The Pause

by Kay Williams

It is 2263 and after years of neglect and disappointment the only thing Rosemary Harkin is sure of is that her Naval Commander father and career wife mother will still be arguing the specifics of a divorce they had already managed to drag out for two years.


With her eighteenth birthday just weeks away, in her last year of High School and with a fair sized inheritance on the way from her grandmother the only thing stopping her just picking and leaving
town to start a life of her own is her English Literature Professor Jonathan Shay. Calm, witty and gentle mannered and his teaching methods inventive and fun his class has been a freedom from the oppressive structure she has been forced into accepting in the wake of her parent’s apathy.

After four hundred and fourteen years Jonathan Shay has come to terms with the predator he became at the moment of his Undeath, now an Elder in his own right he enjoys his passions for books, stories and teaching, but however controlled he is now he is still a slave to his need for blood and those with a special sweetness in their life source, which is always inconvenient when the maturing blood of his most enigmatic female student calls to him in ways that won’t be ignored.

With the intoxicating scent of her blood driving him Shay beings to lose himself in the Hunt only to witness a break-in that could see his prey taken from him before he gets a chance to savor it, bounding to a rescue sees Harkin helplessly grateful and in his power, but at the crucial moment, fangs poised near perfect skin Shay finds himself unable to complete the act.

Impotence takes on a new meaning as Shay finds the pull of Harkins blood irresistible and at the same time unable to even condone the thought of hurting her, with the help of an old friend as a buffer Harkin begins to confide and confess and Shay finds that dead hearts are still capable of breaking and his appetite for possession can be used to protect.

But something is coming that will test the strength of Harkin’s trust.

The Waking Night, a powerful sect of Mages charged to maintain the flow of magic that pulses out of Favlas, is losing its battle to control the Nexus, and when it fails, and Favlas and Earth are reunited once more by its magic, all hell will break loose.

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 14, 2012

About the author

As well as a successful author, Kay Williams is a professional actress who has played a wide range of leading roles at theaters around the U.S. For several years, Kay worked behind-the-scenes with an independent filmmaker in New York, traveling with him to Leningrad in 1991 where she received the idea for The Matryoshka Murders. Anything could happen here, she thought, in this city at this desperate time.

Eileen “Jo” Wyman, Kay’s writing partner, helped organize photos and notes collected from the trip, and together they drafted a plot and wrote this thriller that begins in Russia and jumps across an ocean to New York City.

Eileen, known to friends as Jo, an amazing, talented woman, tragically passed away on Sept. 6, 2013, just after The Matryoshka Murders was completed. Jo worked in radio-TV and began her writing career in comedy, crafting jokes for speech writers and comedians, humorous fillers for magazines, and captions for cartoonists. She loved humor—from punch line jokes to surreal comedy to wit and word play—filling file box after file box with her wry, pithy descriptions.

The authors’ move into the crime-ridden, sleazy Hell’s Kitchen of 1977 provided the catalyst for their award-winning thriller, Butcher of Dreams. Kay’s wide ranging acting credits and theater experience gave focus to this character/plot driven mystery that centers around the struggling 42nd Street repertory theater where much of the action takes place.

Kay is also a co-author of the comic romance One Last Dance:It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love, started by her journalist father Mardo Williams, and finished by her and her sister Jerri Lawrence. One Last Dance has won several awards, including an Ohioana Award (to Jerri and Kay) for writing and editing excellence.

Coming next (dedicated to Jo) - Part One of a Series: New York City, Collected Letters, 1956-57: Were We Ever That Young?, the hilarious, heart-breaking and hair-raising adventures of two starry-eyed girls from the Midwest (Jo and Kay) who arrive in New York City with big dreams of success. Part Two of the Series will be San Francisco, Collected Letters, the Sixties.