Publication date: Late June, 2015
Hope springs eternal for everyone except Bella Kynaston. She survived the rape, but making it through the trial is another deal all together. As lies come forward, more questions arise leaving Bella to suffer more punishment than she believed she deserved. Sometimes ending it all seems like the only answer. Will she find the peace she so desperately seeks if the pain permanently ended?
Jeremiah believed he’d done the right thing, even if the timing hadn’t been ideal. The only way to protect Bella was if he stayed out of her life. Or so he thought. When Bella starts dating David, Jeremiah thinks David could save her. As it turns out, things progressively get worse. Could Jeremiah be the solution? If so, can he get to her in time? Or will he suffer the worst punishment of his life and lose her forever?In the wake of destruction, endless possibilities emerge. Bella undermined her own self-worth until she met Jeremiah. He helped her find a confidence she had never known before. It becomes short lived when she is attacked by one of her father’s enemies. Will her relationship with Jeremiah be destroyed or can they recover and build anew?
EXCERPT
Taking up half the back wall was a huge mirror. Bella readjusted her hair so the scar was covered. God, could she watch as Bobby used the assortment of colored ink bottles on her body. Or stare at herself from that long chair? Her gaze flicked from the chair to the mirror and stopped on her reflection. She inched a step back.
“Do you have something in mind?”
Bobby’s question snapped her out of the downward spiral her mind started. She half nodded and handed him the design. A skull and bones with a tattered pirate flag. Deuteronomy was scrawled in Old English between the tips of the dagger-shaped bones as if it was the name of a ship. The 8 and 5 filled the eye sockets. “This. On my lower back.”
“Okay. Do you want a sugar skull? It’s a bit more feminine.”
“I don’t know what that is, but no. I want that exact design.”
“Okay. Let me get this scaled down.” Bobby disappeared into a back room.
Her eyes settled on the mirror once again. The girl who stared back at her had dead, hollowed hazel eyes, not the vibrant hazel they used to be; skin faded to caramel rather than its natural mocha color; flat black hair, no longer its full, rich midnight; nothing compared to the beautiful man who stood beside her holding a thin hand in his own. Her gaze drifted to David. Tall, well-toned, shiny blue-black hair and piercing blue eyes. What the hell could he see in her? Nothing, but damage. Bella removed her hand from David’s grip and stepped to a wall with picture frames. She needed to distract herself, otherwise she’d never go through with the tattoo. It was important she did. “Do you have one already?”
“Two, actually.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Why do you look surprised?” David cracked a smile.
“I guess I just didn’t peg you for someone who would mar his body.”
“I don’t see it that way. It’s a form of art. Besides if it is defiling, then why are you doing it?”
Oh, he really wouldn’t like the answer to that. It matched her darkened soul. Because she desperately needed to feel something besides the emotional pain that weighed her down. Not that she ever intended to disclose those truths to anyone. How could she answer him without actually answering him? “What? I don’t look like the type of person who would get a tattoo?”
“No, but looks can be deceiving.”
“That they can.” Bella muttered.
“You okay? You seem a little on edge since we got back here.”
Thankfully, Bobby picked that moment to walk back into the room. His arrival saved her from an honest response. He patted the chair for her to join him. “Ready?”
“Umm, yeah. So, uh, how do I... how do I sit in this thing?”
“For the low back, you’re going to straddle it.”
Of course. Every inch of her expected him to say those two awful words. But there was no way she could stare at her reflection for however long this would take. She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. A hand landed on her shoulder and Bella jumped.
“Just me. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
Bobby looked at Bella. “All your information is stored. If you’re not ready today, you can always come back.”
“No. I want to get it done, I just...” The law said she couldn’t get a tattoo because of her age. Sarresh had helped her with a fake ID, but Heather’s version looked real. For today, she was already eighteen. She had to get it done. There was no room to chicken out.
“Will some adjustments help?” David asked.
How did he know? After all he’d done to help her through this, she owed him. And she knew exactly what they had to do. “Yes.”
Bobby nodded. “Tell me what you need.”
“Can we turn the chair away from the mirror? And can you put a smaller mirror behind me, just where you’ll be working and give me a hand-held one. I have to be able to watch.”
Bobby stood and made quick work of her requests. “Will this do?”
“Yes, thank you.” Bella inhaled a deep breath and swept one leg over the armless chair. It was still awkward, but her nerves had settled more than she could’ve anticipated.
David smiled. “If you need a hand, I’m here.”
“Just talk to me. Yeah, that’ll be good.” She glanced to the hand-held mirror as Bobby tucked a sheet of paper into her pants and swiped a wet, cold wipe along her low-back. Watching made the minor touch easier to handle.
“I’m just wiping your back. I’ll transfer the design, get the colors together and then we’ll get started. Let me know if you need a break at all.”
“Do you think I’ll need one?”
“It depends on your pain tolerance. This is a fleshy area so it’s a good place for a tattoo.”
Pain tolerance? Any other time and she might’ve laughed. She’d taken pain killers that morning. Would she even feel the sting of the needle as it danced across her skin? Maybe she shouldn’t have taken the pills. No, that would’ve been dangerous and unpredictable. Besides, maybe she would still feel some delicious lick of pain. The whirring noise pulled her back into reality and she instantly turned her gaze to Bobby. With a simple nod, she adjusted the mirror.
David leaned back against the wall. “What would you like to talk about?”
“Tell me about the tattoos you have.”
Goodreads ** Amazon ** Barnes&Noble
About the author:
At the age of 16, Krys Fenner fell in love with Psychology and Creative Writing. At that time she wrote her first short story dealing with sexual abuse and forgiveness. Psychological issues in her family filled her with the desire to help others using her own experiences. So in 2004, she earned an Associate of Arts in Psychology. And while her sister is the one with dreams of becoming a Psychologist, Krys Fenner returned to Creative Writing. She is currently working on a Bachelor of Arts and plans to continue on to a Masters degree, where she can major in her first love (Creative Writing) and minor in her second (Psychology).
Francesco, a brilliant middle-aged oncologist signs in a social network while surfing the Internet. He bumps into the profile of the girl he was desperately in love with during High School ‘68, when a horrible homicide happened and the guilty was never to be found. 
Published: June 27th, 2015
Francesco, a brilliant middle-aged oncologist signs in a social network while surfing the Internet. He bumps into the profile of the girl he was desperately in love with during High School ‘68, when a horrible homicide happened and the guilty was never to be found. His destiny intertwines in an unpredictable way with that of the girl, now a mature woman. Desperate passions and deep loves of a generation belonging to the past. A thriller that leads to a stunning end.
"This was a wonderful collaboration with you and thank you for letting me help you achieve your goal of publishing the English edition of this unique story. Set in the context of the turbulent times we grew up in and then forward to present day, those of us who remember how it was then and the different paths we took to where are now can relate to the complexities of choices and decisions your characters faced in those difficult years." Allison Whitmore
I used a particular literary technique writing the book, that is speaking in the first person. So the reader looks through Francesco’s eyes and thinks with his mind. And another thing that surprised me is that I thought and described even intimate moments as if I were a man. I enjoyed it so much to enter in a man’s shoes that when the book was ended I really felt I had lost something. The publisher thought that there was a mistake on my name as an author, because only a man could have written so well about man!
"As I wrote No Steps on the Snow with my left hand, when an accident occurred to me and I was motionless for a couple of months, Italian literary critics use to say that this book was written with the left hand, the hand of the heart."
I was born in Rome, where I lived during my childhood. Then I moved to United States of America where I lived a significant period of my adolescence, attending St. Francis School in Manchester, New Hampshire. Then I came back to Italy, Rome, where I finished my classical studies. Even in the professional life I have lived experiences in different contexts, which have enriched my "baggage". Working in the public sector I have dealt, inter alia, with the International Relations and Cultural Exchanges with Foreign Countries. In the private life, I'm married with two children. I was always inclined towards writing and this passion has led me to take part in various literary competitions, winning many important national awards. I wrote the following books:
RACHEL’S CHILD (Italian Edition) My second thriller published in 2012 and presented successfully at the Lamezia Terme Book Fair.
GUEST POST
When did I become a writer?
The answer is that I’ve always been an author, without realizing it. But a woman’s life is full of things and I am a mother of two children, with a family and a work and I couldn’t dedicate time to my passion. Until an accident occurred to me and, motionless for two months, I could finally write. I knew what an inspiration is, hearing in my mind the first words of my book. I started to put it down, not knowing what the story would have been and, without an outline, I went on writing. That’s how No Steps on the Snow came out, intertwining memories of High School time, dreams of that generation and imagination. The main character of the story, Francesco, is a middle-aged oncologist that, surfing in the Internet and signing in a social network, stumbles in the profile of the girl, now a mature woman, he loved desperately during High School time, in 1968. Those were the years of the students’ rebellion, of Woodstock and the free love, the time of desperate passions. What comes out, page by page, is that Francesco feels a great remorse toward Milena. But that’s not all, in fact through Francesco’s memories the reader discovers that a terrible homicide had happened at that time. The guilty was never to be found and the murder had been registered as a political crime, one of the many that occurred in those years. Francesco’s actual high bourgeois life, comfortable and safe with four children and a wife, that he occasionally betrays, gets completely upset. The inner journey that starts in his mind, full of memories and nostalgia, leads him to get in touch with Milena. From then on, the suspense grows line after line to a stunning end.
I used a particular literary technique writing the book, that is speaking in the first person. So the reader looks through Francesco’s eyes and thinks with his mind. And another thing that surprised me is that I thought and described even intimate moments as if I were a man. I enjoyed it so much to enter in a man’s shoes that when the book was ended I really felt I had lost something. The publisher thought that there was a mistake on my name as an author, because only a man could have written so well about man! In the book, I describe some beautiful Italian places. First of all Rome, with its mystique and charm, as it was then and now, as well as Santa Severa with its ancient castle on the sea or Monte Argentario, a mountain in the sea, bound to the land by a narrow street. And I remind many songs of the ‘60s, like Don’t Let Me Down and Get Back by the Beatles, If Paradise Is Half As Nice, by the Amen Corner and Eleonor, by the Turtles, that became great successes also in Italian editions. A soundtrack that takes the reader through the whole story.
One of the best memories about this book, besides the great satisfaction of the national awards I won in its Italian edition, was a meeting I had with my readers. A middle-aged woman came near me and asked me if she could read to me a sentence of my book that had particularly touched her. And she pronounced intensely these few lines of No Steps on the Snow “…the doors left locked inside our soul can open again when they want to, even if we delude ourselves into thinking we have thrown away the key.” I felt moved and we looked at each other’s eyes wet of emotion.
About the author:
I was born in Rome, where I lived during my childhood. Then I moved to United States of America where I lived a significant period of my adolescence, attending St. Francis School in Manchester, New Hampshire. Then I came back to Italy, Rome, where I finished my classical studies. Even in the professional life I have lived experiences in different contexts, which have enriched my "baggage". Working in the public sector I have dealt, inter alia, with the International Relations and Cultural Exchanges with Foreign Countries. In the private life, I'm married with two children. I was always inclined towards writing and this passion has led me to take part in various literary competitions, winning many important national awards. I wrote the following books: NO STEPS ON THE SNOW (English Edition published in June 2015)The Italian edition was published in 2010 and the book has been a cultural event for the city of Rome in summer 2012. It won the National Literary Award Circe 2013. It has been presented in the most important Italian Book Fair Piùlibripiùliberi.
A SHADOW ON MERRIMACK RIVER My first English Edition published in 2013 available in USA and worldwide, has had four/five stars review from American literary blogs and readers. It's Italian Version “UN’OMBRA SUL FIUME MERRIMACK” is an Amazon Bestselling in the genders of historical fiction and thrillers and noir.
RACHEL’S CHILD (Italian Edition) My second thriller published in 2012 and presented successfully at the Lamezia Terme Book Fair.THE FOUNTAIN OF THE FROGS (Italian Edition) It was published in June 2015. The thriller is set in the ancient and magic centre of Rome. It won the National Literary Award Perseide 2014.
DEWDROPS SHORT NOVELS (Italian Edition) is a collection of my short novels, that investigate the intimate sphere of human feelings, and have won national literary awards.
My Italian editions will soon be translated in English. To a journalist who asked me what is writing for me, I answered: “Writing is my haven, my everything.”
National Literary Award Circe 2013 Winner
