Your Next Read is Now Boarding
A crisp, tense, international modern fantasy! In print, ebook, and audiobook
Read it now!Imaginative stories. Rich settings. Desperate characters. Stylish prose.
Demon +
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…because it’s the only world we get, and because we inherit it, it seems permanent, and dependable.
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My recent series on inspirations for my novel, The Demon in Business Class.
A Valentine to The Alexandria Quartet
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Begin at the beginning! In this opening excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, meet Zarabeth, who both sinks and rises when her office gives her bad news…
APRIL 2009
BANKRUPTCY – You Need Help
Chapter 1 — Washington, DC
In the fake-oak-paneled conference room, Zarabeth Battrie found a dozen others standing. All looked wilted and worn, with bunched shirts and bowing ankles. The plastic tables were gone, the plastic chairs stacked in the corner. More people arrived but no one unstacked the chairs. A herd instinct, Zarabeth decided, to keep a clear path for fleeing.
A natty beige man in a crisp blue plaid suit came in, pushing a low gray plastic cart with stacks of documents. If the standing people surprised him, he didn’t show it. With practiced ease he lowered the room’s screen, plugged in his powerstrip. Someone passed the documents around but no one spoke. In the silence, Zarabeth felt anxieties around her, about money, status, children, groping her like fevered predictable hands. Too intimate, these people’s worries in her skin when she didn’t know their names, or want to. She shook them off, pushed through to the front so as not to stare at men’s backs all meeting.
About me
I’m from Washington DC, USA, and I live in the city now with my family. I’m the only child of Polish immigrants. The USA is my home culture, but I felt incompletely connected to it growing up, and had to find my own ways to bridge the gap. I suppose this has made me open to bridging, and also open to gaps. Social / loner, classicist / punk, contented / bored. That slash is the attractor I orbit, calmly / uncomfortably.
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