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.
Book Page to find buy links: Mist and Shadows
Ghosts:
I want to tear her voice from my thoughts, to rip her questions out of the wind and set them in stone. Drown her in the ocean again and again. But she’d win. She’d come back to me as a kelpie, leading me into the tangle, to my death in the moors. Or a siren, sunning on the jagged rocks against which the sea foam crests, and I’d wade willingly into the deep to taste her lips one last time.
Mortuary Man:
Every night his questions get more personal, more prying. He scrutinizes me with his words, pries me open, comes dangerously close to puncturing my heart. I cry myself to sleep, both longing to help him, and fearing that someday, he’ll show up on my doorstep. I cry for the boy I knew and loved.
Siobhan and the Siren:
The siren leans back on her elbows, sunning herself. The glorious golden morning dries her hair and draws the chill from her body. The Wastes were cold last night from the storm and she is tired from battling through the waves. The siren is fair, with pale skin and hair the color of the sky. Her eyes reflect waterfalls, and her scent, the flowers from the grotto of Aqualia.
Minor Deaths:
White sink, red blood—a trail of pink as the water splashes over my hands. I scrub with a washcloth but the blood clings to my skin, a thin layer of red sealing my pores. My hands stand out from my body. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with them. Right now, I don’t even know if they’re mine. I don’t remember where the blood came from.
Willowborn:
The shadow cat climbed the steps, a silhouette against the approaching dawn, and with its front claws, scratched a deep mark on her door. Then, turning tail, it leapt off the porch and vanished. The town returned to bed and Bethany Ann dreamed of the wind and what it might be whispering to her.
Memory’s Child:
Along the creek, beneath the water, caves had formed in the embankment. Some were useable by the small fish that flickered through the current. But here and there, a few of the caves were larger. Turtles nestled in them, and water frogs. But the biggest had been claimed long ago by a water sprite.