I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the BLINDSPOTS by Rhonda Parrish Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours.
Title: BLINDSPOTS
Author: Rhonda Parrish
Pub. Date: June 5, 2023
Publisher: Poise and Pen Publishing
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 195
Find it: Goodreads, books2read
The war is done.
Ricky wants some time to lick his wounds and learn what the new normal is going to look like for him but then his brother goes missing. Now Ricky needs to team up with his wartime friends (and at least one dog he’d hoped never to see again) to find him, figure out what’s going on and save the world.
Again.
And the clock is ticking…
Excerpt:
Choosing an excerpt to share from a novel can be challenging. You must choose a brief bit of the story that will capture people’s attention and also accurately give a taste of the book without requiring too much context. Usually I share the very first couple hundred words, however, because this book is kind of tricky to define I actually already shared the first chapter on my blog (you can read it here. So that complicated my choice. But only a little bit *wink*
Another of my favourite scenes happens right near the start of the story. Our intrepid hero Ricky the (mostly) Golden Retriever has arrived at his friend Winter’s workshop.
*
Winter didn’t like us scratching at her door to get her attention, so she’d rigged up a doorbell system using a rope tug.
I caught the rope in my teeth, thankful for the knot that had been tied on the end, and pulled. It tasted exactly how you’d expect a giant piece of doggie dental floss to taste and I was also rewarded by the sound of the buzzer echoing through the depths of Winter’s hovel.
Then, I heard something move above me. I leapt back, hackles raised, growling, and saw a telescoping pole separate itself from the wall and lurch awkwardly in my direction.
I growled louder, and let loose a bark just before Winter’s chuckle crackled through a speaker near the door.
“Don’t panic, Ricky,” she said. “Just me getting a look at you. Come on in.”
“Don’t panic, Ricky,” I mumbled under my breath. Easy for her to say, she wasn’t the one who’d just had part of a wall come to life and come straight for him.
I heard her chuckle once more, so she must have heard me, and then the resonant click of her speaker ticking off. I pushed the door open and wandered inside.
Stacks of boxes and papers and metal woopdewoos loomed over me from either side and a basket hanging over my head rattled when my tail tapped against it. I tucked my tail in close to my body and ducked my head. I did not want to cause an avalanche in here. No one could expect to survive that.
“I am over here,” she called, from somewhere in the depths of her labyrinth. The good news was, like with any labyrinth, there was only one direction I could go. Her collected bits and bobs created walls which effectively left only one path, and I was on it.
I stepped carefully. In stark contrast to every other horizontal surface in the place, Winter’s floor was clean and clear. But even so I’d tromped on a tiny spring last time I’d been here and it had stabbed deep enough into the pad of my foot that I’d been limping for a week afterward.
One day there was going to be a ground rumble around here and all this stuff was going to bury Winter tighter than a grunt in a foxhole. Winter said no way, but I figured that just went to show that no matter how brilliant you are we all have blindspots.
I wound my way through the various stacks of stuff and eventually found Winter. The room was round, I think, though it was difficult to tell with the stacks and piles of all manner of metal thingamagigs. Winter was right in the middle of it, where the floor was most concave. She was staring through what looked like a pair of binoculars, except that they were attached to a series of pipes and poles. Three wide screens were arrayed directly in front of her, flickering between different scenes in and around her home. A series of buttons, levers and what looked like the stick shift from a very large truck filled the rest of the space that made up her workstation.
I saw the front door flash into view on one of the monitors. Fenton, Meep and Moo had all made it.
*
Winter is a lot of fun for me – she’s the only one of Ricky’s friends who isn’t a dog and I enjoy making her a big of a collector as well as the genius of the group. She’s also named in honour of my late mother, who loved owls, so that’s another point in her favour.
Oh! And I loved Winter’s workshop so much that I commissioned the amazing Allie MacAlister to illustrate it for me!
That is just one of four illustrations by Allie that are in the book. Because, who says books for grown-ups can’t have cute pictures?
About Rhonda Parrish:
Like a magpie, Rhonda Parrish is constantly distracted by shiny things. She’s the editor of many anthologies and author of plenty of books, stories and poems. She lives with her husband and cats in Edmonton, Alberta, and she can often be found there playing Dungeons and Dragons, bingeing crime dramas or cheering on the Oilers.
Her website, updated regularly, is at http://www.rhondaparrish.com and
her Patreon, updated even more regularly, is at https://www.patreon.com/RhondaParrish
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Amazon
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
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6/5/2023 |
Excerpt |
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6/6/2023 |
IG Post |
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6/7/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/8/2023 |
Guest Post/IG Post |
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6/9/2023 |
Guest Post |
Week Two:
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6/12/2023 |
Guest Post |
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6/13/2023 |
Guest Post/IG Post |
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6/14/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/15/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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6/16/2023 |
Review |
Week Three:
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6/19/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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6/20/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
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6/21/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
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6/22/2023 |
IG Review |
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6/23/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
Week Four:
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6/26/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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6/27/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
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6/28/2023 |
IG Review |
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6/29/2023 |
IG Review |
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6/30/2023 |
IG Review |
