Title: Seaspray
Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 07/12/2022
Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex
Length: 52200
Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, amnesia, coming of age, virgins, magical realism, second chances, family drama
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Description
Winslow Birkel is a sweet young man in his first relationship. But his boyfriend, the charming and fiery Chad Loveless, has become increasingly abusive to the point where Winslow fears for his life.
Everything changes in a single night when Winslow, fleeing yet another epic fight, goes out to a local bar and finds a sympathetic ear in a new friend, Darryn Maxwell. But when he comes home, Chad’s waiting. He’s got it in for Winslow, whom he wrongly accuses of being unfaithful.
The stormy night sends Winslow off on a journey to escape. The last thing he recalls is skidding off the road and into the river. When he awakens, he’s mysteriously in the charming seaside town of Seaspray, where people are warm and welcoming, yet their appearances and disappearances are all too inexplicable.
Back home, Darryn wonders what’s happened to the new guy he met during his first outing to the local gay bar, the Q. Darryn knows Winslow’s been abused, but he also feels he’s quickly fallen in love with Winslow.
Can Winslow and Darryn decipher their respective mysteries? Is it possible for them to reunite? Is Chad still lurking and plotting to make sure Winslow never loves anyone else? The answers to these questions await you in Seaspray, where you may, or may not, ever leave.
Seaspray
Rick R. Reed © 2022
All Rights Reserved
Behind me, faceup, lay Chad. He wasn’t moving.
The fingernail of a moon peered down upon us, not judging, but simply observing. Lightning bugs danced in the air. Crickets sang. The wind rustled tree leaves. And the sky, much earlier clear and starry, was clouded over, bringing the scent and promise of rain.
Heat lightning flashed in the distance, blue-white, followed by a growl of thunder.
“What have I done?” I whispered.
»
The memory rose, without context. I could see it in my mind’s eye, but I felt apart from it, as though it were an image from someone else’s past or a movie. I shook my head to clear it and moved on.
The fog, which had put wherever I was into a kind of Brigadoon magic, dissipated as the sun rose higher. The day gradually clarified as the sun chased away darkening clouds and replaced them with a field of neon blue. Sounds, previously muted, filtered in—traffic nearby; now and then, a person calling, laughter; birdsong; wind rustling boughs of pine.
I took my bearings. I stood next to a small winding road that hugged the cliffs I’d just climbed. Across from me was a small park—nothing much to see. It was about a half acre with a strip of grass, more pines, and a cinder block building that must be a restroom. Facing the sea was a bench. I sat down on it.
Was I experiencing some kind of amnesia? Other than bits and pieces of scattered memory that felt as though they didn’t even belong to me, I had no idea how I’d come to Seaspray, wherever it was.
The truth was I’d never seen the ocean. In fact, I’d never ventured much farther than the valley I’d been born into at the foothills of the Appalachians and bordered by the slow-moving mud-brown current of the Ohio River.
I had no idea how I’d ended up in the ocean.
I had no idea if the roiling sea before me was the Atlantic or the Pacific—or something else entirely.
I felt a vague dread at remembering what had brought me here, despite wanting to know, to understand. I had no practical reminiscences, such as boarding a plane, train, or even taking a road trip.
How would I survive? I patted myself down, my clothes, jeans, and a worn gray sweatshirt, and downward, looking for clues. But I found no wallet, no keys, not even spare change in my pockets.
My clothes were dry. How could they be? I’d just emerged from being fully submerged in salt water.
This has to be a dream.
But something told me it wasn’t. The world was too real. The roar of the ocean crashing into the shore below me, the smell of pine and salt, the thrum of cars on some unseen motorway—these things all testified to reality, even if that reality was surreal. Even the cool breeze, soothing, spoke of real life and not the ether of dreams.
I stood from the bench and turned toward the sound of the cars. I figured where there were cars, civilization would follow. Maybe I’d find a town and people.
Answers.
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Rick R. Reed is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction. He is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Entertainment Weekly has described his work as “heartrending and sensitive.” Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” Find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.
