About Aversion:
For Gemma Green’s first time, things should have been straightforward. Find your subject, hold their gaze and push a thought into their head to save them from future disaster – Aversion complete. A pretty simple process given that the subject was to have no recollection of the experience. But Russ Tanner doesn’t seem to want to forget. In fact the more she tries to avoid him, the more he pushes to get to know her. Gemma knows she has a problem but is she facing the side effects of a failed Aversion or has the school’s tennis champ really fallen for her?
Excerpt:
“You broke him.”
Again I jumped at the sound of a male voice close behind me. How come all these people were creeping up on me today? When I saw the speaker, I relaxed a bit but I still wasn’t happy. It was one of the four other Averters in our school. You didn’t really think it was only little old me stationed at our school, did you? There are far too many problems in life for most schools to be left with only one trainee Averter.
The slightly overweight boy who had startled me was the oldest Averter of our lot and was two years ahead of me at school. There was another boy in his year and two other boys in the year below me. Although none of us ever spoke to each other, we could tell what we were. I knew by the fact that I couldn’t read anything off them and also by the fact that when they first saw me, they had stared at me for much longer than I had stared at them. They were understandably shocked that I was a girl - their fathers must have had a lot of explaining to do when they got home – and it must have been difficult for them to accept that I wasn’t just defective. By speaking to me, this boy had just made my day even weirder.
“What?”
“I said you broke him. You must have. He definitely remembers you.”
“How do you…”
He hushed me by waving his hand in my face. “I’ve been doing this for three years and when I saw you today in the cafeteria, I knew you had finally carried out your first Aversion. A bit late if you ask me but I’m guessing that’s not the first disappointment your father has had to deal with.”
I was too shocked by his words to react. Dad had told me that some people were not pleased with the fact that he had decided to raise me as an Averter but I had never witnessed any hostility because of what I was.
The boy must have mistaken my silence for acceptance of his superiority because he carried on like he hadn’t just been incredibly mean to me. “You must have done something you weren’t supposed to. That’s why he has a memory of you but not what you did to him. You’re linked now and he knows it but he doesn’t know why.”
I should have been angry with him for being such an arse but what he said struck gold. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before? I had told Russ to quit smoking and that was not part of what I was supposed to change in his future. I was only meant to stop his party attendance and the resulting events and I couldn’t even remember why I had added the smoking bit, but I had and here we were. I tried to calm myself down by thinking back to what Dad had thought me about failed Aversions but this was not quite a failed Aversion. I had carried out my task successfully, so what disaster did this fall under?
My next thought was that I had to tell Dad straightaway. He would know what to do. He might even have given me a scenario like this in the past as part of a test and I had forgotten.
“You’re going to have to fix him on your own.”
“What?” I must have sounded really dim to the boy. I hadn’t formed a single complete sentence since he started speaking to me.
“If you tell your father, you set yourself back a few months at best. There was a boy who messed up an Aversion a few years ago.” He paused and sucked in air through his teeth to convey the severity of the situation. “We’ve all been trying hard not to repeat his mistake.”
Despite my annoyance at his smugness and my curiosity as to what the boy’s crime and punishment had been, I had to swallow my pride and ask the question I felt was most important. As strange as it seemed, it sounded like he was trying to help me.
“And how do I fix him?” For obvious reasons, I didn’t keep notes about what we did so I couldn’t go home and search through my handy guide to being an Averter because there was none.
The boy shrugged and started to walk away. “Every one of them is different; it’s impossible to tell what moves one in relation to another. You have to figure it out for yourself. Just hope it’s something simple and quick.”
“Wait!” I called out to him but he acted like he couldn’t hear me and didn’t turn around. My goodness, he was really going to leave me hanging.
About the Author:
Kenechi lives in London and enjoys writing fantasy/paranormal fiction and short stories (some of which she posts on her blog). She also hates the cold and hopes to one day figure out how to hibernate in winter.
Giveaway:
One lucky winner will win their choice of ebook, Aversion or The Other Slipper. This giveaway is open INT as long as you are able to receive ebooks. Giveaway ends 1/25.
There is also another giveaway running throughout the tour. One UK person who comments on the tour stops will win a paperback of The Other Slipper by Kenechi Udogu. Sorry, this is for UK residents only!
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Check out the rest of the tour HERE!
I love the sound of this one :)
ReplyDeleteI can't believe how many books there are out there that I never hear about until later n_n
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