American Ghoul by Walt Morton Blog Tour with Excerpt and Giveaway :)

Welcome to my tour stop for American Ghoul by Walt Morton! This is a mature young adult paranormal dark fantasy novel. The tour runs October 19-30th with reviews, interviews, guest posts and excerpts. Check out the tour page for the full schedule.

About the Book:

Seventeen-year-old Howard Pickman has some unusual problems: He comes from a family of ghouls with a long history of digging up corpses, and he’s just moved to a new school filled with kids that are scarier than he is. American Ghoul is the story of an exceptionally odd teenager trying to survive the most terrible time anybody has to go through -- senior year at high school. 


"A gloriously macabre young-adult tale about the difficulties of being a teenage ghoul in the 1970s. Once readers dig up this clever supernatural story, they likely won't want to put it down." - KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Anyone wanting a refreshing story with a young voice full of humor and teenage angst, yet with all the Gothic trappings that have kept the genre popular for over two centuries, give American Ghoul a try! - SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

  "I admire Morton's story-telling ability, his macabre descriptions and his dark treatment of the high school experience from a teenager with a terrible secret. There were moments that chilled me to the bone, but kept me turning the pages to follow Howard's journey from outsider to anti-hero." - JACKSONVILLE NAVIGATOR

Goodreads | Amazon

Free for Kindle Halloween weekend! 10/30-11/1 

***EXCERPT***

We parked the Impala in the garage. Granny and I climbed out and opened the trunk. The body had settled next to the spare tire, hugging it. One shoe had come off and the dark blue sock was threadbare with a toe poking through. That worn sock gave me a pang of sadness.

“Now can we cut him in half?” Granny said.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Granny, you want me crawl in there and saw away? There’s no room and your trunk will get all gooey with gore.”

“I didn’t think of that. See what happens when you get old and hungry? The mind doesn’t work so good.”

“I’ll tie a rope around each ankle and we can pull him out.”

By the time we dragged the Mulligan boy’s body down to the basement it was real late. Granny and I were sweating bullets and running on the adrenaline thrill of evading the police combined with the promise of fresh meat.

We put Mulligan out on the table and cut his clothes away with Granny’s surgical scissors. She had a lot of medical equipment pilfered during her years of hospital service.

“Do you think the drowning will affect his flavor?"

“Nope, we ate two like that down in Georgia and they tasted fine,” I said.

“I was afraid it might taste watery,” Granny said.

After the clothes were sliced away Mulligan looked like an albino specimen of baby whale. The drowning hadn’t helped his appearance but even on the best of days Mulligan was never an attractive sight in the nude.

I re-checked his neck, arms and legs for the telltale incisions that would indicate embalming. There were none. He was good meat.

Granny approached me carefully carrying a glass of weird-looking green fluid.”

"What’s that?”

“Limeade. You better drink it or you’ll get dehydrated doing all this work in such awful humidity.”

I gulped it down.

She was right. Despite the late hour and the relative coolness of the cellar, it was a hot summer night in New Jersey and I had just finished over an hour of frenzied digging and hauling.

I walked over and picked up the pruning saw and set the blade on Mulligan’s forehead.

“Howard! What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m opening the skull, Granny.”

“Oh. But shouldn’t you…? Um…”

I studied her. She seemed unsure, her eyes hunting about the boy’s body. What did she expect, a zipper?

“Don’t you know what to do, Granny?”

“I never had an entire body,” Granny said. “How do you usually start?”

“Back in Georgia, we’d open the head to get the brains, pineal and pituitary. Then the chest for the heart and adrenals.”

“Oh,” said Granny. She scratched her chin in thought like somebody remembering details from a distant childhood. She looked at the body with obvious longing, like a toothless old dog studying a bone.

“Do you have the plastic bags?” I said.

“Plenty in the kitchen. I’ll get them."

Twenty-three minutes later, and despite struggling with dull teeth on the pruning saw, I handed Granny the last of four plastic bags filled with selected organs. I put down the boning knife and wiped a red hand on my filthy T-shirt, which was stained with layers of mud and splatters of gore. I felt a surge of satisfaction. I handled that body with a speed and efficiency of butchering that would make my father proud.

“You remind me so much of your Grandpa Frank,” Granny said.

*************

 About the Author:

Walt Morton is a writer, photographer, and artist. AMERICAN GHOUL, his debut novel, has been called “The Tom Sawyer of horror fiction.” With this book he is continuing a decade-long exploration into weird tales via photography, film, painting and writing. Walt has lectured at the British Film Institute and studied intensively in five martial arts.

A complete biography of his exploits and interests would be so shocking, improbable and incredible that modesty demands "the less said the better." He would like to thank Jane Austen, who coined that "less said the better" idea. AMERICAN GHOUL is his first of several books that reinvent the supernatural horror genre. Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, he now lives in California.

 His upcoming novels in 2015 and 2016 will include works in horror, science-fiction, and detective genres.

Website | Twitter @WaltMort

 

GIVEAWAY:

Collectible, art-skull hand painted, signed and numbered by Walt Morton, the author

Ends Nov. 4th

Prizing provided by the author, hosts are not responsible.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions