Hello World! My first novel is going into a Free Book Promotion starting tomorrow, Sunday, March 25, 2018 at midnight, and ending Tuesday, March 27, 2018, 11:59 PM PDT! Be sure to pick it up while it's freeeeeee!

The link to get it is; https://www.amazon.com/Somewhere-Middle-Lucas-Coon/dp/1548862975

So, yeah! Be sure to pick it up Starting Tomorrow!

She sat in her rocking chair and stared through the window into her back yard. There were plants in various stages of Spring growth. Her tulips were blooming brightly, but her lilacs were simply thickening their leaves at the moment. The sunny weather with the occasional rains of early April were doing their best to keep the soil wet and the plants thriving. She smiled at the simplistic beauty of the lawn.

It had been a while since she'd had the chance to get outside and tend to any of it; her granddaughter had been doing most of the work over the last few years. She would tell the little girl what to do and she would simply do it. The tasks weren't difficult; dig a small hole for the bulb, rake the mulch over there, turn the hose on and spray everything down. There was the occasional pruning that had to be done, and she was always worried about her granddaughter holding the clippers, but nothing ever went wrong. It was a chance to bond with between the two of them, and it was more connection with someone than she'd gotten in a long time. Her husband had passed away, her siblings were all older and elsewhere. She'd lost her parents a long, long time ago. Each day, it was just her, her rocking chair, a pot of coffee and the void-filling noise on the television.

That's how it was, at least, things had changed recently. It had been around a week since the news burst into one of her shows with an abrupt screeching noise. The emergency alert system took over the speakers and her favorite show stopped suddenly. "This is not a test of the--" She turned the volume down. Even with her hearing troubles, this was too much for her. "This is an emergency broadcast. At this time, the entire city is being placed under a lock-down. There has been a confirmed outbreak of an unknown illness." This was a first. She hadn't heard of the emergency system actually being used for an emergency like this, at least not where she'd lived. She listened to the rest of the broadcast; despite the urgency of the matter, it wasn't going to change anything. Her only son had taken the opportunity of spring break to leave the state; he was somewhere in the southern end of Florida at this point. At the very least, she knew that her granddaughter was safely out of the way of whatever this illness was.

She quickly learned what the illness actually meant; people were being infected with something, a parasite it seemed, and going crazy. It all seemed like the premise of a movie; people getting sick and eating each other like zombies. It certainly didn't feel like a Tuesday evening, but that's what it had turned into. She saw the footage of the monsters tearing each other apart. She saw the videos on the news of what was happening at the hospital, it was terrifying to say the least. There was no way she was going to make it out of this whole thing alive, she couldn't leave the house and there was no one coming to rescue her. She'd managed to make it as long as she had, but it wasn't going to matter. She'd come to terms with this at the beginning of it all.

She lifted the ceramic mug from the table to her mouth and sipped the bitter coffee. The warmth was refreshing. She moved to place the mug back onto the table and began rocking the chair once more as she watched the beautiful day outside. Her hands caressed the shotgun that sat idly across her lap. She smiled, her husband would have been happy to know that his military training had rubbed off on her. He would have been even more proud that his insistence on keeping the shotgun was going to keep her safe, even if for just a little while. She hated guns, she hated that he had this one in the house to begin with; but something about holding it and preparing to use it made her think of him.

"Maybe he was crazy." She grinned again and pushed back once more. "Maybe we both were." She could feel her eyes starting to water. If there was anything after life, then she would know soon. If not, that was fine. She'd spent more than eighty-three years watching the world around her change, and that amount of time was plenty. After everything else she'd experienced, it was almost nice to know that her end would come at a time when watching the sun rise and set were her entertainment of choice. She laughed at this thought. "Sheesh, I am old..."

She had grown older, and she'd loved every moment of life that had passed. She knew that, eventually, the infected were going to sniff her out, and they would find her. She couldn't run, but that was fine. She gripped the shotgun once more; she wasn't going to go down without a fight...

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One Word Idea came from the following: http://ideagenerator.creativitygames.net

It's a neat site that may help others, and I wanted to give credit.

#FreeWrite #JustWrite #OneWord

-This isn't my favorite free write, but i wanted to write something that tied into the story in my novels. -

"OK." He took a deep breath. "I need to think this through." He glanced in both directions from the driver's seat of his sports car. "I'm in the middle of nowhere, that'll help for now." He gripped the steering wheel tightly and stared into the black emptiness of a rural highway at midnight. Living in a midwestern state with a lot of empty space was going to be his saving grace. He twisted the switch on the steering column to turn off the headlights; the world around him became and empty void. There were no streetlights, no lights from oncoming cars. The only light came from the cellphone he held in his hands.

"Two-fourteen." He noted the time and waited. Before a minute could pass, the phone started to ring with a generic beeping noise. He fumbled with it for a moment beore pressing the button to answer the incoming call. "Hello?"

"Hello." The voice was quiet and muffled. There was a pause, the caller wasn't one for conversation.

"I'm here, right where you told me to be. I followed the GPS to the exact location." His voice was desperate. "What do you want now?"

"Did you get her?" The muffled stranger asked his direct question. The man glanced back toward the rear seat of his vehicle. His face fell to a grimace before he returned to the conversation.

"Yeah, I got her." He shook his head. He had kidnapped this woman that he'd never met. He injected her with some questionable syringe and she fell unconscious. He wasn't sure if she was dead at this point, she hadn't made any sound since he had pulled her into the seat. "What did I inject her with? Did I kill this woman?"

"No." The voice wasn't reassuring, despite its short statement.

"She isn't moving and I can't tell if she's--"

"If you did exactly as I told you to, then she's still alive." The voice became impatient. There was another moment of silence. "I'm beginning to question whether you're taking me seriously."

"I am!" The man shifted to a demanding tone. "I am. Trust me, I am." He stared off into the darkness. "Look, let's just move on. I got her, I drove way out here; what's next? Do you want me to leave her on the side of the road? Wait until morning and get information from her? What?"

"Get out of the vehicle." The voice made a quick demand. The man hesitated; he didn't have a choice in the end. He shoved the door open and stepped onto the gravel. "Go to the trunk and open it." This took him by surprise; the only things he kept in his trunk were jumper cables and a poorly thrown together duck-out bag. He relented and walked to the rear of the car, opening the trunk. He was partially correct, his bag and cables were shoved off to the side. In their normal place was a neatly rolled and tied tarp. Next to it was a shovel, and a small kit of some sort. He grabbed the cloth bag and opened it; duct tape, rope, another small syringe kit and a cross. He had a feeling he knew where this was going to end up.

"Alright, I see what you've thrown in here..." He once again hesitated to continue this conversation. "What are you expecting?"

"You're going to bind her then wrap her in the tarp." The voice echoed the obvious. "The syringe contains the same thing that you injected her with earlier. It's up to you if you want, or need, to use it; consider it a gift of sorts. Once you've done that, you're going to dig a six foot deep hole and--"

"You don't have to finish that thought, I get it." He cut the voice off. "And the cross?"

"A marker." The voice responded sharply. "Sun rise is at approximately six-twenty-two. You have until then to finish this. If I haven't recieved a call from you by then, my system will auto-dial the police with your exact location, and everything that you are trying to hide is released to every outlet I've deemed necessary." The voice once again reminded him of their control over the situation. "I would also recommend you don't try to avoid actually doing what I'm telling you, I am watching you."

"I'm supposed to do this by sunrise?" He stepped back and glanced around the empty gravel road; the possibility of any one else coming down the road was zero. This location was chosen for obvious reasons.

"You've already wasted fifteen minutes." The voice reminded him of his constraints. "I'd hurry; the morning comes sooner than you'd think when you're burying someone alive..."

#JustWrite #Suspense #MidStory #QuickWrite

Here's a snippet of part of my first novel.

“It’s over Darren, there’s nothing left to fight against, and there’s nothing left to fight for. We’re at the mercy of our captors. I’m done with being hopeful, and I’m done trying to get out of hell. That’s what this is; it’s our hell, our penance. Maybe not specifically yours or mine, but our as a society. That power-struggle I was talking about earlier, that’s what this is. It’s our historical boiling point, everything that’s ever happened has led us to where we are now. We can’t change history. All we can do is be submissive to what happens, there’s nothing we can do to change what happened, and we can’t fix what’s happening.” Mitchell finished scrubbing himself down and rinsed the soap off his skin. It may have been refreshing, but that happiness was coming to a quick end as it literally circled the drain. As he stared at the soapy water sliding into the metal grate on the floor he thought about what he had just said. Mitchell wanted nothing more than to be wrong; but this time he knew he was right. “I’m sorry Darren.” “It’s not over Mitchell.” The fear was replaced with the sound of anger. Mitchell realized that his speech had probably made Darren mad, and he knew he should have joined the optimism. He wanted to, but he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. “Darren, seriously...” “No. It’s not over.” The angered tone rose from the ashes with a sense of certainty and courage. Mitchell assumed this to be the tone of a damned fool. “It’s not over until I’m dead.”

Interested? Reach out to me for info. It's also on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Somewhere-Middle-Lucas-Coon/dp/1548862975