Coincidentally, there's a great guest-blog by Josh Lanyon, and follow-up comments, at Jeanne Barrack's spot, The Sweet Flag (http://thesweetflagmenlove.blogspot.com/).
Gray Man is coming out Friday, August 22, at Changeling Press. Here's the blurb, which is followed by an excerpt:
* * * * *
Emma Moore’s vacation along the lower New England seaboard had everything to do with bolstering her flagging relationship and nothing to do with finding ghosts. But when an eerie entry written in archaic script shows up in her diary, she suspects it might be related to the shadowy figure suddenly clinging to her boyfriend’s back.
A shockingly orgasmic ride on a theme-park roller coaster and the mystifying utterances of a psychic stranger only strengthen Emma’s suspicion that something, or someone, is going bump—and hump—in the night. Getting to the bottom of this disturbing yet compelling phenomenon seems her only recourse.
Leaving her lawyer-boyfriend behind in Boston to pursue his work and possibly an affair, Emma returns to the historic Connecticut inn where the intensely passionate Gray Man first appeared. What she discovers and experiences there bring her the most wrenching sadness and exhilarating hope she’s ever known . . . and the realization that there are no bounds in time and space any more than there are in the ocean that lies beyond her window.
* * * * *
As soon as her eyes opened to the sharp sunlight of a late-September morning, Emma realized she’d neglected to do something very, very important last night. Not only had she forgotten to stash her diary, she’d—
Oh shit.
Shooting a quick glance at Alan, who seemed to be sleeping soundly, Emma slipped out of bed and into her bathrobe and pattered as quietly as possible to the sitting room. Easing open the door, hoping its thin squeak wouldn’t wake her companion, she rose up on the balls of her feet and took three long strides to the desk. Sure enough, the diary still lay there, wide open.
Emma reached out to snatch it and stuff it into her pocket. Her arm froze in midair.
Beneath the final line of her entry, a single word had been written in a jagged, archaic script.
Yes.
Emma’s breath stopped. A prickling sensation wound simultaneously from the back of her neck and her solar plexus to the middle of her spine. As her skin pinched into gooseflesh, she shot a look over her shoulder. Was this Alan’s way of reassuring her? Had he altered his handwriting to make it in keeping with a seventeenth-century town?
As unlikely as it seemed—the man was singularly devoid of both whimsy and imagination—it was the only explanation Emma could come up with. Either that or she’d turned into a sleepwalker with multiple-personality disorder. Cautiously lifting the diary as if it might shock or burn her, she tiptoed back to her suitcase and once again secreted the book.
But her surprises had just begun.
"Getting ready to leave?"
Emma spun around. Alan, his face peppered with a sandy growth of whiskers, was sitting up in bed, watching her. He ran both hands over his head and stretched backward. Emma’s shock gave way to curiosity. She squinted, peered at him. There was something—
He frowned. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Why indeed. Was his body casting a shadow against the headboard? Emma’s gaze shifted to the windows and followed the course of the incoming light. Yes, it was possible. But… "I, uh, was just wondering how you’d look with a beard and mustache."
Alan’s right hand immediately went to the lower half of his face and rubbed it. "Don’t even go there," he said.
"Alan, did you happen to get up in the middle of the night and go into the sitting room?"
He gave her a puzzled look. "No. Why would I do that?" Sliding to the edge of the bed, he yawned, scratched the middle of his chest and got up. "I slept like a log last night." He shuffled toward the bathroom.
Emma’s mouth fell open as she followed his progress. The shadow that was behind him in bed was still behind him, hovering at his back like some gauzy gray kite he was toting over his shoulder. It had a vaguely human form, but taller than Alan’s. Taller and unsettled, like a swath of fog.
~~~~~
From Gray Man, coming August 22 from Changeling Press
Copyright (c) 2008, K. Z. Snow
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