Today on the Shadow Portal, I'm featuring T.W. Luedke and his novel, The Shepherd, as part of his book tour. Be sure and get all the way to the bottom of the post for a chance to enter to win a free copy.
Review copies available in: PDF
The Shepherd
Genre: YA
Paranormal Thriller
ISBN: (ASIN B00FK37LZO)
Book Length: (236 PAGES)
Publisher: (Travis Luedke)
DESCRIPTION
Skate punks, kleptomaniacs, clairvoyant visions and
reincarnation...
...THE SHEPHERD is unlike any other Young Adult novel you
have ever read.
Mike Evans here. Sixteen year old skate punk squatting in a white-trash
trailer park with my loser drunk Dad. Seems I lost most of my friends when Dad
lost our home in foreclosure. Only Anita stuck by me. Worse, I keep having
strange clairvoyant visions of things that always come true.
Then I almost ran over Nadia in my Geo. A passing truck finished the job –
left a crumpled heap of skin and bone on the road. I fixed her. Me.
Now this fourteen year old girl won’t leave me alone. I sorta let her sneak
in my window when she needs a place to crash.
I have a double life: daytime at school, Anita, skating, and then my nights
with Nadia. She's my
secret friend, gives me money and listens to my
problems when nobody else will.
My world is spinning out of control. Old friends have turned enemy, my
grisly visions of death won’t quit, and Anita’s intentions make my head spin.
Even with all that, I’ve got bigger stuff to worry about.
Nadia’s hiding something.
˃˃˃ "I could not put this book down. All I keep thinking
about is what could possibly happen next. I felt as if I was back in high
school with them!"
˃˃˃ "It's almost a love triangle of epic proportions or
so you think....Travis blew me away with this book, I never saw what was
coming."
˃˃˃ "Amazing, I loved Mike and Anita. The characters
that I didn't feel could redeem themselves did in ways I never thought
possible. I loved the ending and so not what I thought would happen. I love the
element of surprise."
Sharp, witty, dark and gritty, The Shepherd is the must read
YA paranormal thriller of 2013. Get your copy now!
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Thursday,
September 9th, 5:15 p.m.
Shit happens, life happens, but for some reason it happens to me a lot.
I was kinda hoping life would give me a break – maybe crap on somebody
else for a while.
Yeah, right.
I mean, look at Justin Shelby. I’m
sitting here in my car, in the McDonald’s drive through, and what is he
doing? He’s climbing up the side of the
damn playcenter. Probably faded on
prescription pills he stole from his mom.
This guy is begging for life to hit him upside the head. But it never does.
And then there’s his buddy, Tommy Schroeder, goading him on.
“Do it man! You’re almost
there!”
One of the wrestling elite of Moses Lake High School, Tommy’s mere
presence inspired Justin to new heights of idiocy. Justin scaled the side of the outdoor
playcenter like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.
Justin skated religiously, a regular at the downtown Moses Lake
skatepark across from the Aquatic Center.
Like most of us skaters, he was thin, moderately athletic, and had a
strong sense of balance from endless hours busting his ass on the
concrete. Climbing the playcenter wasn’t
any more dangerous than the skate tricks we recorded and posted to YouTube.
He quickly reached the apex, damn
spider monkey. He stood exalted atop
the dome of the airplane-shaped plastic toy.
An elementary kid inside gawked up at him from the Plexiglas window.
“This is classic!” Tommy whipped
out his cell phone and started recording.
Looked like a good idea to me, so I did the same. You never know what folly you might catch on
video. I mean, this was live action
stuff. I could be ten seconds away from
a viral Youtube video, Gangnam Style.
Tommy encouraged Justin’s antics with loud catcalls. Justin proclaimed his status as king of the
hill, arms held high.
“Yeah bitches, hell yeah!”
Justin yelled and hooted at the top of his lungs, pumping his fists in
the air.
I narrated to my potential audience of millions, “This is a flagrant
violation of the rules.” I panned my cellphone camera over to the placard by
the entry gate and zoomed in to catch a clear shot of the playcenter rules. “There it is folks, rule number three: No climbing outside the playcenter. And we can’t forget rule number four: No children over the age of fourteen
allowed. For the record, Justin is
sixteen.”
Returning to the action, I caught Tommy’s upturned face lit with
excitement, and then slid the view up the playcenter to Justin. “There’s the big man, putting on a show for
his new best friend.”
It kinda stung in a way I didn’t like to admit, that Justin was doing
all this for Tommy. A couple months ago,
Justin was my best friend, my idiot. Or
so I had thought.
But Tommy was cool. Popular and
wealthy, he also happened to be one of the biggest arrogant pricks in my class,
and Justin’s ticket into the ‘cool crowd.’
“Always trying to prove something.”
I shook my head.
Tommy and I don’t get along so well. It’s a Rachelle thing. One of those life things that happens to me
so often.
I should just keep my mouth shut and catch some choice video, but you
know what they say, the observer always
affects the observed …
“Hey ass munch, get down before you break your neck!”
Justin’s head whipped around to the sound of my voice, causing his body
to sway with the sudden movement. As
soon as he spotted me parked in the drive-through a nasty smirk bloomed across
his face. In a moment of sublime
inspiration, Justin dropped his pants with a show of lily-white butt
cheeks. He obviously hadn’t seen me
recording with my cell phone.
Tommy noticed me too. “How about
a double McAss burger Mikey?”
He loves to call me Mikey. He
knows I hate it. No one but Tommy calls
me Mikey.
The girl delivering my cheeseburger held her hand over her mouth to
cover her braces as she giggled and snarfed at the sight of Justin’s naked rump
shaking back and forth while he taunted, “It’s a full moon tonight Mikey. Hope you enjoy the view!”
Perfect. Now Justin’s calling me
Mikey. God I hate that name.
“It’s Michael, asshole! And
thanks for the killer video. Goin’
straight to Facebook.” I held my cell
phone out the window for him.
Justin looked back over his shoulder in surprise, attempting to pull up
his pants at the same time. The
knee-jerk reaction caused him to lose his delicate balance atop the apex of the
plastic airplane. He fell onto his right
side, and slithered down the side of the playcenter. His hands shot out across the smooth surface,
clawing, seeking a grip. There was
nothing to grab.
I watched him slide inexorably down the outside of the playcenter,
pants and underwear still down around his thighs. He tried rolling into position for a feet-first
landing. The maneuver would’ve worked if
not for the fence being so close to the playcenter. The bright yellow, powder-coated aluminum
fence that had aided his climb to the top now blocked his landing on the way
down.
Justin’s momentum came to an abrupt halt as he hit the top of the fence
ass first.
I cringed and almost ruined the shot.
“That’s gotta hurt.”
Justin’s blood-curdling scream of agony made my skin crawl. He sat there, squealing like a stuck
pig. The top section of fence tubing had
impaled him where the sun don’t shine.
Pegged in the holiest of holies, he had two inches of aluminum post
going in through the out door.
“Oh my god this is insane!”
I saved the ninety-three second video clip of Justin on my smart phone
and posted it directly to my Facebook timeline.
I had a momentary twinge of conscience.
I mean, he was still crying, and Tommy was trying to climb the fence to
help him. It looked really painful.
“I can always delete it later …”
I was gonna call for help, but Tommy already had his phone out as
Justin yelled in his face, “Call 911!”
I only had a few minutes to get to work. As I drove off, I thought about taking that
video down. I probably should have. But it only took fifteen minutes for my video
clip to find its way to over 200 students at Moses Lake High School, shared
over and over to dozens of Facebook profiles.
My first ever viral video.
I guess life happens to Justin Shelby too.
* * * *
About the Author
Travis Luedke is a
husband, father, and author of Urban Fantasy Thriller, Paranormal Romance,
Contemporary Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction, and Sci-fi. He is currently catching
a 3rd degree sunburn in San Antonio, Texas, and loving every minute of it.
As the author of
the Nightlife Series novels, Travis lives very vicariously through his
writings. He invites you to enjoy his macabre flights of fancy, but be warned: The Nightlife Series is violent, sexy, and
occasionally violently sexy.
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