Stranger Will by Caleb J. Ross review and giveaway!

About the book: The child he loves. The idea of a child, he’s beginning to understand, is where everything will go wrong. William works as a human remains removal specialist, removing stains left by the dead. Whether by a bloody crime scene or a quiet domestic death, William is reminded each day of the frailty of human life. As his fiance, Julie, nears term with their first child William becomes increasingly desperate for a way to overcome his belief that to birth is to kill. But Mrs. Rose, an elementary school principal and messenger pigeon hobbyist, nurtures William’s depressive outlook and claims to have a way to prove that William’s hesitancy to accept fatherhood is not only natural but necessary. In this novel of impending fatherhood, an idealistic teacher recruits a pliant protege to join her group of Strangers – a devout collection of kindred minds who have dedicated their lives to cultivating a unique idea of perfection. But joining is easier than leaving. Stranger Will explores the human urge to reproduce via one man’s struggle to understand his role as a father. As Rob Roberge, author of More than They Could Chew and Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life, says “This is an original—unlike anything you’ve ever read before.” Pick up your copy of this Literary/ Psychological/ Horror through Amazon US, Amazon UK, or Barnes & Noble.

About the author: Caleb J. Ross has a BA in English Literature and creative writing from Emporia State University. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared widely, both online and in print. He is the author of five books of fiction and is a core contributor to The BookTube Vidcast, a columnist at ManArchy Magazine, and is the creator of The Burning Books Channel, a YouTube channel featuring humorous book reviews, literary skits, writing advice, and rants. Connect with Caleb on his website, Facebook,true" target="_blank">GoodReads, or Twitter.
About the prizes: Who doesn't love prizes? You could win either of two $25 Amazon gift cards, an autographed copy of Stranger Will, or an autographed copy of one of its tour mates, Angel Falls by Michael Paul Gonazelz or The Sound of Loneliness by Craig Wallwork. Here's what you need to do...

1. Enter the Rafflecopter contest
2. Leave a comment on my blog.

That's it! One random commenter during this tour will win a $25 gift card. Visit more blogs for more chances to win--the full list of participating bloggers can be found here. The other $25 gift card and the 3 autographed books will be given out via Rafflecopter. You can find the contest entry form linked below or on the official Perfect Edge Trifecta tour page via Novel Publicity. Good luck! Perfect Edge Books was founded in late 2011 to unite authors whose books weren't "obviously" commercial. Our books tend to sit in various genres all at once: literary fiction, satire, neo-noir, sci-fi, experimental prose. We believe that literary doesn't have to mean difficult, and that difficult doesn't just mean pointless. We prefer to cultivate a word-of-mouth approach to marketing, and keep production as simple as we can. Learn more at www.PerfectEdgeBooks.com.

Learn more about Stranger Will's tour mates HERE.

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Excerpt:

William Lowson had seen a homeless man once before. This was back in Herman Essex, before moving to Brackenwood, before the pregnancy. Even before Julie. William figured him to be just a man with different tastes in clothing, a man like F. Lowson, William’s father, with his thin shirts and pants painted in oil and puddle water. But for that assumption, William was corrected. “That’s not a man,” F. Lowson told his son that day many years ago. “That is a bum.”

The bum hurled a dime, connecting with F. Lowson’s neck. The father beat the bum, cursed him as the ambulance drove away, for making his taxes pay the impending hospital bill. Tiny William learned that day that some people are fit for fatherhood, and some aren’t.

An army of homeless claims the streets of Brackenwood.
They march in Salvation Army boots to the tune of secret voices, and chew MREs found in trash bins. They beg for change like their lives are judged at the end of bayonet. But all with white teeth. Clean hair, too. The bums of F. Lowson’s age barely had teeth or hair at all, and here these people were, like catalog model homeless, not an honest stereotype among them.
William had moved his fiancée to Brackenwood just months ago citing its high death rate as promise to a more lucrative life. He removed stains for a living, those left by dead bodies—from roads, from homes, from ditches. From schools, from church pews, from benches. Just the dying homeless alone—encouraged by disease, cold winters, and neglect—William thought would be enough to keep his growing family fed. Though food wasn’t his initial concern after recently learning of Julie’s pregnancy. Instead, he worried about contamination.

The phenyl lacquered into his fingerprint crevasses warps every bite of food into fire. Julie makes a strong goulash, but onion and paprika cannot mask the taste of chemicals used to absolve blood and skin from highways and dashboards. She can ferment a stiff sauerkraut, but even cabbage brine tastes like water when chased with residual Thermo-55 deodorizer.
He’s read every book available at the modest Brackenwood library, searching for a reason to believe that this child could survive beyond these chemicals. The olfactory lobes form as early as six weeks, he’s read. He didn’t know this until week ten when Julie finally revealed her pregnancy. By that time he’d already been inadvertently bathing the fetus in fumes he’d neglect washing from his clothes, instead letting them contaminate the air, fall into Julie’s mouth, down her throat, and into the amniotic fluid flowing through the fetus’s oral and nasal cavities. Biologists used to believe that smell depended on access to air. Now, they could blame William should anything happen. They could blame the bodies he cleans from the road as the source of his child’s imperfections.
“Stay away,” Julie says when William steps into the living room. “You smell like formaldehyde.” He smells chili on the stove, seasoned with the Virex TB cleaner wafting from his shirt.
With each chemical breath William dreams the inhaled fumes were formaldehyde, solidifying his insides, making him capable of just a few more years, a reason to think he could mutate his genes to give any children a few more days than God could.
He loves the baby already. He’s a realist, though. The child, he loves. The idea of a child, he’s beginning to understand, is where everything will go wrong.
He sleeps that night on the living room couch next to the phone. People seem to die a lot in the middle of the night.

My Review:

 

Wow. I love dark horror, but this was a step beyond. I literally had to make sure the lights were on. The author is definitely either messed up or extremely talented. I think he is extremely talented. He created a world so dark and vivid, that it was beyond what ever I could have imagined it was about. The main character is jacked up. He has more issues then I don't know who. He job is to clean up crime scenes. How gross is that? Not only does he know what probably happened, but he also gets it in his head. There were times he had to deal with body parts. He doesn't want his child to be born. Okay a lot of men don't.  However the author takes this to a scary level that I am not going to spoil in this review.

I also wanted to discuss the writing style. The images that the author wrote about were, and still are, fresh in my mind as though I am in the book seeing what the characters see.

There is also concerns about the chemicals that William uses as par of his job. Are they safe for a baby? Are they safe for his wife? for him?

I am giving this book a 5/5 because I am afraid of Mrs Rose! lol I am seriously giving this book a 5/5. I have not read such psychologically dark horror in a very, very, long time. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own. I am definitely keeping an eye on this writer!

Blog Tour 

1-Apr	Bigger, Fuller Glass
1-Apr	Bookworm Castle
1-Apr	Naimeless
2-Apr	Deal Sharing Aunt
2-Apr	Growing Up Little
3-Apr	Free Book Reviews
3-Apr	The Reviewing Shelf
4-Apr	Candle Beam Books
4-Apr	Challenging Reads
5-Apr	Lissette E. Manning’s Blog
6-Apr	Cabin Goddess
7-Apr	Tread Softly
7-Apr	Words in Sync

 

About the Author:

Caleb J. Ross has a BA in English Literature and creative writing from Emporia State University. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared widely, both online and in print. He is the author of five books of fiction and is a core contributor to The BookTube Vidcast, a columnist at ManArchy Magazine, and is the creator of The Burning Books Channel, a YouTube channel featuring humorous book reviews, literary skits, writing advice, and rants.
Connect with Caleb on his website, Facebook, GoodReads, or Twitter.