Reading from the unpublished manuscript of the 108 page novella [one of the perks of being related to a novelist]

Sheri is my sister, and will be publishing this series through Amazon. When The Bark is released I’ll get an excerpt up on the site so you can check it out.

Morgan Mansfield is a sculptor, who is still haunted by the gruesome death of her parents. As a child she was the one to find the bodies of her beheaded father and her eviscerated—and until then pregnant—mother. As she glances up at the beastly sculpture she has just wrought in still-wet clay, she has to admit that she is still deeply haunted. A successful artist—partially because a gallery owner is in love with her—with an eccentric feral cat as a house guest, and a bitchy, demanding, guilt-tripping older sister nagging her to spy on her cheating boyfriend, Morgan is in for a really rotten week…

The dark redolent atmospherics of The Bark set a troubled stage on which Morgan must exercise her demons, which are not responding to bourbon therapy the way they should. ‘The long, lonely hours of the night’, her nightmares, and dreamy visitations from her mother, leave Morgan feeling like she is forever caught ‘between oblivion and redemption’. The author does an excellent job of keeping the reader bottled up with Morgan Mansfield; letting us experience her yearning for peace of mind and her blunted convictions, along with the doubts and fears that plague her.

If you like haunting atmospherics and conflicted characters—and Morgan is a pretty messed up chick—you should really like this piece. I enjoyed Sheri’s novel The Good Witch of Morgan’s Peak, even though it was kind of girly. But this story is nasty, and made me sit back and forget about my own creepology for an entire afternoon.

We’ll give you a heads up when the first installment of Love Bites is available.

Sheri’s link is on our network page.