C.M. Vazquez's Blog

It's mid-month. That means it's time for another WIP! I figured I’d include anything new as part of my WIPs. 
Last month I started an online book club on TikTok and YouTube. I am going to be reading the full Dexter Series by Jeff Lindsay. I make videos for each chapter giving a recap as well as my impressions of the chapter. I hope that viewers will join the club by reading along with me and giving their own impressions in the comments. I have chapters 1-11 up of Darkly Dreaming Dexter with a playlist on YouTube to watch them in order. Please click on the link at the bottom of this WIP and subscribe to my channel if you are interested.
I have also been working on BCS book 2 and have a mini teaser from chapter 2 for you:
It was summertime and I remember staring at the empty fireplace while I waited for Dr. Wright to make her entrance. She came in with a firm hand shake and an introduction. The first Catelyn I’ve met,  pronounced Cattle-Inn. She thought it best to have our first meeting at the manor, a place where I’d be comfortable.
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 Welcome to the very first WIP update that I have ever done as a published author! If you don't know or are unfamiliar with the term WIP, it means Work In Progress. Every month, about midway, I will be sharing small tidbits of my current works in progress. Today's is from the second book in The Bird Cage Society Series A.K.A. BCS.

The second book will of course have the main title The Bird Cage Society with the subtitle, tentatively, Flying. I originally came up with Flying as a way to give the subtitles in the series some cohesion but as the outline for the second book unfolds, this little subtitle is looking more and more like it will be tossed aside. So even though it's technically TBD, Flying works for now.

SPOILER ALERT! Please be aware that any WIPs that feature an ongoing series may contain spoilers for previous books. If you have not read The Bird Cage Society: Falling, please do so before reading any WIPs for future installments, including this one.

Flying takes place about three months after the ending events of Falling. Charly is reeling not only from what she has learned since her kidnapping but also from some pretty traumatic experiences. Book two starts off with a bit of a recap for the ending of book one along with an altered replay of those events and the consequences that occurred afterward between books one and two.

I know, a bit vague right? But in a effort to avoid giving away too much while still maintaining a good amount of anticipation... Here's a small snippet of chapter one, BCS, Flying:

About a month after the events of the Creche, I woke up to pounding on my bed cubby followed by concerned shouting. It’s a habit to latch my cubby door when I sleep. A feature my Guardians most likely regretted in that moment. Sliding the door aside, I came face to face with Elijah’s unusually animated one. I sighed in relief. Eyes widened, brows raised, and lips parted. His breath was heavy as he ran his gaze along my face and into the darkness of my cubby’s interior.

I wasn’t sure what he thought he’d find but when his gaze swept back to mine our eyes met and mingled. Deep blue capturing gold-speckled brown. And as often happens when I look into Elijah’s eyes, I couldn’t see anything else. 

Stay tuned for more Mid-Month WIPs! 

 

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Kidnapped, afraid, and confused.

Charly Brewer is a self-conscious and reserved introvert with a love of pop-punk music and a talent she doesn’t know she possesses.

When she is taken from her comfortable world and thrust into an organization that most don’t know exists, a struggle to come to grips with her new life becomes a realization of herself.

But there are other dangers lurking in Charly’s new world…

Can she trust the people who have awakened her potential? And will it be worth changing her life for?

(Featured on the Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 1 Ep. of The NoSleep Podcast)



I wish I could say that my day started off like any other. An unreasonably loud alarm clock. The brightness of the morning sun across my face. Hell, even a crowing rooster would’ve sufficed.
No. I didn’t get mornings. Or nights. I got afternoons. The same afternoon like some twisted Groundhog Day rerun.
My days started in study hall. The last period of the day. Freshman year, high school. January, 2015. Five minutes before the end of day bell.
No matter what I did, no matter what I said, everything was always the same. It didn’t matter if I chose not to answer Mr. Penmoore’s question. He went on as if I had. No matter how fast I tried to get home, I always arrived at the same time. 3:04 pm. 
I tried staying after school. And once I even ran directly to my bedroom as soon I got home in an attempt to avoid the horrifying event altogether. But my efforts fell on futility. 
When the clock strikes 3:06 pm I’m always standing in the doorway of the upstairs bathroom looking at my mother’s exsanguinated corpse. Every time, I find her lying in a mixture of her own blood and water. Her dead eyes staring up at the popcorn ceiling. 
Whatever force held me in this limbo allowed me to stay in that moment just long enough to scream and shout “why?!”. After awhile the why became less about the reason my mom had done this and more on the motive behind the constant repetition.
Had I done something wrong? Did I cause this? Was I being punished?
This went on for an innumerable amount of time. The boredom was constant, the outcome never changed. I couldn’t go anywhere I hadn’t been or see anything I hadn’t seen. Pages of books that I recognized yet never read were blank. Everything was the same until it wasn’t. 
The bell rang releasing the students into the hallway. I lagged behind as usual. Weary and depressed. My feet shuffled along. I gazed down at the multi-colored tile floor as I went. My forehead smacked into a solid object which sent my body toppling backward. I rubbed my smarting forehead, shocked that I could feel pain that wasn’t emotional. I grimaced as a headache began to form.
I looked up in search of the thing that had effectively stopped my forward momentum. A door sat upright on the floor in the middle of the hallway. It was a pretty generic wooden door. One you might find on the front of any cookie cutter home. Soft brown with a brass knob.
I reacted the way any reasonable person would. I got up, righted myself, walked up to the door and cranked my head around to the other side. When I didn’t find anything over there, I pulled back and stared at the doorknob. 
A few things crossed my mind. Is this the way out or is this a trick? Hope was standing right in front of me. What if this was my only chance? Could I let it slip away? I found my hand reaching and grasping the knob before I made the conscious decision to do so. My hand turned but the handle didn’t. 

The damn door was locked! I kicked it and cursed at the sick sense of humor of the damn force that held me here. 
The moment I made the decision to turn and leave the door behind, it was as if the day had sped up. I had only been in front of that door for a few minutes. Yet I found myself in the upstairs bathroom once again gazing down at my lifeless mother. I let out the same scream that left my lips when I found her the first time. Everything was raw again. And then it was study hall…
I felt worn out but never tired. Not like I ever slept anyway. More days passed. At least that part of the day. When the door showed up again it was on the bus ride home. 
A regular sized door in the middle of a school bus. The aisle wasn’t big enough nor the roof of the bus to accommodate the door, none of which seemed to matter. The edges of the wooden door simply phased through those areas and the children that passed through as if it didn’t exist. 
A window had appeared among the differences of the door. As soon I made a move to interact with it, the world around me stopped. The bus, the movement and voices of the other kids, even the goings on outside the bus. I tentatively peered through the glass. I saw only what was currently on the other side of the door. The inside of a school bus and children frozen in time. 
I sighed in disappointment and turned away. My mom looked like a porcelain doll. Pale, wide-eyed, and unmoving. I didn’t scream this time.
In the following days I began writing letters to my mom that I knew she would never see. It wasn’t just that I knew I would never see her alive again in this world of repetition but that I knew deep down, if I ever managed to get past the upstairs bathroom, that she was really dead. 
The understanding that this world was not a nightmare but a memory was gradual. With it came the memories of the events leading up to the last five minutes of study hall. My morning really had begun with an alarm clock. Only, the sound was set to resemble that of a rooster and I had opened my eyes to the blinding glare of the morning sun coming in my bedroom window. 
I showered and got dressed. My mom had breakfast waiting for me like she always does. We talked about sleep and my upcoming math test. She told me she loved me and kissed my forehead goodbye then told me I was going to miss the bus. This made me lurch off the bar stool at the kitchen island and bound for the front door, backpack in hand. I had barely made it out the front door when I realized I forgot my pencil bag. I ran back inside toward the living room stand barely glancing at the bag as I snatched it up.
“Bye! Love you!” I yelled to mom as I flew out the door to the awaiting bus. 
The school day passed as normal. I’m pretty sure I flunked my math test. But as study hall was nearing its last five minutes a thought that had been roaming in the back of my mind all day pushed its way to the front and shoved a mental picture before my eyes. 
When I grabbed the pencil bag off the stand that morning there had been a small pill bottle next to it. I could chalk it up to the busyness of the school day or the inner workings of an absent-minded teenager but honestly I don’t know why it took me so long to register what I had seen. A second after this memory, the clock ticked to five minutes remaining of class. 

Right after I regained this memory I was thrust back into the doorway of the upstairs bathroom. I looked over at my mother as I had done so many times but this time I felt a weight in my hand and held it up. A prescription bottle of pills was clutched in my left hand. My mother’s name along with the name of an anti-depressant was printed on the label. It was a bottle of thirty dated for six months ago and it was full. 
I guess we see more than we think we do.
I didn’t know how long my mother had been depressed. No matter how long, she hid it well. How could I have known? Not once had I felt its effects. My mom always treated me like I was the most important thing in her life. She was the kindest most attentive mother I had ever met.
In that moment the realization dawned that this was not my fault and there wasn’t anything I could’ve done. My mom loved me. She just hadn’t loved herself.

"Annie..." 
Someone called my name. My head whipped around and I looked into the upstairs hallway. The door was back and perched on the edge of the staircase. I made my way to it and looked through the window once more.
A fatigued and slightly plumper version of my dad sat on a leather couch in a room full of books. He was looking back at me with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. I hadn’t realized I had ahold of the knob until I was pushing the door open. 
The room on the other side was suddenly much larger. I sat across from my father on the leather couch. I was dressed in what looked like white button up pajamas and there was a man with glasses sitting in another leather chair on the other side of us. 
“Where are we?” I glanced back at my dad for the answer.
He burst into tears with a smile on his face and gathered me into his arms. I welcomed the hug as my own tears began to spill over. Then he and the doctor began to talk. The new information on top of my own revelations was a lot to take in at once. The words catatonic and years were passed around as well as my father informing that my mother was dead. All I could say was “I know” while I cried and hugged him some more. We finally got to experience the shared grief that had been denied us for so long. But I didn’t blame myself anymore.
Now I know that if I ever get lost again, all I have to do is search for that door.