From Zero Hour

Will grabbed Ernest's jaw and pulled his face to eye level. "Every time you shunt in, you're one day closer to death."

"Every day we live is one day closer to death, Will. And you've got it all turned around. PODs support life. It's their main purpose."

read chapter 7

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Hooray, it's summer. I wish I got a summer vacation now like I did when I was a little kid. Even though there's no rest for the wicked (i.e., me), there's still a different feel in the air.

Around these parts, it's construction. The lot next door had a new manufactured home put in it. I'm hoping that whoever my new neighbors turn out to be, they're quiet. My old neighbor was fantabulously quiet. I'll miss that about him, though I'm happy he's traded up to a nicer house.

The county road going by my home is being worked on, and that seems to be taking forever. I also get rerouted at the weirdest points because they're paving stuff, and it's not like when I lived in Chicago and if one way was blocked, I could go around an take another way. I'm out in the boonies and there are things like hills and fields in the way, and sometimes there's only one way in or out of a place. And there's a big tar-smelling machine between me and my destination!

Here's to getting where we're going.

xxoo
Jordan

Secrets now in Mobi/Kindle

I'm pleased to announce that Secrets is now available in mobi and Kindle formats. My next ebook release shouldn't have as much of a lag now that I'm all signed up with everyone and I've figured out all the hoops I'm supposed to jump through.

Progress report on PsyCop: Property

Ack, look at all those stickies. Those are all changes I want to make, and I'm only halfway through. (Also, I flipped the book face-down so I can reveal the front cover when it's all ready to go.)

I've got my galley for PsyCop: Property but proofing it is an exacting task. I'm really nit-picky and I want it to be as perfect as I can make it. I should probably stop trying to guesstimate when it'll be ready. Soon!

Love and Obsession

There's a certain kind of love story that really pushes my buttons. It's a love that spills over into obsession, where the two characters are so lost in each other that they're bound to crash and burn, but my oh my, they'll burn brightly before they immolate.

The first book I ever read that made my adolescent brain go "Hot damn!" was Twins: A Novel by Bari Wood. (Sometimes this is also called Twins: Dead Ringers, depending on the edition. It was made into a film called Dead Ringers, but the homoerotic content was removed.)

I took a peek at the 2001 re-release of Twins on Amazon and found only one review there, a one-star. It saddened me. The reviewer found the book too "disturbing" and therefore gave it the bad review.

I don't recall the writing style specifically, because I didn't have any opinions about style way back when. Yes, at one point in my life I could just enjoy a story. I kind of miss that. Now I'm all hung up on style and structure and word choice.

So I'll need to re-read it and add my two cents. I'm a little scared to re-read an old favorite with my new, picky eyes. But if I don't like the writing style, I'll maybe even ignore that, since the plot itself produced a few major wrinkles in my gray matter that effected my whole development as an author. I think it stinks that a reviewer would diss something because it's too "disturbing" for her tender sensibilities. One-stars should be reserved for authors who recycle the same old plot with crap writing and try to re-feed it to the public over and over so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of it. Not authors who hit on something so visceral that it haunts the reader after she closes the covers.

My Channeling Morpheus characters have been hijacking my head lately because they really do obsession better than anyone I've written in a long time. The third story, Manikin, is being spit-shined and gussied up for an early August release, and then the fourth should be September/October (it looks like we've been publishing them every six weeks or so, but no definite release date yet.)

Here's a sneak preview from the fourth Channeling Morpheus story where the obsession's cranked up high:

I hustled Michael over to a fitting room. "We're closing in about ten minutes," said the girl in the blue polyester vest behind the check-in. Her eyes were puffy. She was clearly up way past her bedtime.

I pulled my shades down and looked at her over the top. "Don't worry," I said. "We'll see ourselves out."

She resisted me, but just for a second. She was young, and she was tired. And she really didn't care what we did one way or the other, as long as she didn't get blamed for it.

"I can do this mys..."

I shoved Michael into a stall and stepped in behind him. I closed and locked the door.

Mirrors, all around us. I watched him double-check my reflection. He had to have a vamp-bullshit list as long as his arm by now, a tally he'd pieced together by watching me. Maybe he'd type it up on his little pink computer.

I backed him into a mirror. "This is gonna be good."

He made one of his precious sounds when I took him by the jaw and kissed him hard. They undo me, those sounds of his, tiny things while his heart flutters like a sparrow's, and I could squeeze him until things shattered inside. I didn't do that, of course. But I could. Break him up and suck out the marrow.

He tore his mouth from mine. "No one can see. Right?"

I glanced at the mirror behind him. One-way glass. Behind it, a security guard. I wondered if I could vamp him through the glass. Why not? I stared hard where his eyes would be, even though I could only see his outline. Watch if you want, I don't give a fuck. But leave us be.

Channeling Morpheus stories 1 and 2 are available at Changeling Press!

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Zero Hour - Chapter 7
(click here for whole story starting at chapter 1)

Ernest had to look through the doorway twice. The room where he'd had his first cup of coffee now looked more like the alleyway behind the building. Except instead of being knee-deep in drifting Styrofoam, the room was littered with hundreds and hundreds of mangled books.

Ernest's knees buckled.

He knelt on the floor, picked up a torn page, and pressed its brittle pulpiness against his cheek. Then he sneezed and allowed the paper to flutter back down to the floor. He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and tried to figure out what to do, but the sight of all those historical documents so carelessly destroyed left him too stunned to even move.

He picked up the cover and front signature of one book, put it down, and then another. He touched book after book, each one precious, each one rendered useless by one pointless, wanton act of destruction.

Ernest's chest spasmed, and his eyes and nose began to run. The dust was obviously too much for him.

When his head stopped spinning, Ernest got his feet under him and stood. There was the precious cup he'd held, shattered in a dozen pieces, along with all the others that had shared the shelf with it. There was the velvet sofa, its fabric split, stuffing spilled forth like entrails.

He sagged against the wall and stared.

Eventually he could no longer make out the individual items that had been destroyed. The room seemed more like a scattering of gravel, or a patch of various weeds: a grouping of random things meshed into an amalgam. His eyes scanned the piles, the drifts, the stacks. And then they lit upon a door.

It was a narrow door, its wood the same color as the surrounding paneling. There was an old-time doorknob at waist level, and beneath it, an old-time lock.

Ernest fished the key from his pocket. He'd already found the lock that it opened. One key, one lock, wasn't that the way of it? Ernest scowled. What if it wasn't?

He stepped carefully through the drifts of paper and board and dried flakes of glue, and eventually made his way to the far door. He slid the key into the lock. It fit.

It turned.

click here for the rest of chapter 7 (worksafe)

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PsyCop Stories:
PsyCop: Partners (Paperback, contains Among the Living and Criss Cross)
Among the Living - PsyCop Book 1 (multi-format eBook)
Criss Cross - PsyCop Book 2 (multi-format eBook)
Body & Soul - PsyCop Book 3 (multi-format eBook)
Secrets - PsyCop Book 4 (PDF eBook) (Click here for Mobi edition)
Many Happy Returns (PsyCop Short - PDF eBook)
Thaw (PsyCop Short - PDF eBook, FREE!)
Mind Reader (PsyCop Short - PDF eBook, FREE!)
Striking Sparks (PsyCop Novelette - PDF eBook )

Channeling Morpheus Stories:
Payback (multi-format eBook)
Vertigo (multi-format eBook)
Manikin (coming in August)

Other Stories:
Starlight (PDF eBook)
Verdant (multi-format eBook)
Kindred Spirits (PDF eBook)

Kindle Editions:
Secrets (Kindle Edition)
Criss Cross (Kindle Edition)
Many Happy Returns (Kindle Edition)
Starlight (Kindle Edition)
Kindred Spirits (Kindle Edition)
Striking Sparks (Kindle Edition)

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Email me at jordan (at) psycop (dot) com

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JCP News • Jordan Castillo Price • PO Box 153 • Barneveld, WI 53507