I am so excited to be participating in this release day blitz for Ashes & Ice by Rochelle Maya Callen. Before I show you the cover and let you read a couple excerpts lets get to know Rochelle better.
Rochelle grew up dreaming up stories. When she entered high
school, she tucked away her creative side and jumped head-first into academics,
work, and service projects. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in
Political Science and Communication when she was twenty years old. After years
away from her writing, Rochelle picked up a pen and started fleshing out a
character sketch that she outlined when she was twelve. That sketch was the
start of the Ashes and Ice story. Rochelle lives in the DC metro area with her
husband and daughter. By day she works as a behavioral therapist. By night, she
is a dreamer and is busy tapping out new stories on her keyboard.
Stalker Links:
She is desperate to remember.
He is aching to forget.
Together, they are not broken.
But together, one may not survive.
Jade wakes up with no memory of her past and blood on her hands.
Plagued by wicked thoughts, she searches for answers. Instead, she finds a boy
who doesn't offer her answers, but hope. But sometimes, when nightmares turn
into reality and death follows you everywhere, hope is not enough.
LUST. LOVE. LOSS. Sometimes, all that is left are Ashes and Ice
Excerpt #1:
Jade
The girl’s glassy, dead eyes stare into me, through me, pierce me with a fierce
urgency, with a wicked accusation. The blood is still on my hands.
Red hair, blue eyes, a constellation of freckles on pale skin. She was fragile
and innocent, a lovely thing. That is what I think until I see the gashes on
her wrists and throat. With her blood spilling out, she looks delicious. She’s
mine. Possessiveness shocks me, stabs into me. I run, tearing away from a craving
I don't understand.
Breathless, I grit my teeth and run harder, faster.
My feet pound against the earth, away from the lifeless body and toward the
lights of the city lingering on the horizon. Rot and death linger in my
nostrils. Unscarred skin stretches taut over my freezing bones. Echoes of an
empty memory reverberate in my mind, taunting me. The ice chases me, clutches
me, and bites at my heels, sending shivers up my spine. The ice wants me back,
but I run forward, toward the lights, toward the heat, toward a world that
burns me, because I have no other choice.
The lights are so close. Heat scalds my skin.
Images race through my mind, paralyzing me. I skid to a stop, my boots digging
into the mud. The vision’s blurred edges materialize into solid shapes.
I gasp.
A new horror rakes my insides. Desperation propels me forward; the pictures
nagging at my seams threaten to tear me apart.
Scorching fire licks over my skin. In my vision, I contort like a vile, ugly
creature, eyes as black as decay. My frame hunches over the small, dead girl,
like a demon looming over a defenseless child. Her blood drips from my mouth.
I lick my lips and taste only salty sweat.
I run, desperate to trample the vision under my feet, to crush it deep into the
ground.
I refuse to believe the image, refuse to acknowledge the monster within me
demanding to be unleashed—and the possibility it has already been unbound. An
unrelenting tide of fear washes over me. Past the denial, the fear, and the
hope, I think I can still taste her.
The cold stillness inside me cracks open just as the lights of the city slam
into me.
Excerpt #2:
Connor
Tears burn. I never realized it before, but they do. Tears reach down my throat
and settle in my gut until the pain cripples me. I clutch my stomach as I look
into the casket. His face doesn’t even look the same. Bloated like a Mardi Gras
float, discolored like a mannequin. This isn’t my father.
But it is.
If I have learned anything in my short life, it is this: funerals are bullshit.
People dress in carefully pressed black suits. Parents give me “meaningful”
nods as if that could ease the grief. It doesn’t.
Then there are the kids from school, the ones dragged along by their parents.
People drag their kids along as if filling the church was a necessary thing. As
if the more pews filled somehow expedite the dead’s trip to heaven. I doubt it
does. Maybe some of the girls went shopping to buy just the right outfit so
their cleavage to respectability ratio was just right, or their ass to
waist ratio was cinched properly.
People sit in the pews dressed in their finest
let’s-go-pay-our-respects-to-the-dead-guy-we-never-knew wear, smacking the gum
in their mouths, cupping cellphones so they can LOL any comment buzzing
in, and drumming their fingers because the pastor is going on too long.
All they want to do is go home, sneak in a make-out session with their
girlfriends, eat their dinners, and maybe catch a 7 o’clock movie.
I hate these kids. The ones who stare at me, roll their eyes, and yawn. The
ones who trip me at school and slam me into lockers. The ones who sit in a pew,
contributing to the headcount, while I sit up here in front, holding back the
tears fighting to make their appearance. I swallow them down. I won’t cry. Not
here. Not with these people.
Dad’s funeral should be an empty church with mom, his three brothers, and me.
It should be the five of us having a messy, sloppy, sobbing affair where we
cling to each other because we are all we have left. The marble floors should
be slick with our tears. It isn’t. We sit here, straight backed, completely
composed as if death is just a passing expiration date and our small,
insignificant world has not been split open and left gaping.
***
I’m in my room, staring at the ceiling. The funeral service was hours ago.
The house feels empty and cold. I hear a stifled whimper from down the hall.
Mom.
Probably crying into a pillow so the house can’t hear, but it can. It seems
unfair she can’t wail aloud, so loud the house’s hundred-year-old studs
tremble.
She doesn’t. I don’t either. We cry in our own rooms, remembering a man who
will never be here again.
The house creaks. Maybe it feels the weight of our grief, maybe the floorboards
are buckling because the burden is too heavy.
I ache, desperate to forget the long battle with cancer, the blood sputtering
out of his mouth with his last words—what where they? I can’t remember because
the fear in his eyes overshadowed anything he said. Now the loss. I don’t want
to feel this loss. Some divine entity has taken dull scissors and cut out a
piece of my life and now I have jagged scars to remind me I lost too much. Too
much.
I want to forget, because it hurts to remember.
I bury my head in the pillow, hoping to suffocate the memories, to choke out
the pain.
Release Day Special:
I can't wait to read this book. It sounds so good. I wanna say Thank You to Rochelle for letting me participate in her release day blitz and Thank You to Lady Amber's Tours for letting me be part of this blog tour.
~Sabrina
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