The Struggles of Love

Synder & Kedrick’s World

Have you ever met someone and thought to yourself, well this is going to be one for the books…?  You see his eyes, listen to his voice, remember the way he stands hip-shod, blush at his crooked grin and feel your heart flutter in your chest, wonder why it is you can actually hear the blood either boil in your veins or go all molten?

There’s no reason for this madness, you think.  I have known him for most of my life, you think.  I remember when he was a plump seven-year-old with a snotty nose.  He played with slimy icky frogs, for crying out loud.  He dug in his nose, constantly, and blew spit bubbles.  This is the boy who called you, “fat mamma in elementary school.  He was the boy you thought was the grossest things since those little green alien peas you were made to eat when you were a kid, and he used to be shorter than you, too.  Ugh, and now his silly grins, deep voice, and sexy stroll sets your world on fire and makes your mind go straight to the gutter.  What is wrong with you?

That is nothing compared to Synder’s plight in The Cursed, my current work in progress (WIP).  When they were children, Kedrick and Synder played in the wood between their two families’ compounds in the rich and lush world of Sweetwater, South Carolina.  It’s a little town on the outskirts of Charleston.  The people of Sweetwater are aware that they are surrounded by the several clans of powerful beings.  They don’t know what to call them, and the townsfolk are unaware that their outlying neighbors are long-lived and two families of those powerful beings are feuding with one another.  The two clans the MacDara and Hollywells are powerful enough to cause earthquakes, destructive storms, and possibly send Sweetwater itself plummeting deep beneath the land, loam, and into the fires of hell, itself, if they are not careful when throwing hexes back and forth between each other.

The hexes the clans throw are the least of Sweetwater’s problems.  There is an evil entity amongst them, seducing, devouring, and leaving the corpses of their young men to be found around the territory of the powerful beings.

Synder from the Hollywell clan and Kedrick of the MacDara clan have been tasked to find out what happened to their deceased siblings, and there begins Synder’s dilemma.  For all of her childhood from around ten years old, she has known Kedrick MacDara to be her enemy.  Why all of a sudden when she returns home from Maryland to help her clan discover what caused her precious brother’s death is, she bombarded by feelings of attraction and downright lust for a man she was born to hate.  She’s never truly hated him.  She remembers playing with him in the wood.  She remembers them saving and caring for an injured bird together.  But that was when they were children and didn’t know any better.  What’s her excuse now.

Kedrick is no longer a snotnosed little boy of nine.  He’s a tall strapping man.  He has black hair and the bold cobalt blue eyes of the black Irish.  His shoulders are broad.  His smile to die for, and his body a supple dream of hard contours.  She dreams about him.  She remembers the way he decides to play a magick trick on her and has no idea how to reverse it once he’s stripped her of all but her cloak.  She hears his voice in her mind and on the breeze.  She feels his touch in her sleep.  She feels him near when he should be far afield.  What is going on with her?  Is she nuts?  His clan is her family’s oldest enemy.  Forbidden and crazy to contemplate, nonetheless Synder finds herself falling in love, and the Gods ordain it even as her family and his forbids their union. 

Caught between family and love, the Gods’ ordinance and her family’s intolerance, and a devlish entity hellbent on destroying them all, Synder and Kedrick not only fall in love and follow the Gods’ decree, but try to save their families regardless of their bickering and determination to breed hatred amongst their clans.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Synder and Kedrick’s world.  They have been my constant companions since May of 2020.  I have five more chapters to go, so I’m pretty excited to be leading into the final climax and resolution of their story.  I hope you’ll join their journey when the book comes out.

Till next we meet: stay well and keep creating!

CSA