BooksChatter: ☀☄ The Flip - Michael Phillip Cash

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for The Flip, a Horror Suspense by Michael Phillip Cash (15 May 2014, Chelshire, Inc., 201 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below. Read the Prologue and the first two chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

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

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Synopsis | Trailer | Teaser | About the Author | Tour Stops

Synopsis

Julie and Brad Evans are house flippers. They buy low, clean out the old occupants junk, and try to make a profit.

Enter Hemmings House on Bedlam Street in scenic Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Too good a deal to pass up, but with an ominous secret. The old Victorian Mansion has dwellers that do not want to be dispossessed.

As the house reveals it's past, will the couples marriage survive The Flip?

Teaser: Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

     Julie hung up the phone with a satisfied snap. This would make her boss happy. She had collected on an old debt, one the firm had given up on. That was her charm, her boss often told her: she was as tenacious as a terrier. She wasn’t quite sure if that was a compliment or not, being compared to a dog, but she’d take it. The job was, well, OK. She thought that her boss believed he paid her enough, but that was open for discussion as far as she was concerned. She had been there since graduating college. After majoring in psychology, there wasn’t much she could find out in the workplace, so she stayed. She had started as the receptionist, then moved to DocStar, filing boring information all day, and now she had settled into the collection department, doubling as an assistant to the boss. Oh, he had a secretary— she had been with him for over twenty years— but they gave the grunt work to Julie. She wondered who was crankier: Mr. Wilson, her boss, or Joanne, his right hand. The older woman had iron-gray hair to match an iron spine, and every so often, Julie wanted to ask if she removed the rod up her ass when she went to sleep at night.
     She owed Mr. Wilson a lot. When she had entered the flipping business, he arranged for her first loans. He liked her ambition, he told her. He respected the fact that she was willing to work at her small business on the weekends. Mr. Wilson supported free enterprise, as long as it didn’t interfere with Julie’s day job. While he hadn’t given her a raise in eight years, doing this side business had enabled her to make up the difference. It had started with a condo in Rego Park. It was a foreclosure Mr. Wilson had told her about. She bought it, resurfaced the kitchen, cleaned up the cat shit, and sold it, making herself a clean $ 15,000. Flipping was easy. Buy a house that needed some lipstick, clean it up, and sell it, making a small amount of money for the next one. The collapsed economy was a perfect excuse for her boss to freeze her salary, but he had made up for it when he found a second property for her and set Julie up with a decent contractor. When she met Brad, they eighty-sixed the hired help and did the work themselves.
     Getting ahead was tough, but doing this side venture made her a little independent. Each flip was still a struggle. One mistake, such as wood rot she wasn’t prepared for or hidden problems missed on the primary inspections, could throw her whole bottom line out the window. Julie didn’t have a big war chest, as her father called it. In other words, she had very little in reserve. Each job represented a hard-earned profit that enabled her to invest in another property right after. Still, she had trouble landing funds. The whole banking industry was a mess after the mortgage meltdown. They were so careful with whom they did business, making borrowing money very difficult. She had no assets, nothing to secure for a big credit line to purchase the houses. Mr. Wilson not only cosigned for her, but he also pushed the bank to give her more credit. He was the bank’s biggest customer and had enough clout there to bully them around. And one thing was certain: Mr. Wilson was a bully. Brad didn’t like her boss. Lately, it seemed that Brad didn’t like anything connected to her.
     She frowned, new worry lines creasing the smooth skin of her brow. She was pretty, not beautiful. Cute, perky, with long brown hair kissed by the sun, a swinging body toned with hours of yoga, and merry green eyes. The people who liked her said she was a go-getter; the ones who didn’t said she had a type A personality. Brad told her he liked her drive, found her inspiring, and enjoyed their chemistry. His laconic attitude tempered her impulsiveness. Their fundamental differences enhanced each other, creating a perfect balance. Holding up her wedding photo, she stared wistfully at the tanned couple. They looked perfect together. He was wearing a slick white dinner jacket with black tuxedo pants. She wore a Calvin Klein slip of a dress. They were both barefoot and ankle-deep in the sands of a Dominican Republic beach. The wind had snatched her veil. Brad’s arms were protectively around her when the photographer had snapped a classic black-and-white shot of them on the beach. She loved that picture; it summed up the simplicity of her relationship with Brad. It was black and white, no bullshit, founded in love, rooted in respect, and a whole lot of fun. In other words, it was bliss. They looked like a couple from a high-end perfume advertisement, everybody always said.
     Theirs had been a wonderful storybook courtship. Boy meets girl, instant attraction, destination: wedding. They had met at one of those Match.com mixers and hit it off immediately. She couldn’t believe he wasn’t taken. He had shoulders that filled a room, as well as a personality to match. He had just left the army after two tours in Afghanistan, and compared to the guys she normally dated, he was the real deal. Kind, polite, and ever so gallant, it didn’t take her long to let every rule fall by the wayside and allow herself to commit early. If only he could find something he liked to do. After his discharge, he drove a limo on the weekends while he attended a community college. She knew he disliked it, and after they dated a bit, she had talked him into flipping houses with her. They had split the cost of three houses, small tract homes in Levittown, nothing so big that they could get hurt.
     [...]

The Flip
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About the Author

Michael Phillip Cash is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. His novels are best-sellers on Amazon under their genres – Young Adult, Thriller, Suspense, Ghost, Action Adventure, Fantasy, Paranormal Romance and Horror. Michael writes full-time and lives on the North Shore of Long Island with his wonderful wife and screaming children.

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