Supervision Blog Tour: Interview & #Giveaway

Can you tell us a little about Supervision?

SUPERVISION is the story of a girl named Esme who lives in NYC. She gets in trouble, and, as punishment, is sent away to live with her grandmother in a small town in the country. Her new home is strange.  The house is a big, ruined mansion full of empty rooms, and her grandmother ignores her. Still, she makes new friends, and really likes them—but something is wrong. Her friends are dead. She might be too.

Where did the inspiration for Supervision come from?

SUPERVISION came from two things: an announcement on the NYC subway and a free piano. I was living in NYC, far far uptown, and would ride the subway for 2 hours or more every day to get to my jobs. I kept hearing an announcement on the trains, whenever they would stop: “This train is being help by supervision.” Soon, like Esme, I moved from NYC to a small, strange Appalachian town. I decided, since I had the space for the first time in my life, I would get a piano, something I’ve always wanted to do; I’ve played since I was a child. So I answered a classified ad for a free piano that took me to a big, ruined mansion on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. The woman who lived there was moving and getting rid of the piano. She told me the house was haunted, the pond was haunted, the tunnel beneath the house was haunted. I took the piano right away! And I kept thinking about that house… that house…Who would live there? Who had died there?

Describe Esme and Ez in 140 characters each.

Ez is actually Esme’s nickname; one of her new strange friends gives it to her. She’s 15 years-old, an orphan, raised by her grandmother and big sister. She’s third generation American-Chinese. Her grandfather immigrated to Pennsylvania to work on the railroads. Ez loves a mystery. She likes research, helping people, and figuring things out. She’s smart but she’s starting to hate school. She comes from a family of ballerinas, but she never learned to dance. She lived in NYC, but wears jeans and a hoodie every day. She feels like an outsider. She has horrible dreams. And something is going terribly wrong with her.

Tom Griffin is Ez’s neighbor in her new home. He’s an orphan of sorts too, adopted. He left school to work. He is kind but headstrong. He has a little sister, of whom he is very protective. They’ve had a difficult life, and he’s had to take care of both of them for a long time. In a way, he’s given up on happiness or hope for himself. And then he meets Esme.   

Why should we pick up Supervision?

I was born in rural, isolated Indiana. I used to play in the fields by myself. I learned to ride my bike in the cemetery next door to my house. I was alone a lot, and I started to make up stories when I was very young to comfort myself. I invented characters to keep myself company. SUPERVISION will keep you company. It has diverse characters and mysterious situations, a little bit of history and a dose of Victorian spiritualism. It has a subway, train tunnels, murders, ballet, and a séance. It will keep you up late on dark nights, and I hope, at its end, it will comfort you. I started writing so I that wasn’t alone. I keep writing so that you aren’t alone.  

Supervision by Alison Stine 

Published by: HarperVoyager

Publication date: April 9th 2015

Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult

Synopsis:

Something is wrong with Esmé.

Kicked out of school in New York, she’s sent to live with her grandmother in a small Appalachian town. But something is wrong with the grandmother Ez hasn’t seen for years; she leaves at midnight, carrying a big black bag. Something is wrong with her grandmother’s house, a decrepit mansion full of stray cats, stairs that lead to nowhere, beds that unmake themselves. Something is wrong in the town where a kid disappears every year, where a whistle sounds at night but no train arrives.

And something is wrong with the cute and friendly neighbor Ez’s age with black curls and ice-blue eyes: He’s dead.

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ALISON STINE’s first novel SUPERVISION will be released by Harper Voyager UK in 2015.

Also the author of three books of poetry: WAIT (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), OHIO VIOLENCE (University of North Texas Press, 2009), and LOT OF MY SISTER (Kent State University Press, 2001), she has worked as an actor, an artist’s model, a high school teacher, and a professor. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Ohio University, and is an avid urban explorer.

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