The Midnight Lullaby – Chapter One Excerpt

Everybody has secrets…

For years, Benedict Lyon has been living a lie. Not even his family knows the truth he’s been keeping from the world. Only Emmeline knows his secret—and she’s dead.

…some are darker than others…

When the matriarch of the Lyon family passes away, Benedict is summoned home for the funeral. Emmeline urges Benedict not to go, certain that if he returns to that house, neither one of them will escape.

…but are they worth dying for?

Their presence in the family home causes the spirit of Gloria Lyon to become restless, and as the remaining members of the Lyon family attempt to put their mother to rest, long buried secrets, some deadlier than others, are unearthed. Who will survive…

The Midnight Lullaby

Coming soon! Pre-order on amazon!

Chapter One Excerpt

Benedict was eight years old, sitting on a stiff chair in the dark hallway of a house he didn’t know. He clamped his hands around the edges of his seat, trying to press his bones so tight that they wouldn’t shake. His head whipped from side to side, unblinking as he searched for shapes.

“Tell me where it is!” Gloria’s voice boomed from the room down the hall. Benedict winced, squinting to see through the doorway and into the wild flicker of candlelight.

The witch screamed, writhing on the floor at Gloria’s feet. She chanted between her howls, head thumping back against the floor and narrow chest pushing high. Even from this distance, and even with her screeches in the air, he heard her bones cracking.

“Give me the book!” Gloria roared.

Wind rushed through the house, knocking the pictures from the walls. Windows cracked in their frames. Doors opened and closed with furious bangs upstairs.

“Can you see them?” Elysium whispered.

Benedict gulped ragged breaths, fear marching a parade through his chest with the big drums in his ears. “No.”

His brother sighed, the teen crouching in front of Benedict. “Benny, there.” He pointed down the hall, toward the open doorway and their mother’s booming voice demanding to know where the spirit-wielder hid her book of secrets. “There. You see that one? He’s big. You have to see him.”

Benedict cried but didn’t blink at the tears, staring down the hall through a liquid haze. He saw the doorway and the lights inside and his mother’s shadow cast across the twisting woman on the floor. “There’s no one in the hall,” he confessed.

The floorboards squeaked; he saw them straining and heard the heavy footfalls coming toward them, but he didn’t see the ghost.

“What’s happening?” Benedict begged, small voice almost lost under the raging of the house. He jumped at a scratching sound, claws on hardwood, and a sickly meowing.

“The witch is calling the spirits she’s trapped here,” his brother explained.

“Will they hurt Mother?” Benedict asked, still staring down the hallway. The heavy steps getting closer.

“Do you see him yet?” Elysium asked rather than answering, head whipping back and forth, watching something in the empty hall and studying his baby brother.

Benedict wrinkled his nose, trying not to cry.

The floorboards creaked closer and closer, his little heart fluttering wildly in his chest.

“Benny, you see him, right?” Elysium shouted over the groaning walls and wailing woman—over the scratching and the creaking and that awful meowing. “Benny—”

Benedict screamed when something pulled Elysium away from him and dragged his older brother down the hall, tossing him into a dark parlor with a heavy thud.

Benedict jumped down from his chair and ran after him, tears spilling over his lashes. He didn’t see whatever they saw, but he knew it was real. He looked around at the empty chairs and couches, his hands balled into fists against his sides. “Elysium?” he whispered.

A thump on the wall drew his gaze up, eyes straining and vision blurring at the edges.

His brother was there, pinned against the wall by an unseen force and held so high up that the top of his head almost brushed the ceiling. Elysium rasped in ragged breaths, heels kicking against the wall.

Benedict backed up, unable to look away until he bumped into a closet door. The scratching grew louder, the yowling from inside desperate. He twisted around and stared at the doorknob.

He knew he shouldn’t open it, but a whisper told him he had to. Something was inside…  something that needed out.

The boy reached up and used both hands to turn the knob. The door opened with a pop, and he shuffled back from it. For one blessed moment, the scratching stopped, the meowing went silent, and then the mangy monsters poured out. Cats, twisted and thin, half-decayed but still moving. Their claws scratched against the floor, never retracting into their paws, some with no meat to call a paw anymore. One looked up at Benedict, an empty socket and the glint of bone flashing at him. It meowed, and he could see the vocal cords rattling in its neck where the fur and flesh were missing.

He screamed, but the house only grew louder, trying to smother him.

And then he was off his feet.

For a second, he choked on his sounds, terrified that the ghost had snatched him up like it had Elysium, and then he inhaled and knew exactly whose arms he was in. His brother held him against his shoulder and ran from the room, kicking the door shut behind them. He didn’t stop, running straight down the corridor and toward the sound of their mother’s voice. Benedict buried his face in that shoulder, rubbing his tears out in the fabric of his shirt and hoping even now that Mother wouldn’t notice how he had cried.

Elysium put him down on his feet in a corner of the room, kneeling in front of him and pulling a piece of white chalk from his vest pocket. Benedict, drowning in his own fear, couldn’t stop gasping for air. Elysium drew a half-circle on the wood floor from wall to wall, closing Benedict into the corner, and then started sketching runes over the edges of the circle. “Don’t move,” he yelled over the storm of spirits.

Benedict bit his lip to keep from whining, looking past Elysium at the woman writhing in the middle of the room. She clawed score marks into the floorboards like the cats had, her orange hair long and knotted around her face and shoulders. Her boots thudded and kicked, but she couldn’t get away, pinned there on the ground by Gloria Lyon’s will. His mother stood over her, her dark hair braided over one shoulder and her sharp, black suit making her look like a shadow come to life. “Relent the book. Release the spirits. And I will spare you,” Gloria shouted, unmoved by all the shows of power the other woman had displayed—by all the fury of her creations in this house.

The woman on the floor screamed, and Benedict could hear windows breaking.

Elysium cupped the sides of his face in his hands, making Benedict look at him rather than them. “Okay, Benny. You know how this works.”

Benedict swallowed hard, trying again not to cry. He nodded once, and Elysium flashed him a smile.

Benedict closed his eyes.

The battle of wills continued to rage on, screams and thuds rampant in the house, but he didn’t open his eyes to see. He pressed the heels of his palms into his ears when the screaming grew to be too much, shaking his head when he heard Elysium cry out in pain and gasping for air when those horrible yowls grew closer and closer.

But he didn’t open his eyes. Not until the house had finally gone quiet hours later. Not until his mother picked him up from the corner and carried him out of the house. She put him in the back seat of the car, and he waited. When she came back, Elysium was with her, one arm broken and folded to his chest and the other carrying a worn, leather-bound notebook.

Benedict blinked out the window. The sun peeked over the houses down the hillside in bright wisps of pink and orange. When the house they had come from went up in flames, it wasn’t wisps of orange like the ones in the sky. There were no shades of pink. Just violent, furious heat.

Gloria had not spared the woman inside—not even when she gave up her book and released the spirits she had bound to her home.

Even Benedict, at eight years old, had known she wouldn’t show mercy. It wasn’t her way.

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Infernal Excerpt

An excerpt from Infernal, a horror novel about an adventurous group trying to escape a dangerous island.

She stood on that ledge and put the mouthpiece of her oxygen tank between her lips. She watched the opening at the top of her cage while Felix watched the shark. She held her camera close to her belly with both hands.

“Go,” he said, and she jumped.

The world went quiet. Not silent, but quiet. She sank down into the bottom of her cage and stayed there, turning on her camera and testing out the settings on the great open sea around her. When a shadow cut over her, she twisted up to film George from beneath as he circled the boat again. She stood, getting her bearings, and pushed the camera and her arms out the viewing hole to film the shark as he moved deeper, leaving the hunk of fish for a moment to circle her instead.

The cage shuddered, bobbed, and then started to move. Either Felix or Poppy were turning the crank to move her out from the boat. The chains rattled, making strange sounds in the water, the surface rippling around the top four edges. George seemed more interested when she moved, coming in closer, baring teeth for the camera and nudging the cage.

He swam between her and the boat and in the background of the shot she saw Felix drop down into the second cage. George whipped around to investigate and she filmed the massive fish closing in on Felix’s cage to take a closer look. The body of the shark blocked her view of the other cage completely and then, seemingly out of nowhere, a second shark burst up from the deep. Val knocked her shoulder against the bars but held fast to her camera. The second, larger shark shot straight up under George, caught his belly in her jaws and continued to thrust upward.

They breeched the surface together but with their combined weight, the flight was short-lived. They crashed back down and onto Felix’s cage. The whole back of the ship dipped down, pulled violently until either the cables or the rigging snapped. The sharks thrashed, stirring air into the water turned red with blood.

Val continued to hold the camera on reflex but stopped thinking about the shot. She stared over it in disbelief at the scene. The new shark, even larger than George, thrashed against the back of the boat atop the shark cage. She couldn’t see Felix through the writhing bodies of beasts and churning waters. Her heart sank low in her stomach when Felix’s cage dropped out from behind the fighting giants. She leaned hard into the front of her cage to see him slipping down into the dark, but the cage was empty. A sliver of relief washed over her, her body leaning forward into the bars and exhaling a gust of bubbles. Her gaze tore up to the fight again, suddenly horrified that he might be in those waters with the monster sharks.

Before she could worry about whether or not he had gotten out of the sea and into the boat, her own cage bobbed. Had the rigging really given way? Was her cage cut loose? It bobbed again, sinking lower, more than a meter from the surface now. Biting at her breather, she let go of the camera with one hand and pushed herself upward. Grabbing onto one edge of her cage and pulling, Val launched herself high enough to have her head break the surface. Water clung to her goggles and daylight gleamed, making her squint.

Felix stood on deck and even from this distance she could tell he was shouting, arms pulling with all his weight to try to turn the crank and drag her cage back in. It must have been stuck. They couldn’t reel her back to the boat. Lochner had left the wheelhouse, shouting something back to Felix and then pointing up at the rigging. Val looked up, squinting against the sun. The rigging had bent, half attached now where bolts ripped out and only struggling cables kept it together. Those cables were the ones still attached to her cage—dragging her in closer to the ship and closer to the sharks thrashing about the waters between.

Felix twisted to the side to look back at her. She was going to collide with the great whites. There was a chance she could survive just bunkered down in her vessel. There was a chance they would stop any second now and vanish into the deep. The water churned red, spraying into the air when a tail cut across the surface. There was also a chance they would push her cage down enough to snap those cables, or whatever fastened them to the ship, and she would have no choice but to swim up through that bloody water or sink to the bottom and eventually drown.

It seemed that the very moment she made her choice to abandon the cage, Felix climbed over the railing along the side of the ship and dove into the waters off the port. She pulled her legs up out of the cage and pushed off the metal railing. It was hard to swim away from the boat, away from safety rather than toward it, but she had to get distance from the struggle in the water. She sank down just enough to escape the splashing on the surface, breather exhaling bubbles and fins propelling her forward. She cut an arch in the blue, inelegant in the company of creatures made to swim.

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Hellbound in a Hurry Excerpt

HELLBOUND IN A HURRY comes out in 2 weeks!

When Antonia gets a disturbing message from her brother, she drops everything to search for him. What she finds is Jack—an interstellar being claiming to have been dragged into mortal existence against its will by the same cult her brother was with.

Jack just wants to get home, out of the human vessel it’s currently trapped in, and back to immortality. In exchange for her help, Jack offers to lead Antonia to her brother.

The two go on a violent ride—one desperate to survive and the other bent on revenge.

Will either of them be long for this world?

This horror novella is my first self-publishing project and I’ve learned so much.

This was a completely new experience for me and it’s been a lot of googling. I found a wonderful editor to work with, Rachel Oestreich of The Wallflower Editing, LLC and the process was so smooth. If you’re looking for an editor, I would happily recommend her.

I’ve also learned the hard way why people pay to have their books formatted–that was tricky. I have never known Word more intimately and thank goodness for googling.

And cover art by Linn Arvidsson! It was a pleasure to work with her again!

HELLBOUND IN A HURRY is up on goodreads, so please take a minute to add it to your TBR!

Chapter One of HELLBOUND IN A HURRY

Dominic ran over the uneven ground, away from the voices and the flicker of flashlights, and definitely away from the glow of the old greenhouse. He ran toward the arms of darkness in panic and desperation—the only way anyone ever did.

His right ankle throbbed, sending jolts of pain up his leg with every step, dragging him lower and lower. No matter how much he blinked or how wide he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see, the branches overhead so thick that not even starlight could reach him now. There was no way he could escape—nowhere he could go—but he couldn’t stop trying. His arms stretched out ahead of him, scraping against trees in an effort to navigate. He had no direction—needed no direction but away. He was a bird in flight.

The white beams of flashlights strobed through the night to his right and left. Dominic hadn’t realized he was crying until those lights gave him a taste of his own vision, blurred.

A light flashed right over his shoulder. He was sure of it, as though he could feel the heat of the lamp through his sweatshirt.

His right ankle finally gave out and he fell hard, rolling in low bushes and newly fallen leaves. He clawed at the cold ground, dragging himself into the dark. Footfalls came closer, stomping the autumn ground.

Dominic’s short life flashed before his eyes, and he found it lacking. Too much panic and pain and not enough joy, not enough contentment or laughter. Too much running for his life and looking for a place to sleep. Too much hunger.

The beam of light struck him in the back, pouring over him. His dark hair hung in his face, sticking to sweaty skin, and his dirt-coated fingers groped at the mulch of the forest floor. The ink on the backs of his hands stood out in the light, the word ‘hands’ tattooed on the back of his left and ‘up’ on the back of his right in scrawling script. A part of his frantic mind registered the words and imagined a voice with the flashlight calling them—shouting at him in the night under the flashing glow of red and blue lights. But that had been in another place and another time. Not here. Not tonight. These people had no demands of him because they wanted to take everything.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, turning him over and groping at his side, trying to lift him up. Dominic swallowed for air, vision still blurred in tears when the man pulled him to his feet. Dominic kept his weight on his left this time, one hand grabbing the man by the shoulder for stability while his other arm lifted and swung the rock he had picked up from the ground—leaving a crater in the cold earth. He slammed the rock against the man’s temple, hard enough to hear the clap of flesh and crack of bone. The flashlight fell, half-buried against the crisp leaves.

Dominic swung again and again, in brutal succession, until the stranger landed on his knees and then slumped over. He was still breathing, the sound of it raspy and wet. Dominic patted him down in a hurry, found his phone, and took it.

He turned off the flashlight and hopped away, using the trees to keep himself upright in the dark and moving away from the sounds of the search party. He didn’t stand a chance. He couldn’t get far like this, in the dark and with only one leg to stand on. He slid down a slope and crawled into the base of a tree, hoping it would hide him from the search lights.

Dominic turned the phone on, holding it close to his chest and curling his body around it. He dialed the only number he knew by heart and choked back a sob when it rang and rang. “Please,” he whispered to the night.

No answer.

He didn’t know her work number. He dialed again.

Ringing.

Ringing.

The beam of a flashlight stroked the night far to his left and he pressed the phone to his chest to hide the glow. When the light passed, he held the phone to his ear again. The automated answering machine recited the number to him and suggested he leave a message. Not even her voice. He almost forgot how to speak when the beep sounded, coughing and dragging a breath in. “Annie… Please…” He cried and cringed, hating himself for doing this. “I should never have gone with them. You were right… Please. Please help me.”

Logic told him there was nothing she could do now, even if she had answered. He was torturing himself and he was torturing her. “Annie, they’re insane. They’re going to kill me, or I’m going to die in this fucking forest, and I just want to leave.” He choked back a mad laugh. “Save me. Please. Please. Just one more time. Save me and I promise I won’t do dumb shit like this anymore. I promise, I’ll get my shit together. Please, Annie. Please.”

Four beams of light fell on him, hands grabbing from all directions. Dominic screamed when he was lifted from the ground, not even ashamed of that high-pitched sound echoing from his chest. There was no room for shame now—only fear and anger. Annie had told him, back when they were teens, that all other emotions were useless and frivolous. The only ones that would ever help them were fear and anger. She had leaned into it and made those feelings her home. Dominic had never been able to do the same, always aching for something better, something softer. He hated the wild, soul-gripping strength of fear, and the way it infected every part of his heart. And now, he was going to die with it as his last thought, his last friend, his last anything.

They dragged him screaming from the woods and into the clearing, the glow of that old glass building pulsing in the night. He flailed, but they were more than enough to keep hold of him. The phone was gone, he realized. Had they taken it and hung up or left it there in the woods?

The door opened, dozens of figures standing around in their robes and hoods. Cliché motherfuckers, he thought but bit back the fury and begged instead—still hoping against hope. “Please! Just let me go!”

The figures swayed and moaned their strange, melodious chants, side-by-side like faceless lemmings in the dark.

The old greenhouse was warm, the space inside cleared but for an alter at one end and a long dining table in front of it. Their voices echoed inside, rising up against the dirt-coated glass walls. They had no faces—these people, he knew most of them. He had spent months at their compound thinking he had found a home, but it had all been a lie. He had been a fool, and Annie had been right. There was no easy out. There were no homes. Just monsters with hungry needs of their own.

Dominic let out another ragged scream, body bowing when they put him down on that table and cuffed his arms overhead. “Fuck you! I hate you! I hope you all die for this!” he shouted, feeling that rage pour into his heart like the infectious, molten substance it was. He laughed through his tears, his voice echoing over their chanting and moaning. They would die for this, he realized. They would all pay. But it was only a small comfort to him now—not nearly enough.

One man, without a hood drawn, stood up at the alter overhead, and Dominic recognized him. Benjamin stared back at him for a long minute. They had been in the same foster home for a year when they were twelve and reconnected a couple times since. The last time had been when Benny heard about this commune where they could get away from it all, “it all” being the gloom of the city, the shitty jobs Dominic could never quite hold on to, and the drugs that always left him feeling hollowed out and lost. It was supposed to be a place full of sunshine, fresh air, and freedom. But what had really convinced Dominic was the way Benny had said “family.” He promised that was what it was like, up here in the woods. That it would be like finally coming home—finally finding his family.

“Benny… I want to leave.” Dominic managed to choke out the words.

Benny winced subtly, the perfect mix of remorse and excitement all pressed under the numbing weight of his high. Dominic knew what Benny looked like high—his eyes glassy and red-rimmed and his mouth slack in the corners. He was shirtless, jeans riding low on his hips, and the candlelight made the sheen of sweat on his brown skin glimmer like stars.

The chanting grew louder, the robed figures pressing closer. Two of the hooded figures rounded the table, holding a stag mask between them. Dominic struggled, but they placed it over his face, the weight pinning his head back. It stunk inside, warm and animal. He screamed and the sound echoed back on him. He could barely see through the slits of the eyes, catching Benny’s face just before he donned a wolf mask and picked up a slender knife.

Dominic struggled anew, even knowing it was pointless. He struggled and screamed and kicked, sounds growing only louder when the knife sunk into his chest.

He realized, in the last moments of his life, that family had always been bloodshed and struggle. It had always been a fight to survive. But family had also been the people fighting to keep him alive. Family had been the one person that ever fought for Dominic. And he knew, without a doubt, that his last phone call would bring her down on these people like lightning on dry grass. They thought they knew some secret of the universe—that they could summon a demon.

But they had no idea that he had already called one.

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Writing The Wicker Witch

I have a couple projects in the works this year and among them are a few horror novellas/novels I’m writing and editing. I usually set aside a few weeks to write my first drafts. They’re sloppy but I get them done and then work on edits later on.

Last month I wrote my first draft of a work I’m currently calling The Wicker Witch. The first week went super smooth, the second got a little bumpy.

I dedicated a couple weeks to it and wrote five thousand words a day. My goal for the project was 50k but that was really just a guess. I wasn’t sure if it would come out longer or shorter.

I swear, I sent my dad a text first. He replied and that led to me calling him up at his 1:15am to talk about bridges for my book.

So the second week didn’t go quite as smooth as the first but I managed to stay on target for my word count. It went over the estimated 50k and into a third week. But it’s done!

And this is pretty much what it looks like! I write all my first drafts on Scrivener because you can have the outline in the same screen as well as a sidebar with character cards and this pretty little project target thingy!

Now, I should be on to editing this or one of the other finished first drafts on my desk BUT I jumped on another novella outline I had ready while I was still on a writing kick.

So, wish me luck! Because now I’m writing a novella about a demon and a mobster on a joyride!

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2018 Recap

What happened in 2018?

I didn’t do all of my resolutions for last year, and it wasn’t all amazing all the time, but here are the highlights!

  • I became lactose intolerant. It happened all of a sudden. It was awful. I miss eating cheese without having to take a pill first BUT for the first time in my life I don’t have the acne face of a fourteen year old. It turns out, cheese was my enemy all along.
  • I published my first ever horror novel, Infernal, with Grinning Skull Press! I’m so excited to have it out in the world.
  • I discovered audio-books. When I was younger I couldn’t listen to books because I got distracted and stopped paying attention. I went on with life believing that I couldn’t listen to audio-books. I WAS WRONG! I spend so much time outside walking or at the gym and this is perfect! I love it. I can finally multitask reading.
  • I wrote another horror and outlined a few more!
  • I discovered Stephen King. I know, I’m behind. I tried reading Stephen King as a kid and totally hated it. I was reading fantasy almost exclusively back then and doing it for escapism. Stephen King’s work was just too close to reality for my younger self and I didn’t get it or appreciate it. I went on from there with the continued assumption that Mr. King and I did not jive. The truth is, I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t at the point in my life where I would appreciate his books. But I am now and OH MY GOSH there are so many to read! So far I’ve consumed: Carrie, Cujo, In the Tall Grass, A Good Marriage, The Outsider, Joyland, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. <3
  • World Weaver Press published the second book of my Crowns & Ash series, Detox in Letters! And @writendesk did live tweeting while reading it and it was one of the coolest, most thrilling, events of my life!
  • I visited my family in California for my mom’s wedding party, survived the aggressive heat, and ate matcha soft-serve in a fish shaped cone in San Francisco!
  • I wrote a rough ROUGH first draft of book 4 of the Crowns & Ash series and sent the 3rd off to my amazing editor, Laura Harvey!

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