The Writer’s Voice Competition

Plot Summary

HUNTER GREEN is a completed 75,000 word thriller with supernatural and slow burn horror elements. It’s told from the dual perspective of a husband and a wife.

When Professor Philip Reeves dreams, he vanishes. Instead of waking up in his safe, suburban home, he’s sent all over the globe. Helplessness overwhelms him as the almost weekly night-time disappearances threaten his marriage, finances, and career.

Phil’s wife Becky digs deep into his family history and unearths a fairy curse that haunted his ancestors. But the motives of the fairy people can be misleading. Becky suspects the fairies are sending a message through an emerging, unusual destination pattern. While the Reeves try to untangle the fairy’s riddle, their six-year-old daughter Janie develops a deadly imaginary friendship with the Pied Piper. The ghost is stalking the final descendant of the Hamelin children.

Phil and Becky must unravel the fairy curse, find Janie, and stop the Piper from fulfilling his legacy.

I began my writing career as a music journalist for the Flint Journal in 1995. I moved on to write for the National Institutes of Health in 2005. I’m now the social media strategist for one of the Institutes. I received my Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan-Flint, where I focused on medieval literature and technical writing.

Like Philip, I’m a father with a young son. When I’m not writing, I’m learning jiu-jitsu, playing board games, hiking- I do this a lot and it helps me with outdoor scenes.

First 250

Philip sat up sharply. His temple slammed into the slat of an upper bunk.

“God-” He stopped short of blasphemy. He immediately grabbed at his head, trying to mute the pain.

Wooden slats shouldn’t have been there. He felt panic bubbling in his chest and fought to stamp it down. The bed didn’t feel right, he thought, as his head ached. He struggled to shake off a night’s worth of grogginess and sour dreams. His hand hadn’t been resting on his wife’s hip or the dip in her side as it should be. Becky should be there. As he lay back down, he realized the mattress was too thin to be his own, and the unfamiliar pillow weakly cradling his head housed a reminder of someone else’s cigarettes. In the pale, morning light, he saw that a threadbare bed sheet had gotten tangled up in his legs.

Inhaling slowly, exhaling with forced control, Phil set his mind to analyzing the problem. For starters, he was fully dressed. That much was good. In most situations, waking up fully clothed would be even more alarming. For most people, it would mean they’d blacked out the night before, leaving a wake of destruction behind drug or drink-fueled adventures. That didn’t describe Phil. He’d gone to his very sensible suburban bed dressed for this night’s potential event. It was the third time this had happened to him in two weeks, and he was officially over it.