UK Appreciation Month; Kate Cann - Guest Post and Giveaway

Old British Traditions and the Roots of Possessed and Fire

by Kate Cann

Books often come about by happy collisions. I have a friend who lives in Newick, Sussex, and she invited me to the great bonfire festival held there every year. We stood on the edge of the road in the night and watched as this curious, carnival procession of people walked by, carrying flaming torches. Some were dressed as monks, some as Elizabethans, some as witches … it was a powerful and eerie sight. It was fun but there was something dark about its edges. I felt the same when I went to the huge Lewes bonfire festival, on November the fifth – a sense of layers and layers of tradition, all merging on this one night. I started thinking about a small town where a series of strange fire festivals and rituals were carried out, that were something to do with protection, although the meanings had been mostly forgotten. Then something shocking happens that makes the rediscovery of those meanings urgently important…

What “collided” with this was the chance I had to spend a day and a night in a haunted mansion. I’m not going to name it because the owner was miffed with me for basing Morton’s Keep, that centre for ancient evil, on his ancestral home. But it was one of the most terrifying nights of my life, and it was rich fodder for writing those books. I really felt the fear that I describe Rayne feeling, and so many details – from the ornate gates to the sinister glass box halfway up the stairs, from the one-handed clock to the fountain choked with ivy – were lifted gratefully from that ancient house!

And then there’s Morris dancing. For years I’d dismissed it as embarrassing gambolling by men with bells round their knees, waving hankies about. Then I went to the Faversham Hops festival and saw its more barbarous side. Men and woman with green and black smeared on their faces, wearing hoods or antlers, crashing wooden staves against each other – I found the pagan anarchy of the old dances quite thrilling.

The last element to collide was an interest I had in the peer pressure that surrounds teenage groups and gangs. How seductive to move to a new area and be sought out by the most glamorous group that’s there. But suppose they have bad reasons for wanting you?

Kate’s blog tour now concludes, but don’t miss her interview on Tuesday 13th November on www.diverse-pages.com

Find out more about Kate www.facebook.com/authorKateCann

Witch Crag


In a tribe where basic survival is the only priority, Kita must make a choice: to accept arranged marriages and being treated with less value than sheep, or escape and journey to the place that even the strongest men fear with their lives — Witch Crag.

But a common threat is facing the witches and sheepmen alike.

The tribes must somehow overcome their prejudices and join together if they are to win a war that threatens to destroy everything they hold as good.

 

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- Ends 30th November 
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Author Bio: 

Kate Cann has always enjoyed stories and writing. After completing two degrees at Kent University, in English and American Studies, she started working for a publisher as a copy-editor, going freelance after the birth of her two children.

It was when Kate was editing some teenage books that she decided to have a go herself. She spent a year writing her first teen title, Diving In, which was followed by two sequels, In the Deep End and Sink or Swim, as well as several other novels including Possessed and Fire.

Leaving Poppy, published in 2007, marked a new direction for Kate. A haunting psychological thriller about a girl trying to escape the suffocating grasp of her family, Leaving Poppy was shortlisted for the 2007 Booktrust Teenage Prize and won the 2008 Angus Book Award. Her latest book is Witch Crag – Kate’s first dystopian novel.

Kate lives in Hampshire with her husband where she writes full time.

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