Character Intro: Oliver – Weathering Old Souls #NextChapterPub #SpiritualFiction @JamesCudney4

What an exciting year this is! Lots of bookish fun… with releases a plenty!

Weathering Old Souls is a co-written book that James J. Cudney and I wrote in 2020. It’s a multi-genre tale featuring metaphysical, historical fiction, past-life regression and more.

James (AKA Jay) and I have been sharing character introductions for Weathering Old Souls since the Fall of 2020, and today we’ll share the LAST ONE because next month it will be RELEASED! Today, we’re going to give you a bit of insight on Oliver, our main character’s dad. He raised Abigail, all the while suffering the crippling grief of losing her mother during childbirth. Abigail wasn’t always an easy child to raise, she did often regress into vivid memories of her past lives after all. Oliver, although distant, did his best. We’ll share a bit more about him, but first let’s cover the progress and release of Weathering Old Souls!

Just over a week ago Jay and I revealed the cover to Weathering Old Souls, and it’s absolutely beautiful!! Thanks again to everyone who jumped in and participated in the reveal. We’ve also set up two different blog tours!

There will be a release tour hosted by the lovely Maia with Silver Dagger. It will last a couple of weeks, and we’re offering ARC’s for review as a part of the tour. Reviews are extremely cherished by James and I!! We’ll be sharing a sign up link ASAP.
There will also be a release BLITZ hosted by the very beautiful and much loved Shannon over at Reads and Reels. You can sign up for that here: SIGN UP for WOS with RR Book TOURS

To top off all the excitement we’ll be doing a release week GIVEAWAY!!

There will be 4 prizes as part of this marketing campaign.

$25 Amazon Gift Card
$40 Psychic Services
1 eBook of Weathering Old Souls
1 physical book of Weathering Old Souls (US Only)

Entries for this giveaway will be open until the week following the release of Weathering Old Souls. Winners will be announced as soon as the drawing is closed. You can enter to win one of the prizes HERE or by clicking this link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/e5ee1a9223/?

Anyhow… back to the Character Intro!

Here are a links to all of our Character Introductions in the past:

Abigail: Main Character
The Fashionista: Serial Killer
Sarah Brown: Elderly woman who provides clues from the past
Nadia: Abigail’s Mother
Penelope: The wife of a past life being
Naniwa: Victim of Asian prejudice during WWII
Emilio: Loving husband, son and father – died in explosion

Now for an EXCERPT to introduce Oliver:

Oliver stares at a willowy nurse with a vacant expression and watches her place several extra items into a bag for his baby girl. A new doctor, one he isn’t sure if he’s seen before, scrolls through a clipboard of discharge papers, monotonously dictating instructions. They’ve let Abigail stay in the hospital’s nursery for nearly a week. Not because she’s needed the attention, or that she isn’t a healthy baby, but because Oliver begged them to grant him enough time to bury his wife before being forced to take the child back with him to an empty home.

He’s detached, a blank slate, wishing for nothing more than to turn back time and insist that Nadia never skip a pill. He would’ve worn a rubber every single instance, plus double checked on her daily intake of birth control. Oliver thinks of all the things he should have done differently—only accepting a low-income job, choosing the wrong hospital, and finding more time before having children. Nadia insisted that Abigail was a gift from the heavens, and now his wife is gone. What kind of God would do such a thing to his beautiful Nadia? Grief forces her last words to sting him repeatedly. Why did Nadia keep shouting ‘thirty-three’ as their daughter entered the world? By now, Oliver has become annoyed over his wife’s obsession with numbers, refusing to teach Abigail about them.

“Oliver?” the doctor barks, tilting his head to the side and closing a bit of space between them. “Oliver, can you repeat what I just said?”

Oliver snaps out of his daydreaming of Nadia, gazing back and forth between the nurse who’s prepping Abigail and the doctor who’s now intruding on his personal space. Oliver does not understand what the man has said. All he can think about, when he eventually makes eye contact, is whether this doctor was one of several people in the room when Nadia died. It was chaos, the cramped and sterile space overfilled with medical personnel rushing in every direction trying to revive her. All the while he screamed and yelled at the fools who were too busy fretting over the baby to bring back his dying wife.

Abigail fusses, whimpering a quiet moan from the little plastic bed the nurse has her in. Oliver looks away and watches the nurse fetch a bottle.

“Oliver?” the doctor continues to pester for his attention. “Do you understand your responsibilities as a parent? I need to ensure the child’s safety before I can discharge her.”

Oliver gently clears his throat. The idea of adoption entered his thoughts the previous day, but it was a mere passing option. Nadia would surely turn over in her freshly dug grave at even the muttering of such a word as adoption.

“I understand,” he finally speaks because he can’t avoid it anymore. “Feed her every three hours, at least. Keep tiny items out of reach. Burp her, change her diaper, make sure she sleeps on her side, so she doesn’t choke on spit-up.” Oliver nods at his own words and stares again at his additional responsibility. One that he’s avoided for seven days while he buried the love of his life and drank himself to sleep each night. “I get it,” he mumbles. All he can think about is the lost wages this week and those coming down the pike if he has to stay home more often to raise her. He’d spent everything on the funeral too. How will they survive?

Publication Date:

May 15^th, 2021

Pre-Sale/Purchase Links:

https://books2read.com/WOS

http://mybook.to/weathering

Goodreads Link:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56709730-weathering-old-souls

Weathering Old Souls Description:

Abigail has always struggled with strange voices appearing inside her head. From the relentless tyranny a woman faces on an antebellum plantation to the unknown prison camps in America during World War II, our heroine discovers the past in a way that forever changes her future. There are moments from previous periods that serve as guiding posts for the country’s growth, but they also mark the transitions for Abigail’s own personal history. Her best friend, Margaret, partners with Abigail to discover the identity of these voices while focusing on her passion and quest to become a United States senator. Through it all, a serial killer torments the country, romance blossoms between some of the people they meet during the journey, and secrets long thought buried come to light in devastating ways. With the twisting of elements, numerical alignments, and the trauma of spiritual entanglements, no one will be the same… and just a few might not even be around anymore.

Genre:

Contemporary Fiction but with historical interludes, metaphysical elements, past life regression, suspense / mystery