Back to Cowbird Creek, With a Corrected Excerpt

As I'll say in today's Substack post, now that I've survived Release Day for my paranormal horror-adjacent novel, I'm returning to my historical romance series Cowbird Creek.  Looking up some character details in earlier books, I came upon an excerpt involving chicken soup (not in any way related to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series) and decided to read it just for the fun of it. Except when I did so, I noticed some format weirdness. Why were a few words in bold and a sentence in the wrong size font? I anxiously turned to the actual book and was relieved, if mystified, that it didn't include the same errors.

I made haste to fix the errors and then went looking online for wherever I'd posted the excerpt originally. I soon learned that the site where that excerpt appeared no longer exists in its original form, and the replacement I found doesn't seem to have the excerpt anywhere. I really do like the scene, so I'm posting it -- in corrected form, of course -- here.

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Joshua closed the door behind the farmer’s boy, holding the empty coffee cup, and leaned against the door. He’d made enough coffee for both of them, but hadn’t ended up drinking any. Bone-tired as he was, he didn’t have the strength to deal with coffee jitters. 

He stumbled over to the dresser where he kept his nightshirt, pulled off his soaked frock coat and shirt and trousers, let them fall in a sodden heap on the floor, and pulled the nightshirt on. He’d take the wet, wrinkled clothes to Li Chang in the morning. Times like this, he was sorely grateful to his sisters back in Pennsylvania, who’d pooled their resources to send him a second set of clothes suitable for a doctor. He used almost his last strength to dig the bone saw in its case out of his bag and shove it out of sight on the shelf where he kept it. 

Scratching at the door heralded Major’s return from wherever he’d been wandering. Joshua grabbed a towel from the hook near the door and let the dog in. Rubbing the dog down warmed him up a little, but the sooner he was in bed with every quilt and comforter he owned on top of him, the happier he’d be. He moved to blow out the oil lamp. 

Were those steps on the stairs up to his rooms? 

And then, the door again, but this time a knock, or maybe a kick, a dull thud, once and then repeated. 

If he’d had the energy, he would have cussed a blue streak. Not now. Oh, God, not now. A knock this late meant an emergency. He would have to somehow find the wit and the strength to save someone, and he had none of either left. 

“Doctor Gibbs!” (“Doh-ktor Kibbs.”) A woman. He knew he should, but didn't, recognize the voice. 

She didn’t sound sick. Could it be one of her neighbors, or worse, a neighbor’s child? But if it were childhood disease, he might be able to treat the fever, at least, or do something for vomiting. He could handle that. He opened the door. 

There stood Mrs. Blum, her fur coat making her look like a friendly mama bear, holding a covered pot in her hands. 

“I saw you come in, looking so wet and tired. I brought enough for the boy who was with you, but I see he’s gone. May I come in? You won’t leave an old woman standing outside on a staircase, will you?” 

He stumbled back dumbly and let her pass, shoving the door shut with a weak thrust as she barreled toward the kitchen table. She put the pot down, dropped her coat in a corner, and pulled out his chair. “Sit, sit!” 

He collapsed into the chair while she rummaged around, seemingly quite at home, finding a bowl and a spoon. She pulled a ladle from some pocket, then whisked the cover off the pot. Fragrant steam rose up out of it. He leaned forward, sniffing, and smiled weakly to see Major coming toward them to do the same. “What is it?” 

“What is it? Chicken soup is what it is! What else, for warming you up and keeping you from catching your death?” She paused, almost coy. “Oh, here I am telling you your business. But if you don’t already know about chicken soup, it’s time you did, no?” (Though the “no” sounded more like “nu.”) 

She dipped the ladle in once, twice, three times, and then stopped and frowned at the bowl in frustration, looking ready to scold it for not having more room before pushing it toward him. “You start with that. I’ll put the rest on the stove to keep warm.” 

The soup had hunks of carrot and big chunks of chicken, and some sort of strange, light dumplings. Joshua barely made himself use the spoon instead of picking up the bowl and pouring it into his mouth. As it was, his hand shook so that he spilled some of the soup on the table. Without missing a beat, Mrs. Blum tossed a dish towel his way before dragging a stool over to the table and perching on it, overflowing it on every side. When he managed to look up from his miraculous meal, he saw her beaming at him, clearly delighted at the way he was slurping the soup down with no sign of table manners. The moment the spoon clinked the bottom of the bowl, she grabbed the bowl and filled it back up to the brim. “Eat, eat!” 

He was feeling full to the brim himself, but he thought it likely that if he dared to stop before the bowl was empty again, she would seize the spoon and feed him like an infant. He made his way manfully through.

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If you don't already know Dr. Joshua Gibbs and widow Freida Blum, you can find them in What Heals the Heart (Cowbird Creek Book 1).

Wish me luck with Book 5!

Ta-da! It's Release Day for THAT THE DEAD MAY REST, and here's one more excerpt

Let the trumpet sound! It's Release Day for That the Dead May Rest. One more time, here's the cover.

And one more time, here's an excerpt. I wasn't sure which one to post today. After yesterday's downbeat selection, I'd like to post something more hopeful, but that would involve spoilers. So I picked an excerpt that at least has some loveliness in it, while continuing to show Millie's emotional struggle.

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The way things were going, it was a relief for Millie to welcome someone who’d died of a heart attack — though he’d been living in a leftover bomb shelter, and his last few days had been spent by himself, fearfully eating canned food. He greeted the news that he had moved on with a mixture of resignation and relief. He had one request, which he made to Millie with a humble air as if it might be unreasonable. “Could I go somewhere with fresh air? Is that something you have here?”

She looked at him, sitting a little hunched over with his hands clasped on his knee and his eyes shy and hopeful, and made her decision. She had never taken anyone there except Sofia, let alone a stranger . . . but it was time to share. “I know just the place. At least, it’s a favorite of mine, and you’ll be able to smell fresh air, and the sea.”

The man couldn’t stop looking at the waves. Crouching just out of their reach, he watched them flow in and out, in and out as if mesmerized. When Millie knelt in the sand next to him, he said softly, “I’ve never seen the ocean. I always wanted to.”

“It isn’t exactly like this,” Millie admitted. “In the real ocean, you get waves building up high and then crashing down, or some places crashing into rocks. You can see that whenever you like. But I wanted something quieter. Softer, if that makes any sense.”

The man looked away from the water and gazed at her in wonder. “You made this place?”

Millie looked down as she said, “I guess you could say that. I had someone — my friend Sofia, you should meet her — help me, tell me how. But all you have to do is sit with yourself for a while and imagine a place you’d like to be. And you can make more than one place, to fit all the different ways you might be feeling.” She glanced up, and the eagerness in his face made her say, “I could help you, if you’d like.”

“That would be wonderful!” He looked back at the water. “Soon, anyway. I’d like to just sit here for a little while and listen to the sea.”

She hadn’t wanted to ask many questions while he was so clearly taking comfort in this escape from care, but in a few minutes he started talking without prompting, in murmured phrases. “We didn’t know what to believe. Who to believe. People were dying in awful ways, but there weren’t any clear photos or videos showing how it happened. And then a few videos did turn up, but they could have been fake. I’ve never believed in Sasquatch or vampires or any of that. But how would wild animals get loose in cities?”

That suggested another question: were the creatures showing up inside cities? Were any security cameras catching them?

But the man was asking Millie something. “Do you know, here? What’s happening?”

There was no good reason to tell him just how much she did know, not the worst of it. It would only shock and frighten him, when he was just now feeling safe again. But she did say, “I’m afraid it really is something like what you said first. Something I never would have believed either, until I heard it from people coming here. It’s, um, it’s more or less zombies.” Now he did look shocked. What could she say? “So you were right to be frightened, and to take shelter.”

Neither of them had any more to say for a while. They listened to the waves, instead, and the faint shushing sound of the breeze bringing them the lightly salted air.

Finally the man spoke again. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about my making my own special places. I saw redwoods, once. A forest of them, one gigantic tree after another. I could never see the tops of them. I used to think that in heaven, I could see redwoods again, and I’d somehow be able to see the very tops of the trees.” He stopped, and she was about to promise him again that he could create that vision when he went on, “But now, I think about that forest, with all the trees close around in every direction, and I don’t want to be there again. I want to be able to see for a long way on every side.” Another pause. “I know it’s silly, here. There aren’t any of those creatures.” Then he went rigid and wide-eyed, and asked in a tight voice, “There aren’t, are there? Zombies? There aren’t any here?”

Millie closed her eyes for a moment and then made herself open them. No zombies here. Just the people who became them, whose bodies had hunted down men just like him and torn them apart. People like her. She made herself breathe evenly for a moment, to calm down enough to answer, “No, there are no zombies here.”

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I hope you're ready to learn how Millie and Rosie and Emma find the strength they didn't know they had, and how they and the others work together to counter the zombie threat. Here are some purchase links.

-- Amazon

-- Barnes & Noble

-- Bookshop.org

For those who've already read the book (e.g. via NetGalley) and those who will be reading it now, please consider leaving a review! Reviews make it more likely that the retailer will feature the book more prominently. They can also make the author feel seen and/or appreciated.

Happy reading!

Today's excerpt: the chronicler tells a grim tale

 Only one more day! That the Dead May Rest will be available from multiple retailers tomorrow, October 17th. In the meantime, here's another excerpt. None of the continuing characters are involved, and the voice describing what happens is a narrator I've called "the chronicler."

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The pastor tidied up the church and thought with satisfaction — he hoped it didn’t amount to improper pride — of the funeral the day before, and his counseling session with the new widower after the graveside service. Attendance had been good, with extended family and neighbors and even coworkers from before the deceased retired to fuss over her husband and work in her garden. The husband had made sure there would be flowers growing near the grave, in season, and already several crocuses had popped up, which the pastor had made sure the grave diggers did not disturb. The weather for the burial had been benign, an unusually warm afternoon for March with a gentle breeze, and the grave site would be positively pastoral in the spring, the grass lush and green, the faint sound of water lapping at the manicured shore of the nearby lake.

The bereaved husband had seemed to take some comfort from the irrational, but oh-so-human thought of his beloved wife appreciating the spot and his care in choosing it. Encouraging any thoughts and feelings that helped the man cope, providing a sympathetic listener for his grief, while steering his mind toward the heavenly reward into which his wife had been received . . . it had been a good day’s work, and he was grateful that such work was his lot in life.

He was not prepared for that very man to burst into the sanctuary, wild-haired and wild-eyed, beside himself, shouting, “Where’s my wife!”

Had the man’s grief driven him out of his mind? How had the pastor failed to see some warning sign? He hurried to the widower’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward a pew. But the man shrugged him off, violently, and spun to face him. “I went to the grave! It’s all torn up!”

The casket must have been defective, allowing odors to escape that had attracted some stray dog. It must have been a large dog, to do such damage. “I’m so sorry. That must have been very hard to see. We’ll contact — ”

“You don’t UNDERSTAND! It’s all torn up and EMPTY! She’s gone! Someone stole her body. . . .” He broke down in sobs, groping for something to support him. He might be ready to sit down, now. The pastor reached out —

and froze as something banged into the church door, once, twice, and then burst in.

A lurching nightmare, the essence of desecration, had entered his church. And he recognized it. Recognized her from photographs, even though the husband had chosen a closed casket. And what he saw before him was a hideous mockery.

The pastor had never thought of himself as physically courageous. But he could not let this horror, this evil, go unopposed. He strode up to it and declared, “BEGONE, FOUL THING! THIS IS HOLY GROUND!”

It leaped for him, snarling, biting, clawing. And as it opened his throat, as his thoughts bled away, the last thought he carried into darkness was relief, even gratitude, that he wouldn’t live to see whether the creature attacked the man who had been her husband.

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A word of reassurance: that's about as grim as the book gets, and things do get better. You only have to take my word for it for one more day. . . .

Tomorrow, you can order the book instead of preordering it! All the following preorder links will then become purchase links.

-- Amazon (ebook)

-- Amazon (paperback)

-- Bookshop.org (paperback)

-- Kobo (ebook)

-- Barnes & Noble (ebook)

-- Barnes & Noble (paperback)

See you tomorrow!

Today's excerpt: the spirits are done waiting around

 That the Dead May Rest comes out the day after tomorrow! (Gulp.) Today's excerpt is a longer one, spanning parts of two scenes. An explanatory note: Sam is an old flame of Rosie's, now a spirit. By this point, he has already succeeded in making contact with Rosie, and she's agreed to do some research into what's happening, but she's been stalling on actually reporting back on what she found out.

The italicized, centered name after the asterisks indicates the character whose POV we're entering. The first of the two scenes takes place in the afterlife.

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Sam waited for Jeri to sit back down and then slowly stood up, his hands in his pockets. It looked as if his fingers were fidgeting. “Rosie promised to find out what was happening and how often, but she hasn’t tried to get in touch with me since then. And she’s a professional medium! She’s just decided not to cooperate.” A couple of people groaned, and others muttered. Sam nodded agreement and added, “I’m about ready to pester her some more.”

Millie considered the problem. Being a medium for money was a time-honored way to con people, but if Sam had gotten through before, Rosie must have some genuine ability to span the divide between the living and the afterlife. What if she hadn’t realized it? And besides, it’d be natural enough to want to hide from the ugliness of what was happening. Millie would have been glad to do the same, if only she hadn’t been dragged into the middle of it. She raised a hand for Johnny’s attention and said, “What if she’s just taking her time, or not sure what to do?”

“Stalling? Yeah, she might be doing that.” Sam chewed his lip for a moment. “Well, I’ll just need to get her moving.”

Johnny looked around the group and said slowly, “You probably have the best chance of a real exchange, a back-and-forth dialogue. How about if we take advantage of it? Jeri, Robert, how would you feel about hitching a ride, so to speak, on Sam’s channel of communication with his friend?”

Jeri jumped up again, waving her arm. “Oh, let me! I could even ask this Rosie to get in touch with my sister!” Her face suddenly crumpled, and she fought her way through tears to say, “I could tell her I love her.”

Johnny came over and enveloped her in a bear hug, while Robert said more quietly, “I’d be glad to join in.”

Millie looked at them, and then at the rest of the group. Could she? Did she want to? Yes and yes. “Why not some more of us?”

Jeri raised an eyebrow. “Did you want to get in on this? What could you tell them?”

Millie looked her square in the eye. “I can tell them what you couldn’t. I could tell them that my body killed someone, and that I want it stopped. I want it to STOP.”

* * * * *

Rosie

Rosie had spent quite enough time running errands for her overactive imagination. And now her assistant was offering a necessary distraction. “It’s time for another séance, isn’t it? You did spend a substantial, if not inadvisable, amount of money on the new sound system, and the bill has come in.”

They arranged to set things in motion immediately for another séance as soon as they could collect enough people to attend it. They had to include some new clients along with the regulars, so extra staging would be prudent. She had Diane pull the high-end portable air conditioner out of the attic and place it where it would, at the appropriate moment, blow into the room, with the mood music on high enough volume to cover the sound. Then Diane showed the new clients where to put jackets and coats, as well as purses and other such articles. Some mediums would have their helpers search purses and coat pockets for useful information, but Rosie had no use for such crude methods. Mingling, eavesdropping, seemingly trivial questions, and Rosie’s keen ability to read people would suffice.

The clients, old and new, gradually took their seats. Rosie let them converse a little longer — reading lips was one of her more useful skills — and then slowly lifted her hands. “Welcome, friends,” she intoned, and went on with her usual spiel. As she uttered the words “spirit guide,” the cool air began to flow into the room, and the more sensitive among the clients looked around uneasily or went pale.

But then, impossibly, a wave of warm air flowed in and overpowered it, air carrying the scent of . . . roses. And as the murmuring around the table increased, she heard a familiar male voice say, in somewhat sarcastic tones, Time for a new spirit guide, Rosie. And I’m bringing some friends.

She almost let her jaw drop before gaining control of it. And speaking of control, she had better make sure she retained it. Could she go through the usual greeting to her supposed guide, and follow it with the contacts whose suitability she’d pieced together? Not a chance, not with Sam saying, Well, Rosie? Ready to meet them? They need to talk to you.

She looked around the room with an awestruck expression, which was close enough to her actual feelings that she could easily don it. “My friends, something unprecedented is taking place! My spirit guide, Aya, has yielded to the entreaties of another spirit who urgently needs to speak to us. His name, she says, is – speak louder, please -- is Thaddeus.” That’d show him. Take over her séance, would he?

Very funny. Now listen up.

— No, you just hold on a minute while I get ‘em ready for you.

Rosie had always been good at creating voices. It was even easier to mimic a voice she’d recently heard. She ran Sam’s words over in her head for a moment and then said in her own voice, “Listen, friends, to the urgent message Thaddeus has come so far to share with us, a danger he and his friends have sensed from the Great Beyond.” And then, at a lower pitch and in Sam’s rhythms: “I’m here to warn you all, and to ask you to warn others. There is danger coming your way, and you, all of you, the living, need to find out what to do about it.” And then, to twist Sam’s tail a little more, she added, “Thank you, Madame Rebecca, for giving me a way for my friends and me to deliver this warning.”

The clients were so riveted they were barely breathing. Their eyes went even wider as the breeze shifted from warm and floral to cold again, but clammy this time, and bearing the odor of damp earth.

Now came a new voice, a woman’s, not exactly old, but with the tentative, shaky sound that some women acquired before their time. Rosie obediently echoed it. “My name is Millie, and I know better than almost anyone else that something terrible is happening.”

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Today's preorder link goes to Amazon once again.

Tomorrow: a report from the field, not for the faint of heart.

Twin sisters, one on each side of the divide

Hello again! As we approach Release Day for That the Dead May Rest, I continue to post excerpts. This two scenes will introduce you to Janna, the teenaged girl whose twin sister died of anorexia. (If you've read many of my books, you may have noticed my fascination with identical twins.) After today, I'll focus less on characters and more on events.

First, here's the introduction to Janna and her sister.

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It never surprised Janna to dream about her sister. In fact, it would have terrified her if she stopped dreaming about Jeri. They had, after all, been together since the moment that one small cluster of cells had decided to become two. And while they hadn’t spent every minute, or even every day, at each other’s sides, separation had always felt temporary, even when Jeri’s anorexia had become so extreme that an ambulance screamed its way to the hospital, carrying her out of reach until Janna could get someone to drive her there.

And then she’d died, and Janna’s world had fractured into unrecognizable pieces — but at least she had her dreams.

In this one they were watching TV, but not in the hospital. She wasn’t even sitting on Jeri’s bed, the way they had that last year. Instead, they were curled up on the living room couch, sharing the big fuzzy blanket, watching Ghostbusters: Afterlife and sharing a big bowl of popcorn —

Janna couldn’t help it — she jerked herself awake. Popcorn? Jeri sitting there casually snacking? And they hadn’t been little kids. They’d been about the age Janna was now. What the hell?

And there’d been something else. Jeri hadn’t looked exactly healthy, the way she was in some dreams, the ones it hurt to wake up from. But she hadn’t been the near-skeleton Janna had seen so often, and which Jeri had somehow never been able to see. Yes, she’d been thin, but not thin enough to make anyone wonder, let alone worry or stare. And her hair had color in it, the brown-red their mother liked to call auburn, and the bit of wave that made it different from Janna’s, instead of hanging dark and colorless and breaking off like worn-out thread.

But that wasn’t all. There’d been one more thing, but what was it? She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrated hard, and then she had it — and it made chills run down her spine and then settle in her stomach. Jeri’s clothes. She’d been wearing the outfit their parents had bought for her, the dark orange corduroys and forest green pullover that would’ve fit Janna, that they bought for the day they couldn’t stop hoping for, the day Jeri would come home to stay. They’d insisted in dressing Jeri in it for the funeral, even though it was so much too big. She’d been wearing it in the dream, sitting there next to Janna under the blanket, eating popcorn . . . and it had only been a little loose.

Janna fell back down on the bed and curled up small. It should be real. That should be their life, and it wasn’t and never would be again. She slammed her fist into the mattress and let the tears come. 

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This next scene takes place after the spirits have started trying to reach the living.

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In this dream, Jeri had sent Janna a postcard. But it wasn’t a postcard she’d ever seen in a drugstore or tourist shop. The postcards she was used to seeing had landmarks, or ocean scenes, or mountains, or cute animals like kittens and puppies. This postcard startled her, even in the dream, because it was so far from panoramic, showing only a few details, and yet looked exactly like the twins’ secret hideaway. The picture would have to have been taken from the base of the willow tree, looking up and outward through the swaying green branches with the spray of the waterfall visible between them. The warm glow of the light — “golden hour” light — brought back memories of brownie-and-cookie picnics, gobbled greedily while their mother called out to them that dinner was ready. . . .

Dream-Janna turned the postcard over, only to find another image. This one was no photograph, but a tarot card. She and Jeri had just started learning about tarot when Jeri went to the hospital the last time, the time she never came back. Janna had brought a Starlit Twins tarot deck with her to the hospital on a couple of visits, using her phone to call up one of the online guides to the different cards. This card looked like The Tower, which could mean too many things — from danger or crisis to more positive changes. What was Jeri trying to say?

Then the card changed, morphing into another: Strength. They’d laughed about this one (though Jeri’s laugh had an awful rattling sound that stopped Janna’s laughter) because, in the deck Janna had brought, the figure on the card looked a little like them. At least, like both of them before Jeri had started to look more like the skeleton on an antique Death card.

And then it shifted again, into a card from some other deck she couldn’t identify. It might be the Judgment card. She couldn’t remember what that would mean, but it must mean something other than the picture on it. Because the picture showed people standing up in their graves. What did it mean?

She woke up with that question echoing in her ears.

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Today's preorder link is for Bookshop.org, the site through which innumerable independent bookstores (like the wonderful Morgenstern Books in Bloomington, IN) take orders.

In related news, I've started a Substack! I'm still figuring out how to make it look the way I prefer, so bear with me. Please feel free to subscribe anyway.

Next time: the spirits get tired of waiting.

This Week, On "As the Dead Speak": Emma hears from her son

(The title of this post may ring a bell for those who remember the old daytime soap operas. I used to watch them with my mom.)

The countdown continues toward the release of That the Dead May Rest! Since I haven't posted the cover in a while, here it is again.

First up: Emma. If you've been following along, you'll have read the post where I briefly introduced her. Here's the second scene from her POV (point of view), which comes immediately after our introduction to Rosie in yesterday's post.

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Emma was trying to write a letter to her son. If people knew, they’d shake their heads and say sympathetically that she must be too grief-stricken, or simply too old, to know how pointless it was. But what else could she do?

When Robert was alive, she had somehow thought it a better use of her time to clean the house, or look at pictures of her ex-husband, or do exercises, or search for new clients, or do any number of things rather than to write to him. There would always be time later. She might deserve the agony that made up her days and her nights, for so idiotically assuming there would be time.

It was still hard to find things to say when she no longer had news to tell him, or new books to recommend, or any advice to give. Nor could she ask him about his day, or his job, or whether he had gotten serious about some woman, or when he would come to see her.

If she had written to him then, when he was still there to read it, would he have written back? What would he have said? Would his letters have been impatient, as he sometimes had been when she phoned him more than once a day? Or would he have been kind? If she closed her eyes, she could almost see his jagged handwriting slanting across the page, starting with Dear Mom. . . .

She closed her eyes, imagining it, and didn’t open them until she felt a strange spasm in her hand, almost as if her pen had twitched. On the page, under her own cramped handwriting, there was a line slanting down from left to right, a line she hadn’t meant to write. A line starting with an uneven shape, a sort of squashed circle, almost like a D.

Was she seeing things? Was the twitch in her hands the beginning of some sort of seizure? She should be frightened, but she was too tired to care. She left the letter on the table and shuffled to her bedroom. There was nothing, after all, more worth doing than to sleep.

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A little later, Emma tries again.

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An evening and night of fitful, interrupted sleep had left Emma both exhausted and restless, a miserable combination. She tried cleaning house, but could only manage the energy for the easiest jobs — the jobs she did more often, which didn’t need doing again. She reread her grocery list and added a couple of items she might never use, then one more that she almost never allowed herself — dark chocolate truffles. Maybe biting into a truffle would remind her what it felt like to enjoy something.

And then she gave up on all these useless ways of stalling, and sat down to write that letter to Robert.

She reached for the pad of stationery she’d been using, almost down to the last sheet, and saw that she hadn’t torn off the spoiled sheet from last time. She should call her doctor and get examined for conditions that could cause seizures. As she picked up the pen, she held it in the air for a minute, and then two. No tremors, no shaking. She got rid of the spoiled sheet, pulled the fresh sheet toward her, and started to write.

Dear Robert,

Last fall’s leaves are still on the lawn, and how I wish

The pen jerked across the page again. And then, as she gripped it so tight her fingers hurt, it spelled out, in barely legible letters,

Mom Mom it’s me

She almost dropped the pen, but managed to catch it. She brought it to her lips and kissed it, then held it point down on the paper again, whispering, “Robert, oh, Robert, where are you?” But it didn’t matter, because now she knew that he was somewhere. “Never mind that, oh, my darling boy, what did you want to say?”

Mom, we need your help

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Today's preorder link is for Amazon. 

Next time: Janna dreams about her sister -- and about tarot cards.

Next excerpt: meet Rosie, who goes by Madame Rebecca

As we continue the rollout of excerpts from That the Dead May Rest, it's time to switch focus to the folks still on Earth. First up: Rosie, who (as mentioned earlier) had some glimmers of psychic ability as a teenager, but has long since written them off as illusions. The only trace they left behind is her choice of profession. She's a medium, with an extensive repertoire of methods to deceive her clients and equipment to help her do so.

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Madame Rebecca (or Rosie, when not in professional mode) sat at the table, the heavy velvet curtains blocking the inconvenient sunlight, and sniffed the incense her assistant Diane had lit, assessing it and finding it good. Not strong enough to irritate nasal passages, but plenty for providing atmosphere, as did the deep bass notes of the music playing at the other end of the house, just at the threshold of audibility. The black tablecloth covered the round walnut claw-foot table, and her painstakingly recruited clients held hands around it, staring at the single candle in the center. The heat was turned up high enough that her clients would welcome it after the February chill — and would be all the more susceptible to the breeze from the fan Diane would turn on at the appropriate moment.

“Welcome, friends,” she intoned. “You have come together out of a shared yearning, a need to reach beyond the boundaries accepted by so many as impermeable, to welcome the spirits who themselves yearn to communicate with us.” She paused to look around the room, projecting warmth without anything so ordinary as a smile. “Now let all distractions and trivial concerns fall away, and open yourselves to the ineffable, as I await the touch of my spirit guide.” 

Maybe it was time for a new spirit guide — a man, a warrior or shaman, instead of the Egyptian courtesan she’d been trotting out for so long. She could almost hear the man’s voice, a warm baritone rumble, authoritative and masculine . . . .

Was she bored enough that her imagination had become intrusive? It almost seemed that she was hearing such a voice, that it was even demanding her attention. How ridiculous! She shoved aside the memory of her teenaged years, when her daydreams would be interrupted by the faint echo of mysterious voices, tantalizing, fading in and out. Without the naive hope that the voices would grow louder and prove real, and then the disappointment and anger when they faded away, she might never have seized on becoming a medium. It had been a sort of revenge on those thwarted hopes.

And now she was letting those old memories sabotage her. What expression had been on her face, these last minutes? She had better get down to business.

“She comes, she approaches! Welcome, Aya, gentle helper, and tell me what spirits you bring with you to speak to the living. . . .”

A wearisome time later, after“Aya” had conveyed her messages of love and reassurance, Diane collected payments from the clients and ushered them out. When they were all gone, Rosie pushed back from the table, stood up, stretched, and went to open the curtains. But the sunlight had fled.

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See Wednesday's post for a séance that goes rather differently!

Today's preorder links are for Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Tomorrow, you'll meet Emma.