Blog tour: The Six Days by Anna McCormally + excerpt
Happy Hump Day! On this Wednesday, we bring a blog tour for Anna Carolyn McCormally's YA fantasy novel, The Six Days. This tour is hosted by Enchanted Book Promotions and it's our first time featuring a Giant Squid Books title. Welcome and thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the excerpt!
Title: The Six
Days
Author: Anna
McCormally
Genre: YA
Fantasy
Format: Paperback, eBook, 318 pages
Published April 1st 2014 by Giant Squid Books
Fifteen years ago, in the middle
of the night, Jamie Carpenter’s mother went up to the dark lighthouse on the
cliffs. She never came back.
Yesterday, Jamie had a
nightmare: his little brother disappearing like their mother did, through the
door of the lighthouse, a door that has never opened.
Today, the nightmare came true.
Jamie’s brother is missing. And not just missing–he’s been abducted, taken
through the lighthouse door into the world of magic that lays beyond.
With his best friend Nia at his
side, Jamie crosses into a world he never knew existed–but Emanu is not the
fairytale world of childrens stories. Desperate
to understand who took Danny and why, struggling to survive in a world of
shadowy magic, Jamie and Nia seek the help of the Council of Witches. As they uncover more and more
of Jamie’s family secrets and unknown powers, it becomes clear that Nia herself
may be something more than human–and that it’s her the Council views as their
biggest threat…
Swept up in a dark political
game they don’t understand, burdened by magic they don’t know how to use, Jamie
and Nia are going to have to learn fast if they’re going to survive Emanu and
rescue Danny Carpenter. There are only six days until the gate between worlds
closes again.
For good.
EXCERPT:
"Cal says, “I never
asked you—what does it feel like for you?”
“What does what feel
like?”
“The magic,” he says and
all of a sudden all she can think about is their conversation on the boat, the
firelight and Cal oh so close under the sky, just like he is now.
Music drifts over them
from inside like a cool breeze and the air tastes of silver starlight, crisp
and cold. Nia relishes the taste of it, breathes in and out slowly, her breath
smoky on the night air.
“It feels like breathing,”
she says, and looks up at him. “Like I was never breathing properly before,
just shallow breaths, you know, something blocking the airflow. And then, in
the attic, it was just switched on—and I could breathe.” She looks back at the
river below them. “It feels intoxicating,” she says. “It’s like I’m drunk on
breathing.”
“So you’re not,” Cal says,
“angry.”
She cocks her head, waits.
“I’m angry,” he explains.
“I’m so furious that this happened to us I can hardly think about anything
else. Everything about our lives—it wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it wasn’t true.
I wish none of this had ever happened; I’d give anything to go back.” He says
this all very calmly, like he has thought very hard about how to articulate
something that he is struggling to come to terms with and, in finding the
words, has accepted it a little. It is marvelous, his self-awareness; he is a
marvel.
“Oh Cal,” she says. She
has the urge to reach out and touch his face, but she doesn’t. “I know I
shouldn’t say this but we’re going to find Danny, aren’t we? We’re going to
save him? So in the end I’m glad it happened, because—I won’t have to go back.”
She pauses and then repeats what she’d said to Jamie, wondering what Cal’s
reaction will be: “They’ll have to forgive me, won’t they? The Council?”
He doesn’t say anything;
he seems to have tensed.
She says, “You think I’m
horrible.”
“No,” he says, “I don’t
think you’re horrible. It’s just—you never did anything wrong. I just think
don’t think you have anything to prove to them.”
“It’s not about that,” she
says, frowning, and Cal says, “Isn’t it? You’re not—you’re not like them.”
“And what are they like?”
she asks without looking at him.
“They’re—” he says and
then hesitates. “I don’t know. Heartless.”
She laughs. “And I’m not
heartless?”
“No,” he says, with
wonder, “No, you’re—of course you’re not. Nia,” (his voice is staid and steady
voice and it irritates her; everything she loves about Cal and everything she
hates about him are the same things), “I’ve known you practically my entire
life, I know what you’re like and you’re...you’re the least—”
“I’m not afraid of the Call,”
Nia cuts him off. “If that’s what—if it happens to me then I’m not afraid. I
would be happy to go to the Council. I’d be grateful.”
He gazes at her; his look
rings through the air. “Ni,” he says, and then, blushing, shakes his
head."
Author Bio
Anna Carolyn McCormally currently manages a small used bookstore in Washington, D.C.. She has a tattoo of the Deathly Hallows and blogs about YA fiction at www.giantsquidbooks.com.. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in pacificREVIEW, Quantum Fairy Tales and 3 am magazine. Follow her on Twitter @mccormallie.
Thanks so much for hosting this excerpt--that was one of my favorite scenes to write!
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