Book 2: Future Revealed

“Future Revealed” blurb:

Ruby, Pagan, and Koby are lonely, missing the community they left and the friendship of the people from the valley. As they collect supplies for winter, they decide to get extra and visit the valley, taking them some food and maybe animals to help them.

But first they have to hide from a group of motorcyclists looking to raid settlements for food and women. The trio’s next stop is an abandoned farm, where they find some useful things, including some animals and a truck to transport them back to their warehouse home.

They stay in the warehouse during winter, but once the weather becomes warm again they finish planning their trip to the village, adding a high-sided utility trailer to their vehicles to transport fuel for the people.

Danger is everywhere in this lawless world with food so scarce. Will they even survive the journey?

STORY EXCERPT

Ruby rested on her heels, her hands on her hips, stretching her back, then sank onto her butt and extended her legs out in front of her, lifting her arms to the ceiling and rolling her shoulders. Hell she was stiff. Deliberately she clenched and released the muscles in her legs, arms, and shoulders, rolling her head from side to side, and curling and stretching her back. Caring for the vegetables was back-breaking work, but if she wanted to eat, she didn’t have any other choice than to do the hard yards.

If we were living in a community, there’d be more people to do the work.

Yeah, smart-ass, but they’d eat the food, too, so we’d have more work to do.

But at least I could talk to them while I was working!

Sure she had Koby and Pagan to talk to, and she loved them both with all her heart, but the truth was, she was lonely. She craved other people the way she craved chocolate. Koby and Pagan were wonderful and caring, but they were only two, and she needed a community around her. Her loneliness was made worse because for a few brief days she’d had the group from the village to talk to, and she’d loved talking girl stuff with Adena and Zuri. Also, she knew the men had enjoyed sharing with the village men. The evenings around the fire just chatting about anything and everything had been the highlight of the past month. Hell, the past year! Apart from the awesome orgasms Pagan and Koby gave her night after night. They were spectacular, too. If only she could have the two men and a community, life would be perfect.

But their own community had hated it when the three of them bonded, and the only solution was to leave. The spiteful comments and hateful looks were unending and soul destroying. Especially from people she’d always thought of as her friends, women she’d grown up with. Plus they’d found this huge building and had all their crops under the one roof instead of having to move from apartment to apartment or plant outdoors and wonder if the winds would come again and poison everything. Although Zuri’s people grew all their crops outside in the ground and had no trouble with illness. Zuri had said no one had died from the bad winds in a decade or longer. So could they live with Zuri? After all, she was part of a threesome arrangement with Tau and Udo.

Ruby stood up and shrugged. She’d talk to Koby and Pagan again. They’d discussed the idea in general terms. Likely it was time now to consider it seriously. She really was lonely, and the work was hard. Although the crops here grew very well, and the ones at Zuri’s village weren’t so good, which was why her people were scavenging for food and how they’d come to meet. Dammit, there was always a negative to consider!

Buy link: http://www.bookstrand.com/future-revealed

Berengaria Brown

http://berengariasblog.blogspot.com/

http://berengariabrown.com/

"Forbidden Future": Book 1 of "Embrace the Future"

“Forbidden Future: Blurb:

More than fifty years ago, wicked winds, carrying deadly diseases, swept across the land, and their ancestors fled to a protected valley. But now the easy-to-gather food and fuel are used up, and the people struggle to feed themselves. The goods their ancestors had brought with them are worn out, and life is hard trying to feed and provide for themselves.

Zuri, Udo, and Tau love each other, but have to meet in the forest to make love. The people decide to go to the city to look for food and fuel. It’s Zuri who finds the ancestors’ truck and asks for a gift in return—that she, Tau, and Udo could be together. Their request is granted. Then everyone plans for the trip to the city. It’ll be very dangerous, but the three of them will be together. But will they find any food? Will they even survive? 

STORY EXCERPT

He limped slowly up the long hill, leaning heavily on his cane. From time to time he stopped, breathing heavily, but he always began walking again, a little slower perhaps, the cane digging deeper into the grass as he leaned harder on it, but he persisted all the way until he finally reached the top.

When he arrived there, he rested both hands on the walking stick then lowered himself to the grass, dropping the last nine or ten inches onto his ass with a slight thump and an expletive.

Dammit, I don’t know why I come here. It always makes my knees ache and I always have to rest. Yeah and getting up is always a bitch. Gonna be a helluva bitch again today.

He smiled. He knew why he came. It was the only connection left to his childhood. A world long gone that almost no one else could remember. He was only fifty-eight years old. Not so old perhaps, but these days few people lived past forty. Life was just too damn hard. He had a dim memory of attending an eightieth birthday party. For his grandmother? Or likely his great-grandmother. Who knew anymore? But what he did know, what he still saw clearly in his mind, was the crowd of really old people, people in their eighties, nineties even, who’d been at that party.

Ah yes, it was more than fifty years ago though. Before everything had changed. Before…

He looked around him, taking in the panoramic view he’d expended so much pain and energy to see. Every time he came here, he was aware it might be the last time. The last time he could look into the distance and see the high buildings of what had once been a city. It was crumbled now, ruined, with wild grasses growing up in the cracked buildings. With houses and apartment blocks fallen down over what had once been freeways.

The people he lived with—or more accurately, the parents and grandparents of the people he lived with—had escaped from that big city and made their home here, next to a fresh-flowing river, in a lush valley where crops grew well. Where they were protected from the wicked winds that raced across the land, destroying houses and pushing down trees. Winds that for the first ten years had carried diseases that killed anyone exposed to them for too long. Winds that even now sent everyone scurrying indoors to shelter until they blew themselves out, even though no one had died from wind-borne diseases for many years now.

No one knew exactly what had happened. He was much too young then to understand more than the desperate scramble to leave the city and travel as far and as fast as they could. Until they came to the valley and there they stopped and hid and sheltered and stayed, building a new home.

But he remembered the city and yearned for its conveniences. For lights that went on when he flicked a switch. For foods that stayed cold on hot days, and for the ability to heat and cook food in moments, instead of it taking hours. The young children thought his stories about his childhood were just stories since almost no one alive had lived in the city. But although he’d only been a child then, his mind was not deranged. His memories were clear. However, he’d learned not to speak of them anymore. So here he came to look, to remember, to wonder what the children growing up in the valley would have for their future. So much hard work to produce food and fuel,and so little time to appreciate anything of beauty. No time for joy or learning. What would their lives hold?

As he sat there he came to a decision. He would insist on all the children being taught to read and write, would teach them himself maybe. Even though everyone’s days were full of the hard work needed just to stay alive, and fuel was much too scarce to be wasted lighting the village after dark, he would find a way to instill basic literacy in the newest generation. If they were ever to have time for leisure, ever to be able to provide more than the basic necessities, it would only happen through people trained to think of more than mere survival. People trained to appreciate beauty and learning. It was up to him. He would rise to this new challenge.

Buy Link: http://www.bookstrand.com/forbidden-future

 Berengaria Brown

http://berengariasblog.blogspot.com/

http://berengariabrown.com/