Local author Grant McKenzie is breaking into the U.S. book market with his first hardcover supernatural thriller set to hit shelves next month.
Speak The Dead begins with six-year old Sally Blue who is awoke one night by a gun shot. She runs into her parents’ room to find her father missing and her mother dead. In her mind, she hears her mother’s voice call ‘Run. Sally, Run’ and takes off into the night.
The book begins 25 years later, with Blue working as a mortician’s beautician.
“One night she’s working and she hears this horrible car accident and she rushes out there. There’s a woman who was hit by a car and is lying there dead. When she touches this woman who has just died, she gets this flash of the last 10 seconds of her life and then the book spirals from there,” said McKenzie, a former Monday Magazine and Vancouver Sun editor.
The book, which took roughly a year to write, also includes a supernatural element that differs from the five other edge-of-your-seat thrillers McKenzie has published.
“I let the reader make up their mind about how much they want to believe or how much they want to accept because you can read the book without accepting any of that supernatural element,” McKenzie said.
“I wanted to write in a way that in theory, it could happen in real life. Sally’s perceptions might not always be true, but that’s up to the reader to decide.”
McKenzie recently signed a five-book deal with New York publisher Polis Books with Speak The Dead being one of McKenzie’s first big pushes to enter the U.S. book market.
McKenzie is also the author of Switch, Angel With A Bullet and No Cry For Help.
The book will be released on Sept. 15 and will be available both online and in major bookstores.