Nine days from today, The Seventh Echo will officially be released.
If you’ve been following along you’ve seen the Echoes. You’ve met some of the characters. You’ve heard me talk about Fairmont, Iron Forge, Dan Mercer, and the mystery surrounding his past. But there’s one thing I haven’t done yet:
I haven’t actually let you read the book….
Until now, that is.
Today, for the first time, I’m sharing Chapter One of The Seventh Echo in its entirety.
Meet Dan Mercer. He’s spent thirty years building a career and a life far removed from the Pennsylvania town where he grew up. He thinks he knows where his life is headed next.
He has no idea what’s coming.
This is where his story begins.
CHAPTER ONE
“All children, except one, grow up.”
That opening line from Peter Pan used to bother me when I was young, and I didn’t know why. I still remember reading it beneath a yellow-lighted bedside lamp, the paper warm against my small fingertips. It sounded more like a lullaby; something soft and certain.
Back then, growing up felt like sunlight on closed eyelids, or the click of a lock sliding into place. It meant being taller, stronger, and independent.
But what I didn’t understand was that the line from J. M. Barrie’s book wasn’t just about getting older. It was about leaving something behind, and once you cross that line, you can never go back. Childhood closes like a door, and it doesn’t reopen.
Or so I thought.
My name is Dan Mercer, and I serve as Senior Director of Acquisitions and Development at Winston-Bright Capital Logistics, headquartered in Manhattan, New York.
From my office on the fiftieth floor, I look out over the city below, alive with the growl of traffic and its endless hum.
A sharp tang of executive cologne drifts down the corridor every morning, mingling with the stale bitterness of breakroom coffee. It’s the smell of ambition; polished, caffeinated, and faintly exhausted.
I’ve spent thirty years at Winston-Bright Capital Logistics. Long enough to watch executives retire, buildings rise and fall, and projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars move from concept to ribbon cutting.
Most days, that just meant more meetings, but early retirement was no longer a dream. It was a date on a calendar that kept getting closer.
The laptop on my desk chimed loudly, as if it had somewhere better to be. I slumped into the soft leather chair and glanced at the screen. It’s my colleague, Jared Nichols, calling me through Microsoft Teams.
Aside from me, Jared’s the longest-tenured employee at the company. He came onboard as an intern straight out of college, and has now spent the last twenty-five years in the trenches with me. We often turn projects into little races with each other, just to see who can finish first. All in good fun, of course—well, mostly.
Jared is always clean shaven, with a perfect haircut and usually wearing a suit that probably costs more than my truck. Even on Fridays he shows up to the office in a shirt and tie, like he doesn’t know what the word casual means.
I tapped the button on the Bluetooth device hooked over my ear and answered.
“Hey, Jared. What’s up?”
“Morning, Dan,” he said, sounding a bit more irritated than usual. “Something’s wrong with the network again. I was going to put in a support ticket with the IT department. Are you able to get into the Bedford file?”
“Well, since we’re both talking to each other, I’m guessing the network itself is fine. Give me a second.”
I quickly skimmed through the settings on my laptop, then opened a web browser. The screen immediately flashed the warning: Page Cannot Be Displayed. I attempted to pull up the Bedford file directly, but received a similar error message.
“Teams is working fine. Email too. It looks like it’s the corporate intranet and file servers that are down again.”
Jared exhaled sharply. “That’s the third time this week. I need these reports finished before lunch.”
“Cut the IT guys a little slack,” I said. “They’re migrating all the servers to the new cloud system. We look forward to bringing you a more robust outlet for all of your applications and files soon.”
There was a brief pause.
“Dude, wasn’t that a direct quote from their last email?” Jared asked.
“Yessir!” I laughed. “Want to grab a coffee while we wait it out?”
“Sure—but not the stuff in the breakroom. Let’s go downstairs to the coffee bar.”
“Meet you there,” I said.
***
Want to keep reading? You don’t have to wait until August 18.
A limited number of advance eBook copies of The Seventh Echo are available FREE through BookSirens in exchange for an honest review.
Or preorder your copy today:
Book Signing Events:
Doylestown Bookshop – Doylestown, PA: Saturday, August 29th – 1-3 p.m.
Barnes & Noble – Easton, PA : Saturday, September 5th – 1-4 p.m.
go.Jimmy.go 
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