Blog Tour: IMAGINARY FRIENDS by Chad Musick

Imaginary Friends

by Chad Musick

 

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GENRE:   YA Magical Realism

 

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BLURB:

 

If the delivery had been a demonic bowling alley or a mermaid’s grotto, Ivy would have sent it away. She has standards, after all. But she can’t refuse a magical Library, especially when they’ve gone to the trouble of including a wheelchair ramp. They say that on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog, but somebody knows fourteen-year-old Ivy is an orphan, that she sells her paper-writing services to lazy college students, and that her imaginary friends are unhappy being stuck in the mural on the wall of her Alaskan home.

Himitsu refuses the Library, becoming angry enough to attack the delivery people with his bamboo sword. They won’t tempt him with books, any more than his mother has been able to tempt him into leaving their apartment during the past two years. He has all he needs: video games, online forums, and his virtual girlfriend Moe. Well, almost all. His dad’s death has left a hole in him, which is why when he receives text messages saying the Library can bring back the dead, he changes his mind. Moe tries to warn him about the danger, but what does she know, anyway?

Now, having been lured into the Library and having foolishly brought their imaginary friends with them, Ivy and Himitsu find those friends are trapped. The teens have a choice: fulfill the Librarian’s odd and painful demands in hopes of rescuing their friends or go back alone to their small, boring lives, knowing they’ve failed the only ones who really believe in them.

 

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Excerpt One:

All giraffes are named Janice, excepting a few heretics. The old guard, being traditionalists, are the most militant in asserting that this is the necessary state of affairs.

 

The Janice of our story, however, is not one of the old guard. He’s too young to be a veteran of the Nehming War, and to him the consequent Sophie massacre is something that happened to distant French relatives. Because of this, he is sometimes known to intimate that his name might, in fact, be Chanda.

Despite this obvious breach in social graces, he doesn’t consider himself to be a deviant. In fact, he thinks of himself as quite normal. Janice is anything but normal. For one thing, he’s a giraffe. We mustn’t neglect this observation. Giraffes are not normal. But let us leave that aside for a moment and pretend they are.

Humans, not being monstrosities except in aggregate, naturally regard involuntary baldness among the males as an unsightly defect. Bald men are likely to be regarded as degenerates. Some of them even become history teachers. Among boy giraffes, however, baldness of the ossicles—those little sticky-uppy bits on their heads—is a mark of honor gained by battering at other giraffes.

 

To his enduring shame, the tops of Janice’s ossicles are covered in thick, feathery hair. Not because he is cowardly (though he is) but because Janice has never met another giraffe. In fact, he’s never encountered a third dimension at all, being stuck in perpetual twilight in the paper jungle pasted to the wall of Ivy’s otherwise crappy little house.

 

 

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What drives the characters in your story and why?

The two main characters in Imaginary Friends are Ivy and Himitsu. They are very different. Ivy is living on her own in Alaska and selling term papers to college students while trying to stay off the radar of social services. When she receives the delivery of the magical library, and they include a wheelchair ramp, she is immediately intrigued. Ivy’s world is very small, and her only friends are animals in a mural painted on her living room wall. She enters the library out of curiosity and at the urging of her imaginary friends who want to escape the mural. Ivy never imagined that they would be trapped inside the library. Once Ivy’s friends are trapped, she is motivated to free them. Ivy lost her parents in a car accident and cannot bear to lose anyone else.

When we meet Himitsu, it is several years after the suicide of his father, and he is living with his grandmother. Himitsu is a shut-in whose only friend is an AI called Moe. The first time they try to deliver the library doors, Himitsu refuses them thinking that they are a ploy of his grandmother to get him to do something other than hang out with Moe. Later that day, he receives a message that the doors leading to the magical library can bring back the dead.  Moe is skeptical and warns Himitsu not to go, but he enters the library anyway. He is desperate to see his father again. Once inside the library, he discovers that they cannot bring his father back and that Moe is trapped inside. Himitsu, like Ivy, wants to save his only friend. 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Chad Musick grew up in Utah, California, Washington, Texas, and (most of all) Alaska. He fell in love in California and then moved with his family to Japan, where he’s found happiness. He earned a PhD in Mathematical Science but loves art and science equally.

Despite a tendency for electronic devices to burst into flame after Chad handles them, he persists in working in various technical and technology-related roles.

Chad makes no secret of being epileptic, autistic, and arthritic, facts that inform how he approaches both science and the arts.

 

Amazon buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Friends-Chad-Musick/dp/1953971733/

 

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GIVEAWAY :

Chad Musick will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway