Today's Author Takeover is with Selah and I am so excited. I have been wanting to read her book for awhile so when she asked to take over my blog I jumped at the chance. So lets get to know more about Selah and her book then she will take over.
Selah Janel
has been blessed with a giant imagination since she was little and convinced
that fairies lived in the nearby state park or vampires hid in the abandoned
barns outside of town. Her appreciation for a good story was enhanced by a love
of reading, the many talented storytellers that surrounded her, and a healthy
curiosity for everything. A talent for warping everything she learned didn’t
hurt, either. She gravitates to writing fantasy and horror, but can be
convinced to pursue any genre if the idea is good enough. Often her stories
feature the unknown creeping into the “real” world and she loves to find the
magical in the mundane.
She has four e-books with No Boundaries Press,
including the historical vampire story ‘Mooner’ and the contemporary short ‘The
Other Man’. Her work has also been
included in ‘The MacGuffin’, ‘The Realm Beyond’, ‘Stories for Children
Magazine’, and the upcoming Wicked East Press anthology ‘Bedtime Stories for
Girls’. She likes her music to rock, her vampires lethal, her fairies to play
mind games, and her princesses to hold their own.
Stalker Links:
Live like a rock star.
Dance ‘til you die.
Are you in?
Blurb
What kind of a rock star lives in a small town in the middle
of nowhere and plays at weddings and funerals? That’s what Jeremiah Kensington
is thinking after an unsuccessful bar gig one night. Then Jack Scratch comes
into his life, ready to represent him and launch him to stardom. Jack can give
him everything: a new band, a new name, a new life, a new look, and new
boots…although they aren’t exactly new. They once belonged to The One, a rocker
so legendary and so mysterious that it’s urban legend that he used black magic
to gain success. But what does Jeremiah care about urban legend? And it’s
probably just coincidence that the shoes make him dance better than anyone,
even if it doesn’t always feel like he’s controlling his movements. It’s no big
deal that he plunges into a world of excess and decadence as soon as he puts
the shoes on his feet, right?
But
what happens when they refuse to come off?
Excerpt:
They’re mine. I’m really
holding them,
Jeremiah realized. I’m holding history
that isn’t supposed to exist. When The One took the stage, any competition
turned tail and ran. It was said that the one time the singer revealed what he
looked like the crowds were moved to tears by his beauty and sophistication,
and tore each other apart because they couldn’t get to him. Some said it was a
conspiracy that complete copies of his songs didn’t exist because the music was
too potent to release to the public. There were people who still worshipped the
mystery, the music, the outfits, and the boots.
And
now those people would come to him.
“Go
on. Try them on,” Jack encouraged. Jeremiah nodded and carefully put the
platforms on the floor. Shaking with nerves, the youth sat and guided his feet
into the cherry red sheaths. Electricity crackled along his instep and through
his toes. He tugged the vinyl up over his calf and gasped. Jeremiah was
overtaken by a sudden burn, a sudden ant-crawling of power that worked its way
through his skin and into his very soul.
“What
the—” he choked. The plastic spasmed, tightened around his foot, and then
relaxed. The left boot stretched itself a little higher up his calf and
extended its sole and heel a little more to adapt to his needs. Jeremiah
thought he had imagined it, but the right boot immediately followed suit. The
matching sets of the laces squirmed and rippled, settling into a slightly
different pattern than when they were taken out of their box. A quick look
around proved that while everyone in the room was looking, Jack was the only
other person that actually saw. “Did
they just…?” Jeremiah couldn’t bring himself to say something so bizarre. He
barely managed to hold back a cry when a thousand tiny needle teeth nibbled his
skin from toes to knees. A tingling sensation spread under his skin and
Jeremiah was filled with a rush of violent confidence that almost made him
swoon.
“Good.
They fit,” Jack said. Only his tiny, mysteriously cruel little smile hinted
that he was aware of the boots’ strange behavior.
The
longer Jeremiah looked at himself the more he realized that he could do no
wrong. My life just changed. With these on my feet, my past is gone. I’m
going to be better than I ever thought possible.
All
around him the yes-men and hangers-on gaped.
“You
look so good!” the store footman practically swooned. His vinyl and lace frock
coat danced under the fluttering movements of his hands. His sharp, pale face
flushed with excitement underneath the stylized Victorian wig.
“I’m
gonna cry you look so good!” the blonde assistant squealed, gripping Jack’s
knee as if she’d keel over if she didn’t have it there to support her. “It’s
like I’m witnessing history!”
The
faces that surround him were positively thunderstruck and at his mercy. The
camera kept right on clicking. Jeremiah got to his feet and struck a few more
ambitious poses, dropping into a low crouch before kicking a leg up in an
insane bastardization of a round kick.
It didn’t matter that he’d grown up looking like every other average guy
in Middle America. It didn’t matter that he’d been more accustomed to cotton
T-shirts and washed-out blue jeans than the clothes Jack had him wearing. The
overall look wasn’t complete, but the boots pulled everything together. The
added height evened out his lanky proportions. In some unlikely way the
platforms made his stubble-sporting, angular face look downright exotic. His
eyes blazed liquid brown heat and his dishwater hair almost glowed under the
dressing room lights.
Jeremiah
sashayed around the tiny space and leapt onto the low podium at the room’s
center, full of a burning drive to do
something. He wanted to sing. He wanted to rock. He wanted to dance, and he’d never had that sort of
urge before in his life. Every school dance he’d ever gone to had involved him
either playing in the band or drinking contraband beverages with his friends
outside the building. “Guess I’m a natural!” he laughed. He knew he was lying,
Jack knew he was lying, but there was no reason for anyone else to know the
truth. Why bother with the truth when the image in the mirror was so much
better?
He
had expected his balance to be shaky in the tall platforms, but it was like the
boots were built for him. He hadn't thought to check the size. Maybe The One
wasn't the original owner; maybe they conformed to whoever wore them.
Jeremiah’s face glowed when he looked at his mirror image. His reflection
looked as giddy and ecstatic as he felt. Why
do I care what they are? If they work, they work! His eyes dropped to the
new footwear. He was just able to see the tiny, warped image of his face in the
shiny toes. Everything’s going to be
amazing from now on. As he admired his distorted image via his feet, all of his hang-ups and personality drained
out of him. Who needs a personality with
boots like these?
Jack
Scratch watched his protégé glided round the room, that same tiny, dangerous
smile just barely curling his full mouth. "Just think. What you have on
represents everything that you want to be," he coached. His words drilled
through the rocker's ears and hardwired themselves into the deepest parts of
Jeremiah’s heart and soul. "They’re everything you want on your side.
These boots are temptation and chaos, just like you. I've got it," he
declared. "I've got your name."
"Give
it to me," a raspy voice in front of the mirror breathed.
"Forget
Jeremiah Kensington: folk singer, blue jean rocker, country boy, small town
loser,” Jack breathed, his giant hands fervently patting down his front until
he found which jacket pocket his cigarettes were hidden in. It was amazing that
he didn’t gouge himself in the chest given the sharpened tip of the massive
silver ring that enveloped his right forefinger. The manager leaned back
against the sofa and lit up, never once taking his eyes off his new golden boy
and meal ticket. “From now on you are J.K. Asmodeus, rock star and corrupter of
the masses." A thin plume of smoke stretched up to frame his intense
expression.
J.K.
looked from Jack to the man in the mirror, saw how the red glitter of the boots
was echoed in his eyes. "Yes."
The
two ignored the gasps and commentary around them as everyone texted photos and
alerted the necessary paparazzi. The pair shared a slow smile as Jack inhaled
another draw of nicotine. “It’s time to sign,” he murmured. The smoke crept in
front of his face and turned his pleased expression into something that
bordered on animalistic. He removed the top sheet of the stack he’d been
examining and held it out to the younger man.
I should wait and
consult a lawyer. I should take my time. These things need to be done with
care, a
distant echo of a Midwestern conscience chided. J.K. ignored it, grinned back
at his manager, and reached for the fountain pen the manager handed him. His
expression was almost as malevolent as Jack’s, though there were still traces
of wholesomeness that had yet to drain away. “Let’s do it.”
Buy Links:
Now it's time to let welcome Selah to the blog for her take over post:
A lot of people ask me the question that a lot of authors
get asked: ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ I guess a lot of people assume that
you have to be plugged into some other way of thinking, or purposefully do some
sort of secret special writing exercise or exorcism to get ideas to write
about, especially if you want to write genre fiction.
The plain fact is ideas are all around us if a person is
open to them. I try to be open to new story ideas as they come, and ways to
improve or change up whatever I’m currently working on. It’s amazing to me that
when I least expect it, the most mundane, every-day things can inspire me. It
may be a line in an article that gets me thinking, it may be a news blurb or
something I encounter while walking in the neighborhood, but my notes are full
of little incidents that can trigger the plot or a subplot in any of my works
in progress in a heartbeat.
How many times do we pass groups of plants in our
neighborhoods? What if they were secretly inhabited by pixies? What if the
winding greenery along the highway, those trees and weeds that creep and press
over the guardrails…what if it’s part of the forest’s primordial genetics
urging it to fight back against all the progress man has put into place? What
if the regular parts of our little lives are far from regular, but part of a
much bigger plot set into place by things as far from human as you can get?
I also draw a lot on the interests I’ve developed through
the years. My love of vampires and my love of overlooked parts of American
history influenced by horror e-book Mooner.
My love of music and my curiosity over the changing dynamics in
relationships inspired me to write The
Other Man. I continually go back to the influences and lessons of Lovecraft
and Ray Bradbury, Madeline L’Engle and many others. And yet, I was unprepared
for how much of my interests and emotions would find their way into In the Red.
The novel is loosely based on the themes of the old fairy
tale ‘The Red Shoes,’ but merged with some urban fantasy elements and rock n’
roll. I was able to bring a lot to the story: my love of music, my experience and
love of performing, my experience growing up in small towns, my love of the
fantastic, of magic, of otherworldly creatures. Even if I don’t always agree
with the choices my characters’ make, they were absolutely the right choices
for the story. Still, it took a lot of work to get the details right, as well
as a lot of extra research on the things I wasn’t
sure about: a lot of medical information, the ins and outs of excess, and what
it’s like to perform as an instrumentalist. That’s also something that helps as
a writer: the willingness to be curious and seek answers to your own questions.
Sure, I could have glossed over some things, but it would have made the story
that much weaker. Urban fantasy works because it’s also rooted in the real
world, and if the mundane things didn’t seem real, then the fantastic aspects
would really be uneven in comparison.
It also took delving into what the characters would feel
when presented with certain situations. In this case I was able to draw on my
theatre training and use a variation of the actor’s tool, sense memory.
Basically, I tried really hard to think of a time in my life where I might feel
something similar, really figure out what I was actually feeling, and use that
as a starting point for what my characters were feeling. Some parts were easier
to write than others, but that life experience made it a little easier to
expand the story on a deadline.
You don’t have to have those interests or little tricks to
be a writer, of course. Everyone has their own life experiences and their own
tools – that’s what makes every author so different. It’s why there can be such
a wealth of stories in the world, which is fantastic. Every author, whether
they’re a big name and big contracts or someone who’s just starting out and never
been published, has things that strike them, things they notice, and things
that have happened to them in their lives that they can draw upon. I think it’s
important to realize that that’s something that really makes authors equally
capable, if they can learn to listen and draw upon all those things.
Thank you to Selah for Taking Over my blog today. I hope you all had as much fun as I did getting to know more about Selah, her book, and how she comes up with her ideas. Selah has donated 1 ebook for a giveaway. To win answer this question: If you could walk in somebody's shoes, who would you pick and why? (this can be a fictional character or real person) Good Luck!!! Please make sure you stop by Selah's page and tell her thank you for the donation.
~Sabrina
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