Moondance

by Flo Fitzpatrick

1997: Autumn in Texarkana and the harvest moon is shinin' on. Sybil MacKenzie (Mac), in town to choreograph "South Pacific" for a local theatre is feeling moonstruck. She's falling in love with a younger man, Johnny Chandler who's playing Joe Cable in the show. In between rehearsals, the pair are entering swing dance contests, sharing stories of traumatic events in their lives, and searching for clues to the identify of a killer. They also are experiencing physical events that happened to a pair of teen lovers in the mid-1940s, who were caught in the grip of the Texarkana Phantom Moonlight Killer. When Mac and Johnny learn that their forties counterparts met a violent death in 1947, they're forced to confront the past and embrace the presnt before history can repeat under the next full moon. (previously published as "It's a Marvelous Night for a Moondance" )

343 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 28, 2020

About the author

Flo Fitzpatrick’s first attempt to enter the field of literature was a work of science fiction called “The Bug on the Wall.” It consisted of two sentences. “There was a bug. It was on the wall.” She was five at the time, so perhaps the brevity of this piece was understandable.

She grew more adventurous and at age eight wrote two chapters of what was intended to be a full-length novel entitled, “The Skinner Family goes to Ireland.” The plot consisted of the Skinner family heading over to Ireland to visit their Aunt Donna who lived on a potato farm and owned a swimming pool. Flo’s older brothers, twins, were somewhat skeptical that the Skinners would make it to Ireland traveling across the Atlantic from New York to London by train. (Flo has since pointed out that the English Channel now boasts an underwater transportation system leading from England to France and that she was just ahead of her time.)

She earned a B.F. A. in Dance and an M.A. in theatre, then spent her years after college shuttling back and forth from New York to her native Texas working as a dancer/singer/actress, teaching dance and acting, and choreographing for various theatres and community colleges. During her career in theatre, Flo has played nice ladies (Nellie-South Pacific), not-so-nice ladies (Lily St. Regis-Annie), funny ladies (Jane-Fallen Angels) singing ladies (Cherie -Bus Stop), dancing ladies (Vibrata - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and even dead ladies (three murdered hookers in Jack the Ripper!) The last, she claims, was tough. She had to spend the first ten minutes of the show lying on the floor not breathing. Flo still loves wacky characters both on and off stage.