Guest Post and Giveaway by Liesel Hill

I am so excited to have Liesel as a part of Spooking The Spine! I hope you enjoy getting to know her as much as I have:

October is one of my favorite times of year! Halloween is so fun and festive and there’s just so much going on! It’s also a fun time for the obsessive reader! This year, I put aside several books I was reading or planning on reading so I could focus on Halloween reads for the month of October.

For me, Halloween themes include monsters such as vampires (the kind that are monsters rather than sparkley boyfriends) zombies, ghosts, ghouls, and even a few serial killers. Anything spooky qualifies. So far, I’ve read Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake and The Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin. Both were awesome! Now I’m reading Bloodlust by Gary C. King, a true crime novel about a sadistic serial killer who targeted prostitutes in the eighties. It’s all kinds of disturbing!

I also like to try and read one of the classics during the month of October. Either Bram Stoker’s Dracula (still the cold standard for vampire stories, even a hundred plus years later), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (a bit more difficult to get to, but moving as ever), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a surprisingly compelling classic) or the immortal Edgar Allen Poe. (The Masque of the Red Death was always my favorite, though I do think Berenice is more disturbing.

I definitely don’t get to all the classics each year (usually just one) and I think I’ll read about my buddy Dr. Jekyll this year right after I finish Bloodlust. I also have a collective 36 books on various Halloween-themed shelves on Goodreads.com, so obviously I won’t get to all those either.

Halloween is just a fun time to kick back and reads some awesome spooky stories. Any other time of year, if you told someone you were reading about Jack the Ripper, they’d look at you like you just announced you were going to grow a pair of pants in your back yard. But in October, they just smile and nod knowingly. They might even make their thumb and forefinger into a fake gun and point it at you while they click their tongues. They just get it. It’s October, after all!

So, what are you reading this Halloween? I’m giving away a $10 Amazon gift card you can use to pick up a few spooky reads (or whatever kind you want. :D) To enter, fill out the rafflecopter below. For the most entries leave a comment telling me what the scariest book you’ve ever read is.

My answer to this? Probably Patricia Cornwell’s portrait of Jack the Ripper. It’s entitled Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed. You’ll find it in the true crime section.

Happy Halloween, Everyone!
 

About Liesel

 

Author blurb:

Liesel K Hill is an award-winning author with a degree from Weber State University. She writes across three genres: scifi/fantasy, historical fiction, and crime drama, and has had at least one book picked up for each genre, though none is actually out yet. She comes from a large, tight-knit family and lives in northern Utah with two of her sisters and her niece.

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In a world where collective hives are enslaving the population and individuals have been hunted to the verge of extinction, Maggie Harper, and independent 21st Century woman, must find the strength to preserve the freedom of the future, but without the aid of her memories.

After experiencing a traumatic time loss, Maggie is plagued by a barrage of images she can't explain. When she's attacked by a creep with a spider's web tattoo, she is saved by Marcus, a man she's never met, but somehow remembers. He tells her that both he and her creepy attacker are from a future in which individuals are being murdered by collectives, and Marcus is part of the rebellion. The collectives have acquired time travel and they plan to enslave the human race throughout all of history. The flashes Maggie has been seeing are echoes of lost memories, and the information buried deep within them is instrumental in defeating the collective hives.

In order to preserve the individuality of mankind, Maggie must try to re-discover stolen memories, re-kindle friendships she has no recollection of, and wade through her feelings for the mysterious Marcus, all while dodging the tattooed assassins the collectives keep sending her way.

If Maggie can't fill the holes in her memory and find the answers to stop the collectives, the world both in her time and in all ages past and future will be doomed to enslavement in the grey, mediocre collectives. As the danger swirls around her and the collectives close in, Maggie realizes she must make a choice: stand out or fade away...

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