Deadgirl Blog Tour: Excerpt

Welcome to my stop on the Deadgirl blog tour! Today I have a great excerpt from the book to share with you!

Deadgirl

Author: B.C. Johnson

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance

Release Date: November 6, 2014

Cover Artist: Andy Garcia 

Description:

Dead is such a strong word . . .

Lucy Day, 15 years old, is murdered on her very first date. Not one to take that kind of thing lying down, she awakens a day later with a seemingly human body and more than a little confusion. Lucy tries to return to her normal life, but the afterlife keeps getting in the way.

Zack, her crush-maybe-boyfriend, isn't exactly excited that she ditched him on their first date. Oh, and Abraham, Lucy’s personal Grim Reaper, begins hunting her, dead-set on righting the error that dropped her back into the spongy flesh of a living girl. Lucy must put her mangled life back together, escape re-death, and learn to control her burgeoning powers while staying one step ahead of Abraham.

But when she learns the devastating price of coming back from the dead, Lucy is forced to make the hardest decision of her re-life — can she really sacrifice her loved ones to stay out of the grave? 

My eyes flicked open. Grey. Lightless yet oddly lit grey. A haze without an end.

I held my hands in front of my eyes. Not blind. Charcoal grey sand, wet and clumpy, stuck to my fingers. I sat up in surprise.

I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that right away.

The dark grey sand unraveled up and down a long, featureless coastline. The surging grey soup of the ocean beat against the shore, cresting and falling in meager impressions of waves. The sea stretched on forever, with only the distant glimmer and the far-off ringing of what had to be a long line of abandoned, rusting buoys. A sky the color of ash, devoid entirely of clouds, empty of the warmth of any visible sun, cast a weird indirect glow on everything. Nothing bright, nothing dark. Just a miserable granite color in all directions.

I turned around, away from the featureless ocean. The charcoal sand crested into a ridge that blocked anything in that direction from sight. Sand, in undulating dunes, stretched out to the left and right of me, paralleling the shape of the coastline.

“Hello!”

My voice didn’t echo. It stopped where it left my mouth, as if it died the moment it hit oxygen.

“HELLO!”

The same effect, only louder. I winced.

Time to assess the situation, Luce. You’re on an alien planet? No. Dead? Maybe. Dreaming?

I looked around again, trying to soak in the strange environment. It was cold—wherever I was, I was still wearing the skirt, boots, torn shirt, coat combo I’d had on for far too long. It wasn’t Alaska cold, just beach-cold, but it was enough. I thought about the bonfires we’d had freshman year and longed. I tucked my coat around my body and buttoned it up to my neck.

My legs were damp and my skirt felt soaked-through. It clung to me like a second skin, no flex, no slink, all friction. It was the feeling of wet socks all over, and I resisted a disgusted shudder.

No, I wasn’t dreaming. I’d never felt anything so vivid in a dream. Besides, in dreams, didn’t things…happen? Friends, loved ones, horror-movie slashers. Something. Not featureless grey and disquiet.

I stood up and nearly snapped my ankle. If I thought running in boots sucked, standing in wet sand was murder. My high-heeled boots may have looked sexy-tough, but at that moment I wanted nothing to do with them. I reached down, navigated the long and gruesome task of unlacing them around my calves, and tugged them off. I tied them together, wrapped the laces around one finger, and tossed them over my shoulder. I stripped off my black socks with one hand, doing the one-foot-dance all the while, and tucked them into the boots.

My bare feet sank into the moist sand with a squelch. I wriggled my toes and felt a violent chill spike through them.

“Time to get movin’, Luce,” I said to no one. “Because this is pretty damn weird.”

Born in Southern California, B.C. Johnson has been writing since he realized it was one of the few socially acceptable ways to tell people a bunch of stuff you just made up off the top of your head. He attended Savanna High School in Anaheim, and an undisclosed amount of college before deciding that weird odd jobs were a far greater career path.

This lead him to such exciting professions as: aluminum recovery machinist, lighting designer, construction demo, sound mixer, receptionist, theater stage hand, wedding security, high school custodian, museum events manager, webmaster, IT guy, copywriter, and one memorable night as the bouncer at a nightclub. He is trying very hard to add “vampire hunter” and “spaceship captain” to that list.

He currently lives in Garden Grove with his supernal wife Gina, his half-corgi, half-muppet dog Luna, and his new half-grayhound, half-living-tornado-of-destruction Kaylee. He also spends time with his two brothers, his parents, and his close friends, whose primary pursuit are usually healthy debates about movie minutiea. When he’s not working or writing, he’s been to known to pursue all conceivable geeky avenues of interest including but not limited to video games, the sort of TV shows/movies Benedict Cumberbatch might star in, graphic novels, podcasts, funny gifs, the whole thing.

He’s also been known to apply his special brand of hyperbole and mania to pop-culture humor essays for various websites that can be found on his homepage, bc-johnson.com. B.C. also has a high school noir short story called “The Lancer” available on Kindle.

Deadgirl is his first novel. 

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