Item: Friends to the End
Author: Gina

Friends to the End by C.L. Colyer | $15 Giveaway, Guest Post, & Excerpt

A book blog tour from Goddess Fish Promotions.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Marianne & Judy at Goddess Fish for providing me with the information for this tour.

Book Details

Friends to the End by C.L. Colyer, Cherie Colyer
Published by The Wild Rose Press on 09/27/2021
Genres: Fiction, Adventure, Friendship, Middle-Grade, Mystery
Format: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 190

Twelve-year-old Zach is convinced he'll never be happy without his best friend Jeremy by his side. But both of their lives changed with a bang five months ago, and as far as Zach's concerned, it's his fault Jeremy will never see his twelfth birthday.

When Zach moves with his family to a Chicago suburb, he quickly becomes friends with a group of thrill-seeking kids trying to find a disappearing haunted house.

But Zach's not worried. He doesn't believe in ghosts, so he follows them into a wild, dangerous encounter that becomes a battle to decide what's real and what's not.

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Excerpt from Friends to the End

We scrambled to our feet and ran to the front door, stopping with the toes of our gym shoes just outside the worn threshold. If the house vanished at that very moment, would we vanish, too, or did we have to be inside to disappear forever?

A long table rested next to the wall in the foyer. Several black-and-white photos in tarnished silver frames sat on top of it. The women in the pictures wore large floppy hats and long dresses. The men wore white shirts and jackets like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The children had on sweaters and knee-high socks. No one was smiling.

“I thought you wanted to go inside,” I said. “Now’s your chance.”

Josh shook his head. “Not so important anymore.”

“Yeah, I can see just fine from here,” Dom said.

But Morgan was inside.

A stomp of my foot on the aging wood confirmed we were standing on an extremely solid porch. We were peering through a very real doorway. If this was the vanishing house, shouldn’t it be translucent like Ghost Girl or hazy like the car?

“Maybe we’re overreacting,” I said. Just because the welcome sign happened to have the same name on it as the guy in the graveyard, and just because the date on it was a couple of centuries old, that didn’t mean we should assume the worst. Right?

Only, the evidence in front of us said otherwise. The house was lit with candles and oil lamps. There were no televisions or radios or phones visible. The more I noticed, the more it looked wrong. The fancy armchairs and matching sofa, the family portrait above the stone fireplace, even the shoes left near the door were unlike anything I’d seen before.

Dom mumbled something inaudible and then screamed Morgan’s name.

The air in the house was cool. It pushed against the warmth of summer, fighting to keep it outside. With it came a whispered, “Don’t

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Purchase Links for Friends to the End

Amazon Bookshop/IndieBound

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Guest Post by Cherie Colyer

The Inspiration behind Friends to the End

Hello!

I write across genres, with most of my published titles being young adult paranormal romances/thrills. But I have always had a love for children’s fantasy. Bring on the ghosts, vampires, witches, and weird. I’ll gobble up these stories, cheering and gasping right along with the characters. It’s because I love these stories so much that I enjoy weaving together my own.

Friends to the End is the third middle-grade novel I penned, but the first to be published. The inspiration behind this story was two-fold. The adventure came first. I envisioned four friends creeping around an ancient old house, trying not to draw attention to themselves as they searched for a way out.

Who they were hiding from and why they were in danger came to me quite out of the blue as I drove by a road not far from my house. Tucked between the homes on what would otherwise be a peaceful rural road is the second most haunted cemetery in Illinois. I passed this road everyday as a teen as the bus took me to school. I’d heard the stories of apparitions seen floating above graves or walking down the road. This cemetery quickly became the inspiration for my fictional town.

But Friends to the End isn’t just a ghost story. Zach, my kind-hearted and brave (even though he doesn’t realize it just yet) protagonist is dealing with the loss of his best friends. His personal journey was born by the overwhelming and heartbreaking loss of innocent lives that happen in Chicago and other cities everyday.

Having lost his best friend to the violence, Zach battles the ghosts in his past as he battles the all too real ghosts in the book. He’ll need to be brave if he hopes to make it out alive.

Thanks for having me on your blog!

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I love my Amazon Kindle Unlimited Subscription. So many books, so little time!

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About C.L. Colyer

C.L. Colyer found her love for writing in first grade when her class was sent to the library and asked to find a book for their first book report. While she doesn’t still have this book report, she’s very proud to say she got an A on it. Her favorite thing about the book was that it had no words. That’s right, not one! That gave her the freedom to interpret the pictures in any way she wanted and write her own story.

This sparked her love for writing essays. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she sat down and penned her first novel. This story has a special place in her heart because it’s the story that helped her discover her passion for writing. She has since written several books, many of which may never see the light of day, but all of which helped her learn to combine her passion for writing with her fascination with all things mythical. You’ll find examples of this in her novels.

(Also see Cherie Colyer on here)

About Cherie Colyer

Cherie Colyer is the author of Damned When I Didn't, Challenging Destiny, and the Embrace series. When she’s not getting the fictional people in her life into trouble, she can be found solving network issues at work, spending time with family and friends, reading, or exploring the great outdoors.

Professional network technician by day, novelist by night, Cherie lives a quiet life in the Chicago suburbs with her charming husband. She has four amazing sons who she loves dearly.

Cherie magically weaves together stories with a paranormal twist. She’s the author of the Embrace series (Embrace, Hold Tight, and Entwined), Challenging Destiny, Damned When I Didn’t, and Friends to the End. She waltzes into the adult novel world with this enchanting holiday romance, Merry Little Wishing Spritz.