Hello Readers! Welcome to the Release Day Celebration for the
In the Beginning: Dark Retellings of
Biblical Tales Anthology
presented by Month9Books!
Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!
Happy Book Birthday!
In the Beginning (Oct. 25, 2016) –Eight authors come together to build a powerful collection of dark young adult short stories inspired by the mysteries, faith, and darkness found within the Bible. Old Testament and New Testament, iconic and obscure figures alike are illuminated, explored, and re-envisioned throughout this charity anthology from Month9Books.
IN THE BEGINNING, ed. Laureen Cantwell and Georgia McBride
Daniel and the Dragon by Stephen Clements
A troubled orphan named Habakkuk dutifully follows his master, the prophet Daniel, into temples of blood-thirsty demon-gods, battles with unspeakable horrors, and bears witnesses to mind-breaking evil until his master's zealous defiance of the king's law seals their fate.
Babylon by Nicole Crucial
Far above the earth, in Second Eden, where moments and eternities all blur together, young Babylon befriends Sefer, the Book of Life. As Babylon awaits the moment she'll fulfill her destiny, she and Sefer try to understand the world in which they live.
Last Will and Testament by Mike Hays
A homeless young boy, Baz, bears the weight of humanity on his shoulders and upon his body. When dark forces test a new-found friendship, Baz’s willingness to bear the ugliness of their world will be shaken.
The Demon Was Me by Sharon Hughson
Based on the story of the demon-possessed boy healed by Jesus, this tale provides a glimpse into a post-apocalyptic world where a teenage boy seeks to journey to a better land and yearns to discover the kind of man he's meant to be, only to be hijacked by an evil spirit intent upon chipping away at the hope, faith, and resilience of its host.
The Deluge by Marti Johnson
A non-believer shares the story of Noah’s ark-building and the deadly downpour that follows. Fear, faithlessness, and the fallibility of mankind collide in a community where second chances aren’t unlimited and a better-late-than-never attitude just might be your doom.
Condemned by Elle O'Neill
Just sixteen-years-old, Barabbas finds himself pulled out of Routlege Academy and into a reality show competition—against Jesus himself—where the reward for the winner is life.
First Wife by Lora Palmer
In a first-person retelling of the saga of Jacob, Rachel and Leah, themes of family, deception, guilt, and heartache emerge amidst the first days of Leah’s marriage to Jacob—a marriage mired in trickery a mere week before Jacob was to marry Leah's sister Rachel.
Emmaculate by Christina Raus
Based on the story of Mary's Immaculate Conception, we enter the troubled mind of Emma, who finds herself torn between her religious upbringing and the purity ring that binds her to her boyfriend and the pregnancy that results from her relationship with another boy.
In the Beginning: Dark Retellings of Biblical Tales
Publication Date: October 25, 2016
Publisher: Month9Books
From THE DEMON WAS ME,
by Sharon Hughson:
The ghastly black fog
overtook me. Icicles pierced my back. Every muscle in my body spasmed. I
plunged face-first against the ground. Something sharp gouged my cheek. Shivery
tingles pervaded my insides. A vile presence pressed against my mind.
“Get out!” I rolled to my back, arms outstretched. I wanted to fight, throw the
intruder off me. But how can you resist something as ethereal as air?
Laughter rang in my ears. Sinister. It shuddered against my soul. Terror and
hopelessness collided in my chest. A foreign power clutched at my mind.
I screamed. I rolled to my side and squeezed my eyes shut. If only I could
disappear.
Another dark wave of laughter echoed through my skull. Convulsions gripped me.
Against my will, my
limbs flailed in every direction. A spike pressed into my mind. I cradled my
throbbing head. My body, a tumbleweed in the wind, spun on the ground.
From EMMACULATE, by Christina Raus:
The Ten Commandments are pretty straightforward. Killing? Bad.
Lying? Nope. Adultery? Don’t even think about it. But is real life really that
straightforward? If you tell your boyfriend that you’re going golfing, when
really you’re going out to cheat on him, is the lying or the adultery worse?
What if you stab the guy you’re having an affair with? Isn’t being a murderer
worse than being a cheater? I think the stabbing is worse than the lying and
the cheating combined. So, it was kind of unfair for God to group killing,
lying, and cheating all together under one umbrella. They all seemed really
different.
I was an adulterer. I couldn’t deny that. I was also a liar. A
very, very good liar. But I wasn’t a murderer.
From THE DELUGE, by Marti Johnson:
The stench of mildew
and mold is heavy in our nostrils, and my lungs feel as though they are on
fire. My breathing is audible in the lulls between the thunderclaps. My mother
huddles, shivering, propped between two rocks. She is coughing painfully, and I
can hear her teeth chattering.
It is hard to breathe
because the air itself is full of water.
A deeper shadow has
fallen across the side of the mountain on which we are sheltering. I pull aside
the brambles, and gasp in amazement when I realize what it is. “Look!” I call
to the others, and point at the sight. The ark has risen with the water, and
now bobs up and down. It sits high in the water. We hear nothing from it but
the creaking of the wood timbers and the sound of the branches and rocks on the
hillside scraping against its hull.
From
DANIEL AND THE DRAGON, by Stephen Clements:
Your god is a liar!” roared the wizened man in thin black robes, as he pounded his breast with his fist.
Habakkuk stood by the gates of the temple as his master picked a fight with a sanctuary full of the slavish followers of Bel, a
bloodthirsty demon god. A fire raged in the fanged maw of a giant, stone head
sunken into the back of the temple, there to receive the offerings rendered unto Bel. He had seen this before in other
temple raids with his master, though not on such a massive scale, and not at
the heart of the demon cult in Babylon itself. The fire raged as the greatest offering that the Babylonians—who adored Bel above all
other gods—could sacrifice to their deity was their own newborn children,
rolled their screaming, helpless bodies down a stone, handshaped altar into the
fire. They offered the fruit of their wombs to their dark god, who devoured the innocent souls sacrificed to
him in eldritch rituals.
******
STEPHEN
CLEMENTS:
Stephen Clements earned a Masters in Political Science from
the University of Memphis, served a stint in the US Army with a heaping long
tour in Iraq, and would never recommend Baghdad as a vacation spot. When he got
out, he cornered and married a mean, beautiful woman, and they have three
corgis and one murderous cat. He has three books, with a recent short story in
MEMPHIS NOIR. He loves history, theology, travel, and making wine.
******
NICOLE
CRUCIAL:
Nicole Crucial is a creative writing student at UNC
Wilmington. Her hobbies outside of reading and writing include social media,
Netflix, yoga (sometimes), costuming, organizing things, and spoiling her cat.
She loves writing about fantastic worlds because she is certain that she would
not survive in them.
MIKE
HAYS:
Mike Hays is from Kansas, a tried and true
flatlander by birth. He relishes the fact his adult self can now make stuff up
and not be sent to the principal’s office for it. His life is built around
stories—whether as a dad, a molecular microbiologist, a high school sports
coach, or as an author— stories are key. He writes mainly from a boy point of
view and hopes to spread ideas and stupid-funny inspiration through his books,
blogs, and social media. His upper middle-grade historical fiction, THE YOUNGER
DAYS, is about a family’s survival in the fallout from the violent Border War
over “Bloody” Kansas.
******
SHARON
HUGHSON:
Nurtured through a troubled teenhood by Aslan in Narnia,
Sharon Hughson has long appreciated the power of the written word. She has
published romance and women’s fiction, but her dream is to write young adult
fantasy, a genre she credits for keeping her alive during her parents’
turbulent divorce and the chaotic readjustments that followed. Sharon fuels her
imagination with recollections from years of motherhood and a lifetime of
experience working with young people, at church and in public school. She
resides in Oregon with her husband, sons and three cats, where she spends her
non-writing hours substitute teaching, reading, playing piano, enjoying the
outdoors and scrapbooking her family’s memories.
******
MARTI
JOHNSON:
Marti Johnson was born on an American Naval base
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She has lived in Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado,
Nevada and California. Marti hiked and climbed mountains as a girl and young
teen, and spent many years on horseback in the scenic eastern Sierras in
California. She is the author (under her given name, Margaret Johnson) of DARK
HORSE SPIRIT: BEYOND REDEMPTION published in 2014, and is currently working on
a sequel.
******
ELLE
O’NEILL:
Elle O’Neill loves reading and writing—from her first
all-nighter as a seven-year old with autographed copies of David Adler’s Cam
Jansen books to her high school and college English and creative writing
classes. She believes that you can fall into the world of a book and find
yourself. While she sometimes has a hard time separating fiction from reality
(or is it that she prefers not to?), she likes to think that’s a whimsical
asset. She enjoys reading just about anything, but treasures underdogs and
bluestockings—their trials and successes feel close to home.
******
LORA
PALMER:
Lora Palmer writes science fiction and fantasy for young
adults. Her debut novel, THE MIRRORMASTERS, is forthcoming from Clean Reads.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania is her home, where she resides with her wonderful
husband and their mischievous cat. She has earned a graduate degree in
Psychology and works at a local residential facility serving autistic children
and teens. In her spare time, she also sings in a praise band, Chalice Sounds.
******
CHRISTINA
RAUS:
Christina Raus earned her BA in
Creative Writing from Western New England University in 2015. She received the
Max Y. Litman English Prize for literary analysis and written communication
upon her graduation. She has written articles for Lioness Magazine, a digital
publication for female entrepreneurs. Originally from Massachusetts, she
currently resides in New York, where she is attending Sarah Lawrence College
and working on a novel. She is expected to graduate from Sarah Lawrence’s MFA
in Creative Writing Program in 2017. “Emmaculate” is her first fiction
publication.
LAUREEN
P. CANTWELL, Editor:
Laureen
grew up in eastern Long Island and eventually found her way to Memphis —“the
rock ’n’ roll side of Tennessee,” where she worked as a librarian at the
University of Memphis and grew to love the darkness of the city—and Elvis.
While there, she proposed and co-edited an anthology of short fiction, Memphis Noir, part of Akashic Books’ renowned Noir series published in November 2015. That adventure led to a
conversation with Georgia McBride at a library conference, and to the thrilling
experience of working with In the
Beginning and putting together a charity anthology full of complex stories
suitable for a young adult audience. She currently lives in Western Colorado
and works as a librarian for Colorado Mesa University.
GEORGIA McBRIDE, Editor:
Georgia lives in North Carolina with her kids and
husband. She has three dogs, one bird, and a fish. She loves
to read, watch movies, listen to music, and go see films. She is a publisher,
producer, writer, and editor. She has never met a piece of bacon she did not
eat, or a cup of coffee she did not drink.
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