Title: Make Like Mountains

Series: Liquid Onyx, Book Two

Author: BL Jones

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 05/30/2023

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 130800

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, humour, family-drama, gay, bisexual, pansexual, superhero, crime gang, magic, PTSD, slow burn, friends to lovers

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Description

Four months ago, Rexley Nova exploded into Danger City, fought some villains, saved some people, and became the vigilante known by the media as ‘Wrath’.

Alongside the superpowered friends he grew up with and Danger’s resident hero, Polaris, Rex is doing his best to protect the city and save the world on the regular, while also attempting to curb some of his more violent tendencies and figure out what the villainous group of Mages he’s been fighting are up to.

Through all this, Rex has to contend with his feelings for two men; Damon, a dangerous and aloof superhero, the one person who understands what being a vigilante means to Rex, and Jamie, his best friend’s older brother who he’s felt an intense connection with almost his entire life.

Rex battles violent superhumans, saves snarky children, gets himself a sidekick, deals with his extremely weird family, goes on a disastrous date, and continues to fistfight his own anxiety. #Traumaisthenewblack.

Excerpt

Make Like Mountains
BL Jones © 2023
All Rights Reserved

Mia

I would like to believe every bad choice I’ve made was rooted in altruism, through the pursuit of discovery. Even if I was wrong more often than I was right. Even if my bad choices led to so much suffering. Even if my regret is endless and true and as raw now as it was over fifteen years ago.

In the beginning, all I wanted to do was help. A simple, if at times directionless, goal. When I started out, I didn’t know what I was capable of. I didn’t know what other people were capable of either.

I often think of my daughter and how, when she was a child, I would tell her everyone makes mistakes.

And everyone does. It’s a rare truth that parents tell their children.

What parents usually fail to say, though, is the hardest mistakes to live with are the ones we can do nothing about. The decisions we make that ripple out of our control and cause irreparable damage to other people. Those mistakes echo throughout the rest of our lives, twisting and shaping our futures and ourselves into something, someone, unrecognisable. Perhaps someone we told ourselves we would never become.

If asked to explain the worst of my choices, I could say many things. I could say I was swept up in the tidal wave of genius that was Dr Alexander Nova. I could say I didn’t think it would go as far as it did. I could say I was forced and manipulated by Obsidian Inc. to do things I would never have done otherwise.

I was tricked, I was hurt, I was forced.

I could lay claim to those justifications.

But it would be a lie. And I wouldn’t stoop to that. I abhor people who make excuses for the acts of evil they commit.

I was not conned into it. I was not abused in my past. I was not coerced or blackmailed.

I made every single one of my mistakes with my eyes wide open. It doesn’t make it any easier to forgive myself for those sins, but at least I can accept the depth of my corruption for what it is.

I have spent over a decade trying to correct the mistakes I made as a young woman. And for over a decade, I have been unsuccessful.

My continued failure has led me here, to the point I am at now. I tried to avoid these extreme measures. It is not what I wanted. But there comes a time when we must take the first step on the hardest path. There comes a time when we must do what pains us most. A time when we use the corruption inside us to reverse the corruption we inflicted on others. Or, in my case, the world.

I have failed to heal the festering wounds I once helped claw into the skin of our society.

Almost a month after my second attempt, I find myself sitting in my daughter’s flat with a cup of quickly cooling tea in my hands.

We’re scrunched up on her shaggy green sofa, both of us sans shoes. Usually, I would relish the opportunity to be here with Andy. I enjoy our simple, quiet moments together. I enjoy hearing Andy tell me stories about her life, her work, her friends, her latest spat with her girlfriend, Dru, over whose turn it was to take out the bins.

But today I cannot seem to get to grips with myself. It isn’t hard to think of the reason why.

We have lost many in the two failed attempts to begin our eradication of corrupted blood. Our mission was worth the loss. I still believe that. But after our second attempt, some are wavering.

It was inevitable. One failure can be chalked up to a lack of experience and bad luck. Two is the beginning of a pattern.

There is grief and resentment to contend with now. There are those who do not believe we are capable of the task set before us.

Some want to give up while they still have their freedom and their lives. I understand the urge, the fear. I’ve felt it myself.

But our work is not done.

I cannot allow us to spiral.

We have sacrificed too much. I have had to take from them to steady us, and they will not forget that.

After the disaster of the park concert, I tried to rectify what had been done in the name of our cause.

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Meet the Author

BL Jones is a twentysomething British author who spends all her free time reading and writing and taming her three much younger brothers. She works as a BSL interpreter in Bristol and lives with a temperamental bunny named Pepsi. She’s been writing stories since she was five, rarely sharing them with anyone except her numerous stuffed animals. BL has had a difficult journey into discovering and accepting her own queerness, and therefore believes that positive, honest, and authentic stories about queer people are very important. She hopes to contribute her own stories for people to have fun with and enjoy.