“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.” – Carl Jung

I am excited to announce that Circle of Truth, Close Enough to Kill series, book 3 is now available in both paperback and digital versions.

I searched the book for a satisfying teaser to share, not an easy endeavor. There are many twists in the plot and I didn’t want to spoil any of the suspense. Prerelease readers have called it “suspenseful and hard to put down.”

Here is an excerpt, giving a peek inside the mind of a murderer, a killer whose love turns to rage, causing an explosion of fierce and deadly passion. Who will be the next person, close enough to kill? You will soon find out.

She fondled the knife handle, her thumb moved up and down. Oh, it felt good. It really did. She released a long abdominal breath, closed her eyes and rubbed the knife from bottom to top. Her eyes were hollow. She thought about the hours leading up to Noah’s murder.

The pain. The pain.

Noah — love of her life, man of her dreams — the pain he caused her ate at her insides. She remembered. She had cried, hunched over, folded in half, broken, trampled, paralyzed. She lay on John’s couch, moved her thumb up and down the edge of the knife. She was almost in a trance as she thought back on those devastating hours after she found out about his betrayal. Those hours that broke her forever.

She remembered feeling empty, like she didn’t exist anymore. His betrayal took her soul right out of her. Whoever she was before, the she that existed for him, that woman was no more. Instead she felt a void; a part of her had been ripped right out, and in its place was a rage like she had never felt before.

It had no words.

Everything became colorless.

She had played Evanescence’s song “My Immortality” over and over on her computer. Amy Lee’s voice bellowed the exquisite pain only someone whose heart had been crushed could ever comprehend. She sat, listened to the song, to the words. She tried to swallow her feelings. She tried to rationalize, to compartmentalize. Nothing would ease the pain and that wordless rage seethed.

He had always been the one. Always. She had given him all of her, everything she had. And he didn’t care. He took her for granted. He made her expendable.

She sang along with Amy Lee: These wounds won’t seem to heal,this pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase.

She tried to use Amy Lee’s words as her own, to help her integrate the betrayal and stop the simmering volcano that engulfed her. She sang at the top of her lungs. Tears flew out of her eyes. Her body sliced into itsy-bitsy pieces. Her open crevices filled with that inarticulate rage, a rage so deep it seeped through every pour. It swallowed her. It became her.

She picked up a knife. Amy Lee’s voice still rang loudly in her apartment. She stopped hearing. She held that knife, rubbed the blade. She didn’t know why at first. She just fondled the edge with her thumb, over and over. It was then, while she massaged the blade that she knew what she had to do. She would Kill Noah. (Capital K). There was no other way out. She had to do it. Nothing could stop her.

She thought back on that first moment when she plunged the knife into Noah’s chest, the way it felt when it penetrated his flesh and she saw inside of him. She looked at the tip of the knife she held presently and sat up on the couch. Noah had begged and begged for his life. Even while she killed him, she still loved him.

Thank you all for your interest and support. I hope you enjoy reading the book, as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I will be giving away 3 signed copies to subscribers of my newsletter. Winners will be notified on Friday.

Here is a brief excerpt from the book I am currently writing: a romantic-suspense about Olivia, a woman torn between two men, one from her past, the other in her present. As her heart breaks, so does mine; as she is surprised by her choices, so am I.

He took her hand, weaved his fingers through. “I know you’re scared and that’s exactly how you should feel.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I need to pull myself together before we get there. I need to be strong.”

“You are strong.”

“I don’t feel very strong.”

“Having an emotional reaction to a devastating experience isn’t a weakness. It’s called being human. You, Liv, are a strong woman. I know you will make it through this. Cry if you feel like crying, scream if you feel like screaming, break something, throw something. Do whatever you have to do to get the feelings out. Acting normal in this situation would be abnormal. Right?”

She gave a small, sad smile through her tears. “Yes.”

The sky opened up and released a heavy rain. Huge drops of water hit the windshield, thumping like a steady pound on a bass drum. Adam flicked the wipers on. They moved quickly back and forth, click, click; click, click.

She watched the rain land and then be wiped away. More huge drops fell, only to be swiftly eliminated. It was the constant ebb and flow of life, manifesting on the windshield: something developed, existed briefly, ephemerally, only to be gone in a smear. The cadence of the hammering water, mixed with the click of the wipers, felt hypnotic, as she tried to avoid the reality of what she was going home to. She watched this process of birth and death on the windshield, almost numb, until Adam pulled up at her parents’ house.

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