Today on my blog I have the next stop on the Darynda Jones blog tour. On my stop there is a spotlight, excerpt, and giveaway.
Twelve. Twelve of the deadliest
beasts ever forged in the fires of hell have escaped onto our plane, and they
want nothing more than to rip out the jugular of Charley Davidson and serve her
lifeless, mangled body to Satan for dinner. So there’s that. But Charley has
more on her plate than a mob of testy hellhounds. For one thing, her father has
disappeared, and the more she retraces his last steps, the more she learns he
was conducting an investigation of his own, one that has Charley questioning
everything she’s ever known about him. Add to that an ex-BFF who is haunting
her night and day, a rash of suicides that has authorities baffled, and a
drop-dead sexy fiancé who has attracted the attentions of a local celebrity,
and Charley is not having the best week of her life.
A tad north of hell, a hop, skip, and a jump
past the realm of eternity, is a little place called Earth, and Charley
Davidson, grim reaper extraordinaire, is determined to do everything in her
power to protect it.
We’re doomed.
Excerpt:
I took
the stairs to the basement. He’d been favoring the basement lately, as it had a
few unused walls. I turned on my flashlight and slowed the lower I got.
“Could
this place be any creepier?” Jessica asked, appearing behind me, her hands
cradled at her chest as though afraid to touch anything.
“It is
now,” I said, refraining from doing a fist pump and shouting, Score!
A singsong
voice fluttered through the air toward me. “Somebody’s in trouble.”
I
recognized the voice as Strawberry Shortcake’s—not her real name—a girl who’d
drowned when she was nine. She’d taken up residence with Rocket and his little
sister, Blue Bell. My gratitude with respect to that fact knew no bounds,
because before SS had taken to squatting at the asylum, she was better known as
a crazy stalker chick who warned me repeatedly to stay away from her brother,
David Taft, a police officer in my uncle’s precinct. And she often tried to
scratch my eyes out. Not an endearing quality.
Since
Taft and I could barely stand each other, her concerns had never truly been an
issue, but she’d seen me as a threat until her brother started dating skanks.
Her words. After that, she decided I needed to date him after all. Thankfully,
she was too busy being Chrissy from Three’s Company to push the issue.
Jessica
and I turned toward her. SS wore her usual pink Strawberry Shortcake pajamas
that were all the rage back in the day. Her long blond hair hung in tangles
down her back as always, and her baby blues shimmered a silvery color, even
incorporeal as she was. Though her luster had a general grayness to it, she was
as solid to me as the walls around us.
The
grayness often gave the departed away. And the cold. But more than that, their
lack of emotion was a real tip- off —I couldn’t feel any radiating off the
dead, as I could the living. Even without those signs, there was something
intangible about the departed that made me instinctively know they were no
longer among the living. It just registered in the back of my mind when I met
someone who’d departed. I could always sense it. From the day I was born, I
knew there were two kinds of people: the living and the dead.
Book Links:
NYTimes
and USA Today Bestselling Author Darynda Jones has won numerous awards for her
work, including a prestigious Golden Heart®, a Rebecca, two Hold Medallions, a
RITA ®, and a Daphne du Maurier, and she has received stellar reviews
from dozens of publications including starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly,
Booklist, and the Library Journal. As a born storyteller, Darynda grew up
spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate
soul who happened by, annoying man and beast alike, and she is ever so grateful
for the opportunity to carry on that tradition. She currently has two series
with St. Martin’s Press: The Charley Davidson Series and the Darklight Trilogy.
She lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her
husband of almost 30 years and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones
Boys. She can be found at www.daryndajones.com.
I would like to say Thank You to Darynda for letting me participate in this blog tour. Don't forget to enter the awesome giveaway.
~Sabrina
I have been a fan of Darynda's since 'First Grave on the Right' came out. It was the first time that I laughed out loud while reading it, causing my autistic son to lean over and say "what so funny?"
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