UNSEEN: Undone Realms Book 1

Unheeded (The Fold: bk. 2) Blurb and Excerpt

If you liked UNSEEN, check out its sequel, UNHEEDED:

 Meet new characters...explore the Dual Realms...discover how Clara became unseen.

 When the impossible is made possible, Avie, the stepdaughter of a realm worker, finds herself transported to an apple orchard on a world that is not her own. There she stumbles upon Oliver, a migrant laborer who assumes Avie is from the city.  Only years later when Avie is able to return to Oliver's realm does he realize she's learned to stepped through the Fold separating their dual realities.

 Oliver can't stop thinking about Avie or the world she comes from.  Together they carry out a plan to bring him through the Fold so that they can be together.  But this plan is not without serious risks.  In Avie's world, people from other realities are not welcome.  While the threat of persecution threatens them from the outside, an internal struggle grows within Oliver as well.  When this struggle intensifies, the two must decide whether sanity and freedom are too high a price to pay in order to be together.

 ***

 Excerpt from the first chapter, A Beautiful Curse:

 After Avie's mother died, her father remarried just in time to suffer the misfortune of dying himself.  This left twelve year-old Avie in the care of her new stepmother—a woman whose idea of dealing with the girl's unconcealed rage was to leave the room.  Marcella had been married merely five weeks when her husband took ill and died; with so little natural attachment to her stepchild, few doubted she'd rid herself of Avie as soon as possible.

Avie could have ended up at a welfare center, looked after by some random member of Compassion Corp, but Marcella had surprised everyone, refusing to give the girl up no matter what.  She had made an oath, the neighbor's speculated, attending her husband in his final moments and promising him to care for his daughter.  What other reason could there be? 

Marcella chose to keep Avie with her and yet still Avie felt she didn't belong with her stepmother—that she didn't in fact belong anywhere because in her mind people needed to be wherever there was someone to love them.  She wasn't sure where that would be but it certainly wasn't here.

A year of despair passed them by.  Each day was an ordeal to be overcome, but when Avie counted them up, she could scarcely believe she'd lived so many sunrises since her father's sun had set for that last time.  Marcella tried to be a mother to Avie, but she was a hard woman who struggled to display any emotions, much less the kindness and sympathy Avie required. 

Simply put, Marcella was failing Avie, and no wonder.  She had given up her job as a Caller when Avie became her charge, but she had certainly not ceased her realm research even though all such work beyond the confines of the Caller Agency was strictly forbidden.  In fact, if anything, closeted away together in their tiny yellow cottage, she became more obsessed with it.  She would disappear into her back room for hours and hours to work on her mysterious formulas, leaving Avie to her own devices; and in those days, such devices usually encompassed a dark trifecta of wallowing, pining, and bitterness.

Avie, currently in wallowing mode, was scraping food off of a cook pot when Marcella came running out of her room, eyes lit with an excitement Avie had never seen before, not even on the day she had married Avie's father.

"It can be done!" She gathered what seemed to Avie to be a random assortment of things—a hairbrush, matches, a protein bar, and shoved them into her handbag.  "I've figured out how."

Avie, hands frozen in mid scrape, squinted her eyes at her stepmother.  "How what?"

"The glue can be undone, the layers can be peeled apart.  I've found the Fold!"

Avie began scrubbing again.  "That's just great, Marcella."

Marcella tossed her bag onto the couch and came over to Avie, grabbing her by the shoulders.  "I've found a way to move through to other Realms.  Well, to the Dual Realm, at least."

Avie shrugged the woman off.  "That's impossible.  Plus it's illegal to even try."

"And why would they make something illegal if it wasn't possible." She raised an eyebrow at Avie.  "Well?"

"Well, I still don't believe you."

Marcella leaned over, putting her hands on her knees as though she was talking to a small child.  "Do you think I'm crazy then?"

"No, I know you're crazy."  She turned back towards the sink.  "Just like I know I'm stuck with you."

Marcella laughed.  "You are the opposite of stuck now."

***

A/N:  I  hope you have enjoyed this short teaser for book 2 of The Fold.  UNHEEDED is now available! Turn to the next chapter and then click on the external link to begin your journey.

Book 3, UNSPOKEN, will begin updates soon!