Coming to a Road Near You

Highway 24 is on its way. The content edits are done. The line edits are done. The cover is done. My novelette—something between a short story and a novella—will be coming out from MuseItUp Publishing in June 2013.

Here's the blurb:

On a lonely country highway, a young travelling salesman runs down a teenage girl. It was an accident. Why she was wandering around on a highway in a pink, formal dress, he can’t imagine. There’s no doubt she’s dead. Fear takes over and he flees the scene, absently taking one of her shoes with him. An old memory, something familiar about that shoe, struggles to surface. As he speeds away from the accident, he thinks his nightmare can’t get any worse, until he sees a pair of green eyes in his rear-view mirror. The shoe and those eyes lead him to a small town where he meets an all too knowing preacher and a sheriff obsessed with the girl’s tragic demise. As Paul digs deeper into the mystery of the girl and her shoe, he comes face-to-face with a dark secret from his father’s past.

And here's a brief excerpt:

With one mistake, everything in his life had changed. He found no easy catharsis. Her death melded to him, her copper fusing with his tin to yield a tarnished brass. Numbness morphed to anger at the injustice. She was to blame. She’d jumped into his path. Not enough time and distance for the brakes. Nobody does that kind of shit, unless… 

Unless someone was chasing her. A cold shiver coursed down Paul’s spine. He looked up the road, peering into the black void behind him, listening for a snapping twig or gravel crunching underfoot. Darkness weighed on him from the heavens and earth and every direction. His instincts told him to run, but his conscience refused to let him leave. Abandoning her seemed so final; giving in to fear and giving up without a fight. He had to do something, so he stooped over to pick her up. When his fingertips brushed the silky, pink fabric, reality struck him with the weight of a steel door. He stopped himself. 

His stunned mind roused, forming predictions for the future, most of them terrifying.

Drive safely and keep your eyes on the road.