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Sample chapters from two finished works-- |
Perception of DangerSamantha Abbott has been working in the Lower East Side of New York City for ten years. Gentrifying has improved the area here and there, but there are still large pockets of aimless, angry people capable of senseless violence given the right provocation. She is comfortable in the projects, keeps her eyes open and knows when to take an escort. Then she is sent on an emergency visit to an old woman reported to be in trouble. The woman’s apartment is in a safe area so she goes alone. Unfortunately, the only thing waiting for her is a vicious mugging. It doesn’t take her long to realize only someone from her office would know enough about her movements to set her up. Why is the question. Any one who works with her knows she carries nothing worth stealing. When a succession of calamities happen around her, the rumor spreads she is having a nervous break down and becoming a liability to the agency. When people start dying, she does not have time to worry about losing her job, the problem is staying alive long enough to figure out why. . |
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Deadly ChoicesAnnie Marsh assumes her dull job is safe until someone locks her in the morgue with a corpse and resets the thermostat below freezing. She struggles to stay alive only to find the real fight for her life has just begun. What could she have done that made her worth killing? Annie has been on her own since she was seventeen when she made the choice to defy her social activist parents. She thought pro-choice meant what it said. In the seventeen years since then, she has learned how to survive without help, even help from her lover. When he abandons her, she suddenly realizes survival is not enough. She thought this small town would be a friendly place where her illegitimate child could grow up secure and loved in the midst of his dead father’s family. Instead, they will not acknowledge her son as kin and tell anyone who will listen that Annie is the town whore. Worse, her son hates the town until the seductive woman his father dated seventeen years earlier makes a successful play for him. This is not the kind of nurturing Annie had in mind. |
Contact Jeanne at jeanne@jdenault.com. |