Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The Ten Thousand Hands Project ~ An Excerpt

“Ok. Look around you, James. What do you see?”

James looked around the room and let his eyes land back on Jezebel Leigh. “I see a room full of people drinking coffee and eating baked goods.”

“Wrong! What you see are the people who are nameless, faceless, and countless. In this world, the names our parents gave us don’t matter anymore. We aren’t those people. We never were.”

“I think you are wrong. Your name does matter. When you leave this world you want to have a clean, untarnished name to carry with you; don’t you?” James’s voice became one of seriousness. Jezebel Leigh laughed hysterically; so loudly in response to his question a hush fell over the whole room as all eyes turned to the commotion at Jezzie’s table.

“James…James…James,” she started in a low voice shaking her head in utter disappointment, “you don’t really believe that do you?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

Jezebel reached out her hand and softly placed it on his in a gesture of pity. “James, we aren’t ever leaving this life. Once you are in this world you don’t ever get out; you just get forgotten.”

"Sticks and Bones"

It’s true, sticks and stones can break bones; but words…words can break the whole person. The evil has been created; can Marcia Grant stop it?


Detective Marcia Grant is drawn into a world that wasn’t covered in the behavioral science or criminal justice text books.

When Leah Jackson is reported missing and turns up dead on the abandoned farmstead of Clyde Jordaine, the most hated man in West Fargo, Detective Marcia Grant and the whole city of West Fargo are drawn into a world where nothing makes sense. Through the investigation, Detective Grant is drawn back into the dramas of high school-- the categories, abuses and social ladders to be climbed and clung too at all costs. Nothing had really changed since her own high school days in the 80s, except the technology boom of the internet, cell phones, and internet social networking sites.

The case is botched from the beginning. To make matters worse, Officer Jonathon Drake inadvertently lets Marcia know how he truly feels about her and quits his job in the field, leaving her with a rookie cop, and Arnie, a seasoned officer biding his time to retirement, to solve the case.

Sticks and Bones is a psychological crime thriller that is bound to change the way people think about the underlying evil that has a very real presence in American society.