Saturday, April 20, 2013

Sliding Beneath the Surface - Review

Today's review is of the bizarre and fascinating story by author Doug Dillon.  Sliding Beneath the Surface is a unique, well written and captivating story.  Doug Dillon has a natural flow in his style that makes his characters not only believable, but come to life before you.  As you'll see below, the premise of this series is: You create your own reality... Well, Mr. Dillon has definitely made his own reality and I thoroughly enjoyed myself as we join Jeff in his struggle to grasp what happens to him.  This is an amazing book by an amazing writer and I can't wait to read the next one.  I will be adding Doug Dillon to my list of authors to be looking for.  Our writing styles are not the same, but it is effortless to lose yourself in his book.  You will find yourself  "Sliding Beneath the Surface" as you read.

I hope to host Mr. Dillon on my blog again in the future.

To top it off, this incredible adventure of words is on sale for $.99!!!!
Dates: April 1-24  That doesn't leave much time.  So get yours now!



Blurb:
A new resident of America's oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his friend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.

Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff's spine tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida's distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.

Finally, overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff's world shifts from frightening to  downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo's advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.

Here is the Puzzle Ball Rafflecopter 


Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality. 


The St. Augustine Trilogy Book 1


Excerpt

I shut Lobo’s door behind me without putting on my jacket and took a big breath of cold air. Standing there for a second, I felt like I had been running hard. God, my heart pounded so hard I thought it might split wide open, and that stupid headache throbbed even more. I hated leaving Carla like I did, but the time to get out of there had come.

Being away from Lobo was such a relief. With my eyes closed, I took another deep breath and let it out slowly. All that had gone on that afternoon rushed through my mind like a flooding river. Instantly, those panicky urges to turn around and run away while walking towards Lobo’s place with Carla popped up in my head. I opened my eyes again only to see that everything had gotten a lot darker than it was seconds before. A massive fog bank had somehow moved in over Matanzas Bay and already covered most of Lobo’s dock. As I watched, the rest of the dock disappeared into all that gray stuff as if it had never been there. Rapidly, a smaller wave of fog rolled over the tip of the peninsula and headed right for me at a speed fog should never move. It all happened so fast, I had no time to think or act. Long fingers of mist reached for the porch, and before I knew it, a cold wetness surrounded me.

“What the hell?” I whispered to myself. Talk about freaky. Yeah,  it scared me—so much that I even turned around to go back into the house. Believe it or not, right then, facing old Lobo seemed better than dealing with that awful, weird fog. When I turned around though, I couldn’t find the house. All I could see was fog in every direction. Even so, I knew the front door had to be there directly in front of me, right? I mean I hadn’t moved more than a couple of feet away from it, so I stretched my arms out and slowly stepped forward.

After walking maybe five or six steps, I still hadn’t found the door or any part of the house. I know what you’re thinking. You’re sure I must have been hallucinating all of that or something. I don’t blame you. To be perfectly honest, I thought the same thing at first, but that cold, wet fog was very, very real.

“Carla!” I shouted, but my voice sounded muffled. “Lobo?” I yelled. At any second, I expected one of them to open the door and answer me. No such luck. I kept shouting anyway.

When I finally gave up yelling my lungs out, the absolute silence startled me. Like a thick blanket of insulation, the fog no longer allowed any sound in from the outside world—no birds chirping, no noises from boats out on the bay or traffic in the neighborhood. Nothing but total silence. I swear, it was so quiet I actually heard my heart beating. As I listened though, I noticed a darkness creeping into the fog. I’m telling you, it just got darker and darker as I stood there frozen in fear, with my head still aching. In less than a minute, I was in total blackness with only the feel of cold, wet fog all over me. Strangely enough, I also smelled something like pine needles. Pine trees. Pine needles. Something like that.

I didn’t know what to do. Lobo’s words about spirits and danger still swirled through my weary brain, reviving the memory of that deep blackness I had seen at the bottom of his carved ivory ball. For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming somehow, but the feel of that cold fog all over my body told a different story. I turned around several times, hoping to see or hear something, anything. When that got me nowhere, the panic really started to build. Even in the cold, I could feel sweat trickling down my back and under my arms. I had never felt so alone.

“Wait. Wait a minute,” I said out loud, closing my eyes even though there was nothing to see. “Take it easy and think.” After sucking in a couple of deep breaths of cold air, I put on my jacket. Funny how that helped. Doing that one little thing for myself also calmed me down a little. Even my headache eased up a bit.

No matter what, I said to myself, you still have to be on Lobo’s porch. All you have to do is get down on your hands and knees and feel your way across the wood floor until you find the door. Why didn’t you think of that before, idiot?

To be Continued...

(Sneak Peek of book 2 below!!)

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Sneak Peek Teaser of the next book!!!!
Excerpt from Stepping Off a Cliff 
The St. Augustine Trilogy Book 2
Coming This Summer!


Excerpt

In total darkness, a swirling, thickness pulled me downward to what I just knew had to be my death. Pressed face first into something cold, soft, twisted and rubbery, I realized with horror that I was suffocating. Filled with panic, I pushed against the gunk in front of me with both hands and strained my neck so I could lift my head as far as possible.

With my mouth and nose finally free, I sucked in a ton of needed air but that’s when I noticed there was nothing behind me except a shrieking, frigid wind. It blasted from somewhere below my feet and up across my entire body. Each breath though, made it feel as if little knives were digging into my lungs. The jacket I wore flapped wildly around my head and I began to shiver.

G-force. That’s why I had such a tough time moving—all that rubbery crap and I were spinning downward into the howling darkness at an incredible speed. The word vortex popped into my head and I swear, it almost felt like someone had flushed a huge, refrigerated toilet and I was going down the drain. The only thing close to that I had ever experienced was a ride at the fair where they rotate you in a circular cage and then the floor drops away leaving everybody stuck to the inner wall.

With each passing second, my lungs ached even more and the shivering increased. Freezing to death increasingly seemed like a very real possibility. A memory of stepping on ice crystals in cold darkness with Carla and Lobo at the St. Augustine National Cemetery shot through my mind but I pushed it away. I had to concentrate on my present situation in order to survive, if survival was possible at all.

The only thing I could think of was to turn over on my back so my face didn’t get pushed back down into the gunk again. It took every bit of my strength and a bunch of time but I did it—very, very slowly. Once more, my body sank three or four inches into the squishy cold stuff. This time though, the wind ripped across the front of me.

At least I finally didn’t have to worry about breathing, right? But I’m ashamed to say, only then did I think about Carla. I knew she had to be in there with me, wherever there was. I wanted to find her, help her, do  something, but I couldn’t even help myself. When I shouted her name, my voice came out weak and I could hardly hear it above that roaring wind.

Just when I thought I would go absolutely crazy with fear for both of us, the circular motion slowed a little. At the same time, the darkness lifted enough for me to find Carla. There she was, about fifty feet away but stuck upside down against a glistening blackness that surrounded us, her hair whipping across her face. There was nothing between us but open space. And wind. Nasty, roaring wind.


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