Release Blitz w/ Giveaway: Curved Horizon by Taylor Brooke

Posted March 8, 2018 by Dale

Curved Horizon picks up a few weeks after the conclusion of Fortitude Smashed with Daisy Yuen and Chelsea Cavanaugh, whose Camellia Clocks are drawing close to timing out. Navigating the ins-and-outs of love is hard enough as strangers destined to be soul mates and proves even more complicated when Daisy shares dark, ugly secrets that linger in her and Aiden’s pasts.

Meanwhile, Shannon and Aiden continue to explore their own, new relationship. Fall brings them an unforgettable one-year anniversary, but when Shannon suffers a life-threatening accident on the job, Chelsea, Daisy, and Aiden must find a way to let go of the past to make room for their future.

Dive deeper into the world of the Camellia Clock—a world of soulmates, secrets, and the healing power of love.

Content Warnings: Interlude Press posts content warnings for new books on its website at interludepress.com/content-warnings

On the last day of June, Daisy picked Chelsea up from the Inn by Main beach. They drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, over winding hilltops, and stopped at antique shops to look at jewelry and coffee shops for pastries. As the morning bled into afternoon, Daisy cut through Laguna Canyon to get back into town and parked at the curb outside a brightly colored apartment complex.

“Will you text the boys and tell them to meet us here?” Daisy pulled her keys from the ignition and shoved them into her purse.

“Where’s here?” Chelsea asked. Her thumbs were poised over her cell phone.

Daisy smiled and said, “The Hollow.”

Chelsea looked into the heart of The Hollow, and things from another time stared back. Rabbits looked on curiously from the tree line, insects with dainty watercolor wings flew between branches, butterflies fluttered alongside bumblebees, a tree harboring memories like lost souls loomed in the center of it all, a chunk of time recycled, a moment relived again and again.

The Hollow was a place for many things—secrets and flight, ocean air and ubiquitous melancholy. It was a thing kept apart from everything else, a channel between realities—what once was battling with what is now.

“When did you find this place?” Chelsea looked up the trunk of the center tree, watching ants crawl through song lyrics that stretched up and up.

Daisy shook her head. “I didn’t,” she said. “Aiden did.”

It all made sense—this place and the people who visited it. It was theirs, and so it was magic.

Her fingers traced over carvings, lyrics that told stories of broken hearts and lonely kids. Daisy’s name was scrawled next to a V and an A—the rest was gone, scratched away. Aiden’s name stood out above a cluster of lyrics stained by remnants of dark liquid. Blood, Chelsea thought it, but she didn’t say it.

“It’s so weird being back in this treehouse,” Daisy said. She climbed the rope ladder that led to the landing with the tire swing. The holes in her black tights stretched, fraying open on the back of her knees and peeling apart on her calves. A charcoal romper clung to her waist; the straps on her shoulders dropped over the tops of her arms. Chelsea wondered how she climbed in those pleather platform boots. “We used to take shelter here, party here, just be here. It was our place, you know?”

“I think the whole town was yours,” Chelsea said. Her fingers dusted Aiden’s name, Daisy’s, another set of lyrics, Jon, Vance, carvings by names she didn’t know and probably never would. It seemed like flipping through a scrapbook, but more intimate, like flipping through a diary and seeing pictures instead of words. “We had places in Milford, but I usually stayed with the horses, or we went into the woods to the lake down the road from Shannon’s house. We used to drive and drive until the streetlights ended and all we could see was stars. We’d sit in the bed of Shannon’s truck and talk about our futures, about nothin’.”

After fleshing out a multitude of fantastical creatures as a special effects makeup artist, Taylor Brooke turned her imagination back to her true love—books. When she’s not nestled in a blanket typing away on her laptop, she’s traveling, hiking or reading. She writes Queer books for teens and adults. She is the author of Fortitude Smashed (Interlude Press ’17) and is represented by Saba Sulaiman at Talcott Notch Literary Services.