Liquid Silver Anthology: Boundless

Boundless by Annie Dean ~ Bonnie Dee ~ Dionne Galace
From: Liquid Silver

Nothing about the old neighborhood had changed. Same rusty cars, same broken chain link fences, same tired houses with peeling paint or weathered siding. Teresa didn’t know why it mattered, but she hated for him to see where she came from. She tried to cover it with small talk. “When the mill closed, it hit people pretty hard. The area just hasn’t been the same since.”

A lot of things would never be the same. He didn’t offer his hand or words of comfort. If she wanted tenderness, she’d need to ask. Unless she presented him with overt cues, reading such things wouldn’t come easily to Dev. When would he have practiced? As they walked, she counted broken streetlamps. Dogs rummaged in nearby alleys. Beneath the heavy web of ugly electrical wires, quiet despair ruled these streets. The house looked exactly as she remembered it too: a dilapidated ranch with a detached garage done in bile-green siding. Two overgrown hedges nearly obscured the driveway and the half fence her dad had erected to keep out the neighbor’s dogs stood at a drunken angle in the front yard.

He seemed to read her expression. “Some flowers can thrive anywhere, Tess.”

Ben still kept the spare key beneath the mat on the front stoop, so she let them in. “He’s probably still at Graterford.”

Stepping over the threshold sent a cold chill through her. When she left here at eighteen, she’d hoped never to return. At twenty-four, the house seemed smaller than she recalled, tiny rooms, dingy walls and low ceilings. She flicked on the overhead light, noted the dirt caked inside the cheap plastic fixture. Her dad’s tweed recliner still sat before the TV. The stain where she’d spilled her grape Kool-Aid too. The place smelled faintly musty, a touch of mildew in the walls. From the living room she could either turn left down the hall toward the bedrooms or pass straight into the kitchen. Black and white linoleum. Teresa drew up short, her whole body taut. Seeing that floor hit much harder than remembering it. For a moment she thought she might be sick.

Dev spoke her nightmare aloud. “She died there.” Not a question. “You found her.”

“Yeah.” It took all her self-control to get the word out.

“Your father murdered her.” His voice sounded cool and remote. Except for the intense glitter of his eyes, she might even believe he felt nothing.

“Shut up.”

“He promised to love and cherish her. Instead he beat her to death with his fists.”

“Shut up!”

In two strides he crossed the living room and stood with her in the doorway to the kitchen. Side by side, but not touching. “That’s why I don’t affect you,” he said, as if in realization. “You’re almost completely armored by fear. He’s why you ran all the way to British Columbia, why you worked so hard to find somewhere you’d be safe.”

“You don’t know anything about it.” The words felt wrenched from her. She wanted to hurt him as he was hurting her, digging deep into the ragged edges of a wound she’d believed to be healed. “He caught her with another man, Dev. She came home with his sweat on her skin, his…”

“So she deserved to die? Did your God bestow the right of judgment on your father, Tess? And because your mother was a whore, you must be a Madonna? Because you were so afraid you’d turn out like her, afraid your father would find a reason to come for you next?”

Seven Days ~ Annie Dean

I am not a huge fan of reviewing an anthology due to the fact half the time you are simply telling people over and over again that they should have written a novel and they should have had better pacing. How boring is that? “Trick or Treat!”

I promise, I will try and ignore pacing problems and simply look at the stories written.

So, I was reading this paranormal about this girl Teresa about to take her vows to become a nun when she gets a visit from this sexy, demon, dragon, dude named Dev and then near the end of all that… BOOM! I was suddenly in the middle of this hard biting contemporary story that was like ten times more awesome.

How did that happen? All this dark stuff just rained down from the heavens. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but it was an abrupt and sudden change of pace. So let’s just say the paranormal elements were OK but somewhat used with a tad whiff of wish fulfillment especially when they up and fly to Paris.

It was the neat unexpected back story about Teresa that caught my attention and made me want a whole different story. One that was dark and contemporary and damn good. So I will be checking out Annie’s future stories for that to happen.

Annie Dean if you ever get the chance pick up J. G. Hayes ~ This Thing Called Courage because he has a writing voice very similar to yours when writing about the same type of people. His stories are about working class gay guys but the backgrounds and areas they live in are similar. I guess I would describe it as cold, dark, urban blight, with a dollop of humanity and very realistic people surviving despite their surroundings.

You would probably be most excellent at a similar style with admittedly more romance and less tragic endings involved. Hey, let’s all agree that we have tons of writers doing paranormal romance because fantasy is just easier but very few writers can pull off this type of convincing realism in a contemporary story. I say, Go for the gusto girl!

She gazed across the pumpkin patch toward the dry stalks of field corn, rattling and whispering their secrets to one another. There were many pumpkins left among the twisting vines and she wished she’d taken more to market. The number of direct-sell customers visiting the farm was down this year and pumpkins were practically unmarketable after Halloween was past.

Her gaze shifted to her scarecrow. “Well, another summer over. We may have actually made enough from the corn and soybeans and the stupid pumpkins to pay the taxes and heat the house this winter. Maybe even buy groceries, woo-hoo!”

Sam frowned down at her.

“Yes, I know, you were hoping for a Cancun holiday. Me too. Sometimes I’d like to sell this place, move to the city and never see anything except asphalt and tall buildings again.”

Again she looked across the fields at the stand of woods that marked her property line. Gold, orange and an occasional scarlet maple flamed in contrast to trees with dark green leaves that hadn’t yet changed. One of the neighbors was burning leaves and a smudge of smoke blossomed against the sky. Marie could smell it from a quarter mile away, sharp and tangy. It smelled like fall and made her crave a cup of cider and a doughnut. No, she wouldn’t really give up her land, but lately a need for change took hold of her and shook her like a north wind rattling the eaves on a blustery day.

The need for something new was so strong inside her today that it almost felt as if she was poised on the cusp of a great void, about to take a plunge. It was an odd feeling, and silly, because nothing was going to happen. Nothing ever did. Tomorrow she’d wake up to the same life as today.

“I should put in sunflowers next year. They’re a big seller.” She pointed out to Sam, picturing a sea of yellow faces turned to the sun, moving in unison to track the passing of yet another day. The image depressed the hell out of her.

“Next year. Will anything be different? Or will I still be sitting here talking to you?” She glared at the scarecrow. He gazed impassively back at her.

“Stupid, useless thing. You can’t even keep the crows out of the corn. What good are you?” She rested her chin on her hand, elbows on knees and stared glumly ahead. She had to get out more. Holding conversations with inanimate dummies was a little too Anthony Perkins in Psycho. At only thirty-two Marie already felt old and worn out, too exhausted to face the dating game. She’d tried all the unattached, local men she knew and no one was the one. Lately, she rarely went out with anyone except her female friends. Meeting a guy at a club in the city was even worse. You set yourself up for a one-night stand, not a relationship, and at this stage in her life Marie was more than ready for the real deal, someone who wanted to share a life and not just a night with her. She examined the straw-padded body and stern face of the scarecrow.

“If you were a real man, you’d know that I just insulted you. You wouldn’t stand for being called useless and you’d come down from there and show me just how useful you could be.”

If you were a real man.

The Straw Man – Bonnie Dee

Marie is a gentle soul living in the rural hinterlands, which is close to the winterlands but with less available men that come complete with all their body parts. Anyway, it is Halloween and that don’t mean a thing when she ain’t got that swing. Doo-wop Doo-wop.
So singing Disney tunes “When you wish upon some straw. Makes no difference how horny you are…”

Anyway, Sam “I’m Just A Love Machine” Strawman shows up to pound at her back door that night and boy does he scare some crows away. Sam brings new meaning to the term “straight on till morning” and Marie is heart broken when his cock is blocked by the rising sun. I am so there with her as she lays in that muddy corn field praying to the corn dog heavens to bring back her sometin sometin.

Hey, anybody who has ever been stranded in outer Mongolia or Baker, Oregon has been there, especially since the local male population is covered head to toe in bear grease and shuns the use of Right Guard. Even gay men are not that desperate. Well they are , but even they have standards. You are stuck with mail order and lets just admit that Amazon and Walmart do not carry “ALL YOUR NEEDS”.

Bonnie Dee rocks in making sure this feels like the whole story and nothing but the story, so help her God. Great pacing (oops) and a sweet candy corn ending for all.

The woman looked up at him with interest and Jack felt as though he had been punched in the gut. She had the look of an old-school Hollywood bombshell mixed with a Japanese anime character. She was a sex kitten, an innocent schoolgirl, and two fingers of straight-up, single-match scotch rolled into one. Jack felt like dragging her into a dark alley for a quick fuck, then asking her out to a nice steak dinner afterward. He couldn’t recall ever feeling quite like this in his entire life.

Her heavily lashed, almond-shaped eyes were shockingly violet and something told Jack they weren’t contact lenses. Damn, a man could fall into those eyes and never want to crawl back out. He cleared his throat and stuck out his hand. “Jack Ridley, KTCI News. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She ignored his hand and pursed her lips, raking her eyes from his scruffy boots to the top of his head. No doubt she was wondering if she should talk to him or mace him in the face and run away screaming. Her violet gaze settled for a moment on the scar on his forehead before moving on to meet his eyes. “Why aren’t you all suited up and wearing a tie like those other guys?” She tilted her head toward the other reporters talking to the crowd.

There was sexual appreciation in her eyes and Jack’s jeans became uncomfortably tight. He had to resist the urge to reach down and adjust himself. “I do the pre-interviews. I make sure that what you have to say deserves to be on the eleven o’clock news before I have you talk to our correspondent.”

She sucked her lower lip between her small, white teeth as she looked at him as though trying to decide if he was legit or not. “Hmm…”

Jack swallowed hard as the tip of her tongue peeked out to touch the corner of her full mouth. She was wearing a light pink lipstick and a generous amount of lip-gloss.
“Can you tell me what happened…” His gaze dropped to her nametag. “Kitty?”

“Like I told your crew, Jack…” She nodded at something behind him and took a step toward him to place her small, pale hand on the sleeve of his brown bomber jacket. “I was only a few feet away when it happened. One minute I had a pounding headache and wishing I could go home already and the next, I was flying across the bar. When I came to, the boat was there. There was, like … a flash of light before it happened.”

“Yeah, I heard. Like Star Trek.” He didn’t have to look behind him to know his crew was at his back. Tiff made a joke he couldn’t hear and Kenny snickered in response. He ignored the both of them. “If this boat just popped up right there in the middle of the bar, what happened to the people sitting there? They weren’t injured?”

“No.” She reached up to snag a lock of hair that had slipped out of her bun and tucked it behind her ear. “They were … um … just kind of pushed to the side. Some people were flung out of the way like me, but all I got was a scratch.” She pointed to the white bandage taped to her elbow. “Some people think it’s…” She hesitated and stopped.

“What?” Jack prodded patiently.

She bit her lip again and touched her neck with long, graceful fingers. Her nails were painted black. “It’s silly, but some people think it’s aliens returning a ship they took out of the Bermuda Triangle.” She took another step closer and leaned her head toward him as though to sniff him. “Could you spare a smoke? I quit an eternity ago, but after the night I’ve had, I think I deserve one.”

Jack reached for his pack and pulled out a stick. He meant to hand it to her, but she tilted her head toward him and parted her lips. He groaned inwardly. Was she playing with him? She had to know what she was doing to him. A bead of sweat trickled from his temple down the side of his face, but somehow he managed to bring the cigarette to her mouth. Her lips formed a smile around the filter, her violet eyes sparkling. He took out his lighter to light it for her, but before he could get it to work, the tip of the cigarette flared to life. Her eyes widened in shock. With a shaking hand, she took the cigarette out of her mouth and stared at it in wonder. “That’s some trick. How did you do it?”

Waking Kitty – Dionne Galace

Dear Dionne Galace,

I loved it. Kitty, the waitress with the pink hair and body by Mattel meets Jack, our pill popping, hard headed hero, and then things get really weird. Yeah, I saw Philip K. Dick meets Bubblegum Crisis a mile away and then some. Quite frankly we need more, more of this fine craziness damn it. I wanted Megatokyo and Boomers and the brother constantly looking up her dress even. OK, I did not get them, but demons or dragons or whatever were cool.

Listen Shomi ain’t out on eBook yet. So it is time to take the first punch. You realize if P.K. Dick actually had done a romance it would have been all Twin Peaks and would have given the reader no idea if the people having the sex were the people that were introduced at the beginning or the people that got the HEA. Because he would have had to point out the fragile nature of our concept of reality and our tenuous hold on it at best. So thank you for the restraint.

If I was gonna bitch, there was just a ton of things going on and I think it was the short story format that drew away from the meat of the “I am Tarzan, you are Jane” parts disrupting our chance to see them getting to know each other better in order to sell the HEA. I had fun watching you make your moves and build the tension though and figuring out where you were going was a hopeless task.

I can’t wait to see you fly with a whole book of your own. You are full of awesome.

Now for the grade, despite my noted anthology allergy… Well Grade B is for Boundless and a joy to read.

Tags: Annie Dean, Bonnie Dee, Dionne Galace, Fantasy Romance, Grade B, Straight

What I Am Reading ~ Dionne Galace: Boundless

Boundless by Annie Dean ~ Bonnie Dee ~ Dionne Galace
From: Liquid Silver

Seven Days – Annie Dean

Teresa intends to devote her life to the church, immaculate and untouched. Into her quiet life comes a beautiful devil sent to test her purity and her determination. She is silent prayers at midnight; he is the flash of gold in a gambler’s palm. She has known nothing but service and self-sacrifice. He has known nothing but centuries of carnal sin.

Neither know anything about love.

If she denies him, she condemns him to eternity in Hell. If she yields, she forfeits her soul. Who will emerge victorious? To find out, join Dev and Teresa for seven days of temptation.

The Straw Man – Bonnie Dee

A lonely woman imagines the perfect man and accidentally conjures him into being on All Hallows Eve. For a single night she has the lover of her dreams, but a night isn’t nearly enough. Can she find a way to turn her fantasy man back to flesh and blood?

Waking Kitty – Dionne Galace

Jack Ridley is an old-fashioned reporter. He doesn’t believe in anything unless there’s a ton of evidence to back it up and even then, he may still have a question or two hundred for it. Until he meets Kitty Jones and falls like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, Jack can’t seem to care that the ducks in a nearby park are turning pink or giant statues of naked men are appearing out of nowhere in the middle of downtown Chicago traffic.

Pink-haired Kitty Jones is beautiful, flirtatious, and seemingly happy-go-lucky. Under the cheerful, self-assured façade, however, she is slowly falling apart. Not only does she suffer from blackouts and wakes up unable to recall where she is or how she got there, she seems to be seeing dragons … everywhere. The only person she can turn to now is Jack Ridley, a tough-as-nails reporter who seems to have a few secrets of his own.

Tags: Annie Dean, Bonnie Dee, Dionne Galace, Fantasy Romance, Liquid Silver, Straight