Hello!

I hope you are doing well, and if you are in the path of the various heat waves out there at the moment, that you are staying safe and cool. We are currently officially in Extreme Drought here, which I’m not happy about, but the weather just doesn’t seem to listen to me very much.

Along with the extreme drought and the heat, I’ve also been dealing with other strange and annoying things, like last month’s bat incursion that resulted in me getting the whole post-exposure rabies prophylaxis sequence. The good news is that it’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience and that if I should ever have another rabies exposure, I will only need to get a booster shot or two, rather than the whole sequence with the antiserum. 

But because of all that, I decided to cancel the Kickstarter I’d planned for my new story Spring Hope, and just put it up on KU instead. It’s now currently out and available–for free!–on Kindle here. 

It takes place about 25 years after the end of Terminal Degree (also currently free on all retailers here). I don’t want to go into too much detail about it for fear of spoilers, but it has a lot of stuff about topics that are currently in the news, like Long Covid and phasing out animal experimentation. It’s short, barely a novella, and features cats! Cover and blurb are below.

How can you hold onto hope when what you love most is in danger?

Rowena Halley’s life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. Yes, she got the job and the man and the family. She’s built the life she’d dreamed of for so long. But life throws curve balls. Like the phone call that turns her spring break plans upside down.

Next thing she knows, she’s pounding the mean streets of Chapel Hill in search of a very special cat. Then she finds out that more than one life is at stake. Can she find a win-win solution before it’s too late for everyone?

This uplifting cozy noir short read is set 25 years after the end of the Doctor Rowena Halley series and is approximately 17,000 words long. It touches on serious themes like Long Covid, climate change, and animal experimentation, but with an ultimately positive message. 

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Again, it’s free on Kindle this weekend (and last I checked, it was #1 in Animal Stories in the Amazon free store, which was a thrill and no mistake!) and the link is here. The rest of the books in the series are all either free or 99c too. The Amazon series link is here. 

Happy reading, and stay cool!

Sid Stark