I am excited to welcome author SG Reding, who is celebrating the release of her new novel, Ourselves.
They have always been among us.
An ancient, enigmatic race, the Nahan have protected their secret world by cultivating the myths of fanged, bloodsucking monsters that haunt legends. Yet they walk through our world as our coworkers and our neighbors, hiding in plain sight and coexisting in peace. They survive…and they prosper.
A shy young dreamer, Tomas wanders through his life with help from his good friends and influential family on the ruling Council. Now, he’s decided his future lies with the Nahan’s most elite class: the mysterious Storytellers. But his family is troubled by his new choice—and by his new girlfriend, Stell, a wild, beautiful, and deadly outcast from a fanatical Nahan sect.
As Tomas descends into the dark wonders of the Nahan’s most powerful culture, Stell answers her own calling as an exceptional assassin. But when a lethal conspiracy threatens their destinies, Tomas and Stell must unite their remarkable talents against the strongest—and most sinister—of their kind.
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Exclusive Excerpt of Chapter One from Ourselves
Everyone thought there was something wrong with Tomas. He knew it. And they were probably right. His cousin Louis had spent a lifetime taking care of him – defending him in school-yard fights and smoothing things over for him socially. Aricelli and other girls in their group hid their eye rolls, ruffling his hair and treating him more like a puppy than a guy. It wasn’t just because he was the youngest in the group either, although that didn’t help. Especially since it took him longer to graduate from high school than anyone else.
Even among the Nahan, twenty-four was a little old to be taking high school chemistry.
The Nahan aged differently than the common, much more slowly, so it wasn’t unheard of to take that long to graduate but it was more than just being a late bloomer. Tomas could never get the hang of social interaction. Louis assured him that even with his awkwardness, his looks more than made up for his shortcomings with the girls. Or would if he ever got up the courage to try.
The problem was, his problem wasn’t just with girls. It was people in general – Nahan and common. Crowds unnerved Tomas and four voices speaking in a room at a time sounded like thousands to him. The Nahan community in Deerfield assumed he was just shy, sheltered as he was by his socially cunning cousin, and so let Tomas slide under the radar. But now he had graduated, a moment the group had been waiting for so everyone could take their avalentu, the Nahan word for flight.
That was the plan for the summer, to map out their routes, to solidify their arrangements, and pick their travel mates. Tomas would travel with Louis. Aricelli and Kitty would no doubt travel together. They’d crisscross the country, away from their families and the watchful eye of the Council for the first times in their lives. There would be no Heritage School, no parents, no rules. They could explore and party and feed from the common with a freedom they never knew at home. Avalentu served as a rite of passage into adulthood for the Nahan and the thought of it scared the crap out of Tomas.
But he’d come to his grandparents’ farm here in upstate New York as he did every summer. Louis and Aricelli and the others would be showing up soon as they always did. They’d have a few weeks to get the last pieces of advice and to make their last-minute arrangements and then they’d be off.
Tomas would be in a pick-up truck for weeks with Louis. His cousin wanted to head west. There would be bars and parties and festivals. There would be girls both Nahan and common. There would be guys too for Louis, who made no effort to hide his preference. And for Tomas there would be an unrelenting pressure to interact and open up and drown himself in the hammering wall of noise that came with people people people.
So he’d run up onto the mountain.
The higher he ran up the eastern side of the slope, the calmer he felt. Noises from the town below him fell away and the feel of voices ringing in his ears grew fainter with each step. He didn’t worry about getting lost; he’d been running on this hill every summer of his life although today he’d climbed higher than ever before. The mountain leveled out here and there and the forest stretched out in every direction. He heard a creek running behind a thicket of blackberry bushes and Tomas didn’t let himself question the wisdom of charging through the thorny bushes in just his shorts and t-shirt.
And there in the clearing stood a completely naked girl.
Tomas felt his cheeks redden and could feel his usual stammer coming on but something about the way she just stood there smiling at him made his nerves melt away. She looked nothing like the girls in his group and not just because she was naked. Her long, black hair hung matted and clumped with leaves and dirt and he’d never seen eyes so pale. She didn’t move to hide herself. Mud streaked across her small breast and green and brown stains on her kneecaps broke up the line of her long, slim legs.
She looked like a wild creature.
“I’m Stell,” she said and he heard Nahan in her voice. “All the time. I’m only ever Stell.”
Something inside his chest loosened. He couldn’t think of anywhere he would rather be at that or any moment. He thought that Louis would be proud of him for stepping forward and taking the girl’s hand. They sat together on the moss and started to talk.
Excerpted from Ourselves by S.G. Redling. Copyright 2015. Published By 47North. Used by permission of the publisher. Not for reprint without permission.
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Meet SG Redling!
S. G. Redling hosted a morning radio program for fifteen years before turning to writing. A graduate of Georgetown University, she was a finalist in the 2011 Esquire Short Short Fiction Contest. She is the author of The Widow File, Redemption Key, Damocles, Flowertown, and Braid: Three Twisted Stories. She currently resides in her home state of West Virginia.
Contact Info: Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads | Amazon
Want to purchase SG Reding’s novels?
Ourselves
Flowertown
Damocles
Braid: Three Twisted Stories
Dani Britton
