White Space: Book one of the Dark Passages by Ilsa J. Bick

Emma hadn't planned to go away for the holidays but after being accused of plagiarism, she needed to get away. She grabbs her friend Lily, rents a van, and heads out on the road. But a nasty snowstorm soon leaves them unable to see much of anything, a situation that's made worse with Emma has one of her blinks. 

Ever since she was a kid, Emma experiences what she calls blinks - fugue states that occur frequently and without warning. This time, she sees a girl and her family in a farmhouse arguing about monsters, dark passages, and white space. Before she knows it, Emma is slams back into the present and just moments away from hitting a snow mobile!

Eric and his brother Casey only narrowly miss getting hit by the careening van, but that doesn't mean everyone is out of the woods. The van slides through the guardrail and is just moments from going over when Rima and Tony arrive to try and help. And this isn't the worse danger the teens will face. No. This is just the beginning. 

Holy freaking head trip! White Space is crazy!

I had no idea what to expect going into this book. Other than noting it was being hailed as Memento meets Inception and that it was by Ilsa J. Bick, who I've heard excellent things about, that is. But that was enough for me. And I don't think any real description short of trying to give the whole thing away could even remotely prepare me for what was to come in the book.

This is the kind of book that's made for bookish horror fans. There's a crazy horror author, increasingly weird settings, and monsters as well as a plot so full of unexpected turns and switchbacks that it'll leave your head spinning before the end. And what an end it is! This is the first in a series so of course the end is all kinds of crazypants goodness and absolutely no resolution whatsoever. And yet, I have to say it's the kind of book I think is so insane that it works for just the right reader (me!).

White Space officially hits shelves tomorrow. If you don't like weird and trippy stories with twist after twist after twist, you probably won't like White Space. If, however, you do enjoy stories a la Memento and Inception (which only resemble Bick's latest in that they're trippy and full of twists), then you'll love White Space and I highly, highly recommend treating yourself to a copy as soon as you possibly can!

Rating: 5/5

Last List Blog Hop: A Q&A with Ilsa J. Bick + a Giveaway

Frequenters to my blog have seen me fangirl on and on about Ilsa J. Bick's White Space for quite some time now. It was seriously one of the most unique books I've ever read. It was one of my top ten reads of 2014 and the follow up, The Dickens Mirror, has been one of my most anticipated reads of 2015. So of course when Egmont USA announced it would be closing its doors earlier this year I was amazed, shocked, and pretty darn sad. No, it didn't mean The Dickens Mirror wouldn't see the light of day, but it did mean one of my new favorite authors was going to be affected in an undeniably crappy way.

So when the Cuddlebuggery Last List Blog Hop was announced, I hopped to and headed over there to sign on. Thanks to the fabulous organizing of Kat Kennedy, I get to host Ilsa here in a Q&A and I get to offer up an autographed copy of White Space as a giveaway. Oh, and did I mention that was an international giveaway?!

Before I turn things over to Ilsa, here's a bit about The Dickens Mirror from Goodreads (note, if you haven't read White Space, you might want to skip over this part):

Critically acclaimed author of The Ashes Trilogy, Ilsa J. Bick takes her new Dark Passages series to an alternative Victorian London where Emma Lindsay continues to wade through blurred realities now that she has lost everything: her way, her reality, her friends. In this London, Emma will find alternative versions of her friends from the White Space and even Arthur Conan Doyle.

Emma Lindsay finds herself with nowhere to go, no place to call home. Her friends are dead. Eric, the perfect boy she wrote into being, and his brother, Casey, are lost to the Dark Passages. With no way of knowing where she belongs, she commands the cynosure, a beacon and lens that allows for safe passage between the Many Worlds, to put her where she might find her friends—find Eric—again. What she never anticipated was waking up in the body of Little Lizzie, all grown up—or that, in this alternative London, Elizabeth McDermott is mad.

In this London, Tony and Rima are “rats,” teens who gather the dead to be used for fuel. Their friend, Bode, is an attendant at Bedlam, where Elizabeth has been committed after being rescued by Arthur Conan Doyle, a drug-addicted constable.

Tormented by the voices of all the many characters based on her, all Elizabeth wants is to get rid of the pieces under her skin once and for all. While professing to treat Elizabeth, her physician, Dr. Kramer, has actually drugged her to allow Emma—who’s blinked to this London before—to emerge as the dominant personality…because Kramer has plans. Elizabeth is the key to finding and accessing the Dickens Mirror.

But Elizabeth is dying, and if Emma can’t find a way out, everyone as they exist in this London, as well as the twelve-year-old version of herself and the shadows—what remains of Eric, Casey, and Rima that she pulled with her from the Dark Passages—will die with her.

And now a Q&A with Ilsa J. Bick!

How would you describe the Dark Passages duology in a nutshell?

Well, I could direct your readers to Amazon or B&N or something, and they can read the synopses. In fact, that’s not a bad idea since, except for the “critically-acclaimed” part, I helped to write them, so go here for White Space and here for Dickens Mirror.

Go ahead . . . I’ll wait.

Okay? So now let’s talk themes. In a nutshell, I’m playing around with the nature of reality while also kind of commenting on what it’s like to be a writer, when certain characters or stories get under your skin and just won’t let go. For that matter, I’m also talking about what happens when you, the reader, gets lost in a story.

First off, honestly, our problem is the same as Emma’s and Rima’s and Casey’s, as all my characters in this series: how do you know you’re real? You don’t (see below) and that’s precisely the problem my characters run into: whether or not they’re real people or simply characters, infused with too much of a real life, who’ve escaped their stories by falling between the lines into White Space. (Emma, of course, is the most powerful character in this regard; she can blink from one story to the next—or be swept there—because she’s an unfinished character; her story hasn’t reached its end; she’s full of potential.)

Because what really goes on in all that seemingly empty white space? Or another way to look at it is like this: a word has no meaning—none, zero, zich, zip—unless there’s emptiness around it. Unless it’s bounded by emptiness—by white space—to give it power and definition. A D is a D because there’s space around the letter to make it a D. A word or letter or symbol or sentence means absolutely nothing if you don’t set it off by a lot of white space.

So . . . what is white space? What is the emptiness between letters and lines and paragraphs or between the chapters in a book or scenes when, all of a sudden, it’s a week later? I know I’ve driven some of my readers bonkers by ending some books on highly ambiguous notes . . .but I do that on purpose. Guys, that’s why empty page at the end of a book is there: for you to carry on the story the way you think it should go.

So then, this duology goes one step further. What if a writer doesn’t put symbols on white space . . . you know, write a letter or type a page . . . but draws symbols from this emptiness? You know that expression, falling between the lines? That implies there’s something there, doesn’t it?

That the lines are solid, but the space is or could be . . . anything?

I started to wonder what would happen if a character really did just that. Is that character lost, or can she crawl out and find herself in another story? What happens if the wrong character gets into the wrong story?

Okay, that’s more than a nutshell, but you get my drift. I hope. Don’t tell me if you don’t. Life is hard enough.

Child psychologist, film scholar, former Air Force major… you have quite a varied resume! How would you say these experiences have influenced your writing in general and the Dark Passages books in particular?

Well, as a shrink, you crawl through a lot of private sewers. I’ve worked with kids in family bound together by hate, those who treat the people they say they love so badly, and, of course, the outright abusive. I’ve also worked in a women’s prison with people you really don’t want to meet in a dark alley; honestly, orange is the new black this ain’t.

So all that, coupled with having grown up around military folks and my own service during the First Gulf War working with soldiers in the run-up and after their deployments as well as more personal history (my dad’s a Holocaust survivor, for example, and I’ve had my own run-ins with prejudice, even now) . . . I know that people behave very badly all the time. There’s no way I can write sweetness and light because they are tough to find. I’m not necessarily a pessimist, but I do think that people can be counted on to live down to your lowest expectations, especially when things go south. Yes, of course, there are people who surprise you, but they’re in the minority.

I bring all that to my novels. For me, people struggling through adversity to discover that lost light in themselves—that you are not necessarily the worthless scum-bag kid people say or think you are, or that you are stronger than you believe you can be—is what I’m about. The art a society produces, whether that art is literature, music, the visuals arts or film, is the art it requires, and you can learn a lot about what troubles or inspires folks by paying attention to things like that.

In terms of the Dark Passages series in particular, though . . . let me tell you where I got the original idea of playing with the nature of reality: my youngest daughter. See, I have this habit of thinly veiling her in a lot of different stories, and then having her die in the most horrible ways. Never done that to my eldest, who’s beside herself with jealousy and wants to know when I’ll kill her (soon, I promised, very soon). But the youngest kid . . . boy, I off her all the time. Honestly, you’d think the kid would catch a clue.

Anyway, she made some offhand remark about a book I was working on, like was I going to kill her this time or not. (I wasn’t; I was busy killing her cousins.) But we did talk about it, because it turns out she was both kind of flattered but also upset that I kept offing her even though it really wasn’t her. I found out that it always gave her kind of a jolt to recognize a detail that related to her or read her name in one of my books (or in any book, for that matter). When I asked why, she said that her brain always sort of tripped over that. Like she had to remind herself that this hadn’t happened to her; it was only a book; this wasn’t her life.

Well, that was just fascinating. I have such an uncommon name that I’ve only run across it in a book twice before (and one movie, although Humphrey Bogart says it incorrectly and I’ll never be anywhere near as gorgeous as Ingrid Bergman). So that little mental hitch has virtually never happened, but when it has . . . well, I find that my eyes kind of stumble. It’s hard to read and lose myself in the story because I’m constantly thinking, that’s not me; that’s not my life.

But that got me to thinking about perception and reality, something in which, as a shrink, I’ve always been interested. (Really, as a therapist, you are attempting to shift a patient’s perception of reality, but is that the same thing as truth? No, it’s your truth; it’s what you perceive as being more normative. Sort of a slippery slope, if you take my meaning.)

We take it for granted that when we open our eyes, that what surrounds us is real. But how do you know for sure? You really don’t, just as you have no idea if what I say is green really is. If you’re a kid and I say that something is green and say that often enough, you’ll believe me even if what I think is green is really blue or red. For that matter, you have no clue that what you see in the mirror is how you truly appear to others. (A schizophrenic patient once described what she saw when she looked at me and—exaggeration aside—it was pretty interesting.)

By extension, what others say about you influences your perceptions about yourself and, by extension, your reality. So . . . can anyone be sure that you’re the author of your own story? On a more mundane level and for a lot of teens, how do you know that your ambition to be, say, a lawyer or doctor is truly your idea instead of your parents’? What if you’re really a character in someone else’s drama and don’t know it?

See what I mean? You can go crazy thinking about stuff like this, which only goes to show that the old saw about shrinks is true: takes one to know one.

How and when did you decide that you wanted to write?

Long story really short: I didn’t, really. My husband did. I had been writing a bunch of nonfiction articles on film and psychoanalysis for some time but getting kind of bored. Honestly, once you figure out the kind of primitive imagery a film’s using or at what developmental level it functions, then it gets repetitive because everything conforms to genre standards, and different genres have certain tropes to which they normally adhere. So it was fun, but I was also thinking, okay, what’s next?

That’s where the husband said that he thought I really wanted to write novels but was too chicken to try because he thought I thought I would fail. (He was right. This is the disadvantage of being married for so long you can finish one another’s sentences.) So then he dared me to try and, well, I never back down from a dare. (My mother’s hair went white at an early age. If she’d only known about that time I was nine and stood at the edge of a two-story balcony, weighing the risks of breaking my legs, all to impress some boy named Scott . . . she might have grounded me for life.)

Anyway, I started writing stories. (Okay, I’ll be honest; I always wanted to write myself aboard the Starship Enterprise. Captain Kirk was such a hunk.) Well, they were terrible. I mean, really bad. I think I wrote about fifty completely awful stories and six equally abysmal novels (three Trek, three not) before I wrote one 7,000-word story that I managed to sell. Actually, it not only sold but took grand prize in a contest. I won a lot of money and promptly bought a refrigerator. The story got published and then reprinted a couple of times. Then I sat around and fretted, completely paralyzed for a couple months, because I couldn’t figure out what I’d done right. In the end, it was just that I’d finally written enough really, really bad words—about a million, all told—until I stumbled on how to find the not-so-bad ones. But that’s how I got started.

Are there any particular writers/books/films that have inspired you throughout your writing career?

Uhm . . . yeah and no. The truth is that if you’ve written just a thumpingly good story, you are my favorite writer of the moment, and I want to gouge out your eyes with a fork because I wish I’d thought of that idea first. So I’ve had no real inspiration, per se, although I can say that a writer to whose work I have returned on many occasions is Stephen King. Even when he’s awful—and he’s written a ton of real clunkers—he’s better than most because he knows how to tell a story. Now, whether you care about the story he’s telling depends. But he’s one careful guy when it comes to setting things up and making you take the bait.

For example, Secret Window, Secret Garden is just a masterpiece. Yeah, yeah, the end is clunky (he’s not that great with endings, IMHO; for example, the end of the film version of The Mist is far superior to the actual novella), but he really sucks you in right away. I remember the first time I came to that story, I actually heard it (James Woods does a fabulous job). Afterward, I was, like, what? How’d he do that? So then I grabbed the book and went through and tore it up with a critical eye to see how he’d done it, because I was convinced he hadn’t played fair. Well, he had, and from the get-go, in the very second paragraph. The clues are all there, but they’re so cleverly placed, you don’t see them for what they are until the end.

I love the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a character in The Dickens Mirror. Of all the literary personalities out there who could appear in a Victorian London setting, though, I’m curious why you chose Doyle in particular?

Because no one else would think of it? I’m being only semi-facetious here. People know about Dickens and Collins and Thackeray, but how many know about Doyle? I mean, they may know his name, but there’s no way that, say, Pip or Scrooge is more real to people than Dickens. That’s not the case with Doyle. People know Sherlock Holmes, a person who was never real and yet is treated as someone who could be. I mean, there are statues of the guy, for God’s sake. So that really fit in well with the general conceit of the novels: i.e., that we all might be characters in someone else’s book and not know it.

In addition, I was really interested in Doyle as a person. You know, his family (which was HUGE; we’re talking nine sibs) was desperately poor; they lived in the slummiest sections of Edinburgh; he ran with a Catholic gang; his dad ended up a drunk and then hallucinating away in an asylum where he died; and the list goes on. I mean, the guy was also kind of certifiable in a way; he had his own breakdown when his son died just before the end of World War I and then he went completely overboard into spiritualism. He was a bit of a nut, really. So I got interested in the Doyle who might have been—rough, unscrupulous, an addict, and all-around not-very-nice guy with his own demons.

The Dark Passages books are quite different from anything else I’ve ever read, and in a great way! Was the writing process for these two books different in any way from your previous work?

Well, thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed them.

To answer your question, though . . . you know, a funny thing happens whenever I finish a book: I don’t remember the agony that goes into it. In that way, it’s a touch like having a kid ;-)

What I do recall is that I did a TON more research for this book than any other I’ve ever attempted, mainly because, you know, what did I know about Victorian London or Edinburgh? Right: just what I’d read in books. So I had to actually go visit the London Police Museum and Royal College of Surgeons and the old Bedlam which is now the Imperial War Museum and talk to a ton of people, especially since I knew that DM would end up there. I had to wander around Edinburgh and travel out to Sciennes Hill Place, walk around the city and environs—and the number of books and articles I read!! Make your head spin. But I had to do the bulk of the research before beginning White Space, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d end up using versus what I’d throw away or just file for some other book at some other time.

The thing about research is, it can be a huge time-sink. There’s always one more place to go, another book to read. What I had to learn was that a) research isn’t writing and b) you only need enough for verisimilitude. I’m not writing for Victorians; I’m writing for contemporary readers, and if you read a lot of contemporary YA set in that time period, writers sprinkle in little details to give a sense of place. For my people, language was important, too, and that was a challenge because you have to get the slang right but not overdo it so you sound like a caricature. Thankfully, there are a couple compendiums of very old books that catalogue just that.

Another interesting bit about that process: you think you know what you need. What happens, though, is that you do something that’s kind of throwaway . . . like, something touristy (in this case, it was a visit to a very little-known series of caverns under a bunch of cross-streets in the outskirts of Edinburgh as well as all the hidden nooks and crannies under Edinburgh on general principle because of the way the city was once laid out) which solifidied the idea of those caverns/tunnels under Bedlam. (Actually, having worked in a very old Connecticut psychiatric facility that Dickens once visited, I know that these kinds of tunnels still exist.)

The other thing that was different here: the number of false starts and amount of blood on the floor (I mean, in terms of dead pages and shredded sections). There is so much more to the story that I never put in because I just couldn’t. Originally, I’d planned for a trilogy but my then-editor suggested it might be better to wrap it up as a duology. Given what’s gone on with Egmont USA, this was so prescient; I’d have his first-born child if he weren’t already happily married ;-). So all the stuff and little details and adventures and all that I’d planned to take these characters on had to be whittled down to something manageable.

Out of all of the characters in White Space and Dickens Mirror was there any one that you’d consider a personal favorite? If so, why?

Gosh, I love them all; I mean, this is like asking me to pick my favorite child . . . but I guess I’d say Rima, Casey, and Doyle. Rima turned out to be a really interesting girl who has plenty of reasons to be bitter and hard but is instead incredibly compassionate and humane while still being strong. Casey was fun because I got to torture him so much, and I suppose that Doyle was my Casey in DM. I mean, when you think about it, Doyle was just this average, rough, blue-collar, not-really-bright guy simply trying to get along and eke out some kind of life at the end of the world only to have his demons catch up and assume a life of their own. Playing on what the real Doyle wrote, plaguing him with Black Dog—an incredibly perverse alter that is a play on the hound of the Baskervilles and, in this story, his Cerberus—was immense fun.

Oh, and I did enjoy making fun of myself there at the end. The challenge of writing yourself into a novel should not be underestimated.

Playing off your “Sunday’s Cake, Friday’s Cocktail” blog posts, is there a particular drink or snack you’d recommend readers pair with White Space and/or The Dickens Mirror?

What an interesting question! Well, if we’re talking cake, then an old-fashioned steamed pudding made in a real pudding mold would do for either. I really am quite partial to a recent recipe I tried for Christmas pudding as well as a terrific one that features persimmons.

There is, however, one pudding I’d like to try that I think would fit very well with DM: black pudding, which is this very boozy concoction that requires some time to swim around and soak up brandy before steaming. And it really is jet-black. Absolute heaven, with a healthy dollop of sweetened double cream.

Drinks, drinks . . . well, if I were being very Dickensian about it, you could either consume as much alcohol as Dickens actually did in any given day, or make yourself a nice hot gin punch with, say, Old Tom, which is a somewhat sweeter gin than London Dry that got its start back in the 18th century but eventually lost out to a taste for London Dry. If you’re up for a simple cocktail made with Old Tom, though, then I’d suggest an Ampersand, a lovely though largely forgotten drink made with Old Tom, cognac, bitters, and sweet vermouth—and call it a day.

If you want to the true Dickens experience, though, you’ve got two choices: a punch or just a lot of alcohol in various forms quaffed throughout the day. If you go for a punch, you can’t do much better than the one he actually wrote about in Pickwick Papers: brandy, rum, sugar, lemon, and hot water. (It’s really not as potent as all that either, which explains why people could drink this all night long.)

On the other hand, if your liver needs the exercise, make like the Inimitable himself. Dickens’ old manager, George Dolby, wrote a book about the author’s reading tours and even talked about “the Boss’s” routine in terms of how he prepared, what he ate, that kind of thing. To fortify himself, Dickens would start his day with some rum and cream. Not a lot, say, a couple teaspoons worth of rum. At teatime, he’d throw back about a pint of Champagne—so, two cups. Then, a little before he’d go on stage, Dickens would down a tumbler of sherry (and we’re talking, a tumbler) with a raw egg mixed in.

After that, Dickens gets positively abstemious. In-between acts, he was quite adamant that he had a nice hot beef tea waiting, and then before bed, he’d have soup. (I know: staid. But that doesn’t count all the little tipples and toasts and nips he’d pound back at various points of the day because people were always dropping by, and he was quite the entertainer.

On the other hand, compared to Wilkie Collins, who never traveled anywhere without his jug of laudanum—yes, a jug—Dickens was a veritable teetotaler.

See, this is where research is dangerous.

For the purposes of my books, though? Go straight for Death in the Afternoon, which, given the mind-bending nature of the duology, works for both. The drink was a Hemingway favorite, and one he contributed to a celebrity book of cocktails way back in 1935. It’s actually named for a non-fiction book of the same title that he wrote on bullfighting. What you do is fill a glass with about four ounces of Champagne (I’d suggest something middling nice, like Chandon) and then top it with one-and-a-half ounces of absinthe. (By the way, I wrote about this cocktail—and absinthe, in particular—so do check it out: http://www.ilsajbick.com/?p=2980.)

The thing is . . . Hemingway was drinking these when absinthe still contained the compound, thujone, which is what used to make the spirit so damned dangerous. As in, bloody hallucinate your head off dangerous—and he said you should drink three to five of these suckers, though he did suggest you do so slowly.

But you have to wonder: just what the heck was he seeing by the end?

Can you give us a hint about what you’re working on next?

Sure . . . let’s just say it involves a bunch of teenagers (some of whom are out to settle old grudges), a plane crash, a ghost town, some really hungry critters, a long-buried secret, and a question of who pulled which trigger when. Think Lord of the Flies set in the Canadian Rockies . . . and now you’re cooking.

About the author: Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major, and now an award-winning author of dozens of short stories and novels, including her critically acclaimed ASHES Trilogy, Draw the Dark, Drowning Instinct, and The Sin-Eater’s Confession. WHITE SPACE, the first volume of her Dark Passages horror/fantasy duology, is currently long-listed for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a YA Novel. The sequel, THE DICKENS MIRROR, will hit shelves on March 10, 2015. 

Ilsa lives with her long-suffering husband and other furry creatures near a Hebrew cemetery in rural Wisconsin. One thing she loves about the neighbors: they’re very quiet and only come around for sugar once in a blue moon.

Drop by her website, www.ilsajbick.com, for her Sundays’ cake and Friday’s cocktail recipes as well as other assorted maunderings; or find her on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter (@ilsajbick), or Instagram (@ilsajbick).

Huge thanks to Ilsa for being here today and to Kat for setting up the Last List Blog Hop! The Dickens Mirror is officially out on shelves March 10 and I do highly suggest you snatch up a copy.

And now for the giveaway! To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, March 9. Open internationally!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I've Only Read Once but Need to Read More

I've decided to jump on board with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week the topic is: authors I've read once and need to read more.

Goodness! Just ten?!

1. Ilsa J. Bick - yes, White Space was my first time reading Bick. Her earlier series gets rave reviews and considering how much I completely loved White Space I'll be reading more of her work sooner rather than later (like White Space's follow up!) 

2. Terry Pratchett - I've not actually even read Pratchett, if we're splitting hairs here. (I"m counting him anyway.) I've read Good Omens, which he co wrote with Neil Gaiman. Considering he's my husband's favorite author and we do have most of his titles in our house I'm a little embarrassed that I haven't read him. 

3. Michael McDowell - kind of the same as Pratchett. I read Candles Burning and didn't love it. McDowell frequently pops up in horror recommendation lists, though, and with The Amulet and The Elementals back in print now it seems like the perfect time to read more. 

4. Graham Joyce - this might be a cheat because I could swear that I've read more than one of Joyce's books, and yet it seems my Swiss cheese brain might be playing tricks on me. I've definitely read The Silent Land and I've definitely got a couple of others in my TBR. Joyce unfortunately passed away just after the release of his most recent title, The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit.

5. Susan Hill - Of course I had to read The Woman in Black before the movie released but I've also amassed quite a Susan Hill collection in my TBR. Some of it has been hoarding her shorter horror reads for when the mood hits and some of it has been snatching up her series titles as I come across them so that I have them when I'm ready to start from the beginning (and I may still be missing the first book, which would hold up starting). 

6. Lauren Beukes - The Shining Girls blew me away and it really took a lot of restraint not to start buying up her backlist and hoarding them in the TBR. I've tried to make myself hold back a bit on that! Her newest book is out this week, though, and I'm not going to be able to hold out.

7. Melissa Marr - this is another weird one. I'm not sure how but Graveminder is so far the only book I own and have read by Marr. Made For You is new out this week and I think I'll have to buy it!

8. Katie Crouch - I only recently read Crouch for the first time. Abroad was amazing! A 2014 favorite and a book that gave me a massively difficult to overcome book hangover. While I understand her earlier books are a bit different (quite in some cases) this is an author I definitely need to spend more time reading!

9. Jessica Anya Blau - same reason as Crouch! Wonder Bread Summer was one of the best books I read last year. I've actually got Blau's two previous books waiting in the TBR as we speak. 

10. Amy Tan - I read Saving Fish From Drowning over the Christmas holiday the year it was released and really enjoyed it. I don't know why I've not read more by her - The Joy Luck Club sadly wasn't on my school reading lists. 

Wicked Valentine's Read-a-Thon update

Hello, all! A Wicked Valentine's Read-a-Thon update here. (I posted my first update to the intro Read-a-Thon post but decided to do an actual update post today.)

So the Read-a-Thon is ongoing through Monday, which means I have more time but it also means that I needed to add to my list! Here was my starting list:

This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

Fates by Lanie Bross

Fire by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg

The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena

White Space by Ilsa J. Bick

And after finishing White Space on the 9th, I got rolling pretty good (White Space and Fire were both doorstoppers so I did expect them to take a bit longer). Here's where I am as of today:

2/14 Update -
This Dark Road to Mercy completed (232 pages)
Fates completed (366 pages)
Fire completed (692 pages)

Which means that all I have left from the list is The Taste of Apple Seeds, possibly the shortest title there! Unfortunately like its predecessor Fire left me with a massive book hangover. Urgh. And so this called not only for desperate measures (a potential book slump to avert as well as bulking up the list to get me through the weekend). Sadly my first potential add on is so far a DNF so I will not mention that title here, but here are the others:

Things Withered by Susie Moloney (shorts) - 56/280 completed

Conquest by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard 

Wicked Valentine's Read-a-Thon vol 2

Hi, all! This year I've signed on for My Shelf Confessions's Wicked Valentine's Read-a-Thon! The goal is simply to read as much as possible between today (Feb 7) and Feb 17. I feel like I've made good work of staying on top of the growing TBR but a read a thon is alway a welcome chance to tackle more!

Here are the books I'm hoping to get through during the read-a-thon:

This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

Fates by Lanie Bross

Fire by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg

The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena

White Space by Ilsa J. Bick

I'm actually pretty positive that I can finish most if not all of these. I may even be able to get to one or two more depending on how successful the weekends are! (Note, a couple of these are actually pretty short so it shouldn't be too bad even with Valentine's Day date night.)

2/10: Update -
White Space completed! (560 pages)
This Dark Road to Mercy 154/232 completed

Short Fiction Friday: Two Orbs Prequels by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

I've been in the mood for a good alien invasion book for a while now - it's a result of my own attempt to make room for more traditional science fiction in my reading list AND the new Simon451 releases I've been delving into (which have only left me craving more). And given that I've still got Simon451's Nicholas Sansbury Smith releases to dive into ready to go on my ereader, I figured it was time.

But I read these backwards, starting with "White Sands" rather than "Solar Storms," something I have to consider a bit of a mistake. See, it's not until almost the end of "White Sands" that the story's timeframe becomes somewhat clearer, with a mention of the "solar storms of 2055." Anyway, that was my mistake but it certainly didn't make "White Sands" any less fun! I've since gone back and read "Solar Storms" though and am going to cover them in order here.

In "Solar Storms," Doctors Sophie Winston and Emanuel Rodriguez have been tasked to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for what they believe is a NASA operation. Upon arrival, they learn that recent sun activity suggests an anomalous event that could be catastrophic to Earth. Massive solar flares seem to be increasing in size and frequency and it seems to be just a matter of time before they hit our planet. Sophie and Emanuel have both studied varied effects of such an event but the CME hits before they can even begin to theorize what might be causing it. Now everything has changed and surviving the storm is just the beginning. 

"Solar Storms" honestly did clear up a few things for me. Some of the when and the what are revealed, and we're given a bit of a look into NTC's involvement at this early stage as well as the government's... response... (I've since started Orbs, so I know Sophie makes a return). There's a very menacing overtone to the whole story what with the questions surround the cause of the flares and Sophie's initial discoveries pertaining to that matter.

"White Sands" begins with brothers Jeff and David (and stepmom Paula) headed to meet their dad for their annual visit. Dad - Michael Fitz - is a guard working for the New Tech Corporation, based at their White Sands Missile Range location. 

The visit is off to a rocky start when Paula and the kids are redirected after witnessing what they believe is a test flight of one of NTC's new prototypes. Unbeknownst to Fitz's family - and much of the base staff - NTC has intel that indicates an alien landing is imminent. While some of the company's top scientists are boarding a shuttle that will take them off world to a new potential colony, Fitz and his sons are going to witness the beginnings of a hostile invasion firsthand. 

Hmmm. And things have now gotten much more interesting and much more complicated. The beings actually do make contact in "White Sands" and it is creepy as hell! But what I find even more chilling is the obvious way the powers that be have kept it all from everyone! Of course that begins in "Solar Storms" but it's much, much worse by the time "White Sands" takes place.

So far I'm finding Nicholas Sansbury Smith's work to be quite entertaining. These are sci fi tales that even I can wrap my brain around, so they're not terribly heavy on the actual science part. There is enough present, though, to set a nice tone and scene for the series.

"Solar Storms," "White Sands," Orbs and Orbs II: Stranded are out now. Orbs III: Redemption and another prequel short, "Red Sands," are due out next year.

What I'm Reading: Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff + a Giveaway

Morning, all! It's been a crazy month here - conferences, conferences, conferences, twitter pitch events, and I'm up to my eyeballs with manuscripts to read. And so though I'd planned a review of Gemina today, I haven't quite finished it yet. It is providing some much needed relaxation (i.e. bathtub) reading though :)

Here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.

The saga that began with Illuminae continues on board the space station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of BeiTech’s assault. Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter, Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.

When an elite BeiTech team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum may be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival. The fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.

But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.

So yes, this is the follow up to last year's Illuminae. And yes, even though this one does focus on two new characters, you do have to read them in order - Kady is present and the story picks up IMMEDIATELY after the events in Illuminae. 

I love not only the premise of these, but the overall experience of reading them. The story itself is built as a briefing meant to explain what's happened in the wake of an invasion. So rather than a straightforward narrative, the tale is presented as interviews, surveillance footage, chats, emails, etc. And there's a great design element that goes along with all of that as well: pages that shift between the normal white with black text to black with white text, illustrations, and formatting/design elements to indicate what kind of piece you're looking at (an email, chat, that sort of thing).  

And while the books do appear to be behemoths, each weighing in at about 600 pages, the formatting actually makes for a rather speedy read. As with its predecessor, Gemina has some pages that really have very little in the way of text to read at all. Combined with a gripping story (hate to use such an overused word there, but that's what it is), that framework of compiled documents really does allow the story to move quite quickly. 

So yeah, I'm digging it! 

Thanks to the publisher, I am able to offer up one copy of Gemina for a giveaway. To enter, simply fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, November 7. Open US only and no PO boxes please. 

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The Venetian Bargain by Marina Fiorato - Excerpt + Giveaway

Today marks the release of Marina Fiorato's latest, The Venetian Bargain. Thanks to the publishers, I've got an excerpt to tease you with and I'm able to offer up one copy as a giveaway as well :)

Here's a bit about the book from the publisher first:

Venice, 1576. Five years after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto, a ship steals unnoticed into Venice bearing a deadly cargo. A man, more dead than alive, disembarks and staggers into Piazza San Marco. He brings a gift to Venice from Constantinople. Within days the city is infected with bubonic plague—and the Turkish Sultan has his revenge.

But the ship also holds a secret stowaway—Feyra, a young and beautiful harem doctor fleeing a future as the Sultan’s concubine. Only her wits and medical knowledge keep her alive as the plague ravages Venice.

In despair, the Doge commissions the architect Andrea Palladio to build the greatest church of his career—an offering to God so magnificent Venice will be saved. But Palladio’s life is in danger too, and it will require the skills of Annibale Cason, the city’s finest plague doctor, to keep him alive. What Annibale had not counted on was meeting Feyra, who is now under Palladio’s protection—an impossible woman who’s quite possibly his perfect match.

About the author:
MARINA FIORATO is half-Venetian and a history graduate of Oxford University and the University of Venice, where she specialized in the study of Shakespeare’s plays as an historical source. After University she studied art and has since worked as an illustrator, actress, and film reviewer. She also designed tour visuals for rock bands including U2 and the Rolling Stones. She lives in London with her husband, son, and daughter.

PROLOGUE
Venice
Christian Year 1576

Sebastiano Venier, Doge of Venice, gazed from the stone quatrefoil window, with eyes that were as troubled as the ocean.

His weather-eye, sharpened by many years at sea, had seen the storm approaching for three days, clotting and clouding on the horizon and rolling in across the sickly amethyst waves. Now the maelstrom was here, and it had brought with it something more malign than ill weather.

With his flowing white beard and noble countenance, the Doge had been immortalized by Tintoretto and been compared to Neptune who also ruled a seabound kingdom. He had even, in hushed tones, been compared to the Almighty. A profoundly devout man, the Doge would have been deeply troubled, for different reasons, by each comparison; but today he would have given anything to have the omnipotence to save Venice from her darkest hour.

He watched as six figures, huddled together against the elements, hurried along a dock already glazed with water at every flow of the tide, the ebb tugging at the hems of their black robes. The cloaks and cowls gave them a monastic look, but these six men were men of science, not religion. They dealt in life and death. They were doctors.

As they drew closer he could see their masks clearly; bone-white beaks curving in a predatory hook from the dark cowls. The masks were frightening enough, but the reason for them even more ominous.

They were his Medico delle Peste. Plague doctors.

They were six scholars, men of letters from good families, all schooled at the best medical academies, one for each of the six sestieri of Venice. To see the Doctors together was an ill omen. Doge Sebastiano Venier doubted that they had ever even met together before; and they seemed to him to swoop like a murder of crows at a graveside. Perhaps his own. His shoulders dropped for an instant; he felt very old.

He watched the doctors wade along the peerless Riva degli Schiavoni, one of the most wondrous streets in the world, and knew that any minute now they would enter his great white palace. The Doge’s skin chilled as if sea-spray had doused him. He leaned his head against the cool quarrels of glass, and shut his eyes for one blessed instant. If he hadn’t done so, he might have seen a Venetian galleass sailing swiftly away on the dark and swelling waters; but he did close his eyes for a couple of heartbeats, just to be still and breathe in the salt ether.

The smell of Venice.

Sebastiano Venier straightened up, reminding himself who he was, where he was. He looked at the delicate stonework of his windows, the fi nest Venetian glazing keeping the thunder of the sea from his ears. He looked up, tilting his noble head to the ceiling and the peerless frescoes of red and gold painted over hundreds of years by the fi nest Venetian artists, covering the cavernous, glorious space above. And yet, all the riches and the glory could not keep the Pestilence from his door.

The Doge settled in his great chair and waited for the doctors to be announced. They fi led in, dripping, and semicircled him like vultures, the red crystal eyepieces set into their masks glittering hungrily, as if ready to peck the very flesh of him. But the moment they began to speak, the Doge ceased to be afraid of them.

‘We had expected it, my lord,’ said one. ‘In the botanical gardens of the Jesuiti, there have been of late unusual numbers of butterflies – hundreds upon thousands of them.’

The Doge raised a single, winter-white brow. ‘Butterflies?’

The doctor, failing to register the steel in the Doge’s tone, prattled on. ‘Why, Doge, butterflies are well known to be harbingers of pestilence.’

‘It is true,’ chimed in another. ‘There have been other signs too. There is a bakery in the Arsenale, and when you tear the loaves in twain, the bread itself begins to bleed.’

The Doge rapped his fingertips on the arm of his chair. ‘The fact that the pestilence has arrived in Venice is not a matter for debate. The question is, how to best treat the Plague.’

It was no use. One physician wanted to combat the pestilence by advising his patients to wear a dead toad around the neck. The next advised backing a live pigeon into the patients’ swollen buboes in the groin and armpit, so that the tail feathers could draw out the poison. They began to talk over one another, their beaks almost clashing, the masks now ridiculous; the doctors’ learned, mellow voices raised in pitch until they were quacking like so many ducks.

The Doge, irritated, found his attention wandering. These physicians were charlatans, buffoons, each one more self-important than the next. His eyes drifted to the shadow of an arras, where a man, an old man like himself, stood listening; waiting for the moment when the Doge would call him forth, and tell him why he had been summoned.

And now for the giveaway! To enter simply fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, April 21. Open US only and no PO boxes please. Good luck!

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Guest post by Amy Talkington

Good morning, everyone! Today I am pleased to be part of SOHO Teen's tour for Amy Talkington's debut Liv, Forever with a guest post from Amy herself!

Folks have been buzzing about Liv, Forever for ages now! Reps were raving about it here at Mountains and Plains last fall and it's been gaining more and more attention ever since. The book is finally out on shelves and I am pleased as punch to welcome Amy to the blog.

Take it away, Amy!

A few people have asked me where I wrote Liv, Forever. I love my writing space so I thought I’d share all the details with you!

When I had my first child five years ago, it prompted me to do what I’d long wanted to do: convert our old freestanding garage into my office. We live on a very steep hill and the garage is down the hill from our house, providing the perfect amount of separation from the main house—so I’m “home” but I’m not home.

I have a friend who is an incredible interior designer (like she helped do one of the Ace Hotels!) and she agreed to give me some advice on the space. I knew I wanted an “inspiration wall” somewhere and I knew I wanted bookshelves somewhere and of course I needed a desk but I wasn’t quite sure how to arrange it all. My friend had a brilliant idea: One complete wall of books. One complete wall of inspiration images. Put the desk right in the middle, so the images and the words meet in my mind. I love that idea, that I sit in between a wall of words and a wall of images and they meet at my desk, where I sit and type. I feel inspired by that concept every day, whether writing a screenplay or Liv, Forever (or a screenplay of Liv, Forever!)

The third wall (which is behind me) is filled with framed art and memorabilia—including a movie poster from the indie feature I wrote and directed The Night of the White Pants, the autograph I got from Andy Warhol at a book signing in 1985, and one of my old self-portraits.

Everyone has their own take on this, but I personally think it’s very important to create a serious work space for yourself—even if it’s just a closet! Make it your own. Make it inspiring. Take yourself seriously as a writer. Take yourself seriously as a creator. An artist. Surround yourself with ideas and inspirations. And write!

If you want to know all the latest on Liv, Forever follow me on Twitter @amytalkington and Tumblr http://amytalkington.tumblr.com/

Big, big thanks to Amy for being on the blog today and to the folks over at SOHO Teen for setting this up!

Top Ten Tuesday: Teen Recommendations for Adults

I've decided to jump on board with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week the topic is: Recommendations for Readers Who Have Never Read X. So this week I'm going with recs for adults who don't read YA. 

I get it, a lot of adults have yet to dip their toe into the teen pool. I only started when I had teen sisters of my own. They'd express their great appreciation for a certain book and convince me to give it a try. Before too long I was the one reading and passing teen titles along to them! 

All of the titles I'm recommending are books that I think read as well as anything found in the "adult" section of the bookstore. They just happen to have teen characters.

1. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan - If you're not into zombies this might not work, but I do so love this series and find it truly effective and horrific as an adult. 

2. Sabriel by Garth Nix - who doesn't love this book? It's an excellent fantasy read regardless of your age. 

3. The Demon Trapper's Daughter by Jana Oliver - I knew very little about this series when I read this one but I couldn't put it down. I read it in one sitting!

4. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - this one is just such a unique premise and Taylor's style of writing is hypnotic.

5. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - another one with a unique premise. The use of vintage images paired with an incredibly fun (and dark) story. 

6. The Circle by Sara Elfgren and Mats Strandberg - this is a Scandinavian teen trilogy about witches.  But it's also about those painful teenage years. 

7. White Space by Ilsa Black - so this book seems to be very polarizing - you either love it or hate it. It's so incredibly weird and twisty and I of course loved it! I'm careful about who I recommend it to but for the right reader it's a real adventure. 

8. Pure by Julianna Baggott - my impression is that even the publisher was cross marketing this one for teens and adults. 

9. Velveteen by Danny Marks - this is a teen release from Mark Henry. It's oh, so dark and definitely one that can work just as well for adults as it does for teens. 

10. The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist - I thought this one deserved much more love than it got when it was released! This is a teen sci-fi title with a fabulous narrator. It's also Dahlquist's first teen release. 

Top Ten Tuesday: 2014 Favorites so Far

I've decided to jump on board with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week the topic is: Top Ten Books I've Read So Far This Year.

1. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker - a fabulous "literary" mystery (in quotes because it's literally a mystery based in the publishing world). Absolutely loved it!

2. Wolf by Mo Hayder - the dark and twisted seventh installment in one of my all time favorite series by one of my all time favorite authors. 

3. The Quick by Lauren Owen - a Victorian gothic tale with vampires. And a debut at that!

4. Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates - this one came with much anticipation so I was pretty relieved (and stoked) when it lived up to that. 

5. Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke - this is one of those twisted books that really sticks with you. Months after finishing it I'm still sort of reeling over how great it was. 

6. Fire by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg - OMG! This is book two in the Engelsfors trilogy and I'm dying to read book three! 

7. White Space by Ilsa J. Bick - I loved everything about this twisted mind bender of a read! It's out there, but it's a good out there. 

8. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge - probably (aside from Cinder) my favorite twist on a fairy tale so far in the trend. 

9. Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines - I love this series. It's superheroes vs zombies - what's not to love, right? This one turns the series upside down in so many fabulous ways. 

10. No One Else Can Have You by Kathleen Hale - I thought this book was pretty hilarious. It is very much in the vein of a teen Fargo (and yes, it's very dark). 

The Devil and the White City -- A Roadtrip Audio Post

Whoa! I'm late coming to this one, I know -- Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City was pubbed in 2003 and here I am posting after I listened to it on audio on our trip home from Texas. It was one of two picks we made to get us through the fifteen hour drive to Austin (then San Antonio) and back home (yeah, we pulled into our drive at 2:30 this morning and I'm totally beat!). After all, whether you choose to drive the highways of New Mexico or Oklahoma, there's a lot of dead air space between Colorado and South Central Texas (or Louisiana as is usually the case), so we go in for the LONG audio books.

I chose Devil for a couple of reasons: one, because the book's been of interest to me since it came out, but I'm really picky when it comes to nonfiction. Two, because Tony Goldwyn is the narrator. I'm actually not big on audios -- I prefer to read at my own pace (but would actually like if I could get some audios read by the authors themselves). Narrator is a big deciding factor for me if it's actually someone I recognize. I like Goldwyn and figured he'd be nice to listen to (and he was).

The book, if you're one of the last people left (like me) who hasn't read it yet, is about the Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer H.H. Holmes. Mike wasn't a huge fan of the tie in between the two and said he'd have preferred the book be focused more on one or the other, but I thought it was fascinating. First, you have the massively, seemingly ridiculous and impossible undertaking of putting together the world's fair. I can't honestly see an event of this magnitude coming together ever again -- but it would be kind of cool if it did. Then, you have this serial killer who by all accounts is incredibly creepy and insane! The man built a freak show, torture chamber filled mansion in the middle of Chicago and is thought to have killed anywhere between 9 and 100-200 people! It's a who's who of name dropping -- even the Pinkertons were called in to investigate and Holmes sold his own confession to Hearst.

Some say that Holmes was America's first serial killer. It's amazing that he was able to get away with what he did for so long. And truly, the man was a psychopath to rival the worst I've heard of. Both of us (Mike and myself) would have liked more on Frank Geyer, and since the audio we found was abridged, I'd like to go back and read the actual book to see if there's more to his story as well. The end of the book was especially disturbing, even if it is a bit of a strange connect the dots game regarding the deaths of those surrounding Holmes.

At this point, I'd like to fit Larson's other books into the TBR somewhere. Thunderstruck would probably be my next choice seeing as how it's about Crippen, but Isaac's Storm, about the hurricane that destroyed Galveston in 1900, or the new one, In the Garden of Beasts, both sound equally interesting.

Ah well, I'm working on Good Omens as we speak (Mike's been on me to read it for years now) and trying to recover from our little vacation :) Oh, and if you're interested, rumor has it Devil rights have been sold and Leonardo DiCaprio has expressed interest in playing Holmes.

Lone Star by Paullina Simons - Excerpt

Happy Book Birthday to Paullina Simons whose latest, Lone Star, hits shelves today!

To celebrate the release, I've got an excerpt to share - just to get you started :) But first, here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

Chloe is just weeks away from heading off to college and starting a new life far from her home in Maine when she embarks on a great European adventure with her boyfriend and two best friends. Their destination is Barcelona, but first they must detour through the historic cities of Eastern Europe to keep an old family promise.

Here, in this fledgling post-Communist world, Chloe meets a charming American vagabond named Johnny, who carries a guitar, an easy smile—and a lifetime of secrets. From Treblinka to Trieste, from Karnikava to Krakow, from Vilnius to Venice, the unlikely band of friends and lovers traverse the old world on a train trip that becomes a treacherous journey into Europe’s and Johnny’s darkest past—a journey that jeopardizes Chloe’s plans for the future and all she ever thought she wanted.

But the lifelong bonds Chloe and her friends share are about to be put to the ultimate test—and whether or not they reach Barcelona, they can only be certain that their lives will never be the same again.

Simons is known for her epic and romantic tales and Lone Star promises to be just that!

Now without further ado, here's a taste to pique your interest:

Chloe squeezed in by the window near the massive woman. She felt so claustrophobically cramped. Too many strangers in one confined space. Like spending hours in a packed and broken elevator. At least here there was a window.

Fifteen minutes behind schedule, the train engines finally spun into action, and she permitted herself a small smile. Yes, it was smelly. And awfully crowded. And soon to be hot. Her shirt was still damp from the rain, and all the windows were closed and she couldn’t find her ticket to show the conductor. But the train was moving at last. Soon this would be over.

Not a minute after the conductor left, the door opened again and into their stuffy, overcrowded cabin stepped the dreaded eighth passenger, a young dude. No! It was impossible! There was no room here; couldn’t he see that? It was as clear as the scowl on her face. A sharply inhaling Chloe despised him from the moment he slid open the door, smiling widely, and stepped inside to look for a seat. He was not only tall and had to bow his head to fit under the cornice, but he carried with him a crapload of stuff, enough to warrant his own cabin. Besides the oversized green duffel and a backpack, he wore a bulky leather jacket and a pretentious black beret. And on his back was a guitar of all things. Chloe nearly groaned. A guitar!

The luggage shelf above their heads was full. There was no room for a man-sized duffel, no room for a man-sized guitar, no room for a man. The guitar looked old and beat-up, and had no case. Nice way to take care of an instrument, Chloe thought. But when he spun around, she saw that the strings were new. She didn’t know which detail made her most hostile. All of it.

This interloper, at whom Chloe was too upset to look directly, assessed the situation in the cabin.

“Hello, there,” he said to her in a low easy melodic American voice. Cool and casual and friendly. Like a singsong. A fed-up Chloe stared out the window, ignoring him. Undeterred, the insolent intruder continued to speak. She glared in his direction, hoping her internal screaming might dissuade him. Nope. Just the opposite. Grinning at her with his mouthful of teeth like a simpleton, he took one long gallop through the compartment and was by her side, his duffel, backpack, guitar, jacket, pompous beret, everything. Was his black hair short or was it slicked back in a ponytail? He would have a ponytail, wouldn’t he? Oh yes. There it was.

“Hi,” he said to her, dropping the duffel to the floor. “Sorry about all my stuff. Would you mind?”

“Mind what?” Chloe barked. Her mother wouldn’t be pleased with her manners. How did he know she spoke English?

“Um, scooting over just a wee bit?” he said. His large eyes were twinkling. He probably thought they were dark chocolate in color. “You’re in my seat. Maybe you could move a smidge, and then I’d fit right in.” He grinned. “I’m good at fitting into tight spaces.” He didn’t just say that! “I’m skinny, you see,” he added. Chloe didn’t see. She didn’t see anything. She flung herself at the window. She would’ve liked to fling herself through the window like a waxwing slain.

The conductor opened the door and grunted at the unwelcome arrival. “Billetes? ”

“One moment.” The guy reached into his back pocket, and his elbow poked Chloe in her breast! He stopped, didn’t even say excuse me, moved away slightly, and passed her the guitar. “Can you hold it for a sec? I have to find my pass.”

It wasn’t as if he asked her for a favor, expecting perhaps a no. Had he ever heard the word no? He acted as if he hadn’t. First he pushed his guitar at her, already standing up, and then he asked her to hold it. Perhaps the unspoken threat was, either hold my guitar or be elbowed again in your ample bosom.

He took something out of his wallet that did not look like a ticket or a Eurail pass. The conductor glanced at it, glanced at him a moment longer, nodded quickly, his hand almost going to his temple in a salute, and backed out of the cabin. The guy stuffed everything back into his wallet, and sat down.

“I’ll take my guitar now,” he said.

She turned to the window and checked her watch. It was only 5:30! The train wouldn’t get to Riga until after eight. Chloe tried to think of other things. Yet the boy’s presence next to her was enormous and could not be denied. He crowded out all her other thoughts. She couldn’t close her eyes. She couldn’t read her book. Trying not to breathe, she stared grimly out of the window, her mouth in a clamshell.

For a few minutes, the compartment was almost silent. The professor was reading Hawking. The father was reading the paper and the boy was playing a handheld video game. The male half of the stout couple was napping, while the female half was attempting to involve guitar boy in conversation. Apologetically glancing at the woman while trying to catch Chloe’s eye, he said in English with a rueful smile, “I speak only the most basic Latvian. I wish I could explain that to her.” Oh, he fancied himself to be quite the smiler!

It was hot. Chloe’s damp shirt was pressed against the shoulder of his leather jacket. After a few minutes he mercifully took the jacket off, but not before flinging his arms and elbows and hands in all directions. Women, Chloe wanted to yell in alarm, guard your boobs! Under the leather, he wore a plain black fitted T with the white star of Texas above the pocket. Was he from Texas? Words could not express how much she didn’t care.

“I’m Johnny, by the way,” he said. “Pleased to meet you. And you are . . .”

“Chloe.” They were sitting too close for Chloe to turn her head and look him in the eye. His face was barely a foot away from her face. She half nodded in his general direction, keeping her eyes on his denim-clad knees and the pointed black–leather toe of what looked to be a snazzy cowboy boot. Lucchese perhaps? Wow. Leather jacket, beret, an ancient guitar with new strings. What the hell?

“Hi, Chloe,” he said. “Would you like to book a tour of Riga with me? I’m very good.” Every word spoken through two rows of exposed white teeth.

How good could he be? “Um, no, thank you.”

He leaned to Chloe, like a kid already familiar and undaunted by her hostility, oblivious to it, really. He inhaled the air around her and said, “You smell nice.” He tilted his head, this way and that. “Like a girl. You smell . . .” He inhaled again. “Like lavender and vanilla.”

For a moment Chloe caught his smiling eye. He blinked, slowly. She blinked slowly back. When she replied, she felt slightly heady, as if she’d been winded. “You’re telling me I smell like fabric softener?”

And he, without missing a beat, said, “I don’t know, what’s fabric softener?”

Thanks to the publisher for providing the excerpt today. Now head out to your local bookstore and grab a copy - you do have that Thanksgiving break to fill with reading after all!

The River at Night by Erica Ferencik - Excerpt

Good morning, everybody! Today I have two posts for one of January's most anticipated thriller debuts, Erica Ferencik's The River at Night. First up, an excerpt to give you a little taste.

But before we dive in, here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

Winifred Allen needs a vacation.

Stifled by a soul-crushing job, devastated by the death of her beloved brother, and lonely after the end of a fifteen-year marriage, Wini is feeling vulnerable. So when her three best friends insist on a high-octane getaway for their annual girls’ trip, she signs on, despite her misgivings.

What starts out as an invigorating hiking and rafting excursion in the remote Allagash Wilderness soon becomes an all-too-real nightmare: A freak accident leaves the women stranded, separating them from their raft and everything they need to survive. When night descends, a fire on the mountainside lures them to a ramshackle camp that appears to be their lifeline. But as Wini and her friends grasp the true intent of their supposed saviors, long buried secrets emerge and lifelong allegiances are put to the test. To survive, Wini must reach beyond the world she knows to harness an inner strength she never knew she possessed.

The River at Night hit shelves just yesterday, and it's an IndieNext pick!

The River at Night

by Erica Ferencik

1 

Early one morning in late March, Pia forced my hand.

A slapping spring wind ushered me through the heavy doors of the YMCA lobby as the minute hand of the yellowing 1950s- era clock over the check-in desk snapped to 7:09. Head down and on task to be in my preferred lane by precisely 7:15, I rushed along the glass corridor next to the pool. The chemical stink leaked from the ancient windows, as did the muffled shrieks of children and the lifeguard’s whistle. I felt cosseted by the shabby walls, by my self-righteous routine, by the fact that I’d ousted myself from my warm bed to face another tedious day head-on. Small victories.

I’d just squeezed myself into my old-lady swimsuit when the phone in my bag began to bleat. I dug it out. The screen pulsed with the image of Pia Zanderlee ski-racing down a double black diamond slope somewhere in Banff.

My choices? Answer it now or play phone tag for another week. Pia was that friend you love with a twinge of resentment. The sparkly one who never has time for you unless it’s on her schedule, but you like her too much to flush her down the friendship toilet.

“Wow, a phone call—from you!” I said as I mercilessly assessed my middle-aged pudge in the greasy mirror. “To what do I owe the honor?”

Of course I knew the reason. Five unanswered texts.

Pia laughed. “Hey, Win, listen. We need to make our reservations. Like, by tomorrow.”

I fished around in my swim bag for my goggles. “Yeah, I haven’t—”

“I get it. Nature’s not your thing, but you’re going to love it once you’re out there. Rachel and Sandra are chomping at the bit to go, but they have to make their travel plans. We all do.”

With a shudder, I recalled my frantic Google search the night before for Winnegosset River Rafting, Maine.

No results.

“Just wondering why this place doesn’t have some kind of website. I mean, is it legit?” I asked, my voice coming out all high and tinny. Already I was ashamed of my wussiness. “I’d hate to get all the way up there and find out this is some sort of shady operation—”

I could feel her roll her eyes. “Wini, just because some place or something or someone doesn’t have a website doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” She sounded windblown, breathless. I pictured her power walking through her Cambridge neighborhood, wrist weights flashing neon. “It’s a big old world out there. One of the reasons this place is so awesome is because no one knows about it yet, so it’s not booked solid before the snow’s even melted. That’s why there’s space for the weekend we all want, get it? This year, it’s the world’s best-kept secret—next year, forget it!”

“I don’t know, Pia . . .” I glanced at the time: 7:14.

She laughed, softening to me now. “Look, the guy who runs the white-water tours is a good friend of my dad—he’s my dad’s friend’s son, I mean, so it’s cool.”

“Can’t believe Rachel would want to—”

“Are you crazy? She’s dying to go. And Sandra? Please. She’d get on a plane right now if she could.”

With a wave of affection I pictured my last Skype with Sandra: kids running around screaming in the background, papers to correct stacked next to her. When I brought up the trip, she’d groaned, Hell, yes, I’m game for anything—just get me out of Dodge!

“Wini, listen up: Next year—I promise, we’ll go to a beach somewhere. Cancún, Key West, you choose. Do nothing and just bake.

“Look, Pia, I’m at the pool and I’m going to lose my lane—”

“Okay. Swim. Then call me.”

I tucked my flyaway dirty-blond bob—the compromise cut for all hopelessly shitty hair—under my bathing cap, then hustled my stuff into a locker and slammed it shut. Do nothing and just bake. Did she really think that was all I was interested in? Who was the one who rented the bike the last time we went to the Cape? Just me, as I recalled, while all of them sat around the rental pouring more and more tequila into the blender each day. And my God— we were all pushing forty—shouldn’t awesome and cool be in the rearview mirror by now? 



I crossed the slimy tiles of the dressing room and pushed open the swinging doors to the pool. The air hit me, muggy and warm, dense with chlorine that barely masked an underwhiff of urine and sweat. Children laughed and punched at the blue water in the shallow end as I padded over to my favorite lane, which was . . . occupied.

It was 7:16 and frog man had beat me to it. Fuck.

For close to a year, this nonagenarian ear, nose, and throat doctor and I had been locked in a mostly silent daily battle over the best lane—far left-hand side, under the skylights—from 7:15 to 8:00 each weekday morning. Usually I was the victor, something about which I’d felt ridiculous glee. We’d only ever exchanged the briefest of greetings; both of us getting to the Y a notch earlier each day. I imagined we both craved this mindless exercise, thoughts freed by the calming boredom of swimming and near weightlessness.

But today I’d lost the battle. I plopped down on a hard plastic seat, pouting inside but feigning serenity as I watched him slap through his slow-motion crawl. He appeared to lose steam near the end of a lap, then climbed the ladder out of the pool as only a ninety-year-old can: with careful deliberation in every step. As I watched the water drip off his flat ass and down his pencil legs, I realized that he was making his way to me, or rather to a stack of towels next to me, and in a few seconds I’d pretty much have to talk to him. He uncorked his goggles with a soft sucking sound. I noticed his eyes seemed a bit wearier than usual, even for a man his age who had just worked his daily laps.

“How are you?” I shifted in my seat, conscious of my bathing cap squeezing my head and distorting my face as I stole the odd glance at the deliciously empty lane.

“I’m well, thank you. Though very sad today.”

I studied him more closely now, caught off guard by his intimate tone. “Why?”

Though his expression was grim, I wasn’t prepared for what he said.

“I just lost my daughter to cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” I choked out. I felt socked in the soft fleshy parts; smacked off the rails of my deeply grooved routine and whipped around to face something I didn’t want to see.

He took a towel and poked at his ears with it. A gold cross hung from a glimmering chain around his thin neck, the skin white and rubbery looking. “It was a long struggle. Part of me is glad it’s over.” He squinted at me as if seeing me for the first time. “She was about your age,” he added, turning to walk away before I could utter a word of comfort. I watched him travel in his flap step the length of the pool to the men’s lockers, his head held down so low I could barely see the top of it.

My hands trembled as I gripped the steel ladder and made my way down into the antiseptic blue. I pushed off. Eyes shut tight and heart pumping, I watched the words She was about your age hover in my brain until the letters dissolved into nothingness. The horror of his offhand observation numbed me as I turned and floated on my back, breathing heavily in the oppressive air. As I slogged joylessly through my laps, I thought of my own father rolling his eyes when I said I was afraid of sleepaway camp, of third grade, of walking on grass barefoot “because of worms.” As cold as he could be to my brother and me, not a thing on earth seemed to frighten him.

I had barely toweled myself off when my phone lit up with a text from Pia. A question mark, that was it. Followed by three more. Methodically I removed my work clothes from my locker, arranging them neatly on the bench behind me. I pulled off my bathing cap, sat down, and picked up the phone.

My thumbs hovered over the keys as I shivered in the over- heated locker room. I took a deep breath—shampoo, rubber, mold, a sting of disinfectant—and slowly let it out, a sharp pain lodging in my gut. I couldn’t tell which was worse, the fear of being left behind by my friends as they dashed away on some überbonding, unforgettable adventure, or the inevitable self-loathing if I stayed behind like some gutless wimp—safe, always safe—half-fucking- dead with safety. Why couldn’t I just say yes to a camping trip with three of my best friends? What was I so afraid of?

Pool water dripped from my hair, beading on the phone as I commanded myself to text something.

Anything.

I watched my fingers as they typed, Okay, I’m in, and pressed send.

And I'm in too! Be sure to head back here in a bit to see my review of The River at Night (psst, there's a giveaway too!). 

For more on Erica Ferencik and her work you can visit her website here. You can also follow her on Twitter.