.............................Free Reads
Fey Touched Teaser by Erin Zarro
A Hunter discovers something impossible.
Still Waters Run Deep Part 1 by Siri Paulson
Payut is a peddlar, but once he was more. Part one of five of a fantasy serial.
.............For You...............
Still Waters Run Deep Part 2 by Siri Paulson
Payut meets a stranger and an old teacher. Part two of five.
The Spirit Mask by Siri Paulson
A new shaman has much to learn.
From Us............................
Still Waters Run Deep Part 3 by Siri Paulson
Reluctant and frightened, Payut goes downriver while everyone else flees. Part three of five.
The Door in the Attic by Kit Campbell
Curiousity can be dangerous to more than cats.
Sneak Peek of Grave Touched
Erin here. I wanted to give you a sneak peek of Grave Touched, book 2 of my Fey Touched series, releasing May 1st from Turtleduck Press. Not long now! (Also? Fey Touched, book 1, is on sale for $.99 right now. Check it out if you want to catch up!)
Whispers. A flicker of thought.
My eyes wouldn't open. Panic sliced through me.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
"It's okay, Em. You're okay," a familiar male voice said. A hand stroked my brow. Nick? Was Nick here? My beloved Nick could always soothe me, keep me from the edge.
"Em…you're really here," Nick said softly. "You're alive."
Alive? Of course I was alive.
I opened my eyes, wincing.
A tall human woman watched me with gray eyes that I was sure peeled layers off of me. "Emily, I'm Doctor Lucia Jonath. You've been under my care for a few weeks now because you were in an accident."
Accountability
On Saturday, March 14th, at a quarter to six in the morning, I changed out of my pajamas and into the clothes I would wear to drive from Tucson, Arizona to Dana Point, California. Unfortunately as I did, I changed from my blue flannel shirt to my red one, and left my new Fitbit Zip attached to the blue shirt. Which I then flung across my bed before packing up my car and herding the family out the door for possibly our most highly-anticipated vacation ever.
What I did, basically, was shoot myself in the foot for the next four days as far as my fitness goals went.
The Haunting of Heatherbrae Station
A free short story
by Siri Paulson
14 May 18—, Earth reckoning
Dear Millie,
What a forlorn place this is! How far we have come from Mrs. Tattersall's London Academy for Female Tutors. I hope you are finding Luna Station, and your young charges, more amiable than mine. How often I imagined the two motherless children here, starved for a woman's gentle hand and eager to learn, as befits even the farthest-flung of Queen Victoria's young citizens. Even the thought of being trapped on the station for three months until the orbits lined up again did not deter me. But I fear I have made a dreadful mistake.
My first sight of Heatherbrae Station from the ethership's shuttle, as we made our approach yesterday, was daunting enough. The edifice loomed above us, ill-lit by the distant Sun, with the fantastic whorls of Saturn's surface behind. The station has ornate crenellations like a castle, and pointed arches along its axis—for it is shaped like a dumbbell, the Alpha end for the workers and the shuttlecraft they use to gather raw material from the rings, the middle for processing, and the Beta end for Stationmaster Edmund Croyden and his children and staff...and me. The whole rotates to provide gravity at each end. Quite ingenious; but from the shuttle it was dark and grim, and about it hovered a queer white light that gave me the chills.
I must have made some sound, for the pilot turned to me and grinned. "Cheerful, ain't it?" he said. "Welcome to your new home, Miss Okembe. Word is it's haunted."
"I do not hold with superstition," I told him.
Do you know what he said, Millie? "You should."
Well! I have not come so far from Nigeria only to withstand further mutterings and foolishness...or so I believed.