In my garden

Real life is LOUD. For someone like me, who suffers skull-pounding headaches, noise can practically incapacitate me.

I used to be immune to noise, back when I lived in the Big Apple. It was like background music. But since I had my head split by a couple of street thugs, my life has drastically changed. The sports bar where I work isn’t too bad. The sound on the TV is on mute, with closed-captioning, and the guys who watch it do their own commentary. It’s far enough away from the bar that the whooping and hollering isn’t in my face.

Thanks to the generosity of my older half-brother, Richard, I live on a peaceful street. Usually the loudest noise to fracture the quiet is the screeching of a jay or the caw of a crow. I can handle that. And the peace I gain from my garden is priceless.

But the garden is no longer my safe haven. On a recent fall day, deadheading the annuals changed my life forever when I grabbed a bumblebee that had been darting among the petals. The next thing I knew, I’d been stung, watching the spec on my hand turn into a welt, and then I came over all cold and my throat started to close. Luckily, I was speaking to my sister-in-law, a nurse, at the time, or I’d have been a goner.

But it wasn’t just anaphylactic shock that scared the bejeepers out of me. Everything went dark, and then there was this terrible bright light, hauling me up toward it—pulling me away from everything I knew and loved—including my life.

A shot of epinephrine brought me back to the here and now, and I intend to stay here … and yet, I have a funny feeling that all is not as it should be. That there are people, things, and events conspiring to make that near-death experience become a reality.

I’m afraid. Very afraid.

You can read more about Jeff in Dark Waters, the sixth book in the “Jeff Resnick” series. The first book in the series is Murder on the Mind which is free for all e formats at Backlist Ebooks.

Meet the author
The immensely popular “Booktown” Mystery series is what put Lorraine Bartlett’s pen name Lorna Barrett on the New York Times Bestseller list, but it’s her talent — whether writing as Lorna, or L.L. Bartlett, or Lorraine Bartlett — that keeps her there. This multi-published, Agatha-nominated author pens the exciting “Jeff Resnick” Mysteries as well as the acclaimed “Victoria Square” Mystery series, and now the “Tales of Telenia” fantasy saga, and has many short stories and novellas to her name(s). Check out the links to all her works here: www.LLBartlett.com

Lorraine’s latest release is Dark Waters, the 6th Jeff Resnick Mystery was released October 1. A near-death experience colors Jeff Resnick’s life, but his investigation into the death of a racketeer puts him in jeopardy as he searches for missing assets.