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Survive.

BY S.C. DEUTSCH

Dystopian | Self-Published | November 2020

No longer watching the ground as she walked, Ana’s sole concentration was now on the trees directly in her path. The jungle was thinning, and she was sure it would meet the beach very soon. The creature trotted in front, leading the way while keeping its place slow to accommodate Ana’s dragging feet. When the trees were spaced far enough apart for a glimpse of the water to be seen, Ana stopped, and her mouth dropped. Rubbing both eyes, then squinting against the glare, she was unable to believe they had finally made it back. Despite the difficulty it caused her breathing, Ana forced herself into a trot, no longer needing the creature to lead the way.

Ana had only gone a few steps when something she saw on the water caused her to scream in frustration. A small boat appeared to be leaving the beach and heading out to sea. Momentarily forgetting everything, including her companion, Ana screamed again and took off. The creature, startled, came to a stop, stared for a moment, then took off after her. Ana was no longer watching where she was going. Vaguely aware of the trees blocking her path and swerving to avoid them, she ran full out in the direction of the beach. Tripping several times and passing through low-growing bushes, her legs were scratched and abraded, and the shortened pants were ripped even further. Continuing to scream at the top of her lungs, Ana hoped to catch the pilot’s attention and force the boat to return to shore. Her companion followed, galloping as it attempted to catch up but unable to reach the girl running headlong through the trees.

Ana never saw the patch of dirt that looked different than the surrounding area. Her entire concentration on reaching the beach before the raft was out of earshot, she ran right into it, managing a few steps before sinking to her hips. Struggling, she continued to try and push forward, but was now stuck fast. Screaming in frustration, Ana redoubled her efforts to move, with no success. Her companion was dancing along the edge of the patch, tail slashing furiously over its back. The screaming descended to a squeak, her voice giving out as her throat became raw. Giving one final push in an effort to escape proved fruitless. The ground had

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locked everything from the hips down in a muddy vise, resisting any attempt at movement. Ana searched the surrounding area for something to grab, hoping to be able to haul herself out. Seeing nothing, Ana raised both hands, covering her face as the tears started to fall. Believing that the rendezvous had been missed by mere minutes, she concluded that there was no escaping this hellhole, which led to an outpouring of grief that overwhelmed her. Tears poured through her fingers, dropping with fat plops into the mud below. Ana continued sobbing.

And then started screaming. Despite the damaged vocal cords, Ana kept at it, a raw primitive sound like nothing ever heard by the residents of the surrounding jungle. Something was in the mud and it was attacking her legs. Like a thousand razor sharp knives, the feeling was nothing short of being slashed to ribbons. Afraid to reach into the muck to try and stop whatever it was, Ana threw back her head and howled. Her furry friend gave one more panicked look at the desperate scene playing out in the mud, turned tail, and fled.

Ana never saw it leave. Something unusual was starting to occur and her grip on reality was slipping away. The sea began separating into prisms of light and dark blues, sharp crystals like quartz rising from the depths. The sky was running with assorted colors, swirling and blending before running into the sea and eventually merging with the crystals. Ana stopped screaming and gazed around in wonder. The pain was still there, but it felt separate, like a wall divided it from her physical being. The colors of the forest had become ultravivid, and the rich smell of rot and decay, not being at all unpleasant, filled her nostrils. The sound of a beating heart and blood rushing could be heard, and Ana was surprised to find that the whooshing came from inside her. Head cocked as soft music emerged from the surrounding trees, her body swayed with the rhythm of it as the sound could now be seen as well as heard. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Could you survive alone for seven days on an inhospitable island? Spoiled and pampered, Ana has never been held responsible for anything in her whole life. When she commits a crime against the government, she is sentenced to exile on a remote island. All she receives to aid her in her trial is a list of instructions she must follow, a knife, and a backpack, contents unknown. After being deposited on the beach, Ana must navigate this strange and often hostile world for the next seven days, returning to the same spot in exactly one week or risk losing her ride home. Along the way, Ana discovers things are not often as they appear, and help can be found in the most unexpected places. Her voyage leads her to discovering hard truths about both herself and the world she inhabits. But will these discoveries ultimately help her survive? Or will she lose any chance of returning to the world she knows and the life she lived before?

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Not My Ruckus.

BY CHAD MUSICK

Cinnabar Moth Publishing | February 2021

Esther kissed me once for free, when we were both just girls. We were sitting watching the Rangers play baseball—not the Olympics, because it was the summer of 1980 and Carter was choosing to hide in a boycott rather than fight the communists who were running it—and Gunnar went to the fridge to get a fresh bottle of beer.

“Daddy,” Esther called, “can we have some sandwiches?”

He grunted back, and we heard his breathing punctuated by the clatter of the silverware drawer and the rattle of the jam jar.

Esther swayed back and forth, making fun of how Gunnar had staggered as he walked to the kitchen.

“Usually I get his beers, or mom does, but you’re company.” She winked at me.

I wasn’t allowed at Esther’s house often, even though we should have been best friends all along. We were both 14, we lived across the street from each other, and we would go to high school together the next year, just like we’d always gone to school together. But her family wasn’t our kind of people.

On the day Esther kissed me, though, momma’d had a vision of her and Esther’s mom going shopping together.

When momma had a vision, you didn’t stand in the way, and so she had dropped me off and taken Esther’s mom in the big car to go shopping.

Gunnar came back with a paper plate of peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for us, and a pair of beers for himself. He eased back down into his lounger with the creak of springs and scritch of leather on denim, and opened a beer. He let it dangle from his fingers, and it wasn’t long before he was snoring.

Esther crept up on him and eased the bottle from him.

She held it out, for me to drink. This was one of the reasons they weren’t our kind of people, and I shook my head no at her.

“I’ll scream,” she whispered, and held it out again. “It’s gross. He’s already drank off it.”

Esther pushed her finger into the neck of the bottle and wiped it, just a little

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pop of sound when her finger came out, then wiped the outside of the top. She made me take the bottle.

I drank some, of course I did. Not much, just a swallow, so she wouldn’t scream, and then I gave it back to her.

She finished the bottle, and then laid it down beneath Gunnar’s fingertips. There hadn’t been much left anyway, I told myself.

We sat on the floor in the Texas summer heat and leaned our backs against the new couch. The plastic on the seats got sticky and uncomfortable when the sun shone on it, but the unglazed terra cotta floor was cool, and her hand was warm when she put it in mine.

She was swaying again, and when she swayed my way, her head rested on my shoulder and stayed there.

“Esther,” I told her. She looked up.

“We’re best friends now.” She nodded.

Good. It was good to have a friend. Even if next year she didn’t join me in softball and running and volleyball and all the other sports I’d been denied in junior high because there were only intramurals, I’d still have a friend. Frank didn’t let me play with him anymore, because he was older and it wasn’t “cool” to have your little sister around, especially if she was better at baseball than you. He could get the bat on the ball sometimes, smash it high in the air with the powerful arms that he’d once used to hoist me on his wide shoulders, but he lacked control. Just about every hit was a foul or a pop fly. Even when he hit it well, he was never ready to run.

I’ve always been ready to run.

Esther didn’t care about baseball, even if she’d watch it on the tv with me. At school, I’d used to watch her when she double-dutched with the other girls, who called me boy like it was a curse word and stopped their ropes when I came around.

“I have a secret,” she said, without lifting her head. “I want to tell it to you.” 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Folks know 14-year-old Clare isn’t normal, even for a tomboy. She runs too much, talks too little, carries a gun too often, and holds a grudge forever. Only her papa’s job at the bank keeps gossip quiet. It’s unwise to risk the cold anger of the man who knows everyone’s secrets. Clare feels prepared for everything from fire, to flood, to demon attack. When her neighbor Esther kisses her, though, Clare has no ready script. Maybe she could write one, given time she doesn’t have. At the moment of that first kiss, Esther’s mom is bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Clare can read the signs everyone else is determined to ignore. A murder was only the beginning. Esther needs protection, whether she wants it or not, and Clare won’t abandon her friend just because things are hard.

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Abundance: A Novel.

BY JAKOB GUANZON

Fiction | Graywolf Press | March 2021

$8,722.04

Everything, everyone had a price, and so this was Papa’s. If this life insurance check amounted to the dollar-cent sum of nearly six decades of breathing, a solid four of which had been spent working, Henry didn’t even want to know the heartless arithmetic that would one day crunch out his own price tag.

Even though it was Saturday, his body clock had still dragged him out of bed by 5:30 a.m., no matter how badly he wanted to sink back into sleep. He was turning into Papa. Before climbing out of their cozy nest, he sealed the covers over Michelle, ran a palm over the bulge of her tummy.Rather than flip on the TV for the day’s forecast, he watched the coffeepot fill drip by drip until it grumbled through its finale. Then, with the life insurance check clasped against a mug of black coffee, he toed the screen door open and took a seat on their single wide’s wood-latticed steps.

Dawn’s citrus matched the tart, sulphur smell of the gravel pits in the distance, the horizon line spliced by angling stalks of cranes and conveyor belts. There’d been little time to grieve. Papa likely would have appreciated the bypassing of mourning rituals. The single-page, handwritten will, drawn up shortly after Mom had passed, simply named Henry sole executor, who could do with Papa’s assets and ashes as he saw fit.

What he picked up from the med school’s crematorium wasn’t an urn. Just a container. Plain, cylindrical,

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white, slightly bigger than a Folgers can and much heavier than it looked. When he gave it a shake to assess its contents, his papa, he heard a little thump from within.

Chunks of bone, he was told. Its label, printed in a mechanical, matterof-fact font, spelled out Papa’s name and three dates: birth, death, cremation. But before he could dig up the phone numbers of family members he’d only met once as a three-year-old visiting Manila, other phone calls started coming in.

A swarm of indecipherable legalese and not-so-subtle insinuations. The banks and collection agencies were demanding Henry take over Papa’s unfinished payments and settle his debts, threatening repossession, probate court showdowns, and garnisheeing his wages.

They were relentless, seething, foaming. Their persistence would have made even the most shameless, derisive, and downright slimy of the skinnies blush. After a twenty-minute conversation with an estate lawyer (billed the full hourly rate of $150), all the logistics and ciphers got distilled down to more comprehensible terms:As executor, Henry was legally obliged to set his neck to the chopping block. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A wrenching debut about the causes and effects of poverty, as seen by a father and son living in a pickup

Evicted from their trailer on New Year’s Eve, Henry and his son, Junior, have been reduced to living out of a pickup truck. Six months later, things are even more desperate. Henry, barely a year out of prison for pushing opioids, is down to his last pocketful of dollars, and little remains between him and the street. But hope is on the horizon: Today is Junior’s birthday, and Henry has a job interview tomorrow.

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She Wore a Yellow Dress.

BY JOHN R. CAMMIDGE

Historical Fiction | Gatekeeper Press | Feb 2021

It was not until the following morning that I realised how stupid I was. The effects of the alcohol had worn off, and I worried that I had likely put an end to my relationship with Jean-Louise, if she ever found out. It was not the dancing and talking that was the issue, it was the kissing. She would regard that as cheating and I had not lived up to my promise to stay away from Essex girls. I could gamble that she would never find out, but many people had seen my behaviour and there was always the risk that someone might tell her. I could not wait for that to happen; I had to do something before she heard about it from someone else.

It seemed that the best way was to admit to my indiscretion as soon as possible. I would have to conduct a very difficult conversation with her, and while Chris arranged to have the party host pass on a message to Vanessa that I would not call her, I prepared for my next meeting with Jean-Louise.

Our arrangement for the following weekend was to meet in central London, and go shopping along the Kings Road in Chelsea and then on to Carnaby Street. Jean-Louise had never visited these places, but she had read about their many boutiques containing fabulous clothes and outrageous-looking people. During the outing, I paid for an orange and grey miniskirt for her to wear at college, and a pale cream leather pinafore dress for her to wear when we went out together during the cold winter evenings.

I planned to make my confession during dinner at a newly opened Indian restaurant just north of Oxford Street. We found a quiet corner table as Jean-Louise excitedly re-examined her purchases from earlier in the day. Once the poppadoms and beer had been served, I looked her in the eyes, and began.

“I need to tell you something about last Saturday.” I spoke quietly, so that we would not be overheard. “Chris asked me to go to a party with him last weekend. I didn’t want to go but he said I should because it was arranged for this year’s intake of graduate trainees.”. I could hear myself beginning to blame Chris, and that was not my intention, so I went on. “Anyway, I decided to go with him, and during

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the party his girlfriend introduced me to one of her female acquaintances. I wasn’t thinking at the time, but we talked and we danced, and I maybe danced with her longer than I should have. She was pretty but nothing took place because I asked Chris to take me home. I’m sorry that I broke my promise to you and spent time with another woman. What I did was wrong, and it will never happen again.”

She looked shocked and, judging by her reaction, she was more hurt than angry. I waited for her response, and in a few seconds it came. “That really wasn’t a nice thing to do. I told you in Hull that something like this might happen. How would you like it if I said that I’d gone out with a friend and met another man in Manchester? You’d be jealous and disappointed, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s how I feel, but at least you’re telling me, and you sound penitent. I’ve so much else to worry about at the moment that I don’t want us to fall out right now, but let this be a warning to you, and never let it happen again.”

I felt a wave of relief hearing that our relationship was still intact, and the incident had made me realise how fond I was of Jean-Louise. I started to think that maybe the time had come to do something more with our relationship, and not wait until she finished her teacher training.

As I travelled by Underground back to Upminster, I pondered our future. I was still awaiting

placement in a permanent job, and she had not even begun to search for a teaching post in Manchester, so maybe now was the time to become engaged. I thought that it might encourage her to think about teaching in Essex and lessen her distress if I was not placed in Langley. Proposing our engagement did not require setting a wedding date, but her answer would indicate whether she cared for me or not. Also, at the back of my mind I admit to having thoughts that, if Jean-Louise turned me down (something that I was not hoping for), at least I would have opportunities to meet other girls like Vanessa.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A spark is lit on Bonfire Night in Northern England in 1965, but for John and Jean-Louise the fireworks continue to explode for decades to come. An awkward Yorkshire farm boy with few prospects and a sophisticated town girl from Manchester, John and Jean-Louise blossom, grow - both together and apart - and find ways to compromise in this coming-of-age story that goes beyond the wedding where the curtain often drops.

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One Stupid Thing.

BY STEWART LEWIS

Young Adult | Turner Publishing | March 2021

The beacon from the looming lighthouse at the end of Baxter Road broke through the fog in slow bright arcs, illuminating the two of them in brief flashes. During one, Jamie and Sophia locked eyes, and the ladder creaked. Trevor reappeared, presenting a carton of eggs and placing them on the railing.“What are you doing, Trev, making us omelets?” Jamie asked.

“I’ll have mine poached,” Sophia said, taking her phone back out.

“No, we’re going to play a little game.” He handed them each an egg. “Moving cars. Windshields are twenty points. Roofs are ten. First one to fifty wins.” “Wins what?” Sophia wanted to know, still scrolling.Trevor took out an Amazon gift card. Jamie looked away toward the hidden ocean.

“Fine,” Jamie said. “But you guys already have credit cards.” Sophia just shrugged. Trevor spun around and whooped. “How do we fall for his crap so easily?” Jamie whispered to Sophia. “Dunno. Always been that way.” The first car that went by was a vintage Land Rover. All three of them launched an egg toward the street, but the SUV was long gone before the eggs smashed onto the pavement, each yolk a yellow blob glowing in the dark. Trevor howled like a sick dog. “At least we’re doing something! You feel it? That’s blood running through your veins.” As he distributed the second round of eggs, he took on the role of a commentator, as if it was a major sporting event. “Showing promise from Greenwich, Connecticut, is Sophia Long Arms, and right on her tail is Shorty J, who is not ‘yolking’ around . . .”

They heard another vehicle coming. It was a pickup truck. Trevor and Sophia hurled their eggs, but Jamie just dropped his onto the roof. “WTF, Jamestown. You got a limp wrist?” Trevor spat his nickname for Jamie with contempt, a bad taste in his mouth. “I dropped it by accident,” Jamie lied.

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“Fine, ten points for me.” Trevor downed the rest of his second beer and let out a sharp burp. “Gross,” Sophia said. Jamie gave her a look of agreement, as if he’d never do such a thing. The street below was quiet. Vapors rose off the pavement. Jamie looked across the shuttered, vaulted rooftops of the homes around them, some whose spires stuck out through the fog. “This could be an English village,” he said to no one in particular. “Maybe that’s why they call it New England,” Sophia said. “Due to the resemblance.” Trevor passed out the eggs again, and Sophia said, “One more and I’m out.” “C’mon, Long Arms!” “Yeah, me too. This is dumb,” Jamie added. Trevor looked at both of them, slowly shaking his head. But then his eyes widened at the sound of another car coming. An old Mustang. The three of them got into position, like it was an actual sport. The sound of the car got louder as it approached, and Trevor yelled, “Now!” They all released the eggs at the same time, which sailed perfectly, like a trio of arced missiles programmed to attack a target. There was something beautiful about that moment, like time slowing down, until another sound came that made Sophia scream—a piercing screech of tires. The car jerked to the right, swerving into a tree with a deafening crunch on impact. Jamie jumped back, repeating the word “no” softly, under his breath, over and over. Trevor lurched forward, holding the railing. Sophia hugged herself, her jaw slack. Then, a bone-chilling silence. There was no more laughter from downstairs—just the tick and hiss of the Mustang’s engine dying, the windshield crumpled inward, as if punched by a giant. The body of the car hugged the tree, and smoke from the engine ascended through the leaves. The three of them stood there, frozen, waiting. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

ONE STUPID THING

It was just one stupid thing that happened...

When a group of high school students spend a summer night drinking warm beer on the beach and playing pranks on passing cars they get a lot more than they bargained for when a seemingly innocent game takes a sinister turn. From award-winning author Stewart Lewis, comes an island mystery told from the perspective of four teens who get involved in a tragic accident that may be a murder.

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Watch Her Vanish.

BY ELLERY A. KANE

Thrillers & Suspense | Bookouture | Oct 2020

Olivia ran in the direction of the screaming. Though it had stopped now, the absence of it chilled her. Down the steps of Grateful Heart, up the stone path that wound around the back and into the grove of ancient redwoods. Here, the path turned to dirt and led to the Earl River that flowed into the bay. “Doctor Rockwell!” Olivia heard one of the Murdock twins calling her name before she saw her, bone-white and trembling, near the large drainpipe at the river’s edge. A dog whined and circled her, its leash trailing behind, forgotten. Olivia knew then, it was Maryann and her poodle, Luna. Just behind Maryann, plain as day, Olivia saw the feet. The soles, booted and unmoving. The legs, still as driftwood. They protruded from the pipe and rested on the mossy rocks below. Whatever else remained lay inside the tunnel, shrouded in the endless dark. “It’s her,” Maryann said, her voice one-note. Hollow as a dead piano key. Olivia hurried down the embankment to the river, careful not to slip, and past Maryann toward the pipe’s entrance. In the summer, the river beneath the bridge slowed to a trickle here, and kids smoked cigarettes and weed, and immortalized their names in spray paint under the shelter of the drainpipe. Other things happened too. Bad things. Like the rape of the Simmons girl a few summers back. But now, the water hit Olivia, ice-cold, at mid-calf. She sloshed across the river and toward that pair of feet, extending her arms to keep her balance on the shifting rocks. “It’s her,” Maryann said again. “It’s her.” Olivia heard voices behind her. A panicked jumble of them. One, in particular, rose above the others, announcing himself as an officer of the law, telling her to get back. To wait. She ignored them all. All her life she’d run toward trouble. How else could she explain her chosen profession? Em called it her savior complex. But in truth, Olivia had only ever wanted to save one person. But her dad didn’t want saving. So, she had to settle for saving somebody else. A whole lot of somebodies. Bonnie, though, was beyond saving. Olivia had known it from the moment she’d heard Luna whimpering, seen her wandering free, her fur slick with river water. Luna, the kind of dog who had outfits for every holiday and rode around town in a baby carriage and had her hair groomed more often than Olivia. Luna, who Maryann loved so much she had a lifesized stuffed replica in her office at the library. Maybe, in some dark crevice of Olivia’s heart, she’d known all along. Mothers don’t

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go missing voluntarily. Not mothers like Bonnie. When Olivia reached the drainpipe and could finally see inside, it hit her like pounding waves breaking against the sheer cliffs that bordered Fog Harbor. First, the hands, partially submerged and bloated as oven mitts. Olivia braced herself against the tunnel’s rim. Then, the blouse strewn open; the jeans undone. Olivia’s legs anchored her to the spot like the roots of the centuries-old trees that watched, unaffected by it all. The eyes open but opaque and unseeing; the lips slightly parted. Olivia intended to scream, but the sound got stuck, and she only managed a shallow gasp. Finally, the ligature around the neck. The head, oddly angled. Olivia bent over, dry-heaving, and felt her knees buckle beneath her, just as a hand cleaved to her elbow to hold her upright. She knew that hand. It belonged to the smartass detective. “What the hell are you thinking?” he asked. “You can’t just go charging into a crime scene.” Olivia couldn’t tell him she blamed herself for this; it sounded ridiculous. But she’d knowingly gone into Grateful Heart, and now Maryann and Bonnie had to suffer the consequences of her curse. She also couldn’t tell him the other thing: that it wasn’t her first dead body. Not even Em knew that. Only her father knew, and he’d made her swear to take it to the grave. She couldn’t explain any of that, so she simply nodded, her head bobbing like a child’s balloon as he guided her to the rocks nearby. With his help, she lowered herself onto a dry spot next to Maryann. She focused on her breathing and Luna’s lolling pink tongue until she felt halfway human again. At the top of the embankment, James pushed his way through the crowd, but he didn’t make it far. His face twisted. Animal sounds escaped his mouth. Someone grabbed him, and he collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Olivia knew it was a moment she’d live again and again in the worst of her nightmares. “It’s her, right?” Maryann sounded better now. Less like the undead and more like the Maryann who worked as the prison librarian, her nose stuck in a book and everybody else’s business. There was no one else but Olivia to answer. “Yes.” 

ABOUT THE BOOK

WATCH HER VANISH

Shutting the car door against the rain, Bonnie instantly feels safe with her husband’s favorite baseball cap on the seat beside her and the two empty booster seats in the backseat littered with loose Cheerios. She smiles to herself, feeling lucky to be going back to her boys. But she never makes it home…

An addictive and unputdownable crime thriller that will keep you up all night. Perfect for fans of Melinda Leigh, Kendra Elliot and Mary Burton.