Release date: August 16, 2015
Subgenre: Post-apocalyptic, dystopian, romance
About Her Eyes Matched the Sky:
This romance brought to you by the end of the world...She
was looking forward to her junior year of high school, obsessing about
prom, getting her driver's license and maybe even meeting her first
boyfriend, but September finds her on the run, from the bombings, from
looters and much, much worse.
No more homecoming.
No more homeroom.
No more home.
The
United States of America is dying, dragging civilization down with it.
No electricity, no cars, no phones, no infrastructure, nothing but
anarchy remains. The survivors, families and struggling communities are
migrating west, away from the invading armies. Some are praying for
the lights to come back on, but others are embracing the New World
Order, living for today and taking what they need, but mostly, what they
want.
Among them are the orphaned children, scraping by in the
shadows with fewer and fewer surviving the cold nights of the
approaching winter. But they don't have to be the forgotten generation.
All they need is a leader.
And she's found him. If she can keep him alive, they may all have a chance.
Excerpt:
I walk over to the side of the foyer,
out of sight of the street people and lean against the flowered wallpaper near
the front door, next to one of those framed needle-points: We may not have it all together, but
together, we have it all. I keep an
eye on the kid as I pull out a cigarette and light it with a wooden grocery
store match.
The sun peeks through the trees and
casts long shadows across the street.
The light is creeping over what’s left of the wood living room floor.
“Seriously, go,” the kid says
again. He’s relentless, but I’ve already
made up my mind.
Life and death isn’t anything more
than a coin flip, but come hell or high-water, this one’s going to live.
I toss my backpack over one shoulder
and pull the .45 from the front pocket.
I casually point it toward the kid and motion with it to the
street. “Come on, I’m not going to leave
you here by yourself. Let’s go find
something to eat.”
“With you?” he asks in an unexpectedly
dismissive tone.
“Who else?”
“I don’t need you,” he says, fading
further back into the eroding shadows.
“The hell you don’t. Look kid, you’ve been lucky so far. Winter’s coming and it’s only a matter of
time until…” I point the .45 out toward
the mob. “It’s all gone. Everything is fucking gone. Soon, they’re going to start taking what they
want. It’s going to be like nothing you
can imagine. Sorry, kid, I hate to say
this, but it’s time to grow the fuck up.”
“I can take care of myself…”
“You can’t take care of shit. Do you even have a weapon?”
“Please go…” His voice breaks.
“Are you crying? What the fuck, kid?”
“No, I’m not, please…” He is crying, but trying like hell to hide
it.
Tough kid.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” he
says.
“Piss? So hurry up and piss.” This is a lot of drama.
I
turn away and concentrate on my
cigarette as I watch the crowd continue to grow. “Seriously, we need to
go. Crowds are dangerous.” I turn back to see the kid on his feet.
The jerky barrel of a chrome revolver
is no more than three inches from my face, aimed with dirty shaking hands.
“You mean a weapon like this?” he
says, unable to keep the venom from his voice.
Now that the kid is out of the
shadows, he’s not as young as I thought, maybe about my age, give or take. The long, heavy leather coat is at least
three sizes too big. He’s got a ratty
wool scarf wrapped around his face, covering everything except his eyes and a
black beanie over his head. Muddy jeans
and small, worn basketball sneakers show from under the dull-brown leather
coat.
But the most interesting thing is —
he’s not even a he.
Big, teary, cornflower blue eyes
surrounded by long, dark lashes are staring up at me.
I feel like I’ve been slapped.
Her eyes are so, so blue, so clear,
so innocent…
I didn’t know I could still feel like
this. I thought I was over compassion;
thought it was buried in a shallow grave somewhere back East, along with my
guilt and regret.
Release date: September 14, 2015
Subgenre: Post-apocalyptic, dystopian, YA romance
About The Mark:
This romance brought to you by the end of the world...
He
was just a teenager, hollow and lost, looking to keep the past buried,
to forget. Surviving wasn't so much an instinct as it was a hobby. He
surfs the backwash of the westward migration across a dead America; a
war-torn desolation devoid of electricity, infrastructure and
civilization.
It has become a strange and unrecognizable land,
rife with the worst of humanity. And his was a life without hope,
equally dark and solitary.
Until he meets Emily; until he meets Feral.
Once was boy, selfish and directionless.
Now is love.
Now is reason.
Now is vengeance.
They are his vow, his purpose, and to save them, he'll murder the world.
Author's Note: Feral is an ongoing serialized story. Episode 3, Of One Skein, is coming soon.
Excerpt:
“What?” she asks from the middle of
shop. She shakes her head, dismissing me
and turns away, but then stops and slowly looks at me again, like maybe she
senses my daydream, my longing.
I feel guilty and look away. “Nothing, just…nothing.” I start kicking the piles of boxes, trying
and failing at not being jealous of Kyle goddamn Bledsoe, what a dick.
“There’s got to be something useful
here,” I shout in frustration.
“Want to get high? We got bongs?” Feral laughs.
“Tease.”
“How would you know?” she asks with
that defiant and accusatory tone of hers.
“I can tell. I bet you were a cheerleader or some kind of rah-fucking-rah
go-team-go do-gooder chick.”
“I could have sworn we already
covered this — you don’t know anything about me. And call me a chick one more time and I’ll
suffocate you with my pom-poms.”
“What’s the opposite of a fate worse
than death?” I ask, grinning.
“What does that mean?”
“Death by pom-poms might not be so
bad, well, not your pom-poms anyway…”
“I’m trying to decide if you’re being
charming or a pig. I’m going with pig,” she
says with mock disgust.
“Seriously, you were one of the cool
kids, right?”
“Like I said…”
“I don’t know anything, yeah, I heard
you the first ten times and I still think you’re full of shit.”
“Why do you think I was popular?”
“They way you talk, like I said, you’re
a tease.”
“You should ask Kyle about that,” she
says, winking.
“What’s a tease?” Emily asks.
“Now you’ve done it, explain that one
ass…hat,” Feral finishes, grinning as she pulls her goggles off.
“Ass-hat?” Emily repeats.
Feral laughs, but I’m thinking about
beating the shit out of someone I’ve never met, for something that probably
didn’t even happen, in like, eighth grade.
If there was any doubt before, it’s all cleared up now — I’m bat-shit
crazy.
Fucking Kyle.
He knew her before.
Lucky son of a bitch.
Emily plops down on the orange couch
and stabs her knife into the cushion next to her like it’s nothing.
But it is.
It’s wrong.
It’s sobering.
“Keep looking,” I say again, sourly.
Feral nods and pushes through the
debris to the check-out counter and starts pulling out drawers and opening
cabinet doors.
I get back to kicking boxes along the
walls. I’m guessing the ones with shit
in them won’t move.
Besides the bongs, there are ripped
ponchos, post cards scattered everywhere and other worthless crap piled around,
broken candles, incense and lots of those empty knife and decorative weapons boxes. Somewhere out there in the vast
post-apocalyptic wasteland are gangs that smell like apple-rose patchouli, armed
with Klingon battle axes or whatever they’re called, blunt Katanas and child-proof
throwing stars.
Jesus Christ, the end of the world is
a fucking comic book convention gone horribly wrong.
About P.J. Post:
P.J. Post grew up during the Punk revolution of the early 80's and
writes dark, character-driven coming of age stories that capture the
anger, angst and especially the romance of that time.
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