Magic Thursday: Theresa Fuller Shares Memories of Her Childhood in Singapore

This mini-memoir by author Theresa Fuller is a totally fascinating insight into another culture. Enjoy!

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I drew heavily on my parents’ arranged marriage when I was writing The Girl Who Became a Goddess.

An arranged marriage is a marriage organized by relatives and friends. In Singapore, the zodiac is considered, as well as the ages of the two young people and their personalities. My mother was extremely young. I was told the reason for marrying her off; was her mother was ill. This is the same scenario for my protagonist, Chang E (also known as Chang Er or Chang O), whose own mother was dying.

My mother was also apparently very beautiful, and her family worried she would be carried off by some young man and despoiled. Looking at my father, I often wondered what possessed her to marry him, for she was thin and fair, while he was dark and fat. Personality-wise, they were almost opposites. She was a princess; he, the court magician. Her answer was always that she had to be obedient. My sister and I were the products of that marriage, which unfortunately, lasted just over ten years. And my grandmother, whose illness necessitated the marriage, died exactly one week after I was born. She named me, but that was all I knew of her.

Divorce, then and now, in Singapore is considered a disgrace. My best friend was so worried about my future, that she informed me of her parents’ decision to adopt me, to prevent me from becoming ‘havoc’, which basically, was Singapore slang for getting expelled from school, possibly becoming a drug addict and maybe even an unmarried mother. A slut.

I failed school that year.

My teachers transferred me to the next class in the hopes that I would do better. Thankfully, I did. Our lives, however, had changed forever. I would like to say that my sister and I went from a normal, middle-class family to being latch-key kids. But sadly, that would have been something. Instead, each school day we came home to find ourselves locked out of the house—no mother in sight.

We were forced to wait an hour or so until she returned. After a few days of this, I rebelled.

I grabbed my sister and made her stand with me in the middle of the courtyard of our block of Housing Development Board (HDB) flats, where every single neighbour would see us. When my mother got home from wherever she had been, she was horrified. From that day on, she always made sure she was home before the school bus dropped us off. But the victory wasn’t what I’d expected.

When we got home, we deposited our bags in the living room, then rushed out the door with her. We were still hardly ever home.

My mother had developed a gambling obsession. She travelled from house to house playing Mah Jong. I hated being in strangers’ homes. In some, there were children we could play with, or fight with. There was often nothing else to do. To prevent me from complaining—which I was becoming very good at—she would buy me books.

I lay on the cement floor and read, and nothing disturbed me. She got her peace, and I got introduced to the world of books.

I used books to escape what was a horrible situation. Later, when I became a mother myself, I felt drawn back into a world that had given me so much joy. It was then that I began to write.

At first, I wrote children’s picture books. I had a toddler at the time, and I guess that was a natural progression but then I began writing fantasy which was, and still is, my first love. And probably the direct result of growing up with all these folktales.

In The Girl Who Became a Goddess, I wrote about the folktales I grew up with. Being of Chinese descent and living in Singapore, I was soon familiar with the mousedeer–Sang Kancil—who danced on the backs of crocodiles. Then there were the legends from China, of which Chang E, the Moon Goddess, was one of, as well as the boy who became a cricket.

Living in Sydney, Australia, so far away from the jungles of Singapore and Malaysia, I wanted my children to understand the world I’d come from, the stories that had made me who I am today, because stories settle in your psyche and become a part of who you are.

Even telling my first born about Peter Rabbit took an interesting turn one day when I walked in on my Australian husband, who was telling our six-year old his Australian version of Peter Rabbit—how to skin a rabbit.

We take stories and turn them into our own—writing what we want to happen and thus creating a world which makes sense, and hopefully makes us happy.

I write about girls saving the world, and in the process, themselves.   

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Here is another of Theresa's books.
Available now! Amazon



She thought she could change the world...

When Lady Elizabeth Ada Lovelace, a beautiful, arrogant suffragette, purchased the 19th-century Algorithmic Engine in order to become the world's first programmer, she planned to break the shackles of inequality for Victorian women.

Until her world became that of the machine...

Instead she learns the true meaning of equality when she ends up trapped, brought down to the level of the machine. Inside the double-crossing computer, Elizabeth must match wits with a stubbornly idealistic ghost and a chillingly handsome doppelganger in the computer's endless series of mind games. But as the machine learns to become a sentient being, time is ticking away. Elizabeth finds herself falling in love with the ghost trapped in the machine. Together they are pitted in a race against the machine to escape before the Algorithmic Engine shuts down - killing them all.

Now all their worlds hang in the balance.

Magic Thursday--Marie Dry Shares an Excerpt from Her Latest Release

On a future earth, Aurora has been desperately searching for her long-lost sister, when she is sacrificed to Balthazar, leader of the fearsome Cyborgs who invaded earth. Now she is stuck on an alien spaceship with a crazy Cyborg who thinks she can give him a soul and who has a weird fixation with the way she moves. Aurora is desperate to return to earth to search for her sister while the President of United Earth insists that only she can save Earth from enslavement by the cyborgs. After spending time with the cyborgs, aurora realizes that the machine she thought would be easy to betray, the machine she has to betray, if she ever wants to rescue her sister from enslavement, has turned into a man she could come to love.

CHAPTER 1

Washington, DC, Summer, 2116:

The President of United Earth had an “I’ve got bad news but let’s smile and pretend it won’t destroy your whole life” look on his face. “Ms. Skuy, come in. We don’t have much time before I have to sacrifice you to the aliens.”

Aurora stumbled through the door of the Oval Office. She’d like to believe his words had been a joke, but she knew better. Tension hung thick in the air. “Excuse me?”

The president’s tired face softened. “My apologies. That was in bad taste.”

He clasped her arm and steadied her, giving her elaborate, medieval style dress a quick once over and lingering on the elegant signature glass hairpins keeping her long, upswept hair in place. In the outer corners of his eyes, crinkles appeared, as if he wanted to smile. As if he was pleased. The dresses were her armor and the hairpins potential weapons. But why was the president pleased about her wearing them? “You wore your hairpins,” he said.

“As fascinating as I find the fact that the President of United Earth apparently plans to sacrifice me to the aliens with my hairpins in place, I’d like to know why your soldiers invaded my office and brought me here at gunpoint.” That was an exaggeration, but not by much.

He led her to a royal-blue-velvet-covered visitor’s chair. “I need your help. The survival of the human race is at stake.”

The president had been the most powerful man on Earth, until the alien spaceships arrived a year ago. Now the commander of the menacing alien fleet orbiting Earth filled that position, even if he wasn’t quite on Earth. And probably not even a man.

“When your soldiers came to my office and insisted I accompany them here, I assumed there was a crisis at one of my foundation’s soup kitchens. Human sacrifice did not occur to me.” She really hoped he’d been joking, but the ruthless purpose in his eyes and the ominous feel in the air told a different story.

He fixed her with those fierce, battle-worn eyes. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? We finally get it right. No more pollution, population numbers are manageable, and healthcare has never been this good.” He rubbed his brow, a weary irritated gesture. “Goddamn aliens.”

She nodded. “It does seem ironic. Instead of 2115 going down in history as the year we conquered famine, it’s known as the year the aliens came.”

He had to know of the harsh realities the media glossed over. The previous president had all but destroyed the freedom of the press. Men and women had been forced into sterilization clinics during the last two presidencies. Her sister was living proof that slavery was still thriving. Ever since his election, she’d wondered what this man was capable of. “What do the aliens have to do with me? Why did you mention sacrifice?”

The angry buzz of the protestors outside filtered through the walls. They’d congregated outside United Earth buildings all around the world, waving placards demanding the aliens leave, with unimaginative slogans like, Earth is for Humans and Aliens Go Back Where You Came From.

Instead of answering her question, he held out a hairpin. “I need to give you this. As I said, we don’t have much time.”

She studied the glass pin--similar in design to the ones she had in her hair--designed to look like old fashioned hat pins, adding an air of whimsy to her elaborate hairdo. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“It’s safe to use in your hair, but if you twist the top like this, it turns into an injection. It contains picos.” He demonstrated and, after sealing it again, handed it to Aurora. Picos was micro technology, still experimental in their application. “Never let it out of your sight.” His smile was little more than an awkward upward turn at the corners of his mouth. “Or, in this case, hair.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

He gave her that tight-lipped soldier’s smile. “You have to find an opportunity to inject it into their leader. The picos are programmed to turn him pliable to the first person he sees after he is injected.”

“Why would you think I’d ever meet the--” She closed her eyes. “The sacrifice,” she murmured.

“The sacrifice,” he agreed.

The president clutched the nape of his neck. In that moment, he didn’t look like the President of United Earth. Instead, he looked weary and at the end of his rope. “This morning, I received a--” He hesitated and then shrugged. “--a call from the leader of the aliens.”

Aurora straightened. “You saw one of them?” She forgot to be regal and graceful, to keep her mask in place. No one knew what the aliens wanted, what they looked like. Several experts had speculated that they could be artificial intelligence, so-called tin men. The name had caught on, and now everyone called the elusive aliens tinners.

“No, the call was voice only. He spoke in English. Accented, but good English.”

The aliens had announced their arrival by bombing the International Space Station and the satellites orbiting Earth. Next, they’d bombed Washington, DC, from space. Aurora would never forget the day that happened. She’d been in her office, watching the destruction on television, the horror of it hard to accept even now. Ever since, humanity had braced for more bombings that never happened. And then the aliens called the president?

“He?”

“Yes, the alien who called me was definitely a ‘he.’”

“And you think the picos could give us an advantage?” She was all for any advantage they could get, but she didn’t want to be the one wielding the secret weapon.

“Yes. Those picos are the reason I had you brought here. We’ve been working on a plan, in the event that we encountered them.”

“What did he want, Mr. President?”

He walked over to the window and then turned to face her with a jerky, almost uncoordinated, move. “He offered a ceasefire in exchange for certain...promises.”

“What promises?” Whatever they promised wasn’t worth more than her sister’s life.

“He made it clear that if we don’t give them what they want, they’d bomb us again. And this time, they won’t stop after destroying a few empty buildings. His smile was bitter. “He used very precise words. ‘Deliver or face another barrage of bombs.’”

Now they were getting to it, the reason he had her collected and brought here. “Deliver what?” she asked, but she knew. Oh yes, she knew. This wasn’t her first stint into being the sacrificial lamb. This time, she’d fight. She had too much to lose.

“He wants you,” he said. “And I had the impression that the alien leader wanted you for himself. That it was personal.”

The world tilted around her. Even expecting his answer, her body still readied for fight or flight. “Why? Why me?” Sure the foundation was influential, but why would the aliens be interested in someone doing charity work? “How do they even know me out of the billions of people on Earth?”

“I can only guess.”

“You’re going to hand me over?” She had worth, she should be protected. She was a tax payer, after all.

He spoke between clenched teeth, his jaw bulging like that of a bull dog. “If they’d landed their spaceships, if we could fight them, I’d dare them to come for you and give them a war that would make their great grandchildren say my name with loathing.” He paced--long angry strides, up and down in front of her. “My hands are tied. They shoot down our missiles and planes before they even leave the atmosphere. I can’t get to them to fight them.” He sat behind the desk, shoulders tensed, his hands fisted against his forehead. “Even if I could, those idiots in the cabinet would oppose me.”

Her mind kept screaming at her to get away from there. To run to safety. Her legs wouldn’t run. “I’m--” She swallowed, tried again. “I’m your only hope to get to them?”

Her hands started a fine tremble that spread to the rest of her body. She hid them in the folds of her dress. She wanted to sound as if she’d be glad to sacrifice herself for the human race, but she didn’t pull it off. Acid crept up her throat. Why did this keep happening to her?

He stopped pacing and turned to look her straight in the eye. “I hate to ask this of you.” Those soldier’s eyes pierced hers. “I don’t even want to speculate on what they want, but this is an opportunity we cannot ignore. We’d have someone on the inside.”

“But you’re not asking, are you, Mr. President?” Just as the man who had handed her over before had not asked.

Aurora heard her own voice through a peculiar swishing noise in her ears, the bitterness penetrating like a whistle through fog. She didn’t want to be Earth’s only hope. If she was the only one who could save them from the tinners, Earth was in big trouble. Her sister could attest to that. Aurora wanted to run and keep running. But this horrendous feeling of inevitability chained her to her chair.

He became military straight, lifted his chin. “I cannot afford to give you a choice.”

Aurora started to lift her hand to push it through her hair, remembered she carried a deadly weapon there, and lowered it. “Let’s face it, you’d be a much better hostage. I’m only grand master of an organization that builds schools and helps street children.”

She wasn’t done, either. So many children out there still needed help while she searched for Ter. She didn’t have time for the president to sacrifice her.

He punched his fist into his palm, and she jumped in the chair. “Dammit, I don’t want to do this. For whatever reason, they fixated on you. And this is a chance for us to get someone on the inside.”

“What exactly do you expect me to do once I’m up there? They’ll probably throw me into a cell and dissect me.” She’d be helpless, unable to defend herself. It was ironic really. She’d spent her whole life trying to ensure that she’d never be vulnerable and helpless again. But all her martial arts and weapons training wouldn’t help her on a spaceship surrounded by aliens. “And, anyway, pico technology has never worked the way its creators hoped.”

In every test, the scientists had lost control over the substance injected into lab animals.

“We have to try it,” he said.

She couldn’t suppress a visible shudder. “He could go crazy on me. Or worse, I could be gang raped. Or dissected.”

He tensed. “Rape is a very real concern. But I don’t think they plan to dissect you. He asked me what you eat, the precise portions necessary to ensure your health. And I mean precise. The temperature that would be ‘optimal’ for your ‘survival.’ His words.”

“So how is this supposed to work?” She had visions of chains clanging around her wrists and ankles while the president handed her over. Social media being what it was, it would go viral as well.

The president paced. “It doesn’t sit well with me, sending a civilian into the enemy’s hands--a female civilian.” She could see him vibrate with the need to go to war. When she opened her mouth to repeat her question, he held up a hand. “To answer your question, he said he’d come get you here.”

Her stomach turned, and she couldn’t stop her hands from crushing the heavy silk material of her dress. It took all her self-control not to run for the door before the tinner came to take her to her doom.

He stopped in front of her. “I hate to say it--”

“I’m ’Earth’s only hope,” she finished for him, the clichéd words tasting ominous on her lips. “I want something in return.”

“I know of your search for your sister. I will use every resource at my disposal to find her.”

She fixed him with the gaze she used when she forced the board of the foundation to approve funds for her pet projects. “Know this, Mr. President, as long as I am assured you are saving my sister, I am Earth’s only hope. Cross me on this, and I’ll be Earth’s biggest nightmare.”

Ever since she walked into this office, she’d seen regret, caution, and other emotions in the president’s eyes. Now he lifted a hand and patted her shoulder in an awkward, almost boyish, gesture. He walked up and down in front of her, and she resisted the urge to push him into a chair where he couldn’t make her dizzy with his pacing. “We don’t have much time left,” he said. “You have to pretend to return his interest if it’s sexual. Make it subtle, so he doesn’t realize you’re playing him. Do whatever you have to do to gain his trust.”

“And if he’s a machine, how do I gain the trust of something that has the same emotional capacity than my laptop?”

The president lifted his stubborn chin at her. “If he’s any type of AI, you appeal to his logic.”

“When do I inject him with the picos?”

“First, I need you to get me some information. Where do they come from? How many of them are there? Are there more on their way? What kind and how many weapons do they have?”

Did he really think they’d let her walk around the spaceship asking questions? She clutched her arms around her middle. Oh God, she was going to be taken to the aliens on their spaceship. Dread paralyzed her and stole her senses. She tried to speak, to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. “Do you think they’d let me close enough to one of them to inject?”

“He will if you seduce him.”

“And, of course, I would be the person for the job.” She didn’t care that her voice dripped bitterness. “How do I report my findings to you? I doubt he’d just let me come home to talk to you every now and then.” It was more likely that she’d be dead the moment she passed on any information she managed to get her hands on. She suppressed a shudder.

“I told him I would only hand you over if I can talk to you every week.”

“And he agreed to that?”

“Yes.”

Aurora could see the same suspicion, that she felt at the tinner’s agreement, on the president’s face.

“During a visit last month to the hearing-impaired school in upstate New York, you used sign language.”

“You want to communicate with sign language during those once a week calls?” It sounded like a plan that could get her killed or tortured. “The aliens are clever enough to build spaceships and travel to Earth from who knows how many miles away. Sign language won’t fool them.” She shook her head. “They won’t fall for it.”

“We do not have a choice. My first lesson starts tomorrow. Be very careful, just chat normally a few times before you start reporting. Let them relax their vigilance, start to trust you.” The president smiled, a grim satisfied smile, his campaign smile. “We may yet prevail.”

If he thought that smile reassured her, he was very much mistaken. She’d dealt with politicians in her duties as grand master of the Phoenix Foundation. No, he didn’t fool her at all. At this stage, he’d sacrifice his own mother if it meant finding a weapon against the tinners.

“How soon do I need to go?”

“He’s coming for you in the next few minutes.”

Aurora stood and started for the door, her legs trying to take her to safety. Again, that roaring in her ears deafened her. She clenched her trembling hands into tight fists and forced back the urge to flee. She turned around on trembling legs and faced the pity in the president’s eyes. Coming from the man willing to sacrifice her, she didn’t appreciate it. At all. “I have to let my assistant know.”

“Already done.”

She couldn’t do this.

Aurora took several deep breaths and returned to her chair, trying not to look as if her shaking knees would give way under her at any moment.

She had to do this.

****

Available now   

Amazon

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Ever since she can remember Marie Dry wanted to travel. She had had the privilege of living in Zambia, Morocco, and Spain and sees herself as a bit of a gypsy. Every few years she gets restless and has to be some place new.

She read romances since she was nine and was fairly young when she decided she would write the perfect story that had all the elements she looked for in a romance. In 1997 she decided to go all out with her writing and to get published. Being published by Black Opal Books is a dream come true for her. 

There are several wonderful moments in her life that she would never trade for anything. One of them is meeting President Nelson Mandela and the second being published.

Magic Thursday--J L Peridot Shares an Excerpt from Her Latest Novella

Warning: The following excerpt contains strong language.

From The Only Question That Matters:

“Do you find me attractive?”

Just like that, I ask him. And why not? We’ve been flirting a little lately, I think. Unless I’ve read him completely wrong.

It’s likely. It’s been a long time since I’ve flirted with anyone, and I’ve never found reading people as easy as others make it out to be. My friends have a knack for sensing the difference between a signal for affection and someone just being friendly. But not me.

The first boy who broke my heart was named Vaughan. His family was from the Aegis colony. He had those beautiful green eyes and high cheekbones his people are famous for. I was thirteen and too tragic. He was kind to me once when we both had detention, and I was too inexperienced to know how easily I could embarrass myself in the months that followed.

Finally, we both attended a Christmas party at the home of a mutual friend. I kissed him under the mistletoe. He hugged me with one hand on my ass. I skipped away, thinking he might ask me out. Later, I overheard him and a big-breasted girl from another school making fun of me when they thought I was out of the room.

The music stops. The whirring fades as twelve spinning wheels slow to a halt. At first, I think I’ve fucked up, and my face and neck are warm—warmer than they would normally be after a spin class. When he leans over the handles instead of looking at me, I think maybe he just didn’t hear me. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. I step off my bike, but before I can leave, his hand is on my arm.

“Wait.”

The word falls out of him between breaths. He is drenched in sweat, and the heat emanating from him ripples the air around the surface of his skin. He squeezes my wrist, forehead resting on his other hand, shoulders rising and falling.

The studio walls glow with a dewy light. It’s morning, almost my last. By this time tomorrow, the AMS Celestial Dream will reach Planet Paradiso, the end of my journey. Or rather, the beginning. But Alexei will carry on and circle back home, wherever his home is. The universe is a big place. We may never see each other again. This is my last chance.

And so, even if I wait for the answer to be no, I suppose I'm glad to have asked. I could have opened by asking, will you go to bed with me? But we barely know each other beyond light conversation and laughter, three times a week or less. A spin class here, a yoga class there—quips and commiserations, captured in forty-five-minute aerobic snapshots, and passing glances in amenities around the ship.

After one final, deep breath, Alexei looks at me. His blue eyes offer the smile that connects us before it travels to his lips. His hand moves to my hand. He gives me another squeeze.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think that last hill would be so steep. I guess my cardio’s not that good.” He pauses, mouth open. I brace for a rejection, but he gets off his bike and continues. “I do find you attractive, Sofia, as a matter of fact.”

Now it’s my turn to smile. My body wants to turn away so my stupid face doesn’t betray my feelings, my secrets, my fear that he means to share this joke with one of the beauties in tomorrow’s Body Pump.

But I stand fast and hold his gaze. I let him see my eyes, my lips. I let him see me. I am thirty-two now, not thirteen. He is Alexei, not Vaughan. And despite my preparations for this moment, I stand here at a loss for words.

“Well,” I begin slowly, leaning on my bike so he won’t think me too eager, “that is good to know.”

A rustle at the door breaks the silence between us. It’s Danica from housekeeping. Two nights ago, we chatted while she refreshed the kitchenette in my cabin. I liked her then, but her eyes are black like the void and she has the face of a chocolate china doll. Her deep-red tunic fits her petite figure too well, with the cruise ship’s monogram stitched in a precarious position on the edge of her left breast.

She is pretty. And so I bristle now, even though she is the politest of polite as she waves to us.

“Hello, ma’am, sir.” She bobs her head in deference. “May I clean this room?”

I wonder if Alexei likes subservient women. Perhaps the old me would have been a better match for him. But I doubt Danica is subservient off the clock. Her eyes shine far too brightly when she smiles. There is cheek in her. Perhaps he sees it too. When he tells her we’re done in here, I listen for the hidden knowledge in his voice.

But when she wheels her cart inside, his eyes remain on me. He slings his towel over his neck and motions for the door.

“Come on,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”

Outside the cycle studio, the corridor is dim. All of the ship is like this: bright and warm where people gather, conservative where they merely transit. I hear the exclusive Diamond Deck is lush and bright wherever you go; opulence, perhaps for its own sake. An empty room doesn’t need light or comfortable heat. And neither do we, as we pad the shadowed wooden floors on the way to the showers.

I think to ask him, now, will you go to bed with me? But perhaps it’s still too soon? I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. All I can think about are my hours running out.

—

“Do I call this love already? I am almost disgusted with myself. How pathetic to fall so easily. Perhaps I was the cause of my past heartbreaks. Not stupid schoolboys or an arrogant rich man, but a gullible girl from a flower farm who opens her heart too readily and expects too much.”

Sofia is en route to Planet Paradiso, ready to start a new life after her divorce. But when she accepts Alexei's dinner invitation on her final evening, she realises she's in for more than she bargained for. As the AMS Celestial Dream arrives at its destination, and their one-night stand draws to a close, Sofia must choose between a newfound possibility with Alexei and the freedom she so desperately craves.

The Only Question That Matters by JL Peridot is an emotional examination of healing and resilience through sex and love. Available now on Amazon.

Magic Thursday July

Hello, everyone—It’s Colleen, although you’ll see me writing as C.M. Simpson and Carlie Simonsen, pretty much most days. I’ve written a lot of short fiction, and will continue to do that in the future, but, this year, I’m kicking off with some novels for C.M. Simpson. (Next year, it’s Carlie’s turn.)

The Evolution of a Universe

I’ve done novels before, and even completed a fantasy trilogy, but this year I’m working on my first science fiction series, and put a bit of a twist into it. The funny thing is that these characters didn’t come with a series in mind… or even a novel. They arrived in dribs and drabs as I wrote flash fiction for my first two flash fiction collections… and then they decided they had to have a short story… and then they wanted a novel.

And then they decided that they belonged in the same universe as Agent Delight of Odyssey, and that she should become a feature of their stories, as well—and they didn’t stop there. Because of the novels, I have discovered that many of the short stories I’ve written belong in the same universe, and that’s made my life both easier and harder, which brings me what’s good and bad about writing a series.

Pros and Cons of Writing in a Known Universe

Writing stories in a known universe is easier than writing a stand-alone, because I know a lot more about my universe than if I had to start it off from scratch. I can draw from events and characters that I’ve written about before, and I’ve got a lot more to build on. The universe feels more real as a result.

But writing in a known universe is also harder, because I have to remember where the characters have met before, and where on the universe’s timeline they are in relation to what’s happened. I don’t have time-travel—that I know of—so there’s no easy out if I mess it up.

(Pro Tip: Create a ‘bible’ for your universe where you note down every person, place, event, or item that you name in your universe, and the story it can be found in. You’ll need it as you create more stories in that setting.)

When I decided to write my current series, I didn’t know Agent Delight was linked to the universe; that came out in the first book, and it meant I had to remember there were a bunch of short stories and flash fiction about her that I had to keep at the back of my mind. It also meant there was a bunch of information I could draw from when I was building my series’ universe.

Overall, I’ve found writing this series has gotten easier as time has gone on, and that’s solely because there is so much already in place. Apart from keeping things straight in the stories, I’ve yet to discover any real down sides.

An Overview of the Mack ‘n’ Me ‘n’ Odyssey Series

I’m planning this to be a six-book series, and will be releasing the fourth book, Mack ‘n’ Me: The Transporter’s Favour, in the next fortnight. Next year, I’ll release a collection of all the flash fiction and short stories around these characters, but that’s a little way off, right now. Each book has so far dealt with slightly different opponents, and each book has linked the series’ setting to previous short stories.

Book 1, Mack ‘n’ Me: Origins, surprised me by being the story of how Cutter joined Mack’s crew. It also brought Delight and Odyssey to the setting, and saw Cutter dealing with Odyssey’s claim on her life, and a master of genetic mutation with a technological twist. This is followed by the short story, The Depredides Dance, in which Cutter meets Abby, a sentient courier ship, and tells the story of what happened immediately after Origins ends.

The short story, Cloud Door, fits in before Book 2, Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host. In Cloud Door, Mack and Cutter mess up the plans of a some space-faring werewolves, and in Blaedergil’s Host, Cutter and Mack work together to deal with a marriage alliance that had gone off the tracks, and noble rivalries. It also introduces the arach, a race of space-faring shape-shifting spiders.

Book 3, Mack ‘n’ Me: Arach, focuses on the arach, but introduces the world of K’Kavor, with its wasp and spider races. And Book 4, Mack ‘n’ Me: The Transporter’s Favour tells the story of what happens when Abby calls on Cutter to pay the favour she owes—and introduces the wolves of the Star Shadow clan.

You can find the first chapters of the first three novels on my blog—and the first chapter for this title will be available on the 16th. I’ve included a brief excerpt from the next release, but, be warned, the main character swears a lot—and the rest of the crew aren’t much better.

Story Excerpt from Mack ‘n’ Me: The Transporter’s Favour

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The Marie hung in orbit around Lichcomb’s World, and we could see at a glance that she was in trouble. The four bright dots coming in hard from the planet below were military grade, and they were hailing as they came.

“Shady Marie stand down. Put your weapons on hold. We are going to board.”

Rohan’s defiant near-adult pseudo-bass came as a surprise.

“Like Hell, you are. Case!”

And Abby and I watched as the Marie’s engines flared.

Flared and died.

And… Well, Rohan’s vocabulary of swears had expanded since I’d first noticed his limited range of f&%$s.

“Wow,” I managed, listening to Case laughing so hard she had to be falling out of her chair. “Just. Wow. I wonder where he learned that!”

“Hmmm. I don’t.” Abby didn’t sound amused, and neither did the voice hailing from the incoming shuttles.

“Insults to our parentage will not reactivate your drives, Marie. Now put your mother on.”

Rohan’s response was immediate, and held an all too familiar tone.

“I’m sorry, s#%t-for-brains, mother can’t make it to the comms, right now. You’ll just have to kiss my a$%.”

“Oh. That’s not good.”

“You’re telling me,” Abby said. “Those mercs are going to have him for breakfast.”

“Mack will be upset if the Marie gets dented. Rohan doesn’t know what he’s playing with.”

“No, he really doesn’t,” and something in Abby’s tone made me take a closer look at the shuttles.

“Tell me they’re not.”

“Wish I could, sweetie, but I think he upset them.”

Upset wasn’t quite the word I’d have used, but Abs was right. The four drop-ships had gone weapons hot, and they hadn’t slowed down.

“Stand your crew down, cub. This isn’t meant to be a kill mission.”

Well, that was good to know.

“Cub,” Abby said, as though that explained everything, and maybe it did. “Their leader’s a wolf.”

“Wolf?”

“Yeah, you know, wolf. Like the wolves of Lunar One, or the hunt clans four systems over.”

“No, sorry. You are talking four-legged dog-things that hunt in packs, right?”

“No, sweetie. I’m talking werewolves.”

Well, f#@%. Not more shapeshifters. Weren’t the arach enough for a single universe?

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Mack ‘n’ Me: Origins, The Depredides Dance, Cloud Door, Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host, Mack ‘n’ Me: Arach

Marie Dry Shares a Chapter from her Latest Release

In a bleak future, where government systems are breaking down and poverty and violence reign, on an abandoned farm in Montana, Susannah had a simple plan. She’d capture an alien, sell him to the resistance, and use the money to save her son.

Instead, Susannah had an arrogant alien trapped in a pit who acted as if she was the prisoner. He wanted to kill her dog and insisted she should care for the wound he sustained when he fell into the pit she dug to trap him. On top of that, she had no way to know if the resistance got her message. Every day that passed, she doubted her decision to hand Azagor over to the resistance.

But her son, her baby, was being held by people who considered him unclean because he was conceived out of wedlock—and time was running out.


Read on for a sneak peak at the first chapter of Alien Captured.

  

Chapter 1

S

usannah slammed the trapdoor over the crudely dug pit she’d caught her enemy in. “I’ve got you now, devil, you won’t be haunting innocent women in these mountains again,” she crowed. She caught a glimpse of a stick protruding from a muscled green shoulder as the door slid in place with a metal screech.

The trapdoor was designed to slide over the pit with a lock to keep prisoners in. The lock slid easily in place, and she frowned down at it. Did it used to be this clean or easy to slide over the pit? She shrugged. There wasn’t time to think about it now. From inside the pit, something scraped against the dirt wall and a growl rumbled up from the depths of the dark hole.

Susannah inched out of his sight, half convinced the devil would try to climb out. He might be trapped inside the pit, but he could reach through the gaps in the trapdoor and grab her.

“Female.” He sure didn’t sound human.

Susannah sank down on her knees and cautiously crawled to the edge of the pit, trying to see in without the creature inside noticing. Pebbles scraped her knees through her heavy black dress that kept tripping her. “Kick off, already.” She whispered the forbidden words defiantly.

Brother Joseph had said it was a sin to use those words, but she couldn’t see how it was a sin to say the same thing with different words. And she wouldn’t feel guilty for wishing the monster dead.

“Show yourself, human.”

Again, goose bumps spread over her body. His voice, from inside the pit, sounded like a shovel when she shoved it into the dry rocky ground on the east of the farm. It scraped over her skin, invaded her body. It should make her want to run away screaming, but instead she leaned closer to hear more.

She shook off the strange feelings and answered him. “Why should I?”

Never before had she dared be this openly defiant and it was good. Blood rushed through her veins. Large green hands gripped the iron grid she’d locked over the pit and shook it. For one horrendous moment, she thought he would break through the iron. She’d dug the pit deeper, day after day, until she thought her arms would fall off. And this green man with the horn on his head could still reach it.

Susannah jerked upright. Her heart hammered so hard she couldn’t hear her own ragged breathing or any of the everyday noises on the farm. She breathed deep until most of the panic subsided. His hands had disappeared inside the pit again, and she sagged. She’d thought for sure he’d break that door and get to her.

“I said show yourself,” he ordered again. He spoke English with a slight accent, his rough voice grating against her nerves. She’d believed that he was a demon come to haunt her when he appeared before her almost four years ago. Then last year, Caine, a brother who moved from farm to farm, had told them about the aliens. She wouldn’t presume to know better than Caine, the man she’d come to love, but she couldn’t see how an alien that supposedly came from high up in the sky, could speak her language like this one did.

“Don’t order me around, ungodly creature.” This time it would be different. No one would punish her for seeing him like they did four years ago when he’d appeared before her. Instead, she’d use him to get off this farm and find Noah. She fisted her hands in the clumps of grass growing sparsely all over the farm. It had cost her everything, and he had no right to talk to her in that know-it-all way. Ghostly little legs crawled over her skin, and she tightened her grip on the grass blades until her knuckles ached. It was over, the whippings, the punishments in the pit with the creatures coming at night to crawl into her hair and over her body, the endless sermons. She still woke at night, her body sore from her frantic slapping at creatures that came out at night, in her dreams, to crawl all over her with scratchy little paws. She brushed her hand over her braided hair and then forced herself to stop, to lower her hand and rest it on her knee. No insects crawled over her.

An exaggerated sigh from inside the pit. The rough ground scraping against her knees, she carefully crawled closer and peered over the edge of the hole. Straight into eyes that looked exactly the way she always thought evil satanic eyes would look. Her body vibrated, as if she’d hit an unyielding rock with a pick axe. Those eyes had haunted her dreams. He stared up at her out of a face with sharp cheekbones, a big jaw. All those years ago, when he’d suddenly appeared before her, she’d been too scared to notice anything beyond the fact that he was green and large with unholy red eyes. She’d thought him evil incarnate, the devil come to take her for her sins, and had run screaming. She gripped the edge of the trapdoor until her nails tore. If only she hadn’t screamed. If she could go back and change her reactions that fateful day, maybe she’d still have Noah.

“I am wounded female.” He sprawled against the dirt wall of the pit, like a brother newly given his own farm and women to supervise.

He wore a silver uniform, but the skin on his hands, neck, and face were green and gold. It reminded her of the skin of the snake Joseph showed them once when he did a sermon on the serpent in paradise. The being in front of her had the evil beauty that fascinated and repelled at the same time. Worse than those eyes were the horn growing out of his head and into his forehead. She’d never thought demons existed, but that horn almost convinced her. Her demon. No matter that Caine said he was an alien, in her mind she’d called him that ever since that day he’d appeared and destroyed her life.

During one of his trips to the farm, after they’d become close, Caine had given her a TC. A wonderful box with a button you pressed, and then moving images of wondrous things appeared. Next to the gifts from her mother, that was the best thing she’d ever been given. She’d kept it hidden from the others. It told her about the aliens, and still, in her mind, she called him a demon. He’d appeared to her that one time, long ago. One moment she was alone and the next he stood in front of her. Big and mean and glaring at her with red eyes straight from hell.

That was when Brother Joseph’s punishments had gotten worse. Turned more evil than this alien creature. He’d drawn the others into his hatred for her. A hatred that never made sense to her. How could you hate someone because of the shape of their eyes?

After that time four years ago, the evil red-eyed creature never showed himself again. But she knew he watched. Had felt his gaze burn over her. Branding her. She didn’t dare mention this to the others, but she feared the creature wanted her. That he wanted to have relations with her.

She’d almost gotten used to feeling his gaze on her every few days when, a year ago, he’d disappeared. She didn’t even want to admit it to herself, but she’d almost missed feeling his presence. Then, last month, her personal demon had returned. She never saw him, but she knew he was there. Watching her. Always watching her.

Caine had told her that aliens came from the sky and claimed they now ruled Earth. The brothers who ran the farms in Montana didn’t recognize outside authority and had ignored the fact that aliens now walked on Earth. She didn’t know if she believed anyone could fly through space in something like a car. Even if it had wings, she didn’t think it could fly that high. And how did they breathe up there? The only reason she discounted Brother Josephatus’s theory, that they crawled out of hell, was that she refused to agree with the man who took Noah from her. About anything.

She frowned down at her prisoner. “Your wounds are not my concern.” He was frighteningly big, but not close to the size the alien on the TC had been. That one had easily gripped a human in one ugly claw.

“Are you a baby alien?” Was it right to keep a baby alien trapped? Even a scary looking one? It was difficult to judge with him sitting down, but she thought maybe he’d grown since she last saw him.

The alien jerked upright from being hunched over. He didn’t look wounded or weak anymore, even with the blood stained stick protruding from his shoulder. The breakfast she didn’t have scrambled in her stomach. Death stared up at her out of acidic eyes.

“You call me an infant?” He reminded her of the way coals smoldered red when you blew on them. She should’ve dug the pit deeper. Her muscles still ached from climbing in and out of the hole, clutching a bucket of dirt, for hours every day. It was ironic. The pit, where she’d spent so much time being punished, meant she was lucky that she had an existing pit to use. If only she’d dug it much deeper.

“You’re smaller than the alien on the TC, the ones that ate the humans.” The Lord help her if he was a baby alien. What if he grew some more while she waited to hand him over and the trap wouldn’t hold him anymore.

The alien slammed his head back against the dirt wall, and she winced. Whatever rumbled in his chest didn’t bode well for her.

He straightened, seeming unaware of the stick protruding from his shoulder. Did demons, no aliens, even feel pain? “Zyrgins do not eat humans.” He managed to convey his low opinion of her intelligence.

He might say they didn’t, but she didn’t have to believe him. “How fast do you grow?”

“I. Am not. A baby.” He thumped his head against the dirt wall with each word. His neck arched and veins and muscles moved under his tough looking skin. She’d never seen anyone so muscled. Not even the Space Ranger she’d seen on the TC before it broke.

She leaned over farther, grabbing her long black braid before it could hang down into the pit. “If you’re not a baby, how come you’re so small? And you’ve grown since that first time you came here.” She’d thought this one scary big that day, until she’d seen that horrendous monster eating a human. She shuddered. Blood and pieces of meat had flown everywhere when the alien had bit off a human’s head. Crunching on the head with big spiky teeth.

He seemed at a loss for words. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and he eyed the trap door in a way that caused her heartbeat to go all crazy again. “I just came out of my third change,” he gritted out.

She had the strong impression that he wanted to keep thumping his head against the wall. Or jump out and choke her. She eyed the steel grid. Parts of it were rusted. Even if he was a baby, he was still bigger than her. Who knew how strong their young were? “I don’t know what you mean by your third change.”

He glared up at her. “We go through three changes and shed our skins.”

She recoiled. “Like a snake?”

He bared long ugly incisors, and she recoiled farther.

“I am a grown Zyrgin warrior.” He snarled at her, and she retreated far enough that she could still see him, but not so close that he could jump and grab her through the grid.

He was trapped, she reminded herself. She was safe from those teeth. She hoped. “I saw one of you eat a human with my own eyes. He held a man in his claw. So if you’re not a baby how come you’re not big enough to hold someone in your hand?” Never in her life did she expect to see something that awful. She was lucky she’d run into a smaller alien all those years ago, or she might’ve been eaten. At least it would’ve been over with quick. Joseph’s punishments had been never ending.

She inched forward again and peaked over the rim of the hole. This alien sitting in the pit of atonement, muscled arms over his massive chest, fascinated her as much as he scared her. He was built a lot different than human men. Even the space ranger didn’t have that many muscles. Everywhere on his body, they bulged and rippled, and she had to remind herself that evil sometimes came disguised as beauty. Because, despite his snake -like skin and evil eyes, he had a wild, almost hypnotic beauty.

She’d dug the pit deeper and planted sharpened sticks at the bottom. One of the sharpened spears had gone deep into his shoulder. Her stomach turned. It had to be painful. He slouched down every now and then, and she had the awful feeling he had to remind himself to appear weak and wounded. “Where did you see a giant Zyrgin eat a human?” he asked her. He absently wiggled the stick in the wound.

Susannah’s stomach turned again when blood spurted out of the wound. She gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t feel sympathy, she wouldn’t. Because of him, Brother Josephatus had put her in the pit of atonement. What was wrong with the alien? Didn’t he feel pain? And why did he act as if she didn’t know anything that happened in the world?

“On the TC.” It was strange, being able to admit that she had a TC without fear of punishment. It showed this creature that she was modern and informed and not a backward person. Before it stopped working, the TC had been a treasure trove of information about the outside world. She’d been inconsolable when it just died. After everything had been taken from her, it had felt as if she was left naked and bruised.

Another savage noise from his chest, and she inched back a bit. “That was resistance propaganda,” he said, managing to sound as if he knew everything and she said only silly things.

“I saw an ugly green alien that looked just like you, only bigger, grab a human and bite off his head. How can the resistance lie about that?” She tapped her forefinger against the trapdoor. “Tell me that, Mr. Clever Green Demon.”

He stared up at her, and she had the impression he was at a loss for words.

“I would’ve preferred to live the rest of my life without seeing that creature bite of a human head.” She shuddered again. “How can you keep eating with blood spurting everywhere?” She didn’t know which was worse, all the blood or the headless body that was still kicking in that awful claw. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. It had sucked the blood out of the decapitated human’s neck. “Crunching heads with your teeth is disgusting.”

“You know about the resistance?”

“Everyone knows of them.” He didn’t have to act as if she didn’t know anything about the outside world. In the short time she’d had the TC, she’d learned a lot.

He relaxed slightly, leaning back against the dirt wall. Blood oozed out of his wound. He had red blood, like a human. Did that mean he was one of God’s creatures? Was she evil because she was determined not to get close enough to him to care for his wound?

“The resistance created those films using TC generated images.”

She frowned. Didn’t want to admit she didn’t know what generated images meant.

He narrowed his eyes and clarified. “It wasn’t real, those were drawings that moved, not real Zyrgins and humans.”

She planted her palms on the ground and leaned slightly over the rim to mock. “Drawings that look like real people. That move? Only a baby would believe something like that.” How gullible did he think she was?

He stared up at her, and again she had the feeling he didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t even react to being called a baby.

“How do you know about the resistance, but not TC generated images?”

There was something in his voice, some emotion, and—so help her—if it was pity, she’d put back all the dirt she’d dug out of the pit and bury him alive.

“Caine told me about the resistance.” He’d shown her a way to contact them, but the alien didn’t need to know this. She rubbed her chest. She missed Caine and Noah so much. What did she do wrong? Was she such a terrible person that she had to be punished like this?

He didn’t move, the only physical sign of rage was the way his eyes glowed like red hot coals. But it emanated from him in a wave so strong, she shuffled back, ignoring the rocks digging into her knees through the heavy fabric of her dress. “Who. Is. Caine?” His voice was so rough she could barely make out the words.

“No one that needs concern you.” She visited his grave every day, but she couldn’t stand the thought of Caine in the cold hard earth. When she stood there, her heart aching, her arms empty, she pretended that he stood with her. Alive and talking to her. Telling her amazing things about the outside world. Assuring her that they’d get Noah back.

“I will find out,” the alien said, and it was a threat. He pointed to the cheese squashed into the ground when he fell. It lay inside the sizable dent his body had made on the floor of the pit when he fell in. “Why was there cheese on one of the sticks?”

“It was to lure you into the hole you evil…Satan.” It had been a huge sacrifice. Her food stores were depleted, and the soil wasn’t yielding anything anymore.

“You think we Satans eat cheese?” The evil pest dared to mock her after everything he’d cost her.

“It worked, didn’t it? You’re trapped in the hole like a rat in a trap.”

He moved, as if he would get up and break through the iron grid. “Do not ever again call me a rat.”

Keeping a wary eye on him, she smirked. It was heady to have the upper hand for a change. “I will call you whatever I want. You’re my prisoner, and you can’t stop me, rat.” She leaned closer. “Rat, double rat.”

He thumped his head against the wall of the pit. Several times. Strange grating sounds coming out of his mouth.

“Are you speaking your language when you make those strange growly noises?” She liked being like this, in charge and not afraid to taunt a dangerous being.

He stilled and nailed her again with those eyes that were sometimes black and then glowed red in an unholy concoction.

“We call ourselves Zyrgins and, yes, that was my language. A language so complicated that no other race has ever managed to speak it.”

If only she had a gun. “Are you calling me stupid?”

It was the one thing she’d promised herself when the others left her behind. Never again would she allow anyone to call her stupid or treat her like she was.

He looked up at her for a long time. She could almost feel his gaze like a physical touch on her head scarf, her face and for the longest time her breasts that were, thankfully, properly covered by her dress. Again, she had the feeling that he understood much more about her than she was comfortable with. “No, my…no, female, I would never call you that. I would kill anyone that dared call you stupid.”

“When you came here all those years ago, why did you appear in front of me and not the other women?” Every time Joseph put her in the pit, when the lashes fell on her back, when they took her baby, that’s what she wanted to ask. Why her?

“I did not choose them.”

“Choose for what exactly?” She scowled at him. When he’d appeared in front of her, out of thin air and she’d screamed and ran, she’d made the second biggest mistake of her life and told the others she’d seen the devil. Even before then, her life had not been easy among the cousins, on account of her being different. But after that, Brother Josephatus had said she was touched by evil and that she should be punished until the evil was purged. Life had become hell. She’d thought it was hell until they took Noah from her.

“I chose you for my—” The alien hesitated, as if he tried to hide something from her. “I chose you as my woman,” he said at last.

She scrambled back, away from his words, her dress trapped beneath her knees, hindering her. Deep inside, where she didn’t want to acknowledge it, she’d known. Even so, it still shocked her that such a creature would want to, want to….

She couldn’t even think the words in her mind.

She jerked her dress out from under her and then leaned forward again. At this rate, she’d wear out her knees. “Never say such a thing again, you ungodly creature. I would never commit such a sin.” She shuddered to think of the punishments the others would mete out for something like that. They might have left her behind, but if she did that, they’d come back especially to punish her.

The silence stretched as they tried to outstare each other. His gaze burned her, and she had to blink. He didn’t. “Your eyes are ugly,” she blurted.

He thumped his head again, harsh sounds coming out of his mouth. At last, he stilled and visibly calmed himself. “I am aware of your beliefs. The human woman who…belongs to my leader explained it to me.”

“One of you took a human woman?” That poor woman. How could she have relations with such a big…

Her mind wouldn’t go there. It was a good thing she decided to capture this one. Who knew what he would’ve done to her if he walked around loose?

“Are you sure you’re fully grown?”

He was big, but if his leader was his size at least the human woman he kept captive wouldn’t be torn apart during relations. Nothing would convince her that the woman went to the creature of her own free will. Tiredness settled on Susannah’s shoulders. After she’d found Noah, she’d have to try and find a way to help the poor woman. She couldn’t live with herself otherwise. Then she’d settle somewhere the brothers would never find her, and, hopefully, life wouldn’t be a struggle every day.

“Yes, I’m fully grown,” he said, long suffering.

“I will not be your—your woman. Your skin is like a snake’s. You must be some kind of unholy reptile. It would be a sin to have relations with you.” She bit her lip. She wouldn’t judge the woman their leader had taken. After she’d found a way to rescue her, Susannah would explain to her that she couldn’t help what was done to her and couldn’t be held accountable for the sin. If her relatives wouldn’t accept her back, Susannah would let her stay with her and Noah.

The alien’s skin changed, the green striations faded, until his skin turned a beautiful copper. “Does my skin please you now?”

“How did you do that, what are you?” In the weak light shining into the pit, his skin glowed, like Cousin Esther’s prized copper pot. The copper shine and the way his uniform bulged with well-developed muscles was oddly beautiful. Maybe Brother Josephatus was right. Maybe she was a woman of sin.

“Only a warrior can change his skin, it should please you that you were chosen by one.”

“The only thing about you that pleases me is that you are safely captured.” Blood oozed out of his wound again, and she sighed. “I will bring you some disinfectant and bandages for your wound.” She couldn’t ignore the fact that he must be in pain and getting weak from blood loss. But, he’d changed his skin color.

“Finally, you react the way my—b—woman should. You will look after my wound and sponge me down when the fever comes?”

She scowled at him. “I’m not coming down there. I’ll drop down what you need, and you can do it yourself.”

He made a low growly sound that scraped over her skin, and nothing could get her to say it out loud, but he was strangely beautiful, sitting on the dirt, his throat arched, those eyes staring at her.

“You are a most unnatural human female.”

“I’m unnatural? Who’s the freak with the green skin around here?” A freak that could change it from green and gold to copper.

“A normal female would want to bathe my warrior body when the fever comes.” He ignored her reference to his green skin.

“Are your kind prone to fevers?” She needed to keep him alive until they came for him. Fevers were tricky, she’d seen two cousins die from it, but she didn’t dare go down there.

“No.”

“Are you about to kick off, is that why you think you’ll get a fever?” she asked and didn’t know if maybe she should hope for that. She could just hand over his body. She rubbed the sturdy cotton covering her chest. The thought of this strangely compelling creature dead made her heart ache.

“Kick off?”

“Die.”

“You wish me dead, female?” He was scarier than the alien on the TC when he spoke in that accented, grating voice.

Susannah stared down at him and had the craziest urge to laugh and laugh until all the anger, pain, and fear escaped her body. They’d stripped her naked, whipped her, threw her into the punishment pit for two weeks. Because of him. Because she told them she saw a green demon. It led to her losing the person she loved more than her own life. And this creature calmly asked her why she wished him harm. As if she didn’t carry the reminders of what he’d cost her on her body.

“You cost me everything, demon. But I don’t wish you dead.” She only wanted him to stay alive because the resistance would probably pay more for a live alien. Not because he was less a monster than she remembered.

Maybe when she had Noah back, she would stop hating him, but now every time she looked at him, she remembered. The marks on her body ached as if the wounds were fresh. She didn’t have it in her not to hate him. But she wouldn’t become like Brother Josephatus. When she found Noah, when she had him in her arms again, she wouldn’t be a monster that knew only hate. “If you die from the fever, I’d give you a Christian burial,” she told him. He looked tough to her, and she didn’t see any sign that he was in pain, but he might be injured worse than she could see from up here.

“Zyrgin warriors don’t die that easily, female.” He moved, as if he wanted to stand up and intimidate her. She was even more grateful now that Brother Josephatus had made the iron cover for the pit. Life could be strange sometimes. When she’d been in the pit, she’d hated it. Now it kept her safe. He leaned back again, hunching his shoulders, and, again, she had the uneasy feeling that he’d forgotten that he was trying to appear weak and injured.

“I will get the bandages and antiseptic.” She needed to be away from him for a while. He upset her in ways she didn’t understand.

“Before you go, tell me about your TC.”

She turned back and frowned at him. “My TC?”

“I did not think your people had technology. You said you saw the propaganda clip on the TC.”

She shrugged. “We don’t. Brother Josephatus—I mean, Joseph—said it was the devils instrument, but I had one I kept hidden.”

Joseph had insisted they called him by that pretentious name. When they left her behind, she’d promised herself that never again would she call him Brother Josephatus.

Even if they took her back, she wouldn’t call him that.

“Is Brother Joseph the male who never did any work and ate so much he became a very round human?”

She smiled, and it felt strange on her face. Properly raised cousins were supposed to work and not give themselves over to frivolous pleasures that made you smile. “Yes, that’s Brother Joseph.”

He cocked his head at a strange angle. “What do you plan to do with me?”

“I think I’m going to sell you,” she said.

***

 Available now from Amazon

***

Ever since she can remember Marie Dry wanted to travel. She had had the privilege of living in Zambia, Morocco, and Spain and sees herself as a bit of a gypsy. Every few years she gets restless and has to be some place new.

She read romances since she was nine and was fairly young when she decided she would write the perfect story that had all the elements she looked for in a romance. In 1997 she decided to go all out with her writing and to get published. Being published by Black Opal Books is a dream come true for her.

There are several wonderful moments in her life that she would never trade for anything. One of them is meeting President Nelson Mandela and the second being published.