Afterlife
Book 2
Terri Bruce
Genre: Contemporary fantasy/paranormal
Publisher: Mictlan Press
Date of Publication: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9913036-2-5 (print) /
ISBN: 978-0-9913036-3-2 (ebook)
Number of pages: 318
Word Count: 99,000
Cover Artist: Artwork by Shelby Robinson;
cover layout by Jennifer Stolzer
Book Description:
When recently-deceased Irene Dunphy decided to “follow the light,” she thought she’d end up in Heaven or Hell and her journey would be over.
Boy, was she wrong.
She soon finds that “the other side” isn’t a final destination but a kind of purgatory where billions of spirits are stuck, with no way to move forward or back. Even worse, deranged phantoms known as “Hungry Ghosts” stalk the dead, intent on destroying them. The only way out is for Irene to forget her life on earth—including the boy who risked everything to help her cross over—which she’s not about to do.
As Irene desperately searches for an alternative, help unexpectedly comes in the unlikeliest of forms: a twelfth-century Spanish knight and a nineteenth-century American cowboy. Even more surprising, one offers a chance for redemption; the other, love. Unfortunately, she won’t be able to have either if she can’t find a way to escape the hellish limbo where they’re all trapped.
Excerpt:
Her hand touched
a rock, one of the flat beach stones she’d seen on graves. She picked it up,
laying it flat in her palm. She didn’t remember picking this up. In fact, she
had been careful not to take any. It had seemed disrespectful and too much like
stealing to remove them, and while she’d seen a few here—both loose and piled
in cairns—she hadn’t picked any of them up. There had been no point. What would
she do with a rock?
No wonder her
bag was so heavy.
She tossed the
rock over her shoulder and heard it hit the ground with a satisfying thud some
distance away. It felt good to be rid of something, to make a decision and be
sure it was the right one.
She surveyed the
pile again and then grabbed a small handful of paper animals. She picked one up
between a finger and thumb. It was a horse. Irene had been in Chinatown during
Chinese Ghost Festival, a holiday in which the living left offerings for the
dead. These offerings included paper replicas of things people thought the dead
would need in the afterlife—money, clothes, television sets, and even animals.
Irene had admired the precise and delicate folds of the Origami figures and had
picked some up to admire them more closely. Without thinking, she had dropped
them into her bag and apparently been carrying them ever since.
Well, even Jonah
couldn’t argue with her on this—there was no way she was going to need a paper
horse on her journey through the afterlife. Plus, these didn’t hold any
sentimental value. She cast the horse onto a nearby fire and watched as the
paper curled and blackened in the low-burning flames.
The fire leapt and
seemed to glow blue for a moment. Irene tensed—what was happening?
Thick black
smoke began to rise slowly from the flames, spiraling upward in a thickening
column. The smoke grew denser and then elongated sideways. Irene leapt to her
feet and backed away, her heart pounding. Something was forming in the fire.
The smoke was
taking shape now; there was purpose and design in its movements. She could see
a long, horizontal back, four legs, a neck, and finally a head and a tail. The
smoke swirled with a final flourish and then shuddered into the solidity of a
smoke-colored horse. The animal blinked passively. Then it violently shook its
head, blew out a breath, and delicately picked its way forward out of the fire.
It immediately put its head down and began to lip the ground, looking for food.
Irene stared
stupidly at it. “Are you shitting me?”
About the Author:
Terri Bruce has been making up adventure stories for as long as she can remember. Like Anne Shirley, she prefers to make people cry rather than laugh, but is happy if she can do either. She produces fantasy and adventure stories from a haunted house in New England where she lives with her husband and three cats.
Website/Blog: http://www.terribruce.net
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@_TerriBruce
Amazon Author Page: www.amazon.com/author/terribruce
Goodreads Profile: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6450132.Terri_Bruce
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Terri-Bruce-Fan-Page/325830544139030
1 comments:
Such a magnificent excerpt! I can't wait to read some more! =D
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