Series: Metiks Fade #1
Publication date: March 20th, 2018
Publisher: Owl Hollow Press
Synopsis (according to Goodreads):
Anna is a student surviving the city, and she lives by a simple credo, "Never play their game, their game is always rigged." For every man she has ever know, it's a saying that has served her well.
That all changes on the night of "The Big Storm," when Anna is slipped a date rape drug. Though she saves herself and her best friend, Anna is lost to the dark heart of the city and finds herself hunted by The Night Collectors. Unsure if these monsters are real or hallucinations, Anna nonetheless fights them as best she can. The battle attracts a stranger--Teej--who saves her using powers she cannot understand. He explains that she is an Undreamer and possesses the same powers, and in the future, he will not be the one to save her. She will save him.
But Anna is not yet ready to join Teej and stand against The Dreamers. She has difficult decisions of her own to make. Decisions she has always run from. She still has her partner's suicide letter. It remains unopened. She still wears his ring, she can't seem to remember his face.
Anna learns of The Dreamers--artists so preeminent in their respective fields that they can paint, dance, sew, or sing new realities--and as she travels through their creations, she learns that there's as much beauty in the world as there is horror. With a complex conspiracy at work within the community of Dreamers that threatens to undermine reality itself, Anna will have to look deep within herself, and eventually have to face the horrors of her own past, to save her old world as well as her new one.
Anna Undreaming is a dark urban fantasy, and the first book in The Metiks Fade trilogy.
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Excerpt
Knock... Knock... Knock...
Knock... Knock... Knock...
Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock...
What if I just don't answer the door? Anna paced back and forth. She didn't have to play his game. She didn't have to be like the other women. This wasn't his world; it was hers. Her home. Anna didn't have to let him in.
There were about two seconds between each knock, and after each six knocks, there was a break of about ten seconds. Just long enough to make her think he had stopped. That he had gone away. Then it started again.
Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock...
Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock...
She found herself frozen in place, looking at her own front door, willing the monster outside to go away. He wouldn't stop knocking. Now, each time he knocked, the floor rumbled, too. Like an earthquake. That tremor that always came when a Haze began.
He would never go away. He was there to kill her, and he absolutely would not stop.
She shouted directly at him this time. "No more!"
The knocking stopped. Anna took a step closer to the door, waiting for it to start again. Was that it? Had she stopped him in his tracks? Was it so simple? Maybe he was like a vampire; he couldn't come in unless she invited him.
From the other room, she heard a phone ring. The old-fashioned dial type of phone. Anna didn't have one of those.
Slowly backing away from the front door while keeping her eyes forward, she walked into her familiar living room and saw next to the sofa an unfamiliar, chunky, red telephone. The kind you would see on old TV shows. The kind she had seen in the purple desert. And it wasn't just the phone that had changed. Though her apartment looked the same, everything felt different. The air was cool and dry. The colors were more vibrant. She felt exposed.
The ringing echoed around the room, and the sound was more clear and resonant than anything she had ever heard. As though her ears had been stuffed with cotton wool her whole life, and she was hearing clearly for the first time. And she understood now. She was in his Haze, in his world.
Knock... Knock... Knock...
Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock...
What if I just don't answer the door? Anna paced back and forth. She didn't have to play his game. She didn't have to be like the other women. This wasn't his world; it was hers. Her home. Anna didn't have to let him in.
There were about two seconds between each knock, and after each six knocks, there was a break of about ten seconds. Just long enough to make her think he had stopped. That he had gone away. Then it started again.
Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock...
Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock... Knock...
She found herself frozen in place, looking at her own front door, willing the monster outside to go away. He wouldn't stop knocking. Now, each time he knocked, the floor rumbled, too. Like an earthquake. That tremor that always came when a Haze began.
He would never go away. He was there to kill her, and he absolutely would not stop.
She shouted directly at him this time. "No more!"
The knocking stopped. Anna took a step closer to the door, waiting for it to start again. Was that it? Had she stopped him in his tracks? Was it so simple? Maybe he was like a vampire; he couldn't come in unless she invited him.
From the other room, she heard a phone ring. The old-fashioned dial type of phone. Anna didn't have one of those.
Slowly backing away from the front door while keeping her eyes forward, she walked into her familiar living room and saw next to the sofa an unfamiliar, chunky, red telephone. The kind you would see on old TV shows. The kind she had seen in the purple desert. And it wasn't just the phone that had changed. Though her apartment looked the same, everything felt different. The air was cool and dry. The colors were more vibrant. She felt exposed.
The ringing echoed around the room, and the sound was more clear and resonant than anything she had ever heard. As though her ears had been stuffed with cotton wool her whole life, and she was hearing clearly for the first time. And she understood now. She was in his Haze, in his world.
Hi there! My name is Thomas Welsh and my first novel ANNA UNDREAMING is a dark urban fantasy story that was released in March 2018. It is the first entry in the METIKS FADE trilogy. You can buy it here.
I am 37 years old and live in Scotland, and I started writing fiction early last year. I was the winner of the Elbow Room fiction prize for my short story "And Then I was Floating" and I've also been published in a few other short story collections, including 404 Ink and Leicester Writes. I received an honourable mention in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction award and my story Suicide Vending Machine will soon be featured on the Pseudopod Podcast.
I have been published in You Died--a book about Dark Souls--and I also write about games, music, and film. You can find my work on Kotaku, Unwinnable Magazine and GlitchFreeGame. For my games writing, I was inducted into the fellowship of BAFTA.
I love Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny and dark fantasy stories where women save themselves!
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