Wednesday 31 August 2016

Chapter One, A Slow Twisting Place

Note: I will (hopefully) be posting a chapter of this novel every weekday until it's done or I drop dead.  Please come back tomorrow for Chapter Two!


A Slow Twisting Place

Chapter One,-- Chicago, 1979

On the coldest day in February, just two months shy of my fifth birthday, my chance for a normal life disappeared forever. 

Ignorant to this fact, I was playing by myself in the backyard of Edward’s mansion, shivering underneath the oppressive bulk of my snowmobile suit, when Edward’s ex-wife Julia appeared before me.  She was holding my little Snoopy bag, and she looked like she’d been crying.  “Come on, Rachel,” she said.  “You’re staying with me and Michael tonight.” 

I followed her out to her car, where Michael was waiting in the backseat, fiddling with his backpack.  During the drive to the house Julia was strangely quiet.  Normally she couldn’t shut up even when she had laryngitis, but neither her 10 year old son nor I dared to ask what had accomplished the impossible. This meant the monumental silence remained unbroken until Julia shepherded us into her kitchen.  The huge bowls of ice cream she proceeded to shove underneath our noses made it official: whatever she had to say, it was bad

This didn’t stop me from diving into the ice cream with gusto, however.  I almost forgot Julia was in the room until she noisily blew her nose.  Her voice muffled by the tissue, she said, “I have something to tell the both of you.  It’s about Edward.”  At the mere mention of his name, her eyes filled with tears.  “I’m sorry,” she sniffled, “but he passed away this morning.” 

I looked at Michael.  Michael looked at me.      

“That means we aren’t going to see him anymore,” Julia helpfully supplied, but I had figured that part out on my own.  The Saturday we’d discovered Michael’s goldfish floating on top of its aquarium, I’d participated in the ceremonial toilet flushing that had served as my introduction to the concept of death.  I understood that by dying Edward, too, had been flushed down the proverbial toilet. 

But this realization did not cause me to burst out into the torrent of tears Julia’s manner seemed to indicate was appropriate.  Not even Michael, the sole child in the room who could claim biological connection to Edward, seemed especially broken up by the alleged tragedy.  Only after Julia detailed for us how Edward’s secretary had found Edward collapsed in his office, the victim of an apparent heart attack, did Michael say something—and his “Wow!” betrayed not grief so much as awe.  I couldn’t blame him, really.  It was kind of impressive.

Julia, on the other hand, must have been expecting a different reaction.  As her eyes darted between the two children at the table, searching for signs of what simply was not there, Michael and I resumed shoveling the ice cream into our mouths.  “Isn’t this horrible?” Julia prompted.  “Aren’t you sad?”

Michael shrugged.  I shrugged, too.

For a second there Julia looked like she feared for our moral development.  But abruptly her face cleared, and she nodded in a knowing sort of way.  “Of course,” she said, “you’re in shock.  But, Rachel, you don’t need to worry about a thing.  You’ll just be living with Michael and me full-time now.”  

I looked at Michael.  Michael looked at me. 

“No kidding,” he answered, and held out his bowl for another scoop of vanilla fudge swirl.

Well, Michael may have taken Julia’s statement for granted, but from an adult’s perspective there was nothing obvious about it.  Legally I meant nothing to Julia.  As far as I knew I meant nothing to any of them, and that included Edward.  My time with him had been the result of an obscure chain of events that only Edward understood in full, and which, to my vast regret, he had omitted to share with me or his ex-wife before his untimely demise. 

In our one conversation on the subject a few months earlier, Julia had admitted to me that she only knew my mother had once been Edward’s maid, and that Edward had taken me in as a favor to this maid, with the intention of keeping me forever.  Where my mother had gone to, or why she would pass her toddler off onto her employer, were mysteries no one could solve.  There was but one fact that Julia could impart with absolute certainty: Edward was not my father.  In telling me this Julia acted like I might be disappointed, but I was thrilled to hear it.  My unknown paternity allowed me to fantasize that my real father might be a dashing European count, pining away for his lost daughter in a spectacular seaside castle—not the aloof old man who I’d been living with for three years now. 
 
If anyone should have understood my non-attachment to Edward, it was Julia.  While Edward’s motives in opening his home to me might have been above reproach, the execution of those motives left much to be desired.  Perpetually stunned to find me sitting at his dinner table, he celebrated his new role not by reducing his ridiculous hours at the fancy law firm he chaired, but by increasing them.  This almost wholesale abdication of parental-like duties propelled his appalled ex-wife Julia—also an attorney, but a substantially younger one with a different set of values—to pick up the slack. 

And there was a lot of slack.  It was Julia who looked after me whenever Edward traveled for business, Julia who took me to the doctor, Julia who purchased my clothes, and Julia who brought me with her and Michael on vacation.  By my third birthday I was spending at least half of my time with her, whether or not Edward was in town.  This allowed Edward the space he needed to get drunk on top-shelf cognac while he cried over a leather-bound photograph album that I never did manage to see up close.

So because of how things were with Edward at the time of his exit, I don’t think I considered my change in life circumstances as unwelcome, per se, or even much of a change.  Now that he was out of the picture I could stay in the little girl room Julia had long ago established for me in her house, complete with frilly day bed and pink-striped wallpaper, and never have to leave again.  “I’m going to adopt you,” Julia told me, “and then you’ll officially be one of the family, instead of just emotionally one of the family.”  It all sounded good to me.  Edward might have been dead, but my life would go on—with possibly even more benefits than before.

***

Jed Meisler, the executor of Edward’s estate, arranged for the wake to take place on Saturday evening.   Not having any idea what a funeral was like I lobbied hard to go, on the grounds that if Michael got to, so should I.  But on Saturday afternoon Julia told me that I would be staying at home with the nanny. 

Julia and Michael got home from the wake just in time for the opening segment of “The Love Boat.”  The nanny tore herself away from the T.V. and went out to greet them but I, in the middle of a crucial wardrobe change for my Barbie, remained where I was; hearing Julia snap at Michael to go upstairs might have had something to do with that.  But then a few doors slammed, the dog barked, and Julia was in the family room with me, reeking of cigarette smoke.   When I smiled at her she began pacing back and forth in front of the stereo.  “I have something to tell you,” she said.   

In the dramatic hush that followed I pondered the heady issue of what color gown Barbie should wear for her night out on the town with Michael’s G.I. Joe.  I was leaning toward a red sequined cocktail dress, when Julia blurted out, “You’re not going to be living here after all.” 

This was not what I had expected to hear.  Then again, I hadn’t really been expecting to hear anything.  So I just replied, “I’m not?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I answered, and started to strip Barbie of her purple skirt.  Surely all Julia meant was that I would still be living in Edward’s house—just without Edward there, which, let’s face it, was not much different than how it had been before he died.  While not wildly pleased by that change of plan, I could handle the disappointment. 

“I don’t think you quite understand what I mean,” Julia said, with one of those worried frowns that made her forehead look squidgy.  “Edward designated his son Bryan to be your guardian.  That means you’ll be living with him now.” 

At this my Barbie hit the floor with a definitive thwack, but Julia was now too busy glaring at the wall and puffing on her cigarette to notice.  “Not that Edward had any right—you weren’t even officially adopted yet,” she muttered.  “You still belong to the state.  Besides, I was the one who took care of you all of these years, goddamn son of a bitch,” she spat out, and I wasn’t sure whom she meant, Edward or Bryan.  “You remember Bryan, don’t you?” she asked me in a slightly more neutral tone.  “He was home last December.”

Oh, yes.  I remembered him, all right. 

The by-product of Edward’s marriage to his much-mourned first wife, Bryan had distinguished himself by scaring the hell out of me.  Within five minutes of his arrival, Bryan Jennings—tall, dark, and sporting a ferocious scowl—made it known he hated his father and everything Edward stood for.  He overcame this repulsion just long enough for the impromptu holiday visit that could have been clocked with a stopwatch.  The cuddly stuffed panda bear that he presented to me on Christmas morning hadn’t fooled me for a minute into believing he might have a kinder view toward me than he did his dear old dad.  Just how the oldest son barked at me to get away from the electrical cord connecting the Christmas lights to the outlet was enough to make me grateful he’d moved out of Edward’s house two years earlier.  And now Julia was telling me that I had to live with him?  There would never be enough ice cream in the whole wide world to make that okay.
 
“He’ll be here in the morning,” Julia brutally concluded.  “He’s skipping the burial, the ungrateful little toad.  That means tonight I have to pack up what you need to take with you to Boston.” 

“…Boston?”

“It’s in Massachusetts,” she said, as if that should clear things up for me.  Julia paused to take a deep drag off her cigarette; her eyes, still fixated on some point over my shoulder, had gone moist again.  “I’m sorry, Rachel.  This isn’t how I wanted it to be.”

That made two of us.

***

Coping with Edward’s death was nothing compared to watching Julia pack a suitcase for me.  “Why can’t Rachel stay here?” Michael asked her from the floor of the closet, where he and I were camped out.  “Bryan’s not even that old.  He’s only in college.  It’s not fair that he gets her!”

“I know it’s not fair.  But there isn’t anything we can do about it.  We just have to accept it.”

“He’s not her father, is he?” 

Julia let out a sharp laugh.  “Heavens, no!”

“Then why does he get her?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“But he’s mean!”

“He’s not mean.  He’s just—Bryan.  I’m sure he’ll be very nice to Rachel.”  Julia pasted a brave but thoroughly transparent smile on her face.  “And Rachel will still get to visit.  It will be fun.”

Well, Julia sounded so unconvinced of how fun my impending doom with Bryan Jennings would be that it was impossible to believe her.  Neither did I agree that we should passively accept the fate that had befallen us.  It was me, after all, and not her who would be going off with the oldest son bright and early tomorrow morning. 

Tortured by that knowledge, I tossed and turned for much of the night.  Once I finally did drift off, it was only to dream of a giant, dark ogre—his eyes glittering black and cold as he dragged me off into a cave from which there was no escape.
           
This nightmare had begun to fade into another one involving giants when a familiar voice broke into my consciousness. 

RachelYou have to get up!

My eyes fluttered open.  Julia was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in her green velvet bathrobe.  A cigarette dangled out of the corner of her mouth.  “I know you’re tired,” she told me, “but it’s time to get up.”
   
I blinked at the traitorous sun streaming in through the blinds.   With a start I bolted into an upright position.

It was morning.

I stared at Julia in mute horror as she cast a nervous glance behind her to the empty doorway.  When she returned her haunted eyes to me, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up on end.  Instinctively I pulled my blanket over my mouth, in anticipation of the Poltergeist moment I knew must follow.  “Rachel,” Julia hissed.  “He’s here.” 

There was no question this time as to which “he” she referred to.
 
BryanThe oldest son. 

Downstairs.
 
Waiting.

Waiting for me.  

“Don’t make me go,” I begged Julia, but she, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, just hugged me hard.  “It’s okay,” she croaked out.  “You’re going to be just fine.”

Yeah, right.  That reassurance might have been more credible were I not about to be carted off to a far-away land called Massachusetts by the right hand of the devil.  Even old Edward—a pretty scary guy himself, judging from how the surly cook always scurried from the kitchen whenever Edward stomped in—had shown real relief back in December when Bryan had blown back out of town almost as quickly as he had blown in.  No one wanted this Bryan person around.  No one wanted me to live with him.  Yet Julia had plainly abandoned all attempts to save me.  I had no choice.
 
Wriggling out from Julia’s embrace, I hit the floor and started running.

“Rachel!” Julia cried.  “Come back!”

I ignored her.  She would never catch me—she couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs without wheezing. 

Normally I was a shy, submissive child, remarkable only for my willingness to do whatever adults asked of me.  But desperate times called for desperate measures.  If I had to spend the next three weeks hiding out in the prickly bushes in Julia’s backyard, relying for subsistence on berries, then that was just what I would do.  At my last doctor’s appointment I’d heard the doctor tell Julia that I ranked in the bottom growth percentile range for my age group.  If anyone could survive on the occasional piece of stale bread, it was me.   

And if hanging out in the bushes failed, maybe I would get saved by a pack of wolves, or be abducted by a crowd of friendly aliens.  It happened in Disney movies all of the time.  Why couldn’t it happen to me?  There was at least a chance.   There had to be.  Because I would not go anywhere with him I would not go anywhere with him I would not go anywhere with him…my frantic determination rocketing me forward, I rounded the corner of the hallway.

And ran straight into a pair of legs.

The momentum of the crash was so powerful that it sent me bouncing back toward a decorative table embellished with one of Julia’s many antique flower vases.  My arms span like an out of control windmill as I seemed destined to smash both it and myself to smithereens—until a pair of hands reached out and caught me just before I made contact with the table.  Stunned but otherwise unharmed, I curled my fingers around jacket sleeves I did not recognize.

“Hey, little girl,” a male voice said from above.  “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

I looked up.  When my rescuer smiled at me I blinked hard.

The man lowered himself to the floor; deep blue eyes studied me closely. “Did I hurt you?”
  
I shook my head—although if he had hurt me, I wouldn’t have cared.  Because here before me knelt the most beautiful man I had ever seen. 

Obviously I was still dreaming.  There was no way this man could exist in the real world.  The chiseled features, the dark hair, the olive skin…my god.   I reached out and touched his face, certain that the mirage still holding onto me would vanish into a poof of air.

And yet he didn’t.  He remained very much in front of me, as I traced a line over his sculpted cheekbone, down to his freshly-shaven chin.  Without thinking I let out the breath I’d been holding.  He was not a hallucination.  He was real.  “Hi,” I whispered.  “Hi,” he said back, and smiled again.

I had met this man before.  I even knew his name, and why he had come here.  I just could not believe it.  Otherwise it would be impossible to reconcile how what I’d been told, let alone what I remembered, could be so completely wrong.   This man seemed much too safe, and smelled far too good, to be the person we had all been bemoaning for the past twelve hours, not to mention the holiday visitor of fleeting duration.  Now, in the protective fold of this man’s arms, I felt something so different from fear that it nearly throttled me.  He was not the same person.  He couldn’t be.  And yet, he looked exactly like him!  Unable to make sense of this conundrum, I asked him, “Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” he answered, and with that the last vestiges of my fear vanished forever.   The immediate love I felt for Bryan Jennings was as inevitable as it was baffling.    

“Let’s get you dressed, missy,” Bryan said.  He then kissed me on the cheek and turned us toward the bedroom, where Julia was standing in the doorway.  Something about the expression on her face let me know she would hate the man in her hallway forever.  “I’m sorry,” she began, but Bryan cut her off cold.  “I told you last night what time I was coming.  Rachel should have been ready an hour ago.”  His words left little icicles in their wake.

My life with Bryan Jennings had begun.




**If you enjoyed this, check out my new novel The Abduction Myth, now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav

Disconnect

Photo by C. Hornby

This is a fool’s story warped into submission
Say what you want to say?
No one wants to listen
No one will help us sleep at night and
no one can save that kitten
No one wants to know if it is spring
or winter
Or whether the stars were bitten

Tuesday 30 August 2016

The Abduction Myth available as a free download today on Amazon!

My new psychological thriller, The Abduction Myth, is available today only as a free download on Amazon!  

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav

You can read the first three chapters here:

http://thedevilsdiaries.blogspot.co.uk/p/chapter-two-abduction-myth.html

Please check it out!



Faithful


time is a monster                     asleep under the carpet
so easy to trip up on                to cover in never
with purples and yellows                    not just for pictures

but her yesterday sees            
her tomorrow remembers

Monday 29 August 2016

The Witch & the Doll


Her glassy eyes drove me mad.  In a fit of rage, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife.  She said something in that dull, mechanical voice of hers as I slapped her down on the counter, but I refused to listen.  Instead I raised the knife high in the air and crashed the knife down across her neck, like a human guillotine. 

Her round plastic head jerked back, separated from its body.  It balanced on the edge of the counter for a long second; she cast me one last glassy-eyed look before her head then hit the floor.  It seemed to roll forever, until it finally came to rest underneath the sink.

I laid the knife down on the counter.  With some uncertainty, I pushed my fist into her dolly stomach, but nothing happened.  She was silent at last.

I had killed it.  I had killed the doll.

Sunday 28 August 2016

Elegy


This is a study in shattering
the shattering of the dust clouds
raging above the earth

the shattering of the net underneath
our breaking connection line
of only the endless clicking as we
swallow the sky

because this is a study in reality
what little of it is there is left to
hold against our one line of
defense

when wishing will not make it so
when the brutality of existing
requires me to let you
go

and I am thundering through
this what must be
shattering the glass with the howling
wind of disappointment wrapped
around me

because this is a study in endings
of our ending duly recorded but
eroded by time

yes I am alone
that is my tree on the hill
my gray sky to raise my muted
expectations to…


From my collection of poetry, The Snow Documents, now available on Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJEMAYC#nav-subnav

Saturday 27 August 2016

Waking up


I woke up just as my foot hit the grass.
I felt around next to me, but the dog who smelled like cake had gone.
In fact, I was no longer in the woods.  I was in a bed, in a room. 
Not the room, however, in the Great Hall.
I felt my back.  The fairy wings had gone.  

Thursday 25 August 2016

The Oily Puddle


I slipped inside of the
oily puddle today.
Even though I knew it
was there.

The twig you threw was good
enough to save
itself, barely.
Still, it was the strangest thing.
While I was waiting,
suddenly I had this tree.
Not much moves me,
but I had to move for the roots.
They were so big.

It burned inside, I know it.
The petrol had to burn the
branches inside,
had to leave scars that
never turn white.

The explosion would have
horrified you,
had you waited to see.
Oil does that—
it explodes.
And then there is nothing left.
Not even a twig.

Fading


hold my hand for just
a little while...
we are moving
and fading
on and on

Wednesday 24 August 2016

Chapter One, The Abduction Myth

I could blame it on Daisy, my bullmastiff.  Or I could blame it on my sister Christine for giving me Daisy as a birthday present.  But Daisy couldn’t help being huge, and Christine knew how much I wanted a dog.  “God knows you could use the company,” she snorted, with a sideways glance at Ethan.  He muttered something under his breath, but Christine just smiled; she loved to annoy him.  Only later would that more innocent dislike turn to hate.  “He started it,” she would tell me.  “If it weren’t for that lying piece of shit none of this would have happened.” 

Her logic held a certain appeal.  If Ethan hadn’t ended our engagement, and thus our living arrangement, I wouldn’t have been desperate to find a place that accepted giant-sized dogs.  I could have lived forever in the house his parents bought him, looking the other way whenever he came home late, with the quiet belief that no one’s life was perfect.  I’d never expected perfect.  Good enough suited me just fine.

Except that interpretation of events wouldn’t have been fair.  Yes, Ethan had cheated.  Yes, he said that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life with a “doormat” like me.  But when I became homeless, Christine did offer me and Daisy temporary shelter at her condo.  She even insisted she’d be happy for us to stay indefinitely.  And L.A., she argued, was far more exciting than the quiet college town I’d never left, to be with the boyfriend who couldn’t let his university lifestyle go.  Christine presented me with the perfect solution until I figured out just how, at the age of 32, to rebuild my life.  After all, I worked from home, so I could live wherever I wanted.  There was no need to feel chained to my dwindling life in El Prado.

Yet despite all of these good reasons to say yes to Christine’s offer, I said no.  I said no, because I hated L.A.  I said no because while I adored Christine, we were too different to make good roommates.  And I said no because I still loved Ethan.  We’d been together for eleven years—I didn’t know how to live without him.  Besides, I genuinely believed that once I was gone, he would miss our life together; I needed to be nearby for when that moment of clarity came.  Ethan did not force me to stay loyal to him.  He didn’t even ask.  I made that mistake all by myself.

My mother never let me forget that, because she’d warned me against Ethan from the start.  Of course, she’d despaired over pretty much everything I did—my family’s favourite label for me was naive.  But eventually she too found someone else to blame.  Not my late father, who had walked out on us when I was a baby.  Nor did she blame the one who nearly killed me thirty years later, in every sense of the word.  Even this monster my mother considered just a symptom, rather than the disease itself.

Instead, she focused all of her wrath on the man she loathed at first sight.  The man, she said, who made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up every time he looked at me.  He had brought me to the brink of despair, she insisted, and then gave me a gentle push just as she and Christine meant to save me.  “You must see, darling,” she wept to me, during that last conversation, “how he is responsible for everything that’s gone wrong in your life.”

I didn’t see.  I couldn’t see anything at all, no matter how hard I tried.  All I wanted was one incorruptible truth to call my own.  But truth is organic, like a strand of DNA.  It can mutate, or combine with other strands of truth, until it evolves into something that no longer bears any resemblance to its previous self.  For too long my truth did just that—twisting and changing, attaching itself to others, until it became unrecognizable.  But the monster was not built to survive.  Nothing really is.

That left just me.  Just me, and every stupid decision I ever made.

Except that this isn’t a story about blame, or about truth. 

This is a story about him.

Purchase The Abduction Myth now on amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav

Escape


For the first time in what felt like years, the dragon appeared in my dream that night.  As we stood facing each other in the meadow I thought he seemed sympathetic, but resolute.  “You were right,” I told him.  “I don’t love them.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I hope you don’t feel responsible.”

“The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves,” I replied.  “But, please—do you know who he is?”

“Of course.  So do you.”

My shoulders slumped.  “I knew you wouldn’t tell me.  I’m just so tired.”

“Then wake up,” the dragon said.  “You’ve been asleep long enough.”

I opened my eyes.  When I glanced over at Rick, he was sleeping soundly next to me.  It was almost morning.

--From my novel The Abduction Myth, available on Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav

Tuesday 23 August 2016

The End of the Game


here in your believing
triumph is fleeting
from so far away
no tongues left to speak in

Reckoning

When I opened the cage and released the girl, she howled past me, a cyclone powered by atomic pain.  I crouched against the wall and covered my ears but I could still hear her screams, the terrified shouts of those in the lost restaurant, as she raged deadly witness against them.


After it was all over the followers had gone, sucked up in the girl’s funnel cloud.  Everything lay on the ground, broken.  The restaurant would not be serving again.

I was wondering with a pang of regret where Marietta had gone when a dishevelled figure with a lopsided purple hairdo and an old face limped over to me.  The cruelty in her expression was now mingled with resentment.  We just stood and looked at each other for a while, until she said, “You think you have won.  But the spell is broken for you, too.”

“I know,” I answered.  “But at least I can live with myself.”

“We’ll see about that,” she replied.  She then disappeared, rather against her will, I thought, into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.


Monday 22 August 2016

The Fire Within


Truth



All I wanted was one incorruptible truth to call my own.  But truth is organic, like a strand of DNA.  It can mutate, or combine with other strands of truth, until it evolves into something that no longer bears any resemblance to its previous self.  For too long my truth did just that—twisting and changing, attaching itself to others, until it became unrecognizable.  But the monster was not built to survive.  Nothing really is.

That left just me.  Just me, and every stupid decision I ever made.

Except that this isn’t a story about blame, or about truth. 

This is a story about him.

--From my novel The Abduction Myth, now available on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav

Sunday 21 August 2016

Betrayal


I wonder how I will know when
the sky becomes my master
when dreams of yesterday stop
mocking me with laughter
tomorrow is today tornadoes
circling my trailer
I was wrong over
and over again

--From "The Ballad of Love and Death," in my collection of poems, The Snow Documents, available as a download on Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJEMAYC#nav-subnav


Saturday 20 August 2016

Reviewers

Right now I have two books available on Amazon.

The first, my novel, The Abduction Myth:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KI6XNJU#nav-subnav

and the second, a collection of poetry entitled, The Snow Documents:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJEMAYC#nav-subnav

If you read either one and enjoy it, please do write a review.  It makes a huge difference!

Thank you....


Broken


And yet neither could I just carry on.  Each choice I made, each breath I took, led to disaster.  I no longer believed in the future.  I wasn’t even sure I believed in love anymore—at least, not the redemptive kind.  All I did know was that I felt like a shattered piece of china glued back together one too many times.  I had no idea who or what to trust, who to blame, or who to forgive.  But the terrified child inside of me refused to be silenced.  She would not leave me be.

The truth could no longer be avoided.  I was damaged beyond repair.  This time there would be no gluing me back together again.

--from my novel, The Abduction Myth, now available for download on Amazon:

Friday 19 August 2016

Facebook & Twitter

Just a reminder that I am also on Facebook and Twitter!

Twitter:  @mmsimons13
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/MM-Simons-853730224660140/





Locked in


So much and so completely ignored
ripping the hinges off of the doors
catapulting me into a world where
daydreams remember

Thursday 18 August 2016

Free download on Kindle

My novel, The Abduction Myth, is a free download today on Amazon/Kindle!  

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/embed?asin=B01KI6XNJU&asin=B01KI6XNJU&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_5OwTxbNSYJYWD


A modern and romantic reimagining of the Greek myths about Hades, the god of the Underworld, and how Persephone became his queen. 

Set in the current day, the story follows Stevie Callaghan, a shy book illustrator in desperate need of an apartment.  Against her better judgment she moves above a bookstore owned by Rick Smith, an intimidating, scruffy intellectual beloved by his customers and staff despite his brusque manner.  Already unsettled by Rick, Stevie is horrified to learn that all of his employees come from a young offender program. 
 
She soon befriends a few members of Rick’s staff, however, and becomes a regular at the bookstore cafe.  Just as she begins to feel settled, she witnesses a late-night fire no one else seems to notice, and finds herself haunted by a recurring dream in which she is visited by a talking dragon.  Worse yet, Rick’s newest employee Vince, a disturbed born-again Christian, develops an obsessive interest in her.  Rick, on the other hand, seems to hold Stevie in utter contempt—until he initiates a relationship with her when she least expects it.  To her own surprise Stevie falls in love with him, even though he remains something of a mystery to her.  Stevie’s overbearing mother is instantly suspicious of Rick, but she cannot persuade Stevie to leave him.

Events take a harrowing turn when Vince becomes convinced that Rick is Satan, and embarks on a twisted campaign to “save” Stevie that leaves her life shattered.   After someone close to her is then the victim of a brutal murder, Stevie is forced to confront her mother’s suspicions that Rick is not at all who he claims to be.