Guest Post & Giveaway: The Fort - Aric Davis

Please welcome Aric Davis to the blog today! And be sure to stay tuned after the guest post for the giveaway.

Aric Davis is married with one daughter and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he worked for sixteen years as a body-piercer, he now writes full time. A punk rock aficionado, Davis does anything he can to increase awareness of a good band. He likes weather cold enough to need a sweatshirt but not a coat, and friends who wear their hearts on their sleeves. In addition to reading and writing, he also enjoy roller coasters, hockey, and a good cigar.

Aric is the author of 7 Books: From Ashes Rise: A Novel of Michigan, Nickel Plated, A Good and Useful Hurt, The Black Death: A Dead Man Novella, Rough Men, Breaking Point, and The Fort.

My favorite types of books when I was growing up were limited to two topics, horror and suspense. Because of this it felt like a natural transition that after writing a YA detective novel and a horror novel based in a tattoo shop, that my next book would be a suspense novel, the aptly titled Rough Men. In that book my protagonist is sent on a hell bent mission of revenge after his scumbag son is killed, and though I enjoyed my first delve into adult crime, I feel in retrospect that the book was missing some of the heart of my earlier novels. The Fort was to be my transition between those ideas, a horrific thriller with likable characters, and though I know that not everyone will agree, I feel like I succeeded.

When one is writing a thriller, horror, or any other type of novel, there are some genre tropes that are so easy to put into play that it’s almost like stacking Lego’s. By comparison, putting characters into those worlds that are compelling, empathetic, and alive is much more akin to breaking out the Testor’s Paint and Glue and a Revell 1:24 B17 model kit. Either way you’re building something, but that model is going to be one hell of a mess if you don’t have your poop in a group. Writing can be very similar, especially when you’re looking back at your project and you can see mismatched dialogue, characters that once seemed so vivid but are now just obvious shells, and situations that force unrealistic expectations on even the most kind-hearted of reader. These sorts of errors can take months to see, but are far more glaring on the Revell bomber than on a stack of bricks.

Thankfully, with the help of a couple of wonderful editors-along with a group of just as wonderful first readers-these tropes and characters can usually be slowly sorted out, even when I tackled some of them so ham-fistedly in the beginning. That is the risk, I suppose, and the fun part of getting to play in the deep water. There’s a lot more fear involved, and it can be far too easy to feel gutted over a bad review when the person reading the novel didn’t enjoy the fake friends that I fell in love with, but it certainly is a more rewarding experience. No matter what genre I work in, that remains the goal, to write a manuscript that I’m proud of and to populate it with people that either terrify me or that I want to help. And to try and scrape off the excess glue, of course.

Aric Davis’ novel The Fort is available now on Amazon.com. At turns heartbreaking and breathtakingly thrilling, The Fort perfectly renders a coming-of-age story in the 1980s, in those final days of childhood independence, discovery, and paradise lost.

THE FORT tells the story of three young boys enjoying freedom in the tree house fort they have built in the woods behind their homes. But a killer- a deranged Vietnam vet- lurks in their midst, and when the boys spot him near the fort with his latest victim, a teen named Molly, they know they must do their part to save her. Doubted by the police and their parents, the boys decide to take action on their own – to find Molly, to protect themselves, and to save the small corner of the world that remains theirs alone. Told from the alternating viewpoints of the boys, the killer, and the detective on his trail, this is an electrifying story of its time and place – the Grand Rapids of the 1980's, when economic uncertainties and the looming shadows of the Vietnam War lingered over many neighborhoods.

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a Rafflecopter giveaway DISCLOSURE: Freda's Voice received no compensation for posting.