Sunday, March 27, 2016

Guest Post: Because Magic - Why I Write Fantasy & Paranormal by Molly Ringle.

This week, I'm pleased to welcome back to Dean from Australia, my Central Avenue Publishing stable mate and dear friend Molly Ringle. The next few months are gearing up to be exciting ones for us both as we prepare for the release of our respective titles. Molly's, in particular, promises to be epic as she concludes her genre bending trilogy under her Chrysomelia Stories banner with "Immortal's Spring". I've had the pleasure of following this re-imagining of Greek Mythology from the beginning and I'm excited for readers and fans to be able to get their hands on the final instalment.

So, without further ado, I'll hand you over to Molly.


Seattle based author, Molly Ringle (image credit: Molly Ringle). 

Having just spent the better part of four years writing and editing a trilogy based on Greek mythology (Persephone’s Orchard, Underworld’s Daughter, and the upcoming Immortal’s Spring), I’ve had plenty of time to ponder why I choose subjects like gods, immortality, magic fruits, and flying ghost horses. In the world around us, there are so many complex issues and fascinating places I could write about. So why do I often forgo those in favor of writing about something that doesn’t exist? In short, why do I write fantasy? 

Books 1 and 2 of the Chrysomelia Stories by Molly Ringle (image credit: Molly Ringle).

Why does any fantasy writer do so, for that matter? I can’t speak for all of them. George R.R. Martin probably has reasons different from those of J.K. Rowling, and I bet Tolkien came at the subject differently than Madeleine L’Engle, and maybe what I say here wouldn’t hold true for any of them.

My first answer is, however, probably one of the things almost every fiction writer would say: I like to create a world where I control everything. I work through the confusions of real life by manipulating the lives of characters in meticulous detail. Sometimes I write about the so-called real world too—that is, events that we all agree could potentially happen, even though they didn’t. But other times I take my imaginary world further, into things that couldn’t happen, into fantasy and magic. Now what good does that do me?

I suppose part of it is that the restrictions of real life frustrate me—along with everyone else on Earth—on a daily basis. Why can’t we heal people instantly? Why can’t we shape-shift? Why can’t we manipulate forces of nature? Why can’t we see and talk to ghosts? Having wishes that transcend the possible is one of the poignant charms of humanity. Our species’ oldest-known stories—myths and folklore—are full of exactly those types of wildly creative scenarios. Every culture around the globe has nurtured stories like these for millennia. When I look at it anthropologically like that, I feel that by writing fantasy I’m being deeply traditional, rather than shallow, fanciful, or trendy. Fantasy has serious street cred, if dominance of the literary record counts for anything (and I’d say it should).

Writing about magic also introduces both interesting problems for the characters and unusual solutions to them. In some ways it makes things harder for me as a writer, because if we have magic at our disposal, why can’t that just fix everything? You have to come up with rules and restrictions on your magical system, and stick to them, or readers will rise up in revolt and (rightly) cry, “Unfair!” The magic should never be too easy. Easy magic that fixes everything with no cost might be a lovely daydream, but it lacks the tension and drama needed for a good plot. (As the characters on “Once Upon a Time” like to tell us approximately every fifteen minutes, “All magic comes with a price.”) (Ideally you’d add, “Dearie,” in Robert Carlyle’s delectable Scottish accent.)

However, the rules, restrictions, price, and effects of magic get to be completely zany. That’s the fun of it. Yes, this character can turn into a wolf, but never a bat or anything else; that’s just the rule. Yes, you can reverse this evil spell, but only if you accomplish these three bizarre tasks before sunrise. Sorry, but those are the conditions. Yes, you can enter and leave the supernatural realm safely, as long as you don’t eat or drink anything while you’re there, because then you’d be bound to it. Them’s the rules! 

You’ve read fairy tales; you know this is how it always goes. The magic is dreamlike in its nonsense logic, but that’s kind of why we love it. Maybe it works for us because real life doesn’t actually make very good sense either, if we’re honest, so why not turn fully surreal and flex some imagination while we’re at it? 

And, of course, I love the crazy places a fantasy setup can take us. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that there’s a twist at the end of Immortal’s Spring that’s the sort of outlandish plot device I can probably only use once in my whole career, and it can only happen because of the magic involved, and I love it. (Readers might love it too, or might just think it’s insane; we shall see!) 

I will surely sometimes take a break from these magical challenges and settle back into a novel about the real world, as I’ve done before, where I can rely on the ordinary limitations of humankind and the laws of physics. That’s comforting too, when my mind tires of the acrobatics that fantasy plots call for. But other times, as in the Persephone’s Orchard trilogy, I love slipping into the dream world and getting to explain away wondrous happenings with the excuse, “Because magic.”  

Book 3 of the Chrysomelia Stories - Coming June 2016 (image credit: Molly Ringle).

- - -

Molly Ringle is the author of the Greek mythology fantasy series that begins with Persephone’s Orchard and continues in Underworld’s Daughter. The final book, Immortal’s Spring, comes out in June 2016. She has also written ghost stories in The Ghost Downstairs and Of Ghosts and Geeks—and, to some degree, in What Scotland Taught Me. She stays within the bounds of reality (though still fiction) in her romance novel Summer Term and her dark romantic comedy Relatively Honest. She lives in Seattle with her family, is happy when it’s cool and cloudy, and gets giddy about fandom, things that smell good, and gorgeous photos of gardens.

Pre-order Immortal's Spring here.

Visit Molly Ringle here.

Molly Ringle on Goodreads here.

Tweet with Molly Ringle here.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Seeing Double - A Look At The Doppelganger by P. Wish.

Having completed work on my own psychological thriller and engaging in discussion with other authors who have written in the genre, I am discovering some really unique and exciting stories emerging in this space. 

One such author, Manchester based, P. Wish and I found one another recently through a great discussion on book trailers and I quickly found myself drawn to her own exciting project which will launch world wide this week. 

The Doppelganger, a psychological thriller set in Chicago, promises all the great hallmarks of genre fiction, featuring, among other things, a strong but flawed female protagonist. 

Doppelganger (image credit: P. Wish).

From the liner notes;

‘They say when you meet somebody that looks just like you, you die.’

Darcy Godfrey lives a seemingly normal life as a librarian in Chicago. One day, she comes across a blog that is filled with accounts of her past. The blogger, known as 'D', seems to know everything about her life- even things that Darcy cannot remember. 

Things begin to go wrong when her nemesis is murdered, making her a suspect. Now, Darcy must find the person behind the blog before it's too late."

From the early reading I've been lucky enough to do on this book, The Doppelganger promises to be a tense and exciting thriller - and, if I may be so bold, it kinda feels like a spiritual sister to The Recipient.

Darcy Godfrey is an enticing character, replete with a tragic backstory that informs much of her presence in the novel. She is subsequently flawed and functions better as a loner - a'la Jessica Jones, which I think is really appealing. She also promises to be resourceful in the face of a terrifying antagonist who will push her to her limit. Wish's writing style is immediate and she instantly draws you into a dense and fully realized Chicago. In the exclusive excerpt for The Doppelganger (re-printed here with kind permission from the author) mood and tension are introduced from the get go - a great hook for this kind of genre fiction - and they lay the foundations for what promises to be a cracking ride.

I think it is our time. The psychological thriller feels as though it is emerging from out of the *cough* Twilight *cough* shadows as *the* next big thing in publishing and I am excited by voices like P. Wish who are bringing freshness to the genre. 

Author P. Wish (image credit: P. Wish).

P. Wish is an author of psychological thrillers and mysteries. She is a Law graduate from the University of Manchester, UK. The Doppelganger is her debut novel.

Excerpt: The Doppelganger by P. Wish.

Darcy’s eyes hung over the blog post. Her larynx felt like a thorn in her throat. She could barely breathe. Her heartbeat took over her ears. She teared up. She caught them before they fell on the keyboard. 

It was not a mere blog post. It was her story. 

Who the hell was this woman? 

Darcy clicked on ‘About’. The screen refreshed. A white image floated up the screen. It was a caricature. No photo. No name. No explanation. Just one useless cartoon of something that looked like a woman- from an angle. 

She scrolled down for the author bio. 

‘D is a thirty-something who lives in the city. She enjoys reading and writing about her life, especially her childhood.’ 

No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram. No expanded bio. Nothing. 

Just those two sentences. 

Darcy’s mind reeled. She clicked on the ‘contact’ page. At least, the blog had one. 

At the end of the page was an inconspicuous ‘Contact me’ icon. Darcy clicked on it. A contact form appeared. Blank white spaces, contrasting against the black background, haunted her. 

Her fingers drummed violently against the keypad. She re-read the e-mail. How was she supposed to ask the writer about her past? Maybe she wasn’t alone in this. There was someone else who had experienced something similar. The realization filled Darcy with hope. After all these years, she found a ray of hope. She couldn’t let it slip away. 

She quickly typed out an e-mail. She didn’t send it. 

She decided to wait for the next blog post. She deleted the e-mail and turned on the television. Her fingers restlessly traced patterns on the couch. She fidgeted with her phone. 

Curiosity nibbled at her. 

The final draft was only one sentence long. She read the words on the page. 
Who are you? 

The Doppelganger is out internationally on March 24th 2016.

Pre-order The Doppelganger here.

Visit P. Wish here

Connect with P. Wish here

Tweet with P. Wish here

Goodreads with P. Wish here


Wednesday, March 16, 2016

The Snore Of Destiny - Part Deux.

It's quite a thing to be travelling along, living your life and dealing with the mundane problems of life and then, suddenly, be forced into a sudden left turn that, literally, shakes shit up. 

So, remember that time when I was talking to you about a little problem I had with snoring? You know - when I'd resorted to a handful of "home remedies" in the hope that I could stop this throaty rumble that had people running from me as if I was the xenomorph from the Alien film series? turns out that there is a reason for this snore - and it is one that I hadn't anticipated. At all.

I won't go into a long winded recap of the whole snore-fest. You can click through to read my original post and the rather screwy lengths I'd gone to try and stop it. 

After we returned from our family holiday on Kangaroo Island, I'd resolved to give this thing proper medical attention and I went to see my G.P. with the intention of nipping this thing in the bud right away. After examining me and determining that there was no obvious reason for me to suddenly have begun snoring, my GP and I decided to refer me to an ear, nose and throat surgeon. Because I'm *in the business*, as it were, I know a number of fine surgeons in this field. An appointment was duly made.

Upon visiting the ENT surgeon and having the somewhat wierd experience of a camera being threaded down the back of my throat right there in his rooms, a rather alarming discovery was made. It turns out that my right vocal cord is paralysed - specifically, the arytenoid cartilage that anchors the vocal cord to the  result is that during things like speech, breathing or the act of swallowing, the right side of my throat is collapsing inwards whenever the cords come together so that they don't close up properly.

image credit: Mayo Clinic.

In my discussions with both the GP and the ENT surgeon, a couple of things were happening in addition to the snoring that I'd kind of disregarded but were now, with the advent of all this, things that I should have paid more attention to. Over the past few months I'd noticed, on occasion, that whenever I engaged in exercise I would, after a while, find it difficult to breathe and in addition to that, my breathing had become quite noisy. I was producing a stridor. After exercise, I'd noticed that I had the feeling of a lump in my throat without any real explanation. It was uncomfortable but I'd gotten used to it and therefore dismissed it.

And, very occasionally, I'd noticed that I have struggled with swallowing - whereby I have actually choked on small morsels of food that would otherwise be considered innocuous. There have been a few instances of this that have garnered wierd stares and chuckles from my family but they didn't occur so often that we'd conisdered anything untoward about them. All these symptoms have gotten progressively worse in the last month or so and they've been harder to ignore.

So, on the day that I'm sitting in the surgeon's rooms and we're discussing a paralysed vocal cord, two things came up as causators for it - the first being a viral neuritis leading to an inflammation of the nerve that supplies the right side of my vocal cords. The cause for this is generally sheeted home to a viral infection which can be something as general as a flu. 

The other possibility was a lesion or tumour.

Alarm bells sounded in my head on that one as I recalled memories of my experience of the spinal cord tumour that disrupted so much of my adolesence. Whilst I'd been told that the chances of me having another tumour like the one I'd had in my spinal cord was remote, there was always a slight possibility there could be another schwanomma lurking around inside me. 

In light of this, it was decided that I should undergo two tests to bed down what we were dealing with - a sleep study to monitor the severity of my snore and its affect on my sleep and an MRI scan of my neck and chest to rule out the possibililty of a new tumour growing on the cranial nerve.

image credit: Auburn University.

If you've ever had an MRI, you'll know that it is, at best, a disconcerting experience. You are essentially placed inside a tunnel that isn't much wider than the average person from shoulder to shoulder. It is an uncomfortable and claustrophobic environment and moving inside the tunnel is not an option. Furthermore, a series of huge magnets revolve around you that create a noise unlike anything you've ever heard. It's loud and it's a little scary. 

For my scan, I had the additional *delight* of having my head and neck encased in a rather medieval cage, securing me in such a way that even subtle movements of my head were impossible. Scratching my nose was out of the question. For 45 minutes I was inside this machine, completely helpless and at the mercy of noise that would make Darth Vader quiver. 

The sleep study was a world away from that experience and I was able to complete it at home with a minimum of fuss. It's not really worth mentioning to be honest, but here's a nice picture.

The week long wait following the scan passed in a blur and I was pretty withdrawn for much of the time. The thought of possibly having a tumour - another tumour - was breath taking. Recalling those memories as a kid, going through serious surgery was unpleasant to say the least and it was all I could to keep myself from descending into panic.

Fortunately, the MRI was clear of any sign of a tumour. My relief at having dodged that bullet cannot be understated and I almost had an episode of urinary incontinence in the surgeon's rooms. The scan was able to visualize the defect in my vocal cord and noted the swelling caused by the snore and the general irritation of the tissues in my throat. The sleep study cearly showed that the snore accompanying my sleep state was significant though my overall sleep was rated - surprisingly - pretty decently.

So what's the next step?

Well, in a few weeks time, I will be admitted to hospital to have a more thorough study of my throat known as a nasoendoscopy. During that procedure, I'll be anesthetized and the surgeon will examine how the defect with my vocal cord causes my snoring. He also intends to examine my throat further down, to rule out any other causes or problems with my throat that might be contributing to all of this. The bigger part of the surgery, the part that I'm the most nervous about, will involve the surgeon applying a laser to an area of my throat adjacent to the vocal cord. He will, literally, burn it, creating an area of scarring that will, hopefully, prevent the vocal cord from collapsing in, causing the snore and the asymmetrical airflow over my cords that has caused so much trouble for me over the past few months. It will be a little painful and I may have some temporary difficulties with speech and swallowing but the snore will be gone and my wife will want to share the same bed with me again so that's gotta be a good thing right!???

This was a left turn I didn't expect to be taking and I certainly didn't expect that a snore would have a decidedly more complex root cause as mine does.

I get to be a patient. As a clinician - that's going to be a *fun* experience. 

You know what they say about nurses and doctors making the worst patients...


Sunday, March 13, 2016

The Recipient - Exclusive Extract from Dean Mayes.

This week, I'd like to share an exclusive extract from my upcoming psychological thriller, The Recipient which is available for pre-order now at Amazon and The Book Depository. Taken from the early chapter of the novel, this passage introduces Casey Schillinge - 3 years after her life saving heart transplant. In that time, Casey has undergone a tectonic change - and not all of it has been good. 


A masculine fist rapped three times against the green metal
of a huge industrial door that faced onto a darkened corridor.
The owner of that hand, a tall and angular middle-aged male
dressed in an expensive grey suit stepped back, crossed his hands
low across his front, and waited patiently.

He couldn’t be sure if he could hear anybody behind the door,
though a cursory glance at the floor revealed a thin shaft of light
coming from inside.

Waiting patiently, he was distracted by the faint aroma of cinnamon
that seemed to surround him here in this dark and dingy hall.
A single light globe that dangled from a cobwebbed cable above his
head flickered in the gloom, illuminating the remnant of a painted
sign on the brick wall beside him. 

Mitchell & Sons Granary Supply, in a faded, antique font, was
declared proudly over an image of a pair of Clydesdale horses.
They were hauling a vintage wooden wagon, piled high with what
the man assumed were sacks of grain. Curiously, the visual cue
touched off an olfactory hallucination within him. He thought he
could detect the scent of oats—a hint to this building’s long forgotten

He checked the face of his Tag Heuer watch and scowled. It was
10PM—a ridiculous time to be conducting business, he thought. He
had been given little choice, however. His superiors’ instructions to
him were explicit: Be at this address no earlier than 10PM and no
later than 10:05PM.

His lips shifted into a fleeting, ironic smile.

He would bet his left testicle that the instruction had come not
from his superiors, but from their contractor. And that very contractor
had earned a reputation for a being a hard arse.

Suddenly the green door groaned on its track and rumbled
sideways, revealing a petite young woman. Her tousled wet hair
was a dark nut-brown. He thought he saw hints of red in it, but he
couldn’t be sure. Upon first glance, it appeared to be a short bob
tied back in a pony tail, but he noticed that both the back and sides
were shaved close to the skin. A long fringe hung low over her large
green eyes. Those eyes were ringed by liner that made her appear
almost Gothic. Though her features were attractive and feminine,
her powdery visage was stony, dangerous even.

She wore a grey, long-sleeved Lycra gym top that hugged her
lithe figure and ended at the waist.

His eyes, almost involuntarily, scanned downward as he noticed
that she wore bikini bottoms only; her long legs and slender feet
were bare.

The corner of his left eyebrow raised appreciatively.

“What do you want?” the young woman snapped, jolting him
from his procession of impure thoughts.

She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the
door frame suggestively, maintaining an interrogatory glare at the
stranger before her.

“Schillinge?” he queried, shifting uncomfortably.

She nodded once.

“Is it done?”

Wordlessly, she reached down to the elastic waist of her bikini
bottoms and plucked forth an object.

The man watched as she flipped the shining golden object into
her palm and held it up for him to see. It was no bigger than a stick
of gum; an ingot that was perfectly smooth and shining in the halflight.

With a flick of her hand, one end of the ingot suddenly swung
open on a hinge revealing its true nature as an ingenious, delicate

The man leaned in closer to see and found himself gazing down
on the small ingot. His brow furrowed. Squinting in the low light
of the darkened hallway, he attempted focus on something printed
on the high capacity USB key, but all he could make out was a
symbol—a single octagon etched into the golden surface.

He looked up at Casey. “Is that it?” he questioned incredulously.
Casey merely shrugged.

Slowly, the man reached up to take the key from her when, without
warning, the lid snapped shut and she whipped it away before
he even registered what she had done.

“Money first,” Casey snapped as the man blinked at her.

Brushing down his jacket, the man reached into his inner pocket
and took out a thin rectangular box. He held it out and she took it,
stuffing it into the elastic of her bikini bottoms. Without taking her
eyes off him, she handed over the golden key.

The man took it and pocketed it, then glanced down at her hip,
at the shining rectangular tin tucked there.

“You’re not gonna check it?” he queried.

She allowed herself a smirk.

“I designed your people’s system, remember? You fuck me over,
all I have to do is press a key.”

The man grinned. “They told me that you’re a hard-on,” he
leered. “So, all they have to do is plug this in?”

Casey nodded. “It’ll do the rest. Deployment should take a half
hour at the most. Your entire network will be upgraded to the new
protocols, as per the contract.”

The man raised one eyebrow, impressed. “Sounds good.”
Casey watched as he turned on his heel and disappeared down
the stairs. Once he was out of sight, she retreated into the semidark-
ness of her warehouse apartment, locking the heavy green door
behind her.

In stark contrast to the dingy hallway outside the door, Casey
Schillinge’s apartment was an altogether different environment.
The converted granary and flour mill offered a spacious living space
that was modern and comfortable while incorporating elements of
its historical past. A fully equipped, yet minimalist, kitchen lay to
her right while a luxurious living area occupied the space to her left.
Two leather sofas sat facing one another, watched over by a large,
flat panel TV and entertainment centre. Up a steel staircase that was
bolted to the exposed brick wall was a mezzanine level populated
by a master bedroom and bathroom. Casey hardly ever went up
there. It acted as little more than storage. Near a large window and
balcony that extended the full width of the building, the space had
been converted into a stylish bedroom that was divided from the
main living area by a tall, Gothic-styled wardrobe.

It was an item in the centre of the apartment, through which
Casey passed now, that presented the most divergent example of
decor in the otherwise stylish home. A large architectural workbench
with a tempered glass surface stood in middle of the room.

On it sat an LCD screen and a keyboard that had been fashioned
from a piece of glass. The light from the LCD screen accounted for
much of the apartment’s illumination presently, bathing everything
in its immediate proximity in a turquoise light. The work bench, the
screen, and keyboard were her tools of trade.

She set down the metallic cash box and she regarded the LCD
screen fleetingly. With a quick tap of the glass surface adjacent to
the keyboard, the screen went dark; its unearthly glow vanquished
for the time being. Casey considered opening the case, but she decided
to leave it untouched.

Having performed work for this particular client several times
before, she knew they were good for the money. And she knew the
payment was considerable.

For the past three years, Casey had employed her remarkable
skill set—gleaned from her double degree in mathematics and com-
puter science—and directed it into a career in which she operated
on the edge.

On one hand, she contracted herself out to big businesses, providing
her expertise in constructing and maintaining security systems
and network infrastructure that was considered second to none. On
the other, Casey performed work for various underground groups
who would be considered an enemy of the legitimate corporate interests
from which she earned her considerable living.

She was a “grey hat” in every sense.

A grey hat who was, finally, in between jobs.

This latest contract—the construction of a particularly complex
security system for a prominent investment firm—had consumed
her life for the past three months. It had involved writing a state-of-the-
art encryption language from scratch, deploying it across a vast
network, then testing it for weaknesses and flaws which she then
had to eliminate one by one, before testing the system again. She
put in long hours, had rarely left her apartment and had thought
of little else other than the contract. Now, with the exchange of her
signature gold-plated USB key with the company’s representative,
she had nothing left to apply herself to—at least for now. Casey
could finally relax.

But therein lay a unique and difficult dilemma.

Casey turned from the desk and faced the exposed brick wall
that separated the living area from the en suite bathroom. Hanging
from the bricks there, bathed now in a soft orange hue from
a street lamp outside, was a painting by the impressionist master

The woman in the painting looked down on Casey with overtly
large, expressive eyes and lips that curled upward ever so slightly
in a smile that could, for all the world, have been meant for Casey
herself. Auburn hair hung down on either side of her elongated
features. There was a beauty about the woman in the painting, who
Casey knew to be Jeanne Hebuterne, Modigliani’s lover and muse.
Though not an original, the painting was Casey’s favourite possession:
a gift from her grandparents on her twenty-first birthday.

Her grandfather often said that she reminded him of a Modigliani
painting. Casey smiled at the recollection, then absently clutched
at the back of her head, feeling the short, sharp bristles of her dark
hair. It had once been as long and as beautiful as Modigliani’s muse.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Touching a hand to the glass that protected the print inside,
Casey went to the fridge in the kitchen and plucked out a bottle of
wine. A long-stemmed glass was already waiting for her on the adjacent
countertop and she poured a generous lug of the sauvignon
blanc into it.

Time to celebrate, she thought wryly.
Walking past the workstation, bottle and glass in hand, Casey
looked over to the entertainment centre, locking her eyes onto a
familiar looking object there: a voice activated R2-D2 toy from the
Star Wars saga. It was one of Casey’s little indulgences.

“Hey, R2,” she commanded.

The little droid’s flashing red and blue light winked to life and its
domed head swivelled in the direction of her voice.
“Play music.”

A door on the barrel chest of the droid flipped opened and an
extendible arm appeared from inside.

This was not an accessory that came “out of the box” when Casey
purchased it. Rather, its presence was a result of some considerable
tweaking and customising by Casey herself.

The little droid rolled over to the front of the entertainment centre
and aimed its arm at the infrared pick-up of the sound system.
In an instant, the frenetic rock music of the Foo Fighters filled the
room. Casey allowed herself a satisfied smile.

Setting her glass on the edge of the work bench, she peeled her
gym top off and tossed it at her treadmill in the corner of the room
where it landed on one of the handles of the machine. The cool air of
the apartment caressed her skin, causing her nipples to stand erect
and she shivered, invigorated by the sensation. Reaching up, she
massaged a knot of tension from her left shoulder. An intricate tat-
too of a Japanese cherry blossom adorned her left shoulder blade, its
pink flowers catching the light from the street.

For a moment, Casey considered remaining topless, but she
opted instead to take a linen shirt that was hanging on the corner of
her wardrobe. She quickly threw it on.

Collecting her glass and the bottle and opening the glass sliding
door, Casey stepped out onto the balcony of her apartment. Immediately
she felt the balmy summer evening air on her skin and she

She set the wine bottle on a table and sipped from her glass as
she surveyed the bustling scene below her from the balcony railing.
This was the Esplanade, the main thoroughfare of the beachside
suburb of St. Kilda. The street was thick with Saturday night traffic,
both pedestrian and automotive, as people made their way to and
from the myriad eateries and entertainment venues that lined the
strip. To the north, Casey could see the lights from the iconic Luna
Park fun fair, as well as the equally famous Palais Theatre, where
large groups of people were milling about its entrance, waiting to
be admitted to whatever gig was playing tonight. Further on, she
could just see the famous Espy Hotel, another St. Kilda landmark
that routinely drew large crowds most nights of the week.

The sight of so many people below caused Casey to shiver. She
could feel an unpleasant knot of tension in the pit of her stomach.
She hated crowds as much as she hated being outdoors. The
very thought of being trapped down there in the throng of Saturday
night revellers filled her with dread.

Taking a larger gulp from her glass, Casey pulled her eyes from
below and cast them out across the inky waters of Port Phillip Bay.
A collection of flickering lights emanating from various ships and
boats captured her focus, taking it away from the chaotic throng
below. Her anxiety abated. Her breathing relaxed, the heartbeat

The heart, she thought darkly as she retreated from the balcony
edge and sat down on a lounge chair.

Balancing her glass on her knee, Casey closed her eyes and closed
out the sounds of the street until there was nothing but the sound
of the beating heart inside her chest. Its thump was vital and strong.
Casey reclined on the chair, lifting her feet and laying her head
back on the cushion. She placed her glass on the table beside her
and reached towards the buttons of her shirt, undoing a couple of
them, allowing the balmy summer breeze to caress her chest, her
almost perfect skin. A single blemish resided there, dark red in the
half-light. A thick, raised scar that ran down her sternum, perfectly
centred on her chest.

She hated that scar more than anything.

Though it was from a life-giving surgeon’s cut made in order to
deliver the heart she now carried, it served as a permanent physical
reminder of the journey she had taken from the edge of death, an
abyss from which she thought she would never escape.

She was alive.


She was alive but she was imprisoned by the realities of a life
post-transplant. The ongoing medical support and treatment and
medications were an omnipresent, oppressive fixture in her daily
existence. The regular visits to her doctors, the constant tweaking
of her medications, the continual tests to ensure that her new heart
remained functional and optimal. The medical team had inserted
themselves into every aspect of her life, observing how she ate, how
she drank, how she slept, how she worked. They were constantly
advising her and counselling her.

She hated it.

Casey felt like some bizarre human experiment, destined for an
eternity of analysis and scrutiny.
But there were also the other unanticipated things that no one,
least of all she, could have predicted. Her insomnia was foremost.
There were frequent periods where Casey could be trapped awake
for days at a time, unable to calm her mind. It was a phenomenon
that only existed since the surgery and it had not abated.
In order to function, Casey developed inventive strategies.
Work was one method. By taking on the most complex jobs she
could find, jobs that would occupy as much time as possible, she
would render sleep a luxury. So long as she was working, constructing,
testing and problem-solving she could avoid dealing with the
negatives of her insomnia. Medications helped too—and not the
type that were sanctioned by her medical team. Casey had done
enough research on the myriad of available stimulants and depressants
to know what she could take safely, and in what combinations,
if there was such a thing.

Despite this, Casey knew there was a limit to staving off sleep.
Her body eventually called time-out and she had to succumb.
Then she dreamed. It was the thing she hated most of all.
With the completion of the contract and no new work on the
horizon, she had run out of excuses to avoid sleep.
She drew the glass up to her lips again and sipped. Alcohol
would numb her, but only partially.

Looking down, Casey spied a small wooden box on the table.
Setting her glass down, she reached for it and balanced it on her
knees as she opened it. Inside was a small metallic pipe and a Zippo
lighter, both of which were surrounded by balled-up wads of green.
She plucked up the pipe and pressed one of those wads into the conical
spout, then lit the marijuana, taking a long drag. As the effects
of the drug worked almost immediately, she reclined and smiled.
Her muscles relaxed, the tornado of her thoughts dissipated.
If her physician knew what she was doing right now, he would
have a shit-fit.

His drug-addled heart transplant recipient.

Fuck him and his rules, she thought acidly. This is what changing
my life gets you.

Her life had indeed changed. It had shifted tectonically. No longer
was Casey Schillinge the wide-eyed, optimistic young woman.
The goody-two-shoes suburban daughter. The high achieving,
straight-A university student.

The heart had changed everything. It had taken as much away
from her as it had given her.

For now, the wine would anaesthetise her, but the weed would
knock out her subconscious and give her what she so desperately
craved: long, dreamless sleep.


The Recipient by Dean Mayes is out May 1st 2016 from Central Avenue Publishing.