Put your ear to the ground….something’s coming your way…something BIG….keep listening….

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I once dubbed Kate Genet ‘the lesbian Stephen King’ then recanted the statement in favor of calling her ‘the lesbian Nancy Drew’. After reading Remnant I realize my first proclamation was premature but nonetheless accurate. 

Remnant has all the elements of a good, old-fashioned horror story: the tingly ‘Oh !@#$ what’s going on’ feeling; the sickening drop when you realize what’s going on, then the subsequent wavering between hope and despair of surviving this very bad thing.

In Remnant, the very bad thing is that one morning Cass wakes up and her boyfriend’s gone. (I just heard a collective groan from half the lesbians reading this. Hold on. Stick with me. I had to trust Ms. Genet and so will you. I promise it will be worth it). So the boyfriend is gone, all his family, and the chickens too. Other than the native birds singing merrily in the bush, there doesn’t appear to be another living creature around but for a darling horse named Esmerelda. As she searches vainly for other humans, Cass gradually realizes that not only is everyone vanished but the land seems to be quickly reclaiming the evidence of human existence. Cities disappear in volcanic upheavals. Homes, stores and streets are engulfed by the encroaching vegetation. Cass and Esmerelda appear indeed to be remnants of a suddenly lost civilization. Just as Cass starts – oh, but wait. I can’t say more without giving away the fine suspense of the novel. You’ll have to read it yourself to find out if Cass is the only human left on earth, or at least in New Zealand.

There were enough twists and turns in Remnant to keep me up late two nights in a row. I get up fiendishly early so rarely stay up late with a book but Remnant was just too fun to put down. Reading it felt like being at a slumber party with your best girlfriends, you know, that magic time after you’ve all gone to bed but are too wired to sleep, so you tell ghost stories until someone gets too scared and makes everybody stop. Then you tease that poor girl for being a baby but you’re secretly relieved.  

Remnant is only available as an e-book, but Genet is all the incentive you should need to pop seventy-nine bucks for a Kindle. I was lucky enough to discover her on Smashwords when her writing was free but Genet is still a bargain with her works priced at $4.99 or less. 

Genet’s brand of horror is not without humor and tenderness, so don’t be put off if you’re not much of a horror fan. And I’m not even sure if horror is the correct genre. Maybe call it futuristic sci-fi and leave it at that? Whatever the genre, Remnant doesn’t disappoint. It’s a quick, fun, spooky read. Enjoy! 

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Keye Street was an Atlanta cop until the alcoholic wreckage of her life caught up to her.  Now, newly sober, Keye takes odd jobs serving subpoenas and chasing down bounty jumpers. When a serial killer surfaces in Atlanta, Lieutenant Rauser, Keye’s old buddy from the force, asks for help profiling him. The killer is clever, manipulative, and very skilled at what he does. Clues are sparse, and it doesn’t help when the killler begins to taunt the APD in letters to Atlanta newspapers. Nor does it help that he’s devolving, and as he needs to kill at more frequent intervals it becomes increasingly apparent that Keye may be his next target.  

As the number of bodies escalate, so do the pressures on Keye: to help Rauser; to stay alive; prevent anyone else from getting killed, and stay sober through all that. Not to mention keeping her amusing day jobs. If you are up on your criminal profiling the ending won’t come as a surprise; Williams craftily inserts a couple behavioral clues that point the reader toward her bad guy. The writing is sure, her characters tough but accessible, and the chase to find the killer will make you turn pages far into the night.  

I found an immediate affinity with Keye Street as she is so much like my Franco character – an alcoholic cop specializing in criminal profiling; gruesome serial murders; a personal history marked by homicide; coping through rough, black humor; a cast of minor characters spanning the diversity rainbow; rugged, working-man dialogue, and a tender but not sappy romance. About the only thing they don’t have in common is that Keye is straight and turns to deserts in sobriety rather than lattes. They’d make a clever homicide team. I’m anticipating Keye’s next adventure and after reading The Stranger You Seek you will be too. 

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Okay, thanks to all of you who held my hand after that last post. (Kelly, just for you, I’m starting a new Franco novel.) Come the next morning a cooler head prevailed and I merely said “Hello” to my boss instead of dropping to my knees and groveling for that full-time job. I also had the BRILLIANT idea in the middle of the night to contact Catherine M. Wilson at Raqoon Design. I knew of her for two reasons.

The first, I think, was someone recommending her when I started my ebook odyssey back in April. Should have listened then. But I’m stubborn. (Persistent, I like to say.) My second knowing of her was from reading her own flawlessly formatted and edited ebook, When Women Were Warriors. So next morning I got in touch with her and handed The River Within off. Like a hot potato.

I love that book. I wrote it. It’s my child. And though, god help me, I am sick unto death of it, I cannot abandon it. So I will let someone who knows what she is doing do for River what I cannot. I’m a writer, not a professional formatter. I’m going back to what I know. That’s writing. Wish me luck.

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Gosh, I’d love to find all the people who have written articles about how you can self-publish your book in one day and wring each of their necks. Very, very slowly. I first published The River Within in April. This is October. It’s still not perfect on my Nook – five extra pages and two gaps between paragraphs, but tonight I thought, okay, I can live with that. I think (oh please dear god please dear god) after hiring a professional editor, at least all the typos are out. The formatting….

The formatting is what’s making me alternately homi- and suicidal. Uploaded the “final” version to Kindle and the formatting is worse than when I started in April. None of the Arial font came out (okay on the Nook) and the paragraph breaks (okay on the Nook) are all over the place or non-existant.

I think I will go to my day boss tomorrow and say, “You know what? I’m done writing. It was fun but it’s over. I’ll take that full-time job you’ve always wanted me to take. ” Future posts will be about the thrill of walking behind  excavators and bulldozers all day. But at least I know how to do that.  

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