Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!
Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the RED TEAM–but there is also a blue team, a gold team, an orange team, a red team, and an indie team for a chance to win a whole different set of books!
If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.
SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE
Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the red team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).
Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by October 6th, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.
SCAVENGER HUNT POST
Yvonne Ventresca is an award-winning young adult author who frequently explores themes of trust, deception, and betrayal in her novels. BLACK FLOWERS, WHITE LIES (Sky Pony Press, 2016) won a National IPPY Gold Medal for YA fiction, and Buzzfeed said, “This suspenseful psychological thriller definitely won’t disappoint.” Yvonne’s other published work includes PANDEMIC (winner of a Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), two nonfiction books, and several short stories selected for anthologies. She loves a good ghost story, and as a third-degree black belt, she studies Isshinryu karate in a haunted dojo. You can learn more about her books at YvonneVentresca.com, where she also features resources for teen writers, or connect with her here:
Facebook | Twitter | Blog | Instagram | Pinterest |Goodreads
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
Exclusive Black Flowers, White Lies content: Ghosts
By Yvonne Ventresca
I wasn’t thinking about ghosts when we first relocated to an ordinary suburban house. I tried to keep the place organized, even with two young kids, so when items in our home moved around unexplainably, it was both noticeable and disturbing.
One day a sweater that I would normally hang neatly on the banister was strewn across the stairs. No big deal, I tried to rationalize. I figured my toddler daughter had pulled it down. Other items shifted, and I made excuses for each one.
But I clearly remember the afternoon I opened the hall closet to find my daughter’s sippy cup on a shelf with the towels, not in the kitchen cabinet where it belonged. It did not seem like a scene from a horror movie. It was daylight, there was no mysterious chill in the air, and sippy cups are not particularly scary. Still, I stood there, frozen. The shelf was too high for my daughter to reach, my husband was at work (and not that inclined to pick up sippy cups anyway), and my son was a newborn.
I did not want to consider the idea that the house was haunted. But how else did these things move around? I worried enough to talk to the hypothetical ghost. Please stop, I said. This is frightening, and if you are a kind spirit, perhaps you could just leave us alone?
To my relief, the incidents ended soon after. Coincidentally (or not), my son finally started sleeping through the night. I probably moved things myself and just didn’t remember doing it, right? I wrote off the whole experience to my sleep deprivation and tried to forget about it.
And yet . . . when I started writing Black Flowers, White Lies, the eerie feeling about ghosts came back to me. I remembered the wondering so clearly: what if? And that helped inspire Ella’s story.
About Black Flowers, White Lies:
LIES CAN COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU.
Her father died before she was born, but Ella Benton knows they have a connection that transcends the grave. Since her mother disapproves, she keeps her visits to the cemetery where he’s buried secret. But when Ella learns that her mother may have lied about how Dad died sixteen years ago, it’s clear she’s not the only one with secrets. New facts point to his death in a psychiatric hospital, not a car accident as Mom always claimed.
When a handprint much like the one Ella left on her father’s tombstone mysteriously appears on the bathroom mirror, she wonders if Dad is warning her of danger, as he did once before, or if someone’s playing unsettling tricks on her. But as the unexplained events become more frequent and more sinister, she finds herself terrified about who—or what—might harm her.
Soon the evidence points to someone new: Ella herself. What if, like Dad, she’s suffering from a mental breakdown? In this second novel from award-winning author Yvonne Ventresca, Ella desperately needs to find answers—no matter how disturbing the truth might be.
To buy Black Flowers, White Lies: Indiebound | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | AmazonUK | BAM
And don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of books by me,
Courtney Brandt, and more! To enter, you need to know that my favorite number is
17. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the
red team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!
CONTINUE THE HUNT
To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author! Visit
Brenda Drake, another member of the
red team for more details.
