I have so much to tell you, I hardly know where to begin.

I suppose for starters, letting you know that this blog post might be on the loopy, sleep-deprived side is fair. I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Two hours from midnight to 2am and then another two from 5-7am. The rest of the night I was counting contractions. An hour apart. Accompanied by some wicked bad nausea. As you can imagine, I’m exhausted.

But that doesn’t put a damper on the the awesomeness that is: RELEASE DAY!

Surfacing is finally available from Freya’s Bower.

I’m making this little snippet available exclusively on the blog! So read on!

Excerpt:

“Paige, honey, we have to talk.”
I look into her vibrant lavender eyes lined with black pencil. Her very full lips
colored in a rich chocolate hue. She’s a dark angel. I imagine myself condemned.
“About what?” I ask, though I already know.
“This book,” she says, her espresso in one hand, the other doing a little wave in
the air.
“Aimee, I already told you why I need to do this. Ryan’s asking questions. I
need your support.”
“I can’t support you, Paige. You know how wrong it is.”
“It’s a book! A work of fiction. Who’s going to believe it?”
“That isn’t the point!” She leans forward. Her fists hit the table in a forceful
move that’s out of character. All trace of grace and control vanishes. Her eyes
widen. Her cheeks flush. She squirms in her seat. “It’s dangerous. I am not
willing to risk you to that kind of exposure. To risk myself.”
“I’m changing our names.”
“Changing our names doesn’t change a thing.” She catches her rising voice and
returns to a hushed whisper. “Paige, you said you’d moved on. I don’t want to do
this. I don’t want to relive this anymore.”
“I have to finish it. I have to say goodbye to him once and for all.”
“I know how much you loved him, but you can’t continue to torture yourself
like this. He’s gone, Paige. He left us behind to clean up his mess.”
I hear the hurt in her voice and remain silent. It’s easy to forget that she
suffered as much as I did. “I know that….”
“You are engaged!” she erupts into another frenzied speech, “To a wonderful
man! Ryan loves you. He loves you, Paige. Stop doing this. You’re going to open
up a can of worms and hurt him. Just leave it alone.”
I listen to her words, know full well that she’s right. But there is a stubborn
streak that won’t allow me to budge.
“I can’t.”
“What has gotten into you?”
“I don’t expect you to understand….” The minute the words leave my mouth, I
regret them.
“Understand?” she leans back into her seat, her face blank. “You don’t think I’d
understand? Right, of course, because I wasn’t the one who held you all those
nights you cried. Who listened to your unbelievable story or kept your precious
little secret. Don’t talk to me about not understanding, Paige. Don’t you dare. I
picked up the pieces of your broken heart when he left. I’ve been picking up
whatever pieces of you are left ever since.”
Her eyes water. My chest tightens. God, I am the scum of the earth.
“Aimee… I’m… I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
She gives her drink a final sip and stands. “I can’t support you on this one. I’m
sorry, I love you, but you’re being irrational. I can’t deal with you when you’re like this. I’ll call you during the week.”
She walks out, leaving only a twenty-dollar bill and an empty mug as a sign of
her presence. I look down at the money and sigh. It wasn’t supposed to turn out
this way. Why couldn’t I let this go? I think of my journal, of all the nights I wrote
in it, just the scattered thoughts and feelings of a young woman trying to explain
the unexplainable.
Then, it hits me.
I am writing because I need answers. I don’t know how I got from point A to
point B. In science, there is a logical answer to everything. I need to know how I
lost my life and my heart all in one year. I need to understand how I allowed my
soul to die at eighteen and why now, ten years later, it begs to be revived.

book signing pic

And to round things out nicely (ha ha, get it? ROUND things out? *snort*), I’m going to post my favorite photo from the book signing this weekend. It was such a blast and although I didn’t hang around the entire time, due to the starting contractions, I did enjoy meeting all the fabulous authors and doing a reading!