Hi all!
Please help me
welcome Author Constance Phillips to my blog today! She is a fellow Ohioan and I'm pleased to feature her on my blog!
Here is some
information about the author:
Constance is actively involved in her local Romance Writers of America chapter (MVRWA) and the Southeast Michigan chapter of the United States Pony Club. When not writing or enjoying the outdoors, she loves reality television or can be found at a Rick Springfield concert (just look for the pink Converse high tops).
Resurrecting Harry
Constance Phillips
Constance Phillips
Genre: Paranormal
Romance
Publisher: Crescent
Moon Press
ISBN: 978-1-939173-13-3
Number of pages:
270
Word Count: 91,000
Cover Artist:
Lilliana Sanchez
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/2fWMcc8h368
Book Description:
Can the greatest escape artist ever
known break the grim reaper’s chains to save the only woman he’s ever loved?
In order to save Bess from self-destruction, Harry Houdini
puts his afterlife on the line by entering a wager with purgatory’s keeper. He
gives Harry a younger face and body, and a new name: Erich Welch.
Bess clings to his promise to deliver a coded message from
beyond the grave, determined to provide the bridge for him to cross, even if
that means befriending her husband's sworn enemy.
Erich needs to help Bess over her loss and put her on the
road to healing, but will any good come from resurrecting Harry?
Resurrecting Harry Excerpt
For
Harry Houdini, failure wasn’t an option.
Being
closed into the old steamer trunk didn’t faze him, not even when the familiar
sound of a padlock clanking in place echoed in his ear. When water began to
seep through the seams, most men would panic, but years of experience pushed
down the instinct. He knew his faithful assistant and wife, Bess, had slipped
into the spotlight to distract the crowd and raise the tension, just like
they’d practiced for hours and performed dozens of times.
While
the fans anticipated the worst, he took a slow and measured breath and prepared
for several minutes without oxygen.
Harry
focused on his center from behind veiled lids and used every last bit of
strength to extend his legs. The side of the trunk he’d carefully loosened the
night before popped off, and the water now rushed in. With cuffed hands, he
felt along the lid, guiding himself out. His hooked pinky swiped the key from
beneath his tongue, but the metallic taste remained.
Lifting
his legs, he made short work of the shackles binding his ankles and then arched
his back, reaching toward the surface. In seconds, the cuffs securing his
wrists fell away too.
All
that was left was to break the surface and claim his reward. The roar of the crowd
and Bess’s loving arms were the only two things that thrilled him more than
defying death. Her and his fans gave him the drive to succeed.
Light
faded away, as if rain clouds covered the sun or as if he was sinking further
away from his destination.
His
world spun like a child’s top. A pulse thumped in his ear and molten-hot blood
pumped through his veins. Pure adrenaline fueled the glimpses of his past,
which flashed by like the slides his brother, Theo, showed after every
vacation. But Harry wasn’t watching the events unfold; he relived the memories
over and again.
The
spinning stopped. He now hung upside down, wrapped tighter than a Christmas
present. His Chinese Water Torture Chamber, a straight jacket and the stage of
the Orpheum Theatre; Harry might as well be safe at home in bed. He’d free
himself from the binds as soon as he pushed his shoulder out of joint.
With
a pop, this faded to white too.
Always
trapped. Never escaping. No reward.
The
spinning continued, like a phonograph record.
Shivers raked
his body. In the distance, he could hear a doctor offering comfort and
explaining to a sobbing Bess that hope was lost.
Harry saw
nothing, just shuddered and listened. Icy water enveloped him; his neck rested
on the frosty cast-iron tub. No matter how many times he relived it, he still
believed his infection would clear and the fever would break. He may have stood
in the shadow cast by the angel of death, but he still denied the inevitable. A
burst appendix destroy the great Harry Houdini, master escape artist and expert
showman? Never. When the lights fell on his final performance, something
grander than illness would extinguish his flame.
Swallowing
hard, he fought the quiver in his lips and tried to call out for Bess. Her
touch to his cheek would provide the needed strength. The only vision that ever
played out completely: he whispered her name and watched his own chest rise and
fall for the last time.
Spinning. Spinning.
The
cold vanished, his pain dissipated, but the mental torture never ended. Over
and over he experienced his greatest challenges, but not the successes. Never
completing an escape and returning to Bess’s embrace kept him lonely and
devastated. What had he done to deserve such torment, and for how long would
this agony continue?
Harry
always believed in ashes to ashes. When his heart stopped, his mind would too.
Anything else seemed impossible, but now he knew different. This was Hell.
But
what of the fire and brimstone ol’ man Thomas used to preach about on the
corner?
As a child, Harry’s sainted mother would rush
him past Seventh and Main where the elderly man
testified to the world. She’d whisper passages from the Torah and remind him
his main concern should be this life. Despite his mother’s dislike for the
reverend, he taught Harry a valuable lesson that would stick with him his whole
life: give people a show.
Would
it disappoint the preacher to know that, despite what the scriptures said, Hell
didn’t torture the body with never-ending fires, but focused on the mind? Harry
knew this was worse.
His
stomach heaved to and fro. Bile bubbled in his gut and pushed its way up,
burning his throat, but the relief vomiting would bring never came.
Why won’t the spinning stop? Maybe
because he allowed it to continue. Change comes from within. That’s how he
lived his life: for every action, a reaction. Why should death be different?
No
more complacency.
He
tightened his muscles and stretched his body as taut as possible. “STOP!”
Spinning. Spinning. As if he
was embedded on a reel-to-reel film and someone had pushed rewind, but he was
through being held at someone else’s mercy. Again, he ordered an end to the
torture.
The
loud clank of rusty gears grinding together sounded, and he felt whatever force
kept him tied to this existence snap. His body plummeted and his arms thrashed;
pleas turned to screams. Maybe there was
something worse than the status quo. Falling faster now, he tensed his muscles
and braced for the agonizing pain of hitting the ground.
Soft
and comforting instead, like slipping into a feather bed and wrapping up in a
patchwork quilt, he felt ground beneath him. And serenity. An end to his
anguish? He opened his eyes and wondered if he’d see anything but his past.
White padding adorned the walls and the floor, like he’d seen in those mental
hospitals he toured while concocting his straightjacket escape.
But
Harry wasn’t crazy. He was dead.
The air shifted; the temperature rose. Sweat
replaced the goose bumps that covered his arms. A body? Harry touched the flesh
to make sure it was real. The image of a floating soul now shattered by this
reality. Hot, humid air burned his lungs as he leaned against the wall and
looked up into the ice-blue eyes of a stranger, who loomed a good foot taller
than Harry and was wrapped in tight, black leather like the blacksmiths he’d
known in his youth or the cowboys he’d first met out west. Long, black hair
veiled the stranger’s face. He lit a cigarette and threw his head back,
inhaling deeply and giving Harry another look at those bizarre eyes. A shiver
rode his spine. “My God.”
Twitter: http://www.twiter.com/CPhillips
