Cover Reveal: Entanglement by Katie Rose Guest Pryal

 

 

Let’s do a cover reveal today! The newest book to come out of the oh so capable hands of the Velvet Morning Press duo- Adria and Vicki is going to be Katie Rose Guest Pryal’s ENTANGLEMENT (look for it summer 2015!)

But today, exclusively at Traveling With T, is the cover reveal!

Now, no peeking till I say it’s time!

Are your eyes closed? (Wait, if they are- then you wouldn’t be able to read this- so maybe just a teensy peek!)

You ready?

3,2,1…..

Sparkles and glitter, oh my! Here it is!

Photo Credit: Velvet Morning Press

 

 

Like the cover? You should totally tweet Katie and let her know!

 

What is the book about? I’m so glad you asked!

ENTANGLEMENT, forthcoming summer 2015 from Velvet Morning Press, tells the story of awkward, twenty-one-year-old Greta Donovan, the fiercely intelligent daughter of a philandering physics professor. She doesn’t relate to people nearly as well as she relates to facts and figures. While Greta gets quarks and string theory, she hasn’t a clue where men are concerned.

Which is exactly why she doesn’t see it coming when someone tries to kill her.

After college, Greta’s father kicks her out. She moves to L.A. with her best friend Daphne Saito, a troubled girl with an abusive past. The charismatic Daphne teaches Greta how to wear stilettos, apply lip gloss, and navigate 1990s Hollywood nightlife. Daphne is determined to succeed, and she drags an unwilling Greta into the limelight with her.

When Greta walks out on her, Daphne tries to win her back. But Daphne’s desperate tactics just push Greta farther away. Reeling, Daphne betrays Greta while throwing a dangerous man in her path. Can Greta survive? Can she forgive?

 

**Which is why she doesn’t see it coming when someone tries to kill her.* Are you kidding me? After that line- it’s like I have to know. And I suspect many readers will feel the same!

Of course you know that I can’t just give you a cover reveal- oh no… Gotta give you that excerpt to get you all interested!

Excerpt from ENTANGLEMENT

1. Los Angeles, December 1999

From her hospital bed, Greta considers the single flickering fluorescent tube behind the translucent ceiling panel. She imagines the electricity coursing through, the mercury atoms generating invisible ultraviolet light. Phosphorescence. Even though she can’t see the mercury, she knows it is there, and knowing gives her comfort. At least the elements are still behaving as they should.

Nothing else is. Everything she could count on has been smashed.

Everyone she’s counted on has betrayed her.

But she won’t cry any more. She did that for a while tonight, but the nurses took turns watching her through the narrow glass of her door, curious and prying. So she stopped crying. She couldn’t bear them.

The ICU bustles. The wall clock indicates that the hour is three o’clock, and the darkness outside her window indicates that the time is antemeridian. Next to her, a morphine-derivative drip beeps every sixty seconds. She supposes the doctors selected this particular class of painkiller because it doesn’t have blood thinning properties. Properties that would be deadly given the bruising on her brain.

Her father would be happy. She can hear him now: Never sacrifice your genius for a little pain.

She blinks once to clear her vision, to refocus.

She knows she probably won’t die of her head injury, although she had trouble maintaining consciousness when she first awoke twenty-four hours ago.

A concussion, the doctor said. You’re out of the dark, but this is going to hurt like hell.

She appreciated his honesty. It seemed to be in short supply in her life.

The hospital reminds Greta of her daily vigils at her dying mother’s bedside when she was in high school. She glances at the empty chair next to the bed, grateful no one sits there out of obligation or duty. Marcellus, her landlord, who came with her to the hospital, left soon after the doctors whisked her into radiology. Even Daphne and Timmy have left, sent away by Greta after she woke.

She couldn’t stand to see their guilty faces.

Timmy arrived first, waiting for her when she opened her eyes, his face covered in love and pain.

“Greta,” he said. “What happened? Who did this?”

She didn’t tell him. She wasn’t sure why. She knew who attacked her. After all, she spoke with the man before turning her back on him, before he struck her.

But something in the tone of Timmy’s voice made Greta hold back. He looked guilty for some reason, as though he’d been the one holding the weapon.

And her instincts were indeed right. He did feel guilty. Although Greta didn’t believe in sixth senses or ESP, she knew that humans—like any animals—could perceive unconsciously more than they could perceive consciously, and that these unconscious perceptions could add up to a split-second conclusion. And the conclusion she drew when she saw Timmy was that he’d done something to hurt her.

Had he ever.

Daphne arrived later, after Greta had sent Timmy away. Daphne, supremely perceptive, knew she was in trouble before Greta had said anything at all. Daphne also knew there was nothing she could do to earn Greta’s forgiveness.

Greta had always had a hard time forgiving people.

“I’ll go now,” Daphne said.

Greta nodded in assent.

“I’ll love you forever, Greta.” Daphne’s voice broke. “You are my family.”

Greta turned away. Daphne was her family, too. And now she knew what family meant to Daphne.

Greta shuts her eyes and tries to place the events of the past thirty hours in chronological order. Without this deliberate effort, the faces and places merge and swirl, and causation gets lost in the muck of it. It’s really important to her that the causes are clear. As clear as the effects.

The effects: lying in a hospital bed in the ICU with a dislocated shoulder, a concussion covered by a sutured scalp, and a large hematoma on her face.

The causes: That’s what she’s trying to work out. She’s always believed that with enough application of concentration, she could solve even the most complicated equations.

She admits to herself that this time she might be stumped.

She thinks of Timmy once more, of the pain on his face while he sat in that plastic chair.

She thinks of Daphne sitting by her side, reaching out for Greta’s I.V.-splintered hand while Greta turned away.

Greta wonders if the rest of her might splinter as well, into shards of energy, into the particles that compose her body, until there’s nothing left of her on those white sheets.

She’d be free.

She clamps a lid on her wonderings and reaches for her cell phone. She needs a strategy, not a reverie. She needs to make sure she’ll be safe: from the police officer sitting outside her door. From Daphne and Timmy. And from the man who might still want to hurt her.

She presses the telephone buttons with one hand. She listens for the ring and then the voice.

***************

Photo Credit: Velvet Morning Press

About the Author

Katie enjoys her three professions—novelist, freelance journalist, and lawyer—for one reason: her love of the written word. Fiction or nonfiction, Katie thrives on putting thoughts to paper and sharing them with the world. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where the energy of the campus and cafés inspires her to keep writing.

Like this glimpse at Katie’s writing? Sign up for her newsletter, Writing Isn’t Sexy (no really, it isn’t), at http://bit.ly/pryalnews. You’ll also be the first to find out about new releases and sales! And be sure to check out the latest on her website, KatieRoseGuestPryal.com.

 

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Happy Reading and Bookishly Yours,

T @ Traveling With T