Authors

In reply to Tharaniya.

The cover will probably be a bit delayed this time due to the slowness of the edits. Title should be relatively soon.

In reply to Selma.

First I’ve heard of that! According to my publishers they’re still aiming for November 2026.

In reply to Selma.

2027

In reply to Benedict.

That’s wonderful news! A retailer’s website listed march 27th as the publishing date for book 4 so that had me a little worried for a moment.

In reply to Benedict.

That is great news – looking forward to Book#4!

In reply to Bill.

Love the books, but I have to absolutely agree with you on the last point, especially.

In reply to Bill.

I think he also has one that he wears around his neck as a necklace.

In reply to Hubert.

It shouldn’t delay things. Book 4 is still on track to release this November, and Book 5 is currently on track to release a year after that.

Given the timing of the book 4 edits, curious what you think this will do to the release dates of the rest of the books (particularly for books 4 and 5), if that’s something you can share?

Thank you very much for the update on Book#4. I’m assuming that there will be further world-building, perhaps when the edits are complete, these expand our knowledge of Stephen’s world and add to our enjoyment of the whole IoM series. However, I can see why they wouldn’t fit within the Novels themselves but are an amazing bonus for fans to peruse while waiting for the next book in the series. They are also, so far, factual (I think?) so missing out on speculation on the ‘grey areas’ of the world such as the mysterious powerful groups in the background, influencing a lot of the world’s major events.

I can understand that you don’t want to include spoilers with the world-builders, but think (perhaps?) that your readers would be justified in knowing as much as Stephen does at this stage in the series? I’m thinking Primal and Dimensional Drucraft and how these can be used. We haven’t heard in the books that he has tried these but even if he hasn’t found wells and tried/failed to fashion Sigls he must has seen some indications on what range of sigls be structured from the what’s offered in the Exchange Catalogue?

Stephen has also met “the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen” and has been thrown into close proximity to her with his Personal Security work. While I am not expecting the series to morph into a Romance Novel, although I would guess that his post-teenage hormones mush be firing at each encounter? I was hoping that interactions between the two of them would figure in his narrative of events, rather than they suddenly emerge as a couple (as Alex and Ann did in the previous series).

Happy Friday!

The Random Number Generator performed its duty and gave us the winner of the vellum overlay set for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me:

Congratulations, Erin Phillippi!

I will contact Erin from the modr@ilona-andrews.com email address. If we don’t hear back by Thursday, May 14, a new winner will be drawn next Friday.

What are these?

For anyone who missed it, Ilona made a video explaining and demonstrating the vellum inserts, which you can find here.

Briefly: vellum overlays are not art prints. They are semi-transparent character portraits printed on softly textured vellum, which is a frosted, slightly cloudy specialty paper that lets the art show through while giving it a muted, layered effect. They are designed to be tucked into the hardcover book or placed over a page, not framed as standalone wall art.

The vellum overlays will be available as a set of six in the Ilona Andrews merch store when it reopens. I don’t have an official date for the opening yet, and House Andrews are still working out whether international availability is possible. The best way to make sure you don’t miss the announcement is to subscribe to the Ilona Andrews newsletter.

At the moment, the set will include only the six character portraits by Helena Elias: Clover, Solentine Dagarra, Ramond vi Everard, the Sun Margrave, Doran Arvel and the Man from the Garden.

If you are looking for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me art prints, reminder that many of the commissioned artists have prints available directly through their own stores, which is covered and linked in this post. Buying from them is a wonderful way to support the artists and their original, human-made work, taking a stand against AI content.

Speaking of AI and spam, a quick online safety reminder: please stay vigilant for scammers. House Andrews will never ask you to cover postage costs, pay fees, or make any kind of money transfer connected to these giveaways. Winners are announced here on the blog, and we will only contact you from an official Ilona Andrews account or email address, with the link to the public blog post as proof that you are indeed the winner.

May your weekend bring good times, good tidings, and yummy snacks!

Note from Ilona – we should have the first batch of vellum next week. We will be doing a trial run of 120 sheets, with 20 sets of 6. We have never acted as a fulfillment center before, so we want to make sure that we iron out any kinks before fully unleashing the Horde. If you miss the opportunity to order, don’t panic. We will be doing a larger print run, and this vellum is printed locally by a small business, so it’s not shipping in from overseas and it will be available much faster.

The post This Kingdom Vellum Overlay Giveaway Winner first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Wait.. Doesn’t Stephen wear most of his sigls as rings?

I overslept, and my day started with an outraged cat.

Over the past few days, a road crew has been working on the street next to our house. They are repaving it. The road is closed, and Gordon observed the workers having heated words with a driver of a delivery truck this morning. We might be trapped today.

Because of the road crew, we are keeping Tuna inside. Tuna started life as a stray who wandered randomly around an apartment complex, and breaking him of wanting to go outside is impossible. He has two acres here, and he is very much the lord of his domain. Today His Majesty was refused access to the outside. The inability to inspect his lands didn’t sit well, so he made himself into a nuisance.

Tuna: Pet me! Pet me! Pet me! Look, I meow by the door. Open door. OPEN DOOR.

Me, trying to clean up: No.

The allergies have been terrible, and neither of us is sleeping that well. I was shopping for some Halls cough drops and saw that instead of puny bags, they now come in full scale large jars. Of course, I bought a jar. It was delivered yesterday with saline spray and Flonase, and being too tired, I plopped all of that on my writing tray in the office. I need the tray to write.

Me, gathering items to take to the medicine cabinet.

Tuna: TREATS.

Me: No, you fool. These are not Temptation treats.

Tuna: TREATS.

Me: It’s cough drops!

Tuna: If not treats, why treat shaped? TREATS.

Tuna Vision

I gave him treats. The vet will fuss at me again over his weight, but there are limits to human patience.

I come to you with a mission this morning. The book is now 185K. It is very clear that there is no room left for anything else in our lives. I still have not unpacked. Or sent things out. Mod R will have strong words with me here soon if I keep failing.

We need assistance, or we will never get the shop back off the ground, and our time is better spent writing. To that end, we hired a designer to help us turn the treasure trove of art into merch. Here is some of her work.

These bookmarks will be included in the media package. We have secured a printer for the vellum, so we will be bringing to you a media pack with vellum, stickers, and bookmarks.

Do you have any favorite quotes or moments you want reflected in This Kingdom merch? Please leave us a comment below. If you are dying for something from the other series, you can throw it in there too, but we are focusing on This Kingdom as it is the latest release.

The comment section to this post contains SPOILERS. Read at your own risk.

The post Cats and Bookmarks first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to head over to Storybundle  to pick up a copy, along with ebooks by Darcy Pattison, Douglas Smith, Ron Collins, Tracy Cooper-Posey and others.

Everything in this Storybundle is exclusive, including The Write Attitude. So if you want to read it now, pick it up from Storybundle. The bundle will end in 9 days, so hurry on over. If you don’t want a deal on the ebook or if you only read print, then you can always preorder the book on various retailer sites starting next month. The new edition will release in July.

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post appeared on my Patreon page in November of 2025, and is one of the early chapters in the book.

SOUNDING LIKE YOURSELF

From 2025

In a Billboard article about Addison Rae, I came across a useful Miles Davis quote. (Billboard, August 13, 2025.) She cited the quote this way:

Sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.

Wow. That hit home. But before I used it to base a blog post on, I looked it up. I was worried that it really wasn’t a Miles Davis quote or that it was a misquote (although it didn’t sound like one). What I found was that there are two versions of this quote, which leads me to believe that the jazz great remarked on this a lot.

The other version of the quote says:

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

And I think I like that one better, although both quotes are useful. For those of you who don’t know who Miles Davis was, he was one of the most influential musicians of the mid-twentieth century. He is definitely one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time.

If you are not familiar with him or his work, start at his website, milesdavis.com, and scan outward. You are probably familiar with a lot of his music, particularly if you’re a jazz fan.

The reason I like both quotes is that they have at least two different meanings, three if you think of them from the point of view of a prose writer.

The first quote: It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

That’s all about voice. Yes, Miles Davis, Addison Rae, and vocal coach Eric Vetro (who first showed Rae the quote) were talking about a musical voice—about sounding like no one else by channeling your own inner vision.

Which is what the best writers do. (That’s why the worst copy editors aren’t the ones who introduce mistakes; they’re the ones who put some writer’s manuscript into “perfect” grammar, ruining their voice.) If you listen to Stephen King reading his own work, his inflections and pauses are not surprising because he knows how to write them into the prose. (His accent or the tone of his voice might surprise you, but nothing more than that.)

Stephen King, former English teacher, found his own voice as a young boy and then learned how to transmit that voice, via the tool of a manuscript, into the brain of a reader. What he does is an extremely difficult skill, and one I aspire to. That’s why I typed Mick Herron’s work into my computer a while back (see the previous chapter), so that I could learn how someone else did things.

The more tools you have in the toolbox, the better writer you will be.

If you don’t read much fiction or you don’t read much fiction anymore, as so many writers say, then you’ve stopped accumulating tools. As long as I breathe, I will be reading. And the fascinating part to me is that I see writers do things that I thought were impossible or things I’ve never thought of. Or, Mick Herron’s case, he does things that someone, somewhere, decades ago, had warned me away from. (The opening to each Slough House book is an astonishing exercise in setting the stage as well as the characters and the themes of each book.)

Here’s the tough part. Once you sound like yourself, your writing will seem bland to you. Because you live with that voice in your head each and every day.

So that’s the voice part.

That’s the first part of sounding like yourself.

The second part is this: You must defend your voice, your “sound.” Sure, it might be “wrong” to use a dozen semi-colons in a single paragraph, but Herron does it to such great effect (sometimes in a single sentence) that the reader doesn’t notice them.

I didn’t realize the man uses a million semi-colons until I typed in his work. I’m semi-colon lite, dash heavy, which, I thought, made me a much more breathless writer than he is, but his work continually proves me wrong.

I’m sure some silly copy editor somewhere tried, once upon a time, to edit out all of his semi-colons and to make his honkin’ long single-sentence paragraphs into many sentences, and from what I can tell, the man slapped them down.

There’s another component to voice, though, and it has nothing to do with words and grammar and punctuation. It’s subject matter. It’s characterization. It’s something I discussed after the Herron piece. It’s the ability to “go there,” wherever there is. (See chapter 10.) To write the stuff that frightens us, that makes us original, that might get us in trouble with the readers or in some cases, the government.

It’s the stuff that doesn’t fall into genre lines.

I was having a discussion a few weeks back with someone I was considering working with on a future project. That person insisted we use trope charts, like so many writers have started to do in Kickstarters.

Tropes are well and good, if used sparingly. As a romance reader, I want to see—either from the sales copy or from a trope listing—that the book in my hand uses the enemies-to-lovers trope or is a small-town romance. I want to avoid a guardian-ward historical trope because…yucky!

So a one-line description or acknowledgement of the trope is a good thing, especially in books where the ending is prescribed, like a romance (happily ever after) or a cozy mystery (amateur solves a stakes-free murder).

But other than that—a tropes chart? You might as well put two gigantic signs on your work. The first sign says, Read something else because this book is on rails. The second sign says, This book is mediocre. There are no surprises here. There’s a third sign, but only if someone dares to crack open a book based on a tropes chart. And that sign says This writer has no idea what tropes are. The ones listed here are not in the book.

Whoops.

Writers who sound like themselves can’t write books that can be boiled down into a tropes chart. Sure, the overall trope might work because that might form the heart of the book. (I’m thinking of enemies to lovers here in a romance trope.) But going beyond that would harm the reading experience if the writer is writing from their heart.

That’s why writers who are really good at sounding like themselves often have trouble selling their fiction to set markets, particularly traditional markets. Those markets want something they can sell, and a book that’s on rails is easier to market to a consumer than a book that is, at its core, like nothing a reader has ever seen before.

That’s why this quote comes from Miles Davis. His website has this sentence on the home page:

Miles Davis made music that grew from an uncanny talent to hear the future and a headstrong desire to play it.

Note the phrases here. “Uncanny talent.” In other words, he did things no one else dared. “Hear the future.” I might disagree with that one on some level, because on that level, Davis invented the future that his website claimed he heard. And, the most important phrase, “a headstrong desire to play it.”

Later this little biographical snippet points out that Davis never stopped fighting for his art. That’s my memory of him. He wasn’t as respected in his lifetime as he became later, even though no one dared argue with the impact he was having. I worked in listener-sponsored radio in Wisconsin and was immersed in jazz. We could play all kinds of jazz for our listeners and they supported the programming with their dollars.

The other local jazz station was much more conservative. They played traditional melodic jazz, things we call standards now, and would go to modern jazz after 10 p.m. when most Midwesterners went to bed. Even then, you wouldn’t find a lot of Miles Davis on that station. The powers that be loathed his work.

I think that’s the other side of this. You have to become good enough to force people to have opinions about your work. “Having opinions” means they’ll love it or they’ll hate it. What is most important, though, is that they won’t forget it.

These mediocre, “properly written” works? The ones with the voice edited out of them, with the vision troped to death? Those will be forgotten the moment that the reader closes the book.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to be accused of being mediocre. Love or hate my work, that’s up to the reader. But finding it dull or predictable…well, then, I’ve done something wrong.

The second quote from Miles Davis is my favorite. I think it might more accurately reflect what he’s getting at, especially if you’re familiar with his music.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

Yeah, I know. He’s talking about playing music, often onstage. He was the master of improvisation, but even in the improvisation, the listener knew they were listening to Miles Davis. His perspective was that original.

But what I love here is the word “play.” I love watching jazz musicians in particular improvise. Somewhere in the middle of what they’re doing, they’ll grin at each other. They’re having fun. They’re creating something new, something unexpected, and it gives them joy.

This type of musicianship is why I don’t miss a Keith Urban residency when he’s in Las Vegas. He performs intensely and playfully, goofing around much more than other residency performers I’ve seen. I wasn’t a big fan (or much of a fan at all) when I first saw him perform, and now I go to watch the playful musicianship.

Writers need to play as well. We need to experiment. We need to risk failure. We need to jangle some chords, try a different instrument, and go far, far, far off the beaten path.

That means we’ll miss sometimes, but it also means that when we hit, the work will be powerful.

When I talk about play, I’m not saying that writers should only write something light and “fun.” Instead, I’m talking about experimentation, about risking everything, about free-floating ideas from our own subconscious even if those ideas make us feel uncomfortable.

We should also go for different formats and different genres, different lengths and different ideas than we’ve explored before. We might not be onstage riffing with our friends, but we should write in that same spirit of improvisational play.

We need to be uniquely ourselves as writers. And as Miles Davis said (and yes, he wrote his own stuff), it takes a long time to achieve that.

But finding yourself as a writer? That’s worth the time spent.

“Sounding Like Yourself” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This ebook, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

 

Check out this all new Dresden Files Novella today!

I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation with short video. Sometimes I add audio, but every now and then I do something that’s imagery and text. I’ve done that here, with the video I did for Dean Wesley Smith’s current Kickstarter campaign.  There was simply too much information to cram into a talky video, so I didn’t. I let images do the work.

If you like what you see here, head over to the campaign. You’ll find it here.

You know what? Even if you don’t like the video, head over to the campaign. There’s lots to love in it.

Enjoy!

https://kriswrites.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Five-Science-Fiction-Collections-high-quality.mp4

I did not get much sleep last night. I am relying on tea and sheer will, so let’s hope I make sense. We have an art print roundup for you this morning, with several options from the artists who worked on This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.

A note about shipping: a lot of the artists we work with are outside the US. The shipping costs have risen sharply, in large part due to the tariffs. If you want a signed print and you are in the US, you might have to pay more.

Because of this, all of the artists on this list offer INPRNT art. These prints are not signed museum quality but are still beautiful. They are more reasonably priced and have US domestic shipping rates.

So: INPRNT = unsigned print, local shipping for US.

Luisa Preissler

Fine art prints and collectible character cards featuring illustrations by Luisa Preissler, created for the world of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews.

The prints are museum-quality giclée prints. Each one is hand-signed by the artist and available exclusively during a limited pre-order window.

Also available is a set of collectible character cards featuring Maggie & Everard, finished with gold details. The cards include foil stamping on both sides and rounded corners — designed to be displayed rather than stored away.

Pre-order period: May 1st – May 15th, 2026 (closes 8 PM CEST / Berlin time). All items are produced after the pre-order closes and are expected to begin shipping May 29th.

You can shop the signed fine art prints and character cards here:
https://luisapreissler.de/collections/all

Please note for US customers: due to current customs regulations, shipping is only available via DHL Express, which is significantly more expensive, and import duties may apply on arrival.

For a more budget-friendly option, the unsigned prints are available via INPRNT:
https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/luisapreissler/. This option does not include the custom character cards, however.

Helena Elias

Helena’s shop offers high quality collector prints in two sizes. They are giclée printing quality on matte museum paper.

She is located in Australia, so all prices are in Australian dollars (AUD); however, the prints are fulfilled through an international distributor. So while you are paying in AUD, your shipping will be domestic if you are in US and you won’t have to wait for your prints to clear customs.

Candice Slater

Candice Slater offers the landmarks of Kair Toren and Inheritance art through INPRNT.

The prints are unsigned, with domestic US shipping, and some are also available as posters, minis, framed prints, and stickers.

Leesha Hannigan

Leesha also offers art prints through INPRNT. While I do not see Sushi there right now, I am pretty sure she was going to add her. However, you can shop all of the other amazing art she has. The doggie. Look at the doggie!

Don’t forget to enter the vellum giveaway by signing up for our newsletter.

A reminder that our Merch Store will not offer art prints. We are doing vellum hardback inserts and the usual merch items like T-shirts, cups etc. If you want art prints, please order directly from the artists.

PS Mod R:

Ilona wrote this blog post for us, but she has a lot on her plate, so I’ve set myself as the author to ensure the comments come only to me and don’t flood her inbox. There is no deep conspiracy here, I’m certain we would all prefer House Andrews to focus on what they do best!

The post Art Print Roundup first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Thanks for the article! It made the image of Stephen becoming a Sigl manufactor, similar to a jewelry designer, pop up in my head. It would be interesting to see Stephen develop more in that area, especially now that he hopefully will get more access to information, what with his position as a liaison.

Santa Cruz right after the 1989 earthquake. Broken concrete, broken dreams. One woman uses time slips to escape that moment only to find herself in a tangle of family. She needs a solution that will survive…long after she does.

“Perennials” is free on this website for one week only. You can get your own copy in ebook on every e-retailer or go to WMGbooks.com.

 

Perennials Kristine Kathryn Rusch

1989

IN REAL TIME the destruction looks different. I stand at the edge of the Pacific Garden Mall and see flat concrete, large holes surrounded by wire fences, a few shored-up buildings, and innumerable parking lots.

Last summer, eucalyptus trees covered the mall. Buildings—a few that had survived the ’06 quake—lined the streets. Street musicians hung out on corners; bicyclists and pedestrians filled the sidewalks. The place had the kind of life that too few cities experience.

I had always loved that life. To me, it was the heart of Santa Cruz.

I don’t like real time. As I stand here, hands in the pockets of my windbreaker, staring at the remains of the destruction, I see the city as a newcomer would see it: a broken, deserted downtown, like so many other downtowns in so many other places. Newcomers would think that Santa Cruz has charm anyway. The Boardwalk, with its famous roller coaster and sea view, still stands. Shops dominate the pier. Funky older houses line tree-covered, winding streets. There are only a few of us who know, a few of us who remember, and we will never forget.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother’s house smelled of peppermint. I loved the kitchen. Light streamed in from two windows and the screen door. Grandma’s collection of saltshakers lined one window like a curtain. On the counter, chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting cooled. The cookie jar waited on top of the refrigerator for that special moment during the day when Grandma would reward us for being ourselves.

In her bedroom the portraits hung: Grandma’s mother in 1886, at twenty-six a foreboding woman with dark eyes; Grandma’s entire family around 1910, arranged from tallest to shortest, Great-aunt Ruth (always the gregarious one) with a bow the size of a Stetson hat tied in her hair; Grandma, Grandpa, my father, and Aunt Mary in her forties—Grandma looking the same, shoulders back, gaze straightforward and proud; Grandpa smiling, his hair nearly gone, hand holding his only daughter’s; Aunt Mary looking young and happy; and my father, wearing black-rimmed glasses, his body still young-man trim, and his hairline receding like his father’s, with an impish grin that I had seen only when he played cards. I used to lie on Grandma’s bed and stare at the pictures as I tried to conjure the family ghosts. No haunting ever came—no shaking chains, no eerie voices. But some of the pictures seemed alive. On those nights when I slept on the cot at the foot of Grandma’s bed, I would wake to whisperings that I attributed to my great-grandmother and my grandfather, both of whom died shortly before I was born. The whisperings were always too faint to hear, but I felt the love in them, just as I felt the love in my grandmother’s gaze.

***

I take my car from the mall to the Boardwalk. The drive is familiar, except for the cracked windows, the fallen signs. The road itself has lost its smoothness, and the car rocks in the ruts. I keep the radio off, listening instead to the whoosh of other cars as they pass, the honking horns, the occasional shouts of pedestrians as they walk down the twisting streets.

The morning looks no different than any other, even though it should. I know that if I turn down the right street, I’ll find my tiny one-room apartment, filled with books and newspapers, an overlarge stereo, and a sofa bed; a place that’s less of a haven than somewhere to sleep. I clerk at the local grocery store and put most of my money into a savings account that I never touch. My grandmother and I share a social life with each other—made up of each other—which she said is normal for a woman of ninety-five, but not for a woman of thirty. She would tell me I need to live in my present and work for my future, and I would always laugh and tell her life is easier in the past.

The Boardwalk looms, a barrier against the sea. The view is both dated and modern: the old wooden roller coaster dominates the skyline, making the newer flume ride and the Giant Dipper seem cheap and brassy. I park my car in the empty parking lot and walk to the gate. Someone has locked it and placed a CLOSED sign against the metal bars. Through the doors past the concession stands and shored-up rides, the ocean whispers against the beach. The air smells of sea salt and fresh wind instead of cotton candy and corn dogs. My hands sink deeper into my pockets, and the nylon strains against my knuckles.

On hot summer days, the parking lot was full, and cars circled the street like hungry cats. I walk back to my car, alone in a place that I never believed could be lonely. I pull the car door open and stand for a moment before crawling inside. Across the street a cyclone fence surrounds an empty field. Scraggles of winter grass cover the choppy earth. Something sat there, something I should remember. My mind yields up no images, no pictures of the spot, though I had once gone by it daily. I get into the car, close the door, and huddle against the steering wheel. One tiny fragment gone—dispersed by the sands of time.

***

On the day my Aunt Esther died, I arrived home from school to find my mother scrubbing the kitchen floor. Dirt streaked her face, except for the places where hours-dried tears had cleaned the skin. I touched her shoulder, and she shook me away.

“Get off my floor.” Her voice was harsh and raw. I had never heard its peculiar edge before.

I stood for a moment, wanting to ask details—the school counselor had told me only that my aunt, my mother’s favorite sister, was dead—wanting to hold my mother, to comfort her, to share the pain. Instead, I walked across the clean linoleum into the living room and sat on a transplanted kitchen chair in the growing twilight until my father came home.

He made us dinner on the well-scrubbed stove, and then he put my mother to bed. I huddled under one of my grandmother’s afghans on the couch and listened to my father’s voice drone as he made the arrangements by phone. When he finally came into the living room, looking smaller than I had ever seen him, his balding head shining in the lamplight, I asked, “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to remember her,” he said. “That’s all we can do.”

***

The empty field mocks me. I can see nothing but the diamond wires of the cyclone fence, the clumps of dirt, the shades of ancient footprints. If I go back six months, I will see it. I will know.

I reach for a time slip, feel its power hum against my fingertips, but as I try to grasp the rim, the slip scuttles away, and I remain in real time, clutching the steering wheel of a twenty-year-old car, a car I’ve owned for only half a day.

Somewhere I will find a place that hasn’t changed, a place where the past, present, and future have fused, a place that is safe.

I turn the key in the ignition, and the car hums into life. As I pull out of the parking lot, a dozen other cars appear from nowhere. Perhaps we all are searching for the same thing.

***

Four days after my aunt’s funeral, I found my first time slip. I lay on my bed in the upstairs of the creaky old Victorian house my mother had just cleaned top to bottom. I was almost asleep, when a light-filled slit like that of a half-opened door appeared in the air before me. I had seen those slits before, several dozen times in my young life. When I was four, the night my sister (who was my mother surrogate) married, hundreds of light slits appeared in my room. I cowered against the wall and screamed for help. No help came. My parents, too drunk from the wedding, slept through all my cries. Finally the lights faded, and I thought the lights were dream visions that passed into my waking hours.

That night, though, I knew I wasn’t asleep. Another slit appeared, and another, until they surrounded me, and their light felt like a hug. No one had hugged me since my aunt died. No one had said more than three sentences to me in all that time—except my grandmother, who tried to comfort me by phone from her home six hundred miles away.

I reached out, perhaps to hug back, perhaps just to touch, when I felt something hum against my fingertips. I stuck my hand inside the nearest light, and felt a solid edge. I grabbed the edge, pulled a little—

And found myself in my Aunt Esther’s dining room. The room smelled of cigarettes, roast beef, and fresh bread. Bottles of alcohol covered the bureau, and half a dozen people sat around the table. The chandelier sent a crystal light across the room. It took a moment to recognize the man at the head of the table as my uncle. He was too slim, his hair too dark. My parents sat on one side, my mother’s hair long and black and coiled around her scalp, my father looking like the picture in Grandma’s bedroom. Aunt Esther came out of the kitchen, carrying one of her good serving bowls filled with broccoli in cheese sauce. She was beautiful: her face unlined, her eyes wide and dark. Her hair, cut in its usual marcel, didn’t seem dated, but looked appropriate somehow. She set the bowl down, and the woman across the table—not my mother, but someone else I vaguely recognized—stubbed out a cigarette. My uncle carved the roast beef, while my father picked up the bowl filled with mashed potatoes and plopped a spoonful on his plate. My mother took the bowl from him and looked at Aunt Esther.

I walked to the table and took a little piece of meat. It was good and hot. I hadn’t had Esther’s cooking since my uncle died.

“All this food,” Mother said. “We should say grace.”

“Father would have said grace.” Aunt Esther’s voice was smoother, less rough than I remembered it, as if the years of cigarettes and alcohol hadn’t touched it yet. “But I figure we earned it—why should we eat it after it gets cold?”

“Esther.” My uncle placed a slab of roast beef on his own plate. He didn’t look up, but I could hear the caution in his tone. I touched his shoulder, hoping he would pull his chair back, but he didn’t notice me.

Esther took a sip from the drink beside her ashtray. “I don’t have to do everything my father taught me. He’s been dead for twenty years. And if he were here, he wouldn’t be thankful for the food. He would yell at me for all the paint I wear, the booze I drink, and the things I say.”

“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” my mother said softly.

“See what I mean?” Esther said. “She was only four when he died, and she can mimic his voice perfectly. Some people always haunt you.”

The scene faded. I reached for my uncle, but found myself grabbing my own bedspread, the smell of roast beef and cigarettes still lingering in my nostrils. I hugged my pillow and waited until dawn for the lights to return. They didn’t, and I fell into an uneasy sleep.

***

I have driven along the ocean for over an hour. Finally I pull into an empty turnout at the edge of a cliff and get out of my car. The wind is cold here, the ocean rough and gray. Waves break against the rocks below me. Off in the distance, heavy, dark clouds threaten a major winter storm.

The ocean is here, ever present, ever changing, never reassuring. I reach for a time slip, and can’t even find one, shivering as a chill runs up my back. Used to be I could slip anywhere, anytime. I would close my eyes and reach until I felt the hum. Then I would grab a corner and pull myself into another world.

My grandmother would say it was as if I had disappeared from my eyes. She never knew where I went, and I would never know where I was going, only that I would find somewhere better than I was. She hated it when I was gone. But the time slips never lasted long. I would get a brief glimpse and then come back to the present. I saw bits of my parents’ lives, bits of wars, bits of places I would never see again. When I went through high school, the lights faded, but the hums remained. I learned to control the slips, to go anywhere I wanted. And often I would end up in Santa Cruz, on the Boardwalk or in the mall, places where time had a special essence, an added dimension of warmth.

Sea droplets splash my face. I draw my windbreaker closer. This is a place I would have visited in a slip, but it feels wrong in real time. Less powerful, less potent. If I were able to slip now, I would return to my grandmother’s house, steal a fingerful of marshmallow frosting, and lie on her bed, staring at the photos. I would listen to the whispers, the haunting, and if I heard my grandmother’s step, slow and sure across her linoleum, I would run to the kitchen, hug her, and never let her go.

Some of the water drops running down my face are warm. I wipe my cheeks, irritated at the moisture, and turn my back on the sea. It is not home, it is not safe, and it has no warmth.

***

Last week the phone woke me out of a sound sleep. Grandma was in the emergency room, bleeding from countless ulcers in her ninety-five-year-old stomach. She was screaming for me, they said. Even if she hadn’t been, I still would have rushed to the hospital.

The hospital had a Sunday-morning quiet. The walls were painted forest green, and the plush carpet absorbed all sound. I hurried to the emergency wing, and they ushered me to a back room. My grandmother lay on a bed, held down by a doctor and three nurses. Her gray hair was matted around her face; her watery blue eyes were wide with fright. When she saw me, she murmured, “Thank God. Thank God.”

“You’re her granddaughter?” the doctor asked. He was my age, but his frustration made him seem younger. “We need to put some tubes down her to pump the blood from her stomach. But she won’t let us.”

The tubes went through the nostrils. I remembered my mother hooked up like that in the years before the alcohol finally killed her.

Grandma grabbed my hand. She squeezed so tight that I knew I would bruise. “They’re hurting me,” she said.

“They have to hurt you to help you,” I said.

“Will you stay while we try again?” the doctor asked. “Maybe she’ll be calmer around you.”

I nodded. They brought the tubes to her nose, and Grandma screamed and thrashed. I put my hands on her shoulders, held her head in place, and she stopped moving. All the while they worked, she watched me, staring into my eyes as if my presence gave her strength. Finally everything was in place, the suction began working, and the tubes turned black with her blood.

The doctor thanked me and took the nurses outside. Grandma closed her eyes and sighed once. I reached for a time slip, a short moment somewhere better, when her grip tightened on my hand.

“Stay.” Her voice was wispy, a little girl’s.

“I’m right here,” I said.

“No.” She shook her head once. I brushed the hair from her forehead. “Stay in your eyes. You aren’t living when you’re running away.”

I pulled over a chair and sat down, never letting go of her hand. For that entire week, I stayed. But she didn’t.

This morning she left.

***

I’m back on the mall, staring at the empty spots, the holes, the missing pieces. I can’t slip away anymore, can’t run to some better spot in someone else’s life. In my week’s stay, the ability to slip left me. I ramble through this broken place, where pieces of the past have shattered like concrete against the force of the earth, and I know that parts have already left my memory—perhaps to form other time slips that other children can run away to.

I guess, Grandma would say, it is time to start living in the present and planning for the future.

I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

Beside me on the cyclone fence, a work permit flutters in the breeze. Across the street, enterprising merchants have set up large tents filled with heat and light and merchandise. I walk over there, away from the demolished Cooper House, the shored-up western facades, the buildings of handmade brick that had survived the ’06 quake and had died in this one. A little bit of history passed on. A life spanning nearly a century, punctuated by two quakes and, in the end, some lingering pain.

A woman sells plants outside the nearest tent. She sits next to the tent wall, clutching a steaming paper cup, and watches me. I glance at the plants, little shoots in green plastic pots, and I know that she is here, hoping that people will plant for spring.

“I want some flowers.” My voice cracks as if I never use it. “Perennials.”

She shows me more shoots in more green plastic pots. I buy six that bloom in different light and temperature. Flowers for my grandmother’s grave, always and forever. Always changing, always there. One small way—my only way—to control a bit of time…

And to keep it warm.

 

Copyright Information

Perennials

Copyright © by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © by WMG Publishing Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © blinkblink/Depositphotos

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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