Booktrope Publishing has released The Key to Everything by Alex M. Kimmell in both paperback and digital editions.
Description: Cracked and weathered binding, hiding mysteries on pages tied closed by a bloodstained string. A happy young family enchanted by dreams and possibilities. A barren, empty room. A boy with no friends obsessively drawing angles, edges and diagrams.
In his debut novel, Alex Kimmell captures a vivid and startling tale of fear. Auden’s journey begins when he discovers a curious leather-bound book whose contents will soon endanger his entire family. The pages of this book draw him into a prison that cannot be breached, a place that can only be unlocked with a very special key.
In The Key to Everything, fear is explored and heightened through jarring imagery and a terrifying, unique menace, ratcheting up the tension until the novel’s gripping climax.
“I grew up in Los Angeles, California during those heady days when kids could still trick-or-treat outside instead of walking around from store to store inside the sterile safety of shopping malls,” says Kimmell. “My friends and I could run and play without any thought of being shot or kidnapped leaving riderless skateboards spinning their lonely wheels.
“Though I grew up in a safe environment, the nightmares found me every night. Pulling the covers over my head, I welcomed them. I enjoyed reading stories of monsters and ghosts lurking in the shadows. I loved the terror and suspense of good scary movies. Constantly daydreaming that something horrible awaited me around every street corner of my beautifully manicured suburban neighborhood.
“When I wasn’t reading I played music. It took over my life. It provided me with the keys to an education and the ability to see the world. Music was how I met my future wife while playing a gig at a dingy Irish pub near the ocean in Santa Monica.
“Even then, the nightmares flowed through me. I scribbled down a poem here, wrote a song there. There were ideas for stories running through my head at all times of the day or night. Eventually my wife suggested I take writing fiction more seriously, since it featured so prominently as a creative outlet for me.”
You can pick up a copy on Amazon here: The Key to Everything
