(Which is still coming out December 9 and can be pre-ordered here. Outside the US, try this. I’m still waiting for a link to the paperback edition.)
Foul language warning on this one!
Her shelves were filling up again with other books, like those John Jakes Bicentennial paperbacks in which people experienced all the important events of American history between simultaneous orgasms. There was also Anne Frank’s diary and a bunch of depressing Holocaust novels. Sometimes she wondered if she liked to read those because no matter how difficult her life got, she could always think well, at least I’m not in a concentration camp.
The crash was still his downfall. As he’d explained to his psychiatrist, if the plane was a black box in which he might or might not have done all that he could to save his family, all those realities had existed at the same time until the moment someone found him lying unconscious in a field of shade tobacco. He had to live with the version of reality in which they were dead and, at the very least, he was the one who’d put them in that box to begin with. Schrodinger had designed his experiment specifically to either kill the cat or not, and luckily for him it wasn’t a real cat, because if it had been, he’d probably be the most notorious man in the history of physics. But David’s family had been real.
“I’m sorry, what?” the doctor had said. “I’m not following you at all.”
“It’s theoretical physics,” David had said. “Schrodinger’s cat? Very basic stuff I’d expect any college graduate to know. But never mind.”
“Is this level of arrogance normal for you?” the doctor had asked. “If so, I believe you may really be improving.”
“What I don’t understand about this holiday is the football part of it. Not that what you lot play is what I would consider football.”
Colin had already said some variation on this to him at least once a week since he’d met him. “Are you watching the game?” he asked hopefully. He had no actual interest in the day’s games, but having a television on would reduce the pressure to have conversation.
“Good Lord, no,” Colin said. “I did watch some of that parade, though. A bizarre tribal custom if I ever saw one. Huge inflated totems, dizzying drumbeats, virgins displayed like offerings to appease the gods!”
“So where’s Molly?” he asked Cassandra, who looked as if she’d had just about enough of Colin.
MOLLY WISHED Farrah Fawcett would stop smiling. She was clearly out of touch with what was going on in this room. Or maybe she wasn’t – her smile had a kind of gritting-her-teeth quality to it, as if the actress was just possibly being forced to hold that smile under the threat of death. It reminded Molly of the huge, helpless grin on the skeleton in her biology class; she could practically see the white, bleached skull waiting to be revealed under all that perfect hair and skin. But she didn’t want to think about that, anymore than she wanted to be where she was.
If she really insisted on going through with this, it was going to be like making love to a pill bug. One touch in the wrong spot, and she’d curl up into a little ball. Hell, he might, too. How did two pill bugs ever mate? He guessed they had to possess a basic level of pill bug trust, or just be too fucking horny to care.
I think that’s it for free excerpts, except that I might do a couple of future posts with locations and paintings that show up in the book. If you’re on my mailing list, you already got Chapter 3, and you’ll get Chapter 4 and then 5 soon. Also, you’ll get a prequel chapter from The Awful Mess sometime early next month. If you tried to join and didn’t get anything, try again and remember to confirm your subscription.
The Awful Mess ebook will be on sale Oct. 28 – Nov. 4. It’s that title’s first time out through BookBub with the newer cover, and also the first time promoting to multiple retailers rather than just Amazon. I’m very curious to see how it does … and hopeful it might goose pre-orders on this one.