I have very exciting and definitely 100% real and not a joke news! Book 1 of Rainy Day Dreams will be receiving an officially sanctioned novelization! For more information scroll to the very bottom of the page, I’m too excited about the excerpts I’m allowed to share so I’m just going to get those out of the way first before I delve into the logistics of when the book will be released:

 

Chapter 1 Excerpt: Page 3

Twack! The axe sunk dramatically into the black bark of the looming tree.

“Tristin,” Teady said, his words psychically sounding in Tristin’s head. “I’m not sure we should be doing this.”
“Huh? Of course we should be!” Tristin responded, axe in hand and smiling with a manic glee to deftly bury her tragic, harrowing backstory. “What makes you say that?” She asked, willfully innocent of the potential consequences of chopping down an ancient, magical tree to retrieve a legendary orb said to grant the finder any wish. Surely, she had once thought to herself, there could be no downside to this significant undertaking I’ve set out upon due to my tragic backstory.

“I have a bad feeling about this place,” Teady said in his wordless way, hinting at that unspoken possibility that attacking a magic tree with an axe may not, in fact, be the wisest course of action.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a tree!” Tristin said with a laugh, shoving her own fears deeper down with chuckles, not to resurface for another seventeen chapters, except to be occasionally teased at along the way. “You silly ol’ bear.”
The forest loomed ominously around the two adventurers in that fashion forests only achieve, and rarely, when they play host to supernatural shenanigans. Tristin didn’t feel the watchful silhouette in the distance, as she was far too distracted with the aforementioned magical lumberjacking and emotional self-denial so skillfully exhibited by a teenager who’s going through some things.

“Don’t worry,” she continued—though, really, she could bear to be more worried herself. “I’ll find that Orb lickety-split, get my wish, and we’ll be home before you know it!”

Tristin was, however, as we’ll soon see, very wrong about all three of those points.

 

Chapter 2 Excerpt: Page 54

“Amélie, who is this?” Freya asked, secretly hoping this interloper wouldn’t shoulder her out as a main character. The ambient lights of the dinner party danced around her skeptical expression as she weighed how long it might now be until she was back in the story.

“This is…” Amélie considered how she might lie in a way that was both demeaning to the intruder but not altogether obvious, “…my younger brother, Michael.” Her exasperation and embarrassment mixed much like the unseen sauces on the plate in front of her. “I hadn’t planned for him to join us, but here he seems to be.”
Michael said nothing as he sat smugly at the table, utterly smug in his smugness. He held his napkin in his hand, moments away from folding it into the shape of an exotic bird to bring attention to his strong, slender, and, from a neutral and objective standpoint, sexy hands.

“Well, that’s alright,” Kiara added to break the tension brought about by Amélie’s weird baggage with this man who clearly is not her brother and said man’s continued smugness. She’d already long since surrendered any top billing in the larger story, already exhausted by the strong main character energy radiating from some of the other guests. Granted, it was not an easy surrender, as she felt quite confident with her character design. “I’m sure none of us mind if he joins.”
Tristin made a sound like a cross between a grunt, a moan, and a sigh that could only really be accurately captured as the audible manifestation of a cute little heart. Her eyes were positively sparkling as she beheld this terribly attractive stranger, considering with no sense of decency what those strong, slender, and, from a neutral and objective standpoint, sexy hands may be capable of.

“Not at all,” Tristin managed to mumble in her swoon, content to imagine this Michael guy having to count blades of grass and cricket heartbeats in order to resist gobbling her up.
Mara glared down at Tristin, a minor, reproachfully.

 

Chapter 3 Excerpt: Page 75

Before Mara had a chance to fully enter the room, she was confronted with two powerful forces: Tristin’s overabundance of exuberance made altogether untenable by this early hour, and Michael’s wholly unfair daddy energy as he peered over his readers.

“Mara!” Tristin shouted, throwing her arms up. “I just discovered that your world has the best cereal ever! It’s called Sugar Bits. You gotta try it!” New, Sugar Bits has folks in a whirl! You’re on top of the world with Sugar Bits! This crispy, crunchy puffed cereal has a delicious sugar-flavored coating (it’s just sugar) toasted on. So sweet all the way through, you don’t even need to add extra sugar! But Tristin absolutely did because there was sugar on the table for the coffee, and no one stopped her.

“Yes, come have some breakfast,” Michael said aloud. He added silently in his mind, I’d like to have you for breakfast—you look tastier than a box of Sugar Bits original sugar flavor puffed cereal. Michael smoldered over his folded newspaper he held as a prop for this precise opportunity. He otherwise had no interest in the goings-on of the rest of the town. Instead, he kept it propped to the business section for optimum dad vibes, while leaving the arts and culture section open on the table, as if he’d just finished reading it, so to seem creative and interesting as well.

Mara’s eyebrows shot up, both at the audacity of Tristin’s breakfast-themed enthusiasm and how detestable Michael was for being such a snack himself. “Tristin, we’re leaving.” Mara takes Tristin by the shoulders, quickly assessing how difficult she might be if dragged bodily from her seat.

“Wha-now?” Tristin stammered, her half-eaten second bowl of Sugar Bits crackling merrily in front of her. More fun than a carnival—that’s Sugar Bits, the handy breakfast cereal and ‘tween meal snack. Watch the whole family go for it, any time of day! P.S., it stays crisp till the bowl’s empty.

“Yes,” Mara replied. She briefly considered that the cereal looked pretty good, but then just as quickly got a toothache just from the smell of it.

Michael lifted his mug in both hands like some kind of adorable cottagecore model. “Are you sure?” He asked with a smirk. “You look exhausted.” He had a little chuckle to himself, mentally adding, It was me that kept you awake all night, Mara. I’m such a scamp, aren’t I? “Why not have a cup of coffee first?” He added, even though it wasn’t actually coffee in his own mug. It was… something else. You’ll find out later.

“No,” Mara said with the firmness of someone who would’ve preferred not to have been harassed all night in her dreams or, at the very least, had some sexy dreams mixed in as well. All the elements were there: billowy dresses, shadowy tendrils, big grabby hands, a big ol’ mouth with the gums and tongue visible and everything. But, no, they were menacing. Not the good kind of going bump in the night at all. “Tristin-“

“But- Sugar Bits…” Tristin started, too disappointed from being pulled away from the sugary cereal and, to a lesser extent, Michael to notice her surroundings shifting around her as they teleported away. She did, in fact, have exceptionally lewd dreams about Michael the night before, but those were fully the work of her own imagination and had nothing to do with Michael’s mysterious plot.

“I’ll buy you a box later,” Mara said, whisking the two of them away. She knew she could pick up a box of Sugar Bits at her local grocer in the cereal aisle. Have a wonderful time nibbling Sugar Bits like candy—right out of the box! Because it’s basically just candy. Makes you glad you’ve got a sweet tooth. Put Sugar Bits on your grocery list today!
Sugar Bits: As a cereal it’s dandy, for snacks it’s handy, or eat it like candy!

 

 

Chapter 4 Excerpt: Page 96

Mara and Michael danced.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Michael asked after hearing Mara make a sound he would describe as “…”
“Nah,” Mara responded, deciding to keep her thoughts to herself, penny or no.

They continued dancing.

 

Chapter 5 Excerpt: Page 121 and 122

Tristin distractedly swung open the door, half-expecting a gelatinous solicitor or a furry courier but still thinking over Mara’s sour morning mood.

“Uh, good morning.” Michael stood on the doorstep, and Tristin struggled to lift her jaw from the floor. “Mara… should be expecting me…”

Tristin blushed deeply as Michael swept up to her, taking her chin in his hands and lifting her gaze to meet his.
“…Expecting me to whisk you away,” Michael continued, now surrounded by sparkly pink bubbles and an intoxicating mist. “I couldn’t get you out of my mind, Tristin. Ever since that first night, watching you accidentally blurt out wildly inappropriate comments at my sister’s dinner party, I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I woke so early the next morning to see you again—to imagine as if you had never left my sight at all—and to gaze upon you as you demolished several bowls of sugary cereal filled my heart with love.” Michael lifted Tristin up off her feet, nuzzling his face into her neck and hair to drink in her scent.

“Michael! I knew you’d return to me!” Tristin swooned.

“Of course, my darling! Now we may have five to eight babies, each of which will be extraordinarily beautiful because we, ourselves, as so hot.” Michael smoldered sexily.

“We are both so hot!” Tristin exclaimed.

“I am a chaste and noble gentleman, so I will restrain myself from any sort of indecency until after we’ve wed!” Michael mused handsomely.

“Objectively, I respect your decision, despite my own rowdy and insatiable lust!” Tristin purred erotically.
“Indeed, so too is my lust insatiable. I can wait no longer! Something you didn’t know about this world is that if we both agree we want to be married, then we’re married! So, if you agree to it now, it’ll be so, and then nothing may stop us!” Michael growled moaningly.

“What a perfect way to be immediately satisfied without compromising my poorly constructed fantasy about a slow burn courtship. But, of course, I’ll still want a wedding so I can wear the big beautiful dress and all that!” Tristin murmured demurely.

“That is also how we do things here!” Michael charmed gorgeously.

“Take me away, Michael! Throw me down on a soft cloud of pillows and-“

“…Um, I’m going to come in… ok?” Michael had actually mumbled, unsexily, at some point.
“Tristin!” Teady said into Tristin’s mind, “He’s gone inside already.”
“Ah!” Tristin gasped, looking around to see that she was, in fact, still in her pajamas in a now-empty doorway. I didn’t even notice him brush past me! I totally could’ve accidentally bumped into him on purpose, she thought to herself. Teady still scowled in his teddy bear way because he knew her well enough. “Oh shoot! Gotta tell Mara!”
Meanwhile, Mara was already scrutinizing their new intruder, though not letting the whole ordeal so much as interrupt her making a cup of tea. She even considered offering Michael a cup, then remembered that, as a vampire, he would likely only drink blood or blood-based products. It must’ve been blood in his mug all those pages ago, when he offered her coffee. What a scamp you are, Michael, offering me coffee when you yourself were drinking blood and not coffee at all.

“So you were actually serious…” Mara said, “You’re the prize and now you want to live here?”

“Yes,” Michael replied.

“Alright…” Mara said, reluctantly accepting that because she had just fought this man for her life and won, resulting in his emotional breakdown, she was bound by shonen protagonist rules to now befriend this man. “But let me make one thing clear. You try to pull any vampire shenanigans like last night with Tristin and I will end you.”

“I won’t. I promise” Michael said, struggling internally with an identity crisis of no longer thinking himself the scariest person in the room. “Actually… about Tristin… Could you not tell her I’m… a vampire? I don’t… want her to know.” It brought some comfort to Michael knowing that keeping this secret from Tristin would never have any negative repercussions.

Mara pondered his request, ultimately deciding that when his terrible judgement blows up in his face, it’ll be his mess to clean up, and she agreed. “Fine.”

 

 

Cover Credits:

Cover design made by Taylor Currey with Canva using free stock illustrations.
Book mockup designed by Yeven_Popov / Freepik

 

 

I hope you enjoyed these excerpts and hopefully picked up on the face that this is, in fact…

an April Fool’s joke!

Taylor did do a fantastic job with these. I think they’re hilarious anyway and I almost do wish he was going to do a full version of the book. Though maybe that would be too much. Don’t forget to come back on Tuesday for April’s guest art post!