EXTRACT FOR
The Fracture in the Scarlet Sky
(Craig M. Sampson)

Peter was still wondering if all that had happened in the last 6 months or so was real. As he sat in his small cottage nestled in the woods just outside Bend, Oregon he knew in his heart that it was, but still with all he had been through during his work on his latest book, "The Fracture in the Scarlet Sky", it seemed too impossible to accept if he considered it with just his rational mind. Peter had never been one to put much stock in anything intangible or which could not be explained by reason or logic, but that was the old Peter he guessed. After an explosion on the literary scene when he was just 19, he had churned out one popular novel after another, both professionally satisfying as well as financially successful as his bank account could attest to.

After a short hiatus he found a new opus in his latest creation, but until just recently he was not so sure he was going to survive what the creative process had somehow brought forth. Peter had always invested a high degree of himself to each of his books, often getting pulled into the plot to a degree in which he sometimes struggled to separate his actual life from his fictional characters. It had never bothered him particularly...like method acting he had always told himself. But his time it had been different. This time...and he still had difficulty saying this without feeling he had gone a bit mad...one of his characters had taken on a bigger than life presence. Jack Hawthorne, his very dark and sinister protagonist had somehow leapt from the pages and inserted himself into Peter's life.

He had considered contacting someone to help him with this situation when he realized what had happened and the degree of peril he was in, but the whole idea was so crazy that Peter was pretty sure he would never find anyone to take his experience seriously...initially even he was the biggest skeptic of the whole idea. But as time went on his skepticism faded and Peter knew he alone would have to deal with saving his own life. It was like this nightmare from which he could not awaken from but unlike the dream-state this situation was all too real and perilous. After a few close calls with Jack Hawthorne, Peter had to drop all his preconceived notions and belief systems of things that might exist outside the material world if he was to survive. In the end it was a negotiation that pulled him back from the brink of death...one that in his wildest imagination Peter would never have thought anything he would ever have to consider.