Title: Love in
the Time of the Dead
Author: Tera Shanley
Genre: Adult Supernatural/Zombie Romance
17+
Publication Date: October 22, 2013
Published By: Omnific
Publishing
Event organized by: Literati Author
Services, Inc.
Synopsis
Laney Landry has been fighting
Deads alongside her brother and friends for three years. But she has a secret.
She's immune to Dead bites and has to find the right people to trust with the
information. Her team rallies around her to find a doctor who can extract a
vaccine from Laney which could fight the virus that ended the world.
Sean Daniels leads a colony that provides her team with much needed shelter and supplies. He is obviously interested in Laney. The question is whether he's only intrigued by her as a source for the possible vaccine, or for something more. Tests for the cure might push her body beyond what it can endure, and just as she faces a ghost from her past, her longtime teammate Derek Mitchell hints at an interest in more than just her Dead slaying abilities.
Two honorable and alluring men - one colossal decision to make. Despite historically bad taste in men, can she rise above the chaos of the apocalypse and choose the one who deserves her heart? The right choice could mean the difference between surviving...and living.
Sean Daniels leads a colony that provides her team with much needed shelter and supplies. He is obviously interested in Laney. The question is whether he's only intrigued by her as a source for the possible vaccine, or for something more. Tests for the cure might push her body beyond what it can endure, and just as she faces a ghost from her past, her longtime teammate Derek Mitchell hints at an interest in more than just her Dead slaying abilities.
Two honorable and alluring men - one colossal decision to make. Despite historically bad taste in men, can she rise above the chaos of the apocalypse and choose the one who deserves her heart? The right choice could mean the difference between surviving...and living.
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A New Perspective
Have you
ever read a scene and wished you could see what the other character was
thinking? Or why they were making the decision they were making? I’m forever
wishing to be in both heads at once, feeling what both players feel in a
pivotal moment. Doesn’t make for good writing or easy reading though. Too much
head-hopping.
Doesn’t mean
we as writers don’t write the scene from the other character’s point of view,
or think of it from another perspective. Maybe it stays in our heads, or maybe
we write it and it switches point of view during edits. Or maybe, Heaven
forbid, we have to cut it altogether. (Cue sobby belly-flopping onto the ground
and kicking feet.)
In this
scene, Laney takes the lead in Love in the Time of the Dead. She and her team
have just had a bad night running from Deads and Mitchell (hunky, schmexyface
Mitchell) makes a questionable call when it comes to her mental safety. This
scene has only been offered through Laney’s eyes. Until now.
*******
Standing next
to Sean Daniels in the middle of a moonless night with a herd of newly turned
Deads on the other side of the woods behind them was a test in patience.
Patience being the opposite of punching him in the jugular.
Mitchell
couldn’t put a finger on why the man bothered him so much. Maybe it was because
he was reckless under the weight of grief, or maybe it was the seemingly
unconscious authority he wielded over everyone around him. It probably had to
do with him jamming a gun against Laney’s head during gate check.
He clenched
and unclenched his fists to relieve the fury that ran like a river through his
veins. If Sean had even brushed that trigger with his finger, Mitchell would
have killed him, consequences be damned.
He sized
Sean up. He was almost as tall and every bit as physically fit but there was no
way he’d seen as much field time, fighting.
Sean leveled
him a long, unblinking look, like he could read his uncharitable thoughts.
Mitchell
cocked his head to the side and glared. He could best him.
“All clear,”
Laney yelled from the flat gas station roof above. “You guys can come on up.”
He scaled
the rickety, rust eaten ladder to the soundtrack of a murmured argument. What
was Guist worked up about? His stone-toned reprimand to Laney was about as
close to a tantrum as his stoic friend had ever thrown. More proof it had been
on hellish night for all of them.
“What’s
going on guys?” He asked when he hopped over the ledge of the roof.
“Laney’s
being stubborn,” Guist gritted out.
Mitchell
shrugged. What else was new? If Laney wasn’t being stubborn, she was either
sick or dead.
Even in the
blue moonlight, Laney cut a heartbreaking figure against the backdrop of the
dilapidated roof. She’d curled her arms around herself like armor from the
chilly breeze her black tank top refused to protect her from. Some of her dark
hair had fallen from her ponytail and whipped around her face and she was
biting her full bottom lip like she was keeping some secret emotion in check.
If he didn’t know better, he could’ve sworn there was a shallow rim of unshed
tears in her eyes.
The look of
sadness shrouded by determination on her pale face did nothing to deter from
her fierce beauty. It did, however, gut him. Turning with a huff, she staked
out the furthest corner of the sagging roof and curled in on herself beside her
backpack.
Mitchell
frowned and followed Guist to a ledge a short distance away. Nothing in him
wanted to leave Laney to her thoughts on a night like this, but she wouldn’t
want to talk. Not now.
Guist rifled
noisily through his pack, but it was only a passing distraction from his
attention to Laney’s form, still and filling the night with a sadness that
mirrored his own. He sat on the ledge and clutched the edge of the two-by-four
beneath him until his knuckles hurt. Tonight shouldn’t have happened.
Sean stood
from his place near Adrianna and Finn and shuffled toward Laney, careful to
neatly jump a hole in the roof that had booby-trapped the space between them.
“Laney?” he asked.
Mitchell
stifled a satisfied grin when Laney asked, “What,” in a tone that would rival
the crack of a whip.
“Were you
asleep?” Sean asked.
Laney sighed
and leaned her head back against the ledge. “It seems my mind won’t let me.”
An idea
niggled at Mitchell. She was exhausted, heart-broken, and any man with eyes
could see she was drowning in her own guilt. She’d be useless trying to get to
the hidden truck come morning.
“Yeah,” Sean
said in a low voice. “Listen, I’m really sorry about your brother.”
Fire burned
Mitchell up until he couldn’t see straight. That loss was for Laney, and him,
and Guist. They were family and Sean was other.
He stood and bit out, “You didn’t know him,” before squatting by Guist. Laney
needed help out of her own head, but she certainly didn’t need it from this
jack-yacker with his pretty apologies. He lowered his voice. “Do you have any
sleeping pills?”
Guist’s eyes
had aged a hundred years in a day but he nodded. “She’s going to kill you.”
“She’ll get
over it. She always does.”
Guist shook
his head like Mitchell was playing with fire but his mind was made up.
“I traded
fairly for these. Don’t know exactly what they are, but they’ll knock her out.”
Guist plunked them into her canteen he still had hooked to his pack from
earlier in the day, and gave it a sound shake.
Sean was
squatted in front of Laney, talking quietly, and Mitchell interrupted with a,
“You need to eat something.”
“I’m not
hungry,” she said.
Not surprising,
but she wouldn’t take a drink from the offered canteen without deep suspicion
if he wasn’t smart about it. Sean gave her a small wave and left for his side
of the roof and Mitchell pushed. “It doesn’t smell like Deads around here, does
it?”
She stared
passively into the night.
“No? Then
you need to eat. Here.” He took a seat beside her. “Guist got us some dried
venison,” he said, handing her a piece of the salted meat.
“If I eat,
will you leave me alone?”
“Sure.” He’d
say just about anything to help her.
Their meal
of carrots, biscuits, and jerky was shared in silence. One that had weight
under such loss. When she reached for her canteen, she fumbled around her pack
for a few moments before she said, “Shoot, I think I lost my canteen.”
Here went
nothing. “No, you didn’t. Guist still had it from when he refilled it earlier.”
He handed over the sloshing container. “Here.”
She took a
healthy swig, and then another. Swishing it around in her mouth she swallowed
slowly and noted, “It has a weird aftertaste.”
“Yeah, Guist
said it all tastes like that,” he lied. “It’s from how they purify their water
or something.”
She slumped
and sighed heavily and Mitchell took the opportunity to pour out the little
remaining tainted water over the side of the roof.
She gave a
frown and two slow motion blinks before she slurred, “Son of a ---,” and
drifted off.
“Did you
just drug her?” Sean asked from the other side of the roof.
An odd
sensation filled his gut. Triumph laced with dread. “She’ll thank me in the
morning.” He hoped.
Sean snorted
and shook his head before laying down on a blanket he’d pulled from Jarren’s
pack.
Laney
twitched in her sleep and Mitchell tugged his own blanket from his pack to
cover her chilled body. When she jerked again, he sat behind her and pulled her
head gently into his lap so she wouldn’t hit the side of the ledge. With the
barest brush of a finger, he moved the flyaway strands of silky, dark hair from
her face and watched her face transform from suffocating sadness to rest in a
heartbeat. It was hard to hold onto guilt when he’d helped her. Sure, he’d done
it by questionable means by pre-apocalypse standards, but times were different
now.
Mitchell had
made a promise to Jarren that he’d take care of Laney, and if it took
everything he had, he was going to keep it.
*******
Needless to
say, our Dead-slaying, weapon-wielding, utterly independent Laney doesn’t thank
him in the morning. What do you guys think about Mitchell’s plan?
Sweet-in-his-own-brand-of-morally-questionable helping, or hindering?
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About the Author
 |
Tera Shanley writes in sub-genres that stretch from
Paranormal Romance, to Historic Western Romance, to Apocalyptic (zombie)
Romance. The common theme? She loves love! A self-proclaimed bookworm, she was
raised in small town Texas and could often be found decorating a table at the
local library. She currently lives in Dallas with her husband and two young
children and when she isn’t busy running around after her family, she’s writing
a new story or devouring a good book. Any spare time is dedicated to chocolate
licking, rifle slinging, friend hugging, and the great outdoors.
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