Excerpt: Mind Over All by Karina Fabian

Karina Fabian will be our chat guest August 2, 2015. Join us in the chatroom at 7 pm ET (New York Time).

Blurb: At last, Deryl has it all. He’s mastered his psychic abilities and escaped both the asylum on Earth where he was being studied and the influence of the alien Master who would use his powers as a weapon. He found acceptance among the psychic people of Kanaan and will soon be a father. However, the danger isn’t over.


The Master’s people plan to invade his new homeworld, but even worse, the planets are set to crash into each other. Deryl will have to accept his role as savior of both worlds and push his mind’s powers to the limit in order to save the people he loves most.

Excerpt 1:

Joshua rested his elbows on the counter and let out a long breath. He tried to imagine an entire planet being destroyed, but it was just too big; all his mind pictured were scenes from science fiction movies. But he could understand being terrified for someone he loved—oh, could he identify with that.

Rather than the smooth, nearly instantaneous trip he’d experienced teleporting to Earth, the return to Kanaan felt like trying to drive blind through a hurricane. Forces he didn’t have the thought power to define buffeted him from all sides, trying to draw him of course or tear his friends from his grasp. But his daughter Called him, reaching out to the only person she was aware of besides her mother, and Deryl followed her trust like a beacon, using all his stubbornness to push through the current while keeping Sachiko and Joshua tethered to him.

Excerpt 2:

Deryl braced his feet, splayed his hands palms downward, and sucked the energy from Barin. When Deryl had first been learning to control his abilities, particularly to deal with the legion of impressions coming at him from others around him, Joshua had taught him to shield himself from the mental/emotional aspects. Over the past year, he’d taught himself to filter those aspects out. It was energy, all energy, pure and neutral, like food once processed through the digestive tract. Now, he applied the same skills to Barin, stripping away the pain of the turmoil, taking the energy into himself, storing it, letting it build. The tremors under his feet stilled. The waves crashing against the rocks calmed. The wind that drove the poisonous air against his makeshift mask quieted.

In response, Deryl’s breathing accelerated, his blood raced, his stomach churned. Adrenalin coursed through him, making him shake. He ignored it, pulling further on Barin, reaching into the ground, through the air, and to the ley lines that arched weakly overhead. A detached part of his mind worked physics problems of angles and forces. Barin needed shields, and he was just the man to do it.

The key to his sanity lay in creating shields—barriers against unwanted thoughts and emotions, clumsily erected until Joshua and his neuro linguistic programming style of psychology had taken him at his word that he was truly psychic and helped him create stronger, more clever shields. He’d further honed his skills on Kanaan, training under Salgoud in anticipation of a Barin attack: manipulating energy to protect himself, then Tasmae, gradually expanding— He could do this. It was just a matter of size and energy.

Two minutes to atmosphere. Deryl’s muscles strained as he lifted his hands over his head, palms still fat but now toward the sky. His hasty calculations complete enough, he released the power to meet the Miscria Storm.

"Wake of the Red Mistress" excerpt

Teel James Glenn was our guest in the chatroom Sunday, July 10. This is an excerpt from his latest book, "Wake of the Red Mistress". Who doesn't like pirate stories?



We join the tale as the pirates have swarmed the ship and Shinara and her young charges are below decks locked into their room:

Abruptly a blood-curdling scream came from the corridor and all their eyes fixed on the barred portal. It sounded like Fergon’s deep voice, but with a tone of agony they could never have imagined him making.

“Keep reading, girls,” Shinara ordered. She worked to keep her voice firm and fight the panic that welled up from within her.

The sound of many bodies moving around in the corridor with many curse words and oaths promised violence. Abruptly a pounding erupted on the thick wooden door.

The girls all screamed and huddled together as a boarding ax smashed into the planks of the door.

“Trust in the Goddess,” Shinara said with all the calm she could force, “and we will be delivered.”

As she spoke the door splintered and a bearded head thrust through the gap.

“Women!” The pirated proclaimed with a sinister laugh.

The younger sisters screamed and clung to each other as the head withdrew and a second, even gruffer, scarred face filled the gap.

“They’re sisters of Yulina!” the cutthroat called to the others. His leering smile exposed a near toothless mouth. “And some choice ones!” He pushed a hairy arm in the hole in the door and grabbed the bar off the inside.

Sister Shinara stepped before the girls with her back to them clutching her scriptures to her bosom and faced the entering corsairs. She stared the intruders down as they streamed through the door. Goddess protect these of your flock who stand before you. Guide me to do right.

She tried to speak words of protest to the attackers but her words were lost in the cries of triumph and oaths that promised evil.

Rough hands seized Shinara and tore her gown to expose her naked bosom. She struggled against the vice grip of a brigand as others grabbed the screaming girls.

“Leave them alone,” she cried in vain.

The pirate holding Shinara ran a hand around her waist to roughly grab her naked breast and squeeze it. She yelled out in pain, turning her head to look him in the face.

He had fetid breath and his body odor made her gag but her revulsion was not for herself, but for the younger girls. “Do what you will with me, but leave them alone.”

“Oh, as you command, m’highness,” the pirate holding her said. “Shall I bring your worship’s private yacht around as well?” This brought laughter from the dozen brigands who swarmed into the cabin behind him. It sounded loud enough that it almost drowned out the screams of the terrified, young sisters as the other corsairs began to remove their clothing.

“Quiet,” a female voice cut through all the noise. It was not loud, but had the quality of command that made even the screaming girls choke their cries to low sobs. “What is going on here?”

“The Red Mistress,” Yuza whispered. Here eyes widened and for the moment She forgot her distress in the presence of the piratical legend she had heard so much about.

The speaker was a woman, but such as none of the sisters had ever seen. She stood barely five feet tall though her presence filled the room. Her hair hung long and curly and fiery red, barely held back with a striped blue rag to reveal a pale face with green, cat like eyes.

She wore crimson fighting leathers and a loose shirt, a brace of throwing knives on a bandolier across her ample breasts. In her hand she held a bloody cutlass.

When the pirate holding Shinara did not respond quickly enough, the petite hellion sprang forward and slapped him across the face over Shinara’s shoulder.

“I said what is going on?” The female pirate barked.

The struck brigand released the sister. For a moment anger flared in his eyes, but he quickly contained it and stepped back with a shrugging gesture. “We were just getting these holy rollers, ready to throw over the side, Aurzia,” he said contritely. “They put up a fight.”

“He lies," Shinara said. She pulled together the torn edges of her gown and stepped to comfort the youngest of the sisters. “We would not fight; we of the Order of Yulina do not take up arms.”

The tall blonde locked eyes with the redheaded pirate and showed none of the fear she felt, her beliefs and her responsibility for the younger girls being her bulwark against her own terror.

The piratess appraised the sister with a feral grin and smiling eyes. She licked her full lips and nodded. “It doesn’t really matter, little sister,” Aurzia said, “My men have strict orders, no molesting women!” She took a step forward, her cutlass flicked out and the pirate that had spoken yelped. He grabbed the bloody spot where the ear had just been severed and fell to his knees cursing.

“Let them say their last prayers and then finish them quick,” the Red Mistress said with a final longing look at Shinara before she turned to leave. “I want all the bodies in the water before we put a prize crew on this scow.”

Yuza screamed and fainted.