The Girl From The Well Blog Tour {Interview and Giveaway}

I'm so stoked to have The Girl from the Well Blog Tour stopping by today with my Interview with Rin Chupeco and a Giveaway...

The Girl from the Well

by Rin Chupeco

August 5, 2014

Sourcebooks Fire

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night. 

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out. 

The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge", based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story.

Goodreads / Amazon / B&N / IndieBound / Book Depository

What three words best describe The Girl from the Well?

creepy, unnatural - and fierce

Grab a copy of The Girl from the Well and answer the following:

favorite chapter?

The last chapter. I had no idea how to finish the novel until I was practically there, so I was surprised at how well the ending suited the story.

favorite page?

The first page. Everything you need to know about Okiku's personality has been laid bare there.

favorite setting/place?

Mount Osore is one of the places in Japan that comes up in the novel. Imagine sulfuric hot springs, an isolated Buddhist temple, and a sea so wide and blue and inviting - until you realize it's too poisonous to swim in. As a mountain of death it is both picturesque and grotesque, even by Japanese standards.

flip to a random page and give us a 1-2 sentences teaser?

"It sees the boy, but not with eyes. From behind its mask it is smiling, but it has no mouth."

What inspired The Girl from the Well? How did the story come to be?

Once upon a time, I was an office flunky making my living dissecting technical manuals, and doing so at an office inside a building that had seen better days. Since technical manuals require a lot of overtime, and because other people working in the building also required overtime, and because I looked like a cleaned up version of The Ring girl, I wound up scaring a lot of guys and girls every time I left the building at the same time they did. My idea of a 'good' ghost came about then (mostly because when they grew accustomed to it and started teasing me about looking like the undead, I protested that I was the good kind of undead.)

I started thinking about how a novel would read like from the perspective of what in other books would have been the story's antagonist.

Can you tell us a little bit about your characters Okiku and Tarquin? What sets them apart from other YA characters? What makes them special or unique?

Though not always the case, females in novels are often depicted as being more emotional than their male counterparts. With The Girl from the Well, the roles were reversed. Okiku is the brains and the detached observer of events. Tark is more emotional and snarky – he's also the sarcastic one of the duo. I'd also written Okiku as someone who considers herself a supporting character rather than as the story's heroine (despite being one); hence, her fascination with other people's lives (Tark's and Callie's, especially) and why she is hesitant about relaying much about her own, though she's the book's narrator.

The Girl from the Well is bound to awesomely spook many readers...what was the last creeptastic thing (book/movie/tv show/etc) that kept you up at night or gave you the chills?

I am a huge Asian horror movie fan, and recently there's this Thai horror film that came out called 3 am that scared the crap out of me. It's actually made up of three short stories. The first is about a group of sisters who run a wig shop, who become haunted when they are sold human hair belonging to someone who had committed suicide. The second concerns a mortician who falls in love with a corpse bride he is watching over. The third involves a group of office workers playing pranks on each another, until they go too far. I love these small budget films, because they take the time to build the creepy atmosphere and weave it around their stories.

Fill in the blanks:

I’m really awesome at playing video games. This is not going to be a skill set that's going to make me rich any time soon, but it's always been my way to de-stress after a long day. I am probably going to be one of those eighty year old grandmas playing Grand Theft Auto XXXVIII.

I’m really embarrassed to admit that I have never properly learned how to ride a bike. In my defense, driving in Manila can be a frightening experience. Riding a bike is even worse.  

The last great book I read was Snuff by Terry Pratchett

If you were to create and bake a cupcake inspired by The Girl from the Well, what would it look and taste like, and what would you call it?

If we're being realistic, it would actually taste like crap and look like a cat had thrown up in it, because I'm a horrible baker. But if we're basing this on the theory that I can bake edible things, the cupcake bases would resemble a little well made of matcha green tea wrapped in gray fondant. The frosting would be swirly dark chocolate made to look like long, creepy hair. I'd call them Matcha Malice cupcakes.

Thank you so much for stopping by, Rin!

website * goodreads * twitter 

Despite an unsettling resemblance to Japanese revenants, Rin always maintains her sense of hummus. Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, she keeps four pets: a dog, two birds, and a husband. Dances like the neighbors are watching.

Her work, The Girl from the Well, is a YA psychological horror novel due out in Fall 2014, pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge". She is represented by Nicole LaBombard and Rebecca Podos of the Helen Rees Agency.

Win a copy of The Girl From The Well!

The peeps at Sourcebooks Fire have offered up one copy for one winner.

DETAILS

-US only

-ends 8/26/14

-must be 13+ to enter

-winner will be emailed and must claim prize within 48 hours

-Word Spelunking is not responsible for lost, damaged, or stolen prizes

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