I want to share an excerpt from my new project, Users. That’s just a working title. I’ve got no idea what the finished title will be yet. I’ve thrown a few things around, but I think it fits for now. The main character is an ex heroin junkie and in his world “Users” is the name of powered individuals. There’s all kinds of users, guys with super strength, some with telekinesis, others with the ability to use fire. It’s a kind of anti-hero super hero book. Not like superman or anything, but more like Sin City or the movie Push. Here’s the unedited prologue, a sneak peek at what’s coming. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to comment below on what you think of it so far.

The book starts with a visit to his shrink and every new part of the book, about every 3 chapters, we get another visit with his doctor to check in on what’s happening in the plot so far.



“It never ceases to amaze me, how life can be so fragile yet at the same time so tenacious. In a brutal attack one man can get stabbed fifty seven times with a butcher knife and miraculously survives; while the next accidentally falls asleep and drowns in four inches of bathwater. One man is mauled by a grizzly bear, walks twenty miles while holding in his bowels with his bare hands and survives; and then another is punched in a street fight, falls back hitting his head on a curb, and dies instantly.

Who knows why one body can take such punishment, and struggle to hang on, while another lets their life simply slip through their fingers like grains of sand. Why is Mick Jagger still rocking it at seventy something after decades of rock star partying, while Heath Ledger overdoses and dies after a single night of too much medication.

These are the types of things that keep me up at night. Wondering why, after all I’ve done to myself, am I still alive.

“Carter,” she said, bringing me back to reality.

She caught me spacing out again, my mind wandering, as it seems to often.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

“Um…I…,” I stammered, struggling for the right thing to say.

She sighed.

Not wanting to make eye contact, I stared off at the mostly bare wall behind her. The only thing hanging from the wall was a framed diploma from the University of Texas A&M, reminding me of my lack of even a high school diploma, just to ensure I felt inferior to this dark haired woman. She sat cross legged, peering down at me from behind her glasses. She was slightly overweight and just unattractive enough to make me comfortable with having to spill my guts to her, week in and week out.

“How is the medication? Any side effects?”

“No, it’s been fine,” I lied.

In truth I’d been suffering from prolonged ejaculation, also defined as a struggle to climax during sex. If you call that a struggle. Some men would call that a blessing. Here they are premature ejaculating all over the place and I’m going strong like a bull, but I didn’t want to tell her that. The last thing I needed was her to take me off my meds just because I was struggling to cum once and awhile. Trust me I need them.

“You look like hell,” she said, and I couldn’t deny that fact.

The scratches and bruises covering my arms, and the black eye I could hardly see out of were the type of damning evidence that would hold up in court. Nervously, I tapped my foot repeatedly and rapidly on the wood tile covering her office floor.

“I had a rough week,” I said.

“Carter, you’ve got to get yourself together,” she said, “I thought we were making real progress here, but this seems like a major set back.”

“I got into a fight.”

“I can see that.” She leaned back in her tall backed leather chair. It looked expensive, and it better have been at the three hundred plus dollars an hour I was paying her, but with my particular problems it took a particular kind of shrink to deal with me, and that didn’t come cheap. “Tell me about it.”

“The fight?” I asked.

She folded her arms over her chest and for a split second she stared at me as if I had just asked the worlds dumbest question, but she quickly shifted in her seat, a true pro, to hide her disdain for me.

“Yes, tell me about the fight,” she confirmed.

“It’s a long story.”

“You’ve still got forty minutes on the clock. We’re not going anywhere, so start at the beginning.”

I smirked, lifting my cheek on the right side, the side with the black eye, and it stung as the puffed up purple skin squeezed tight.

“Okay,” I said, “It all started with a phone call.”



So there it is. That’s how the story starts. Please comment on what you thought of the beginning.

Thanks,

Stacy