Book Blast for Travis Heermann's The Wild Boys

The Wild Boys by Travis Heermann
Young Adult Horror-Thriller

·        Trade Paperback - $15.95, 5 x 8", December 1, 2012, ISBN: 978-1-61572-825-1, Damnation Books

• E-Book - $6.99, (Kindle, Sony, Nook, iPad), May 20, 2012, ISBN: 978-1-61572-824-4 Damnation Books

Can a 16-year-old girl stem the tide of a lycanthro-pocalypse?

When three younger boys show up on the doorstep of Mia's everyday suburban existence, naked and on the run, she is drawn into a shadow world where a series of strange disappearances heralds a slowly spreading plague of lycanthropy. Mia must save the three orphaned boys from their brutal Alpha, a man-beast who believes humans are food.

A war is brewing for the top of the food chain.

Mia doesn’t know it yet, but she holds the key to the future of the human race.

Book Excerpt 

Suddenly every hair on her head, her arms, her legs stood on end. Mia stood and scanned the darkness within the wooden perimeter. The only light came from streetlights filtering through branches surrounding the fence and from the feeble glow of the kitchen light. A deep, heavy snuffling puffed underneath the backyard gate. An animal, something, and a big one. Something hard like nails scratched faintly over the paving stones on the path to the gate. More snuffling, sniffing.

And then the latch on the gate began to rattle.

Her blood froze.

The latch clicked and the door began to swing slowly inward.

In less than a heartbeat, she threw herself behind the backyard shed, which lay closer than the back patio door.

The gate squeaked faintly.

Her trembling hands sought the latch on the shed door, tried to slide it ever so gently, silently. A click that sounded like thunder as the latch released and the door swung open. She ducked inside and ever so gently, silently, eased the latch closed. There were spiders in here. She never went in the shed for just that reason, but she did not dare think about that now, did not dare think about the webs that might inches from her flesh, or all the little creepy-crawlies that waited in the dark to suck the fluids of insects unlucky enough to be ensnared. The sharp tangy smells of gasoline and oil and lawn fertilizer overlay the scent of earth and dust.

Moments after the door closed, the puff of breath came under the door, sniffing, the kind of sniffing that comes from deep, cavernous lungs, lungs that were not human. The sound came from the rear corner of the shed, moved along the base of the wall toward the front. Only a thin sheet of wood separated her from whatever that was, and it had to be enormous.

Mia’s trembling hands shifted gears to earthquake mode. Don’t rattle the latch!

The heavy breathing moved to the corner of the shed, then back to the door, and a shadow obscured the bottom half of the light square around perimeter of the door. Nostrils moved to the bottom corner of the door, sniffing at the crack. Mia imagined the breaths as they found their way inside driving up little clouds of dust from the floor of the shed.

Something hard, unyielding clamped over the latch on the outside, like the grip of a pliers.

"A fast-paced novel about love, loss, and the unforgettable scent of once being human, The Wild Boys is impossible to put down." - Shelly Li, Scholastic Award-winning author of The Royal Hunter: Throne Under Siege

"I recommend The Wild Boys for people who like thrillers, people who like horror, and people who want to read wild chase scenes with plucky heroines (and a dog)." - Kater Cheek, author of the Kit Melbourne series"