Following our Release Day Party, thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for The Torment Of Rachel Ames , a horror suspense novella by Jeff Gunhus (10 November 2015, Seven Guns Press , 121 pages). "Cinematic, engrossing, scary and thought-provoking all at the same time. This story kept me guessing throughout. Once I sat down to read it, I didn't stop until I'd turned the last page...then I read it a second time. I have a feeling that will happen to a lot of people." - Jim Beard, Screenwriter
"A joy to read! A creepy, unsettling, dark joy, but a joy nonetheless. If you enjoy dark stories with psychological twists, this is a must read." - Kate Tilton, Founder Kate Tilton's Author Services, LLC
PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below. Read the first three chapters with Amazon Look Inside. The Torment Of Rachel Ames is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.
Find out more about Jeff Gunhus and his other works in our two sections below.
Author Jeff Gunhus will be awarding one $50 Amazon Gift Card, and one signed copy of the Torment of Rachel Ames to a randomly drawn winners via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀) and reviews (✍).
Synopsis | Teaser | Other Works by the Author | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops | Author Q&A Jeff Gunhus on "Killer Pursuit"
Synopsis
Suffering from writer’s block, novelist Rachel Ames escapes to a lake cabin to calm her mind and regain a sense of herself.The location is perfect. Isolated. Beautiful. Inspiring. It even comes with a good-looking landlord who shows an interest in her. But she can’t shake the sense that something terrible has followed her to the lake, something just beyond her consciousness, something out on the edge where the sounds of a raging fire and sirens linger whenever she slows down to listen.
Determined to make the cabin work, she tries to settle in and give her new life a chance. But when strange things begin to happen around her and she wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake. As the darkness that’s followed her manifests itself in inexplicable ways, her concept of reality is stretched thin and she realizes nothing at the lake is what it seems.
As she fights to survive with her sanity intact, she understands too late that the location she’s chosen for herself is far from perfect.
Teaser: Excerpt
Rachel wakes just as the sun begins to set behind the mountains on the far side of the lake. She’s up with a start, a disoriented jump from the darkness of sleep into the flesh and blood reality of the world. There’s a panicked gasp of air as she pushes away a heavy weight smothering her.
But there’s nothing there. Only a faint echo of a dream that she senses was brilliant Technicolor only seconds earlier, but now disintegrates wherever she tries to grasp it. All that’s left of the dream is the smell of the world burning, lingering strongly enough that she searches the room for signs of smoke, thinking her dream world had stolen the idea from the real. But there is nothing. Only the couch where she napped, the dining table where Underwood smirks at her, still unused, and the kitchen, as equally ignored as the typewriter. No smoke. No fire. It’s no matter because all thoughts of either drift away with the rest of her forgotten dream and she lets it happen. There’s no fight in her to remember. She didn’t come to the cabin to remember, anyway.
She stands and stretches, shocked by how long she’s slept. There’s no clock or watch in the house or on her person, one of her writing retreat rules, but the light outside tells her the story. As the final bit of sun ducks behind the mountain in that curious sped up way typical of the last seconds of the sunset, she has a foreboding sense that time is somehow moving faster than it should. But that’s crazy, just her imagination taking advantage of her blurry state of mind.
That’s jus’ not how things work around here.
It’s Ollie’s voice in her head, but somehow she knows he’s right. Time doesn’t move faster here. It’s not how things work.
Thinking of work, she walks over to the dining room table and is surprised to see a piece of paper rolled into Underwood’s gleaming paper feeder, the metal bar snug against it, ready for business.
“You hoping to get lucky tonight, big guy?” she says. She waits, half-expecting the keys to thump out an answer to her question. But they don’t. They haven’t for a long time. “Let me use the bathroom first,” she says. “Help yourself to a drink.”
She turns to the sliding door to go outside but stops herself, surprised to find she means to pee outside. She’s embarrassed by the idea even though there’s no one else there. “Get a grip,” she mumbles, walking through the cabin and using the bathroom like a normal person. When she’s done, she pours herself a drink from the bottle in the kitchen, then returns to the table to face her tormentor.
Fingers on the keys. White page ready for her brilliance. Begging for it. And she wants to give it. More than that, she wants to stuff it down Underwood’s throat so hard he gags on it.
Her fingers move, slow at first, tentative. Then faster, speed building and building, until she’s dancing over the keys. The metal prongs, each with its own letter, smack through the black ink ribbon and stamp the paper. Her left hand swats the return register without being told when it’s time to do so. This is it, the old magic. She closes her eyes, swaying to the musicality of the words in her head, relishing the sense of them traveling through her nervous system in electrical impulses telling her hands what to do. Loving that all of it, this dance, this kinetic energy, this alchemy of creation, is thoughts made real. All she has to do to see inside her own mind is open her eyes, look at the page and see…
… a half-page of neat typing. First line indented. Hyphenated words at right margin. Two paragraph breaks. Lines of dialog in quotes. And not a single actual word that makes sense.
Gibberish.
All of it.
But there’s nothing there. Only a faint echo of a dream that she senses was brilliant Technicolor only seconds earlier, but now disintegrates wherever she tries to grasp it. All that’s left of the dream is the smell of the world burning, lingering strongly enough that she searches the room for signs of smoke, thinking her dream world had stolen the idea from the real. But there is nothing. Only the couch where she napped, the dining table where Underwood smirks at her, still unused, and the kitchen, as equally ignored as the typewriter. No smoke. No fire. It’s no matter because all thoughts of either drift away with the rest of her forgotten dream and she lets it happen. There’s no fight in her to remember. She didn’t come to the cabin to remember, anyway.
She stands and stretches, shocked by how long she’s slept. There’s no clock or watch in the house or on her person, one of her writing retreat rules, but the light outside tells her the story. As the final bit of sun ducks behind the mountain in that curious sped up way typical of the last seconds of the sunset, she has a foreboding sense that time is somehow moving faster than it should. But that’s crazy, just her imagination taking advantage of her blurry state of mind.
That’s jus’ not how things work around here.
It’s Ollie’s voice in her head, but somehow she knows he’s right. Time doesn’t move faster here. It’s not how things work.
Thinking of work, she walks over to the dining room table and is surprised to see a piece of paper rolled into Underwood’s gleaming paper feeder, the metal bar snug against it, ready for business.
“You hoping to get lucky tonight, big guy?” she says. She waits, half-expecting the keys to thump out an answer to her question. But they don’t. They haven’t for a long time. “Let me use the bathroom first,” she says. “Help yourself to a drink.”
She turns to the sliding door to go outside but stops herself, surprised to find she means to pee outside. She’s embarrassed by the idea even though there’s no one else there. “Get a grip,” she mumbles, walking through the cabin and using the bathroom like a normal person. When she’s done, she pours herself a drink from the bottle in the kitchen, then returns to the table to face her tormentor.
Fingers on the keys. White page ready for her brilliance. Begging for it. And she wants to give it. More than that, she wants to stuff it down Underwood’s throat so hard he gags on it.
Her fingers move, slow at first, tentative. Then faster, speed building and building, until she’s dancing over the keys. The metal prongs, each with its own letter, smack through the black ink ribbon and stamp the paper. Her left hand swats the return register without being told when it’s time to do so. This is it, the old magic. She closes her eyes, swaying to the musicality of the words in her head, relishing the sense of them traveling through her nervous system in electrical impulses telling her hands what to do. Loving that all of it, this dance, this kinetic energy, this alchemy of creation, is thoughts made real. All she has to do to see inside her own mind is open her eyes, look at the page and see…
… a half-page of neat typing. First line indented. Hyphenated words at right margin. Two paragraph breaks. Lines of dialog in quotes. And not a single actual word that makes sense.
Gibberish.
All of it.
The Torment Of Rachel Ames
Available NOW!
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US:
Other Works by Jeff Gunhus
Allison McNeil Thrillers: Killer Within [1] || Killer Pursuit [2] ||Night Chill: Night Chill [1] || Night Terror [2] ||
Jack Templar Chronicles: Jack Templar: Monster Hunter [1] || Jack Templar and the Monster Hunter Academy [2] || Jack Templar And The Lord Of The Vampires [3] || Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves [4] || Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons [5] ||
ALL titles listed here are FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner Lending Library.
Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.
Killer Within: Allison McNeil [1]
Serial killer Arnie Milhouse may be ready to end his thirteen-year killing spree, but he wants one last victim before leaving Annapolis—and the sexy new photographer in town promises to be his most satisfying score yet. He develops plans to seduce the mysterious Allison by luring her out to sea aboard his luxury catamaran for a secluded weekend he won’t forget…and one she won’t survive.
But Arnie’s latest mark is more than just another pretty face. Allison McNeil has her own secret agenda, and enough insider information to connect Arnie’s long string of seemingly unrelated murders. Hunting down serial killers is more than just a hobby for Allison: she’s ready to face her personal demons and take down this vicious predator once and for all.
Revised edition: This edition of Killer Within includes editorial revisions.
[Published 17 February 2015, 274 pages]
Killer Pursuit: Allison McNeil [2]
**View our full feature & interview with author Jeff Gunhus**When a high-society call girl is murdered in her Georgetown home, investigators find two cameras hidden in the walls of her bedroom. One has its memory erased, presumably by the murderer. The second is connected to the Internet through an encrypted connection...and no-one knows who's on the other end.
Special Agent Allison McNeil is asked by beleaguered FBI Director Clarence Mason to run an off-the-record investigation of the murder because of the murder's similarity to a case she worked a year earlier. Allison knows the most direct path to apprehending the killer is to find the videos, but the rumors that the victim's client list may have included Mason's political enemies has her worried about the director's motives. As she starts her investigation, she quickly discovers that she's not the only one pursuing the videos. In fact, the most aggressive person racing against her might be the murderer himself.
[Pre-order now. Published 18 January 2016, 289 pages]
Night Chill: Night Chill [1]
Jack Tremont moves his family to the quiet mountains of Western Maryland hoping to leave behind a troubled past and restart his life. Instead, he finds himself caught up in a nightmare when his daughter Sarah is targeted by Nate Huckley, a mysterious and horrifying stranger driven by a dark, ancient power who will stop at nothing to abduct Sarah.
When Sarah goes missing, suspicion falls on Jack and he must uncover the secrets of the small mountain town of Prescott City and face the evil secret hidden there. As he digs further, he learns the conspiracy reaches more deeply than he could have imagined.
He must soon face the question, What is a father willing to do to save his child?
The answer? Anything. Anything at all.
[Published 11 December 2013, 439 pages]
Night Terror: Night Chill [2]
Sequel to the Amazon Bestseller, Night Chill.
Ten years after her abduction and near-sacrifice to the Source, Sarah Tremont struggles to be a normal teenager. As much as she’s tried to suppress the power inside of her, it’s grown dangerously strong and has drawn the attention of those who want to possess her power for themselves.
The nightmare that she thought was long over starts again as powerful forces descend upon Prescott City to seek her out. With her parents and Joseph Lonetree’s help, Sarah must stand up to an evil much more powerful than the one she faced in the caves a decade earlier. But in the end, she discovers the greatest danger might come from the power living inside of her.
[Published 1 October 2014, 394 pages]
Jack Templar: Monster Hunter: Jack Templar Chronicles [1]
However, if you’re not a monster hunter…YOU MUST LEAVE THIS PAGE IMMEDIATELY.
I’m serious.
This story was never meant to become public. When I heard that some copies were making it into the hands of non-hunters, I freaked out. I’ve destroyed hundreds of these illegal copies but I can’t be sure I’ve found them all. The fact that you’ve gotten this far is proof of that.
This isn’t a game. This is real. So read this next part carefully.
If you open this book, the monsters will sense it. They will be attracted to you like sharks tracking blood in the water. Whether you like it or not, you will be dragged into this world of monsters just as I was. You will have no choice but to become a hunter.
Trust me, you’re not ready for this. This monsters are everywhere and you won’t stand a chance with the proper training.
I beg you, don’t read this book.
And if you do…don’t say I didn’t warn you.
[Published 17 October 2012, 204 pages]
Jack Templar and the Monster Hunter Academy: Jack Templar Chronicles [2]
Joined by his friends Will and T-Rex, and led by Eva, the mysterious one-handed monster hunter, Jack sets out for the Monster Hunter Academy where he hopes to find answers to his questions. Little does he suspect that the Academy is filled with dangers of its own, many of them more terrifying than anything he’s faced so far.
[Published 25 March 2013, 330 pages]
Jack Templar And The Lord Of The Vampires: Jack Templar Chronicles [3]
After fighting a goblin army, befriending an ancient werewolf, and battling two fire breathing dragons during his adventures at the Monster Hunter Academy, Jack Templar hoped for a rest. No such luck.
In this third adventure of the Jack Templar Monster Hunter series, Jack embarks on a quest to track down and acquire the first of five mythical Jerusalem Stones, an ancient power source found by his ancestors, the Templar Knights. Only the reunited Stones can stop Ren Lucre, the Dark Lord who holds Jack’s father hostage and prepares for an all-out war against an unsuspecting human world.
A different Creach Lord holds each Stone, and recovering them will not be easy. Jack and his friends begin their quest by seeking out a powerful and terrifying adversary, the Lord of the Vampires. The fate of the world rests on Jack’s shoulders and he will be tested like never before.
Join Jack Templar on his most dangerous journey yet, but remember that doing so makes you part of his world. Read this book only if you are prepared to battle the Creach and live by the monster hunter motto. Because to survive, you must…
[Published 28 September 2013, 361 pages]
Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves: Jack Templar Chronicles [4]
Fresh from confronting the Lord of the Vampires in the limestone catacombs beneath Paris, Jack Templar faces his toughest challenge yet as he searches for the next Jerusalem Stone, this one being held by the Lord of the Werewolves. But the narrow escape from the vampire lair came at a great cost and Eva battles for her survival. The only chance to help Eva is to continue their quest and find the Jerusalem Stones.
Reuniting the Stones will not only stop Ren Lucre’s coming war against mankind, but also transform Eva back into her human self. From the ruins of ancient Delhi to the depths of the Black Forest in Germany, Jack and his friends face monsters, bewildering riddles and treachery from the most unlikely of places.
Through it all, they are plagued by the Oracle’s prediction that at least one of their group will not make it through the adventure alive. Worse yet, they know that Kaeden, the Lord of the Werewolves, will do his best to make sure none of them do. But they are monster hunters of the Black Guard…
…and they will do their duty, come what may.
[Published 15 October 2014, 243 pages]
Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons [5]
With two of the Jerusalem Stones in hand, Jack and his friends must race the clock to find the remaining Stones as Ren Lucre’s Creach forces gather strength.
With two of their group now with Creach blood flowing in their veins, the team will be tested as never before. They must unite together if they have any hope of surviving their journey to the Underworld and their battle with the vicious Lord of the Demons.
The fate of the entire world hangs in the balance.
[Published 4 August 2015, 296 pages]
About the Author
Jeff Gunhus is the author of thriller and horror novels for adults and the middle grade/YA series, The Templar Chronicles. The first book, Jack Templar Monster Hunter, was written in an effort to get his reluctant reader eleven-year old son excited about reading. It worked and a new series was born. His books for adults have reached the Top 100 on Amazon and have been Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Finalists.
After his experience with his son, he is passionate about helping parents reach young reluctant readers and is active in child literacy issues.
As a father of five, he leads an active lifestyle in Maryland with his wife Nicole by trying to constantly keep up with their kids.
In rare moments of quiet, he can be found in the back of the City Dock Cafe in Annapolis working on his next novel.
Follow Jeff Gunhus:
Giveaway and Tour Stops
Enter to win a $50 Amazon GC or one signed copy of the Torment of Rachel Ames.a Rafflecopter giveaway
10 November 2015 - Release Day Party: Enter to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card + Paperback copy of The Torment Of Rachel Ames, or one of four Paperback copies of The Torment Of Rachel Ames.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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