WINNER! The Clues to Kusachuma won a gold medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards; Pre-teen Fiction – Mystery category!
While vacationing in the mountains with their parents, suburban twins Allan and Allison discover a complex treasure hunt revealed to them, clue by clue, on small printed cards placed in secret locations. In search of each new destination, the kids find themselves roaming through the big mysterious house of their uncle as well as around the oddly-named town of End Of The Road. As the treasure hunt progresses, they are presented with more complex clues as well as challenges and danger. Along the way, they discover eerie new places, find new friends, make new enemies, and learn secrets about their family’s past. Eventually a strange world that they never knew existed is revealed to them.
In 2009, when i started writing this book, it was intended to be something entirely different. It was going to be an irreverent, silly book, but after a couple chapters i realized that it was turning into more of a serious story. I changed the beginning and forged ahead, incorporating the idea of the treasure hunt. (Once i was done with this story, i went back to the original idea that i’d had and wrote the silly, irreverent book.)
The original treasure hunters were my nephews Charlie and Thomas. During the summer of 2006, i set up a 17-step treasure hunt for them at our family’s summer house. It required them to travel all around the grounds and the nearby lake, and they managed to solve and find all of the printed cards in one day. The hunt ended at a secret tree house that i’d spent the summer building in the woods. I pulled a couple of the clues for the treasure hunt in this book directly from that original treasure hunt.
In 2018, i revisited this story and polished it up for publishing. I completely rewrote the first chapter and added to the last chapter in order to give the narrative a bit more support on either end. The title was changed multiple times before i settled on the name of the water dragon (mentioned in the text) as part of it. I may revisit these characters again, but for now, this is a stand-alone work.
The cover was illustrated by Laurel Aylesworth. You can find her art at laurelaylesworth.com
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- The Clues to Kusachuma – Hardcover
- The Clues to Kusachuma – Paperback
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