It's coming up fast. The release date of my newest Rocktoberfest novel Damaged Saints. This is a totally new band from the ones explored in Tattered Angel and Bleeding Dawn, which means new characters, new dynamics, and new challenges to overcome.
Just days after last year's Rocktobefest, Damaged Saints experienced an onstage accident that injured two members of the band, one to the point of no longer being able to perform in the capacity he once had. Other bands might have fallen apart under the circumstances, but the members of Damaged Saints are determined to make it back to Rocktoberfest this year, though in order to accomplish that, they will need another singer.
Enter Jagger.
Sent by a mutual friend, he's only ever played in cover bands, but he's got an amazing voice, learns fast, and possesses the kind of stage presence that can easily hypnotize a crowd and whip them into an absolute frenzy.
Nicknamed Sinfully Delicious by his best friend, Jagger is hesitant about the whole thing, but especially the two very large, very loud, furry death machines owned by the band. A childhood experience left him terrified of dogs, and the last thing he's interested in is being part of a band that travels with them.
It will take some finesse, a whole lot of convincing, and serious bonding time to get him over his fears, but if they can manage it, they might just have found the perfect person to step into their former singer's place.
Left staircase, left at the top of the stairs, Jagger was
whistling as he climbed them, so engrossed in his thoughts that he never once
stopped to consider that the dogs might not be put away. He’d managed, thanks
to his new bandmates, to avoid them ever since they’d sent him fleeing the
morning that he’d arrived. Only now, there was the jangle of chains as a large,
fluffy body came hurrying his way.
Fuck that shit.
He spun around, threw
one leg over the banister, and did a major slide for life in an attempt to
avoid the dog, who seemed to take it as a challenge and came bounding down the
stairs after him. Jagger hit the ground running, scrambled around a corner, and
wrenched open the first door he came to.
The linin closet, joy, he
smacked his head on a low shelf as he ducked low and pulled the door shut just
as a snout appeared beside it. Heart hammering in his chest, he remained in a
crouch, listening to the dog sniff, whine, and paw at the door, then leap up on
it to claw at the paint.
“Friendly my ass,”
Jagger grumbled, receiving a loud woof as an answering remark. More like
threat, really, and one Jagger was going to damn sure respect. He’d just sit
there until one of his bandmates came home and hope it wouldn’t be long. He
kicked himself for never having them put their contact information in his
phone, but then, with him living there with them, he really hadn’t seen the
need.
Soon as he was safe
from the furry death machine, he was collecting them all, just in case he ever
found himself in this predicament again, not that he had any intention of
leaving his room or entering the house, without making damned sure they were
locked up somewhere.
He could hear the dog
still shuffling around on the other side of the door, occasionally whining,
claws slipping under the gap at the bottom as it attempted to get at him. At
least there was a sturdy barricade between them, and a rather thick one from
the feel of the wood beneath his hand. If it had been one of those hollowed out
modern things he’d have been typing his will into a text message to Johnny and telling
him exactly how he’d met his end.
Johnny!
With trembling fingers
he pulled his phone from his pocket, having to let go of the doorknob to do it.
He just hoped this dog hadn’t been taught to turn one with its teeth or he was
dead, dead, dead.
When ringing turned to
a message saying that the voice mailbox was full, Jagger groaned and smacked
the heel of his palm to his forehead, cussing up a blue streak as he ended the
call and tried again.
Another message.
He got Johnny’s voice
mail two more times before his best friend’s exasperated voice came growling
through the phone, threatening him with a coffee and chicory enema for blowing
up his phone that way.
“Keep your kinky shit
to yourself, I’m not in the mood for it!” Jagger snapped. “I’m about to be
murdered over here. I need you to call one of my fuckin’ bandmates and tell
them to call off the hounds from hell.”
His fear was met with
silence, then a low chuckle that grew into raucous laughter and something that
sounded a whole lot like Johnny falling off his bed.
“Oh my god, are you
fuckin’ serious?” Johnny cackled before laughing more.
“Remind me to choke the
hell outta you when I see you next,” Jagger grumbled.
“Weren’t you the one
just telling me to stow the kinky shit? Now look at you, promising me a good
time when you’re too far away to deliver.”
“I hate you so hard
right now.”
“Awe, be careful pretty
boy, you hurt my feelings and I might not help you out of whatever mess you’ve
gotten yourself into,” Johnny warned.
“You suck.”
“Proficiently, but
then, you know that.”
“This isn’t funny,
Johnny.”
“No, this is fuckin’
hilarious. Tell me something, Jagger. Where, exactly, are you that you can’t
call for help yourself?”
“The god damned linin closet! Do you think I’d have wasted time calling your ass if I had their fuckin’ numbers?”
“Depends on just how much you’ve missed the sound of my voice.”
You can Preorder Damaged Saints here!
And now for a very special and rather exclusive outtake from my first rocktoberfest book, Tattered Angel, perfect as we coast towards Halloween.
“Look, I’m not saying hiding among the chainsaws would be a
good idea, but a running vehicle, I don’t know man, there’s something kinda
sketch about it sitting there running with no one inside or anywhere around
it,” Riley remarked. The ad on the television one that made him shake his head
every time he saw it.
“Other driver already died of a terminal overdose of
stupid,” came Dez’s flippant reply.
Riley glanced over to see him blinking sleepily, only half
watching the TV, the notebook he’d previously been jotting lyrics on, drooping
in his hand.
“And if it’s a setup?” Riley asked, grinning when Dez turned
his sleepy gaze towards him.
“Then you should be asking yourself why your paranoia didn’t
kick in before you got yourself in that situation in the first place,” Dez
grumbled, giving his head a shake that left his tousled hair in his eyes. In
Riley’s opinion, he looked downright adorable fighting sleep and fumbling
around for his pen.
Snickering, Riley glanced between Dez and their drummer,
who, from his heavy-lidded gaze, looked half asleep too. “See that right there is
why Damien wouldn’t survive a horror movie. He’d overanalyze everything to
death and end up merc’ed while debating which way to go.”
Damien didn’t crack an eye open, just flipped him off and
chucked a crumpled bit of paper in his general direction, not that it hit
anything.
“No, Damien wouldn’t have been involved in that dumpster
fire in the first place,” their drummer intoned, referring to himself in third
person. “Damien would have taken one look at the creepy ass road, said ‘oh hell
no,’ and started hitchhiking home, leaving you idiots to whatever fate had in
store for you.”
“There is that,” Riley conceded.
“Unless the person you hitch a ride from ends up being some
psycho or serial killer,” Dez remarked, rolling onto his side. “Hell, these
days you gotta be half-wackadoodle to pick up a stranger like that.”
“Sounds like you speak from experience.”
“Could be.”
“From the note of amusement in your voice, it sounds as if
there is one rather interesting story there. Dish.” Damien demanded, sitting up
a little, his entire focus on Dez, who shrugged, shy and hesitant like most
every time they asked him something personal.
“What I wanna know is if you were the wackadoodle out there
hitchhiking, or the psycho picking people up?” Riley asked.
“Oh hell no. No way I’d let a complete stranger on the back
of the bike with me. Too many things could go wrong. Between them freaking out
over a close call to those that wanna get freaky and start shoving their hands
places I don’t need ‘em to be when I’m driving, the whole concept would just be
a very, very bad idea.”
“And once again, sounds like you’re speaking from
experience.”
“Let’s just say that my first trek out on my own taught me a
whole lotta things in some of the hardest ways possible,” Dez remarked, spreading
the notebook open in front of him to put a barrier between him and them.
“That mean you hitched too?” Riley pressed, though he was
certain he already knew the answer to that.
“Let’s just say that a situation necessitated it, once, and I
found myself bailing out into a ditch from a truck going almost fifty. Any
faster and I think I’d have been too scared to do it.”
“Mind if I ask what the situation was?”
“Yeah, actually, I do,” Dez remarked, rolling from the couch
and stretching his back a little. “I’m tired and it’s not really a moment of
stupidity I wanna relive. Let’s just say that there is absolutely nothing, including
chainsaw wielding hillbillies, that could ever get me to do that again.”
And with that, he disappeared through the curtain into the
sleeping area, leaving Riley and Damien to raise an eyebrow at one another.
“Damn…now I truly wish to know what took place,” Damien
remarked.
“Think he’ll ever tell us?” Riley pondered.
“No chance in hell!” Dez bellowed, the fierceness of his
tone startling them both.
“Guess he told you,” Zakk called from the front where he’d
been keeping James company. The pair of them laughing like hyenas as the RV bounced,
hard.
“How about you two pay attention to the road before one of
us has to hike up the road looking for a farmhouse or cell phone reception, and
I’m pretty sure it won’t be Dez.”
“Believe that!” came the reply from the back, prompting
another round of laughter. It’s all fun and games until real life imitates the
movies, and a horror movie at that. With that in mind, Riley turned his
attention back to the TV in the hopes that the pair in the front would put
their focus back where it belonged…on the road.
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