Pages

▼

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Goth Girl Virgin Queen ~ Exclusive Excerpt

Exclusive Excerpt From Goth Girl Virgin Queen

Carnival lights swirled around Jackie, dizzying her as emotions rose through her feet. She stopped and pressed her eye to the camera lens. The lens washed the emotions away, stilled and silenced the mayhem. She could see everything like a normal person. Maybe if she had camera lens contacts she could be normal. 
She shot pictures of the Viking boat, the merry-go-round, and even Madam Sophie. She was still shaken over their encounter. She was certain Madam Sophie hated her. She couldn’t blame her, though, not after what had happened. And she wouldn’t be surprised if Madam Sophie knew the truth. 
For Jason’s sake, Jackie went on the Ferris wheel, the Himalaya, and the Tilt-a-Whirl, absorbing the emotions from the people who previously sat in the rides, which made her sicker than the spinning and twirling. She was physically and emotionally sapped and wanted to wrap her arm around Jason and lean on him, but she couldn’t. She was all alone with this disease.
As they [Jackie, Jason, Zeta, and Trish] walked down the main path of the carnival, heading to the parking lot, the lights dimmed and the rides slowed. Motors hummed and drained of power. The four of them stopped walking, and everyone around them stopped in the middle of what they were doing. 
The carnival fell silent. 
After a few seconds, the power resurged. Transformers buzzed, the lights illuminated and blinked in rhythmic patterns, and music boomed. Carnies restarted rides, and people went about what they had been doing. The carnival was once again filled with sound and movement. 
“Would you look at that?” Zeta pointed to the sky. 
But it was the ground and the minute vibrations surging through the soles of her boots and up her legs that Jackie was focused on. Her shins ached and tickled—the same feeling as hitting a funny bone—and they were too weak to support her body. She dropped to the damp ground, onto the mud-dried hay. 
“Jackie, you okay?” Zeta knelt beside her. 
Jackie rubbed her shins. “Did you feel that?” The nerve endings throughout her body tingled, and blue washed over her eyes and faded to black. 
When Jackie opened her eyes, white, ghastly faces with blackened eyes and lips stared down at her. Had she died and gone to hell? 
“Guess the carnival was a bad idea,” Trish said sarcastically. 
“Holy blazing balls of fire,” Zeta said. “Don’t tell me solar storms set you off too.” 
“What?” Jackie said. 
Zeta pointed up. “Look.” 
Swirls of red and green spread across the night sky. “Was there an explosion?” 
“Kind of, but it happened several days ago. All of these energized particle thingies from the sun just reached the Earth now. It’s all Ms. Gut Tree’s been yapping about for the past month. I had to write a freaking report.” 
Jackie had Ms. Guthrie last year. She was always working current scientific events into her lesson plans. Not having Ms. Guthrie this semester, she missed this one coming. “I don’t think I can get up. I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning.” 
“Magnetism,” Zeta said. “That’s why the lights dimmed. Screws up homing pigeons big time too.” She bent over and reached out her hand. 
“No, I can do it.” The last thing Jackie needed was to get zapped again. She rolled over onto her hands and knees and then rose up until her hands were on her thighs and her chin was tucked to her chest. She stayed bent until she felt stable enough to stand up straight. 
Zeta picked up Jackie’s satchel and dusted it off. 
“My camera!” She felt for it. It still hung around her neck. There was a little dirt around the bottom edge and the lens where it had hit the ground. She rubbed the dirt off with her thumb. 
Zeta handed Jason the keys to Jackie’s car. “Here, you drive Jackie home. Trish and I will follow.” 
Trish reached for the keys. “No.” 
Jason locked his fingers around them before Trish could. “I’ll do it.” 
“Relax,” Zeta said to Trish. “He’s just driving her home.” 
Trish’s face was red. Her emotions scalding. 
Zeta tugged Trish’s arm. “You’re making Jackie sick. Let’s go.” She led Trish to her car. 
Trish turned and glared at Jackie.
Welcome to the 2-week blog tour for Goth Girl, Virgin Queen by JoAnne Keltner.

Follow the tour and connect with bloggers, read reviews of the book, read guest posts, and meet the author.


Book Information:

Title: Goth Girl, Virgin Queen

Author Name: JoAnne Keltner

Genre(s): Young Adult Paranormal

Length: Approx. 298 pages

Release Date: December 3, 2015

About Goth Girl, Virgin Queen:

Calling Jackie Turov psychic makes her cringe. But Jackie’s no normal seventeen-year-old. She picks up emotions from people and objects like a freak. The emotions make her sick, and the guilt she feels for lying to her church when she was twelve causes her to deny her psychic abilities.

So Jackie goes goth to make others stay away from her and forget her past. But her past is soon resurrected when her jealous friend Trish invites a demon, a persecutor of healers, to steal away Jason’s love for Jackie. The demon causes Jackie to be bullied for the lie she told and puts her best friend, Jason, in danger.

Jackie must learn how to use her gift to protect Jason and herself and to heal the negative energies of those around her. To do so means she must overcome her guilt and accept who she is before the demon claims her soul.

Read an Excerpt:

The medicine cabinet mirror—dotted with rust and turning gray—made the powder foundation on Jackie’s face look ashen and her jet-black hair, blurry. She looked like a shadow of a girl. She smeared black lipstick on her lips and shook out her shoulder-length hair. Her straight-cut bangs veiled her mascara-lined eyes, and the layered ends of her hair stuck out in defiant wisps.

Some of the kids at school—the ones she didn’t hang out with—called her Goth Girl. Some, whose memories wouldn’t die, called her VQ for Virgin Queen.

Jackie preferred Goth Girl, to be one of the living dead, to be numb to the emotions that plagued her. But this was what she wanted, not what she got.

Goth Girl or Virgin Queen, she was a freak, absorbing the emotions around her like a sponge. Sometimes the emotions made her sick. Sometimes they made her see things.

Because of this, she kept to a tight-knit group of goth friends—Jason, Zeta, and Trish—and avoided social activities. She attended high school only because Mom wouldn’t let her homeschool. Mom was afraid she’d hang with Babu all day, making piroshki and doing needlepoint instead of studying. Jackie, afraid of what life offered a freak like her beyond high school, had to admit that hanging with Babu all day was tempting.

Typically, Fridays were movie nights for Jason and her, but tonight would be different. Tonight, she’d subject herself to a hodgepodge of emotions from crowds and rides and the very ground she’d walk on to protect Jason. For this, she would need physical and spiritual strength, which she sought from Babu these days.

Babu’s door was cracked, and Jackie slowly pushed the door open. “Babu?”

The room smelled of beeswax and down. A candle burned on the shrine on the dresser. The flickering flame animated the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and cast shadows across the picture of Babu, Grandma, Mom, and Jackie. Although Babu didn’t speak English, and Jackie didn’t understand much Russian, Jackie knew Babu kept that picture on her shrine to pray for Grandma, who passed away several years ago; for Mom, who divorced Dad; and for the girl who saw the Virgin when she was twelve—for the girl she had become as a teen.

Babu sat in bed, a country quilt spread over her legs, her thumb pressed against a knot of her prayer rope, her head bowed sleepily, and her lips wording prayers.

“I wanted to say goodbye,” Jackie whispered.

Babu crossed herself and then smiled at Jackie, her gold eyetooth shining from the light of the bed-stand lamp. She patted the empty space beside her. “Sadees.”

Jackie sat down beside Babu at the edge of the bed and took Babu’s hand in hers. Babu’s hand was warm and knotted with arthritis. Jackie rubbed her thumb over the bumps on Babu’s knuckles; her black fingernails were a sharp contrast to Babu’s flour-white skin.

She wasn’t afraid to touch Babu’s hands and absorb her emotions. Jackie got a good feeling from her. Babu filled Jackie’s inner vision with white light. She renewed her spirit. And this is what Jackie needed for the commitment she had made for tonight.

“Kooda eedyosh?” Babu asked.

“I’m going out,” Jackie said as if Babu understood her. This is how they communicated: Babu telling her stuff she couldn’t understand, Jackie telling Babu stuff she couldn’t understand. Somehow they carried on fine this way.

“Eedyosh sdroozyamee?”

“I’m going with Jason.”

Babu rubbed the top of Jackie’s hand and ran her thumb over black fingernails. “Fsyevo kharoshevuh,” she said in a comforting tone and gently squeezed Jackie’s hand. Then she cupped her hands around Jackie’s jaws and pulled her forehead to her lips. Jackie imagined Babu’s kiss imprinted on her forehead and carrying Babu’s blessings and love with her tonight.
Meet the Author:



JoAnne Keltner is the author of Goth Girl, Virgin Queen (Solstice Publishing, 2015) and Obsession. As an only child and avid daydreamer, she spent hours alone in her backyard on the South Side of Chicago, which she imagined to be everything from an alien planet to the Antarctic. She currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, four dogs, cat, and three chickens. When she isn't writing or freelance editing, she's obsessively streaming popular TV shows.

Social Media Links:
at

2 comments:

  1. JoAnne KeltnerNovember 1, 2017 at 5:30 AM

    Thank you, Karlee, for posting this exclusive excerpt of Goth Girl Virgin Queen!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sapphyria's BooksNovember 1, 2017 at 10:17 AM

    What a wonderful excerpt! Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete