Cover Reveal - Successful lawyer Jeremy Speer has it all—a loving husband, a beautiful home, and a cherished dream that’s about to become reality. He’s learned not to take happiness for granted, meeting the challenges of life and love head-on with unwavering commitment and fierce devotion.
Release Date: September 28th, 2015
Successful lawyer Jeremy Speer has it all—a loving husband, a beautiful home, and a cherished dream that’s about to become reality. He’s learned not to take happiness for granted, meeting the challenges of life and love head-on with unwavering commitment and fierce devotion. A series of tragic events leave Jeremy shattered, adrift on a sea of unimaginable pain. He’s able to piece his life back together, but instead of embracing it, he merely exists, using isolation and punishing physical exertion to keep the world at bay.
High school teacher Kai Daniels has a heart for at-risk kids—he was one himself, and a teenage brush with the law and some troubled years behind bars left him scarred inside and out. With courage, hard work, and the support of friends, he’s built a fulfilling life that leaves no time for a relationship.
An intense encounter with Kai at a gay club ignites a spark in Jeremy that he thought was extinguished forever, but he’s unwilling to destroy the fragile peace he’s managed to create, and he leaves Kai humiliated and disappointed. Things should have ended there, but a bizarre occurrence brings the two together in a way neither of them expected.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
The world wasn’t supposed to end on a day like today, a day when the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was shining, the temperature so perfect and mild that the air felt… soft, caressing. It wasn’t supposed to end while children were playing in their front yards, free for the day from the confinement of school, laughing with joy, enjoying the innocent pleasures of childhood.
The world wasn’t supposed to end at all, not like this. Not while Jeremy was standing on his own front porch, the smell of the pot roast Brent put in the crockpot that morning wafting from the open doorway Jeremy stood in front of, listening as a grim-faced police officer said words like “accident” and “hospital” and “serious.”
“But he just went to pick up our dry cleaning,” Jeremy said stupidly for the third time, and he wondered at the pity that crossed the officer’s face.
“Sir, you need to get to the hospital right now. Mr. Speer has you listed on his emergency info as next of kin, and the doctors will have some questions.” The officer’s tone was gentle, almost too gentle, like he was trying to keep Jeremy calm.
Jeremy just stood there, not wanting to face it. Brent was finally doing better, so much better, and now this? A painful injury could send him spiraling back down into the black hole he’d just climbed out of, and at the thought of it, Jeremy was suddenly exhausted, so emotionally tired.
“Sir, we need to go. Let me drive you to the hospital.” The officer’s insistent voice snapped him out of those disloyal thoughts, and Jeremy was bitterly ashamed of himself. For better or for worse, he told himself fiercely, remembering whispering those words time and again in Brent’s ear while wiping the tears from his cheeks with his thumbs, doing his best to comfort and soothe.
Jeremy nodded, reaching out to grab his wallet, keys and phone from the little basket just inside the door. The officer waited while he locked up, then led him to his patrol car. As Jeremy started to climb into the front passenger seat, he suddenly remembered something.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “I should turn off the crockpot. He worked so hard on dinner, I don’t want it to be ruined.”
“Sir, we really need to—” the officer began, but Jeremy turned and started hurrying back toward the house.
“It’ll just take a second,” he called over his shoulder, digging around in his pocket for his keys, dropping them a few times before fumbling the front door open with shaking hands and rushing across the kitchen to flip off the crockpot. What are you doing? Who cares about the fucking food?
On the way to the hospital he wondered how badly Brent was hurt. After all the dry cleaner was only about two miles from home, and most of the journey there was on side streets, neighborhood streets. Whiplash, some cuts and bruises, maybe a broken bone?
Later Jeremy would wonder at his cluelessness, should have known a few bumps and scrapes wouldn’t warrant an officer being sent to his house to get him. It was like his mind and heart were doing their desperate best to protect him, to insulate him, for just a few more precious minutes. Because the world wasn’t supposed to end today, not ever, not like this.
About the author:
Melanie Hansen has spent time in Texas and Florida prisons…for work. She’s been in a room with a 17-year-old mass murderer who was also one of the most soft-spoken and polite teenagers she’s ever met. After a 13-year career as a court reporter, she can tell many stories both hilarious and heartbreaking.She grew up with an Air Force dad, and ended up marrying a Navy man. After living and working all over the country, she hopes to bring these rich and varied life experiences to her stories about people finding love amidst real-life struggles.
Melanie left the stressful world of the courtroom behind and now enjoys a rewarding career transcribing for a deaf student. She currently lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons.
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There have always been warps—tears between realities—and they’ve always been a threat to humanity. Most people are blind to them. But Hallie’s eyes are opening. Now that she’s going to school at the Protectorate, she’s learning there’s more to life than fun and games.
There have always been warps—tears between realities—and they’ve always been a threat to humanity. Most people are blind to them. But Hallie’s eyes are opening. Now that she’s going to school at the Protectorate, she’s learning there’s more to life than fun and games.
The truth is, she’s just become part of Earth’s only shield against the monsters of the warps. Before, she didn’t think she was anything special. Now, yanked from her relatively normal life, she realizes that she doesn’t have a choice.
When the emergency alarm sounds, calling everyone in the school to arms, even the young and inexperienced are needed. As one of the warp weavers—capable of closing the warps and stopping the monsters—Hallie must now work to save lives. And she must do it in the most complicated situation she’s ever experienced. Because there are sea serpents in the Thames, and Hallie has to close the doors that are letting them in.
The problem is, they’re underwater, and they’re hungry.
Now everyone is relying on her, and Hallie must find a way to do her job—with a brand new partner—before it’s too late. Because if she fails she’ll die, along with everyone who’s depending on her.
EXCERPT
The team next to us glides to the edge of the wharf and drops into the water, the weight of the girls plunging the whole apparatus under.
I flinch in shock, and Ruble pats my hand. The gleaming container pops to the surface as I watch, just metres from our feet, and slides off over the water, leaning forward. Like a Segway—a floating, water-riding Segway made of magic. In it, Louise is wielding the fierce-looking gun she’d been assembling in the van, while her partner crouches in front of her, one hand pressed against the inside of the bubble. A viciously serrated tail punctures the water surface next to them, but they’re already spinning out of the way, as if they’d seen it coming. Louise fires, the sound muffled by distance, and gleaming purple blood flowers on the chalky tail, which splashes back into the water, raising a huge wave that almost capsizes the team.I realize I’m pressed extremely tightly against Ruble’s back, and that he’s been talking for the past few minutes, and groan under my breath. Can’t you listen to one thing, Hallie, ever?
“Are you ready?” His voice is thrumming with excitement. No, no, I didn’t hear a word you just said, and I have no idea what you need from me or what I’m doing.
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Tash McAdam’s first writing experience (a collaborative effort) came at the age of eight, and included passing floppy discs back and forth with a best friend at swimming lessons. Since then, Tash has spent time falling in streams, out of trees, learning to juggle, dreaming about zombies, dancing, painting, learning Karate, becoming a punk rock pianist, and of course, writing.Tash is a teacher in real life, but dreams of being a full-time writer, and living a life of never-ending travel. Though born in the hilly sheepland of Wales, Tash has lived in South Korea and Chile and now calls Vancouver, Canada home.
SLAM, a novella in The Psionics, is Tash’s first published work. Maelstrom, the full length novel will be out in June. Visit the website or facebook for news, gossip, and random tidbits about Tash’s adventures.
It’s 1941 and Alice “Al” Huffman comes from the potato fields of Long Island with her childhood friends to make it on the Broadway stage, only to find she has no talent. She meets Juliana, the glamorous, perpetually-on-the-brink-of stardom nightclub singer whose voice sounds to her like “warm milk slipping down the whole of my body.”
Release Date: September 14th, 2015
It’s 1941 and Alice “Al” Huffman comes from the potato fields of Long Island with her childhood friends to make it on the Broadway stage, only to find she has no talent. She meets Juliana, the glamorous, perpetually-on-the-brink-of stardom nightclub singer whose voice sounds to her like “warm milk slipping down the whole of my body.”
Juliana, a sexual risk-taker with a secret, easily reels in a mesmerized Al who has never felt a love like this before. Al is determined to hang onto Juliana no matter what. The only problem is that Juliana is more a woman of her time than Al could ever have expected.
Through Juliana, Al enters a secret world that includes men who wear frilly bathrobes and grass skirts and women who smoke cigars and wear pants with the zippers in the front. Cameo appearances are made by Liberace, Ethel Merman, Talulah Bankhead, Lauren Bacall, Angela Lansbury and other 1940s celebrities.
About the author:Vanda, an Edward Albee Fellow and Lambda National Literary Award Finalist, was profiled in the Dramatist Guild's Magazine article, "50 (playwrights) To Watch." She won first place in Pride Film and Stage's Women's Work Contest for her play, PATIENT HM (Now titled THE FORGETTING CURVE). THE FORGETTING CURVE was a winner in Theater Resources, Unlimited (TRU) Voices Reading Series. As a result this play was optioned and is expected to open next year in Boston. Her play, VILE AFFECTIONS, was published by Original Works, Publisher after receiving five standing room only performances at the International New York Fringe Festival. Her play, WHY’D YA MAKE ME WEAR THIS, JOE? received seven finalist awards and won first place in Celebration Theater’s Best LGBT Play Contest.
18+ Young women are vanishing from Miami’s club scene, most disappearing without a trace, others found suffocated in plastic bags, their battered corpses filled with a deadly cocktail of narcotics.
There are no suspects and few clues.
Published: July 6th, 2015
Young women are vanishing from Miami’s club scene, most disappearing without a trace, others found suffocated in plastic bags, their battered corpses filled with a deadly cocktail of narcotics.
There are no suspects and few clues.
When exotic dancer Rayne is taken, her sister Blaze calls the ladies of Shadowlands to find her.
With only five days before Rayne is found dead or never found at all, Smoak and Ash dive into Miami’s underworld of drugs, prostitution and slavery, using every skill they have to find her before the clock runs out.
Alone?
Afraid?
Lost?
In trouble and have nowhere to turn?
Call Shadowlands. We’re here to help.
EXCERPT
Murphy lived in a large condominium complex with views of both the ocean and the not too distant skyscrapers of the city proper. Each of the condominiums within the complex were two stories tall with four apartments per building, two on the top and two on the bottom. Murphy’s residence was on the first floor with a walk out to the harbor beyond the complex. Smoak parked her bike on the street in front of his building and walked toward his door, her hands in her jacket pockets. Detective Murphy answered the door after Smoak’s third persistent ring of the doorbell. He was messy-haired and stood bleary eyed in his boxers, the fly hanging open.
“What do you want?” he growled. “I work nights!”
Smoak lowered her glasses. “Hey, Murphy, long time no see. I’d hoped Mr. Higgins had buried you under a bigger rock, but here we are, just like old times. Do you have a minute for a friend?”
“You…” Murphy breathed.
“Me,” Smoak confirmed.
Murphy stared for a moment then pushed the door shut in Smoak’s face. She could hear him moving around inside and knew he was getting ready to run. She leaned back and kicked the door, popping the cheap lock with the heel of her boot. She followed through and glanced around the wide entryway. Murphy had knocked over two dining chairs in his haste. He’d also broken a glass coffee table in the next room and now stood amidst the glass, trying to put on a pair of pants and not cut his feet at the same time.
“What’s the problem, Murph?” Smoak asked. “I just want to ask you a couple questions. You act like I’m trying to sell you Amway.”
Murphy buckled his belt and backed away, reaching for the sliding door. “I’ve seen your military record, MacKenna. You aren’t here to ask any questions, they sent you to kill me!”
Smoak spread her hands to show they were empty. “What are you talking about? No one sent me. I’m looking for Rayne Nightingale, and I think you might have been one of the last people to see her. I just want to talk. Gaia, what has you so spooked?”
“You’re not here to kill me?” Murphy asked.
“Of course not! What kind of idiot kills a cop in his own place?” Smoak asked. “I’d wait till you were getting donuts…”
A shotgun blast ripped through the apartment door, breaking the hinges and knocking Smoak off her feet to fall in a heap among the dining chairs.
“Detective Murphy,” a man said in a Russian accent. “Gregor has decided it is time for you to retire.”
“The Russians!” Murphy yelled.
Smoak heard the sliding door open and the breaking of more glass, combined with the report of another shotgun blast. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her back and stood, drawing her knives as she rose. A large man, his broad chest and muscular arms covered in tattoos, stood in the doorway, a tactical shotgun clutched in his beefy hands.
“Go away, bub,” she said. “I need him alive.”
The man leveled his shotgun at her and sneered. “Too bad, girl. You brought knives to a gunfight. Move out of the way, and you won’t get hurt.”
“Not the first time,” Smoak replied. “Drop the shotgun and lay down on the floor with your hands on your head.”
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About the author:
When at home she spends her time writing urban fantasy novels including the best-selling Storm Chronicles series and the Midnight Roads, a series loosely based on her own travels around the country.
Her debut ‘Chronicles novel, Stormrise, struck gold less than twenty four hours from being unleashed on an unsuspecting public, hitting best seller status in three categories in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. Her additional novels have all followed suit and she has no plans to stop writing any time soon.
Her debut ‘Chronicles novel, Stormrise, struck gold less than twenty four hours from being unleashed on an unsuspecting public, hitting best seller status in three categories in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. Her additional novels have all followed suit and she has no plans to stop writing any time soon.
If she’s not setting quill to parchment Skye can be found hiking with her Siberian Husky, camping, motorcycling, ghost hunting, or gaming.
Skye is a proud Wicca, musician and gamer girl and will happily discuss any of those topics. And no, practicing Wicca doesn’t mean she dances naked around stone circles. As far as you know.
