HURRICANE JANE (A Novel Series)

I am now in the planning stages of what will FINALLY be my first stab at a series of novels based on a character created by my hubby years ago who has generously handed her over to me with hopes that I can create a legacy of my own. Much like his BLACKJACK and TIGER MOON, Hurricane Jane comes with a fabulous origin story and eerie/creepy mix of heroism and haunting. I will accept pre-payments for the first in the series (which I should have done by Christmas) from those of you who have bought and enjoyed my previous novels.

It is my hope to write AT LEAST 10 in the series -- more if it really kicks ass.

Any and all encouragement is welcomed as writing is time-consuming and can be arduous.

The first chapter is available herein, as a 'teaser' I suppose. Hope you enjoy...

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EYES OF THE STORM

She fell out of the sky like Lucifer.

That's what they say. Every witness was to say the same words.

"She fell out of the sky...like Lucifer".

There are secret alcoves on every coast, on every continent, where people have never tread. The water was always high. The rocks were always hostile. The fences were always too tall. Though the stretch of possibility beckoned, eyes widened and ached to pioneer; but, for whatever reason, there was never a footprint to be washed away by the tide. It was from one of these that the storm escaped, having been caged there for centuries. It bared fangs, growled, snarled, reddened its eyes, flared its claws. Its roar was audible across the horn of Africa as it leapt and sped across the Atlantic, soaking up savagery from the fierce equator and tropical strata above it. Like a cyclone of sea and sky it needed only to avenge its imprisonment. By the time it lashed Bahamas, it was blood-thirsty and only God himself could contain it.

As with every natural atrocity, the crazed adventurers could not resist the dare. At a distance only the insane consider safe, they were watching the beast devour the beach, tearing away trees like twigs, folding the entire coast in on itself, creasing it like paper, drowning it in rage so thick and deep there was no way to rescue it.

And it was there -- in that ferocious spell -- they were bound like little soldiers along the final brink...watching.

She fell out of the sky. Like Lucifer.

Out of the fury of wind and water and whatever other super-nature conspires, she fell.

First there was the scream, the shriek, the banshee-wail that pierced even the monstrous voice of the hurricane.

It drew eyes to the blue licks of lightning inside the infinite churnings where witnesses saw her.

She was barely a speck, lit up like a crackling, fallen livewire, the black furrows of storm almost suspending her, almost tearing her in two.

But she was falling.

From a distance it was not immediately certain to the eye.

But she was falling. Fast. Hard. Horrifyingly...she was falling.

And she was screaming.

"She fell out of the sky...like Lucifer..." every witness insisted, even though what they were saying was impossible and, for decades to come, would be picked apart by every cynic, critic and alleged expert. Like the Patterson–Gimlin footage, a dubious folk-tale became of their claims.

She fell out of the sky like Lucifer.

She hit the raging waters like a missile and moved through its invisible underworld like so many stones that turn up by the billions on the beach. But she was not one of billions of stones. She was, in fact, not one of a billion of anything.

The heroic who braved the threat found her naked, broken, barely breathing.

She was carried through the fingers of the tempest towards the town.

The witnesses would all tell the tale a thousand times more to reporters, to family, to the children by the fires.

That angry alcove where another world may exist, sealed again for centuries more, its legend would one day nearly vanish in the shadow of the woman who fell from the sky like Lucifer...still breathing...still weeping...still clutching at her rescuers, unable to move her lips.

Only two things of that original, historical horror would pass over the lips of every original teller of the tale.

She fell out of the sky...like Lucifer.

And...she was absolutely beautiful!