Sacrifice

In a small southern town called Grimshaw, fourteen-year-old Angel Fallow lives in misery. Her Bible-quoting stepfather beats her if she dares break his fanatical rules. Her mother is cold and distant. Angel's only outlet is trips to the woods for secret, forbidden meetings with classmate Peter St. Thomas, her best and only friend. Angel has always believed that her natural father died right after her birth. So when she learns he actually disappeared and was presumed dead, she's instilled with hopes of finding him and a chance at a normal life. When Angel and Peter begin searching for Angel's father, they discover two forces more powerful than any they ever imagined possible—the light of a beautiful first love, and the darkness that has caused so many of Grimshaw's children to suddenly die or disappear. As their relationship deepens, they unearth evidence of a local Satanist cult, its sacrifices of innocent children, and its horrifying connection to Angel's father. That same cult conducts its gruesome rituals with children who fit their physical profile, within the same woods where they meet. And they realize their discovery could cost them everything—including their lives...

About the Author

Friends and close confidants of Macey Wuesthoff sometimes affectionately call her "the mule" because she is so stubborn when it comes to her writing. Refusing to listen to anyone who tries to warn her that her self-set literary goals are probably too high, Macey asserts that her ambition is to be the next Stephen King…or more. Despite her elders' ongoing arguments that she should pursue a career in a more stable field, such as medicine or education, she has never been able to stop herself from chasing her true dream.Born Macey Baggett in the tiny town of Florence, Alabama, Macey was an only child who grew up at the end of a desolate dirt road, with her mother, neighboring grandparents, and a few pets and farm animals as her only companions. Not exactly an environment of vast childhood recreation! So it is little wonder that Macey started entertaining herself by making up stories the moment she was old enough to pencil simple drawings and words-at age five-and-a-half years old. And she never stopped. She drew juvenile comics and wrote picture books as a child. In school, her writing evolved through the usual academic cycles: reports, compositions, and eventually research papers.Yet these cycles weren't so usual for Macey. From very early on, something clearly stood out in her writing to other people. Numerous classmates approached her and beg her to write their papers for them. Her teachers pushed her to enter writing contests and join advanced and supplementary literary classes, and urged her mother to encourage her in her writing abilities. When Macey was a freshman in high school, a creative writing assignment forced her into a career poetry contest. Having no interest in or the assignment, she scribbled seven lines of unrhymed verse in five minutes and slapped her paper in. That verse placed second in the contest and a was published in the local newspaper and school magazine. Most of Macey's works of subsequent years were read aloud to the class as models, and teachers and parents often asked her to tutor their students in writing. Ultimately, Macey graduated high school with the highest average in her A.P. English class over four consecutive years.Macey attended undergraduate school in her hometown at the University of North Alabama. During her advanced composition course, she was assigned a research paper on a controversial theme of her selection. Her chosen topic-childlessness by choice-was a controversial one, especially in the conservative area where she lived. Still, something in Macey's paper sparked her professor's interest. He entered the completed paper into another contest, resulting in Macey winning the Phi Kappa Phi Student Scholars Award for written research. Additionally, Macey spent one of her last semesters of college as a U.N.A public relations intern writer, again only because her major required it. As a journalistic writing virgin in the company of interns who all had a semester or more of P.R. under their belts, Macey naturally felt intimidated. Yet the local and regional media published several of her articles, one of which resulted in a faculty member appearing on a local TV program with Garth Brooks (big potatoes in a small town like Florence!). According to Macey's P.R. supervisor, during a semester in which there was little P.R. news to begin with, Macey ended up getting more articles published than any other writer on staff within the same period. One semester later, Macey graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in secondary education and the highest GPA in her major field, Language Arts English.Over the years, Macey's love of both writing and reading and watching horror fiction have intermarried and produced the continuously multiplying offspring of her horror works. In June 2001, Macey's horror story "In Death's Face" placed second in the Philadelphia Writers Conference Short Fiction Contest and was published in the 2001 Philadelphia Writers Conference Anthology. In June 2002, one of her few nonfiction works, a feature article on her personal struggles with endometriosis, also earned a second place award at the Philadelphia Writer's Conference, this time in the category of magazine writing and was published in the 2002 Philadelphia Writers Conference Anthology. Sacrifice is Macey's first novel to be placed under contract, but she has written various other horror novels and stories as well. She currently resides in Savannah, Georgia with her husband, Nathan and their Chihuahuas Medea and Pandora. She is currently writing a sequel to Sacrifice.More on Macey can be found her home page: http://www.maceyshouseofhorror.com.

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