Hi peeps! We have Jesi Lea Ryan visiting today with her new release Surreal Estate, we have a great excerpt and a brilliant $20 Riptide GC giveaway so check out the post and leave a comment to enter the giveaway!  ❤ ~Pixie~

Surreal Estate

Jesi Lea Ryan

Sasha Michaels is a psychic with an affinity for houses. And he’s homeless. Go figure. After months of sleeping rough, he stumbles upon an abandoned house, and the lonely place beckons him inside. He’s finally safe . . . until someone comes blundering in to his hideaway.

House-flipper Nick Cooper lost everything in the recession. Desperate to revive his business, he turns to a loan shark to fund his comeback project: flipping an abandoned house full of potential. But it turns out the house has an unexpected occupant.

Nick and Sasha make a deal: Sasha can stay in exchange for helping with the renovation. To both of their surprise, the closer they get to the loan shark’s due date, the stronger their feelings for each other grow. Problem is, Nick isn’t the only one with feelings for Sasha, and now the house doesn’t want to let Sasha go.

Reader discretion advised. This title contains the following sensitive themes: drug use, explicit violence, non-consensual touching 

Excerpt!

Sasha

Fall

I wasn’t sleeping. No one really did when spending the night on a bench in a seedy park. Too easy to get mugged by a crackhead. Instead, I stared up at the starless Milwaukee night and lamented my lack of four walls and a roof. The three layers of clothes I wore warded off the autumn chill, but I worried what winter would bring. I could wander south like some of my brethren, but at the heart of it, I was a Wisconsin guy born and raised. This was my home, no matter how battered and bruised it left me.

“Hey, kid,” called a scratchy voice in the dark.

I sat up and saw Willie’s dark figure ambling toward me. The cold must’ve been bothering his trick knee, because he leaned a little too heavily on the shopping cart that contained all of his worldly belongings. He was old and mostly harmless, but I pulled my bag closer to me anyway. You couldn’t be too careful out here.

“What’s up, Willie?”

The old man sat down next to me on the bench, sending a waft of air, acrid with meth-sweat and filth, up around us. I switched to breathing through my mouth.

“Saw you playing your guitar on the bridge today. From the looks of your case, I’d say you hauled in at least fifty bucks.”

It had only been twenty-three, but it was always best to downplay any cash I might have . . . even if it was only Old Willie asking. “It wasn’t that much, and I spent most of it on dinner.”

“Well, that’s too bad. I know a guy we could pick up a half gram of crystal from real cheap. Turn around and double our money easy.” He gave me the side-eye, checking for my reaction. I forced myself not to clench my teeth as I replied.

“No, thanks, man. I’m not into dealing. Besides, I don’t have that kind of cash.” I did, but the last thing I was going to do was drop what I had into a half-cocked drug deal. Suddenly, I wanted to get out of here, away from the drug talk. I might be in dire straits, but I’d never turn to dealing. I’d seen the toll that shit could take on not just the user, but their families, their friends, everything they touched. A shiver rolled up my spine.

I stood, slinging my guitar case onto my back and lifting my bag. “Nice seeing you, Willie, but it’s cold out here. I’m gonna see if I can find hot coffee or something.”

“Okay, kid. Try the gas station over on Twentieth Street. They should be open.”

I gave him a pat on the shoulder and walked away. It took twenty paces before my nose cleared of his scent. I wasn’t the freshest either, but at least I made an effort.

It was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it. I crossed the little park heading to the street. A cop car drove past me a little too slowly; the second time I’d seen it that night. At best, the cop would tell me to be on my way. At worst . . . well, I didn’t want to deal with that. I wasn’t drunk or high or causing trouble, and I was so tired of people treating me like a criminal just because I was poor. I needed to get out of this place, with its heavy shadows watching me, and remind myself there was such a thing as normal in this world.

The tiny, no-name city park gave way to nearly empty streets as I cut through the parking lots of gas stations and Asian groceries. The worn concrete buildings and closed corner bars still displaying old Schlitz signs in the windows were echoes of a time when the city had teamed with blue-collar jobs and a hope for the future. No one could be hopeful on this street now.

I rounded the corner into a residential neighborhood lined with mature trees and pre–World War II family homes. It was the kind of neighborhood where parents worked jobs with uniforms and punched clocks, and they trusted their latchkey kids to hold the fort down until they could get home with their buckets of fast-food chicken for noshing on in front of the TV. In other words, a lot like the neighborhood I’d grown up in.

As I walked past the sleeping homes, a soft hum woke up the sixth sense in my mind. When I was young, I’d manifested psychic abilities, and walking down a neighborhood street had excited me. I had an affinity for homes . . . well, all buildings really. And in turn, they had an affinity for me. They always seemed to know I could hear them.

The best way I can describe my gift is that human emotions imprint on the places people live, work, and spend time. The structures absorb those emotions, and I can read them. Mostly, I only sense a low vibration of warmth, affection, sorrow . . . But if the vibrations are strong, well, other things happen.

My range isn’t wide, but in a populous neighborhood like this one, the vibes tend to mix together like an odd, harmonious chorus in my mind. Sometimes a place will resonate more strongly than the others, rising above as if in solo and calling out to me with its story.

As I neared the corner, a house with plastic toys lying in the yard beckoned me closer. I approached the porch steps and rested my hand on the railing, opening myself up to the energy of the wood beneath my palm. My breath hitched as the spirit of the house touched my soul and slowly filled me with its tenderness for the occupants inside.

In my opinion, contentment is a vastly underrated emotion. Happiness, true elation, is difficult to sustain long-term. You’d either cross over into mania or you’d get so used to the feeling that your internal benchmark would shift, making it seem ho-hum. Which is actually sad. Contentment, on the other hand, is like a long feeling of okay. A sigh for the soul. Things might not be perfect in your life, you might have a micromanager boss or a persistent ache in your back, but overall, your life is going swell. The bad moments won’t keep you down, and you retain your capacity for appreciating the good ones.

A light deep within the house came on. Someone getting up for an early shift or maybe just taking a piss. I adjusted the guitar on my back and continued down the street. I passed an elementary school and rounded another block. I was thinking of splurging on an Egg McMuffin when I felt it. A tug in my chest.

I turned to see what had pulled at me. Across a short expanse of overgrown yard was a large, stately colonial. Thick vines climbed the brick and clung to the mortar, giving the home an ominous quality in the darkness. But the sense coming from it didn’t feel dangerous, only abandoned. The house called to me with a mixture of loneliness and desperation. I held my hand out, letting the cool vibrations roll over my skin.

Come inside.

I strode up the walk, unable to ignore the call. The neglect made my body feel hollow. The windows on the lower level were mostly boarded over with plywood. A niggling sense of heaviness on my left arm steered me, causing me to skirt the porch and go around the side instead. There, the vines climbed over the windows and choked the gutters. I reached the backyard with its foot-long grass and giant bushes that blocked the rest of the neighborhood from view. It wasn’t four walls and a roof, but the privacy of the backyard lent a feeling of safety that I’d rarely experienced since taking to the streets.

Come inside.

I stepped up onto the rear porch and the nearly rotten wood gave way slightly to my weight. I opened the rusty screen door and tried the knob on the inner door. Locked tight.

Come inside.

How? I might be able to play almost any instrument set in front of me, but picking locks was not in my repertoire. I could track down Five Finger Felix (not his real name, but he answered to it) and ask him to come back tonight to help me break in, but no. If he knew there was a big, vacant home over here, he’d have it overrun with squatters by the end of the week. No one ever accused Felix of being discreet.

My side felt tingly and weighted again. I let the house steer me where it wanted me to go, stepping off the porch and rounding to the left side.

Come inside.

The heaviness vanished, and I stopped. I glanced down at a small basement window, and then bent to get a closer look. It was tough to see with the dark shadows cast from the lilac bushes, but a barely perceptible, otherworldly haze around the window forced my eyes to focus on it. There was no glass in the rotting frame, only a sheet of heavy black plastic. I pushed on the sheet. It came away easily, the adhesive on the old tape long dried out.

I slipped the guitar off my back and set it on the ground next to my pack. I was thin enough to have no problem fitting through the tight space, but was it such a good idea to venture in? No telling what hid in the black void of the basement.

Come. Inside.

I couldn’t turn my back on the house now. Bad idea or not, it needed me.

I wiggled out of my jacket, not believing I was doing this. Breaking and entering wasn’t my style. Then feetfirst, I sank down on my butt and scooched forward. I sat there for a moment, legs dangling inside, unable to sense the bottom of the black abyss. Then, with a deep breath, I steeled my nerves and dropped in.

About Jesi!

USA Today bestselling author Jesi Lea Ryan grew up in the Mississippi River town of Dubuque, Iowa. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in creative writing and literature and a Master’s in business administration, along with an assortment of Associate’s degrees, certificates and designations, none of which have anything to do with writing books about psychics.

Jesi considers herself a well-rounded nerd. She loves studying British history, exploring foreign cities on Google Earth, watching TED talks, listening to true crime podcasts, floating in her pool, and reading or listening to books — approximately two hundred books a year in many different genres. The side effect of all this is that she’s the ideal person to have on your trivia team, or what a former co-worker called “a dump truck of knowledge.

Her biggest vice is procrastination. #TheStruggleIsReal

Jesi spent most of her adult life in Madison, Wisconsin, but now lives in Maricopa, Arizona, with her spouse and two exceptionally naughty kitties. Summers may be brutal, but at least she doesn’t have to shovel the heat off her driveway.

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Giveaway!

To celebrate the release of Surreal Estate, one lucky person will win a $20 Riptide gift card!

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