Hypable has an exclusive look at the haunting cover art for teen horror novel Shutter, as well an interview with author Courtney Alameda!
Horror is rising in young adult fiction, and Shutter by Courtney Alameda is sure to be a standout in the budding genre. The creepy cover art for Shutter, debuting here on Hypable, leaves no doubt that the spine-tingling tale of cameras and curses will have readers sleeping with the lights on.
Check out the cover right here, and enter our giveaway to win an advanced copy of Shutter below.
On second thought, we might just leave the lights on all the time.
Summary
Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat—a girl who sees auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she’s trained to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their energy on film. She’s aided by Oliver, a techno-whiz; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy she’s loved forever.
When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain. Micheline learns that if she doesn’t exorcise in seven days, she and her friends will die.
Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she’s faced before… or die trying.
Interview with Courtney Alameda
Tell us five random facts about yourself.
1) The only thing I’m terrified of is the ocean, because you can’t fight a fifty-foot wave, friends. (Or Godzilla, who COMES FROM THE OCEAN.)
2) My favorite horror film is Ridley Scott’s Alien, but Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods ranks a close second.
3) I played my first video game at age four, so you’d think I’d be good at them by now. NOPE. I’ve been dying my way through a survival horror gem called The Last of Us for the last few months.
4) I consider Mary Shelley my literary godmother, though I hated Frankenstein the first time I read the novel.
5) Despite my affinity for horror, I am a sucker for all things cute and fluffy.
What is your favorite element of the cover for Shutter?
The font treatment! Particularly the title font: bold, beautifully distressed, and blurred, it reminds me of a flickering CRT television screen, which is a perfect nod to Poltergeist. If the clothes make the man, then the fonts make the design.
I’m also smitten with the artwork’s ferocity, which I believe manages to both entice readers to pick up the novel and warn them of the creature lurking inside its pages…
Why did you feel you had to tell Micheline’s story?
There are a good number of teens haunting my subconscious mind, all waiting to have their stories told – Micheline was simply the most insistent at the time. Chalk it up to her Helsing tenacity!
What is one thing you wish you knew when you sat down to write Shutter?
Well, I know there are things I’m glad I didn’t know: I’m glad I didn’t know how many words I’d write toward one project to get the story right. I’m glad I didn’t know how this book would break my heart and reconstruct it again. And I’m especially glad I didn’t know the book would both land me an amazing agent and sell to my dream publishing house!
Which is easier to write: The first line, or the last line?
First lines come easy, as they are usually the first words I hear my characters “speak” to me. Last lines are the hardest, as they can feel like saying “farewell for now,” to both the characters and the reader.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on two prequel short stories set in the Shutter-verse: the first of which recounts the reaping of the Embarcadero Scissorclaw, and the second of which will probably focus on the night Micheline’s mother and brothers are murdered, as told from Ryder’s point of view. I tried to write the latter story from Micheline’s point of view, but the experience was simply too raw and too emotional to share. (Or even finish, for that matter.)
Secondly, there are new novels coming down the pipeline… all of them chimerical, genre-bending, monstrous little things.
For more information…
Follow Courtney on Twitter, and learn more about the bookseller-turned-author at her website, CourtneyAlameda.com.
Giveaway
Enter to win one of five signed advance copies of Shutter by Courtney Alameda!
Giveaway open to readers in the US and Canada.
Shutter by Courtney Alameda will hit bookstores in Feb. 2015.