QSFer Michelle Schad has a new queer urban fantasy superhero book out (pansexual): Hellfire.
For many, the United States is a land of opportunity and new beginnings – unless you happen to be ‘different’ from everyone else. Hadi Shahir is one of those people, different in more ways than one. Hadi can manipulate fire; he is ‘Evolved’.
All he wants is a new life and new adventures in this land of opportunity. His dreams become endless nightmares, however, that begin with an inexplicable hate crime that leaves the young man traumatized and untrusting of the world around him. A chance encounter with a pretty face cracks that shell, showing him that not everyone in Chicago is out to get him until a rash of violent, deadly fires breaks out around the city.
Suddenly, all eyes focus on Hadi when too many coincidences bring his abilities to the forefront. In a matter of moments, Hadi jumps to the top of the AEC’s most-wanted list. His quiet life as a bartender quickly turns into a tangled mess of chaos, lies, and murder that drag the entire city of Chicago down in flames with the remnants of Hadi’s ruined life.
Graphic violence. Past trauma references. Racial profiling. Drug use.
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Excerpt
Hadi!
He coughed, choking on the rainwater that streamed down the sides of his broken nose. Each droplet dripped down the back of his throat along with the copper tang of his own blood.
Hadi!!
He took another gut punch to the stomach, curling in over the steel toe that delivered the painful blow. He wretched into the puddle beneath him, groaning pitifully after. The kicks continued, bruising his ribs, his sides and hips, his chest and back until he no longer had the strength to keep them away. Instead, he lay there, dead to the world around him, numb to the pain and hateful words spewed at him.
HADI!
The nightmare shattered like a broken window.
A violent hissing replaced the thunderous sound of falling rain. The taste and smell of copper evaporated into the odor of melting plastic.
“Get up!” someone barked in Arabic. The pain of the nightmare still lingered, but something about the barked order made Hadi Shahir’s limbs move, made him sit up and force his eyes open. Half of his room was on fire.
“Shit,” he cursed, immediately absorbing the flames into the palm of his hand. It burned the skin, reminding him of his curse. “Saleh, I’m sorry I-”
“You are late for work,” his cousin, Saleh, said heavily. “Mary already called. She is waiting for you.”
Hadi watched Saleh walk away with the fire extinguisher still in hand. The white foam was everywhere.
There was absolutely nothing left of the television that once sat atop Hadi’s dresser. He could hear Nima, Saleh’s wife, asking if everything was all right as Saleh left the room and their baby girl crying from all the commotion Hadi caused.
The nightmare was the same every night.
Author Bio
From a young age, there have been voices inside of Michelle’s head. No, not those kinds of voices – or, maybe they are; who really knows? Rather than fear those voices, Michelle wrangled them like wild mustangs on the prairie, make each one bend to her will in its own time. Well, what does that mean?
It means that Michelle has been writing stories of the fantastic, the horrific, and the mysterious for as long as her little fingers have been able to hold a pen and probably longer, but memory only goes back so far. In a world that passes for ‘normal’, she is all of the ‘normal’ things one might expect: mother, wife, keeper of fur-babies. She is also a student of life, meaning if there is something to learn, she will learn it, thus making her a veritable font of only partially useful knowledge.
The whimsy and ChAoS that actually controls the rest of Michelle’s existence has earned her a place in two different arenas so far: Bards and Sages Quarterly and Corrugated Sky Publishing. While wielding the unwieldiness of words is her primary function, she is also an avid crafter, collector of “creepy” ball-jointed dolls, and can run through a Target in under an hour with only two extra items from her intended list. Talent!
Coming soon–the next book in her Beyond Human Series, PARADOX Release Date: TBD
You can find more about her on her website at https://tamingchaos.net/
| Author Website | https://tamingchaos.net/ |
| Author Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/tamingchaos2017/ |
| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/ChelleSchad |
Love!