Hi there! I’m adding a segment called Sunday Snippets to my blog. As long as I have something new and exciting to offer you, I’ll be posting these snippets on Sundays, and possibly adding an additional segment on Tuesdays. We’ll see. Check out the tidbits below and enjoy! 🙂
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Here’s something from my new book Jesus Kid. It’s on preorder now and goes live on December 6, 2017!
Thirty years ago, an asteroid stuck the Earth. Now killer plants hunt the last surviving humans.
Ori Scott is a young junkie running from his mother’s prophecy that he’d one day save the world from the killer plants. Her preaching made him a laughingstock and now he hides in his drugs. But he can’t hide the change in his veins. They are turning green, and the prophecy is dragging him into a dark struggle between invisible forces. Set up on bogus drug charges, Ori is taken to a secret facility where he becomes a test subject in experiments to discover an antidote to the alien plant’s sting.
Jack Doll is a cop with a vendetta against the plants that killed his best friend. All he has in the world now is his old friend’s lover, Rive. Together they form an unbreakable bond—or so he thought. Jack has never liked Rive’s friend, Ori, but he believes in Ori’s innocence and doesn’t understand Rive’s strange indifference to Ori’s conviction. Struggling with his suspicions, Jack can’t help digging into a mystery that draws him closer to Ori than ever before—and closer to somebody who has secrets to hide.
Alone and scared, Ori is grateful for Jack Doll’s friendship, and his longtime crush soon blossoms into love. But Ori has no plans to accept his fate. He wants to escape, and he doesn’t care if he takes the cure with him.
SNIPPET (from the first chapter THE ROBBERY):
The robber swung the gun back in his face. Jack didn’t blink this time. It was going to happen. He expected to die. He didn’t want to, and not like this, but it was going to happen. Killed in a riot. Knifed or stomped on or brained with a pipe. He was a cop, and he expected to die.
But not in a bank robbery.Â
And not today. Today, he’d expected to pull out some cash for the pool hall down the street. Enjoy a few beers. Play a few games. Find a cutie to go home with. The usual things. But staring at a gun stuck in his face while Wally shook like a booweed tentacle behind the counter and Rive’s druggie boyfriend pounded on the front door was right up there with pigs flying or holding his breath until he passed out.
Not likely. Not expected.
Not the last seconds of his life. Thinking that made his nerves fire. Made everything sharp. He focused on the robber and not the sound of Wally scrambling behind the counter as he dragged cash boxes off the shelf underneath. The shadows grew still and flat on the walls. A bus chugged by and the scents of biofuel and vesperia blossoms stole in under the door. On the sidewalk, Ori shifted from foot to foot and pounded on the door again.
The robber jerked and shot a look at Wally. “I put the goddam sign on the door. Don’t it say closed?”
“You’re talking,” said Jack. “The kid isn’t deaf.”
The robber glared at him. Movement flickered in the corner of Jack’s eye. Ori leaned in against the plate glass window, trying to peer through the space between the door and an advertisement for the Star Fall Festival. He cupped his hands near the spot where the tail of the asteroid streaked to the bottom corner of the poster. “C’mon, Wally. Lemme in.”
Strung out, maybe.
“Fuck,” muttered the robber.
Before Jack could say anything, the guy backed up, flipped the lock, and yanked the door open. Ori charged in. In a flash, Jack took in the strip of skin between his pants and shirt, the bare arms, the bracelet on his wrist, the silver rings in his ears and belly button, the long tangle of beige-colored hair, and the flinch when his gaze met Jack’s.
He licked his lips and winked. “Hey, Jack.”
“Yeah. Hey,” said the robber, sending Ori into a spin. His breath rattled in and out before he muttered, “Holy shit.”
BUY HERE
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And here’s a treat from Mary Newman!
SNIPPET:
We rode through the night for maybe half an hour or a little more. I wasn’t sure since I spent a lot of the trip with my eyes closed, praying as hard as I’d ever prayed I would be able to keep my promise to Joseph, Micah, and Garrett. Not that I believed in God. I mean, where the hell was God when my mom and dad were being murdered? Where was he when Preacher Jonah made all of his crazy decrees? And, where the hell was he when I’d tried to escape one hell and ran straight into another one? Yeah, God and I weren’t on speaking terms, at the moment.Â
The bike stopped and I opened my eyes. They opened even wider when the hill we were sitting in front of split and became a huge entry into the side of it. We rode into this giant maw and I knew I was descending into an even worse part of hell. I’d never been so petrified, and I could barely breathe for the panic choking me. The moon had been nearly full outside, but inside the tunnel it was pitch black. Brock switched on the headlamp at the front of his dirt bike and it didn’t seem to do much other than illuminate the walls and a path going downward. We eventually came to a stop and the lights came on to reveal a bunch of trikes, dirt bikes, a pickup, a red sports car, and the missing Jeep. Brock pulled me off the bike, and directed me to a door with a big wheel on it.
Evan, the other guy with us, input a code or something on a little square pad with push buttons, turned the wheel, and the door opened with a whoosh. I was pushed inside a foyer of some kind, and right into a whole bunch of people who were staring at me with expressions ranging from amused to distrustful.
“Who’s this, Brock?” a guy at the front asked.
“Not sure, Olly,” Brock responded. “Evan and I caught him running away from the town we were watching. Thought Flint and Lily should know.”
“Go get Lily,” Olly ordered one of the men.
We just stood there waiting, my knees knocking in fear, until a slender woman who was almost as tall as I was came into the room.
“I’m here,” she said. “What’s this?”
“Kid we found running away from the town, Boss Lady,” Brock said. “Actually, he found us. Ran right into me.”
“How old are you, Kid?”
“I… I… Not sure,” I stammered. “Sixteen?”
“You got a name?”
“M… M… Matt… Uh, M… Mickey.”
The woman laughed, kind of rueful-like. “Well Matt/Mickey, you look like you’ve been through hell and back. Brock, take him to Zeke’s office. Evan, head over to Rhett’s and tell Zeke we’ve got a visitor he needs to see. You hungry Matt/Mickey?”
I was, but I didn’t think I could eat anything without throwing it all back up, so I shook my head.
“Suit yourself,” the woman said. “My name’s Lily, by the way, and you can consider yourself our prisoner until we tell you different.”
I nodded because what else could I do? I’d run to save my life and try to save my friends, and I’d messed it up so bad, I didn’t even have an idea of how I was going to get out of this place. Brock pushed me in front of him down a hallway and into a big room with a huge desk and black leather furniture. He told me to sit in one of the chairs and I just kind of sunk into it. At least hell had comfortable seating.
A bottle of cold water was put in my hand and I simply stared at it. Brock huffed a laugh, took it back, opened it and shoved it back towards me.
“Drink, kid. You look like you need it.”
I followed orders and drank the entire bottle before carefully sitting it on the glass and metal table in front of me. We waited for some time, and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I was too scared to relax, though, and if I had fallen asleep, it would have been due to sheer exhaustion. I heard footsteps, murmuring voices and then the door opened. I looked up to see the same tall, red-haired man I knew I’d seen lying dead in a field only a week or so ago.
Oh, God! I was in hell! “You’re dead!” I croaked and everything went dark.
BUY HERE! Kindle edition
AND HERE! Paperback
