Detective Lieutenant Frank Ryman and his girl friend Jaysa have quarreled.  His cases have come apart and he is despondent.  He tells her he needs her and she says she cannot see him that night.  Anngry and surly he hangs up on her and goes home thinking that this might as well be the end for them.  He is there for her, but she surely is not there for him.  At home, he finds her there sitting in the dark.

He stood still, ambivalent.  He wanted to kiss her blind, go into her body and never come out.  And he wanted to smack her, make her pay for all the hurt she’d caused him.

“We have to talk,” she said quietly.

Where had he heard that before?

She patted the sofa.  “Please come here.”

He set the bag down.  He hesitated for a mminute and then sat down, not touching her.  She moved closer.

Her voice was husky and full of tears.  “When I left you last year, I left because I’m in love with you, and love isn’t something I can handle anymore.  Leaving was the only way I could stop loving you, only I couldn’t stop.  When I began to see you again, I wouldn’t sleep with you.  That way, I wouldn’t  love you so much–I thought.”

She sighed and the sound tore at him.  She looked so haggard, so vulnerable.  Well, she had nothihng on him.

“Frank, when I was twenty-two, I met a man, a black guy, a residential developer in New Orleans.  He was older, just moved there from D.C.  He was handsome, smooth, and hellishly romantic.  I was isolated, like I’ve told you, no stranger to pain.  I had heard he might be married, but he denied it and there was no wife in sight.  I’m going to gloss over the affair, but there were rides on his yacht, dinners and sex in his mansion, gifts the way I’d never gotten them.  I wasn’t a virgin; I’d had an affair with a high school friend.”

She was silent then, and on impulse he moved closer and stroked her back.  When she spoke again, it was through tears and harsh breathing.  “It went on for three months and I got pregnant.  I was so happy.  I told him about it, and he went beserk.”

Then her voice got cold and sere, and he knew she was protecting herself from intolerable pain.

“He cursed me, said he had counted on me to protect him.  We were using condoms, so he must have slipped up.  I told him that when I found my voice after the first shock.  I asked why we couldn’t get married, and he said he was already married, to a Swedish blonde who was in her country with her sick mother.

“So your wife is white?” I asked.

“‘Oh yes,’ he told me.  ‘Very white.’    

“I thought of my father and his blonde showgirl, and my heart split open again.  It was a time when black was beautiful, but I felt small and incredibly ugly.  I accused him of leading me on, lying to me, which  he surely had done … and he went off again.”

She screwed up her face as she continued.  “‘Listen,” he told me.’” “‘I’m sick of this whole scene.  Every little nigra bitch in this city has her very own little bastard, a little welfare baby.  You’re supposed to be smart.  Why didn’t you check me out?  I’ll give you five thousand dollars for an abortion, and you’re out of my life.  Good luck with the next sucker.’”

He let her talk and continued to stroke her.

“Something crazy came over me then.  We were standing in his bedroom.  I picked up my heavy pocketbook and swung at him with all  my might, swung at his head.  I knocked him off balance, and I think the fury in my eyes frightened him at least a little.  I know my rage frightened me.  I wanted to kill him.  I would have killed him.  I knew he kept a gun in the end table drawer, and my father had taught me to shoot.  I wanted to take that gun and put bullets into his heart the way he’d done to me.”

Acid tears burned his eyes and his heart felt raw with sympathy.  He wanted to kill the bastard who had hurt her like this.  She was silent for a long time; he took both her hands in his and kissed them.  “I’m so sorry, love.”  After a moment he asked, “What happened to your baby?”

Tears ran down her cheeks.  “I told myself it was my baby as well as his.  I was in law school and doing well, but I couldn’t sleep nights.  I fought violent urges to get up, go ring his doorbell, and kill him.”

She cried then, a deluge of terrible tears.  He held her aainst the fury that still raged in her;  then she stopped as abruptly as she’d begun.  “Maybe my baby didn’t want to be born to such a furious mother.  My womb was no place to thrive. The little boy fetus died when I miscarried.  It had survived for three months.  I went into therapy for a while, but I couldn’t talk about it.  I had killing in my bloodstream, and that’s all I could think about.

“There were men in my life then,  Frank.  Some of them were like you; and like you, they wanted to marry me.  And I kept thinking, couldn’t they see the evil? Couldn’t they, couldn’t you, can’t you see what a killer I still am?  If you hurt me bad enough, I may kill you.  Don’t you know that?”

“We all want to kill at some time in our lives,” Frank said gently.  “Honey, let’s get some help for you now.  Carroll City is a great place for mental health treatmennt.  People come here from all over the world.  You say you love me; don’t be hostage to your fear.  I’ll be with you all the way. We can make it; I know we can.”

Her face was grave. “You’re not afraid of me?  You’d trust me, feeling the way I do?”

“I trust you.” He half grinned, with his own heart hurting.  “If you kill me, I’ll die happy.”

———————————————————

So, there you have six excerpts from Dying on the Edge, my romantic voodoo mystery.  I take  as my slogan now: Written in blood — mine!  It is multiculural, multilayered and it’s  about love and hate, truth and lies, faithfulness and betrayal.  More people have told me they love it than have ever said about my books before and I am so pleased I’m humbled.  Others don’t get it and that is understandable.  Edge helped me to exorcise many demons in my past and hopelfully lets many ghosts from my past  rest in peace.

I certainly hope you’ll like and buy Edge even though it’s higher priced than my books have been.  Keep it or pass it on to a friend, or give it to your library.  I think you’ll like it and identify with it.

Next time back to blogging about self-publishing and bringing you links to places that can help you get ahead.  But you know me, I’m also into what’s happening in our world today and I’m mindful that my blog on the murder of little Shaniya Davis and her being sold into sex slavery by her mother got more comments than any other blog.

Until next time, and I certainly hope there is a next time.

Dying on the Edge: Sixth and Last Excerpt originally appeared on Francine Craft on July 16, 2010.

Cloudy Ocean Shoreline

Hello again.  You’ll notice I use the same dark and stormy photo I’ve used before.  It’s about the gloomiest I could find and it portends trouble and grief, which is the way I view incest and other abuse, especially child abuse. I would have liked to use Munch’s “The Scream,” if I could have found an available copy.  I hope like me you read it and weep – then set out to help!

Frank Ryman, the lead detective is in his office where a young black couple has been ushered in.  He notices that the woman is somewhat unsteady on her feet and her companion is very solicitous of her.  She has been the understudy for the murdered woman.  Frank has asked the man to wait outside.

“My name is Carlotta Matthews.  I’ve never been married, so it’s Ms. Matthews, my father’s name.”

There was something about the way she said it, with a tinge of bitterness.  Frank sat in hhis chair at an angle to her.  “What is it you want to talk with me about?”

Her hands shook little less than her voice.  “I’m going to tell you something that will shock you, and I’d give my life not to have to say it.  I know you want me to tell you what I know about this woman’s death, but this has to come first.  Someone else’s life is in danger,  someone I love deeply.”

Frank nodded.  “Please relax and go on.”  His heart went out to her because she so plainly suffered.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush.  Being a detective, you know about incest.  She said the word as if it were a rattlesnake in her mouth.

“Yes, I do know.  You don’t have to stand on ceremony with me, Carly.  There’s nothing I haven’t heard about.  If  it’s something you’ve known, I won’t sit in judgment and I’ll give you what help I can.’

That should clear up any notion she had that this was some uhneard of evil.

“Okay.” Tears slid down her face.  He handed her a box of tissues.  “My father and I … oh God, it goes back to when I was an older child and it–didn’t stop until I was sixteen and ran away.  I told  him I’d kill him–I’d kill myself if he tried to make me come back.  He didn’t.”

She sttopped for so long, he said gently, “Please go on.”

Her face was a study in agony then.  “He said he wasn’t to blame, that I was a born whore, that  most women were.”

He felt the start of outrage.  “The biggest lie ever told, but I’m sure you know by now he had to excuse himself.  This kind of  behavior is common in men who sleep with their daughters.”

Frank hurt for her in some deep place within himself.  Matthews?  That cooperative man who had looked at him with such sorrowful eyes when he had talked about the murdered woman?  What must he have thought of her.  The man’s voice came back: she’s so good to me.

“Listen,” he said, his voice both angry and soothing.  “You’re dead when you stop caring in this business, so I’ll help you in any way I can.”

Just a little later Frank talks to his detective buddy, Hux, about the woman’s story.

Frank sat thinking about Carly Matthews and her anguished face when she’d talked about the incest and her fear for her younger sister.  Hux saw the look and sobered.  Frank told him the story and Hux whistled.

“What do you think?” Frank asked.

Hux looked at him with a baleful eye.  “I knew there was something I didn’t like about Webster Mattheews.  He looks like a half-assed knight on a white horse.”  Hux seemed to get more rattled as he talked.

“Listen,” Hux said, “I’ve always thought motherfucker was the most useful word in the English language.  And by God, men like Matthews prove it.”

——————————————————

There you have it, another turn in the case.  I had intended to make this the last excerpt, but what will be the sixth and last excerpt will go on Friday.  It’s about Frank’s beloved off and on lawyer girlfriend and her soul-searing rage at a former lover.  Abortion and miscarriage and lifelong grief and urge to kill.  It’s too powerful to miss.

I hope you’ll still be with me next Friday when you’ll read the longest of the excerpts, almost the whole chapter.  Many women will identify and weep.  Many men should hang their heads in shame, but many more men will empathize and swear never to go there and will look at the loved women in their lives in a different light.

Will I see you next Friday?  I think you’ll identify.  Until then -

Dying on the Edge: Fifth Excerpt originally appeared on Francine Craft on July 12, 2010.

Lily Pads in Water

Det. Lieutenant Frank Ryman is telling his captain, Winthrop Pemberton, about an incident with the murdered woman that involved him.  Remembering, he is angry and embarrassed.

After a few minutes had gone by and the woman’s drinks had begun to take effect, she had come over and sat close to him.  Her perfume was expensive, exciting, but he was in love with Sofia.

“How about a kiss, lover?” she had whispered, her lips parted as she ran the tip of her tongue over them.

Sofia, Frank’s wife and the woman’s friend, was desirable.  He was faithful, not too long married, but this woman was like all the women in the Bible and good novels, like Salome and Scarlett O’Hara.  He had been forty-eight then and there wasn’t much he hadn’t been exposed to, but he hadn’t sampled all that many of the world’s women or the world’s vices, or even the world’s wares, for that matter.

He had decided to play it light.  “Come on now,” he said.  “I’m the husband of your friend.”

She had laughed just a little, and she seemed hurt.

He had tried to smooth it over.  “Look, you’re the most beautiful woman I know, except Sofia, but I believe in fidelity in marriage.”

She had smiled mysteriously.  “I see,” she said softly, and got up and left the room.

Frank had tapped his foot to the jazz playing on the stereo, nervously awaiting his wife.  Even if he didn’t really want this woman, his middle-aged ego felt enriched by her aggressive hustle.  He wondered how many men she came onto in any given week.  Hell, men sure weren’t shy about propositioning women and crowding them.  Were women equal, or weren’t they?

He was staring at the richly hued Persian rug, lost in thought, when she coughed.  Looking up, he saw her standing in the arch of the living room in front of a bank of windows with the drapes open.  She was silkily alabaster white — and birth-naked.  Overwhelmed, his body liked what faced him even if  the faithful part of his mind did not.  He stood up, the difference in their heights making him feel less vulnerable.

“Cut it out now.  Be nice,” he said, like the black Dutch uncle he sure as hell didn’t feel like.

“No, you be nice,”  she cooed.   From her lips, it was a command from master to servant.  As his mouth set in a hard line,  and he silently threatened to disown the clamoring lower half of himself, she snarled, “Don’t you go high and mighty on me! Why are you being so damned mean?”

They were on even ground now.  He was going to have to cut her down.  All his instincts said she didn’t want him for erotic gain. She meant to control him.

“Well,” he drawled, “I guess you might say that the bitch you’re acting like brings out nothing but the mean old junkyard dog in me.”

It wasn’t what she expected.  She started toward hhim, undulating.  He saw that she would stop at nothing to seduce him, and although he couldn’t admit it, her single-minded assault frightened him.

“Cut it out or I’m leaving,” he said sharply.  “You think even if I wanted you, I’d let  Sofia come in and catch us here?”

Angry beyond the attempted seduction, he started to the closet to get his coat.  The cool room seemed unbearably hot through the sweat on his body.

“Go on, run!” she snarled.  “I like black men, but I want the genuine article, not a sorry mongrel half-breed like you.”

Her words were a rabbit punch to  his belly.  Maybe she’d discussed him with Sofia, and Sofia knew his pain at Jesse’s and Jenny’s blackness and his own white skin. They loved him and he loved them, but he was stubbornly acknowledged by Max, his white father, and that made it worse.

The words he prided himself on never calling women rushed to his lips, but he stifled them;  they’d never satisfy him now. He needed blood.  Fighting, blindly angry, he stopped and said to her, “If being all white makes you so fucking almighty, then why are you so goddamned miserable?”

“Voila!” Her smile, her languid stance blazed into rage.  He had started again for the closet when she picked up a vase and sent it toward the wall just past him, grazing the side of his head.

—————————————————————————–

So, the plot thickens.  I will let this segment stay up because many people don’t use the Internet on weekends.  Monday,  please read an alcoholic father’s strange reasoning behind his incest with one daughter, his gropings with another younger one,  and his link to a murdered woman.  Read, too, one detective’s pithy comment on that incest.

Wishing you a great weekend and hoping to see you Monday!  Slow down and keep cool!

Fourth Excerpt from Dying on the Edge originally appeared on Francine Craft on July 8, 2010.

———————————————–

The other detectives were carefully checking three bedrooms, one master and two smaller, and three walk-in closets filled with clothes.  All three knew that a couple of outfits would equal any one of their yearly salaries.

The master bedroom was in wild disarray, with clothes pulled from hangers, but seemingly undamaged, the rose velvet bedspread crumpled on the floor and the mattress askew on the bed.  Frank knew the woman didn’t live here, but in a penthouse on Eden Avenue that  was far plusher than this apartment.

He stood surveying the room.  It was s silent here.  Something bad had happened here.  His skin prickled with dread.

Police and firemen received more and more false alarms and lunatic calls lately, burning up already tight money and resources, but this time Frank  would have donated a year of  his salary to find this call was nothing but a fool’s caper.

One more door, this one of solid oak.  Frank pushed it open and caught his breath.  The others were right behind him.  This was the aviary.  White doves frantically swept past them, shrieking.  Surprised, they shielded their eyes at first and saw it before they could wonder why the doves were so frightened. Frank switched on the light and they saw that a wide streak of blood led from the middle of the room into a huge bird cage.

The phone call had been no prank.

A woman clad in a leopard print bikini lay in  a fetal position in the huge gold-lacquered bird cage that reached nearly to the ceiling, its walk-in door open.  A dove cowered in the far corner as if afraid to move.

Frank squatted beside the woman, his breathing ragged.  Hell, hadn’t he known from the beginnning it would be her?

———————————————

Blue Ocean Shoreline

Thursday, I will bring you the fourth excerpt, a seduction scene from hell. I’ll leave on until the following Monday because so many people don’t read on weekends and this is a longer scene.   Then the last scene which is a sad one that comes on Monday about sexual abuse that  blights far too many lives, shrouding those lives in destructive secrecy.

 Will I see you again this Thursday?  Please take very good care and I certainly hope I will.

Third Excerpt from Dying on the Edge originally appeared on Francine Craft on July 6, 2010.

Cloudy Ocean Shoreline

In this, the second excerpt from Dying on the Edge, a woman is reminiscing about  visiting Port au Prince, Haiti and a noted houngan (voodoo high priest) in search of a spell, potions, or poisons to kill a woman whose husband she intends to have.  The houngan is Papa Henri Delacroix and like most other men, he is entranced by this woman.

“Welcome again,” Papa Henry had said, seemingly delighted to see her.  He was very tall, with light chocolate-hued skin and long, tangled locks of kinky gray hair.  He was wearing a robe of light gray cotton.

She got down to  business immediately.  She had soothed his masculinity, leading up slowly to her true mission in their two previous meetings, playing the adoring supplicant.  Now she told him bluntly that she wanted Kurt Wilder for her husband. 

He listened carefully before he spoke.  “So the wife does not wish to let this man go.  Perhaps she needs him more than you do, loves him more –”

“No!”  She was suurprised at her own vehemence.  “I must have him!”  Her voice trembled with emotion.

He nodded, studying her intently but giving her no answer.

Raw with need, she had begged him again and again, saying that she needed something truly powerful if it became necessary to do away with this woman.

Then he had smiled, closing his eyes as if in blessing.  She had felt happy, believing that she had finally reached him and that he favored her at last.

Finally he opened his eyes and studied her.  “You are so beautiful.  But you are also a fool.  You have lied to me, and because of your spell and the fact that you remind me someone dear, I have only seen the good in you.  This was a mistake.  I will not help you.”

She began to rise to leave, infuriated.  She had wasted too much time.  If he wouldn’t help her, there were others.  She didn’t need this excuse for a houngan.

He leaned forward, and his big, gnarled  hand covered her slender one.  “There is no victory in evil,” he said mildly.  Evil can only destroy; it is without power to create anything save chaos.”

Facing him, her face contorted with anger and frustration so that it was no longer beautiful, she flung at him, “Perhaps you are the fool, Henry Delacroix.  Surely you know that destruction is often a necessary step to creation.”

She had glanced at him triumphantly before he said sadly, “Do not do this deed you plan, even if it becomes, as you put it, necessary.  You are  not yet dead enough inside to be effectively evil.  You still feel too much.  Listen when I tell you that you will die in the flames you light for another.  At the very least, you spirit will die.”

She would listen no longer.  Opening her purse, she had pulled out a sheaf of bills to pay him, even though he had proved useless.  He refused the money and  followed her to the door, pleading, “If I am an old fool, even fools are wise on some subjects.  I beg you to listen….”

But she had rushed to the waiting jeep taxi and the grinning, sleepy-eyed driver who, at her request, had taken her to Simone.  Madame Simone Duclair was a well-known mambo, a voodoo priestess highly recommended by a Haitian acquaintance.

—————————————————————————-

The next excerpt will come on Tuesday and depict the detectives finding a woman’s body. 

All five  excerpts  skip throughout the book and will give you the flavor of the book.  Responses of most readers have been supportive and full of praise.  But Edge  is not everybody’s cup of tea.  If you don’t care for psychology, I wouldn’t advise trying to read it.  It’s subtle and not everyone likes subtlety in a story.

So come Tuesday, as they say in the U.S, south, if I live and nothing happens, I’ll bring you the third excerpt.  But it’s the  fourth and the fifth that are explosive and the fifth is sad.

Will I see you next Tuesday?  I certainly hope so.

Second Excerpt from Dying on the Edge originally appeared on Francine Craft on July 3, 2010.