How Our New Series Orchard Pointe Differs from The Woodsview Murders

I promised that Jolene and I would start revealing more details about our new Orchard Pointe series in early 2016, so I've been trying to figure out how to do that without spoiling anything. And then Jolene and I had a conversation this week about Orchard Pointe that I thought would give people a good idea of how it differs from our Woodsview Murders series.

The gist of our conversation was this: The setting of Orchard Pointe is as much of a main character in our series as anyone else.

Don't get me wrong--Woodsview, Massachusetts absolutely a character, and I love that place with all my heart. As I wrote in my last post, there are real people and places that inspire much of Woodsview, and it's also a love letter to all the slasher movies that we grew up watching (seriously, there are dozens and dozens of Easter eggs for 80s horror fans in HARROWED) . You'll see even more of Woodsview and the surrounding areas in book two. But at its core, HARROWED and the Woodsview series is about the Woodsview Harvester and Avery Blair. The slasher and the final girl.

The Orchard Pointe series is about this wonderful, weird little place and the things that happen there. There are characters you will explore Orchard Pointe with (and one in particular moving forward), and you will love them like we do (trust me--they're awesome). The first book will introduce you to Orchard Pointe and some of the people that both live and visit there. But it also features a big mystery, one that will be told in its entirety in this first book. From there, each book will show you more and more of Orchard Pointe, and it's going to get weirder and weirder.

When people ask me what types of movies or stories inspire Woodsview, I tell them things like Friday the 13th, Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Night of the Creeps.

But if you want to get an idea of what to expect from Orchard Pointe, I would tell you to watch all of Twin Peaks, the first five seasons of The X-Files and the entirety of The Twilight Zone. There are a couple of more direct influences for the first book, but I will save those for later.

So, that's a glimpse into what you can expect from Orchard Pointe. It's still very much a YA horror series, but with a little more mystery and a little less stabbing than Woodsview.

When people die in Orchard Pointe, they die a little more...oddly.