The Whispering Pines series by Heidi Lang and Kati Bartkowski

I always enjoy interviewing middle grade co-authors Heidi Lang and Kati Bartkowski! I featured the first book in this series, Whispering Pines, and I’m thrilled to announce that the whole series is finally available as a boxed set.

Rae’s father vanished without a trace—and Rae knows what happened to him. But no one believes her when she says that her father didn’t run off, that he was actually taken. Now, a year of therapy later, Rae’s mother decides they need a fresh start, and so they move to a new town in the hope that life can return to normal.

The problem is, there is nothing normal about the town of Whispering Pines.

No one knows this better than Caden. He’s lived in Whispering Pines his entire life, and he’s seen more than his fair share of weird—starting with his own family, as the town is the perfect home base for his mother’s ghost hunting business.

When several kids go missing and then show up like zombies with their eyes removed, many locals brush it off. Just another day in Whispering Pines. But Caden has a dark secret, one that may explain why someone is stealing eyes. And Rae, who knows how it feels to not be believed, may be just the person Caden needs to help him put things right.

As the two work to protect their families and their town, they encounter flesh-eating centipedes, shady corporations, another realm, and an alien-infested forest.

In our last interview, Heidi said, “This fourth book [in the Whispering Pines series] will wrap up the main storylines.” How difficult was it to “button up” everything you both established over the course of four books?

HEIDI: It was very difficult. We wanted to make sure we tied up all the loose threads from the previous three books, and also gave all the characters a satisfying story arc, which took quite a bit of juggling.

KATI: Yeah, we had Caden’s occult family drama to resolve, and Rae’s extraterrestrial family drama to conclude, and a couple of villains who needed a chance to either redeem themselves or double down on their villainy, plus, of course, the impending destruction of the entire town…it was a lot.

HEIDI: I remember repeating “why did we make things so complicated” every time we had to rethink the plot of the fourth book. Which we did a lot. But, in the end, we were both happy with how we managed to end everything…and how we were also able to keep a few smaller story threads open for potential future spin-offs. 😉

Ooh, I like the sound of spin-offs! Now that the whole Whispering Pines series is now available as a boxed set, what do you like most about it?

KATI: It’s so pretty! 🙂 The box was designed by Alicia Mikles based on the series design by Tiara Iandiorio, and uses our book 1 cover illustration, which was done by Diana Novich. Xavier Collette illustrated the covers for books 2-4.

HEIDI: We really lucked out when it came to our cover illustrators, and I love how the box looks with all of them together. But my favorite part is the fact that I personally loved getting a boxset of a whole series when I was a kid. And now I get to be on the other side of that, with my own books in a set. That makes me really happy.

Wonderful! Do you both envision future collaborations with one another?

KATI: Heidi and I each have a two-year-old at home, so finding the time to collaborate is tricky right now. But when our youngest are a little more independent, we have some things we’d definitely like to work on together. Right now we’re both working on our own projects, though.

That makes a lot of sense! What kinds of books/genres would you like to write that you aren’t currently working on? Is there a particular area of unexplored territory you’d like to experiment with?

HEIDI: I want to write adult horror. Not anything gruesome…well, maybe a little gruesome, but mostly more psychological. I have a couple of ideas I’m pretty interested in with middle aged moms as the protagonists. While I will always love writing middle grade, I’d like to explore some of those other “in the middle” ages. I’d also like to write scifi. WHISPERING PINES dips its toes into the realm of scifi, but it would be fun to fully lean into that genre.

KATI: I really want to get into illustration, and MG books that rely more heavily on illustrations to tell their stories, like WondLa, and Last Kids on Earth.

Order The Whispering Pines Boxed Set