Today I’m
featuring a special excerpt from the psychological thriller, The Last
Dreamgirl, by Shane Hayes.
During his virtual book tour, Shane will be awarding a $20 Amazon
or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn
person. To be entered for a chance to win, use
the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops, too!
A little
bit about the author:
A native
Philadelphian, Shane Hayes earned his bachelor’s and his law degree from
Villanova University, and studied for a year at Princeton Theological Seminary.
He worked as a writer/editor for Prentice Hall and an attorney for the federal
government. He is married, has four children, and lives in suburban
Philadelphia. His nonfiction book The End of Unbelief: A New Approach to the
Question of God was released by Leafwood Publishers in the fall of 2014.
Two
young men meet on ship when both are recently out of college. They share a
flaming ambition. Each aims to write novels that will be internationally acclaimed
and win him a place in American letters. One of them, Paul Theroux, achieves
the dream in all its glory: becomes world famous, writes over 40 books, and
three of his novels are made into films. The other, Shane Hayes, fails
completely, but keeps tenaciously writing, decade after decade, plowing on
through hundreds of rejections. Then almost half a century later, Shane
contacts Paul, who remembers him, reads three of his books, likes them, and
praises them with endorsements.
In
writing to agents and publishers Shane could now say, “Query for a novel
praised by Paul Theroux.” No one offers a book deal because of an endorsement,
so rejections keep coming. But more people let him send at least a sample and
are predisposed to see merit in it. At his age, time is crucial. In the month
he turns 75, Shane receives contracts on two of his books from different
publishers. He will always be grateful to the literary giant who remembered ten
days of friendship half-a-lifetime after it ended.
A little
bit about The Last Dreamgirl:
For
every man there’s a girl who grips his imagination and his heart as no other
girl ever did or will. She may be in her teens or a mature woman. He responds
to her as a boy to a girl. Whether she comes early in his life or late, there
is a throne in his subconscious that she takes possession of, without trying,
often without wanting to.The image he forms of her reigns there in perpetuity,
even if she has left his life, or this life. Her enchantment never fades or
fails, and he is never immune to it. She may not be for him the last wife or
paramour, but she is the last dreamgirl.
Excerpt from The Last Dreamgirl:
Traffic
was light enough that Ron could pull out and follow Bower, a car or two behind.
Bower drove to a local Acme supermarket, parked, grabbed a pushcart, and went
in to shop.
Ron
did the same. While he avoided trailing Bower through the aisles he effectively
followed him by going down aisles that Bower was coming up, and sometimes
pausing near Bower to search for products on one side of the aisle while Bower
was scanning the shelves on the other side. Viewing the man’s features at close
range Ron had no doubt that this was the Vulture. Ron got so close to him in
the drug and cosmetics aisle that he made two notable observations. First, from
a sharp side angle Bower’s deformed eye-placement could be seen under his dark
glasses. Second, he was working from two shopping lists—which seemed to be in
different handwriting. At a glance Ron perceived one as a small neat feminine
hand, written in blue ink, and the other as a larger, though equally neat,
hand—probably masculine—in pencil.
Ron’s
heart leaped at the thought that the penned shopping list had been written by
Sandra Moore. But he knew how much he wanted to find evidence of her being
alive in Bower’s house and feared he might have seen what he wanted to see.
Seconds after the observation, when he had moved down the aisle, he began to
question it.
The
fact that both lists were so neatly written made him doubt that they were done
by different hands. The pencil versus ink could have created that illusion; and
sometimes one’s mood and the size of the paper can prompt one to write smaller
than usual....
Ron’s
doubts about handwriting were resolved when he made his next pass of Bower’s
cart near the feminine hygiene shelves and saw in it a box of women’s sanitary
napkins. Why in God’s name would Bower be buying Kotex if he lived alone? There
had to be a woman there and a menstruating woman at that. Ron couldn’t check
but would be willing to bet that the Kotex had been written on the blue-ink
shopping list in what had first struck him as a feminine hand. It was a
feminine hand, and he would lay odds that it was Sandra’s.
Ron
got right behind Bower in the checkout line and noticed that he had also bought
a woman’s scented bath powder, a feminine underarm deodorant, and a supply of
hairpins. Ron had to resist an impulse to cry out in joy and triumph. None of
the female items were things a young man would bring to a girl he was dating.
None was the equivalent of a bouquet, a box of candy, or a bottle of perfume.
These were things a man would typically pick up for his wife or mistress, a
woman he was living with. Or a girl he held captive.
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