Greetings one and all! Trying something new and different here at Split Horizons… having a guest author, Ms.Stephanie Abbott, provide a character interview for her novella “Past Lives #1 Rachel”.
Do me a favor and leave some feedback … 1) are you interested in seeing more guest posts from other authors and 2) would you be interested in seeing a few character interviews with the gang from the Bloody Rose? Let me know!
Without further ado, allow me to present Ms.Stephanie Abbott (AKA S.A. Reid)!
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“What Do You Like About People?”
By Stephanie Abbott
Orangeberry Book Tour - Stephanie Abbott
If you’d asked me this question before the crash, I probably would have gotten snarky and said, “When they leave me alone,” or “Watching them back the hell off.” Oh, not all the time, or even most of the time, but it was a stressful month – finals, Christmas shopping, and icy roads. My cousin and best friend Brannon scored us an invite to a holiday party, but a jack-knifed tractor trailer changed everything. One minute traffic was moving well, despite the snow and ice, and the next a silver Porsche lost control and hit my little car head-on. When I woke up, I was – well. Someone else. A Victorian lady named Cassandra Masters. Living in 1870s London, serving a secret organization called the Order, and in love with two very different men.
After a trip to the ER, I shook off Cassandra’s persona and realized what had happened. I’d been Cassandra in a past life. And she was more than just an upper-class lady in a corsets-and-crumpets world. She was a powerful telepath in a society that had no use for females, except to breed more telepaths. And I, too, possessed the same power to read minds, force weaker people to obey me, even gather my psionic energy and throw it like a lightning bolt. The car crash shook me to my soul, so when I regained my senses as Rachel, my once-dormant telepathy shot from 0 to 60. Suddenly, I knew what everyone around me was thinking. What they thought of themselves, and what they thought of me.
Now there are some bad telepaths in the world. Crazy, cruel, sadistic psis who hate almost everyone and manipulate them like puppets. Maybe they figure other people have it coming. It’s true, when you first start reading minds, it’s hard to keep perspective. Who would have guessed my best friend Brannon secretly thought I was spoiled? Or that my new friend (and fellow crash survivor) Zach, so calm and intellectual on the outside, wanted to skip getting to know me and take me to bed? Even his roommate Josh struck me as shallow, dismissing Brannon as a nonentity while plotting ways to seduce Hayden, driver of that infamous silver Porsche. The five of us, once the best of friends – in some cases, more than friends – in 1870 had been reunited, and my telepathy threatened to ruin it all.
But with time I learned people are too complex to judge on the basis of their surface thoughts – momentary flashes of envy, lust or fear. Each mind is a constellation of good, bad, ugly and beautiful. What fascinates me now isn’t that people have petty moments or days when they hate everyone and want to be left alone. It’s that people – most people – put aside the negative and come through for each other, time and again. Not because they’re perfect inside but because they fight to against their unkind impulses. So that’s what I like about people: our uniquely human instinct to recognize our shortcomings and struggle to be better.
Who is Rachel Macready? She is the main character in Stephanie Abbott’s latest novella, Past Lives #1 Rachel. A near-fatal car crash unlocks memories from Rachel’s past life, dredging up secrets taken to the grave. And even as Rachel discovers the hidden power that is her birthright, she finds herself drawn to the reincarnates of two very different men. In that past life, both loved her. One might even have loved her to death…
About the author – Stephanie Abbott is the face behind the popular pseudonym, S.A. Reid. Well-known for her “real and likeable characters”, she also writes paranormal fiction (a new series titled Past Lives is currently being penned), fantasy, and sci-fi. Additionally, she also pens cozy mysteries as Emma Jameson.
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