Blog Tour, Excerpt & Giveaway:
You Can Save Me
By R.L. Merrill

Carnival of Mysteries Series

Universal Link

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Excerpt:

The sun rose and revealed a beautiful day ahead as we descended the grade beside Castaic Lake into Los Angeles County. I was stunned by the transformation of the landscape. My head moved on a swivel. The cars were different, the road was much wider than I remembered. There were so many buildings…

“Unreal,” I muttered to myself. Ryan had been singing along to the music playing on the radio, music I’d never heard. It wasn’t like any radio I’d ever seen before, either. It seemed to be controlled by some sort of touching glass on the dashboard of the truck. The same one he’d used to call the police last night. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Every once in a while he’d tap it and the music would change, the cool air would come through the vents, something else would happen.

“Dee Dee?” Kal asked, leaning between the seats again. He was so big, it wasn’t much of a stretch. “What is the last date that you remember?”

“Date?”

“Yeah, like the day, maybe, when you joined the carnival?”

“You mean… Oh, it was December.” The further we drove from the nightmare at the rest area, the more my memories began tickling my mind, like sprinkles on a cupcake. “We’d just played The Fillmore in San Francisco. It was the last night of our tour. Tess flew back, so we dropped her off at the airport. I was riding home with the guys in our band and the crew, in the van. It was December fifteenth, I think. I know everyone was happy to be done before the holidays.”

Ryan glanced at me and cleared his throat. “The Fillmore, huh? That’s cool.”

Kal squeezed his shoulder, then looked at me with those intense blue eyes. “What year do you think it is now?”

I turned to stare at him. “What year? It’s 1979, man. What are you talking about?”

“Oh shit,” Ryan muttered. He flicked on his blinker and changed lanes, letting out a whistling breath and shaking his head.

“We need to prepare you,” Kal said. “Time doesn’t work the same at the carnival.”

“I know that. It’s fucking weird there. Days seem longer because the sky is all lit up, even at night. You go to sleep in one place and wake up someplace else. People dress funny sometimes. I gave up trying to figure it out and just did my thing. I was only there like, what, a few weeks? A month maybe? I don’t remember. Oh shit, is it nineteen-eighty? Man, I was looking forward to New Year’s, and I missed it?”

Kal frowned. “Did Mr. Ame say anything before you left? Give you anything?”

Should I tell them about the guy? “He knew I had something I needed to do, and no. He said I could take what I needed, so I took the guitar and my board. Why?”

“Do you have a billfold?” Kal asked.

“No.” I lost everything. “Just some borrowed clothes and the guitar. And my talking board, but that was mine from before. I think. I remember it from before.” Somehow I knew that much.

“And he didn’t give you a billfold? Didn’t give you anything else?” Kal seemed distraught. I wondered why. What the hell didn’t Ame tell me?

“Baby, he gave him us. You think we just happened to be driving through the desert in the wee hours when this guy shows up?” Ryan shook his head. “We’re his help. Don’t worry, we’ll get you squared away. You were playing a show? You play guitar?”

“And piano. And I sing. Or I used to. Haven’t been able to since, well… Not since I came to the carnival.”

Ryan and Kal traded looks.

“I couldn’t speak,” Kal said to me. “When I got to the carnival, and after. Ryan and his friends helped me after I left, until I could.”

“How long ago did you leave?” I asked him.

Kal looked to Ryan.

“We met a year and a half ago, when he joined the traveling music festival that my band was playing.” Ryan glanced at me again and then looked where he was driving. “That was July tenth. Twenty-eighteen. Today is December fifteenth, twenty-nineteen.”

My head started to pound and my vision went blurry—but instead of it being otherworldly like when I used my talking board, it was my tears.

I’d been gone? For forty years?

Was there anyone left? Did anyone miss me?

I didn’t want to know the answer to that. All I could remember was that Laurel Canyon was a place I’d lived, and what happened right before I… met my fate, I supposed.

I looked to Kal, and his expression had changed from fierce protectiveness to just plain sad. “How long were you at the carnival?” I asked him.

Kal’s gaze flicked to Ryan and back to me. “I joined the carnival in nineteen thirty-three.”

I counted in my head as I gaped at him. “Eighty-five years?”

Kal shrugged. “It was only a year to me. I did my service for Mr. Ame, played my calliaphone and the carnival’s calliope, kept them running and in good shape. Then it was time for me to go. It just so happened that the music festival shared grounds with the carnival that day.” He rubbed the back of Ryan’s neck. “And I met Ryan.”

Ryan reached back and squeezed his hand. “He watched out for me, I watched out for him. And now we’re married.”

“And now we’ll watch out for you,” Kal said, leveling his gaze on me.

“I promised Mr. Ame,” Ryan said. “When the time came, I’d help someone else like someone did for me. So we got you, okay?”

It all sounded nice, but folks didn’t stay. They did their thing and went on their way.

“Well, I appreciate the ride, but I can take care of myself.”

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Enter the Giveaway:

To celebrate the release of You Can Save Me, R.L. Merrill is giving away a $25 Amazon Voucher!

Enter the Rafflecopter giveaway for your chance to win!

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Direct Link: https://bit.ly/YCSMGiveaway

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About the Author:

R.L. Merrill loves creating compelling stories that will stay with readers long after. Ro writes inclusive contemporary romance, paranormal, and horror-inspired music reviews. A mom, wife, daughter, former educator, and advocate for social and reproductive justice, you can currently find cruising in her Bronco with Great Dane pup Velma, being terrorized by feline twins Dracula and Frankenstein, or headbanging at a rock show near her home in the San Francisco Bay Area! Stay Tuned for more…

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