Starting the Next Chapter: The Dark Unwinding Tour

Welcome to day 3 of The Dark Unwinding blog tour! I'm so glad to take part in this tour, for The Dark Unwinding is a wonderful book and Sharon Cameron is such a gracious author. She has been great to work with, as evidenced by her guest post today. When asked to write about her favorite real-life mystery, she really came through with an enlightening post that speaks to the heart of The Dark Unwinding. I hope you all have as much fun reading it as I did!

Burning Curiosity

by Sharon Cameron

I adore hidden things and the unknown. Hence my younger self’s obsession with Nancy Drew and my older self’s fascination with just about anything shrouded by time. The past conceals so much that is still true, and yet we don’t know what that truth is. The curiosity burns! Tollund Man (see image here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ tolland-man.html) is 2,000 year old body that is slightly gross but super fascinating, and the wondering about who he was and why he died will probably kill me someday. I have the same unfortunate problem with a missing chest of Jacobite gold and the inhabitants of Roanoke.

But a mystery perhaps less epic, and yet just as curiosity burning to me, was: what was up with the Fifth Duke of Portland? The Duke inherited an ancient house and vast lands in Nottinghamshire in the mid-1800s, and not only did he employ a small town’s worth of men, keeping them at work with extravagant building projects, but he had a railway in his basement, for the purpose of delivering roast chickens, day or night, and he communicated with servants only by letterbox. He had walls built around his bed, and a special carriage made so that no one could see when he was in it (taking the precaution to often run the carriage back and forth when he wasn’t in it, so no one could be sure). All the rooms in his sprawling mansion were painted pink, and he had miles of underground, gaslit tunnels dug, so he walk the grounds of his estate alone and unseen.

My first reaction? Well, that’s a little crazy! But then I thought about how time can hide the truth. The man was definitely squandering his fortune, but is there a better use for money than to provide twenty years of employment to hundreds families that might have otherwise died in a workhouse? And how often does anyone just up and tell a Duke that he isn’t behaving normally? And what is normal, anyway? What if he wasn’t crazy, but just shy, or disfigured, or suffering from an anxiety disorder? The curiosity burns!

So instead of letting my curiosity possibly kill me this time, I allowed the idea of the Duke’s bizarre estate and to become the inspiration for Stranwyne Keep in The Dark Unwinding, creating a child-like inventor as its reclusive owner. In my story, Uncle Tulman uses grandiose building projects as a way to express himself. The tunnels, pink walls, ritualistic habits, and machines of clockwork are his means of control, a method of understanding a world that is utterly confusing to him. Maybe the Fifth Duke of Portland, in his own way, was doing much the same.

About the Author

Photo by Rusty Russel (2011)

Sharon Cameron was awarded the 2009 Sue Alexander Most Promising New Work Award by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators for her debut novel, The Dark Unwinding. When not writing Sharon can be found thumbing dusty tomes, shooting her longbow, or indulging in her lifelong search for secret passages.

Find Sharon on:

Her website: sharoncameronbooks.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sharon-Cameron/218828031528005

Twitter: @CameronSharonE

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11733187-the-dark-unwinding

About the Book

The Dark Unwinding begins when seventeen year old Katharine Tulman is sent to her uncle’s remote and bizarre estate to have him committed to an asylum. But instead of a lunatic, she finds a child-like, genius inventor with his own set of rules, employing a village of nine hundred people rescued from the workhouses of London. Katharine is torn between protecting her own inheritance and preserving her uncle’s peculiar world that she has come to care for deeply, a choice made even more complicated by a gray-eyed apprentice, and the strange visions and nightmares that have her secretly fearing for her own sanity. 

Check Out the Tour!

August 26 Hannah @ The Book Vortex

Guest Post- Introduction

August 27 Marielle @ Book Thoughts by Marielle

Interview with Sharon

August 28 Marla @ Starting the Next Chapter

Guest Post: Favorite Real Life Mystery

August 29 Amy @ Denim Jacket Librarian

List: 10 Pieces of Advice

August 30 Lauren @ The Housework Can Wait

Interview with Sharon

August 31 Tirzah @ The Compulsive Reader