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Since childhood, all sorts of
stories and characters have lived in G.K. Brady’s imagination, elbowing one
another for attention, so she’s finally giving them their voice on the written
page.

 An award-winning
writer of contemporary romance, she loves telling tales of the
less-than-perfect hero or heroine who transforms with each turn of a page. She
also writes historical fiction under the pen name Griffin Brady.

 G.K. is a wife and
the proud mom of three grown sons. When she’s not writing, she might be
reading, traveling, drinking wine, listening to music, or gardening—sometimes
all at once! She currently resides in Colorado with her very patient husband.

  

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A Story of Parenting
Across Two Cultures

by Marguerite Welch

Genre: Multicultural Contemporary Fiction, Drama

For fans of Little
Fires Everywhere, a novel that explores the ambiguities of motherhood and
salvation through the anguished relationship between a troubled, undocumented
Mexican teenager and the grieving, upper-middle-class mother who takes her in.

After the drug overdose of her teenage son, Helen, a privileged white woman,
takes in Mia, a troubled and undocumented Mexican teenager.

Although they initially fill each other’s voids, Helen’s lofty expectations of
Mia eventually test that bond and Mia, tortured by guilt and starved for
affection, runs off with Diego, an MS13 gang leader. While Helen, bereft over
losing another child, tries to reconstruct her life, Mia’s life with Diego
spirals into a nightmare: Just after she has his baby, he goes to jail for
multiple murders. As each woman moves forward through her own challenges, Helen
confronts her deep-seated prejudices, while Mia battles her own demons in
search of self-identity and meaning in her life.

A haunting and suspenseful cautionary tale, Borrowed Child is
about what happens when a well-meaning inclination toward “salvation” goes
awry.

[A] detailed and occasionally heartbreaking portrait that
pays special attention to the physical and emotional struggles of a young
undocumented immigrant.” —Kirkus

“With the grace and complexity of The White
Album by Joan Didion, Borrowed Child examines how intention and
action, especially for white people, might misinterpret the complexities of race
and power in the United States. With gorgeous writing, Welch subverts
expectations and gifts us a nuanced view of prejudice.”—Melissa Scholes Young, author of Flood and The Hive

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CHAPTER
1: HELEN

For
more than a week I could not make myself open the door to Mia’s room. When I
finally raised the shades, light illuminated the space like a stage set: the
rumpled bed, the hot pink lipstick on the dresser, the closet door agape,
revealing the outfit I gave her for church. Gray wool slacks dangled awkwardly
from a plastic hanger, the silk blouse discarded in a
dusty corner along with one dirty sock—all clues, remnants of a life lived on
this stage. But was it the beginning of the play or the end?

Mia had just started her senior year in high school. I knew
she was intimidated by all the college visits and apprehensive about submitting
the applications, but I had convinced myself that she was ready to say goodbye
to her old life and start anew. Sure, we’d experienced difficulties and
detours, what family doesn’t? But I believed all was resolved; believed, that
is, until one random Wednesday in late September when she never came home. No
one saw her—not her teachers, the office staff, or her counselor. No one knew
where she was.

At first, I thought Mia had gone off with friends and simply
forgotten to call. She would have called, wouldn’t she? Maybe she had gone back
to her birth mother’s home. But that seemed unlikely. I pulled out my cell
phone every few minutes to see if I had missed a text. By 8:00 p.m. I called
her mother.

“Maybe she go off with drug dealer boyfriend,” Carmen said
in broken English.

What drug dealer boyfriend? I wanted to cry out, but knew it
was pointless. I couldn’t understand her rapid-fire Spanish and our adversarial
relationship over the years had made meaningful communication impossible.
Carmen’s lack of concern for Mia’s welfare had always mystified and infuriated
me.

“You no call the police, okay?” Carmen added. It had been my
experience that people in the Hispanic community often panicked when they saw a
uniform. It wouldn’t do any good to get the police involved and might make it
worse.

“Okay, but please call me if you hear anything,” I
pleaded.She never called.

I cried on my husband’s shoulder. “How could Mia do this?
Something must be very wrong.” Don was upset too, but couldn’t resist giving me
that “I-told-you-so” look, patting my hand with a restrained sense of
obligation rather than genuine concern, or so I read it at the time. Now I
understand how needy and unfair I was. He had always been so loving and
supportive no matter how crazy my schemes and passionate my interests, whether
he understood them or not.

The saying “opposites attract” could not have been truer in
our relationship. He was a man of science. I was a dreamy artistic type. He
read Naval Institute Proceedings. I read poetry. He liked spaghetti. I liked
sushi. He couldn’t tell a petunia from a daisy. I was a gardener. And yet, life
together was better than apart. When our boys came along, he was an involved,
loving father who disciplined with love and loved unrestrainedly. But, at that
moment, if I could have gotten beyond my own conflicted feelings of hurt and
worry, I could have seen by the way his hand shook as he picked up his Maker’s
Mark on the rocks and took a couple of quick gulps that he was genuinely
concerned about Mia’s absence.

It was too hard. Both of us felt the stab of an old, only
partially healed wound, for which Mia had been a temporary anesthetic. Don
banged his drink down on the table, half surprised by the noise, and hugged me
silently, afraid to say a word, one pain masking another. An image swam to the
surface: Sammy’s grin and tousled mop of blond hair. How could we have been so
unaware of the troubled waters beneath that sunny smile? The dark, anxious
place that became his secret home beyond our reach and knowing. Now, clueless
again, we had let another child slip through the cracks and I was left
clutching her abandoned lipstick until my palm bled.

Marguerite Welch is a writer, artist, photographer and
sailor whose essays and reviews on fine art photography have been published in
the NEW ART EXAMINER, WASHINGTON REVIEW OF THE ARTS, AFTERIMAGE and other local
and national art publications. Short personal essays and travel pieces have
appeared in BAY WEEKLY, WANDERLUST and CHESAPEAKE BAY MAGAZINE. Her travel
memoir, WATERBORNE: A SLOW TRIP AROUND A SMALL PLANET, published by Seaworthy
Publications in September 2019, documents a 14-year world circumnavigation
undertaken with her husband in their 38-foot sailboat Ithaca. In her spare time
she tends her garden on the banks of the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland
where she and her husband have lived for 40 years.

 

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A citizen of the universe, Yona Katz is a financial director
during the day. But as soon as night falls, numbers and reports are chased away
by the stories that live in the stars. One day, Yona decided that she was brave
enough to share these stories with the world. Yona loves exploring the themes
of diversity and inclusivity. She wants to reach her readers to show them that
love is universal, that even heroes are flawed, and that everyone has the right
to make mistakes. Yona is Canadian but Antigua and Barbuda is her current home.

 

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Mystic
Madness!

Join the doomed on their vision quests in eleven stories by
the damnedest writers in Perdition: Janet Morris; A.L. Butcher; Joe Bonadonna;
Andrew P. Weston; Gustavo Bondoni; Seth Lindberg; Tom Barczak; Michael H.
Hanson; Louis Antonelli; Christopher Crosby Morris.

Mystics in Hell is the latest volume in the notorious
Heroes in Hell series of anthologies and novels created by Janet Morris.

A Frame of Mind by Janet Morris & Chris Morris

Kit Marlowe treks back from exile, where he has encountered
three witches. Carrying a skull which he found on a blasted heath, he arrives
at the Globe, where Satan and the angel of death accost him. At their
displeasure, he’s banished once more, this time to return instantly via the
powers of the Fates. Satan meets him at a cast party and decrees that Kit not
only will spy for him, but play Banquo, beheaded in each subsequent performance
of Macbeth.

The Come Right Inn by Andrew P. Weston

Where we meet up with one of Satan’s most secretive agents. A
charming woman with a finger—and most other body parts—in every pie. She’s
bewitching, beguiling, and bedeviled to be sure, but won’t think twice about
skinning you alive if you cross her.

Abode of Woe by A.L. Butcher

When the self-proclaimed anti-messiah builds a temple on
their doorstep and ruins business, Calchas and Cassandra look to some devious
means to bring down the walls. Dueling mystics and misinformation bring mayhem
to the underworld.

Fool’s Gold by S.E. Lindberg

A tale of the Egyptian god of mysticism, Thoth, who seeks
conspirators to retrieve the Philosopher’s Stone; with it, Thoth could usurp
Satan’s control of the realm of Duat. Taking up the charge is Howard Carter,
infamous antiquarian and tomb raider, and the disgraced evolutionist Ernst
Haeckel. They discover that King Midas’s alchemical ability to transmute flesh
into gold relies on the stolen stone, and Midas is producing Hell’s new
gastro-currency: buttcoin. They infiltrate the Mortuary Mint and sabotage the
currency’s production. Instead of returning the stone to Thoth, the duo uses it
to build up their own fortune. The auditors of Hell, namely the First and
Second of the Sibitti, police the matter.

The True Believer by  Lou Antonelli

Few national leaders of the 20th century had as much of a
negative and controversial impact on history as Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, prime
minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966, when he was assassinated. Commonly
referred to in South Africa as “Dr.” Verwoerd, he had a PhD in psychology, and
went down in history as The Man Who Invented Apartheid. Now in Hell, Dr.
Verwoerd refuses to acknowledge his infernal fate and gets a special visit to
set him straight.

By Any Means Necessary by Gustavo Bondoni

Umberto Eco knows he’s in Hell; the suffering and multiple
deaths that never kill him permanently are more than enough of a clue for a man
of his learning.  But when he gets forcibly recruited by Nazi Commando
Otto Skorzeny to prove the theories of one of history’s greatest charlatans, he
thinks things can’t get any worse.  He’s wrong.  Hell can always get
worse.

Excalibur by Tom Barczak

When dealing with the harsh reality of the Afterlife: Hell
can be hard. But Rasputin has something even harder, and Lafayette Ronald
Hubbard desperately needs it if he is going to pull off the greatest magic
trick Hell has ever known.

On The Run by Michael H. Hanson

Tells of Sufi mystic Rumi, Zen Buddhist Dōgen, and Charlatan
Spiritualist Mina Crandon using their new-found magics on the grandest of all
quests, to find powerful talismans that will allow them to escape Hell itself.

The Sorcerous Apprentice by  Andrew P. Weston

Daemon Grim learns new tricks from an old dog. And just as
well. There’s a fallen saint to bring to heel, and she’s not known for playing
ball . . . crystal or otherwise.

The Colossus of Hell by Joe Bonadonna

Doctor Victor Frankenstein and computer scientist Alan Turing
want to build a cyborg. Quasimodo wants to win the hand of the French fortune
teller, Marie Anne Lenormand. Rasputin and Cagliostro want to open an
exclusive, private club. And a mysterious damned soul, known only as the Orange
Ogre, wants revenge against anyone in Hell who ever cheated or betrayed him,
laughed at and humiliated him, or even ignored him—especially His Satanic
Majesty himself.

Strange Arts by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

In a Tower cell, Marlowe’s head struggles to regain
consciousness and rejoin his body. Here he finds his Elizabethan spymaster,
Walsingham, waiting with J the Merciful and three mysterious Sisters. After
painfully stitching together his body and soul, the five entreat him to join
their most secret conspiracy.

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From The Abode of Woe
by A.L. Butcher

 

Paradise’s
dim light grew ever dimmer as the hell-lights began to glare with the blue glow
of sulfur. It was an unforgiving light for the unforgiven. Word had got around,
and crowds had begun to gather for the evening’s entertainment. Calchas had
started a book on the outcome of the battle, and the diablos were rolling in.

“Two to One
for the Pig Man!” yelled a grifter clad in the sharpest suit of the evening.

“Seven to
Four for the Prince!” bellowed another voice, shrill in the crowd.

Kevin the
fiend grinned. He was having the time of his unlife; he’d read the small-print.

“Are they
ready?” Calchas asked, eying the large and sinister cloth-covered mounds on
opposing sides of the temple.

“Yep. Ready
for mayhem, master.” A smiling fiend is not something to stir the heart with
confidence or joy and Calchas sobered. He wondered if he should feel guilty,
but he had enough of that to last a thousand lifetimes and these New Dead had
brought it on themselves. At least that is what he told himself and Cassandra.

“Ego fighting
ego will bring no good for either. A temple built in haste to honor mere vanity
and lies will surely fall to dust.” Cassandra stared at the mounds, hoping
these fire-spiting death machines would not bring them all to the Undertaker’s
door. Were they too close? She closed her eyes and let her mind wander.

“Will we be
punished for this venture?” He’d asked, thinking too late they may have erred
and voicing both their fears. He hoped nothing would backfire; plans in hell
oft went awry. And he knew that sooner or later he’d pay the price for this
deceit.

“This is
Hades. Punishment is inherent. But I think not . . . at least not on this day.
‘Rue thy former life, and revel in thy afterlife, for thou art damned.’ Is that
not the advice you once gave me? We are the damned. We must survive as we may.
But those infernal and wicked weapons of the new-dead — Surely the walls of
Ilium would have fallen on the first day.” She paused, “Would we have fought
with such demon-weapons of war?”

Calchas gazed
over to the two looming cloth-bound shapes. “Probably. Priam and Agamemnon
would have found some means to destroy one another, no doubt. Man’s capacity
for war outweighs his capacity for reason — and this place is full of the
testimonials to that.”

“They will
fall in dust as vain men are wont to do.” Cassandra told him.

“They won’t
go through with it. It would be suicide. That building will fall down in the
next hell-storm,” Calchas replied, doubtful.

They’d
watched the crowd assemble from a reasonable distance. “Pack up. In case. And I
will try to steer the mayhem from our door to be on the safe side, should the
range of those war-weapons be enough to hit us. Make sure you are careful where
you stand.

“Look there’s
old Assisi. Out for the entertainment, along with everyone else by the looks.
Let’s see — drinks are half-price.” Calchas would not let this opportunity
pass.

Cassandra
nodded, “Where did you get the fire-spitters?”

“Che Guevara
owes me a favor. It might be useful to keep one—just in case. How hard can they
be to use? Look, come there are our two brave heroes.” Calchas separated
himself from Cassandra, still in the guise of the department man, and wandered
over to the two Prophets.

“So,
gentlemen, are we ready to settle this? Remember the winner gets control of
that site, should it still be standing. The loser, or losers . . .will have
more immediate issues to deal with.” Calchas motioned to the nearer of the
covered shapes. “Who would like Big Bertha?”

The Reverend
Henry Prince stared doubtfully at the shape. “That’s not a sword, or a
firearm.”

“Give that
make a Heck-Cookie!” Kevin chortled. He’d been milling and warming up the
onlookers. With a flourish he tugged the cloth away — to reveal a howitzer,
pointing towards the Temple of Woe. It was an evil-looking device, as were many
man-made machines of death. “Humans, they do like to kill one another in all
sorts of inventive ways! Welcome Big Bertha. She’s a friendly girl!”

“And the
other?” Smyth-Pigott asked, his voice tremulous.

They walked
across to a lower-slung shape. “Gentlemen, meet Roaring Meg, the deadly maiden
of the English Roundheads,” Kevin chuckled.

“Not your era, I suppose, but they do the job. They
are primed for combat. Meg has helpers: she fires but one ball at a time, yet
she’s a fiery lass and one of the more knowledgeable operatives of hell has
evened the odds.” Calchas held his palm out, containing dice. “Whoever rolls
snake-eyes gets first choice, but Meg is a little slower, and older, and thus
she fires first.”

“What happens if we refuse this ridiculous plan?”
Henry Prince could not take his eyes from the cannon.

“Refuse? I wasn’t aware that was an option.” Calchas
feigned surprise.

Kevin murmured something in Calchas’ ear, “My
associate says it is an option but if
a refusal is forthcoming then all rights are revoked to build now and for
infernity, Sentence will be the six-hundred and sixty-five years of cleaning
Perish sewers, and you must publicly affirm your rival as the true Chosen One,
the true heir and the ultimate seer. And as both are equally guilty you will
have to work together, and your women too, forever. If both refuse, then it
must be done at exactly the same time. Whomever speaks first is deemed the
greater coward.”

British-born A. L.
Butcher is an avid reader and creator of worlds, a poet, and a dreamer, a lover
of science, natural history, history, and monkeys. Her prose has been described
as ‘dark and gritty’ and her poetry as ‘evocative’. She writes with a sure and
sometimes erotic sensibility of things that might have been, never were, but
could be.

Alex is the
author of the Light Beyond the Storm Chronicles and the Tales
of Erana lyrical fantasy series. She also has several short stories in
the fantasy, fantasy romance genres with occasional forays into gothic style
horror, including the Legacy of the Mask series. With a background in
politics, classical studies, ancient history and myth, her affinities bring an
eclectic and unique flavour in her work, mixing reality and dream in alchemical
proportions that bring her characters and worlds to life.

She also curates
speculative fiction themed book bundles on Pubshare – for the most part – the Here Be Series

Alex is also proud to
be a writer for Perseid Press where her work features in Heroika: Dragon
Eaters, Heroika Skirmishers – where she was editor and cover designer as
well as writer – as well as Lovers in Hell and Mystics in Hell –
part of the acclaimed Heroes in Hell series. http://www.theperseidpress.com/

 

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