…because it’s the only world we get, and because we inherit it, it seems permanent, and dependable.
Category: homepage
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Video – The Book Break
Host Melissa Martinez interviews me about Demon, my Tarot, and more!
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From the vaults…
January 2021 – this month’s selection from the vaults is one of my most popular posts, from 2012, about my spiritual beliefs –
Dark Consciousness
I have decided to come clean. I am not an atheist.
People who note the Abrahamic and Gothic mythologies behind my novel might be a little surprised to hear I ever thought I was an atheist. Thing is, they’re my mythologies too. I’m as entitled to use them to tell my difficult tales as the wonky Athenians were when they took up PTSD through the lens of oracles and furies.
But I thought I was an atheist. …
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Excerpt – Chapter 8
In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, Gabriel and his boss try to recruit a criminal with a secret hobby, and a special talent…
from Chapter 8 – San Francisco
In the silent dim gray, the limousine’s facing benches seemed less car than train. Gabriel remembered long rides in Russia, bundled up in the cold cheap seats. The memory grew immediate, the start of a dream he shook off. The limousine had stopped.
Gabriel followed Thorn out to face a bluer brighter sky above a boarded-up building that stank of urine and rat. The rest of the street looked like anyplace: market, laundry, nail salon, carry-out Chinese, bank. As they walked Gabriel oriented himself. Van Ness behind them. The bar where he’d met Gita was only a few blocks away. Gita would find all this exciting.
Thorn led him to the nail salon. “It’s downstairs. All I know is we’ll get in.”
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Excerpt – Chapter 12
In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, in a hotel bar in Aberdeen, Scotland, two people meet cute … not so cute.
Chapter 12 — Aberdeen
Gosh she was pretty.
“The bartender comes and goes,” Gabriel told her. “He helps in the kitchen.” Her face was a tangram of sharp ellipses: pointed chin, long nose, tall forehead, wide mouth. He smelled cucumber from the hotel soap, lemongrass shampoo, old smoke. “Shame about the weather.”
“Yep.” The bartender returned. In glasses and a gray mustache, he looked like a squirrel. “White rum?” Zarabeth asked. “Diet cola. Stiff, please. With a lime.”
“On my tab, please,” Gabriel told the bartender.
“Thank you, Gabriel.” She slid off her barstool gingerly, walked around him and took the stool to his right, at the end of the bar. Her scent rust and clay, dry dust of dead leaves. “My first night, here and in Scotland. You?”
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Excerpt – Chapter 1
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 HelpChapter 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.
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On This Site
There’s more than just my novel! Interviews, essays, tech articles, and other great reads.
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Excerpt – Chapter 31
In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, Zarabeth is sent to Las Vegas after surviving an encounter with angels. Turns out, there are side effects — but an immortal is willing to guide Zarabeth to her next adventure…
from Chapter 31 – Las Vegas
At eight-thirty Zarabeth sat at a small piano bar off the casino lobby. Dark eyeliner, red skirt-suit, tall black heels, cheap watches. The bartender lit her cigarettes. Fun to be classy. Two drinks later she wore the feeling out of the bar like a psychic fur stole. She stood outside to scan taxis and town cars.
“Zazzy Boots!” Out the back window of a limousine, a familiar face. Toothy smile and long heavy nose, a black derby on her curly black hair. “Get over here!”
The vanity pictures in Janice Goldman’s glass Los Angeles office dated to Zarabeth’s childhood, movie stars with permed curls and narrow ties. Janice had the same face in all of them. Soon after, Missy had shown her a picture of Great-Grandmother Johnson as a single young flapper, arm in arm with Janice. “A different name back then,” Missy had said.
