Blog Tour: WILD HORSE by Kyle Richardson

WILD HORSE (a novelette) by Kyle Richardson

EBOOK RELEASE DATE: 7/30/19

GENRE: Dystopian, Superhero, YA, Novelette

BOOK PAGE: https://www.meerkatpress.com/books/wild-horse/ 

SUMMARY: Grady has found a crack in the wall—a crack to the outside world. But all he knows about life outside the compound comes from books, magazines, and a photograph of a creature that no longer exists. Things change when he meets a girl with raspberry-yellow hair, and a secret that could lead them to a world beyond the walls. A world where their abilities could change everything … or lead them both to ruin. 

BUY LINKS: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kyle lives in the suburban wilds of Canada with his adorable wife,
their rambunctious son, and their adventurous daughter. He writes about shapeshifters,
superheroes, and the occasional clockwork beast, moonlights as an editor at Meerkat Press,
and has a terrible habit of saying the wrong thing at the most inopportune moments. His short
fiction has appeared in places such as Love Hurts: A Speculative Fiction Anthology and
Daily Science Fiction.

AUTHOR LINKS: Website | Twitter | Goodreads

EXCERPT:

Grady finds it in the spring, when the leaves are sprouting from the trees in tiny pink-green buds. There are no trees in the courtyard, there's only dirt and rocks and other kids that look like Grady—their heads shaven, their clothes loose and gray, the skin under their eyes a creamy blue and red. But Grady has found a crack in the wall, a crack that wasn't there before—a crack that isn't supposed to be. Whenever the guards aren't looking, he leans his face against the wall and peers through the crack at the world outside. He does this with his left eye first. Always his left eye first. The gap is so tiny it's like squinting through a nostril. But in that nostril there's the sky, purple as a bruise, and beneath it there are scrawny trees with tiny pink-green buds. Today the trees bend and sway, like they know Grady's watching. Like they're dancing just for him. And his cracked lips spread until he's smiling, big and dumb. 

This is when he hears the voice. "What're you looking at?" The voice comes from behind him, small and smooth and wild, like the picture of the horse taped to the ceiling above his cot. It knocks something loose in him, something that tumbles free, something that falls but doesn't seem to ever land. Whatever it is, it just keeps on falling, lost somewhere inside him. Grady frowns and squirms, but the stupid feeling doesn't quit. "Go away," he tells the voice. He doesn't bother to turn. "I'm looking at spring," he adds, "but you wouldn't know what that is."

The voice that's like a wild horse, it tells him, "I do too know what spring is. And I know that you're mean and I don't like you." Then the voice is gone, and a guard walks by, and Grady looks away from the wall as if the crack isn’t there at all. And stomping away from him straight across the courtyard, like she's trying to knock the world off orbit with the weight of her footsteps alone, is a skinny girl with loose gray clothes and raspberry-yellow hair.

Grady raises his eyebrows. Whatever that thing is inside him, it tumbles even faster.

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✱✱Book Review✱✱ BLOG TOUR: Collision: Stories by J.S. Breukelaar

Collision: Stories

by J.S. Breukelaar

Speculative Fiction, Horror, Weird, Fantasy, Scifi, Dystopian

A collection of twelve of J.S. Breukelaar's darkest, finest stories with four new works, including the uncanny new novella "Ripples on a Blank Shore." Introduction by award-winning author, Angela Slatter. Relish the gothic strangeness of "Union Falls," the alien horror of "Rogues Bay 3013," the heartbreaking dystopia of "Glow," the weird mythos of "Ava Rune," and others. This collection from the author of American Monster and the internationally acclaimed and Aurealis Award finalist, Aletheia, announces a new and powerful voice in fantastical fiction.

Buy Links:

Book Depository

Amazon

B&N

Goodreads

Momma Says: 4 stars⭐⭐⭐⭐

This collection covers a wide variety of horror/thriller tropes, including some I wouldn't normally pick up, but they do have a couple of things in common. The writing is excellent and the author certainly has the short story/novella length read down to a fine art. Each story pulled me in quickly and held on tight. Regardless of the particular trope, each tale has a tone of disquiet, and they all make you think outside the box, way outside the box in some cases. This is not a book for those who need everything laid out and tied up in a neat little bow, but if you like stories that stretch the imagination sometimes to point of scratching your head in wonder, then I recommend giving this one a read. Some stories are more complicated than others, but each is thoroughly thought-provoking. I took my time with the book, reading one story every day or so to fully digest each crazy, twisted world the author has created. 

Excerpt

Like Ripples on a Blank Shore

The Host went down in an eruption of crimson and bone, bringing commuter traffic to a standstill. Car windows unwound as drivers scanned for the shooter. Reports would later confirm that a pedestrian lost her footing on the splashed goo of the Host’s brain matter and broke her hip in two places. The passing woman turned out to be the shooter’s aunt.

There was no doubt about it. Hosts were bad news.

That was the beginning. No one in Deerport, or anywhere, knew what drew the Hosts in such sudden numbers to some towns and not others. Experts attempted to pinpoint a cause, or reason, or remedy—but no one could agree on even what they were, let alone why. Arriving in twos and bad-news threes at the Greyhound Station, into Deerport they came over those dark, wet weeks. Alighting uncertainly from the bus or the backseats of Uber rides, they tracked slush down the aisles of the Safeway and slowed traffic and filled the darkness of the purple-curtained multiplex theaters with their relentless, restless rustle.

And there were more on the way, according to Professor Maya Grayson at Sullivan College, an expert in medieval folklore and on all things Hostish. When asked by a reporter, “Why so many Hosts pouring into Deerport?” Grayson quickly answered by referring to last year’s Tower 9 Incident in New York City where an apartment building in the Upper West Side attracted Hosts (a shortened version of the singular hostis, from the Latin word for enemy, stranger, or guest) by the hundreds. Residents reported seeing them slumped on the fire escape and in the basement laundry room, leaving a shimmer of dark ooze along the walls where they edged like spiders. Riding up and down the outside of the building on the joists, laughing—if that clotted sigh could be called a laugh—as the wind peeled off their loose flesh.

“I can understand glass towers in Manhattan, but why Deerport?” the radio caller had asked Professor Grayson. But no one, not even Grayson, could say why they came to a certain place, or for whom—if they targeted certain individuals or towns. Nobody knew.

At six p.m. on a Monday evening, the Upper Deerport Terminus was thronged with Hosts and nons. Celia, at five feet eight, scanned over the sea of heads for Terminal 10, where her bus was already almost full and ready to depart. She’d never make it through the crowds in time. She would be lucky to make the next one. A male Host with a seamed face jostled her elbow. From one swollen eyelid, slid a single tear, tensely oblong. Celia watched the tear trickle down the filthy crease that bisected his cheek, over his jaw and back into a bloodless slit at his neck, and decided she would get an Uber. But getting out was easier said than done—the Terminus was packed.

Gooseflesh rode the back of her neck—there was something wanting about their presence, as if they knew her even if she didn’t know them. That was the problem with these so-called infestations—random and inexplicable as experts insisted that they were. It was as if the Hosts knew where they were going and what they were looking for. Or who.

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Author Bio:

J.S. Breukelaar is the author of the Aurealis-nominated novel Aletheia, and American Monster, a Wonderland Award finalist. She has published stories, poems and essays in publications such as Gamut, Black Static, Unnerving, Lightspeed, Lamplight and elsewhere. She is a columnist and regular instructor at LitReactor.com. California-born and New York raised, she currently lives in Sydney, Australia with her family. You can find her at www.thelivingsuitcase.com.

Missing Signal Blog Tour

Title: Missing Signal

Author: Seb Doubinsky

Release Date: 8/29/18

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian

Buy Links:

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946154113

B&N - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/missing-signal-seb-doubinsky/1128220400

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41558571-missing-signal

Synopsis:

From Seb Doubinsky, author of The Song of Synth, The Babylonian Trilogy, White City, Absinth, Omega Gray, and Suan Ming, comes his highly anticipated next installment in the City-States Cycle. Missing Signal—a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a government conspiracy? Agent Terrence Kovacs has worked for the New Petersburg Counter-Intel Department propagating fake UFO stories for so long that even he has a hard time separating fact from fiction. Especially when he’s approached by a beautiful woman named Vita, who claims she’s been sent from another planet to liberate Earth.

Author Bio:

Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual writer born in Paris in 1963. His novels, all set in a dystopian universe revolving around competing cities-states, have been published in the UK and in the USA. He currently lives with his family in Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches at the university.

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