Sunny with a Chance of Happiness: Lightning Gap

By Kari Kilgore

Who Rescues Who?

George Edwards knows his kids got a great start in life. They prove it every day.
But that leaves George struggling to adjust to life without them.
Needing to figure out the next part of his own journey.
Then one morning, a change he can't ignore bursts into his life.
Will George grab his chance at happiness or let it pass him by?

 

A Lightning Gap Story

Also available in the collection Facing Down Extraordinary.

 

An excerpt from Sunny with a Chance of Happiness:

An Unexpected Guest, Right on Time

George took a deep, nostalgia-laced breath, reached for his socks, and froze.

A rustling noise erupted from the trees and brush to his right.

Too big to be a squirrel.

Not big enough to be a bear, right? Anyway, black bears weren't likely to be too aggressive this time of year. No brand-new cubs to keep an eye on like back in the early spring.

Still, George strained to listen and see, ready to head for the front door in a hurry. He'd heard the rumors about mountain lions still hanging on in an area they were supposedly extinct from.

Heard more than a few of those bone-chilling screams in the night, too.

When the brush finally parted, he let out a grunt and relaxed a little.

Not a bear or any sort of cat after all.

A dog burst out into the yard instead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jun 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201005566

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

Sunny with a Chance of Happiness

For every four-legged soul who rescues me

Sunny with a Chance of Happiness

A Lightning Gap Story

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Sunny with a Chance of Happiness

George Edwards wondered what evil twist of nature made kids magically transform themselves into adults right around the time their parents realized they were middle-aged. Simple biology and math couldn’t possibly explain such cruelty.

Or maybe it was just him not stopping to look around him often enough, just like his little sister Sophie always said.

Either way, he very much wanted to file a complaint. Ask for a do-over.

Convince his own sweet twins to come back and hang out with the old man just a little bit longer.

George sat on his broad front porch thinking his gloomy, aged thoughts, doing his best to ignore the spectacular sunrise unfolding all around him. Not at all conducive for a good bout of feeling sorry for himself.

The house perched on the outskirts of Lightning Gap, Virginia, right on the edge between the national forest that covered the mountain and the town tucked away at the top. The sky overhead had barely shifted from pink to the faintest blue, without a cloud to break up the wash of color.

If he walked out into the yard and turned to the right, he’d catch sight of the town’s namesake and most distinctive feature: the sheltering limestone ridge that cradled Lightning Gap, ending with the towering spike of the Lightning Stone itself. Target of the unusual number of electrical storms that passed through. He’d spent part of the long night before enjoying a brash, particularly noisy one passing through, with gales of rain, brilliant flashes of lightning, and thunder to rattle the windows.

George knew he wasn’t the only one that at least half-believed that stone and the storms were the source of the town’s peculiar magic.

The valley seemed to ripple below him as the last of the morning mist burned off, and the illusion of water continued in the contours of the land. One ridge after the other, each one covered with thick stands of hickory, oak, maple, and pine trees. From here, he could see what looked like all of Felten County gradually lighting up in a thousand shades of