☀♫ Marionettes - Kerry Alan Denney

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Marionettes, a Supernatural thriller by Kerry Alan Denney (31 May 2016, Juju Mojo Publications, 253 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis, music playlist and excerpt below.  Read the first four chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Marionettes is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

Author Kerry Alan Denney will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner 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 | Music Playlist | Teaser | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

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Synopsis

What would you do if you could control the thoughts and actions of others? And how far would you go until that power controls you?

Resuscitated after he drowns and dies in a flood, David Flint discovers he has returned from the other side with an uncanny ability: He can “jump” into people’s bodies and minds, and control their thoughts and actions.

David believes it's a gift, and wants to use it to help people. Then four members of a ruthless drug ring savagely attack his fiancée and leave her in a coma, and David tries to use his new power to destroy the whole ring. But the ringleader, a voodoo priest known as the Zombie Master, is a formidable man with a deadly secret: He has the same incredible ability as David.

When the two human marionette masters clash in a brutal bloody showdown, using the ring’s members as their puppets, David discovers he’s battling for much more than his life—he’s fighting to rid the world of an evil human abomination.

Marionettes illuminates the greatest achievements of the human spirit and the darkest corridors of our minds, and answers the age-old question: What are the consequences of absolute power?

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Teaser: Excerpt

from Chapter 1

     Cynthia caressed my cheek. “David, you’re remembering what already happened. It’s over now. You’re safe here.”
      “Already… drowned, didn’t I?”
      “Yes. You were dead for nearly five minutes. It’s a miracle the couple who pulled you out were able to revive you.”
      “Died.”
      “Mmm-hmm. Your rescuers brought you to the hospital, and the doctors removed a glass shard from your abdomen. We nearly lost you again twice last night. But now you’re back, and okay and getting better.”
      I closed my eyes. Five minutes. That’s long enough, from what I’ve heard, to lose some brain cells. Maybe that’s what was wrong with me.
      Maybe I was crazy.
      I opened my eyes and gazed into Cynthia’s smiling face. “Can I… have some more ice, please?”
      Cynthia released my hand, retrieved the cup, and spoon-fed me more. “Slow and easy, David. Take your time.”
      I held the chips in my mouth and felt the ice melt, smoothly roll down my throat, and slaughter more little swordsmen. It was the best thing I could ever remember tasting.
      Then I closed my eyes again, relaxed, and slept.
      And dreamed. In the next dream I was a little girl, also in a hospital bed. I figured at the time that it was a recurring dream theme, but it felt more real than my experiences with Cynthia and the doctor. I ached, in different ways than the dream-David ached. Broken bones, cuts, bruises, and abrasions abounded all over my body.
      Charlene Porter was my name. I turned ten years old last week, May the second. Momma and my friends call me Charlie. I’d been in a car accident, riding with my best friend Alisha and her mom to the ice-skating rink— their birthday present to me. Momma couldn’t come because she was working late. She supported us by herself since Daddy left. Neither Alisha nor her mom had anything worse than cuts and bruises. I was the one who really got hurt.
      Some birthday present, huh?
      I’ve had dreams where I was some unidentifiable other person. But never a female until Danielle the gospel-loving nurse. And this time I had a full name and birth date. Part of me wanted out of this too-real dream, but a more insistent part wanted to know more about this dream-Charlie.
      I liked her, found her charming and lovable, as did the entire nursing staff. Don’t ask how I knew that; I didn’t find out until later. Charlie had a prevailing optimism and cheerfulness that was a lot like mine before Karin died, and I wanted a piece of it, wanted that back.
      One leg and one arm in a cast, I was talking to two nurses in my room. I knew what Charlie was thinking and what she was going to say, as if I was really her.
      “So why don’t you tell her you want a puppy, honey?” Julia the nurse asked. They were talking about Charlie’s mother. I knew the nurse’s name was Julia— the same nurse Danielle passed in the hallway in my other “dream”— as well as things Julia had told Charlie about her own kids.
      “Because of Polly,” we said, frowning. That drew sad looks from Julia and the other nurse, whose name was Kristen.
      “Who is Polly?” Kristen asked.
      I knew the whole story about Polly. It had broken Charlie’s heart, and her mother’s too. “She was our Labrador Retriever,” we answered, tears brimming in our eyes. “She died.”
      “Oh, Charlie,” Julia said. “What happened to her?”
      “She was on a leash that was on a runner, so she could run. We had to keep her on it ’cause we didn’t have a fence. We left her there, and went shopping one day. There was this pretty white dress I wanted, and Momma bought it for me.”
      Tears rolled down our cheeks. There was an aching pressure in our chest that had nothing to do with Charlie’s accident, where there had been nothing but a hollow emptiness in mine since I lost Karin. We choked back a sob, wanting to be strong and tell the rest of the story without making a blubbering idiot of ourselves.
      “When we got home, I was so happy. I put on my dress. I wanted to show it to Polly. When I got to her, she was… wrapped around the tree at the end of the runner. She choked on it.”
      We drew a shuddering breath as Julia rushed with Kristen to our bedside.
      “I wish I’d never seen that stupid dress!”
      “Oh, Charlie,” Kristen said, running her hand through our blond curls.
      “Charlie, I’m so sorry,” Julia whispered, rubbing our shoulder from the bed’s other side.
      We were all gushy, crying like a bunch of babies.
      “Momma’ll never let me get another puppy now. Not without a fence so we don’t have to tie him up. We threw that runner away for good.”
      “Honey, you have to ask her,” Julia said, wiping tears from her eyes.
      “Yeah, Charlie,” Kristen said. “You have to.”
      “She’ll never say yes.”
      This was too much for me. I wanted out of this too-real sad dream. Again, as with Danielle, snap and I woke up in my own bed. Everything was blurry. The dream had put tears in my own eyes.
      I tried to sort out what was happening to me. Was I losing my mind? With newfound clarity, a deeply disturbing thought popped into my head: What if I did drown and die in the flood, but was never revived? What if these unnervingly real dreams weren’t dreams at all? What if I was dead, a ghost trapped on the earthly plane, popping in and out of different people in some hospital and experiencing their lives, their emotions, their thoughts and sensations?
      The idea scared the crap out of me.

Marionettes
Available NOW!

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About the Author

Colleagues and readers have dubbed Kerry Alan Denney The Reality Bender.  The multiple award-winning author of the paranormal thrillers Dreamweavers (Juju Mojo Publications, August 2015) and Soulsnatcher (Juju Mojo Publications, April 2014), the post-apocalyptic sci-fi/ horror thriller Jagannath (Permuted Press, February 2015), and numerous short stories published online and in anthologies, Kerry blends elements of the supernatural, paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror in his work: speculative fiction at its wildest and craziest. With joy, malicious glee, and a touch of madness, he writes reality-bending thrillers, even when the voices don’t compel him to. His protagonists are his children, and he loves them as dearly as he despises his antagonists... even when he has to kill them.

On July 24, 2015, Jagannath became a #1 Amazon bestseller. On March 31, 2015, Soulsnatcher won 2nd Place as 2014 Book of the Year in The Drunken Druid’s International Book Award competition. Jagannath and Soulsnatcher each received a rave blurb from New York Times bestselling author James Rollins.

Kerry lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia with his golden retriever Holly Jolly, a veteran professional Therapy Dog, where he is currently writing his next supernatural thriller... and deciding who to kill in it.

Be on the lookout for Kerry’s new post-apocalyptic/ paranormal thriller A Mighty Rolling Thunder, coming December 3, 2016 from Burning Willow Press.

Follow Kerry Alan Denney:

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Giveaway and Tour Stops

Enter to win a $20 Amazon/BN GC – a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Follow Marionettes's tour at:

Jun 6: Christine Young
Jun 7: Long and Short Reviews
Jun 8: Room With Books
Jun 9: Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews
Jun 10: Am Kinda Busy Reading!
Jun 14: Deal Sharing Aunt
Jun 15: The Book Review
Jun 16: It's Raining Books
Jun 16: fundinmental ✍
Jun 17: Readeropolis
Jun 20: Natural Bri ✍
Jun 21: BooksChatter
Jun 22: Independent Authors
Jun 23: The Avid Reader
Jun 24: This and That Book Blog
Jun 27: The Certifiable Wenches
Jun 28: Queen of All She Reads
Jun 29: Straight from the Library
Jun 30: HarmonyKent ✍
Jul 1: Cover2Cover

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