Welcome to Clarissa Johal's book tour!
Be sure to comment here and at all other sites for her tour - because...
Clarissa will be awarding an ecopy of STRUCK
to three (3) randomly drawn commenters during the tour.
Here is the schedule for her tour. Comment and win!
And now, the plot!
The shadows
hadn't been waiting.
The shadows had
been invited.
After a painful
breakup, Gwynneth Reese moves in with her best friend and takes a job at a
retirement home. She grows especially close to one resident, who dies alone the
night of a terrific storm. On the way home from paying her last respects,
Gwynneth is caught in another storm and is struck by lightning. She wakes in
the hospital with a vague memory of being rescued by a mysterious stranger.
Following her release from the hospital, the stranger visits her at will and
offers Gwynneth a gift--one that will stay the hands of death. Gwynneth is
uncertain whether Julian is a savior or something more sinister... for as he
shares more and more of this gift, his price becomes more and more deadly.
Excerpt
A bolt of
blue-white lightning snaked from the sky and hit the ground in front of her.
The thunderclap that shattered the air was deafening. Gwynneth slammed on her
brakes and skidded. It was a slow skid, or it seemed to be. Spinning around and
around in a circle, she felt like she was watching herself from afar. Time felt
like it was slowing. Oddly enough, she found herself wondering if there would
be white or red flowers on Hannah’s casket. Or maybe none at all.
Gwynneth’s face
smacked against the steering wheel. Reality hit her along with the pain. She
had forgotten to wear her seatbelt. She pressed her fingers lightly to her
throbbing temple and winced. “Shit!” Thankfully, she was in one piece. Gwynneth
opened the car door. Lightning lit the area and bathed her senses in a flash of
blue-white. Icy rain hit her skin. Stupid! You left your jacket back at the
funeral home. She ran around the car and checked all the tires. The back one
was flat, and on top of that, her car was quite obviously stuck in a ditch.
“Great.” She had no spare tire, she knew that for sure. She also had no idea which
way led back to the retirement home. Her headlights cast a weak glow through
the rain. Soaked to the skin and shivering, Gwynneth peered into the darkness.
A muddy road meandered across saturated fields and off into nothingness.
She sloshed back
to her car and quickly turned the engine off. She certainly didn’t need a dead
battery on top of a flat tire. “Okay, Gwen,” she said aloud, “you need to
figure out what to do.” Rain ran in rivulets down her face and her tie-dyed
T-shirt stuck to her like a second skin. I’m a soggy, shivering rainbow. She
started to walk and cursed the fact that her cell phone wasn’t charged. Seth
was always bugging her about that. “Suck it up, Gwen. It rains in Oregon too.”
The inky blackness was disconcerting. Lightning intermittently illuminated the
area like the flash of a camera. A snapshot of a road to nowhere. Gwynneth
hoped that she was at least walking in the right direction. Her teeth were
chattering so hard she was in danger of biting her own tongue. Thunder rolled up
her spine and along her scalp like probing fingers.
Her thoughts
wandered back to Hannah. A diary. I wonder what she wrote about? She wouldn’t
read it, of course, it was private. I’m sure she just wants me to throw it away
so her children don’t either. A pang of loss sliced through the cold and
Gwynneth shook it off. They had spent countless hours chatting and Hannah never
mentioned a diary. She bit her lip. If she could only turn back time, Gwynneth
would have told her how much their time together had meant. Hannah had always
encouraged her to start painting again, but also understood why Gwynneth
couldn’t.
A loud ‘crack’
sounded and an iridescent white light surrounded her. Two things registered: a
searing pain that ripped down her back and the ground which seemed to be pulled
away from her at an alarming speed.
* * * *
Blackness.
Pain shot through
the back of Gwynneth’s head as she opened her eyes. Somebody was standing over
her. She tried to focus on the face, but it hurt too much. A cool hand slid
across her forehead. She opened her eyes again.
Pale, almost
white eyes. High cheekbones, aquiline nose, and a well-shaped mouth. Long,
white hair. Ageless. Beautiful, like a Michelangelo. All of those details
registered with clarity before agony ripped through her body. She arched her
back and cried out. The man murmured something into her ear which she couldn’t
understand. She could feel the vibration of his voice and his breath on her
neck as he gathered her in his arms. She opened her eyes and saw lightning fork
to the ground silently behind him. She blacked out again.
Author Info!
Clarissa Johal
has worked as a veterinary assistant, zoo-keeper aide and vegetarian chef.
Writing has always been her passion. When she’s not listening to the ghosts in
her head, she’s dancing or taking photographs of gargoyles. She shares her life
with her husband, two daughters and every stray animal that darkens the
doorstep. One day, she expects that a wayward troll will wander into her yard,
but that hasn’t happened yet.
Buy Links for
STRUCK
