When Mia Mitchell, a hardcore but lonely former Marine, steps into an alley to pull some thugs off an unlucky foreigner, she walks into a fight she expects. What she doesn’t see coming is the foreigner making her a job offer any sane person would refuse. So, she takes it. She thinks she’s headed for some third-world country; instead she’s mysteriously transported to an Earth-like parallel world. That’s a mad left-hook.
Mia discovers a matriarchal dystopia where freedom doesn’t exist and fighting for it means execution. Lethal force bends all to the law; women fear for their families and un-wed men suffer slavery. Mia’s job is to train an underground syndicate of male freedom-fighters for a violent revolution. However, the guys don’t want a pair of X chromosomes showing them the way.
Eben, an escaped slave, is encouraged by Mia to become a leader among the men. But when he turns his quiet determination on her, it spells F.U.B.A.R. for cynical Mia. Their unexpected connection threatens more than her exit strategy; it threatens the power struggle festering with in the syndicate.
Haunted by nightmares and post-traumatic stress, unsure who to trust or how to get home, Mia struggles to stay alive as she realizes all is not what it seems.
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Excerpt:
I found myself in an open field, it was sunny but I was cold. I turned. A smooth, polished piece of granite marked Dad’s grave. His casket was buried in the cold earth, but he wasn’t in there, inside that wooden box. He was free somewhere, roaming the world in some capacity, enjoying himself. It was I who was trapped in a box.
Strong arms surrounded me. I turned into them, to Harris, the only other man I’d ever trusted.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.” He squeezed me closer and wound the curls of my hair around his finger, knowing it relaxed me. The soothing never came. I clutched him closer in a desperate attempt to keep him with me.
He pulled away but I clung to him like a child. He took my face between his hands and wiped at the tears with his thumbs, the ring I’d given him on his finger.
“I love you.” I’d never said it enough when it had mattered. He’d always been better at saying those things.
“I know.” He smiled and his blue eyes sparkled in that mischievous way they always had when we’d been kids in JeetKune Do class.
He brought his lips to mine. My heart shuddered. I willed Harris to stay with me. My hands cupped the back of his head, my fingers ran through his shaved Army hair, and then through blood. His eyes were wide and scared. I didn’t know where he was hurt, they’d never told me. It’d been closed casket. I held him tighter but his arms loosened. He was gone, dissolved like sand that melted through my fingers. The band he’d given me melted too, burning my hand.
Alone and surrounded by blackness I fell to my knees. It was my fault he was gone. Why had Harris come with me?
Wind struck my face. The moon looked down on me, an insect in its path. Something else mingled with the wind and stuck in my eyes, throat, and chest. Sand. Harris. Desolation.
A berm on either side of me and a ranger graveyard before me—I was in the middle of a desert. The cold made me tremble. Then the fire came.
All my life I’ve dreamed of stories or have had my nose buried in one. I live in Edmonton, Canada with my husband and my weird sense of humor.
I love old war movies, dystopian fiction, and any story with action, a good plot, and characters I'd get into a fight at the pub for. Not that I'm a brawler or anything. Unless you think that out-of-print book or vintage piece at the thrift shop is going home with you instead of me. Then, my friend, the gloves are off.
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