Joy developed an ability in her late teens and early 20’s that most women don’t have: she can read auras… and she can see ghosts. When she’s drunk or stoned. All the better if both. One night, after tying-one-on, Joy feels empathy for one ghost in particular: Ethel, a girl-ghost who haunts a movie theater. In an act of impulse, Joy throws a rock at the theater marquee, busts a dozen light bulbs, startles the ghost, and sets in motion her portal fantasy adventure.
Soon she finds herself transported to an alternate underwater Earth populated by sea monsters, plesiosaurs, giant prehistoric lobsters, telepathic Naiads, and Mermaids dwelling within their traveling, ocean floor, Temple.
Her body begins to change. She is taken captive but escapes. She becomes gravely injured in a shark attack and hides out as a stowaway in a Naiad living quarters. They assume she is a fellow Naiad (from another Temple perhaps (?) her clothes are incredibly weird after all) and so, they strike a bargain: help them in their labors to get ahead in their work quotas, and in exchange they’ll help her escape the Temple, hopefully, without incident.
Thus begins “The Naiad’s Necklace,” a funny and suspenseful tale of building friendships and avoiding the gaze (literally) of a Temple full of (mostly) asshole mermen.
How will Joy take to a booze and caffeine withdrawal? Not to mention a hardcore seafood-cleanse. How do her roommates react to her singing heavy metal lyrics? She has to admit: growing fins and fangs in stressful situations is pretty f-ing rad. Will Joy eventually turn into a mermaid? The new gills in her neck and the colorful scales growing on her shin points to “probably,” unless she can escape and find a portal back.
These questions and many other mermaid anatomical questions that nobody wanted answered, get answered. The Temple of the Mermaid series is an adult fantasy riot.
