Martina McAtee

Martina McAtee is a best-selling author and the winner of the 2016 Reader's Favorite Gold Medal for her first book, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. She lives in Jupiter, Florida with her teenage daughters, her best friend, two attack Chihuahuas, and two shady looking cats. By day she is a registered nurse, but by night she writes young adult books about reapers, zombies, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. She wrote her first story when she was five with an orange crayon on a legal pad she stole from her mom's office. She's been writing ever since.

Her influences include Christopher Pike, R.L.Stine, Joss Whedon, L.J. Smith, and even J.K. Rowling. Living in South Florida provides her with plenty of material for the weird worlds she writes about. When she isn't working, teaching, or writing, she's reading or watching shows involving reapers, zombies, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures.

Her novels, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, Dark Dreams and Dead Things, and Loving You with Teeth and Claws are on sale now at Amazon, Barnes &Noble, and Books A Million. She is currently working on the fourth book in the 'Dead Things' series, Sinister Souls and Dead Things due to release soon.

## History of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things

After Martina's mother passed away, she wanted to test her parent's theory that her calling was to write. The only problem, Martina hadn't written a word in over ten years.

In 2014, November NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) rolled around and she knew it was time to put pen to paper. Martina set her goal at 50,000 words or give up writing forever.

About a year before NaNoWriMo, she had a dream. A girl with fiery red hair parading through the snow, leading a group of supernatural creatures and communicating with the ghost of a silver-haired boy. It never left her, and she even compiled a notebook full of notes that she still has. Given time, those very notes became book one and two of the dead things series.

In three months, Martina had written about 100k words and after another six months, it was ready to be published. If not for the thumbs up from her friend, Melissa, and her work friend, we would never get to see how amazing the dead things series is.

In the first few drafts, Josephine and Miller had nothing to do with any part of the plot, it was Allister who organized the whole thing. But during the second draft, the addition of the Oracle and the witch was perfect.

The support for this series was endless from her family: her daughter, Mikyla, her sister, Susan, her nieces, Shannon and Dani. Her best friend, Melissa, for reading the book three times for grammatical errors. Lee Ann for reading the book and encouraging her. Kathy, who was proud as her mother would have been. Nathalia Suellen for the gorgeous cover design. Chance Miller, who listened to various plot ideas and characters. Jo Micheals for making the book beautiful. K.M. Walther and Heidi Johnson for helping edit the book. Amber Garcia, Molly Phipps, Layla Venturini and Jennifer Malone Wright for their support and reassurance. Beta readers and the launch team for reading through.

And of course there were monumental moments along the way: the first five-star review, seeing the books in Grammy swag bags and the teen choice awards, the faction wars, and the seeing the deadlings (the Facebook group Martina runs) interact with each other and the books.