She felt around in her coat pocket, found the keys, wallet, and cash still there. It was a good thing she hadn’t ditched them yet. And that building was the only place she knew with certainty she wouldn’t be seen on camera tonight. She’d taken care of that. Maybe she’d even push a little, letting out enough charge to make that throbbing liver happy again.
Smiling, Mel walked with lighter steps toward her car. Another problem solved. Solving problems had always made Mel happy. Now, she had a few new tools in her problem-solving arsenal. As she left the streetlights behind her, the night’s darkness and shadows returned. In her ears, the faint echo of a jaunty song. In her mind, a big pile of green-tinted papers.
Behind her, an inkier darkness loomed and trailed, bouncing along as she stepped in tune to a beat only she could hear.
A darkness in the shape of wings.
About Magic Baby in Room 108
Both novels in this volume of Dark Collections arose from a single conversation I overhead while waiting for my coffee in a crowded Starbucks. Just to set the scene for you, there were two women talking and they weren’t obvious radicals or anything. They were soccer moms—quite literally—since each had a child with her about the same age wearing little kid soccer uniforms. Neat, casual, subtly fashionable, nice handbags…just two well-put-together ladies doing their Saturday thing.
I’m not in the habit of eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help overhearing this conversation, given the crowd and the long wait. The two women were discussing the political climate, a few parts of it in particular. The talk had clearly been going on for some time.
What I overheard was them agreeing that certain segments of the political system wouldn’t be happy until women were property again, then agreeing it was probably a bit hyperbolic to say that. One woman responded that if it did happen, she would start eating men and then they would have a reason to say women were man-eaters. They laughed.
The other woman stopped laughing and said she couldn’t live like that. She’d simply die. She’d will herself to die, because she couldn’t live like that.
Shortly after that, my coffee arrived and I had no excuse to keep listening. My brain was buzzing like crazy. There was something there, something vital, something worth exploring. It didn’t matter if I agreed or disagreed with the topic. It didn’t matter if I thought it really was hyperbole. It was the approach that zinged my brain. Two such divergent approaches from two, seemingly average women one might see anywhere on a given day merited thought.
These two novels were born from my brain-buzz that day. The venti mocha with an extra shot of espresso may have played some role in the buzz, but these novels were born that day…in that ten-minute slot of time. It took about six months to start really feeling the details of the novels, and another two years to write them, but this novel was the first of the two born that day.
Magic Baby is quite clearly inspired by the woman who said she would eat men rather than be property of them. It’s entirely different, of course, but inspired by that violent expression of defiance. The next novel is inspired by the other woman’s response, but also entirely different. Let’s hope you enjoyed this one’s bizarre twists and will enjoy the next one just as much.
All of Them Dead or Hidden
Suddenly, women in the tens of millions die during a single day…and they keep on dying. The source for all this death can’t be found, but the result is chaos. What happens in a world where women have become the most endangered of creatures?
Four survivors separated by thousands of miles take very different approaches to life after the end of all things. For none of them is life easy. For none is life guaranteed. As the world shifts and desperation turns into a grinding determination, can the future of the human race be left in the hands of the few remaining women necessary to maintain that future? And if not them, who gets to decide?
Now
The House
The creak of the floorboards wakes him like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. He scrambles from his bed, tossing aside the tangle he’s made of his covers. He wasn’t sleeping. He almost never sleeps anymore. It seems he’s spending all his nights waiting for that sound on the boards. He knows which one it is, the board that belongs to that particular creak.
On his toes to avoid making his own creaking noises, he hurries toward the door and the peephole roughly set into it. He almost holds his breath, waiting.
Will she or won’t she?
A door clicks. He squeezes his hands so tightly together that it would hurt if he weren’t so engrossed in the peephole. No matter how many times she does this, it’s always like the first time.
And this, this very thing about to happen, this is his absolute favorite thing of all. She is going to walk down the hallway.
Her head appears close to his peephole because her door is kitty-corner to his own. His bedroom is the last in the hallway and it gives him a view all the way to the staircase at the other end of the large house. There are many doors between him and the stairs, many steps she will have to take.
Her face is calm and without expression. It’s always like that now. Or almost always. Her hair is drawn up into a dark, messy knot at the back of her head and
