Changeling Moon Book Excerpt & Giveaway

I admit I'm a cover whore. If you're book has a good cover... I will most likely want to read it. Even with a sucky synopsis... I will most likely want to read it. Luckily for me Dani Harper's Changeling Moon has a pretty cover. I actually enjoy the purple skin-tone and the red lips, it just works for me. My favorite part? The wolf in the cover model's necklace...a very nice detail! I also really like the sound of the book so definite bonus points! And yes, I know as a reader I should never judge a book by it's cover...but I just can't help it sometimes. Shame on me =)

When I accepted a review request for Changeling Moon I was also allowed access to share the prologue and first chapter. If you like the sound of it there's a chance to to win a copy of the book at the end of the post so be sure to fill out the form! And also be sure to stop by next month for my review.

Prologue

The wolf wanted out.

Heavy clouds obscured the moon and washed the night with icy rain. The cold, damp air brought a myriad of intriguing scents.

The man slunk along the sidewalk, his limbs tingling as his body instinctively drew energy from the earth.

The wolf wanted out now.

Full of hunger and rage, the wolf writhed under the man’s skin in anticipation as he turned into a familiar alley behind the town hall.

It was dark here, overgrown with trees and bushes, flanked with leaning fences, sagging garages, and numberless garbage cans. There was a spot where no light reached, a perfect spot to—

The wolf snarled its impatience and he cursed back. He was trying to hurry, dammit, but his body refused to cooperate. To human eyes, he was just an old drunk, sixty going on eighty. In reality, he was far older than even those like him could guess. When his wolf wanted out, he could no longer keep it leashed for long. And truth be told, he didn’t want to. Because once he took on his lupine form, all his aches and pains would disappear and he’d be strong and powerful again.

The wolf within whispered: Tonight we will hunt. And become even stronger.

Chapter One
 
Freezing rain sliced out of the black sky, turning the wet pavement to glass. Zoey stared out at the freakish weather and groaned aloud. With less than two days left in the month of April, the skies had been clear and bright all afternoon. Trees were budding early and spring had seemed like a sure bet. Now this. Local residents said if you didn’t like the weather this far north, just wait fifteen minutes. She gave it five, only to have the rain turn to sleet.

Perhaps she should have asked more questions before taking the job as editor of the Dunvegan Herald Weekly. She was getting the peace and quiet she’d wanted, all right, but so far the weather simply sucked.

Winter had been in full swing when she’d arrived at the end of October. Wasn’t it ever going to end?

Sighing, she buttoned her thin jacket up to her chin and hoisted the camera bag to her shoulder in preparation for the long, cold walk to her truck. All she wanted was a hot shower, her soft flannel pajamas with the little cartoon sheep on them, the TV turned to Late Night, and a cheese and mushroom omelet before bed. Hell, maybe just the omelet. She hadn’t eaten since noon, unless the three faded M&Ms she’d found at the bottom of her bag counted as food.

As usual, the council meeting for the Village of Dunvegan had gone on much too long. Who’d have thought that such a small community could have so much business to discuss? It was long after ten when the mayor, the councilors, and the remnants of a long-winded delegation filed out. Zoey had lingered only a few moments to scribble down a couple more notes for her article but it was long enough to make her the last person out of the building.

The heavy glass door automatically locked behind her, the metallic sound echoing ominously. Had she taken longer than she thought? There wasn’t a goddamn soul left on the street. Even the hockey arena next door was deserted, although a senior men’s playoff game earlier had made parking difficult to find. Now, her truck – a sturdy old red Bronco that handled the snow much better than her poor little SUV had – was the only vehicle in sight.

The freezing rain made the three-block trek to the truck seem even longer. Not only did the cold wind drive stinging pellets of ice into her face, but her usual business-like stride had to be shortened to tiny careful steps. Her knee-high leather boots were strictly a fashion accessory – her bedroom slippers would have given her more traction on the ice. If she slipped and broke her ankle out here, would anyone even find her before morning?

The truck glittered strangely as she approached and her heart sank.

Thick glass-like sheets of ice coated every surface, sealing the doors. Near-frozen herself, she pounded on the lock with the side of her fist until the ice broke away and she could get her key in. “Come on, dammit, come on!”

Of course, the key refused to turn, while the cold both numbed and hurt her gloveless fingers. She tried the passenger door lock without success then walked gingerly around to the rear cargo door. No luck there either. She’d have to call a tow –

Except that her cell phone was on the front seat of her truck.

Certain that things couldn’t get any worse, she tested each door again. Maybe one of the locks would loosen up if she kept trying. If not, she’d probably have to walk all the way home, and wasn’t that a cheery prospect?

Suddenly a furtive movement teased at her peripheral vision. Zoey straightened slowly and studied her surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. The streetlights were very far apart, just glowing pools of pale gold that punctuated the darkness rather than alleviating it. Few downtown businesses bothered to leave lights on overnight. The whispery hiss of the freezing rain was all that she could hear.

A normal person would simply chalk it up to imagination – but she’d been forced to toss normal out the window at an early age. Her mother, aunts and grandmother were all powerful psychics – and the gene had been passed down to Zoey. Or at least a watered-down version of it. The talent was reliable enough when it worked, but it seemed to come and go as it pleased. Like right now.

Zoey tried hard to focus yet sensed absolutely nothing. It was her own fault perhaps for trying to rid herself of the inconvenient ability.

No extrasensory power was needed, however, to see something large and black glide silently from one shadow to another near the building she’d just left. What the hell was that? There was nowhere to go for help. Only the two bars would still be open but they were several blocks away, as was the RCMP detachment. There was a rundown trailer park a block and a half from the far side of the arena, but Zoey knew there were no streetlights anywhere along that route.

A dog? Maybe it’s just a big dog, she thought. A really big dog or a runaway cow. After all, this was a rural community. And a northern rural community at that, so maybe it was just a local moose, ha, ha….

She struggled to keep her fear at bay and redoubled her efforts on the door locks, all the while straining to listen over the sound of her own harsh breathing.

The rear door lock was just beginning to show promise when a low, rumbling growl caused her to drop her keys. She spun to see a monstrous shape emerge from the shadows, stiff-legged and head lowered. A wolf? It was bigger than any damn wolf had a right to be. Jesus. Some primal instinct warned her not to run and not to scream, that the animal would be on her instantly if she did so.

She backed away slowly, trying not to slip, trying to put the truck between herself and the creature. Its eyes glowed green like something out of a horror flick, but this was no movie. Snarling black lips were pulled back to expose gleaming ivory teeth. The grizzled gray fur around its neck was bristling. Zoey was minutely aware that the hair on the back of her own neck was standing on end. Her breath came in short shuddering gasps as she blindly felt for the truck behind her with her hands, sliding her feet carefully without lifting them from the pavement.

She made it around the corner of the Bronco. As soon as she was out of the wolf’s line of sight, she turned and half skated, half ran for the front of the truck as fast as the glassy pavement would allow. Don’t fall, don’t fall! It was a litany in her brain as she scrambled up the slippery front bumper onto the icy hood. With no hope of outrunning the creature and no safe place in sight, the roof of the truck seemed like her best bet – if she could make it. Don’t fall, don’t fall!

Flailing for a handhold, she seized an ice-crusted windshield wiper, only to have the metal frame snap off in her hand. She screamed as she slid back a few inches.

The wolf sprang at once. It scrabbled and clawed, unable to find a purchase on the ice-coated metal. Foam from its snapping jaws sprayed over her as the beast roared its frustration. Finally it slipped back to the ground and began to pace around the truck.

Zoey managed to shimmy up the hood until she was able to put her back against the windshield with her knees drawn up to her chin. She risked a glance at the roof behind her – she had to get higher. Before she could move, however, the wolf attacked again, scrambling its way up the front bumper. Vicious jaws slashed at her at her. Without thought, Zoey kicked out at the wolf, knocking one leg out from under it. It slid backwards but not before it clamped its teeth on her calf. The enormous weight of the creature dragged at her and she felt herself starting to slide….

One hand still clutched the broken windshield wiper and she used it, whipping the creature’s face and muzzle with the frozen blade until she landed a slice across one ungodly glowing eye. The rage-filled snarl became a strangled yelp, the wolf released her leg and slipped from the hood. This time Zoey didn’t look, just turned and launched herself upwards for the roof rack. She came down hard, adrenaline keeping her from feeling the impact of the bruising metal rails. She was only conscious of the desperate need to claw and grasp and cling and pull until she was safely on the very top of the vehicle.

Except she wasn’t safe. Not by a long shot. Crap. She could see plainly that she wasn’t high enough. Crap, crap, crap. The enraged wolf leapt upwards in spite of the fact that its feet could find little purchase on the ice-coated pavement. What it couldn’t gain in momentum, it made up for in effort, hurling itself repeatedly against the Bronco. Its snapping jaws came so close that Zoey could see the bleeding welts across its face, see that one of its hellish eyes was now clouded and half-closed. She slashed at it again, catching its tender nose so it howled in frustration and pain as it dropped to the ground. Snarling, it paced back and forth like a caged lion, watching her. Waiting.

The wind picked up and the freezing rain intensified. Huddled on her knees in the exact center of the icy roof, Zoey’s adrenaline began to ebb. She was cold and exhausted, and parts of her were numb. But she wasn’t helpless, she wouldn’t allow herself to think that way. The thin windshield wiper was badly bent and pieces of it were missing now, but she’d damn well punch the wolf in the nose with her bare fist if she had to. If she still could….

The wolf sprang again.

* * * *

Dr. Connor Macleod cursed himself for the hundredth time for not bringing another veterinarian into his practice. His family and friends, and particularly his receptionist, had been on his case about it for the past two years. He’d always handled everything himself, but it was time to face facts: His practice had grown too large.

The second calving season of the year was in full swing and Connor had been out on farm calls since five o’clock that morning. He wouldn’t have minded except he’d only been in bed since four after performing an emergency caesarian on a heifer. That case had been touch and go for most of the night. He’d had a few choice words for the farmer who had bred the young animal to a bull of a much larger breed, creating a huge calf that couldn’t possibly be born on its own. The man had been defensive and angry, but Connor didn’t care. He had every patience with animals and none at all for those who deliberately misused them.

Right now he had no patience left for anything and the freakish weather didn’t improve his mood. He needed coffee. And food. And sleep, but that was less likely than the other two. Fortunately he wasn’t human and as long as he ate enough, his body could deal with a serious sleep deficit – at least for a while.

As the lights of Dunvegan came into view, uneasiness twisted his gut.

The ice storm had been far more intense here, the road glassed over and treacherous, yet his feelings had nothing to do with the driving conditions. He switched off the radio and pulled to the side of the road for a few moments, needing to think, to focus and unravel the sudden surge of energies he sensed.

Suddenly the darkness brightened as everything around him – the dashboard, his hands on the steering wheel, the road signs – began to glow with a silvery light. It was a phenomenon that only he could see, a precursor to farsight….

He yelled out. He couldn’t help it. A hideous premonition spawned a violent and bloody image in his mind. A woman was in terrible danger, and what was threatening her was no more human than he was.

In the blink of an eye the image was gone and the otherworldly light yielded to the natural darkness. Connor pulled back onto the deserted highway and sped towards the village, heedless of the glaring ice. The truck had studded tires and four-wheel drive, both necessary in harsh northern winters and unpredictable northern springs, and Connor was a skilled driver. Nevertheless, his pickup stayed on the road largely because he willed it to. The vehicle fishtailed repeatedly but recovered each time as he drove into town and turned onto a side street.

Close. He knew he was close, he could feel it. Suddenly he swung hard onto Hemstock Avenue – where a huge wolf leapt at a parked truck. He leaned on the horn and stepped on the accelerator as the snarling creature fell back into the road. One eye flashed green in the bright headlights, as it turned to look at the oncoming truck –

The above is an excerpt from the book Changeling Moon by Dani Harper.
The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright © 2011 Dani Harper, author of Changeling Moon

Author Bio

Dani Harper, author of Changeling Moon, writes paranormal romance, blogs about the paranormal, watches paranormal TV and movies, and reads paranormal books of almost any kind. So it's only natural that werewolves, faeries, ghosts and other supernatural creatures populate her stories. She lives on an island in Southeast Alaska with her fisherman husband. Her stories get written on land or at sea with the help of her executive secretary, Fiona the Pug.

For more information please visit http://www.daniharper.com/ and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter





----------

To enter to win a paperback copy fill out this form!

Giveaway ends June 17th

US/Canada Entrants Only

Good Luck!!

Day 269 - Evil at Heart - Book Promo

So I just recently got Chelsea Cain's Heartsick! I've heard her Gretchen Lowell series is pretty amazing. I'm pretty excited to get started. For those of you that are already Chelsea Cain fans you should be pretty excited to know that her newest installment - Evil at Heart - was released yesterday!!



Have you read anything by Chelsea??


If so, what did you think??



----------


Here's the first two chapters!




C H A P T E R 1

The rest stop off I-84 on the Oregon side of the Columbia River was vile, even by rest- stop standards. Graffiti covered the white subway- tile walls; the paper- towel and toilet- paper dispensers had been emptied, their contents now strewn on the concrete floor. Two of the metal stall doors were pulled off their top hinges and hung at odd angles. It smelled like a parking- garage stairwell, that peculiar marriage of urine and cement. Eighteen miles from the nearest bathroom, and they end up at a rest stop trashed by hooligans. There was no alternative. Amy put her hands on her hips and stared at her eleven- year- old daughter.

“Come on, Dakota,” she said.
Dakota’s blue eyes widened. “I’m not going in there,” she said.

This is what the whole road trip had been like. They had been making the annual drive up from Bakersfield to see Erik’s family in Hood River every summer since Dakota had been a toddler. She had always loved it. This year she had spent the whole trip texting friends and listening to her iPod. Maybe if Dakota hadn’t been such a little jackass for the last two days, Amy would have been more sympathetic.

“Just squat over the bowl,” Amy said.
Dakota bit her lip, leaving a glob of pink lip gloss on her front tooth. “It’s gross,” she said.
“Want me to see if the men’s room is any better?” Amy asked.
Dakota’s cheeks flushed. “No way,” she said.
“You said you had to go,” Amy said.

In fact, after not going in the restaurant they had stopped at for dinner, Dakota had quickly begun insisting that her bladder was going to burst and that if it did she was going to use it to seek emancipated minor status under California law. Amy didn’t even know what the fuck that was, but it seemed serious. So here they were, at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. There was a banging at the door.

“What are you guys doing in there?” Erik called.

They were twenty minutes from his sister’s house. If they didn’t get there soon, Amy knew that Erik was going to lose it. He had already been white- knuckling the wheel for the past ten miles. Who was she kidding? She was the one who was going to lose it.

“She doesn’t want to use any of the toilets,” Amy called to her husband.
“Then come outside and go behind a tree,” Erik called back.
“Dad!” Dakota said.

Amy pushed open the door to the last stall. It was cleaner than the rest, or at least less filthy. Toilet paper in the dispenser. No visible human waste. That was a start.

“What about this one?” Amy asked her daughter. Dakota took a few tentative steps up behind her and peered into the toilet bowl.
“There’s something in there,” she said, pointing limply to the pale pink water in the bowl.
Amy didn’t have time to explain to her daughter the effect of beets on pee.
“Just flush it,” Amy said. She turned and walked over to the row of white sinks and waited. She heard the toilet flush and felt a little bit of the tension bleed from her shoulders. They would
be on the road soon. Erik’s sister would have wine waiting. Erik’s sister always had wine waiting.
“Mom?” Amy heard her daughter ask.

What now? Amy turned and saw her daughter standing in the stall, the metal door swung open. Dakota’s face was white, blank, her hands balled into fists. The toilet was overflowing, water spilling over the lid onto the floor, forming a puddle that seemed to almost have a tide. Only there was something in the water. It swirled with veins of red. It looked almost menstrual. And for a second Amy thought, Did Dakota get her period?

The bloody water streaked down along the outside of the white toilet bowl, onto the floor, under Dakota’s sneakers, and toward where Amy stood frozen. There was something in the toilet, something that had bobbed to the surface and now sat at rim level. A piece of something raw. Flesh. Like some maniac had skinned and drowned a rat. It sat on the edge of the bowl for a moment and then slopped onto the floor and slid forward, skimming Dakota’s sneaker and disappearing under the next stall. Dakota shrieked and scrambled forward out of the stall into Amy’s arms, not even looking back when her iPod slipped from her hands and landed at the base of the toilet with a deadening splash. Amy forced herself to swallow the warm saliva that rose in her throat, marshaling her will not to gag. It wasn’t a rat. It was definitely not a rat.

“Mom?” Dakota said.
“Yes?” Amy whispered. The iPod was still playing. Amy could hear some tinny pop song coming out of the half- submerged white earbuds. Then, just like that, it stopped.
“I don’t have to go to the bathroom anymore,” Dakota said.



C H A P T E R 2

Detective Henry Sobol lifted the evidence bag out of the rest- stop bathroom sink. The contents, four fistfuls of severed flesh, three of which had been plunged from the toilet, glistened under the clear plastic. It was heavier than it looked— dark, almost purple— and the large medallions of flesh were frayed, like they had been cut with a serrated blade. Blood and toilet water formed a triangle of pink juice at the corner of the bag. It didn’t have the sanitized look of the clean, plump, pink meat under Saran Wrap at the supermarket; something had been killed for this. Or someone had tried to make a kebab out of roadkill.

“Tell me again where you found this?” Henry said.

The state cop who’d called him stood next to Henry with his “Smokey Bear” hat in his hands. The bathroom’s fluorescent lights gave his skin a pale green sheen.

“The john,” the state trooper said, tilting his head toward an open stall.
“Got a nine- one- one call. Family reported some blood in the bathroom. I responded.” He shrugged.
“Plunged it. That came up.” Maybe it wasn’t the lighting, Henry thought. Maybe the trooper was green because he was sick to his stomach.
“You have to call him,” Claire said again.

Henry looked back up at the wall. Hundreds of tiny hearts, executed perfectly with what looked to be a red Sharpie. They covered everything, obliterated everything. The heart was Gretchen’s signature. She carved it on all of her victims. She’d carved it on Archie.

And now she was back.



----------




----------


A little bit about Chelsea:

CHELSEA CAIN was born in 1972, lived the first few years of her life on a hippie commune in Iowa, and grew up in Bellingham, Washington.Her first novel featuring Detective Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell, HEARTSICK, was a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback and has been translated into over 20 languages. The follow-up in the series– SWEETHEART--also a NYT bestseller--is available in stores now. The third installment, EVIL AT HEART, will be released on September 1, 2009. Chelsea is a former columnist for The Oregonian, and a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review.


Her other books include:
DHARMA GIRL: A Road Trip Across the American Generations (Seal Press)
THE HIPPIE HANDBOOK (Chronicle Books)
CONFESSIONS OF A TEEN SLEUTH (Bloomsbury)
DOES THIS CAPE MAKE ME LOOK FAT? Pop Psychology for Superheroes (Chronicle Books)


She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.

For more check out Chelsea's origin story here! It's good stuff =)

Day 259 - The Birthing House - Book Promo

I can't remember where I first heard about The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom. I do remember seeing the cover, reading the title, and just feeling compelled to read the blurb:

(from St. Martin's Press)

It was expecting them.

Conrad and Joanna Harrison, a young couple from Los Angeles, attempt to save their marriage by leaving the pressures of the city to start anew in a quiet, rural setting. They buy a Victorian mansion that once served as a haven for unwed mothers, called a birthing house. One day when Joanna is away, the previous owner visits Conrad to bequeath a vital piece of the house’s historic heritage, a photo album that he claims “belongs to the house.” Thumbing through the old, sepia-colored photographs of midwives and fearful, unhappily pregnant girls in their starched, nineteenth-century dresses, Conrad is suddenly chilled to the bone: staring back at him with a countenance of hatred and rage is the image of his own wife….

Thus begins a story of possession, sexual obsession, and, ultimately, murder, as a centuries-old crime is reenacted in the present, turning Conrad and Joanna’s American dream into a relentless nightmare.

An extraordinary marriage of supernatural thrills and exquisite psychological suspense, The Birthing House marks the debut of a writer whose first novel is a terrifying tour de force





I definitely had to add it to my wishlist! I was lucky enough to receive an email with some exclusive material about the author and his debut book.

Please feel free to leave comments, visit the links provided, and check out The Birthing House which has been released this month!

----------

Q&A with Christopher Ransom: (edited version)**


Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about you and your writing career.
I’ve been writing prose off and on for sixteen years but took a five-year detour to write screenplays before working up the courage to write my first novel, The Birthing House, which is out now in the UK and will be released in the US this August. I spent three years writing The Birthing House and it was the best education in writing I ever received. I was a terrible student in high school and college, and never attended a writer’s workshop or other writing program, so maybe it took me a little longer to do it on my own. At any rate, I never enjoyed writing as much as I did while working on my novel, so I plan to stick with this for a while.

What is your most recent novel about – if you are allowed to tell us?
The Birthing House is about a couple in their 30s, Conrad and Joanna Harrison, who are trying to reboot their marriage, so to speak, by moving from Los Angeles to a small town in rural Wisconsin. Soon after they settle in, Jo leaves Conrad for eight weeks of training for a new job, and Conrad, stewing in the house all summer, discovers that their new home, which is really his new home, was a birthing house at the turn of the century and may now be haunted. Conrad is wrestling with the idea and reality of becoming a father, the growing pains of leaving adolescence and his early 20s behind to become domestic. He is haunted by a destructive relationship from his high school years that continues to wreak havoc in his life and is responsible for almost literally opening the door to the entity that still resides in the former birthing house. In the course of uncovering (or ignoring at his peril) the house’s history and trying to salvage his dying marriage, Conrad becomes obsessed with his next door neighbour, Nadia, who is 20 and pregnant, and has some experience with the evil residing under Conrad’s roof. The novel is about the toll of a dual-income marriage, how our past relationships inform and disturb our present relationships, how infidelity and sexuality fit into the larger scheme of procreation, and—as I like to joke—only incidentally about a haunted birthing house.

I make that joke because, in truth, I did not set out to write a haunted house novel at all, or even a horror novel. I am not particularly interested in or frightened by ghosts or monsters. However, in terms of communicating what’s going on in someone’s head, a house is a great metaphor for the mind, and the ghost is a marvellous mirror of the psyche. And people—they scare me. So I just started writing about three characters locked in a situation I found fascinating. About a hundred pages in, I realized the story was following the classic haunted house trajectory. Coincidentally (or not very), my wife and I had recently moved from Los Angeles to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, which is a town of about three thousand people, so we were experiencing an amusing form of culture shock. We bought a 140-year-old Victorian and later learned it had been a birthing house and small clinic near the turn of the century. I did not borrow my house’s real history in any way; the idea of what it would be like if my house really was haunted was quite enough. During the first draft, I was only vaguely aware that I was writing about a troubled marriage, sex, birth, and all the rest while living under the roof of a birthing house. The potential of a haunted birthing house became intertwined with the questions and themes I was exploring, and the title was too appropriate to resist. Who knows, maybe the house wanted me to write the book (he says with nervous laughter and mild fear).

What do you think makes the horror genre so fascinating to readers and writers?
The power, for one. The raw, straight-to-your-primal-center-ness of it. There is no question fear is one of the most compelling emotions, that it is one of the strongest and most fundamental. It’s not like delight or melancholy, relative lightweights. Fear is right up there with love. It is crucial to our survival. From one perspective, it is fair to say fear drives nearly every other emotion, including love. Do we not love out of fear of being alone, at least partially? Do we not work for fear of going hungry?

For readers, horror fiction is a safe venue we visit to experience fear without being overwhelmed by it. No one wants horror in their life, but we will all face it in one form or another. I forget who said stories are tools for living, but I believe that. I cannot imagine living without quality fiction. So, if that is true, then horror stories might contain some tools for learning how to deal with the bad shit life throws our way. Maybe that is a stretch, but I find reading dark fiction fortifying in some way. I also just like experiencing a good thrill, without the hangover.

As for writers, for this writer anyway, the horror genre comes equipped with another marvellous set of tools. The ghosts, the houses, the monsters, the descent into a self and reality (even an everyday, real-world reality) we did not know existed, the whole range of darker human psychology. It’s almost another language. There are tropes and tricks and rules to break. When the writing is going well, the writer feels every event in the story as it is being written, as if by surprise, as his reader will experience it eventually. This makes for a fun ride behind the keyboard. But more importantly, writing horror, like writing in any other genre, should be an exploration of the self. It’s not easy to plumb one’s deepest fears and bring them into the daylight, but it is rewarding on many levels.


What movies / books influenced your development as a genre writer? Similarly, what books, movies, comics, get you excited as a fan?
I suspect we live in an age when there are two types of horror writers: those who admit they were influenced by Stephen King to some degree, and those who lie. It might be a cliché at this point, but King’s books taught me to love reading. I read Cujo when I was 11 and I never looked back. Pet Sematary is the scariest novel I have or probably ever will read. It’s also a very serious novel, when you look beyond the cat that comes back from the grave. He’s writing about the most painful things a human can face: death, burial, the loss of child. How our culture does almost nothing to prepare for the natural eventuality of death. I honestly don’t know how he found the courage to go that far--that deep into his fear. I reread it again for the fifth or sixth time last summer and was struck by how even the vocabulary and syntax King uses in Pet Sematary reek of sour earth, embalming fluids, medicine, cold soil. There is a vintage texture, as if it were aging well in the sense of a classic, which of course I feel it is. So, yes, like many readers in the 80s and 90s, I was weaned on Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, and many others. They all influenced me in some way, large or small.

Dan Simmons’s speculative-horror-love story of a novel, The Hollow Man, is quite different than my novel (or any that I will likely ever attempt to write) but it was a pivotal book in my life. I read it when I was 20, trying to decide what to do with myself, and the novel terrified me, challenged me, and made me weep, all in the span of about seven hours. I decided shortly after that to become a writer. There were a lot of books that nudged me toward the decision, but The Hollow Man was the nail in my coffin.

As I neared my late 20s and began to get serious, there were a few other authors, in various genres, not just horror, that changed how I thought about style and narrative, and I am sure they influenced me as well. Colin Harrison’s Afterburn took my head off. I still study the way he achieves such momentum without sacrificing nuance of language and depth of character. Nabokov has playfulness and an ability to find humour in the most wretched of circumstances, and that can be useful when writing horror.

What gets me excited as a fan is when one of my favourite authors releases a new novel. Peter Blauner is in my humble opinion the best “crime” writer working today, though he is much more than that. The only problem is, he only publishes a new novel every four years or so. But I am glad he takes his time, because the quality really shows and he is always worth the wait.

Who do you go all fan-boy about when it comes to the horror genre? Have you ever met anyone more famous than yourself and how did you react?
When I worked a Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles, I once waited on Julia Roberts, just like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. She was very polite but she didn’t fall in love with me. Does that count? No, I guess not. Well, I haven’t met too many famous writers. I did meet Dan Simmons years ago, when I had just decided to become a writer and he was signing copies of The Hollow Man (which as I said had just become my favourite novel). Dan was seated in this tiny newsstand on Main Street in Longmont, Colorado, near my hometown of Boulder, so it was easy for me to wander over on my lunch break. Anyway, I was the first (okay, only) person in line; Dan was not yet the supernova he is today. I probably could have had his ear for half an hour, and he was very polite, but I was too frightened to squeak much more than, “Thank you.” I quickly fled the store, clutching my signed first edition to my bosom like a schoolgirl with her first love note.

If you had a chance to invite any horror legend, be it actor, writer, director, author (living / dead / undead) over for some tea, who would you choose and why?
After reading Charles LaBrutto’s excellent biography of Stanley Kubrick, wherein he chronicles many of the director’s bull sessions with writers and actors, I couldn’t stop thinking about what that must have been like for those who had the privilege—and some would say the curse—of Kubrick’s company. I realize Kubrick was not a horror guy per se, but he was tuned in to the dark side of human nature. There is a coldness to his work, his control, his obsessive nature. But he was also reputed to be a very sweet man, and an expert on a huge array of subjects. There is something tantalizing and terrifying about getting one of Kubrick’s phone calls in the middle of the night, being whisked off to his hidden estate, and hired to be a writer on one of his films, only to find oneself locked in a seemingly endless conversation with the man, who, it was reported, went through phases where he and his guests ate the same meal over and over for weeks, until he tired of it. Visiting writers seemed to emerge from the Kubrick compound like aged moles, gray-haired and blinded by his intensity and brilliance. I wouldn’t have been able to resist that call, had it ever come.

Lights on or off when watching horror flicks?
Off, of course, without exception. I am allowed to make my wife watch only one scary movie per year, so that means for all the others it’s me and one of my dogs under a blanket, lights off, eyes bugging out. Actually, watching a scary film by yourself increases the potency, so I don’t mind. Last summer I watched The Orphanage all by myself and that one got me pretty good.

Which do you prefer: Romero originals or remakes?
Oh, I know this is sacrilege, but I’ll go with the Dawn of the Dead remake here. The screenwriter on that one, James Gunn, is a very funny guy who gets zombies and I thought he handled it very well. It was scary and funny and full of great action set pieces. His characters were solid, his dialogue chewy. The sniper going after “Burt Reynolds” bit in there is priceless.

What is the best advice you ever received from someone about horror writing?
The best advice I know of for writing horror is no different than the advice we hear for writing any other kind of fiction and literature. The same things are important. Quality writing, characters that feel and behave like real people with real problems, realistic dialogue, evocative setting, all of it. In fact, when it comes to writing horror, or any genre that tends to rely too much on the wowee factor, we need to be extra vigilant, mindful of the fundamentals—namely, writing well. Plot and suspense are the least of our problems. We can’t rely on ghosts and serial killers and zombies to fool the reader for long. Or maybe we can, but we shouldn’t. Because while the apocalypse might get some fanboys in the door, the fanboys are all growing up, too, and eventually the day will come when they demand better of us. Actually, in all fairness, they already do. So, we owe it to our careers, our genre, our publishers and readers, to strive for quality. The writing is everything. That is what I tell myself every day, because I know I have a long way to go, and if you’re not constantly trying to improve the quality of your writing, you’re dead.

The horror genre has seen many incarnations over the past few years – what do you think the future holds for the genre?
I have been hearing about the death of horror in publishing since I attended The Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference in 1993 or thereabouts. But good writers kept on publishing horror novels every year, right up through today. The vampire stuff seems to be bottomless. I know a lot of the large houses in New York are a little skittish about horror, but on the other hand, my editor at St. Martin’s Press told me he had been looking for a good ghost story for four years before he acquired The Birthing House. Now, look, I’m not saying I wrote The Turn of the Screw or The Shining—I know I did not. But four years? That tells me that either agents are extremely gun shy about submitting horror or there just aren’t that many well written and truly frightening manuscripts floating through the channels. In either case, we have only ourselves to blame.

But of course there are cycles. Trends. You can’t plan for them or write with an eye on them, though, so why bother? Hollywood ate up a ton of ghost stories after The Sixth Sense made $300 million domestic, and once that milked out, they went after harder stuff, exploitation fare, torture porn (which does nothing for me), and some great zombie flicks (which I do like). Now that those are playing out, we’re back to psychological stuff and ghost stories and dark fantasy and . . .

All of which is to say, I don’t have a clue where horror is going, and I never gave it much thought. I focused on writing the book that I wanted to write, to the best of my abilities, and it worked out. I am fortunate that it did. I am sure timing was a factor. But the reality is that there will always be a market for quality horror fiction and writing that truly moves the reader.

Do you have a zombie apocalypse survival plan – apart from going to hide in the Winchester, that is! – and will you be able to implement it?
You know, if it comes to that point, where we are truly being overrun by the zombie hoard, I think I would rather just join them. I mean, think about it, do zombies looked stressed to you? Other than finding food, what’s a zombie got to worry about? They don’t have to get up and go to work every day. They don’t have to pay taxes or fret about the state of the world or try to get laid. They have no fear of death because the worst has already happened to them. All a zombie has to do is duck some bullets and find some brains to gnaw on, and there are plenty of those to go around. Hey, I’m a foodie. I could live like that. Kind of do already, now that I think about it.

----------



Here's an excerpt from The Birthing House...

THE BIRTHING HOUSE
an excerpt
from the novel
by
Christopher Ransom

They were in the house a week before it came for him.

Joanna Harrison was dozing on the couch in the TV room while her husband stood on the deck, breathing through a sweet clove cigarette that burned his throat and floated a candy cloud above his empty thoughts. The cigarette was the kind found on the back covers of men’s magazines, the smoke of wannabes. What Conrad wanted to be this night was content, and, for a few more minutes of this vanishing sunset hour, he was.
Content equally with himself and his lot: a full acre of sloping lawn, century-old maple and black walnut trees, and a garden as large as a swimming pool, its aged gray gate roped with grape vines. Raspberry and clover grew thick in the shade of the shaggy pines still moist with the day’s sweet rain.

He heard running water and looked through the window into the kitchen. Her blurry, sleepy-slouched shape hovered for a moment, probably filling a glass to take to bed. He waved to her. She either did not see him or was too tired to wave back. She turned away and faded back into the house.

He wanted to follow her, but he waited. Let her brush and floss, finish with a shot of the orange Listerine before she turned back the freshly laundered Egyptian cotton. You can’t rush these things. These are delicate times. Eyes closed, he could almost see her stretched out in one of her tanktinis and cotton boy-cut underwear, a big girl-woman reading another marketing book he always said were made for people on planes. She must be happy here. Otherwise, she would be cleaning and planning and avoiding bedtime.

Summer had arrived early. The house was muggy. He wondered if she would be warm enough to go without covers, but cool enough to allow his touch.

He had been shocked to discover that he wanted her more now. He was still madder than hell about the entire stupid scene with That Fucker Jake and all its implications, its mysteries. But he knew the balance of things and how he’d not been holding up his share of them was half the problem. Maybe more than half. She’d almost slipped away. Even before that nasty little homecoming it had been months, and since the fresh start (that was how he thought of it, but never named it as such, not aloud) he’d been watching for signs. If Luther and Alice were in their crates, that was one sign. If she had showered that was yet another, though never a binding one. None of the signs were binding, which added suspense to the marriage and kept his hopes in a perpetual swing from boyish curiosity on one side to blood-stewing resentment on the other.

He walked up the deck steps to the wooden walkway, into the mudroom. He climbed stairs (the servants’ stairs off the kitchen, not the front stairs with the black maple banister, which for some reason he had been avoiding since the move) and felt the weight of the day in his bones.

By the time he finished brushing his teeth he was tired the way only people who have unpacked ninety percent of their possessions in a single day can be tired. His mind was empty, his muscles what his mom said his father used to call labor-fucked, the old man’s way of suggesting that work is its own reward.

I’m sorry, Dad-

Work. He knew his hands still worked for her. He thought she liked his hands better than just about every other part of him. He no longer relied on his appearance as the catalyst, didn’t know many men married more than a few years who did. He knew he wasn’t a Jake. At thirty he was what divorced female bartenders had from time to time called cute, no longer handsome, if he ever was. He felt remarkably average. He had acquired a belly, but the move had already burned that down from a 36 to a 34. With the yard work he’d be down to a 32—his high school Levi’s size—by the end of June. Jo always said she liked his laugh lines, the spokes radiating from what his mother used to call his wily eyes. Wily used to be enough, but now he was just grateful for a second chance. He could live with average—so long as he could still seduce her.

Conrad wound his way through the back hall, making the S-turn through the library, into the front hallway. The creaking floorboards were a new sound, allowing him to birth one final clear thought for the day.

This is a healing place. This is home.

Conrad waded into the moonlight pooling on the new queen-sized bed—another purchase, this one more deserved—he’d made without her input. The ceiling fan was whirring, the dogs were curled into their crates on the floor, and Jo was waiting for him on top of the new sheets. She was without a top, wearing only loose fitting boxers (his), which were somehow better than if she were naked. That she had gone halfway without prematurely forfeiting the under garment was a gesture that made him feel understood. The arc of her hips rose off the bed like the fender of a street rod and his blood awakened.

With his blood, his hopes.

No longer content, Conrad stretched out, not caring what funny tent shape his penis made as it unfolded like a miniature welcome banner. He rolled to one side, facing her. She smelled of earth and lavender and something otherwise herbal—new scents for her in this new place. Her belly was nearly flat except for the smallest of rolls just above the waistband, and he loved this, too. He called it her little chile relleno and she would slap him, but it didn’t bother her, not really. Her hips were womanly wide, but with her height she remained sleek, especially when prone, like now. She stood a little over six feet to his five-nine. His fingers grazed her fine brown navel hairs. Her eyes gleamed under heavy lids, glassy and black as mountain ponds at midnight.

It was a beginning, and he was a man who loved beginnings more than middles or endings.

“Come,” Jo said. Or maybe Con, half of his name.

“Hm?”

“. . . not ready.”

“Not what?” His hand found the elastic rim of her waistband, then moved into the open front of his boxer shorts on her.

“. . . about behbee,” she murmured.

“What, Baby?”

Not baby. Uppercase, Baby. A nickname he used.

“. . . owin me the behbee…be-ah-eye,” she mumbled, which sounded like was going to be all right.

“Of course,” he said, like it was his idea too. He had no idea.

“. . . bee woul’ go a father.”

We should go farther.

He pushed one, then two fingers lower to her mound, but her legs were crossed and he swerved off course, touching only her thigh. Just her thigh, but soft was soft and his excitement ratcheted up another notch.

“-not ready,” she squeaked, rolling away.

Shit. Might not have been sleeping before, but was now. Snoring too. Weird, he thought. Had she done this before? With the eyes open and the talking?

Should he let her sleep or try one more time?

Yes . . . no. He kissed her goodnight and rolled to his back, allowing the fan to push warm summer air over his fading, obedient hard-on. His mind dropped into that lower gear, the one that is not yet sleep but somehow dreaming already.

In the half-dream he was in the house, beside her, finding the wetness and sliding in not for the first time but as if they had been moving this way for minutes or an hour. He was all corded muscle and arched away, feeling her soak him in her own undulations. The movement was soothing, almost non-sexual, like being rocked in a crib.

Her grip on him strengthened and clenched, pushing back with legs and ass, drawing his ejaculate out in a sudden burst that ended too quickly, leaving him weak and sleepy all over again.

Drifting . . .

Until the dream, the same one or some new post-coital version, was split by the sound of crying. His body twitched itself awake, and he knew these were not Jo’s tears. This was the noise a newborn makes after sucking in its first violent breath as it enters this violent world. It was a sound that had skipped mewling and launched straight into wailing, and it was coming from behind a wall or far away.

Faintly, under the baby’s hacking shriek, there arose another sound. This one did sound like a woman, and he imagined the infant’s mother, or the midwife, perhaps. This older cry in the dark was a trailing scream, as if something was pulling her away from her child and down a long corridor that narrowed to nothing.

Panicked, he rolled over to shake Jo—why hasn’t she woken up and grabbed me?—and felt the cool stirring of air as she lifted off the bed. He could see only blackness, and with the drone of the fan he could not hear her feet padding on the wood floor. A flash of her silhouette in the doorway left a retinal echo, but the room was too dark to grasp any details. If he saw her at all, she was gone now.

To the bathroom, he thought. There she goes, carrying my seed. The semi-sleep-molestation and abrupt ending made him wince with guilt, but he did not seek her out in the ensuing silence. Exhausted from the day of unpacking (and tossed dream sex), Conrad decided the crying was but a fragment of the dream, a lingering scene planted by her words.

“. . . the behbee, the behbee . . .”

The crying returned once, quieter and farther away, until like a passing thunderstorm it faded to nothing.

He hovered on the edge of sleep.

Something’s wrong.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. She had not returned.

“Jo?”

She did not answer.

“Jo,” he said, louder. “Baby, you okay

His eyes adjusted to the dark. The dogs were standing at the master bedroom door facing the hall, whining, tails stiff like the hairs on their shoulders. Conrad flattened his body and counted to ten. It’s rational, he told himself. When something so unexplainable and real (the dogs made it real) as a crying baby in your childless home wakes you, it is normal to ignore it and go back to sleep. So back he went, as deep as a man can go, until he forgot the all about the crying sounds and her cold departure, her absolute absence.

Even when, in the morning, waking to a half-empty bed, he padded downstairs and found her where he’d left her before he stepped out for a smoke at dusk, sleeping on the sofa.

Alone.



Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Ransom

**This interview was not conducted by me. I also took out some questions from the original interview...**
----------

Visit Christopher's website here for more information.

Christopher Ransom has also started a blog for people to post their own personal experiences with the supernatural. Share your stories here!

If you want more of The Birthing House you can read the first 2 chapters here!


----------

Has anyone got a hold of this book? If so, what did you think??

Day 124 - French Bred Guest Post & Excerpt

I'm excited to have author Frederic Guarino at my blog today. He has kindly written a few words on how he came to be a writer. You can read my review of his first book, French Bred here. If anyone has any questions for him please comment below 8)


"As far as I can remember, I've always written my thoughts down. As a young man, my prose was a lot darker, angry, and critical. I guess it was a way of spewing my venom into poetry, short stories, and commentaries, all of it in French. At age twenty-three, I got married, moved to the U.S., and stopped writing all together, because I couldn't find the inspiration to write in French in my new English-speaking environement, and wasn't proficient enough in English to make sense of anything. After a ten year hiatus, for no specific reason whatsoever, the urge to write resurfaced, and English words appeared on the page. This time, the mood was much lighter, and I found that I really enjoyed writing with humor, poking fun at myself and the world around me. Strongly influenced by such authors as Dave Barry, David Sedaris, and Laurie Notaro, I began writing my own memoirs, starting at the beginning, and I haven't stopped yet. Sometimes, I feel like Forrest Gump who began running with no particular goal in mind and kept on going. So far, I have completed three books. My first book "French Bred" has just been published as an e-book, and I'm working on getting the other two out there, hopefully in print.When, I'm not writing, I am a divorced father of two, run my own small business, and live in Medway, Massachusetts."






And now I am very pleased to present Chapter One of French Bred. The introduction of his mother and father is one of my favorite parts of the book. Enjoy! A big thank you to Frederic for allowing me to post the excerpt.

Chapter 1

The butter obsession and other embarassing bits

For a very long time, I firmly believed in the idea that my family was perfect. I thought my parents were infallible, had the correct solution to all problems, and the right answers to all questions. In the early years, the only faux-pas they committed was to present me with a
sibling. I was the only child for almost six years so when my brother came I resented sharing my parent’s attention, as much as the need to keep an eye on my stuff.

Otherwise, they made everything all right.

My folks were the perfect team in a perfect world.

Boy, was I wrong!

Looking back with my middle-aged view, I realize my family was just as dysfunctional as everybody else’s family. But before I systematically dismantle my idealistic opinion of my childhood, I must say that I love my family dearly---heck, I even agreed to live with them---and they definitely have something to do with who I turned out to be.
Which, perhaps, is not saying much.

My mother was born and raised in Brittany, the westernmost region of France. When looking at a map, Brittany sticks out like a protruding nose butchered by an unlicensed cosmetic surgeon.
People there are well-known for their stubbornness, their contempt for Parisians, and the butter oozing out of their pores. They cover everything with butter. I once watched my grandmother spread butter on a slice of apple. “These folks at Giroux Farm really know their butter!”
she said.

My mother kept the tradition alive by insuring we never suffered from low cholesterol. She surrounded, soaked, dipped, and spread everything with butter. Butter was measured in pounds for every cake recipes and our family was on a five-sticks-a-day habit. They didn’t make patches to curb that addiction.

No need to plan for college. We sweated butter, we spat butter, peed butter, and our tears could be saved and recycled for hot oil treatment. At that rate, my brother and I would have a heart attack before we reached eighteen and, if researchers pondered the effect of extreme butter intake in relation to family dysfunction, they’d probably find a link.

To prevent a coronary epidemic, the Brittanians mixed apple cider with a high volume of alcohol. They found it worked wonders to unclog their busy arteries. It also nicely eased babies to sleep, removed tomato stains, and disinfected fishing hook injuries.

Mom was a very sensible and Cartesian woman. She dealt only with her daily reality and had no use for the abstract. She used her imagination and creativity to find easier ways to perform her tasks or organize her kitchen in the most efficient manner, which meant that nobody could find anything without her help. I cannot remember ever seeing her seated, and her schedule was influenced by the “need to” basis--her need to iron my father’s shirt, to clean the windows, to butter the toast.

While she never worked outside the home, she didn’t have a moment for herself, always trotting with a rag in her hand. She always looked at a room in despair. It was never spotless enough and we couldn’t understand how that was possible.

My mother set the rules for my brother, Manu, and me. Rule number one was to be respected at all cost. “If you bring a friend over, let me know at least an hour ahead.”

It was as if our teenage friends would enter our bacteria-free environment with white gloves and run their fingers on the shelves or check for spider webs, which would bring untold shame onto our name. She never understood that there could have been a pile of rotting trash on the dining room table and nobody, even the girls, would have noticed. We took great pleasure in arriving unannounced with strangers, standing in the entryway with innocent smiles. This triggered a panic attack as severe as if we ran out of butter. She ran in every direction, her eyes rolling around in their sockets while she blocked access to messy areas and slammed doors shut.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! Jesus, the place is disgusting!” she cried.

Most of the time, the only item out of place was the vacuum cleaner, which stood in the middle of the living room. Before letting us go up to our room, she felt compelled to apologize to our fourteen-year-old friends for the dreadful state of our estate.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t have time to do the windows. Please pardon the dust,” she said.

Her obsessive-compulsive behavior wasn’t limited to our home, though. Twice a year, Manu and I forced a smidgen of enthusiasm out of our selfish selves and willingly sat in the car for the family road trip. We went to my mom’s hometown to visit my grandparents. The trip took anywhere from two and a half to five hours, depending on snack breaks, police presence, traffic, and my brother’s bladder.

He had this uncontrollable urge to mark his territory at every rest area along the way. My father’s patience eroded more each time. “Again! But you just went twenty miles ago. God! How much can this kid pee without drinking?”

Well, quite a bit as it turned out, since he only managed three drops at a time. The frequent stops were a distraction to Dad, who focused on hidden spots along the way where the highway patrol might set-up a trap to catch speedsters. His concentration was akin to hypnosis, his eyes went from right to left, and his hands clamped tightly on the wheel. Once in while, he let out a barely audible whisper, “There’s one”. He gradually slowed down and could not hide his joy if the nose of a cruiser popped out from behind a bush. “Gotcha, Copper!”

Mom and Dad had different packing styles. He did not touch a thing, but reserved the right to analyze the final product. His main idea involved big bags or suitcases, ideal for trunk space management. Manu and I usually stood to the side, watching him squeeze the bags a certain way, then take them out to shove them in again. There was always one that would not go or another that would stick out. “Ah, for God’s sake! One centimeter! One lousy centimeter! It’s always the same! I’m always missing one centimeter! If this goddam car was one centimeter wider, everything would fit! But, no! Oh no way! Couldn’t be that easy, huh? God forbid my life could become easier!”

He then looked up to the sky, “Is it too much to ask to cut me some slack once in a while?”

Like a museum visitor staring at a famous painting, he took a step back, crossed his arms, and studied the trunk space. There had to be a way to squeeze the luggage in and close the trunk, and he was hell-bent on finding it. We could tell Samsonites were twirling aimlessly around in his mind. He finally asked, “You guys have any ideas?”

We knew better than to be dragged into this. From that point on, every word we said would be held against us in a court of baggage handling law. By then, the neighbors across the streets had set up their chairs by their bay window and waited for the show to begin. Right on cue, Mom opened the kitchen window and said, “Darling, did you know there is another bag by the door that we need to bring with us?”

“What?” yelled Dad.

Birds abruptly stopped chirping. Our dog Rudy’s tail bent between his legs as he scampered away towards the far reaches of the backyard. Mom closed the window to protect herself from incoming verbal shrapnel, and we took two more steps back. Dad’s face turned purplish red; foam appeared at the corner of his mouth and his hands constricted into tight fists.

The result of the blast resonated for miles around, the shock waves rattling our young brains. As the first words came out of his lips, spit traveled all the way to the windshield.

“GODDAMIT! JESUS CHRIST! SHIT! SHE DID IT AGAIN!”

He grabbed the closest handles and pulled the 2-ton suitcases out as if they were filled with cotton, scattering them on the driveway. “There is no way we need so may freaking bags for a week trip! What the hell is she packing anyway? The whole goddam house?”

His body arched forward and, fists at his sides, he speed-walked back to the house, violently opened the door, grabbed the stray bag, and stormed back to the car where he threw it in the back of the trunk with all his might. “THERE! I’m sure we REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need whatever the hell’s in that bag!”

The neighbors cracked open their bay window to get full audio impact, and leaned forward with avid interest. Dad grabbed the suitcases littering the pavement behind the car and launched them with no particular pattern into the trunk. “Get in there you bastards! You want to mess with me? You’re not gonna win! I’ll rip your heads off!”

“And where exactly would the head of a suitcase be?” Manu whispered in my ear.

Running out of ammunition, he looked around him but there were no bags left. Once again, the miracle of blind mindless rage had occurred. As suddenly as he had begun, the trunk-filling struggle ended. The three of us stared at the jam-packed trunk. Without a word, and before any of the luggage sprung out like a jack-in-the-box, he laid his hands on the trunk door and pushed down until we heard the satisfying click of the lock mechanism.

“Way to go, Dad!” exclaimed Manu.

“Yeah, see? No need to get all upset!” Dad said as if the previous chain of events was part of his plan all along.

Sensing the end of the show, the neighbors stood up and applauded.

Mom waited for this moment to add more items to the load. She did not believe in consolidating her belongings into fewer than twenty-five grocery store plastic bags, claiming that she could find them more easily when she packed things separately. That rationale blew out the window since all plastic bags looked the same and made the search much lengthier and more complicated. The next best place for the little bags containing anything from peaches to a nail cutter was under our feet.

“Do you realize we look like bums who live in their car?” my father said, shaking his head.

“Nobody’s going to look in here and you’ll sing a different tune when you ask me for something and, voila!” she replied. Little was needed out of these carefully prepared pouches since my father solely concentrated on driving, my brother watched road signs, and I had my stack of vomit bags on my lap. Throughout the drive, we always tested my mother’s organizational skills by asking her for everything we could possibly think of, starting with the easy ones like water, Kleenex, and chocolate bars. Then, we raised the ante to out-of-season fruits and wet towels; and still she produced. An hour later, I met the gourmet dessert again at the bottom of my paper bag.

Once our car was in motion, Mom’s road trip ritual consisted of cutting the tails off twenty pounds of green beans, creating a pile of discarded tails, and another of freshly castrated vegetables on her lap. This kept her somewhat silent for the first hour. By completion of the task, she turned toward the backseat and claimed, “It sure will be nice to have fresh beans for dinner. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be eating canned stuff.”

Then, she took out a stack of the worst tabloid magazines, high enough to fill an uninterrupted week of browsing for gossip, and proceeded to read aloud.

“Did you know the pope had a grandson with his own daughter? That seems impossible!”

Backseat: “Om-uumpf!”

She suddenly turned toward Dad and held the magazine up. “Look,honey, she’s not bad looking.”

“I can’t read and drive at the same time,” he replied.

“No, I mean, for a pope’s daughter, she’s pretty.”

Finally, he glanced sideways, pulling the car enough to the side to graze past a tanker truck. “Yeah, she’s hot! Are you happy now?”

“It says here that Neptune will slam into Uranus sometime next year.”

“Uh-uh,” I said, and then barfed.

Manu leaned away from me, “Ah, gross! You stink!”

“Leave him alone,” Mom said. “It’s not his fault.”

“I can’t take this!” Manu replied. “I’m gonna get sick!”

Mom tapped Dad on the shoulder, “We need some fresh air.”

“I’m not stopping again!”

“Maybe we should leave him at the next rest area,” Manu said while craning his neck to look for another road sign.

“I’m not stopping. Throw the bag out the window!”

“You can’t do that!” Mom said.

“Throw HIM out the window!” Manu said, holding his nose.

Eventually, we made it to a rest area where I could deposit my bodily fluids in a trash receptacle, while Manu claimed another grassy knoll of the French countryside as his.

Much later, I figured out the smell of the leather seats was thereason for my throwing up regularly.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really hope you enjoyed the excerpt!! You can purchase Fred Bred here. This is really a fun reading experience.