By Kayleigh Sky (Guest Blogger)
My
name sounds sweet, doesn’t it? Kayleigh Sky. Do you see me skipping
through fields of wildflowers and dancing under puffy white clouds?
I
need to take out an advisory. Check with your
doctor before starting this
or any of Kayleigh’s
books! Proceed at your
own risk!
That
last statement I kind of do advise. I put it point blank on my author
bio, my Facebook page, my twitter profile, and my website that I
Write Dark Intense Stories. What part of that statement makes it
sound like I write fluffy little love stories? None, right? So if
people pick up my book and still come out scared to death of the
world they’d just inhabited, what does that say about my level of
darkness? Darker than dark? Darkness squared?
Okay.
Just so we’re on the same page here. I. Am. Dark. In high school, I
was the kid who’d pick Fahrenheit 451 over
Catcher in the Rye,
or A Separate Peace over Pride
and Prejudice. Not that there wasn’t
lovely angst in all four books, but the first of each pair offered a
world just like our own, except… not. I do that in Backbone.
It’s a future world but still ours. Are you scared of your world?
Probably not. Hopefully not really scared. Maybe a little
uneasy. Imagine you’re walking down a busy street in a familiar
city or town. You have errands, a job to get to, a friend to meet for
coffee. You know this place. It’s broad daylight. Pedestrians
surround you. A cop is parked on the street, maybe standing on the
sidewalk, talking to a shop owner. The sky is clear. All is well in
the world. Then you turn the corner and… it’s all the same. Shops
and cafes and people. But there’s something slightly off. You slow
and people flow around you. They look back as they move on. You see
the knowing looks in their eyes. You can’t see what the difference
is. Maybe the sides of the buildings lean imperceptibly. Or maybe the
doors are a little too narrow, the parking meters slightly out of
alignment, the colors a little dull or a little too bright. The
changes are minuscule, but you can sense them. A feeling of terror
crawls along your skin. The eyes watching you brighten in amusement.
You whirl around and race back to the other street where everything
was right and good just a moment ago. You breathe in incredible
relief to be back in your world again.
Do
you like that sensation of instability? Of being immersed in
something that isn’t what you thought it was? Then I’m looking
for you, my kindred spirits. I’m on a search for my tribe. The
dwellers in the dark. I wrote a post for my own blog recently called
Who Wants To Brave
The Dark with Me?
I write stories that distress people. I am grateful that I can pull
people so deeply into a story that they emerge back into the real
world with relief. That means that they have felt. Maybe not what
they wanted to feel. Maybe they wanted a few more spoonfuls of sugar
to go with their very dark coffee, but as the title to this post
clearly states, I am not Mary fucking Poppins. We all don’t want
the same things. I get that. But I also know that I’m not the only
dark soul out there. Come out, come
out, wherever you are.
You are the ones who can bear the pain and the fear of a character’s
dark journey because the experience of his salvation is so blessedly
joyful. An exquisite pain! You, my fellow tribe members, celebrate
the power of love to open the iron gates between heaven and hell.
Do
I write romance? Yes, I do. I believe that love saves and redeems.
That’s the kind of love I write about. I will take you to a world
where salvation is always in doubt because that’s where my guys
live. But I also write Happy Ever Afters! The guy always gets the guy
and all he ever dreamed of. All he was afraid to dream of. All he
never had the courage to believe in. The dark is the place where the
heart purges itself of all but the essence of truth. What do you
really want? When you turn that corner onto a world you never
imagined, what is the thing you most long to hold onto? Will you
fight for it? Will you rejoice that the struggle was worth the prize?
Then welcome to my world… I’ve been looking for you. :)
Blurb
Struggling to survive in a deadly new world, Brey Jamieson soon
discovers that the man who holds his heart might not be willing to set
it free.
A
universal vaccine eradicates all known viruses from the human
population, but in the wake of this miracle, a deadly new virus
suddenly surfaces. As the death toll rises, people riot in panic and
civilization collapses.
Brey Jamieson, a convicted felon, is suddenly
set loose in this violent new world. Desperate to reunite with his
family, he sets out on a journey across the country but is captured
by a brutal man who plans to sell him into slavery.
Hank Kresnak is a
cop in the new world. It is his job to preserve the law. But when he
sees Brey, his belief in everything he has built his new life on
begins to crumble. Memories of a dark and terrible time reawaken. He
was the cop who arrested Brey, and with one look into Brey’s
eyes, he knew his life would never be the same. He was a married man
with two daughters, but he couldn’t
forget a man he barely even knew. Now his wife and daughters are
gone, and he must struggle to save the man of his dreams from a
nightmare fate.
Excerpt
The
man was bent over inside the gas station. Naked. Tied down.
Fuck.
A slave.
Hank
gave a tug on Trixie’s reins and pushed on through scrubby brown
hills. The sky was a high, flat blue and a dry, astringent smell
filled the air. Hank breathed deeply, inhaling a faint tickle of
dust. Below was a spit of a town—just a gas station and an unused
diner.
All
familiar.
His
life now. But, fuck, he didn’t want to see this. He was a cop, for
godsakes. He was supposed to break up fights and put bad guys away.
In his old life, he knew the homeless man who rummaged in the
alleyway behind the Thai Palace by name. He guarded a social worker
named Joy who came to take a five-year-old in pink barrettes out of a
crack house where her daddy knifed her mommy to death for forgetting
to put ice in his Pepsi. He dodged a TV somebody tried to drop on his
head out of a fifth floor window. He took complaints and made
reports. He hauled in pimps, drug dealers and drunk and disorderlies.
He went after bad guys.
Guys
like Thom—who bounced
and wobbled
in the
too-hot sun.
Animated. A
friendly
salesman.
Laughter
floated in the air.
Christ,
he wanted to go get that naked man. Wanted to grab him and run off
with him.
Save
him.
Like
he couldn’t save anybody else.
He
wanted his old life back. The life with the dance recitals, soccer,
movies with Beth, game night with the girls, work, bills.
He
liked that life. It was a good life.
Then
a company called Bio-Gen Tech came out with a vaccine called Pox Vac
and for only pennies a shot, almost all viruses—flu,
colds,
HIV—disappeared. Conspiracy
theorists claimed that Pox Vac was really nanotechnology funded by
corporations to control the purchasing habits of consumers. To them,
that was the only way Pox Vac could make sense. Otherwise, it was
un-American. There was no profit in cures. Hank scoffed at that. The
girls got their shots. Beth too, but he didn’t. Lazy, he guessed.
It
didn’t matter. Life went on—piano lessons, school plays, a trip
to the Grand Canyon, work.
Then
Beth’s
affair.
He
didn’t like to think about that, but it was a part of the end—like
summer’s last barbecues and early twilights.
Then
people began to die.
They
called the new virus Eve. By spring, shell-shocked survivors
scattered out of almost-empty cities. Now, three years later, he
lived in a half-dead world with people like Thom Donnell, the
bulbous, waddling former insurance salesman, because that’s what
Thom was before—a salesman. Still a salesman. Gesticulating avidly
to his customers between slaps to the naked man’s ass.
It
made Hank’s blood boil.
*
* *
Brey
didn’t know where he was anymore. He thought he used to know. But
now he wasn’t sure. His face scrunched up, but he didn’t feel it.
All he felt was that bar under his belly, and he wanted to get away
from it, but he couldn’t. His position confused him. He didn’t
like it. He couldn’t get a good breath in, and his legs shook. He
was hot, too.
Lemonade,
he thought. That would be good. Under the veranda by the pool. A ball
game on TV.
“Giants
an’ Dodgers.”
“No
Dodgers.”
He
didn’t like that voice.
Metal
clanked.
Fuck,
that bar hurt.
Sweat
stung his eyes, and he blinked grit away. There was concrete beneath
him. A concrete floor. Oil stains. Oh yeah. A garage.
His
legs shook again. Fuck. Fuck. “I have to go!”
Nobody
looked at him, though. His voice wouldn’t come out. Only a raspy
breath that he couldn’t quite catch. Noise rang in his
ears—booming, raucous,
shrill.
Fuck!
He
struggled, metal bit into his wrists, and the pressure on his belly
made his head swim. He was tired. Too tired for this. He didn’t
want to do it anymore. Shame flooded him like hot water—itching,
burning and stinging. Surreal. Out of nowhere. His memories of
getting here swirled with images of swimming pools, orange and yellow
leaves, a cell with bars, a blue strobe light, bare dry hills and a
fat man smiling brightly.
Thom.
He
couldn’t remember coming here, undressing or bending over the bar.
Panic fluttered inside him, and he began to pant again. Please God,
please. I don’t want this. I don’t. But he wasn’t really sure
of that anymore.
“Stop!”
His
breath rasped, and that laugh came again. High-pitched. Shrill.
“Wakey-wakey.”
He
thrashed. No!
One
of the men grabbed onto him and slammed him against the bar. Pain
burst inside, and his thoughts scattered again. He tried to grab on.
Imagined a pool, lemonade, Goldy chasing tennis balls.
Sunshine.
The
drone of a TV.
Beautiful
things like autumn leaves.
His
breath exploded. Oh please, God. Please. I wanna go home! Please,
please.
But
all that came out was a rasp, a whisper—“Help me”—followed by
a voice that grunted in his ear. “Who’s gonna help you, pretty
boy?”
Him,
he thought, painlessly now, floating away again. Him.
About
Kayleigh
Kayleigh
Sky is a m/m erotic romance writer.
Kayleigh’s
stories are
tales of
struggle
and pain,
loss and
despair.
Love is
won in
the battle
to rise
out of
the depths
of
darkness.
Victory is
in the
sweet bliss
of happily
ever after.
Once
upon a
time
Kayleigh
hid out
in a
cold dark
garage
reading a
book her
parents
forbid her
to read.
She was
nine years
old. The
book?
Giovanni’s
Room
by James
Baldwin, a
story of
love
between two
men–well,
actually
the story
was a
little more
complicated
than that,
but hey,
she was
nine.
In
the dark of the garage, a light, a passion, a sheer joy for love in
all its manifestations awoke.
And
love
between two
men–Hot!
Kayleigh’s
men are
often
broken,
always
brave, and
always memorable.
Social
Media Links
kayleigh.sky.write [at] gmail [dot] com
