Backslide, book 3 in the Harper Revolution YA space opera portal fantasy series, is now available on all major ebook platforms and in print. In this third installment, Emma learns new facts that clash with what she thought she knew.
We also say goodbye to [spoiler] and [spoiler].
If you’re new to the series, it starts with book 1, Porcelain. Emma Harper is a girl with serious self-destruction problems, and she has to get sucked through a wormhole to a distant part of the universe to figure that out.
Here’s an excerpt from Porcelain (also available for iBooks, Nook, and more):
Showering made me feel better. It always did. Water sluiced away grime and erased evidence of anything. I could cry in the shower and no one ever knew.
Giant, frosted globe lights cast soft, yellow-white light across the tiled expanse of my bathroom. I stared at my damp self in the mirror with a grimace of disgust. Bulges and flab hung everywhere. Shadows under my eyes made me look like a freak. My nose had broken out in blackheads again, probably because of the cheesecake. I hadn’t purged it fast enough.
Wrapping my pink, fluffy robe around my body let me not look at it anymore. I didn’t need to see my gut bulges. No one wanted to see that. When I wore my bikini, everyone would. The one-piece swimsuit in the drawer with my bikini sounded like a good idea. Facing the choice of being laughed at for my gut and being laughed at for the extra fabric, I liked the option that took more effort to remove.
I sighed and attacked my hair, resigned to the judgment of my friends. Unlike Madison’s tight, elegant curls, my mop frizzed into a puff when I did nothing to it. Step one had me dragging a comb through it, teasing out the snarls. That fact kept me out of the water at the beach.
As I watched my gross, knobby hands work with my tangles, my vision clouded with swirling motes of static. This time, though, instead of filling my sight, it only covered the mirror. When I turned my head, everything else seemed fine. The surface of the mirror writhed with dancing black and white dots.
Maybe I’d passed out in the shower? The dots jerked sideways in a flicker, forming a fleeting picture of Ethan with his mouth moving. Except he looked older, with more muscle and his face and shoulders filled out. He looked like an adult, like a soldier from a movie. I reached a hand for him. The static returned.
“No! Come back! Don’t leave me again!” I lurched forward and pounded on the mirror, my eyes burning with tears.
I couldn’t go through that again. The knock on the door, the colonel sitting in our living room. Papers. The word “classified,” over and over. Mom falling apart. Dad telling me to go to my room. When I don’t go, Mom screams at me.
They couldn’t give us a flag because they never found his body.
“Please,” I begged the mirror.
The static flickered. I fell forward.
Books 1 and 2 are also available in audiobook. I expect to release books 4 and 5 to finish the series in 2020.