| LEAVING THE PACK | |||
| Series: | Silver Nights Trilogy | ||
| Author: | David O'Brien | ||
| Available: | Summer 2014 | ||
| ISBN: | 9781311587855 | ||
| ASIN: | B00KCYJA78 | ||
| Length: | Novel | ||
| Genre: | Horror Romance | ||
| Price: |
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Nobody believes in werewolves.
That's just what Paul McHew and his friends are counting on.They and their kind roam our city streets: a race of people from whom the terrible legend stems; now living among us invisibly after centuries of persecution through fear and ignorance. Superficially Caucasian but physiologically very different, with lunar rhythms so strong that during the three days of the full moon they are almost completely controlled by their hormonal instincts, you might have cursed them as just another group of brawling youths or drunken gang-bangers. Now at the point of extinction, if they are to survive their existence must remain restricted to mere stories and legend, but, paradoxically, they also must marry outside their society in order to persist.
The responsibility for negotiating this knife-edge is given to Paul, who runs the streets with his friends during the full moon, keeping them out of real trouble and its resultant difficult questions. Having succeeded for years, he finds his real test of leadership comes when he meets Susan, a potential life-mate, to whom he will have to reveal his true identity if he is ever to leave his pack.
10% of the author's royalties will be donated to WWF, the World Wildlife Fund.
About the Author
David J O'Brien was born and raised in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland. He studied environmental biology and later studied deer biology for his PhD, at University College Dublin. Instead of pursuing his life-long interest in wolves and predator-prey interactions, after completing his doctorate, he taught English in Madrid, Spain, for four years while his girlfriend finished her doctorate in molecular biology. They married and moved to Boston, USA, so his wife could pursue her career and David decided that teaching was a vocation he was happy to continue. After seven great years teaching Biology at Boston's Cathedral High School and Zoology at Bridgewater State College, he returned to Spain three years ago so his wife could set up her new research group in her hometown of Pamplona shortly before their daughter was born.
David has loved writing since his teens. He began with poetry and had one of his first poems published in Cadenza, a small Dublin poetry magazine at the age of fourteen. Since then several more have been published in journals and anthologies such as Albatross, The Tennessee State Poetry League, Poems of Nature and various anthologies of Forward Press imprint in Britain. He began writing fiction soon after and wrote the novella that would later become Leaving The Pack at the age of seventeen. Though his academic writing took precedence for a number of years, and he is still involved in deer biology and management, he kept writing other things in his spare time and has always dreamt of one day being able to do it full time. While living in Madrid, he wrote some non-fiction articles for the Magazine Hot English and while in Boston for the newspaper Dig. There, too, he took a feature-writing class in Emmanuel College he was awarded as thanks for mentoring a student teacher.
An avid wildlife enthusiast and ecologist, much of David's non-academic writing, especially poetry, is inspired by wildlife and science, and he sometimes seeks to describe the science behind the supernatural. He has written a little bit of everything: to date a four-act play, a six-episode sit-com, various short stories and four more novels.
After two more years teaching English and science in a secondary school, David recently moved to a private teaching academy to develop their English program. This has not only given him more time with his daughter and enjoy Pamplona and its surroundings, but also allowed him to finally devote time to fully developing his writing career.
He is currently working on a long novel set in the pre-Columbian Caribbean, and a non-fiction book about the sociology of hunting. At the same time he is looking for outlets for his other works: two contemporary adult novels; one set in the west of Ireland and the other set in Madrid, a young adult ghost story set in a town outside London, and a children's novel about a boy who can see leprechauns.
David has loved writing since his teens. He began with poetry and had one of his first poems published in Cadenza, a small Dublin poetry magazine at the age of fourteen. Since then several more have been published in journals and anthologies such as Albatross, The Tennessee State Poetry League, Poems of Nature and various anthologies of Forward Press imprint in Britain. He began writing fiction soon after and wrote the novella that would later become Leaving The Pack at the age of seventeen. Though his academic writing took precedence for a number of years, and he is still involved in deer biology and management, he kept writing other things in his spare time and has always dreamt of one day being able to do it full time. While living in Madrid, he wrote some non-fiction articles for the Magazine Hot English and while in Boston for the newspaper Dig. There, too, he took a feature-writing class in Emmanuel College he was awarded as thanks for mentoring a student teacher.
An avid wildlife enthusiast and ecologist, much of David's non-academic writing, especially poetry, is inspired by wildlife and science, and he sometimes seeks to describe the science behind the supernatural. He has written a little bit of everything: to date a four-act play, a six-episode sit-com, various short stories and four more novels.
After two more years teaching English and science in a secondary school, David recently moved to a private teaching academy to develop their English program. This has not only given him more time with his daughter and enjoy Pamplona and its surroundings, but also allowed him to finally devote time to fully developing his writing career.
He is currently working on a long novel set in the pre-Columbian Caribbean, and a non-fiction book about the sociology of hunting. At the same time he is looking for outlets for his other works: two contemporary adult novels; one set in the west of Ireland and the other set in Madrid, a young adult ghost story set in a town outside London, and a children's novel about a boy who can see leprechauns.
Read an Excerpt
“God, I love this town!” Paul McHew said. He gazed from the window of his sixth-floor apartment out across the city and the foaming sea beyond. The sun was setting and the rooftops of the neighboring buildings were cast in shadow, their grime and decrepit state obscured. Farther off, the skyscrapers that housed the downtown banks and financial institutions were bathed in the last crimson rays of sunlight. Behind the city, sitting just below the eastern horizon, a pale yellow moon was slowly rising up over the sea into the darkening sky.Unseen, between the run-down constructions that spread out from Paul’s ancient redbrick building and the better kept houses and shops a mile off, the Wilneff River ran south, narrow and fast as it rushed from the mountains far behind his loft apartment. It turned east to the sea and was now visible as a dark line devoid of street lights, widening as it flowed into the harbor. It separated the tall business district on the south bank from the lower warehouses and factories that spread out from the riverside docks on the north side. These merged with houses near the shore, a few miles north of his vantage point and closer to the river before it curved east, while south of downtown, shopping malls turned to apartment blocks and suburban housing estates nearer the coast.
Clad only in black jeans, he’d opened the chipped and rotting wooden window frame to feel the warm wind rush across the skin of his muscular torso and dry the last of the water droplets from the shower he’d just taken, which clung to the thick mat of coarse hair that covered his body. The gusting air played with his damp, shoulder-length hair as it forced its way into the loft, but it showed little tendency to take up much more moisture. It was already almost saturated. Paul could smell the rain that was on its way. The clouds were quickly building up as the air temperature dropped after a sultry day.
On the brick windowsill, a few white flakes of paint had fallen from the frame, as they did every time he slid up the window. As he deeply inhaled the humid breeze, the bits were blown onto the corrugated iron roof of a dilapidated lean-to in the dingy back yard five floors below.
The sight of the rising moon exhilarated him. As he put his head and torso outside the window and let out a long, ear-piercing howl, he felt his heartbeat begin to quicken, ever so slightly. When he could exhale no more, he banged the glass above his head and grinned.
He gulped another lungful of air, sucking in the feeling of the coming night, and reveled in the excitement of what would happen when the sun died completely.
It had been many years since his first foray into the silver light that would soon bathe the streets before him. Uncountable nights under the full moon, striding up and down each street and thoroughfare, exploring every alley and back parking lot, he’d spent the hours of darkness searching out sensations. He’d seen so many sights, snatches of lives, experienced a host of situations, heard unutterable whispers, caught looks and felt touches from a multitude of inhabitants and new arrivals to the city, that some would have forgotten most of them. Paul kept them all within easy reach of his memory, catalogued chronologically, as if his strolls through the city were a story – one which kept him orientated within its walls. Some things had changed over time, as even in eternal cities they are wont to.
Clad only in black jeans, he’d opened the chipped and rotting wooden window frame to feel the warm wind rush across the skin of his muscular torso and dry the last of the water droplets from the shower he’d just taken, which clung to the thick mat of coarse hair that covered his body. The gusting air played with his damp, shoulder-length hair as it forced its way into the loft, but it showed little tendency to take up much more moisture. It was already almost saturated. Paul could smell the rain that was on its way. The clouds were quickly building up as the air temperature dropped after a sultry day.
On the brick windowsill, a few white flakes of paint had fallen from the frame, as they did every time he slid up the window. As he deeply inhaled the humid breeze, the bits were blown onto the corrugated iron roof of a dilapidated lean-to in the dingy back yard five floors below.
The sight of the rising moon exhilarated him. As he put his head and torso outside the window and let out a long, ear-piercing howl, he felt his heartbeat begin to quicken, ever so slightly. When he could exhale no more, he banged the glass above his head and grinned.
He gulped another lungful of air, sucking in the feeling of the coming night, and reveled in the excitement of what would happen when the sun died completely.
It had been many years since his first foray into the silver light that would soon bathe the streets before him. Uncountable nights under the full moon, striding up and down each street and thoroughfare, exploring every alley and back parking lot, he’d spent the hours of darkness searching out sensations. He’d seen so many sights, snatches of lives, experienced a host of situations, heard unutterable whispers, caught looks and felt touches from a multitude of inhabitants and new arrivals to the city, that some would have forgotten most of them. Paul kept them all within easy reach of his memory, catalogued chronologically, as if his strolls through the city were a story – one which kept him orientated within its walls. Some things had changed over time, as even in eternal cities they are wont to.
