BOTW - The Soul Jar

For some reason MySpace will not let me post a blog entry today, so I'm posting my BOTW excerpt here. Hopefully I'll get this up and running later but for now...enjoy!

This week’s Backlist Book of the Week is The Soul Jar by Jennifer Colgan

This story started out as a single scene and turned into a grand adventure. I’d really enjoyed researching Chance and Bree’s route from New York to Cairo. Even though I never left home, I felt like I’d been on the trip with them. A little bit of trivia, when Bree is killing time on the airplane, trying to ignore Chance, she’s reading a copy of Conjured in Flames!

Trapped in an alabaster prison for three thousand years, the souls of two ancient lovers await their freedom. Reunited after a bitter betrayal, modern fortune hunters Bree Sennett and “Chance” MacKenzie will risk their lives and their love for the fabled Soul Jar and its long-hidden secrets.


The words, the plot, the characters are all magical and will keep you wanting more ... Great job Ms. Colgan. – Klarissa, Joyfully Reviewed



Excerpt from The Soul Jar
By Jennifer Colgan
Copyright 2006, New Concepts Publishing


http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/thesouljar.htm


The fine hairs on the nape of Bree’s neck rose and her skin tingled when she saw the jar. Her chest felt tight and the corners of her eyes burned with more unshed tears, but these at least didn’t embarrass her. To find the mythical Soul Jar--to stand within reach of something that, if all the legends were true, held the life essences of two lovers, punished for an eternity for the sin of wanting each other--was a cause well worth shedding a tear or two over. Meeting Chance MacKenzie again--finding out the man she’d once loved more than life itself had returned from the grave--should have paled in comparison.

Or maybe it was the prospect of having to split her profits with him that made her misty eyed. As if she’d make a profit on this mission to begin with.

She blinked to clear her suddenly blurry vision and turned on him. “Well? Did you find what you came for?”

The path of his smoky gaze told her he had.

“If you want it, you’re going to have to shoot me.” Boldly, she turned her back on him again and reached for the jar, but her throat burned with the cavalier threat. She remembered that fateful morning and the tearing pain in the center of her chest when she’d realized her lover had a gun pointed at her heart.

Don’t make me shoot you, luv, he’d said with that charming smile she’d come to adore. Get out of bed nice and slow. Get dressed and get lost. Our little dalliance is over now.

She shoved the vile memory to the back of her mind and reached for the jar. It slid into her hand as though it belonged there. Cool and smooth as an egg, it fit perfectly in her palm. Overcome with the urge to cradle it against her and protect it, Bree glowered at Chance over her shoulder.

He held her daring gaze as she liberated a folded knapsack from under her voluminous sweatshirt and slipped the jar inside.

“What’s the matter, MacKenzie? Don’t have it in you to kill me?” Again, she wanted to add. Her heart had withered and died two years ago. She’d been functioning on autopilot ever since. She’d thought too often afterwards that perhaps she should have called his bluff back then and forced him to shoot her. At least then her pain would have ended swiftly.

“I’m not armed,” he replied, tracking her movements as she edged toward the narrow aisle between the shelves.

“I don’t believe you.” He hadn’t gotten his nickname by being unprepared.

He shrugged. “Try me. If you want to carry the jar out of here, I won’t stop you. But I promise you, luv, you won’t be the one who ends up with it.”