Wednesday night I finished the seventh Rainbow Rock book. Thursday morning I had a call from my agent. Two new books will be going live in August. Woo-hoo!
RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK features Marcie Carmody, who was a teenager when we met her in Book 4: A LITTLE NIGHT RAINBOW. She's older--and wiser--now, crawling home to Rainbow Rock after a broken relationship has left her devastated. Here's the opening to her story:
CHAPTER
ONE
Late
February
The sun was setting behind her, lighting
the clouds ahead in delicate pastels that would have been beautiful on any other
day. It was the kind of winter sunset tourists came to the desert to find, but
Marcie Carmody only found it worrisome. “Damn,” she muttered, slamming her hand
against the steering wheel and pushing hard on the accelerator. It was bad
enough to be crawling home broken and defeated. She didn’t want to have to call
for rescue just because the lights on her old clunker had shorted out somewhere
this side of San Bernardino.
She passed Joseph City on her way to
Holbrook, grateful for light traffic on I-40. “Can’t you make it twenty more
minutes?” she grumbled aloud. With luck, the miles would run out before the
last of the light.
That was when she spotted the Highway
Patrol car sitting under a billboard for the Sagebrush Trading Post: “See our
Jackelope! Cold Cherry Cider!” As she passed, going some fifteen miles per hour
above the limit, she wasn’t at all surprised to see the trooper pull in behind
her and light her up. She ran a hand through her mop of unruly auburn curls.
“Dammit twice!” She
slowed and pulled to the shoulder. “This is not my day. Or my week, month or year,
for that matter.”
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
MAGGIE RISING is my first YA novel (first detective/ghost/paranormal story, too) which will also be "going live" in August. You may already have met Maggie. Here's the beginning of her story:
CHAPTER ONE
On the last day of
the year, I sat in my Great-Aunt Betty’s reading parlor staring at the framed
story cloth on the wall. The embroidered figures showed the cycle of planting,
harvest, and New Year in a Southeast Asian village. One figure, the “doctor” or
shaman, told a different story. If I had never seen him, maybe I never would
have been arrested for murder, spent time in jail, or befriended a ghost. Or I
might have, anyway. It’s possible I was already on that path.
* * *
Early October
“So,
are you really a psychic?”
The girl at the
counter looked like so many others I’d seen since hanging my shingle next to Aunt
Betty’s last summer. I wanted to answer, Hey,
look: You came here because the sign says Psychic Readings. What do you
expect? Instead, I gave her my wisest, most knowing smile while sizing her
up.
Look like fun? Stick around. There's much more fun to come.
Susan Aylworth is the author of nine published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her newest book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, was printed in June by Covenant Communications. Her tenth novel, RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, will soon be available as an original e-book, the seventh in the Rainbow Rock series, and MAGGIE RISING will be #11. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.
