VBT & #Giveaway: Prophet's Debt by Robert Creekmore
@Archaeolibrary, @GoddessFish, @RobertCreekmore,
#Dark, #Contemporary, #Fiction,
At fourteen, Naomi Pace knows she loves her best friend, Tiffany. During the Perseid meteor shower of summer 1993, she finds out Tiffany feels the same, just as they’re outed. Naomi is sent away to a conversion program in the remote Appalachians of North Carolina, knowing nothing of the horrors that await or the strength they will catalyze. Escaping into the frigid wilderness, she forges her own destiny. Trapped in hiding, Naomi fights to conquer fear and find her way back to Tiffany. Taking bloody vengeance to end a cult that tortures and murders children seems impossible, but so is having the guidance of a mythic creature of strength and violence. Those who hurt Naomi as a girl will come to fear the woman she has become and the path she will tread to find revenge, safety, and Tiffany.
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When I awake, my face is swollen and my head throbs with each heartbeat. I hear the muffled sounds of a woman singing hymns. It is the voice of Shelby Howell, the pastor’s wife. I hear the clank of dishes and the water running. Shelby is the kind of person who likes to occupy herself with chores during a crisis.
I sit up and attempt to swing my legs off the right side of the bed. My arms are snatched back with a clink and rattle. Both of my wrists have been secured to the bed with medium gauge chains, no more than a yard in length. The links have already left marks on my skin. The padlocks holding the loops of chain around my wrists clatter when I moved. I hear the water in the kitchen stop running, followed by the high-pitched snap and clap of cheap flip flops. Mrs. Howell is a woman in her late sixties, short, round, and pale. She has a shitty perm, which gave her hair the appearance of a puffy white helmet.
As Mrs. Howell enters the room, she comments, “I thought I heard you wrestlin’-bout.”
“Where are my parents?” I ask.
“They’ve gone out of town with Pastor Howell.”
“Why?”
“They’ve gone to get help for you.”
“I don’t need help.”
How do I feel about the old adage, “write what you know?” I agree with it one-hundred percent with a caveat. If the world you’re creating is one of fantasy, then what you create is what you know, because it’s your personal realm. And who knows your mental space better than yourself? That’s exactly what I did when creating my first novel, Afiri. It’s a science fiction fantasy that primarily takes place on another planet.
My new novel, Prophet’s Debt is wholly different. The world I wrote about is heavily based on real places and experiences. One thing we cannot control is where we pop out onto this bizarre planet. I grew up in a rural farming community in Eastern North Carolina, heavily immersed in the Evangelical cult. My experiences are wildly different from someone who grew up in a Hassidic community in New York City. In fact, I’ve never even been to New York. I’ve seen it on television and read plenty of books about it, but if I were to try to write about the life of a Manhattener who rarely leaves the island, it would fall flat as a pancake.
One advantage I have is that I’ve lived a unique life, both by chance and choice. While most American kids in the eighties were living in a split-level somewhere in suburbia playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was walking the woods and fields of a farm with a rifle in my hand, isolated from the world at large. After university, I lived in one of those placid, upper-middle-class neighborhoods of North Raleigh. I found that I wasn’t suited for the condo life. On a whim, I took a job in a rural Appalachia and spent a few years living in an extremely remote cabin that was built in the late 1800s. That’s where Naomi Pace and the adventures of the Prophet’s Debt trilogy began to come to life. However, it wasn’t until I moved back to the rural farming community where I grew up that I was able to see the whole picture objectively.
My advice is to do something absolutely mad so you have material for the future.
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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.
Find his website https://robertcreekmore.com/
Tour hosted by: Goddess Fish Promotions
