My first book award!

The Orphan Ship has been awarded a 2012 silver Children's Literary Classics award.  www.childrensliteraryclassics.com 

An excerpt from my sequel, The Lost Sheep

        

Blaze lowered his voice as he took a bite of sticky rice. “What did you say to Lorina?”

Marco dropped his gaze to the table. “I told her the orphanage would be a challenge for Captain Shepherd over the next few years.”

“That wouldn’t make her cry,” Jake said. “What are you leaving out?”

Marco was trapped. He couldn’t tell them the rest. “I don’t remember.”

“Liar!” Jake’s right fist was halfway to Marco’s nose before Blaze intervened.

“Stop!” The engineer deflected Jake’s punch with an outstretched arm. “Take it easy!” Blaze lowered his voice. “We all want to pound him, but we need to hear what he has to say first.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to lies!” Jake’s face was turning red beneath his tan. “You know what you said to her, so you’d better spit it out!”

Marco could feel his own face heating up. He was starting to shake from a combination of fear and anger. Stay silent and take a pounding, or take a pounding after I tell them? He didn’t care for the limited options.

“They say confession is good for the soul,” Vipul spoke up.

Marco shot the older man a withering glance.

Jake sneered. “Ting doesn’t have a soul.”

That remark did it for Marco; he was livid. “You want a confession, O’Brien? Here it is: I told Lorina someone close to her was going to die!”

There was instant silence at the table. The color drained from Blaze’s face.

Jake appeared to be having an internal battle with his emotions, his mouth working silently but furiously until he roared, “Who! Which of us is going to die? Is it me, or Blaze, or Niyati?”

“Don’t you have a shred of decency?” Blaze asked. “How could you say something like that to her?”

“Who is it!” Jake demanded.

“I don’t know.” Marco’s adrenaline was racing. He’d taken on bigger men than O’Brien, and he was ready to defend himself.

“Liar!” Jake cleared the table with a sweep of his arm, sending plates and food flying across the galley. He reached across the table again and seized Marco’s collar with both hands, yanking him up from his chair. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know!” Marco grabbed Jake’s wrists and pried his grip free. “Get your hands off me!”

Jake shoved him backwards; Marco’s chair seat swiveled and dumped him onto the floor. “I can’t believe we have to work with a psychopath like you!”

Marco was on his feet in an instant. He threw himself at Jake, driving his shoulder into the medic’s abdomen. The two men crashed to the floor between the tables. Marco managed to land a single punch to Jake’s ribs before he felt large hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him off O’Brien.