Jessica A. Scott's Blog, page 5

Author Interviews

I am very excited to announce that, beginning on Friday, February 3, 2017, I will be adding a new feature to my blog: author interviews!

Every Friday, I will be posting an interview with a different author. The only rule is that they have to have at least one book currently available for sale. That way, we can talk about it, and readers can buy it!

I am very interested to learn more about my fellow authors, and I hope that being interviewed on my blog will help us all get a bit more of that elusive exposure that all authors need for success. I think it will be a great experiment, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

If you’re an author who would like to be interviewed, send me a request at interviews@jessicascottauthor.com. Just tell me a bit about yourself and your book, and if there is any date that you would prefer to have your interview published, and I will send you a set of interview questions to answer.

If you’re a reader, please feel free to comment on the interviews themselves and share your opinions, or comment on this post and suggest authors that you would like to see interviewed!

I look forward to hearing from everyone

Chase and Charlie Gets a 2nd Edition!

As most of you know, my first novel, Chase and Charlie, was originally published by a small publishing house. As most of you also know, it was not a great experience for me. I didn’t receive any help in the way of editing, promotion, publicity, or feedback, and I felt like I was totally alone in creating and marketing the book.

So, when my contract expired, I decided to embrace that “alone-ness” and re-publish the book myself!

I have always been a self-starter, and I saw the ending of my contract as a great opportunity to use the skills I learned when self-publishing Portrait of a Sunset to publish a second edition of Chase and Charlie. I did some more editing, redid the cover, and made a few other small tweaks and improvements, and now it is available on Amazon.com.

Another benefit of publishing it myself is that I was able to set the price to something that is much more reasonable for a book such as that. That way, more people can afford the book, and will hopefully be inspired to buy it!

Stay tuned for more news about both of my books, and if you’ve read them already, let me know what you think of them in the comments section!

Portrait of a Sunset is now on Wattpad!

There is no doubt about it: promoting and marketing books is the toughest part of being a writer. I have discussed this in previous posts, and it is safe to say that I was getting a bit discouraged. Today, though, I have new hope! A friend recommended that I join Wattpad, a website that lets writers share their books so that readers can read them for free. Starting this week, I will be posting one chapter of Portrait of a Sunset on Wattpad every week, and I hope you’ll check it out and read along!

Here’s the link: https://www.wattpad.com/344402913-portrait-of-a-sunset-chapter-1

But, as you already know, if you just can’t wait to read the finished product, you can always buy the paperback or ebook version on Amazon.

There’s a lot going on here today, so that’s all for now. I’ll be back with more updates soon!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Portrait of a Sunset on sale for $0.99! (November 5 – 12)

Just a quick announcement…

For one week only, the ebook version of Portrait of a Sunset will be on sale for only $0.99 on Amazon. Click here to order your copy before time runs out!

Musings on Marketing

Hello again, and happy Friday, everyone!

Portrait of a Sunset has officially launched, and it has been a busy week promoting the book. I have been asked in several interviews what the hardest part of writing is, and I would have to say it is exactly that: promoting the book once it is finished!

As an author, I LOVE the writing process. Even the stress of trying to find time to write the book and the overcoming of writer’s block is beautiful in its own way, because it is all a part of the process. What I don’t love, though, is marketing. I have never been one to “toot my own horn,” as they say, so it is hard for me to contact people and post on websites telling people to buy my book. I always come off too timid, as if they would be doing me a favor by buying my book (which they would), or as if I don’t want to inconvenience them by asking them to pay to read my work (which I don’t), as if my work isn’t important enough to deserve their attention (which is!!).

But, whether they are self-published or published through a traditional publishing house (I fall under both of these categories), in today’s world, the task of marketing falls almost completely onto the writer’s shoulders. So, I have to suck it up and hawk the book, even if it makes me feel like I am cheapening the story by turning it into something that can be sold, instead of the piece of my soul that it really is (dramatic, I know. Did I mention I’m a writer?).

So, the next few weeks will be devoted to developing a better marketing strategy. There are thousands of websites out there with tips for promoting books, and the key is to find the way that works for me, and for this particular book. For my first book, Chase and Charlie, Facebook was a fantastic marketing tool. I was able to grow my “author platform” and get lots of likes on my author page, but this doesn’t always translate into books sold (It is good for the self-esteem, though!). For Portrait, though, it is proving harder to get through to the audience I accrued, because everyone’s newsfeeds are so saturated with other things (does anyone happen know who is running in that election this year?) that my posts and links get hidden as soon as I post them.

My working theory for now is that the best strategy is one that involves both word of mouth and an online presence. I am requesting reviews from bloggers and the local newspaper in my hometown, but I also have to really start selling myself and my book when I meet people in the real world as well. Either way, it is (and I am) a work in progress, but I know that I will eventually find a way that works. Perhaps my quiet, unassuming air will work to my advantage… and if worst comes to worst, I can just buy a big box of my books and sell them on the street corner!

Stay tuned for more of my thoughts on the writing and publishing process (if you’re interested, I’m not obligating you to do anything, I swear!!), and be on the lookout for news – I have a Goodreads giveaway in the works, so one lucky person could soon win a free copy of Portrait of a Sunset!

In the meantime, if you have any writing or marketing tips or experiences to share, let me know in the comments! Or, you can watch the amazing book trailer I made here. (See? I’m getting better at this stuff already!)

Sneak Preview of Portrait of a Sunset

Only two days to go until the release of Portrait of a Sunset! Do you know what that means? It means it is the perfect time to give my readers a sneak peek at the book!

Below is the first chapter of Portrait of a Sunset. Feel free to leave comments – I’d love to know what you think of it! If you enjoy the first chapter, the full novel will be available for purchase on Amazon.com on October 28, 2016.  Stay tuned for more updates, and enjoy the excerpt!

 

PORTRAIT OF A SUNSET

By Jessica A. Scott
Chapter 1

~

When I met Casey Linderman, I was a shell of the person I used to be—or worse: a shell of the person that I thought I should have been. A disastrous summer had ripped me out of my comfortably mediocre life as an artist in training and had thrust me into a world where I no longer belonged, a world in which I was completely, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

The worst part was, I was beginning to like it that way.

That was why, when I took a seat next to Casey in the first of many, many hospital-mandated group therapy sessions in the basement of the local YMCA, I didn’t say a word. To my satisfaction, he didn’t say one either.

I studied my worn-out tennis shoes as the other group members trickled into the oddly bright, strangely sanitary-smelling room. With weary eyes, I traced my dusty, fraying shoelaces as they looped around each other and formed a haphazard, off-white bow before coming to rest atop the graying canvas of the once-white sneaker.

Interesting.

I shifted to a less-slouchy position in my cold metal chair and checked my watch.

Five to seven. Therapy would be starting any minute. My stomach bubbled with nerves as I closed my eyes, trying to figure out how a girl like me had ended up in a place like that.

I took a deep breath and let it out. I could hear muttering around me as other people filled in the remaining empty seats. I tuned them out as I continued to try to calm down.

Just breathe, Clara, I told myself, you can do this.

I took another breath, focusing on the glow of the fluorescent lights coming through my heavy eyelids. I hadn’t slept for three days. Subsequently, I began to drift off, my head drooping down onto my chest.

That’s when the waves began to wash over me, softly at first, but steadily growing in power and succession until all at once they were crashing into me, stealing my breath as I fought the urge to scream. I could just see the sun, that false idol of hope and happiness, impossibly bright as it stared down at me dispassionately and I sank deeper and deeper into the depths of the darkening water.

I awoke with a jerk, stomping my foot and startling Casey, but no one else.

“Sorry,” I muttered, wiping my eyes. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find them wet with the beginnings of what was sure to have been a veritable torrent of tears, as per usual.

Casey grunted wordlessly in reply.

I decided to study his shoes for a while. Being a person who carefully avoided eye contact on most occasions, I learned a lot about people from their shoes. Take nurses, for example. On average, nurses wear sensible but stylish tennis shoes that give them the mobility to get where they are needed fast, but also afford them the opportunity to express their own individuality in terms of color and style. The nurses that work in pediatrics and love babies and puppies and all other cute, precious things usually wear pink-accented shoes, as well as their hearts on their sleeves. The serious, no-nonsense nurses in the Intensive Care Unit wear black tennis shoes to show that, whatever they’re doing, they give it their all, and there will be no fooling around. Priests also wear black sneakers to display their commitment to their vows of poverty and modesty, and perhaps as a reference to the darker side of humanity that even a man of God must possess. Funeral directors wear shiny, impersonal, black loafers to signify that they do not want to share in your pain or be given any information about your plight because they have already heard it all before.

By that point in my life, I was an expert at shoe psychology. I could learn everything I needed to know about a person before I ever looked up at their face. Just by glancing at their footwear, I could tell who they were and where they were going—and how that would affect me.

Casey’s shoes, though, were a complete enigma. They were huge, muddy, black, combat-style boots with thick soles and a good arch—great for walking and motorcycling and other general bad-assery. However, looped tight around one of the flat, black shoelaces on his boat-sized right boot was a single plastic purple flower on a string that looked as if it had come off a little girl’s hair barrette.

Interesting.

“Welcome, everyone,” called a gratingly cheerful voice from the front of the room. Reluctantly, I put my shoe-study on hold and looked up to see the grief counselor enter the room, closing the door behind him as he trapped us all in that brightly lit, white-walled lobby of hell.

He looked just as I thought he would: annoying.

Everything about him screamed “LOVE ME!”; from his green and black checkered sweater vest and matching chartreuse bowtie to his lime-colored dress shirt and fabulous, neon-green converse sneakers. His brown hair was parted on the left with a severe crease, and flecks of grey were just beginning to crop up around his temples, where I half-expected to see the remnants of some white clown make-up. He practically danced over to sit across from me in the circle of chairs, and picked up a clipboard from the floor under his seat, crossing his legs daintily.

“I’m so glad that you’re all here,” he said, nearly bursting the faux buttons on his sweater vest in his enthusiasm. “Welcome to the first official meeting of the Siblings of Homicide Victims Therapy Group!”

I winced. Not only had the ridiculously-perky therapist just reminded me of all that I had lost, but he had said those words so flippantly, so carelessly, as if they were just words and meant nothing.

But of course they didn’t, really. Not to him, anyway.

Casey shifted uncomfortably in the chair to my left and I knew that I wasn’t the only one who had been stung.

“Well, as you know,” the counselor continued, “I am Doctor Jay Hartman, but you can just call me Doctor Jay. Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves, what do you say?”

No one said anything.

I took a look around the room at the twelve other zombie-like figures and was mildly surprised to find that I was not the only one with dark circles under my red, watery eyes, and I was not the only one who thought that “Dr. Jay” was turning out to be a colossal douche.

“Who wants to go first?” the “doctor” asked, beaming expectantly at each of us in turn. One by one, the group members’ weary, bloodshot eyes dropped to the floor, hiding their pale, haggard faces from the counselor’s view.

“Aww, a little shy, are we?” Jay asked, a subtle note of impatience coloring his effeminate voice. When no one replied, he continued, “Okay then, how about this: you all break into groups of two—”

My stomach sank. I hated groups of any size.

“—and interview each other? No topic is off limits. Remember, we’re here to share our feelings!”

I felt like I might vomit. I barely acknowledged my feelings myself; I sure as hell wasn’t ready to share them with anyone else. I closed my eyes again and took a deep breath. Like clockwork, the waves began to ebb and flow anew, and I wrenched my eyes back open.

“Do you want to be my partner?” I asked Casey’s shoes, my voice rough as my panic slowly subsided.

He grunted again.

Not sure if that grunt meant yes or no, I glanced up and finally got my first real look at the man-mountain that was Casey Linderman. His broad, muscular shoulders were slumped in his blue flannel shirt, a posture that should have made him seem less like a giant, but somehow made him look even more gargantuan, making me wonder how the spindly metal chair beneath him could possibly be supporting his weight.

He had to have been at least six foot five, standing, and easily weighed 300 pounds or more, every pound of which appeared to be solid muscle. He looked too big to be allowed, as if he were some sort of mythical giant that, for whatever reason, had condescended to take a break from his normal routine of skull-crushing and monster-stomping to climb down his beanstalk and fraternize with us mere, grief-stricken mortals here on Earth.

I realized that my mouth was hanging open as I gazed up at his dark-complected face. His black, shaggy hair and five o’clock shadow made him seem all the more dangerous, but neither of those things could compare to his eyes. His fierce, haunted, blazing brown eyes glared down at me, as if they were trying to bore into my brain, as if he were challenging me to comment on his size like I am sure so many others had before.

I politely declined that challenge.

“I…I’m Clara Halpert,” I stuttered, looking back down at my own weathered shoes.

“Casey Linderman,” he rumbled in reply. His voice was so deep that I could feel my chair vibrate beneath me when he spoke.

“Come on, guys!” Jay cawed over the muted din, “You have to talk! Why else would you be here? Now turn your chairs to face each other and let’s get started!”

Suppressing a heavy sigh, I stood up and turned my chair to face Casey, who did the same.

“Um…I don’t know what to say,” I admitted quietly, my face flushing as I looked down at my hands. Eye contact had been difficult for me all of my life, but never more so than after the events of that summer.

“Me neither,” Casey replied, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

After a brief inner-struggle with shyness, I looked up to meet his eyes again and was surprised to see that the giant looked just as nervous as I felt.

Interesting.

“Well, I guess I could ask you how old you are,” I muttered, trying to sound off-handed.

“Twenty-three,” he said shortly, “You?”

“Twenty. Do you go to school?”

“Not anymore. You?”

“Not really,” I replied vaguely.

My palms were beginning to sweat. Already we were getting too close to the heart of the issue.

“Do you have a job?” I asked, my voice much too loud.

It was his turn to get uncomfortable. For some reason I couldn’t discern, he began to fidget with the cuffs of his sleeves. “Um…not really, anymore.”

I nodded, ignoring the fact that his answer was just as vague as the one I had given.

“Okay, guys,” Jay said, barely having to raise his voice to be louder than the group, “now that you’re all warmed up, I want you to tell your partner what brings you here to this group meeting tonight. I know it’s hard, but the first step to overcoming your grief is to share it with someone else.”

I glared at him.

Why was it that the most logical, poignant thing he’d said all night was exactly the thing that I least wanted to hear?

Casey cleared his throat again, and the people around us quietly began to share their deeply repressed pain with their partners. I looked up at Casey, panicking. The room began to spin as I was overcome with nausea.

“Do…you wanna go first?” Casey asked, looking a bit alarmed by my trembling and sweating as I hurtled toward a full-blown anxiety attack.

I shook my head. “I think I—”

“Hey, guys!” Jay crowed right in my ear. Casey and I both jumped. “I don’t hear any sharing yet!”

“We’re getting to it,” Casey said, a bit brusquely.

“Well, how about you go first, little lady?” Jay suggested, picking up a strand of my long, curly hair and tossing it playfully back over my shoulder.

I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t speak. My throat was tight and my stomach was squirming as if I’d just eaten a bucket full of worms. The room was spinning and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t talk about this, not yet. Not here. Not with Jay’s strangely moist breath in my face.

“Go on,” said Jay’s muffled voice in my ear, “look your partner in the eye and tell him what you’re feeling inside.”

After trying and failing to catch my breath, I did as that douchebag counselor instructed. I stared right up into Casey’s wide, fearful eyes and said, “I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

With that, I slumped over and vomited spectacularly, setting Dr. Jay’s lovely lime-green sneakers adrift in a sea of sick.

“Oh! My! GOD!!” he shrieked, in the voice of an eight-year-old girl.

He finally leapt out of the way, but I could not stop painting the floor with what little I had eaten over the past twenty-four hours—and then some. My face grew hot and sweaty as I retched, my hair swinging dangerously close to the fountain of vomit.

Then, suddenly, I felt a rush of cool air as someone swept my long, loose curls out of the danger zone and gathered them up, holding them together at the nape of my neck as they rested their other hand on the small of my back. No one had touched me so tenderly in months, and no stranger had ever been that thoughtful toward me.

The surprise I felt must have overridden my brain’s panicked instructions to my heaving stomach for, after what had felt like ten minutes, I was finally able to stop puking and come up for air. Too exhausted to feel embarrassed, I wiped my stinging lips on my jacket sleeve and sat up to face the rest of the group.

I had expected to see thirteen pairs of wide eyes staring at me in disgust, but instead saw only a haphazard half circle of empty chairs. I wiped my streaming eyes and turned, with some trepidation, to see who, if anyone, was still holding my hair.

It was Casey.

Giant, awkward, scary Casey was holding my hair and not looking disgusted at all. If I had been capable of feeling love at that moment, I would surely have fallen in love with him on the spot.

“Thanks,” I said thickly, pulling a ponytail holder from my skinny wrist and gingerly taking my hair back from him.

He shrugged.

“Where did everyone else go?” I asked, forgetting to stare at his feet instead of his face.

“Dr. Jay ran out as soon as your puke hit his shoes,” Casey said in a baritone monotone, “and everyone else took that to mean that Group was over.”

I nodded, resting my aching forehead on my hand as I tried not to look at the mess I had made on the white linoleum floor. Then a thought swam into my foggy brain, and I turned back to Casey.

“Why didn’t you leave, too?” I asked, suspicious.

He shrugged again, still fighting to pull the cuffs of his stubborn sleeves down over his own wrists. “I didn’t have anywhere else to be just then.”

 

Thanks for reading! Be sure to get your copy of Portrait of a Sunset on Friday, October 28th at Amazon.com!

Bad Moon Rising Interview

Hello again!

There has been a flurry of activity lately in terms of news and publicity for both of my novels! Today, I was interviewed by Teri Polen as a part of the Bad Moon Rising interview series on her Books and Such blog. I particularly liked the questions on this interview – hopefully you will too! Below, you can read the interview in its entirety, or you can click here to see it on its original page.






October 18, 2016
#BadMoonRising Day 18 Chase and Charlie by Jessica A. Scott #IndieAuthor #thriller @JessicaAScott89

The month is flying by – we’re already on Day 18 – and today we welcome Jessica A. Scott!  Talk about building your readership – she’s been writing since the age of 3 and had fans of her work since first grade.

Charlie loves Chase.

He’s not just her brother, he’s her best friend. He’s her confidant, her moral compass, her partner  in quirky movie fandom: he’s everything she wishes she could be…until he gets framed for  murder. When a man is killed and Chase is left holding the murder weapon, he’s deemed  “criminally insane” and sent to the ominous Gray’ Institute of Mental Health. Desperate for  answers, Charlie infiltrates the asylum with the help of a kind young custodian and soon  discovers that nothing-and no one-is as it seems.

Armed with nothing but her wits, her guts, and her unflagging loyalty, Charlie must fight her  way through a nightmarish maze of lies and manipulation to expose, not just the truth about her  brother, but a much darker, much more sinister truth about the crime he didn’t commit, and the  institution that has no right to hold him.

What’s the first story you ever wrote?

I’m pretty sure that I came out of the womb writing stories, but the first one I really remember writing was for a Young Author’s contest in first grade. The title was “Toby and Tiger Lilly,” and it was about the adventures of a white German Shepherd and a white tiger, based on my family dog and my favorite stuffed animal (Toby and Tiger Lilly, respectively). The two could talk, and were best friends that traveled around and did great things (I think at one point they even went to outer space). I even wrote sequels! The class loved it, and I won the Young Author’s contest for several years running. Even now, I think that was one of my favorite stories to write.

Which fictional character would you most like to meet and have a drink with?

Odd Thomas from Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series. I love his character because, even though he has the power to see dead people and has to spend a lot of his time fighting against some really dark things, he is still funny and personable and fun to read. I love “everyman” characters like that.

In the spirit of Halloween, what scares you?

Public speaking. (Good thing this is a written interview!) But in the spirit of Halloween, I don’t like the dark too much either. There are too many things possibly lurking in there…

Favorite hero and villain in a book/movie?

Hmm… that’s tough. My favorites change often, depending on which book I’m reading or which movie I’m watching at the time. However, my favorite heroes tend to be the ones who keep trying even when everything is going against them, and never lose hope that they will win in the end. My favorite villains are the complex ones, who remind us that good and evil aren’t black and white. I love villains who have a good reason for being evil, who started off as good people, but then something happened to them that was terrible, and their entire life shifted because of it. That kind of villain is more human and believable, and I think that is what makes them so interesting to me.

What do you consider the hardest part of writing?

I think that the hardest part of writing is finding the time to write. If you live with other people and/or have a job and/or other responsibilities, it is very difficult to carve out a big enough chunk of time to really get lost in what you’re writing, which is key in writing a good story. In my heart, writing is always the number one priority, but life often has other plans, so I have to always make sure I find a balance.

What are you working on now?

I’m just finishing up writing another novel now, but I don’t usually talk about my work until it is completely finished and ready to be read. But I can talk about my second book, a romantic suspense novel titled Portrait of a Sunset, which will be published at the end of October! It is about an artist named Clara whose sister is brutally murdered. While trying to come to terms with her death (as well as her own role in it), Clara meets a man named Casey, who has his own dark, tragic past to deal with. Together, they work to try to become whole again, but it isn’t so easy. No matter how hard they try, they just cannot escape the pasts that haunt them. While Clara’s traumatic memories and overwhelming anxiety threaten to drown her, Casey’s dark past manifests itself in a much more corporeal, much more lethal way.

Will they ever be able to extricate themselves from the past and move on? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Author bio

Jessica A. Scott is a University of Louisville graduate with degrees in English and Humanities, the latter of which includes concentrations in Literature, Linguistics, and Classical and Modern Languages.

She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she has been writing avidly since the age of three. Her genre interests include thrillers, romantic suspense, and mystery. Her debut novel, Chase and Charlie, was published by Black Rose Writing on May 28, 2015.

Where to find Jessica

 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessica.a.scott.author

 Twitter: https://twitter.com/JessicaAScott89

 Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14022075.Jessica_A_Scott

 Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Jessica-A.-Scott/e/B00YL3VM90?ref_=pe_1724030_132998060

Buy links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Chase-Charlie-Jessica-Scott/dp/1612965296/

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chase-and-charlie-jessica-a-scott/1122022055?ean=9781612965291

Black Rose Writing: http://www.blackrosewriting.com/suspensethriller/chase-and-charlie

Drumroll, Please…

Hello everyone! Long time, no see, I know. But I have some big news that might make it easier to forgive me for my absence these past few months…

I am publishing my second book!

In a little less than two weeks, I will be publishing Portrait of a Sunset, the first and arguably the best novel that I have written (not to mention the one that is closest to my heart). A few years ago, I got publishing deal for this book, and it seemed like things were going great…until the publisher wanted me to change the very things that made my book MY book. They wanted me to change the way the main character spoke, and change her personality, just for the sake of making the book sound more like the other books they had published, but I couldn’t do it. Even if it meant that I wouldn’t achieve my dream of being a published author (Chase and Charlie was still in the “writing” phase at this time), I had to back out of the deal, because Clara, my main character, means a lot to me, and I couldn’t sacrifice her story just for the sake of seeing my name in print.

So, I broke the contract, and the book went back into my file cabinet…until a few months ago, when I decided that the time has come to share it with the world. I strongly believe in this book, and I know that it deserves to be in print, so I am going to publish it myself on Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing.

Self-publishing might not be the “traditional ” route according to some writers and readers, but I believe in this book – and in myself – enough to give it a try. It has already been a long, hard journey, and it is only just getting started. But I hope you’ll come along on that journey with me, and check out Portrait of a Sunset when it’s released on October 28, 2016.

Until then, here is a sneak peak at the cover:

From now on, I will be more active on this blog, as well as on other social media outlets. Later this week, I will be posting an interview I did for the Books and Such blog, as well as a first-hand account of my experience of self-publishing. In the meantime, enjoy a peek at the back cover summary as well!

“When I met Casey Linderman, I was a shell of the person I used to be—or worse: the shell of the person I thought I should have been…”
For Clara Halpert, an artist at heart, life is full of color and vivacity—until her older sister Charlotte is brutally murdered. With her family broken, her dreams shattered, and her creativity smothered by the overwhelming weight of grief and guilt, Clara’s once-bright, once-colorful future is quickly fading to grey.
Now tasked with completing a round of hospital-mandated group therapy sessions at the local YMCA, Clara has hit rock bottom. She has resigned herself to feeling lost and lonely forever…
Until she meets Casey Linderman.
Like her, Casey has more than his own fair share of dark secrets and terrible regrets to live with, but that doesn’t stop him from making Clara feel something that she hasn’t felt for a long time: hope.
Together, the two must find a way to navigate themselves (and each other) through the maze of their inner darkness and back to the light of sanity and completeness. No matter how hard Clara and Casey try to move on, however, they can never completely outrun the pasts that define them, the pasts that still haunt them both physically and emotionally. While Clara’s traumatic memories and overwhelming anxiety threaten to drown her, Casey’s dark history manifests itself in a much more corporeal, much more lethal way.
Can these two broken people find a way to escape the pasts that cripple them and become whole again? Or will taking a risk and opening themselves up to one another only manage to hurt them even more?

Chase and Charlie Sneak Preview

Good morning, everyone! As some of you may know, I recently reached 100 likes on my Facebook author page. In celebration of this, I am posting the first two chapters of Chase and Charlie. Your support means more to me than you know, and I hope you know how much I appreciate it.

So, without any further ado, here is your free sneak peak at Chase and Charlie. Enjoy!

Chase and Charlie

By Jessica A. Scott

1

My big brother is awesome.

Sure, brothers and sisters are supposed to fight all the time, but Chase and I never have (Don’t worry, my parents don’t understand it either). Chase is two years older than me and, despite his enormity (he’s 6’6” and 310 pounds) and my petite-ness (I’m only 5’5”), a lot of people mistake us for twins, possibly because we do everything together. We go places together, we watch movies together, we finish each other’s sentences, we read each other’s minds…well, sort of. In our conversations, there’s never a “Chase” without a “Charlie,” never a “him” without an “me” right after it; we’re so close that my mom says we’re basically one soul living in two bodies.

Basically, Chase is my best friend—which is why I had to try to clear his name when he was framed for murder.

It happened at the movie theater, of all places. Chase and I had gone to see the new Star Trek flick two nights before his college graduation. It was supposed to be our last hurrah—our symbolic last night of fun before he had to go off and join the adults in the “real world,” where he had already landed an internship as a physical therapist at the YMCA. To start our night off with a bang, we had gone to Chuck-E-Cheese, where we had won enough tickets to combine and exchange for an enormous, life-size Chuck-E-Cheese doll and a handful of disapproving looks from the younger kids’ parents. Next came the movie (we left Chuck waiting in the passenger’s seat of the car to guard our leftover pizza) and after that, we had planned to go to an all-night mini-golf course, where we were going to play until one of us got a hole in one (which probably never would have happened, due to my appalling lack of coordination and the fact that Chase’s hands made the putter look like a Barbie doll accessory).

Our night was supposed to be epic. Instead, it was epically awful.

“Ugh, I hate previews,” Chase groaned as we filed into two seats toward the middle of the theater.

“What, you don’t like movies about talking dogs?” I asked, plopping down in my seat and pouring my box of Snocaps into our gigantic communal bucket of popcorn.

“No, I just don’t want to see all of the funny parts of a movie in the trailer.” He emptied his box of Sour Patch Kids into the mix as well. “Half the time, the movie they’re advertising only has about three funny parts in it altogether, so they show those in the previews to market it as a comedy and get you hooked—”

“—then you pay to see the movie, expecting it to be hilarious, but it’s actually some dramedy about a girl who gets impregnated by some dude she met in a club,” I finished.

“Exactly.”

We had had this conversation before, many times. Chase and I loved movies. We had seen every movie that had come to that theater since we were ten years old, even if we had had to scrape together all of our birthday money or do extra chores around the house to finance our trip. When we weren’t at the real cinema, we’d watch movies at home on cable or DVD, or on one of the hundreds of old VHS tapes our Grandpa Max had left us when he died. Films were our passion, and just one of the many things that brought us together when that pesky “real world” kept threatening to pull us apart.

The lights dimmed a bit lower as the more impressive trailers began to play, reducing the visibility of the theater to “can barely see my hand in front of my face” levels. I leaned back in my seat and shuffled my feet to unstick my sneakers from the floor, then I fearlessly plunged my hand down into our trademark cesspool of movie theater snackage.

“Ugh.” I grimaced as my hand squelched against the soggy popcorn. “We put way too much butter in this.” I took my hand back out to show it to Chase and we both watched as big, fat teardrops of golden butter glinted in the light from the cartoon movie preview on the screen and splashed back down into the paper bucket.

“I’ll run and get some napkins,” Chase sighed, rolling his eyes as he squished his extra-large soft drink into his cup holder and stood up.

“What am I supposed to do while I wait?” I asked, waving my dripping hand at him.

“Just stick your hand back in there and mix the butter in with the rest of the popcorn,” he said, shoving my hand back into the soggy mess. “It’s already all gross anyway.”

“Thanks.” I smirked.

He stuck out his tongue at me in reply, then began his slow, hulking, disruptive shuffle to the end of the row of seats. A few of the Trekkies behind us shouted angrily that he was blocking their view of the whole screen (which, admittedly, he probably was), but he was eventually able to sidle past everyone to the end of the aisle and down the carpeted stairs.

I did as Chase suggested and stirred the popcorn, mixing in the butter with the melting Snocaps. Half-drooling with anticipation of its gooey goodness, I grabbed an enormous handful of greasy popcorn, oozing chocolate, and sticky Sour Patch Kids. Just as I was about to shove the delicious disaster into my salivating mouth, the lights went out completely, plunging the theater into complete darkness.

I dropped my popcorn back into the tub.

It was normal for the house lights to go down at the start of a movie, but the movie wasn’t playing. The screen was just as pitch black as the rest of the theater, and I couldn’t even make out the shape of my sticky hand anymore when I waved it in front of my face.

All around me, people began to shift in their seats, whispering nervously to each other, as if the darkness imposed some sort of volume limit.

“What’s going on?” A man yelled from behind me, sounding oddly panicked (Apparently he didn’t know about the volume limit).

“Yeah, where’s the movie?” called a gruff-sounding woman toward the front of the room.

“Chase?” I squeaked, completely inside the noise parameters. It was a little known fact (except to Chase, of course) that I was—and am, to this day—deathly afraid of the dark. It seems irrational, yes—until you consider what kind of things could be lurking in said darkness, especially in a shadowy movie theater full of possible perverts and rapists. “Chase?” I whispered again, my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I was sure that the Trekkies behind me could hear it.

Slowly, people started to remember that they all had cell phones. Soon, the theater was filled with tiny, floating squares of blue light, all bouncing toward the exit. It didn’t help me see any better, however; it only dazzled me, stinging my eyes and reminding me of a swarm of lightning bugs bobbing across an empty, black abyss.

Suddenly, there came the sound of a scuffle from up by the screen.

The quadrilateral fireflies flocked in that direction as I rooted myself to my chair, cowering in my fear of nothing and straining to keep myself from hearing what was going on.

“Help!” a muffled male voice cried out, as most of the fireflies reached the end of their thirty-second lifespan and flickered out. There was a loud grunt and a clang, then the sickening, splattering sound of a pumpkin being smashed to pieces across the carpeted floor.

Several people screamed, but I didn’t know why.

Who cares? I thought. It was just a pumpkin!

Wasn’t it?

My mind was too alert, too many thoughts were racing through my brain for me to figure out what was really happening, and the bright, burning, blistering cell phone lights couldn’t even begin to penetrate the cloying, suffocating darkness around me. There was more grunting, more thumping, more cracking, more screaming. Just as one last, loud, agonized moan reached my ears, the lights came back up, this time to their full brightness.

Everyone gasped.

All of the people in front of me were staring at the platform beneath the screen, covering their mouths in horror and disgust. Some were crying, others were stoic and emotionless as they stared ahead of them with blank faces, as if they were in shock. One of the Trekkies behind me stumbled to the aisle and threw up.

I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t want to see anything. I didn’t know why, but I was sure that my sense of foreboding, for once, should be heeded, and that I should not, under any circumstances, look at the platform below. Every neuron in my brain was telling me to just stay seated, to just wait, to just sit still and stay quiet until my big brother came back to get me.

But I was standing up.

Against my will, my numb, tingly body brought me to my feet, to stand atop my jelly-legs.

I took a deep breath and looked down at the platform.

I felt the popcorn bucket fall to the ground, brushing wetly against my pant leg, as I met Chase’s eyes beneath the blank white screen.

It was him. He had been the one grunting, the one groaning, the one smashing the pumpkin (it was a pumpkin, right?). He was what everyone had heard, what everyone was gaping at with a mixture of fear and anger.

He was holding a bat. A shiny, silver, aluminum baseball bat covered in something that not even my delusional brain could confuse with pumpkin guts.

“Don’t look, Charlotte,” Chase plead, in a whisper that carried to me through the now-silent theater as well as if he had shouted it. “Please, don’t look.”

But I looked.

I looked at his red-stained clothes, at his wide, panicked brown eyes staring out at me from the depths of his pallid, blood-streaked face. I looked at the bloody bat in his hand. I looked at his once-white, now-crimson tennis shoes. Most of all, though, I looked at the battered, bleeding, broken body of the man that lay on the floor at his feet—the man that everyone in that theater knew had just been killed by my big brother.

That’s when I fainted.

2

I had never fainted in my life, but I fainted then, and I fainted hard. I fainted so hard that I didn’t even know where I was when I woke up…probably because where I woke up was nowhere near where I had passed out.

“Chase?’ I muttered as I came to, unsticking my fuzzy tongue from the roof of my dry, cottony mouth as I squinted around at the lobby of what appeared to be a police station. My head was in my mother’s lap (I could tell it was her because, even in the face of adversity, she still smelled like warm chocolate chip cookies and laundry detergent), and police officers swarmed around us like busy worker bees, fluttering their paperwork wings and buzzing questions at her so sharply that they physically stung her.

“Mrs. Chapman, has your son ever physically assaulted you or your daughter?” one of the officers demanded, his pen suspended over a clipboard as he stood in front of her, his belt buckle just even with my nose.

“Of course not!” Mom exclaimed, her hand flying up to her neck to touch the crucifix necklace that my dad had given her when they were teenagers. From the position I was lying in (face up, staring at the bottom of her chin), I could see that her jaw was clenched in distress, and her long, pale fingers were trembling.

Mom had always been fragile. She had been sick a lot as a kid, and now she rarely left the house for fear of catching another debilitating illness. Her hermit-esque lifestyle had never really bothered me—having her home meant that I was never lacking for a female confidant or a plate of warm brownies—but it bothered Chase. While Dad treated Mom like she was a tiny glass butterfly that could be shattered by the slightest jostle or raised voice, Chase thought that Mom should get out into the world and experience things.

Somehow, though, I don’t think that a murder investigation was exactly what he had in mind.

“Chase has never assaulted anyone,” I grunted, sitting up. Mom grabbed my shoulders as I swayed, wincing as the blood rushed to my head so fast that it felt as if someone was hitting me in the head with a baseball bat.

Oops. Poor choice of words.

Just then, there was a scuffle and a loud, clinking shuffle of chained feet as Chase was dragged roughly into the police station. My mother gasped, covering her mouth with her porcelain fingers like a scandalized woman in a black and white movie.

I felt my own chest constrict with shock and horror as I got a closer look at my big brother, shackled between two rough-looking cops like a dangerous, Hannibal Lecter-like criminal. All he was missing was the leather mask. His white polo shirt was stained with dark, blackish-purple blood and his well-worn jeans still dripped with the stuff. Bits and pieces of bone and flesh and God knows what else peppered his pant legs and crunched beneath his feet as he crossed the shiny white linoleum floor, his sneakers making a sloppy squelch with every clanking step he took. His bare arms were coated in chunky, sticky-looking clumps of gummy, jelly-like fluid that glittered and glistened beneath the bright fluorescent lights, and the skin on his face looked as if it had been airbrushed with maroon spray paint, with specks of dark blood scattered across his cheeks like rusty red freckles.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

His eyes, his once-wide, once-kind, once-innocent, brown eyes were wild and round, filled with some sort of odd, disconnected look that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Where…where are you taking him?” I stammered, getting to my feet. Mom clutched the side seam of my jeans as if to steady me, but in reality she was probably afraid that I would do something stupid (which, admittedly, would not have been out of character).

“Interrogation room,” the cop to Chase’s right informed me, his voice curt and his thin, brown lips barely moving. His dark eyes stared straight ahead, not looking at me, as if he were afraid that seeing the humanity in me would lessen the evil he needed to see in my brother.

“Right now?” I asked, tasting bile. “Doesn’t he need to see a lawyer first? Or make a phone call?”

“He doesn’t deserve a phone call,” snarled the other cop, a young, clean-shaven rube with the face of a twelve-year-old combatting a nasty stomach virus.

“Watch it, Lieutenant,” snapped his older, wiser, wearier-looking counterpart.

“Hey,” I called, helplessly, as they kept walking, passing us now. “Hey, that’s my brother!”

Chase hadn’t looked at me before, but he looked at me then. His big, empty brown eyes focused on me for a moment, piercing me with a strange sort of strangled intensity, communicating a thousand desperate, wordless messages I couldn’t even begin to decode.

“Can I just… can I just talk to him for one second?” I begged, blinking furiously as they just kept on walking, dragging my brother farther and farther away from me.

“Charlotte,” my mother whispered, her voice choked with tears, “Sit down here and—”

“NO!” I shouted, growing more and more frantic with each clink of the chain and each squelchy, squeaky footfall.

“Ma’am, we need you to calm down,” the lieutenant called over his shoulder, throwing me a dispassionate smirk that only frightened me further.

I needed to see my brother. I needed to hug him, to touch him, to tell him that everything would be alright. I needed to make that distant, tortured look in his eyes go away, and I needed to tell him that I loved him and that I knew he hadn’t killed anyone, no matter how bad it looked or sounded to everyone else.

But they just kept walking.

The blue-uniformed officers led him through the lobby to a door on the other side. Suddenly, inexplicably, my heart filled with dread and a deep, dark, soul-shattering fear. Somehow I knew that, once he passed through that doorway, once he crossed over that threshold to meet whatever lay on the other side, the brother I knew would be gone, never to be seen again. And I would be left there alone, with no one to look out for me.

Before I knew what I was doing, I broke free of my mother’s limp, feeble grasp and took off running, bounding across the bright, blood-slick floor, dodging desks and chairs and trashcans and startling all of the off-duty cops. I was just sliding up to Chase when someone finally gave a shout to announce my presence.

The two policemen holding my brother flinched in unison, turning around just as I jumped in front of Chase and leapt up to throw my skinny, shaking arms around his neck.

“I know you didn’t do it!” I cried, hot, burning tears streaming down my face as I hugged him tight, praying that it wouldn’t be the last time.

“Charlie, get down,” Chase said gently, his deep voice thick with pain as it rumbled through my chest cavity.

“NO!” I yelled again, as one of the cops grabbed me around the middle and tried to yank me off him. I leaned my head back to meet Chase’s eyes, and was heartened to see that, though full of anguish, they were also full of life now, as that horrible hollowness began to ebb. “Chase, I need you to know that I believe in you!”

I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I knew that, in that moment, there was nothing in the world more important than for him to know that someone, somewhere, still trusted him, still looked up to him, still had complete and utter faith in him and everything that he did.

Chase’s eyes softened as they filled with affection and the same fond, brotherly pride I had seen in them so many times before.

“I know you do, Charlie,” he murmured, a ghost of a smile pulling at his lips.

Reassured, I nodded as I returned his semi-smile. Then, with a final squeeze of his big neck and a kiss on his blood-spattered cheek, I let go, allowing the pissy young lieutenant to haul me away.

 

OFFICIAL CHASE AND CHARLIE BOOK TRAILER!!

Good afternoon!

A  few months ago, one of the PR representatives from Black Rose Writing suggested that a good way to build hype and interest in my book would be to make a video trailer. At first, I admit that I scoffed at this idea–mostly because I didn’t have the money to hire actors to be in it, etc.

But recently, I thought about it some more, and I realized that I could make a perfectly nice, creepy, suspenseful trailer using nothing but some spooky music, some quotes from the book, and a few persuasive sounding lines. So, using my trusty Powerpoint Presentation-making skills from my school days, I came up with what I think is a pretty respectable ad for Chase and Charlie. Hopefully it will inspire people to share it, and convince a new crop of readers to check out the book!

So now, without any further ado, I present to you, the official book trailer for Chase and Charlie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbdkVxFjxmk

Enjoy! (And as always, let me know what you think of it!)