Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Like a Thief in the Night

Strangers in the night…
Lovers at first sight, in love forever…*

Strangers in the Night. The phrase conjures images of shadows and mystery. Of dark deeds and darker passions. Of two people who are strangers to each other, but not to the nighttime world they share.

When I read Samhain’s call for submissions to a Valentine’s Day anthology with the theme of Strangers in the Night, I immediately thought of a two-hundred word scene I’d written in which a woman sneaks into a dark penthouse and watches a sleeping man.

The sleeping man is beautiful. If circumstances were different, the two might have been lovers. But the woman is an assassin, and the man is her target. She kills him in his sleep and kisses his blood-flecked lips as the last breath of life escapes him.

Though the assassin has never felt regret before, nor remorse, she feels both now . She apologizes to the dead man. She wishes their first meeting could have been different. But this meeting—this man—is more different than the assassin can possibly imagine.

The world is wider and stranger than the seemingly concrete boundaries of night and day or life and death, for death is no obstacle to the man the assassin killed and kissed. When the immortal’s eyes open again—impossibly beautiful, impossibly alive—the assassin’s target will reveal that he has been hunting his lovely murderess. Only, he doesn’t want just her life, he wants her body, heart, and soul as well.

The 200 word scene became my 28,000 word novella, Like a Thief in the Night.

Like a Thief… isn’t your typical Valentine’s Day fare. Put away the pink hearts and candies, but keep the dark chocolate. Turn up Sinatra’s smooth, smoky voice on the MP3 player and lose yourself in this dark, sexy tale of attraction and adventure played out against a backdrop of night.

Read an excerpt. Buy the novella. Enter to win a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate.

*selected lyrics from "Strangers in the Night" by Kampfert, Singleton & Snyder