Winged Blog Tour Guest Post by L.M. Pruitt

I fell from the Talmadge Bridge the week before I turned thirty.

I was given a choice: Go to Heaven. Go back to my life in Savannah. Or spend eternity fighting evil under the direction of the archangels.

I chose the demons--and the angels.

I chose the Winged.

WINGED

Making the Choice

Every day we’re faced with choices. Some of them are fairly frivolous—should I wear the green shirt or the blue? Regular or decaf coffee? Listen to this CD or that one? Some are more intense—should I take this job? Should I move halfway across the country? Should I marry this person?

Nobody ever really wakes up in the morning and wonders to their self—Would I give my life for someone else?

For some professions it is there, tucked away in the back of people’s minds. Every time a uniformed officer “clocks in”, there’s the possibility that a call is going to go wrong. That the officer’s life is going to be placed in danger. Every time a firefighter or somebody working as an emergency medical service staff member answer a call there’s the possibility that something is going to go horribly, terribly wrong. This is something they live with every single day they go in to work.

And they do it anyway.

We respect them for it, almost revere them. When the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, the outpouring of emotion for the fallen firefighters and police officers of the NYPD and NYFD was overwhelming. The pilots who purposefully crashed their plane to prevent any further attacks hold the same exalted place in the American pantheon of heroes. A hundred years from now their sacrifice will still be remembered, no matter what else has happened between then and now.

Why?

Because they didn’t have to do it.

Like I mentioned before, there’s not an individual in those careers who has never, not once, imagined the possibility of dying in the line of duty. But even then, it’s not something you consciously remember. It’s not something that sits in the back of your mind every single second of every single day. It’s not something that you have an absolute this-is-what-I’m-going-to-do plan for.

Every emergency service person who went into those buildings knew the possibility of not making it out alive. And they went in anyway.

I can’t speak for others, but I wouldn’t have thought less of any of them for saying no. For saying they wanted to go home to their families and friends. That they wanted the chance to finish living their lives. I can’t think less of them, because I can honestly say I don’t know what I would do if faced with the same choice.

They made the hardest of choices—am I willing to give my life for someone else? For the remote possibility that someone else can live?

They made the ultimate sacrifice.

Now that I’ve either made you think or made you cry or maybe even both, the only thing I’m going to say about WINGED is that it’s not only police and firefighters and EMTs and soldiers who make that sacrifice. Sometimes it’s ordinary people.

Like a librarian.

L.M. Pruitt

Amazon Best Selling Author of The Jude Magdalyn Series
Amazon Best Selling Author of The Moon Rising Series

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**Winged** Available February 5!