Still Sick

So the new series might not be up till next week. Until then, check out a preview of my next novel:

The September evening was stifling, like being locked into kiln just as it was beginning to heat up. The air was as still as corpse in rigor mortis. There hadn’t been rain for more than a year, at least not down in Fort City. Maybe upstate they got some, some cold relief in from the mountains. But not even a gaming junky, desperate for his next fix would have taken that bet. They were calling it a drought in the rest of the States, blaming it on climate change or global warming or divine retribution, maybe. The rest of us knew better. This was Fort City, Zion State and her weather patterns hadn’t adhered to any kind of natural pattern since before the dinosaurs, so why start now? We all knew what was coming. A storm, not of lightning and rain but of blood and fire. A Fort City storm. The kind that leaves bodies piled hundreds deep along the roads. The kind of storm that doesn’t break apart families so much as it does wipe entire generations. The kind of storm we haven’t seen in more than three decades, not since I took over from Lukas the Wolfman and ended the drug trade on our streets. The kind that makes damn sure you’ll never sleep again. And then maybe, if the city was satisfied with our tribute, she’d send the rain. Maybe. She didn’t always.

And Sanctuary For All

The Standard Tech Case Files: And Sanctuary For All
by Joshua Corbeil-Stoodley

Akisha cowered as the brutes advanced. They were faceless, formless; their bodies made of the same ever-shifting shadows that made up the alleyway. Only Akisha was solid, only Akisha was real. And yet Gloria still couldn’t reach her sister, still struggled through the shadowy world as if the shadows were made of molasses. The hazy brutes had no such problem; they advanced on the cowering dame with the practised ease of sharks. No, not sharks, Gloria reminded herself. Pigs.
“Akisha!” Gloria screamed. “Akisha, run!”
But she couldn’t, no more that Gloria herself could. Akisha stumbled backward, slamming against a shadow wall that had all of a sudden became as solid as if it had been made of brick. There she lay, curled like a hedgehog, as one of her tormentors broke away from the pack.
“Get away from her!” Gloria screamed, looking around desperately for something, anything she could use as a weapon. Something she could use to save her sister.
The shadow-brute who had broken away from the pack was now standing behind Akisha, dragging her roughly to her feet. She clawed at his form feebly, having no more effect than Gloria had. Continue reading