Epic Thursday...

                                                                                                    

It's Epic Thursday again, and this week I am so excited to host Bethany Hagen!!!  She is a fellow WrAHM, and the author of the sweeping YA debut, LANDRY PARK, pitched as Gone with the Nuclear Wind, which will be released by Dial/Penguin in Fall of 2013.  (Photo Copyright Denise Overholt) 

Bethany Hagen was born and raised in Kansas City, where she lives with her husband and two children. When she's not writing or doing her librarian thing, she's drinking coffee or doing Chinese Kenpo Karate. Usually not at the same time.

You can find her blog here: www.bethanyhagen.com
And her Twitter here: @bethany_hagen
And her Pinterest here: www.pinterest.com/pengwendolen

Laundry Park description:
In a country ruled by the lavish Gentry, sixteen year old Madeline Landry dreams   of going off to the University to escape from the classmates who whisper behind her back, and from her parents, who want nothing more than to marry her off to save their debt-ridden estate. 

But when Madeleine spies the city's new golden boy David helping a Rootless girl in the park—in spite of the fact that the Rootless handle the nuclear charges that power the Gentry’s lifestyle and are considered worse than vermin-- all of her judgments and certainties about her place within the social elite are swept away. 

Soon, rumors of war and rebellion begin to swirl, with David Dana at the center. While the Rootless plot revolution and scandal rips across the Gentry, Madeline must decide between her duty and her desires, between her conscience and her ancestral destiny. 


And don't forget to stop by next week when I'm hosting Laura Rahimi Barnes (another wonderful WrAHM and writer of Middle Grade awesomeness)   You can visit her at Laura B Writer for her wisdom in Building Author Media Presence.

And now we have an excerpt from Bethany's trunked serial killer novel, The Cancer Empire.  We'll just call it The Epic Murder Most Foul...

The song ended and Gawain let the hand holding the microphone fall to his side. His eyes, almost preternaturally blue, almost purple, dazzling Chinese bellflowers in the dark. My arms slid around his neck and I pulled him close. Why the hell couldn’t I feel for Gawain what I did for Noel? He certainly deserved it more. 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.” 

Our lips met and the microphone dropped to the ground as the people in the bar whistled and applauded. I could smell everything, hear everything, but it blended together in dizzy swirls, Gawain’s mouth on mine the only thing connecting one moment to the next. 

Somebody kicked on the music and the band members moved back down to the bar. In half a second, my mind was made up. I broke away and moved toward the bathroom. I looked back over my shoulder suggestively. With a groan, Gawain followed. 

We were barely in the door, I hadn’t even turned on the light, before I was seized and set on the sink. My legs instinctively wrapped around his body, and he kissed my neck and ear, hands running along the stays of my corset, gently tugging them loose. 

“I never told you thanks,” I said breathlessly. 

“For what?”  

My corset began to fall away from my back. I could barely concentrate. “… The rose you left me?” 

He looked at me and cocked his head. “I didn’t leave you a rose.” 

This struck me as odd, but then, my heart leapt—it must have been Noel. Gawain didn’t give me time to consider this, his mouth was on mine again and my corset completely undone, and only a cheap strapless bra to separate my skin from his. I could feel the music throbbing through the sink, the mirror cold against my almost naked back, the vibrations in my spine stinging from my hair to my boots. I found myself kissing in time to the music, and to the time of the flashing lights coming in from the door that never shut all the way. 

“I love you,” he murmured into my ear.  

Is now the time? His hips were grinding against me, and I was drunk, making out topless in a bar bathroom, and I knew I should answer back— The bathroom flickered as the door creaked open and in the flash of light, I saw Gawain’s eyes, elfishly brilliant. Then a flash of silver and sickening sound of puncture. 

The strobe like was like lightening, the knife thunder, and all I could see was bright red and a figure in black. Gawain’s hands clutched convulsively around my arms, and, as I screamed, the knife came through his throat from the back, shredding the voice that had sang me to sleep for eleven years. A grisly gargling noise came from Gawain as he breathed through the blood and metal lodged in his throat, and he toppled, hands still gripping mine. I fell with him, temporarily tangled with the still warm limbs, my face pressed against the bloody collarbone.

I scrambled and I heard people outside coming to the door, which had been closed and locked behind this intruder. My boots slipped in the blood and I fell to my knees, trying desperately to get away from the figure in black. I looked up, Gawain’s blood dripping off my face, I could taste it; I beheld the incarnation of every fear I hitherto given thought to. 

Paltry moonlight filtered in through the grimy window, and in the few seconds between my falling and Danny breaking open the door in a fit of bar-tending glory, I saw a figure clad in soft black—tuxedo pants and a clingy, expensive looking turtleneck, black leather gloves that gleamed softly in the dark. Even his face was masked, a silky black hood the draped elegantly down around his neck and shoulders. 

The figure held out its hand, impatiently beckoning, but then the door splintered open. He moved with a serrated quickness; in a few seconds work, he was in the window, and with one last look at me, he stole from the bathroom like a cat. I sucked in a breath to scream, breathed in the tang of Gawain’s blood, and retched. Danny found me on my knees in a hell that was somewhere between retching and screaming.

And don't forget, it's never too late to volunteer some of your own Epic writings.  Contact me at amclites@gmail.com.