Celtic
Cross is part of the Celtic series. In this young
adult novel, Johnny O’Shea
needs to dig deep into his soul to find out who wants to
tear down an ancient church and to try and stop them. The following
is an excerpt from the first chapter.
Sitting on the side of the mountain, looking out over the sea, I realize
it is as cold as three-day-old piss out here. What the hell was I thinking? Alright, it’s true I didn’t want Fiona to leave. Who would?
She’s the hottest piece of you-know-what I’ve ever seen,
and besides, she’s in love with me. Me, Johnny O’Shea, a
dumb ass delinquent from Queens, has won the heart of the prettiest and
smartest lass on the west coast of Ireland. She must’ve been drinking
when she said it. But there it was, falling off her lips, “I love
you, Johnny.” No sooner had she said it when, poof, she was gone,
back to the university at Cork, her nose buried in a book written by
some long-dead bastard. So here I am, acting
all weepy over some girl, sitting in some ruined churchyard, killing
time until she comes home. This sucks. I’ve
got to get my act together. I mean, I’ve dealt with all kinds
of crap in my life. Growing up with a drug-addicted mother was tough
enough, but then she got herself killed by stealing some wad of cash
that wasn’t hers. Hell, I’ve been chased by some lunatic
Russian who was ready to ship my head off to Siberia. And I’ve
got the meanest grandmother of all time, who is just too much of a witch
to drop dead. All this, I can handle. But Fiona going off to school for
a couple of weeks, and I’m sitting around like a two-year-old who’s
lost his frigging blanky. I get up, kick a
wad of sheep manure, and watch it roll off the peat and into the road.
Climbing to higher ground, I decide to go check out
the church. Fiona took me here when we first met. It’s kind of
cool, all these empty walls and spaces where windows used to be. She
said it was founded back in 850 AD. I mean, think about that. 850 AD.
I can’t even think back to last year, never mind thousands of years
ago. By the time the 1500’s rolled around, the damned thing was
already in ruins, partially crushed by some maniac reformers. And so
it just sits there, a messy piece of history that almost seems too sacred
to simply tear down. You can almost hear the dead people buried all around
the yard, whispering into the foggy air..