New Release Sample: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

When the tour group of eight got to the second room off the restored lobby, which was the locker room, something weird happened. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who saw the green, glow-in-the-dark gas that seeped up through the cracks in the tile floor and streamed out through the vents in the rusty old locker doors. I watched those streamers swirl around for a few seconds. They turned into tentacles like an octopus, except without the suction cups, and reached across the room to us. Nobody reacted. Not even Mr. Wellington, when one of those tentacles curved around his shoulders and flicked at his coat.

I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen, because the greeny-glowing tentacles were transparent. Common sense said they were just gas. Except would gas act like that? There wasn't a breeze in the room to explain the movement if it was just gas.

One tentacle wrapped around Mr. Wellington's throat, and he choked. I opened my mouth to scream.

The tentacles vanished, just popping out of existence in silence. Mr. Wellington went on telling funny stories. The men and women who had used this locker room, during different phases of the factory's history. The different things that had been manufactured here, depending on the economy or what was needed in the rest of the country.

Nobody else seemed to have seen the tentacles, otherwise they would have said something, right? Of course, I saw them, and I didn't say anything, so how could I be sure? The freaky thing was that Mr. Wellington seemed to forget he was choking, the moment the tentacles vanished. As if he hadn't really felt them, or hadn't been choking at all.

So what had I seen, if what I saw didn't happen?

When in doubt, go to Mum and Pop. They investigated the really weird, after all.

New Release Sample: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

Miss Angela came to the door as I walked up the sidewalk. She waved, and I looked back to see Mrs. S sitting in her car, watching me. I had the weirdest feeling she was making sure I actually got to the front door, like there was a chance something would happen to stop me. Why would she think that? Divine's was probably the safest place in the entire town, even including Oak Cottage with all the doors and windows closed and locked and Miss Abby on duty.

"I imagine you're just eaten up with curiosity over what Charlie and Rainbow sent me, aren't you?" Miss Angela stepped back to let me go past her through the door. She laughed when I just grinned at her and nodded and handed her the envelope.

She gestured for me to follow her, and we went upstairs. Not to the second floor, to her apartment, which I had expected. We went up to the third floor, and she pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket and unlocked one of the doors.

"You do know the difference between secrets that are bad for you to keep, and secrets that are bad for everyone else if you don't keep them, don't you, Lanie?" Miss Angela paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"I think so."

"Not that I doubt you, but…" She sighed. "Why don't you tell me the kinds of secrets that are bad for you?"

"Well… When somebody gets hurt, and they tell me I better not tell the teacher. Or Miss Abby. Or you," I hurried to add. That got a twitch of her lips and she relaxed just a little bit.

"This is probably laying a burden on you far too soon, but I daresay destiny has already marked you clearly enough." She got down on one knee so she could look me in the eyes as she talked. "Say someone makes you do something that you don't understand, but you know deep in your heart, it's wrong. You don't want to do it, maybe it even hurts, but that person is much stronger than you, and they tell you not to tell anybody. Maybe they even threaten to hurt you, or people you love, if you tell anyone what they did."

"Those bad people can't find us here, in Neighborlee, can they?" I must have been scared. I know there was a queasy kind of sensation in my head and my stomach at the same time, and my voice dropped to a whisper.

New Release Sample: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

The celebrating died down, as people ran off to get on whatever phones they could find to spread the news. We didn't have a lot of cell phones back then. The Zephyrs hurried over to where I was standing by my sled. Mrs. Z hugged me and apologized. They both laughed when I told them I knew what was going on. We climbed on the sled and screamed all the way down the hill. Mr. Z pulled the sled and the Zephyrs held my hands and we walked up the hill together. We went down twice more, and then someone flagged down Mr. Z to talk about something and Mrs. Z went to get hot chocolate for us.

Then the crimson and gold figure that had been lingering on the edge of my vision attacked. She could finally tower over me because she stood two feet up the slope.

"You think you're so smart!" Sylvia shrieked. Her fists were jammed into her hips, so it made the skirts stick out in the fancy outfit more appropriate for figure skating than sledding. "You think it's funny? Those stupid, nasty, mean people are thieves!"

Then she said other things with words I didn't understand. I had to look them up later. They were mean, derogatory, and even racially hateful. She picked on Mrs. Z for being Asian and called Mr. Z a drug-pusher and a hippie and accused them of being liars and Communist spies and dozens of other things she could only have picked up from the so-called adults in her family.

Sylvia's arsenal of nastiness did have limits. When she started in on her second round, I told her she was repeating herself.

Interrupting a Grandstone wasn't smart. It just increased their speed, volume and pitch, and sometimes added spitting.

The really un-smart part of the whole encounter was that I should have turned my back on her as soon as she called the Zephyrs stupid. I mean, I had a sled right there and I was on the hill. I could have just turned and sat down and pushed. By the time she realized I wasn't listening, I would have been twenty feet away.

"That is enough, young lady," Miss Underwood said, in that tone that was so calm and disappointed, it was scary.

Most Kindergarteners would have stopped short, frozen by guilt, knowing we had made our teacher unhappy.

Sylvia let out a shriek and launched herself at me. Miss Underwood caught her by the collar of her coat. Sylvia had strong legs and a hard push-off, and enough momentum to unbalance them both and send them into the snow.

New Release Sample: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

I had decided I needed to practice my kinda-sorta flying, to show Angela what I could do next time we met up. I already had it in my head that just going up and down, or gliding, wasn’t good enough. Maybe she could help me figure out how to fly like Superman. I found a sheltered spot at the far end of the field where the older kids played baseball and soccer, in the thick clump of trees enclosed by the fence encircling the orphanage grounds. I rose as high as I could get before I got scared and then hung there until the ground started to look a little fuzzy before I came back down. At five years old, twenty feet off the ground was the equivalent of Mount Everest. I had just worked up the nerve to try some sideways shifting when Kurt walked into the little clearing where I was practicing, and looked up at me. Fortunately, I was wearing shorts, rather than a skirt. Skirts were for church and school.

"You hum really loud." He was grinning at me.

"No I'm not." I was indignant, because I knew enough to keep quiet so the kids who might make fun of me wouldn't see me.

"Yeah, you do, but it's not the kind of humming that people can hear."

"That's stupid. How can you hear it if people can't hear it?" I came down a little faster than I intended and my knees wobbled when I hit. Kurt steadied me, and a funny buzzing sensation kind of shocked me where his hand touched my bare arm.

"Like that." He grinned wider, gray eyes sparkling, and rubbed his hand on the front of his t-shirt. "It's okay, I hum too."

"Are you laughing at me?" I had already run into the two chief bullies, Ricky and Donny. They had overheard Miss Abby talking with another houseparent about my reading ability, and came running to inflict their new nickname on me: Lanie Brainy.

"Nope. We're superheroes."

"Huh?"

That was my introduction to the amazing world of comic books and superheroes and mutants and superpowers and saving the world.

New Release Sample: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

Outings with Mrs. S were special occasions. We all loved her, even if she did rule with an iron fist and no one could ever get away with anything. The important thing was that we knew she loved us, fiercely, like a lioness. No one ever made fun of her children or pushed us to the back of the line. No one pried into our lives and put us under a microscope, and then when they decided we weren’t useful, relegated us to the trash, the way the Grandstones did.

The Grandstones were Neighborlee's resident robber barons and spoiled rich kids, with the attitude that they were entitled to everything and anyone they wanted. If they had to rewrite history to prove it, they would.

Mrs. S took me to lunch at Miller's Diner, where I had my first ever peanut butter chocolate malt. I knew Stephanie Groves, the waitress who took care of us. She was an NCH graduate who came in once a month to do crafts or bake with the children, or just play games with us. Many of the Lost Kids came back to NCH and repaid the debt of love and care they had been given.

After lunch, we went to Divine's Emporium and I met Miss Angela. Divine's is an old Victorian house, one of the oldest in town, painted olive and gold, with all the fancy gingerbread trimming and gables and skinny windows and a deep porch and a flagstone walk and a wrought iron fence across the front. It sits on the edge of a somewhat steep hill, at the end of a dead-end street, looking down over the Metroparks. The hill isn't too steep that deer can't come up the slope to Angela's garden in back. They don't pillage her garden like they do other gardens in town, and she puts out salt licks and bins of grain and fruit for them. All the animals that come to visit behave themselves in Angela's garden.

That's the outside. The inside…is a wonderland. Lots of rooms that, from the outside, should be small, yet feel huge on the inside, filled with a wonderful hodge-podge of treasures. Lots of secondhand items, with Divine's doing a booming resale business. A glorious mixture of pottery and crystal, rag dolls, candles, used books, wind chimes, old furniture, nostalgia toys, a tiny soda fountain/coffee shop tucked into a corner, jewelry, vintage clothes, apothecary jars full of penny candy, and the Wishing Ball.

The Wishing Ball, that day I first saw it, sat on the marble countertop in the main room of the shop, next to an old-fashioned brass cash register. It was about the size of a bowling ball, something along the lines of those gazing balls that some people put in their gardens, but dark, with metallic rainbow streaks all through it. The colors seemed to move. Not when I was looking straight at them, but as I turned my head, or from the corner of my eyes. The stand was a coiled, dark brass dragon, the long tail wrapped around twice.

New Release Sample: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID
Neighborlee, Ohio
Book 1

Fantasy

www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com
www.Mlevigne.com

Welcome to Neighborlee, Ohio.

Where? Somewhere on the North Coast of Ohio, south of Cleveland, right off I-71, north of Medina, in the heart of Cuyahoga County.

What is it? That’s a little harder to explain.

Neighborlee is a place you need to experience.

The most important thing you need to understand: Neighborlee is magic. Some people say the town is alive. It exists to protect the weird and wonderful (and sometimes a little bit scary) from the cold, practical, material world.

More important, Neighborlee protects the outside world from the weird and wonderful that come to visit … and sometimes come to stay.

First stop: Divine’s Emporium, a four-story Victorian house sitting on a hill overlooking the Metroparks. Whatever you really need, you can find at Divine’s. Even if you don’t know what you’re looking for when you walk in the door. The shop is often bigger inside than it is outside. Angela is the proprietor. Please stay on the first floor. You don’t want to find out what is hidden and locked safely away upstairs. Like Aslan, Angela is good, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. And neither are the secrets and wonders and doorways to other worlds that she protects … and keeps securely locked.

Come in and explore. Meet the people who help Angela guard Neighborlee. Share their adventures of magic and wonder, danger and sacrifice. You never know who or what you’ll run into as you walk the streets and listen to the stories of their lives.

Coming title: CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID

May 1, the Neighborlee, Ohio fantasy series re-launches.

You may have read the books when they originally were released by Uncial Press.

I'm going back through, fixing little holes in the storyline, adding some new sub-plots and details, and the stories are now being released in chronological order of events.

There were originally 8 books -- when the series is finished, there will be 13.
New titles.
New cover art.
A lot more intense.

So you may have read some of the Neighborlee, Ohio books before, but I can guarantee there's something new to discover and some changes even in books you've read before.

The schedule is a new PRINT book coming out every other month, starting in May.

The ebook version will be released through Kindle/Amazon and Kindle Unlimited (as soon as I figure out HOW) for the first 3 months, then we'll go wide, if you prefer other reading formats. Ebooks will be released before the print versions.

Audiobooks are far on the horizon, so if you prefer to listen to stories instead of reading them, STAY TUNED!!

And check in with Ye Olde Dragon Books as we build the website and release information. You'll be able to buy print copies directly through us, as well as ebooks when we go into wide distribution, and hopefully audiobooks as well!

www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com