“I started it Saturday and finished it Sunday. I can honestly say it’s been the first book I’ve read in a long time that I grudgingly put down when I had to go do something else. I enjoyed it so much.”
William Kerns  Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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When artist, Kira McGovern mixes paints with the ashes of the dead, she discovers her extraordinary gift, but it also leads her to some horrifying crimes in this psychological thriller of a novel.It seems innocent enough at first, thought Kira McGovern—mixing her dead mother’s ashes with paint to create a tribute painting. What a way to personalize and immortalize her mom’s memory! The idea so ensnares her that she forms a new business, Canvas of Life, to do just that for others. As she begins with her first clients, something inexplicable occurs: Kira experiences segments of the dead person’s life. In dreams and visions she begins to receive images, some are gratifying, some unpleasant and some of them are downright deadly.Sean Easton is a Kansas farm boy with a special talent he is just beginning to understand. His father, too, has recently died, but something sinister still lingers on the farm. When he takes his father’s ashes to Kira as a pretense to meet her, he not only falls in love but makes some startling discoveries about his own life as well, and as Kira begins to paint with Sean’s father’s ashes the real terror begins….In Dark Canvas, join Kira and Sean as they realize they must quickly find the meaning and the source of her dreams and visions before both their love and their lives are destroyed.

Excerpt from Dark Canvas

Fear stalked Kira like a ravenous wolf. It was a formless voiceless thing that coiled its tendrils around her heart. Walking carefully through the moon-shadowed forest, she held her hands up to catch the copious snowflakes falling all around her, felt the dread and wondered, while her heart raced.With the eerie silence that accompanies snowfalls and the moonlight dancing through the boughs and flakes, the entire scene was a unique combination for the senses. Slowly, she walked while the hair on the back of her neck continually tried to stand on end. Where was she, and why was she so afraid? Her hands felt cold and clammy, and her pulse continued to accelerate. Home, she thought. She needed to get home. Absently, she lifted her hand to catch the snowflakes and looked more closely to see the different shapes. Her eyes widened. They weren’t snowflakes. They were ashes!Her gaze flew to the woods surrounding her, at the feathery flakes pouring thickly from the sky. Mounds of ashes everywhere!

Now the tendrils of terror coalesced into a cable as it wound its way around her heart, then ever so slowly began to squeeze. Her pace quickened, and as if in answer to her actions the ashes began to fall harder. She wanted to run, but the powdery residue clung to her feet. Pulling furiously, she tried to free her feet, but the harder she pulled, the more the now viscous amalgam clung.

A thick, foul, rotting smell accosted her senses. Her stomach clenched. Lifting her gaze to look for the source of the disgusting smell, she watched in shock as something began to bubble up out of the mounds of ash. As the first shape squeezed itself free, the grey flakes slid like feathers from its surface. It looked like the top of a glass globe. More globes broke the surface, shedding their strange coating and rotating in her direction. Slowly, moving in unison, they all turned to face her and shock turned to horror as she recognized severed heads were encased in the glass, each face frozen in the terror of its demise, eyes wide and mouths rigid in a final mortal cry. The unnatural silence of the night shattered at the sound of a ghastly scream.

And then she realized the sound was coming from her.

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