WELCOME to the Silver Hollow by Jennifer Silverwood blog tour hosted by Bewitching Book Tours.
I have a awesome guest post from the author to share with you all and of course of great giveaway for some free goodies. ;) Sit back and relax and enjoy this post.
❤
Silver Hollow by Jennifer Silverwood
Genre: Paranormal Romance/ Fantasy
Romance/ Chick-lit
Publisher: SilverWoodSketches
ISBN: 1481000144
Number of pages: 322
Cover Artist: Najla Qamber
Amie Wentworth writes paranormal romances, not because she is looking for a
degree in ectoplasm, but because she’s got bills to pay. Ever since her parents’ car
crash, she has been led a reclusive life and trusted books more than people. Not
even a letter from her long-lost uncle, begging her to visit, gives Amie incentive
for anything other than ire – until she is stabbed in an alley and brought back to life
by a mysterious stranger.
After crossing the Atlantic to her father’s homeland, Amie is dragged into the very
sort of tale she is used to selling. Silver Hollow is a place of ancient traditions and
supernatural dangers, where everything is the opposite of what it seems and few
escape sane.
To make matters worse, the man who saved her life keeps turning up and her
would-be-murderer is still at large.
But when she comes face to face with the ugly truth, will she too be sucked into
her father’s madness? Or will she discover that madness is just another name for
honesty?
❤ The hour before dawn found Amie pulling her car round the back alley. Through the gloom and decades-buried waste behind Pat’s Delights was a narrow strip leading to the back staircase leading up to her flat.
The stranger’s face came unbidden to her as she gathered her things and moved her weary legs. Black eyes set deeply in a shadow-drenched face haunted her, eyes which seemed to accuse and praise, sift and wonder. Now that she knew, she realized she must have seen him before today, maybe even in the past she had tried to forget.
The faded yellowing parchment marked with heavy black ink, with words too absurd to be true, flashed in her mind. Clutching the key hidden in her jeans pockets while digging through her purse for her keys, she remembered Uncle Henry’s letter. Mulling over the words, she once again recalled how angry she had been ten years ago after reading his first note. So what the cops were uncertain how the accident had happened. So what her father had known some powerful people. Amie had been primped and pushed into the upper-class social sphere through her teens and knew how to handle that sort. She could take care of herself just like she always had. She would tear up the letters and the tickets tonight. The twins and James were her family now.
As she placed her shoe upon the first rickety metal step, two thick and powerful hands grabbed her in the same moment.
It happened so quickly she forgot to scream. Dropping her purse she struggled, kicked and bucked against the crazy person lifting her and pulling her deeper into the shadows of the alley. And the harder she struggled the tighter his choking embrace became against her chest.
She thought at last to cry out, only to feel her face being smashed against a brick wall. She gasped as the figure suddenly pushed her aside, out of his embrace. Amie stumbled back and nearly tripping over a metal pipe. She righted herself only to come face-to-face with the black-masked figure. His brilliant blue eyes blazed into hers, now filled with unmistakable purpose. Too late she realized his intentions as a sickeningly cool object was plunged into her chest and pulled quickly out again.
Her vision swam, then blurred as she slumped against the trash-littered concrete. Her mind began to fade into an ever-deepening sleep though her eyes watched on. The black-garbed man was fighting someone else. Unmasked, this guy was taller, broader in the shoulders than her murderer and wrought by fury.
Pain…she had not known the meaning of the word before now and even this too was fading into the deep sleep. The further she fell the less sense the scene before her made. Her mind didn’t believe that the tall man had really tossed her attacker five feet into the air over his shoulder and into the brick, or a strange light and energy crackled in the suddenly luminous alley.
She was too afraid to hope when a pair of warm hands cradled her in a firm embrace. He pulled her from the muck and fixed his dark eyes on her. Obsidian-cut eyes, familiar eyes, pierced through her gaze and reached deeper. His face, once so indiscernible it could be called plain, was now twisted as though in agony. Even though she was slipping, falling into a calm quiet darkness, he refused to let her go. His hand moved from her neck to her cheek with the faintest touch. He pushed past and clasped hold of something tearing deep inside of her then. The black of his irises gave way to a strange mix of blue and green flecks gleaming in their depths. She saw…
Fields of brilliant emerald grass and a sun filled with more colors than she knew to name.
Darkness and a dirty cell, where heavy fists punctuated his pain.
Time beyond counting became a lifetime lost.
A green-eyed dark-haired beauty bathed in sunlight stretched out her hand to him.
Someone was screaming. Amie frowned as the woman’s cries grew louder. Pain spiked up in her chest as her lungs constricted and her heart was ripped apart then reformed. The woman’s screams died when she took a breath and realized the voice was hers.
She blinked.
And then she was lying within the narrow strip between two brick buildings, alone. ❤
Beginnings & Sisterhoods
I remember my dad once telling me, every time he performed a piano piece in front of an audience, that he never worried about the middle part as much as the end or beginning. Because what’s important is that you begin and end well, even if you mess up somewhere along the way. And if you play your cards right, you can fool the audience into thinking it was meant to be played that way.
Now obviously writing books and playing music are two completely different things, but they’re not as separate as people might think. Everyone wants to know what the author listened to while writing their books, and if they don’t want to at least they’d be interested in finding out. And the way we throw ourselves into crafting a finely polished, finished “piece,” is the same way a musician gives their lives daily to master their instrument and those notes.
I started Silver Hollow with a book within a book. Ever since The Neverending Story, I’ve loved the idea of worlds within worlds, especially worlds within books. But there was a time when I played around with a couple different beginnings to this story. After consulting my life long betas, the twins, I decided to stick with what you can see now.
If you’ve been following this tour, then you might already know how much I owe Silver Hollow to the two ladies who helped inspire the story in the first place. I wrote for them as much as me growing up. Partly because we grew up in the country and there was nothing more entertaining to do, and mostly because we honestly loved working on our books together.
Our brainstorming sessions in the past often sounded something like this:
Faye: Think Jo needs to die!
Jo: I think you do!
Faye: I can’t, I’m fading with the wind!
Jo: Whatever! I’ll pull you underneath the sea so the shark dwellers can feed on your body down there!
You get the gist. Another thing that changed during the big overhaul transformation with Allison (another bestie who I couldn’t have finished this project without! She pretty much helped me write the second draft) were the flashbacks.
Originally they were flashbacks to Amie’s time with her parents and growing up with the twins. I hated scrapping them for plot purposes, but it had to be done. And because y’all have been so awesome and I like sharing secret things, here they are for your viewing pleasure.
Draft 1 Flashback- the sisterhood
Amie’s family had made a holiday of it that summer. It was going to be a slam bang Fourth of July no matter how much her father protested. But if Amie had to hear one more story about how America betrayed its mother nation she might just lose it for real this year.
Jo and Faye helped her convince him in the end, argued that if he hated America so much he wouldn’t have rushed here in the first place.
Low and behold but Drustan Wentworth had the most fun that night. He was laughing and swapping stories with Robert, the twins’ balding cop dad. Their mothers shook their heads over the men’s antics. And while their parents’ backs were turned to the fireworks display on the lake, Amie twirled her sparklers.
So she freaked when Faye jumped in her line of vision, eyes gleaming mischievously, “Hey!”
“Good grief Faye I almost set your hair on fire!” Amie grumbled. Faye was trying to communicate something with her eyes, which as usual came off as hardly subtle. Jerking her head back to the trees behind them finally turned Amie’s vision. Sure enough a flashlight blinked at them once, then twice.
Amie groaned. “Now? We’re about to make smores!” Faye hooked arms and was already dragging her into the forest.
“Come on, if we don’t leave now we won’t have the chance.” And then she went into Mission Impossible mode, jumping behind trees, fingers bent into fake guns. Amie usually joined in. But she was too bitter over the chocolate marshmallow pieces of heaven she was missing out on.
Jo stood up once they reached her hiding spot, flashlight under her chin. “Whahaha!” Amie rolled her eyes but couldn’t help her grin. Jo had the effect of lightening anyone’s bad moods when she wanted. Turning to Faye, “What took you so long beans?!”
Faye held up a hand, currently the latest cool fad apparently. “Whatever! You know I’m working on my ninja skills. I needed the practice.”
Amie interrupted the brewing argument, “Where are we going that’s so great y’all took me away from my chocolate?”
Faye stopped them at the middle of an empty glade. Fireworks crackled in the distance. Through the uppermost branches they could still see a shower of lights. Hands braced on Amie’s shoulders, the taller twin rushed to a dark heap on the ground. “First you need one of these!” When she twirled back around three nets were in her hands.
Amie stared, “We’re catching butterflies? Are you kidding me? It’s almost midnight!”
Jo jumped up and down, clearly on another sugar high and blew a pink bubble the size of her fist. “Yeah beans!”
“No!” Faye argued. “Fireflies. So take one and wait for it.” They sat together in that glade for what felt like an hour to three preteens, and in reality was more like five minutes, before the first blinking lights appeared.
And Amie’s foul mood disappeared the moment not one but dozens of golden lights began to buzz around them. She’d never seen anything like it. It was just like one of father’s stories…magical. They captured fireflies and placed them inside the giant glass jar Jo brought. After poking holes the girls sat in a circle around that jar and made a solemn vow.
“I solemnly swear to always be true to the sisters three…” Amie recited while placing her palm over the two already covering the jar. They all smiled. Thus the secret AJSS club was born.
You’ll be seeing more glimpses behind Amie and the twins’ friendship again in the future. For now, I hope you’ve enjoyed yet another piece of this “making of” expose. I am so thankful that the twins helped me begin well and Silver Hollow wouldn’t have come into being without them. They were there with me in the beginning and I look forward to seeing what life’s adventures hold for us next, Faye and Jo.
About The Author: Jennifer Silverwood
Find Jennifer @
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
Jennifer Silverwood was raised deep in the heart of Texas and has been spinning yarns a mile high since childhood. In her spare time she reads and writes and tries to sustain her wanderlust, whether it's the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, the highlands of Ecuador or a road trip to the next town.
After attending three different universities without managing to square a degree, she decided to the next logical thing; become a writer. Always on the lookout for her next adventure, in print or reality, she dreams of one day proving to the masses that everything really is better in Texas.
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