YA Feature: Dusty Crabtree author of Shadow Eyes

*Note: This post was from Friday 3rd August, due to computer problems it keep deleting, fingers crossed it stays up this time*

This week on the YA author feature is Dusty Crabtree author of Shadow Eyes! Enjoy the interview and leave a nice comment for the author!

Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into writing?

I’m a high school English teacher in Oklahoma and a youth sponsor at our church, so obviously I have a passion for teens. I’ve loved young adult books for a while now but never really thought about being a writer until my friend suggested I write a book like the ones we enjoyed (mostly about angels at the time). I took her advice, tried it out, and found that I actually loved writing fiction! With a little practice and lots of initial revision, the words eventually flowed as naturally as if I’d been a writer all my life.

Can you tell us a little about your novel, Shadow Eyes?

Shadow Eyes is about a girl named Iris who’s had the ability to see murky shadows and glowing light figures ever since a tragic incident on her 14^th birthday…an incident that the reader doesn’t know about until the end. She’s the only one who can see these figures, which makes life difficult to say the least. To make matters more complicated, new and mysterious characters enter her life and challenge everything she thinks she knows.

Where did you get the idea for Shadow Eyes?

The inspiration actually came from a screenplay idea I had a few years before deciding to write a novel. The movie would have been about a cast of intertwined characters going about their lives and making mistakes with dark, creepy shadows hovering around them, whispering to them and influencing them to do evil things. Only the audience would see the shadows, though. The characters would be completely oblivious. It would have been like a Christian horror movie, if there ever was such a genre! To make it more fit for a young adult book, I decided to have a 1^st person narrator be able to see this happening around her.

Shadow Eyes is a YA urban fantasy novel. Is this the genre you prefer to write in or is there any other genres you would like to explore?

Well, I like to write what I enjoy reading, and I love urban fantasies, paranormal romances, and dystopias. My next series may be dystopian – I’m toying with some ideas already even though I have 3 more books planned in the Shadow Eyes series! One I’m currently working on. J

In Shadow Eyes, shadows entice individuals towards evil. What exactly are the shadows? Are they live creatures? Can our shadows be affected?

Essentially, the shadows are demons, so their status as “living” creatures is kind of vague. I mean, most of them have something that passes as a face and some of their personalities show through the way they move and look, so I guess that would be considered living. Their shape varies from a foggy cloud to a very defined human-looking silhouette depending on their intentions.

Why should we read Shadow Eyes in one sentence?

Although Shadow Eyes is a book you won’t be able to put down because it’s intriguing, compelling, and mysterious, it can also deeply affect the way you view the world around you, give you hope, and even change your life. (Hey, it’s one sentence and grammatically correct.)

Bookie questions:

　

Fave book as a child and why?

A Wrinkle in Time – I guess I’ve always loved fantasy now that I think about it. The ability to travel through time and into other dimensions was just so cool! It was an awesome book and still is!

Fave 2012 read and why?

Divergent and Insurgent – Not sure which one I liked more, the first or second book. Of course there’s a third one coming, and I’m super excited! I loved this series because it was so unique and interesting! The characters were intriguing and the world she described was very entertaining and well-written!

An author you would recommend to my readers?

Well-known favs – Becca Fitzpatrick, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins

Musa author peeps whose books I’ve read and loved – Kristina Blevins, Liz DeJesus, Linda Benson

Favourite YA genre and why?

Right now, probably Dystopian because I love the uniqueness and bizarreness of the worlds authors can create. It’s creativity at its finest, and there’s always something unexpected.

　

Complete this sentence.

　

My perfect summer day would be sitting beside the sea/lake drinking something fruity and eating chocolate while reading the newest popular young adult book. (Hey, I can’t say a name, because I rarely ever read a book twice. There are just too many other books to read!)

Check out Dusty’s blog at http://dustycrabtree.wordpress.com/

Find her on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/dusty.crabtree.1
Follow her on twitter at https://twitter.com/dustycrabtree
Buy Shadow Eyes at http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=176
(also available at all major online bookstores)
View the book trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7UP9A0Fm78