Young Adult-Psychological Thriller-Mystery
Re-release date: October 2013
Series: Dead Dreams #1
Purchase: Amazon
Synopsis via Goodreads:
Eighteen-year-old Brie O’Mara has so much going for her: a loving family in the sidelines, an heiress for a roommate, and dreams that might just come true. Big dreams--of going to acting school, finishing college and making a name for herself. She is about to be the envy of everyone she knew. What more could she hope for? Except her dreams are about to lead her down the road to nightmares. Nightmares that could turn into a deadly reality.
About the Author
-----------------------------
Emma Right is a happy wife and homeschool mother of five living in the Pacific West Coast. Besides running a busy home, and looking after too many pets, she also enjoys reading aloud to her children and often has her nose in a book. Right was a copywriter for a major advertising agency during her B.C. years. B.C.meaning “Before Children,” which may as well have been in the B.C.era, as she always says.
www.emmaright.com | twitter.com/emmbeliever
Click "read more" to read an excerpt from the book!!
Click "read more" to read an excerpt from the book!!
Dead Dreams
Chapter One
It started on a warm April afternoon. Gusts of wind
blew against the oak tree right outside my kitchen balcony, in my tiny
apartment in Atherton, California. Sometimes the branches that touched the side
of the building made scraping noises. The yellow huckleberry flowers twining
their way across my apartment balcony infused the air with sweetness.
My mother had insisted, as was her tendency on most things, I take
the pot of wild huckleberry, her housewarming gift, to my new two-bedroom
apartment. It wasn’t really new, just new to me, as was the entire experience
of living separately, away from my family, and the prospect of having a
roommate, someone who could be a best friend, something I’d dreamed of since I
finished high school and debuted into adulthood.
“Wait for me by the curb,” my mother said, her voice blaring from
the phone even though I didn’t set her on speaker. “You need to eat better.”
Her usual punctuation at the end of her orders.
So, I skipped down three flights of steps and headed toward the
side of the apartment building to await my mother’s gift of the evening, salad
in an รก la chicken style, her insistent recipe to cure me of bad eating habits.
At least it wasn’t chicken soup double-boiled till the bones melted, I consoled
myself.
I hadn’t waited long when a vehicle careened round the corner. I
heard it first, that high-pitched screech of brakes wearing thin when the
driver rammed his foot against it. From the corner of my eye, even before I
turned to face it, I saw the blue truck. It rounded the bend where Emerson
Street met Ravenswood, tottered before it righted itself and headed straight at
me.
I took three steps back, fell and scrambled to get back up as the
vehicle like a giant bullet struck the sidewalk I had only seconds ago stood
on. The driver must have lost control, but when he hit the sidewalk it slowed
the vehicle enough so he could bridle his speed and manage the truck as he
continued to careen down the street.
My mother arrived a half minute later but she had seen it all.
Like superwoman, she leaped out of her twenty-year-old Mercedes and rushed
toward me, all breathless and blonde hair disheveled.
“Are you all right?” She reached out to help me up.
“Yes, yes,” I said, brushing the dirt off my yoga pants.
“Crazy driver. Brie, I just don’t know about this business of you
staying alone here like this.” She walked back to her white Mercedes, leaned in
the open window, and brought out a casserole dish piled high with something
green. Make that several shades of green.
I followed her, admittedly winded.“Seriously, Mom. It’s just one
of those things. Mad drivers could happen anywhere I live.”
She gave me no end of grief as to what a bad idea it was for me to
live alone like this even though she knew I was going to get a roommate.
“Mom, stop worrying,” I said.
“You’re asking me to stop being your mother, I hope you realize
this.”
“I’ll find someone dependable by the end of the week, I promise.”
No way I was going back to live at home. Not that I came from a bad home
environment. But I had my reasons.
I had advertised on Craig’s List, despite my mother’s protests
that only scum would answer “those kinds of ads.”
Perhaps there was some truth to Mother’s biases, but I wouldn’t
exactly call Sarah McIntyre scum. If she was, what would that make me?
Sarah’s father had inherited the family “coal” money. Their
ancestors had emigrated from Scotland (where else, with a name like McIntyre,
right?) in the early 1800s and bought an entire mountain (I kid you not) in
West Virginia. It was a one-hit wonder in that the mountain hid a coal fortune
under it, and hence the McIntyre Coal Rights Company was born. This was the
McIntyre claim to wealth, and also a source of remorse and guilt for Sarah, for
supposedly dozens of miners working for them had lost their lives due to the
business, most to lung cancer or black lung, as it was commonly called. Hazards
of the occupation.
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