In Stone Blog Tour {Review + Interview + Giveaway}

Title: In Stone

Author: Louise D. Gornall

Publisher and Imprint: Entranced Publishing, Blush

Genre: YA paranormal romance

Release Date: July 1

Length: 120 pages

 

Beau Bailey is suffering from a post-break-up meltdown when she
happens across a knife in her local park and takes it home. Less than a week later, the new boy in school has her trapped in an alley; he’s sprouted horns and is going to kill Beau unless she hands over the knife.

Until Eighteenth-century gargoyle, Jack, shows up to save her.

Jack has woken from a century-long slumber to tell Beau that she’s unwittingly been drafted into a power struggle between two
immortal races: Demons and Gargoyles. The knife is the only one in existence capable of killing immortals and they’ll tear the world apart to get it back. To draw the warring immortals away from her home, Beau goes with Jack in search of the mind-bending realm known as the Underworld, a place where they’ll hopefully be able to destroy the knife and prevent all hell from breaking loose. That is, provided they can outrun the demons chasing them.

Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-1_shhtTZI

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 MY REVIEW!!!!

All it took was Beau witnessing one guy turn to dust, then taking the knife that killed him to turn her life upside down. Now she must try and destroy the knife with the help of newcomer Jack- who just happens to be a gargoyle. If they don’t destroy the knife, demons will try to retrieve the knife and take over the world. Beau just wants to get rid of it and for everything to return to normal, but Jack needs her help because anyone that touches the knife changes..... into power hungry monsters. But Beau is the only one it doesn't change…..or does it? 

They are in a race against time to destroy the knife amidst the threat of Demons that will stop at nothing to retrieve it.

How do I even begin to start this review? Let’s just say that this book was fan flipping tastic! Never heard of this book?….well now you have and you seriously need to look it up. It has Demons, it has half-demons, and it has Gargoyles…..I mean what more could you want? This is my first book that I've read about gargoyles, and now I can’t wait to read more. If there are other gargoyle books out there like this one, sign me up quick! This book was an epic adventure!!!!!! The book started off with a bang and ended with a bang and leaves you wanting the next book... like yesterday. Beau is just a mortal with a semi ordinary life, but within a matter of days all the changes. How would you react? Well she gets depressed and then she gets angry, Why her? She keeps asking herself that question during the whole book….well she doesn’t say it exactly but it is implied. It does finally say why it had to be her and let me tell you,  I never saw that coming. I mean OMG!!!!!! Anyways,  I laughed and cried most of the book, but mostly laughed. Beau is crazy and I love it. The book wouldn’t have been the same without her. Oh, there are some things that go on in the book that should get you interested. How about Hell? Purgatory? Learning about the gargoyles and the knife? That was some pretty serious stuff. I was just mesmerized by all of it. I didn't want this book to end and I only stopped to go the bathroom and get a little snack. This book will have you in its clutching from the first word. This book has already earned a spot in my top reads of the year. ^_^

Overall: YOU NEED THIS BOOK IN YOUR LIFE!!!! What are you waiting for, go get it. :D

Beau: She is slightly perverted and I love it. She had me laughing on several occasions and had me crying for her during others. We see two different sides of her in this book and both of them are fascinating. One minute she is sweet, and the next you better watch your back.

Jack: At first he is a little mysterious, but then he opens up to Beau and I was shocked he did. We find out how he became a gargoyle and why. Like I said, shocking stuff. He is very protective of Beau….but is it out of friendship or more? ;) We also get to see different side of him. It’s like I’ve slowly fallen for him, but I’m still cautious because he is so unpredictable. I just need the next book to find out what’s going to happen.

Here are two quotes if I still haven’t convinced you to read In Stone

His back is to me. My eyes zero in on his butt. I’m looking for a tail, not checking him out. Granted, he has a great ass. And sturdy shoulder blades that sit like rocks under his shirt. But I’m not checking him out. There is no sign of the snaky appendage.

Choirs sing. Fireworks explode. Babies are born. The knife.

5 FANTASTICAL STARS!!!!!!!!!

So what do you think, sound like your kind of book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. :D

And if by some means I still haven’t convinced you (COME ON MAN) to read the book. Here is an excerpt from the book!!!!

I recently read this article in Cosmopoli-teen Magazine that gave tips on how to handle a break-up. Basically, the article said: go out; get yourself a new hair cut; buy yourself a shiny new lip gloss, and you’ll no longer feel the pain of being chucked away like yesterday’s trash.

Lies. Being dumped still hurts like a baseball bat to the pancreas. Only now my hair is slightly shorter and my lips taste of Strawberry Sunrise.

In real life, being dumped has me curled up on a bed of frozen grass, trying to soften the sound of a bark-cry with the snot-soaked sleeve of my jacket. I think maybe I will never love anyone ever again. Deciding on a life of celibacy at seventeen may seem a little extreme, but right now I couldn’t give a crap. My insides are bleeding.

A sudden gust of wind charges through the park. It makes the leaves of the Holly trees whisper to one another. The temperature is creeping into subzero territory. Any minute now, I’m going to pick my broken self up off the floor, head back home and probably, maybe, definitely listen to indie bands sing songs about bleeding love.

Any minute now.

I’m telepathically trying to send Mark take-me-back messages when a man’s cry echoes around the park. My eyes pop open. At first I think it’s him, that somehow my mind has found him across miles of landscape, and he’s here to scoop me up off the ground and tell me he’s made a huge mistake. But then I hear it again, louder, urgent, a strangled yelp. It’s a sharp slap back to reality, and I can’t stand up quick enough.

My house is right across the street, barely a two minute walk away, but before I can take a single step the earth beneath my feet begins to tremble. Earthquakes in Plumbridge are as rare as the Dodo bird, so heaven knows why I brace myself for the concrete to split open and swallow me. But I do. And it doesn’t. Instead there’s a dull thud. The shaking ground stills; the wind dies. My sobs cease, and silence, the sort that makes you think the whole world stopped and took a breath all at once, smothers me. Like if I move, the atmosphere might shatter into a million tiny pieces. Slowly, I turn my head toward where the thud came from.

Across the stone path, not three feet away, the full moon sheds silver streams of light onto a motionless man, limbs twisted up all over the place, sort of like a bug smashed up against a windshield.

This is a dream. Got to be a dream. I pinch my arm. I’m not really sure how the concept of pinching yourself during a dream works. Something about only being able to feel the pain when you’re awake? The nip stings all the way down to my elbow, so I guess, according to the rules of dream-science, I’m awake.

Crap.

I look up at the sky, scan the vast, navy-blue blanket for signs of more free-falling men. I laugh, just once, because this is absurd with a big ole side of crazy. I’m spotting for men in the sky as casually as if I were counting clouds.

Minutes tick by before it occurs to me that I have to do something, something that isn’t wishing myself away from this situation. A lump that tastes like Penicillin rises in my throat and sticks there as I find my feet and edge closer to him. I kneel at his side, folding myself slowly, as if I’m about to curtsey. My mind is working at the speed of light, sifting through memories of health class, of one hour sessions trying to breathe life back into a plastic doll, while class clown, Ralph Frasier, pretends to pork his doll at the back of the room.

I push my trembling fingers against the man’s neck. There’s not a wisp of heat rising from his skin. He’s cold and clammy like the corpses at the funeral parlor where mom works. He has no pulse, and there’s no sign of a swell in his chest. He’s dead. He’s as dead as a Resusci-Annie doll.

My left eye breaks out into a twitching frenzy. I push it to a standstill because winking at a dead body is weird, even for me. In the last couple of years I’ve seen my fair share of cadavers, but never one that wasn’t wrapped in a green cloth, tagged around the big toe, and carrying its very own police report. I need to go home, call the cops, get mom.

Mom. Double crap.

She is going to kill me for being out here in the middle of the night. Screwing up a clump of hair in my hand, I slump back on my heels and take in a lungful of icy air. My pajama pants pull tight against my knees, and a cold, sticky sensation blossoms against my skin. My pants are sticking to me. My eye twitch is back with a vengeance, and it brought a dagger to jam into my eyeball. Fighting the hesitation in my fingers, I dab the damp patch. Please let it be dew from the midnight air.

Midnight dewdrops are not bright red.

“Oh god.” I choke at the smudges of blood streaked across my palm. The moonlight makes the deep-red stains glisten like rubies. A scream tears its way up from my chest, only to die in a whimper when I see something poking out of the side of the body.

A handle.

I thought the fall had killed him. Now, I’m not so sure.

I back away, pushed by the idea that this poor victim of a freak falling accident might not be a victim at all. He has a knife sticking out of him. Thoughts of who put it there and why are assaulting me when the body expels a low groan. The sound wraps around my bones like a blanket of ice. Colder than death. Without thinking, I slap my hand over my mouth to stifle a second scream. Huge mistake.

The smell of iron dances under my nose as the moist stamp of almost-corpse blood bonds to my skin. I start spitting, scrubbing at my lips with the sleeve of my jacket. I can taste it. Him. Sharp, sour. I’m so wrapped up in the horror of my macabre facial, I almost forget he’s awake. Almost. I tiptoe back over. I don’t know why I tiptoe. It’s not like the sound of my steps are going to finish him off.

His eyes are wide open. Shining pale-blue with a soft, light behind them. They’re the strangest things. My breath catches, and for a second I know what it’s like to be a moth infatuated by a flame. Then the light goes out, and the color of his eyes dulls to grey. He stares vacantly at the empty space overhead. His lips twitch and slurp at the air, trying to quell a thirst for oxygen.

I can’t decide if he has the felon look. You know the felon look. It’s not down to any single feature, but when you see a photo-fit on the news, those dark circles around tiny eyes, mussed hair and crooked grin just seem to scream the guy is a serial killer. The almost-corpse has a pointy chin, a jaw and cheeks that I think if I ran my finger over I’d give myself a paper cut. His hair is long, dark. It’s pushed back from his face and splayed out around his head like a burnt-out halo. Quite beautiful, in a fragrance commercial kind of way.

My artistic eyes — the ones that I hope will get me into college so I don’t have to follow mom into the business of dressing up the dead — are roaming over his features when I spot something crawling around his cheek. I hone in for a closer look. Not crawling, cracking. Something I can’t see is sucking the moisture right out of him. As if he were clay being overcooked, his skin is splitting. My jaw drops as I watch the tiny lines tear up his face. His lips start moving, slower and more defined. I tip my ear toward him.

Another mistake.

He snatches hold of my hand. His grip is vise-like. I try to pull away, but he’s strong, adamant. My fingers slip because they’re slick with blood. He gives my arm a yank, and I fall forward, stopping inches above his face. He smells like the pages of an old book.

“What’s your name?” he asks. My nails cut through his skin as I try to peel his fingers away, but he doesn’t flinch. “Your name, God damn it.” Boom. He has the voice of a giant.

“Beau. My name is Beau. Let go of me.”

“I found you.” I think he sighs.

“Yeah, you found me,” I say. My ears are flooded with the sound of my heart hammering.

“You see the blade? Beau, you must take it and run with it,” he croaks through labored pants.

“I’m not touching anything. We need to get you to a doctor. Let go of me, and I’ll go get help.” He ignores my request and starts leading my hand toward the knife handle.

“Please, you’re hurting me,” I say as he unhooks my fingers from his and wraps my hand tightly around the handle. He places his hand on top of mine. My knuckles turn white under his squeeze.

“You must do this,” he urges. His giant voice is dead. His words are now limping past his lips. “Take it.”

“My mom’s a doctor,” I lie. Not that it matters. I’m pretty certain this guy is beyond saving. “We live just across the street. She can help you.”

“No! No one else. Just you.” The blade starts to rise. It’s like watching the approaching fin of a Great White. Coincidentally, my heart is hammering out the opening of the Jaws theme tune. The further out the knife comes the more stained with crimson it is. It doesn’t look like any blade I’ve ever seen before. Not that I’m blade savvy or anything, but to me it looks more like I’m pulling bone.

“This is nuts. We need to stop.”

“My time is up,” he says. I’m grimacing, making squeaky sounds and tearless whimpers, as the knife slurps its way back through tough flesh and contracting muscle. It slips all the way out amidst a trickle of blood. The Lasagna I’d had for dinner sloshes about in my stomach. 

“Listen to me. Listen,” he chokes. “You must do this. You have to take the blade and hide it where no one will ever find it. You have to do this.” He gasps. “Before he comes.”

“He?” I ask. I can’t pull my eyes away from the knife. An onslaught of drool is collecting inside my bottom lip. Wonderment. Can I say wonderment when I’m not a kid dreaming of sugarplums and warm, woolen mittens? I don’t care; wonderment is what’s got me when I look at the knife. 

“He wants the blade, but you can’t let him have it, understand? If he has it the Gargoyle will become the hunted.” The almost-corpse exhales a long sigh, and his hand falls from around mine. The knife is in my hand now, only my hand.

I’m holding it.

It looks old. There are several lines of inscription carved into the handle. I can’t read it;  I can barely see it through the blood, but I can feel the swirling, intricate lines like brail under my thumb.

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all. This is insane,” I exhale. “Who are you? What is this?”

“I am one of the Gargoyle. At least, that is what I was,” he replies.

“A Gargoyle? Is that some sort of gang?”

“It’s my job to protect you,” he says. He’s delusional, exhausted, sucking on his bottom lip in search of some moisture. I’m not sure he knows what he’s saying anymore. “But alas, my life has become a lie.” He groans. Then his cracking face starts to dissipate and blow away in the wind. I think some of it gets in my eyes because they start to sting. When I blink, the world is dressed in a fuzzy black haze. I try to rub my vision clear, but am unsuccessful.

“You must go now,” the man exclaims in a sharp breath. I quit rubbing my eyes and look back down on him. His stare swells. Something about my face makes his lower lip quiver. The way he’s glaring has me craving a bath of boiling water and some antiseptic scrub.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What…what have I done?”

“I don’t know. What have you done?”

He doesn’t answer. I know it’s time to run when the atmosphere starts to shake again, and the almost-corpse flicks his eyes toward a thick congregation of trees.

Review Snippets:

“Straight away I was drawn in by the story and Louise's fantastic writing style, and I really struggled to put it down.”

“If a story can have me so invested that it brings out those kind of emotions in me - whether happy or sad - then I know I've found another to add to my favourites, and In Stone was one of those books.”

“The plot was perfectly executed and delivers a thrilling ride filled with adventure, trails and an unexpected end.”

1. If you could describe your book using three words, what would they be?

Fast, funny, freaky -- I started using F-words and couldn't stop!

2. What sparked the idea for your novel?

There were a few things that kind of mixed in my mind to form an In Stone-story-stew. There was this quote by Nietzsche that goes a little something like this:

"Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Then there was the plot of Lord of the Rings, and I also saw this conversation unfold on Twitter about the invincibility of immortals.

3. Do you have a favorite character from In Stone? If so, can you tell me who it is?

Jack is my favorite! He's just so suave and sarcastic...although he is at his most brilliant when he's bouncing off of Beau.

4. Did you have to do any research while writing In Stone?

There was a lot of looking at pictures to scout for locations, and I read a few articles on the gargoyles frightening away demons myth. It was interesting stuff, but this story kind of had a mind of its own. I'm not great at sticking to outlines and I didn't want to get too bogged down in facts.

5. I’ve always wanted to ask an author about their cover. So, did you have any say in the cover and do you think it portrays what’s in the book?

Entranced asked me if I had any ideas. I suggested that the cover show something that I hadn't mentioned in the blurb...something that's going on with Beau (you know the thing I'm talking about ;)) And the designer, Suzannah, got it spot on. I was stoked when I saw it!

6. Do you have any other books planned for the future?

I'm writing the In Stone sequel as we speak, and I've written a YA horror which I'm hoping to find a home for before the year is out!

7. So on Goodreads it doesn’t say if In Stone is going to be a series. Is it?

It is! There is a sequel underway. I feel like Beau's story isn't over just yet...

8. What are your goals in regards to your writing?

To be honest with you my goal was to be published. Everything that happens now is just icing on an already pretty sweet cake!

9. Was there a certain author or book that influenced you into writing?

The person that talked me into writing was actually my twin sister, Rachael! She's always been a huge reader, bigger than me. I was dabbling in screenwriting, getting nowhere, and she was all like you should give writing novels a go. And here we are!

10. What was the hardest part of writing your book?

Getting the voice right was tough. When I first wrote Beau she had this hyperbolic, lyrical dialect. I was trying to be smart, but when I started revising I just wanted to punch her in the face. The second I stopped trying to force it was the second I realized who she was and where she was coming from.

11. While you were writing, did you ever feel as if you were one of the characters?

I relate to Beau a lot. She picked up my dry sense of humor during drafting. I was also a wannabe goth in my teens...and I guess, I want to make out with Jack!

Speed Round :D

Favorite Drink?

Tea; two sugars.

Guilty Pleasure?

I put chocolate on most of the things I eat...even savory things.

Favorite Movie?

Lord of the Rings.

Cats or Dogs?

Both!

Print or ebook?

Both!

Vampire or werewolf? Or any other supernatural creature

I'm team Edward. But my favorite supernatural creature has got to be my very own gargoyle, Jack!

I would like to end the interview with something fun. Can you tell me something fun/random/wonky/crazy about yourself or your writing habits?

I'm generally pretty wonky. What can I tell you....Erm...my least favorite word in the world is moist. I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was growing up, and last year my summer was so painfully boring that I learnt how to roll a two pence piece across my knuckles.


Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions!!! ^_^

Thank you so much for having me. This has been great fun <3

About the Author:

Louise is a graduate of Garstang Community Academy. She is currently studying for a BA (Hons) in English language and literature with special emphasis on creative writing. YA aficionado. Brit bird. Film nerd. Identical twin. Junk food enthusiast. Rumored pink Power Ranger. Zombie apocalypse 2012 survivor. She is also an avid collector of book boyfriends.

Author Social Media Links:

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GIVEAWAY TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!

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