Book Spotlight and Author Interview
Magali was kind enough to answer some questions for the magazine. Check out
what she had to say...
I finished the book back in August of 2014 while I was still in university. At the time, I was sure it was
perfect, but after querying and getting a lot (and I mean, a lot!) of rejections, I decided to press pause.
In total, I have edited this book seventy-one times, revised it three times, and rewrote it once. And alt-
hough it may seem like a lot, it was the exact right amount to make it what it is today: a published book.
Evernight Publishing took a chance on me as a new author, and I am ever so thankful to them. They
care about their authors, and want to sell their books while being approachable and always willing to
help.
The story’s raw base idea comes from an experience I had when I was around eleven years old. My
sister and I, along with a few neighbourhood kids, used to go play in the woods a lot back when my
small town still had some forest. There was one dense, dark forest with a lot of pines, and not too far
from that one was a larger one but more with high grass and dunes. We went into the one with dunes at
one point with my six-month-old pup, and at one point, she got loose and ran off. Well, not too long after
chasing her, she came running back to us shaking. We ended up going toward where she ran from
while I held her in my arms and came upon a large black tree. It looked like it had been burned since
there were no leaves, and it was pitch black. The weirdest thing was that everything around it within ten
feet was dead…withered. When I cracked one of the branches, it was greenish/white inside, meaning it
was still alive. My dog whimpered and cried as I got closer to the trunk, and when I touched it, it was ice
cold to the point it felt like I had burned my fingers. The neighborhood kids touched it as well and not
only did they confirm the strange feeling, one actually got a weird static shock from it. Well, we finally
left, and years later, I barely thought of the tree because we didn’t go into those woods much anymore
as the town was tearing it down bit by bit. Today, both woods are gone to make way for houses… The
even weirder thing? The house that’s just over where the black tree used to be is always for sale. Eve-
ryone who’s ever moved in there moved out a few months later.
It relives me, actually. I feel like I’ve taken a weight off my brain every time I write. What ex-
hausts me is my day job, which makes it harder and harder to actually have any to write at all
anymore.
An owl since I write best at night.