They told us monsters weren't real -- – #Horror #DarkSciFi #ComingOfAge #Giveaway

By Shelly Campbell (Guest Blogger) 

Welcome to Beyond Romance, Shelly! When I read the description of Dark Walkers, it reminded me a bit of C.S. Lewis' Narnia (albeit darker). What books or other sources influenced this series? ~ Lisabet

Thank you so much for having me on the blog, Lisabet!

I’m glad the Dark Walker series brought C.S. Lewis’s Narnia to mind for you as that’s one of the inspirations for Gulf. What if there were doors that led to other worlds, but it was no fairytale on the other side?

I was also fascinated by Stephen King’s 11/22/63 with its portal that led to the same setting in a different time. Jake Epping stumbles into a world with very specific rules about how it works, and finds out that there are unavoidable consequences to making ripples somewhere you don’t belong. I wanted my MC David to feel that too, and I thought it would be interesting to play with the idea: what if you felt more at home on the other side—the wrong side—than you did in the world you grew up in?

Horror, in general, does a wonderful job of isolating its main characters. The phone goes dead. The dark alley dead-ends. The car runs out of gas on an abandoned, foggy road and there’s no one you can call for help. Us humans are herd creatures. Being singled out and isolated from the pack is a visceral and ancient fear for us. I wanted to amplify that for David.

He comes from a big family, never alone, but always isolated. At first, it seems like the regular sort of obscurity, the kind that makes you overlook the quiet kid in a loud crowd, but I try to make it obvious early on that David’s invisibility has escalated into something more than that. He’s fading from his world like a Polaroid picture in reverse. His world is trying to erase him, and his family is forgetting him.

Worse yet, something alien the other side of the door is trying to get through and devour everyone he loves. He has to save his world alone because nobody can see or hear him. No one is there to help. In that way, the Dark Walker series was inspired by that isolation horror movies and books do so well.

Gulf is set in the late 80s and early 90s. That’s the era I grew up in. Not only did it allow for that ‘there’s no cell phones’ type of isolation, but it was nostalgic to have David growing up in the same decades as I did. And it inspired those 80s horror movie poster style covers I got to design!

Breach, the sequel, is a bit of a different beast. No longer a coming-of-age horror story about a boy and his family against an evil alien world, it expands into multiple dimensions, like Doctor Who. David is no longer alone, but becomes part of a team—or so he thinks. And readers get a bit more insight into how the worlds we glimpsed in Gulf were formed, and the origin of the aliens.

David is definitely not in Kansas anymore.

And, of course, everything gets exponentially worse in book three, coming in early 2025. I can’t wait to share David’s messed up worlds with you all!

Series Blurb

When we were children, they told us monsters weren't real. They were dead wrong.

It’s just a closet door with a skeleton key, but when David opens it, he unlocks a gateway to a sinister world that’s bent on destroying everything and everyone he loves. Some doors are better left closed.

Embark on a thrilling journey with the Dark Walker Series, and be transported into an interdimensional tale of monsters, lies and self-discovery. Where the terror of darkness is real and the line between ally and enemy is as thin as a blade.

"Equal parts coming of age story and otherworldly horror, Gulf probes the depths of loneliness, loss of identity and childhood trauma. It is a true treat for fans of the genre and had me clutched in its razor-clawed hands from the first word to the last.” -C.M. Forest author of Infested

 

Blurb for Gulf

Seventeen-year-old David is fading from his world, like a Polaroid picture in reverse. He longs to feel connected to something bigger.

When his brothers discover the new extension at the rental cottage comes with a locked door, David finds the key first. Expecting to claim a bedroom, he opens a dimensional gateway instead, exploring abandoned versions of his world in different timelines, 1960s muscle cars alternating with crumbling cottages.

Except now the dimensional bridge won’t close, and something hungry claws the door at night. David scours for clues to break the bridge, but each trip to the other side makes him fade more on his. Even if he succeeds, he risks severing his connection to his own world, and dying on the wrong side, forgotten.

 

Blurb for Breach

There are doors that open to other worlds, but it’s no fairytale on the other side.

I thought otherworldly monsters bent on devouring my whole world starting with my family trumped everything. Turns out, I was wrong. My world's only one of thousands facing annihilation from the maneaters that tried to eat me alive. Charlie saved me, rolled into my life on a motorcycle, and rescued me.

Problem is, I’m the Embassy’s property now. They’re the interdimensional agency tasked with stemming the flow of ravenous aliens into our universe, but they seem more interested in studying me. I crashed a gateway in a way they’ve never seen. The Embassy wants to replicate that. I think they want to use me as a war weapon.

If I don’t convince Charlie to help me escape, I’ll be an Embassy science experiment for the rest of my short life, or worse, eternally trapped in the dark hell that fills the spaces between worlds.

Excerpt (from Gulf)

Certain my family is gone, I cross to the five-panel in two strides, twist the key into the lock, and push the door.

It doesn’t open.

Of course it doesn’t, idiot. It’s still hung like a closet door. It opens out, not in.

I pull.

Mirror.

That’s the first thought that strikes me as I take in the exact duplicate of the living room I’m standing in. Same green, crushed velvet sofa bed sagging behind me. Identical chipped melamine cabinets. Same painted windmills on the porcelain tile backsplash—wait.

No me.

No reflection of me. Tentative as Alice in bloody Wonderland, I pull the black skeleton key from its hole and crane my head through the doorway. No dirty breakfast dishes, but when I look over my shoulder, there’s still stacks of egg-yolk spackled tin plates beside our sink. Crumpled under one arm of the hide-a-bed is my plaid blanket, but the one in front of me is empty. Looks dusty.

“What the hell, Everett?” This is creepy.

The ole bugger’s built an exact mirror image of the room next door. Where on earth did he find the twin to that green monster of a couch? There’s even a spring beckoning through the same spot in the back cushion.

Got an eye for detail, hasn’t he?

Same woodstove too, only this one has a cold, crusty frying pan on it. I can still feel the heat on my back from ours across the wall.

The pine planking creaks under my next step, and I jump and then smile, but I’m pretty sure it ends up as a snarl. An odd feeling consumes me whole, the one I had just before Sam Ren and his gorilla wingmen beat the piss out of me behind the Dairy Queen. A curdled sense of approaching doom slithers through my lungs.

Get out.

Primal instinct presses me back a step toward the door, but I hold fast there, like a dumbass, like I waited while Sam Ren eased toward me in the Dairy Queen parking lot.

Shaking out my hands and hissing through my teeth, I scan the room trying to identify what’s wrong, because something is. Something is very wrong, and it’s not just the duplicate room, or the draft emanating from here at night. It takes a few seconds to pin it down. The out-of-place thing. My throat spasms when I see it. I swallow and shift to the balls of my feet.

“Window,” I whisper.

About the Author

At a young age, Shelly Campbell wanted to be an air show pilot or a pirate, possibly a dragon and definitely a writer and artist. She’s piloted a Cessna 172 through spins and stalls, and sailed up the east coast on a tall ship barque—mostly without projectile vomiting. In the end, Shelly found writing and drawing dragons to be so much easier on the stomach. Shelly writes speculative fiction ranging from grimdark fantasy, to sci-fi and horror. She’d love to hear from you.

http://www.shellycampbellauthorandart.com

https://twitter.com/ShellyCFineArt

https://www.instagram.com/shellycampbellfineart

https://www.facebook.com/shellycampbellauthorandart

https://www.tiktok.com/@shellycampbellauthor

The author will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway