Here’s the prologue for my new book, Finding Emma, which is coming out October 20. There’s a button at the bottom to add it to Goodreads if you’re interested. Enjoy!
Cover Reveal and Pre-Order: Monday, September 14
Prologue
It all started with a cat.
Well, to be fair, it technically started over a year ago, but maybe I should back up a little bit first. When I was five, I had the bright idea to corner my neighbor’s cat and spray it with a squirt gun and then couldn’t understand why the cat clawed and scratched her way out of that damn corner, leaving my five-year-old self bloody and crying. Thus, after that little encounter, my distaste and general indifference to cats began.
They just always seemed like outliers to me: predatory, creepy, sneaky, destroyers of power cords and furniture. The differences between cats and dogs were staggering–take my childhood dog for instance: a happy-go-lucky, tail-wagging, sloppy-kissing, frolicking in the backyard golden retriever. Compared to the anti-social, complicated mannerisms of cats, dogs just always seemed nicer. Easier than difficult-to-please, cagey, and skittish cats.
Not that I didn’t think all those cute Youtube videos of kittens were absolutely adorable. I mean, seriously, a cat playing the piano? Making grumpy faces? Sure, they were cute, but that was pretty much the extent of how much I ever even thought about cats.
So, I pretty much kept my distance with a carefully-drawn line in the sand between us, especially since, as I grew older, I’d developed a slight cat allergy–slight meaning I felt my eyes watering and my throat closing within 10 minutes of being in the same room as a cat. No big loss on my part, that was for sure.
I guess I just figured I’d always have dogs. And I guess that was before I belly-flopped off the deep end and landed face-first on the cold, wet floor of rock bottom.
So, like I said, it all started with a cat.
K. Ryan 