Forget Me Not
Shadowflesh Series
Book 2
by Shawn Martin
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Publisher: Vinspire Publishing
Date of Publication: March 31, 2014
Cover Artist: Elaina Lee
Book Description:
Fortune has smiled on seventeen year old Aileen McCormick ever since Addison came back into her life, giving her the love she has so desperately longed for. That is, until a mysterious man slithers across her path and slips a spellbinding cameo around her neck. The cameo holds more than just the image of an enchantress who hungers for souls. It possesses a curse that strangles away every memory Aileen has of Addison.
Addison, a three hundred year old fugitive from the netherworld, recognizes the wretched woman inside the cameo and the curse she has cast on his unsuspecting love. The enchanted cameo has but one purpose: to torment Aileen with hints of love she can no longer recall.
Aileen cannot escape the deadly cameo. She runs for her life with the curse only a breath away. If she truly wants her memory back, the enchantress is all too willing to restore it. It will cost her, though. Cost her everything.
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Chapter 1
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been afraid of the dark. It seemed like a lifetime ago, when shadows and demons consumed me at night, when the end of the world was but a breath away. That was all before I met Addison.
From the very moment I literally fell into his arms, I had fallen hopelessly in love with him. Hopelessly, carelessly, eternally in love with him. And he loved me back.
Addison Wake had become my entire life, my reason for living. I breathed in his love and exhaled his name. My heart beat a passionate rhythm to which only he marched. He danced into my dreams, stealing me away into the stars at the witching hour. Since he had come back to me we had been inseparable.
The last amber leaves of autumn waved goodbye to the worst and best year of my life. The year I lost my home, my friends, everything I thought I needed to live. The year I discovered a grandmother I hardly knew. The year I found new friends. The year I fell in love.
The calendar gloated that Christmas was less than a month away, but who cared? I looked forward to the first day of winter. Or rather the longest night of the year. Ever since finding out Santa was just a figment of my parents’ imagination, I didn’t have much use for the yuletide. But I had always loved that long and wonderful night. Addison had already set a date for that night, promising to take me to an air show in the day and onto the rooftop at night to teach me the constellations.
It was kind of embarrassing, but I had never really learned the stars. Sure, I could spot the Big Dipper and hardly ever mistook the moon for a comet. But that was the extent of my celestial knowledge. Most of my time had been spent looking down rather than up, and I regretted that. Just one more regret in the long list I had been working on in my seventeen years. But all that was changing, and Addison was helping me one regret at a time.
To say I appreciated everything he had done for me would be an understatement. He taught me how to drive a stick. He trusted me with his deepest, darkest secrets. He saved my life. He fell in love with me, maybe even more than I had fallen in love with him. If that was possible.
Mere words could do no justice for how I felt about Addison. But that didn’t stop me from trying to tell him, or show him. I poured my heart out into haiku almost daily. I swirled his initials into the thighs of my worn jeans in three colors of permanent ink. I learned to say “I love you” in twenty-one languages.
My most recent declaration of love cost me an entire paycheck. I purchased a star. Not the Hollywood kind starlets walked across in stilettos. An actual star, in outer space, where no man has boldly gone before.
Bonnie Fay and Nicola had completely different reactions when I confessed what I had done. Bonnie Fay wrinkled her nose and squinted at me, forcing the kind of smile that told me I was lame. “Sounds kinda hokey,” she had said in her southern drawl. “Sugar, if you’re gonna tease him with something he can’t have, don’t let it be a star.”
Nicola, the polar opposite to everything calm and conforming, had a completely different reaction. She ached a sigh, crossed her hands over her heart, and fell backwards onto my bed. “That is just so…” She took a breath and clicked the heals of her combat boots. I prayed she’d say something other than “hokey.” “So… romantic.” Then she wiped away a hint of her sentimentality before it had the chance to smear her dark eye make-up. She had spent too long applying deadly Goth to have it ruined by a girly tear.
Yes, I bought my boyfriend a star. It was a little star – I didn’t make that much money – cleverly hidden in the Scorpius constellation. The website informed me the little speck could be seen near the horizon using a telescope the size of a small skyscraper. But the heavenly body, now and forever known as “Addison Wake,” was indeed there. It was my gift to him, a little piece of eternity that would smile down upon us every night until the stars all went out.
Okay, it was a little hokey.
But what could I have given to Addison Wake? He wasn’t exactly like the other boys at Redcliff High. To be perfectly clear, he was nothing at all like anyone on this mortal world. Addison was a phantom, a fugitive from the netherworld, casually walking among the living as shadowflesh. He willed his dark, mysterious ether into the tall, lean embodiment of perfection. An immortal soul, yet vulnerable shadowflesh.
And no, I didn’t need my head examined… or maybe I did.
Addison was completely wrong for me, completely wrong for any living, breathing girl who had a fondness for staying alive. The more I knew we shouldn’t be together, the more I was drawn to him. Like a knot, the harder a person tried to pull it apart the tighter it got.
To show my love for Addison, I had to think of something as unique, something as ageless as he. Haiku hadn’t cut it. And it wasn’t like I could burn him a CD of my favorite music and expect it to mean anything in a year, or a decade, or a century. But a star, it would be forever.
And when that long and wonderful night finally came and Addison showed me the constellations, I would surprise him with his star, pointing to the part of the sky where the tiny speck was supposed to be.
I had no idea how he would react. Maybe he’d shrug or look at me as if I had lost my mind. Or maybe he’d arch one eyebrow higher than the other over his smoky blue eyes and kiss me. It would be cold, December nights get that way, so he would undoubtedly drape his leather flight jacket over my shoulders and wrap me in his strong arms, and I would kiss him back like I had never kissed him before, like I would never kiss him again. And perhaps that would be the night. The night.
I no longer feared the darkness. As a matter of fact, I looked forward it. The longest, darkest night of the year waited for me, and that should have been my happily ever after. But fate can be a funny, cruel thing.
Chapter 1
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been afraid of the dark. It seemed like a lifetime ago, when shadows and demons consumed me at night, when the end of the world was but a breath away. That was all before I met Addison.
From the very moment I literally fell into his arms, I had fallen hopelessly in love with him. Hopelessly, carelessly, eternally in love with him. And he loved me back.
Addison Wake had become my entire life, my reason for living. I breathed in his love and exhaled his name. My heart beat a passionate rhythm to which only he marched. He danced into my dreams, stealing me away into the stars at the witching hour. Since he had come back to me we had been inseparable.
The last amber leaves of autumn waved goodbye to the worst and best year of my life. The year I lost my home, my friends, everything I thought I needed to live. The year I discovered a grandmother I hardly knew. The year I found new friends. The year I fell in love.
The calendar gloated that Christmas was less than a month away, but who cared? I looked forward to the first day of winter. Or rather the longest night of the year. Ever since finding out Santa was just a figment of my parents’ imagination, I didn’t have much use for the yuletide. But I had always loved that long and wonderful night. Addison had already set a date for that night, promising to take me to an air show in the day and onto the rooftop at night to teach me the constellations.
It was kind of embarrassing, but I had never really learned the stars. Sure, I could spot the Big Dipper and hardly ever mistook the moon for a comet. But that was the extent of my celestial knowledge. Most of my time had been spent looking down rather than up, and I regretted that. Just one more regret in the long list I had been working on in my seventeen years. But all that was changing, and Addison was helping me one regret at a time.
To say I appreciated everything he had done for me would be an understatement. He taught me how to drive a stick. He trusted me with his deepest, darkest secrets. He saved my life. He fell in love with me, maybe even more than I had fallen in love with him. If that was possible.
Mere words could do no justice for how I felt about Addison. But that didn’t stop me from trying to tell him, or show him. I poured my heart out into haiku almost daily. I swirled his initials into the thighs of my worn jeans in three colors of permanent ink. I learned to say “I love you” in twenty-one languages.
My most recent declaration of love cost me an entire paycheck. I purchased a star. Not the Hollywood kind starlets walked across in stilettos. An actual star, in outer space, where no man has boldly gone before.
Bonnie Fay and Nicola had completely different reactions when I confessed what I had done. Bonnie Fay wrinkled her nose and squinted at me, forcing the kind of smile that told me I was lame. “Sounds kinda hokey,” she had said in her southern drawl. “Sugar, if you’re gonna tease him with something he can’t have, don’t let it be a star.”
Nicola, the polar opposite to everything calm and conforming, had a completely different reaction. She ached a sigh, crossed her hands over her heart, and fell backwards onto my bed. “That is just so…” She took a breath and clicked the heals of her combat boots. I prayed she’d say something other than “hokey.” “So… romantic.” Then she wiped away a hint of her sentimentality before it had the chance to smear her dark eye make-up. She had spent too long applying deadly Goth to have it ruined by a girly tear.
Yes, I bought my boyfriend a star. It was a little star – I didn’t make that much money – cleverly hidden in the Scorpius constellation. The website informed me the little speck could be seen near the horizon using a telescope the size of a small skyscraper. But the heavenly body, now and forever known as “Addison Wake,” was indeed there. It was my gift to him, a little piece of eternity that would smile down upon us every night until the stars all went out.
Okay, it was a little hokey.
But what could I have given to Addison Wake? He wasn’t exactly like the other boys at Redcliff High. To be perfectly clear, he was nothing at all like anyone on this mortal world. Addison was a phantom, a fugitive from the netherworld, casually walking among the living as shadowflesh. He willed his dark, mysterious ether into the tall, lean embodiment of perfection. An immortal soul, yet vulnerable shadowflesh.
And no, I didn’t need my head examined… or maybe I did.
Addison was completely wrong for me, completely wrong for any living, breathing girl who had a fondness for staying alive. The more I knew we shouldn’t be together, the more I was drawn to him. Like a knot, the harder a person tried to pull it apart the tighter it got.
To show my love for Addison, I had to think of something as unique, something as ageless as he. Haiku hadn’t cut it. And it wasn’t like I could burn him a CD of my favorite music and expect it to mean anything in a year, or a decade, or a century. But a star, it would be forever.
And when that long and wonderful night finally came and Addison showed me the constellations, I would surprise him with his star, pointing to the part of the sky where the tiny speck was supposed to be.
I had no idea how he would react. Maybe he’d shrug or look at me as if I had lost my mind. Or maybe he’d arch one eyebrow higher than the other over his smoky blue eyes and kiss me. It would be cold, December nights get that way, so he would undoubtedly drape his leather flight jacket over my shoulders and wrap me in his strong arms, and I would kiss him back like I had never kissed him before, like I would never kiss him again. And perhaps that would be the night. The night.
I no longer feared the darkness. As a matter of fact, I looked forward it. The longest, darkest night of the year waited for me, and that should have been my happily ever after. But fate can be a funny, cruel thing.
A little about Shawn...Shawn Martin calls Springfield, Missouri, home. After graduating from Missouri State University with majors in Economics and Political Science, he bounced around the Midwest only to end up right where he started.
His day (and night) job is being a firefighter. Aside from rescuing cats in trees and removing burnt pot roasts from ovens, he spends his time finding the hardest way to do the simplest of things. The rest of his time is spent weaving words into another installment in the Shadowflesh Series. Visit www.shadowflesh.com for a look into the author and his work.
If you could have any superpower what would you choose?
If anything goes, I'd want to fly like Superman. The idea of being able to swoop down and save the day thrills me. And having the ability to leap off a crumbling building in dire times might just come in handy. Of all the superpowers swimming in the pages of comic books (or graphic novels), that's the one which calls to me.
Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
In addition to writing, I work as a firefighter. This past December, the fire chief called me into his office. For a minute I thought I was in trouble and couldn't for the life of me figure out what I had done. With a serious, almost uncomfortable expression, he handed me two copies of my first novel Shadowflesh. Then he smiled and asked if I could sign each copy. Validation as a writer... it feels great.
Please tell us in one sentence only, why we should read your book.
Forget Me Not invites you to embrace your fears without ever giving up hope.
Favorite food?
Sugar covered strawberries, without a doubt. They excite every taste bud and bring an uncomplicated happiness to my whole body.
What book are reading now?
My tastes are eclectic. I read everything from the dictionary to cookbooks to paranormal fiction. At the moment, I am on a Dresden adventure in Skin Game by Jim Butcher. His writing seems to come effortlessly, which is a great trick, maybe even magic.
What’s your favorite season/weather?
I love the autumn. The color of the foliage make me think the trees are out for one last hurrah before the long winter sets in. The wind blows cool and dry, carrying the scent of harvest and the sound of rustling leaves. Autumn brings a welcome sadness, saying goodbye to summer.
What was your favorite children's book?
Where the Wild Things Are. It told me that even when you're bad and your parents get mad, you can check out of reality for a while... but there's no place like home.
Beach or Pool?
I'm a beach kind of guy. The ocean has a beginning somewhere far away, but it chooses to come to a glorious end where the waves crash upon my feet. The sand is more inviting than the concrete surrounding a pool. And when you look down you might just find a seashell, rather than a pool toy.
What is one book everyone should read?
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg. As we all struggle with the weight of reality, this book breaks down insanity into its basic elements and then reconfigures it into sanity.
Any other books in the works? Goals for future projects?
I'm working on the third installment in the Shadowflesh series, a book called Invisible Ink. If you love Victorian England, suspense, and the paranormal, I think you'll enjoy this. Look for it in 2015.
10 print or ebook copies of the book – winner’s choice (Print US Shipping Only)
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