Michael Murphy is here today to talk about his new Dreamspun Desires release, Stranger in a Foreign Land. Find out more about this amnesia contemporary romance and read an excerpt below!
Stranger in a Foreign Land
By Michael
Murphy
What would you
do if one day you “woke up” to find yourself in a catastrophic car crash? With no memory of how or why you got there,
you’re crashing around unrestrained inside an old car as it is hit by several
others and then careens off the road and down an embankment, rolling over and
over along the way.
As flames lick
at the broken body of the cab, your only concern would be to get out! Get out now!
To hell with anything else, just get out before it explodes. American
business traveler Patrick finds himself in this situation, but with one major
problem: he doesn’t know who he is, how
he got there, or even where “there” is!
Tearing his
clothes, his jacket with his wallet, leaving behind his briefcase with his
passport and his cash, Patrick frantically wriggles out through what used to be
the back end of the cab. He might not
know who he is, but he knows he has to get away before the fire spreads and it
gets worse.
Barely a few
hundred yards away from the burning vehicle, Patrick is knocked to the ground
when the gas tank of the cab explodes, sending pieces of the vehicle into the
air to rain down over the entire area.
Too close, Patrick does all he can think of doing – tucking and making
as small a target as possible. Scalding
hot debris, some of it burning, rains down all around him.
When it’s safe,
he’s back on his feet and running again, desperate to get away, to get far, far
away. Exhausted, terrified, system overwhelmed with adrenaline, his primitive
flight response takes over and he runs, regardless of his injuries or
condition. He runs, and runs, and runs
until he can’t run anymore – and until he’s even more hopelessly lost than he
was before.
Used up, he
collapses and tries to pull himself together. Taking a quick inventory of
himself and his surroundings, he realizes he doesn’t know who he is, where he
is, or why he’s even there. The road
signs are illegible, it is beastly hot, and he could kill for a drink of cold
water, or for something to take the pain away from the burns on his hands.
Feeling more
fear than he could imagine ever feeling before, Patrick was a very lost man in
a Stranger in a Foreign Land.
Blurb:
After an
accident stole his memory, the only home former American businessman Patrick
knows is Bangkok. He recovers under the tender ministrations of Jack, an
Australian ex-pat who works nights at a pineapple cannery. Together they search
for clues to Patrick’s identity, but without success, and soon that forgotten
past seems less and less important as they build a new life together.
But the past
comes crashing in when Patrick’s brother travels to Thailand looking for him…
and demanding Patrick returns to Los Angeles, away from Jack and the only world
familiar to him. The attention also causes trouble for Jack, and to make their
way back to each other, Patrick will need to find not only himself, but Jack as
well, before everything is lost….
Bio:
Originally from
rural upstate New York, Michael Murphy grew up walking through fields of corn
taller than most people, riding horses, and driving on dirt roads. For more
than thirty years he has lived in Washington, DC where there aren’t many dirt
roads or horses.
His biggest
influences when growing up were his two grandmothers. Both were ferociously
strong women who were widowed young while they still had children at home. Neither remarried, but they picked up the
shattered pieces of their lives and built new lives for themselves. They taught him that the underdog could come
out on top if he or she just tried.
Those women
loved to read and to tell stories, so it just always seemed a natural thing for
him to want to do the same. When he hit
a major milestone birthday he realized that there were fewer years left in
which to do things than there had already been. He made a bucket list, which
had writing a book at the top of the list.
With his twentieth-third book now in the editorial production process,
that dream has been realized and has been one of the high points of his life.
Buy link:
Excerpt:
Chapter
1—Welcome to Thailand
THE
WHEELS of the fully loaded 747 jumbo jet slammed down onto the runway in
Bangkok, as rough a landing as the flight had been. Despite the jarring
touchdown, Patrick had a sense of overwhelming joy for the fact that this leg
of his trip was nearly over. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say he
felt the anticipation of impending great joy, because otherwise he felt like
day-old dog crap.
Every
time Patrick made this flight, he told himself he would never again subject
himself to the ordeal. Surely he would remember before agreeing to another such
trip that flights that lasted more than twelve hours were killers. But every
time, he forgot and agreed once again to make the long haul halfway around the
world.
This
time—with God as his witness—this time would
be different, he told himself, as the plane that had moments before so
gracefully glided through the air, now lumbered across the taxiway, swaying as
it made its way slowly to the terminal.
This
trip had included the added misery because he’d waited too late to book his
ticket. His work in London had taken longer than originally budgeted, so he’d
had to postpone his departure for Bangkok. When he’d finally been able to leave
London, all the first-class and business-class seats for the flight from London
to Bangkok were gone. Although he wanted to pay to sit up front with more room
so he could work—maybe lie back and sleep for a while—he was relegated to the
back of the bus with the rest of the passengers in coach. If he hadn’t been so
pressed for time, he would have waited and taken another flight, one where he
could have gotten a seat in first class. But he was due in a meeting first
thing the next morning, so flexibility and time were two luxuries he did not
have on this leg of the trip. He’d had to suck it up and deal with the
situation, but that didn’t stop him from grumbling to himself.
When
they had finally parked at the gate, he knew no matter how much he wanted to be
off that airplane—and he really, really, really wanted to get off—it would only
further the torture to even think about getting out of his seat just yet.
Nothing was going to happen right away; no one was going to move anytime soon
where he was seated near the back of the plane, so why bother even trying.
Standing would only take him from his uncomfortable seat to stand uncomfortably
in the overcrowded aisle, assuming he could even squeeze into it.
He
had read the reports by the so-called experts on how a fully loaded 747 could
be evacuated in something like ninety seconds. He wondered why those same
experts didn’t make a report on how long it took to deplane a fully loaded 747
after a twelve-hour flight, when everyone had to get out of their seat, stretch
their sore and aching muscles, find their carry-ons, hit someone by accident
with luggage that was too large, then have to stop and hold up everyone else
while they apologized, and finally make their way off the plane. Deplaning was
not a speedy process, especially when one was seated way, way in the back as
Patrick was on this flight.
As he
waited, he was neither patient nor impatient. He was just sort of numb. When
the hordes of humanity closest to him finally started to move, Patrick tried to
remember how his legs worked. After collecting his briefcase from under the
seat in front of him, he crawled out of his godforsaken middle seat at the back
of the coach cabin, grabbed his one small carry-on bag, and then started to
move with the herd off the plane.
When
the air on the jet bridge touched his face, it felt like someone had thrown a
hot, wet, smelly blanket over his head. Ah, yes, a cool day in Bangkok.
He
knew that after drinking about a gallon of water, spending about an hour in the
shower, followed by ten hours of sleep, then and only then would he start to
feel like a real human being again. But he couldn’t let his mind go there just
yet. No. There were too many hurdles to get through between where he was and
those good feelings.
The
walkway from the airplane into the terminal always reminded him of the chutes
cattle were forced into on their way to the slaughterhouse. He didn’t know what
had originally placed that image into his head, but once there, it would not
leave. Now, every time he found himself walking through one of the things, that
vision came rushing back to him uninvited.
Patrick
had made his first trip to Thailand many years earlier, when flights came into
an older airport in a different part of town. For the last several years, all
flights arrived at the still relatively new airport. The only problem was the
new airport had a lot more capacity, and more capacity brought more planes,
which brought more people, which made for a bit of chaos at times getting out
of the airport.
In
addition to being a ridiculously long flight, this flight had been especially
torturous because of bad weather. Huge storms somewhere over Belarus or
Kazakhstan had woken up most of the people who had settled in to try to get
some sleep. There was something about getting tossed around on a darkened plane
in the middle of the night that was especially frightening, even for a road
warrior like Patrick.
The
flight had left London’s Heathrow Airport pretty much on time a few minutes
after ten o’clock on Saturday night. Patrick had hoped to get some sleep, but
the experience of filling the plane to capacity and then shaking it vigorously
for roughly one-quarter of the distance did not lend itself to rest.
Their
pilot had dutifully tried to find better conditions by detouring around the
worst of the weather, but in the end, there was only so much he could do.
Patrick
had not been able to get much sleep, so with nothing else to do, he had sat in
his middle seat and watched the little airplane symbol on the map on the
seatback in front of him as it slowly—ever so slowly—inched its way across
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, a sliver of Nepal, and finally, finally
over Myanmar before they started their descent into Bangkok, Thailand, where
they landed at about three thirty Sunday afternoon. With the time change of six
hours and the flight time of twelve, it was only eighteen hours, but to Patrick
and everyone else who crawled off the plane that hot, muggy afternoon, it felt
like a lifetime had passed since they boarded.
For
once, the lines at the various checkpoints were not too ridiculous. Still,
Patrick unfailingly picked one of the slower lines, then inched his way
through, showing his passport when required, turning in documents he’d
completed aboard the plane, and answering questions asked of him.
When
he finally had his suitcase in hand and had cleared every checkpoint, he strode
through the terminal. The last hurdle was another line, this one for a cab to
take him into the city to his hotel. At least inside the airport when he’d
stood in line, it had been air-conditioned. But the cab line was outside in the
lingering heat and overwhelming humidity of an afternoon in Thailand.
The
line moved slowly, with there being more passengers than cabs, for some reason.
He didn’t know if it was the convergence of multiple jumbo jets arriving at the
same time, but the cab line was interminable. Patrick was exhausted, and the
longer he waited, the more he sweat and the more uncomfortable he became.
Finally the line moved, and it was his turn.
After
the driver had stashed his suitcase in the trunk of the cab, Patrick crawled
into the back seat of the small Thai car and closed his eyes for a few minutes.
He tried picturing the welcoming grand lobby of his hotel, a place he’d stayed
many times and knew rather well. Without intending to do so, he drifted to
sleep for a few minutes.
He
opened his eyes blearily and looked around. Was he at his hotel already? No.
But something had woken him. What the hell was it? Ah. He saw now that his
cabdriver was trying to hand him something. Hadn’t he seen Patrick sleeping?
Tipping didn’t mean the same thing in Thailand, so Patrick wouldn’t be able to
undertip to express his dissatisfaction.
When
he had roused himself enough to figure out who he was and where he was, Patrick
instinctively reached out and took what the driver was trying to shove his way.
One glance, though, told him all he needed to know. The driver was attempting
to persuade him to rent a prostitute from him. Patrick didn’t know if the woman
was supposed to be the driver’s wife or sister or mother or some random
stranger. He didn’t care. He didn’t go for women and certainly wouldn’t
willingly sleep with some stranger a cabdriver in a foreign land was pushing on
him.
The
driver was half turned around, smiling at Patrick. He seemed extraordinarily
eager for Patrick to look at the photos, as if looking at them would change his
mind. His English was horrible, but Patrick knew what the guy was doing and
didn’t want to play that game. He shook his head and shoved the plastic-covered
photos back to the man. The driver smiled more and gestured for Patrick to look
some more. Patrick caught something about “good deal.” When the guy wouldn’t
take the pictures back, Patrick simply dropped them onto the front seat beside
the driver.
Thai
people can be very gentle, quiet people, but this driver was neither. He wanted
to make a sale and was not pleased Patrick wasn’t interested. He was turning back
toward Patrick to say something. Patrick was looking at him, dreading the idea
of a dispute with a non-English-speaking cabdriver in a foreign country.
But
neither of them needed to worry, at least about that. While the driver had been
distracted trying to convince Patrick of the great deal he had for him, their
car had veered slightly across the lines separating the two lanes of traffic.
Before a single word of argument could be uttered, a truck slammed into the
front of the driver’s side of the cab with a vicious force, not only stopping
their forward momentum but also snapping the car hard as they spun out of
control. It all happened so fast the collision pushed the car into the path of
another vehicle, which smashed into the front end of the other side of the cab,
whipping them around.
Another
truck smashed into the second car, which crushed some more of the cab. The
third collision somehow loosened the cab from the other vehicles, and it slid
sideways over the edge of the road and down a concrete embankment. The angle of
descent was enough that the cab started to roll and did three complete
rotations before coming to rest upside down in a crumpled heap of twisted metal
and plastic.
It
was irrelevant to the driver—he’d died almost instantly when the first truck
hit the vehicle. But it was very much relevant for Patrick in the back seat, or
more properly what was left of the back seat, which now sat where part of the
trunk had once rested. Most of the trunk had been sheared off at one stage or
another of the various encounters with other vehicles.
No
one could come through a massive traumatic crash like that one and walk away
without a scratch. Patrick was indeed scratched and scraped, bumped and
bruised, and even burned in one place. He’d been thrown around the inside of
the cab from one side to the other and back again before the small car had
taken its final roll down the embankment. He barely realized it, but his left
shoulder was injured and would soon hurt like crazy.
During
their crash, Patrick’s head had banged hard into the window, or something else
in the car. Even though the cab was no longer moving, he was having a miserable
time trying to stop the world from spinning.
Any
fatigue Patrick had felt was automatically erased by the adrenaline flooding
his bloodstream. As that rush of hormones subsided a bit, Patrick felt an
overwhelming urge to simply lie back now that his world had stopped flipping
end over end. Blood dripped over one eye from a horrible cut on his forehead.
He felt woozy and just wanted to be still for a moment. Whether he was
conscious or not didn’t matter; he just wanted his world to stabilize.
But
he wasn’t given that choice. A spark from somewhere ignited the gasoline
leaking from the car. Patrick was close enough to both the gas and the fire
that his primitive fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. He knew without thinking
that fire meant danger and he had to get the hell out of there. His bleeding
forehead and the dizziness made it difficult for him to see straight, but he
managed to feel his way to an opening of some sort. He didn’t know exactly
what, nor did it really matter.
As he
pulled himself through the opening in the twisted carcass of the vehicle, one
leg of his suit pants caught on a jagged piece of metal and tore half of that
piece of cloth away. His jacket fared no better. He caught the left sleeve on
another piece of metal and left it behind as he struggled to get free. He
smelled the smoke and felt the heat of the flames, so he knew getting out,
getting away, was all that mattered if he wanted to live for more than the next
sixty seconds.
Before
Patrick departed from home, first for London and then for Bangkok, he had
purchased sufficient British pounds for the first part of his trip and
Thai baht for the second. But all his currency was either in the
inside pocket of his jacket, in his wallet (which was in his briefcase, which
was still inside the cab), or in the pocket of his pants—the pants that had
been torn as he crawled from the cab. But none of that mattered to Patrick at
the moment. In fact, none of those thoughts were anywhere near the front of his
mind. First and foremost was the basic instinct to survive.
When
he pulled himself clear of the crumpled cab, he stayed down and just kept
scrambling, intent on putting distance between himself and the mangled wreck.
He
hadn’t gotten ten feet before a massive explosion ripped through the air.
Patrick instinctively threw himself flat onto the concrete, assuming it was his
cab that had just blown up. It took him nearly thirty seconds to realize the
explosion had come from somewhere else. Looking around he saw his cab still
burning and still too close, so he got back onto his hands and knees and kept
crawling away.
After
he had covered about fifty feet, he ran out of space to move because the
concrete platform ended and he could see the river below. But that didn’t
matter because Patrick’s attention was ripped away by the sound of his cab
exploding. The combination of fire and gasoline had produced the cataclysmic
reaction he’d instinctively feared.
When
the first explosion had happened, Patrick had dropped to the ground. He didn’t
get a choice on this one—the force of the blast knocked him down.
Patrick
rolled over onto his back as the fireball of flames engulfed the cab. Pieces of
the vehicle blown away by the explosion started to rain down. Instinctively he
rolled to his side and attempted to curl into a fetal position so he could
shield his body the best he could from the pieces of hot or burning metal and
plastic. The blast of heat from the explosion threatened to push him over the
edge and into the river below.
Once
the initial roar of the flames died back, Patrick knew he had to get the hell
out of there. The heat of the flames was licking at him. He had to put some distance
between the burning cab and himself.
With
the river to one side, flames from the road on the other, and his own burning
cab behind him, he fled the only way left open to him. He simply focused on
moving away from the heat of the fire. It took some work, but he managed to
stand up and walk and to eventually climb out of the concrete valley he was in.
He walked a fair distance before he found a spot with a less steep incline that
allowed him to climb up, and eventually he made it up to road level.
When he
got to the road level, he looked left and then right, but nothing seemed
familiar. He didn’t know where he was or which way he should go.
At
the very moment Patrick came closest to flat-out screaming panic, he realized
not only did he not know where he was, but he also did not know who he was. He was no longer Patrick. He was a
stranger in a very foreign land, a man with absolutely no clue about anything.
