The Non Reluctant Reader YA Paranormal Spooktacular Day Four: Daniel Marks, author of Velveteen

Today is the fourth day of The Non Reluctant Reader YA Paranormal Spooktacular and I'm pleased to welcome Daniel Marks, author of Velveteen for a guest post! Read the post then enter the giveaway for a signed copy of Velveteen! And make sure when you're tweeting about the event to use the hashtag #NRRYASpooktacular!

Velveteen Monroe is dead. At 16, she was kidnapped and murdered by a madman named Bonesaw. But that’s not the problem.
The problem is she landed in purgatory. And while it’s not a fiery inferno, it’s certainly no heaven. It’s gray, ashen, and crumbling more and more by the day, and everyone has a job to do. Which doesn’t leave Velveteen much time to do anything about what’s really on her mind.
Bonesaw.
Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she’s figured out just how to do it. She’ll haunt him for the rest of his days.

It’ll be brutal... and awesome.
But crossing the divide between the living and the dead has devastating consequences. Velveteen’s obsessive haunting cracks the foundations of purgatory and jeopardizes her very soul. A risk she’s willing to take—except fate has just given her reason to stick around: an unreasonably hot and completely off-limits coworker.
Velveteen can’t help herself when it comes to breaking rules... or getting revenge. And she just might be angry enough to take everyone down with her.

WHEN I WAS A KID WE WERE SCARED AS HELL…AND LIKED IT! 

Has Halloween changed a lot? I mean since I was a kid? I have this feeling it’s a different world out there, somehow gentler and struggling to be free of conflict, populated by a generation that doesn’t seek out horrific experiences. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But until I am certain, I’m going to hide out in my house watching horror movies and pretending that people aren’t quivering in the shadows for fear that Hocus Pocus might come on the TV (clue: that movie’s not scary).

I’m thinking of a Halloween back in 1978. I was in the 5th grade, so long ago, I can’t even remember how old that would make me—clearly I need some gingko. I can paint you a picture though. Back then, it was pretty common for young kids to roam the streets until 10 or 11 at night without our parents worrying. After all, the folks were too busy cutting the seatbelts out of the car or filling the attic with asbestos to mind. So, on a regular night, the neighborhood was a thunderdome of pranks, fights and vandalism.

But on Halloween…APOCALYPSE!

We’d dress up in our crappy costumes and hit the streets, eyes narrowed to slits to search out the older kids hiding in the shadows, waiting to slit our trick-or-treat bags open with knives they’d swiped from their older brothers or sisters. The candy would rain down on the concrete. Reach for it at your own peril. Violence was not out of the question, nor was anyone likely to go to Juvie for beating up a kid. That just didn’t happen. Ever—the juvie part, I mean, not the beatings. Those were rampant.

Those were the days, though. Days of actual, unsupervised danger—not a parent in sight. And kids were tough, we moved in packs like animals. I say one group jump a stranger who dared to whisper something from a bush. He may have survived with a few teeth intact. Maybe.

Meanwhile, the kids just walked off with their candy cigarettes dangling from their lips jumped on their banana seat bikes and headed down the next driveway to snatch some razor blade-laced popcorn balls or red candy apples spiked with cyanide. NOMS.

I shouldn’t pretend that our parents didn’t care. That wasn’t what was going on at all. In the ten to twelve years of parenting that preceded this Halloween night, they’d done exactly what parents did back then, they filled us with capital “F” Fear. They taught us to be leery of strangers and to fight back…hard, lest we be murdered. Horror movies were a blueprint for safety. Hey, Danny. Check out what happens to these kids when they don’t tell their mom where they’re going.

Yup. Dead.

Maybe I came from a tough area—I know I did—but there’s something to be said about being tough. It’s a shield. Because when the horror show comes. I’m ready. I hear the music and I know there’s something around the corner.

My blade is ready. How about yours?

Giveaway

Danny has generously offered up a signed copy of Velveteen and some swag! Enter to win that after the page break!

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