FEATURED AUTHOR: RACHEL TAMAYO

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

What do you do when you know you’re on a serial killer’s hit list?



Six women are dead, and Wren Addison is the next victim on the SMS Killer’s list—or so she’s been told after waking in a pool of blood with no memory of the events that have transpired.



Newly separated and struggling to start her life over after her husband’s infidelity, Wren tries to remember what happened to her, but nothing is adding up as more horrors unfold around her. With her life on a timer and the murderer taunting her, she realizes there is nothing typical about this serial killer.



Wren is pushed to the edge as she dances between knowing she's likely to die and fighting to be the first to survive. As the truth starts to emerge, she rises to the challenge and decides not to go down without a fight.



Someone is going to die, and she’s determined it won’t be her.

Book Details:


Title: Carnal Knowledge


Author: Rachael Tamayo


Genre: psychological thriller


Series: The Deadly Sins Series 


Publisher: Tangled Tree Publishing (July 11, 2020)


Print length: 296 pages


On tour with: Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

   

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH RACHEL TAMAYO


A few of your favorite things: family, good food, sunshine, movies in the dark with a blanket.
Things you need to throw out: clothes that don’t fit, toys kids don’t play with, and a towel with holes in it I keep washing. LOL.


Things you need in order to write: access to OneDrive and Microsoft Word. If the mood hits me, I can write anywhere.
Things that hamper your writing: figuring out what my characters will do in a given situation.

Things you love about writing: everything! Creating a world, telling an amazing story. Making someone say, “Wow what a story!”
Things you hate about writing: the fear of people hating what I write. To be a writer is to expose a part of yourself to the world. It’s always risky.

Easiest thing about being a writer: there isn’t much easy about being a writer. LOL. 

Hardest thing about being a writer: explaining that I have no idea where the ideas come from; they just come to me.


Things you love about where you live: mild winters! No snow, warm days. Sunshine, 30 minutes from the ocean. Texas hospitality. The way everyone helped one another during Hurricane Harvey.
Things that make you want to move: I can’t imagine living anywhere else.


Things you never want to run out of: food, money, love, joy, smiles.
Things you wish you’d never bought: slime for my kids. LOL. 


Favorite foods: hamburgers, tacos, fajitas, ice cream, Dr Pepper.
Things that make you want to throw up: Brussels sprouts, cooked cabbage, rare steak.

Favorite music: I am pretty all over the place with music. Songs in my play list hit on every genre of music there is. I absolutely love “Hypnotic” by Notorious BIG though. I love music that makes me want to move.
Music that make your ears bleed: Death Metal.

Favorite beverage: Dr Pepper. 

Something that gives you a pickle face: Big Red.

Favorite smell: black cherry, pipe tobacco, leather.

Something that makes you hold your nose: my dogs when they come in from playing in outside when it's hot. Phew!

Something you’re really good at: cooking.

Something you’re really bad at: folding laundry.

Something you wish you could do: sing.
Something you wish you’d never learned to do: can’t think of anything I would want to unlearn. At some point I think everything is useful in its own time.

Something you like to do: Sleep! 

Something you wish you’d never done: dropped out of college. I don’t as much regret it as kinda wonder what would have happened if I'd finished.

People you consider as heroes: those who stand up for what is right no matter what. Mothers, single fathers. 

People with a big L on their foreheads: People that think of nothing but how a situation impacts them and don’t care about anything else. 



Last best thing you ate: the pizza that gave me a headache. LOL 

Last thing you regret eating: the pizza I had recently—not realizing it had gluten in it—gave me a terrible gluten headache.

Things you’d walk a mile for: my family.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: flying cockroaches.

Things to say to an author: I got a book hangover from your book! 

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: You don’t make much doing that, do you?

Favorite places you’ve been: Hamilton Pool in Texas. 

Places you never want to go to again: A funeral for a loved one.

Things that make you happy: seeing my kids happy.

Things that drive you crazy: seeing them sad because someone was mean to them.

Find the first book in this series here.

EXCERPT FROM CARNAL KNOWLEDGE

You really don’t know how you feel about some things until they happen to you. You can guess. You can pretend you’d be strong, that you’d stand on the rooftops and shout your indignation as you shake your fist to the skies, but those are only guesses. Hopes. What we think we know about ourselves. They say no one ever really knows anyone. I think it’d be a safe bet to say that we don’t really know ourselves either. You think you do. The “Oh, I’d never do that! Look at how she’s acting. If I were in her shoes….” but you don’t. No one does.

I said the same things to myself when I walked out on my husband, Ricky, months ago. Those thoughts went through my head as I closed the door behind me for what I told myself was the last time. I wouldn’t let myself cry as I said goodbye to him, only feeling the first tears fall when I heard the click behind me, the locking of the door to what used to be our home together. When he didn’t chase me and beg me to stay.

I wept in that moment, wondering how much pain a person could take.

Over the days that followed, it faded into something more akin to numbness as I found an apartment and got a new checking account. As I arranged to find movers to get my things while he was at work, all while thanking God that we had no children.

Now I find myself in that place once more, though for an altogether different reason. Something has happened to me, something that leaves my body sore and my head feeling as if I have a hangover. These are the moments that tell you who you really are, leaving you exposed to your own darkness.

I found that out about myself. No one ever imagines themselves in this position. You’re not prepared. No amount of self-defense can prepare you for the shock that is the next morning, waking up in a bloody mess, knowing you’ve been sexually assaulted.

I can’t even say it out loud. I won’t. I refuse to do it. It makes it real, and I don’t want it to be real. I want it to be some horrible nightmare that I can wake up from.

But it’s not.

It’s the middle of the night. I’m sitting on the floor of my shower, the water finally not running pink anymore. My face feels puffy from crying as I carefully wash the wounds, the soap burning. I wince and then stand up before the water turns cold. Sitting here won’t accomplish anything.

I look down at the mark on my left breast, swollen and purple. The definite outline of teeth, broken skin, tender to touch. It’s not the only place I’m hurting, but it’s the only one I can easily see. The only one I can’t really hide from. It’s a slap in the face, a calling card from someone I can’t remember. A face that won’t ever haunt my dreams.

So, what do I do now? It’s about 4:00 a.m. Do I call someone? The police? My friend Lily? My husband? Maybe Alex? Surely she would believe me.

I blink away tears, dipping my head back into the hot spray to wash the blood out of my hair.

No, I won’t tell anyone. It’s too embarrassing. Too humiliating. This big foreboding thing happened to me. What they warned us all about. My drink was tampered with, and someone hurt me. I broke the rules, and I got this for it.

I should have listened, I suppose.

I feel sick knowing what someone did to me while I was asleep. Or was I? Maybe I did fight and just can’t remember. I’d fight, surely. I wouldn’t just lie there and take it, right? The thought gives me some minimal sliver of peace, like passing through the eye of the hurricane—you know it’s not real, not the end, but you relish it just the same.

By the time I get out of the shower, I realize I haven’t really slept. My alarm will go off at seven for work so I can catch the bus and be on time for the morning meeting. I could get three hours of sleep before that, maybe.

I shut off the water, suddenly a bit afraid. Knowing someone was here gives me the creeps. Makes me wish I’d gotten that gun Ricky tried so hard to get me to agree to, the one I refused. I wouldn’t give in, fearing some horrible accident. He kept his locked up, and I never bothered to learn to shoot. He begged to teach me, tried to get me to hold his Glock to “get the feel of it.” Nope. Now I regret it.

In the months I’ve lived here, I haven’t been afraid to be on my own until now. Someone got to me. I’m without defense in my own home.

***

Excerpt from Carnal Knowledge by Rachael Tamayo.  Copyright 2020 by Rachael Tamayo. Reproduced with permission from Tangled Tree Publishing. All rights reserved.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

 Rachael Tamayo is an international bestseller and award-winning author.  She lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and their two small children. 

Connect with Rachel:

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