Guest Post and Giveaway: Curse of Arachnaman by Hayden Thorne

We welcome Hayden Thorne today to chat a bit about the re-release of Curse of Arachnaman, the continuing adventures of Eric, Peter, and the rest of the superheroes and villains who populate Vintage City. Enjoy the excerpt Hayden is sharing, then be sure to click on the Rafflecopter widget below for the chance to win an e-copy of Curse of Arachnaman.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: My original intention for Mr. Eric Steven Plath was to finish his adventures at the end of Masks: Ordinary Champions, the third installment of the original trilogy. As I wrote it, though, wee little ideas kept popping up like mutant undead gophers here and there. And dark forces swayed me into turning that spider robot attack at the mall into something more than what was originally intended. I was at first hoping to show that the superheroes’ work is never done. Get rid of one supervillain, and another will rise up the ranks and annoy the living hell out of everyone. But, noooooo.

And so, Curse of Arachnaman’s basic plot slowly formed in my head. I thought at first it was going to be nothing more than an odd one-off after the trilogy, but at that point, the genie had been let out, and more books popped out. I’m currently working on the seventh and last installment of the entire series, and I hope to have it available fairly soon.

Curse of Arachnaman, Mimi Attacks!, and Dr. Morbid’s Castle of Blood are all episodic in nature. They don’t follow an arc, but they’re clearly sequels of each other, with all of them following the events in the original trilogy.

Blurb: Curse of Arachnaman follows the events in the first three books in the Masks series. Eric is settling down into a near-normal existence. He’s learning to cope with a different kind of closet — being kept from talking freely about his relationship with Calais and the other superheroes — as well as an increasingly protective mother, his sister’s new squeaky-clean boyfriend, and a bingo-obsessed best friend.

Eric also learns that, sometimes, being an asset to the forces of good means simply being himself. In the meantime, Vintage City is under siege from a new threat, one which is proving to be much more dangerous than all of the other supervillains the heroes have faced combined. Good people find themselves at the mercy of an angry lunatic who will stop at nothing to purge the city of what he sees to be undesirable elements.

Buy Links: Queerteen Press/JMS Books | Amazon | Smashwords

Excerpt: From Chapter 17

The girl who’d fallen apart earlier dangled nearby, but she’d calmed down by now. All I could hear from her were a little bit of sniffling and coughing as she waited her turn to be released.

“Glad to see you’re okay,” I said, offering her a smile, for what it was worth.

“I wanna go home,” she croaked. “That’s saying something, you know, ‘cause I hate my parents. This sucks.”

“Well – you kind of get used to this sort of thing after a while. Trust me.”

She blinked. “You’ve been screwed up like this before?”

“More times than you can imagine. I look at this as character-building, sort of.”

Calais had walked up to her by then. “Okay, don’t move,” he said as he grabbed hold of the white stuff that wrapped around her and tore it open with one powerful tug of his hands. The sound of ripping cloth followed, and with a little yelp, the girl fell straight into his arms.

The next few moments were like the longest ever in my short-yet-screwed-up life. Think of a really awful, sappy video of some really awful, sappy love song. Okay, imagine everything happening in super slow-motion, with the girl falling in Calais’ arms. Then their eyes meet. He looks sympathetic yet stays professionally distant. She stares at him, stunned, her arms wrapped around his neck, her body easily held up because he’s just oh-so-strong.

Oh, fucking hell, just think of the scene in Sense and Sensibility where Kate Winslet fell down and got swept up in Greg Wise’s arms in the rain – thank you, Liz, for making me suffer through that sappy-ass movie – are you with me yet? Yeah, that was it. That was bloody it, as the British would say.

“Easy, easy, I got you,” he said, setting her back on the ground. It took her several more very annoying seconds before she let go because she clung like a leech to him even after he set her down. “You’re safe now,” he reassured her, prying her arms from his neck. “Okay, let me go, so I can take this guy down.”

“Oh,” she breathed, staring at him, wide-eyed. “Thank you.”

God. I recognized that look.

“Wow, you’re even better-looking in person,” she added, tucking hair behind her ears. Did she just giggle and blush? Calais smiled back and gave her a reassuring pat on the arm, and, encouraged, she stood on tiptoes and gave him a grateful peck on the cheek.

I sighed. “Hello, helpless victim over here. Very uncomfortable position. Probably damaged innards and ability to produce children.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice taking on a little-girl-like tone. It took the appearance of a police officer to pull her away from Calais, and she trotted off, glancing over her shoulder for one final adoring look before vanishing in the confusion of activity.

“Well, will you look at that?” I said dully. “I’m the last one to be saved. Yay me.”

Calais stood before me, hands on his nicely narrow hips. “I leave you alone for three minutes, and all hell breaks loose.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to be attacked! Are you blaming me?”

“I told you to wait by the car, didn’t I?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“Uh-huh…”

I sighed again, drooping. “I just wanted to check out the arcade,” I said. “What’s the harm in that?”

“Um…” Calais pointed at my web cocoon. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

“Look, I was born under a black sign. Can I come down now? This sucks. Oh, by the way, thanks for the Jane Austen moment back there.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” I frankly didn’t know what was worse – seeing Peter/Calais with a girl or with another guy. Either way made me want to puke out all my innards.

Shaking his head, Calais tore at the stuff, and I fell into his arms, which was always a good thing, though it was too bad he couldn’t take me home like this. And there were way too many people around, so no huggy-kissy stuff and all the comfort-me-please things that happened when the hero saved the day.

“Thanks,” I grumbled. Then I gave a start, stiffening. I looked behind mme and then gaped at him. “What the…did you just goose me?”

He grinned. “The best thing about hyper speed. I can get away with so much crap with you in public.”

About the Author: I’ve lived most of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area though I wasn’t born there (or, indeed, the USA). I’m married with no kids and three cats, am a cycling nut (go Garmin!), and my day job involves artwork, great coworkers who specialize in all kinds of media, and the occasional strange customer requests involving papier mache fish with sparkly scales.

I’m a writer of young adult fiction, specializing in contemporary fantasy, historical fantasy, and historical genres. My books range from a superhero fantasy series to reworked folktales to Victorian ghost fiction. My themes are coming-of-age with very little focus on romance (most of the time) and more on individual growth with some adventure thrown in.

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