BLOG TOUR Dark Walker Series by Shelly Campbell

Hi friends! Welcome to my stop on the tour for the Dark Walker series by author Shelly Campbell. Check out the post to learn more about the books, the author, and even the author's favorite genre. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the post as well and enter the giveaway - the author will be giving away a $15 Amazon gift card to a random winner through Rafflecopter at the end of the tour. 

Happy reading everyone!

About the Series

When we were children, they told us monsters weren't real. They were dead wrong.

It’s just a closet door with a skeleton key, but when David opens it, he unlocks a gateway to a sinister world that’s bent on destroying everything and everyone he loves. Some doors are better left closed. 

Embark on a thrilling journey with the Dark Walker Series, and be transported into an interdimensional tale of monsters, lies and self-discovery. Where the terror of darkness is real and the line between ally and enemy is as thin as a blade.

"Equal parts coming of age story and otherworldly horror, Gulf probes the depths of loneliness, loss of identity and childhood trauma. It is a true treat for fans of the genre and had me clutched in its razor-clawed hands from the first word to the last.” -C.M. Forest author of Infested

About the Books

About Book One, Gulf:

Seventeen-year-old David is fading from his world, like a Polaroid picture in reverse. He longs to feel connected to something bigger.

When his brothers discover the new extension at the rental cottage comes with a locked door, David finds the key first. Expecting to claim a bedroom, he opens a dimensional gateway instead, exploring abandoned versions of his world in different timelines, 1960s muscle cars alternating with crumbling cottages.

Except now the dimensional bridge won’t close, and something hungry claws the door at night. David scours for clues to break the bridge, but each trip to the other side makes him fade more on his. Even if he succeeds, he risks severing his connection to his own world, and dying on the wrong side, forgotten.

About Book Two, Breach:

There are doors that open to other worlds, but it’s no fairytale on the other side.

I thought otherworldly monsters bent on devouring my whole world starting with my family trumped everything. Turns out, I was wrong. My world's only one of thousands facing annihilation from the maneaters that tried to eat me alive. Charlie saved me, rolled into my life on a motorcycle, and rescued me.

Problem is, I’m the Embassy’s property now. They’re the interdimensional agency tasked with stemming the flow of ravenous aliens into our universe, but they seem more interested in studying me. I crashed a gateway in a way they’ve never seen. The Embassy wants to replicate that. I think they want to use me as a war weapon.

If I don’t convince Charlie to help me escape, I’ll be an Embassy science experiment for the rest of my short life, or worse, eternally trapped in the dark hell that fills the spaces between worlds.

Excerpt from Gulf

“James?” I try again. “Wake up, James. It’s back.” 

I need someone else to feel it, to experience the icy breath of air from under the door and see if it’s as foreboding to them as it is to me, or if they can sense it at all.

Maybe it’s just messed up circuitry in my mind.

James doesn’t wake up, just shuffles around in the loft like a slow-motion pinball. Eventually, I climb the ladder and pull the beanbag across the gap in the railing. He’ll break his neck one of these nights. When my feet hit the main floor, the draft washes over them and makes me flinch. I lick my lips and ignore the soft rattle of the five-panel door in its frame.

Guest Post from the Author: "My Favorite Genre"

Dusty, thank you so much for having me as a guest. I really appreciate the support and the chance to connect with new readers, and I was tickled when one of your topic ideas was favourite genre because you mentioned that yours was sci-fi, and it’s mine as well. 

While I have written a grimdark fantasy duology (The Marked Son series), and a sci-fi horror series (the Dark Walker series), the only sci-fi I really have under my belt is a YA solar flare post-apocalypse series (Sol Survivors) that’s set in Canada decades after the sun’s erratic activity has knocked out electrical grids on a wide scale. Even that one is soft sci-fi. Regardless, sci-fi is my reading genre of choice.

I love diving into well crafted worlds with creative technology, but that’s not what I love most about science fiction. So often this genre, holds up a lens to our current societies and asks those big ‘what if’ questions. To pull a quote from a book I co-wrote with my editor Allison Alexander, Making Myths and Magic: a field guide to writing sci-fi and fantasy novels:

 Science fiction is a genre that examines the effects of science-real or imagined-on a society or an individual. While the science does not have to be proven, the author usually provides groundwork that makes their scenarios plausible to their readers, as opposed to fantasy, which is based on the supernatural, occult, magic, and the impossible.

The modern genre took shape in Western culture as the Industrial Revolution shifted societal norms and caused writers to question the effects of burgeoning technology in the world around them. The term "science fiction" was popularized by the genre's main advocate, 1920's publisher Hugo Gernsback-of whom the Hugo Awards are named after.

In the 19th century, French author Jules Verne penned many stories that incorporated innovations that didn't exist until much later. His adventure stories Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days conceptualized vehicles like submarines and rockets well before they were practical modes of transport. He's often regarded as the father of science fiction, sharing the title with H.G.Wells.

Wells's work had a huge influence on the vision of the future today. He touched on genetic science in 1896 with The Island of Dr. Moreau, explored space in 1901 with The First Men in the Moon, and even touched on nuclear weapons in 1914 with The World Set Free. He also described items like mobile phones, automated doors, and armoured tanks long before any of those were invented.

Science fiction opens our eyes to what our future could be and how society is affected by exponential technological growth. The universe is the limit!

What’s not to love? I’d love to hear what your favorite genre is in the comments. And I’d love if you checked out my latest addition to the Dark Walker series, Breach. If you like your sci-fi mixed with horror and Doctor Who/Stranger Things/Total Recall vibes, it might be right up your alley.

About the Author 

At a young age, Shelly Campbell wanted to be an air show pilot or a pirate, possibly a dragon and definitely a writer and artist. She’s piloted a Cessna 172 through spins and stalls, and sailed up the east coast on a tall ship barque—mostly without projectile vomiting. In the end, Shelly found writing and drawing dragons to be so much easier on the stomach. Shelly writes speculative fiction ranging from grimdark fantasy, to sci-fi and horror. She’d love to hear from you.

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