A Linchpin Life

By Kari Kilgore

An Echo That Never Fades

Annie's life always feels disconnected. Detached. Missing an essential part.

An empty space in her mind she never fills.

Until one night a year, when worlds of possibility open.

What happens when Annie takes a chance that could close the door forever?

 

Also available in Fantastic Shorts: Volume 3

 

An excerpt from A Linchpin Life:

A passage to herself Now Annie heard the fire crackle, heard the crunch and whisper of people moving along the sand. Low conversation floated into her awareness, along with the muted sound of the continuing wind.

And still, the low, never-ending roar of the waves.

Trent stopped pulling against her hands and gripped her upper arms. Annie felt his body rigid and trembling against hers.

He tried to speak, but his voice shuddered and broke.

"I don't understand."

Annie opened her eyes, her cheek still pressed against his chest.

Still dark on a winter's night.

Still that full moon riding overhead, partly hidden behind one dark, heavy cloud.

But everything else had changed. Gone back to normal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393261988

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

A Linchpin Life

For everyone who suspected their true path waited just out of sight

And had to courage to find out it was true

A LINCHPIN LIFE

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

CHAPTER 1

The beach was a moving impressionist painting.

Black sky overhead, only a few stars showing through the low clouds. Full moon cutting through, pale light rising and falling as the clouds scudded by. Snow against the even blacker ocean, white-capped waves washing in and out.

Annie knew she’d never seen anything so beautiful with her eyes open.

Her feet crunched in the snow, but the odd, soft resistance of the sand underneath kept her off balance. She kept walking though, and she welcomed the warmth when Trent grabbed her hand.

She’d long suspected he anchored her in the world more than he or anyone else yet knew.

Seagulls would overwhelm this place in the morning, even in the middle of December in Maine. They never seemed to tire of their scavenging ways.

But tonight, all she could hear was their crunchy footsteps, the wind whistling even through her knitted toboggan pulled down low.

And those waves.

Those went on in her imagination forever, and just as long out here in the real world. The waves haunted her dreams, bringing something to the edge of consciousness, forever out of reach.

She laughed when a big wave hit a rock she hadn’t noticed below the tide line. The splash was shockingly cold against her face and hands.

Trent drew back, laughing with her, brushing his own face but not letting go of her hand. Annie tasted briny water on her lips. A craving for her grandmother’s seafood boil made to take advantage of the day’s fresh catch drifted through her belly about twelve years too late.

The town behind them might have been as lifeless as this beach tonight, where only the two of them braved the cutting wind. Not a light shone in any