Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Joel A. Sutherland!
Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!
Meet the Author: Joel A. Sutherland
Joel A. Sutherland is the Silver Birch, Diamond Willow and Hackmatack Award-winning author of Be a Writing Superstar, numerous volumes of Haunted Canada (a series that now has more than 500,000 copies in print), Summer’s End (a Red Maple Award Honour Book currently in development for television by Scholastic Entertainment, Mainframe Studios and Man of Action Entertainment) and House of Ash and Bone. His new series, Haunted, has been praised by Goosebumps author R.L. Stine. He has a Masters of Information and Library Studies from Aberystwyth University in Wales and lives in southeastern Ontario with his family, where he is always on the lookout for ghosts.
About the Book: The Whisperings
Burn Our Bodies Down meets Delicious Monsters in this terrifying new young adult horror by acclaimed master of the macabre Joel A. Sutherland.
Joana and her younger brother Peter aren’t used to setting down roots. Ever since the violent murder of their mother, their father can’t stay in one place for long, haunted by the literal ghosts of the past. He has what he calls “the Whisperings,” and will do anything to protect his children from the horrors that torment him.
When the family moves to Burlington, Vermont, Joana thinks they’ve finally found a place to call home. They rent the lower half of a creepy yet comfortable mansion downtown, and Joana actually begins to fit in at school, thanks in part to Willem, a handsome (and single) classmate.
But a near-death experience awakens the Whisperings in Joana, and she soon realizes her family isn’t the only family living in the house. She meets the Keils — ghosts forced to relive their own gruesome murders every night. As they say, misery loves company . . . and suddenly, Joana is forced to protect the ones closest to her from a supernatural threat, in this horrifying haunted house story for teen readers.
About the Book: House of Ash & Bone
The Haunted meets House of Salt and Sorrows in this young adult debut horror by acclaimed master of the macabre Joel A. Sutherland.
Seventeen-year-old Josephine Jagger is a talented writer with special abilities she doesn’t fully understand. Over the years she has developed methods to cope with the voices she hears in her head, but the old house her family has inherited in Vermont makes Josephine question what’s real and what’s not more than anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s filled with shadows, and whispers, and the unshakable feeling of being watched. Josephine then catches her first glimpse of a shadowy woman with long hair, pale skin, an impossibly wide smile and hollow pits for eyes. Her name is Dorcas, the ghost of a witch who died three hundred years ago. She has summoned the family to Vermont to ensnare them — then consume them — in order to rise from the grave and live again..
~Author Chat~
YABC: What inspired you to write this book?
Joel A. Sutherland: A few years ago, three characters popped into my head, quite uninvited. It was a middle-aged father, looking quite tired and haggard, and his teen daughter and son. He’d just woken them in the middle of the night and told them he’d heard the Whisperings again, so they had to move immediately. With their few meagre possessions, the kids got into their dad’s car, no questions asked, and off they drove deep into the woods of Vermont, leaving behind an untold number of questions in my head. I knew then that I had to write the book that became The Whisperings to get the answers I needed.
YABC: What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?
Joel A. Sutherland: Without giving too much away, there’s a scene near the end of the novel in which the main character, Joana, gets to spend a little time with her mother, who died when she was three years old. Joana blames herself for her mother’s death and her journey to work through her misplaced guilt is at the heart of this haunted story, so this scene is the emotional climax. It was especially hard for me to write since I lost my mom while working on The Whisperings after a lengthy battle with superficial siderosis, a rare, disabling degenerative disorder affecting the brain and spinal cord. In a way, writing this book helped me work through a lot of the pain I was living through at the time.
YABC: Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?
Joel A. Sutherland: The value of time! When I started seeking publication, I had all the time in the world, and yet I wasn’t nearly as productive as I am now. Back then, I worked part-time and didn’t have any kids, so I’d often spend a lot of time playing online solitaire and scrolling social media when I sat down to write. These days, I work full time as a Library Director, have three amazing children, and am typically working on five or six books in various stages of production at any given time. So, when I have a spare hour, you better believe I make the most of it, and I’m always ready to turn on my laptop or open a notebook and start writing.
YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?
Joel A. Sutherland: Everything! Beautiful, haunting, evocative – it’s perfect. Cover artist Jorge Mascarenhas is a master and captured the mix of fear and sorrow that are woven throughout the story. I love that the girl’s mouth is covered by a smiling wisp of fog, that insects are practically crawling all over her, and that she’s crying a bloody tear – all key elements of the novel that readers will slowly discover!
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you want your reader to remember from this book?
Joel A. Sutherland: For me, truly great horror stories teach us how to defeat the thing hiding under our bed, the monster lurking in our closet, or the voices only we can hear. They give us the tools we need to face our fears. They remind us that we’re not alone; when the lights go out, we all get a little scared. But in the morning, the sun always rises. That’s the main thing I hope readers (especially anyone who has lost a loved one) remember after they’ve read the final page.
YABC: What are your favorite themes or tropes?
Joel A. Sutherland: This isn’t going to shock anyone that’s familiar with my books, but I’m a sucker for classic gothic horror stories filled with old, groaning mansions and characters haunted by the ghosts of their past and their present. Some personal faves include Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King’s The Shining, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.
YABC: Do you have a playlist you listened to while writing?
Joel A. Sutherland: Always! I listen to music as I write and typically pick a different band or musician for each new book, but for The Whisperings, I mostly listened to a moody, haunting southern gothic playlist I discovered on Spotify. One song that stood out from the rest and perfectly matched the vibe of the book was “Lay This Body Down” by Sam Lee. Every time it came on, I had to pause writing and crank up the volume, and when I got back to writing the words flowing through my head were always a little bit creepier.
YABC: If you could collaborate with any other writer in history, who would it be?
Joel A. Sutherland: Tough question! How do I pick just one? All right, if I must, I’ll cheat and pick two, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. I read Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus and Dracula when I was quite young, and they were very influential. Their themes and imagery have stuck with me ever since.
YABC: Any new releases you are looking forward to in 2025?
Joel A. Sutherland: I can’t wait to read Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, released earlier this year. I’ve heard great things about it, and one of Hendrix’s earlier novels, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, is one of the best modern horror novels I’ve read.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
Joel A. Sutherland: So much! My first young adult novel, House of Ash and Bone (Tundra Books), will be released in paperback with an all-new horror-infused cover right around the same time that The Whisperings is published. I also write a popular series of true ghost stories for Scholastic Canada, and the next two books, Haunted Canada: The Fourth Terrifying Collection and Hunted Canada: The Graphic Novel, Volume 2 are both being published this year as well. 2025 is shaping up to be another busy – and scary – year!
Title: The Whisperings
Author: Joel A. Sutherland
Release Date: August 5, 2025
Publisher: Tundra Books
ISBN: 9781774881019
Genre: YA Fiction – Horror
Age Range: 14 & Up
Title: House of Ash and Bone
Author: Joel A. Sutherland
Release Day: July 1, 2025
Publisher: Tundra Books
ISBN: 9781774881002
Genre: YA Fiction – Horror
Age range: 12 & Up
~ Giveaway Details ~
Eight (8) winners will receive a copy of The Whisperings in hardcover and a copy of the new paperback edition with a new cover of House of Ash and Bone (Joel A. Sutherland) ~US/CAN Only!
*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*
