Well friends and lovely readers, though my editing is still slogging along at an agonizing pace, I have finally bitten the bullet and decided to share a bit more about the fourth book in The Crow Series with you. Personally, I'm hoping by being public with it, it'll help motivate me to get the damn thing finished. It's a good book, and an important one for the series, but for some reason my brain just doesn't want to get involved. I think it's "getting towards the end" syndrome, seeing the final book on the horizon and desperately avoiding the culmination and ending of something I have grown to love and enjoy over the past few years.
My mind keeps drifting off to other stories I have in the works, books I'll be focusing on once The Crow Series is finished. I'm excited to get back to work on Firechild, which I've returned to writing lately - as well as editing Songbird of Souls, which is probably the next book I will release after Curse and before the fifth Crow book, Redeem (Yes, I did just tell you the title of the final book. Can't recall if I've mentioned it before and I'm too tired to go read through previous posts to see if this is new knowledge or not.)
I haven't officially set the release date yet for Curse, mostly because I don't want to set a date I might not be able to keep, but right now I'm shooting for the last week in August, provided I can get my ass moving and get the editing wrapped up satisfactorily by then.
I've actually had the front cover done for over a month now. I'm still making little tweaks here and there, but for the most part this is it:
Usually, this is where I'd post the blurb but I'm not quite happy with the current one I'm using, so I've decided instead to give you a sneak peek at Chapter One. (Please remember, this is not the final version and is subject to change during the final round of edits.)
Curse
Chapter One
My combat boots squeaked across the uneven lime-green linoleum as I crossed over the kitchen floor for the fourth time.
“Any luck finding them?” My cell phone was pressed hard against my ear, making the lobe tingle with numbness as I heard Dominik Gianno grumble on the other end of the line. The private investigator had been dodging my calls for almost a week and I was getting desperate. My little brother was still missing and the culprits had vanished into the wind.
“Not so far - but about the pay—” The phone clicked as I mashed the end call button and stared down at the screen in frustration, my eyes narrowing over the small rectangle of plastic and metal in accusation while my boots continued creaking over the sticky floor in Graham’s safe-house apartment. The kitchen was little more than a narrow hallway - stove, sink and fridge all lined up neatly against the wall all the way to the window at the end.
Julian watched me curiously from his perch above the microwave on the small square of counter space near the stove, his black beady eyes darting back and forth as I paced. I heaved a heavy sigh, my fingers curling around the cell phone in my palm before I swung my arm out like pitching a baseball and hurled it across the room. I immediately cringed with regret as I heard the phone crunch and crack against the far wall.
Fuck.
I’d lost my temper.
Julian narrowed his eyes disapprovingly as he watched me bend low over the shattered screen. The glass was cracked from end to end, a spider-web of broken shards obscuring the glowing numbers.
My body tensed with surprise as I heard Felix’s insistent tapping against the windowpane behind me. I’d sent him out searching for signs of Oliver earlier that morning. After weeks in hiding, searching everywhere we could think of, we still didn’t even know if our youngest brother was alive or dead.
As I slid the cloudy glass up over my head, the late-spring rain pelting my cheeks from outside, my heart sank. Felix hopped over the sill, avoiding my gaze as he flapped the droplets from his wings and soared off into the next room.
“No luck either, huh?” I followed him through the kitchen into the large room that made up the rest of the apartment, my broken phone still clutched carefully in the palm of my hand. He settled himself on top of our father’s leather briefcase. It was resting on the end of the milk-crate coffee table which was basically just two plastic crates holding up a rectangular plank of brittle plywood. Despite all the new and expensive furniture Graham and Conner had in their Williamsburg loft, Graham’s safe-house up in the Bronx was sparse and falling to pieces. The only other furniture in the room was a queen-sized bed with flannel bed-sheets and a folding lawn chair placed next to the make-shift table. Since my arrival a few weeks prior, I had decorated the peeling gray wallpaper with every note, connection and clue I had come by since my three brothers had been cursed into the useless bodies of crows.
I was starting to feel like one of those psychos from the movies who obsessed over a mystery to the point of compulsion. The walls of the safe-house apartment were evidence of my manic-state - pictures of lost loved ones, names and dates, theories and connections scrawled on yellow sticky notes with crudely drawn arrows pointing between them. My brainstorming had come to nothing. I still couldn’t figure out who placed the curse on my brothers or why, who would have wanted to kill my childhood best friend or the most important question - how was it all connected?
I had my suspicions. Leena had been pulling the strings. Her father, the mind-reading creep Eustace McFinney, had known about my brother Felix and my friend Marisol’s secret relationship and the child they’d made growing in her womb.
And then there was Vicky - my Great Aunt’s nurse. Her betrayal stung worse than a thousand needles in my chest. She’d been like family, and despite how much I hated her for her part in all of it, I still couldn’t shake the affection I held for her from all those years growing up in her shadow.
The three of them had been plotting together, manipulating us all in some elaborate scheme that I still couldn’t wrap my head around. We were just naive kids, completely sheltered from our magical heritage and abilities. What danger did we pose for them to ruin us so thoroughly?
Felix was staring at the picture of Marisol I had taped to the wall. He squawked angrily, stomping his taloned feet over the soft leather briefcase until I was forced to shoo him off it.
“You’re going to scratch it, dumb-ass.” I grumbled, lifting it and pressing it protectively over my chest. Felix fixed me with a frustrated glare and pecked insistently at the leather with his beak. My hands smoothed over the surface. It felt weird without the bulk of my mother’s journal inside, a faint depression marking its absence.
The book.
Felix was practically screaming it with his eyes.
“You always were the smartest one in the family.” I reached out and gently rubbed my fingers over the soft feathers down his back. He nuzzled his face into my palm and I sighed, the gesture reminding me of my cat Sienna. After the chaos that followed the Vernal Equinox celebration - our haphazard plan to steal Silas away from Leena and then returning to find that Vicky had poisoned my Great Aunt Henriette - I’d panicked. Oliver had been taken, Henriette was weak and knocking on death’s door, and Silas was a useless mess, trying to remember all the horrible things that Leena had forced him to do while under her control. I could see the people I loved being ripped away, one by one, and I was determined to put an end to it the only way I knew how.
By leaving.
I’d returned to Soda’s apartment that night after they’d all fallen asleep. I didn’t take much with me - stuffing my bag with a few jeans and t-shirts, my father’s briefcase, the bird totems and the statue Ru had made for me that held my mother’s likeness. Sienna rubbed between my ankles, excited by my presence. His rumbling purrs vibrated through the leather of my boots and I sighed sadly, rummaging through my schoolwork before tearing out a sheet of blank loose-leaf.
Please feed Fuzzy-butt.
I folded the paper over four twenty dollar bills and stuck it under a magnet on the fridge. I pulled open the door, my face washed in cold air as I slid a six-pack of beer onto the empty shelf inside. I leaned the pen back onto the paper as I slid the door closed:
P.S. I left you beer.
Soda would be furious with me but I didn’t care. Better to be angry than dead.
I headed back into my bedroom for my bag and spotted my mother’s necklace dangling from a nail on the wall over my mattress. I slid it into my back pocket before heading out the door, leaving everything else behind.
The look of betrayal in Sienna’s big round eyes as I closed the door between us still tugged at my heart. The little ball of fluff was my comfort - my quiet companion who never judged when I faltered and who loved me unquestioningly. To say that I missed him would be an understatement. Though I had Julian and Felix, my weeks spent in the safe-house had been lonely - isolated from everything and everyone who mattered to me. I’d gone there to clear my head and focus without distractions, searching for any sign of Vicky or Leena - or even McFinney. So far I’d only been successful at staying clear of everyone else.
Felix gave me one of his then why are you just sitting there looks - or perhaps I’d imagined it. I had become so used to my brothers as birds that I felt like we could almost communicate.
“Don’t look so smug, bird-brain. You may be clever but you still have to eat worms for breakfast.” I said with a smirk, ripping off a large stretch of clear packing tape that I’d been using to stick the pictures and scraps of paper on the grimy gray wallpaper. I held it carefully by the corners between my pinched fingers, trying to ease the stickiness off my skin as I laid it over the web of cracks in the glass screen of my cell phone. Once I got it in the right place I smoothed my fingers across the clear film, sticking it firmly to the glass to hold all the pieces together. At the pressure of my fingers the touch-screen responded.
It was in a sorry state, the glowing numbers barely readable, but at least it still worked.
I squinted into the screen between the cracks.
3:22 P.M.
Eva Applegru would still be at Manuscripts for a few more hours. Even though I knew, after what had happened between Conner and I at the Equinox Celebration, I was probably the last person she wanted to see. In order to get Silas away from Leena we had orchestrated a public display of affection out in the middle of the dance-floor. It had gotten the mindless Silas’ attention, but it had also embittered Eva who had a major crush on Conner.
Yet, knowing what little I did about Eva, I was certain she wasn’t capable of damaging a book, no matter how much she hated me. Eva seemed to value books more than people. I was certain she still had possession my mother’s journal, despite her inability to reveal what was written inside.
________________________________________________________
So, there it is. The first look at Book Four.
In other news, I have yet to post the new About the Author section as it still needs some focused editing and I've been trying to keep my editing focus on Curse. It is still in the works, just slightly delayed.
My newly embraced Instagram account is up and I've been posting fairly regularly there if you wanna check it out ---> Everyn's Instagram of Random Pictures She's Taken.
And lastly, I have finally decided to pull The Crow Series out of Kindle Unlimited. Despite the fact that half the books I sell per month are actually KU borrows, the amount I get paid for each borrow is painful and practically like giving it away. I've had readers ask when they'll be able to get the series on other platforms and the answer is sometime after September when the current books enrolled have wrapped up their contracts. I will possibly put other books in KU in the future, but right now going wide looks like a better prospect. I pulled Crow out of Smashwords a while back and may not use them again, but I'd like to see the books back on the other platforms like B&N, Kobo and iBooks. *shrug* It couldn't hurt, right?
Thanks for reading!
I hope you're all as excited about the new book as I am - now back to work!
*hears the snapping of whips behind her and diligently sits down to edit*
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