Welcome Anneli Purchase. I’m showing off
Anneli’s beautiful new cover for Orion’s Gift, which I must say looks hugely
intriguing. Anneli’s here to share a little bit more about it.
Thanks to Anita B. Carroll’s design skills,
you can now judge a book by its cover,
Sylvia, our California girl, is walking
away (from her old life), but she looks enticing enough for Kevin, her new love
interest, to follow her. Actually, he did say he’d follow her anywhere—and he
does.
But will it be enough? Does our California
girl trust him? Can she ever trust anyone again after what she’s been through?
Can he convince her that they can make it together?
But neither of them know that characters
from their old life are catching up with them, and their pursuers have less
than noble intentions.
Orion’s Gift will keep you turning pages.
Excerpt from Orion’s Gift:
Sylvia is driving the Baja
Peninsula. It’s the day before she meets Kevin, her new love interest. Her van
has a flat tire. She is alone (with only Annie, her mascot doll, hanging from
the curtain rod) on the empty Baja highway.
Heatwaves rose from the
pavement as far as I could see in either direction. It was unlikely that anyone
would be coming along, but to be safe, I set up my emergency triangles. I
didn’t want to get creamed by a crazy driver. And what about those bandidos
Rose had told me about? A shiver of fear passed through me. I should hurry up
and get this tire changed. I couldn’t shake off the creepy feeling. Don’t be so paranoid, I told myself. All
the same, I placed my bear spray on the passenger seat.
Clumsily, I inserted the
jack handle and turned it to raise the car. The van started to roll. I grabbed
the nearest rock and put it behind the back wheel. I put one more behind each
of the other wheels and pulled on the emergency brake. Then I raised the van
again. I tried to loosen the wheel nuts. The tire spun around. I lowered the
van a bit till the tire barely touched the ground. Better. It was trial and
error, but I was learning. I raised the van a tiny bit again, got the old tire
off, and rolled the spare over. As I fitted the spare onto the bolts, a compact
car with a noisy muffler rattled up behind me and stopped.
A young Mexican in
scruffy jeans and a black shirt jumped out. “Hola!” he said. “You need help?” He was alone.
“Thanks. I’m almost
done.” Where was he when I needed him ten minutes ago?
“Permítame. Manuel Hernandez will do it for you.” He shoved me
aside. The push was harder than the friendly nudge of a man saying, “Step
aside, honey, and let a man do that.” I didn’t like it, and my fluttering
stomach warned me to be careful. But he was already tightening the nuts on the
wheel. The job was finished.
I took the jack and
wrench from him and put them into the van through the open sliding door. As I
turned my back to him, he laughed and said, “And now, pretty señorita,
I will take my thank you.”
His grip on my arm sent adrenaline rushing to my knees.
I thought they had turned to jelly. Thoughts of Mario and his unwanted
attentions flashed through my head. No one was around to save me this time. I
smiled and said, “Ah sí, momento. Mi bolsa.” With my free arm, I reached for
the front seat. I hoped he would think I was getting my purse. The bear spray
hit him full in the face. He spun away backwards and roared with outrage,
filling the quiet desert air with Spanish obscenities. Recovering slightly, he
staggered towards me cursing and batting at me blindly. I gave him a shove and
another spray. While he lay in the ditch shrieking and gasping and moaning, I
ran to his car and took the keys out of the ignition. Then I slammed shut the
van’s side door, jumped into the driver’s seat, and locked all the doors. “You
can have your keys back,” I shouted at him. “I’ll drop them on the road one
mile from here.”
He lurched to his feet and yelled. He shook his fist at
me, and staggered in my direction. As he slammed his fist into the side of the
van, I punched the gas pedal. The tires squealed on the hot pavement. My hands
were shaking so badly I could hardly steer.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Calm down, calm down.”
I glanced at Annie. She wouldn’t panic. But I wasn’t Annie. “I should never
have come here alone.” I babbled incoherently, aware of what I was doing but
unable to stop.
About Anneli Purchase:
Anneli Purchase has more hobbies and
projects than she can pursue in one lifetime, but of them all, writing takes
priority. Traveling, camping, fishing, gardening, mushroom picking, and
birdwatching are her preferred pastimes when she is not writing. Anneli has
lived on Vancouver Island, Canada, for most of her life. The island provides
everything she needs for the activities she enjoys.
Links:
You can buy Orion’s Gift from
To find out more about Anneli Purchase and her books visit:
Twitter: @anneli33
Website: http://www.anneli-purchase.com
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