Outskirts Press, INC.

A Dream House…Where Dreams Come True

2017 CIPA EVVY THIRD PLACE AWARD - FICTION - ROMANCE

In Waters Deep... Are Secrets Unveiled... Marisa always knew she was different—in a special way. At a young age, her father introduced her to her celestial sister, MoonGlow. Throughout her life, Marisa has been aware of mysteries and magic just beyond what she can see. Now in her early forties, she’s come to a turning point. She is a young widow, and her son has left for college. It’s time for a new dream…and with her special gift of "knowing," she buys a supposedly haunted house near the Great Liquid…the ocean. As she inhabits her haven, she comes to realize that it isn’t haunted: it is "mystical"...and her celestial friends want to draw her into realms where past and present merge. As she surrenders to MoonGlow and the ocean's tide in an ecstatic dance of fate, intertwining journeys will lay open a former life where those of money and prominence rule, and those of tainted lives are kept at bay with utmost discretion. "Familiar" stirrings will unveil kept secrets and rekindle once lived passions. Marisa will see the triumphs and tragedies of a past that intertwines with the present, as old friends and lovers become new, as past sorrow pierces her present karma, and past joy flowers into new beginnings. Immersed in the Great Liquid's wonder, guided by MoonGlow, Marisa will truly discover what lies hidden in liquid.

PROLOGUE: I was eight years old when my father told me, “Marisa, be careful what you tell people---what you reveal of yourself,” as he broke his gaze from afar for just a moment to look at me. “I mean all the things I’ve taught and shared with you about our friends out there. People won’t always understand you, or even try. They may label you, turn away, and well---it’s just best to keep these secrets to yourself for the most part.” As my father and I continued to gaze up at the life beyond and outside our realm, I broke our mutual ritual for a moment and looked at him. “Dad, why is that again? Why can’t I just be me and say what I want to say?” I, myself, did not call them secrets as my father did. I called them “knowings” as a child. My father and I just knew stuff that maybe only a few did. That particular night had dominated a clear unobstructed sky. Except for a few childlike questions from me, we both basked without any interruption in our viewing of inexhaustible counts of divinely fixed bodies of light, who so proudly boasted of their penetrating luminosity. Those bodies were akin to us. They were our own. They belonged to us and we belonged to them. We knew this to be true. My father was given the gift of these “knowings” when he was a child. As an astronomy professor, he would be the one to introduce and bestow truths to me of intrinsic as well as extrinsic mysteries of those worlds above and beyond. From the earliest time that I could remember, he had presented me to our friends, the constellations, and their own collective domains of various inheritances. It made me feel special, yet isolated much of the time. After that time of being eight years of age, I began venturing through my higher self. I became awakened to higher grounds, so to speak, ever soaring more and more as time passed by. I was my father’s daughter indeed. I was one of his kind who possessed these “knowings.” I was also the one whom he had chosen to be introduced to his best friend shortly after my birth and likewise, she would become my best friend also. She was not of this world, though. She resided elsewhere. As he continued to reiterate the necessity of being “careful” throughout my childhood, I would reassure him. I divulged to only a few along the way and more so to my friend, Caroline, who would become my earthly best friend at the age of nine. Otherwise, I kept quiet. So I came to be, well--the one whom I was meant to be. As my journeys continued into adulthood, I would be lifted and escorted into the abodes of the night skies comprised of endless esoteric mysteries. These journeys would lead me to the knowings of the Great Liquid who retained from us sentenced humans the secrets and sins that had been hidden for eons. Though I would possess great reverence of this massive liquid, I would also possess an unexplained lifelong fear of it, and thus I would continue to hope for the day of reasoning of this lingering fear. In time, I would also be taken to a forgotten earthly period where a former lover would yearn to be reunited again with me in the present. Thus, the word “familiar” would come forefront in endless successions consuming my thoughts and rousings. My best friend from elsewhere would be the very one to propagate those journeys and have me enter into those worlds of unveiling what is hidden…what is hidden in liquid.