Middle-grade author, Ciera Burch, stops by Geeks Vibes Nation to talk about her latest novel, Camp Twisted Pine. In this exclusive interview, Ciera talks about the novel’s inspirations, balancing serious themes with spooky adventure, and her favorite part of writing the novel.
GVN: Hi Ciera! Thank you for returning to Geek Vibes Nation to discuss your latest novel, Camp Twisted Pine. Could you start by telling our audience about yourself and your work?
Hi! Thanks for having me again. I’m Ciera Burch, a queer Black writer of children’s books who loves ice cream and Dungeons and Dragons and has too many plants and D&D dice for my own good. I currently have two middle-grade novels, Finch House and Camp Twisted Pine, and a YA novel, Something Kindred. My work tends to deal with family, identity, and, of course, the delightfully fun supernatural like haunted houses, ghosts, and cryptids.
GVN: Your latest novel, Camp Twisted Pine, is a delightfully spooky summer adventure. Can you tell us where the inspiration for the novel came from?
Growing up, I always wanted to go to summer camp, but my mom wasn’t having it. Luckily, my 6th grade class went on a week-long field trip to a place called Mt. Misery in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, my home state. We weren’t allowed any electronics—though my flip phone probably wouldn’t have worked too well in the middle of the woods!—and fully had to immerse ourselves in the outdoors instead. While on a hike a while ago, I was reminiscing about that trip, which was the first time I’d had any real prolonged outdoorsy time, and one thing led to another, and I found myself chomping at the bit to write a summer camp novel! And the Pine Barrens felt like the perfect place to set it, considering it has its very own built-in cryptid, which also happens to be my favorite—the Jersey Devil.
GVN: Naomi is such a strong and resourceful heroine. What went into the process of creating her? Did she surprise you in ways you didn’t expect?
Honestly, like most of my main characters, she came to me pretty fully formed. I knew I wanted to write a summer camp novel and the moment I did, I also knew that I needed a main character who had absolutely zero interest in attending. She surprised me in a lot of ways, but I think her timidness was most surprising. She’s a very smart girl who leans into the logical over the fantastical, so her needing proof and facts made sense, but I was constantly caught off guard by her reactions to other people’s opinions of her and how it influenced her choices, and how hard it could be for her to make up her mind about certain things, even just to herself.
GVN: The novel masterfully weaves in and balances themes such as finding one’s voice, family, and friendship. Why do you feel it was so important to include those themes?
Ah, thank you. I thought it was important because those are facts of life, you know? We all have to figure out who we are—and it’s a lifelong process, but definitely one that begins in adolescence. There are so many times in life when we need to voice our thoughts or stand up for ourselves and others and people, especially people assigned female at birth, are so often told to shrink themselves or make their voices quieter or softer or sweeter in ways that are detrimental to them and the world at large. So, I knew it was important to portray this young girl coming into her own and learning that her voice is important and valued, not just to other people either, but also to herself. Same when it comes to friends and family! Being able to communicate what you need in relationships with other people is an important skill, especially when you love and value those people and they feel the same about you. It can be so hard to be a person—kid or adult—and so I feel it’s important to show how we all need to communicate and check in on each other. Because sometimes you make mistakes and sometimes other people make mistakes, including adults.
GVN: The novel’s supporting characters are also great! What do you think is the key to creating vivid secondary characters?
This was my first time writing such a larger supporting cast and I was actually worried about it, until I realized that them not being the main characters didn’t matter. For me, I wanted to write them the same way that I wrote Naomi—as fully fleshed out, fully realized people. In their own lives, they aren’t background characters in Naomi’s story, she’s a background character in theirs. I had to center them in my mind as people, not secondary characters, and everything really clicked so much better from there.
GVN: What was your favorite part of writing this novel? Did you face any challenges while writing it? If so, how did you overcome them?
My favorite part was getting to do more research on the Pine Barrens! There was so much I didn’t know about the area despite having visited and being from Jersey, and learning about its unique ecology and protected state was really cool, actually. That was also one of the challenges I faced, however—trying not to get bogged down in the research. When we learn something we think is interesting, I think it’s only natural to want to share, especially since Naomi is the type of character to want to share knowledge and it would’ve been easy to info-dump through her, but at the end of the day I had to remember that I was telling a story—a story with fantastical elements, at that—and so while the type of pine trees or the history of the mining culture in the Pine Barrens could be fascinating to read in nonfiction, I had a story to tell. And I had to make the Pine Barrens mine, not a one to one research paper.
GVN: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Everything you write doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it won’t be, because nothing in life is. But it will be yours, and the more you write, the more you’ll get a handle on your own unique voice and you’ll come to appreciate that, even when the writing is hard. Even if you have the same idea as every single person in a 100 foot radius, no one else can write it like you can, and if you want to share that writing with the world—or even just a friend or two—then you absolutely can and should.
GVN: How did writing this novel differ from your others? Is there something you learned while writing this one that you will take into writing the next?
This novel definitely had more of a love for nature in it than my others, but also a deep gratitude for friends. We don’t tend to go through our lives alone and so I really wanted to emphasize just how important friendship can be, especially during scary, or even fantastical, times. I think while writing this one I’ve mostly learned not to shy away from certain elements of storytelling that I want to include, no matter the age I’m writing for. It can be so easy to get in our heads as creators in a culture that’s starting to feel very censored for anything outside of a very particular and constricting norm, but I have to stay true to myself as a person and a writer, and stay true to the authenticity of my characters and their identities as well.
GVN: Can you tell us about what you’re working on next?
I’m currently working on my next middle grade! It’s about Olivia, a 13-year-old, who, after her older brother comes out as gay, starts to realize that she doesn’t quite have the same feelings as her currently very boy-obsessed friends or the other kids at her middle school, and starts to turn quite literally invisible.
GVN: Where can our readers connect with you online?
You can find me on Instagram @cierasburch and on my website at cieraburch.com.
About The Author
Ciera Burch is a lifelong writer and ice cream aficionado. She has a BA from American University and an MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in The American Literary Magazine, Underground, Five Points, Stork, and Blackbird. Her work was also chosen as the 2019 One City One Story read for the Boston Book Festival. While she is originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, DC, with her stuffed animals, plants, and far too many books. Visit Ciera at CieraBurch.com.
About The Book
Whispering Pines meets Small Spaces in this spooky middle grade novel about a girl whose first summer camp experience is disrupted by a menacing creature abducting her fellow campers.
Eleven-year-old Naomi loves all things outdoors—birds and beetles, bats and bunnies—in theory. She explores nature in the best possible way: the cold, hard facts in books. So when her parents’ announcement of their impending divorce comes hand in hand with sending Naomi and her younger twin brothers to summer camp while they figure things out, it’s salt in the wound for Naomi and her avoidance of hands-on experience.
Camp Twisted Pine could be worse. The counselors are nice, and Naomi likes her cabinmates, especially Jackie, whose blunt personality and frank dislike of the camp draws Naomi in quickly. Jackie is also hard of hearing and uses a hearing aid, and the girls quickly develop a routine of sign language lessons in their free time, which Naomi sees as a welcome break when all the s’mores-making and nature walks get to be a bit much.
But the campers aren’t the only ones who roam the grounds of Camp Twisted Pine. When people start to go missing, including Jackie, Naomi has to find a way to save everyone—and herself. Her practical knowledge of the outdoors may still be rudimentary at best, but she has years of studying and the scientific method to fall back on. Can Naomi identify and stop the dangerous predator before it’s too late?
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When he isn’t writing for Geek Vibes Nation or The Cinema Spot, Tristian can be found typing away at one of the novels or screenplays he’s been working on forever.
