He’s thinking about Merle. How something seems to wait in her eyes. How he felt calm, just standing next to her. He’d found pictures of it, and despite the apparently innocent meaning of its name, it did look a bit weird, scary even. More like an animal than a flower, a spiky dragon-headed thing, with purple petals and a bloodred throat at its heart.

Great question, impossible to answer. So many amazing things to go and see – the building of the pyramids, a Viking boat putting out to sea, Man Utd winning the European Championship in 1968… The historical context of most of your novels must mean a huge amount of research prior to writing each book. What does this involve and how long does it take? Centuries before this all went down, a king named Eirikr offers himself as a human sacrifice. His people are dying because of famine and disease, and they have tried other sacrifices—both animals and human—but now nothing but a king's blood will do. As the king approaches the stone table, his wife, Queen Melle, weeps uncontrollably. Moved by her passion and love, Eirikr promises her that he will live again. Seven times in fact. Will she follow him and find him in each life? She will. And so their journey begins. July 2011: In this tale, he appears as a sixteen-year-old boy who helps an archeologist find an old Viking tomb. Despite his developmental disabilities, this Eric knows that he's "not quite the last" (2.10.53). Smart kid.don’t get many visitors,” Eric finished for him. “But there must be some kind of guest house, perhaps?” The most essential change consisted of a more monumental composition. The temple had been enlarged considerably and given a more stern shape, and the figures had been more closely assembled and they formed an unbroken relief-like row. The sketch was put on exhibition in the museum in November 1913 and in a letter to Ludvig Looström, the director of the museum, Larsson offered the painting for 35,000 Swedish kronor. [9] The young woman called Merle half turns and gestures, and now Eric notices a small group of people with her. Eric tries to suppress a laugh. He doesn’t mean to be rude, but the serious look on Merle’s face amuses him. Since the perspective of each of these stories shifts, we get to see more than one side of Eric. Of the seven stories we get about him, Eric only tells us about himself in three of them (as King Eirikr, Erika, and Eric Seven). All our other info about him comes from folks who are outside looking in.

The blood moon is a sign. It's a full moon, it's the winter solstice (so sometime in December), and it's a lunar eclipse, too, so the moon is red, like blood. Blood Red Snow White: A gripping, romantic adventure novel based on the true story of Arthur Ransome's experiences with love and betrayal in war-torn Russia. And there's gold everywhere. The warriors' shields have golden animals on them; the walls of the temple are covered in golden designs; even the three skulls hanging from the sides of the temple are covered in gold. One of them is from a young horse, but the other two are from men.

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Merle, who's been watching this exchange, tilts her head just a fraction more. Her hair falls across her eyes again. Eric notices it, and feels himself fall even faster for her. He feels ridiculous. He's wondering what to say, what to do, but she's asking him something. August 1944: This Erik swaps the c for a k, and is a middle-aged farmer who is none too thrilled with the soldier who makes a crash landing in his fields. But in the end, he dies getting the man to safety. After this rejection, the painting was sold to art collector Carl-Eric Björkegren, who offered to sell it to the Swedish History Museum for 12 million Swedish kronor. This offer caused a controversy in which people debated if the painting belonged to Nationalmuseum or the Swedish History Museum. In this debate where there were exaggerations in both directions, people claimed that the painting was both an unsurpassed masterpiece of Swedish art and a work of suspect morality. In 1987, it was sold by Sotheby's in London to a Japanese art collector. [14]

I think young people often feel that they can’t be a writer or musician or a composer because all those things are done by someone else. So the main reason for having events like this is to make kids think ‘I could do that’. If someone had come to my school when I was a teenager I might have started writing many, many years before. Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined--this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice by a three-time Printz Award Honoree. In the tenth century, an old woman named Melle recalls a series of creepy and terrifying events that happened when she and her twin brother, Eirik, were only ten years old. When their father returned from his Viking voyage that year, he brought a stranger with him who turned out to be their Uncle Tor. What do they do here? Without warning, his mind feels foggy again, and his memory is struggling, though he knows there is something else he was sent to investigate.

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Tor raises a whiskery eyebrow. His face is long and so weather-beaten it is hard to guess how old he is, and Eric notices that there is something wrong with one of his eyes. It’s milky, and doesn’t seem to focus. Maybe he’s even blind in that eye. Eric tries not to stare. What would you sacrifice for someone you've loved forever? Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award, MIDWINTERBLOOD is a dark, breathtaking and cleverly crafted paranormal love story like no other, beautifully told in seven parts and spanning ten centuries.