California

I know y’all think I’ve been slacking again, and I have, but book one has now been reissued, and is back on Amazon and Createspace, and I’m looking for other places to put it as well. The new cover is below.

 However, in the meantime, I’m taking a much needed break and visiting friends in California. I love the pace of life out here, at least in their circle, and I love the fact that even in late June, you can sit outside a good bit of the time. As a native Texan, this is something foreign to me. Late June in Texas is hot, humid, and generally in the middle of an air quality alert, if you are anywhere in the vicinity of a city. 

I can breathe, and I can sit outside, what a concept. The best part about traveling, however, is that with any luck, you get to relax, and I have been doing nothing but relaxing. We have been to the movie, to a theater with electric recliners and tray tables with drink holders, to a pasta buffet at one of the local wineries, and tastings at several others. A nearby brewery has BBQ on Friday nights, and today we drove up to Big Trees state park to picnic. 

Photography opportunities are abundant, and the shot of an eagle in the top of a tree today was my most exciting so far.  I also got some lovely shots of Pardee Lake.  Those will all be up on www.NaturalImagesbySandi.com shortly.  

Alas, however, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and after not having to take a single allergy tablet for a week, my allergies awakened immediately on my return, and went immediately to bronchitis.  This is fairly common for me, but it does tend to slow me down.  I have finally recovered, and feel human again, so I’m back to my blog. 

I’ll be putting up more teasers from Reaching for Beyond this summer and fall as I finish getting it ready to go, so please let me know what you think.

Reaching for Beyond excerpt:

So much blood.  All I could see when I first walked into the room was blood.  I was glad I had the paper booties on, but there was no way they could stand up to that much blood. Whether I would ever get all the blood out of my shoes would be a crapshoot, but I wasn’t going to bet on it.  My feet squished when I walked into the room. 

I couldn’t even see the body at first. Even with my shields as tight as I could get them, emotions screamed through the room, and through me.  Rage. Pain. Terror. My hands shook, and I hid them in my pocket. I tried to ground, and when my mind finally began to process the scene, my stomach revolted. I swallowed rapidly to keep from bolting for the door.  My anger increased.

I thought I’d seen some bad scenes, but I was completely unprepared for what I was seeing and feeling. It was beyond anything I could have imagined, and I have a very dark, twisty imagination. I’ve seen some things I would have preferred not to see in this job, but this was in a whole new category.

Even as I pushed past the emotions permeating the room, I could still smell the blood and death, the Lilin and Were. The blood and the darkness were still there. Blood had soaked in to every visible surface in the bedroom, stood in pools on the carpet, and dark energy continued to spread through the place, reaching for me, trying to bathe me in its sliminess. More puddles held the legs of the furniture where the floor and furniture had absorbed all they could. I could barely process the scene. Some things your mind just refuses to accept. This was one of those things.

What was left of the body was lying on the bed in another pool of blood, and that increased my anger. It was hard to tell, but I thought it had been a young woman. She didn’t look much more than twenty, but it was hard to tell with her face distorted by her screams. Her head had fallen back when her throat was torn out, and even though the killer had eventually severed it from the body, the head, still seemed to be leaning back, screaming. Somehow, the killer affixed the head to the headboard.  Her torso was lying in the center of the bed.  I couldn’t really tell what color the spread had been.  It was all dark red now.  Her stomach was ripped open, intestines, and internal organs spilling from it like so much spaghetti.