THE SPEED OF DARK by Barbara Quinn

GENRE: Paranormal romance, coming-of-age

ELEVATOR PITCH: In the summer of 1964, a teenage boy falls for a mysterious girl who possesses special powers.

STORY SUMMARY: There are some people you never forget. In the summer of 1964, fourteen year old Luke D’Angelo falls for one of them – a mysterious girl named Celeste. Like Luke, Celeste is an outsider struggling to find her identity, but unlike Luke, Celeste has special powers that have the potential to destroy everything Luke and his friends believe in.

Luke and his mentally challenged sister become fast friends with this curious girl. Set in upstate New York, in a town that is home to a shrimp cocktail plant that belches a foul-smelling tomato and fish fog, this coming-of-age tale about a girl with a dream and the teens who want to help her fulfill it, is a balance between the comic and the profound. The story resonates with the message that inside each of us is a light that burns so bright no dark can extinguish it. But at what cost?

TIME PERIOD: 1964

LOCATION: Small town in upstate New York

• CHARACTERS:
  Luke D’Angelo: Fourteen, wiry brown hair, blue eyes, Caucasian, 5’4”, scrawny. Has a crush on Celeste Carey but she cares for Alec. Type: Preston Bailey, Owen Best
• Celeste Carey: Blonde, golden eyed, Caucasian, 5’2’, 14, wants to hold back the dark and has the power to alter the weather. Type: Mackenzie Foy
• Alec: Blonde, athletic, tall, Caucasian, 14. Best friend of Luke who has a crush on Celeste. Type: Dylan Minnette, Jimmy ‘Jax’ Pinchak
• Joanie D’Angelo: Sister of Luke. Brown hair, brown eyes, pudgy, Caucasian, 5’1’, suffering from Fragile X syndrome, 12. Type: Ramona Marquez
• Josh Weingard: 5’ 5’’, brown hair, wrestler’s build, 14, staccato way of speaking. Friends with Luke and Alec. Type: Skyler James Sandak, Zach Mills

ADDITIONAL INFO: Published by Eternal Press 2011

CONTACT: The author at BAQuinn7(at) gmail (dot) com

Barbara Quinn is an award-winning short story writer and author of a variety of novels. Her works have appeared in print, online, and in audio form. She is a Founder and former Publisher of the Rose & Thorn Journal, an online literary zine. She splits her time between Montebello, NY, Anna Maria Island, Florida, and Bradley Beach, NJ.

Barbara Quinn’s novel The Speed of Dark is a fascinating and imaginative story, blending the real with the fantastic, giving us characters we can know and root for. Her writing is wise and magical, filled with wit, passion and honesty.” -Noel Hynd, author of Ghosts and Cemetery of Angels

I’m always on the lookout for a good new author and Barbara Quinn fits that description to a “T.” I loved The Speed of Dark, from the wonderfully realized setting to the characters and their complicated, but timeless, relationships with each other. Quinn has also done a terrific job in bringing to life what it was like growing up in the early part of the sixties. I was a teenager at that time and a lot of what she writes about is eerily familiar-either from my own life, or the people I knew at the time.” -Charles de Lint, author of Someplace to be Flying, Forests of the Heart, Seven Wild Sisters, The Onion Girl

By turns lyrical and grittily realistic, The Speed of Dark brings its own vision to the Stephen King territory of small town life in the sixties. In a novel rich with period detail, Barbara Quinn effectively captures the sense of the numinous that pervades everyday life.-Eileen Kernaghan, author of The Snow Queen, Songs from the Drowned Lands, and The Sarsen Witch.”