Who is Matt Walton? Matthew Walton is one of the characters in A DEAD GUY AT THE SUMMERHOUSE. He isn’t a crush magnet, to say the least.

Here’s a crappy picture I drew of him back before I took any drawing lessons and didn’t know I can’t draw.

Not what you call your dreamboat.

So why am I crushing on him?

Blame it on Bryant Sullivan, the ACX narrator who’s recording the audiobook version. My characters are real to me in a way they haven’t been since I was writing the book. I feel like such a goon! And it isn’t because Bryant is so hawt has such a nice voice; it’s that he puts the feelings behind the words. He’s a voice actor, is what he is, and a damn fine one.

Meet Matt Walton

excerpt from A DEAD GUY AT THE SUMMERHOUSE
by Marian Allen

It was right about then that I saw Matthew Walton watching us from a door in the right-hand wall.
Matthew Walton was on the Board of Trustees for the Refuge, among other things. I’d seen him a couple of times; he was probably in his fifties, meaty but not fat, and his flat-brown eyes were a little on the beady side. He’d done a shoulder-grasping, “Are you a good boy?” job on me a couple of times when I was little. I still felt it when it rained.

What was he doing here?

Aunt Missy saw me staring and said, “This is Matthew Walton, whom everyone knows. He married my late niece Charlotte. And this,” she announced, “is Mitch Franklin. I’ve hired him. I’ll pay him out of my own money, of course; you’ve left me enough for that.”

Mr. Walton’s whole face pinched into a frown. He came toward us. “Hired him for what?”

“Protection from your insane rages, for one thing! I live in deadly fear of your foul temper!”

“I wish.” He looked at me, still frowning. “Don’t I know you?”

“I’m the good boy from the Refuge, sir,” was all I could think of to say, but it clicked.

“Oh, yes. Mitch Franklin. James Michener Franklin; born, 1950. And you’re still–” He stopped himself before he could say still at the Refuge or still not adopted or still an orphan, or whatever foot he’d been about to put in his mouth. As it was, he seemed to think he’d gotten a couple of toes past his molars, because his cheeks reddened and he turned away to Aunt Missy.

“Is that where you’ve b–” He stopped again and sniffed. “Smoke! You’ve been smoking in my car! In my new car!” He whirled around, eyes on the floor. I knew what he was looking for. “You took the dogs with you!” He pointed an accusing finger at them. “You didn’t leave because they disappeared again! You took them! In my new car!”

~*~

So, not an appealing person, but ….

A DEAD GUY AT THE SUMMERHOUSE or, as I call it for short, Dead Guy, is available in print from independent bookstores through IndieBound and from Amazon in print and for Kindle. The audiobook will be out Real Soon Now. You can also read the first chapter on my Dead Guy page.

Indiebound http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781942166085

Amazon http://bookshow.me/1942166087

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character falls in love (in any sense and to any extent) with someone based on their voice.

MA