Author Eliza Crewe stopped by the blog to share an urban legend.

The Legend of ChowtoeThanks Lisa for having me! 

I was born in Illinois and we lived in a house on the last row of houses in a small neighborhood surrounded by forests and cornfields.  In the woods behind our house lived a pack of wild dogs. They were vicious; a mixture of coyotes and house-dogs who were too mean to keep.  Because of these dogs, my older brothers told me, little girls should never wander in the woods alone.  Why, they’d chased our friend Mark–practically a grown-up at 13!–and he’d had to jump over the river and climb a tree to escape them.

My brothers said Mark was lucky. He wouldn’t have stood a chance if Chowtoe still lived in the pack.

I never saw him, but my brothers said Chowtoe was huge, like a bear, and meaner than all the other dogs. He was also different.  While the rest of the dogs were shades of muddy brown, Chowtoe was light-colored, yellow like the golden retriever that lived next door, with yellow wolf-eyes.  Because Chowtoe was so vicious, he didn’t get along with the other dogs. He’d steal all the food when they made a kill and attack the other dogs just for fun. My brothers said they used to find mauled dog-bodies in the woods back when Chowtoe lived there.

But one day, the dozen or so other dogs in the pack  turned on Chowtoe, and attacked him. Even Chowtoe couldn’t handle all of them at once and he was chased from the pack, and then from the forest entirely. Fortunately for him, he found the perfect new hunting grounds–the cornfields at the end of our street. With his yellow coat, and without the rest of the pack slowing him down, he could move through the cornfield with only the slightest shhh shhh rustling of the cornstalks. And that’s where he lives, to this day I’m sure, where he can move as silently and as deadly through the stalks as a shark does through water, and snap up his victims before they know he’s there!

Or so my brothers always said.  Of course this story preceded them dragging me into the cornfields and abandoning me, so you have my permission to take it with a grain of salt.

Connect with Eliza: http://www.elizacrewe.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElizaCrewe  

Be sure to check out Eliza’s debut novel: Cracked. It is fantastic!

Meet Meda. She eats people.

Well, technically, she eats their soul. But she totally promises to only go for people who deserve it. She’s special. It’s not her fault she enjoys it. She can’t help being a bad guy. Besides, what else can she do? Her mother was killed and it’s not like there are any other “soul-eaters” around to show her how to be different. That is, until the three men in suits show up.

They can do what she can do. They’re like her. Meda might finally have a chance to figure out what she is. The problem? They kind of want to kill her. Before they get the chance Meda is rescued by crusaders, members of an elite group dedicated to wiping out Meda’s kind. This is her chance! Play along with the “good guys” and she’ll finally figure out what, exactly, her ‘kind’ is.

Be careful what you wish for. Playing capture the flag with her mortal enemies, babysitting a teenage boy with a hero complex, and trying to keep one step ahead of a too-clever girl are bad enough. But the Hunger is gaining on her.

The more she learns, the worse it gets. And when Meda uncovers a shocking secret about her mother, her past, and her destiny… she may finally give into it.

I love this cover!