The Litter by Kevin R. Doyle [Blitz with Excerpt]

They kept to the shadows so no one would know they existed, and preyed on the nameless who no one would miss. Where did they come from, and who was protecting them?

Welcome to one of the August 2nd stops on the blog tour for The Litter by Kevin R. Doyle with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to check out other stops on this blitz for alternate excerpts, reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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About the Book

The Litter
by Kevin R. Doyle

Published 5 January 2015
Night to Dawn Magazine & Books

Genre: Horror
Page Count: 292
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

They kept to the shadows so no one would know they existed, and preyed on the nameless who no one would miss. Where did they come from, and who was protecting them? In a city that had seen every kind of savagery, they were something new, something more than murderous. And one woman, who had thought she had lost everything there was to lose in life, would soon find that nothing could possibly prepare her for what would come when she entered their world.

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Excerpt

“How is it tonight?” she asked.

“Quiet, so far. But there’s a couple of women who came in right as we were locking up, looked kind of desperate and needy. We had a few empty cots, so I went ahead and assigned them to them. But before he left I had Mark position them far away from the rest of the crowd.”

“You for sure they’re hinky?”

“Not really. Just a feeling. Even so, especially with the stories going around, I figured it best to keep them separated and look in on them every twenty minutes or so.”

“Stories?” Karen asked.

Susan leaned back in her chair and stared at Karen.

“You didn’t hear while you were out there?”

“Hear what?”

“As they trickled in tonight, we began hearing stuff. Whispers. Half sentences. You know. The kind of partial stuff you pick up while you’re dishing out the soup and making up the cots for the night.”

“I left early this afternoon,” Karen said. “Headed out around three, so hardly any of the usuals had shown up yet. What kind of stuff?”

“Supposedly, another homeless guy went missing a day or so ago. One of the older ones again. Only he didn’t stay missing for very long. They found him late last night. More like this morning. Some of them were talking about he’d been cut nearly to shreds. Heard half a dozen versions, each more gruesome than the last, by the time we went lights out.”

Karen glanced over her shoulder at the dormitory area and saw nothing but a sea of huddled forms under blankets, only the occasional ripple of cloth as someone tossed in their sleep signaling any life at all.

She sometimes thought, when she stayed here in the dead of night, that the various pieces of human flotsam that made their way into the shelter went into some sort of limbo with lights out, entered a state of almost hibernation until the morning sun began inching its way through the front windows.

Of course, Karen only held this view on the nights when nothing happened. On those other nights, the ones with non-stop commotion, hardly anyone could get any sleep at all.

It had almost seemed, as some of them had discussed while sitting at their desks, that over the last several weeks the street people had been more grateful than usual for a port in the storm, as if seeking shelter had become even more crucial than in past times.

Which made Karen and her co-workers wonder if maybe, just maybe, the various rumors of people missing off the streets, snatched away in the middle of the night, were more than fanciful imaginings.

About the Author

A high-school teacher, former college instructor and fiction writer, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of numerous short horror stories. He’s also written three crime thrillers, The Group, When You Have to Go There, and And the Devil Walks Away and one horror novel, The Litter. Recently, he’s begun working on the Sam Quinton private eye series. The first Quinton book, Squatter’s Rights, was nominated for the 2021 Shamus award as Best First PI Novel.  The second book, Heel Turn, was released in March of 2021, while the third in the series, Double Frame, is due out March of 2022.

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Giveaway Alert!

Kevin R. Doyle will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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