Sometimes the deepest secrets are hidden behind the thinnest veils.

The first five chapters of Light Always Changes are up now. If you’re getting impatient, you can buy the book here.

introduction
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five

The first four chapters of Light Always Changes are up now. If you’re getting impatient, you can buy the book here.

introduction
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four

This novel will be posted one chapter per week, but the book is finished and available to be ordered in print.

all she wants is to hide her scarred face
all he wants is to take the perfect portrait

    There’s one desk left in the far right row, second desk from the back. She hangs her bag on the seatback, sits down, swings her hair over her cheek. She begins to doodle, tiny flowers and leaves along the very edge of the cover of her spiral notebook.

    “Hi! Lydia, right?” She raises her head, but doesn’t look away from her flowers.

    “You probably didn’t notice me, but I was in your last class. That’s how I know your name.” In her peripheral vision, she can see his hand come up toward her. She reaches up and hooks her hair behind her ear. Turns to face him.

    “Hello,” she says, her voice as stretched and tight as the skin of her cheek.

   “I’m Tanner,” he says, his smile unchanged.

sometimes the deepest secrets
are hidden behind the thinnest veils

Doesn’t the sun always come up again?

Jillian has lost her mother, her home, her favorite aunt, and every friend she’s ever known. Now she’s found Royal. But is he the counter-weight that will help her regain her balance, or is he the anchor that will drag her under forever?

Is he the most perfect boy ever made, or is he a serial killer with a grudge?

Click here to read the first 16 pages…

Click here to order Jillian’s Gold (216 pages, $16.95)

I will be serializing my latest novel, Light Always Changes, on the web. I’m in the process of setting up a blog just for that purpose, and as soon as the book is available for purchase (waiting on the final proof now), I will make that blog public.

My purpose, of course, is to reach a wider audience, and to attract some new readers. I’m not all that eager to read online, myself, but it seems to be the way a lot of younger people seem to expect to do their reading, so I thought I’d give it a try. If this works out, there may be other serializations coming.

Watch this space for further announcements, but in the meantime, here’s a link to the first chapter of Light Always Changes, just to whet your appetite.

Light Always Changes, chapter one

The Bumbler’s Apprentice

What is there that is ignoble in the fulfillment of destiny?

Streep thought he had it all figured out. He was apprenticed by mistake to a know-nothing old buffoon, Basil the Buffoon, who refused to teach him anything because Basil had no Gift except the curse of jealousy. Streep was destined to be a great wizard. He was going places, just as soon as he got past this one little trouble. Then along comes Bruno. Make me a sword, and just like that, his life is in turmoil. Make me a sword as long as you are tall, taller, even, just a bit, make me a sword that long and then I’ll go away and leave you alone.

But now his life will never be the same.

The Meadow

(c) 2008 Levi Montgomery

     She’s mostly quiet, sitting calmly and watching out the window, sometimes watching him drive, with that little smile she has for so much of what he does. Years ago, that smile bugged him a little, till he figured out it meant she was proud of him. He can see the sun stroke across her face as the car turns, even without looking. He can feel the dapples of it across her hands, folded in her lap.
     He mostly just drives. It’s gotten to be a bit of a problem these last few years, just enough to make him fierce in his vigilance. He’s never had an accident, but he watches things more closely now. This is the first time he’s had the car out in months, actually.
     They used to do this a lot, exploring the roads and lanes around town for as far as they could reach. Saturdays, he only had a half-day at work, and Sundays there was church, but those weekend afternoons were for trying to get lost. They always made it back without without getting lost, without ever even really wondering where they were, but they sure tried.
     She’d have packed a lunch, then; chicken and potato salad and pie, books for afterwards, in the big wicker basket her mother made. ’Course, that was the days when you had to be a driver just to be a driver. Not like nowadays, when just anybody can go get a car and get in and drive. No power steering, no power brakes, no automatic trannies and power thisses and automatic thats. You had to know what you were doing, back then.
     This car, though, loafs along the freeway at a steady sixty-five, leaving nothing for him to do but steer, watch like a hawk, and mutter at the maniacs pouring past him on his left. Seventy, the signs say, and they’re doing eighty, at least.

Read the rest . . .

Doesn’t the sun always come up again?

    Dear Auntie May,
    We had this thing we had to do at school, a writing assignment, where we had fifteen minutes to write about “The Most Important Thing I’ve Ever Seen,” which is pretty stupid if you ask me. Most of them wrote about “The Most Important Thing I Ever Saw Was When I Saw the Mayor,” or “The Important Night That I Saw Britney Spears in Concert!” I wrote about watching the sun melt into the ocean at Ocean Shores, about how, in those last few moments, it melts into liquid gold on the waves, and skitters away, circling around behind you for tomorrow’s sunrise, and then I had to read it, and when I was done, there was this silence for a few seconds.
    “Can you really look out over the ocean and not see land at all?” this boy dressed all in black asked me, and I think they’d think I was crazy if I told them that what’s really weird is looking out over the land and not seeing ocean at all.

Jillian has lost her mother, her home, her favorite aunt, and every friend she’s ever known. Now she’s found Royal. But is he the counter-weight that will help her regain her balance, or is he the anchor that will drag her under forever? Is he the most perfect man ever made, or is he a serial killer with a grudge?