New Release: On Black Wings

On sale now in at Amazon is my first independently-published mainstream novel, On Black Wings.

What happens when the world ends and a housewife becomes a teenaged angel of death?

This is a paranormal YA horror novel that breaks a lot of genre conventions but still speaks to a younger audience about life, the state of the world, growing up, leaving home, and having a chance to live your life again.

In some ways it is also has a message for an older audience, what happens when the world and life situation you know is torn away from you in a singular tragic moment, and you struggle against a world you don't know anymore. Would you walk the same path again if your life were different?

Our main character, Jessica White, is a 34-year old housewife witnessing the end of the world at her doorstep, and suddenly she is thrust into her 17-year old body and is made a witness to the event. The same disaster which tears her older life apart she now watches, and she journeys out into the storm of ash and death to find an answer why. Bit-by-bit, she is torn down as she wanders the hellish dying world, and things start happening to her she cannot explain.

She starts moving through time, jumping back and forth in the event and through worlds, and she cannot explain why nor control any of it. Something is happening to her, something strange and powerful, and she has little ability to control the power. She is lost, afraid, and trying to survive.

Zombie-like undead ghouls under the command of wicked forces capture her, and when she escapes, she discovers a large pair of black feathered wings now on her back. She becomes the biblical Angel of Death, one who sends souls into the afterlife, and this is her journey to discover why and who did this to her.

War and religion are a central theme of the book, and the book deals with directly with the apocalypse. It is really a survivor-style book, one girl's war against the forces of destruction trying to bring about the end of the world. She is brought into evil's plan, and she questions her own sanity as she succumbs to the wicked machinations of evil.

While war and religion are themes, they are not overly preachy or overt messages, acting more like backdrops for the central drama and action. It is not a book pushing a point of view, but it more asks the question, what do these forces do to us as people? Can we become the implements of the apocalypse ourselves through our actions and thoughts?

Her fight is to discover not only who she is, but echoes of who she was keep haunting her on her path. Will she walk the same path as her life would have went? Can she? Who are the ones trying to bring about the end of the world? She walks through a hellish, disjointed landscape of places and times, and she fights to keep her sanity and walk a path forward to an escape.

But is an escape really the way out? Or is the only way to survive to sacrifice yourself and save the world? Can she when she can't even control which world she is in?

At its heart, the book is deeply psychological, breaking her life down as she comes to terms with the younger self she hated. It is also a story of how someone changes, and how the people they know change. there is also a story here about war itself, how one becomes a pawn of hatred and discord, and there is a message about war and what it does to us as a people of this world. The forces behind war pull strings, and there comes a point where even they cannot control the beast they unleashed upon the world.

Can she?

On Black Wings, available now on Amazon, and you can borrow and read the entire book for free as a part of the Kindle Unlimited program.