I don't know if this will make me sound old, but I seriously don't know where the last twelve months went. A little over a year ago, I was in full-on freak out mode over publishing my first full length novel. Since then, I've put out 4 more, as well as a series of novellas. I've also had the pleasure of meeting and working with some truly amazing, talented people, from cover artists, to editors, to bloggers, to other authors. All of whom have been incredibly supportive. And many that I'm now honored to call friends. (Please excuse the sap).
In other news, I am currently working on a crap TON of stuff I cannot wait to share with all of you in 2014!!!! Thanks to everyone who started this adventure with me, and I hope you'll stick around to see where the next year takes us. It's gonna be a WILD RIDE! ;)
And, for those of you who disagree with the title of this post, I'm going to give you a sneak peek into the future . . .
Here are just a few of the things I'm working on for 2014.
“Go away!” Cam spins around, bringing me up short. “Stop
following me! Just leave me alone!”
Tears stream down her face and I can’t remember the last
time I saw her cry. It breaks my heart. “I can’t do that.”
“Why? Why won’t
you just leave me alone?”
“Because . . .” Memories, terrible memories, claw their way
in. “I made that mistake once before. I’ll never do it again.”
“Please. Kaden, please.” I don’t know what she’s asking me
for. I’m not sure she even knows. A sob breaks free at the same time her legs give
out, but I’m close enough that I catch her in my arms before she hits the
pavement.
It’s a surprise that she doesn’t push me away. Instead,
burying her face in my shoulder and hanging on for dear life. It throws me off
balance. Cameron has always been so strong. Always bottling up her emotions and
hiding them from everyone else. I don’t know how to react to this unexpected
outburst, so I do what feels right. What I’ve wanted to do since I first laid
eyes on her. I wrap her in my arms and stroke her back, her arms, her
hair—whatever may comfort her—as she cries out her fear, and confusion, and
frustration.
Watching her crumble, I can’t help but wonder if I’m doing
the right thing. Am I being selfish dragging her back into our world? But this
person that she’s become—this person they’ve turned her into—isn’t really her.
This isn’t really Cameron. Not the Cameron I know. And I cannot allow that girl
I know to be lost.
“Let me tell you a
story.” I inhale her scent, allow it to fill me up, steady me. We’re sitting in
the middle of the sidewalk on a well-manicured, residential street. There are
people everywhere. In their cars, their homes, their yards—going about their
lives, blissfully unaware, all around us—but I don’t care. I couldn’t care less
what any of them think. All I care about is the girl in my arms. “Once upon a
time, there was a little girl who lived in a magical place that most people
never even knew existed. It was beautiful and she lived happily with her mother
and father. But then, a darkness fell over the land. And evil. And terrible
things started happening.
“There was also a boy, and even though the darkness was bad
for the land, it brought him something special. It brought him to the girl. The
boy and girl grew up together, determined to fight back against the darkness
that had taken so much from them both. But one day, the girl disappeared. The
boy searched for her. Everywhere. He looked and he looked, but he couldn’t find
her. The darkness had taken her away. It invaded her mind, erased everything
she knew—including the boy. Then the darkness
sent her away. Away from her friends, from her home, from . . . me.” Her damp
eyes blink up at me as I try my best to make her understand, make her remember,
make her feel. Something. “But I
never stopped looking for you, Cam. Not for one minute. I never gave up hope
that I’d get you back. And I’m not going to give up now.”
--Kaden, Resisting Atlantis (coming Feb 2014)
********
I’m an ant. Not the ‘my siblings have children I can spoil
rotten’ kind, and obviously not the ‘crawl all over your counters every spring
and drive your mother crazy’ kind. I’m an A.N.T. An anti-new-technologian? Is
that even a word? I’m not really sure what it stands for exactly, or where and
why they drew the arbitrary line between ‘old’ and ‘new’ technology. All I know
is that I was born an A.N.T., raised as one, and in the end, it saved my life.
A.N.T.’s feared how dependent mankind had become on gadgets,
and gizmos, and computerized this and that. They believed it was dangerous and
unnatural. I believed they were a bunch of lunatics stuck in the dark ages.
It was a constant point of contention between my parents and
me. Dad worked in an office. He spent all day playing on computers, and then
came home and told me they were bad? How is that not hypocritical? But that was
dad. He wasn’t born into the A.N.T. lifestyle like mom was. He married into it,
so he wasn’t so stringent about their beliefs. But he always backed mom’s
decisions and abided by them while he was in her home, so I had to, too. Which
sucked. Big time.
I mean what teenage girl doesn’t have a cell phone? Who
can’t keep up with the gossip about the latest and greatest vampire show
because she doesn’t have a TV to watch it on? Who can’t check their email at
home because there’s no computers, or tablets, or I-whatevers allowed through
the front door?
My life was a weird, confusing combination of restrictive
privileges. We had things like electricity, and a house phone—though it was one
of those wall things with an annoying curly cord, no caller ID, no voicemail.
We didn’t even own a radio, or a microwave. The word ‘internet’ was practically
a curse under our roof.
It could have been worse, though. My friend Tina from down
the street was also an A.N.T. There were several A.N.T families in our
neighborhood, which was weird since the A.N.T. movement really wasn’t all that
large. But we tended to congregate. I always wondered if we all lived in the
same place because we all believed the same things—using the term ‘we’
loosely—or if we all believed the same things because we all lived in the same
place. Maybe there was something in the water.
Either way, Tina had it ten-times worse than I ever did. Her
father, Mr. Kennedy, was as hard-core an A.N.T. as I’d ever met. He wasn’t born
into it, he didn’t marry into it, he genuinely chose that life for both him and
his daughter. My parents might have been lunatics, but Mr. Kennedy was a
flat-out fanatic. Nothing—I mean nothing—in
their house had a power cord. We often joked about what kind of experience he
must have had with an outlet as a child to make him hate them so much. Maybe
one shocked him. Maybe it fried his brain.
Not that it would have done them much good without power. Mr.
Kennedy lived almost entirely off the grid. I slept over at their house once in
the fifth grade and when it got dark out, we lit candles. It was like stepping
back in time. The man even grew almost all of their own food. Tina was
seriously lucky just to have indoor plumbing.
Looking
back, I feel guilty about all of our teasing. Mr. Kennedy is a wonderful man, a
fantastic father, and it just so happened . . .
that he was right.
--Olivia, Plague
2.0
********
When Kiernan dropped me off at home, mom was drunk, which was sort
of like saying the sky was blue. The only thing that varied was the degree of
blueness—or drunkenness, should the metaphor withstand idiocy. Tonight was a
Caribbean blue kind of night.
I could hear her halfway down the hall and she wasn’t happy,
arguing with someone on the phone or herself, which was known to happen on
occasion. Either one was bad news. What made it worse was that Kiernan had insisted
on walking me to my door. And not just the door to the building, oh no, all the
way upstairs.
He glanced my way and I winced as a string of muffled curses filtered through the thin
walls. I knew she wasn't arguing with another person
in the flesh because no one else was allowed in the apartment. Ever. It was an
unwritten rule. One that went right out the window when Kiernan followed me inside
without being invited.
“You!” She whirled on me so fast, eyes bloodshot and narrowed, that
my heart kicked into overdrive and I backed into the wall beside the door
without thinking. “Where the hell have you been?”
The truth is, I was terrified of her. I had no logical reason to
be. She was nearly as short as me and just as thin, consisting on a primarily
liquid diet. She’d had trouble getting around since her injury and she was
almost never in any condition to be any sort of threat, physically. But she had
the sharpest tongue of anyone I’d ever met. Her words alone could—and did—cut
me open and bleed me more effectively than any knife. Every time she opened her
mouth, I’d mentally cower in fear of what would inevitably come out of
it.
--Jade, Falling
to Pieces (coming April 2014)
********
***SPOILER WARNING: Do not read the following teaser if you haven't read the first three novellas in the Heart and Soul series (Temptation, Devotion, and Deception).
“Why would you do that?!”
“Because, Mel! . . . Because I can’t shake the image of you
chained and burned in that cage. It haunts my nightmares. Yes, I betrayed
Heaven, and I’d do it again.”
Oh, Lucas, Lucas, Lucas. Everything inside of me came
crashing down. Knowing the cost of my freedom was devastating, but knowing it
against the fact that this boy, this man, this angel loved me so much that he was willing to turn his back on
everything he’d spent his entire existence fighting for, somehow made it
bearable.
“What will happen to you now?”
“There will be a trial.”
“And?”
“And . . . they’ll cast me out.”
“Cast you out?”
“Of Heaven. They’ll cast me out of Heaven. I’ll become one
of the Fallen.”
“Like . . . Like a . . .” the word burned like acid on my
tongue, “demon?”
“No. Demons are evil, Mel. They make a choice to be that
way. Fallen are neither evil nor good, they’re just . . . Fallen.”
“Who would ever choose to be a demon?”
“Eternity is a long time to be on your own. Eventually,
belonging to a side starts to become tempting. Doesn’t matter what side, and
when only one side is willing to take you . . .”
My heart clenched as I tried to even imagine what he was
saying. What he was facing. He had traded my eternal suffering for his own.
“Lucas . . .” My voice broke over his name and he clasped my
face in his warm hands.
“Don’t. How many times did I tell you I wouldn’t let anyone
hurt you? How many times was that a lie? I’m sick of playing by the rules. I’m
sick of letting you down and watching you suffer my failures. I don’t care the
cost. I will keep you safe for the rest of your life.”
The rest of my life. “Lucas, I’m mortal. What happens after
I die? What will you do then?”
“I’ll spend the rest of eternity grateful to have had you in
my life.”
--Mel, Redemption (Heart and Soul #4)
POINTLESS DISCLAIMER:
All excerpts are unedited and subject to change. Also, those totally vague release dates I posted on a couple of them are subject to being completely irrelevant, but they are what I'm aiming for.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I hope you're as excited about 2014 as I am.
