I’ve got a massive backlist out there, but I’m focusing mostly on my indie releases now, which a lot of my readers haven’t heard of yet. So we’re going to be putting up excerpts of the indie work I’ve done—both full length and short collections, each Wednesday, to encourage you to give my new work a try.
Today’s excerpt comes from Mist and Shadows: Short Tales From Dark Haunts.
Buy Links:
Kindle: https://goo.gl/3MrVrf
Nook: https://goo.gl/dWL6nh
iBooks: https://goo.gl/6Q4SHu
Kobo: https://goo.gl/5U3Te2
Indigo: https://goo.gl/TX1x8r
Ghosts:
Oh, these tests of strength and endurance. She compliantly allows me to strap her down, to bind her body. But her heart? Inviolate. Her feelings, she reserves for herself. She hides her love behind glass walls and cellophane wrap, her devotion aimed at the one man who can hurt her with his words. He can hurt her with a single sentence more than any pain I might inflict.
Siobhan & the Siren:
Hunger knifed her stomach. She bit into one of the fruits. The spine-chilled globes of plum and kriel were sweet. The plants grew thickly under the surface out here, sailors were able to survive on them when their water supplies ran low. Siobhan ate deeply, the fruit restored her will, and when she finished she stood to assess the borders of her new land. Twelve strides wide, fifty strides long. No caves on the sides, no shelter, no growing things. Who had left the basket of fruit was a mystery, but for now, one she could ignore. It was enough that she lived. Aqualia was not ready to call her yet. As the sun climbed higher into the sky, Siobhan sheltered herself from its rays with one of the blankets she’d managed to save and slept.
Minor Deaths:
Slowly, slowly, swim back to my mind. Hold on to the thought. I am Jumping. I am a Jumper and I am a human being. I float in the comfort of the womb. Adjustment takes time, but even that is a paradox, since time passes for my body but not my mind. When I return to the laboratory, twenty-four hours will have passed. But out here? I’ll have been out here a thousand years, all wrapped into a single second.
Memory’s Child:
Slowly rising from the stream, Julie paused before she came to the pond. The unnamed pool was fed by several sources—small creeks feeding from out of the mountains. The constant influx kept the pond from becoming stagnant, and while the algae still bloomed here, and mosquitoes thrived, it wasn’t a dank pool. More than one hiker—some human from the nearby city—had ventured here to swim and play in the water.
