A Father Scene from Restless in Peaceville...

It’s been over a week since Father’s Day, but we’re not done celebrating the guys just yet. All month long authors have been visiting to share scenes featuring a dad (or dad-like figure) from their novels. Today author Pippa Jay joins us with an excerpt from her YA zombie novel Restless in Peaceville. As I put this post together, my daughter is watching Zombieland in the living room, so I’m immersed in the scary creatures. Ahhhh!!!! If you enjoy the clip from this book, which I think you will, you’ll find plenty of links below where you can pick up a copy. Thanks for stopping by.


Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067 and rising… from the grave…

Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems…

But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one for being one of the undead?

And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunger who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.


It takes a few moments for them to acknowledge what they can see, that the impossible is happening. Then Mom shrieks and whatever held me frozen lets me go. I'm moving, too late, scrambling for the back of the house, and I know there's no way I can escape if even one of them comes after me. I can't let them get close. I can't let them see what I've become, what I've done to myself. Bad enough that they're hurting over my death without them learning the kind of thing I am now. I wish I was too dead to care.

Vampire laughs as he turns into smoke and shoots skyward, his mischief done. I hear the front door go and Dad shouting, and all I can think of is to run. But I can't run fast enough.

"You out there! Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing pulling a stunt like that?"

I'm at the back now, desperate for a place to hide and not seeing one. Hell, what do I do? I must look pretty funny staggering in circles, trying to figure out where I can hide myself that he won't look. Then I see the garbage bins.

I lurch toward them. If I believed in the power of prayer, I'd be on my knees right now, hoping for divine intervention. I have no idea if I can get myself in a bin without making such a racket he'll know straight off where I am.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" He's still yelling, and his voice is getting closer. But he's moving slow. Maybe he's reluctant to find out exactly what he did see. It sounds like he thinks someone was playing some kind of twisted joke. I can only hope he'll go on thinking that.

I get the lid off the bin and climb inside. My legs and arms are kind of stiff, but I hunch myself down as best I can and tug the lid back over. At least I can keep quiet. The undead are good at that.

I can't hear footsteps, but he's still yelling, demanding that the comedian show his face and explain. Then it goes quiet. Has he given up? Gone back inside to call the cops? How long will I need to stay here to avoid being seen?

"Luke?"

Shit. He says it right next to where I'm hiding.

"Luke, was that...was that you, son?"

Damn. His voice breaks as he says it. If I could feel anything, I'd feel a hell of a lot worse than I did before I killed myself.

"Luke? Please, if that's really you, come out boy..."

I squeeze my eyes shut and put my hands over my ears. Shut up, Stop saying my name. Go back in. Tell yourselves it was just a cruel joke or your imagination. I'm dead. Dead, just not gone yet...

"Luke? Oh, damn..."

This time I hear him walking, and after a while the door slams shut. I guess he's given up. But for a long while afterward I stay sitting in the garbage where I truly belong.

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After spending twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force. Although happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.

Pippa Jay is a dedicated member of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade and Broad Universe, blogging at Spacefreighters Lounge, Adventures in Scifi, and Romancing the Genres. Her works include YA and adult stories crossing a multitude of subgenres from scifi to the paranormal, often with romance, and she's one of eight authors included in a science fiction romance anthology -- Tales from the SFR Brigade. She's also a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3rd place), the EPIC eBook awards, and the GCC RWA Silken Sands Star Awards (2nd place). 

You can stalk her at her website, or at her blog, but without doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.

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