ThirstGenres: YA Paranormal Romance; Dark Fantasy; Horror
Length: 240+ Pages with Photographs
Vampires, Demons & Ghosts.
Welcome to STARKFIELD ACADEMY.
~ Kira Sutherland ~After a near fatal accident (and getting cheated on by her 'boyfriend'), and beating up the lead cheerleader (with whom the boyfriend cheated...), and being labeled as having 'issues' in her school because she, uhm, sees ghosts, Kira is left with two choices:1. Continue her 'therapy' (where she's told the ghost is a hallucination and also gets her legs ogled too often...)Or2. Go to Starkfield Academy, a boarding school for "Crazies and Convicts" (as the social media sites call them.)She chooses the latter...~ Cory Rand ~Cory Rand has not had an easy life. His mother died in a car accident when he was twelve, and so did his mother's best friend...sort of. You see, Janice made a promise to take care of Cory just before she died, and so she lingers. Undead. A ghost that watches out for him.Brought up in an abusive home, Cory quickly falls into a life of disreputable behavior. After his third offense (which was prompted by a girl, as usual - he has a weakness) he's left with two choices:1. Be tried as an adult and share a cell with a guy named Bubba (he thinks...)Or2. Go to Starkfield Academy, which Cory is pretty sure is run by vampires. But, hey, at least he'll get an education.He chooses the latter...It's at Starkfield that Kira meets Cory Rand, a boy with an insatiable Rage who sees ghosts, too. As well as other things, other things from his past, things that confuse him, things like fire and witches and demons.Things he's always ignored.Until now.
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**Excerpt**
(Exclusive)
-4-
The Buddy
I stare at the gray door that’s going to be my room for the next two years, minus school breaks.
It’s ajar.
I push it slightly and it creaks open.
I’m not sure why I’m being so quiet. The whole building is quiet. Was it this quiet when Ms. Drake gave me the tour?
I’m about to swing the door fully open...when something hits it with a thud.
My heart stops.
My hand jumps off the surface.
I hear my own breathing and suddenly the hallway is too dark, too close.
I’m about to step back when —
“Elliot, get the hell out of my room or I’ll mess you up. I told you I’m not interested in you anymore! GET OUT! I hate you! Hate you! Hate you!”
I can’t help but smile.
Elliot?
“Uhm, hello?”
“What?” the angry girl behind the door says.
I hear fumbling, then the sound of something heavy falling to the ground. The thump-thump-thump of feet against it.
Two little hands curl around the door and yank it open.
Behind it stands an incredibly beautiful (albeit, incredibly large), short girl with gorgeous curls of purple-highlighted hair and red-rimmed eyes. Her irises are a mesmerizing green. “Oh. My. God. I am so sorry!”
This must be Brenda — Brenda the Buddy.
“Hi,” I say.
“Oh, God.”
“It’s okay. You must be my roommate.”
“Oh, crap.”
“Relax. I’m Kira.”
“Oh, man, I can’t believe I just threw my shoe at you.”
Her shoe? I look down at the floor, and there it is. A small, lacy, flat black shoe. “Ah, so that’s what hit the door.”
“Oh, God.”
I extend my hand to her and she just stares at it, her own hand over her mouth. “It’s just that I thought you were someone else. And — ”
“Elliot?”
“You know him?”
“No, you called out his name.”
And then her face goes red, her one hand (the one not covering her mouth) tightens into a fist. She storms to her bed, just stands there. “He’s such an asshole.”
I like this girl.
“I thought boys weren’t allowed in dorm rooms?”
She swirls to face me. “Oh, please. Like they could ever enforce that rule. And the amount of tongue I see flying around in the commons means they don’t care about that one either. Long — Miss Long, she runs the girls’ dorms — she turns a blind eye.”
Okay, so it seems there are two sets of rules in Starkfield: The Official Rules, and the Actual Rules.
Actual Rule Number One? Boys are allowed in dorm rooms.
“Wanna tell me about it? About this...Elliot?”
“Do I!”
She falls back onto her bed and it rocks. I guess my bed will be the one on the right. The wall behind Brenda’s bed is plastered with pictures of men with tattoos and men with tattoos and...men with tattoos. “Urgh,” she cries. She fists her hands into her pink dress and growls at the ceiling.
“Okay, so I’m fat. Duh. Well done. Congratulations, dimwit. But yeah, lotsa guys find me attractive. I’m well-endowed, y’know.” She squeezes her arms to push out her breasts. “So anyway, this Elliot — Elliot James Watson the Third, mind you — he comes over to me one day and says, ‘Hey Brenda, wanna hang out some time?’ Like, okay, I was stunned. I was” — she smacks her head — “stoopid. I mean, the guy’s hot, what with his ginger hair and that whole perfectly-groomed aristocratic rich-boy look. I’m, well” — she demonstrates her body — “y’know...”
“I think you’re very attractive.”
Brenda smiles. “Baby — what’s your name again?”
“Kira.”
“Kira, we’re gonna be great friends. But let’s face facts. I’m a whale.”
“You’re not a whale. You have extremely beautiful eyes, and, yeah” — I look at her chest — “you’re, uhm, ‘well endowed.’”
“Great good it does me. Boys and their fantasies. Anyway, so I fell for the guy. He took me to the woods so we could make out.” Mental Note: Actual Rule Number Two: Woods not out of bounds. “...and, well, one thing led to the next. I’ve kissed guys before. He wasn’t my first. And then, Kira — and then...he dumped me! Well, not technically dumped. We weren’t dating, actually. But, yeah, I hadn’t expected a roll-around on the underbrush and then ciao-ciao, honey baby. Go find someone your own size. He — he...” Incipient tears shone in her bright eyes, but the anger remained. “He — hurt my feelings! What, big girls don’t have emotions? And, you know what, I am beautiful.” She stands, tries to look at her butt and only ends up spinning on the spot.
I laugh.
“I look like a mutt chasing my tail, don’t I?”
She moves over to a mirror (her side of the room) and lifts her dress to over her knees. “This is muscle, babe. Look at those thighs. Dalia Selby would kill for thighs like these. Oh, she’s the slut of the school — AKA Queen Idiot. She thinks she’s so damn sexy with her little devil tattoo on her frickin small waist and everything.” Like Charlene Carverton, I think. “She’s all skin and bones. There’s nothing to hold onto on her, y’know. Like...here.” Brenda grabs a doughy lump on her right hip. “If we lived in the middle ages, I’d be the fairest of them all. Thank you, Elle magazine. Thank you, Harper's Bazaar. Thank you, Fashion TV. I mean, how do they ever expect a skinny girl to give birth with hips that size? She’d break in two.”
I can’t help but chuckle.
“Oh,” Brenda says, like she just suddenly realized something. “You’ve been here five minutes and I haven’t introduced myself.” She waddles over to me, sticks out her hand. “I’m Brenda. Brenda Beaufort.”
“I, uhm, I know. Brenda...the Buddy.”
Her head falls back and she roars out a laugh. “I like that. I like that. Brenda the Buddy Beaufort. Nice. So, whatchoo in for, hon?”
In for. But it’s not a prison. No, really, it’s not... “I, uhm, well — it’s a long story.”
Brenda folds her arms over her generous chest. Waits.
“I, uhm... I beat a girl up at school? She, yeah, slept with the guy I was supposedly seeing and called me crazy and, well, I lost it. In all fairness to her, he was a real asshole.”
Brenda’s grin almost touches her ears. “Was she skinny?”
“You could say that. She was top cheerleader.”
“Oh, damn!” She slaps me on the shoulder. “High five!”
I hesitantly give her a high five. “It wasn’t a proud moment for me.”
“Well, I’m one-a The Crazies — you know who The Crazies are?”
“Uh, yeah, I read it on a forum.”
“Really? Wow, so even the world out there knows about it. That’s incredible. This place is like Fort Knox. Maybe Quon leaked it. Oh, you’ll meet him later.”
“And you?” I ask. “What are you...in...for?”
Brenda looks at me skeptically. “I have an official story,” she says. “Crap the shrinks wanna hear, the teachers, my parents. And then there’s the truth. Somehow, I haven’t figured you out yet. I’m not sure if you can handle the truth!” She leans forward and goes all Jack Nicholson on me, eyes popping out, her voice rising, nearly foaming at the mouth.
“Try me.”
“Something tells me you didn’t just get sent here for beating up on some bimbo.” She steps back onto her bed, sits on it gingerly.
Heck, no point in holding it in. Something tells me Brenda won’t judge me either. “I, uhm...see...a...ghost,” I say.
“A ghost?” Her eyes squint. “Or a demon?”
“What?”
“I wanna know if you see a ghost or a demon.”
“Demon? Uhm, hell, wow — no — no...” The thought of Jack being a demon is like Santa being the Terminator. “Jack is definitely not a demon.”
“Jack?”
“Uhm, yeah, that’s his name.”
“Did he pick it himself or did you give it to him?”
“No, that’s just what he told me his name is.”
“How did you find him?”
“He, uhm, found me.”
“And you didn’t, like, freak out?”
No. He called to me. Called to me at night, and I crawled out of my bed...and looked death in the eyes...and I welcomed it. “Uhm, no, I didn’t freak out. I — I’ve never freaked out on the subject of...death...or the unknown.”
“What, are you like some reincarnated witch or something?”
Brenda is too funny. “No, just...”
“...weird,” she finishes for me. “Like the rest of us. That’s cool, hon. We’re all a little weird. Welcome to Starkfield.”
I’m being called cool for being weird, for being...different. I might like this school after all. “It was like taking in a stray dog,” I say. “And...he didn’t scare me.” Actually, it felt usual to see him, to speak with him.
Brenda cracks out laughing again. “A stray dog? Girl, you are weird.” And then, “That’s so awesome.”
“So what’s your unofficial story?”
Brenda blinks her beautiful green eyes. They look almost supernatural when contrasted with her rings of bright purple hair.
“My story?” she says. “Well, baby...” She inhales deeply. “I dated a vampire.”
Copyright 2016. R P Channing.
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About The Author:
R. P. Channing started writing three years ago, but never published anything even after churning out over a million words of fiction. Thirst: Blood of my Blood is the first book he dared to publish. When asked why, he said, “Because it’s the first thing I wrote that my wife actually enjoyed reading.” When not hammering away (most literally) at his keyboard, he can be found buried in a book, reading anything from romance to horror to young adult to non-fiction to comedy.
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**Giveaway**
(The author is responsible for this giveaway!)
$20 Amazon Gift Voucher
At the back of the book there is a giveaway link.
Once the book hits fifty reviews on Amazon, one of those reviewers will win a $20 (US Dollars) Amazon Gift Voucher!
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