Aaron Majewski, Co-Author of Bedmonsters Are Cool

Today we are interviewing Aaron Majewski, co-author of the young adult fantasy book Bedmonsters Are Cool.
 
Tell us a bit about yourself.
Well, I am the author of several self-published novels mostly of the humor or 'monster' variety; as well as screenplays, stageplays and short stories. I am from Winnipeg Manitoba, and I have a mild dislike of (otherwise known as hate) the ice and snow, so that um, well I get by somehow during the winters!

Describe the plot of your new book in a few sentences.
Basically a young lady rips a hole in time in space, unleashing her very own personal bedmonster on herself and her friends. Then she must come to terms with her heritage of witchcraft while working out how to stuff him back through that tear and close it up... all while definitely not falling in love with her best friend.

You know, classic coming of age stuff.

What made you decide to write a Young Adult fantasy novel?
I enjoy the genera, it gives me as an author the opportunity to explore ideas and situations which would only merit a passing mention in more 'mature' settings, and really is just fun to write.

Who do you think would most appreciate this book?
Anyone who likes their fantasy with a dash (or three) or humor, from teens to adults it has a little something for everyone.

What was it like writing with your co-author, Lorain O’Neil?
Lorain is a joy to work with, I think we complement each others strengths as writers (she loves to edit…as in slash and burn entire pages, and I hate editing)

She also pushes me to be a better writer; more in depth characterization, more on the nose dialog without being too ham fisted about it, just better polished work all around.

Who was your favorite character to write?
Oh Bedmonster, he or it as it were, was the perfect foil to the ‘strightman’ of Becca’s love interest.

What do you have in mind for your next project?
Lorain and I are working on a new fantasy novel, Terabithia, about a young woman's quest to find a mystical key which will put aright what has gone awry after the worlds of Fey and Humans collide.

Is there anything else you'd like potential readers to know about your book?
This book will absolutely positively without a doubt change your life in every single way!

Ok I am just kidding, sorry, but honestly it is just a good fun read. Sit down and spend the weekend with bedmonster’s antics, you will start your Monday with a smile on your face (and if not I don’t do refunds)

A Short Excerpt from Bedmonsters Are Cool, Chapter One:

He was hungry. He was very hungry. He was so HUNGRY.

The gnawing in his hunger-arm was a physical pain and had been for some time, he could no longer remember the last time he’d had a good meal, let alone been full.

The hunger drove him onward, made it impossible to be still. Loud rumbles from his eating-hands filled the air as he padded through the darkness of the Dust Bunny Caverns. The air was heavy and still and reeked of unwashed socks, moldy breadcrumbs (which his sub-species couldn’t digest), decomposing homework, and the acidic taint of Atomic Jazz.

Around him his sound-gathering arms detected the rustles of others of his kind, while his vibration-hairs detected the soft currents of the subworld’s power grid, the magical energy that filled his world and made the impossible probable. His seeing-hands could see nothing now though, because he was too hungry to manipulate light. Relentlessly he pushed on through the darkness on his walking-arms, searching, searching for anything that might sustain him for just a little longer.

His skin-shedder no longer believed in him or anything else that might come through a Door; he’d been unable to gather sustenance in that way for a very long time now and he was

reduced to trolling through the dregs of what drifted through Doors opened by others.

As he prowled through the caverns, BedMonster 1137465893 left his own kind behind, far behind, and moved into the unknown in his quest for food. This was a danger, for who knew what lurked within the darkness of the underworld? Who knew what prowled and stalked and waited for prey? But his kind were hunters, snatchers, and he knew no fear, being the greatest of his kind… okay, so no one else might have thought he was the greatest, but heck, what did they know?

BedMonster’s smelling-hands caught a whiff of something different, something that smelled like fear, and he was instantly alert. His prowling turned almost into a gallop as he climbed the cavern wall, running towards a small dark opening high above he wasn’t sure he was really even seeing. Reaching it, he entered into a low tunnel on his stalking-hands and began probing ahead with his snatching-arms outstretched, his long-corded muscles rippling, attesting to the power of his grip, the expert finality of his snatch.

He’d found something like a Gate into the Real, yet it was different. Too hungry to make his own light yet, he nevertheless saw ahead of him a golden glow emanating from a Gate-like disturbance of air. Gates did not normally glow... perhaps he should be worried about that he thought suspiciously.

Too late.

As he approached the Gate-thing, the golden glow suddenly turned dark red, a color that cried danger and the swirling pattern of disturbance became faster, faster, while the fear scent turned to one of triumph!

And then the light turned green.

*****

She’d friggin’ found it! Becca had exactly six and a half minutes left to get dressed, pack her book bag, get to the bus stop, but she’d found it. No way was she going to high school without her cell.

“Get your ass moving!” her father bellowed from downstairs.

Make-up had to be forgotten (damn), clothes (had she worn these yesterday?) thrown on in abandon, algebra book dispensed with (she’d share Carlie’s who’d hate that but toughola) and she flew. Passing her father pulling out of the driveway to take Normie to daycare and himself to work, she raced toward the bus stop.

She missed it.

Shoot, shoot, shoot, she fumed. Rebecca Ann Westin you are such an idiot! What do I do now?

She walked slowly back to the empty house, defeated, entering its silence, weighing alternatives. She could call her Dad (No!) or she could... just stay home? Who would know? That mattered? She caught a glance of herself in the hall mirror and thought no one’ll probably even notice.

She was not pretty she knew, too tall, too gangly, with way too curly boring brown hair that refused to do anything sensible. One consolation, she had gotten rid of those godawful braces last year. Her teeth were white and straight now and she was going to make darn sure they stayed that way. (She loved her dentist. She hated her dentist.) Good teeth or not though, even with her mother’s assurances that her blue eyes were striking (even when she wore her glasses) and she was going to be beautiful, it hadn’t happened in sixteen years and she had her doubts.

I can just spend the day at home she moped in resignation. Alone.

And then Becca heard a noise upstairs.

*****

This is stupid, this is STOO-PID, she chanted through gritted teeth as she pushed open her bedroom door. The room was a mess of course (she being a teenager, Mom being away, and Dad being, well, Dad) and anything could be hiding anywhere. She gripped her mother’s old golf club and slowly entered the room.

A soft rustling and quiet thumping came from under the bed, its unmade sheets dangling onto the floor obscuring her view underneath.

Oh crap, she cringed, some rabid, chittering, gibbering (or worse, salivating) thing is gonna shoot right outta there and go straight for my ankles. I should call someone, but... I’m skipping school, they’re not exactly gonna be sympathetic.

From as far away as she could manage, Becca thrust out the club and gingerly lifted the fabric.

Okay, breathe now... get down on one knee and just look.

Nothing was there unless you counted massive dust bunnies and small mounds of discarded pantyhose... oh, so that’s where those went.

And then... at the very back, against the wall, something stirred. A hiss, something uncoiling in the shadows.

“DON’T KILL ME!” Becca shrieked. The hiss and the movement ceased abruptly, leaving her unsure whether she had actually even heard them in the first place.

Then something moved, maybe even... glittered?

There’s definitely something there, she decided grimly, it’s suspended off the floor and it’s swaying in the breeze from the air vent. And you know there’s only one way you’re gonna find out what that something is. I am so dead, I am so dead, I am... stop that, you are a big girl.

Carefully, slowly, Becca slid the golf club toward the glimmering darkness. The club met a soft resistance.

GIANT FREAKIN’ COBWEBS! FROM GIANT FREAKIN’ SPIDERS!

Don’t be a moron.

Becca started swishing the club back and forth and found herself getting angry.

Oh show yourself you—

Instantaneously a sparkle of soft golden light appeared and whirled around Becca’s golf club. A sinewy arm shot out of the faintly glittering light, sporting a purplish-gray six-fingered hand that clamped down on the club and pulled. Becca screamed so loudly that her vocal cords nearly ripped, and as she was yanked under the bed the thought that ricocheted through her horror-struck brain was I’m gonna die FOR CUTTING SCHOOL?

Another followed dimly on its heels: Does this mean I can skip the lecture for not making my bed?

*****

The light enwrapped him, melding against his body like a coating of paint, which was not normal for any usual Gate, certainly nothing like a Door. It seeped along his hair coating his hands, his arms, grasping him firmly, carrying him along. BedMonster sensed fear, knew he approached prey, but that prey seemed oddly angered and confused as well. He couldn’t process what was happening to him. A vague shape appeared in the distance and BedMonster 1137465893 reached out to it, heard a scream, a scream that vibrated throughout the small world that was his Gate-like encompassment. He grasped that dark shape and pulled, felt it drag against the palm of one of his snatching-hands trying to get away, trying to leave him behind. He knew that would lead to his dissolution so immediately he twisted, slowly birthing into a small dark space.

The scream echoed around him and he reached out with all his senses, contacting the prey, bounding towards it eagerly. He was under a bed, his natural striking place, and he knew exactly what to do. He careened into the human, hands snaking around and grasping firmly, finding all those places he liked to strike, and scooped up great globules of his sustenance as the prey screamed and struggled beneath him. He had not fed this well in years.

But something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

It was Day, in the Real.

Bedmonsters didn’t do Day.

BedMonster whimpered and fled.

*****

The overlarge hand seemed vaguely gorilla-like, gray-tinged, with purple embedded deeply in the tissue, and six large fingers almost human but for their immense size and strength. The hand clamped onto the golf club and pulled. Becca’s head and shoulders were yanked under the bed as she screamed.

HELL NO I AM NOT GOING UNDER THERE NO WAY! Slamming back on the club with all her might, Becca experienced a weird tingle surge down the back of her spine, across her shoulders and into her arms. The sensation streamed across her hands leaving a faint trace of heat and a metallic taste in the back of her throat. Something seemed to undulate down her arm, jump to the golf club, travel its shaft and flow into the golden light under the bed. The light changed to green, an emerald color like deep ocean, not a safe, soft green, but a dark, scary green, and a part of Becca’s mind whispered green means go, green means open.

Pulling hard, Becca struggled backwards and managed to rock herself back onto her haunches. Without warning the golf club was released and Becca found herself launched, flying across the bedroom landing on her rump, hearing the ominous crunch of her cell phone in her jeans pocket. And then the thing was upon her.

It was a ravenous beast, all hands, hot moist breath, powerful arms, and fur, fur everywhere as it pressed itself against her. Atop her. Pressing her down beneath its weight. It was rummaging she realized in stark petrified terror, it was looking for that perfect place to grip and tear.

And then it was gone.

The beast retreated with a soft cry, leaving Becca disheveled, trembling, but (to her bleak amazement) intact. Under the bed something moved and the light faded. Whatever had pounced on her was huddled under the foot of her bed trembling and whimpering. Becca squatted and edged nearer to gawp at the creature.

The thing under Rebecca Ann Westin’s bed was clearly some kind of animal; it had too many limbs (at least eight she could see) and was furred, about the size of a large dog. For one ridiculous moment Becca thought of her father’s Australian Terrier, Melvin, but this is no dog. The beast had orange-brown fur, oversized six-fingered hands ending in blunt fingernails something like a man’s but much bigger, and most certainly much stronger. Becca was sure the creature could have torn her to pieces if something hadn’t caused its hasty retreat back under the bed.

Becca stared directly at the monster’s eyes –it had two– both perfectly round, each rimmed in gold, but with centers the exact same blue as her own set into the palms of two hands!

BedMonster stared right back.

“What are you?” Becca croaked.

“What are you?” came the sneering response. Its voice was small, afraid, somewhat human, but decidedly not.

“You talk!” As the thing had no head, no clear front or back, this astonished Becca.

“Of course I talk! I’m a bedmonster! Now what are you?” it sniffled, its bravado seemed to be wavering, as if it were in pain.

“Bedmonster? As in nightmare-under-the-bed? But those are fairy stories, ghosts and goblins!”

“Bedmonsters are nothing like fairies, and certainly not like any smelly old goblin, and there are no such things as ghosts. Bedmonsters are the great hunters, the stealthy snatchers, we go where others fear to tread!”

Becca wanted to point out that the bedmonster was currently cowering and whimpering under her bed but that seemed somewhat impolite so she said instead, “You speak English.”

“And modern Greek, some provincial backwoods French, and Latin. Fluently. What’s your point?”

Now the thing was petulant.

“But what are you? I’m sorry, but I still don’t know what a bedmonster really is.”

“A bedmonster obviously is the thing you fear in the dark, the thing that creeps under your bed at night, so when you feel that silent shift of air and know there is a malevolence beneath you, you lie still and quiver and hope that my kind do not come for you.”

It sounded like it was quoting something, or someone, else. “Now again, what are you?” the beast demanded.

“I’m... a girl. My name’s Becca.”

The light about BedMonster seemed to flicker just for a moment, almost in excitement, when Becca said her name.

“Yessss,” it hissed. “You are. Well you are a nasty girl, a naughty girl, fearing me under your bed in Day, opening some weird-assed Gateish thing, drawing me here. Don’t you know bedmonsters shrivel up and die in sunlight?” The bedmonster now sounded aggrieved, and blinked its watery blue eyes once.

“Me? I didn’t bring you here.” It was then that Becca noticed BedMonster was slowly creeping toward her, staying well away from the slant of sunlight streaming in from her mullioned window. “What do you eat?” she demanded suspiciously.

“Human flesh. Specifically, when I can get it, yours.”

“ME?!!”

“Not you, the stuff that sloughs off you. Bedmonsters exist in an asymptomatic-symbiotic relationship with people.”

A whatsit now?

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” a voice demanded from behind Becca who jumped up so fast she actually whirled in midair.

“Aunt Andrea!”

“What were you doing down there?”

Becca was speechless, her eyes darted back to the bed but its sheets were once again dangling onto the floor.

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