Free chapter at the end of this email.
Hope you all are surviving the summer!
Japan hit a record high for hottest days ever recorded, two days in a ROW! We got some rain that cooled us down but also caused flash floods down south. We’re okay but a reminder of how powerful nature is and how we hardly think of Her.
On to the book!
My next book—Dead Roots of the Earth: Black Sun book 4—is coming out in the latter half of September!
All I need to do is finish up some edits this week and get the cover designed, then I’ll set an exact date and announce it.
The Black Sun books are a series, but can be read in any order so if book 4 is your first, totally fine.
If you want to catch up on the series, here’s the first book:
The story: earthquakes are hitting Japan, and holes are opening up everywhere—even in people’s homes. Noah’s wife went missing several years ago, and events lead him to believe she’s connected to the holes. What he finds in his search is a horror that stretches back to the dawn of time and the twilight of the gods.
Bonus News
I have also finished writing the first draft of book 5—Yomi (the Japanese underworld).
This is the only book you have to read after all the others, since the events make no sense without them.
The story: Tokyo is in ruins. The sun has turned black. Ash falls from the sky. Demons are rising from the depths. One woman has to make it to the only daylight left in Japan while taking care of an orphan girl. All while a beast of terrifying origin stalks her through the devastated cityscape.
Free Chapter from Dead Roots of the Earth
"Everyone, get under your desks!" Ms. Funabashi yelled out as she ran across the classroom while covering her head with a picture book.
She pushed a crying boy under his desk. Grabbed a girl by the waist and pulled her under the play table where just minutes before they were making construction paper cutouts of farm animals.
Mei Tanaka watched all of this while hiding under the reading corner table. Her hands gripped the legs until she couldn't feel her fingers anymore.
If Mei had asked her mother just then, she would have said, "Mei-chan, you've seen at least a dozen earthquakes before; you know what this is."
But she was six years old and couldn't remember any of those times when Mom laid out the facts of the universe to her. Overhead, the lights swung furiously from their frail cords like monkeys from a tree. Backpacks fell out of the cubbyholes over by the front door. The ground was Jell-O. It felt like it could swallow her up at any moment. The window over by the goldfish tank cracked down the middle.
So no, Mom, she did not remember all those earthquakes back when she was a toddler. This was a novel experience for her. Something that brought with it a singular and stark emotion, which itself was brand new: terror.
Her friend Juri, also cowering under the same table, was a melted puddle of tears and red cheeks. Mei herself didn't cry. Not because she was so brave—she couldn't even breathe as the earth shook, let alone remember how to cry. She couldn't even tell you her own name just then.
The book that Ms. Funabashi was using as a shield was now on the floor near Mei. Rattling and dancing like when Dad microwaved popcorn. She watched from the safe perch of his shoulders as they both bounced around the kitchen floor to the tune of crack, crack, pop. The floor under her feet was making the same sounds now.
The book—Hi, Butterfly!—was her favorite. She reenacted the boy's desperate adventures of chasing the titular bug around town. Grabbed her net—twice as tall as she was—and ran around alone in the fields. Never caught anything, but running through the waist-high grass screaming and laughing and swiping her net was fun enough. Somehow, thinking about those happier times stung her worse than the fear of the shaking ground did at that moment.
Like that was the last she'd ever be happy.
The quaking stopped. The lights above her swayed more gently until they came to a near standstill, like grass being blown by a calm wind. Juri wiped her snot and tear-smeared face with her sleeves. Mei remembered to breathe.
Some of her classmates stood up, and Ms. Funabashi yelled at them to get back down. There could be aftershocks coming. They obeyed faster than they ever did when she told them to eat lunch with their mouths closed.
That alone told Mei how serious this was.
The lights overhead were now totally still.
Minutes passed until Ms. Funabashi crawled out from under her desk. Her hair was frizzier than usual. Her thin frame somehow more frail than normal. She checked her phone. The principal—whose name Mei could never remember—came running into the room.
"Is everyone okay?" he shouted. Sweat glistened on his round face, and dark stains spread out across his white shirt from his armpits.
The two adults talked in a hushed tone Mei couldn't hear.
"Okay, everyone, it's safe," Ms. Funabashi said with a smile. But her voice shook like Mom's did as she tried to tell Mei that Dad wasn't really angry; he just needed time to relax. Mei would hide in her room and play with her dolls until the screaming from the living stopped and Mom's soft crying began.
Mei stood up but found her legs were rattling just like the popcorn against the glass of the microwave. Come to think of it, it was always after those fights that Dad made the popcorn, as if he were trying to force his family to smile after all the mean things he'd said. Mom never joined them dancing in the kitchen to the pops.
Ms. Funabashi told them to grab their things. She'd be calling their parents to see if they could get picked up early today.
Kaito, a boy who always licked his hand and tried to wipe it on Mei's forehead, high-fived another boy and cheered. Most of the other kids were silent.
Mei's fear was a lead weight around her neck. It bowed her neck downwards, as if trying to sink her deep into the earth.
***
Mei walked down the street that led away from Kushiro Elementary School.
Dad was at work, and Mom was doing errands in the neighboring city of Tawara—the only place with actual fully stocked grocery stores. So, she'd have to walk home alone.
She did this normally, so it shouldn't have been a big deal. All the other kids did too. They would walk through the streets of the small town, holding hands, moving like a flock of birds. The more that flew together, the safer they were from predators, right? She remembered Ms. Funabashi saying something like that during life science lessons.
But today all the other kids got picked up because of the earthquake. Mei knew she wouldn't. Held back tears as she watched Juri jump into her mom's van and even stupid Kaito walk hand in hand with his gross friends.
Today, she was alone. Wearing her blue sneakers. The sole of the left shoe flapped like a sandal. Dad couldn't afford new ones. Her heavy red randoseru backpack caused her to stagger from side to side. Wore a yellow hat that nearly covered her eyes. Her stomach rumbled. Reminding her of that sound—right before the earthquake hit—like thunder echoing out from somewhere beneath her feet.
She turned left onto a road that was not much bigger than an alleyway. There was no one out walking the streets. Overgrown hedges lined the homes along the road. Reaching out from the messy yards with gnarled branches and snaking vines. Almost as if they were trying to grab her. The homes were vacant. Shattered glass and boarded-up windows marked the houses. The yards were untamed jungles. Rusted washing machines and sun-bleached bicycles littered the yards.
She couldn't remember a time when this street had anyone living on it. Dad would yell at Mom sometimes about how the town was drying up, and they needed to move somewhere where he could get a proper job. Mei never really paid much attention to these arguments. Usually, she locked herself in her room with her dolls and her books and let her mind fly away some place nice and friendly. Mei would never have admitted it, but in her fantasies, it was Ms. Funabashi holding her hand and skipping down the street with her. Never once her mother. Definitely not her father, no matter how many popcorn dances he performed.
She hated walking these streets. It wasn't just this one that was like a graveyard. Most of the streets in Kushiro were like this. At least when she walked this path with Juri, they could distract each other from the empty homes. Juri would try to scare Mei by saying that mummies and vampires and ghosts lived in those ruins. They lurked somewhere beyond the black windows and the splintered doors. Those things didn't scare Mei. Not when your best friend was right next to you, at least.
But today.
She was alone.
A grasshopper fluttered in front of her face, and she screamed. It was longer than a pencil. Landed on the cracked pavement in front of her. She circled the bug to get to the other side. It watched her with its vacant eyes. Rubbed its legs together. Helicoptered away.
Mei let out the breath she had been holding. Kept walking down the road. The only bugs she could handle were beautiful butterflies. Not disgusting grasshoppers. Most certainly not spiders. And if a centipede half the length of her forearm were to run out in front of her just then, she'd pee herself.
The sun was in front of her, above the roofs of the homes. The shadows the hedges made streaked across the path. Just under the hedges, it was so dark that Mei couldn't even see the pavement beneath them.
Another grasshopper flew by her ear and scraped across the brim of her hat.
She fell on her butt, slapping at the air with her hands.
She screamed again, but a loud scratching noise cut her off.
It came from the dark space between the hedge and the crumbling brick wall to her left. Something moved in the dark. What could have been a leg rose and extended. It reminded Mei of a crab leg. She slipped out from under her backpack straps and stood to her feet. They were shaking again, like Jell-O. The thing in the dark space scratched what could have been a crab-ish leg against the pavement. Worse than nails against a chalkboard.
Mei ran.
She only had to turn right at the end of the street, go one more block, turn left, and she'd be home.
Buzzing.
Like her electric toothbrush.
She looked up and saw at least two hornets circling above her head.
She ran faster.
Her floppy left shoe flew off, and the bumpy concrete hurt her foot.
She made it to the end of the road and turned right.
There was a man at the end of the street. With the sun behind him, the shade shrouded his features.
He stretched his arms out straight at his sides as if waiting for a hug.
Like a scarecrow.
The buzzing grew louder from right behind her. With it, that scratching sound.
She blinked the tears away and could now see the man's face.
It was Dad!
He was smiling.
Eyes and teeth shining in the sun as if they were gold.
Or silver.
She sprinted towards him.
***
The sun was setting over Kushiro.
The last of the summer cicadas wound down their buzz-saw songs. Scarlet sunlight poured out over a lonely road in a lonely town.
The sunset coated the street in a hazy, blood-like hue.
A small blue sneaker—for a right foot, sole intact—lay on its side in the gutter. Its battered left twin was several feet away.
The open backpack with its spilled contents all over the ground. A grammar book. A plastic container with a half-eaten apple inside.
A red backpack leaned against an unruly hedge. A yellow hat hung from one of its branches. The nametag read: Mei Tanaka.
In the middle of the street, a hole.
The width of a full-grown adult.
Deep.
Dark.
Full of scratching sounds.
This is a cracking good opening chapter!!