They kept to the shadows so no one would know they existed, and preyed on the nameless who no one would miss. Where did they come from, and who was protecting them?
Welcome to one of the May 2nd stops on the blog tour for The Litter (the audio book!) by Kevin R. Doyle with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more guest posts, reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.
About the Author
The world building for The Litter was both general and intimate, if that makes any sense.
In terms of the city itself, though I generally had St. Louis in mind while I wrote it, I went out of my way not to include any identifying names, landmarks, businesses, or events. I wanted the overall setting to be simply a large, unnamed city, among other things giving credence to the idea that the events depicted could happen anywhere. I had to have some place visualized in my head, and St. Louis was the closest city to my personal location at the time that could possibly encompass the people and events of the story.
On the more intimate scale, though, most of the action takes place in The Zone, the inner citiest of the inner city of the general locale. To the best of my knowledge, there is no city in North America with a section specifically called “The Zone.” The closest, as far as I know, would be the old “Combat Zone” of Boston, but from what I hear that’s been cleaned up the last several years, similar to Times Square, and even at its worst the Combat Zone was more a vice-ridden area than a poverty-ridden one, though I’m sure it had its share of poverty as well.
The Zone of The Litter, however, is clearly a ghetto, or inner city if you will, in the worst possible meaning of the word. I included as much detail as I could in terms of people, places, and overall visualization of the area as I could short of bogging down the story. I wanted the reader or listener to hate this place, to abhor the thought of living there, which would, in theory, make the events of the story that much more believable. It’s that old suspension of disbelief issue.
Without giving away any plot points, from the beginning I realized that the plot was so outrageous, so unbelievable, that the setting, the world built if you will, had to be as clear and precise as possible while at the same time not having a specific geographic location. Clearly, this is something rather tricky to pull off, so I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether I succeeded.
About the Book
The Litter
by Kevin R. Doyle
Audiobook
Published 6 March 2024
Books in Motion
Narrated by: Bryce Clifton
Length: 7 hours and 56 minutes
Print/eBook
Published 5 January 2015
Night to Dawn Magazine & Books
Page Count: 292
Genre: Horror
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
They kept to the shadows so no one would know they existed, and preyed on the nameless who no one would miss. Where did they come from, and who was protecting them? In a city that had seen every kind of savagery, they were something new, something more than murderous. And one woman, who had thought she had lost everything there was to lose in life, would soon find that nothing could possibly prepare her for what would come when she entered their world.
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Excerpt
Listen to an audio excerpt here!
Or read an excerpt from our previous post for the print/ebook version of this title over here.
About the Author
A retired high-school teacher and former college instructor, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of four novels in the Sam Quinton mystery series, all published by Camel Press. He’s also written four crime thrillers, including And the Devil Walks Away and The Anchor, and one horror novel, The Litter, along with numerous short horror stories published in small magazines over the years. The first Quinton book, Squatter’s Rights, was nominated for the 2021 Shamus award for Best First PI Novel. A lifelong Midwesterner, Doyle currently resides in Missouri and has loosely based the city of Providence in the Quinton books on Columbia.
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Giveaway Alert!
Kevin R. Doyle will award a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly dawn winner.
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Thank you for featuring THE LITTER today.
Kevin R. Doyle is really popular in our house. My husband loves his books. The Sam Quinton Mystery book series is his all-time favorite!
Hi, those are very kind words. Thank you.
Good morning. Thanks for taking part in this tour. I’ll check in on and off throughout the day.
This sounds like an interesting book.
Looks like a good book.