New novel: WINDWALKER'S MATE

This coming Tuesday, April 1, Amber Quill Press (www.amberquill.com) will release my Lovecraftian romance WINDWALKER’S MATE. This novel revisits one of my favorite themes, union between human and nonhuman beings, although in this case the union is more like rape. As a teenage runaway, Shannon took refuge in a small cult run by the father of Nathan, two years older than she. In a ritual to summon the Windwalker, the entity possessed Nathan, and Shannon became pregnant. Now Nathan’s father, almost five years later, tries to make contact with the little boy, whose existence Nathan has been unaware of. The time for the Windwalker’s child to open the Gate between worlds draws near. I had fun trying to imagine a four-year-old boy who bears the genes of a monster from another space-time continuum. Here’s an excerpt, in which Shannon has just heard thunder from a clear sky and her son Daniel chanting in an unknown language:

She dashed to the window and looked out. She saw no clouds except for a few stray puffs of white. At the same instant, she heard both televisions, in her bedroom and the living room, switch on. A few seconds later, the air conditioner cycled on.

A wind sprang up and lashed the trees. Shannon whirled around to find Daniel still chanting. “What are you singing? Stop it!”

He fell silent and stared at her as if shocked by the rebuke. The TVs and the air conditioner cut off. When she glanced out the window again, she noticed the traffic light in the next block had gone out, too. She heard the squeal of brakes as a car swerved on the way through the intersection.

“Daniel, turn the electricity back on.” The shrill pitch of her own voice reminded her to take a deep breath.

“I don’t know how.” He sounded close to tears.

Poor kid, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he’d done anything at all. Maybe she was losing her mind, to think her child had that kind of power.

“Do you know what did—” she started to ask. She stopped in shock when the sky turned neon purple.

She clenched her fingers on the window sill. The gale still howled around the house, but only there. Branches on trees over a block away didn’t move.

The sky cracked.

She stared in horror at the jagged line of eldritch light. “Make it stop,” she whispered. “Please make it stop.” If the crack widened and that gigantic eye beamed upon her again, she feared she would shatter into a million fragments and never become whole again.

“Mommy?” Daniel’s whimper tore her away from the window.

Falling to her knees, she wrapped him in her arms. “It’s all right.” She rocked him back and forth, praying the lie would become true.

Daniel babbled a string of unintelligible sounds. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke one word. The wind stopped. The sickly light vanished. With a glance over her shoulder, Shannon confirmed that the sky looked normal again. Except that for an instant she saw it as a painted stage backdrop, only a flimsy sheet of cardboard covering black depths of nothingness.

“Honey, can you tell me what just happened?”

“Daddy wanted me to open a door.” He rubbed his eyes and squirmed.

Suppressing a shudder, she relaxed her hold on him. “Don’t do it! It’s dangerous.”

“I can’t. It’s not time yet.”

-end of excerpt-