OCTOBER 10TH GIVEAWAY: PELICAN BAY by Jesse Christiansen

OCTOBER 10TH GIVEAWAY: 

PELICAN BAY by Jesse Giles Christiansen

====== GIVEAWAY CLOSED! =======
==== ALL COPIES HAVE BEEN WON ===

There will be FIVE ECOPIES given away. The first five to comment on the Official Facebook Event page in the post that announces this giveaway wins an ecopy. The link to the Official HALLOWEENPALOOZA Event Page is: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/164385847097718/169684326567870/?comment_id=169786513224318&notif_t=like 

Here's a little bit about PELICAN BAY and its author, Jesse Giles Christiansen. We're even including an excerpt for this exciting tale. Can you say SKELETONS? 

 PELICAN BAY 

After Ethan Hodges discovers an undersea cemetery just off the beach of Pelican Bay, South Carolina, he seeks answers from a grandfatherly fisherman named Captain Shelby. The captain wants the past to remain buried, and he warns Ethan to stay away. But Ethan doesn't listen. Ethan's best friend and secret love interest, Morgan Olinsworth, joins in the investigation, unearthing intriguing secrets about the mysterious fisherman. When Captain Shelby is suspected of murder and disappears, a manhunt ensues, revealing a truth that unnerves everyone in Pelican Bay. 

Jesse Giles Christiansen is an American author who writes compelling literary fiction that weaves the real with the surreal. He attended Florida State University where he received his B.A. in English literature. He wrote his first novel, "About: Journey Into The Mystic" after spending a summer in Alaska working on fishing boats. His newest novel, "Pelican Bay," focuses on a very old fisherman, Captain Shelby, and the mysterious happenings linked to him surrounding a nosy, sea-battered beach town (release date: July 20th, 2013, Imajin Books). One of his literary goals is to write at least fifty novels, and he reminds himself always of something that Ray Bradbury once said: "You fail only if you stop writing."

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 Excerpt of Pelican Bay : 

The dare was born of ghost stories on an early summer eve, a windy dusk blanketing the dunes in view of the old fisherman's just-lit lantern, flickering like a lost soul. His boat was moored to the slippery docks in the near distance, creaking like it always did—a wooden brontosaurus with arthritis.

"You know who's a ghost for real?" Bert said, his dark hair a dune-tip shadow waving in the breeze, a dancing black flame, his eyes darting off to the captain's bobbing boat.

"Shut up," Chucky said.

"I want to know," Aspen said.

"Of course you do, dip shit," Chucky rifled, the stiffening wind now carrying his voice away.

"Have you ever seen him up close?" Bert went on.

"You're an idiot," Chucky said.

"I saw him once," Aspen said, "when I was four. His face is the oldest face I've ever seen."

Chucky laughed. A bullish laugh. Aspen felt a punch coming. Crossed his arms. Cowered for it but it did not come.

"A few years ago I was fishing with my dad and saw him bathing in the ocean near the shore by the old docks. His face looked to be in its twenties," Bert said.

"This is complete bullshit," Chucky said.

"Well, maybe so. You can sit here jerking off and telling stupid stories all night. But if you want to see a real ghost," Bert concluded, "then you need to go out and talk to that old man."

"Ha, ha. What a bunch of morons," Chucky said.

"I believe it. He gives me the willies," Aspen said in a loud whisper. His gentle blue eyes, now almost lost to the engulfing blackness of Pelican Bay, looked near raving.

And the punch finally came.

It seemed to Aspen that they always came without warning. They were like the ominous Atlantic storms that seemed to enjoy bullying Pelican Bay. A jinxed boy, a jinxed town. But Aspen preferred a bad storm over the punches or the insults. He preferred the honor of dying in a storm.

"I've got better things to do," Chucky said, starting up.

"Yeah? Better than watching Aspen go out there and say hi to the old man?"

Chucky sat back down again on the cheek of the dune, his eyes flaring, an evil smile burgeoning.

"You can forget it," Aspen said, rising, his voice trembling a little, betraying the fear underneath its counterfeit bravado.

Another punch. This time from Bert.

"Chicken. Bock, bock, bock," Chucky said, marching around the dune, flapping his arms in grotesque mockery.

The old man's lantern suddenly went out for a moment and goose-bumps ripped at the boys flesh.

Suddenly the lantern was lit again. They all looked at each other, wide-eyed.

"You want to be a real man?" Bert asked. "You want to be treated like one of us?"

"Yeah. You want to stop being a pussy your whole life?" Chucky added, laughing obnoxiously.

Now Aspen looked at them, then out toward the docks, then back at each of them. "I don't have to prove anything."

Chucky grabbed him and he struggled. Bert came up in front of him and said, "We haven't twisted those titties in a while."

"Don't! I don't have titties!"

"Prove it," Bert said.

"Yeah, show us you're not a girl with titties."

Bert reached for Aspen's nipples while Chucky held him.

"Ok! Stop! I'll do it."

"You will?" Bert said.

"He's lying," Chucky said.

"Give me that lantern," Aspen said. "I'll go out there and say hi to that old ghost—and you'll see that I'm not a pussy—that I'm just as tough as you guys."

"Yeah right. You're full of shit," Chucky said.

"No. I think I believe the chicken shit. Give him the lantern," Bert said.

The onyx cloak of a Pelican Bay night was almost upon them. Aspen looked back toward the dunes and his friends had been swallowed by the dark. As he took his first step onto the docks, he looked ahead at the old man's boat, a buoying shadow of archaic oak, a symphony of moaning ropes and petulant planks, a sputtering lantern which was perhaps a disembodied pirate debating between this world and the next.

He stopped just near the boat, struggling to maintain his footing on the slimy dock boards.

"Hello. My name's Aspen. I've come to talk to you."

Nothing.

"I mean you no harm." Aspen's voice was soft and gentle, even when blasted and pitched. He was to be a little orphan Oliver replaying his debut dramatic role for all eternity.

Still nothing.

And then suddenly the darkness grunted. So near him. So near. And there was a sea stench that the young boy could have never known existed until that night. His every youthful sense was insulted, his every thought was of dark, oaky places, his every feeling that of waking in an ancient tomb under the sea.

As his virginal feet began to turn they slipped into the air and the back of his head hit the dock. The next thing that he knew he was immersed in a drastic, salty wetness and sucked under the docks by a wicked current. He was dizzy in the cool, black sea. His head hurt immensely.

Suddenly an arm reached down into the water and groped around. It was as thick as a fallen oak log, the arm of a sea god, but as hairy as a fishing grizzly.

Aspen clung to the dock beam under the water, eyes open, a child apparition under the sea, his hands shredded by the toothed barnacles that munched upon his fleshy palms, his lungs already aching, his darkening mind wanting to surrender, his frail body, always too small, always too weak, wanting to quit.

Many seconds passed. Seconds of absolute fear.

Aspen finally found in himself the courage for one reach. But when he stretched for the great arm, it suddenly abandoned its search.

Sleep now.

No more insults.

No more fretful, desperate young life.

Just peaceful sleep. Dreaming with the sea, of the honor of all those who have warred with it and lost.

But better than no honor at all.