Title: Screamcatcher: Dream Chasers
Author: Christy J. Breedlove
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Book Blurb:
Seventeen year-old Jory Pike knows a thing or two about Indian lore from her half-blood Chippewa ancestry. She can trap, hunt and fish with the best of them. She has a team of three other teen friends called The Badlands Paranormal Society. Instead of bagging groceries or playing on I-pods, they think they can excel at banishing evil spirits. They hope to cleanse houses and earn fat paychecks for their services.
Dream catchers aren't just the chic hoops tourists buy at novelty shops--they work. And sometimes they clog up with nightmares until they collapse under their own evil weight, imploding and sending the dreamer into an alternate world. Jory uses her worst nightmare to enter the dream catcher world. She’s pulled her teammates in deliberately. Everything goes right on schedule, but they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. Now Jory and her friends are there, trapped between the people who have confessed their sins to the Great Spirit and are seeking a way out, and the monsters and evil spirits which are happy to keep them trapped in the web world forever.
They were once considered Seekers in the dream world. Now they’ve become vigilantes and call themselves Pathfinders. Is it spiritual enlightenment they’re after? Or have they now become fatally reckless?
Excerpt:
Now I’m a monster hunter.
There was a time in her life when seventeen-year-old Jory Pike wished she’d stayed in school. She’d always dreamt of entering college, maybe even a university. Now she felt like some kind of half-assed entrepreneur who’d gotten herself in way over her head. How would she ever make a dent in the world of paranormal investigation?
She had one haunted voluntary dream catcher investigation under her belt, and it had paid a respectable sum. Yet she’d risked the lives of three of her friends and nearly didn’t make it back from a horrifying place. Her Chippewa-Ojibwa knowledge of Indian lore, half of her blood ancestry, had somewhat prepared her for the circumstances. This gave her some measure of entitlement. After all, the Chippewa tribe had created the first dream catcher in ages past, so they’d said, but now she wasn’t so sure.
Jory’s ninety-one-year-old grandfather, Albert White Feather Pike, had helped prepare her for the dream catcher world, and he called it a journey which required opening up the gates of spiritual hell and slamming the gates shut behind her. This time she would create her own hell and have no way to get out of it until she found out what she had to deal with; never mind the solution.
Her grandfather had begged her not to go. He’d held onto her so tightly when she’d entered the van with her friends that he’d torn her blouse. After she’d left and cleared the city limits of Wall, South Dakota, she’d wept. She’d always paid great homage to his wisdom and advice. Not this time, the second occurrence in her life. I’m so sorry Grandfather!
Choice Daniels, her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, had volunteered to take the driver’s seat from Wall, South Dakota, to Sylvania, Montana. For the past fifty miles he’d repeated the same phrase over and over again; “We’re getting closer.” She knew he felt a bit south of rattled. When he sighed, he hissed. When he laughed it came out a nervous cackle. All signs of apprehension. Normally, Choice could beat a monster into next Sunday with his breath. He hadn’t shown such confidence lately.
Eighteen-year-old Lander Cunningham, their fix-it man and mechanic, and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Darcy, occupied the rear bench seat. Lander didn’t care one way or the other about where he had to go as long as he remained far from his widowed, alcoholic father. Darcy, who’d skipped two grades in high school and qualified for a scholarship, had always had her nose in a book, trying to figure out everything other people couldn’t. Darcy’s parents didn’t believe the lanky, long-haired Lander had a finger bone of Lancelot in him. They’d always questioned his motives, but with time they were starting to warm to him. Darcy had ground down some of his rough edges. His salvation was her nurturing sweetness.
This made up the Badlands Paranormal Society. Jory’s team—her best friends.
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Why is your featured book a must-read?
Well, what makes this book stand out? I think my book Screamcatcher: Dream Chasers is unique in that I have never seen a dream catcher used as a prop, trope or device in the plot or theme of a book on the Internet. I had to create the inside reality of a web world. My book has shades of Native American Indian lore in it (POC), and I think the characters are diverse and well-drawn. It has a slow-burn sweet romance. My publisher sees this as a mash-up between Jumanji and The Hunger Games. I hope you like this idea.
Giveaway –
Enter to win an e-book bundle of all 23 books featured in the Young Adult Bookish Event:
Open Internationally.
Runs September 7 – 11, 2020.
Winner will be drawn on September 18, 2020.
Author Biography:
I’m Chris Stevenson, using the pen name Christy J. Breedlove for my YA fiction. I hail from Sylvania, Alabama. My early writing accomplishment were multiple hits within a few years: In my first year of writing back in 1987, I wrote three SF short stories that were accepted by major slick magazines which qualified me for the Science Fiction Writers of America, and at the same time achieved a Finalist award in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. This recognition garnered me a top gun SF agent at the time, Richard Curtis Associates. My first novel went to John Badham (Director) and the Producers, the Cohen Brothers. It was an extreme honor to be considered. The writer who beat me out of contention for a feature movie (as well as the book), was Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. My book was called Dinothon.
A year after that I published two best-selling non-fiction books and landed on radio, TV, in every library in the U.S. and in hundreds of newspapers. This was at a time when small and mid-sized press paid nice advances and had unlimited distribution.
I have been trying to catch that lightning in a bottle ever since. My YA dystopian novel, The Girl They Sold to the Moon won the grand prize in a publisher's YA novel writing contest, went to a small auction and got tagged for a film option. My latest release, Screamcatcher: Web World, just currently won Best YA title of 2019. I received a 5-Star and badge in the Readers’ Favorite Awards contest. I have 17 titles appearing on Amazon. I guess I should stick to Young Adult, which I do love BTW.
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