Hello! And Happy 2024!
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:
As always, happy reading!
Sid
Sid Stark, Academic Suspense Author 