When Dusty Crabtree thought about writing, she generally gravitated toward short stories or essays. She is a high school English teacher here in the Oklahoma City area and has had plenty of opportunities to teach and edit the writing of others. But time to write a complete work herself? Well…
But she had a friend and that friend gave her an encouraging nudge. And before long, her ideas and characters about darkness, light, shadows, morals and choices every teen can relate to came to fruition. “Shadow Eyes” was the resulting junior fiction novel and it is now for sale. And, receiving great reviews. Check out what’s being said thus far about the novel on Amazon:
“Such a great read! MAKE YOU[R] TEENAGE DAUGHTER READ THIS!!!! Help them understand it[‘s] okay not to give in to peer pressure!” ~musapublishing
“I am a mother of a young teenager and this is definitely a book I will encourage her to read as she hits high school age. I love the way that this book shows there are forces out there that can influence us in negative ways and that we have a choice to follow them or not.” ~Amazon
“Awesome book! Picked it up at 7 in the evening and didn’t put it back down til I finished reading at 2 am. The way the author introduces the characters draws you in from the beginning and never lets go. I would recommend this book to anyone.” ~Amazon
Crabtree feels that reading is a way of assisting students AND adults in building decision-making skills. She writes:
“I intentionally wrote Shadow Eyes to be a moral-promoting book with life-changing lessons, while still being intriguing and appealing to teens as well as adults. I want to get Shadow Eyes into the hands of teens who desperately need positive role-models and media that will uplift them instead of teach them that being immoral is okay. Teens are my passion – I’m a high school teacher and youth sponsor at our church. Writing this book was just another avenue for me to pursue that passion.”
Let’s take a few glimpses into this work. After all, you might want to know a little bit about the storyline, right?
Iris Kohl lives in a world populated by murky shadows that surround, harass, and entice unsuspecting individuals toward evil. But she is the only one who can see them. She’s had this ability to see the shadows, as well as brilliantly glowing light figures, ever since an obscure, tragic incident on her fourteenth birthday three years earlier. (language from the Shadow Eyes pages on Goodreads.com)
Curious? How about a few quotes from the manuscript?
Three years of dealing with the visions had taught me how to cope in various ways, but I’d never gotten used to walking among herds of people that were ignorant of the truth I was forced to see.
It was as if his green eyes were my kryptonite, making all my defensive powers of wit and sarcasm useless. I was exposed and vulnerable. But for some reason, with Patrick…I liked it.
I closed my eyes tightly and slowly put my hand to my forehead. I didn’t have to be completely lucid to recognize that our wreck of a situation had just escalated from a mild concussion to being thrown through the windshield of the car.
Okay, so we have Iris who can see things others can’t. Patrick who is obviously someone to avoid…or is he? And trouble. And, according to good storytellers…when there’s Trouble, THEN you’ve got a story.
So, check out Shadow Eyes, support your local authors and buy a copy. Heck, buy two! And find out if YOU can also see trouble just around the corner. Or, next page…enjoy!
[kelly]
Check out the flier below for all kinds of information about how and where you can find Shadow Eyes:
