Blog Tour: PROPHET’S LAMENTATION

Prophet’s Lamentation

by Robert Creekmore

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GENRE:   Thriller

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BLURB:

Two years after Naomi murdered the serial killer and rapist Vernon Proffit, she is attempting to adjust to a quiet life with her wife, Tiffany. But Vernon’s flock is not done with her. Under new leadership, their numbers have swollen as they morphed from a single entity into a network of cultists called Apostles of the Cloven Hand.

Naomi has suppressed her abilities since killing Vernon, but she cannot ignore the voices of the young people the new flock tortures and molests. They scream for help in her dreams every night, causing her to question her own sanity.

When she uses her long-dormant abilities to stop an attempted gay-bashing, Naomi’s true identity is exposed. The cult sends an assassin to kill Naomi and her family, forcing them to flee the state while the Apostles move to take everything the family has built.

Naomi fought the cult before and won. But that was before she had her chosen family to worry about. Now, she must choose between hiding on her own to keep her family safe or fighting back to destroy the Apostles. If she hides, the Apostles will continue to victimize those near them. If she fights, her family will be at risk of the same fate they plan for Naomi.

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Excerpt One:

“Even after your enemies’ defeat, they are still with you.”

Those are Nate’s words. I hear them whenever I wake up screaming and fighting in the middle of the night. Tiffany has similar episodes.

How do you build an ordinary life when you’re not, well, ordinary? Terror and fury molded me for eleven years. That abruptly ended with the death of Vernon Proffit and his acolytes. Sure, there was a period of celebration following. After vengeance, the anger never completely subsides. Don’t interpret that as regret; some motherfuckers need killing.

What bothers me is that before I fed Vernon to the Atlantic Ocean, the screams that woke me were my own as I relived trauma. 

The abilities my guide, Mara, gifted me are still intact, but I choose to shut myself off from them. However, now something new comes pulsing forth from the ground that I have no control over. I’m stirred from sleep by the horrors others are experiencing. They cry out for help, but I don’t know how to save them. Mostly, they’re abused young people. Their voices drive me mad. If I could only find them, maybe I could stop their suffering. Last night, it was a young man named Vincent. I couldn’t see where he was. I could only hear him wail in pain as he experienced abject hopelessness.

But I attempt to tarry forward.

Today, I should be happy. It’s July twentieth, two-thousand-six; my twenty-seventh birthday as Naomi Pace. Legally, as Hannah Sillman, I’m thirty-four and will turn thirty-five on Christmas day. That birthday is celebrated more ominously, as the real Hannah rests with her mother, Milly, under an old oak tree high up in the hills of Yancey County. Her father, Al, gifted me with this new life by giving me her identity for my eighteenth birthday. He was more of a father than my own, Amos, who beat me mercilessly when he found out that I was in love with Tiffany. I still am. Their hate and violence couldn’t destroy that. 

I won. Why am I still so sad? Why do I disregard my own life, feeling guilty about those I couldn’t save, like Charles? He died during our escape. There was nothing I could do. I know that, logically, but I can’t convince my heart of it. It eats at me with each heartbeat, saying, ‘you could have done more.’ It does so now, at four-thirty in the morning. I’m sitting up in bed with no one to speak with. I don’t dare wake my beautiful bride, Tiffany, as she sleeps soundly next to me.

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Interview:

Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!

I’m from rural eastern North Carolina. It’s mostly an agrarian economy, so I spent a lot of time on farms growing up. Specifically, a hybrid striped bass fish farm near the ocean. Most of my job was to catch fish for broodstock to breed for the next generation of hatchlings. My books take place on boats and backcountry where I try to convey the survival skills necessary accurately.  

Tell us about your book. How did it get started?

Prophet’s Lamentation is a stand-alone sequel to last year’s release, Prophet’s Debt. It picks up two years after the events of Prophet’s Debt, which is a book that follows a young girl named Naomi Pace during her escape from a conversion camp after witnessing two murders. Eventually, she comes back for well-deserved revenge. 

In Prophet’s Lamentation, Naomi is a young adult who’s doing her best to put together a life with her wife, Tiffany.  But, the death cult she fought has coalesced around another leader who has found a way to harness supernatural abilities similar to her own. This new demi-god makes a priority of hunting down Naomi and her chosen family but they are well hidden.  

This comes to a head on the occasion of Naomi’s twenty-seventh birthday. She’s celebrating at Spectrum, the only gay-friendly establishment in Wilmington, NC. She uses her abilities to prevent a friend from getting gay-bashed. In the process, the wrong person witnesses it, and the truth of her new identity finds itself back to the death cult. 

Their new leader is a charismatic young man named Joseph. He’s done more than just harness abilities similar to Naomi’s, he’s created mindless, terrifying beasts to help him along the way. Naomi and her chosen family flee North Carolina.

But, it doesn’t take long before Naomi hikes through the backcountry of the Appalachian mountains, slips unnoticed into their heavily protected town, and goes to war with them using her sharp aim with a bolt-action rifle and the ability to change the characteristics of the Earth itself with her supernatural gifts.

How do you create your characters?

There are always multiple conversations going on in my mind. I use them to build a construct where they’re tasked with speaking to one another in character.   

What inspires and what got you started in writing?

I write for the people who don’t have a voice; autistic people like myself, and queer folks, like many of my friends. There’s catharsis seeing the good guys win in fiction when they so often do not in reality.

Where do you write? Is there something you need in order to write (music, drinks?)

I need a joint and a martini.

How do you get your ideas for writing?

I honestly don’t know. I sit down and words come out. Even on my worst days, I at least write a paragraph or two. 

What do you like to read?

I write thrillers and horror, but my favorite genre to read is science fiction.

Kurt Vonnegut, David Gerrold, and Jeff VanderMeer are three of my favorites. 

What would your advice be for authors or aspiring in regards to writing?

Pay special attention to your English and Literature classes in high school. Then, don’t worry about writing in your twenties. Go out and live a wild life. Do things most people wouldn’t, besides hurting others. Then, channel all of it. Sit down and write daily at the same time for at least two hours. Waiting for inspiration is a canard. Creativity happens in the process.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Do what you want with this life. Stop chasing material possessions. Careers, luxury goods, and reality TV are farces created to keep you financially hemmed in and intellectually dull. Rebel and absorb what you can before slipping into the great void beyond.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Robert Creekmore is from a rural farming community in Eastern North Carolina.

He attended North Carolina State where he studied psychology. While at university, he was active at the student radio station. There, he fell in love with punk rock and its ethos.

Robert acquired several teaching licenses in special education. He was an autism specialist in Raleigh for eight years. He then taught for four years in a small mountain community in western North Carolina.

During his time in the mountains, he lived with his wife Juliana in a remote primitive cabin built in 1875. While there, he grew most of his own food, raised chickens, worked on a cattle farm, as well as participated in subsistence hunting and fishing.

Eventually, the couple moved back to the small farming community where Robert was raised.

Robert’s first novel Afiri, is a science fiction love letter to his childhood hero Carl Sagan. It was nominated for a Manly Wade Wellman award in 2016.

Robert’s second novel is the first in a trilogy of books. Annoyed with the stereotype of the southeastern United States as a monolith of ignorance and hatred, he wanted to bring forth characters from the region who are queer and autistic. They now hold up a disinfecting light to the hatred of the region’s past and to those who still yearn for a return to ways and ideas that should have long ago perished.

Amazon buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-Lamentation-Robert-Creekmore-ebook/dp/B0BZ6MRPVW/

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:

Robert Creekmore will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway