Guest Post & Giveaway: Aviva Orr author of The Mist of Bronte Moor

The Mist on Bronte Moor
By: Aviva Orr
Publisher: WiDO Publishing
Published: Jan. 8, 2013
Genre: YA

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When fifteen-year-old Heather Jane Bell is diagnosed with alopecia and her hair starts falling out in clumps, she wants nothing more than to escape her home in London and disappear off the face of the earth.

Heather gets her wish when her concerned parents send her to stay with a great-aunt in West Yorkshire. But shortly after she arrives, Heather becomes lost on the moors and is swept through the mist back to the year 1833. There she encounters fifteen-year-old Emily Brontë and is given refuge in the Brontë Parsonage.

Unaware of her host family’s genius and future fame, Heather struggles to cope with alopecia amongst strangers in a world foreign to her. While Heather finds comfort and strength in her growing friendship with Emily and in the embrace of the close-knit Brontë family, her emotions are stretched to the limit when she falls for Emily’s brilliant but troubled brother, Branwell.

Will Heather return to the comforts and conveniences of the twenty-first century? Or will she choose love and remain in the harsh world of nineteenth-century Haworth?

Writing Tips from the Brontë Sisters:

Writing the Mist on Brontë Moor involved plenty of research and gave me an even greater respect for the Brontë family and their work. The Brontës may have been geniuses with an inherent talent for storytelling, but they were also hard working authors who devoted their lives to their craft. Here are some tips from the world’s most beloved novelists:

They read—a lot:

Patrick Brontë taught his children to value reading at an early age. As a family, they devoured the classics (Milton, Bunyan, Coleridge, Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, and Shelley, to name a few). In addition, they subscribed to magazines and read several newspapers on a daily basis.

They wrote consistently:

Starting during childhood, the Brontës filled hundreds of tiny homemade books with tales of their imaginary kingdoms: Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal. They also wrote poetry, kept diaries, and corresponded via letters regularly.

Although Charlotte, Emily, and Anne died prematurely, they left behind a large volume of poems and seven completed novels between them.

They wrote with passion:

The Brontës were passionate about many things (nature, politics, literature, art, and the plight of women in nineteenth-century England). They channeled these passions into their writing and, in doing so, created strong, memorable heroines and timeless tales.

They persevered:

In 1837, Robert Southey (then poet laureate of England) advised a young and ambitious Charlotte Brontë to put down her pen and pick up her apron (I’m paraphrasing, of course). Thankfully, she didn’t heed his advice.

Nine years later, Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor, was rejected several times. While it was being rejected, her sisters’ first novels, Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights, were picked up for publication. In response, Charlotte shelved The Professor and went on to write Jane Eyre. And the rest is, well, you know…

 Originally from South Africa, Aviva now lives in Southern California with her husband, two daughters, and two Yorkie terriers (Lucy and Branwell).

Aviva holds a master's degree in English and has a keen interest in early British literature. The Mist on Brontë Moor is her first novel and will be released by WiDo Publishing on January 8, 2013. 

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