To my utter amazement, he pushes away from me and climbs to his feet. I hesitate, then quickly scramble up from the floor. I have no idea what’s happening.
He shakes his head. “Someone like you… someone in your position, shall we say, could have a lot of influence in Gehenna.”
“What the hell is Gehenna?” My brain is swimming: from the pitched life energy battle, from the crazy things he’s saying, and from this sense of motion under my feet, like the world isn’t steady anymore.
He glances back to Hughes’s bedroom, like he’s just now piecing it together. Why I’m here. What I was doing to Hughes. But he doesn’t understand me—he can’t possibly know.
He looks back to me. “It’s an organization of collectors," he says. “And they want the same thing I think you do.”
“You don’t know what I want,” I toss back. But I’m casting for a solid anchor to hold on to, something that makes sense in all of this.
He straightens his trenchcoat, rumpled from our fight. “You want to make a difference,” he says coolly. “You have the power of life and death in your hands, and you want to do something important with that. Am I wrong?”
I don’t say anything. The sense of panic is tamped down by an unwelcome hope. I don’t want to believe anything this debt collector is saying, but there’s a part of me that wants to hear what he has to say.
He nods, even though I haven’t replied. “I have someone who will very much want to talk to you. I’ll be in contact to set up a meeting.”
“You’ll… what?” It sounds like he’s letting me go. Which spins the gears in my head one more time.
“Go home, Alexandra.” His voice is deadly serious now. “I’ll call you soon.”
I frown, unsure. He’s letting me go, but with the threat, or possibly the promise, of meeting later. With this group, Gehenna. Which could be something that will destroy me or… I can’t even think what the alternative might be. I have this overwhelming sense it will destroy me either way. That a guillotine hangs over my head, regardless. But at least for the moment…
I take a step back, testing. “How about we just forget all this happened? No need to call me in the morning.”
“Trust me, that’s not an option.” He folds his hands in front of his trenchcoat, but doesn’t move to stop me as I slowly edge away.
I turn and run out the back door.
Wraith’s first encounter with Gehenna is not going to be her last. Her attempt to keep the two sides of her life separate is about to be stress-tested to the breaking point.
PRE-ORDER
Specter (Debt Collector 11)
releases 10.27
or
PRE-ORDER
Complete Season Two
releases 12.15
RELEASE ORDER
Season Two – Wraith
10 – Wraith (10.20)
11 – Specter (10.27)
12 – Menace (11.3)
13 – Temptation (11.10)
14 – Shattered (11.17)
15 – Untitled (11.24)
16 – Untitled (12.1)
17 – Untitled (12.8)
18 – Untitled (12.15)
BOX SET (Vol 10-18) – (12.15)
Meanwhile...
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Susan writes speculative fiction all up and down the age spectrum. She’s always dreaming up something new, so subscribe to her mailing list to be the first to know what’s up (including her upcoming Singularity series in 2015)! (Oh, and new subscribers get a free short story, too!)
Faery Swap
(middle grade)
Mindjack Trilogy
(young adult science fiction)
The Dharian Affairs
(steampunk romance)
Debt Collector
(adult future-noir)
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Writing a serial is just like writing a novel... if you were writing that novel while on crack. Or high from life energy hits. Actually, writing a novel and writing a serial are completely different experiences—one is a marathon of story and words, while the other is series of story wind-sprints in which you tell a connected chain of events within a larger story-complex—I think of it as nestled harmonics that fit together to give a larger story experience than is possible within the constraints of a novel. There’s a reason why I continue to write both serials and novels: they’re different ways of telling stories, and I love exploring the possibilities of both.
Not everyone writes serials with the rapid write-release-write-more-release-again pacing that I do with Debt Collector. But that’s the way it began with Season One, and I’m continuing the tradition with Season Two. This insanity would not be possible without the help of several key people. Huge thanks are due to my critique partners, Dianne Salerni, Leigh T. Moore, and Liz Searle. Their rapid-turn-around feedback helps keep the story on the rails as I plow full-steam ahead. Thanks are due also to Steven Novak, who not only makes the series gorgeous with unique cover art for every episode, but he likewise doesn’t bat an eye when I say, “Oh crap, I forgot the paperback cover for episode one, can I have that, like, immediately??” Strangely, he hasn’t thrown me overboard for less demanding, not to mention non-psychotic, clients.
The biggest thanks of all go to my Debt Collectors—those special readers who join the crazy head-long rush while I’m writing the seasons or who wait until the end to read the completed season and then turn around and immediately ask when the next one is coming. Your enthusiasm for the series is like a continuous supply of life energy hits (legal ones, of course)! Thanks for keeping me going.
Susan Kaye Quinn is the author of the bestselling Mindjack Trilogy and the Debt Collector serial, as well as other speculative fiction novels and short stories. Her work has appeared in the Synchronic anthology and has been optioned for Virtual Reality by Immersive Entertainment. Her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist" but she mostly sits around in her PJs in awe that she gets to write full time.
Susan grew up in California, got a bunch of engineering degrees (B.S. Aerospace Engineering, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) and worked everywhere from NASA to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). She designed aircraft engines, studied global warming, and held elected office (as a school board member). All her engineering skills come in handy when dreaming up dangerous mind powers, future dystopian worlds, and slightly plausible steampunk inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in the basement.
Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.
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Table of Contents
Wraith (Debt Collector 10)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Get the Next Episode of Debt Collector
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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