Torn Lives is not a novel that pretends to be three chapters. It is three complete turns of the screw, each with its own temperature, bound by a single moral problem: once the secret is out, who is still standing, and who deserves your sympathy?
The Pillow Talk That Betrayed Her
Shaunia Blackman does what a lot of smart women do. She trusts the man in the bed. Patrick O’Connor is tall enough, present enough, convincing enough. Then the betrayal arrives, and love changes clothes. The man she wants is the man she wants destroyed. I am not interested in making Shaunia tidy. I am interested in what a person becomes when the private vow is broken and the only audience left is herself.
A Violent Turn
Eric Green loves Beverley Harris the way people love their first real weather — as if it will stay mild because they are loyal. He does not yet understand how deranged a person can become when the world will not obey. Love and lust are in the room. So are destruction and pain. Which one gets the last word is the story. Readers who wanted more of that house went on to A Violent Turn Part II. I was not done with them. They were not done with each other.
The Vengeance They Didn’t See Coming
Kayla Johnson and Jayson Whitman decide that justice for Mr. Bronswich will not wait for a system that already failed him. Carlos Roulson did the harm. They intend to collect. Detective work, friendship, and righteous anger make a potent drink. The hangover is the point. Can you turn the table on a man like that without becoming the next person someone else has to stop?
Taken together, the collection is love and war seen from opposite chairs. The heart mourns. The heart heals. Sometimes the healing is just a more sophisticated wound. I wrote it so a reader would feel the weather change — not so they would leave with a slogan.
The book is 255 pages, published June 27, 2018, ISBN 978-1-72203-551-8. Buy it on Amazon or find it through Barnes & Noble.