Category: 2020 NaNowrimo

A Cold Night for Alligators by Viggy Parr Hampton

After getting passed over for a promotion yet again, Dr. Archibald Gruber, a seasoned epidemiologist with the CDC, is ready to do whatever it takes to earn what he deserves—even if it means putting himself in danger.

His opportunity to prove his worth arises when the CDC team dispatched to solve a mysterious outbreak in nearby Savannah comes back puzzled and empty-handed. Throwing his usual sense of risk aversion to the wayside, Gruber decides to go rogue and travel to Savannah to solve the outbreak himself.

When his investigation leads him to the sinister, long-abandoned theme park Gullywasher’s of Georgia, Dr. Gruber crosses paths with Sid and Zeb Barkov, a pair of YouTuber brothers intent on filming their exploration escapades inside the notoriously creepy park. Unfortunately for all three, a paranoid drug dealer has made the old park her center of operations, and she’s managed to awaken the unquiet, hungry forces that call the park home.

Inspired by the author’s real-life work as a botulism epidemiologist at the CDC, A Cold Night for Alligators is science-speckled horror debut that showcases the disastrous consequences that can arise when we mess with things we don’t understand.

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Zahra and the Golden Scarab of Balihar by Michael Grayford

Sixteen year-old Zahra spends her days toiling away as a servant in the sultan’s palace, her mind filled with absurd daydreams of marrying Prince Amir. When he requests her as his personal assistant, she thinks it’s only a matter of time before he falls for her amazing charm and wit. But then she overhears the vizier plotting to use a demon’s love spell to make the prince fall in love with his daughter. She rushes to stop him and causes the spell to misfire, making the prince fall in love with her instead.

Hunted by the furious vizier, Zahra flees. The love-struck Amir tracks her down, and his ridiculous fawning makes her realize that love means nothing if it’s not real. To prove his feelings are true, Amir suggests they seek the Golden Scarab of Balihar, a magical treasure holding a jinni with the power to grant one’s every wish, including breaking a demon’s spell.

As they hunt for the Golden Scarab, Zahra realizes her wonderful charm won’t work on things like giant scorpions, earth-born warriors, or living caves. And when they learn the vizier’s demon wants to use the power of Amir’s royal blood to enact a vicious plan of revenge, she realizes she’ll have to use more than charisma and wishes to save the kingdom and her prince… and get her chance at true love.

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Lost to Follow Up by Adele Blackler

Simone Reilly has perfected flying under the radar in her years as a lab technician at BioDesign. While she quietly did her work, she watched her ambitious co-workers ask too many questions of the chief technology officer, Henry Gutter, and be escorted to the door.  Now, her years of acquiescence have paid off. She receives a coveted promotion just as BioDesign is starting its first human trials, and has a lucrative buyout beckoning. 

Simone should be excited to manage the trial, and work with the brilliant Dr. Goddard, who implants the BioDesign brain stimulator in children with cerebral palsy. But her new boss seems to have a pill problem, the nurse who was her conduit for information vanishes, and patients and evidence keep disappearing. When a patient needs emergency surgery, Simone presses for an investigation into the device. But before the investigation can start, Simone’s boss dies under mysterious circumstances, and Simone begins to realize she can’t trust anyone.

Simone races to prove the device is failing before more sick kids are put on the operating table, but is faced with scared families, company lawyers and non-disclosure agreements, and threats against her own life. 

As answers elude Simone, one thing becomes clear. No life is sacred in this trial. 

Adele Blackler has a PhD in Pharmacology and works as a clinical trial manager for a medical device company. Lost To Follow Up is a medical mystery that examines who pays the ultimate price when human clinical trials go wrong.

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Doctor of Doctors by Lally Pia

With a chisel and scalpel I can remove a human head within forty seconds. Three years into my practice of this macabre craft I checked out of this dead end job, applied to medical school, and became a psychiatrist. The heads I work with now talk back to me–––a mixed blessing, at times…  

My memoir, “Doctor of doctors” is a 90,000-word cultural adventure through four continents. It follows the path of an immigrant whose journey is besieged with setbacks. A bungled U.S. green card application separated me from my family. When medical school closed due to political turmoil, the timing could not have been worse. I was forced to leave Ghana and placed in limbo for two years. Later, single motherhood sent me on a sojourn into the depths of the welfare system. This far from rosy start to my life as a naturalized American citizen made me highly skeptical of the prophecy of a Sri Lankan fortune teller, who told my dad that I would become a physician one day.

I hope to inspire other young adults who have wanted to give up when life gets dark. Over 20,000 people online have already viewed my interview of a day in the life of a psychiatrist, and I believe they will be motivated and entertained by the path that led me there. It will also hopefully blast a hole into the concept that our country needs yet another wall.

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The Color of Trauma by Hollie Smurthwaite

THE COLOR OF TRAUMA, a supernatural suspense novel, is complete at 99,000 words. The book will appeal to readers who enjoy the style and voice of ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE and the pacing and genre combining of Kelley Armstrong.

Kiera Brayleigh is a professional memory reader. Experiencing people’s traumatic memories makes normality impossible, but she’s hoping for functional. Or maybe normal adjacent.

Dean Matthson, a Chicago homicide detective, is troubled by his talent for understanding the worst of humanity. But he doesn’t have time for introspection; he’s hunting a serial killer. At a dead end, he attempts to recruit a memory reader.

Kiera can’t believe what Dean is asking. Only an idiot would peek into a coma patient’s vicious assault memory. Kiera, it turns out, is an idiot. But Dean doesn’t see her that way. Breaking down their boundaries, Kiera and Dean find themselves in an intense affair, but neither is sure they are worthy of love. And both wonder how broken is too broken.

As the pair struggles, the killer discovers Kiera’s involvement, making it a race to find the killer before he finds Kiera.

I won the 2019 Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Manuscript Project contest with THE COLOR OF TRAUMA. I am a member of Off-Campus Writers’ Workshop (OCWW), Sisters In Crime, and the Chicago Writer’s Association.

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Overcast by R.H. Tyrrel

Dyson Vadas is back for senior year and Leia Valerious is fuming. 

Because Dyson is dangerous.  

Leia has not forgotten the attack on Kaye in 8thgrade. Without enough evidence to convict, charges were dropped and Kaye’s parents moved her across the country. Dyson’s elusive parents moved him too. 

But now, Dyson is back, charming the student body with his half mouthed smile. Dyson, who never eats, never tires, and always smells strongly of sunscreen. And now Leia is stuck with Dyson in not one, or two, but three classes. To Leia’s dismay, and against her protests, Dyson keeps inserting himself into her life. 

Armed with rage, determination, and her best friend Venus, Leia struggles to find the courage to stand up to Dyson and prove Dyson is more than what he seems. 

Midwestern public school can be the 9thcircle of hell or a funky pop song experience depending on the people. Growing up in the early 2000’s and frustrated by society’s justice system, I craved a story where the monster, literally and figuratively is not given any sympathy or romantic musings from the heroine. 

I hold a double BFA in Creative Writing and Acting from the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, 2011. Previous Publications include, Anything But Ladylike, Quite Shorts 2011, Uprooted,Poetry on Buses 2014, Blue Paint, Seattle Fringe Festival 2016, and co-author The Fog Machine Play, 2017, produced by Copious Love Productions. 

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THE EAGLE ORDER by Judy L Mohr

ER doctor by day, assassin by night. It’s a cushy job until you get the assignment of your life.

It’s another job done as Alexa gets up from the bed of the man she just killed, but when her mark turns out to be the sixth employee of a genetics research firm to die in three months, Alexa becomes determined to learn the secrets that truly exist in THE EAGLE ORDER—an elite group of assassins selectively bred for the purpose. With rituals and traditions that can kill, assuming you survived to adulthood, and the bodies of pregnant women being disposed of in a volcanic sinkhole, things need to change.

But the head of THE EAGLE ORDER has disappeared, believed to have gone rogue. If Alexa wants answers, and her freedom, she must accept what might well be her last mission: to hunt down the rogue and bring her in dead or alive. There’s only one problem: the rogue taught Alexa everything she knows about being an Eagle. The rogue is her mother.

THE EAGLE ORDER is an adult thriller, with light science fiction elements, complete at 96,000 words. If Max of Dark Angel fame was to become the next Red Sparrow, the steps she would take to claim her freedom and protect the ones she loves would be incalculable.

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American Fledgling by Kirkley Mehndiratta

I guess that the best way to tell you my story is to tell you how I came up with the idea for it.  I was inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote about liberty and safety. He said that if you trade liberty for a measure of safety, you end up with neither.  

What if this idea came out of a little-known adventure that Benjamin Franklin experienced well before he was a founding father?

My 80,000-word middle-grade novel, American Fledgling, is an alternate history with fantastical elements. On the night of his kite and key experiment, a witch turns Benjamin Franklin into a turkey. As a turkey, Benjamin has until Thanksgiving day to get the presidential pardon to break the spell. The future of American democracy hangs in the balance.  American Fledgling is ultimately a story about the fragility of democracy and the power one can have—for good or for ill—to shape the course of history.

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The Last Thing She Thought by Laurie Feldman

Rachel Chambers is a white, single mother who has spent the last 18 years focused on only one thing – raising her biracial son, Eli.  At eighteen, he is killed during a police encounter leaving Rachel unmoored and barely able to function. After receiving Eli’s battered cell phone from the pathologist, she discovers he had a secret girlfriend, Jamira.  Developing a relationship with her gives Rachel the opportunity to learn more about her son, and feels like a meaningful way to keep him alive, in her heart and in her mind. Jamira introduces Rachel to the Black Lives Matter movement and pushes her to insist on a fair investigation.  Though Rachel struggles with acceptance into the group, eventually her new allies help her to engage with the police commission to hold her son’s killer accountable. She begins a romantic relationship with a BLM member, allowing her to envision a fulfilling future, until she is reminded that justice is elusive.  Rachel is then faced with a cruel choice: abandon her quest and invest in a life without Eli or go outside the system to hold law enforcement responsible. She decides she must sacrifice her own life in order to the hold the policemen responsible for her son’s death to account. Rachel’s solution is to detonate a suicide vest at the police station with Eli’s killers in the room.

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