Return, the sequel to Release

Got turned into my publisher about 2 months ago.

What happened?

SHE LOVES IT.  "STRONGER THAN RELEASE"; "BEST SEQUEL IN THE HISTORY OF SEQUELS"; "HASN'T READ A SEQUEL QUITE LIKE IT, EVER," she said.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, you all know how ecstatic and elated this makes me, especially since Return was so difficult to write, from a plot point of view and considering the major life changes that happened while I was writing it.  I wasn't happy with it for the longest time, though when I finally handed it to her, I did think it a pretty good novel.  We are shooting for a Summer 2011 release, so stay tuned!

Here's a snippet:

Unfortunately, he did not have a clear, unobstructed path to his car. Eric didn’t know who – or what -- they were, the beings that stood on either side of the two-foot wide fissure in the pavement, into which half of his car had disappeared. But one thing was for certain: Eric knew that death was staring at him, from a distance of about six feet away. 

There were five of them, and they resembled humans in that they had a head, two arms, two legs; the standard homo sapien characteristics. One resembled Billy Idol in that he had bleached-blonde, spiky hair, though his entire eyes were black. The other four, their features were something like Eric had only seen in movies; not even on Halloween had he ever seen people with such dead-looking skin, green-grey in color. More fantastic -- talons on the end of their hands, and short, stubby horns protruding from balding heads. Their eyes looked somewhat normal -- except where the whites should have been, there was yellow. And the yellow looked like it was glowing.

Glowing!

“Denny?!” Eric followed the clear musical voice that rang out to his right, and was surprised to see that the strange, brother-sister couple had remained. They stared in wonder at the five beings, although the brother must have had some of his wits about him, for he drew a small sword from behind his back.  

“Miranda? Cray?” the Billy-Idol-being responded, looking around him as if he was just as surprised at his presence as Eric.  

A scream turned his attention to his left, and Eric couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  One of the horned beings who had long, ropish braids behind him – or her, as the form somehow looked female – was straddling Denise and appeared to be biting into Denise’s neck.  Denise was struggling, but didn’t seem to be able to shake the thing off her.

“Oh my God, my Aunt’s stories were true!  This can’t be happening!” Amy squeaked from behind him, just as the other horned humanoid looked at them with hunger written all over her face.  

“No, we can’t let them!” the sister called out, and the creature turned its head to look at her, before sneering and continuing its advance towards Eric and Amy. He thought he heard Amy tell him to look away, but Eric’s gaze was sucked into the glowing eyes and ugly smile that showed two rows of pointed teeth. He struggled again to breathe as Amy gripped his neck even more tightly, shooting her left arm out. Eric saw that she held her strange little cross as if she were trying to ward off the advancing evil, like the vampire hunters in the movies did.