INTERVIEW and GIVEAWAY
Grey Skies
by William Becker
Grey Skies by William Becker is currently on tour with Silver Dagger Book Tours. The tour stops here today for my interview with the author, an excerpt, and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.
Description
Roman Toguri finds himself burying the body of a nun in Boone, North Carolina. As the skies darken and it begins to storm, he is forced to shove the corpse into his trunk and take it home for the night, unaware of the torment that playing God will bestow upon him.
Enter Hell with two bonus short stories: “The White Shade”, an ultra-violent look into the mind of a mass shooter, and “The Black Box”, a psychedelic dive into weird horror.
Book Video
Excerpt
When I came close enough, I grabbed one of the wooden planks and hoisted myself into the next room. Gazing around, this room immediately seemed fairly ‘cozy.’ The entire room was constructed from the worn wooden planks that were around the edge of the hole. Several feet across from the entrance to the tunnel was a lamp whose shade had turned an ancient shade of brown, filling the room with the orange light that I had seen from the underground, signalling that I had returned to civilization, or at least somewhere with working electricity.
Perhaps the most important feature of the room was a red velvet couch right next to the map, on which sat my familiar friend, the homeless man. A blank, soulless expression covered his face, his eyes unblinking in his focus, or lack thereof.
This was the first time I had seen him in clear lighting, and the black spots on his face resembled a growth or a scab, seeming to extend and pile up over the top of his skin like mold. It was truly disgusting.
I slowly moved to a wooden door near the couch, waiting for him to stop me, but he stared off in the distance, as if he was watching something behind me. I took another step towards the door when my foot planted down on top of something with a gentle crunch, and seemed to stick to the sole of my shoe as I bent down to examine in; hundreds of black specks scurried away from my feet. Each of these specks hurried past me in a large pack, then crawled underneath the couch where the man was sitting, disappearing from sight. My body locked up and I was forced to cringe when I realized that these specks were baby spiders, and I had just stepped on a large sac.
“Don’t step on those,” the man muttered, his voice sounding hazy and distant, as if the two of us were miles apart.
“What?” I asked, unsure if I had heard him correctly.
“Don’t stomp the eggs,” he replied. His eyes were still locked on something behind me. I glared back, half expecting something to be standing there.
“Why not?”
“Because I like them, and they like the cold.”
I watched several of the baby spiders move through the holes in his clothes, crawling into them and creating tiny bulges beneath the fabric. I shuddered, and then his head began to turn. It was a painfully slow motion that seemed to last decades, until finally, his eyes rested on me.
“I’m finally free, you know.”
There was a ticking noise, as if the second hand on a clock was moving, then the orange glow of the lamp was replaced with darkness. The light had been turned off. I wasn’t sure how the man had turned it off, or if the light had simply given out, but despite this, more light leaked into the room from the cracks in the wooden door leading outside, giving a dimmed view of the man on the couch. I glanced back to the floor to see that dozens of the eggs had appeared all across the ground. Had I not seem them earlier? They were a milky white color and about the size of baseballs. A handful of the eggs seemed to wriggle every few seconds, as if they were about to hatch. The light reflected off of them, giving them a shiny appearance in the light.
I looked around, shrugged, then decided it was time to leave. I tiptoed to the door in a state of horrified confusion, leaving the man and his eggs behind.
[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]
Praise for the Book
“A super-surrealistic novel for people that like their macabre up close and personal, and their meaning very hard to decipher.” ~ Gordon A. Long
“I could not read it in one sitting only because I had to read it early enough during the day so that I could sleep at night. Yeah, I'm not afraid to admit that I was freaked the hell out. This author is 18yrs old and delivered a psychological, twisted horror. I want to see what else he has up his sleeve and yet I don't. I believe fans who are looking for something new in horror will love this book.” ~ ILoveMyAudibleKindle
“Becker pens a good horror story in Grey Skies. I found that I did like the majority of the story, but a few parts were a bit confusing, and a bit slow to make sense, but in the end, I enjoyed the story. Yes, it was creepy and scary, and intriguing to see how the story would play out. I would definitely read more by this author, and I am curiously intrigued (and yet a bit fearful) of his imagination. I look forward to reading more by this author.” ~ Amy's Bookshelf Reviews
“I was pleasantly surprised by this book! The writing is vivid and detailed, and I felt that I was immediately inside the main character's head as he goes through a personal hell.” ~ Aina
“Grey Skies is really good. It's not easy to creep me out but the little parts dealing with spiders got to me.” ~ Kaili Taghon (Entertainingly Nerdy)
Interview with the Author
Author William Becker stops by today to talk about his new book, Grey Skies.
How did you come up with name of this book?
As you get through the book, water, rain, and drowning are pretty important things. Simply enough, Grey Skies is representative of bad weather, and Roman’s experience, especially as the reader dives into the darker parts of his past, can be equated to “feeling under the weather”.
If your book had a candle, what scent would it be?
Wet dirt in the middle of spring.
Do you see writing as a career?
I’m here now, aren’t I?
Do you read yourself and, if so, what is your favorite genre?
I’ll read almost anything besides fantasy. Fantasy itself isn’t bad, but it’s slowly becoming the most tired genre. Every book has started to feel the same to me. A lot of reading online has led me to believe that it’ll be a pseudo-medieval world where a collection of misfits gets together to fight evil that is re-emerging after being dormant for centuries. Prophecy stories are awful, so is dragon-riding, so are epic stories about a bloodline battling for control. It’s just an exhausting genre. No disrespect to whoever writes the stuff, I’m sure there are some very, very talented people out there writing fantasy that would knock my socks off.
Besides that, horror and bizarro fiction can always be pretty fun. I prefer my books to be on the condensed side and not meander around for a few hundred pages. The perfect book is between 150-400 pages. Maybe it’s just my attention span, but books like Under the Dome by Stephen King are just exhaustingly long and don’t really take me anywhere new. In that same breath, Carrie is a good example of a perfect novel, as is something like Piercing by Ryu Murakami. Despite my love for horror, I’ll read anything that’s good.
Thanks for stopping by today, William. Enjoy the rest of your tour!
About the Author
William Becker is an 18-year-old horror author with a mind for weirder sides of the universe. With an emphasis on complex and layered storylines that tug harshly on the reader to search for deeper meanings in the vein of Silent Hill and David Lynch, Becker is a force to be reckoned with in the horror world. His works are constantly unfathomable, throwing terror into places never before seen, while also providing compelling storylines that transcend the predictable jumpscares of the popular modern horror.
His first novel, Weeping of the Caverns, was written when he was 14. After eight months of writing, editing, and revising, the story arrived soon after his 15th birthday. During the writing sessions for his debut novel, he also wrote an ultra-controversial short story known as “The White Shade” that focused on the horrors of a shooting. Living in a modern climate, it was impossible for “The White Shade” to see the light of day. Following a psychedelic stint that consisted of bingeing David Lynch movies, weird art, and considering the depth of the allegory of the cave wall, he returned to writing with a second story, “The Black Box”, and soon after, his second novel, Grey Skies.
Giveaway
Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card or one of three Grey Skies posters.
Links
Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)
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