Free Violet Lagoon by John Everson Page A

Everson titles, please visit www.johneverson.com
     
    Dark Arts Books e-Book Edition, September 2013
    www.darkartsbooks.com  

Dedication
 
For Charlotte's kids...
     

Preface
     
     ack in 2008,  in the midst of working on my third novel, The 13th , I wrote the first outline for the book that would eventually become my seventh novel, Violet Eyes . When I pitched the idea to my editor, Don D’Auria, he thought it would make a “very creepy book,” but had two concerns:
     
    1) Leisure Books, my publisher at the time, already had a couple of recent “spider” books on the roster, from Sarah Pinborough, and he didn’t want to overload the line with eight-legged tales, and 
     
    2) the prologue as I’d outlined it, in his words, “would be mighty long.” 
     
    We agreed that I would hold off on digging into Violet Eyes for a book or two until the dust from Sarah’s novels had settled, and instead I began to work on Siren as my next project. 
    But Violet Eyes didn’t leave my head. And a year or so later, as I was talking with Delirium Books about doing a short bug-themed collection to reboot their hardcover chapbook series, I came up with the idea of turning the outlined prologue of that unwritten novel into a standalone short story.
    Turned out... Don was right. 
    The story I wanted to tell was pretty involved for a prologue. But “Violet Lagoon” did make for a great novelette capper to a little book called Creeptych . When that three-story collection came out from Delirium in 2010, I wasn't sure if that was it for my spiders. I didn’t know if I would ever get the opportunity to write the full novel, but I was happy that a good story had come out of that novel’s outline, anyway. And then a few months later, when Leisure Books began to fall apart and cancelled their mass market paperback line (right after Siren was released!), I really thought “Violet Lagoon” might be the last anyone would see of my spider novel. Who else was I going to write a book like that for?
    Fast forward another couple years, and Don D’Auria was in the midst of building a new horror line at Samhain, as the ashes of Leisure Books still were cooling. He agreed that the time was ripe to write that spider book... but when I sat down to do it, I realized that his concern of four years earlier still held. “Violet Lagoon,” as originally written, had grown too large to simply pick up and serve as a novel’s opening prologue. So I ended up trimming it and splicing pieces of it in as flashback scenes throughout the novel that I finally wrote last year.  
    I still like “Violet Lagoon” in its original form though, and I thought readers might like to see it this way either before or after reading Violet Eyes . Here’s how it all began.
    Beware the bite...
     

I. Setting Sail
     
     ou’re sure Jess is coming?” Billy asked pointedly. “You didn’t scare her off with that Blue Lagoon  shit?”
    Mark shook his head and grinned. “My gal ain’t shy. She’ll be here.”
    Casey nodded and popped the top on a Lite. She took a swig and then gave Billy a long kiss. When it broke, her boyfriend could barely hide a gasp.  “Wow…” he said. “I could get drunk on that!”
    “Jess was all into it,” Casey smiled. “Just like me. We could all use a total break from reality.”
    “Well, I’d like to start that break this week,” Billy grumbled, toying with the “Captain’s wheel” of the speedboat. “I only borrowed this for three days you know.”
    “We’ll get it back in time,” Mark promised. “Knowing your clients, I think you could get away with being a little late if it came to it.”
    “Knowing my clients, I could be at the bottom of the bay if it’s back an hour late,” Billy answered. “Anyway, I’m reformed.”
    Mark pointed to the red cooler sitting in the rear of the craft and grinned. “And I suppose you’ll tell me that there’s no secret compartment filled with Mexico’s