I finished it and it’s available!

“It” is my newest novel, The Tower. It’s available in paperback and is part of Kindle Unlimited. It’s pretty different from my other books and I can’t wait to hear what you think of it.

Like most of my stories, the main character is an unlikely heroine. Her name is Evie. She is not a former soldier, a Krav Maga instructor, or an outdoorsy herbalist in the forest. Instead, she’s disabled, chronically ill, perpetually anxious, and lives on the top floor of a condo building downtown in a big city. When the power goes out for good, she finds herself trapped in her home. How will she manage to survive a city that grows more brutal by the day?

Here are the first few pages to introduce you to Evie. I hope you find yourself cheering for her.

The Tower

Prologue

The first person I ever killed died over a can opener.

The fact that it was true was one of the least strange things that had happened to me recently.

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I did not feel equipped for apocalyptic survival. I was a romance author, for crying out loud. I wrote stories where mortals fell in love with creatures from other realms, and everyone got a happy ending if they survived that pesky third-act misunderstanding.

Despite my lack of consent to participate in the Craptacular Cascading Apocalypse I found myself in, I had put down my pen and picked up a weapon.

Back before all the dystopian nonsense, I had paid extra for a condo with a perfect view. Now, I regretted that view almost every day. The things I saw belonged to a world that seemed like badly written fiction. “Very exaggerated. It goes well beyond willing suspension of disbelief,” I would say seriously, if I were talking to my agent.

My telescope had been a very successful impulse buy. Much more successful than the dangling feather hair clips. I ordered them late one night after watching Lagertha kick butt on Vikings. In my fog of inspiration, I had been certain they were just what I needed to join a shield-maiden army.

Anyway, back to the telescope. I set it up to explore the heavens from my condo, finding stars and constellations in the city sky on those frequent nights when insomnia struck. I absolutely loved staring through it at the beauty beyond my reach.

But since everything went sideways, it pointed downward from the heavens into hell.

I lived on the thirteenth floor, although that was not my official address.  We weren’t supposed to notice that the numbers were consecutive up to 12, then skipped over thirteen like it did not exist, thereby christening the top floor – my floor – the 14th. Apparently superstition still had a seat on the condo board. I resisted the tyranny by calling it the 13th floor. You know, just for spite and giggles.

I was middle-aged and perpetually anxious even before things went south. Mild panic was my baseline. I was also disabled, thanks to faulty collagen that held my body together with all the enthusiasm of worn-out bra straps.

My building was unsettlingly quiet. Most residents of the upper floors had already left. Or worse still, maybe they hadn’t left at all. Maybe some of them had died here, which would account for the sickening smell in the hallway.

As for me, leaving wasn’t an option. I was stuck like a bug in a jar.

Like a cat too far up a tree.

Be positive, I reminded myself for what was probably the 43rd time that day.

Like a princess in a tower.

There. That sounded better.

Unfortunately, no prince clad in armor was clanking up thirteen flights of stairs to save me. Nor was I the plucky heroine tying bedsheets together for a daring escape. I wasn’t plucky. Consider me decidedly unplucked and completely full of feathers.

The idea of me making it down all those flights of stairs would be laughable even to the kindest-natured person. I figured I would be better off stranded up here in my tower than lying, exhausted, in some unfriendly stairwell, where my cat didn’t live and where my books were not shelved.

I sat there on that evening as the darkness began to fall. A half-opened can of creamed corn sat on the kitchen island, untouched. It was like a still life titled “Evidence.” Ironically, I still didn’t have the blasted can opener that caused the entire ruckus.

To add insult to injury, now a dead man lay in the vestibule outside my condo door, and I was going to have to get rid of his body.

You read that correctly.

I, Evangeline Goodnight, was going to get rid of an actual body.

Thank heavens the floor was tile and not carpet, I thought, as my thoughts began to climb rapidly into nonsense and unimportant details.

I was in the safest place I knew, high above a city that had stopped pretending rules mattered. Until now, my unspoken pact with the city had been honored. I stayed up here. The violence stayed down there.

But like everything else, it changed in a heartbeat.

Friday Night

When the power went out, I was getting ready for my Friday night book club get-together. It was annoying.  My lighted makeup mirror went dark before I had finished my eyeliner, leaving me with one dramatic eye and one eye that had apparently chosen a quiet life.

Of course, I didn’t need to waste a good pair of lashes if I was stranded at home. There was no way I was going anywhere with the elevators out of commission. Gravity might help get me down thirteen flights of stairs, but I wasn’t getting back up. Not without an act of Congress and a crane with a basket.

I did the best I could with my makeup. I got dressed in a loose Aerosmith T-shirt and a patterned maxi skirt, adding a wide cuff bracelet and a braided leather belt to the ensemble. I chose a brown, heavily carved cane to complement my outfit. I looked like, in my humble opinion,  a cross between Limping Barbie and Stevie Nicks. All I needed was a flower crown and a kimono. Both of which I own, of course.

My phone still had battery, but the Duke Energy app wouldn’t load. I tried local social media, the news, and my weather app to find out what was going on, but to no avail. My messages to the book club group chat sat there undelivered, which felt rude. If civilization was going to have me dressed up with no place to go, the least it could do was let me send a cancellation text.

I hoped it was a temporary fluke. I puttered around in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher and straightening dish towels. But the time to leave for book club came and went. No hum of the air conditioner starting back up, no flicker of lights – absolutely nothing signaling the ill-timed electrical outage was over. I was bummed. This was one of my few social outlets. I had been looking forward to arguing about the ending, eating grocery-store brie, and pretending I was the sort of person who casually had Friday night plans.

Shrugging it off, I got a battery-powered lantern from the hall closet, feeling smug in the low-stakes way a person does during a temporary inconvenience. I wanted to make sure I could light my way to the bedroom, so I wouldn’t trip.

This was no time to get injured, because heaven help the firemen who would have to carry me down all those stairs on a stretcher. I like firemen. I’m not made of stone. Being introduced while lying on a stretcher like a bug stuck on its back was not my idea of a meet-cute, however. I washed my face, changed into my favorite lavender sloth pajamas, and shoved my feet into some fuzzy orange orthopedic slippers.

It would be a perfect night to use my telescope. I could see the hulking outlines of other buildings, which usually made for a beautiful skyline. The darkness was only interrupted by headlights on cars. The lack of light pollution would give me a fabulous star show.

I gazed at the heavens for hours before I got sleepy and went to bed, delighted by my communion with the stars.

I fully expected the power to resume tomorrow. Denial is a powerful drug, and apparently I had taken the extended-release version.

That was just adorable of me.

Day 1

When I woke up on Saturday after what should’ve been my book club outing, the power was still off. I groaned at the inconvenience, but then remembered.

I had secret weapons, and I wasn’t afraid to deploy them.  In fact, it sounded like fun.

It was almost autumn, late enough in the year that North Carolina wasn’t trying to boil us alive. I shuffled through the condo in my vibrant orthopedic slippers and wildly patterned pajamas, opening the many windows.

I know. I’m very glamorous. Try not to envy me.

A nice breeze swept through my apartment, ruffling some miscellaneous loose papers. The sky was bright and cheerful, and sunlight streamed into my apartment. The prisms I’d hung to catch the light cast cheerful dappled rainbows around the room.

I fed my cat, Jupiter. He was an imperious Russian Blue with strong opinions – an absolutely beautiful cat. I had offered to take him in when a friend told me that Jupe was beating up on her other cats too badly. Try as she might to put a peace treaty into effect, it wasn’t going to happen. That’s how I ended up with a beautiful, judgmental feline roommate.

After I brushed my teeth, I set about managing the food in my refrigerator.  I had a small fridge on my enormous patio that I used when I had guests over for a cookout.  It used far less power, and I could run it on one of two portable solar generators I had, named Inside Genny and Outside Genny.

You see, I had a deep, dark secret.

I had been a closet prepper for years because it helped with my anxiety. I watched shows like Doomsday Preppers and scoffed because I felt that my own preparations made more sense. I had read every book I could get my hands on about general preparedness until they all began to sound the same. It became a hobby that gave me a great deal of peace.

I had gotten started after my divorce, almost twenty years earlier. My health had always been dangling by a gossamer filament, and in lieu of alimony, I had gotten a small condo. I was determined to start a writing career, and money had been incredibly tight. Having some supplies put back meant that at least I had part of the whole survival thing covered. As my career became more successful, my preps became more elaborate. Eventually, I housed them all in the lovely penthouse I had bought and renovated to my specifications.

I’d never once come out of the stockpile closet for fear of what my readers would think. It was fine to be a little different as a creative sort, but there was a scale in the public eye. It started at adorably eccentric and went all the way up to tinfoil-hat-wearing weirdo. I preferred to stay on the whimsical end of that scale. Crazy or not, today I was feeling good about my preparations. Okay, smug even, about the things I had stored away for a rainy day.

Or, in this case, a sunny one.

A small rollator with a basket was the workhorse I had purchased for indoor mobility. It was cream-colored, and instead of a seat like my fancy-going-out rollator, it had a large basket with a flat tray top. Magnus, as I had dubbed the device, was my disability butler, and I used it even more than I had expected to. It was perfect for balance and transporting items from one end of my condo to the other.

That morning, I filled the basket three times to move my perishables outside to my patio kitchen. I dragged Outside Genny from the small storage room off the patio. It was on wheels, or I never could have moved it. Even so, it was a challenge that left my arms feeling like wet noodles. Once I got the small fridge plugged into the generator, I sat down on one of the egg swing chairs to rest for a moment.

Don’t overdo it, Evie, I scolded myself. You know what happens when you overdo it.

I left the freezer food where it was – that stuff would be safe for a couple more days as long as I didn’t open the door. I made myself half a turkey sandwich with a slice of cheese and mashed avocado on fluffy sourdough bread. I put the rest of the turkey and cheese in the outdoor refrigerator, then sat down at my kitchen bar to have breakfast.

My phone was there, where I had left it plugged into the wall overnight. I checked to see how much juice I had – it was at 85%. It had stopped charging as soon as the lights went out. But it was charged enough for me to do some surfing and see why the heck my lights were still out, and more importantly, when they’d be back. I removed my phone from the house Wi-Fi and waited for it to connect to my provider.

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I polished off the sandwich and went outside to see if I could get service. No bars, no matter where I stood.

Irritating.

And also, to be honest, kind of concerning.

Every prepper I know has some kind of little test to make sure that a power outage was just a power outage and not an apocalyptic event that would send us back two hundred years in terms of technology. I was no different. I knew that the issue wasn’t an electromagnetic pulse or a solar storm because my devices still worked. They just had nothing to connect to. The cars were still running with their stereos blasting music, and people were outside enjoying the beautiful weather without a care in the world. Proud moms pushed their strollers to the park. Kids skateboarded in the grocery store parking lot, where they normally would have been run off by bored security guards.

I spent the day tidying up, sweeping my patio, and watering plants in raised beds. At bedtime, I curled up in my room and used my headlamp to read, Jupiter purring at my feet.

While I hoped that everything would be back to normal the following day, I wasn’t worried. In fact, I was downright satisfied by how well my preparedness efforts were paying off.

Maybe I will tell my audience about preparing for emergencies, I thought drowsily as I was drifting off. It might be a public service. A cute little power outage post. Nothing too weird.

Day 3

By Monday morning, I had rebranded the power-outage weekend as a digital detox retreat, because denial is free and requires no Wi-Fi.

I woke up ready to get back to normal.  Surely the power, cell service, or internet would come crawling back now that the grown-ups with clipboards and utility trucks were back at work.

I hooked my Keurig up to my second solar power station, Inside Genny, which I had wheeled into the kitchen where I felt it would do the most good. I made myself coffee, adding some of the cream from my fridge outside. I opened my manuscript in a program that didn’t need the internet, which suddenly felt less old-fashioned and more prophetic. I tried to write while mentally ranking everything in my refrigerator by how soon it planned to betray me. When I began pondering how the heck Mary Shelley had written Frankenstein without spell check and an online thesaurus, I gave up.  I was too distracted to write.

I made the grand expedition across the hall to knock on the door of the only other tenant on my floor, but nobody answered. The man who owned the other penthouse kept it as a pied-à-terre and only used it part of the time. I supposed he had been at his other home, wherever that was, when the outage struck, and had no interest in hiking up all the stairs to come enjoy a blackout at his place in the city.

By evening, Monday had failed to behave like Monday. No utility trucks. No service. No cheerful little outage-map update. No messages finally whooshing through all at once. I felt uneasy and far less confident in this being a little blip than I had on Saturday.

But the view through my telescope that night made my problems seem unimportant. I could easily see the Milky Way, which was generally obscured by light pollution. It should have worried me that Raleigh was dark enough for that. Instead, I was enchanted.

I sipped a mug of cocoa I’d made in the Keurig and lost myself in the heavens, surrounded by stars. For one more night, I let myself believe that the darkness was beautiful.

And that’s before things get crazy.

I hope you’re intrigued and want to hear more from Evie!

Once again, you can grab the book on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. 

I really can’t wait to hear what you think of my new book. Your purchase today helps push me up the New Release rankings on Amazon, and your reviews help my book be seen by more people browsing.