Francine Craft

 The two-week virtual tour for Dying on the Edge is over, and I’d say it was a success.  The winner of a great big Harry and David tower of goodies is Ms. Sydney Molare!  Congratulations, Sydney.  Don’t make yourself sick now:)  This company makes some of the world’s best.

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.

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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.”

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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.

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Sea and Rocks

This was a downtown section of Carroll City, an east coast metropolis with a population of five hundred thousand.  She reflected that what others thought about her didn’t matter now, and she hugged herself.  She was a genuine goddess!  Too bad she couldn’t yet flaunt that to the world.

She sat on a couch facing the windows and stretched, relaxing in the too-warm room, enjoying her triumph, wriggling her scarlet-tipped toes.  She would have all that and more after she and Kurt were married.

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Cascading water Over Mossy Rocks

Far and away you’ll learn more about Dying on the Edge from the back cover than from any thumbnail sketch I could give you.  What you read here really is what you get.

Maggi Frencxh is a beautiful film star whose lust for power and obsessive drive for another woman’s husband can only bring disaster!

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