(Blogoversary Celebration) Author Guest Post: Ruth Frances Long

Hi everyone, I hope you are enjoying the blogoversary celebrations.  Today, author Ruth Frances Long has stopped by the blog to share a guest post in which she introduces us to Jenny – one of the characters from her upcoming novel, The Treachery of Beautiful Things. Thank you for the guest post Ruth and for helping to celebrate Treasured Tales’ blogoversary.  😀

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Hello from Ireland and many thanks to Alishia for asking me to be part of your blog birthday. Not sure if I can cram a birthday cake down the internet but I’ll try…

Hmm… maybe not…

*hastily cleans up* *pretends nothing has happened* *eats the remains of the cake*

Happy birthday *throws confetti to distract everyone*

I’m here today to talk about my forthcoming YA novel The Treachery of Beautiful Things, and its heroine Jenny. And I should do this by putting on my serious author hat. *ahem*

One day I sat down to write and in my head a girl walked up to the edge of a piece of ancient woodland. She was so defensive, so reluctant to let anyone near her, her arms curled around her body, her shoulders slightly rounded, defending herself against the world. She had an over-large bag on her shoulder from which she pulled a rather battered bunch of flowers. She stared at the trees as if terrified of them, but all the same, she started talking.

She spoke to her brother, who had vanished seven years ago. Who had been taken by the trees. “The trees,” she said, “had swallowed him whole.”

And then the music started, music which lured her into the trees despite her fears, her abject terror as it turned out, although I didn’t realise how terrified she was at the time. Because Jenny suffers from a severe form of dendrophobia, the fear of trees. And small wonder.

When she was ten years old, she saw the trees come to life and drag her beloved brother into the forest, never to be seen since. This would be reason enough, but Jenny’s life is even more complicated than that because no one has ever believed her version of events. The world, her parents, all the doctors she has been brought along to see… no one has ever believed her.

Jenny could have buckled under the pressure, could have rejected what she knew to be true and fallen in with everyone else’s version of the world, but she never did. Because Jenny is stubborn. And deep down, although she doesn’t realise it herself, Jenny is strong.

I didn’t realise it at first. She doesn’t always come across as strong, probably because she doesn’t think she is. And she would probably laugh at anyone who said it to her. But that’s part of it. Her stubbornness, her self belief, her own brand of strength to keep true to what she knew for so many years in spite of what everyone else has told her. But Jenny hides so much of herself beneath the surface.

It is only when Jenny makes the leap and enters the Realm in search of her brother that she finds herself. And more, when she finds Jack—Jack, who appears at first to be another obstacle in her path, and Jack who never wanted to get involved with her in the first place. But he can see in her what Jenny herself can’t see.

And Jack is another story altogether.

I hope you’ll love them as much as I do.

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Doesn’t this make you excited to read The Treachery of Beautiful Things?

Thanks for introducing us to Jenny, Ruth.

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More information about The Treachery of Beautiful Things and author Ruth Frances Long:

goodreads ~ website ~ twitter

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Author bio (from author’s website) –

R.F. Long always had a thing for fantasy, romance and ancient mysteries. The combination was bound to cause trouble. In university she studied English Literature, History of Religions and Celtic Civilisation, which just compounded the problem.

She is represented by Suzie Townsend of Nancy Coffey Literary Management.

Her YA dark fantasy The Treachery of Beautiful Things is coming 16th August 2012 from Dial Books for Young Readers.

She lives in Wicklow, the Garden County of Ireland, and works in a specialised library of rare and unusual books.

But they don’t talk to her that often. Or maybe she’s learning not to listen. Maybe.

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Check out the competitions page, to see all the prizes that can be won during the Treasured Tales for Young Adults blogoversary celebration.

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