I don’t know about you, but I have been super busy this quarantine.
After I work on my classes all day, recording lectures and making online assignments, and of course, online meetings, I wind down by working on my writing biz. I try to write a blog a day, and do a little writing on my works in progress.
Well, working all the time is starting to pay off: I’ve finished my first work in progress, Dark Twists and Surreal Turns, and it is polished and wrapping up with my beta readers currently. Today’s picture is the working cover.
Here’s the Amazon blurb:
Do you feel out of control right now?
Being in control is so important, especially when life skews into darkness; Shern Baxter battles for the right to live while her world collapses.
Shern used to be normal. She remembers a time when things were simpler and easier to manage. Then she continued on in her education as a scientist and that’s when things started to compound and reality started to slip.
Grad school is hard enough, but when you mix paranoia and crumbling sanity, your coursework and other priorities take a back seat. Will Shern figure out in time why she is deteriorating, or will she just cease to exist?
A psychological horror thriller full of twists about slipping into darkness while trying to turn out okay. Fans of House of Leaves will definitely enjoy this book.
Book 1 in the Dark Twists Trilogy! Book 2, House, Haunted, hits the market October 2020!
Here’s an excerpt from Dark Twists and Surreal Turns:
There are multiple scraping sounds now. My body is still frozen, brain too overcome with fear to force movement. The scraping noises aren’t coming toward me but moving to the back of the swim locker area.
Come on, I remember the old ladies saying.
It’s not that cold.
We’ll be right here with you.
Nothing’s gonna get you.
You’re going to be fine.
My eyes focus on the locker. Quite a shoddy paint job. Keys have scratched smiley faces and words and crazy squiggle lines that zigzag all over the place. I can’t believe I left my purse in this pathetic locker. Even though the lock helped I bet it wouldn’t have taken long to break in. I could have lost my credit cards and driver’s license and favorite deck of playing cards.
Card playing has always been a fun pastime. It forces you to interact with other people and makes it so much easier to relax. How many people ask deep penetrating questions at a poker game?
Enough talk. Enough chitchat.
I can see the door out of the corner of my eye, the wormhole to reality, the safety zone. Tightening the hold on my purse, I jerk it out of the locker and run. Fear propels me down the row of lockers with superhuman speed, brain only focused on that door, that light at the end of the tunnel, that small passageway for salvation, that—
Stray shoelace drives me downwards.
Momentum slides me across the tile.
The door, that blessed opening of freedom, comes streaking and jams me into the doorframe.
Consciousness fades and monsters come out to play.
Welcome to the wonderful world of me, Shern Baxter.