Posted on February 24, 2015 by sarahmichellelynch

UNFURL – PROLOGUE

COMING SOON!!

EVERYDAY I WOKE, and I was nothing. I went to sleep, and I was less. When I opened my eyes to the world on my 21st birthday, it wasn’t a day to celebrate. It was the same as any other.

I lifted my head to look at the blinding, ignorant world outside the window and felt an instant need to spew. I ran from my bed to the toilet and evacuated my guts into the bowl.

Everyday, the same.

I swallowed hard and panted as I rested back against the cold tile. I couldn’t keep doing this to my body, I knew it. Breaking myself down just so I could build myself back up, fuelling the demons just so I could kill them again in the ring.

The cycle, perpetual.

I stood and walked back out into the apartment she bought for me. At the window, I looked down on Brooklyn and Manhattan beyond that… and I felt, nothing.

Nothing.

On my skin and in my hair I detected more than one female aroma, though the memory of all that was a blurred recollection. I pressed my hand to the glass window and held myself up, the urge to vomit still there.

In my stomach I felt empty and in my heart, there was less than an ounce of anything. My vision was skewed by rainbows of light that weren’t on the spectrum and I didn’t recognise the reflection that stared back at me in the tinted window.

The night before, a Friday, I’d partied hard. Nothing unusual.

I didn’t vomit because of the drink, but because I indulged on everything to excess.

Everything.

Everything that was bad. Everything I didn’t want, but had to have anyway.

I threw my sack of shit body into the shower and burned the entrails away, from my skin at least. From my exterior, just not the inside.

Inside, decay and desolation remained.

I walked out for some breakfast—some orange juice and oatmeal—and picked up my mail as I walked back into the building.

Back in my apartment upstairs, I noticed a parcel amongst the junk—and was surprised to find it contained a number of legal documents. I had only moved in a couple days ago but Jennifer’s people had seen to all the admin on the apartment, so what this was I didn’t know. I feared the contents, unsure what was going on. I didn’t know about this kind of stuff. Since moving to New York I’d never had to worry about anything monetary because Jennifer had always taken care of that for me.

I scanned through and noticed the lawyers on the letterhead weren’t the people Jennifer used. I deduced I had become the owner of some other property and was convinced there had been some error. I called them and said, “You sent me all this stuff but I think there’s been a mistake…”

There hadn’t.

This, was genuine?

I signed a couple of things and personally returned the papers to the lawyers’ office on Third Avenue, first thing Monday.

I asked ‘Turner, Ace and Patrick LLP’ who’d done this for me? They wouldn’t say; they couldn’t disclose a benefactor who’d asked to remain anonymous. All that they’d say was that he had an unusual look.

In exchange I got handed the keys to a potential enterprise that was all mine and though I was suspicious, I went to inspect it anyway.

I walked around the empty space and envisaged how the building had been used before. There were too many tall windows to count and some of those industrial tube lights in the ceiling. It was clearly meant to be used as gallery space but needed work. Doors hung off hinges, damp lurked in places, the floors were a mess and the brick needed repairing—in fact it needed knocking down and starting from scratch! The place didn’t just pose an aesthetic challenge, but a structural one too.

With plenty of wall space available, I should’ve just bought a couple cans of spray paint and made it my own, called it art—had the hoards come through and pay to see the inside of my shattered mind.

I frequently dreamed of bleak landscapes… burning effigies. Bloodied and battered faces and piles of rotting corpses. If I unleashed my mind, who knew what I might create? No doubt something akin to the inside of her mind, something controversial enough to warrant a craze.

No, no! I had to switch that impulse off. It would be a place to sell photographs, not a canvas for the paintings that refused to erase themselves from my burnt vision.

It would cost a bomb just to keep the building standing, so I needed to find work—and fast. As I absorbed my surroundings, she texted and asked if I liked the apartment, my birthday present from her. I thought about my reply for a long time before I finally replied: It suffices.

I thought my response cold, to the point, unquestionable. Succinct. Nothing for her to chew through and spit out.

Moving out of her place on Fifth Avenue had been a long time coming. I never brought women home—I kept all that at the clubs. However, she brought her lovers home with her; men, women, multiple partners. It caused too many arguments between us.

So this gift—the gallery—definitely wasn’t from her. She only ever gave to receive and never without motive. She wouldn’t hand over a gallery in secret, it wasn’t her style. She was all about the showy gestures, all about the control.

This gallery wasn’t her idea. Whose, though? I couldn’t be sure.

As I wandered my own floors and checked out my new patch, I saw a chance. Possibility. Somebody out there wanted me to succeed. Who? I didn’t know! Yet someone could see in me some sort of potential. I had to believe that.

During the days that followed I returned to the gallery again and again, drawing up plans of what I would do with the place if I had money. I didn’t tell Jennifer I was in possession of a gallery but she found out anyway. She knew everything. She had spies, everywhere. She scoffed, of course, warned she would decimate any attempt of mine to make good on such a venture. I didn’t let her snide comments get to me because I had a gallery and that meant someone, somewhere, thought well of me. From then on, I would be better. I would.

I poured my liquor supply down the sink, this simple act already distancing me from who I didn’t want to be. I flushed my pill packets, too. It was time. I didn’t like that stuff and now I had something to work toward, I couldn’t be doing that shit anymore.

What more could she do to hurt me, anyway? There was no mortgage to sabotage, no reputation to ruin. My gallery, like my work, was the pits. Yet it had room for growth and she couldn’t touch that, even though she hated it.

I just didn’t know what lay in store for me.

If only I knew then, what I know now…

**********************************

Read the first book in the series for 99 cents or 99 pence. Unfurl will be available, very, very soon!!

Posted on December 12, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch · 2 Comments

FABIEN: A Christmas Tale – OUT NOW

Synopsis:

Centuries ago Fabien was thrown from his coven for betraying the queen who had claimed him as hers. Leticia chose him for his sexual prowess and never expected he would fall in love with a pathetic human, something she couldn’t forgive. Cursed to live alone, Fabien harbours a small hope he will one day encounter the reincarnation of his one true love.

One cold Christmas Eve Fabien bites a man who he believes could lead him to the one woman who might break the curse he’s been forced to bear for far too long.

The ancient vampire sets out to woo her in the only way he knows how but unfortunately for Fabien, love proves to be his constant undoing . . .

Excerpt:

In simple answer, I smiled and said genuinely, “I really don’t think we have met before. In fact I am sure we haven’t.”

“Hmm.” He held his chin and scratched the black stubble that looked the colour of mercury against his pallid complexion. “Well, I feel like we have met before. In fact I am usually really good at reading people, but you are so… unreachable.”

I nodded, because I agreed with him. “Lots of people say that, don’t worry. I am unreadable, unreachable… even. My husband often doesn’t thank me for it. I just prefer to keep my mystery, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t every woman?” He smiled with a twinkle in his eye.

I didn’t like how awkward it was all becoming, this random stranger appearing in my path like this, so I made a move to leave.

Except he barred my way with an arm and before I could protest, he pulled me into his arms and placed a strange but soul-wrenching kiss on my lips. It wasn’t even that I was attracted to him, no. It wasn’t that his kiss even came close to the kind of kisses I shared with Louis. No.

It was that his kiss brought to mind strange sexual images of him devouring my secret places and sampling me in ways not even Louis had yet. Also, even though his skin remained cold, his kiss was warm and as he held my cheeks in his hands, I didn’t—simply couldn’t—put up a fight of any sort.

I put my hands in his hair and it was so soft. As he kissed me much more deeply, his tongue expertly swirled around mine. I tasted something I had never tasted before, yet I couldn’t describe it. There was no taste like it. A few seconds later, I felt my whole body come alive with an aggressive arousal and I pulled away shaking and shocked.

“I love my husband,” I yelled, and I pulled the dogs with me hastily.

He did not follow me, not in body at least.

Purchase Links:

FIRST FIVE STAR REVIEW ON AMAZON UK:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fangtalisingly good!! 12 Dec 2014

By Audrina Lane

Format:Kindle Edition

I was given an early review copy of this as Sarah knows how much I enjoy her books. This is no exception my only complaint is that it ended too soon!! but then I know she is planning to write another.
I love a good (or should I say bad) vampire hero and Fabien is no exception, his intentions are good but in the bedroom he is a very hot, bad boy!! I enjoyed the way the story switches between his life in the past and the present where he collides in a very dramatic fashion with Louis and Jaimiee and then her twin Jodie. And the love scene between Fabien and the vampire Queen Leticia had me gasping with excitement and desire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All I can say is if you need a story that you can devour in a couple of evenings then this is for you!!

Posted on December 6, 2014December 6, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch

FABIEN: A Christmas Tale – A TEASER

RELEASE DATE DECEMBER 15TH

BLURB:

One cold Christmas Eve Fabien bites a man who he believes could lead him to the one woman who might break the curse he’s been forced to bear for far too long.

The ancient vampire sets out to woo her in the only way he knows how but unfortunately for Fabien, love proves to be his constant undoing . . .

ARCs are currently being sent out and there will be a competition on my FACEBOOK page next week to win your copy! Please contact me for your ARC if you are a reviewer.

Until then here is a teaser to wet your whistles…

Posted on December 1, 2014December 1, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch · 4 Comments

★★ COVER REVEAL – FABIEN: A Christmas Tale ★★

One cold Christmas Eve Fabien bites a man who he believes could lead him to the one woman who might break the curse he’s been forced to bear for far too long.

The ancient vampire sets out to woo her in the only way he knows how but unfortunately for Fabien, love proves to be his constant undoing . . .

RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 15TH

To sign up for the blog tour, visit:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Mmlm7uCX3G3U_QvVkGRuIEh1_mYyhjrnza-ZZGvDR7E/viewform

This is a novella-length book, a read-in-one-sitting kind of zip-read. I’ve been told it is indeed very Christmassy.

I will provide purchase links on release day! Please get in touch with my promoter, AfterDark Online, to enquire about ARCs or any other questions you have!

Happy reading! (UNBIND is still only 99 cents but only for a little while longer!!!)

Posted on October 11, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch

Memory as a Theme – Another Blog Relating to Unbind

“I can remember everything.

That’s my curse, young man.

It’s the greatest curse that’s

ever been inflicted on the

human race: memory.”

Jedediah Leland, Citizen Kane

Does great art have to mirror real life—to be great? If it is an art, but still does this, well… that in itself is great. Right?

Writing Unbind … one of the first things I got into my head was to treat the book as a work of art, which means delving into all the little, tiny nuances of life we forget. However, it is those details that without drawing attention to themselves—make the fabric of our work and our worlds. It’s something that has taken me a long time to master but including the tiny pieces of a world in your work really makes that book work for you… and more importantly, for others too. I read primarily for escapism as do most but that element of realism really does give a book “that edge”.

Dialogue is similarly another thing that is hard to master…

A book begins life as a virtual experience. As an author you first concentrate on the story and plot and work from there. You begin by mapping out the thing as a whole. To make it come alive in the second stage of creation (which is more about the themes and personality of that book) you take the process beyond your own sight of what is happening… to feeling the events through the eyes, ears and scents of your characters. It’s hard to pin down what that MAGIC ingredient is exactly… that thing an author does to draw you under a book’s spell… but when it works, it works. The third and last stage of crafting must bring your characters to life and make them so real… a reader grows to see and feel that character or characters with or without direction from the author.

This all sounds complicated but a good book really does emerge only from a lot of work done behind the scenes, which you the reader or audience never see. Even in the case of some of the bestselling authors out there, you can see which areas they’ve laboured and struggled over. There were maybe sections not easy to write but were nevertheless fundamental to the whole. It’s something we often neglect to consider—a book is not one chapter or one line. It is thousands of words created to evoke a multitude of feelings.

MEMORY, then. Whenever I meet up with old friends, they’ll often say to me, “How do you remember that?” I’ll often remind them of something they had clean forgotten. It may prove no surprise that at school, I struggled with certain subjects that didn’t spark any creativity because I view everything in pictures. It’s probably why people always finish my books and say, “It could be a film,” or, “I see that as a graphic novel one day.” The latter refers to the sci-fi. I thought when I first started out life as a writer—nobody wants to read what Character A had for breakfast that morning. Nobody wants to know that Character B has a bowel problem, either! Ha! These things are true. What the reader does want to know however, is the traits fundamental to your MCs that are essential to the storyline. That is what makes a book a piece of art—it’s only a square of someone’s existence but somehow gives the reader the details needed to imagine and feel the rest. It’s really in the hands of the reader to make books live. It’s really that authors have given you the tools, but you’re the ones sat there doing all the hard work—imagining all those images yourselves through a splendid arrangement of black and white letters on a page or tablet.

My protagonist in Unbind has a vivid memory, too. However, she sees things in archived boxes, a kind of internal filing system. It is this and her whole way of living that ultimately makes her the antithesis to another powerful presence in Unbind.

However, nobody will know what Unbind truly encompasses, not until the last word…

More to come…

Unbind is currently available for pre-order http://mybook.to/Unbind

Posted on September 16, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch

Pre-order Unbind now…

Prologue

Connecticut, 2000

THE OUTLINE OF a petite woman dressed in a gauche ensemble grew bigger as she walked toward Cai. He inwardly groaned, Go away. Please, not her. She stomped across the uneven, old cemetery in her high heels, unceremoniously marching over long-forgotten graves to make her way to where he stood. He noticed her limousine loitering in the distance and reasoned the wake was long over. She’d be hacked off he missed it. Of course he’d purposely avoided the whole thing—fake smiles, apologies, pithy remarks from freeloading drunks and plain fakery from all corners. None of them knew the woman his mother really was. To most she was just a reclusive artist with a ton of secrecy surrounding her unusual lifestyle.

The last mourner there, his neck ached from fixing a constant gaze down into the ground beneath his feet. Tossed earth and red roses marred the gleaming white coffin and he wondered what the point of it all was. His mother wouldn’t know the difference, would she? Then again, he wondered what the point of life was some days.

All day heavy rain clouds had threatened to send him indoors and yet he remained, gazing down into that joyless hole that a man lurking nearby was impatient to fill. Now dusk, it was the dark that might toss him home.

Both parents, gone. The most recent, his mother.

For some reason, he couldn’t mourn. All day he’d willed even a few tears to come, but none had.

His aunt’s hand fell lightly on his shoulder and she tried to tug him away from that site. He knew she was talking but he didn’t hear her, not until she started shouting.

“I’ll have no more nonsense, d’ya hear me Cai? Indoors, now!” She ravaged his ears with a strong, cockney accent.

He thought this woman—his new guardian—crude and dislikable.

The night closed in fast but Cai still refused to leave. The undertaker waited in his truck nearby, talking rampantly on his cell, poised to finally get the job done. Several times that day, Cai had threatened to throw himself in with his mother if he wasn’t given enough time.

There’d never be enough time.

Aunt Jennifer had only just turned up in his life though for years his mother had raved about her incessantly, telling him how glamorous and travelled and individual she was.

“I just learned it’ll be me who oversees your financial affairs, Cai.” He didn’t miss the cool tone of her voice when she said his name, like he was a duty and not a person. “Best start the way we mean to go on… you… being behaved, I mean.”

“Why you?” His teenage voice squeaked slightly, only just broken. “Didn’t Mom leave the lawyers in charge?”

“I don’t know, Cai. Your mother was strange but maybe she did make one sound decision,” she told him firmly. “I’m family… I’m not a faceless pen pusher.”

I’d take one of those any day, he thought.

Fourteen years old and orphaned—all he had left was an aunt he didn’t know and a house full of bad memories.

“I don’t want to stay here. That place,” he said in a rush and gestured to his mother’s mansion nearby, “gives me the creeps.”

She licked her painted lips. “Lucky for you I just landed a job in New York City; they have the best schools anyway I’d bet.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. Escape. Freedom. Somewhere different. That Georgian estate he’d grown up on was full of ghosts and secrets.

The looming white building could be seen from his current hillside vantage point and he didn’t know what was worse—living in a place of nightmares or staring out of the window at the consequences up on the hill.

“We’ll keep the house running… maybe offer it as a wedding venue. Keep it in the family, so to speak.”

“For now, maybe. Later, I’ll demolish it,” he replied.

“We’ll see. This could be an earner for you, love,” she said calmly, but the fingers she kept at his shoulder dug in painfully.

He turned to look at his aunt and saw through the dramatic black veil she wore. All that make-up and elegance, all that poise and style, yet he recognised people by nature were all the same beneath.

He kicked the earth, his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “When I come of age I’ll sell, or better still, have every brick removed and taken elsewhere. I’ll smash it to pieces, bit by bit!”

She scoffed, seemingly unflustered. “Huh, well, we’ll see. There’s a clause, old fashioned but… you’ve inherited as a minor so you’ve to marry to inherit otherwise you won’t get the money before your twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Typical,” he mumbled, stalking away as soon as the first, tender splashes of rain tumbled down. The undertaker cursed desperately in the background, threatening all sorts.

“My sister wouldn’t have wanted you to sell,” she shouted over his shoulder. “She loved this place.”

His mother and aunt British-born, Claudia was the elder sister and had inherited the estate in Connecticut from her father’s elder brother. Claudia’s decision to leave London meant the sisters lost touch somewhat and it was in America that Claudia met Philippe Cortez, Cai’s father—the couple’s volatile partnership something Jennifer never approved of.

Cai and Jennifer were all that remained of a family which from the outside appeared to live fast, and die young.

She caught up with his strides, warning, “I’d advise you not to carry your father’s name, my boy. A man as notorious as him, well now… you don’t want to be tarred by the same brush. I’ll say you were my sister’s love child. I’ll say… well, I’ll make stuff up. After all nobody really knows what went on here, do they? We cannot have people thinking you are your daddy’s son. Do you understand?”

He nodded slowly alongside her, labouredly, and she repeated, “Tell me you understand?”

“I understand.” My father was a bad man.

They climbed into the waiting limousine and Cai hoped they were only going back to the house to pack their bags. He watched the skies open as she continued to dictate to him, the driver setting off without need of instruction.

“I won’t have any mucking about Cai, d’ya hear me? The life you knew is over. You’ll go to school and out into the world for a change. There’ll be no more hiding, d’ya understand me? You’re a clever lad and you’ll do well. You’ll behave and that’s all there is to it… you and me will get on grand if you just behave, hmm?”

He nodded slowly, not caring to show his inward pleasure. He’d been desperate to escape for so long, the smile threatening to break over his face hurt—even though he thought this woman was out of line talking to him that way. Like a child. He’d seen things that made a boy a man.

Jennifer knew he’d had a strange upbringing and she was going to remedy that. The nightmare of the past fourteen years was officially over—and she’d saved him from that in some part, when she could have left him with the servants.

Cai would sell the estate as soon as he got chance, or burn it to the ground. If nothing else, he would at least have every rose on site destroyed so that they never grew again.

He’d wait until he could be free of his aunt—who was just another reminder. Hell, he might even consider getting married.

REVIEWERS PLEASE CONTACT ME THROUGH THE CONTACT FORM ON THIS SITE! THANK YOU!!

PRE-ORDER from AMAZON UK…. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NLQHHQK

Should be available in other territories very soon!

Posted on May 12, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch · 1 Comment

Review and Interview

Thanks to Christina Harding for this… CLICK HERE … or read below for the interview …

What made you want to write erotica?

Story of O heavily influenced me but I have to say the reason I chose to write erotica was that I had a story in my mind to tell, and it was meant for erotica. Charlotte has chronic low self-esteem which she battles during a long, difficult journey. I talked to someone exactly like her who had the same issues and didn’t know how their behaviour came across until someone with the same thing turned around and said, “Hey, you have low self-esteem. You don’t have to suffer with it.” You may ask how does someone not know they have it? Well, you’d have to read Charlotte’s full story in A Fine Profession to find out – and discover how low self-esteem might wreck your sex life, which is obviously a very important aspect of any healthy relationship.

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Oh yeah. I have done lots of jobs that didn’t involve writing and I think actually, they were key to developing me as a writer. I always knew I’d need a bit of life experience before I could class myself as anything of a writer. I’ve worked in professional spheres and the service industries and it has helped because variety in characters fascinates me.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published?

Meeting readers who say, “I rarely read a book I connect with so deeply. Characters I can relate to. Thank you.” This kind of response makes it all worthwhile. A writer’s work is never going to appeal to everyone, but for those it does, it can really make a difference to them.

Is there a genre you could never write? Which and why?

Horror. It’s just not my thing, at all. I’d never get anything done because I’d be sat at my laptop with a pillow over my head, not typing!

Your thoughts on receiving book reviews – the good and the bad –

Of course every writer loves a five star review. We love our own books and love it when someone else loves it too. I also like reviews that are in-depth and perhaps point out what a reader did and didn’t like about the story or characters. If you find out what your writing strengths are, you can bear that in mind for next time. Then there’s the one-star review. If you look at Goodreads there are some people who place one-star ratings even on books that haven’t been published yet! Either because they just didn’t like the sound of the blurb or the cover or the author (often for no real reason). It’s not fair, at all. The one-star rating without any review doesn’t really explain the bad points about a book and says, to me, that the reviewer never read it at all. The most horrible thing a reviewer could ever do is spoiler a book. I had that once and it really upset me. Sure, they had issues with the book. However, other people loved it and the spoiler in question might have ruined it for them, should they check out the reviews beforehand. Spoilers are not for public areas, but for book clubs discussions and social groups. Fair enough! As a reader myself, some spoilers have put me off reading a book everyone else is raving about because I already know the twist. What’s the point after that?

What is the hardest and easiest part about being an erotica writer?

The easiest part (which leads onto the hardest part) is that I know what turns women on and I write it, and it works. The hardest part is looking your friends and family in the eye when they know you write such stuff.

How do you feel about your life as a writer now? Do you regret any past decisions you’ve made?

You can’t regret anything as a writer because writing is like life; you live it and learn it. My books reflect my journey and how I have developed as a writer and a person. I’m proud to share that journey with others.

Have you ever written anything else?

Yes, I’ve written four novels set in a dystopian world. I have also written plenty of poetry, short stories and journalistic material. I recently released a contemporary romance and also, I am currently working on a romantic thriller.

How hard is it to write a book?

It’s easy to write a book if you have an idea. It’s hard to edit it for an audience who need the words in some sort of readable order, without all your own writerly indulgences getting in the way.

What is your favorite or best thing about being an Indie writer?

As an Indie, I have total control over my work. I don’t have a rule book that I have to stick to and I can write whatever I want. For an artist, that is the dream. I started out in this being very aware of how hard it is to be an Indie but I feel some of the stories I wrote were very cathartic for me – and the best thing is that I’ve met loads of other Indies who have enjoyed my work, recommended it to others, and even have let me read their stuff too. I’ve read an awful lot of good Indie books I wouldn’t have known about unless I was part of this network too.

Posted on April 23, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch

Prologue for THE OPERATOR, UNITY VOL.3

This book has been the undoing of me, I have to tell you that. Anyways, here’s a snippet you might like…

This is from the third book in the UNITY series and you can purchase the first two by visiting unitynovels.com

The following is unedited, subject to change etc, but I can tell you this book is the best thing I’ve written yet…

So here we are…

PROLOGUE

When you grow up being told that people are either good or evil, you don’t ever know any different. You can’t distinguish any middle ground. You are told most are evil, though you don’t really know what evil is until evil does. A childhood knowing only that people are to be mistrusted ‒ it stays with you forever and ever. Eighty-odd years of life didn’t convince me that I will ever get over what happened to me both then, and afterwards. What I learned over time, however, was that people and their individuality make everything better, more wholesome. Lots of people along the way smoothed out my rough edges and wore away at my hard shell.

I used to think it was enough to take succor from small things. Perhaps that was my way of coping. Beach walks, strolling around markets, a street stall jacket potato still in its foil wrapper and a plastic fork… those things still seem pretty great, even though I can’t have any of them, not anymore. That is not the world in which we live now.

I used to look at other people and envy them their ignorance, their naivety, their carefree ways. I’d assess them within a heartbeat and know everything about them and their needs, their desires. The stressed-out girl on a delicatessen was only concerned with getting out of there so she could spend her pennies at the local pub with her scruffy boyfriend. The man power-walking the streets with fury was only doing so because his wife wouldn’t put out and he had no other way of sweating off some steam. That paper boy who never spoke… that businesswoman who wore gray suits with such swagger that she convinced herself we didn’t all know it was just High Street clobber and not designer, not at all. That bus driver who always gave me the eye and complained when I didn’t have the right change. All those people, those beautiful people, made the pattern of what was once our world.

Oh we all see the outsides of people. We see the outlines of shapes and images, but do we see their essence, their souls? Their real story? Everyone has a story so they say. Some are possibly better left unsaid.

When you get to the end of my tale, you might wish you’d never heard my story. Sometimes I wished I’d never heard my story. However, it is what made me, me. What shaped me and formed me into the person I became.

Somebody made me realize that surviving wasn’t enough. This person challenged me. Really changed me. Whatever you believe about love, I might show you otherwise. Whatever you think love is, I may prove to the contrary.

You know the basics… now to get to the grit of this tale of UNITY.

You know who I am…

I am the Operator.

RELEASE DATE TBC

Posted on April 9, 2014 by sarahmichellelynch · 2 Comments

Prologue – THE INFORMANT!!!!

OUT THIS WEEK!!

This is the sequel to THE RADICAL and promises to be explosive, action-packed, full of romance, intrigue and surprises galore!

To buy THE RADICAL… GO HERE!!!

READ ON FOR THE INFORMANT PROLOGUE…

January 2064

Mine was a life unlike all the others’. How bold a statement, you may say. Yet quite true. The rest thrived off reputation and hearsay whereas me, Camille Honoré, needed no reputation to prove how much of a threat to Officium I was. Nothing they had thrown at me had killed me. They had tried numerous times. I had kept my head down yet they knew of my conquests. My name was still synonymous with threat.

I sat in a bedroom in Paris, with these thoughts all swirling around my head. I looked out over the expansive rear gardens of Seraph’s new purchase: a house. The place needed a great deal of work and the gardens were more junkyard than recreational space, but I could see she believed in a possible transformation. I’d complain about the seals, the safety locks, the roof and she would smile and return, ‘It has potential.’

I loved her enthusiasm. Even after all that had transpired, she saw something good in everything. I knew it was because she had been to rock bottom and come back again that she didn’t take anything for granted. I had learnt that same lesson myself.

The strain of the past few months had driven me to the odd cigarette and I puffed on one out of the window so she wouldn’t see my vulnerability. Me, yes, me Camille Honoré, who was meant to be beyond all these earthly pleasures. Yet the past nine months had nearly killed me. Why? I could admit the reasons but only to myself. It knew it would take more than retrospect and reflection before I would be able to digest it with anyone else.

Seraph and her “condition” put a spanner in the works, let’s say. A touch of nausea on a certain Dakota apartment balcony was the whole damn reason why nine months had nearly killed me…

I was digressing. Getting sloppy. Allowing emotions to get the better of me. How crass. I forgot Camille Honoré does not admit she has the potential to die, when in fact she has more than the potential. I was just as fallible as the rest, if not more, though I was better at hiding it.

We thought Ryken had successfully paved the way for a resurgence. When in actual fact, no.

“Fuck him,” I whined to myself.

I blamed Eve for teaching me swear words. I blamed her for a lot of things actually. She had passed on and left me with a shit load of problems to mop up, sweep away, tuck under the carpet… (insert other archaisms here).

I was dealing with a mountain of logistical nightmares in fact and no amount of swearing would make me feel any better. Nothing was going to sway me from my feeling that the proverbial was going to hit the fan before long.

He damn well forgot to wear a prophylactic. Nothing but mayhem would ensue because of that one, silly, neglectful action.

I finished the cigarette and took out a mint, spraying myself with scented water too. Perfume would have her licking my face with the heightened sense of smell she had.

A ding from my xGen arrested me and I inwardly recoiled. What now? I told them all to leave me alone. I am not in the mood.

I had retired myself, I suppose, to a certain extent. I had left my no.1 in charge at the shop and had come to Paris with Seraph in a bid to start fresh, breathe away the cobwebs and reconnect with who I used to be. That thought made me chuckle inwardly: who I used to be…

I recalled a little French girl, treated like a princess by her parents, strolling the streets with her mamma, seeking shoes from stalls that would inscribe your name inside and make it all the more magical to have something that was entirely your own. How fantastical. How whimsical. How nothing of that little girl remained in the powerful machine that had replaced her.

I picked up my xGen and saw a message. I saw the sender and heat flooded my body. Heat rose in my cheeks. She still had that affect on me. It read, ‘Got time for a chat? Only a quick one.’

‘Sure,’ I replied, unable to help myself.

She called within a minute and I froze when I saw her. She was all blackness and I loved it. The darkness within her contrasted with the lightness in me. Though what she knew, and only she, was that my depths ran darker and deeper than most others’ – and in that respect we were a perfect fit.

‘How are you?’ she asked with concern.

‘Shit,’ I replied. I never swore. She knew that meant it was bad.

‘He is on his way?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Yes, he is,’ I mumbled.

‘Do you want me to come over?’

‘No,’ I told her, my lips pursed.

‘I don’t like the way you look,’ she argued.

‘How should I look? Pleased?’

I was more miffed than I had ever been.

There was a very valid reason for Ryken’s disappearance off the face of the planet and now I feared all this sacrifice, all this struggle, would be for nothing.

‘You can tell me what is going on in that head of yours. If it will help to unburden you, you may as well.’

I sniffed. I shook my head and rambled quickly in French, quicker than even she could understand. I went into my roughest dialect, my street tongue, and she gawped as I reeled off a lot of jargon.

‘Don’t be such a child and just tell me,’ she chastised.

‘Huh,’ I harrumphed, sitting down on my bed with her on my lap. I had to think of Seraph and her talk of piles earlier… anything to take my mind off the beauty of the woman opposite me.

I cogitated and twisted my mouth before admitting, ‘You haven’t been here when she cries in the night. You haven’t seen her…’ I paused, my mouth twisting uncomfortably while I tried to combat my emotions, ‘…talking like she is happy when she isn’t, not really. She is only pretending… when really she is so sad, she can barely get out of bed in the morning.’

‘Camille, you always knew it would be this way.’

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ I laughed in a trite manner, ‘oh that’s right. Camille follows orders, that is what she does.’

‘This is not you speaking, who is this creature?’ she demanded, her eyes narrowing.

‘I am so tired of this,’ I moaned.

‘You cannot let emotion get the better of you. Not when we have a traitor amongst us.’

‘Ha, a traitor! That is a laugh, is it not? We are all traitors to ourselves. We are human and still we convince ourselves we have no feelings… just to get the job done.’

‘If you don’t bloody tell me what is wrong, right this instant, I am going to come over there to knock some damn sense into you!’

‘That traitor as you term them… that thing who proclaims to be a person, well… my spies tell me things I don’t like to hear. Things that mean this whole sham could have been for nothing! Nothing!’

‘I am coming,’ she warned.

‘No. I don’t need you adding to my problems as well. I already have too many people on the watch list, thank you very much.’

‘A few more days, Camille,’ she comforted me, ‘and Seraph will not be so vulnerable. Just a few more days.’

A few more days, a few more months, a few more years… they had piled up and robbed my life, those “calculations of time” that meant shit. This fight felt like it would never be over.

I wanted to tell my counterpart that she had no idea of the real legacy the Operator had left behind. Secrets nobody but me knew. Some so terrible… some days I had to break skin on the punch bag to rid myself of the guilt I sometimes felt. Me, Camille Honoré, breaking skin. Oh Jesus. Who was I kidding? I was just a woman too. No plan, no motive. Just a woman.

‘I will come if you want me to,’ she added. Oh I bet you would…

‘Non, I don’t want you here,’ I insisted in a harsh voice.

‘Well, chin up. You never know, you might get to kick some more ass before long.’

I looked into her eyes and couldn’t help but crack a wry grin. That had me perked up. She was never easily offended, never gave up on me. She knew just how to appeal to my sense of humor.

‘She’s back, there she is, Camille is in the room again,’ she beamed.

I heard the door to Seraph’s room open after her nap and nodded towards Mara, whispering, ‘Got to go.’

She mouthed, ‘Okay.’

We ended the call and I heard Seraph yell from the corridor, ‘My back’s fuckin’ killin’!’

I chuckled inwardly. Seraph didn’t know how alike she and Eve had been. I had to hope she would never know the extent of the truth in that.

The Radical revealed her place in this tale, now I will unveil mine. Maybe I was the Principal first and foremost, in the eyes of the world. But there is/was so much more to me, too.

I was the Operator’s right-hand woman and you have yet to discover the extent of our former leader’s skills… prepare to be driven deeper into the murky abyss.