Book Blitz: The 400 lb Gorilla by D.C. Farmer

Title: the 400 lb. gorilla

Author: D C Farmer

Series: The Hipposync Archives

Genre: Contemporary, Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Spence City

Release Date: June 24 2014

Goodreads: Add to TBR List

Purchase Link: Amazon | Barnes and Noble

Edition/Formats it will be available in: eBook & Print

Blurb/Synopsis: Matt Danmor thinks he's lucky. Not many people survive a near death accident with nothing more than a bout of amnesia, a touch of clumsiness and the conviction that the technician who did the MRI had grey skin and hooves. Still, it takes time to recover from trauma like that, especially when the girl who was in the accident with you disappears into thin air. Especially when the shrinks keep telling you she's just a figment of your imagination. So when the girl turns up months later looking ravishing, and wanting to carry on where they left off, Matt's troubled life starts looking up. But he hasn't bargained for the baggage that comes with Silvy, like the fact she isn't really an English language student, or even a girl. Underneath her traffic stopping exterior is something else altogether, something involving raving fanatics bent on human sacrifice, dimensionally challenged baked bean tins, a vulture with a penchant for profanity, and a security agent for the Dept of Fimmigration (that's Fae immigration for those of you not in the know) called Kylah with the most amazing gold-flecked eyes.

FTC Disclaimer: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

He placed one foot on the footbridge. Something wet caressed his cheek. He looked up and was greeted by fresh snow coming down with a vengeance. With it came a strange and deathly hush. Even the noise of the late leavers from the pub diminished to a distant jangle of dampened laughter and jeers. Silvy stood watching him, patient and unflustered by the snow. Still the half-moon beamed its cold light onto her hair. It was breathtaking and magical as she held out her hand to him. He stepped forward and her long, cool fingers intertwined with his. She slid her free hand beneath his coat and felt through his T-shirt for the pendant.

“You still wear it,” she whispered.

“Always,” he replied.

“Promise me you will,” she said, and kissed him again. But this one was oddly chaste, starkly different from the passion-filled hunger of before. He leaned forward to respond with a little more interest, but she turned away to look at the river and the water boiling through the weir gates.

“I know this place quite well,” Matt said. “I come up here, sometimes. Since the accident, that is. I love it when it’s like this after the rain. In full flood.”

The snow fell thick and fast now, blurring the pub lights and turning people into blurry shapes.

“I used to wonder what it would be like in the water. Helpless, giving up to the force of it.” Matt glanced at her, but she kept her eyes on the weir. “You probably think I’m a coward. It’s a coward’s way out, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” she asked, the words soft, her eyes flint.

It was a stepping-off-the-escalator-with-your-eyes-shut moment for Matt. His brain was flying along in half-pissed contentment, but Silvy’s words required more than a bit of clear thinking if they were to make any sense.

“What do you mean?” he asked. The wind had picked up, swirling the snow about them. Matt pulled his coat tighter.

“After the accident, remember I told you I went somewhere?” Silvy said.

“Yeah.”

The wind was now howling.

“I died, Matt. After I pulled the wheel and we hit that tree, I died. But you survived. That wasn’t what was meant to happen.”

The steak and cider churned in Matt’s stomach with a sickly swoop. “What do you mean?”

“My injuries were horrific. A broken neck, ruptured internal organs. But, for me,” she smiled a smile of terrible calmness, “dying isn’t that bad.”

“Dying isn’t that bad? Who are you? Miss Blonde Zombie 2014?” Yeah, that was it. Try turning it into a laugh. That usually worked. But no one was laughing here. Not this time.  He had to shout now to be heard above the squal. “Come on, hitting your thumb with a bloody hammer isn’t that bad. But dying is…well, it’s dying. What could be worse than that?”

She turned her eyes towards him. They were silver. Odd that, because there wasn’t any moonlight anymore. “Believe me, there are many things worse than dying, Mathew.”

He was going to ask, “like what?”, but something caught his attention on the island side of the footbridge. It wasn’t easy to see through the snow but, yes, there were people there. Small people dressed in robes. They looked a lot like a children’s choir. And then he realised that he couldn’t hear any sounds from the Carp anymore; they were drowned out by a strange roaring noise coming from behind the stone bridge on the far side of the weir.

A bucket full of ice spilled into his gut and he shivered violently. “Right, this is getting way too weird. What’s going on, Silvy?”

“When I died, someone fixed it for me to come back.”

“Big bloke with a scythe and a white horse?”

Silvy didn’t so much as smile. “When you come back, you will be so much stronger. Like me. We can be together for always, Mathew. All you have to do is jump.”

Matt looked behind him. There were now more “children” on his end of the footbridge as well. He peered at them through the whirling, driving flakes. They looked at him with unblinking eyes. All with identical, fresh-faced stares like a bunch of disturbing Russian dolls. That was worrying.  Beneath him, something was happening to the river. The level appeared to be falling. That was even more worrying. Then, something Silvy had said earlier suddenly rang a very large alarm bell inside his head, too.

“Hang on, did you say, ‘after I pulled the wheel and we hit the tree’ before?”

“Yes.”

A simple word, “yes.” Simple, but loaded with oh, so much terrifying meaning. And as Matt stared at her in disbelief, he saw something move behind her eyes. Something restless and unsavoury which turned the ice in his gut into a glacier. Matt took a step back, but his brain was having a bit of trouble assimilating the whole package. An involuntary laugh escaped from where it cowered deep in his throat. It was meant as a “good one Silvy; now let’s go home to bed” type laugh. Instead, it rushed out as a shrill warble of fear.

“It is time, Mathew,” Silvy said and stepped back. At least that was what Matt’s brain wanted to believe, because admitting to what actually happened was grounds for sectioning. Silvy began drifting back, at a rate of knots, about a foot off the ground, still with that sad little wistful smile on her lips. One second she was next to him, the next she was standing amongst the choirboys of St. Clone’s on the far side of the footbridge. At the same time, the roar from the other side of the weir doubled in volume. Beneath him, the river had dwindled to a trickle. Where the hell was all that water?

The answer came, thirty feet tall, over the stone bridge—a frothing white wall of it twenty five yards away and coming fast. He looked at Silvy and saw her smile tilt upwards to the sky as she and the choir opened their mouths and screamed (or was it wailed?) like banshees. Lots of things were happening in Matt’s brain at once. Panic and terror, but most of all anger.

Silvy.

Too good to be true, bloody Silvy.

Once a successful doctor of medicine, DC Farmer now works two days a week for the NHS and, thanks to the wonders of Krudian physics, the other nine days a week for Hipposync Enterprises as a scribe. His role in documenting the work of the Fimmigration Service (as in Fae immigration), has led to the realization that the world needs to know. Moreover, if he doesn't tell someone soon he is going to burst. Within these pages you will find actual accounts of the splendid work of the Fimmigration Service, beginning with The 400 lb Gorilla–a sample of which is also on this site, and which will soon be published in its totality by Spence City books, once appropriate clearance from the ‘authorities’ has been obtained.

DC Farmer is alive and well in darkest West Wales, UK.

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