Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: If Darkness Takes Us by Brenda Marie Smith

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for If Darkness Takes Us by Brenda Marie Smith. This book tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as a great guest post from the author. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour for more content. Enjoy!

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Title: If Darkness Takes Us

Author: Brenda Marie Smith

Publisher: SFK Press

Publication Date: October 15th 2019

Print Length: 382 pages

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

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In suburban Austin, Texas, Bea Crenshaw secretly prepares for apocalypse, but when a solar pulse destroys modern life, she’s left alone with four grandkids whose parents don’t return home. She must teach these kids to survive without power, cars, phones, running water, or doctors in a world fraught with increasing danger. And deciding whether or not to share food with her starving neighbors puts her morality to the test.

If Darkness Takes Us is realistic post-apocalyptic science-fiction that focuses on a family in peril, led by a no-nonsense grandmother who is at once funny, controlling, and heroic in her struggle to hold her family together with civility and heart.

The book is available now. It’s sequel, If the Light Escapes, is told in the voice of Bea’s eighteen-year-old grandson, Keno Simms, and will be released by SFK Press on August 24, 2021.

“Bea Crenshaw is one of the most unique characters in modern literature—a kick-ass Grandma who is at once tough and vulnerable, and well-prepared to shepherd her extended family through an EMP disaster, or so she thinks." — Laura Creedle, Award-winning Author of The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

"There is real, identifiable humanity, subtle and sweet and sad, and events utterly shattering in their intensity." — Pinckney Benedict, Author of Dogs of God, Miracle Boy, and more

Goodreads * Amazon * Barnes & Noble *

Book Depository * BookPeople Austin *

Books-A-Million * Bookshop *

Half Price Books * Indigo * 

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EXCERPT:

“Mazie, come with me downstairs where it’s safer.”

“I don’t like dark places,” she whined.

I had never yelled at my grandkids in their lives, but my patience was gone. Radioactive fallout could be here any minute.

“Mazie, quit arguing! Come with me now!”

She pinned me with a flash of anger in her eyes. “Where’s my doll?”

“We’ll get it later. Let’s go!”

She made me pick her up. Although she was a wisp, she was still too heavy for me, but I carried her anyway. Holding onto her little frame comforted me, and I needed to be level-headed and strong for these kids.

When we got to the top landing on the stairs, I had to put Mazie down to shut the cellar door. I held her hand, and we descended the stairs together.

As soon as we reached bottom, Milo asked, “Nana, when will Mom and Dad be home?”

Good Lord, I hadn’t even thought about how this nuke or EMP— whatever it was—might have affected the other adults in this family, who were hurtling toward Austin at seventy miles an hour on a jam-packed interstate highway. Did this “event” extend that far? For the love of Jesus!

I tried to hide my shaking hands as I said to Milo, “I’m not sure. It shouldn’t be too long.”

How long is too long, anyway?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brenda Marie Smith lived off the grid for many years in a farming collective where her sons were delivered by midwives. She’s been a community activist, managed student housing co-ops, produced concerts to raise money for causes, done massive quantities of bookkeeping, and raised a small herd of teenage boys.

Brenda is attracted to stories where everyday characters transcend their own limitations to find their inner heroism. She and her husband reside in a grid-connected, solar-powered home in South Austin, Texas. They have more grown kids and grandkids than they can count.

Her first novel, Something Radiates, is a paranormal romantic thriller; If Darkness Takes Us and its sequel, If the Light Escapes, are post-apocalyptic science fiction.

Website * Amazon * Facebook *

Goodreads * Instagram * Twitter * YouTube

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GUEST POST:

I wrote If Darkness Takes Us because…

Ever since I was a teen—a very long time ago, lol—I have been worried about ecological and societal collapse. I’ve worked for and supported environmental and social justice causes all my life, I’ve devoured dystopian and apocalyptic books and stories, and I even wrote one in high school that was runner-up in a national contest.

Yet, so many apocalyptic tales today either take place long after the collapse has occurred, or they are peopled with supernatural creatures like zombies. Don’t get me wrong, I love the great drama and characters in The Walking Dead, and there are dozens of excellent tales of far-future worlds.

But I wanted to write a story that explored what it might actually be like for an average American family to suddenly find itself without the creature comforts and life-saving support systems we are accustomed to. I also wanted to include a grandmother as the protagonist because I feel that old women get short-changed in our literature and on the screen.

I wrote If Darkness Takes Us while so many uncontrolled wildfires were burning in Texas that it seemed as though half the state was ablaze. Hurricanes were increasing in intensity, other states and countries were on fire as well, or flooding, or losing their crops to drought. I could see bigger disasters ahead; I just wasn’t sure which kind would do the most harm. But I did know that whatever catastrophe might befall us, our best odds of survival would come from banding together to help each other. I wanted to write a different kind of apocalypse, one that includes love and hope and human cooperation.

If Darkness came out in October 2019. Five months later, we were plunged into a worldwide pandemic that has killed millions. In February 2021 while I revising the sequel, If the Light Escapes, we had the Texas Snowpocalypse, where the grid was shut down for days during single-digit temperatures. A few days into it, we lost our water, too. And we had to survive using the same skills as the characters in the books, including banding together with neighbors and friends to share food and water, and to mount a rescue operation to move our grandchildren and their mother from an apartment with no heat over treacherous, icy roads.

In all my years of activism, I have learned that it’s very hard to change the thinking and behavior of people. I have hope that, by putting my concerns in fictional form, they have a better chance of touching hearts, convincing folks to protect our environment, and inspiring them to love and care for one another like their lives depend on it, because they do. They really, truly do.

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GIVEAWAY:

Brenda Marie Smith will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway