Or you can always email me. However you like it best is great with me. I love hearing from you!
Also, if you like music, you might like to know that I do, too, and that it plays a big role in my inspiration. For that reason, I create a playlist for each book I write, adding the songs that inspire me as I go. You can find all my playlists here on Spotify.
Other books by M. Leighton on Amazon
All the Pretty Lies ** All the Pretty Poses
All Things Pretty ** All Things Pretty (part two)
Down to You ** Up to Me
Everything for Us
Pocketful of Sand
Strong Enough ** Tough Enough
Brave Enough
The Wild Ones ** Wild Child
Some Like It Wild ** There’s Wild, Then There’s You
YA and PARANORMAL
Fragile
Madly ** Madly & Wolfhardt
Madly & the Jackal ** Madly Boxed Set
Blood Like Poison: For the Love of a Vampire
Blood Like Poison: Destined for a Vampire
Blood Like Poison: To Kill an Angel
Blood Like Poison Boxed Set
The Reaping ** The Reckoning
Gravity
Caterpillar
Wiccan
Beginnings: An M. Leighton Anthology
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author, M. Leighton, is a native of Ohio. She relocated to the warmer climates of the South, where she can be near the water all summer and miss the snow all winter. Possessed of an overactive imagination from early in her childhood, Michelle finally found an acceptable outlet for her fantastical visions: literary fiction. Having written over a dozen novels, these days Michelle enjoys letting her mind wander to more romantic settings with sexy Southern guys, much like the one she married and the ones you'll find in her latest books. When her thoughts aren't roaming in that direction, she'll be riding wild horses, skiing the slopes of Aspen or scuba diving with a hot rock star, all without leaving the cozy comfort of her office.
About Michelle: I love coffee and chocolate, even more so when they are combined. I'm convinced that one day they could be the basis for world peace. I also love the color red and am seriously considering dying my hair.
DOOR NUMBER TWO
THIRTY
Cole
I WAKE WITH a start. My heart is pounding and my head hurts so badly my vision is blurry for a few seconds. I close my eyes and cradle the throbbing left side of my skull until the worst of it passes.
I recall the dream, so perfectly clear. So perfectly real.
Only it’s not. It’s only a dream. A sweet dream and a horrific nightmare. I’ve had it dozens, no hundreds of times before. Maybe more. It always leaves me feeling wrecked. Panicked. Lost. But even so, I never want to wake from it.
Yet I always do.
It takes me a minute to realize who I am. I’m Cole. The guy in the dream. I look like him–somewhat–and I sound like him. I feel like him. Only I’m not sure I’m him. I don’t know what my name is.
In the dream, I see and hear and think and feel like Eden, as though I know her every thought and emotion. But I’m still Cole. It’s like I’m in the director’s chair, directing an intricate drama, enacted only on the stage of my mind. I know all, see all, feel all. Only it’s not real. None of it.
Minutes pass. Maybe more. Maybe an hour. I don’t know. Time means different things these days. But some time later, I crack one lid. When knives don’t pierce my brain, I lift the other and glance around. I’m on my back, staring at the sky. I recognize the trees above me. It’s a familiar canopy, especially one tree in particular with its gnarled branches that look like an enormous hand reaching for me. I’ve always found comfort in it, as though something might be coming to save me, to drag me out of the blank hell that I find myself in.
I sit up, each grate of the park bench digging into my back as I move. They’re familiar to me, too. I wake here often. More often than not, actually. I think the cops stopped patrolling this park at night, so as long as I’m gone by an hour or so after daylight, they don’t give me trouble. But I always come back. After the sun goes down, I come back and I watch. I watch the family across the street, in the brownstone that is as foreign to me as my name or my childhood. It’s never in my dreams, only in my reality. Or, rather, someone else’s reality.