DARK WALKER SERIES

Shelly Campbell

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GENRE:   Speculative Fiction/Horror/ Dark Sci-fi

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Series Blurb:

When we were children, they told us monsters weren’t real. They were dead wrong.

It’s just a closet door with a skeleton key, but when David opens it, he unlocks a gateway to a sinister world that’s bent on destroying everything and everyone he loves. Some doors are better left closed.

Embark on a thrilling journey with the Dark Walker Series, and be transported into an interdimensional tale of monsters, lies and self-discovery. Where the terror of darkness is real and the line between ally and enemy is as thin as a blade.

“Equal parts coming of age story and otherworldly horror, Gulf probes the depths of loneliness, loss of identity and childhood trauma. It is a true treat for fans of the genre and had me clutched in its razor-clawed hands from the first word to the last.” -C.M. Forest author of Infested

Book One Blurb:

Seventeen-year-old David is fading from his world, like a Polaroid picture in reverse. He longs to feel connected to something bigger.

When his brothers discover the new extension at the rental cottage comes with a locked door, David finds the key first. Expecting to claim a bedroom, he opens a dimensional gateway instead, exploring abandoned versions of his world in different timelines, 1960s muscle cars alternating with crumbling cottages.

Except now the dimensional bridge won’t close, and something hungry claws the door at night. David scours for clues to break the bridge, but each trip to the other side makes him fade more on his. Even if he succeeds, he risks severing his connection to his own world, and dying on the wrong side, forgotten.

Book Two Blurb:

There are doors that open to other worlds, but it’s no fairytale on the other side.

I thought otherworldly monsters bent on devouring my whole world starting with my family trumped everything. Turns out, I was wrong. My world’s only one of thousands facing annihilation from the maneaters that tried to eat me alive. Charlie saved me, rolled into my life on a motorcycle, and rescued me.

Problem is, I’m the Embassy’s property now. They’re the interdimensional agency tasked with stemming the flow of ravenous aliens into our universe, but they seem more interested in studying me. I crashed a gateway in a way they’ve never seen. The Embassy wants to replicate that. I think they want to use me as a war weapon.

If I don’t convince Charlie to help me escape, I’ll be an Embassy science experiment for the rest of my short life, or worse, eternally trapped in the dark hell that fills the spaces between worlds.

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Excerpt from GULF:

Certain my family is gone, I cross to the five-panel in two strides, twist the key into the lock, and push the door.

It doesn’t open.

Of course it doesn’t, idiot. It’s still hung like a closet door. It opens out, not in.

I pull.

Mirror.

That’s the first thought that strikes me as I take in the exact duplicate of the living room I’m standing in. Same green, crushed velvet sofa bed sagging behind me. Identical chipped melamine cabinets. Same painted windmills on the porcelain tile backsplash—wait.

No me.

No reflection of me. Tentative as Alice in bloody Wonderland, I pull the black skeleton key from its hole and crane my head through the doorway. No dirty breakfast dishes, but when I look over my shoulder, there’s still stacks of egg-yolk spackled tin plates beside our sink. Crumpled under one arm of the hide-a-bed is my plaid blanket, but the one in front of me is empty. Looks dusty.

“What the hell, Everett?” This is creepy.

The ole bugger’s built an exact mirror image of the room next door. Where on earth did he find the twin to that green monster of a couch? There’s even a spring beckoning through the same spot in the back cushion.

Got an eye for detail, hasn’t he?

Same woodstove too, only this one has a cold, crusty frying pan on it. I can still feel the heat on my back from ours across the wall.

The pine planking creaks under my next step, and I jump and then smile, but I’m pretty sure it ends up as a snarl. An odd feeling consumes me whole, the one I had just before Sam Ren and his gorilla wingmen beat the piss out of me behind the Dairy Queen. A curdled sense of approaching doom slithers through my lungs.

Get out.

Primal instinct presses me back a step toward the door, but I hold fast there, like a dumbass, like I waited while Sam Ren eased toward me in the Dairy Queen parking lot.

Shaking out my hands and hissing through my teeth, I scan the room trying to identify what’s wrong, because something is. Something is very wrong, and it’s not just the duplicate room, or the draft emanating from here at night. It takes a few seconds to pin it down. The out-of-place thing. My throat spasms when I see it. I swallow and shift to the balls of my feet.

“Window,” I whisper.

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The pros and cons of writing in my genre(s)

By Shelly Campbell

Sybrina, thank you so much for having me as a guest on your blog. I really appreciate the support and what a fantastic topic! Let’s dig in.

I write fantasy, horror, and science fiction, genres that typically get glommed together under the speculative fiction umbrella. Cambridge Dictionary defines speculative fiction as a type of story or literature that is set in a world that is different from the one we live in, or that deals with magical or imagined future events.

While some of us like keeping our fictional escapades firmly rooted in familiar ole Earth,other readers—my favorite kind—prefer their escapes to be the far-flung sort. One of the huge pros of writing in my genre is that I get to play in worlds that aren’t only fictional, they’re not governed by the same rules, or occupying the same timeline as my own. That gives me a lot of room to spread my wings and get really creative, but, as wise Uncle Ben on Spider-man once said, with great power comes great responsibility.

Yes, I’m free to write imaginary settings different from the one we live in, but if I want readers to stick around for the ride, I’d better dang well make these places feel realistic. I might not have to play with the current rules of our day, but I do have to build worlds that are governed by some sort of logical law. I can create characters that aren’t human, but they’d better be relatable.Because I want to take readers from ‘But it’s not real!’to ‘Whoa, that felt real’. So, I suppose the huge breadth that horror/fantasy and sci-fi offer can be a pro and a con both.

I enjoy the challenge of putting characters in otherworldly situations and giving them enough depth that readers will want to turn the page to see what happens next because they care about this character. No-one’s going to turn the page if they don’t feel a connection.

One of the cons of writing in these genres is the amount of work that has to go into world-building. I’ve plunked my characters and readers into a very unfamiliar place, and I have to convey a sense of history and teach my readers the ropes without making them feel like they’re reading an encyclopedia. Tolkien may get away with that, but I certainly can’t. That means I have to figure out a delicate balance between making my worlds feel lush and vivid without info-dumping. And sometimes, it’s hard to strike that balance well.

I’d say the biggest con to writing in my genres is that sometimes, we’re not taken seriously as authors. I’ve had multiple folks brighten when they discover I’m a writer only to go a bit cold when they find out what exactly it is that I write. One person actually asked me what my last book was about, and when I told them it was horror, their verbatim reply was ‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ Ha!

Often, horror, sci-fi and fantasy are looked down upon as genres. How big are the sections for these books at your local bookstore compared to other shelves? I’ve generally got a smaller audience than the history, romance, or thriller crowd. My books don’t appeal to a large demographic, although that is changing with mainstream media picking up more sci-fi, horror and fantasy. Shows like Stranger Things, The Expanse, and Shadow and Bone are giving the genres I love a bit of a boost, and it’s nice to see new fans realize that fiction set in fantastical worlds can indeed have deep, meaningful and complex themes that resonate in the real world (plus they’re just plain fun!) I hope whatever your next read is, you enjoy the heck out of it. Keep feeding your imaginations, friends.😊

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

At a young age, Shelly Campbell wanted to be an air show pilot or a pirate, possibly a dragon and definitely a writer and artist. She’s piloted a Cessna 172 through spins and stalls, and sailed up the east coast on a tall ship barque—mostly without projectile vomiting. In the end, Shelly found writing and drawing dragons to be so much easier on the stomach. Shelly writes speculative fiction ranging from grimdark fantasy, to sci-fi and horror. She’d love to hear from you.

http://www.shellycampbellauthorandart.com

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