Welcome to my stop on the official blog tour for Denton Little's Deathdate! Today I have a great excerpt from the book to share with you - and don't forget to enter the awesome giveaway! To follow the rest of the tour, click on the banner above.
Denton Little's Deathdate
Author: Lance Rubin
Genre: YA Science Fiction/Fantasy/Humor
Release Date: April 14, 2015
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Description:
Fans of John Green and Matthew Quick: Get ready to die laughing.
Denton Little's Deathdate takes place in a world exactly like our own except that everyone knows the day they will die. For 17-year-old Denton Little, that's tomorrow, the day of his senior prom.
Despite his early deathdate, Denton has always wanted to live a normal life, but his final days are filled with dramatic firsts. First hangover. First sex. First love triangle (as the first sex seems to have happened not with his adoring girlfriend, but with his best friend's hostile sister. Though he's not totally sure. See: first hangover.) His anxiety builds when he discovers a strange purple rash making its way up his body. Is this what will kill him? And then a strange man shows up at his funeral, claiming to have known Denton's long-deceased mother, and warning him to beware of suspicious government characters…. Suddenly Denton's life is filled with mysterious questions and precious little time to find the answers.
Debut author Lance Rubin takes us on a fast, furious, and outrageously funny ride through the last hours of a teenager's life as he searches for love, meaning, answers, and (just maybe) a way to live on.
Denton Little's Deathdate takes place in a world exactly like our own except that everyone knows the day they will die. For 17-year-old Denton Little, that's tomorrow, the day of his senior prom.
Despite his early deathdate, Denton has always wanted to live a normal life, but his final days are filled with dramatic firsts. First hangover. First sex. First love triangle (as the first sex seems to have happened not with his adoring girlfriend, but with his best friend's hostile sister. Though he's not totally sure. See: first hangover.) His anxiety builds when he discovers a strange purple rash making its way up his body. Is this what will kill him? And then a strange man shows up at his funeral, claiming to have known Denton's long-deceased mother, and warning him to beware of suspicious government characters…. Suddenly Denton's life is filled with mysterious questions and precious little time to find the answers.
Debut author Lance Rubin takes us on a fast, furious, and outrageously funny ride through the last hours of a teenager's life as he searches for love, meaning, answers, and (just maybe) a way to live on.
Chapter 1
I don't think this is my bed.
It's hard to know for sure, as my head is in excruciating pain, but there's something about this bed that doesn't feel like me. It's got extra fluff.
This is disappointing. I had a very clear vision for how the day of my funeral would start, and it involved waking up in my own bed. I would yawn and stretch like a well-rested comic strip character as the smell of bacon wafted up from downstairs. "There's so much bacon down here!" my stepmom would shout.
But instead, I'm swiping at my skull to make sure there aren't any knives sticking out of it as I listen to the voice of some lady who's not my stepmom, talking about something that is not bacon. "Nothing yet," she says, from out in the hallway. "Yes, trust me, I know this is important."
Ow. Something's lumped up under my back. Possibly my old faithful companion, Blue Bronto. Maybe this is my bed after all!
Nope.
It's a pink koala.
I have never owned a pink koala.
"Well, I'm doing everything I can," the woman in the hallway says.
Of course. It's Paolo's mom. I'm in Paolo's house.
I make a halfhearted attempt at sitting up, and as the room slowly spins, I look around. My eye lands on a poster for the National Sarcasm Society. Like we need your support, it reads under the logo.
This is not Paolo's room.
It's a room I've been in approximately three times before, the room of Paolo's older-but-not-by-much sister, Veronica. So: I just woke up on the day of my funeral in my best friend's sister's bed. This was never part of my plan.
"Denton...Are you awake in there?" Paolo's mom says from just outside the door.
I shoot back down and pull the blanket up over my head. She doesn't seem to care that I'm in her daughter's room, but I'd prefer to hide.
"No, he's still out cold," she says as she walks away.
I shrug the blanket off, noticing a Band-Aid on my right index finger. I have no idea why it's there. I must have hurt my finger.
At least my critical thinking skills are firing on all cylinders.
I need to mobilize. I turn onto my stomach and my face mashes deep into the pillow, getting a full-on blast of girl smell. The scent - the mysterious amalgam of soap, peaches, and... mint? - travels up my nasal passages and slams into my brain.
Wait.
Veronica's face appears in my mind, speaking as she gets within kissing distance: "It's just because I feel bad for you."
I remember. I made out with my best friend's sister in my best friend's sister's bed last night. That's incredibly exciting.
But waitasecond. I have a girlfriend. A girlfriend who is not Veronica.
I lift up the covers and look down at myself. My plaid shirt is unbuttoned. Thankfully, I am still wearing jeans. But pants or not, I have completely betrayed my girlfriend, Taryn. Who I really like. Her face pops into my brain:
"You're really cool and great and fun, but I don't think I can do this."
Hold on.
Did my girlfriend dump me last night? I put my hands on my face and joggle my head back and forth, hoping to ease my brain-pain and settle my thoughts into some logical arrangement.
She totally did.
I made out with Veronica and got dumped by Taryn last night. Hopefully not in that order.
My headache pulses. My mouth is sand.
"Don't be ridiculous," I hear Paolo's mom say in a sharp tone. "He's just gonna mess this up." Her intensity is sobering, but only for a fleeting second.
Time to go. I roll to the other side of the bed. A rotting-fruit smell collides with my nose, and I vomit. Right on Veronica's pillow.
Oh man. Through throw-up tears, I see an almost-empty bottle of peach schnapps on the carpet near the bed. Gross.
I hear a scary buzz from under the covers, and I spring into action, legs scrambling wildly as I propel myself back against the thin metal columns of Veronica's headboard. Approximately two seconds later, I realize the buzz was my phone, and not some sort of hostile bug.
I am a cool, manly dude.
Hey you awake yet? Paolo has texted.
Yes. You in your room? I text back, wondering if he's writing to me from across the hall. As I wait for a response, I push the vomit-pillow onto the floor, where it lands amongst a tiny village of bags and crates, detritus from Veronica's first year at college. She just got home a few days ago.
Ha no we got school today bro, Paolo texts. well you don't haha.
Right. Of course I don't.
Because my funeral is at 2 p.m. this afternoon.
For the first time since opening my eyes, I don't think about what I'm doing in this room, what happened last night, or when the construction crew in my brain is going to let up.
What I think is: tomorrow is the day I'm going to die.
After years of being a GoodReads reader, I am delighted to now also be a GoodReads author. My first book, DENTON LITTLE'S DEATHDATE, comes out from Knopf in Spring 2015.
I'm from New Jersey. It's a way better state than people give it credit for. I went to Brown University, and now I live in Brooklyn with my wife and son. They are delightful people.
Before I became an author, I was primarily an actor. "Anything I'd recognize you from?" you might ask. Probably not, unless you watched the short-lived NBC hospital show MERCY, in which I guest-starred as a patient with a naked sleepwalking problem.
By my late 20's, the acting business was making me sad, so I started to focus more on writing.
Now I'm primarily a writer and it makes me incredibly happy.
Book Links:
Giveaway:
(1) Winner will get a copy of DENTON LITTLE'S DEATHDATE (Open INTL)
(1)
Winner will get an ARC, with original cover art (Open US)
(5) Winners will
get a bookmark + sticker set (Open INTL)
(3) Winners will get a hand
drawn cartoon, created by author Lance Rubin (Open INTL)
Must be 13 + To Enter. Open to US only.
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