Halloween Spooktacular: Day 30: Guest Post and Excerpt with Dusty Crabtress

Please give a warm welcome to Dusty Crabtree, who is guest posting today at BLH. Thank you Dusty for stopping by. 

 I absolutely love Halloween, almost as much as Christmas, and get excited every October when I’m finally allowed to set out my decorations and get in a festive mood. Therefore, I had to put a Halloween party scene in my young adult urban fantasy Shadow Eyes. Since the shadowy figures Iris sees throughout the book are pretty creepy themselves, Halloween just lent itself easily to the overall vibe of the story.

This is an excerpt from the book when the protagonist, Iris, arrives at her boyfriend’s Halloween party with her friend Nicole.

 As we waited in the cold, shivering, I admired the Halloween decor Josh and his parents had set up out front. Orange, green and purple lights draped over bushes and surrounded tree trunks. A graveyard sprawled over half the lawn where skeletons peeked out in front of their tombstones, clawing the earth with their bony fingers. For added visual effect, a creepy green spotlight was illuminating the grim scene. A homemade, life-sized mummy with ketchup-bloodied rags had been hung from an awning and was pointing its stained, bandaged finger at us. From the driveway to the door, two flickering trails of small ghosts lit the way up the sidewalk. Cobwebs stretched out and attached themselves to outside walls, trees, bushes and the entryway, and eerie Halloween music crept out the door to the chilled air outside. No wonder his house was a hot spot for trick-or-treaters.

“Hey!” Tyler swung open the door, wearing a black zoot suit and gangster fedora hat. His fake Tommy gun was pointed directly at me. “Whoa! I better not shoot an angel. That’d be bad luck or somethin’, eh?”

His thick Chicago gangster accent cracked me up. He moved his gun to point at Nicole, who held up her gloved hands and winked at him before he lowered it. “Hey! There’s my doll! Come on in to our little speakeasy. It’s the bee’s knees in here!”

He wrapped an arm casually around Nicole, continuing in his character, and turned to escort her into the house. “Hey, Babe Ruth, your dame’s here!”

My eyes brightened in surprise. Babe Ruth? Was that Josh’s costume?

“Hey, Iris, let me take a look at…” Josh had just appeared from around the corner in an old Yankees baseball uniform and stopped short when he saw me standing in the foyer. “Wow! You look…”

“Angelic?” I suggested, flattered by his stunned reaction to my costume.

“Well, yeah, obviously. But I wasn’t going to say that because that would be corny.” He closed the distance between us slowly, looking me over from head to toe.

“That’s never stopped you before.”I chuckled softly as he took my hands.

“I was going to say beautiful or gorgeous…or sexy.” He paused with a quizzical expression. “Is it bad to call an angel ‘sexy’?”

“I don’t know. Is it bad to be a sexy angel?” I had no idea where that boldness came from, but if it was any indication of where the night was headed, I was in big trouble.

Blurb: 

Iris thought she could ignore the shadows...until they went after everyone she loved. Iris Kohl lives in a world populated by murky shadows that surround, harass, and entice unsuspecting individuals toward evil. But she is the only one who can see them. She’s had this ability to see the shadows, as well as brilliantly glowing light figures, ever since an obscure, tragic incident on her fourteenth birthday three years earlier. 

Although she’s learned to cope, the view of her world begins to shift upon the arrival of three mysterious characters. First, a handsome new teacher whose presence scares away shadows; second, a new friend with an awe-inspiring aura; and third, a mysterious and alluring new student whom Iris has a hard time resisting despite already having a boyfriend. 

 As the shadows invade and terrorize her own life and family, she must ultimately revisit the most horrific event of her life in order to learn her true identity and become the hero she was meant to be.  

About the Author:

Dusty Crabtree has been a high school English teacher at Yukon High School in Oklahoma since 2006, a challenge she thoroughly enjoys. She is also a youth sponsor at Cherokee Hills Christian Church in Oklahoma City and feels very blessed with the amazing opportunities she has to develop meaningful relationships with teens on a daily basis.

Her passion for teens has poured into her writing as well. She is the author of the young adult urban fantasy, Shadow Eyes, through Musa Publishing, which she wrote in order to give teens an intriguing and provocative book series that promotes moral messages. She lives with her husband, Clayton, in Yukon, Oklahoma, where they often serve their community as foster parents.

 Check out Dusty’s blog at http://dustycrabtree.wordpress.com/ 

Find her on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/dusty.crabtree.1 

Follow her on twitter at https://twitter.com/dustycrabtree 

Buy Shadow Eyes at http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=176(also available at all major online bookstores) 

View the book trailer at a Rafflecopter giveaway a Rafflecopter giveaway