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Selected - 2009 Bram stocker Award preliminary list for Superior Achievement in a Novel!
Blurb:
Dying by the truckload from a deadly flu outbreak, the citizens of San Antonio, Texas have been quarantined by the U.S. Military. Inside the city, Detective Lily Harris is working burial statistics duty at the Scar, San Antonio’s mass graveyard, when she finds a brutally murdered young woman hidden among the dead.
A Tangled Web. Lily’s investigation soon takes a dark turn. An even deadlier strain of the virus has emerged, and now she finds herself in the middle of a vicious battle between a corrupt local government, a beleaguered medical institution, and a population threatening to boil over into revolt at the quarantine.
No Escape.
As the city erupts in violence, Lily is forced to do the unthinkable. With the clock ticking towards destruction, Lily must lead her family through the city to escape, and bring the truth to the world.
Excerpt:
A bullet whizzed past my ear. I hit the ground and crawled for the van and squeezed under it, inching my way forward, where the hackberry was thickest. I was even with the front tires when I stopped crawling, for a new, but much older fear had gripped me. On the ground in front of me, slowly uncoiling, was a dusty, caramel-colored rattlesnake. Its head looked as big as a slice of pumpkin pie, and its body was as big around as my thigh. The muscles along its flank rippled as it glided through the dirt, its tongue licking the air, sensing a living presence, but smelling only rubber and plastic. I was on my belly, eyes wide open, every muscle in my body frozen with fear. The snake inched closer to me. Its head rose off the ground slightly, and then we were so close we were almost touching, nose to nose. I could see every speck of color in its slitted eyes.
About the author:
Joe McKinney is a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department who has been writing professionally since 2006. He is the author of Dead City (Kensington Publishing Corp., 2006) and Quarantined (Lachesis Publishing, 2009). He has also written more than thirty horror, crime, and science fiction short stories.
Joe McKinney has a Master's Degree in English Literature from The University of Texas at San Antonio, and has received extensive professional training in disaster mitigation, forensics, and homicide investigation techniques. Before promoting to Detective-Investigator, he was a member of the San Antonio Police Department's Critical Incident Management Team, where he helped coordinate San Antonio's official response to a variety of natural and manmade disasters, including floods, hazardous material spills, and train wrecks.
He currently lives in Helotes, Texas, a small country town northwest of San Antonio with his wife and two daughters. An Active Member of both the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers Association, he is a frequent guest at regional science fiction and horror conventions.
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