I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the DEJA VIEW by Michael Thomas Perone Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!   About The Book: Title: DEJA VIEW...

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the DEJA VIEW by Michael Thomas Perone Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Author: Michael Thomas Perone

Pub. Date: October 6, 2023

Publisher: Wheatmark

Formats:  Paperback, eBook

Pages: 275

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/DEJA-VIEW  

Twelve-year-old Bobby Dalton doesn't want to grow up. All his life, he has relied on the imaginary games of childhood with his best friends Joe and Max to get him through the tough times. But this all changes when his Seventh-Grade class buries a time capsule to commemorate the end of the 1980s. Now Bobby is being haunted by visions: ghostly doppelgangers of himself, his friends, and others. He calls them "déjà view." Are these visions real, or has his imagination finally gotten away from him? And if they're real, what do they want? Bobby needs to figure this all out to survive his childhood…and his life.

From the author of the award-winning Danger Peak, Déjà View is a darkly funny coming-of-age dramedy with a sci-fi twist, cranked up to eleven. But even more, it's at once a pulse-pounding thrill ride and a haunting portrait of paranoia, mental illness, and the unbearable sadness of growing up.

Déjà View Excerpt

by Michael Thomas Perone

I picked the following excerpt from my new novel, Déjà View, because for one, I just think it’s funny, but also, it’s the first sign to the reader that things are not quite right in Bobby’s world, and it foreshadows the strangeness to come. Finally, this excerpt reinforces the major theme of my book, which is the death of childhood.

An hour later, Bobby’s guests were seated around a table in the party room, devouring towers of pizza. Bobby and his friends had a front-row seat to the stage of Chuck E. Cheese’s band, an assortment of animatronic animals: a chicken, a dog, some kind of purple monster that resembled McDonaldland’s Grimace, and, of course, Chuck E. himself. Bobby often wondered why anyone would make a rat the mascot for their kid-friendly pizza restaurant; it seemed unsanitary. It mattered little, though. He came for the food and games, not the dinner entertainment. Every year, these robotic animals would mortify him by crooning “Happy Birthday,” their voices becoming craggier as the robots got older, worn from singing over a thousand birthdays to over a thousand boys and girls.

“Mom,” he asked, leaning in conspiratorially so his friends couldn’t hear, “can we skip the Chuck E. song this year? I’m getting a little too old for it.”

“It’s tradition, sweetie,” she replied in a singsong voice to keep up appearances. Before he could respond, Chuck E. came alive, as if possessed by some ancient curse.

“Hey everyone!” it began. “I hear it’s somebody’s birthday!” Derrick and Joe, seated next to each other, offered sardonic, golfer’s applause. The twitchy robot tried reaching for its guitar as his “bandmates” grabbed their own respective instruments. But the twitching suddenly became a trembling as the robot’s arms flailed past his guitar and bonked the chicken, who in turn bumped into the dog. Now all four automatons were shaking as if caught in their own personal earthquake.

“Uh, is this part of the show?” Derrick asked Joe.

“Nah,” Joe replied. “I think Chuck E.’s had one too many birthdays.”

An announcement came over the loudspeaker that there were some “technical difficulties,” but the perverse show continued unbidden. At once, a comet of sparks burst out of the robotic rodent’s back; for a split second, it resembled a flame-spitting sprinkler. Bobby briefly wondered if the thick red curtain behind the performers would catch fire, but fate was kind, and the sparks receded. In the throes of its last herky-jerky movements, Chuck E. finally keeled over and died, its head collapsing onto the floor with a clunk to stare directly at Bobby with one glowing dead eye.

“Hep-pee...burth-dee...,” the mangled voice managed to eke out one final time. Bobby stared in horror as the beloved childhood mascot bit the big one. He was never a huge fan of these robot shows, but he never meant to attend Chuck E.’s funeral. Bobby turned to the end of his table to spy Derrick and Joe snickering to each other in a private conversation, and he felt an aloneness he had never experienced before.

About Michael Thomas Perone:

Michael Thomas Perone is an award-winning author who has written for The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, Long Island Voice (a spinoff of The Village Voice), and The Island Ear (now titled Long Island Press), among others. Online, he has written for Fatherly, Yahoo!, WhatCulture!, and other websites that don’t end with an exclamation mark. His articles for WhatCulture! covering the world of entertainment alone have been viewed over 374,000 times, and his expertise on critical writing in the music industry has been cited on Wikipedia and featured in national press kits. He currently works as a Senior Editor in Manhattan and lives on Long Island with his wife and two daughters. For more information, please visit www.michaelthomasperone.com.

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Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a finished copy of DEJA VIEW, US Only.

Ends December 12th, midnight EST.

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