The Girl by Victory Witherkeigh - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Hi, lovelies!!  It gives me great pleasure today to host Victory Witherkeigh and her new book, “The Girl,” here on FAB!!  For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $10 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card!!  Also, come back daily to interact with Victory and to increase your chances of winning!!

Thanks for stopping by!!  Wishing you all lots of good luck in this fabulous giveaway!!

The Girl

by Victory Witherkeigh

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GENRE:  YA Horror

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BOOK BLURB:

The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl. At birth, the girl’s long, elegant fingers wriggled and grasped forward, motioning to strangle the very air from her mother’s lungs. As she grew older, she grew more like her father, whose ancestors would dream of those soon to die. She walked and talked in her sleep, and her parents warded themselves, telling the girl that she was evil, unlovable, their burden to bear only until her eighteenth birthday released them.

The average person on the streets of Los Angeles would look at the girl and see a young woman with dark chocolate eyes, curly long hair, and tanned skin of her Filipina heritage. Her teachers praised her for her scholarly achievements and extracurricular activities, from academic decathlon to cheer.

The girl knew she was different, especially as she grew to accept that the other children’s parents didn’t despise them. Her parents whispered about their pact as odd and disturbing occurrences continued to happen around her. The girl thought being an evil demon should require the skies to bleed, the ground to tremble, an animal sacrifice to seal the bargain, or at least cause some general mayhem. Did other demons work so hard to find friends, do well on their homework, and protect their spoiled younger brother?

The demon was patient. It could afford to wait, to remind the girl when she was hurt that power was hers to take. She needed only embrace it. It could wait. The girl’s parents were doing much of its work already.

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EXCERPT ONE:

She smoothed the wrinkles down on her black Hermès slacks and shirt before turning the crystal hotel doorknob.

“You bring nothing good into this world,” her mother said, baring her teeth. “You just corrupt and destroy everything. You’re a catalyst, a demonic catalyst. You’re only fit to annihilate. One day you’ll understand the destructive nature of your power. You’ll see the damage you’ll bring to those around you when it’s too late. All those people who tell us you’re amazing, they’ll figure it out. You’ve fooled them for now, but they’ll learn.”

The mother slammed the door as she walked out with that last statement. The tears flowed from the girl’s face as she looked at the door. Her breathing sped up as her stomach roiled, sending her sprinting to the toilet. Her hands were shaking, clammy, as she collapsed to the floor, chills running through her body as she looked up at the ceiling. The orange and bergamot scents of the soaps mixed with the stark, white porcelain tile floor were the only anchors she could focus on to stop herself from throwing up again. Deep in her gut, at the core of her being, there was only one thought she could grasp: she’s right.

“I don’t want to be evil,” she said, whimpering to herself. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“But you aren’t alone, pretty girl,” a voice said with a throaty laugh.

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GUEST POST:

The Craziest Thing I’ve Done in the Name of Research

“Wow, I thought this was going to be a pretty standard hike, but it’s good you booked a private one because this will take a while….”

Not if I throw you off this ravine before we get there…

There I was, crawling over gnarled tree roots, fallen tree trunks over uneven, wet rocks between unkempt switch-back trails. Hands gripping my walking stick as my hiking guide teased me for being so slow as he traversed this trail on the South Pacific island of Moorea, in French Polynesia, in flip-flops.

“Really, this walk - thought it would take us only an hour and a half to the top, but we might be here all day…” he said, his French accent almost laughing as he skipped along in front of me. “But it will be an amazing view once we get to the top….”

And then I’ll just collapse there with my ancestors…

“Do you see these chickens?” he said, jarring my focus away from the humid, torrential acidic taste of bug spray, sunscreen, and sweat dripping into my eyes and mouth. “They’re resting on this tree branch… chickens on the islands still roam free, like dogs… like ancestral times. They can still fly up to 3 meters to get to safety….”

This was supposed to be my vacation, a time I could have been sitting on one of the white or black sand beaches, sipping fresh coconut water or rum cocktails. Instead, I was along a treacherous hiking trail in the mountains of Moorea to listen to this local hiking guide and his famed tales of the island’s gifts and oral history. He was one of the few who had avoided the French Polynesian banking jobs, wanting to explore the ancestral homelands of our people, learning about every rock and planet there was to offer.

“When our ancestors came, only the royal lineage could live along the water’s edge. The common people lived in the mountains. It’s why these trails came about. The working class would traverse these mountains daily - for hunting, foraging, everything. We found they could use the red ginger flower for our soaps and shampoos. You can see along these roots, the symbols still carved for the people to follow - showing them the path where our priests would tap the first tattoos into the skins….”

When I knew I was writing The Girl and taking from the mythology and legends of the Pacific Islands, my family DNA sprouted up. Knowing that so much of our history had been destroyed by colonization meant that there were very few books or texts that I could turn to. National Geographic and older library research would provide some jumping-off points. Still, I need more to feel confident that the stories my grandparents, aunties, or uncles taught in my halaus were rooted in something tangible. It’s how I sipped lukewarm grape Pedialyte, desperately clinging to the hiking elder’s words as his stories continued with each muddy, mosquito-biting step I took. I needed to step into the same ancestral lands, hear the stories, and see and smell the air and flowers. The oral history I’d heard for so long transformed in front of my eyes.

“We’re here!” he shouted as my eyes widened at the valleys below. “We’ll traverse this edge to the end of the trail. Sometimes travelers want to climb this rock… even though in Tahitian, it translates to ‘certain death,’ they still wish to go against what we’ve known for eons longer… so we don’t stop them from being stupid… the island will always win. The islands will always show who can survive and earn their place to stay with the heat, the mosquitoes, the jungle, and the death… or it’ll churn you back to the mainland… desperate for paradise knowing you’d never make it….”

I started laughing and crying at the same time… jumping up and down as I took in a view I couldn’t have dreamt up if I had tried.

“But you made it…” he said, his smile widening to a wolfish grin. “it just took so much longer….”

“Yeah,” I said, huffing as tears of joy and surprise ran down my cheeks. “Looks like I made the cut after all.”

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AUTHOR BIO:

Victory Witherkeigh is a female Filipino author originally from Los Angeles, CA, currently living in the Las Vegas area. Victory was a finalist for Wingless Dreamer’s 2020 Overcoming Fear Short Story award and a 2021 winner of the Two Sisters Writing and Publishing Short Story Contest.

She has print publications in the horror anthologies Supernatural Drabbles of Dread through Macabre Ladies Publishing, Bodies Full of Burning through Sliced Up Press, and In Filth It Shall Be Found through OutCast Press.

Her first novel, set to debut in Spring 2024 with Cinnabar Moth Publishing, has been a finalist for Killer Nashville’s 2020 Claymore Award, a 2020 Cinnamon Press Literature Award Honoree, and long-listed in the 2021 Voyage YA Book Pitch Contest.

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CONNECT WITH VICTORY:

Website:

https://victorywitherkeigh.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/victorywitherkeigh

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/witherkeigh

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/victory_witherkeigh

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21666297.Victory_Witherkeigh

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62892266-the-girl

Amazon Author Page:

https://amzn.to/3BvD58m

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AMAZON BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon US Kindle eBook:

https://amzn.to/3uM708A

Amazon US Paperback:

https://amzn.to/3YdCGRT

Amazon US Hardcover:

https://amzn.to/3BxKXWO

Amazon CA Kindle eBook:

https://www.amazon.ca/Girl-Victory-Witherkeigh-ebook/dp/B0BFBTC8X7

Amazon CA Paperback:

https://www.amazon.ca/Girl-Victory-Witherkeigh/dp/1953971601

Amazon CA Hardcover:

https://www.amazon.ca/Girl-Victory-Witherkeigh/dp/195397161X

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Victory will be awarding a $10 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner’s Choice!!!) to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions.  Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.