Strange Times ─ The Ghost in the Girl

From the imagination of blink-182’s award-winning creator Tom DeLonge, the Strange Times crew first debuted in the graphic novel Strange Times: The Curse of Superstition Mountain. Now teamed-up with Geoff Herbach, the award-winning author of the Felton Reinstein Trilogy, DeLonge reveals the secret origin of how the five phantom hunters first banded together against the forces of darkness…

Charlie Wilkins has it all. Pitcher on the baseball team, point guard on the basketball team, good jock friends and girls who just love him. Then his U.S. Air Force dad goes M.I.A. during a secret mission and Charlie falls into darkness. He quits basketball, pushes away his old friends who all seem so stupid. He stops talking. Nobody knows what he’s going through, because the government has forbidden the family from disclosing Dad’s predicament. Charlie turns into a loner, until an Earth Science assignment forces him to join a new, messed-up team.

Wiz has a brain for science, a love for steampunk, and a total disgust for most human beings. Heavy-set, picked-on Riley has a home life Harry Potter wouldn’t trade for. Mouse and Mattheson are skateboard slackers with a keen interest in tacos and in building a model volcano that looks like a butt. With zero chemistry between them, Charlie can’t see how he’s going to pass this class. Will he be stuck, suffering, in eighth grade forever?

The earth shifts. It seems impossible. A ghost girl reaches out to Charlie through the terrified skater boys. She’s being stalked by a vengeful spirit that shares a past with Charlie’s family. It soon becomes clear that the spirit is coming for him. He has to save the ghost girl and save himself. His only hope? The nerd Wiz, the loser Riley, the skaters Mouse and Mattheson who want to hook-up with the girl. But, seriously, she’s a ghost.

Strange Times indeed…

Tom DeLonge:

Praised as "Alt-Rock's JK Rowling.." Tom DeLonge is an award-winning creator, platinum recording artist and entrepreneur from San Diego, CA.? He is best known as the lead-vocalist and guitarist for the musical acts blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves.? After selling 25 million records and building multiple successful lifestyle and technology companies over the course of 15 years, DeLonge uses his passion for art and storytelling to create multi-media franchises under his production company To The Stars that span music, books and film.

Geoff Herbach:

Geoff Herbach’s Young Adult novels, Stupid Fast, Nothing Special, I’m With Stupid, and Fat Boy vs. The Cheerleaders, have been listed in the year’s best by the American Library Association, The American Booksellers Association, and many state library associations. Geoff won The Cybils Award for best YA Fiction and the Minnesota Book Award for Young Readers. Prior to writing YA, he published a literary novel, The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, wrote comedy stage shows, including Electric Arc Radio for Minnesota Public Radio and Radio Happy Hour performed at New York City’s (Le) Poisson Rouge. His favorite job (other than working all night at a gas station that allowed him to eat all the nachos he wanted) was writing and performing with the Lit 6 Project, where he traveled the country with his friends telling dumbass stories in rock clubs. He and his wife, the writer Stephanie Wilbur Ash, have four teenagers between them. They live both in Minneapolis, Minnesota and in Mankato, where Geoff teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University. Down in Mankato, they stay in a log cabin that was originally built in 1867. He’s pretty sure the ghost of Laura Ingalls Wilder hangs out here and means him harm.