Hi All!

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!

Sid