Mara Madness Blog Tour: Asylum Post + Scavenger Hunt!
Michelle Hodkin’s in the house and talking the asylum and true events in The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. Oh, and make sure and check out our Mara review here!
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Hey Girls in the Stacks readers!
I’m Michelle, the author of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER, which is kind of a weird book. If you’ve been diligently avoiding poilers of any kind (which I highly recommend, FYI), then look away, because I’m about to reveal some.
The book follows a sixteen year old girl named Mara Dyer as she wakes up from a hospital with no memory of how she got there. All she and the reader know is that she was in an accident and that her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister died when a building collapsed with the four of them inside it.
(Last chance to look away!)
In the book, I called that building the Tamerlane State Lunatic Asylum but what I haven’t publicly said before now is that the asylum actually exists. It has a different name and is located in a different city and state — Laurelton, Rhode Island isn’t a real city. But I based my descriptions of the asylum in the book on actual photographs of the actual asylum that I received. And the real building? It really did collapse.
In Mara Dyer’s world, the Tamerlane State Lunatic Asylum was constructed in 1879 in Laurelton, Rhode Island, just outside of Providence. The building became necessary due to overcrowding of nearby facilities, but year after year of state budget cuts caused the building to fall into a dangerous state of disrepair. An incident in the children’s wing involving a failure of the door pulley system resulted in the permanent closure of Tamerlane’s doors in 1973.
In reality, the wreckage and remaining structures of the asylum still exist today. The blackboard room that’s mentioned in the book is still there. And eventually, all of the photos I received are going to be on http://www.maradyer.com/ so readers can view them, too.
I’ve said before that THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER is based on true events. Which events are true and which aren’t I can’t entirely say, but I can say that I changed the name and location of the asylum for legal reasons. And that Mara Dyer is based on my perception of a very real girl.
If you want to know more than that, you’re just going to have to read it (smile).
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Thanks Michelle for stopping by and sharing some cool, if not just a little creepy details!!
Scavenger Hunt Details!!!!
Each blog on the tour (21 stops) will have a clue. The clues will be letters that spell out an important line from the book. Even if you haven’t read the book you should be able to piece it together! The last day to solve the clue and enter for cool prizes is the September 30th, 2011.
What are these cool prizes you may ask? Two people will win a signed, finished copy of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer!!
You can find the full tour schedule here. That way you can get all the clues! Once you have the line from the book figured out you can go here to enter the giveaway!
Here is our clue:
Michelle is such a tease! =P I am extremely creeped out to think that the asylum was a real place O_O Can’t wait to see those pics!
Michelle is such a tease! =P I am extremely creeped out to think the asylum is real O_O Can’t wait to see those pics!
Darn it! I read it! I should really start listening to warnings…
Can’t wait to read Mara Dyer! Creepiness is definitely my thing.
Love the post! And love the insight on the Asylum!!
I loved the creepy old asylum aspects of the story, so it’s great to know it’s based on a real place. I also can’t wait to see the pictures!
I’m looking forward to getting to this book on my TBR pile. I’ve heard such great things about it.
I am so very excited for this book! I am counting down until Tuesday when I can buy it
[...] (Read review here and speacial guest post by Michelle Hodkin here) [...]
It kind of sounds like the Hudson River State Asylum. It was built in 1873, it went way over in budget couldn’t be taken care of properly, had a fire and collapsed partially.