Tomorrow Comes Media invites you to Blackwyrm Publishing author L. Andrew Cooper’s Burning the Middle Ground Virtual Tour from May 8 to June 7, 2013!
Book synopsis, author bio, links, excerpt, and tour sign up form included below!
Genre: Dark Fantasy
About Burning the Middle Ground:
Burning the Middle Ground is a dark fantasy about small-town America that transforms readers’ fears about the country’s direction into a haunting tale of religious conspiracy and supernatural mind control. A character-driven sensibility like Stephen King’s and a flair for the bizarre like Bentley Little’s delivers as much appeal for dedicated fans of fantasy and horror as for mainstream readers looking for an exciting ride. Brian McCullough comes home from school and discovers that his ten-year-old sister Fran has murdered their parents. Five years later, a journalist, Ronald Glassner, finds Brian living at the same house in the small town of Kenning, Georgia. Planning a book on the McCullough Tragedy, Ronald stumbles into a struggle between Kenning’s First Church, run by the mysterious Reverend Michael Cox, and the New Church, run by the rebellious Jeanne Harper. At the same time, Kenning’s pets go berserk, and dead bodies, with the eyes and tongues removed from their heads, begin to appear.
About Andrew Cooper:
L. Andrew Cooper thinks the smartest people like horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Early in life, he couldn’t handle the scary stuff–he’d sneak and watch horror films and then keep his parents up all night with his nightmares. In the third grade, he finally convinced his parents to let him read grownup horror novels: he started with Stephen King’s _Firestarter_, and by grade five, he was doing book reports on _The Stand_.
When his parents weren’t being kept up late by his nightmares, they worried that his fascination with horror fiction would keep him from experiencing more respectable culture. That all changed when he transitioned from his public high school in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia to uber-respectable Harvard University, where he studied English Literature. From there, he went on to get a Ph.D. in English from Princeton, turning his longstanding engagement with horror into a dissertation. The dissertation became the basis for his first book, _Gothic Realities_ (2010). More recently, his obsession with horror movies turned into a book about one of his favorite directors, _Dario Argento_ (2012). He also co-edited the textbook _Monsters_ (2012), an attempt to infect others with the idea that scary things are worth people’s serious attention.
After living in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, Andrew now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches at the University of Louisville and chairs the board of the Louisville Film Society, the city’s premiere movie-buff institution. _Burning the Middle Ground_ is his debut novel.
L. Andrew Cooper Social Media:
Website and Blog
Facebook
google+: landrew42
Twitter
Amazon
Excerpt from Burning the Middle Ground:
Jeanne pried herself out of the mud and started walking. A few paces brought the hilltop into view. Something – someone – lay there. She moved faster. Someone else had fallen victim to whomever or whatever had left her drenched and defenseless in a cemetery. Together, they would make sense of things.
Before she reached it, she discerned that the supine figure was male. His legs were spread, and his arms extended from his sides, like someone making a snow angel. He seemed to be transfixed by the pouring clouds above him. “Hello?” Jeanne said.
A few more steps brought her to the hilltop. Her eyes registered the stillness of the man’s chest before she saw his face. His mouth hung open, a dark O. Red splotched his nose and cheeks, residue of blood that the rain had not yet washed away. The nose itself looked flattened, sliced open on both sides. The eye sockets were empty.
She knelt beside him and placed her hand on his neck. The flesh was cold. “SOMEBODY!” she yelled. Her joints ached, and her bruised hip throbbed. She had slept on the side of a muddy hill, and now she was cold, wet, aching, hungry, and standing next to a murdered man. The word “ritual” came into her mind. Someone had taken his eyes and destroyed his nose. A perverse impulse forced her to look into the O of his mouth. It was voided, tongueless. He had been murdered and ritually mutilated. She wondered about the order of events.
A sense of danger straightened her spine. No one could have left this man here without noticing her on the hill. More than likely, what had happened to her was connected to what had happened to him. She didn’t recognize the man, but somehow, they were linked.
Come on aboard for an adventure brought to you by L. Andrew Cooper! Sign up on the form below!