louisiana swamps. The realm is magical and the silver fairies are bewitching, but
underneath the beauty lies sinister secrets that are impossible to outrun.
The first question everyone asks me is how did I come up with this idea? What inspired me? In truth, it was my younger sister. When we were little, we were obsessed with fairies and fantasized about finding them in our backyard. We built houses and made gifts, leaving them around the base of trees and amidst flower patches. We watched countless movies and read dozens of books revolving around the tiny enchanting creatures and that wonder and curiosity never left me. Fantasy is my favorite genre to both read and write because you can do whatever you like, let your imagination run wild with very little boundaries.
One day when my sister was visiting me a few years ago, we were outside and I noticed yellow pollen covering my arms and fingertips. I looked down and rubbed the soft powder between my fingers and said,” Wouldn’t it be cool if the pollen just sunk into my skin, like a drug?” Inspiration flashed and both of our jaws dropped. Immediately we ran inside and I grabbed my notebook (because I’m super old school and write down every single story idea I have in a notebook along with the date.) I have at least five floating around my house and every so often I stumble upon them and thumb through, flinching at some ideas and marveling at others.
We sat down at the dining room table and started mapping out a plot. The title instantly leapt to my mind but I needed strong names for my protagonists. I love Eliza because it’s not very common and my sister volunteered Millie. It sounded so sweet and innocent that the story just unraveled from the tip of my pencil in minutes. But unlike all the movies and media surrounding fairies, I wanted to do something different, something haunting and something totally unexpected that flipped the image of a beautiful, petal-wearing fairy on its head.
I made my fairies bleached silver and naked, wearing nothing but billowing black shadows. Rather than tiny dew drops coating their delicate wings, I gave my fairies thick, knotted spider-webbed wings and needle sharp fangs that lust for blood. The fairies are beautiful, yet dangerous and the whole time Eliza is near them she can’t shake the eerie feeling that something isn’t right. I wanted to take something sweet and wondrous and splash a little poison onto the perfect image of a woodland fairy.
For this reason, I also chose Louisiana for the setting. I’ve never been to that part of the country, but no place seemed more fitting. The thick, humid air, the algae-covered swamps, and the chilling moss-covered bald cypress trees created the perfect image in my mind. I notice lots of writers set their novels close to where they themselves live or are familiar with in order to draw on famous landmarks. I’m the opposite. All of my novels are set in towns and cities that I have never been to. I Google lots of images to get an idea of the weather patterns, but then I let my mind do the rest and I feel like I have so much more freedom.
And it worked! I’ve had so many readers come up to me, angry almost and say, “I used to love fairies! Now they’ll never be the same!” I can’t smile any wider when I hear comments like this because that was my goal! I wanted to take a century-old idea and craft it into a novel with such a startling twist, that readers would be left gasping. In this day and age it’s really hard to create a new, original idea, just look at how many times they’ve remade the Batman movies. Yet my idea, actually angers and shocks people, because for most of them, after they read about my fairies ripping and tearing flesh to reach the warm blood inside…that image will never fully dissipate when Tinkerbell flits across their screen.
When my friends and co-workers read Dark Flowers it was so amusing to watch them come in and make eye contact with me. My good friend Kathy even said, “Who are you!” If you look at me, talk to me, there’s no way I could have written a horror novel. I’ve never been considered emo or goth, I have to hide behind a pillow during scary movies, and I sound like Minnie Mouse over the phone. But I have a wild imagination and love exploring the darker side. In fact, many of my ideas have come from my dreams. I’m working on one about witches and I came up with the idea because I dreamed about a girl in a flooded bathroom, drowning. In my dream, I watched her die and as soon as I woke up, I wrote it down in my notebook and cranked out four chapters.
All of my novels have a gritty, uncomfortable edge to them and I remember telling my sister that I wanted Dark Flowers to be creepy, terrifying. I want my story to give readers nightmares. Hopefully
that doesn’t make me sound too weird, but that’s when you know it’s a great book, because even after you put it down, the words and the characters stay with you. My friend Sean was one of my first readers and he told me he couldn’t sleep. All he could picture was Eliza at the end, staring, watching.
I love surprising people and Dark Flowers is a perfect way to give them a glimpse to the darkness lurking beneath my smile and polka dots. Thank you so much! Sweet dreams!
Win a copy of Dark Flowers. Visit the BHC Press
website and fill out the contest form. The contest is running through next Thursday, October 26, 2017. Good luck!
Read what reviewers are saying about Caytlyn Brooke’s multi-award- winning debut YA horror novel Dark Flowers.
…a work of paranormal fiction so utterly haunting and undeniably eerie it’s sure to tingle your spine.
~ Literary Classics
…a haunting story that the reader will not soon forget.
~ InD’Tale Magazine
a highly immersive read.
~Readers’ Favorite
ABOUT DARK FLOWERS:
Life at St. Agatha's School for Girls is anything but a fairytale. With ratty blankets and a torturous device called the box, it's not hard to understand Eliza's desperation to escape. When the timing is right, Eliza manages to run away with her best friend Millie, heading through the Louisiana swamps to the town on the other side. But the swamps may be even more dangerous than the orphanage.
Silver and black fairies invite the girls to experience a world where they can have it all, but Eliza doesn't trust the sparkling beauty. When Millie suddenly becomes violent and attacks another girl, Eliza knows something awful is about to happen. She will do anything to protect Millie but once Eliza remembers her own terrible secret, it is impossible to forget. The fairies' songs call to Eliza and it's getting harder and harder to pretend it's all in her head.
AVAILABLE FORMATS:
Available in hardcover, trade softcover, and ebook. Coming soon to audio! Visit the publisher’s
website for more information and purchasing options.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Caytlyn lives in Elmira, NY with her husband Daniel, her son, Jack, and her orange tabby cat, Ana who is only slightly overweight. She can quote any Disney movie and believes that everyone should wear polka dots.
