BooksChatter: ☀☄ Pokergeist - Michael Phillip Cash

Friday, 16 September 2016

☀☄ Pokergeist - Michael Phillip Cash

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Pokergeist, a Paranormal Thriller by Michael Phillip Cash (6 August 2015, Chelshire, Inc., 265 pages).

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

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

Comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

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

Synopsis

Sometimes life, as well as death, is about second chances.

Luckless Telly Martin doesn't have a clue. An awful gambler trying to scrape by as a professional poker player, he becomes the protégé of world famous poker champion Clutch Henderson. The only catch…Clutch is a ghost.

Telly and Clutch must navigate the seedy gambling underbelly of Las Vegas learning to trust each other in order to win the elusive International Series of Poker, repair their shattered personal relationships and find redemption in this life and the hereafter.

Teaser: Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

One Year Later
     A gray haze hung over the Bellagio poker room, the thick air muffled with the sound of murmuring voices. Telly Martin leaned his face glumly into his palm, trying hard to control his expression. His dark hair needed a haircut, but that cost money, so he was going for a shaggy look, he told Gretchen. The longer hair complemented his high cheekbones and indigo eyes. He was trim— just a bit on the thinner side, he knew. He was watching, he’d told his mother a week ago. Watching his small change, he added to himself. There just wasn’t enough right now— the money only went so far. He’d bought into this game an hour ago. It was a cheap game, low limit, but that was about all he had left in his budget this week. He refused to take any more money from Gretchen, that was for sure. If this one didn’t pan out, he’d rethink the cab driver job Gretchen had suggested again last week. He didn’t want to do that, though. It would interfere with his games. Cab drivers put in long hours, had to be available for the events that went on all the time in Vegas, and he’d miss his chance to play in the International Series. All he had to do was come up with the ten grand. Ten grand. Telly sighed. Not much three years ago, and today an impossible dream. He had a good job in IT at one of the casinos. Worked the computers in the communications department. It was boring but steady. He’d bought a nice house, Gretchen had moved in, and he had planned to marry her that spring. Then the casino had been bought. The purchaser had an existing IT department. Telly was redundant, they’d told him. He didn’t feel redundant— irrelevant, maybe; redundant, definitely not, he thought hotly. He was one of a kind, he knew. He was the only one in the department who always brought in doughnuts on Tuesday. How could that be viewed as redundant? Didn’t he organize the yearly softball game that raised money for the Children’s Cancer Society? Who was doing that now? he wanted to know. He had created the Seniors Glee Club, arranging for a local nursing home to have entertainers from the casino’s show come and sing with the residents. That program was laying an egg, he’d heard. They didn’t have anyone on staff to keep up with it. But Telly was redundant, unnecessary, and currently unemployed.
     “Today, Telly,” Hamdi, the dealer, formerly from Cairo (or so his nametag informed them), pointed to the cards in the middle of the baize. “It’s your bet, sur.” His hometown accent drew out the vowels, confirming his Egyptian heritage.
     Telly looked up at Hamdi, smiling. “Like it here, Hamdi?” Playing at the casino was nothing like a home game. There was no repartee, and socializing was frowned upon. He thought being a professional poker player would be… well… more fun. It wasn’t. The tables were tense, with a distinctly unfriendly feel. While Telly was a reasonable player with his weekend buddies, he was mortified at how little he really knew. One fumble and everybody lost respect for you at the table. The trouble was, nobody had patience.
     “Indeed.” Hamdi smiled, a mouthful of white teeth, and added, “You are holding up the game. Your bet.”
     “Um…” Telly looked at the sea of faces around him. They were in varying degrees of openly hostile to bored out of their minds. “Four dollars?”
     “Are you asking, sur?”
     The man to Telly’s right smirked. “I reraised. Weren’t you watching?”
     “So,” Telly stared at the sparse pile of chips in the center, “I’m supposed to…” He looked at his cards again. His mind had gone blank; he didn’t remember exactly where he was in the game. He dragged a hand through his dark hair. That’s what you get for daydreaming. He hated this feeling.
     Hamdi leaned closer. “If you want to see his hand, you have to bet another four dollars— bring it to a total of eight.”
     Telly looked at his meager stack of chips. He’d double his money if he won. He stared at the ceiling. Then he considered the revolving plastic image of Marilyn Monroe, her dress fluttering around her, spinning at a kiosk of slot machines across the floor. Gretchen would look pretty in that dress, he thought absently. His ears picked out a chorus of cries celebrating a slot win. He failed to see his neighbor observing his every move, the unlit cigar frozen in the other man’s mouth, the smell of wet tobacco offensive. Telly gingerly picked up eight dollar chips, sliding them into the pile. “Call.” He liked the way he sounded. Like he was a professional. Really. He’d tell Gretch all about it tonight when she got off from work. They turned over the rest of their cards.
     [...]

Pokergeist
Available NOW!

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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