Faye McCray's Blog, page 6

Excerpt from New Horror Short Story!

I don't really consider myself a horror writer... per se.  I enjoy writing horror, I enjoy reading horror... I even enjoy watching horror but I'm usually doing those three things covered in a blanket, preferably buried in my husband's armpit and on the verge of having a heart attack.  Call it a byproduct of an active imagination but for at least 24 hours after I do any of the above, I am convinced the circumstances of said horror are likely to happen to me.  Who am I kidding... the side effects of a good horror never wear off.  My kids toys still resemble Chucky and I can't take an innocent bike ride without planning an escape if that runner nearby turns zombie.  With that being said, I was really, really excited to participate in the horror anthology, Anything But Zombies . 

I was recommended by an editor I met while querying Boyfriend.  He became of a fan my zombie shorts in  Dani's Belt's and thought I'd be a great fit.  I had been so immersed in the zombie world for so long, it was a real challenge to think of something equally scary that did not involve the blood sucking undead.  Nonetheless, when I started writing about Tiffany and Ben in Out of Mind, I could not stop!

Out of Mind, my contribution to Anything But Zombies , follows a young woman as she travels to a well-needed country respite with her boyfriend after witnessing a crime.

Read an except below and then buy it NOW here! Every story is awesome and I promise I'm not just saying that.  I have 11 brand new things to be terrified of.


Love and Light,
Faye

Except from Out of Mind in Anything But Zombies:

            It had been four minutes since I’d thought about the dead girl at the party.
Four minutes and about ten seconds if you count the tone-deaf riffs Ben and I attempted after the song was done.Then he looked at me, smiled and ruined it.  Reminding me that he was, in fact, trying to distract me from the dead girl while simultaneously reminding me that nothing could really distract me from the dead girl.That was the pesky thing about dead girls.  They were impossible to forget.Less than forty-eight hours earlier she was slumped at my feet, her thick blood pooling onto the sticky dance floor between us as her life poured from the smoky bullet hole burrowed into her toned tummy.  Her body shook and shuddered as the stampede of screaming partygoers rushed toward the exit, trampling her beautiful salmon-colored dress.  I stood beside her, speckled in her blood and still.  My scream was stuck like a gumdrop in my throat, my feet frozen in place.  “Are you okay?” Ben looked at me uncomfortably from where he sat behind the wheel of his small sedan.  He spoke in that same reluctant tone he had when I showed up at his apartment that night covered in her blood.  Like he wasn’t sure if the title of “sort-of ex-fiance” made him qualified to deal with dead girls and blood stains.  Drunk, mid-sex proposals make for a tenuous kind of commitment.The night I went to the club, Ben and I were on a break.  I’d found a phone number for Katie-with-a-heart-over-the-‘i’ buried in one of his pockets and listened to him stammer out an epically weak explanation about how it got there.  They weren’t his pants or they weren’t his pockets, he didn’t even know his pants had pockets.           “Drink,” a co-worker I’d confided in said the minute we got to the club.  She placed the Tequila shot in my hand and watched me throw it back.  She barely gave it time to burn its way down before handing me another. 
Maybe if I hadn’t been drowning in Tequila when the dead girl was shot, I would have had the good sense to run.  Instead, I stared down at her in a sort of dream-like fog, not entirely sure she, or even I, was real. Read more HERE.

  

Exclusive Excerpt from Boyfriend!

 The following is an excerpt from Boyfriend
Copyright © 2015 by Faye McCray All rights reserved.  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means.  This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. ***I welcomed the feel of the cold air on every inch of my exposed skin as I stood outside of my building in South Jamaica smoking a cigarette.  I leaned up against the dirty brick and looked out onto the project courtyard watching as two boys played basketball on the faded court adjacent to the back entrance to our building.  I smirked as they continuously missed ambitious shots into the tall netless basketball hoops.  A homeless man shifted angrily on a bench beside the court, grumbling incoherently every time the ball hit the pavement.  I took another drag as a cute teenage girl in tight jeans and a short black coat caught my attention.  She walked towards the entrance beside me, pausing to flash me a flirtatious smile before turning her key into the black, steel door of our building.  I watched her ass as she walked in, laughing to myself, pretty sure she wasn’t old enough to be looking at me like that.  I took another puff of my cigarette, letting the tobacco and cold air dance in my lungs.  “You should know better than that,” a familiar voice chastised. I looked up, smirking sheepishly, my grin almost instantly turning to surprise. “Natalie?” Natalie stood in from of me in a white wool coat.  Her hair was cut short around her face and an oversized, brown scarf was wrapped fashionably around her neck.  Her hands were stuffed in her pockets, and her head was cocked to the side awaiting my reaction.  I wanted to embrace her, but I held back. I was pretty sure I no longer had that right.  “Hi.” She hesitated for a moment and then reached for me.  I accepted her embrace, eagerly wrapping my arms around her, squeezing her a little too tight.“Are you okay?” I asked as we pulled away.   The question sprinted out my mouth without a thought.  I hadn’t laid eyes on Natalie since she walked out of my apartment almost two years earlier.  I had gained pieces of information throughout the years from my mother.  Information she gained from people in the neighborhood who had known her and the guy she left with.  One rumor was that she was living on the streets and addicted to cocaine.  Another rumor had her living in a halfway house after being arrested for prostitution.  I took a moment to take her in.  Looking for signs of abuse, addiction, pain… I watched small fogs of air escape her lips as she exhaled, the tip of her nose turning mahogany in the cold.  She always did have sensitive skin.   “I’m fine, Nate.”“What’re you doing here?” I asked, unsure why she would ever come back.“I could ask you the same thing,” she said with a laugh.  “Actually, I don’t know,” she answered after a moment.  “I’ve come by a number of times, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to ring the buzzer.”A number of times?  My mind was reeling.  How long had she been back?   “We got here in July,” she said as if reading my mind, still staring over at the buzzer to the building.“You’re still with that guy?” I asked, struggling to remember the name of the guy she was with when she visited me in D.C.She looked at me confused.  “Who?” she asked.  “Oh, Chris?” She laughed. “No.  Well, not exactly.  We had a son.  I have a son.  By we, I mean, me and my son.” “Wow.”  My mother had been right.“Want to see a picture?” she said, beaming.  I nodded.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone and began flipping through her pictures.  “Here he is,” she said holding the phone in front of me.  A small boy with big dark eyes and a head full of light brown curls sat in the middle of a blue carpet, with a smile so big, he looked like his face might crack.  He had four teeth, two jutting out of the middle of each row of gums.  “His name is Cole. He turned one in October.”  I took her phone and studied the picture.  “Where is he?” I asked, handing her back the phone, looking to see if he was playing in the nearby courtyard.  “I wouldn’t bring him here.” Her motherly protectiveness was evident.  “He’s with a good friend.  We work together.”I nodded.  “He’s a cute kid, Natalie.  Cole is a great name.”Her face softened.  “Thank you.  Remember when Aunt Laura used to listen to those old singers?”I smiled, remembering.  “Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra…”“Nat King Cole,” she added.  “He’s named after him,” she explained.  “I used to love sitting on her lap and listening to her hum to those songs.”  She closed her eyes for a moment.  “Off key,” she added, chuckling.  “Remember, ‘smile, though your heart is aching, smile, even though it’s breaking…’” I nodded.She hugged herself, staring into the air. For a moment, I could smell the sweet scent of Aunt Laura’s pies traveling through the breeze.  I would give anything to be pulled into her warm embrace again.  Just one more time.  To feel loved… understood… without condition or disappointment.  Natalie’s laughter pulled me out of my memories.  I watched as she wiped the beginnings of small tears from falling from her eyes.  She looked at me, her face growing serious.  “Cole changed everything, Nate.”I believed her.  It was like someone had relit that candle inside of her.  A candle I was sure had burnt out.  Her newfound serenity emanated from her and I was both happy and envious.  For a brief moment, happiness had seemed possible for me.  I ran my hand across my forehead, once again feeling consumed with guilt for all the ways I kept fucking it up.  “How about you?” She nudged my shoulder playfully.  “Are you still with that girl you were with in college?  Kerry?”I shook my head. “We broke up.  Nothing much has been going on,” I continued changing the subject.  “I’ve been back home since I graduated.”“You’re living here?”  I nodded.“I just assumed you were on your own,” she said surprised.  I shrugged, feeling ashamed I didn’t have more to show for the four years I had spent at college.  Considering it was the reason I had abandoned her, the least I could do was have more to show for it.  I flicked away the embers of my cigarette and took another long drag.  I imagined my parents settling down at the table, eating the chicken with their fingers, barely speaking to each other and guzzling their alcohol like water.  This was their routine.  Bubbling up each night like the scalding hot lava in a volcano, always on the verge of eruption.  I watched as Natalie stared back at the buzzer, probably picturing the same thing.            “Look, Nate,” she started after a moment.  “I know what it’s like here.  No one should have to live here.  Not even them.”            “It’s cool,” I began, taking another slow drag of my cigarette.  It wasn’t.  But, as far as I was concerned, there was no current solution.  I didn’t have any money and frankly, I didn’t have any energy to try to fix it.            “No, it’s not,” she said.  Her voice was stern.  “I have an apartment uptown.  It isn’t much, but we have an extra room.  You’re more than welcome…”            I laughed cutting her off.  “I’m not letting you go there, Natalie.”  Not only was I not going to burden Natalie with my failures, I knew I wasn’t worthy of her help.  After the way I treated her… after the way I abandoned her.  “You don’t owe me anything,” I concluded.                “Nate,” she began again, reaching out and holding my wrist.  “It was fucked up what you did that night,” she continued knowing exactly what I was talking about.  “I have never felt so alone and afraid in my life.  But I survived.  We were bothvictims.  You couldn’t have saved me.  You barely saved yourself.”  She took a deep breath.  “If you need my forgiveness, fine, I forgive you.  But, I’m not letting you stay here with them.”  She looked into my eyes with a level of understanding only she could have.  We were the only two people on this planet who knew what it was like to be raised by Nathaniel and Christine Best.  We were the only two people who knew what it took to survive.  I looked at the buzzer.  The back of my eyes began to sting.   A lump formed in the pit of my stomach.  She smiled.  “Get your stuff, there’s a bus coming soon.”            I nodded and went back into my parent’s apartment, feeling overwhelmed that she had managed to do for me what I had been too weak to do for her.  Read more HERE.
Love and Light,  Faye

Boyfriend is NOW in Paperback (and New Vlog)!

Boyfriend is now available in Paperback!
Order your copy by clicking on the "Buy Boyfriend in Paperback" link above! Thank you to all those who have purchased and reviewed. We have a 5.0 rating on Amazon and 4.44 on Goodreads! Yay! Check out my new vlog below:


Love and Light,
 Faye

Boyfriend Giveaway!

I'm giving away 2 signed copies of Boyfriend! Enter now to win!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winner announced April 17, 2015.
Love and Light, 
Faye

Big Announcement: We Have a Paperback Date!

Well, before I start, can I just say "Holy crap, it's April!"  We are almost half way through the year and I feel like we just celebrated Christmas! There are so many things I'd like to accomplish this year.  I think that adds to my unshakable awareness of the brevity of time.  First on the list is get Boyfriend out in print so you can all become just as consumed with Nate, Kerry, Jayna, Natalie, Phil, and Allison as I was! Thank you to all those who downloaded, purchased and reviewed.  I am beyond grateful.  That brings me to my next announcement. 


Boyfriend will be released in print on April 17, 2015!

As a warning to all those who love me, I plan to be pretty insufferable that day.  I've been writing stories in mead notebooks since I was 11 years old (before that I was strictly construction paper and backs of receipts).  I'm probably going to be a mixture of this...


and this...

all day long.
Here's the thing about me.  I love, love, love telling stories.  I majored in English in college so I've read all the greats.  However, what I love the most about reading is getting lost in the universe of the storyteller.  As much as I love absorbing the language of the likes of Morrison and Faulkner into my pores and painting the imagery in my mind, I adored reading Gone Girl or Big Little Lies, fast-moving stories with complex characters and impossible circumstances. My goal is to create universes.  Books that you can't put down and you can't wait to turn the next page!

I am currently in the thick of writing my second novel.  I am in that free-flowing part - pre-editing and the constant quest for perfection - where I am just free to love the words and fall madly in love with my characters.  It takes place in the same universe as Boyfriend , a decade or so earlier.  It tells the story of Jayna and all the complexity that made her who she was.  I am really excited about this one, folks!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!

 
Love and Light,
Faye

My new novel, Boyfriend is out now!

Boyfriend is now available for only $4.99 on Amazon Kindle here! All four stories of Dani's Belts are FREE now through Sunday to celebrate!



If you don't have a Kindle, you can download the FREE Kindle app for smartphones, tablets and computers on the Amazon site :-).

Enjoy!

Love and Light,
Faye

And now a word from our sponsor... (My First Vlog!)

Love and Light,
Faye

One more week!

One more week until the arrival of my debut novel, Boyfriend!

I am so excited, guys! My debut novel, Boyfriend will be available on Kindle March 27, 2015 and will be available in print shortly thereafter (date TBA).  For those of you following my blog from the beginning, you know my journey to traditional publishing has been an uphill battle.  I'll spare you the gory details, but I will say this, after months of reflection and soul searching, I realized how amazing every single hill I faced has been.  The truth is, you learn very little from success but a shitload from failure.  Not the least of which is how much you want something and how badly you are willing to fight for it.  Things rarely go as planned but sometimes the detour is worth every single stumble it took to get there.

I am proud of Boyfriend.  It was born on a rainy day on the North Shore of Long Island.  I was on maternity leave and taking a long drive with my son.  He was probably about three or four months and a crier.  Sometimes the lull of a long car ride was the only thing to get him calm.  I had stopped in a small parking lot to a boat dock.  With pen and notebook in hand, I started to reflect on everything that had brought me to that moment.  I was 26, just beginning my second year of marriage, and was (and am) hopelessly in love with my husband and the little life we had just created.  I reminisced about my single days, my amazing friends, and all the frogs we had kissed between us.  Those guys that we knew were broken from the beginning but something in us thought we could fix them.  Those relationships that we gave everything to but were left with only battle scars.  I began to wonder about those guys.  About my friend's ex who lived a secret life as an amateur porn star (yeah, that happened).  My other friend's ex who cheated on her with multiple girls in different social circles on her college campus so they'd never find out about each other (they found out and confronted him together).  Another friend's ex who managed to hide the fact that he had a wife for a full year after meeting her.  The list went on.  We had amassed quite the cast of characters between us.  I wondered if they thought about us.  If they felt guilty.  If they were doing the same to another girl.  Out of my reflection, Nate Best, the protagonist of Boyfriend was born. 



Nate is that guy.  He rarely makes good decisions.  He is afraid of commitment.  But he is human.  He has a painful past that he'd rather forget, and deep insecurities he'd fight to hide.  Boyfriend follows him as he navigates his way through college, meets a beautiful girl and falls in love.  It follows him as he struggles not to mess it up.  It's with him when he does.  Boyfriend is his story.  For better or worse.

I really, really hope you enjoy it :-).

Love and Light,
Faye

My new novel will be available March 27, 2015!

I've been busy, folks! I have two novels, a novella, and a short story set for release this year! The first, Boyfriend, is in the final stages of editing.  It will be available on Amazon Kindle (drumroll, please....) March 27, 2015! Here's the synopsis:

Nate Best enrolls in college in Washington, D.C. to escape a complicated and painful past.  Together with his best friend and roommate, Phil, he parties more than he studies and beds girls as if it is a Division 1 sport.  When Kerry, a beautiful young woman from a privileged background, captures his interest, he jumps at the challenge.  He eagerly denies all he ever was for the chance to be someone completely different with her.  Before long, he starts to believe he can be.  When Kerry's roommate and best friend, Jayna, sees right through his new good boy façade, he is inexplicably drawn to her.  He is intoxicated by her every move, and attracted to her with a careless abandon.  With the reality of who he is never far from his mind, will he succumb to temptation and destroy Kerry? Or will he resist his bad boy ways and be the boyfriend he never thought he could be? 

 
For those of you who are fans of my zombie literature, its a bit of a departure. There are no flesh-thirsty zombies but it's sexy, witty,  and you will meet a cast of unforgettable characters. I hope you are as excited as I am.  More details to come!

Love and Light,
Faye

12 Week Check-In and The Magic of Audiobooks

So, have I mentioned this summer, I discovered the magic of audiobooks?  I was kind of in a semi-writing funk.  After narrowly making it out of the traditional publishing limbo with my dignity, I needed to take a step back and really reconnect with my love of literature.  My husband is a librarian so I'd request book after book which he'd dutifully bring home each evening to collect dust by my bedside.  With the busyness of my and my kids summer schedule, I could barely keep my eyes open to write let alone read by the end of the night.  On a whim, I downloaded Audible on my smart phone and I have kind of been addicted ever since.  I listened to new books and old favs including The Bluest Eye as read by Toni Morrison, Kindred by Octavia Butler, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, The Color Purple as read by Alice Walker, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, The Shining by Stephen King and The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (I also managed to read a few the old fashioned way including Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and currently, Dark Places by Gillian Flynn).  I can totally hear the pretentious college kid I once was judging me for this but audio books have been absolutely amazing!  They were perfect for those times when I took the boys to the park, that endless waiting in the car-rider line, or those long stop-and-go drives to work every morning.  I especially loved the experience of hearing the authors read in their own words.  Sigh.  Just hearing the slowness of meaningful words or the emotion behind loaded statements... letting someone else's thoughts and experience bounce around in the silence of my mind.... it became almost meditative for me.  It reminded me of why I love reading, why I love the art of story-telling, and mostly, why I love writing. I feel more committed than ever to truthfulness and honesty in my story-telling... no matter how hard... no matter how raw.
 
Well, as promised, here is my twelve week fitness update! I am actually smiling this time :-).  I am absolutely loving my fitness journey.  My goal was to look better but I didn't anticipate how much better I would feel.  It's amazing how restorative good health can be for your spirit.  Conquering my health has made me feel like I am strong enough to conquer anything.  That has spilled over into all aspects of my life.  A few people have asked me what I'm doing so here goes: I work out 5 days a week (would be 7 but I can't figure out how to get in those two extra days), I do 20-30 minutes of high intensity cardio each day and then I alternate between upper and lower body strength training.  I also meet with my trainer (hi Bishop!) once a week.  As far as eating, I am a vegetarian but I try to stay relatively low carb and I eat 5 small meals a day.  I eat alot of fiber (love my oats), take a multivitamin every day, and try to eat plenty of protein. 


Also, in January, I started the Couch 2 5K running program!  I think I've had runner envy for a long time.  We have this nature path behind our house that I have a pretty awesome view of from my favorite writing spot.  Every day, I watch folks run by.  For awhile, I have kind of secretly envisioned myself doing the same but I would talk myself down.  I was convinced I didn't have the stamina and I would look ridiculous running.  I have long limbs and a well-earned reputation for being clumsy.  The thing is, my dad is a runner and my granddad was also a runner.  I have the genes to do it - why not just take the plunge?  So, I did.  Thus far, the plan is super manageable (the smart phone APP is awesome!) and if all goes according to plan, I will be running my first 5K this spring.   More importantly, I will be bouncing with those runners outside my window before I know it.  Then, you won't be able to slap the smile off my face (but if you see me, please don't try).  Stay tuned :-).

Love and Light,
Faye