Write to Rescue an Anthology- Excerpt & Guest Post by Michael Williams

Write to Rescue Anthology

Published By- SideStreet Cookie Publishing

Publication Date- November 1st, 2014

Rescue animals need love too. That’s why these nine authors got together to write stories that will warm your heart and entertain. All proceeds will go to animal shelters to help take care of and save the lives of the animals that may become your next family member. There’s a little something for everyone.

The Authors-

Taisheena Rayne - Win, Place, or Show

Shauna Wilhelm - Fostering Hope

Allana Kephart and Melissa Simmons - The Disturbance

Karli Rush - Nine Lives

Carolyn Wolfe - Miracle Paws

Emily Walker - Cats

Miranda Stork and Trish Marie Dawson - A Tale of Two Kitties

Laura DeLuca - Nine Lives 

Michael Williams - The Pride

 

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00P2ZB3WW?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

CA: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00P2ZB3WW?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Guest Post- Michael Williams' Top 5 Favorite Things

#1: Falling asleep with one of my cats snuggled up between my shins. I have one who waits until I’m almost asleep, then climbs between my knees and shoves them apart until there’s room for him to curl up and use my legs as a bed. I love that feeling of casually belonging to his tribe.

#2: Apple jelly made by my mother. It’s not food, it’s magic.

#3: Dracula by Bram Stoker, not just for the vampire but for the brilliant story of affection and care between a group of Victorian proto-hippies. The story is fun and it has genuinely terrifying moments but, more than that, it has real character development and a fascinating web of relationships. The novel may be named after the Count but it’s about a group of friends who, were they lesser people, would have been rivals: three men who loved the same woman but rather than become enemies become brothers and the couple they befriend and their mentor figure? The entire novel is told in epistolary and diary format from the perspectives of those characters, giving us a real chance to get inside their minds and watch the world’s terrors unfold before them. They react with fear, they react with sadness, but they also react with the strength they find in their love for one another. They are the prototype “found family” in an adventure story: the Scooby gang, the Buffy gang, Firefly, you name the genre ensemble cast and they are essentially borrowing this idea from Dracula. (Of course, I’m sure it existed long before this novel, but this novel is my favorite so I’m using it as the framing reference.)

#4: Mario Kart. Gods, I love that game, in all its iterations.

#5: Running in the soft light of a late autumn day when it’s a little cool in the shadows and a little warm in the light.

Excerpt

Please share an excerpt from The Pride with us

Helen Abernathy passed away in her sleep, a slight smile on her face from a pleasant dream, at a ripe old age in excess of years her doctor or she herself had expected. I feel it’s important to include these details, thin though they be, in order to emphasize the fact our story – my story – in some ways begins with a death but is not solely a tale of tragedy. Sad as it made us for Helen to die, it also quite literally made us.

Helen’s death was the awakening of The Pride.

Many stories begin with a death. Many end with a death. Helen liked stories that did both: detective stories with handsome private eyes always a little ruffled and a week behind on rent. She would read them aloud to herself by dim light and she wondered after whether any of her detectives would ever meet a nice girl who could smooth down their fur and make them respectable. Helen liked to imagine herself doing that for them, like those detectives were just another kind of rescue animal waiting to find hers was their new “forever home.”

Helen was a habitual savior. She had a lot of love to give and a very little money to spare and she made it her mission to give both to those just scraping by. She wanted to make things a little easier for them. Helen gave her change to the panhandlers; she gave her time as a volunteer for a half dozen causes; and she gave her heart and her home to twenty-seven cats and one browbeaten St. Bernard named Louie.

Looking back on it, I now think that’s why she always had such pleasant dreams.

We’ll never really understand why, but as Helen’s own mind diminished, ours increased. Dementia crept across Helen’s awareness like rain clouds moving in on a sunny day: the light faded here and there, spotty at first, and over time things became gradually more dim, then altogether dark. As this happened, the light of our own awareness increasingly dawned. We came to comprehend many things over time, among them that we could comprehend. By the time Helen’s mind had mostly gone, intelligence had spread between us like a creeping vine.

It hadn’t quite stuck, though. Helen would have moments of clarity, startling out of her habitual daze to look around at a house maintained by processes she couldn’t remember because she had not participated in them. We had taken care of everything as the blank white sheet of absence was tucked around the corners of her mind. When that happened, it was like sentience was yanked out from under us. We would tumble from whatever vastly complicated process we’d been undertaking, dazed, unaware, once again merely a collection of cats in a increasingly sketchy little house in a slightly shabby neighborhood.

Louie, the St. Bernard, never seemed to notice one way or the other. 

About the Authors- 

Michael Williams

(The Pride)

Michael G. Williams is the author of numerous novels (Perishables, Tooth & Nail, Deal with the Devil) and such short stories as "The Several Monsters of Saint Sara-La-Noire" (ThemeThology: Invasion) and "Daddy Used to Drink Too Much" (Wrapped in Red), "His Shrine to Santa Muerte" (Wrapped in White), and "Stories I Tell to Girls" (Wrapped in Black), a trilogy published across three Sekhmet Press anthologies. Michael lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his partner and two ridiculously spoiled rescue cats.

Laura DeLuca

(Nine Lives)

Laura “Luna” DeLuca lives at the beautiful Jersey shore with her husband and four children. In addition to writing fiction, Laura is also the editor of a popular review blog called New Age Mama. Her works include romantic thrillers, paranormal fiction, contemporary romance, and young adult.

Let me know if this is okay. Should have the edits back to you by tomorrow.I did go through and accepted all your changes but I want to read it through one more time for type-os and I have to wait until the kids are in bed :)

Karli Rush

(Nine Lives)

Karli Rush was born in the heart of Cherokee Nation and lives in its capital.  Her Native American heritage holds sway over her writing in many ways. She has the patience of a brain surgeon operating under fire in a war zone. You can chalk that up to her being the mother of an autistic kiddo. With the passion of a starving artist, she writes. The obsession to tell her tales have led her to write novels in the worlds of Dark Paranormal, Romance, Dystopian, and Vampires. She walks in two worlds, one grounds her and the other frees her imagination.

Allana Kephart and Melissa Simmons

(The Disturbance)

Allana Kephart has been making things up and bending people to her will from a very

young age. She loves animals and reading and spends a large amount of time thinking

up ways to torment her characters. Melissa Simmons is an avid reader who married her

soul mate and is the proud mother of a spoiled cat. She spends her days helping promote

independent authors and doing what the voices in her head tell her to. They share a brain, a

love of coffee and the color purple.

Emily Walker

(Cats)

Emily Walker loves creating worlds and stumbling around in them. She is constantly losing her chap-stick, and has an obsession with the color pink. Currently a resident of the mountains and loving the view she writes mostly paranormal fiction, and horror. Her small family consists of her red bearded other half, a rat terrier named Rebel, and a cat called Mr. Creepy.

Miranda Stork and Trish Marie Dawson

(A Tale of Two Kitties)

Miranda’s bio:

I live in the middle of a forest in North Yorkshire, spending my spare time as the wild woman of the woods, scaring small children and upsetting the sheep. On the days that I feel like being civilized, or I haven't got any unicorns to ride, I sit down and pour the tumbling thoughts in my head out onto digital paper and turn them into paranormal/gothic books. I like taking the classical myths and monsters and giving them a new, contemporary twist, then make them into something that readers can lose themselves in.

Trish's bio:

Trish was born and mostly raised in San Diego, California USA. She lives there now with her family and furbabies. When she's not homeschooling or pretending to do chores, she's reading and writing.

Writer of Fantasy Fiction, Paranormal, YA/NA, Mystery, Horror...

The Find Me Series and the Station Series are available online at Amazon, B&N, Kobo and iTunes, as well as The Well Collector and the collaborative anthology, Once Upon A Twisted Time.

Carolyn Wolfe

(Miracle Paws)

Carolyn Wolfe is a free-lance writer, published poet, and author of eight books, which range from poetry to  fantasy and includes children's literature. Her body of work includes writing articles for newspapers and newsletters,  and hosting poetry events in the Winchester,VA area where she lives with her photographer husband, Scott and her  house full of animal companions.

Taisheena Rayne

(Win, Place or Show)

I am a koala bear sleeping between 18 to 22 hours per day, just ask my (grown) kids.

I have always loved to read. I love how you can be in another world, where heroes always succeed and romance blooms.

Now I create my own worlds where heroines can save the day, love survives and maybe just maybe, dragons are the good guys.

Shauna Wilhelm

(Fostering Hope)

Shauna grew up always liking to write, even doing a program in high school called power of the pen called power of the pen which was a competitive creating writing group.  After that she mainly just wrote poems, which was an outlet to express her emotions to everyday situations rather than keeping them bottled up inside.  This is the first time she has branched out into writing more than a poem and it is also the first time she is sharing her work for someone to read.