The following is an uncorrected excerpt from my current WIP. It contains foul language and questionable uses of bodily fluids. Enjoy. Don’t eat the meat.

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The knowledge grew in Mary like she feared a child had been only days before. But there was no test to assuage her fears this time. in fact, if she’d stuck around for the test she knew she never would have left the hospital. They’d have quarantined her by force. She’d seen what they did in an effort to protect the idiots and bastards all around her.

Mary knew she had whatever it was that Darrion had brought home from the hospital. And while it spread in her veins it reproduced with it a rage like she’d never felt before.

Why her? She went to work every day. She worked a hard job, flinging pork bellys at the packing plant with a nasty Filipino whore at the station next to her who tried to take a finger every time she could. Without a better education it was the best she could do, and she couldn’t get a better education because unlike the prep assholes she’d been bussed off to school with she had no support, no time to go to school because she had to work to keep off the streets.

She couldn’t afford to go to the clinic for more than her yearly visit, how the hell could she afford to be successfully treated for a dangerously infectious disease? How could she expect them to even bother, once they saw she couldn’t pay she’d be tossed in a corner and left to rot and die. They’d make the charts look good, of course. But they’d spend more time mourning her loss than treating her, which is to say, they might feel bad for a moment or two.

The nasty bitch next to her flicked out her blade and Mary just barely pulled her hands back before the blade sliced the skin from the belly. There was another one coming down the line. Mary flipped it onto the next belt and dodged the woman’s slice again.

Mary lived a life of close calls and barely making it. She’d barely made it through high school, getting kicked out of her mother’s house when she hit her mom’s boyfriend on the side of the head with a glass ash tray. He’d tried to grope her and when Mary’s mother had been so furious she’d thrown Mary out right then. it had been a fight to finish school, and there’d been no time to work through college.

Between no tuition support and the forced overtime she’d been working at the plant lately she would have dropped out of college long before now. But now, at last, the bad luck had caught up with her and she was facing down a situation that she saw no escape from.

She couldn’t even visit Trevon, because he’d be sick too, and they’d catch her if she tried.

Why did she have to die? Who’d bee picking on her her whole life? why did God have it out for her instead of for the alcoholic bastard her mother had married. Or her deadbeat druggie dad who’d abandoned the family by getting put in jail for cooking meth? Why did the bitch who kept trying to cut off her arm get to go free, or the jackass supervisor who refused to give her a protective glove to prevent any “accidents”, why couldn’t they get picked off by some ultra rare disease?

Why couldn’t someone who deserved to die bleed out in puddle on their living room floor instead of Darrion, Trevon or herself? What did they do to piss off the world?

Thump. Swish.

Fuck the world, Mary found herself thinking. The supervisor came over and let her go for lunch. Mary pulled off her gear, but a glance at her lunch sent her stomach churning in a most unpleasant way. The clock counted her lunch, and her life, down by tiny, clicking seconds.

When she pulled her coveralls and gloves back on, preparing to return to the line, she hid one of the small utility blades in her pocket. Back on the line the thump swish of her position’s routine became a hiss thump swish.

Mary was very careful to avoid the bitch’s angry blade to her left. But with just a small movement she used her own blade to keep the wounds on her arms opened and flowing. To keep the anger in her veins flowing gently out onto the belt and the meat on its way to the packaging area.

After twenty minutes the pressure began to ease and Mary began to look forward to what life she had left.

I’m pleased to say that Skullvines is moving Rot up to publication this summer! So I’m starting to put into action some of the stuff I’ve been doing to promote it. You saw the flyer in my last post. Here’s the query that sold the book (and it also functions as a pretty neat blurb).

Rot is a no-pause, desperation-filled, stand out zombie novelette. There are no Romero flesh eaters here, only anger-driven souls trapped in their bodies against their will by bereaved loved ones who can’t let go. Plus zombie herding. (Zombie milk available by special arrangement only.)

In a world where some people can will away death itself, Silver Springs Specialty Care Community caters to the undead, a safe place to lock risen loved ones away for the people who don’t have the power to control dead, but aren’t quite ready to let go. Dean, retired from the military and looking for an easier life, runs security at the zombie herding farm, but he quickly learns that dark injustice is not unique to war.

There’s a rotten core to Silver Springs. Now Dean and a quickly decaying corpse named Patrick are on the hunt for the woman they both love and lost to a lucrative business that specializes in greed, zombies and never having to say goodbye.

I’m not feeling terribly enthusiastic about Moon Madness as a title. I mean, I completely rewrote it so I’m thinking it deserves a new title too. So, here’s the blurb I wrote for the query. Please take a moment to vote for which title you like better.

Nika Thompson never had a problem being a werewolf until Rick came into her life. The alpha and his family fill a hole left by her own uncaring family and sucker her out of her life as a free wolf and into pack life. Then, as her luck would have it, Rick and his family hand off their territory, and Nika, to the dark, handsome, incredibly sexy alpha, Maeul.

But the life of a werewolf is often a vicious, brutal thing. As Nika struggles to come to terms with the responsibility Maeul wants to give her when he asks her to be his mate, a dark force is gathering in their woods intend on taking everything from them. When the dusk settles Nika must figure out for herself who the heroine and hero of her story really are before her pack is lost to the greed that can only come from from a human heart.