An Excerpt from Facing The Music

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Tomorrow is the last day of the free giveaway for Facing The Music.  If you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:

New Year’s Day – Posted January 3, 2016

I woke up beside my boyfriend with a pounding headache, a throbbing bladder, and aches in places I didn’t know I could ache.

With a groan, I rolled out of bed so I could go to the bathroom and empty out all of the booze (Lewis Grizzard once wrote that a professional drinker drinks every night of the year except New Year’s Eve, because that’s Amateur Night. Steve and I might not be professional drinkers, but no one can say that we didn’t make the most of amateur night). On the way, I found myself having trouble walking. Go ahead and snicker, it means exactly what you think it means.

After I finished taking care of business (more ouch…we must have been out of our minds last night), I returned to bed. Steve was still asleep – so deep he was still curled up facing the wall, instead of sprawled to fill the empty space like he usually did when I got up first. I wanted nothing more than to join him, but it was already past noon, and we both hated missing too much of the day, even for hangovers.

“Steve? Steve, baby—” I nudged him. Not even a groan. How much did we drink last night?

That brought me up short. How much did we drink last night? I couldn’t remember, and that was weird. I’d been pretty seriously drunk in my day (for an amateur), but I’d never had a blackout. All I could remember after maybe ten o’clock – and we weren’t really drinking that hard at that point – was something about…bells. Tolling bells, counting down to Midnight.

I shuddered, then wondered why. Counting down to Midnight was a good thing on New Year’s Eve, wasn’t it?

Enough with the weird thoughts. I must still be drunk. I nudged Steve again, then harder and more until finally I’m shaking him. “Steve? Steve, wake up, honey, it’s after noon. Steve? Steve? Steve?” By then, I was shaking him hard and he was kind of flopping around and I already knew why he wouldn’t wake up but I didn’t stop shaking because I must be wrong it’s just not possible, he’s only twenty-eight.

“Baby, wake up, baby please!” I finally pulled him far enough toward me that he flopped over on his back, and that’s when I started to scream.

His eyes were wide open and blank, staring at the ceiling. Worse, the pillow was all bloody where his head had been. My first thought was Alcohol poisoning, but there was no puke anywhere – not even on his breath – and besides, alcohol poisoning doesn’t make your ears bleed, does it?

I didn’t know CPR, not really – we’d had a few days on it in Health Class in High School, but that was nine years ago – so I didn’t even try. I just snatched up my cell and dialed 911.

Nothing. No answer. It just rang and rang and rang.

How is that possible? They don’t have holidays off at 911.

After two or three tries, I gave up on that and tried calling a hospital directly. But I didn’t know any hospital numbers, so I dialed 411, then 0.

Nothing.

That was when I ran out into the hallway and started pounding on doors, screaming for help. I started with Mrs. Rosario, who’s a nurse at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.

Nothing. No one.

Finally, I just ran out into the street, barefoot and still in my PJs, screaming for help from someone, anyone, my boyfriend was dead.

Which was when I saw the New Year’s revelers, lining the sidewalks of Manhattan, still tricked out in their party clothes and hats and streamers and sparkles, lying still on the ground with dried trickles of blood coming from their ears.

And that’s where I lose track of myself for a little while. All I can remember after that point is running through the slushy streets of New York, trying to find anyone alive. That, and something about the sound of bells.

 

The Rest of The Story – Posted January 3, 2016

The next few hours are just…lost. I still have no idea what I did between the moment I started running and the time I woke up in a stranger’s apartment.

Well, that’s not completely true. There are a few fragments of memory, like bits of pottery dug up at an archaeological dig:

Running through streets, calling out for somebody, anybody, until my bare feet felt like dead, frozen fish slapping the pavement.

Calling friends and family, boss and co-workers, the guy I met in a bar and dated once back before I met Steve, my bank’s emergency number for if you get your card stolen – anything to make contact. Nothing.

Then I remember this…feeling. A pressure, like a vast weight hanging over my head or a storm front moving in, charging the air with something thick and dark and heavy and smothering, something that burned on the skin instead of tingled. Something that rang like bells instead of thundered.

That drove me inside when January in New York couldn’t. Some instinct told me that being outside under that pressure, that sound, the curtain of darkness advancing down Fifth Avenue, was the worst thing in the world, far worse than entering a dwelling of the dead. I was a mouse in a hawk’s shadow, and I took whatever shelter I could.

Anybody else know what I’m talking about? What was that thing? Could it have had something to do with

For the rest, head on over to Amazon and download yourself a copy.  And while you’re there, check out the rest of the library.  Keep watching for further promotions, and new stories coming soon.

Facing The Music Is Available For Free Download Now Through Thursday!

Facing music with title

The story of Lovecraftian doom and courage at the end of the world is available for free download at Amazon now through Thursday!

While you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

 

Killing Time Available for Free Download Now Through Thursday!

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The Lovecraftian (or Twilight Zone-ish, if you ask my father) story of a man watching as time fragments around him is available for free download at Amazon now through Thursday!

While you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

Spotlighted Link: Sartorially Smart Heroines

I meant to do this sooner, but it seems that I’ve managed to wait until exactly the right time.

Why is it the exact right time?  Because Sartorially Smart Heroines has come off hiatus!

(Okay, maybe I’m a little  late, since the hiatus actually ended almost two weeks ago, but still.)

(Though one could argue that the hiatus itself was on hiatus more often than not.)

As the name suggests, Sartorially Smart Heroines  is a blog that analyzes the outfits, costumes and armor of female characters from pop culture…not all of whom are actually heroines; the very first post I read on SSH was an analysis of Mama Gkika from the webcomic Girl Genius, who, like all the Jaegermonsters from that comic, is a war-loving super soldier who happens to be on the protagonists’ side.

It may seem an oddly specific niche – not that that’s anything unusual on the Internet – but it’s actually a very effective way to: 1) provide a feminist analysis of female bodies and how they’re presented in art and fiction; and 2) promote awesome female characters whose creators actually take them seriously.

And while you’re there, you can catch glimpses of the blogger’s upcoming fantasy novel First Empress, which I, personally, am eager to see completed.

Sartorially Smart Heroines puts up a new post every Sunday, and also has a presence on Tumblr.

Please Help Dacey

Hey, all.  Earlier this week, the daughter of one of my high school friends was on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend to visit colleges when they suffered a terrible car wreck.  The boyfriend was killed, and the daughter is in…bad condition.  Please go to Dacey’s Gofundme and do what you can to help with the family’s medical costs.  If you can’t give, then please spread the word.

The poor kid’s life was just starting to really get going, and it’s going to be so much harder from this point on.  Please do what you can to help.

 

An Excerpt From Looking The Other Way

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Hey, all!  Just a reminder that Looking the Other Way is available for free download on Amazon through Thursday 7/28.  For a taste of just why you might want to download it, take a look at this excerpt:

By the time I got to the other people – to what I so naively believed to be “safety” – they were edging, too. Not away from me, though, nor from the disturbed homeless guy I was fleeing. They were backing away from the edge of the platform, staring at the tracks, wide-eyed and wide-awake at last.

Human nature being what it is, I promptly turned to look where they were looking. When I did, I immediately – finally – knew what the hissing sound had been. I would have known sooner if I hadn’t been paying all of my attention to the angry hobo.

The tracks were full of vermin.

It was a living river, flowing from the Queensward side – from the deep and unbroken dark beneath the East River. Probably shin-deep or worse, if I’d actually dared to get down there: rats squirming and climbing and tumbling over each other as an endless current of cockroaches carried them along.

They were running from something. Was the tunnel flooding? Should I be headed for the surface, like right-frigging-now?

But no, that wasn’t it. If I looked further up the tracks, toward the tunnel, I could see what they were running from. Right behind the cockroaches was a tide of…well, they looked like cockroaches, too, except that they were black – I mean absolute, gleaming, lightless, deep-space black, like chips of the all-consuming Void moving among the plain brown carapaces of New York’s everyday garbage-eaters – and they were big. The ones the size of my finger were running before the ones the size of my palm, who were running before the ones the size of my whole hand, who were…

Then, just as I was about to make a run for the surface – possibly while screaming like a little girl – a dark shape appeared in the tunnel. It looked human and it lurched along like it was drunk or unsteady on its feet, like the homeless guy up on the platform.

I started forward; plague of giant mutant cockroaches or no, a person down on those tracks is in several different kinds of deep trouble. The train would be along any minute, but it might not even be that long before a stumbling drunk stumbled into the third rail.

I didn’t get two steps before Janitor’s Coveralls grabbed my shoulder. “Dejalo, m’ijo,” he said. “Leave it. This is their territory.”

“Their what?” I said, starting forward again. Then I stopped short as the figure emerged from the tunnel.

It wasn’t human. If it ever had been, it wasn’t anymore. More of the black cockroaches – these ones with weird silver-colored ridges and knobs forming patterns on their shells – were swarming all over it. Over it and through it. Black bugs dripped from the sleeves of its trench coat and the cuffs of its raggedy corduroys; they spread like sweat stains across its ancient white undershirt; they concealed its feet as it shuffled forward through the swarm. It opened its mouth and a horrible crackling noise emerged, followed by more of the finger-sized black beetles. Worst of all, when it raised its head so I could see under the battered brim of its hat, I saw two of them lodged in its eye sockets, like tiny pilots operating the vehicle that had once been a man.

For the rest, head on over to Amazon and download yourself a free copy.  While you’re over there, check out the rest of the library.  And keep your eye out for future giveaways!

The One Rose Trilogy, Matriarchy and Following Your Own Rules

Compass Rose

(This review was first published on April 1, 2014, on my old blog.   The articles it refers to will appear here eventually, but this one had to go up now in response to this tumblr post.)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that used the Left Behind novels as a worst-case example for remaining consistent to the rules you establish in your story (as they are the worst-case example for so many things). In the same post, I included what I consider to be a good example of remaining consistent to the rules you establish: the One Rose trilogy by Gail Dayton.

Having had a bit of time to think about it, it seems that the positive example and advice for internal consistency deserves a bit more attention, as does the One Rose Trilogy itself.
Continue readingThe One Rose Trilogy, Matriarchy and Following Your Own Rules”

Looking The Other Way Available for Free Download now through Thursday!

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Like the title says, Looking the Other Way, one of my more popular short stories, is available for free download from Amazon, now through Thursday 7/28.  More news in the coming week!

Interesting Links – 07/20/2016

Hey, all.

In addition to my own work and that of my friends, I’ve found a number of marvelous things around the Internet that I’d like to share with you all.

To start with, here are two beautiful and moving photo collections:

We’re nothing but human

and

Breathtaking Photos of the Human Species

Next we have something very different, but still beautiful in its own way, and definitely very interesting:

Photographs of Everyday Life in 1950s New York

Then we have some baby pictures of something I love very much in:

Traveling down Coney Island to the Beach…in 1868

And finally, we have:

7 Terrifying and Disturbing Horror Films You Can Actually Watch Tonight And Never Sleep Again

Frankly, I think the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but I suppose every horror-related thing almost has to claim to be the most nerve-shattering thing ever.

Of the movies, I like The Birch for its interesting monster, and Mother is what all kids like to imagine our mothers would do if actually confronted with the monster in the closet.  The Little Mermaid reminds us once again that trying to keep supernatural creatures as slaves is a bad mistake.

But it’s the last one, Derailed, that really hits me where I live.  As a city dweller, I fear the darkness beyond the end of the train platform, and find the outlands that are the train yards at the edge of the city to be uncanny.  In this movie, they really are…

Hope you enjoyed all of those.  Don’t forget, Prize Bucks and In the Make-Out Room are still available for free download at Amazon, and will be through Thursday.  And keep watching, there’s always more to come.