Exclusive Excerpt and Giveaway: The Rascal by Eric Arvin

Welcome to The Rascal blog tour with Eric Arvin. We’re so pleased to be a part of helping Eric promote his newest novel, with an exclusive excerpt from the book for you, as well as a couple of great giveaways.

The Grand Prize on the tour is the chance for one lucky reader to win a $20 Gift Card to the e-tailer of choice.

The Runner-up Prize is the chance to win one of THREE e-copies of The Rascal–and, let me tell you, this is the perfect book for some October thrills and chills!

Here are the details:

Leave a relevant and thoughtful comment at each stop on the tour for a chance to win a $20 gift card. The titles of some of your favorite scary and spooktastic books? Loved the Goosebumps series as a kid? That counts. :)

Tour organizers will select a winner at each stop on 25 October 2015 for the $20 Gift Card. Winners of the THREE e-book copies from The Novel Approach will be selected on 13 October 2015.

Must be 18 years or older to enter.

Void where prohibited.

No residency restrictions apply.

 
And that’s it. Enjoy this little teaser, and good luck!

Blurb: Lana is a faded movie star who lives alone in a big house on a hill that overlooks the sea. She has lived this way since the death of her daughter and the disappearance of her husband.

Jeff and Chloe are a couple who live in a cabin below the big house. It was Chloe’s idea to strengthen their marriage; but she see’s now that it isn’t working. Jeff has become obsessed with the cabin and the old water well. Chloe only sees strangeness around her.

One night while talking on the computer with Ethan, Jeff’s brother, a feeling of dread comes to the fore. When Ethan see’s a figure behind Chloe, he leaves his boyfriend and baby and sets out to save Jeff.

Chloe, Ethan and Lana come together to fight an evil that would destroy Jeff. Will they suc-ceed or will all of them fall to the taste of a young cannibalistic ghost?

Buy Link: Wilde City Press || Amazon Pre-Order

The Rascal will be available from other third party e-tailers on 14 October.

Excerpt: Chloe Singh-Cane felt the town’s sense of reverence and expectation as she walked from the old, beaten Jeep into the small grocery store with her husband, Jeff. The few people on the sidewalks abruptly stopped what they were doing and looked at the strangers as if in rapt gratitude. Their expressions verged on hunger. Chloe walked as close to Jeff as he would allow her. His personal space was still precious to him where she was involved.

The store clerk, a razor-thin woman with willows for fingers, watched them from beneath the rims of her glasses. A pleasant, if knowing smile never shifted or fell. There was no one else in the store.

It was a small cubicle of a shop that had been there since the town’s founding. Like all of the structures on the main street, it seemed stoic and stuck, as if the shelves and walls were still adjusting to fluorescent lighting and the computer age was but science fiction. Arts and crafts were sold alongside loaves of bread and bags of candy. Individual colas could still be purchased out of an icebox. There was a smell of nostalgic comfort: wood stoves and wax candles.

Jeff went to the pharmacy aisle and picked up a bottle of aspirin. It had been a long drive and his back was hurting him. Chloe had volunteered to take over, but he shrugged her off as if her suggestion was an annoyance.

Chloe wandered around the store, happy to stretch her legs. She was still surrounded by silence, but at least this was a new silence. In the Jeep, Jeff’s silence had been covered by rock music. In the store, it was disguised by pop-flavored piano music and scented candles. She picked up a bag of candy corn and a bag of sour gummies.

Jeff was waiting at the cash register. He had a cold bottle of root beer to wash down the aspirin. The clerk put down the tabloid magazine she was thumbing through and continued to smile at them as she rang the items up. The lighting behind her caused her long fingers to cast thin shadows.

“Just passing through?” she asked, her voice a scratchy, nicotine-lined thing.

“No,” Chloe offered. “We bought a cottage up on the hill.”

The clerk’s bagging of the items slowed to a crawl. Her eyes swallowed them. “The little place up on Bad Luck Hill?”

“Is that what it’s called? Why in heaven’s name is it called Bad Luck Hill?”

The clerk’s item bagging picked up. “Silly reasons. Or none at all. Who can remember how things get their names?”

About the Author: “Some of [Arvin’s] work is as direct as Hemingway with the sensitivity of O’Connor or Shields, and yet others nuanced as if Maupin wrote a letter to Penthouse.” – Thom Fitzgerald, director THE HANGING GARDEN 

Eric Arvin resides in the same sleepy Indiana river town where he grew up. He graduated from Hanover College with a Bachelors in History. He has lived, for brief periods, in Italy and Australia. He has survived brain surgery and his own loud-mouthed personal demons. Eric is the author ofmWoke Up In A Strange Place, Subsurdity, Simple Men, Galley Proof, and various other sundry and not-so-sundry writings. He intends to live the rest of his days with tongue in cheek and eyes set to roam.

Tour Schedule: 

7 Oct – Prism Book Alliance

8 Oct – The Novel Approach

9 Oct – Rhys Ford

10 Oct – Joyfully Jay

11 Oct – Love Bytes