Moon Shadow

By Sumiko Saulson

This is the seventh book in The Moon Cried Blood series about a young witch named Tisha Gordon who lives in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

In a dream, Tisha’s father, Mark Gordon, comes back from the dead, and boy does he have some explaining to do. Not only are his exwife Joy and daughter Tisha annoyed with him, but his evil daughter Alita wants to have words with him. Meanwhile, Bobby Guerrero, the boy Tisha has a crush on, turns out to be one of Lucia's relatives. He shows up at the house and makes life a little more interesting for Leticia Gordon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iconoclast Productions
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370436712

Sumiko Saulson

Sumiko Saulson is a science-fiction, fantasy and horror writer and graphic novelist. She was the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writer Association's "Scholarship from Hell." She is best known for her non-fiction reference guide "60 Black Women in Horror Fiction." Her novels include "Solitude"," The Moon Cried Blood, "Happiness and Other Diseases", "Somnalia", "Insatiable" and the Amazon bestselling horror comedy “Warmth." She has written several short stories for collections and anthologies, including the Carry the Light award winning science-fiction story "Agrippa." She writes for the Oakland Art Scene for the Examiner.com, SEARCH Magazine and horror blogs HorrorAddicts.net and SumikoSaulson.com, which featured a 2013 Women in Horror Month interview series. The child of African American and Russian-Jewish American parents, she is a native Californian who grew up in Los Angeles and Hawaii. She is an Oakland resident who has spent most of her adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Book preview

Introduction by Flynn Keahi

After a brief, peaceful interlude, things are finally starting to heat up in The Moon Cried Blood series. That’s how you can tell it’s near the end of the series. This is the seventh book in an eight book series. The bad guys always get restless around this time.

As the survivor of three and a half novels, several short stories and a graphic novel, I don’t look forward to this part of the story. The only good thing I can say about it is that it’s usually shorter than the creepy stuff at the beginning. I’ve been biting my nails again, waiting for things to calm down for Tisha Gordon. I sure hope she has a happily ever after ending. I mean, she’s only thirteen. She has so much life left ahead of her.

Those of you who know me from Happiness and Other Diseases and the rest of the Somnalia series know that I came back from the dead. Spoiler alert! Oh wait, too late! Now you know. I died. I came back. I made Sumiko swear not to kill me again. I mean, I literally haunted her dreams for weeks over that.

In this dream, Tisha’s father, Mark Gordon, comes back from the dead, and boy does he have some explaining to do. Not only are his exwife Joy and daughter Tisha annoyed with him, but his evil daughter Alita wants to have words with him.

As you probably know from the earlier novels, Alita’s mother Victoria and her father Mark totally neglected her. That’s probably what made her turn all Kylo Ren from Star Wars evil and stuff. I was neglected, but I never turned evil. Still… Alita’s mom left her home alone with a bottle of vodka and a box of tampons the day she started her period. Samantha Keahi at least had the courtesy to raise me.

I know what you’re thinking… I am neurotic and talk about myself too much. It’s probably because they don’t have any good therapists where I live, in the Demos Oneiroi, the land of dreams. I tried to get the god of nightmares to give me therapy, and boy did that turn out badly.

Am I boring you? Yeah? Oh well. Whatever. I guess Sumiko should have gotten a real person to write her intro. Like you. You real people are so condescending.

I should probably just shut up and let you go on to reading about the creepy dead people. That way you won’t be stuck here listening to the neurotic dead ramble on.

Flynn Keahi

Oakland, January 2017

Flynn Keahi is a fictional character who is the central protagonist in Happiness and Other Diseases and at the heart of the rest of the Somnali series.

Moon Shadow

Book Seven of The Moon Cried Blood Series

Sumiko Saulson

WWW.SUMIKOSAULSON.COM

ICONOCLAST PRODUCTIONS

SAN FRANCISCO * OAKLAND * BERKELEY * VALLEJO

A Call for Noelle

Noelle had no supernatural powers, but she did have the gift of gab. No sooner did Jot hang up the phone than she received another phone call. It was Laurel. I’ve been trying to get through for twenty minutes, she said irritably. Please, may I speak to your mother?

She went into the living room and got Noelle.

Noelle picked up the phone, and tried to find out what was going on. Uh huh, uh huh. She said. Joy wasn’t able to get much from that. That’s good, she said. She went silent for a while. Then, she said, oh no! That’s awful. We’ll be down there tonight. I promise.

What’s going on, Mom? Joy asked, the minute she hung up the phone.

Well, the good news is, Elle woke up this morning. She’s recovering from surgery, and they think she’s going to be fine. Her condition is stable now. But something happened to your grandfather. Porter went down to the hospital last night, visited Letty briefly, and then spent half the night sitting up with his wife. But Elle was heavily sedated and didn’t wake up. The family assumed Porter just stayed with her at the hospital – they even made a cot for him. But when they went to see Elle this morning, he was gone. Just vanished. No one knows where he is.

That is terrible, Joy agreed. I hope he’s okay.

Well the family says he’s been going senile, Noelle confided. She’d been gossiping up a storm with Laurel lately and knew more about Joy’s birth family than Joy did by now. They think he may have wandered off somewhere, dear. Also, he has a drinking problem, as I’m sure you noticed. But I’m sure he will turn up soon.

He saved my life, Joy said. Whatever flaws he may have, he is the man who saved my life. Alita would have attacked me, probably kill me.

I know, dear, Noelle said. She realized she’d just put her foot in her mouth, so she quickly changed the subject. "What do you say your dad and I take you down to your old job and see your old friend Marjorie Hollister? We can eat