A woman was an object, a canvas, upon which society and culture painted labels and framed unspoken expectations, a collectively owned piece upon which shame, scorn, and punishment should be heaped if she failed to conform to the prescribed design.&nbsp;Subterfuge as a woman was always more complicated because a man in a suit was a man in a suit, but a woman in a dress with a hemline two inches too short was ... in the wrong country, a corpse not quite dead.&nbsp;She was the hangman's noose, the guillotine blade, the executioner's axe. That was her burden. One she could never atone for or wash off. She was a killer, just as they were.Some people were easy to find.&nbsp;Others took hunting and patience.&nbsp;The most difficult was a target who knew she was coming. How could they not?&nbsp;When you backed a predator into a corner, when you took and destroyed all that she loved, when you made a game of ruining lives and sadism for you was sport, but then you failed to kill the predator: you’d better know she was coming back.&nbsp;This was an inviolable law.&nbsp;She wasn’t dead, and so she was coming for the person responsible.&nbsp;She had their face, had the name of a city.&nbsp;In the right hands, anything could be mined into so much more.&nbsp;She would find her target.&nbsp;Kill them.&nbsp;Simple as that. A Short Story Novella which is the Prequel to the upcoming release of 'The Catch' due later this year, which takes place directly after the end of the earlier release 'The Doll Maker'.Authors Details:In an alternate universe, I spent my formative years living with parents and siblings, showing up for school and getting acquainted with HBO, Michael Jackson, neon clothes and big hair. In reality, childhood and adolescence were spent begging on city streets from Zurich to Tokyo, preparing food and washing laundry for hundreds of people, and otherwise trying to survive dreary life as a worker bee child in a communal apocalyptic cult.&nbsp;My innocence and scholastic education stopped completely when I was twelve-years-old. Cut off from personal family, at times under the care of sadistic individuals and without access to books or television from the outside world, imagination became a survival mechanism. As a young teenager, I secretly entertained commune children with fantastic stories that took us through time and space, until these sins were discovered by cult leaders. Several laboriously hand-written books were confiscated and burned and I was ordered on pain of - well, a whole lot of pain - never to write fiction again. The nomadic culture of the cult became an adolescent's journey across four continents and nearly two dozen countries culminating in four years living in East and West-Central Africa - thus this is the primary setting of THE INFORMATIONIST. I was in my twenties when I broke free, and leaving everything I knew brought with the fear, a fresh beginning beckoned.&nbsp; Refusing to go to my grave with regrets, "what ifs," or tears over the lost years, I set out to take back what was taken from me. Through trial and error and observing the masters I taught myself the craft, and gradually the gift of storytelling returned. Learning basics that many take for granted has been a journey to be sure, but on the flip side, if I ever need to make breakfast for 150 people, I've already got that covered.

The Vessel (Book IV - The Vanessa Michael Munroe Series-A Short Story Prequel Novella) PDF

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