Vanta M. Black Wants to Give You a Free Book
Grab Your Free Copy of Oubliette in Honor of All Hallows Eve
To support the spirit of sharing books and literature during All Hallows Eve, author Vanta M. Black offers the highly-acclaimed Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place as a free, digital download for the last week of October.
What Is All Hallows Read?
All Hallows Read is an idea that the author Neil Gaiman first suggested as a way to celebrate the week of Halloween. The idea is simple, give an age-appropriate scary book or comic to others. You can give to family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Hand out books to trick-or-treaters, or at Halloween parties.
The All Hallows Read tradition is only a few years old and gains momentum every year. It is traced to 2010 when Gaiman published the now famous A Modest Proposal (That Doesn’t Actually Involve Eating Anyone) blog post. In it he says:
“I propose that, on Hallowe’en or during the week of Hallowe’en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they’ll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they’ll enjoy.
Author Vanta M. Black
I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands — new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe’en. Make their flesh creep…”
Gaiman goes on to ask “Who’s with me?”
This year, for Halloween Week 2016, Vanta M. Black is with him.
Give Someone a Scary Book for Halloween
Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place is being offered free until midnight, October 31st, 2016. Simply go to the Vanta M. Black’s website to request a copy.
Additionally, Black encourages the sharing of the book to others. Pass it along. It is easy to enter the email address of anyone who might enjoy what’s been called “nail-bitingly good” and “unputdownable” by readers.
More About Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place
An oubliette is a vial place found inside castles. It is a narrow pit where people were thrown and literally “forgotten”. It was a dungeon, and being in one meant almost certain death.
The hole was often strewn with bones of those who died before. In many cases, oubliettes were used over spans of centuries, meaning it was filled with the remains of people from various times.
Forgotten and hopeless, the unfortunate soul who was imprisoned in an oubliette may have been a criminal, a prisoner of war, a thief, or simply someone who others wanted to do away with.
In the book Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place, two American sisters are brought to a castle in France that holds an oubliette. But they don’t know that. As the sinister stories of those who met their demise within it twist around them, they become tangled in someone’s dark, ulterior motive.
There are several timelines in the book. Each is the setting for the tale of someone who met their fate in the bottom of that pit. How did they get there? What crime did they commit? Who did they piss off?
- Find out what happens to a simple parish priest during the time of the Black Death.
- Follow two children as they run for their lives during the Inquisition.
- Watch helplessly as a pregnant woman succumb to madness—or is it something else—as the French Revolution rages outside the fortified castle walls.
- You’ll also bear witness to an act so vile that it gives birth to the “thing” that rules the oubliette.
- Observe a flirty young wife seal her own fate when she toys with her husband’s prisoner during the Reformation.
- And pick your side as you watch Roman soldiers overtake the ancient castle and battle for a power they do not understand.
In the end, as you are screaming for mercy, you’ll find yourself screaming for more. The past and present come together as the stories converge and you’re left watching them interweave in an ending that, “…will leave you speechless,” according to Stacey Chillemi in The Huffington Post.
Grab your free digital copy of Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place by Vanta M. Black before it’s too late. Offer expires midnight, October 31, 2016. Share the spookiness and follow #AllHallowsRead and #Fallin.
what do you think?