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Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067
and rising...from the grave...Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems...
But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead?
And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.
A YA supernatural novella, coming from Lycaon Press 20th
August.
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Excerpt:
Where the hell am I?
Not the most original question, I
know, but it’s the best place to start. The only place. I don’t know where I
am. I can’t remember where I was. What I was. But nothing about this place is
familiar, and some part of me didn’t expect this.
There’s a line of people all the
way to infinity. I’m not exaggerating—I do mean infinity. And it hurts to look
at it because the human mind can’t handle that. Not completely. You think you
know how that looks? You don’t. You can’t. Try to imagine the whole of
creation. Can you see every last ant, every last star? No.
Around us—well, it’s a big gray
hall. A really, really huge space, like an aircraft hangar kind of place, only
no planes and no doors. In fact, no walls or roof either. The edges just blur
into the darkness, as though none of it exists except the floor we’re standing
on, and I’m not even sure about that. Looking up makes me giddy. You know when
you’re dizzy from spinning around, and you lay down, but you feel as if you
just keep on falling? That. So I don’t try it again. I keep my eyes away from
the endless line of other people waiting. Instead, I stare at the back of the
person in front of me and try not to think about where I am and what may be
going on. Because now I have a nasty suspicion about it and what might have
happened. My mind scurries away from the thought. This ain’t good.
Oh, by the by, my name is Luke
Chester. That much I do know. I can’t be that old—my hands aren’t wrinkled or
calloused, although there’s a cool scar across my left palm. My skin is pale
gray. So are the long sleeves of my T-shirt. In fact everyone and everything is
gray, just like the room. I stare at the guy in front of me, hoping for some
clues. He has dreadlocks and his skin is so dark as to be almost black. He’s
wearing a tank top, torn and covered with dark streaks that something tells me
should be red, but, like everything else here, have no color. There are two
deep slashes in the back of his neck, and more on his arms. They aren’t
bleeding though. I guess they’ve all dried up, or maybe he’s all bled out. His
jeans are ripped too, although that could be a fashion thing. I can’t see any
wounds on his legs.
I look down at myself. My jeans
are in one piece, but my feet are bare. I wriggle my toes and watch them dance
like I’ve never seen them move before. I can’t feel the ground. I don’t feel
warm or cold, just kind of numb, and distant. It’s as if I’m not really here,
but clearly I am. What happened to me? How did I get here? That bothers me. I
shouldn’t be here. Then again, I’m
not sure where else I should be.
Bio:
After spending twelve years working as an
Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a
stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way
a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between
torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing
guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying
the Dark Side of the Force. Although happily settled in the historical town of
Colchester in the UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters,
she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.
Pippa Jay is a dedicated member of the Science
Fiction Romance Brigade, blogging at Spacefreighters Lounge, Adventures in
Scifi, and Romancing the Genres. Her works include a YA science
fiction novel—Gethyon—published through BURST (Champagne Books), two
self-published short stories (Terms & Conditions Apply, The Bones of the Sea, and Reboot), and she’s
one of eight authors included in a science fiction romance anthology—Tales from
the SFR Brigade. She’s also a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist
in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3rd place), and the GCC RWA Silken Sands
Star Awards (2nd place).
You can stalk her at her website http://pippajay.co.uk, or at her
blog http://pippajay.blogspot.co.uk, but without
doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as
@pippajaygreen.
