Tamara Kirk

“As the sentient book began flipping through pages all by itself, I focused on Eddie and my dream about Poseidon. The pages finally riffled to a stop, and the book lay open to a page decorated with swirling blue and aqua waves around the edges. At the top of the page swooping gold letters spelled out "Nereus." Baffled, I quickly scanned the page. According to the book, Nereus was a figure in ancient Green mythology. He'd been a Titan, the only one who'd avoided getting sent off to where the gods had sent the Titans after the war. He was the father of the Nereids and some dude called Nerites, who looked suspiciously like a Hippocampus. He was a shape shifter with the power of prophecy, who'd aided heroes such as Hercules. He”
― Shéa MacLeod, Kissed by Ice

“Henry Grant, I think again as I exhale a deep breath that eases some of the pain that name causes me. It’s not even the name that I object to, if I’m bein’ completely honest with myself. It’s just a name. If Red had given me the most stellar name I could think of it would still suck ‘cuz it’s not my name. It’s someone else’s name. I’m givin’ up my birthright. It’s mine. Russell Marx. Me. It’s like I’m givin’ up my humanity, too, ‘cuz I was nothin’ but human when I was Russell. Now I’m supposed to be Henry and he’s some kind of freaky half-angel. I have had thousands of names in a thousand different lifetimes, but for some reason, this one, Russell Marx, is the hardest for me to give up. Maybe it’s ‘cuz I’m not dyin’ and movin’ on to the next life. I don’t know, but the pain I feel is somethin’ awful. I clutch the steerin’ wheel tight, drivin’ faster than I should through the sleepy little towns between Crestwood and Coldwater. I”
― Amy A. Bartol, Intuition

“James LaRue wormed his hand through the T-shirts and underwear in his top dresser drawer until his fingers made contact with a box the size of a cigarette pack. It was said that the underwear drawer was one of the first places burglars looked when robbing you. If they found James’ stash, they would most likely think it cocaine, snort a little, and be dead within a minute.”
― Anne Frasier, Play Dead