Author Guest Post: Jennifer Archer, Author of Through Her Eyes

 Hello, everyone! Thanks to Mrs. DeRaps for inviting me to talk about my novel Through Her Eyes that will be in bookstores on April 5^th.

Through Her Eyes was a lot of fun to write for many reasons, one of them being that the main character, Tansy, is the daughter of a horror writer. Tansy’s mom, Millie, writes under the pseudonym Millicent Moon, and Tansy describes her as “the female version of Stephen King, minus the mega bucks and movie deals.”  

When the idea for this story started brewing in my mind, I knew I wanted Tansy’s mother to be a writer, partially because I wanted to step into Tansy’s skin and experience vicariously what it might be like for my kids to have me for a mom! Children of writers have to put up with having a parent whose mind is always “in the clouds,” a parent who stays up into the wee hours of the morning working, or who rises hours before the sun to start banging away on a laptop. They have to put up with their friends’ teasing about “Mom’s embarrassing book covers.” (At least my kids did. I wrote romance novels for a while early in my career, so I had a cover or two that my sons wished they could hide from their friends!)

Through Her Eyes is a ghost story, so having Millie write horror seemed a natural fit. Besides, I’ve always been intrigued by the workings of a horror writer’s mind. For example, I used to think that Stephen King was brilliant, but that he must also be a tiny bit mentally disturbed to come up with the stories he does! Then I read his book On Writing, and although I still think he’s brilliant, I also think he’s a perfectly sane, extremely loving family man, who is incredibly wise. Why did I ever think anything else? As I said, I used to write romance novels, but that doesn’t mean I’m a hopeless romantic. (A romantic, perhaps, but not a hopeless!)

Tansy struggles with that same preconception – people believing her mom is a nutcase because of what she does for a living. She also struggles with embarrassment over the covers of the novels, and some of the titles completely mortify her. Tears of Blood and The Screaming Meemies, for instance. Tansy has to deal with a bit of teasing from classmates, too. One guy at her new school nicknames her “Zombie Girl,” because zombies play leading roles in most of her mom’s books.

I enjoy scary books, and I really love spine-chilling movies, as well; not so much the slash and dash kind, but the sort with a ripple of psychological suspense in them. The sort of movies and stories that don’t just terrify the audience, but make us think and question and try to figure out what’s going on. Books and movies in the genre that I’ve loved probably influenced me, at least in a small way, to make Tansy’s mom a horror novelist. During my twenties, I went on a Stephen King and Dean Koontz book binge, and I still read their novels from time to time; they’re the kings of the genre, in my opinion. If I’m in the mood for a horror novel with writing that’s a bit more on the lush side, I often turn to the writer I consider the queen of the genre – Ann Rice. Her novel The Mummy is a particular favorite.  Of course, the YA market also has many great horror titles, and in these my taste also tends to run more toward the psychologically creepy more than to vampires, werewolves and such, although I enjoy a good story in that vein, too. Some of my YA favorites are older titles, and a few of them are marketed to readers even younger than the typical YA booklover. I particularly enjoyed Coraline, by Neil Gaiman; The Folk Keeper, by Franny Billingsly; and Jade Green, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Owl in Love, by Patrice Kindl is also very unique and intriguing – it’s humorous as well as creepy, and it might very well have been the first shape-shifter novel.

As for movies that influenced me, my favorite chill-raisers are The Mothman Prophecies, Identity, and The Sixth Sense. Oh, and Shadow of the Vampire, which came out in 2000 is by far one of the creepiest movies I’ve ever seen! 

I hope readers of Through Her Eyes will experience a few chills of the same sort these wonderful books and movies induced in me! I invite you to stop by my website www.jenniferarcher.net and my blog www.jenniferarcher.blogspot.com to check out the  book trailer and other information about Through Her Eyes, as well as my other novels.

Author Guest Post + Book Giveaway: Savita Kahlan, Author of The Long Weekend

Savita Kahlan is the author of the chilling thriller, The Long Weekend. This book is absolutely terrifying, due to the subject matter and the author's skill at creating a tense, suspenseful situation where the lives of two boys are at stake. Though this book is thoroughly disturbing, I know that it takes a great writer to develop this type of character/ reader connection. I am highly impressed and completely freaked out.

For her tour stop at DeRaps Reads, I asked Ms. Kahlan to share a bit about a nightmare that she's had. As many of you know from previous posts, I have nightmares almost every night. In fact, I just had a horrific one last night, based on a book I'm currently reading. I'm glad to report that it wasn't as terrifying as Ms. Kahlan's, which you can read about here.

My Nightmare

“It’s dark and the streetlamps emit little light. I’m crouched behind a car, hiding. I’m alone. The street is eerily quiet and deserted, the houses on either side are abandoned. I don’t know how I ended up here all by myself with not a single living soul in sight. I’m catching my breath, thinking maybe I’m safe for a while. I’ve been running all night, running and hiding, running and hiding. Am I doomed never to see the light of day breaking over the horizon, the sweet chorus of birdsong, the rattle and clink of the milkman? I can hear a distant rattle and clink, but it’s not the milkman making early deliveries of bottles of milk. This is the rattle and clink of something else, something that may have once been human, but any humanity it once had has been lost for an age and it has no recollection of what it was like to be human.

The dreaded sound is distant, but I won’t be fooled by that. They almost had me before – yes, there is more than one, more than ten, perhaps twenty or more. I did not stop to count each contorted, disfigured being as they defied their stuttering gait, their misshapen limbs, and robot-like seethed across the fast dwindling space that separated them from me. I begin to move, slowly at first using the parked cars as my shield, then quicker as a glimpse of a rotting arm from the other side of the car. I begin to run. They’re closing in on me. Their guttural cries, their agonised moaning, their strange wheezing, the rattle and clink of the chains that once held them dragging across the ground, it all becomes louder. I run into an abandoned house, hoping to find help, but there is no one there, no weapons, nothing I can use to defend myself. I hear the shuffle of footsteps scraping across floorboards. They’ve followed me. I stifle a scream, my hand stuffed in my mouth, my heart beating so fast I think it might explode...”

And this is when I hope to wake up from the nightmare! Sometimes I do, sweating and panting and clutching at the duvet, other times the nightmare continues...

 *  *  *

And that's just a sample of the quality of Ms. Kalhan's terrifically terrifying writing. The Long Weekend is sure to have you feeling disturbed--even the most jaded of readers will have some heightened sense of fear or fright!

Ms. Kalhan is giving away one copy of her book to one lucky commenter. You have one week to enter this INTERNATIONAL giveaway (closes March 4th). Please leave a comment reacting to Ms. Kalhan's nightmare or describe one of your own. Make sure to leave an email where you can be reached if you are the winner.

Audio Book Review: Locked Inside by Nancy Werlin

Marnie's lived a charmed, but lonely life. Her mother has just recently died, leaving her millions of dollars to inherit, but without a family. She's enrolled in a prestigious boarding school, but has no real friends and spends much of her time playing in virtual world online.  There, she meets a boy named "Elf" and he is one of the only people that she has a connection with.

When Marnie is kidnapped her crazed, psychopathic chemistry teacher, she finds out just how alone she is. This teacher, Leah, claims that she, too, is Marnie's mother's daughter. When all seems hopeless, the Elf somehow comes to her and she's no longer alone. But, they're both stuck and don't know how (or if) they're going to escape.

I've read several books by Nancy Werlin at this point. Some are among my favorite reads and others are not. Unfortunately, this book fell in the latter category. I was just not engaged in the book, even though the reader, Emily Durante, did an amazing job.

I did not hate this book and it had many areas of high interest for me. I think that the parts that lost me happened right away. I am not a gamer and have very little understanding of gaming worlds. Once Marnie is kidnapped, I was definitely hooked. But, this part of the book became so bizarre (and not in a good way) and preposterous that I could just not believe it.

And, the book goes on. And it didn't really get better for me. I wish that this were not true, because I have loved some of Werlin's other books (The Killer's Cousin, The Rules of Survival) and wanted to love this one. Alas, that did not happen. But, I will look forward to reading more from this author and from the woman who read this book.

Read By: Emily Durante

Length: 6 hrs. 40 mins. 

**This audio book counts toward my participation in the 2011 Audio Book Challenge from Teresa's Reading Corner and Whisper Stories in My Ear Audio Book Challenge**

Book Review: Sleepless by Thomas Fahy

Thomas Fahy's Sleepless has plauged my dreams ever since I started reading it. I finished it in  a hurry last night, thinking that I might escape the vivid nightmares that have followed me since I started it last week. No such luck.

I am just like the characters in this book. The sweet and generous students who went to New Orleans to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. The same innocent teens who went there came back to their hometown completely changed. And not for the better.

You see, while they were in New Orleans, some crazy voodoo stuff started to happen. And then a minister was murdered. And when the students come back, the have horrific dreams. Death, murder, blood, killing. When they wake up, it turns out that they have actually committed the violent acts from their dreams. But they have no memory of actually hurting anyone.

Thus begins the horror story that has left me sleepless. This is a fast read and I recommend that you not take your time in reading it--Because they dreams will only worsen as you procrastinate! This is a perfectly scary book for Halloween. I read this book as part of the Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge, which is hosted by the Stainless Steel Droppings book blog.