Hello, and Happy December!
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!
And here are those links once again:
Happy reading!
Sid Stark
Sid Stark, Academic Suspense Author 