Hello friend! A few days back, Elizabeth Gilliland shared about retellings and mentioned her new book, Come One, Come All as being inspired by Wuthering Heights. I am looking forward to reading this book and while I wait for my copy in the mail, here is Elizabeth telling us about it. Take a look at the excerpt at the end of the post. If you are looking for a book to read around Halloween, Come One, Come All is a Gothic Horror.

---

Get to know the author: Elizabeth Gilliland

Welcome back to Armed with A Book, Elizabeth! It’s wonderful to collaborate with you again. 🙂 Tell my readers a bit about yourself!

Hi, Kriti! (And readers!) My name is Elizabeth but I write horror under the pen name E. Gilliland, and I teach high school English (yes, I am that person who made you read The Great Gatsby). When I’m not writing or teaching, I’m most likely hanging out with my cute kid, binging the latest Thing on streaming, and always looking for the next best thing to read.

What inspired you to write this book?

This book is kind of a weird response to a lot of Byronic hero fiction that I was reading, watching, and just all-around consuming in the time of my life when I first started writing this (more on that below). I started out genuinely trying to write a supernatural type romance with a dark sexy antihero and… it took a pretty dark, sad turn. Oh well.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

I looked back through old emails and I think I’ve narrowed it down to writing this in 2014. At the time I had an agent, so I was at least submitting this to her in early 2015, so that tracks. That was kind of a long, weird journey that you can read more about here, but I’d officially put this book on the shelf for many years, and just in the last year it came back to me and wouldn’t leave me alone. So 8 years all in total, but not all of those were actively spent working on the book.

What makes your story unique?

A take no prisoners heroine, an evil circus with a genuine monster at the heart of it, a ghost owl, and a tiger that thinks it’s a dog (among other features, I hope).

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

Gothic horror fans, people who liked The Night Circus, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Nightmare Alley, and people who dig the Mike Flanagan sad-horror vibe. 🙂  

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

This book has lived with me for such a long time that I’m honestly just so excited for someone besides me to be haunted by this story. If I had to choose just one, though… Without spoiling too much, the very last scene of the book was something I was convinced to cut out in previous drafts, even though that’s how I always wanted the story to end. Putting it back into this final version just felt really right for the way the story ultimately came together.

---

Book Excerpt from
Come One, Come All

Louisa had thought the Pied Piper Carnival looked surreal in the scant photographic evidence she’d managed to piece together in her search, but if anything, it was even more bizarrely gaudy in person, tinged with the smell of desperation. Look at me! the freaks and contortionists all but shouted from their faded, patched tents; and from the pretty girls with their barely there costumes fraying at the seams, Love us!; and underneath it all, a whisper so faint it could barely be noticed under the glitz of the peeling-painted signs and the shriek of the dissonant, jarring music: Come.

And people did. In droves, they answered the call of the traveling show, stumbling up to it as if they scarcely understood why they were there, but drawn all the same. Embarrassed, at first, but lured in by those too-bright lights.

At least all of her fears about sticking out like a sore thumb had been in vain. No one here seemed inclined to gawp at any of their fellow voyeurs — not even those, like she, with hair shorn so close to the scalp that bits of skin poked through. It had been an impulsive decision made once the adrenaline from nearly jumping off the roof had worn off and she’d decided, for better or worse, to come on this bizarre journey she could not quite explain, even to herself — that was, if there’d been anyone left to explain it to.

The owl made me do it, she thought wryly to herself, running a self-conscious hand over her freshly buzzed hair. The tinsel dress had been replaced with a flannel shirt two sizes too big, jean shorts, and a sensible, sturdy pair of boots so heavy that if the moon drifted off and took all the gravity with it, there she’d be, still rooted to the earth. The only concession to any kind of glamor was the heavily-coaled eyelids that were not so much an invitation as a warning. Come too close, and I’ll bite.

Despite the rather strange figure she cut, people were too caught up in the shoddy showmanship around them to notice or care. Something about the flashing lights and blaring music distracted them from the blatant disrepair: the signs hanging off their hinges, the pockmarks plastered over with pancake makeup. Simple minds, and all. Still, scoff all she liked, Louisa had to stop herself more than once from leaning in toward a shiny bauble or taking an outstretched palm.

“Pretty lady looking for a good time with a handsome fellow?” one of the popcorn vendors leered at her as she passed, scratching at the dark tendrils of hair protruding through his unbuttoned shirt.

Louisa knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself, truly. “Yeah.” She took in a step closer, all big-eyed innocence. “You know any?”

At once the grin dissolved to a gleaming snarl. “Think you’re funny, huh? I’d watch my back if I were you.”

But Louisa only smirked to herself as she drifted back into the faceless crowd. Just try it, she dared him silently. We’ll see who walks away from it smiling.

“Happy hunting.”

She swiveled to see a woman sitting in a tassled, red velvet-upholstered booth, the hand-painted sign overhead reading ‘Madame Kassandra, Soothsayer.’ Underneath it sat a woman so ancient her skin had begun to shrink in on itself. Her eyes were a milky, unblinking white, her hair a platinum bob cut just below her chin. She stared straight ahead, not seeming to see anything, though Louisa could not shake the feeling that the old crone was looking straight through her.

Curiosity finally winning out, Louisa ventured another step closer. “You talking to me?”

Madame Kassandra beckoned her even closer with the crook of a gnarled, veined finger. Once Louisa was directly in front of her, she cupped a hand over her mouth, giving a hot, exaggerated whisper. “I know what you’re looking for.”

Oh, this ought to be good. “Do you, now?”

“Three.”

Despite herself, Louisa felt a chill course down her spine. But that was the way these shoddy carnival tellers worked, wasn’t it? Trail little breadcrumbs of generalities mixed with a healthy helping of bullshit, make people believe you could peer into their souls.

“Three what?” she bluffed as if the number meant nothing to her, though she caught herself holding her breath as she waited for the answer.

“One for each of the ones you took.” Madame Kassandra’s small, withered hand was surprisingly strong as it encircled her wrist. “But you should have kept running, Lovely Louie. This place is gonna gobble you up.”

Louisa wrenched out of her grasp, more shaken now than she’d care to admit. “Not if I gobble it first,” she muttered, hugging her combat jacket tighter around herself as she threw herself into the crowd.

---

Interested?

Find Come One, Come All on Goodreads, Amazon and IndieStoryGeek.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Elizabeth on Goodreads, Twitter and check out her press website for updates. 

---

If you are an indie author and would like to do a book excerpt, check out my work with me page for details. Check out other book excerpts here.

Cover image: Photo on Unsplash