Today’s Wednesday Wonders welcomes Angela Carling
featuring her Young Adult book, The Secret Keeper.
Book Description:
There
is a street or house in every town that holds secrets that the outside world
would never understand. However in Heber, Arizona, a cursed being holds all
those secrets closely. After the disappearance of her brother, Winter’s family
was never the same, and now she’d done something terrible that would bring her
to the door where such secrets were locked, and the deal she would make with
the mysterious Secret Keeper would forever alter her life and threaten to
destroy Liam, the only boy she ever loved.
Book Excerpt:
Over and over in
my head I repeated, “She can make my secret go away.” I’m not sure if I was
trying to convince myself or trying to keep myself from going nuts, but the
phrase calmed me as I drove.
I found Lejo
Street and began the steep climb to the top. The houses in this neighborhood
were small. Most were weathered if not completely forgotten. Pines grew too
close together. Piles of rusted tools and long-forgotten bathroom fixtures
littered the landscape, hidden only by overgrown grasses and neglected Quakies.
No wonder everyone thought it was creepy.
My heart rate
quickened with the ascent, and my palms left sticky sweat on my steering wheel.
I wiped on my jeans only to have the moisture build up again immediately. Soon
there was nothing but dense forest; a blur of green, broken only by the ashen
skies above. The rain came down in unyielding sheets and I turned up the
windshield wipers. Back and forth they went like a giant metronome, keeping in
step with my nervous heartbeat.
I strained to see
out the windows until there was nothing in front of me but a large rusted metal
gate and a cracked wood sign, painted long ago, that declared, “No trespassing.”
Beyond the gate, through the trees and the rain, I saw the pale blue house that
the girl in the park had described.
One more time I
said out loud, “She can make my secret disappear.” I’d almost convinced myself
now. I had to be convinced, what with the dilapidated house in the middle of
nowhere and the stormy weather.
Everything
screamed “Don’t go in!” but I was driven to try something, anything, not to
lose my best friend and boyfriend.
I climbed from
the car and ran until I reached the porch, slipping and having to catch myself
as I tried to take the stair too fast. Light spilled out through a crack in the
curtains, letting me know someone was there. I lifted my hand to knock on the
old splintered door and froze. I didn’t know The Secret Keeper’s name. How
would I address her? Before I could decide what to do, the old scratched up
door handle turned and the door opened a crack. My mouth fell open. The eyes
that peered through the opening were surprisingly young.
My throat tight
as I swallowed and it sounded loud to me. I could turn and run. Everything in
my gut told me to go but I stood like a marble statue frozen by my anguish.
“Who are you
looking for?” she asked.
Her melodic voice
made me think of dozens of wind chimes all tinkling at once. Still, I felt
uneasy.
I made myself
spit out the words. “The Secret Keeper.”
An excruciatingly
long minute passed and I thought she might tell me that I had the wrong house
or that I should get off her property. Finally, in a voice no louder than a
whisper she said, “Come in. I’m The Secret Keeper.”
Click HERE to see the trailer.
About Angela Carling:
Angela Carling was
raised in Palm Springs California, but lives Arizona with her husband, three
kids and five felines. After years of denial she finally admitted that she is a
hopeless romantic which led her to write her first Young Adult book Unbreakable
Love. Since then she's published three more books, Shackled, Becoming Bryn and
The Secret Keeper. Shackled won the silver IPGA award in 2012 and has been
optioned as a screenplay. She always eats the frosting off her cake and leaves
the rest, and can be caught singing in public bathrooms just for the acoustics.
When she's not writing YA novels, she's mentoring teen writers, making pizza
with her family or dreaming of taking a nap, not necessarily in that order.
Author Links:
Purchase Links:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes | Smashwords
