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So I’ve been sharing a lot of excerpts from Hometown, so I thought it was time to share a few scenes from my other stories. This one is from The Truth of Rock and Roll. It gives us a look at Jenny and Johnny, Our Heroine and Our…Protagonist (he isn’t Our Hero yet), the ferocity of their love, and the power of rock and roll magic. Continue reading “Excerpt from The Truth of Rock and Roll: Fighting in the Locker Room”
The free giveaway is over, but Hometown is still very much available for download and even for free on Kindle Unlimited. If you’d like a look at what you’re missing, have a look at the excerpt below, which introduces our heroine Angelina.
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Angelina Santos-De La Cruz walked toward the shore, the lakebottom silt squishing delightfully between her toes with each step. She didn’t want to get out, really. It was a bright, hot day, the lake was the perfect degree of lukewarm to be both refreshing and relaxing, and she was the kind of bone-weary that only comes after a day spent picnicking and swimming with your friends. But now the shadows were growing long, and it was time to go home.
As she walked, she used both hands to slick her hair back out of her face, then pulled it over one shoulder and began to wring and smooth the water out of it.
Neither of her companions could help staring at her. Very few people could have, really; Angelina Santos-De La Cruz was a beautiful young woman. Her hair was jet black, her eyes the color of a tropical night, and her skin a rich mahogany after a summer of lifeguarding. Sleek, powerful muscles bunched in her arms and shoulders as she wrung out her hair and flexed in her legs as they carried her out of the water. She wore a simple blue one-piece, but some people don’t care about attracting attention, and others don’t need a string bikini to do so. Angelina was both.
“Put your eyes back in your head, Jay.”
Jason Olsen scowled at the bobbing head of his friend Kara Sauer, who was treading water and grinning a few feet to his left.
“You were staring, too,” he accused.
“Of course I was,” she answered, her grin broadening and turning slightly lecherous, “But at least I blink once in a while.”
“That’s just ‘cause you can’t actually see her from here.”
“Touche’.”
“Okay, guys,” Angelina called. Both of their heads swiveled in almost perfect unison. She had reached shore and started drying herself with her Bugs Bunny beach towel. “Everybody out of the pool. I told my parents I’d be home for dinner.”
“Ooh,” Jason said excitedly as he immediately started for shore. “Will there be plátanos?” For the first couple of steps, only Jason’s head was visible – cowlicky mop of sunshine-blond hair (currently plastered to his skull), robin’s-egg blue eyes, broad grin seemingly determined to split narrow face in two – but then his body started to rise out of the water. And then it just…kept…rising. He stood well over six feet tall, easily towering above his two friends, but seeing as how he was as slender as one of the reeds at the shoreline, the boy couldn’t loom if he wanted to. In clothes, he would have looked scrawny, but in his swimming trunks, the girls could see the truth of his lean muscle.
As he reached the shallows and started galloping toward the shore, Angelina contemplated that perhaps he shouldn’t have his shirt off. He was as pale as his Nordic heritage dictated, and she could already see the sunburn forming. She winced in sympathy, although she knew he didn’t hurt yet. He’s going to feel that in the morning.
“There’s going to be plátanos, rice and beans—“ She looked at Kara, who was approaching at a much calmer pace. “—I told them that you were coming, so Mom made sure to make a lot of plants.”
Kara grinned at her friend, blinking owlishly. Even at twenty feet, all she could see of Angelina without her glasses was an attractive blue and brown blur. Not for the first time, Kara felt a twinge of envy for her friend. Oh, she had a few admirers of her own. Or rather, her tits did. Her ass was pretty popular, too. Those who could shift their attention up from her body (soft and voluptuous – such a contrast to Angelina’s hard muscle, she couldn’t help but notice as she approached the shore and the attractive blue-and-brown blur resolved itself), even had some nice words about her face. Unfortunately, since it was round and boyish with a spray of freckles across her nose and a short, unruly patch of ginger hair above, the words were most often some variation on “cute”. Maybe that was why the people she wanted to notice never did.
But enough of that.
“Good,” she said as she reached shore. “I’m glad I won’t have to join you barbarians in your feast of death.”
Jason grinned and handed her a towel. “So which dead animal in particular are we eating tonight?”
“Cow. My mom’s making steak.”
Jay was pleased by this news. Evangelina Rodriguez Santos-De La Cruz’s cooking was extremely popular among her eldest daughter’s circle of friends, and Jay had a particular weakness for her steak.
“So is there an occasion?” Jason asked.
“End-of-the-summer celebration,” Angelina replied. “Double sessions start next Monday. Between those and Dad’s work schedule, we’re not going to be able to get the whole family together at one time for a while.”
Jason shuddered at the mention of “double sessions.” “Can I just say how much I don’t miss double sessions? Running around all day in those damn pads in the August heat wasn’t fun.”
“Is that why you quit?” Angelina asked.
“No. Well…it was one reason among the many. You know I was never really a member of the Cult of Football…”
“Heretic,” Kara teased, retrieving her glasses from the rock where she’d left them.
He grinned at her, then quickly sobered. “I didn’t ‘Believe in the team!’ like Coach Siwarski is always shouting, I’m not trying for a football scholarship, and I’m not like Big Dave, who just loves football that much.”
Kara snorted. “What Big Dave loves is the football groupies.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” Angelina said. “Now hush, let him finish.”
“Thank you,” Jason said. Then he went on: “Anyway, I was always just in it to have fun. And it was fun when I was in Pop Warner, or even JV, but when I got to Varsity it stopped being fun real fast. I mean, all football coaches are hardasses, but Coach Siwarski is just straight-up abusive. Remember that story of him shoving some kid’s head in the toilet for screwing up a play and almost costing us the game?”
Both girls nodded.
“Tip of the iceberg. All last year I was counting the days to the end of the season. I would’ve just quit, but I was afraid he would send enforcers around to break my knees. And I’m only kinda kidding. When he found out I hadn’t signed up, he actually called my house. And when I confirmed that no, I was not going to be playing this year, he said ‘You’re depriving the Team of a perfectly good receiver, boy. You’re going to regret sabotaging the Team.’ I was never more glad to be out of there.”
“Can’t blame you,” Kara agreed.
“Besides,” he finished. “Darren and Psycho Mike are two of the tri-captains this year.”
Both girls shuddered.
“Right,” Kara said as Angelina said. “That’s all you had to say.” Then she turned to Angelina, eager to change the subject. “So, querida, how’s field hockey looking? Gonna make it to regionals this year?”
Angelina nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I’m pretty optimistic. We just – “ That was when a sparkle caught the corner of her eye. “Hey, wait a second. What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Jason asked, looping his towel around his neck.
“I think I saw something,” Angelina muttered, pulling on her sneakers and starting across the field. Curious, her friends followed.
“What is it?” Jason asked as they approached.
“Looks like a car,” Angelina reported. Indeed it did. As they approached, the car in question became visible through the trees. It was an ancient, massive dinosaur of a vehicle, and whatever shade of blue it had once been, time had worn it into the powder blue of a bad seventies prom tuxedo. Its nose pointed toward the lake, and they were approaching its passenger side.
“That’s weird,” she said. “How did it get there? None of the brush looks like it had a car run over it.”
“Maybe it’s been there long enough for the brush to grow back,” Jason offered.
Angelina shook her head. “No, that can’t be it. It wasn’t here last time we came.”
“How do you know that?“ He asked.
“That section of woods was the little girls’ room last time,” Kara reminded him. Then she shrugged. “Hey, it’s a Twilight Zone moment. Every life’s got a few. Let’s just check it out.”
Angelina nodded in agreement and advanced. She silently threw a switch in her mind, and her senses awakened. She was a police chief’s daughter; if she was going to check something out, she was going to do it right.
She shivered and goosebumps rose on her skin as she entered the shadow of the forest – she was still wearing nothing but a wet swimsuit and sneakers, and it was cool away from the sun’s warmth.
A bramble scratched her as she pushed it out of her way, drawing a line of blood on her forearm.
A twig snapped under her feet, and it seemed thunderous. Something was wrong about that. She stopped, turning it over in her mind, trying to see all the angles.
“Why’d you stop, Angel?” Jason whispered.
His whisper sounded thunderous, too, and she was about to shush him, when she realized what was wrong. “It’s too quiet.”
The other two paused to listen.
“You’re right,” Kara agreed. “No birds, no small animals running around, no bugs…”
“Which should be eating us alive,” Jason added.
They all looked at each other. “Twilight Zone?” Jason offered after a moment.
“Twilight Zone,” Kara nodded.
“Right.” Angelina turned back toward the car, squared her shoulders, and continued forward. What she could see of the car wasn’t too impressive: in addition to the threadbare paint, it had a rust-eaten underbelly, its muffler was hanging almost to the ground, and the rear bumper was a plank of treated lumber. One thing was odd, though—it was leaning toward the driver’s side, away from them. Was it sitting in a rut?
Without quite knowing why, Angelina held up her hand and signaled for her friends not to follow. Picking her way carefully, trying not to step on anything, she slowly circled the car.
When the driver’s side came into view, she froze in place, and her eyes grew wide.
“Angel? What’s wrong, querida?” Kara asked.
“I want both of you to back up out of the woods,” Angelina said in a quiet, tight voice. “Try to follow your own tracks as exactly as you can. The second you’re clear of the trees, run for the car, and get my cell phone for me.”
With a grim nod, Kara obeyed. But Jason lingered for a moment. “What’s wrong, Angel? Sure you don’t need some backup?”
“I’m sure.”
Under any other circumstances, his reluctance to leave her in a suddenly and mysteriously iffy situation would have raised a smile. Not then. Later, Kara would joke about how the “Twilight Zone” had suddenly become “Tales From the Crypt.” But right then, there was absolutely nothing funny.
The car wasn’t sitting in a rut. The driver’s side tires had been torn wide open, clear to the rim. Deep gouges crisscrossed the car’s surface, and both windows were smashed out.
But that wasn’t the problem.
No, what had caused Angelina Santos-De La Cruz to send her friends scurrying from the woods was the fact that the driver’s side of that car was painted with thick, tacky, blood that was slowly going dry and brown.
And there were still no flies.
*
Hours later, night had fallen. Angelina, Kara, and Jason’s statements had been taken, and they’d been sent home. The license numbers had been run, and parents had been called. Phone calls to all known friends had found nothing, and now the Belford police were searching the woods for both the missing teens and evidence.
From out in the evening mist, something watched and found it all good.
*
Want more of Angelina’s story? Then head on over to Amazon and get yourself a copy of Hometown. And hey, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library as well.
Hometown is still available for free download at Amazon. If you haven’t picked one up yet and you want to see what you’re missing, have a look at this passage, which introduces our heroine Vicki Powers:
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Continue reading “Excerpts from Hometown: Introducing Vicki”
Shadows walk in the autumn mist.
It’s the Fall of 1994 in the small milltown of Belford, New York. The leaves are turning, the kids are going back to school, and the heat of Summer is giving way to a cool, misty season. It happens every Fall.
Only this Fall, people are disappearing into that mist. Some people are found torn apart, some people are found dead for no reason, and some people aren’t found at all. Other people see strange things in the mist: ghosts and campfire stories.
There’s something out there in that mist. Something old. Something that has slept for a long time, but has now woken up hungry. Maybe the people of Belford could resist it, but as the terrible Fall wears on, more and more of them start…changing. Acting bizarre and violent. In the end, only a small group of teenage defenders are left to make their stand.
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All that sound good to you? Then head on over to Amazon and download your Kindle copy of Hometown, free now through All Soul’s Day!
(That’s Thursday 11/1.)
We’ve met Vicki’s best friend, now it’s time to meet Angelina’s.
The two young people you see before you are Kara Sauer and Jason Olsen. They’re a bit busy at the moment. They attempted a ritual to drive out the dark spiritual forces attacking Belford in the fall of 1994, and maybe it was starting to work, because those dark spiritual forces counterattacked. Right now they’re fending off The Roadster – the surprisingly solid ghost of a local hoodlum who was killed in a suspicious car accident in the Fifties – and a local dog who’s usually a big friendly fluffo but is currently acting more like a satanically possessed wolverine.
Continue reading “Characters of Hometown: Kara Sauer and Jason Olsen”
Every time you go down into the New York subway, you take a chance that you won’t come out again. That’s just the way it is. Usually, the only thing to fear is your fellow passengers. But there are other things waiting down there in the dark below the City, and sometimes the only way to stay alive is to look the other way.
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Reviews Praising Looking The Other Way:
September 27, 2015
Just one more day to go in the Dreams of the Boardwalk giveaway! To give you a taste of what you might be missing, here’s an excerpt:
I knew the exact moment that they realized I was on to them, because their faces…split. Huge grins stretched much farther than a human mouth could open, almost literally ear to ear, and they were grinning mouthfuls of fangs.
I don’t think they expected me to react as quickly as I did. Greaser grabbed for me as I spun away, but gave a cheated shriek as his fingers just skated across the back of my shirt, and then I was off and running.
Usually in nightmares like this, it’s like the world goes into slow motion. No matter how hard I try to run, I don’t get anywhere. Or maybe the boardwalk would stretch into forever in front of me, so no matter how far I ran, there was no escape. Or no matter where I ran, the monsters would always be there in front of me. But none of that was happening. I was booking it, and it was a good thing, too, because Greaser’s shriek brought more shadowy figures pouring out of the darkness. They appeared out of the pools of shadow near broken streetlights, they climbed up through the gaps in the boardwalk, they came up from the darkness beneath and crawled and skittered over the railings, a horde of street thugs from all ages of New York City.
(And I do mean all. There was someone who looked like he’d stepped straight out of Gangs of New York running beside Scary Punk.)
I vaulted the railing and dropped down to the sand. I don’t know why I did that; it was crazy. In the waking world, the sand was level with the boardwalk, but here, it was a fifteen-foot drop, and if I’d broken my leg, I would have been helpless. Trapped prey.
But I didn’t. And I didn’t let myself think about it. I hit the ground, let myself fall, let myself roll, let the sand take the shock, rolled all the way back to my feet and I took off.
Or tried to. Coney Island beach sand is deep, and running in it is hard. I think I surprised them, going over the rail (but how do you surprise the monster in your nightmare?), but I wasn’t gaining enough ground. Worse, I was tiring out again. That first run had taken a lot out of me, and a second burst of adrenaline wasn’t going to carry me far. Not far enough.
I looked over my shoulder, and oh god, they were swarming. Swarming down off the boardwalk, leaping like insects, swarming up from underneath like cockroaches.
I floundered and struggled across the sand, my legs and my chest burning, trying to squeeze out that one last ounce of speed. Why had I even done this? Where was I going?
Then the West End jetty came into sight, and I understood. Sometimes in dreams you know you desperately have to get somewhere, you don’t know why, you just do. And that unconscious knowing was leading me right to my tide pool. I had no idea why, how it was supposed to save me from a horde of monsters in street gear, but –
Oh god, what if it wasn’t there? It was a tide pool! I might be making a desperate break for a stretch of damp sand! And with the heat and the endless run sucking the life out of me, where would I go from there? How much further could I push on before I just collapsed in the sand?
But no, the tide was high, washing syringes and garbage high up on the beach.
I buttonhooked around a fence and there it was, free of garbage and shining like the Moon.
Now what?
Stand in knee-deep water and hope that helps? It wouldn’t even be enough to save me from the heat! Why did I come here?
I turned around and looked back. They were coming – howling and shrieking and laughing that high, insane laugh, halfway across the beach now.
I had to wake up. I had to wake up!
I spun around, shut my eyes tight, and dug my fingernails into my arm, hard enough to draw blood.
Nothing. It wasn’t working. I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t wake up!
That was the breaking point. I was too tired to run any further, and there was no place to run anyway. This terrible dream just wouldn’t end, and I couldn’t even wake up. Exhausted and beaten, I dropped to my knees in the sand.
“Damn you, Dream Boy,” I whispered as the first of my tears dripped into the pool “Where are you? What good is it to have a dream boyfriend if he’s only there to dance and eat cotton candy and screw? Where are you when I need someone to fight for me? Fight like Justin never – “
“You need to give him a name.”
“Who said that?” I looked around wildly, but there was no one.
“Over here.”
I looked at the tide pool, and it was like looking through Alice’s Looking Glass. On the other side of the tide pool’s surface, it was a bright, sunny day. Standing there on the other side of the pool was a young man – maybe thirty – with a black goatee. He was wearing sunglasses, a top hat, and a black bathing suit, the old-fashioned kind with the shoulder straps. In his hands, he held a big Key to the City that read “Coney Island”.
“Help!” I screamed into the water. “Please, you’ve got to help me!”
“I’m trying,” he answered. “But you’ve got to listen. Your dream boy – you need to give him a name. You can’t call him without a name.”
I looked over my shoulder. They were so close, they were coming around the fence now, and this guy was talking about names.
“What?”
“Listen! Your dream boy can help you, but you have to call him, and in order to call him, he needs a name. You already know it – you dreamed him, he’s your perfect teenage boyfriend, all you have to do is let yourself realize it. What is his name?”
And that was when I realized he was right. I’d known Dream Boy’s real name all along. It was a name that none of the actual boys I’d known when I was a teenager had worn, but it had always seemed to me to be the name of restless teenage ride-on-the-edge funtimes, of hot summer nights, leather jackets and cheap wine.
“Jimmy,” I whispered. Ripples began spreading across the tide pool, and the image of the man on the other side disappeared. Somewhere, I knew, Jimmy’s hair had just turned a lighter shade of blond, and a spray of freckles had appeared across his nose and cheeks, as was appropriate for a Jimmy. And those things would stay; he was more real now, more solid and defined.
And he was coming. He was on his way. He just needed –
“JIMMY!” I screamed.
And then he was there.
Want to know the rest? Head on over to Amazon and pick up your free copy of Dreams of the Boardwalk. Promotion ends today!
Lost in the Dream of the City.
Sarah Brannigan’s life has fallen to pieces at the age of forty-five. Her fairy tale marriage has ended, her job history has been a downward spiral since 2008, and she’s paying way too much rent to live in a tiny room in an apartment that she shares with five roommates.
To escape it all, she walks the streets of New York City, seeking out the hidden wonders of the City. And like many before her, she falls in love with Coney Island. Then one day, she falls asleep on a boardwalk bench after a long walk in the hot sun, and she falls into a dream. A dream that seems to reach into Coney Island’s past. A dream of everything she wished for when she was young. A dream whose effects linger even after she’s woken up.
Soon the dream begins to take over as Sarah uses it again and again to seek escape from her failed life. She’s getting everything she ever wanted: youth, love, and adventure. But as she goes deeper into the dream, she gets ever closer to nightmare.
Sound good? Head on over to Amazon and download a copy! Absolutely free, today through Tuesday October 16!
And for the love of God, would somebody please review this thing?
Changeling is still available for free download through Thursday! If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:
“ Oh, human…” the banshee sighed. “What are you trying to do?”
“You say you sing death,” Bridget pressed. “Does it have to be anybody’s death in particular?”
The banshee raised its hands and shook its hooded head.
“Human…Bridget…no. Just stop. I’ve heard this so many times before. What you want is forbidden.”
“Ah, there now, that’s an interesting thing,” Bridget said triumphantly, pointing as she always did when she had someone good and pinned down. “You tell me it’s forbidden, but nobody bothers to forbid something that can’t be done. There’s no laws against counterfeiting by shitting gold coins, after all.”
“Bridget,” The banshee said, taking hold of the pointing hand and – not ungently – moving it away. “If I could do what you wish, not a child would die in this world as long as there was a parent left to say ‘take me instead’.”
Bridget just shook her head. “Oh, come now, what kind of fool do you take me for? Fool enough to think Old Man Death would find taking me sooner rather than later to be a deal worth making?”
“What deal are you making, then?”
Bridget grinned to herself. She had the spirit’s attention now. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been to these parts, you know. Do you remember?”
“I’ve been to all of Ireland,” The banshee answered “I remember it all, but I don’t know which part you want me to remember right now.”
“When last you were here, you sang for my husband.”
There was a long moment of silence. If the banshee had been human, Bridget would have guessed that it was stunned at being confronted by someone who’d been hurt by its work, at being forced to think of that person as someone who hurt instead of a simple singing engagement.
But it wasn’t human, now was it? Surely a creature who “sang death” couldn’t feel such things.
But sure, and didn’t that sound like a sigh that came out from under its hood before it spoke again. “Bridget, I’m sorry. I really am. But I’m afraid that doesn’t change anything.”
“I didna think it would. And there’s no need to be sorry.”
Pause.
“…what’s that again?”
“Jimmy Flanagan was a good man, God rest his soul, and I loved him.” Bridget said. “But his death was no harder than most I’ve seen – a heart attack is head and shoulders above what our Meaghan is facing right now – and my heart didn’t break when he died.”
“No?”
Bridget shook her head. “No. I loved him, but I never could love him the way other wives loved their husbands. When he took me to bed, it was doin’ me duty, not kickin’ up me heels like it is for most women at least once in a while.” She interrupted herself to shake a finger at her spectral companion. “And not because his idea of getting me ready was ‘brace yourself, Bridey’. Jimmy did the best he could, poor man.” She paused a moment then, and her eyes went very far away, and when she spoke it was much softer. “And I never knew why. Why I couldn’t love him like that, I mean…until I heard you sing, and it was like a mermaid instead of a banshee.”
The eerie blue lights within the cowl blinked, and the hooded head cocked. “What in the name of Oberon’s knickers do you mean by that?”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Ye bewitched me, that’s what I mean. I couldn’t tear meself away. If I’d known ye would be this easy to find, I would’ve come to you on the moment.”
“Well most people don’t want to find – “ The banshee began. Then she realized what she was saying. “Are ye daft, woman?”
“Most likely,” Bridget admitted. “I certainly thought the other girls mad when they acted like I’m acting. Thought my way with my Jimmy was more sensible. Now they’re thirty years past it and I’m acting like a girl with her tits just starting to bud making calf eyes at a boy at her first dance.”
“And I’m…the boy?” The banshee asked, still struggling to understand just what this mad human was saying to her.
“You are.”
Hurry on over and pick up a free copy before it’s too late! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library.
