We thought we'd take a bit of time today to point out a book that's in its final stages, written by a dear friend of ours. Secondhand Shoes, by Shelly Arkon, is a blend of comedy, drama, and finding the strength inside to stand up for oneself. It also has a liberal dose of paranormal mixed into the lot. We've had ourselves our own look at the book, which is currently being formatted for release, and it's a great deal of fun- with the occasional fright thrown in for good measure.
Here's the blurb:
The shoes didn’t fit. It was an omen.
Eighteen year old psychic-medium-germ-a-phobe Lila should have listened to ghostly Gram’s advice the morning of her wedding, “Take off that dress and those shoes. And run.”
En route to the honeymoon, she decides to listen after too many disagreements with her groom. It doesn’t pay to go along to make everyone happy.
Still in her wedding dress and shoes, she escapes out a diner’s bathroom window into the Florida woods despite her fear of snakes and germs with her dead Gram’s direction.
So she begins a journey of finding her inner strength that puts her on a deadly run from her psychotic groom and his deranged friends.
Will she ever get past her fear of germs and snakes? Will she survive her honeymoon?
And here we have a short excerpt:
A screen stood between me and my freedom. I pushed it. Nothing. I pushed it again. It was one stubborn screen. I took off a shoe, scraping a blister. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” I muttered.
I held my spiked heel like an ice-pick and punched a hole in the screen, ripping the rest with my other hand.
I didn’t want to, but I had to put my shoe back on and get it over with. I jammed my foot into it and stepped. “Ouch, ooh, ooh, ouch.”
The ledge was tummy high. I slung one leg over it, held onto the bottom of the window, got my other leg up and over and shimmied my way out.
There were woods beyond the alley holding the diner’s dumpsters, trees all the way to the interstate’s on-ramp to my right and on down behind the gas station to my left and beyond.
A light wind blew my hair across my face. I looked at the sky. Dark clouds coming up I-75. I looked at the woods.Probably a million snakes in there,I thought.
“Don’t be afraid, Lila,” Gram said.
A half-dozen sparrows flew from around the front of the diner, low to the ground, and into the woods. I followed them in through the ferns bordering the pavement and into the trees. My lacey arm caught on a cypress branch ripping a portion of my sleeve from me.
I walked for at least a half hour. When Max and I left the wedding, it must’ve been mid-eighty degrees. It warmed up since then like twenty more. That was a Florida July for you. The humidity made it almost unbearable. I was sweating, my bodice soaked. The money inside my bra stuck to my skin. It itched. The lace on my one arm and back itched more. I smelled no better than Max did when he got home from work and every winged insect buzzed around me. I smacked at them. A big, black horsefly really liked me. It wouldn’t go away. I thought of Max.
My blisters and toes screamed pre-, mid-, and post-step. The balls of my feet, too. The three inchers got caught in vines, branches, and mole holes. It took a lot to stay upright in the deep leaves. I considered taking my shoes off, but there might be hook worms or some jungle ameoba waiting to feast on my leg muscles, and I needed my legs to get me out of this mess. Mom scared me out of going shoeless when I was little, and I’d never gone barefoot except on Mom’s clean carpets and disinfected floors. I wore shoes or slippers at Cynthia’s. Her mother didn’t vacuum every day. Nor did I taste Pine Sol in the back of my throat at her house.
A hawk flew down out of nowhere and landed on the ground in front of me, tilted its head, and blinked its eyes at me.
The hawk jumped up and down, flitting its wings. He turned and squawked.
“You want me to follow you?”
It hopped onward, looking back at me every third or fourth bounce.
From not too far behind me a male voice bellowed, “Lila!”
Max.
You can find Shelly through her blogs (one of which is frequently hijacked by two bickering dogs). Have a look, start following her, and you'll find you'll really get to like her.
Secondhand Shoes
The Life Of A Novice Writer
