So I finished this…it’s another FBI short… well, not super short, it’s about category length, but hey.  FYI, it was just finished, typos are probably there.  They’ll get caught in editing/revising.

Dunno what will come of it. Sent it to Samhain but we’ll see what they say.

Jay Roberts never expected to fall in love with a man from Hell.

But she had.

And now he’d up and cut her off.  Out of the blue.

She’d met Lincoln Dawson online and it hadn’t been at one of those hokey, online dating sites.  She didn’t mess with those.

What was she supposed to put down?

Hello… I’m a security specialist who works for a think tank/security group/troubleshooter group known as the Oswald Group and I’m psychometric.  It causes some issues with intimacy because when I touch people, I pick up on what they think and if you compare to a former lover, I’m going to know.  I’m five three, I hate walks in the rain, I kind of enjoy dirty movies, I love dirty books and I’m still a virgin. I’m kinky as hell and I’d love to find a way to get laid, but I don’t see that happening…

Yeah, it led to problems.

It had been pure accident that she met Linc.

She was online, incognito, naturally. Almost any time she went online, it was related to work.  She had been investigating the disappearance of a teenager in Florida and he’d been smacking down somebody who had been preying on a couple of preteen girls.

Granted, the predator had acted like he was a girl.

She had seen through it, just as Lincoln had.

It was a long and convoluted path, but they’d been talking online for almost a year.

He’d asked more than once if they’d ever meet.

She wanted to tell him yes, so badly.

And she’d been really, really close.

Despite the fact that she’d been…well, misleading him from the beginning. Despite the fact that she had been hiding some huge secrets.

She needed to come clean with him because if she didn’t, they had no chance at all.

And she had been this close.

Planned her entire vacation around coming down here, too.

But then, nearly three months ago, he’d stopped talking to her.  Stopped answering emails, cut off contact completely.

Sadly, one of her jobs came up that had pushed her off the grid for nearly three weeks. She’d reached out to him as soon as it was over and he’d finally called her back, only she’d been in a meeting.

I don’t have time for this, Jay.  It’s not working out.  Good-bye.

When her boss Oz offered her another short-term, off-the-grid job, she took it.  Five weeks in, but she submerged with the gut deep feeling that something was wrong.

Lo and behold, something was.

Now she was here.

In Hell.  Literally, and maybe even in the biblical sense of the word.

Jay had done a double-take the first time she’d seen the name of the little town and she’d asked Linc twice if he was joking. But as she’d driven by the little bank and saw the digital display of the temperature—a balmly 96 in June—she had to admit, Hell was aptly name.  She’d spent the past ten years living in Texas.  She was intimately acquainted with hot.

This place, though, took the idea of hot and cooked it up and deep-fried it for good measure.

Before she hunted down her man, though, and asked how they’d gone from dirty little sexts in the middle of the night to the cold shoulder and I don’t have time for this, she needed gas.  She needed a cold drink and maybe five minutes in the bathroom.

The A.C. on her car was…questionable…at best and she’d been slowing baking in her car for the past hour.  It was edging up nine and it was still boiling hot outside.  This place had to be pure torture come August.

The gas station looked like it hadn’t been updated any time this millinium.  The pumps were slower than her great-grandmother had been on seniors day at Kroger back home in Louisville and when she pushed inside the store, the cool blast of air was so welcome, she wanted to cry.

She was damn glad she always traveled with some cash on hand, because there was a sign taped to the do—Plastic is no good here.  Cash only. Yeah, definitely stuck in the last century, because there was no ATM, either.

The guy behind the counter looked like he might be stuck in the nineties, maybe even the sixties because he was staring at her like she was some alien life form. Jay was used to that.  She actually kind of like the odd attention she received over her pink and blue streaked hair, the little gold hoop that pierced her right eyebrow.  The gloves tended to catch a lot of notice, but she’d give almost anything to not need them.  Her physical appearance was weird enough that the gloves just went with everything else, but the gloves were a necessity.

Everything else was just preference.

She’d go crazy without her gloves. She couldn’t function.  Not for long, anyway.  One touch against the wrong anything was enough to put her into a state of shock, something she knew from experience.

Those innocent little touches, the things people took for granted, were the very things that could drive her insane.  A brush of a hand, even if she was shielded, could flood her with all a person’s fears, anxieties and secrets.  If the person was having a bad day, it got even worse.

And if the person was in pain, physical or mental, the effects were so much worse.

Psychometry wasn’t picky when it decided to wreak fhavoc on her life. Her gift tied into emotions and she didn’t have to take off the gloves to know the guy behind the counter was a mess.

His thoughts were…dark.

She approached him with more than a little bit of caution, wishing she’d thought to strap on her weapon, but it was a pain in the ass, even if she had have a conceal carry permit.  Although, hey… she was kinda sorta involved with the sheriff.

Well, she thought she was.

Maybe.

It didn’t matter, though.

This kid was more involved in whatever was twisting up his mind than anything else.

She pulled her money out of her pocket and peeled off three twenties, putting them down on the counter.

The kid just stared, rocking back and forth on the stool, staring at nothing.

“Ah, hey.  Can I get my change?”

His eyes skittered over to hers.

A chill raced up her back.

The lights aren’t exactly on. Nobody is home, she thought.

The door opened behind her and the kid went stiff, his gaze bouncing to the men behind her and she shifted, turning so that she had them in her line of sight and could still see the kid.

Sweat beaded along his lip and abruptly, his body relaxed and a sigh shuddered out of him.

He blinked and looked at her.  “Ma’am, that will be $57.00.”

She gestured to the counter, focused on the men who move to fill the empty space between the counter and the door.

Rednecks, she thought.  And not the hard-working kind she’d come from.  Her daddy had been a redneck and he’d busted his ass from dawn to dusk to make sure she never wanted for anything.

These guys, though, rednecks and not in the nice sense of the word.  Already, the one in the middle was eying her in that way that just made her feel dirty.  Trouble, trouble, trouble…

Some people just gave off a certain vibe.  Most women eventually learn to pick up on that vibe…it was that vibe that had them crossing the road when she saw a certain sort of guy, the one that made her realize she didn’t want to be anywhere alone with him, the guy that set off every internal alarm she had.  He was the guy that stood too close, stared too long, and generally just creeped her out.

There were three of them standing in front of her now, and the one in the middle was the worst.

And the biggest problem of them all was that he had a rough psychic skill.

In her line of work, she’d come to learn that psychic ability wasn’t as uncommon as some might think.  It was estimated that one percent of the population had some sort of psychic ability—it sounded like a low number, but that added up to one in hundred.  With billions of people on that planet, that wasn’t as low as it seemed.

The abilities varied, though and the typical ‘homegrown’ psychic, like this guy, was weak.  Most of them just had better than average instincts.  Some were going to just be sensitive to things—might feel really uncomfortable in a house where a lot of violence had happened, while another might be really good at guessing a winner at the Derby or really good at occasionally picking four or five lottery numbers.  The lucky sort of bastard.

Judging by the way he was watching her, he decided he was going to get lucky again.

And he had no idea what he was dealing with either.

Because like most of those homegrown psychics, he had no idea what he was, and no idea what he was dealing with.

She shifted her attention back to the boy and waited for her change, using the mirror mounted in the corner to watch him.  If she was lucky, she could get out of here without messing with him.

When he whistled in her direction, Jay ignored it.

She was good at ignoring things.

All she had to do was get out of there and everything would be good.

She scooped up her change, careful not to make contact with the kid behind the counter, careful not to let him touch her even with the gloves.  Tucking her cash into her pocket, she turned to go and wasn’t surprised to see all three men blocking her way.

“Excuse me.”

“She looks like a piece of candy.  Look at that pink hair.”  It was the one with the mild psychic ability and the leer in his eyes made her skin crawl.  His gaze raked over her from head to toe and then zoomed in on her chest.  She wore a tank with a fishnet top stretched over it.  It fit close.  Most of her clothing did.  Once upon a time, she’d hid behind baggy clothing, cowered in her room, convinced she was going crazy.  Her dad’s death, the emergence of her ability, it had all hit at once.  Sanity had been a touch and go thing for a while.

She might be a little crazy but hiding hadn’t helped.

So she’d stopped hiding and she’d learned how to deal.  With everything, just about. Including guys like this.

As he continued to stare at her tits, she said again, “Excuse me.”

A wide, unpleasant smile spread across his face.

She steadied herself and bolstered her shields.  She could only keep everything locked out for short periods of time.  More than ten or fifteen minutes and she felt like she was going through some sort of serious bout of sensory deprivation.  That didn’t help her state of mind.

But touching thugs like this? That wasn’t going to help either.

And she was going to have to touch one of them, probably several of them.

The ringleader stepped up and reached out.

She didn’t react as he trailed a finger down her cheek.  “You lost there, sugar?”  She felt nothing but the physical contact, his finger, rough against her skin.  She could almost imagine a slimy aftertrail.  Dirty—he was so dirty and he contaminated everything he touched.

“No.”  She lied through her teeth and did it with a smile as she angled her head away, breaking contact.  Keeping her shields up kept her feeling too much, but she still caught enough—too much—lust and greed and a need to hurt.  She wanted a shower.  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go.  I’m meeting somebody.”

“Why don’t you tell me where you’re heading?  I can give you a hand.”

“I don’t need—”

The bell over the door rang.

She didn’t look away from the men in front of her.

“Lloyd.  Why don’t you step away from the lady?”

A shiver raced down her spine.  That voice.  Familiar…

The man in front of her curled his lip, a slow, smirking sort of smile.  It was the smile of a man she wouldn’t trust at her back.  She didn’t even trust this man at her front.  “Well, hey there, sheriff…oh, wait. You ain’t the sheriff no more.  You know what?  I think I’ll stay right here.  I’m talking to this pretty little piece of candy here.”

Sheriff—

She tore her eyes away from him and stared at the man she’d come to find.

Sheriff Lincoln Dawson, the man she’d found herself falling head over heels in love with over the past year.

The man who according to this thug wasn’t the sheriff anymore.

Okay, that could wait.

“I think you’ll step away.” Lincoln’s voice came a little closer and she took a deep, steadying breath.

His eyes cut to hers.

And she watched as his gaze passed over her, and then immediately came right back.

Cocking her head, she said softly, “Hello, Lincoln.”

This week?  We’re pursuing the one we love… or well, that’s the theme in the snippet.

A breeze kicked up and blew my hair into my face. I squinted and put the rag down before finding a clip in my bag.  As I was twisting my hair back, I looked up and saw him.  He was sitting closer now.  Closer than he usually sat.  The table that was only fifteen away and he sat on top of it, two bottles of water next to him. I recognized the label.  Aquafina.

And I also couldn’t help but notice that he stared at me.

That damned knot that always settled in my throat decided to make another appearance. Slowly, I looked away and focused on gathering up my supplies. I’d had over three hours.  I didn’t need to start anything else.  Soon, I’d need to get to work on the projects I had up for the day.

There was that one cover…I was going to have fun with it.  It was a male/male project and the…

My jaw dropped open.

The wind had blown the pages of my sketchbook.

And on the back of the sketch I’d just finished were the words.

If you’re going to spend that much time drawing me, maybe you could give me your name.

I’d definitely like yours.

He’d seen.

Oh, fuck.  He had seen it… that intimate picture, that dream I’d dared to let myself have while I was awake, of me, on my knees in front of him, a dream that even now filled me with longing.  He had seen.

He had looked through my sketches, just as I’d feared.

I’d definitely like yours…

(dunno what’s going on with this still.  sorry!)

Myla Jackson
Lauren Dane
Leah Braemel
Caris Roane
Eliza Gayle
Mandy M. Roth
McKenna Jeffries
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
HelenKay Dimon
Felicity Heaton
TJ Michaels

Goal achieved… that was easy.  100 Comments made.  I’ll be making that donation to Girls Write Now.  

… So a racist, misogynist dude decided to use the SFWA twitter feed (it’s been deleted, don’t look for it) to further his own hateful agenda.

Freedom of speech, yadda yadda yadda, but such use of the feed was expressly forbidden, I believe.

Anyway, it pisses me off. I like to turn hate into good things. He gets lots of comments on his blog, lots of pats on the back from people who think women ruin SF and belong in the kitchen, barefoot, probably, etc. So I’m going to do this.

For every comment that blog post gets, up to $100, I’m donating $1 to Girls Write Now, a charity that serves girls/women in New York City.

Cuz while spewing bile is his thing, kindness is mine.

Comments off and I totally moderate comments, especially from hateful trolls.

Spam me, and I reserve the right to mock you.

Which I’ll do.  I got this in my email…seriously.  I added my thoughts in bold.

- Requires five years customer service experience or two years general office experience …well.  I do work in my office.  Sometimes in my jammies.  Or yoga pants.  Does that count?
- A strong work ethic and positive attitude … a positive attitude?  Clearly you don’t know who you’re talking to.
- Wide Inter-personal skills, organization skills, strong analytical ability … um… or gan izah shun…you got me.  I’ve no idea what this word means.  Let me go google–ack!  MY EYES… MY EYES!
- Must have experience, confidence, and ability to conduct security briefings and interviews when required … can I record these briefings and post them to youtube?
- Must have experience executing vendor contracts and price negotiation skills … so check. The vendors get the highest costs they want.  They got families. Right?
- Knowledge of word processing, database, and spreadsheet software … well.  I can help you with the word processing thing, but to the rest, you’re on your own.
- No drug misdemeanors within the past 5 years and ability to pass a drug screen … but if I’ve got a drunk driving record or broke into the bank across the way, that’s all good, right?

This post is sticky… there may be newer posts below.

I need a break.

My brain is tired.  To be blunt, I feel burnt-out, not on writing, but on all the stuff that isn’t writing but is necessary to do in order to be a writer.  Although if I could take a month or two off from writing, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  Sadly, I’ve never caught up from how sick I was a couple of years ago.  I used to have enough of a backlog to let me take a week or so here and there.  Not any more.  Time is something I never have enough of.

So if the blog goes a little quiet, I’m just taking some downtime and I might not be as visible on twitter or facebook for a while either. I’ll be around, just not as much.

To make up for it, I’m posting a nice long excerpt from BROKEN BLADE over at the J.C. Daniels site.

I’ll be around… just not as much.  You all take it easy.

From Broken Blade

“What the fuck?” I whispered. I flexed my hand and longed for the weight of my blade. She wasn’t there, though, and I had to make do with the gun. Mesmerized, I stared at it, barely even aware I’d drawn it. Why was I holding the damn gun?
“Kit.”
I jerked my head to look at TJ.
She was watching me sadly. “He’s hurting, too, Kit. Don’t hate me too much. I’m just trying to help you, kid.”
“What—”
It hit me then and I lunged for the back door.
Another frenzy of lightning hit and then the ward shattered with a groan. Bits and pieces of magic fell to the earth, sparkling in the air. I could see them from the corner of my eyes and the death of the ward sucked the air out of me. If I’d moved a few seconds sooner, I would have gotten away.
But I was sensitive to magic and the power of the ward death’s left me reeling. As I stumbled against the bar, I was painfully aware of the roar echoing through the bar.
The doors opened and spat Damon’s bloodied form at my feet.
I backed up, determined to get something between us.
Something. TJ. Goliath. Anything or anybody.
But TJ had disappeared.
And I was alone with Damon.

Longer excerpt coming soonish.

Myla Jackson
Lauren Dane
Leah Braemel
Caris Roane
Eliza Gayle
Mandy M. Roth
McKenna Jeffries
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
HelenKay Dimon
Felicity Heaton

I wanted her to let me sign the bratlet.  She refused.  She’s picked up a name for her artwork.

M. Walker.

And this is M. Walker’s interpretation of Kit and Damon.

It’s the first fan** art I’ve seen of Kit and Damon and maybe the only I’ve ever see, but as fas as I’m concerned, it’s also some of the best out there.

I prefer to go with reader-inspired…. can we go with reader-inspired?

She’s currently mad at me cuz I won’t tell her what I’m doing with the series and she hasn’t read beyond Blade Song yet.

I’m mean that way.

It’s been a couple of years, I think, since they were available.

We kept the price as low as we could, two books for $12.99.

The other Hunter books will follow, but I don’t know when.  For now, it’s available for pre-order on Amazon, not sure if we are going to be able to get it for pre-order elsewhere… something we’re working on.  More info here…

FYI, I’ve had people ask if I’m going to reconsider pursuing the series…no.  I’m not. Sales had slumped off and unless some sort of absolute miracle happened, it’s not feasible on my end.  I’m sorry. I hope you understand.

This lady is needing some help for a unit that’s coming back home.  Twenty seven soldiers are coming back and they don’t really have anybody to help them settle in.  They will back to a room with a mattress, basically.

She’s already gotten some smaller things, but could use help with the bigger items like sheets, etc.  She’s also running out of time…it seems like the easier thing to do with be send donations in the form of Walmart GCs and she can just pick up everything that is needed with the GCs.

I know some people might not be too comfortable with it, but the name was given to me by Kelley, the lady who heads up the SOS unit I help out and this is likely a lot easier than sending twin-sized bedding, (sheets, pillow cases) and shower curtains, etc.

If you are able and want to help out the soldiers, this is a wonderful way… you can send a Walmart gift card or donation to

Chanel Caldwell
5244-1 Yeakel St
Ft Hood TX 76544

They only have until the 17th to get everything ready, so time really isn’t on our side.

Again, this info is accurate and up to date, passed on to me by Kelley.  She’s the lady who gives me all the info for the SOS units I help out so I do know it is accurate and any help you can give would be very much appreciate, whether you can send $5 GC to Walmart or a new set twin sheets, a shower curtain, etc.

FYI, it’s okay to post this info to blogs, but please don’t post to FB, etc.

So I’m late to the ruckus… I don’t work much on weekends and I had a date night, no kids, no pups, just me and my guy and a hotel and relaxation, something we so needed, and this wasn’t getting in the way.

But I don’t want to not post my thoughts on this.

I’m not a Barbie Doll.

Image via Altered Barbie

I never have been, nor will I ever be.

I’m not going to go into the whole back story…

You can read about it here, here, some of the shit that a female SF has to deal with here or Jim Hines lists a bunch of links here.

Suffice it to say, there’s a bunch of sexism going on within SFWA, people are getting tired of it and are speaking up and others don’t like the fact that people are speaking up over something pisses us off.

Crap like this has been going on for a while and seems to be coming to a head within SFWA.

I’m not terribly active in the SF/F community and at times like this, I can’t decide if I’m happy of that or if I regret it.

Had I attended any of these cons where I saw female authors being talked over, being talked down to, being referred to as ‘token’ females…well, I’m…ah, well.  I’ve never been known for keeping my mouth shut and playing nice is a skill I never learned.

I don’t think I would have made a lot of friends, but I’m not necessarily looking to make friends.

I am a member of SFWA, based on the PNR romances I sold. My contribution to the SF/F writing world would be minimal, although I spend an awful lot of dollars…really, writers, a lot of female dollars are spent in your world–more, probably, than you realize.  Maybe you should ponder that and appreciate it.

But back to the writing world, the closest I come to the SF/F world would be my UF series, the Colbana Files.  And yucky-gross, those have sex in them.  Girl cooties and all that.

I’m a reader of SF/F.  I love the SF written by authors like Ann Aguirre and S.L. Viehl.  Hey, those are women. Character-driven stories like the Grimspace series and Stardoc just call to me and I make no bones about it.

I love Myke Cole’s stories and one of my die hard faves? Dave Wolverton’s Serpent Catch.  I’m a mad lover of Star Wars, I adore LOTR.    I’m something of a geek.

I read SF.  I read fantasy.  I love and adore UF.

I haven’t followed as much of this fray as some people and it’s probably a good thing, because my blood pressure can’t handle it.

I hate sexism.  The SF world has sexism in spades…dinosaurs (FYI, using these term doesn’t have anything to do with their chronological age, more to do with their refusal to come out of the stone age) who think it’s okay to ask women to fetch coffee, people who think it’s okay to refer to women on panels at the token female.  There are people who thinks it’s totally A-OK to have chats about women but they don’t focus on the person’s abilities…sexy they were, how hot they are.  Screw their abilities.  They become body parts and sex objects.

And when people object? Forget people listen to those objections… we should act like Barbie…and carry on with quiet dignity.

Um, yeah.  You can shove that up your tailpipe, buddy.

Being a woman very often means you’re going to be insulted, ignored, condescended, treated as insignificant, devalued, viewed as an object, and the list goes on and on and on…we get so blind to the shit that comes our way at times.

Maybe the problem is that we carried on with quiet dignity for too long.

All women want is to be treated as the equal.  That’s not that frickin’ hard.

At least…it shouldn’t be.

FYI, no woman is your fricking Barbie doll or your coffee girl.

I’ll keep my SFWA membership, because I know the asses aren’t the majority, even when it seems that way.

And maybe I’ll even try to figure out where the regional SF/F cons are and start hitting them.  Who knows… maybe what some of these things need are more loudmouths on hand.  It’s possible we’ve been quiet and dignified long enough.

Also, for a good kick, head over to that Altered Barbie link up top.  ;)  Some really interesting twists on Barbie…and very few are dignified.