Excerpt: The Story of Fester Cat by Paul Magrs
The Story of Fester Cat
By: Paul Magrs
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: Nov. 4, 2014
Genre: Non-Fiction
From when he first ambled into Paul Magrs’s yard—skinny, covered in flea bites, and missing all but one and a half teeth—Fester knew he’d found his family. Paul and his partner, Jeremy, thought it was the ragged black-and-white stray, tired from a rough life on the streets, who was in desperate need of support. But clever Fester knew better. He understood that it was his newfound owners who needed the help.
Over the course of seven years, the feisty feline turned the quaint Manchester house into a loving home. Through his fierce spirit, strong will, and calming energy, Fester taught Paul and Jeremy how to listen and breathe, how to appreciate the joys of simply sitting and singing (what Fester’s purrs sounded like to his silly humans), and how to find joy and contentment in life, even when dealing with hardship.
This is the true story of an extraordinary little cat whose gentle charm and trusting soul turned two young men into a family.
His window is level with the top of his desk. The desk is a flat wooden table, with room for his laptop, a mugful of pens, and a small basket of notebooks. And there’s room enough for me to sit on. There are three basic desk positions for Fester Cat. First, there’s right in front of the laptop. I sit between Paul and his keyboard, pushing my face into his. I nudge him for attention. Somehow he snakes his arms around me and carries on typing, even as I’m kissing him. The warmth of the machine is wonderful.
Then there’s the more nonchalant positioning, on the right of the laptop. From here I can keep an eye on Paul, and lean over now and then to scratch my chin on the very corner of his computer screen. Sometimes I do this so well I leave some slobber on the glass, but he doesn’t mind.
Then—in some ways, best of all—I sit right in front of the window, with the whole of Chestnut Avenue spread before me. I have a magnificent view of the road in front of us and how it splits into two dead ends. Lots of traffic comes past here. Lots of kids in hoodies, school kids, mums with pushchairs, dodgy-looking blokes, and neighbours that I can recognise. Also, lots of cats. I watch them tracking about, hopping over walls, under gates, and brazenly down the middle of the road. Lots and lots of cats, not all of whom I recognise. And dogs and sometimes, late at night, foxes. I sit up, alert, riveted by the drama outside. To me it’s like the telly is to the boys, and I think they understand that.
Paul types away furiously for minutes and hours at a time. Then he stops abruptly. Then he does a bit more. Then he picks out a notebook and goes flipping through quickly, looking for something. Then he starts scribbling madly for page after page and then crossing things out. He uses pens that squeak against the page like baby mice. I can’t help myself hopping over and pushing my cold nose against his hand. If I really want his attention I go and sit on the pages of his notebook. If I think he’s been working too long and too hard and his attention is starting to fray, I go to interrupt him and I know it’s the right thing to do.
…
He talks to me at odd moments through the day. He takes it very seriously, knowing we’re having a proper conversation. Knowing I’m taking it all in. He tries out ideas on me.
“Spoiling you! Huh!” he says.
“Ungow,” I tell him. Surely it’s after twelve by now. Surely it’s almost time for lunch?
“You’re my first ever cat, Fester,” he tells me. “I’ve always wanted one. I always suspected that I might be a cat kind of person. But when I was a kid, Mam wouldn’t have one. She thought they were stinky, nasty things.”
“Ungow!”
“I know! And then, of course, as a student it was always about moving house each year and you couldn’t really have pets. Then it was about moving from city to city. And then me and Jeremy were living in different cities . . .
I like it when he tells me bits about their lives before I came along. I’m slowly building up a picture of who they both are. Paul uses far more words than Jeremy does, of course. He hardly ever shuts up. Only when he’s working or reading—and even then, it’s words, words, words passing through his mind.
“Really, I don’t even know the right way to carry on with a cat. I don’t know the right way to be.”
“Ungow.” I try telling him it’s fine. He doesn’t have to be any particular way. Just keep on doing his normal stuff. Cats don’t need entertaining or babysitting. If I wasn’t interested I’d be nowhere near you. I’d zip off somewhere and get on with something else. You’re okay. You sit quite still and you do some interesting stuff.
I especially like it when he goes off in one of his daydreams, between bouts of his tap-tapping at the keyboard. He stares into space out of the window just like a cat would. We sit there side by side, staring into the road, into other people’s windows, and into the sky.
Reprinted from The Story of Fester Cat by Paul Magrs by arrangement with Berkley, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, Copyright © 2014 by Paul Magrs.
Paul Magrs is the author of many books, written for all ages and in many different genres, but this is his first foray into memoir. He taught novel writing in the MA program in Creative Writing at UEA, and then at Manchester Metropolitan. Paul lives in Manchester, England, with his partner, Jeremy, and is now a full-time writer.
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Excerpt: The Threshing Circle by Neil Grimmet
The Threshing Circle
By: Neil Grimmet
Publisher: Grimpen Publications
Published: Feb. 19, 2014
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
A young couple arrive on the Greek island of Crete and begin prying into the execution of a beautiful English woman during the German occupation sixty years before. They enter a labyrinth of forbidden love, betrayals, murder, greed and vendettas, old and new.
Then they disappear.
A feisty Scottish woman and an irascible, Zorba-like Greek form a reluctant allegiance in a desperate attempt to find and rescue them. They both have very different motives for their involvement. Their search will take them to hidden rituals, ceremonies, remote gatherings, famous monasteries and villages abandoned after decades of vendettas. To the remote island of Gavdos and finally back to a place that, “Even God does not know exists”.
They will encounter characters good and evil; some modern and pragmatic, others ancient and magical.
All the time they are being stalked by the sons of man who seeks to complete the crimes of his father and sate his own greed and insane desire for vengeance. These men are more animal than human and have been raised in the remote mountains for the sole purpose of carrying out the brutal will of their father.The mystery of the real, hidden Crete runs deep, and THE THRESHING CIRCLE explores some of the myths and romance while not shying away from its often violent nature.
By the end choices will have to be made. If such actions are really possible on an island where many Cretans still believe that: “The Cycle of Blood”, can never stop flowing.
A huge cry of pain answered her and echoed into the mountains as Meissher jackbooted the stool over and Marianna
Link lit a cigarette and watched until the kicking death dance became a tremble, and finally stilled. He waited as his men began to drive the villagers into their homes before moving to Hofner. ‘Tell Meissher to clear up then follow us.’
‘What about the child?’ Hofner, a father of three, asked,
gesturing to the house where Athena was still wailing.
Oberleutnant Link had his orders and knew what his part in this bargain was, but he didn’t kill children for traitors and cowards no matter what they’d given in return. ‘Leave it for Meissher, he’ll enjoy taking his frustration out on it.
Anyway, if he hasn’t the stomach it won’t matter. These scum hate all foreigners. The child is a Frank to them; they’ll loot the house before we’re out of sight, and either smother it or let it starve.’
Hofner made his own decision after Oberleutnant Link left. He dimmed the light on the writing table, closed the broken door to the house on Athena and made sure his sadistic
Lieutenant was kept amused with some of the young village girls until he tired of his sport and wanted to leave. Hofner felt good, and if he ended up on the Eastern Front with Meissher for forgetting to remind him of Link’s orders then so be it. But there was no way he wanted to see that beautiful child follow her mother to the grave.
Later, after the last of the Germans disappeared into the fading darkness and Athena cried as her mother grew cold, shadowy figures began to move. One of them, silver-haired, tall and dressed in a flowing black robe, slipped stealthily into the house. She looked around and began gathering up what she could take, then moved towards the screaming child. Her long, thin hands closed around the baby and quickly silenced its cries.
Neil Grimmett has had over eighty five short stories published. In the UK by among others: London Magazine, Stand, Panurge, Iron, Ambit, Postscripts Magazine, Pretext etc. Australia, Quadrant, South Africa, New Contrast. Plus stories in the leading journals of Singapore, India, France, Canada, and the USA, where he has appeared in Fiction, The Yale Review, DoubleTake, The southern Humanities Review, Green Mountains Review, Descant, The Southern Review, West Branch and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He has appeared online in Blackbird, Plum Ruby Review, Tatlin\’s Tower, Web Del Sol, In Posse Review, m.a.g., Word Riot, Blue Moon Review, 3AM, Gangway, Eclectica, The Cortland Review, Segue, The Dublin Quarterly , Ducts, Sugar Mule, Mysterical E, Thuglit and over thirty others. His stories have also appeared in the anthologies: ENGLAND CALLING, BOOK OF VOICES and Italy’s ISBN’s Top International Stories. He has made the storySouth Million Writers Notable Short Story list for the last three years. In addition, he has won the Write On poetry award, 7 Oppenheim John Downes Awards, 5 major British Arts Council Awards, a Royal Society of Authors award and was just awarded a major grant from the Royal Literary Fund. He has been signed over the last ten years by twelve of the leading literary agents in both the UK and USA. His current agent is Jon Elek at United Agents who is just going out with his 2nd literary thriller, THE HOARD.
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Excerpt: Healing the Bayou by Mary Bernsen
Healing the Bayou
By: Mary Bernsen
Publisher: Etopia Press
Published: May 2, 2014
Genre: Paranormal Romance
After learning that she is adopted, Eliza sets off to locate her biological family and finds them in the Louisiana bayou. But they’re more than just locals—they’re descended from the area’s most famous Voodoo queen, Marie Laveau—Eliza’s great-great-grandmother. Surrounded by a mysterious world of séances, spells, and sacrifices, Eliza finds herself worshiped as the last great priestess. What’s more, she’s inherited the ability to heal the souls of others with a simple touch of her hands.
Eliza is expected to cultivate this gift so she can claim her title as Queen and return the Voodoo community to glory. A task Eliza wouldn’t mind as long as she could perform it beside the devastating Samuel Mueller. But according to tradition, Samuel is her keeper, and a keeper never becomes romantically involved with his ward. His sacred duty is to protect her. And the bayou is rife with enemies who would sacrifice anything to eliminate outsiders like Eliza…
I turned to face him, and he was breathing hard. He looked disheveled, as if he had just fought a battle with himself and lost. I opened my mouth to comfort him— to tell him it was OK and I understood. Before I could he had my face in his hands and he brought his lips down onto mine in an almost desperate panic. Sinking into the sensation of his passion, I lavished in the feelings coming over
Lifting me, he wrapped my legs around his waist before he fell to his knees, laid me down, and climbed on top of me. The bottom of my dress had bunched up to my waist, and I peeled his shirt away to expose his skin underneath. I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to feel it against mine.
Mary Bernsen is a southwest Florida native currently living in Punta Gorda with her two beautiful children and a third, much larger child that she affectionately calls husband. She spends her days creating characters on the good side of twenty-five because she is in serious denial about the fact that she is now on the bad side of it. She has a passion for fantasy of any kind along with historical fiction.
If she isn’t having conversations with her made-up friends, you can usually find her clipping coupons or out on the boat enjoying the muddy waters of Peace River (as long as it isn’t below 80 degrees).
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Excerpt: Third Rail by Rory Flynn
Third Rail
By: Rory Flynn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: June10, 2014
Genre: Mystery
At crime scenes, Eddy Harkness is a human Ouija board, a brilliant young detective with a knack for finding the hidden something—cash, drugs, guns, bodies. But Eddy’s swift rise in an elite narcotics unit is derailed by the death of a Red Sox fan in the chaos of a World Series win, a death some camera-phone-wielding witnesses believe he could have prevented. Scapegoated, Eddy is exiled to his hometown just outside Boston, where he empties parking meters and struggles to redeem his disgraced family name.
Then one night Harkness’s police-issue Glock disappears. Unable to report the theft, Harkness starts a secret search—just as a string of fatal accidents lead him to uncover a new, dangerous smart drug, Third Rail. With only a plastic disc gun to protect him, Harkness begins a high-stakes investigation that leads him into the darkest corners of the city, where politicians and criminals intertwine to deadly effect.
Harkness runs west toward the car. No dodging. Stay on the line. These are the rules of engagement tonight.
The BMW hurtles closer and the driver hits the horn. Breath steaming in the cool night air, Harkness runs down the yellow line. The horn screams and the car swerves so close that Harkness could reach out and touch the doors as it flies past, its slipstream spinning Harkness to the ground. The driver lays on the horn, the note bending lower as the car speeds away.
“One down,” Harkness whispers. His palms scrape in the grit as he stumbles to his feet and turns to watch the red taillights smearing toward South Station.
When Pauley Fitzgerald stood here exactly a year ago, the highway was crowded with Sox fans driving home. In the blurry security video, he leaps across the lanes, pivots sideways, ricochets from one lane to the next, and somersaults over moving cars. More than three million people had watched Turnpike Toreador the last time Harkness checked YouTube, staring in sick fascination as Pauley Fitz dropped, danced, and died. After it was all over, the Staties couldn’t even find his teeth.
Harkness runs down the empty highway as the white eyes of new headlights race toward him.
Rory Flynn is a Boston-based mystery writer whose novels include Third Rail, the debut of the Eddy Harkness series (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2014). Author Jess Walter (Beautiful Ruins) calls Flynn “a suspense writer to watch.” And readers compare his work to Robert B. Parker, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George V. Higgins.
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