Author Archives: Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez

About Jennifer Reed/ bookjunkiez

My Niece and Nephew joke that I could open a used book store with all the books that I own. I love to read, that is my addiction. I can't go a week without going to a book store. I love crocheting. I love to write stories and poetry. I also love my family, even though they make me crazy at times. I am a huge Donald Duck Fan.

MEDITATION the ULTIMATE SUPERPOWER Virtual Book Tour

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MEDITATION the ULTIMATE SUPERPOWER cover
 

How to defeat the villain inside you
 

 

Nonfiction
 
Date Published: 04-22-2022
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Sometimes the whole world seems to be against us, we feel ourselves
surrounded and chased by evil villains that mess with our head, with our
minds … they attack us through advertisements, rules and limitations,
social media, telephones, they make us waste our money, our time, our life;
they distract us, they make us lose our balance and disconnect from our
inner world, from our mind. They start to control us.

 

But, are those villains really out there? Well… No, the villains are
only inside your head, that’s right, these villains live in your mind and
control your behavior and your reactions to those external temptations, they
want you to have unhealthy and destructive thoughts, they talk to you and
control you, they weaken you, make you feel less, make you feel insecure, or
make you feel that your life is meaningless and maybe, make you think that
you do not deserve to be happy; comparing you with others, crushing your
dreams, your desires, your real happiness. Have you heard them? Of course
you hear them, they all speak to us, they are always there. These villains
are our wild, out-of-control thoughts, that sometimes are just there and we
can’t make them disappear or silence them!

 

 

ENOUGH! It is time for you to take control, for you to decide either to
ignore them or to send them away, to weaken their power in you, you are
stronger and you have the super power to get rid of them. You have the
superpower to control your thoughts, to control and decide your reactions,
to choose how to live your life by being aware, being present and being true
to yourself… how? Through meditation.

 

 

This is not just a book, is the beginning of your journey. I wrote it for
you to find a way to understand your power, to understand how important your
mental health is, this is a priority now. I’m showing you different ways of
meditation for you to choose and to like it, I want you to find your own way
of meditation that you can feel engaged, that you can feel motivated.
Meditation is not boring, is not a waste of time, and no, is not a religion
or part of any religion itself , and is not a trending fashion, meditation
is a mind superpower. And you have it. Why you are wasting it!?

 

 

I have a mission: I want you to learn meditation, practice meditation , I
want you to like it, to enjoy it, to make it part of your daily life to make
it part of your priority healthy habits. I want you to have a healthy mind
and to always THINK HEALTHY. One single person can’t fix the world, but we
can start with each one of us, with our children, to learn to think healthy,
a healthy mind culture is the beginning of a better world.

 

 

If you are reading this, means you need this, means you want more in your
life. Are you ready to be the master of your own life? You are in the right
place. Welcome. Let’s built a community of healthy thinkers, follow me, join
me, let’s learn together how to do it and how to apply and use it in our
daily lives to keep our mind healthy, to reach our goals and to have the
life we have always wanted.

 

MEDITATION the ULTIMATE SUPERPOWER tablet      
 

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE 

THINK HEALTHY

Sometimes, the whole world seems to be against us. Going outside is a dangerous adventure full of obstacles to overcome; it is as if returning home safely and sane every day was more by luck than something normal. They are out there, those villains, always on the lookout they attack us through advertisements, noise, flashy objects, sales, rules, loud music, social media, telephones, they make us spend our money, they assault us, and they chain us and control us. Nobody talks much anymore; everyone looks at their screens. The only introspection of today’s human being is to get lost in the world of technology.

But are those villains really out there? No, the villains are only inside you.

That’s right, the villain lives in your mind and wants to destroy you, wants to lead you to spend, to eat unhealthy food, to think that you do not deserve to be happy. He talks to you and controls you; he weakens you, makes you feel less, makes you feel insecure, makes you feel that your life is meaningless, depresses you, leads to self-destructive behaviors, makes you aggressive, makes you apathetic, and even leads you to think that it is not worth living, that your dreams are not worth it, that they are impossible and that you will not achieve anything in life… Have you heard them? Of course you hear them. They all speak to us; they are always there.

ENOUGH! It is time for you to take control; for you to decide to ignore them, to weaken their power in you, you are stronger and you have the super power to get rid of them, to free yourself, to go out and live free, feel safe, feel happy, change bad habits, eat healthy, do everything you set your mind to, solve your problems, without stress, be at peace and enjoy the silence of your mind.

Every day, humanity disconnects and loses itself more. We are becoming slaves and robots programmed to react automatically. With so many stimuli, we are losing the ability to look inward. We have a growing need to get everything they offer us, to compare our life with others, thus creating a false life in a social network to feel better, with the idea that happiness is obtained from the outside or is measured according to what we have or accomplish.

In the past, people were not so interconnected with the outside world; therefore, they did not know much about what was happening around the globe.

The information was more limited and not so constant. To obtain something, you had to go buy it; to receive a mail you had to wait for days or even weeks—there was no instant gratification. Everything took time, effort and a process, which gave space to a more lasting and genuine gratification and happiness. People lived happily with what they had around them since they did not program themselves every second to need all the objects that were advertised. People spent more time with the family, contemplating over sunsets or landscapes, in endless talks with friends and family accompanied by a good cup of coffee at home, without having to spend thousands on a brand of coffee.

There was no rush; they lived with less information and with fewer needs, unintentionally living in a more contemplative state and involuntarily meditating. Their mind did not receive so much information and it was not necessary to learn so much to be successful or happy, in their mind there were empty spaces, which helped them to reorder ideas, to maintain their sanity. They used the superpower naturally, perhaps without knowing it.

Today, there are no empty spaces in the mind; it is full of information that we are unable to process and is saturated with disordered and negative thoughts, which gives the villains the opportunity to attack us and lead us straight to depression, to materialism, to giving importance to things more than to emotions. Nowadays, people measure their happiness with their bank account, with the size of their house, with the name of their friends, although surely at the end of the day they feel unsatisfied in their big house, next to their tired partner, and feeling empty inside, posting and looking at their social media with more than thousand friends, whom you perhaps don’t know or see less and less, but showing the “perfect” life they lead.

The stress generated by this growing need to have more and more and to satisfy the demands of a castrating, demanding and competitive society makes our body and mind sick. The villains are defeating us little by little.

Our mind and our body are not designed to cope with this pace of life and if we do not give them a moment of rest a day, there will come a point when it’ll begin to fail, causing both physical and mental illnesses. That is why today meditation is a vital issue.

In the past, meditation was thought to be a luxury that only the great masters, such as Buddha, could afford to do. It was not even a concept that needed definition; they just did it naturally without thinking about it. Life was so quiet and still that meditating was a natural state of life. Later, it became an exotic fashion brought from the East and with a misconception that it was practiced by people with money and a certain social status, it did not achieve its goal as it became a social club where powerful people met to perform an exotic practice to be fashionable… But now, this information is available to everyone.

Today, meditation is a primary need, an escape valve, a real alternative to prevent neurosis and stress caused by our accelerated pace of life. It is the super power that will help you beat all those villains in your head. The social and economic pressure is now forty times greater, so the pressure generated inside our body is enormous and may be on the verge of exploding. To release this pressure, it is necessary to enter meditative states at least once a day.

Meditation is more advanced than any medicine in the world; the illness was created by your stress, by your mind, so it will be your mind that has the power to heal you, but more than anything, meditation will help us to prevent these diseases, save money, live in harmony, solve our emotional and physical conflicts, sleep better and bring thousands of other benefits. 

Having a healthy body, eating healthy and exercising are constantly being promoted as good habits, but not many talks about having a healthy mind.

We only get advice on how to fight depression or fix our mental health once is already broken; meditation should be promoted as a preventive practice, a constant maintenance tool of the mind to avoid reaching chronic levels of anxiety or stress, a way to be mentally healthy.

It is said that your body is your temple, yes, but your mind… is what keeps it standing. You can have a perfect body, a perfect temple, but it can fall and be destroyed at any moment if your mind is sick or unstable. Exercise and eat healthy, yes, of course, but above all, it is time to exercise your mind. 

It’s time to THINK HEALTHY.

You must learn to meditate, to make a full stop, to focus on yourself and only on yourself, without the influence of any memory, or stimulus, or old thoughts or any fantastic unreal worlds in your mind. It is time for you to discover and awaken the power that lives within you. Dare to meet yourself, take control of your mind, of your life, wake up and learn to use that great superpower inside you.


About the Author

Rei Vila
Rei Vila is an Entrepreneur, Author, Designer and a Mental Health advocate
and activist. To THINK HEALTHY is his priority and major purpose, promoting
meditation as the GYM of the mind, and as a tool to keep you sane and
balanced.


He is a lover of all the arts, he have studies in architecture, art history,
design, music, performing arts and literature. Traveling the world and
learning about other cultures is his other passion and it has led him to
live, study and work in various countries such as Mexico, Canada, the United
States, Spain, India and China, for which he has studied at least 5
languages.


In 2012, he decided to travel to India to become a certified yoga teacher.
It was there in Rishikesh, north of India, where he knew deeply the world of
meditation and from there, his purpose, his mission has been to share it
with the world, so he began to give workshops where he realized how needy we
all are of find inner peace and this inspired him to write his first book:
Meditation – The Ultimate Superpower.


He recently founded “The Mind Conservatory” a site where people
will be able to learn different styles of meditation and many other
techniques, exercises and workshops to improve their mental health; also a
place for people to find tools to create and sustain their own mental health
routine and improve their quality of life by thinking healthy, and learning
how to deal with the unpleasant thoughts and feelings. He will soon launch
my own meditation technique and mobile APP to keep helping people to get
closer and more engaged and interested on this amazing superpower and to
promote mental health as a priority.


He lives in Shanghai, China with his wife and son since 2014, and he is
currently the Art Director at Shanghai Disneyland.

 

 

 

 

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The Island Mother Blitz

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Horror / Suspense / Thriller

Date Published: July 14, 2022

 

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Leigh Ramos is a woman on the run from her own life. After barely escaping
from a toxic relationship with a drug dealer, emotionally codependent Leigh
decides to start her life over somewhere far from the hills of Kentucky. She
feels inexplicably drawn to Hawaii, where she manages to land a job in an
exclusive resort. At first, it almost seems too good to be true, and of
course, it is.

Supernatural horrors start manifesting all around Leigh and her new
co-workers, and soon she starts having disturbing nightmares of impossible
creatures calling out to her. To make matters worse, Leigh’s violent
ex-boyfriend is close on her tail, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
Now trapped in the midst of all these dangers, Leigh can’t help but fall
back on old habits. She finds comfort in the arms of her new boss, an upbeat
hospitality manager who seems almost too perfect.

In order to survive paradise, Leigh will need to learn from her past
mistakes or she will be doomed to repeat them.

 

 

About the Author

Jon Cohn

Jon Cohn has been giving himself nightmares reading horror books ever since
he was a small child, and he revels in the opportunity to do the same to
others. When he is not busy writing spooky stories, Jon is a professional
board game designer and publisher. He specializes in games that– you
guessed it– focus on horror, and hopefully a few laughs. He lives in San
Diego, CA with his wife and two little monsters, Luna and Gizmo.

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The Rising Blitz

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Olivia Callahan Suspense, Book Two

Psychological Suspense / Crime Thriller

Released: March 2022

Publisher: Level Best Books

 

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After an assault that landed her in the hospital as a Jane Doe two years
earlier, Olivia Callahan has regained her speech, movement, and much of the
memory she lost due to a traumatic brain injury. The media hype about the
incident has faded away, and Olivia is ready to rebuild her life, but her
therapist insists she must continue to look back in order to move forward.
The only person that can help her recall specifics is her abusive
ex-husband, Monty, who is in prison for murder. The thought of talking to
Monty makes her skin crawl, but for her daughters’ sake and her own
sanity, she must learn more about who she was before the attack.

Just as the pieces of her life start falling into place, she stumbles
across the still-warm body of an old friend who has been gruesomely
murdered. Her dream of pursuing a peaceful existence is shattered when she
learns the killer left evidence behind to implicate her in the murder. The
only person that would want to sabotage her is Monty—but he’s in
prison! Something sinister is going on, and Olivia is desperate to figure it
out before another senseless murder is committed.

Other books in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series:

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The Deadening

Olivia Callahan Suspense, Book One

 

Olivia Callahan’s quiet, orderly life is shattered when she regains
consciousness in a hospital and discovers she is paralyzed and cannot
remember a thing. The fragmented voices she hears around her help her piece
together that an apparent assault landed her in the hospital, but nobody
knows who attacked her, or why. After a chilling struggle to survive, she
awakens from a coma unable to remember what happened to her or anything at
all, except she has been told she is an entirely different person. Or is
she?

Now, in spite of a brain injury that has rewired her personality, Olivia is
on a mission to reclaim her life. As clarity surfaces and she starts to
understand who she was, she is shocked. Had she really been that person? And
if so, does she want her old life back?

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Excerpt

My mind stalled. Paranoia curdled in my gut. My fingers clenched the
armrests. I eased myself from the chair.

My still-unpredictable brain flipped me back to my hospital room eighteen
months prior, where for five weeks I’d counted each step my legs could
manage. Mechanically, I started counting. One step. Two steps. Three.
Don’t look down! Keep going! Four steps. Almost there! Then you can
look down!

 

Five. Five. Five…I looked down.

 

A scream exploded from my lips and vibrated all the way down to my bones.
Automatically, I pulled out my cell to call 911, but…slowly put it
back in my purse. I took a deep breath. Just hang on a minute. What would
Hunter do?

What should I do?

I made a strangled sound in the back of my throat.

One thing you won’t do, Olivia Callahan, is nothing!

 Earl lay behind his desk, staring at the ceiling. The tears came when
I realized that he’d dressed up for me…like I’d dressed
up for him. He’d even worn a vest, but his shirt was pulled out and
the dark red of his blood had saturated his shirt, the vest, the floor.
“Ohmigod , Earl,” I breathed.

 

About the Author

Kerry Peresta

Kerry Peresta is the author of the Olivia Callahan Suspense series. Book
One, THE DEADENING, released in 2021 and Book Two, THE RISING, released in
2022, both by Level Best Books. She is currently working on the third,
fourth, and fifth books in the series. Kerry spent thirty years in
advertising as an account manager, creative director, copywriter, and
editor. She began writing full-time in 2009 as a humor columnist for a daily
newspaper, and in 2012, she moved to the Baltimore area and became chapter
president of the Maryland Writer’s Association, where she became an
active participant in the writing community. After moving to Hilton Head
Island, SC in 2015, Kerry joined the Island Writers Network, the Sisters in
Crime organization, South Carolina Writers Association, and became a
presenter for the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Kerry and her husband enjoy
their wonderful flock of grandkids, and indulgently endure two annoying
cats. Find out more about Kerry at kerryperesta.net.

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The Abdication Virtual Book Tour

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Crime / Suspense / thriller

Date Published: 06/07/2021

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

 

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The town of Unity sits perched on the edge of a yawning ravine where, long
ago, a charisma of angels provided spiritual succour to a fledgeling human
race. Then mankind was granted the gift of free will and had to find its own
way, albeit with the guidance of the angels. The people’s first
conscious act was to make an exodus from Unity – they built a rope
bridge across the ravine and founded the town of Topeth. For a time, the
union between the people of Topeth and the angels of Unity was one of mutual
benefit. After that early spring advance, there had been a torrid decline in
which mankind’s development resembled a crumpled, fading autumnal
leaf.

Following the promptings of an inner voice, Tula, a young woman from the
city, trudges into Topeth. Her quest is to abide with the angels and thereby
discover the right and proper exercise of free will. To do that, she has to
cross the bridge – and overcome her vertigo.

Topeth is in upheaval; the townsfolk blame the death of a child on dust
from the nearby copper mines. The priests have convinced them that a horde
of devils have thrown the angels out of Unity and now occupy the bridge,
possessing anyone who trespasses on it. Then there’s the heinous
Temple of Moloch!

The Abdication is the story of Tula’s endeavour to step upon the path
of a destiny far greater than she could ever have imagined.

 The Abdication tablet

EXCERPT

13.  The Acropolis

Tula staggered away from the Temple of Moloch to escape the toxic atmosphere. The air was thin. Her body was sweating, her stomach, knotted. Once in a while, she paused to gather her breath. Her head swirled with conflicting views about the townsfolk. At one turn they were kind and hospitable, but then they seemed to flip into a collective madness, in which they were possessed and intoxicated by a deluded sadistic pleasure.

There were no devils, other than those believed and invested in by people’s hearts and minds. The devils had no power without the freely given will of the people. She did not think this was how the gift of free will was intended to be exercised.

Then there was the bridge, a bridge to the future, away from the past and into the bright lights of tomorrow. Was its true name Via Angelica or the Devils’ Bridge? After Jevros’s fall and the tragic death of his baby girl, she had entertained her doubts. And now Moloch – the terrifying monster.

She needed a quiet place to meditate. The sun was arcing in the sky and sending waves of heat onto the town. The sunlight glinted on the derelict temple columns on Acropolis Hill. On first arriving in Topeth, the old structure had intrigued her. It would be an ideal sanctuary, at least until the gruesome ceremony at the bronze temple had finished.

Occupying the highest point in the town, the old Acropolis had been abandoned to nature, a monumental relic to a past era. She found herself at the head of a causeway leading to the first of three tiered terraces or courts, each separated by a low boundary wall running around the hillside like a girdle. The Acropolis building itself, or what was left of it, stood bleak and proud on the uppermost peak.

On entering the outer court, she scrunched up her nose. The stench was coming from a mound of rubbish. Blotches of weed poked through the gaps in the pile of old rotting clothes, discarded sandals, broken bottles and more of those nearly new children’s toys. The tip had attracted vermin, who, on her arrival, scampered for cover into the tall, thin spindles of dry grass. Schooled both by the adversity of the heat and the rarity of the atmosphere in Topeth, the rats seemed as big as beavers and mountain-ready.

Rats she did not like, neither the four-legged variety nor the two-legged. She had encountered a few of both in her short time on Earth and bore a particular disgust for the latter. Both smelled; the four-legged were putrid and the two-legged, well, they were even worse, since they had free will and therefore had volunteered to act like the four-legged variety.

Then there was the compliance, the serial inability to think for oneself and to follow others as a matter of course. She did not like that either. Yet it was as infuriatingly difficult to spot as to eradicate. Her pet hate was the giving of a name by its parents to a child. Her parents had named her Tula. She had not asked for it, condoned it, or even agreed to it, yet the name had stuck. One day, she would give herself a new name, to mark the beginning of her life-long quest, with a name chosen by her that chimed with her perceived destiny. Now that sounded like the proper exercise of free will.

She was Tula; Tula was she. The name had echoes of the tulip, the flower. Did her cheeks bloom with their fiery reds? Did she smell as nice? Could she smell her own body odour or her own clothes? They mostly smelled of sweat and fear, but on the odd occasion that she found that quiet, listening space in herself, she smelled as sweet as the turban-topped tulip.

 

About the Author

Justin Newland

Justin Newland is an author of historical fantasy and secret history
thrillers – that’s history with a supernatural twist. His stories
feature known events and real people from history which are re-told and
examined through the lens of the supernatural. He gives author talks and is
a regular contributor to BBC Radio Bristol’s Thought for the Day. He
lives with his partner in plain sight of the Mendip Hills in Somerset,
England.

 

His Books

The Genes of Isis is a tale of love, destruction and ephemeral power set
under the skies of Ancient Egypt. A re-telling of the Biblical story of the
flood, it reveals the mystery of the genes of Isis – or genesis
– of mankind. ISBN 9781789014860.

“The novel is creative, sophisticated, and downright brilliant! I
couldn’t ask more of an Egyptian-esque book!”
– Lauren,
Books Beyond the Story.

 

The Old Dragon’s Head is a historical fantasy and supernatural
thriller set during the Ming Dynasty and played out in the shadows the Great
Wall of China. It explores the secret history of the influences that shaped
the beginnings of modern times.  ISBN 9781789015829.

‘The author is an excellent storyteller.” – British
Fantasy Society.

 

Set during the Great Enlightenment, The Coronation reveals the secret
history of the Industrial Revolution. ISBN 9781838591885.

“The novel explores the themes of belonging, outsiders…
religion and war…  filtered through the lens of the
other-worldly.”
– A. Deane, Page Farer Book Blog.

 

His latest, The Abdication (July, 2021), is a suspense thriller, a journey
of destiny, wisdom and self-discovery. ISBN 9781800463950.

“In Topeth, Tula confronts the truth, her faith in herself, faith in
a higher purpose, and ultimately, what it means to abdicate that
faith.” – 
V. Triola, Coast to Coast.

 

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Hashtag: #Matadorbooks

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the author)

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Bee and Harp Teaser Tuesday

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Paranormal Romance, LGBTQ

Date Published: July 15, 2022

Publisher: Changeling Press

Dublin Museum Curator Bee McBride’s research tour is interrupted by a
shady stranger with a broken harp — and a broken heart.

When Bee, the stranger, and the harp are kidnapped by art thieves, Bee
discovers the dusty instrument is the legendary magic harp of the ancient
Celtic god Dagda.

Can her buzzing fervor find a way to unlock the harp’s music and the
stranger’s ardor before Midsummer Night?

 

 

Bee and Harp paperback

EXCERPT

All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2022 Siondalin O’Craig

 

July 1

Kevin O’Donnell called the place where he’d been resting his
head these last couple of years the Marble Arches, after the caves in
Fermanagh. These caves under FDR Drive weren’t etched into limestone,
however; their side walls were crumbling concrete from an early era of
Manhattan development. Bits of shell and round stone sloughed off onto the
floor each time he brushed by it. The supporting pillars were concrete of a
more modern vintage, but in the same rotted condition, stained by runoff
from the road above, broken flakes exposing lines of rusted rebar.

The back wall was raw Manhattan bedrock, and in this heat it had the
advantage of staying cool, and while the drought was doing murderous damage
elsewhere, it meant the floor of the Marble Arches stayed blessedly dry for
the moment. Sitting with his back against the bedrock, Kevin could look out
across the docks and over the East River to Brooklyn, watching the yachts,
the tour boats, and the giant freighters that taunted him with their ability
to leave this place and bring their sailors back to homes and families far
away.

* * *

For ten days, Kevin had been trying to coax sound from the harp. He sat
with its base tucked between his legs, cushioned by the neatly folded wrap
of linen, its soundboard held tight to his chest in a lover’s embrace.
Sometimes his fingers floated silently over the strings. Other times he just
held it close, feeling energy flowing from it into his body.

Kevin cleaned the wood slowly, carefully, using a bandanna he found in the
gutter, and the water from a dozen half-full plastic water bottles he pulled
from garbage cans. Rich carving emerged from the grime. Clasped in the
dragon’s claws were two large roses, so lifelike that it appeared
fresh drops of dew spangled their petals. The roses were bundled with oak
leaves, and acorns tumbled down the pillar.

“Daur da Bláo,” Kevin whispered. The Oak of Two
Blossoms.

He had stopped in at the sailor’s mission on the Bowery and begged a
pair of nail clippers. He clipped his ragged nails straight across, slightly
longer than the tips of his fingers. Plucking the strings of an ancient wire
frame harp was done with the fingernails.

He found enough change on the street to buy a cup of tea at the coffee shop
across from the Strand bookshop and used the foaming pink soap in their
restroom to scrub the layers of grime from his hands. He pumped more soap
into his empty paper teacup and took it back to the Marble Arches. He bathed
the wire strings in the soap and let them soak, then poured clean water over
them and rubbed them down with the bandana.

He’d been right. The corr, or pinboard, was brass, embossed with
four-stranded knotwork. The tuning pins were also brass, burnished to a
sheen, their leaf-shaped heads inset with silver triskeles. But the strings
themselves were pure gold. The harp of legends, he thought. This can’t
be real
.

His perch under the roadway suddenly felt confining, stifling. He wrapped
the harp and walked out onto the Brooklyn Bridge. The sun was burning hot
and blindingly white, but the air over the East River was stirring. The
tourist crowd was subdued in the heat, and the joggers who usually occupied
a steady lane of the walkway were completely absent.

He found an unoccupied bench in the shadow of the bridge’s dark
limestone towers. He wrapped his arms around the harp. A breeze wove between
the strings, and he thought he heard a faint, high-pitched hum. He pressed
his ear to the frame and listened. Yes, there. So fragile. So distant. But
the harp did have a voice, inside the soundbox. The harp was alive.

He put his fingers to the strings, his left hand reaching out to the high
strings nestled in the point of the frame, his right hand over his thighs,
spread over the bass strings. The hand position was the opposite of that on
modern harps, but this was the way frame harp playing was depicted in the
ancient carvings and medieval manuscripts, and so it was how frame harps
continue to be played by the small handful of people in the world who had
any familiarity with them.

He bent his head as if in prayer, pressed close against the soundboard. He
plucked a string with the middle finger of his right hand, then with the
ring finger, silently playing the pick-up notes to Pretty Maid Milking a
Cow
. The lyrics had emerged in the nineteenth century, but the origins of
the hauntingly poignant harp tune underneath the ballad was lost in
antiquity.

His hands bloomed into motion, the ghost of the soundless tune echoing in
his mind. A living vine of energy began to grow between his body and the
ancient harp, its gold strings glittering.

The notes in his mind tangled with the breeze rising from the water, and
swirled into visual images. A woman’s hands, her wrists, her forearms
bare, in dim light, glistening with water. Her shoulders, rising from a dark
lake. A curve of hip, strong legs, bare feet on a stony shore. Drying her
auburn hair. Looking at him with soft brown eyes. Eyes that were full of
warmth. Eyes that were full of love. Full of desire.

He stopped and straightened his spine, hands reaching to damp the strings
by habit, though they had yet to make a noise. He felt a current coursing
through his body, from his fingertips up through the long disused muscles of
his forearms, muscles that used to pop with sinewy definition when he played
ten hours a day. The power ran down his spine and through the long lean
muscles of his legs, taut from walking countless miles of lonely
sidewalks.

Kevin realized, as if he were watching himself from a distance, that his
cock was pressed rigidly against the harp. He froze, motionless, as if his
erection were a wild bird that he did not want to frighten. He took his
hands away from the harp, resting them on his thighs. His body came back to
the bench on the Brooklyn Bridge, but something inside of him had
changed.

I am Kevin O’Donnell, he thought. Kevin O’Donnell, the
harper
.

About the Author

Siondalin O’Craig writes romance with the slow burn of a peat fire on an
autumn night deep in the woodland hills. Sip a glass of Irish whiskey, turn
the page, and let the magic overtake you. Siondalin lives in the mountains
of New England where she walks under the trees celebrating the wheel of the
year, grows a luscious garden full of magical herbs, and plays a wicked
Irish fiddle. Follow her on Facebook and email her at
siondalinocraig@gmail.com to sign up for her newsletter.

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