Tour and Giveaway for BLACK IN TIME by Brynn Chapman!

Black in Time

(Synesthesia Shift #2)

By Brynn Chapman

YA Historical Urban Fantasy
Paperback & ebook, 143 Pages
April 6, 2021 by Burns and Lea Books

Patient Twenty-Nine, or Jane, is within reach of her heart’s desire: a home outside of Soothing Hills Asylum, where she has been raised.

Her sister Jules wants to take her in, and a man, Mason, is deeply in love with her and wants to care for her. But before Jane can leave, she must be examined by the Board of Lunacy. Jane is still hearing voices and songs from the cornfield outside the asylum, voices and songs that tell her what she must do, and that no one else can hear. So the Board may not allow her to leave.

But the asylum is becoming more and more dangerous. Its lead alienist, Dr. Frost, has disappeared, there have been frightening sightings of a woman in white, running through the corn at night, and perhaps worst of all: lobotomized women from the asylum are turning up pregnant.

Jane is desperate to get away and go to her new home. Mason and Jules only want to rescue Jane from the asylum.

But there is a complication: for Jane, the voice in the corn calls. And she must obey.

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Excerpt from Book

Gentile arrives at the chair, his wizened hand lightly touching the halo.

The hair on the back of my neck rises. I understand the need for many of the asylum’s treatments—but this? I cannot come to terms with this idea, nor the outcomes I have thus far borne witness to. Electricity, fed through the chair’s halo, till life is extinguished.

“And how is Old Sparky today?” He speaks to the machine, patting it almost lovingly.

I shudder and bite my lip.

All words die in my throat.

As a boy, I watched our farm animals perish in a horrible barn fire. From that day, the sickeningly sweet smell of charred flesh is seemingly ever-embedded in my nostrils and mind.

Merely staring at “Old Sparky” not only revives this phantom smell but sends an instantaneous rise of bile up my esophagus.

“You do not approve,” Gentile says. It is not a question.

“No. This is one area of practice where we diverge. I… do not believe we should have the power to… snuff life. Not in this fashion.”

Gentile nods. “I am only in agreement in extreme circumstances. The chair was Frost’s, you know this.”

“Yes. But I was under the assumption we were here to discuss ablation. Not this… contraption.”

“Indeed. Walk with me, Jonathon.” He slips a periodical into my hands, the London Medical and Surgical Journal, where I assume I will read of his justifications for “Old Sparky.” Physicks are deluded in the sense that if words appear in a coherent, bound, and published fashion, they must be true and should be replicated.

I myself am a believer in problem-solving and experience.

I follow, just now noticing a huddled group of white coats, new alienists. Their faces are so fresh, they resemble excited schoolboys
rather than newly graduated interns from the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“No. I sawr him. I’s tellin’ you, I sawr him!” a patient wails.

The young doctor dodges—but is not quick enough.

The young woman clutches and attaches to Dr. Pembleton’s lab coat, shaking him hard enough to send his horn-rimmed spectacles sliding to the end of his pointy nose.

Though her waist is buckled to the chair, the girl halves her body like a contortionist as Pembleton struggles backward, giving a valiant effort to disentangle himself.

I step forward, and all six young coats straighten in attention, parting like the sea for Moses to grant me passage.

I stand before her, bobbing and weaving with her darting gaze. “What is it, Wilhelmina? Whom have you seen?”

Her befuddled expression clears as her eyes fixate on me. She releases Pembleton, and he immediately retreats into the protective huddle of alienists as they close ranks. They circle him like a horde protecting an injured comrade.

“Oh, Dr. Grayjoy.” She grasps my hand, and I squeeze it in return. “I sawr him. IdidIdidIdid.”

I kneel before her. “Who? Who have you seen?”

Her face drains of remaining color, her eyes flicking left and right like an animal trapped.

She leans in, our heads nearly touching—I smell ripe urine and the rot of her teeth.

“Dr. Cloud. He has returned.”

Other Books in the Series

The Requiem Red

(Synesthesia Shift #1)

By Brynn Chapman

YA Historical Urban Fantasy
Hardcover, Paperback & ebook, 300 Pages
February 4, 2019 by Burns and Lea Books

Life for Patient 29 is full of medicated day dreams of a life outside the walls of Soothing Hills Asylum. But fantasies are not all that consume her. A monster roams the halls of the sanitarium she reluctantly calls home and three girls have been found dead. The dead girls share one common thread . . . each was 29’s cell mate. As the investigation gets under way, she retreats into her mind, listening to the voices that call to her. She is endowed with the cursed gift of perception. Through it, she hears messages carried upon the notes of music, discerns words hidden among the strokes of paintings, and minds pleadings for help from the corn field outside.

Could the key to the murders lie within 29’s broken mind? Mason, an orderly, does not see 29 as a lunatic and as his belief in her grows so does her self-confidence. The possibility of one day leaving the asylum seems less and less like a fantasy. But the monster has other plans for her. Leaving will not be so easy, at least not while she is alive.

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About the Author

Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Brynn Chapman is the daughter of two teachers. Her writing reflects her passions: science, history and love—not necessarily in that order. In real life, the geek gene runs strong in her family, as does the Asperger’s syndrome. Her writing reflects her experience as a pediatric therapist and her interactions with society’s downtrodden. In fiction, she’s a strong believer in underdogs and happily-ever-afters. She also writes non-fiction and lectures on the subjects of autism and sensory integration and is a medical contributor to online journal The Age of Autism.

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