Coming Soon - My Dark Angel

My first love has always been the wasted landscape of post apocalyptic fiction. The tribal societies that arise, the laws that fall to the wayside, and the general degeneration of mankind in its fight to survive. The brutality and carnage, the misery and suffering, it's like being in high school all over again.

I don't have a release date yet but am expecting My Dark Angel to be available in late April. It's a throwback to the old school bodice rippers, except Nadine murders a few assholes and there are no quivering flowers of womanhood in need of proud warrior spears.... here's a few snippets.

Funny thing, standing on a stage while people bid on you. Do you stand tall or cower? Do you glare defiantly or accept the hand you’re dealt and try to look appealing? I watched a lot of luckless folks make those decisions that day, and I still don’t know the answer. For the men, squared shoulders and defiance usually resulted in a one way ticket to the arena, but sometimes the puling and cringing found themselves in line for the ludus as well, slaves to more respected slaves for now, punching bags and training tools for later.

For the women it didn’t matter. I saw scratching, screaming girls fetch as much as seasoned whores who stood with hips tipped forward and fingers spreading lips wide before the slobbering crowd. Except for very old, the destination was almost always the same. Not even the little girls were immune to the bids of the whoremasters. For now they could serve as maids; in time they would serve in a different capacity.

Domestic Discipline and Peeps

The Hickory Switch is now available through Blushing Books! This Christian domestic discipline romance is a departure from my usual work, and follows Doris de Vris from The Evolution of Emma Adler after she leaves home and marries a preacher who introduces her to the hickory switch.

The old man has been ill lately, as old dogs are wont to do. Blind, nearly deaf, and now with some horrible stomach illness no doubt resulting from gobbling up something foul that he sniffed up in the yard, he does little more than lie in bed groaning or rushing to the back door (or refrigerator or washer and dryer depending on which direction he gets himself going) and begging to go outside lest he embarrass himself horribly on the kitchen floor. The first night of his misery, our exchange student suggested I put him outside because he was gross. It was 32F with snow on the horizon. Needless to say I pointed out I'd had him ten years, and her seven months, and if anyone was going to be sleeping in the yard it would not be my sick and blind and arthritic buddy.

The house is blissfully silent at the moment, thanks to her being on a senior class trip and him being over his projectile defecation. This is good news in more ways than one, although I fear I have discovered the source of Old Man's misery.

We had an early Easter egg hunt for some kids and I succumbed to the cheery yellow sugar coated marshmallow bunnies more than once. Now I'm the one groaning in the corner and begging to go out.

Damn you sugary marshmallowy bastards!

The Rising Yangtze

This is from my Sex and Honey collection. I'm a total documentary freak, and saw one about a young girl living on the banks of the Yangtze as the waters rose and her family was forced to leave. Her story stuck with me, and then one evening this story came from her. 

The Rising Yangtze

  

Xue silently picked her way through the tall reeds along the bank of the river, her tiny bare feet leaving only faint impressions in the soft, sucking mud. Yesterday the river had been much further down the steep hillside but today it lapped the edges of the worn trail she and her friends had spent the past fourteen years making. She was saddened to know by tomorrow it would devour their secret trail entirely, only allowing the tallest of the reeds another day to taste sunlight before they too were submerged.

The Three Gorges Dam was a source of pride for most of the Chinese people but Xue hated it. The completion of the dam meant the waters of the Yangtze would rise over ninety meters, and as it was drowning the grasses and trails so too would it bury the home she had spent her whole life in. Even now her parents were busily dragging their pitiful belongings up the steep banks to the new apartments the government was relocating them to.  Xue knew she should be helping them and that she was being selfish, but today was the last day she would have to see her best friends and spend time in the spot they had called their own since they were small children. Dragging her spoiled little brother’s bed up the steep hillside held little appeal.