Rhys’ Note: I first met Eric in person at the ABQ GRL. So many letters. Albuquerque GayRomLit. We met in passing and what I knew of Eric was through videos and chance meetings but one never ever forgets Eric Arvin. His personality is bigger than life and so is his writing. When the mention of a blog tour for his latest book, The Rascal, came about, I said… yes please. Let me spread the Word!

Because the Word of Arvin needs to be spread. Eric’s writing is glorious. Hands down, absolutely freaking glorious. You won’t get better horror and complexity than from Eric. Without a damned doubt. So, read the excerpt, enter the giveaway and go grab the book. You won’t regret it.

Giveaway:
Leave a relevant and thoughtful comment at each stop on the tour for a chance to win a $20 gift card. Tour organizers will select a winner at each stop on 25 October 2015. Must be 18 years or older to enter. Void where prohibited.

The Rascal
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 succeed or will all of them fall to the taste of a young cannibalistic ghost?

And now, an excerpt from The Rascal

Ethan tried to call Kelton again. No service. Kelton was probably worried sick by now. He always thought too much. He worried too much. Like a good mother. Perhaps that was why Ethan fell for him: his caring, his gentleness. Ethan longed for that now, to be held in Kelton’s arms. He regretted not spending just a few more moments in an embrace before he sped out the door for Wicker.

He noted the computer sitting idle on the kitchen table. Chloe’s story had been absolutely beyond sane, but Ethan could not explain the image he had seen behind her when they had been chatting online. He looked at the kitchen doorway where the strange figure had stood. It was assuredly not Jeff, and after a few slight investigations of the cottage, he decided Chloe wasn’t cheating again. So then, who was that? They hadn’t made friends with any of the townsfolk. That was certain. They were very much alone there. And in fact they seemed, by the tenor in Chloe’s voice, to be rather miserable there as well. At least, Chloe did. The only company had been Lana Pruitt, and the image Ethan had seen on the computer screen was certainly not that of a faded film star.

And then there was something else about Chloe, altogether more personal, that bothered Ethan. When she was telling him what had happened and she spoke of her ‘feelings,’ her premonitions, it had made him very angry. It had been her premonitions, after all, that had nearly cost him and Kelton the adoption of Bug. Sure, the bridge had collapsed, but coincidence did not excuse bigotry.

Yet Ethan wondered…

His own ‘feelings’ that something was wrong, that something terrible was happening to Jeff, they had seemingly been accurate. What if these were along the same lines as Chloe’s own premonitions?

“We’re all psychic in some way,” she had once said at a dinner when Jeff first introduced her to Ethan and Kelton. They were at a bar and grill in the middle of a shopping plaza. Jeff had seemed uncomfortable with the subject, looking around as if waiting for the opportunity to excuse his wife’s quirks. But what if she was right? What if the entire planet was like a big ball of string, everything truly connected to everything else, like some New Ager’s dream?

Ethan shook his head at the thought. Proof. That’s what he relied on. Things that could be broken or bruised, mended and embraced. Prove to him that a ghost exists and then maybe he’d believe it. At the moment, however, the solid world was causing quite enough problems without adding the invisible to the mix.

Links:
Wilde City
Amazon (Available on 14 Oct 15)
Omnilit
(please note: OmniLit links to “Eric Arvin” but will be available for order there soon.)

Tour Schedule
7 Oct – Prism Book Alliance (http://www.prismbookalliance.com)
8 Oct – The Novel Approach (http://thenovelapproachreviews.com/)
9 Oct – Rhys Ford (http://rhysford.com/)
10 Oct – Joyfully Jay (http://joyfullyjay.com/)
11 Oct – Love Bytes (http://lovebytesreviews.com/)

Author Bio
“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 of Woke 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.