A Soggy Brush with History: Voices through Time

By Kari Kilgore

An Uneasy Shiver of Something Wrong

Returning home to Hartstown, Virginia, thrills Beth Azen and her sweet dog Janie.

Taking the chance to breathe and learn to listen her heart's voice again.

Figuring out where her next path in life leads.

But a missed appointment sets Beth on edge for reasons she can't explain.

Will she solve the mystery before it's too late?

 

A Voices Through Time Story

 

Also available in the collection Facing Down Extraordinary

 

An excerpt from A Soggy Brush with History:

When Things Just Don't Feel Right

 

Even as Beth joined Janie on a quick trot in one direction on the gravel road and then back, she knew this didn't make sense.

Ms. Sinnett had been so excited about this visit, sending notes a couple of times a day asking about what Beth might be interested in. She'd asked which of her several delicious cookie varieties Beth preferred (crispy ginger spice sounded best), and whether she'd like tea or coffee (coffee: always coffee).

They'd shared their frustration that a couple of members of the Boun County Historical Society were being oddly stingy with time and materials. She'd even suggested ideas for areas of the town's often-tragic history that Beth might want to concentrate on during the interview.

None of that added up to her just not being here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: May 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201014858

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 Soggy Brush with History

For our sweet neighbor Myrtle

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I’m so thankful I saw the car that day!

A Soggy Brush with History

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

A Soggy Brush with History

As far as Beth Azen was concerned, nowhere was as lovely as the Appalachian Mountains in late summertime. Especially in and around her hometown of Hartstown, Virginia.

She drove along a tightly curved blacktop road, one narrow and remote enough that no one had ever bothered painting lines along the middle. The trees packed close alongside the road and the steep slopes it cut through were covered with lush, thick leaves in every shade of dark green.

The narrow verge along both sides was cut fairly short a few feet back, but beyond that weeds and brush grew wild and tall. A few towered above the rest, sporting the pale purple pyramid blossoms of Joe Pye weed or the zigzag yellow of goldenrod. Before too many days passed, another weed that could get past Beth’s height of not quite six feet would join the party.

The striking violet blooms of ironweed would be the first signal that autumn was just around the corner. And just like every other flower that was already on the scene, all the moths and butterflies and honeybees would swarm to get ready for the long winter.

But for now, Beth drove with the front windows of her black Maxima open, taking in the warm, September afternoon air. The road twisted alongside a good-sized creek, and the sides were too steep and narrow to let her see much of the sky. But what she could glimpse overhead was a clear and deep summer blue.

Not too humid today, with the promise of rain later on in the air along with the sweet fragrance of all