This book, my second published work, pushed it's way out of my consciousness in thirteen days and nights, as soon as I'd put the words 'The End' on my first novel, IN HER TERROR.  It's only a little over 200 pages; it had to be to fit the story.

    The most frequent comment I've received from readers is that they felt as if they were sitting right beside me as they were reading.  That always makes me smile, I feel close to my readers, and very much like the fact that this book makes them feel close to me.

    Although this is for sale in all the usual ways, on all the online bookstore sites and by ordering from your local brick and mortar bookstore, you can also order it directly from the Publisher by following this link:

http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?Search=Yes

    If for some reason that doesn't work, simply put my name into the bookstore tab at the Publish America website.

    The fictional deadline in the book has passed, but I still believe that unless we change our ways, this planet and the people on it are in deadly peril.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

The year is twenty fifty-five, and I’ll be one hundred years old in a couple of months.  There are no more longevity charts to tell us when we should expect to die, and I still feel the way I did in my mid-forties before the earth flooded.  Better even.

I don’t know how long I might have left on this planet, so I am going to use up the paper and pens I’ve been hoarding to write down what’s been happening in my own small world.  And maybe a bit about what I’ve come across in other parts of the countryside where I’ve travelled.

There have been no mass communications for almost fifty years now.  It’s a good thing that when all the electrical generators were swallowed up by the water that the vast majority of people were, too.  There is no way that most of them would have been able - or content - to cope with a world that was suddenly non-electrical.  No conveniences.  No lights, no heat, no water from a tap...

When I think of the luxuries of those days, I can’t imagine what anyone ever found to complain about.  Nobody ever really had to fend for themselves.  Those few of us who’ve survived here and there have found out the hard way that preparing a meal is so much more complicated than picking up a frozen dinner at the corner store!

If you eat meat, you have to hunt it, kill it, skin it and cook it, if you’re lucky enough to have some kind of fire-starter. I personally do not eat animals, but with the perennially warm climate we have now, I have no trouble finding sustenance.

I began stockpiling Bic lighters and wooden matches about two years before the flood, so my little group has never been without fire.  I couldn’t understand at the time why I was doing this, but I had already learned to obey my instincts, my inner voice, by that time.  Naturally, I’ve always given a handful of either matches or lighters to other groups we’ve come across.   I’ve always believed that we should help others as often as we possibly can, just so long as we’re not hurting ourselves at the same time.

When I think back to the end of the last century, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that God decided to give this planet a rearrangement.  Mankind had become so arrogant, so full of themselves and their own accomplishments.  They seemed to begin to think they were gods themselves.  At least that’s how it appeared to me and some others I used to talk with way back when.   I sure do miss some of the people I used to know…
 
I lost my train of thought, drifting off and thinking about old friends.  I think I was talking about the way too many men and women had become.  They somehow seemed to always forget who made their advancements possible.  Did someone just think up the idea for the first camera, for instance, or did God maybe plant the seed of the idea in that individual’s brain?  I have always maintained that I am merely an instrument of God, and that all I do is at His bidding.  He has been a hard taskmaster for most of this long life, but all the things He gives to me more than compensate for anything He asks me to do.

He’s given me the wondrous privilege of having children, and the necessities like air to breathe and water to drink, for example.  In the years since the floods, people have once again begun to see that the presence of an infant in the mother’s womb is a blessing, not an inconvenience to be gotten rid of at the first opportunity.

That used to make me so angry!  Literally millions of babies slaughtered every year!  Thank You, God, for putting an end to the evil practice of abortion, among many other things that we were doing to ourselves and to the being that we inhabit.

The few of us left are ecstatic when the seed of life is planted.  Those of us beyond reproductive age are sad that we can no longer embrace the sacred mission of nurturing a new life to its blessed birth.

I myself was abundantly blessed with seven wonderful children before the flood, and four more of the same since.  I have only one of my daughters left close to me, Melissa, the youngest, bless her heart.  The others have fallen to love or adventure along the way, and settled elsewhere.

    In this time, when there are over 200,000 books published annually in the United States alone, it's difficult to choose what to read.  I certainly hope that you choose my work.  My self and my seven children would certainly appreciate your support.  Who knows, maybe I'll be the one to right a new and hugely successful book or series of books, and you can say "I read her first book!  I knew all along she was a great writer!"