Stephanie Freeman's Blog, page 18
August 25, 2020
HAPPY RELEASE DAY KAREN D. BRADLEY!!!
KNIGHT...
HAPPY RELEASE DAY KAREN D. BRADLEY!!!
KNIGHT OF SOUTH HOLLAND
He’s a brilliant inventor, but he’ll decimate anyone who threatens his woman. When the Kings of the Castle recommend Calvin Atwood, a strategic defense inventor, to create a security shield for the kingdom of Durabia, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. The only problem—it’s a two-year assignment and he promised his fiancée they would step away from their dangerous lifestyle and start a family. Security specialist, Mia Jakob, adores Calvin with all her heart, but his last assignment put both of their lives at risk. She understands how important this new role is to the man she loves, but the thought that he may be avoiding commitment does cross her mind. Calvin was sure he’d made the best decision for his and Mia’s future until enemies of the state target his invention and his woman. Set on a collision course with hidden foes, this Knight will need the help of the Kings to save both his Queen and the Kingdom of Durabia.
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August 13, 2020
Knight of Bronzeville
Chaz Maharaj thought he could maintain the lie of a perfect marriage for his adoring fans … until he met Amanda. Neither of them could have anticipated the unexpected twist that threatens his love and her life.
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Apple: https://bit.ly/KnightofBronzevilleApple
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July 8, 2020
The Diamonds, Blood and Shadows Series
Angels don’t wear medals.
With wings dipped in blood, they all wear scars.
June 10, 2020
Words to Live By
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May 28, 2020
Black Tears
A book excerpt from Stephanie’s upcoming novel, Season of the Blood: Necessary Evil Part III.
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Name’s Brenda.
Been working at Shadow Bay General long before the name change. We were City Hospital back then. I still remember when they had chickens and geese roaming on the front lawn. The patients loved to feed the ducks out at the pond. Even fished a couple people trying to end it all out of there too.
Should be sitting at home collecting my pension and whatever the government doles out. But what’s at home? No grands to speak of or bake cookies with. All that ended when my Antoine Sebastian died.
No.
He didn’t just die. He was murdered.
Named him after my ex husband Antoine and my father Sebastian. Wanted him to have the names of the men that changed my life. Both made me what I was: a daughter and a mother.
Both of them gone too. Antoine by choice when he took up with a neighbor down the street and moved to Atlanta. My dad worked them smelter pots down at Bethlehem Steel with a bit of cigar clenched between his teeth. Senility and cancer took what was left.
My Antoine Sebastian was a good boy. I know. I know everybody says that, but even before he was born, I knew everything was going to be okay. Had him later in life, but that was fine. Carrying him was like carrying an old friend. Being in labor for nearly 48 hours would take the salt out of anyone, but not me. I wanted my little man to come when he was good and ready and not a minute before.
Took so long in making up his mind that the doctor taking care of me dosed off against my belly! Round nine in the morning after finding his keys and his wallet my boy made his arrival. He was madder than a wet hen when he came out. Screamed in my face and crapped on the doctor!
But he was here. Thanked him and God for choosing me. Told Antoine about the plans I had for him. Made promises too.
Told him about my dreams of seeing him sing on the church choir and going on his first date and graduating from high school and college. Getting married and giving me grands. Even had my nickname all picked out; Glamma!
Told him I’d even let him play sports if he wanted to. The books had to come first though. And he did all of those things and more. Got in his fair share of trouble too, but he still managed to get a full ride to that University upstate for Engineering.
Knew something was wrong that morning.
Felt it in my waters.
Antoine was just going to hang with his friends while I packed my bag and put an envelope full of mad money in his suitcase under his socks. Wasn’t much; just enough if he got in a pinch. Wouldn’t take it when I tried to put it in his hand. Told me to hold onto it and that he was going to take care of me.
Antoine’s shirt had red and white stripes on it. His blue jeans were pressed, and his sneakers were as clean as my nurse’s shoes he always polished for me.
They told me is was a regrettable error and that he matched the description of someone that had been causing problems in the neighborhood. Same neighborhood he grew up in. Same sidewalks he shoveled for spending money in the winter. Same lawns he mowed in the summer. Same lawns he raked of leaves in the fall.
Didn’t explain the bruises on his neck or the bullet wounds or how a wallet could be mistaken for a gun.
Olivia, a girl he had a crush on in high school came to the door covered in blood. At first, I thought she’d been hurt, but then I saw her grandmother, Patrice, my best friend come up the steps clutching my boy’s sneakers to her chest.
Followed them, denying it and bargaining with God.
Wouldn’t even let me hold him. Just kept telling me they were sorry for my loss. Sorry for such a regrettable error.
Sorry.
I’m old enough to remember the bodies hanging from the lower branches of trees in my hometown of Bunn, North Carolina.
Even older when I came up on my 18-year work anniversary as a nurse; so, I knew how to clean and wrap a body.
Some old.
Some new.
And now, my Antoine Sebastian.
Max Caldwell was the coroner back then and now. He bent the rules for me and cried with me as I bathed my son one last time.
Wasn’t till later that one of Antoine’s friends told me the police were really after him, not Antoine and that he’d run away because he was holding. He was a pall bearer at the funeral if you can believe that.
I forgave him, but it didn’t make any difference. Antoine was still gone.
Olivia’s all grown up now. That little bit of a thing is a doctor, a surgeon no less. Traveled the world and made a name for herself. Patrice’d be proud. Girl even saw fit to come back home to Shadow Bay with the world at her feet. Olivia is paler though; frailer than she was back then. She looks haunted… hunted.
Air feels like it did when Antoine died. It’s thick and aged and painful like I imagine a fine Irish Malt. I look at that Olivia and my waters are troubled.
Her grandmother is long gone now.
But my waters…. My waters.
In my life I have shed my share of black tears. Stood shoulder to shoulder with mothers and fathers wondering why our children are being slaughtered. Driving while black. Jogging while black. Sleeping in your own home while black and the false accusations because they dared to ask a question or establish boundaries.
Thank God for cell phones!
I mean what is it? What sin is there in the color of our children’s skin?
A child no older than my Antoine came in here tonight more dead than alive. The maggots crawling from her nose confirmed what I already knew. Smell drove more than a few from the room.
Not me.
Somebody needed to be there until it was time for her to let go. Just finished bathing and wrapping her.
I think of Olivia and a man with hellfire eyes.
Keep a hedge around her Father God.
I cannot bury another one.
Excerpt from Season of the Blood: Necessary Evil Part III
Copyright© 2020 by Stephanie Freeman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portion thereof in any form whatsoever.
No one ever told me that grief felt like fear.
-C.S. Lewis
May 22, 2020
Otherness
I am not one or the other.
Names are petty and mine never fit no how. Profound and profane is good enough for me.
I am perfect in my otherness, believe that.
Such a simple truth that dogged my steps from the time I was born. Can’t say my parents loved me, you understand. On the outside I resembled every little girl all decked out in barrettes and bows. Under my skirts… well that was another story entirely. Never thought anything was right or wrong with me until the games started with Daddy.
I won’t bore you with the particulars. Spare me the tears and the guilt that passes for sympathy. All you need to know is that by my twelfth birthday Daddy was in the ground and I put him there. Planted him better than any undertaker or gardener. You don’t get to know how I finished him neither. All you need to know is that he died screaming. Made damned sure of that. I even joined him at one point… in screaming that is.
Laughed a little too.
Mamma married again and you’d think she’d trade up. Hearing the grunts and groans and the occasional gag before she bolted to the bathroom served as a marker. What she couldn’t abide, and more or less let slide I was assigned to.
To keep the peace…. Hell, maybe to take her place on account of the new baby on the way. Out with the old and in with the new, I guess. Hoped it wasn’t true. Prayed it wasn’t , but then I heard the floor creak and my doorknob turn. You know how the story goes.
Can’t stay anywhere for free.
Frying pan to the fire. Rolled out with the clothes on my back and a sweaty, crumpled five in my pocket. Won’t tell you how I earned that or about my first night’s peace. You see my otherness had its perks and buyers. Some meaner than others, but it was business; nothing personal.
Snuffling back blood and spitting out a tooth or two makes you humble or mean. I chose the latter and had a good run until I didn’t
That was where she found me. Hair like flames; green eyes like hellfire. Never said a word. Just sat there in an alley that reeked of piss, vomit and my own fear. Sat there as fine as you please on a wooden milk crate next to the pile of garbage I’d been thrown in.
Followed her I don’t remember how many city blocks.. It was almost daylight before we got to where she was going. She unlocked the door to an apartment and went in leaving the choice to me.
It is one I will never regret.
It’s why I’m here with grey eyes, sagging breasts and a silver beard to match. Filed my teeth down to points and forked my tongue. Can lick many things in many directions and I often do. People think me a monster, and I am. I live, lie and fuck all in equal measure.
Male…female or something else on the menu, I ain’t particular and I don’t discriminate.
I run it all; buy and sell it all. It’s what I am, who I am and what I do.
And I’m good at it.
With a shot glass in one hand and a blunt dangling from the corner of my mouth I am the one your Mamma couldn’t conjure in her worse night terror.
But to her…. Not Mamma, you dumb shit. The one that saved my life and straightened my crown of bones. To her I am Blood. I’d kill or die for her and that’s even after I betrayed her.
Now mind you she ain’t no saint. She rocks her sins like a Sable, and we, the ones she saved worship her for it.
Which is what make our history with this child between us so sweet and strange. Neither of us birthed her, but that little girl is ours just the same. Imagine… two demons raising a little girl. She grown now. Her hands are worth 2 million apiece if you can believe that.
To save her life she gonna have to let one of us go.
But which one… which one?
Not much time left.
Sins be like chickens coming home to roost.
Hell, more like a season of the blood; a fine season of sacrifice.
Excerpt from the book Season of the Blood Necessary Evil Part Three by Stephanie Freeman
Copyright © 2020 Shadowlilly Publications
Copyright© 2020 Stephanie Freeman
All rights Reserved
May 14, 2020
Get the Book That Launched Christian Romance Author, Aracyne Kelly’s Writing Career!
‘She folded her hands to pray, and then she remembered the blood.’
Aracyne Kelly ‘Peculiar Kindness’
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May 1, 2020
New Book Series by Aracyne Kelly Coming Soon!
Proverbs 24:26
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April 29, 2020
The Dirty Business of Men and Slaves
Excerpt from the book, Midnight Son by Stephanie Freeman
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There’s a silence to him whenever he returns from there. An absence of sound I notice whenever he goes down to The Quarters. Oh Mamma told me they all do it, but I couldn’t believe her. My Thomas was different. He was good and kind and so sincere when he dropped to one knee and asked me for my hand. There were tears in his eyes and his bristle lip quivered. He looked so grave then, so serious, as if my answer would somehow change the course of his life or the world, and maybe it did. I’m not pretty like the girls he used to go courting with. My dresses were plain and my hair mousy. Mamma says it was my heart that mattered and how well I took care of a house, but I see now that she was mistaken or lyin’ or maybe both.
Mituba is beautiful, as if God hisself painted her; fashioned her out of some rich sweet darkness, some secret only He knew. Her voice is low and intoxicating where mine is thin and reedy. Her clothes are rags where mine come from the finest shops in town. You should see the way she carries herself all regal like. It don’t matter what her chores are. It’s in the way she carries her head, the arc of her neck and her arm as she carries the baskets out to the fields, the easy smile she shares with her niggra friends. Even after the foreman had his way with her that first and only time… her stumbling toward the water pumps, her smile a red smear. Even then she cleaned herself with a grace I’ve never known. Thomas liked to have beaten that man like one of the defiant ones.
“I’ve seen the way the children snuggle down deep against her. They like to hang on her skirts as she cooks. She has none of her own as far as I can tell, but even that will change now that my Thomas done found her. I’d just die if anyone knew, but I wonder sometimes what it would be like to snuggle down against her. To hear her heart the way the children and Thomas do. I wonder if hers makes a sound that mine under this corset will never make. Does it sing of home or of her day? Does it speak a language few understand? Even the other slaves seem enchanted by her, brushing her hands away from any hard labor to tend to the children or sit under the Maples to knit or crochet things no human hand could make. I think her a witch and I envy her. I wonder in my looking glass if I paint my skin the color of night and arrange what little God blessed me with in a turban and forgo the slip… will he notice me. Will his gaze follow the sway of my hip….the touch of my hand calloused and rough as if it were from a day in the field? If I am her, will he bask under my touch….marvel over the scars on my back, press his lips to the ones that still hum with pain. If I was her, If only I was her….
Followed him one night… needed to know. Watched from behind a tree the way children do. Was Christmas and the air was blue with cold. Dusted his feet of snow before he crossed her threshold. She was making bread for the next day, working the pale white loaf the way I would have worked his shoulder had he been home. Stoked the fire in the hearth. Added the logs he carried with him. Checked the windows for cracks and even pulled a blanket from under his coat, same blanket that arrived that day from Serenity. Ermine but not mine. Little joke I made up makes me cry though so I don’t say it much. Rested his face against the back of her neck… breathed her in never bothering to say hello… but then some things don’t need sayin. I guess.
Thomas who never so much as ventured toward the kitchen in our home for a nip of something smelling extra nice stilled her hands on the dough and eased her aside and taking over. Gestured with his head for her to have a seat closer to the fire. Walking around him the way she did, relieving him of his coat with an ease that made my backache. Whatever cares… whatever worries consuming him during that day gathered under her hand, and with a wave, was washed away gone.
Almost wanted to go inside. Not to fight, but to join in their easy silence, bottle it for home, but just as she wasn’t welcome in my home… I knew I wasn’t welcome in hers. I may have married him first, may bear his name and his acceptable children, but where I live in a house on a hill, she lives in a home in his heart… no whipping can change that.
Thought of taking to my bed, of telling my Pa, but killing her would only drive her deeper within him. Selling her would make her immortal. Killing myself or having me someone from the Quarters crossed my mind, but why? A kiss on the cheek at my wedding and a wedding night spent with a man who had to be drunk to touch me made it pretty clear that I wouldn’t be missed. Made me wonder though with his seed drying on my thigh and the alcohol he drank staining my gown and my skin. If he loved me, why didn’t he take off his britches? If he loved me, why was he warming her home instead of mine?
Saw Mituba as she ran a hand over her belly, as a secret smile curled her full lips. Wouldn’t be long now…children born of love serving children of convenience. My Mamma used to say, “The dirty business of men and slaves is to rationalize the unthinkable.” I have to wonder now my own belly longing to be filled with child and my hands and feet more than a little cold due to a long dead fire and a crack in the window.
Who is the slave?
Hush now… he returns. I’ll fluff my hair and wait for him to return to a bed he hates to a woman he pities. His house is clean, his meals are cooked, and my arms are open. Maybe tonight he will touch me the way he does her. If I’m lucky maybe he’ll mistake the hint of her still on his skin for me.
The bed sinks under his familiar weight as one shoe and then the other falls to the floor. The musk of her comes off of him like heat. He removes his shirt and I can almost see where her hands have been…. where her mouth has been. I quake at the prospect the sounds he made. How her name must have sounded just before… just after…He’s never even spoken my name aloud. I reached out to touch him and his back stiffened as if he were bracing himself, willing himself not to cringe. He turned his head off in the direction of the quarters… to her.
Forever her.
Copyright Stephanie Freeman 2018
All rights reserved
