Ellysian Press is pleased to
announce the release of Moth by Sean
T. Poindexter on August 5, 2014. The editor is Jen Ryan and cover art is by Jeremy
Lovett.
Moth
By
Sean T. Poindexter
Social worker Max Hollingsworth is no stranger to
monsters. Supernatural or human, he's faced all kinds. But when he's called
upon to investigate a missing child, he may have met his match.
Children are vanishing, not just from the streets,
but from their parents' memories. Max's investigation leads him to a gang of neo-Nazi
vampires running a child slavery ring. There, he comes face to face with the
deadliest enemy he's ever met, their charismatic and powerful leader Boone.
Running low on hope and options to find the missing
children, Max turns to his friends for help. But even they aren't enough.
Forced to face the darkness of his own past, Max forges an alliance with the
least likely ally of all. An enemy whose cruelty was almost his end, and haunts
him still.
Buy Links:
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About
Sean T. Poindexter
Though
born in Mesa, Arizona, Sean has spent most of his life in Missouri. After
college, Sean went into social and investigative work, primarily with disabled
adults and seniors. Sean’s background in sociology, criminology, and philosophy
and his experience as an investigator for the State of Missouri, are heavy
influences in his writing.
While
Sean has been writing most of his life, he did not consider doing so
professionally until he was inspired by a terrible vampire movie. During the
film, Sean amused himself by imagining the vampires being attacked by a dragon.
His imagination resulted in his series, The
Dragon’s Blood Chronicles, featuring dragons and vampires.
Sean
enjoys watching and reading science fiction, fantasy, horror, and thrillers.
His hobbies include playing Xbox, fantasy role playing games and collecting
firearms.
Moth is Book 1
of The Max Hollingsworth Paranormal
Mysteries. Sean's other books include The
Shadow of Tiamet and The Will of the
Darkest One, both from The Dragon’s
Blood Chronicles.
Sean’s Links:
GIVEAWAY
Praise for Moth
"Brutal honesty and raw emotion
bleeds on every page as Max survives his challenges only because he is too busy
to stop for death." Wendy Russo, author January Black
“Moth delves into the darkest depths of
child exploitation in America, while seamlessly blending in a hidden underworld
of supernatural nasties. An intense genre-bender of urban fantasy, horror,
thriller, mystery-suspense, with a splatter of steamy, erotica.” Travis Luedke,
author The Nightlife series
Excerpt from Moth - Chapter 1
Chapter One
“Don’t you usually come in
pairs?”
Officer Unruh smiled and
nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Max grinned. “You just get
out?”
“Yes, sir. US Marines.”
“Ah…yeah, I recognize the
haircut.” It wasn’t just that. Max stood a foot over him at six feet, but the
patrolman made up for it with broad arms and a big chest. He didn’t look like
he needed a partner. And then there was this “sir” business…
“Have you been doing this
long?”
“I’ve been with the Joplin PD
for five months. And you?”
Max drummed his fingers on
the bag hanging from his shoulder. “I’ve been a social worker long enough to
know which house on this street we’re going to, even without looking at the
numbers.” It was the one without siding, just bare insulation boards nailed to
the outer wall.
“Yes, sir.”
Max didn’t resent Unruh’s
presence; he just didn’t think it was necessary. He’d taken cops with him lots
of times, and on a few of those instances, it turned out he’d needed them. But
Brian insisted the workers take cops with them anytime an allegation of drugs
was involved in a hotline. It irritated him for a number of reasons, not the
least of which happened to be that Brian’s job used to be his.
That was another story…
The lawn was overgrown and
the wooden porch sagged, but they arrived at the door without incident. Max
knew the drill. The burly young policeman stepped to the side of the locked
screen door and knocked. A few seconds later, an interior door opened and a
man’s face appeared behind the filthy fly screen. Max had been expecting a
woman.
“Is Donna here?” The man
looked at Max with bulging, bloodshot eyes that darted back to the cop as
though expecting a friendlier face. Whatever look Unruh gave, it wasn’t what
he’d hoped. He returned to Max, who repeated the question.
“She’s not here.”
It was eight thirty in the
morning, so if she worked she might have been there. Max didn’t have employer
information for the mother. Also, he kind of doubted she had a job.
Unruh rattled the latch a
bit, but it didn’t budge. “Sir, could you unlock the door please?”
“What’s this about?”
Max stepped to the screen and
held up his plastic ID badge. It said Max Hollingsworth in big letters under a
rather unflattering picture of him. The bulging-eyed man looked at the ID then
back up at Max. He looked surprised. He shouldn’t have been.
“Sir,” repeated Unruh, “Could
you unlock the door please?”
He looked back to Unruh and
nodded. After a click, the door swung open. Max and the patrolman entered the
home.
The look on Unruh’s face implied
disgust. Max grinned, he really hadn’t been doing this long. The home was a
mess, but Max had seen worse—far worse. In a very short time, so would Unruh.
Places like this would become normal for him. Max remembered when this kind of
mess would have bothered him, too.
The term “shithole” was
tossed around so much, but it wasn’t that bad. The awkwardly rectangular living
room smelled like dog and had a few plastic microwave food boats piled on an
old coffee table. Despite the smell, there was no dog in sight. The most
expensive piece of furniture in the room, probably the house, was a flat screen
television. It was paused on an image of a video console football game. The
wireless controller rested on a ratty couch covered by a slightly less ratty
blanket.
“Donna’s sleeping—”
“You said Donna wasn’t here.”
Max glanced over his shoulder. The man wore dirty grey boxer shorts and a plaid
robe. He’d forgone the courtesy of a shirt, so his guests were treated to ribs
poking through the mole-speckled, pasty skin of a man who rarely left the
house.
“Yeah,” he replied with a
dirty chuckle. “I saw the cop and said that.” He looked at Unruh like he
thought the cop would be amused. The cop was not, so he looked away.
Max produced a small notebook
and pen from the bag hanging at his side. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jim…I live with Donna.”
“You sleep on the couch?” He
gestured to it. Jim shook his head.
“Only in the day.”
Must be nice, Max thought,
sleeping in the day. “You work nights, then?” Max had perfected the art of
over-tact, being a complete dick without getting punched. The people he dealt
with didn’t tend to get subtlety. Unruh’s grin showed he got it—the cops
usually did. They both knew the answer already.
“Naw, I’m what you’d call
unemployed.”
He thought about asking him
to elaborate: What exactly do you mean by, unemployed, sir? But that might be
overdoing it. White trash will only tolerate so much subtle condescension.
“Would you call Donna
unemployed?” Max asked, after collecting pedigree information; Jim’s last name,
date of birth, social security number. Max was always surprised when people
gave all that to him, especially the social security number.
“No, she works at Macey’s.”
That was not to be confused with Macy’s, the retail giant. Macey’s was a chain
of convenience stores/gas stations. Joplin had ninety of them or something.
“Is Madolla in her room?”
“No, she sleeps downstairs.”
Max crooked an eye. “Donna or
Madolla?”
“Madolla. She’s around the
corner, in the kitchen.”
Max stopped writing. “The
baby sleeps in the kitchen?” He looked at the entrance to the dining room.
Presumably the kitchen was beyond that, behind the stairs.
“The baby keeps us up if
she’s in the room.”
“Yeah, they’ll do that.”
Max walked around the corner.
The stairs were wooden and covered with peeling brown paint. A few of them were
cracked. They ended in a carpeted second floor. The dining room lacked a table,
and the kitchen beyond was full of dirty dishes and flies. A few feet from a
neglected refrigerator sat a playpen, apparently doing double-duty as a baby
bed.
“Let me get Donna’s ass out
of bed…”
Unruh stepped in from of Jim
as he tried to leave.
“Not just yet.” Max
approached the pen. Jim followed, but Unruh stopped him at the dining room
entrance.
“I think Donna should be
here, I can’t just let anyone see her kid you know—”
“I’m not ‘just anyone’...I
work for the State.”
“She’s sleeping.” He seemed
to be gauging his chances of darting past Unruh without being tackled…or
perhaps his odds of survival if it occurred. He chose the prudent path. “If you
wake her up, Donna’ll be pissed. She cries a lot.”
“They’ll do that, too.”
“She was crying for like,
hours last night.”
Aside from the slight
dirty-diaper smell, Madolla and her pen were clean and well taken care of. The
report said she was six months old, but she looked like a newborn. She was
lying on her belly, still and peaceful. Max started to smile…
“She was bawling all night,
until about four this morning.”
“When was the last time you
or Donna checked her?” Max lowered his hand into the pen and pressed his
fingers to her little scalp.
“Checked her?”
“To see why she was crying.”
“I turned up the TV and she
cried herself out.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When did she stop crying?”
Jim scratched his scalp
through greasy brown hair. “Like three or something. It usually takes longer.”
Max withdrew his hand from
the pen and wrote all that down. The tap of pen on paper competed evenly with
the soft hum of the refrigerator condenser.
“Officer Unruh, can you call
an ambulance please?”
Jim’s eyes widened.
“Ambulance?”
Unruh didn’t ask any
questions. The distraught look on his face showed he didn’t need to. Unruh
stepped away from Jim to the living room and pressed the button on his shoulder
communicator.
“Oh, shit… Should I wake
Donna?” Jim stepped closer to Max so he didn’t interrupt the stream of
ambulance-summoning cop jargon.
“That would be a good idea,”
Max kept his voice as flat as possible, but under the circumstances his bile
filter was a little taxed.
“Shit! What do I tell her? Is
Madolla okay?”
Max turned his eyes to the
pen.
“She’s dead.”
Thanks for having me on your blog!
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