Third Place Books is pleased to host a virtual evening of spooky campfire stories for kids! Moderated by journalist Aurora Domgiuez and featuring Lora Senf and her chilling tale The Clackity; writer Mat Heagerty and illustrator Sam Owen and their graphic novel Lumberjackula; and writer Darcy Marks with her rollicking tale of kids from Hell in Grounded for All Eternity. Circle up around the virtual campfire!
This event will be broadcast live on Zoom. Registering will provide you with a unique access link in an email. During the event, you can ask questions using the Q&A feature, or chat with fellow attendees. A recording of the event will be made available and emailed to all who register.
This author talk is free! You can sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book.
for this virtual event
Reminiscent of Doll Bones, this deliciously eerie middle grade novel tells the story of a girl who must enter a world of ghosts, witches, and monsters to play a game with deadly consequences and rescue her aunt.
Evie Von Rathe lives in Blight Harbor—the seventh-most haunted town in America—with her Aunt Desdemona, the local paranormal expert. Des doesn’t have many rules except one: Stay out of the abandoned slaughterhouse at the edge of town. But when her aunt disappears into the building, Evie goes searching for her.
There she meets The Clackity, a creature who lives in the shadows and seams of the slaughterhouse. The Clackity makes a deal with Evie to help get Des back in exchange for the ghost of John Jeffrey Pope, a serial killer who stalked Blight Harbor a hundred years earlier. Evie must embark on a journey into a strange otherworld filled with hungry witches, penny-eyed ghosts, and a memory-thief, all while being pursued by a dead man whose only goal is to add Evie to his collection of lost souls.
For fans of The Okay Witch and Fake Blood, this hilarious middle grade graphic novel follows a half-vampire, half-lumberjack boy who feels torn between his parents and just wants to be a dancer.
Jack is in a pickle. His lumberjack mom wants him to go to Mighty Log Lumberjack Prep to learn how to chop wood and wear flannel. His vampire dad wants him to go to Sorrow’s Gloom Vampire School to learn how to turn into a bat and drink blood-orange juice. And Jack has a secret: what he really wants to do is dance.
When he finds out about Tip Tap Twinkle Toes Dance Academy from new friend Plenty, Jack feels he’s finally found the place where he can be his true self. But he’s too afraid of disappointing his family to tell them. What’s a half-lumberjack, half-vampire boy to do?
To summon the confidence to pursue his dreams, Jack will have to embrace every part of himself—his lumberjack toughness, his vampire eeriness, and most especially his awesome dance moves.
A group of kids from hell come to Earth on one of the craziest nights of the year—Halloween—in this snarky, witty middle grade adventure about teamwork, friendship, shattering expectations, and understanding the world (or otherworld) around us.
Mal and his friends are just your regular average kids from hell. The suburbs that is, not the fiery pit part. But when Hell’s Bells ring out—signaling that a soul has escaped from one of the eternal circles, Mal and his friends can’t help but take the opportunity for a little adventure.
Before they know it, they’ve somehow slipped through the veil and found themselves in the middle of Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween night. And what’s even worse, they’ve managed to bring the escaped soul with them! As the essence of one of history’s greatest manipulators gains power by shifting the balance on Earth, Mal and his squad-mates—along with some new friends that they meet along the way—work desperately to trap the escapee, save the people of Earth from the forces of evil, and find the portal back to their own dimension.
If they can’t manage it before their parents realize they’re gone, they’ll be grounded for an eternity. And an eternity in hell is a very, very long time.
Lora Senf is a writer of dark and twisty middle grade and young adult stories. When she isn’t reading for school, she’s reading fiction—mostly horror or anything a little weird and unsettling. Lora credits her love of words to her parents and to the public library that was walking distance from her childhood home. Lora is a member of SCBWI, Horror Writers Association, and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. You can find her spending far too much time on Twitter @Lora013.
Mat Heagerty is a comic book writer, rad dad, and all-around chipper dude. He’s the writer of Martian Ghost Centaur, Unplugged and Unpopular, and Just Another Sheep, as well as the forthcoming graphic novel Lumberjackula.
Sam Owen is a freelance comic artist and character designer with a focus on making fantasy and science fiction art geared towards young adults and kids. He’s also the illustrator of Lumberjackula, a middle grade graphic novel.
Darcy Marks is a lifelong reader who learned to walk quite well with a book in front of her face, thank you very much. She lives in Vermont with her husband, three genre-defying kids and a very needy cat, where she writes rebellious fantasy books for kids. When she’s not reading or writing she explains math and science to lawyers as a forensic toxicologist and uses her several black belts to help smash the patriarchy with The Safety Team.
Aurora Lydia Dominguez is a journalist, high school teacher and college professor based in Hollywood, Florida. A journalist at heart, she worked for places like The Miami Herald and J-14 Magazine as a reporter and editor before going from the newsroom to the classroom. Aurora's passions include reading a book on Saturday mornings with her cat Luna, time with her husband Seb and pop rock shows. You can email her at aurily50@hotmail.com.
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