The Telling by Mike Duran

A prophet never loses his calling, only his way.

His words unlocked something deadly, and now the silence is killing them.

Disfigured with a hideous scar from his stepmother, Zeph Walker lives his life in seclusion, cloistered in a ramshackle bookstore on the outskirts of town. But Zeph is also blessed with a gift—an uncanny ability to foresee the future, to know peoples’ deepest sins and secrets. He calls it the Telling, but he has abandoned this gift to a life of solitude, unbelief, and despair—until two detectives escort him to the county morgue where he finds his own body lying on the gurney.

Forced to investigate his own murder, Zeph discovers something insidious behind the city’s urban legends and small-town eccentricities: a subterranean evil that he alone has spawned. His words unlocked something deadly, and now his silence is killing them.

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MIKE DURAN is a novelist, blogger, and freelance writer whose short stories, essays, and commentary have appeared in Relief Journal, Relevant Online, Breakpoint, Rue Morgue magazine, and other print and digital outlets. He is the author of the supernatural thriller THE RESURRECTION (Realms, 2011), which was a finalist in the 2011 INSPY awards, an e-book fantasy novella entitled WINTERLAND, and THE TELLING (Realms May 2012). Mike contributes monthly commentary at Novel Rocket, one of Writer’s Digest 101 Most Helpful Websites for Writers.

To learn more about Mike, please visit his website.