I’m sitting here trying to stay warm on an unusually chilly weekend between LDOC (Last Day of Class; our campus was closed yesterday due to wintry weather) and exam week, and I thought I’d share another sneak peek of a bonus story for my Kickstarter prelaunch while I wait to see if we’ll get snow during my scheduled exam period on Monday morning. So far it’s looking likely. Thank goodness for Zoom.
But back to the Kickstarter. It’s for signed copies of any or all of the books in the Rowena Halley series, plus some things like the audiobook of Terminal Degree and some new bonus stories. It’s a pretty low-key, low-bling affair, but if you want personalized, hand-signed copies of any of the books (including ebooks–it’s now possible to personally sign ebooks!), or any of the bonus stories, this is the place to get them.
Speaking of bonus stories, I’m writing a series of very short stories as free prelaunch bonuses. To get them, all you need to do is follow the prelaunch here.
The bonus stories stories are posted in the prelaunch updates. The first one is already up. The second one will be posted shortly, so if you follow the prelaunch now, you should get notified when it goes up. A preview is below:
***
Alex stared at the text for a moment. Then he saw the saw the time at the top of his phone, wrestled his car door open—really need to get that fixed. Maybe I’ll have enough saved up by winter break— and set off at a brisk jog. Didn’t want to be late for the first faculty meeting of the semester. Especially because he’d been sitting in his car texting his toxic ex-girlfriend. That shit was for teenagers, not war heroes—some fucking hero!—in their mid-thirties with Ivy League PhDs and faculty positions at schools in the Mid-Atlantic.
Tell that to your heart. It’s never matured past fifteen.
***
This particular story starts a few minutes before the beginning of Campus Confidential, and overlaps with it. It’s the first story from Alex’s point of view, so it’s unique.
If you’d like to read the rest of the story, plus the other free prelaunch bonuses, just go to the prelaunch page and hit “Notify me on launch.” This doesn’t lock you into anything, it just means you’ll get notified whenever a new story is posted–and, of course, when the campaign launches, although you are completely free to ignore that information and not back it.
Meanwhile, if you’re in the freeze zone, stay warm, and happy reading!
This bonus story is already up on the prelaunch updates for the Kickstarter!
I hope you’re having a good pre-holiday run! I wanted to give you a sneak peek of some bonus stories I’ve been working on. These are very short little vignettes that will only be available to prelaunch followers of my Kickstarter for signed copies of the complete Rowena series. As part of it, there will be several Kickstarter-exclusive bonus stories, some as part of the prelaunch, some as part of the actual campaign.
To get the first set of stories, all you have to do is follow the campaign prelaunch! The stories will be shared for free with all followers periodically throughout the prelaunch period. To make it clear: these stories will be completely free and there’s no obligation to back the campaign, just to follow the prelaunch.
Here’s the opening paragraphs of the first little bonus vignette. Eagle-eyed readers will spot references to the first chapter of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita:
It was the kind of hot May evening you got sometimes in Moscow that, if you knew your Russian literature, might make you expect Satan to come up and proffer you a business card covered in strange foreign writing.
The card currently being proffered to Dima did, in fact, have strange foreign writing on it, or at least English. He wasn’t sure yet whether or not it was from Satan.
This story takes place prior to the events of the series itself. It’s a kind of prequel to the prequel, you might say. Again, to get the rest of the story, and other bonus prequel stories, all you have to do is follow the Kickstarter campaign prelaunch.
Happy New Year! May 2025 be a year of peace and plenty for all.
Sadly, I was just texting with a Chechen acquaintance about the Ukrainian drone strikes on Grozny, so not really an upbeat end to 2024/start to 2025. If the way you greet the New Year is the way you’ll spend it, then this is not very promising. However, I’d like to think that we have a certain amount of control over our actions, and can consciously choose to act for the better.
Which, as it happens, is a recurring theme in Terminal Degree, which is out now! The ebook and paperback are out today, with the audiobook to follow shortly (I hope). Universal link here. (As a side note, it looks like Kobo may be giving out an old file, even though from my end it’s telling me it has the updated, most recent draft. Sigh… If you get it from Kobo, you will get the complete book, but there might be a few extra typos and maybe some hinky formatting. If you think you got the old file and you’d like the new one, let me know and I’ll send it to you).
Anyway, Terminal Degree starts on December 31st, and is full of themes of karma (kind of a theme of the entire series), redemption (ditto), and helping each other (actually, also kind of ditto). Frankly, from where I’m sitting right now, we as a species could really use a lot of all three. I hope that Terminal Degreeprovides a little hope to its readers, in amongst all the darkness that the characters are navigating.
Cover and blurb below, and once again, wishing you peace, love, and joy for 2025!
Rowena Halley has hit a dead end. Will it leave her dead?
Russian professor Rowena Halley is at the end of her money, the end of her job contract, the end of her romantic hopes…the end of her tether. And just when she thinks she can’t take any more, she gets dragged into not one, but two sticky situations by her nearest and dearest. Her friend Mel needs her help dealing with a scammer, and her long-lost paternal grandparents want her back in their lives—with cultish strings attached.
But Rowena has even bigger problems. Her ex-fiancé, opposition Russian journalist Dima Kuznetsov, comes to America, bringing old history and new danger with him. Rowena wants to believe they have a future as a couple. The mercenaries and hitmen Dima has been tangling with over the years could mean they don’t have a future, period. And revelations about Dima’s most recent deal with the Devil cause Rowena to doubt their chances to make a life together, even if they do survive.
Rowena wants a happy ending for everyone. But with this many bad guys mad at her, the ending she’s most likely to get is the terminal kind.
Content warning: This book contains an Air Force veteran, an officer in the Marines, and an ex-member of the Russian OMON. The language is accordingly salty.
Well, after a couple of busy months, I’m excited to announce that Terminal Degree is finally available for preorder! Yes, at last, it’s (almost) here! The official release date is December 31st.
Funnily enough, it starts on December 31, 2016, at a time when the US was in a state of doubt and confusion during the interregnum period between the election of Donald Trump and the start of his administration. And where do we find ourselves now? That wasn’t what I was consciously expecting when I was actually writing the book, but art is often smarter than logic that way. The book is about a lot of things, but one of them is what it’s like to be living in modern-day America, and, well, I guess we still have a lot of the same problems.
Anyway, the cover and blurb are below, and the link to preorder it is here. And if you’re not on my ARC team but you’d like to be, reply to this email and I’ll add you. I’m planning to send out the ARCs in a couple of weeks, so a month before the release. Hopefully I’ll be finished at least with the recording of the audiobook by then–I’ve had some annoying technical difficulties that have delayed me. I now have a new, more expensive microphone, and have been hard at work recording as much as time and my throat permits (doing John and Dima’s voices tends to frack up my vocal cords, and they both feature heavily in this book).
Cover and blurb below!
Rowena Halley has hit a dead end. Will it leave her dead?
Russian professor Rowena Halley is at the end of her money, the end of her job contract, the end of her romantic hopes…the end of her tether. And just when she thinks she can’t take any more, she gets dragged into not one, but two sticky situations by her nearest and dearest. Her friend Mel needs her help dealing with a scammer, and her long-lost paternal grandparents want her back in their lives—with cultish strings attached.
But Rowena has even bigger problems. Her ex-fiancé, opposition Russian journalist Dima Kuznetsov, comes to America, bringing old history and new danger with him. Rowena wants to believe they have a future as a couple. The mercenaries and hitmen Dima has been tangling with over the years could mean they don’t have a future, period. And revelations about Dima’s most recent deal with the Devil cause Rowena to doubt their chances to make a life together, even if they do survive.
Rowena wants a happy ending for everyone. But with this many bad guys mad at her, the ending she’s most likely to get is the terminal kind.
Content warning: This book contains an Air Force veteran, an officer in the Marines, and an ex-member of the Russian OMON. The language is accordingly salty.
***
There you have it! This book has been a long time in the making (and is, fair warning, accordingly long), but I’m glad it’s finally almost ready to go out into the world. Here‘s the preorder link again, and please let me know if you’d like to join the ARC team!
I’m writing to you from a rather rainy day here on the East Coast. This spring seems determined to make up for the warm, dry autumn we had last year by being cold and damp. Not snowy, you understand: there’s been zero snow. But there’s been a lot of chilly rain. Today at least has had the grace to be reminiscent of a nice soft day in the British Isles, so I’m hoping that it will do my garden some good.
I had great plans to have a first draft of Terminal Degree, the last book in the Rowena Halley series, done by now. Hahahahaha! While the words have flowed pretty easily, tying up all the threads of the previous books means that it will be pretty long. AND I’ve gotten sucked into a super-secret side project which will probably never see the light of day, but which has taken up a lot of my writing time.
(Never fear: I’ll try to incorporate bits of the super-secret side project into my main stories if I can’t publish it, so it won’t go to waste).
However, I have brought Rowena and Dima all the way from January to March. Their relationship is still a giant question mark hanging over their heads, though, and Dima has to set off on his own super-secret side project. I’m including a little excerpt from the March section here to whet your appetite 🙂
But first! All my books are free this week only on the Smashwords Read an Ebook Week sale! Check out the main page here and my personal page here.
And now, at long last, another tense exchange between Rowena and Dima:
***
Dima left early the next morning. He knocked on my door before dawn. When I opened it, he stood there for a long time, looking at me.
“Come in,” I said.
He shook his head. “If I come in, I’ll never leave. I’d better go. I’ll try to let you know I’m okay, but I don’t know how often I’ll be able to be in touch.”
“Try to contact us if you can,” I told him. “We worry. A lot.”
He took a deep breath in and out. “Then I’ll try.” He smiled bleakly. “I must be getting old. This is the first time I don’t want to go on an assignment. I used to thirst for this kind of thing like the water of life. But now I just want to stay here with you and Mama. Some new stage of life, or something like that.”
“I think Pushkin said something clever about that, but I can’t remember it,” I said.
“Yeah…blessed is he who…I can’t remember the rest, either. Anyway.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I’d better go.”
“Come back soon,” I said. “You owe me, remember?”
Something flared in his eyes. He was—deliberately, I thought, with effort—not smiling, but the dimple on his left cheek flexed into view for a second. I could tell, as surely as if his body were mine, that warmth was spreading through him at the memory of last night. “And you always collect on your debts, is that you’re telling me?”
“I intend to collect on this one,” I said. “As God is my witness, I intend to collect on this one.” I’d meant it to be a joke, but it came out as a solemn vow.
“Then pray for me, Inna. Pray for me, and I’ll return.”
“I will,” I promised.
He reached out. His hand hovered in front of my face for a moment, before one finger brushed my lips, soft as a butterfly. He inhaled sharply and pulled his hand away.
“Go with God, Inna,” he said.
“You too,” I told him.
He turned and left. I watched him walk down the stairs and into the pre-dawn semi-darkness. He held the hand that had touched my lips over his mouth the whole way, as if restraining a desperate cry of despair—or inhaling every last atom of a scent only he could sense. Then he was gone.
***
You will be the first to know when Terminal Degree is finished. Meanwhile, you can pick up all my books, plus many others, in the Smashwords Read an Ebook Week sale! Happy reading!
As you no doubt already know, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was declared dead by prison authorities yesterday. As of this morning, his team has confirmed they have received a death notice, but say they have not yet been allowed to see the body.
Cue the conspiracy theories. Already many, including my students, are convinced he was murdered at the behest of the Russian government or Putin personally. Which is possible. It’s also entirely possible that what the prison authorities are saying is exactly what happened: He suddenly collapsed and died from an embolism, with no additional help from poison, beatings, etc. He had apparently been growing increasingly frail, and Arctic penal colonies are notoriously bad for health, especially on top of the near-fatal poisoning in 2021. Perhaps one day we will know exactly what happened, but at the moment it’s mainly wild speculation.
Rather than speculating on Navalny’s precise cause of death, I thought I’d speculate on something very different. What, I’ve been asking myself ever since I saw the headlines yesterday morning, was it all for? What, exactly, did Navalny accomplish with all this?
Navalny had many gifts. He was handsome, charismatic, witty, intelligent, an excellent writer, and possessed more than enough courage for his convictions. But ultimately, what will his legacy be? Has he achieved what he set out to achieve; namely, the overthrow of Putin and the reform of the Russian government?
A sober examination of the facts suggests that he achieved none of those aims, and may in fact have made matters worse by his head-on challenge to the system (more on that later). Meanwhile, he endangered his family, caused his brother to be sent to prison, and finally died without, as far as I know, leaving behind any significant body of work that will live beyond his current notoriety. Perhaps we will one day discover the manuscript to his great work of art or philosophical treatise, but one doubts it. One suspects that he was too busy trying to batter down the entire Russian government with his bare head to produce anything substantive.
As far as I can tell, Navalny got caught up in a fatal flaw we humans (especially of the male variety) are extremely prone to: a dominance struggle. I’ve been studying the psychology and neuroscience of violence as part of my research, and one of the most dangerous and destructive traps people and nations can fall into is a dominance struggle in which both sides are convinced they can and must win. Normally one side is deluded, but their certainty that victory is just around the corner causes them to go on fighting long after they should make a tactical withdrawal and rethink their strategy. Their aggression, meanwhile, triggers more aggression from the other side, leading to an escalation of violence and repression and/or a war of attrition (literal or figurative) in which everyone ultimately loses.
Of course, persistence is essential to achieving anything worthwhile. The trick is knowing the difference between persistence and pigheaded stubbornness that will destroy you and everything you’re striving for. Many of us, alas, have a very hard time drawing that line, and it seems that Navalny did as well.
When he returned to Russia after recovering from the attempted poisoning in 2021, many people wondered why. He knew he would be probably be arrested on the spot, and indeed he was. (If you’re now fulminating against the barbarism of the Russian government and Russian society, consider the fates of similar characters in the West, such as Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. While they are all currently still alive, they have all faced lengthy prison sentences and, in Snowden’s case, the possibility of the death penalty).
I’ve also been thinking about why Navalny returned. When he did it, I assumed it was because he was demonstrating the courage of his convictions and his commitment to Russia, and I have no doubt that was part of it. He could have remained in the West, but he’d probably have had to earn his bread by writing op-eds for Western publications explaining why Russia was evil and needed to be destroyed. Maybe he couldn’t stomach that. Maybe he also couldn’t stomach the thought of becoming just another cranky Russian emigre. Maybe he was addicted to the fame and adulation he was receiving, and was deluded enough to believe he could parlay it into actual power.
We’ll probably never know that either. What we can know is that these head-on dominance struggles rarely achieve what we want them to achieve. The most likely outcome from them is that everybody loses. To actually achieve real change, we often need to implement the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove (MT 10:16), rather than the bullheadedness of the, well, bull.
As it happens, we have another famous Russian, one who unquestionably left behind a substantive legacy, for thoughts on how one might do that. Lev Tolstoy’s concept of nonresistence to evil, developed most thoroughly in his treatise The Kingdom of God is Within You, which I am currently reading, gives us pointers on how we might go about creating good rather than succumbing to evil. It focuses mainly on not falling into a vengeance spiral (something to which we humans are also extremely prone), but I think it could also apply to these dominance struggles that are so deadly. We talk about fighting fire with fire, but too much of that can burn the whole world down (don’t be surprised if you see that line appear again elsewhere, because I’m definitely keeping it).
These are all thoughts I’ve been contemplating as I work on Terminal Degree and consider how best to bring Rowena and Dima’s story to a (temporary) close. Dima is loosely based on a number of real-life prototypes, including Alexei Navalny. In fiction, though, we have the opportunity to run simulations and redo things that have gone wrong in real life. Perhaps the fictional Dima will learn from the real-life Alexei how to have less of the bull and more of the dove in his heart. At the moment, though, I can only conclude by wishing вечная память (eternal memory, an orthodox blessing) for Alexei Navalny. May he be at peace.
Hope your 2024 is continuing to go well–January is such a long month, isn’t it? If you’ve been hit by the various storms that have been sweeping across North America, I hope they haven’t been too exciting. We’ve had thunderstorms, floods, deep freezes, and now flooding again, but so far we’ve at least avoided tornados (knock on wood).
I’m continuing to work on Terminal Degree, the last (planned) book in the Doctor Rowena Halley series. It’s currently looking like it’s going to be rather long, so I don’t have a good idea of when it will be finished, but I thought I’d share a little more of the creative process behind it.
But first, it’s the last weekend of the Strong Women promo, with dozens of free books, including mine! Check it out here.
As I’ve mentioned before, part of my creative process can include specific songs and playlists to either set the mood or provide ideas for plot and character. Total Immersionhad the songs of Florence + the Machine as a running thread throughout the story, for example, while the character Mel listens to the songs of Hayley Kiyoko.
When I started writing Total Immersion, I happened to be listening to “I Wish It Would Rain Down” by Phil Collins (there’s that wild weather again). To be honest, I haven’t quite worked out how the song is going to feature in the book yet, but I have a strong feeling that it needs to. The problem is that it’s a song about endings, and while Terminal Degree will have lots of endings in it, as you might guess from the title, it will also have lots of beginnings, especially for the complex romantic lives of the series’ main characters. So while the melancholy of “I Wish It Would Rain Down” is part of the mood I’m going for, it’s only one part of what is looking to be a long and complicated book.
Then–and I don’t even remember how or why–I went on a Gary Allan kick. I’ve included his songs in earlier books, specifically in relation to Rowena’s brother John, who is a fan. This time, I haven’t name-dropped Gary Allan (yet–the book is still far from finished), but I have included a side plot about John based on the song “Man to Man.” How this will turn out is still to be determined.
Terminal Degree is supposed to end on a hopeful note (spoiler alert!), especially (further spoiler alert!) for the characters’ personal lives. A song I’ve had on repeat while working on scenes involving second-chance romance (because there’s going to be some of that, of course!) is “Bartender” by James Blunt. In fact, I’ve been binge-listening James Blunt for the past several weeks, as his music is full of themes that feature heavily in the stories, such as trauma, self-criticism, and regret. If that sounds too sad, it’s not! At least, I find James Blunt’s music delightful, with catchy tunes and unexpected moments of humor, and I’d like to think my books have glimmers of humor and hope as well.
What about you? Are you listening to anything you’d like to share right now? I’m always happy to get more listening recommendations!
Oh, and here’s that link to the Strong Women book giveaway again.
I hope the new year is starting out well for you, wherever and however you are meeting it. Here it’s currently pouring rain. The pets are unhappy about it, but after the drought we had this fall, we probably need all the rain we can get. It was supposed to be sleet/freezing rain, but so far it’s just been regular old rain, albeit cold and in large quantities. Probably this is a good thing, although it’s not very wintry.
I’ve got another excerpt from Terminal Degree, which as it happens takes place at the beginning of January, but first, a couple of announcements/offers.
First of all, Jamison Hill‘s new novel, Something’s Wrong with Micah, is discounted to $2.99 this week. For those of you who don’t know, which I assume is many of you, Jamison Hill is an author who’s been largely bedbound for a number of years for somewhat mysterious reasons that probably involve Lyme disease. Despite this, he’s managed to do an impressive amount of writing (on his phone, I believe!) and publish a regular blog, a number of articles, and two books.
I’m sharing the book both because I think it’s worth reading, and because Jamison’s experience could be where my character Mel is heading if she doesn’t get her mysterious health problems under control, something that’s part of the excerpt I’ll be sharing at the bottom of this email. (This isn’t a threat–I’m not planning to send Mel down that path–I don’t think–but just to show what the stakes are for her).
The other announcement/promo I want to share is the Strong Women book giveaway on Bookfunnel. It’s got dozens of books in a wide variety of genres, including mine :), but all featuring strong heroines. Check it out below!
And now, at long last, the promised excerpt from Terminal Degree! As a reminder, this is the planned last novel in the Doctor Rowena Halley series. So the pressure’s on to wrap things up! Frankly, I suspect I’m going to have to do a spinoff (maybe several spinoffs) to deal with all my loose ends, but I am at least trying to bring the main threads of Rowena’s story together here.
This excerpt is the end of the first chapter. Rowena and her friend Mel, she of the mysterious illness that has recently been diagnosed as Lyme disease, are spending New Year’s Eve together. They’re hoping for some peace and quiet before the start of the semester. But of course, their phones (the blessing and curse of modern existence!) interrupt their evening with some exciting/alarming notifications…
***
“Do you want anything to eat? Should we actually cook this feast we’ve planned?”
She made a face. “I’ve got to eat something, ‘cause I’ve got to take my next dose of doxycycline, and if I don’t chase it with something high-fat, I’ll barf like…well, you get the picture. But I don’t want to eat anything.”
“How much longer do you have to take it?” Mel had—finally—been diagnosed with Lyme disease at the end of last semester, after a year of increasingly bizarre symptoms that ranged from sudden bouts of the flu to half her face going paralyzed. She had started taking antibiotics over winter break. Since the treatment itself could be pretty debilitating, the hope was to get through the worst of it before the start of the next semester.
“I’ve got one more week of this round. But that’s just the first round. Some people get better after one round. Some people have to take antibiotics for years, and still never get better.”
“Oh,” I said. “So, um…how do you feel?”
She shrugged. “My joint pain’s almost gone, and I’m not twitching as much as I used to. My face looks better, too, don’t you think?”
I leaned across my small table that served as both a working desk and a dining room table for entertaining, and peered at her face through my right eye, and then my left. From up close, I could see that her dark blonde hair in its boyish pixie cut was developing gray hairs around the temple, her wide, expressive mouth had fine lines from too much smiling and too much sun all around it, and there were dark blotches from permanent sun damage across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, I noticed for the first time, were blue-gray with flecks of green and gold. We were so close, our breathing had synchronized.
I jerked back. “It looks perfectly symmetrical.”
“It wasn’t perfectly symmetrical before the Bell’s palsy, but thanks. It feels like it all works fine again, so that’s great. Some things are great.”
“But?”
“But I feel tired as shit, and every time I eat something, it feels like a poison bomb’s going off inside of me. It was like that before, but the doxy ain’t fuckin’ helping, I tell you what.”
“Maybe that will go away when you go off it, and you’ll just feel better,” I said. “Maybe a week from now, you’ll be done with this and you’ll be completely cured.”
She gave me a smile. It was a kind, condescending smile, the kind you give a little child who’s just said something ridiculously hopeful and doesn’t know not to believe her own words. She’d never given me a smile like that before.
I pulled back a little more. That smile said, “You think you know what I’m going through, but you don’t. I’m just too nice to point that out.”
Well, at least she didn’t say it out loud, I told myself.
“Let’s make supper,” I said. “Even if it doesn’t taste good, it’ll keep you from upchucking the pills that are going to cure you.”
“Yeah…is that your phone?”
Two loud pings had filled the apartment.
“I think it’s both our phones,” I said. We pulled out our phones. Indeed, mine had a message notification.
Darling Inna. Happy New Year! Wishing you joy and happiness. If all goes well, in 24 hours Mama and I will be with you in Atlanta!
The warmth that message washed over me insulated me from the chill coming from the other side of the table. It was only Mel’s muttered “Fuck, fuck, fuck” that brought me back to myself.
“What is it?”
She looked up from her phone. “Apparently I’ve just stolen a hundred grand.”
***
Golly! So, full disclosure: Mel’s problems are partly inspired by my own run-ins with scammers. When I wrote that chapter, I’d just been through several rounds of notifying the proper authorities after discovering that my identity had been stolen and used to file fraudulent unemployment claims. I have not been charged with stealing anything–yet–but it’s a sobering reminder of how easy it is to be a victim of fraud and identity theft. So I’m winding a narrative about scams and fraud throughout the book, with Mel on a quest to find her identity thief.
I’ve also added a third plotline to the story recently…but I think I’ll save that for next time. I hope you enjoyed the excerpt, and here are those links again:
Gosh, here we are, the end of the year barreling towards us like an oncoming train…hopefully it’s not that bad, but you get the picture.
I’m proud to say that I’ve been making decent progress on Terminal Degree, the next book in the Doctor Rowena Halley series. Well, I was making decent progress until final exams slammed into us all like a train…gotta stop with the train similes. Anyway, progress has been made. It’s still a long way from finished, so I haven’t even set a release date yet, but I’ve got over 25,000 words of a first draft down, which is a good start.
I thought I’d share a few of those words, but first, check out the Smashwords End of Year Sale, where you can get many, many books, including mine, for free! In fact, the four-book boxed set is currently being featured on the Mystery page 🙂
So do check that out, and here, as promised, is the excerpt from Terminal Degree. For a little background context, Dima and his mother have come to the US for medical treatment. The reunion between them and Rowena is fraught, and it gets even more fraught when Rowena discovers that Dima may be involved in some very questionable activities. This is the scene right after that, when Rowena goes to find Dima and ask him about the accusations she’s just heard. What will happen next? To be honest, I don’t actually know yet, since this is where I stopped in order to deal with a pile of final exams about the development of Russian literature and the consequences of the dissolution of the USSR. Hopefully by the time I get those graded, I’ll know what Dima’s up to. In the meantime, your guess is as good as mine…
***
After Frank hung up, I waited. And waited. And waited. An hour later, Dima still hadn’t come back.
Where are you? I texted.
I waited some more. Still nothing. It was now after 9:00pm. We should really be getting to bed.
I’ll just go check on him. He’d probably gone back to his apartment to take the call, and…what? Fallen asleep? Or maybe he was still on the phone, and I shouldn’t disturb him. Or maybe something terrible had happened to him…maybe whoever he was so concerned about had found him, and jumped him in the stairwell, and…and did I really want to go out into the darkness after him? What if the people after him were still there, waiting in the stairwell for me? What if going out there was the last thing I ever did? What if…
I shoved my feet into my shoes, my arms through the sleeves of my jacket, and my body out the door before I could come up with any more what ifs. Enough with the doom-mongering. Dima had probably fallen fast asleep on the couch after a very long and tiring day. I’d wake him up, we’d apologize to each other, and then we’d both head off to our respective beds, in preparation for another long and tiring day.
The parking lot was very dark. Most of the parking spaces were filled, with deep pools of shadow between and beneath the cars. The thin ring of longleaf pines that surrounded the complex seemed extra-tall and extra-deep, as if they had morphed into a hundred acres of trackless wilderness with the setting of the sun. A gust of wind blew through them, raising a sound from the needles like the whispering of secrets or the hissing of snakes. Clouds scudded across the sky, covering the slender crescent of the waxing moon and blotting out its faint light.
Walk! Just walk! My legs started carrying me past the dark cars and the darker wells of shadow underneath them. Nothing jumped out at me. My ankles tried to shrink in on themselves even so, away from the icy-hot grasp of ghostly hands they were sure were groping for them. Sweat trickled down my sides, and there was a strange, electric-shock-like crawling sensation up the back of my neck as the tiny, feeble hairs there tried to stand on end in a useless gesture of defense and protection.
I wonder if this is how Mel feels all the time? Part of her illness was a whole host of strange sensations, including the feeling of having a taser attached to the back of her neck and the power slowly being turned up.
I glanced behind me involuntarily. What had that sound been? Was someone coming up on me? Was there someone here in the parking lot with me, just out of sight?
It’s a dog, I told myself. Someone’s taking their dog out before bed. It’s probably that woman with the toy poodle who lives in the next building over. I squinted at the dark figure on the edge of my vision. No matter how much I strained my eyes, I couldn’t turn it into a woman and a toy poodle.
Are they coming this way? They’re coming this way! They’re coming right toward me! What should I do? Run? Back to my apartment? Or try to hide in the unlit stairwell ahead?
The dark figure seemed to be picking up speed. I broke into a half-jog. What was that sound? Like a goblin shriek…
“AAAAAGH!” Another figure, even bigger and darker than the one pursuing me, loomed out of the stairwell in front of me. Before I could turn and run, it grabbed my upper arms.
“AAA—“ I started to scream.
“Innochka! What’s the matter?”
“Dima! It’s you!”
“Yeah, it’s me. I came out looking for you, and you practically ran straight into my arms. Are you okay?” His grip tightened. “Is someone after you?”
I looked back. The goblin shrieks had resolved into the yapping of the toy poodle, who had dragged her owner over to greet her best friend, the mini-pinscher from the row of cottages along the edge of the complex. I could now make out the clear and unambiguous outlines of two rather small and unathletic women, who were standing and chatting in the middle of the parking lot while their dogs sniffed and circled each other.
“Only my own unbridled imagination.” I tried to say it lightly, but my voice cracked at the end of the sentence.
Dima looked around. “Even so, let’s get inside. You’re right to be worried about being outside alone after dark. Come on.” He turned and led me up the stairs to his apartment.
***
Yowza! Is Dima actually a hitman who’s a danger to everyone and anyone who gets in his way, including Rowena, or is it all a misunderstanding? I guess we’ll all (including me) find out soon!
Happy September! How are we (almost) in autumn already? To be honest, it hasn’t felt much like autumn around here yet–in fact, I think we just had the hottest week of the year. But lightning is currently flashing and rain is currently lashing against my windows, so maybe this storm is heralding the onset of fall.
I wanted (in between increasingly louder peals of thunder) to let you know about a couple of deals and promos I’m participating in this September with Under Review, my latest release. It’s been out for about a month now, and a huge thank-you to everyone who’s left a review for it so far! Of course, if you haven’t left a review yet but you feel so moved, reviews on any and all platforms are still very much appreciated!
Now, back to those deals and promos. First of all, Under Review is being featured this month in Barnes & Noble’s Top Indie Favorites collection. These books aren’t necessarily discounted, but it’s a hand-picked selection of indie books, many of which are under $5. You can check out the entire collection here and go straight to Under Reviewhere.
Second of all, I’ve currently got a series bundle promotion going on Google Play. This is a discount for the entire Doctor Rowena Halley series, ranging from 25% to 50% off, depending on how many books you get. The link is here. I do have to give a bit of a caveat emptor: this series bundle discount is a new thing that Google Play is trying out, and it seems a bit fiddly. When I go to the page, I only get a 5% discount, but when other people go to the page, they tell me they get a 50% discount. So if you got to the page and it’s not offering you 25-50% off for the series, reach out to Google Play or let me know and I will harass them about it some more 🙂
The storm that blew in while I was typing this was so intense that it caused my neighbor’s brush pile to go floating down the street, but we’re now back to blue skies just a few minutes later. Hopefully the rain did my gardens some good and didn’t destroy the project to redo my front walkway. I guess we’ll find out 🙂 Meanwhile, have a great day wherever you are, and happy reading!
Sid Stark, Academic Suspense Author 