Friday, April 19, 2013

Revealing Hamilton Blog Tour By Sarah Jayne Carr




 Bio (third person unless stated)
Sarah Jayne Carr is a novelist who can be found most evenings with a cup of tea in-hand and her imagination racing from plot to plot. When away from her work, part of her mind is constantly brainstorming her next story and she always has writing paraphernalia within reach.
She wrote stories as a child, but became more serious about her passion during her twenties. In her spare time, she likes to read, splash in mud puddles, smell bookstores and eat Honeycrisp apples. Yearly, she participates in NaNoWriMo and has mentored others through the program. Due to her dedication to National Novel Writing Month, she is part of an amazing writing group.
Born and raised in Washington State, Sarah still resides in the area. Her life is richly filled with her supportive, yet swashbuckling husband and their golden Nugget.
REVEALING HAMILTON is Sarah’s first full-length novel.



A conversation with a stranger changes Amelia Hamilton's life forever. When she learns her grandfather faked his own death, normalcy slips from Amelia's grasp. To make matters worse, he is coming for her in less than seven days. What she hasn't determined is why.
        Amelia's grandfather, Marius Benedict, once headed The Physician Coalition, an elite group of doctors who threw the Hippocratic Oath out the window. Years ago, they used a low-risk medical research study as a front for their experiments. Without their consent, innocents were injected with JackRabbit7, a hazardous substance used to alter their DNA. The victims were left with less-than-desirable super-human powers or excruciating death. Years after he disbanded the group, Marius has a new plan and is reforming The Coalition.
        Max, a mysterious stranger from the Insurance Agency, offers to help keep Amelia safe. He introduces The Agency as an underground government organization that contains and eliminates those who intend to harm the world. To protect The Agency, the truth of their activities are concealed and replaced with sugar-coated stories in the media.
Over the course of the next week, Amelia has to accept the truth and learn who can be trusted. At midnight on her 23rd birthday, a contract between The Coalition and The Insurance Agency will expire, giving Marius full rein to approach his granddaughter and finish the project he started with her so many years ago.

Links to books and Amazon author page

 amazon.com/author/sarahjcarr

Excerpts

Excerpts:

#1

“Grandpa? I’m real hungry. Did you forget about me again?” A wide-eyed little girl stood in the doorway, looking down into the dim basement. She sighed, already knowing the answer to her question.
There was no reply.
The refrigerator whirred, garbling the voices below. She slinked down the wooden steps, her bare feet meeting the cold planks. “Grandpa?” Her skin prickled as a spider scampered across her foot.
Again, there was no reply.
The girl reached the floor of the cellar, still wondering about the owner of the house. On multiple occasions, her grandfather brought her here, telling her to play tea party in the living room and to stay away from the stairs. He promised to fix her something to eat after he finished working. That was long ago. Cold cement touched her soles, causing goose bumps to race down her arms. The pale blue walls made her uncomfortable and the lights on the ceiling pained her eyes. One of the bulbs crackled and buzzed, as if it warned her to retreat.
“Grandpa?” she whispered as she crept along the wall.
A metal table sat in the middle of the room with a papery blanket on top. The walls were lined with white cabinets and the room felt too clean. Nothing about the basement made her feel welcome.
The snippets of foreign language paused when the girl knocked over a garbage can and the sound of metal tumbled along the floor. She clamped her hand over her mouth and darted into the corner, huddling against her knees. Her grandfather was frightening enough when he wasn’t angry.
An unfamiliar voice grew louder, its grating depth and foreign accent scaring her enough until she wet her pants. She held her breath, unable to understand the words he used, but she knew by the urgency in his voice he was looking for her.
“Aha.” A man wearing a surgical mask and lab coat entered her line of vision, staring down toward the floor. She trembled and scrunched her eyes shut, thinking if she couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see her. The staccato clicking of shoes against the floor became louder and she knew he was close.
Unsure of how to protect herself, she stuck out her lower lip and her eyes welled with tears.
The man’s surgical mask hid his face except for his piercing blue eyes. She thought he looked like a porcupine with his hair a mess of dark spikes, sticking out in random directions. Terrified, she watched him analyze her as if she was a first place prize and then she realized escape was impossible.
He picked her up and she screamed, beating him with her tiny fists. She exhausted herself, while he didn’t flinch at her feeble attempt to fight.
Three more men and two women approached; the clacking of shoes unbearable in her tiny ears. Two of them held clipboards; furiously scribbling notes. One of them gripped a voice recorder. They all wore the same masks, concealing their identities.
The man with the wild hair set the girl on the table, restraining her wrists and ankles with leather bands, binding her so her pulse pounded in her hands and feet. She looked around, her breathing accelerating when she saw the needle. “Dr. Benedict said to use the JackRabbit7,” he mumbled.
“Grandpa?” she begged. “Help me!”
The device he held was linked to a syringe and connected into a multi-colored vial. The fluids collected into the barrel, creating a deep red liquid in the hilt of the needle.
“Sit very still and you probably won’t die,” the man with blue eyes said. He edged the needle closer to the girl’s face with shaky hands.
The dream always ended with a sharp puncture to the neck. The girl screamed while the substance raced through her bloodstream. She often remembered it feeling like someone threw a lit match into a puddle of gasoline at her feet as the liquid they called ‘JackRabbit7’ raged inside of her. Then, as the dream always ended, the world went dark when her body could no longer tolerate the pain and she lost consciousness.
This was my past.

#2 –
Something felt wrong.
In the living room, an ottoman rested on its side and a magazine lay open on the floor. A colorful article advertising Las Vegas blared from the pages. From the corner of my eye, the screen of Connor’s cell phone caught my attention. I watched it blink, communicating new messages awaited.
I went to the kitchen next and found the latest stack of mail on the island. The top envelope made me recoil when I saw the return address. It was another letter from the State of Washington. This one was addressed to Amelia Brooks.
My identity had been an issue for years. Since age 18, I had submitted multiple requests to change my last name from my grandfather’s back to my parents. With each attempt, the paperwork came back denied and stated my name was Amelia Benedict or another obscure surname starting with the letter “B”. Double-checking each field, I filled out the forms to read Amelia Hamilton, but was contradicted every time. I determined it a sick way for my grandfather to haunt me from the grave. The latest correspondence would have to wait.
A broken wine bottle and bandage wrappers were on the counter next to the refrigerator. Droplets of dark fluid created a path from the bottle to the sink, making me shudder. The room began to feel too warm and nausea flooded my stomach. I grabbed a rolling pin from the island, gripping it so tightly my knuckles hurt.
“Calm down, Amelia,” I said. “There’s a logical explanation and no one is going to hurt you.” I forced my mind away from childhood memories of a basement.
Swallowing hard, I tiptoed across the living room to the bedroom. As usual, the door was cracked open. I held the pin over my head, ready to attack in an instant. From where I stood, I couldn’t see more than the corner of the dresser and a beam of soft light. I took a deep breath and nudged the handle. A flashlight rested on the nightstand, pointed toward the ceiling. As I scanned the room, my jaw dropped and my heart paused.
“Connor?” I dropped the makeshift weapon at my feet.

#3 –

“When did you do that?” I nodded toward the window as I scrubbed a fork.
“Do what?” he asked.
“The snowman. What else?”
“What snowman, Amelia?”  He stood up.
“The one on the side of the house. It looks just like you.” When I turned off the water and turned around he was gone. “Max?”
I walked over into the living room and was met with a breeze. The door was wide open and footprints led off the porch into the snow.
I put on my boots, not taking extra time to lace them and darted out of the doorway after him. The frosty air tore through the sweater, making me flinch. I mimicked Max’s footprints in the deep snow along the side of the house.
He stood in front of the snowman, which was reminiscent of a chiseled human form. It was crafted in Max’s likeness with locks of snowy strips cascading down the sculpture’s back. Detailed attention was spent to his full lips and narrow face. The oddest feature was the shape of a heart missing through his chest. Intricate details told me someone spent hours on the masterpiece.
“Who did it, Max?” I asked. “Do you have friends who play practical jokes?” When I looked down at the ground, there were no footprints leading to the snowman except for Max’s and mine. Someone had written in the snow, ‘Tick Tock, Max’ and left the stick propped against the snowman’s hand.
Max swallowed hard and looked at me. “Amelia, we need to talk.”

1. Who would play your characters if your book became a movie, please provide pictures. *Images are just from what I Google’d…no copyright research was done. (Images attached)
Amelia– Amy Lee from Evanescence
Max– Michael Wincott from the days of The Crow
Nick– Adam Levine from Maroon 5
Donovan– Brandon Lee from the days of The Crow
Marius – Christopher Walken

1. Contact info (blog, webpage, facebook, Twitter, pinterest, goodreads, and google+) Give everyone something to follow.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6657798.Sarah_Jayne_Carr


~Tonya




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