Inside the Book:
Title: Chaste
Author: Jesse Teller
Release Date: October 5, 2016
Publisher: Amazon Digital
Genre: Dark Fantasy/Horror
Format: Ebook/Paperback
When her devout parents died, Cheryl turned her back on her god. Years of denial and self-loathing have defeated her. Her life consists of taking orders and succumbing to abuse. A group of strangers stops in Chaste for the night, but an unnamed threat is preying on the town. Tragic deaths have become more and more frequent. Cheryl wants to protect these travelers, expose the evil force, and save her fellow citizens, but she must find a way to believe in hope.
The Darkness Between
In 2010, I dedicated myself to writing books. I
wrote every day. Well, five times a week, and I got in the habit. You can get
in the habit of anything—anything. I got in the habit of creating. At the time,
I had dedicated myself to rough drafts. I was trying to teach myself how to
write a story, how to master novels. So, I wrote new material every day. The
ideas kept coming, and I kept writing.
It must have been three years later when it
started getting out of hand. The work swelled and became more than I wanted. It
came to life. It started to breathe, and it began chewing, little bites at
first, gnawing at my sanity.
I was in between books. I had just written Eleacont and was taking a break. My
breaks are usually two weeks long, but the next book was going to be the third
in a series. It would continue a tale I had written 1,600 pages of. So, for
reasons you can probably understand, I read those two books first.
Well, it takes a while to read 1,600 pages. I had
taken two weeks off already, and then reading took another three. About two
weeks into the reading, the work stomped its foot and roared.
At about 2 a.m., I was walking from my office to the
bathroom when I saw smoke. With a sleeping wife and two kids in the house, my
heart exploded into a sprint. The fear in my skin ripped at me, breaking out into
sores of terror as I grabbed the door to the stairs and rushed. When I reached
the living room, I froze and nearly screamed. It was not my house burning down.
It was a character.
A character I had burned at the stake stood atop a
stack of wood in my living room, burning. I could smell her flesh searing. She
bucked and arched her back, fighting to get away from the flames mercilessly
engulfing her. I stood in my living room, staring at the horror of my book now
in my life.
I looked away. I had to. I am ashamed of having
done it. I always told myself I would not flinch at the horrible things that
happen in my work. But this time, I did. I looked away in grief and fear. When
I looked back, she was gone.
Staggering, I went back downstairs to my office. I
was spent, exhausted by the emotional turmoil. I told my wife the next day. She
looked at me with no reaction whatsoever. About five minutes later, she asked,
“Did she say anything?” I told her she hadn’t, and she nodded. We talked about
it for a while but came to no conclusions.
The next night, I heard the soft cry of my
youngest and I went to soothe him back to sleep. I opened his door and, in the
corner, out of reach of the straining light, stood a creature. It was shaped like
a short man, a kid even. It held a shadow that looked like a weapon. I stepped
between my son and the figure, my terror almost crippling, and I fought to
speak, to grab my son and run, to fight, maybe, anything. But I couldn’t. Fear
had locked me up. When the shadow stepped into the light, it was worse than I could
imagine. I stood before Aaron the Marked, a damaged, uber-violent character on the
verge of psychopath. He snarled at me and my blood ran like ice. I could not
bear his gaze. His snarl had unmanned me. When I looked away and then back at
him, he was gone.
My son stopped crying immediately.
For days, they came. They found me everywhere I
went. I saw them on the street. I saw them in the back seat of my car. They all
looked angry. They looked as if they had decided they would take me back.
My only guess was that they had come to drag me
back to work. I read those two books as fast as I could. When I started writing
again, they were gone, a whiff of smoke on the breeze the only sign I had not
been making it all up.
When I take a break, they show up. Two weeks they
give me, then they come get me. They haunt my house. They sulk near my
children. They leave puddles of blood in my office. They stare, stalk, and threaten
me, until they scare me from the world of rationale and drag me back to their
world.
I am a hostage of my own world, a dedicated slave
to the realm I created and the characters that people it.
In January, I’ll sit down to write the sixth and
seventh books in that series. Before I can, I have to read over 3,100 pages to
remind myself of everything happening in the story. During that time, they will
come for me. I can’t escape them.
Meet the Author:
———————
Tour Schedule
Monday, October 10 -Book featured at The Review From Here
Tuesday, October 11 -Guest blogging at Literal Exposure
Thursday, October 13 - Book featured at As the Pages Turns
Friday, October 14 - Guest blogging at Lover of Literature
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Monday, October 17 - Book featured at CBY Book Club
Tuesday, October 18 - Guest blogging at A Title Wave
Thursday, October 20 -Interviewed at Voodoo Princess
Friday, October 21 - Guest blogging at From Paperback to Leatherbound
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Monday, October 24 - Book featured at The Writer's Life
Tuesday, October 25 - Book featured at All Inclusive Retort
Wednesday, October 26 - Guest blogging at Straight From the Author's Mouth
Thursday, October 27 - Book featured The Bookworm Lodge
Friday, October 28 - Guest blogging at The Dark Phantom
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Monday, October 31 - Book featured at Bound 2 Escape
Wednesday, November 2 - The Literary Nook
Thursday, November 3 - Book reviewed at A Room Without Books is Empty
Friday, November 4 - Book reviewed at I'm Shelf-ish
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