Sweeping Chages by Loretta Wheeler

When Gone with the Wind was written, it was the story of the sweeping changes brought on by the civil war within the south. The words penned by that author left us with a vivid depiction of how the south was before the war … and how it was forever changed after the war.

When the winds from the recent hurricane descended upon us, it brought a very different type of change into our lives. Those of us who had been through a hurricane or two before knew the feelings we'd begin to experience, whether we tried to repress them or not. We'd experience them, because they'd be forced upon us … like the unwanted attention of something sinister that has passed through our lives in an earlier time…a dark memory that we cajole ourselves away from as quickly as we can after the event … but no matter how deeply hidden, the memory begins to creep back inside us, escalating in tandem with the wind hovering in the gulf, filling our thoughts, rattling our nerves as it whispers to those nasty little fears that we've tucked away in our subconscious.

The changes begin then, with the first niggling bit of apprehension, and then escalate … sometimes without our full awareness… sometimes with our unabashed terror… and by the time the storm has spent itself on us and gone reeling off in another direction like a drunken giant, everything has changed.

We wake to find devastation … this time on a scale that rivals anything most have experienced before … and with the devastation we find a reality check … within a few hours we see that all we deemed normal … is gone. Once again, we find normal will be hard to define for quite awhile….until we can tempt our minds to put the experience to the side and not look at it dead on … it's the way you get through it … the way you hide it from yourself … until the next time.

It's a little like the thriller's we all write … we love them … they do make us feel alive … and wonderfully safe as we read them in bed … with the lights on :) But, it would behoove us to remember … that sometimes the winds of change arrive … and have a wicked little way of snuffing out all illumination without our permission.

With that thought, come join us as we present The Final Twist's new anthology of short stories, in A Death inTexas. We will be launching the anthology at Katy Budget Books on Friday, October 10th, after 5:30 p.m. You will be able to meet the Final Twist authors, and have them sign their stories for you when you pick up a copy. I'm delighted to say my story, Dark Pleasures will be inside. It's about another type of evil presence in the south that brings about a lot of change … but this time … you can leave the lights on … it's up to you to decide when to turn them out:)

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Learn more about Loretta Wheeler (and her alter ego L Reveaux) at these sites:
http://www.lorettawheeler.com/
http://www.lreveaux.com/
http://www.myspace.com/southernnuances

Excerpt from Dark Pleasures: A Death in Texas (Anthology)Available through Amazon ,
Barnes and Noble &
L &L Dreamspell Oct. 10, 2008

The dog was free and loping down the corridor now. It ran with no hesitation, as if it could see its prey. Suddenly, it leapt forward and snatched at a word tucked in a dim corner of her mind, then swiftly circled back and laid it in front of her. How about carnage? Her mouth twisted. Yep. There it was, in all its grim glory, might as well go for broke and tell it like it was. She accepted the word and closed her eyes.