The Stars of Axuncanny

David Simms

"Penny Annie smelled like marigolds." In his whimsical romance, David Simms brings together a motorcycle-riding monk, a monastery filled with enigmatic rooms, and of course, our heroine Penny Annie, who is questing to redeem her past.

ISBN: 1-931982-70-8 Trade Paper: $14.95 Sale $7.50

ISBN: 1-931082-69-4 Library Binding: $26.00 Sale $13.00

180 pages






	About the Author: David Simms grew up in Western New York State a long time ago and has lived in Canada and in Ireland and up and down the East Coast from New England to Florida. Among other things, he’s been an editor, a teacher, an anthropologist, a married man, and an unmarried man. A year or so into the new millennium, he resurrected a long-suppressed fantasy and became a starving writer, sitting down with a yellow legal pad in a cabin in rural Virginia and beginning The Stars of Axuncanny. Eventually, he also started writing short stories and poetry. He continues with that work and some of it is now being published in literary journals.

Excerpt From the Book:

   Penny Annie smelled like marigolds. She was the first woman I ever made love with as a monk and sometimes her lushly piquant, intoxicating aroma alone made me certain we belonged together.
   All the women I have loved have had an irresistible fragrance about them, but I was intrigued with Penny Annie before she was even close enough to smell, from the moment I first saw her. I was in St. Erose’s kitchen, stir-frying the wild carrots and keeping an eye on the pasta water for the lunch, when her convertible screeched up outside. I looked out the window just as she and Sarah, her large orange dog, leapt from the car. Penny Annie was very tall and striking and the dog was rather goofy-looking. In the dining room a short time later, I kept glancing across the crowded room at them as I did the lunchtime reading, the two of them solemnly eating their servings of pasta and wild carrots and glancing back at me.
   It was after the lunch when we first spoke, there in St. Erose’s dining room shortly before the Heart of the Matter service over in the Holy Barn. Penny Annie had got up from her table and I approached and introduced myself, becoming aware all at once of the smell of marigolds swirling sensually around her.