Pandora 2011: Accounts of the Cursed Shopping Center
Now available on Kindle, in Hardcover and Paperback
The Crescent Beach Mall of South Carolina was your basic modern shopping center-boutiques, eateries, movie theaters, and a packed parking lot-until the very fabric of reality unraveled. Now the mall is a supernatural oddity known worldwide as "Pandora's Box." People travel from miles around to have their chance inside: some emerge with amazing stories, some leave the mall insane, and many are simply never seen again.
Sebastian makes a bundle offering tours into the bowels of Pandora. To assuage his conscience, he gives visitors fair warning: if they have personal demons, they should not go inside. Problem is, the Box, as the locals call it, is most seductive to the worst kind of customers-haunted, twisted and desperate misfits-people who should never be allowed to visit a world that reflects their warped souls.
The locals of Crescent Beach realize the magical effects are spreading beyond the confines of the haunted shopping complex. Children's toys become weapons, pets mutate into monsters, and the flow of time itself is corrupted. Sebastian is no longer the only one in over his balding head. Sheriff Valerie Dunn is there to back up the morally bankrupt tour guide, but can they withstand the power-and temptation-of Pandora's Box?
Time to hit the mall; check your psychological baggage at the door.
An Excerpt from 'Pandora 2011'
There are times being a tour guide just plain rules. I'm sitting behind my double-pedestal oak desk, an ear-to-ear grin plastered on my face.
"I'm looking for an all-new, out-of-this-world sexual experience," purrs the knockout across from me. She's a smoky redhead with painted-on lips, a string-strap black halter and torn blue jeans, revealing entire playgrounds of salon-tanned skin.
"But why visit the Box?" I ask. "Why shell out the thousand bucks to the City of Crescent Beach, and the five hundred to Pandora Tours?"
The woman flicks her fingertips. "One night of stripping. Don't worry about it, handsome."
I wonder if she really finds me handsome. Giving tours of the magical shopping mall has aged me prematurely, robbing most of my hair. I wouldn't exactly qualify as a hunk. I'm more like your typical New York transplant-short, thin, and self-loathing. But don't feel bad for me. I have legitimate reasons to hate myself. "There are safer places for a girl to get her kicks. Are you sure Pandora's for you?"
She doesn't bother reading the release form. Instead, she studies my face. "What's your name again?"
"Sebastian."
She points at herself. "Brittanee-with two E's."
I lean across the desk, a cynical smile playing on my lips. "Is that your real name?"
"Sugar," she says, with a voice made for three-in-the-morning, "nothing about me is real."
"That answers my question. You're gonna love this place. Let's roll."
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One Editor's Description of 'Pandora 2011'
Spooky magic is the phrase that best describes this manuscript's content. Tongue-in-cheek humor might be another, but either way, this text presents a page-turner that is all things: deep, light, scary, touching, silly, and sexual. What seems at first like a ridiculous concept, an enchanted mall, quickly becomes a quirky setting for some truly horrific and supernatural events.
The author possesses a definite voice and tone, expressing himself in humorous and dark ways, the simultaneousness of which is no easy feat. His writing is similar in nature to Carl Hiaasen's, from the matter-of-fact way he describes both mundane and extraordinary things to his dry sense of humor. Cutting off dialogue mid-sentence is another hallmark of the author's style, one that continually keeps the reader smiling at its coyness. The tale itself seems completely original yet strangely familiar as the reader wonders if he or she has come under the mall's spell just in reading about it. There are elements that smack of Stephen King's work, Pulp Fiction, M. Night Shyamalan's movies, and even gritty dramas such as Eastern Promises. But these elements don't weaken the story; they rather enhance it by giving the reader that vaguely familiar feeling while being woven together in a completely fascinating way. The characters are interesting and well developed, especially Sebastian, who is the perfect flawed-but-lovable main character.
