Freefall in February — Launching
Happy New Year!
It’s the traditional day for reflecting, plannning, and promising… followed by the traditional month of backsliding, of course.
In the spirit of breaking that cycle:
FREEFALL, Book Two of Spellkeeper Flight, will be launched on February 5th. After long months of tweaking, the book is ready, the cover’s being set up (stay tuned!), and I’m looking forward to sharing it with the world.
In fact, I have a total of three things to share for the new year:
- First, I will soon be offering THE HIGH ROAD for free, to help new readers find an easy start into the series. (Though I have to say, you’ll find it’s the only thing that’s “easy” for Mark and Angie.)
- Second is that news about FREEFALL, complete with a sample below that takes up right after THE HIGH ROAD’s closing excerpt cut off. (I’ve cut out one name, for readers who haven’t discovered who “the killer” is yet.)
- But also, there’s another excerpt here and another announcement: Book Three, GROUNDED, will be released this summer as well.
Now: the FREEFALL sample at the end of THE HIGH ROAD had left Mark diving back into his enemy’s building at the moment the police turned away, hoping to seize the computer in the office. So:
Sample from FREEFALL
The power lay behind him. His head twisted around, he saw the cop sitting up, gun swinging up in her still-possessed hands.
Too late. Mark tumbled through the office doorway and bounced off a desk, careening to a stop against the wall. He tottered sideways, trying to find cover, but the room barely gave him a few steps either way. No other doors, and no windows.
He waited, trapped. And yet… the cop didn’t close in. He could hear her shuffling to her
He thought of how fast the killer’s control had jumped between the two police officers before, too quick for either of them to realize what had happened… and, he was always trying to spy out the secrets of the belt’s magic…
“You can’t shoot me, can you?” Mark laughed. The sound came out hoarse, and he still moved aside from the doorway. If he was wrong, if the killer was ready to explain away Mark’s body and find other ways to learn their magic—
He sensed the cop still edging toward the doorway. Mark flexed his fingers, praying he could grab and strike before the enemy jumped through that touch. The smell of paint pressed at his nose.
The lights went out.
A flash of memory came: Nolan outside another of these offices, promising If you need a distraction, I’ll freeze the power lines. He blinked wildly, fighting to push the flood of shadows back and make out where the outlines in the room had been.
Over what had to be the police radio came a sharp “What the hell? Bennie?”
“I’m alright!” the possessed woman answered.
Mark blinked harder. His enemy was giving him a moment to work, not calling in the other cop. But that other cop could decide to rush in at any moment. So… there, that blocky shape sitting beside the table’s leg would be the computer he’d come for.
One quick step and he reached behind the box to rip a handful of cables from its back, then snapped the last wire away, half-expecting to hear sparks popping.
Behind him, the cop moved in.
Mark twisted around to glimpse the woman stepping toward him, her empty hand reaching out—closing in to touch, ready to grab my mind! He flung himself backward, and his arm swung out into a scooping motion and slammed into the table.
Pain shot through his knuckles and his injured shoulder, but his magic surged, and he heard the whoosh and the clamor of flying objects and a great crash as he flung the near-weightless table at the cop and it glanced off her to clatter against the wall.
It did little more than make her flinch back, but that gave him the moment he needed to stumble to his feet and snatch up the desktop computer, lightening it too. She was already turning back toward him, still blocking the doorway.
He raised the computer like a shield and charged.
He slammed into her and flung her back, and burst on through the doorway to finally stretch his steps into a leaping run that swept him away from her across the room and barely aimed low enough to slide his head under the front doorway to dart through and out.
Sample from GROUNDED
Mark Petrie took another glance back up the police station corridor, but with all the cops moving about he couldn’t even see the door they’d taken Olivia Nolan and her lawyers through.
He reached out with the magic in his belt again to search for her. The weather energy Nolan carried was a primal force his gravity power could barely feel at the best of times… and using any magic now stretched his frayed nerves and made the dull, shifting roar of the police station’s daily crowd beat against his head. At least he could sense Henry’s own gravity belt up in the room they’d taken him to.
“We should be done with him soon.”
Mark snapped his head forward again. Was that satisfaction in the rail-thin detective’s voice, about how Mark’s cousin had been shaken by all the treacherous power that he had to hush up? Shh, don’t say it.
–That’s as far as I can take Chapter One without veering straight into spoilers. But there’s a reason the chapter is called “Nine Points of the Law.”
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