When we were children, they told us monsters weren't real. They were dead wrong. Dark Walker Series Speculative Fiction/Horror/ Dark Sci-fi by Shelly Campbell Series Tour with Guest Post &Giveaway

 

DARK WALKER SERIES

Shelly Campbell

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GENRE:   Speculative Fiction/Horror/ Dark Sci-fi

 

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BLURB:

 

Series Blurb:

 

When we were children, they told us monsters weren't real. They were dead wrong.

 

It’s just a closet door with a skeleton key, but when David opens it, he unlocks a gateway to a sinister world that’s bent on destroying everything and everyone he loves. Some doors are better left closed.

 

Embark on a thrilling journey with the Dark Walker Series, and be transported into an interdimensional tale of monsters, lies and self-discovery. Where the terror of darkness is real and the line between ally and enemy is as thin as a blade.

 

"Equal parts coming of age story and otherworldly horror, Gulf probes the depths of loneliness, loss of identity and childhood trauma. It is a true treat for fans of the genre and had me clutched in its razor-clawed hands from the first word to the last.” -C.M. Forest author of Infested

 

Blurb:

 

Seventeen-year-old David is fading from his world, like a Polaroid picture in reverse. He longs to feel connected to something bigger.

 

When his brothers discover the new extension at the rental cottage comes with a locked door, David finds the key first. Expecting to claim a bedroom, he opens a dimensional gateway instead, exploring abandoned versions of his world in different timelines, 1960s muscle cars alternating with crumbling cottages.

 

Except now the dimensional bridge won’t close, and something hungry claws the door at night. David scours for clues to break the bridge, but each trip to the other side makes him fade more on his. Even if he succeeds, he risks severing his connection to his own world, and dying on the wrong side, forgotten.

 

Blurb:

 

There are doors that open to other worlds, but it’s no fairytale on the other side.

 

I thought otherworldly monsters bent on devouring my whole world starting with my family trumped everything. Turns out, I was wrong. My world's only one of thousands facing annihilation from the maneaters that tried to eat me alive. Charlie saved me, rolled into my life on a motorcycle, and rescued me.

 

Problem is, I’m the Embassy’s property now. They’re the interdimensional agency tasked with stemming the flow of ravenous aliens into our universe, but they seem more interested in studying me. I crashed a gateway in a way they’ve never seen. The Embassy wants to replicate that. I think they want to use me as a war weapon.

 

If I don’t convince Charlie to help me escape, I’ll be an Embassy science experiment for the rest of my short life, or worse, eternally trapped in the dark hell that fills the spaces between worlds.

 

 

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EXCERPT

Something that sounds like a dog scrabbling across hardwood jolts me awake. I focus on a low wooden ceiling and struggle to place my surroundings. My legs tingle under a heavy weight, and when I push away what I assume is a blanket, the dictionary slides off my knees and falls to the floor with a thud. The busy scratching intensifies, reminds me of mice running through our hollow walls back home, or cockroaches.

 

That sounds bigger than cockroaches. I frown.“Shit!” I whisper, scrambling to the edge of the loft, and blinking into the darkness below.

 

James is standing in front of the couch. A wedge of pale moonlight from the kitchen window ribbons across his back, and his shoulders shudder. He’s shivering. A moving shadow ahead of him catches my gaze. It’s a black hand extending under the door, elongated fingers splayed, claws scrabbling for purchase on the worn planks as it reaches for James’s ankle.

 

“James!” I yelp.

 

He shuffles closer to the five-panel, oblivious to my call, but the maneater hears it and rattles the door violently.

 

“James, stop!” I plunge down the ladder and my feet hit the floor so hard my ankles twinge. Spinning, I grip the couch as I round it, grasping for my brother’s shoulder. I miss, barely raking his back as he shuffles ahead with his hand reaching for the crystal doorknob glinting in the moonlight. “James!”

 

The black questing hand snags around his ankle and yanks hard.

 

James’s chin snaps against his chest as the rest of him rag-dolls backward. A thick smack reverberates through the floor as his head ricochets off hardwood.

 

I scream and jump over him.

 

The claw twists James’s foot sideways and jerks back, mashing my brother’s heel against the bottom of the shuddering door, deaf to his waking, harrowing wail.

 

Blood trickles down his foot.

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Guest Post

Discuss the world you've created for the book.

 

Thank you so much for having me as a guest. I really appreciate the support and the chance to meet some new readers!

For Breach, book two of the Dark Walker series, our main character David discovers that his world is connected to tens of thousands of other dimensions. His universe is like a tree with his world located in one of the upper branches and Prime—the world he’s been plunked into—on the central trunk.

At some point in the past, David’s ancestors figured out they could travel to nearby twigs—dimensions that have branched. Those first trips were cautious. Exploratory. But it didn’t take long for massive government and corporate-run expeditions to launch, intent on extracting resources from other dimensions, adopting future tech, cheating death.

Then, the process for building bridges to other dimensions leaked. A black market for interdimensional travel cropped up, and things went downhill pretty quickly after that. Corporations all racing to plant their flags first. Everyone ignoring the field experts asking travelers to slow down and gauge the possible consequences of their actions.

Everything tangled up to the point where Prime lost track of how many bridges they’d built. They created a dimensional snarl up with so many worlds knotted together that the gravity of it attracted lifeforms from another universe—hostile predatory lifeforms.

Aliens not-so-affectionately nicknamed maneaters initially scouted out newly bridged worlds tentatively.

But now, they’ve turned into massive choking mobs in the millions. Ravenous. Unstoppable. They’re devouring entire populations in days. Prime’s military can’t untangle dimensions fast enough to contain the breaches.  Some factions refuse to collapse bridges.

In the face of annihilation, a cult faction springs up, vocally insisting that the dimensions they'd woven together were meant to be intertwined and the maneaters were meant to take over.

 

Basically, Prime can't stop the stampede it started, and families who can afford it sent their children off world to shelter in "safe worlds", foster dimensions that haven’t yet been breached. A last-ditch effort to shield the next generation from the war that looks to be coming home to their parents. It’s supposed to be temporary. But war is messy, parents are dying, and children are getting orphaned in their foster worlds.

 

That’s the world(s) I drop David into in Breach.  If you like your horror with sci-fi and Doctor Who x Stranger Things x Total Recall vibes, you might enjoy the world I’ve built in the Dark Walker series. I’d love to hear what you think of it!

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

At a young age, Shelly Campbell wanted to be an air show pilot or a pirate, possibly a dragon and definitely a writer and artist. She’s piloted a Cessna 172 through spins and stalls, and sailed up the east coast on a tall ship barque—mostly without projectile vomiting. In the end, Shelly found writing and drawing dragons to be so much easier on the stomach. Shelly writes speculative fiction ranging from grimdark fantasy, to sci-fi and horror. She’d love to hear from you.

 

http://www.shellycampbellauthorandart.com

https://twitter.com/ShellyCFineArt

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https://www.facebook.com/shellycampbellauthorandart

https://www.tiktok.com/@shellycampbellauthor

 

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GIVEAWAY 

The author will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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