Pack Means Family

At long last, The Hunting continues - Volume 2, Pack, will be released for Kindle in January 2018.  It's taken a lot of drafts, a lot of coffee, and a lot of mumbling to myself, but Eric and Jackson's story has finally sorted itself out.

To be fair, nothing is simple when you're talking about a werewolf going on the run with his estranged boyfriend, who very formerly made a living killing monsters like the one his lover has become.  Not to mention his old employers are on their heels - the Division, the most secret and deadly branch of the FBI.  They want Eric back.  And if they can't have him, they'll put him down just like they intend to put his boyfriend down.  Throw in an old indiscretion of Jackson's, resulting in a dangerously jealous young werewolf dead set on knocking out his human rival...  And things are about to get messy.

Pack runs about twice the length of The Hunting, and forms the midsection of what is intended as a trilogy.  Volume 3, Blood, is in the works now and will be out closer to spring/summer of next year.

While The Hunting books are related to and partially set in New Berlin, they form more of a Division subset which gets a bit darker than stories like, say, Sweet.  I have plans for several Division focused novels to be released over the next year or two, werewolves and some undead forays as well.  And then it'll be full circle back into New Berlin proper, where the witches, incubi, and angels have been biding their time.

Pack will be available for presale mid-December.

It's Halloween

Or almost Halloween.  Technically it's the first day of Mabon.  I was born at Mabon, which maybe accounts for some of my darker and more woeful inclinations.  Call me Demeter.  Or Persephone?  But I'm trying to look on the lighter side lately, because sometimes the dark is just too dark.  So even though I'm releasing my first zombie story in less than two weeks, it's kind of a lighter zombie story.  There are even jokes.  I can't say whether the jokes are funny.  But they're in there.  So...

Strange is a short story set in New Berlin, though it stands independent of any previous stories.  It's a look at the dangers of Craigslist roommate ads, and what might happen if a workaholic chef invited a hoodie-wearing, cash-rent-paying zombie to live in his spare bedroom.  It might be weird sometimes, right?  Like, who gets the last piece of bacon?  And is that blood on my beautiful kitchen floor?  But it might also be really convenient, say in the event of a home invasion, to have a roommate with superhuman strength and an insatiable appetite for human flesh.  Naturally though it would be a really stupid idea to start crushing on your dead roommate.

So, yeah, werewolves suck (you guessed it, I'm stalled on the second volume of The Hunting again), and zombies are in.  Strange comes out October 3rd.

And there will probably be more zombie stories to come, because they are somewhat of an obsession of mine.  I can't promise they'll all be light, because, you know, Mabon and the influence of the Dark Mother.  But there will probably be more.  And then maybe some vampires and/or witches.  Possibly we'll go back to a werewolf or two.  Eventually--eventually--there will be a return to the fey and incubi and fallen angels.  Because the angels are really the point of this whole city, if I didn't keep getting so damn sidetracked.

But for now.  Strange.  You can buy or borrow it from Amazon October 3rd.

Meantime.  Happy fall.  Go harvest something.

Christmas in July

I have it. Definite proof that I am actually working on something.

Because clearly I have a fetish for redneck werewolves and their uptight, hunter boyfriends.

Here is the opening of The Hunting, Vol. 2, which I hope will be ready for publication soon.  Or soonish.
_______________

FROM THE EDGE of the forest, cool and dark, Jackson watched his lover shiver in the grip of a nightmare.

Shiver, and then thrash—Eric twisted free of his sleeping bag and kicked it away like a mortal enemy, one bare foot crunching hard into the side of the truck bed.  He came awake with a low, violent cry, sitting straight up and reaching for the knife he always carried strapped to his left calf.

It was gone.  Left behind three hundred miles ago, abandoned in a bloody field, in a town neither of them would ever return to.

If we’re lucky, Jackson thought.

Eric relaxed slightly, the tension leaving his spine.  He scrubbed a hand across his face and stared out bleakly around him.  His gaze swept the clearing and the woods, passing right over the shadows where Jackson lingered.  Even if he’d known where to look, he was just a man, with human eyes.  While Jackson was anything but.

Eric shivered again, and Jackson imagined he could see the tiny hairs on the back of his neck rise up and stand on end.  The mornings here carried autumn’s bite, today worse than usual.  The wind howled around the open truck bed, whipping the short, dark thatch of Eric’s hair.  An overcast sky warned of a nearing storm, an hour, maybe less, before the heavens burst open.

It was their fifth day here.  Five days camped out in the game lands of upstate New York, slapping at mosquitos, staring at trees, and sleeping in the back of the truck together—if together meant lying down together with as much space between them as possible.  If it meant Jackson waking up each morning while the sky was still dark to find Eric’s back turned to him, shoulders hunched against him, every line of him stiff with rejection even in sleep.

Jackson didn’t wake for him to wake up, couldn’t.  Each morning he slipped silently away into the woods to hunt, or sometimes simply to run, to wear the edge off his own tension and forget that Eric hadn’t touched him willingly in five days.

Not since Jackson had changed into a wolf and slaughtered Eric’s stepbrother while he watched.

If that killing had been murder, then so be it.  It had also been justice.  When Jackson was human, he had worried over morality, right and wrong, and crossing the line.  Now he was at peace knowing he would not hesitate to defend himself against any foe.  And to protect those he loved, to avenge the wrongs done them, he would kill without mercy.  Again and again, he would kill, until there was no one left to harm them.

And that was why Eric wouldn’t touch him.

Wishing You a Blessed Samhain

We're finally down to three days before Halloween, my favorite holiday of the year, which at first seemed like it was never going to arrive.  And then during the last week, as Chrismas decorations suddenly starting popping up like some heinous black magic in stores, the end of October became a freight train intent on splattering across the tracks any unfortunate souls caught off their game.

Including me, of course, who had intended all year to have another novel out by early October.  But sometimes the thing you're writing takes a lot more time than you thought it would, and sometimes the thing you're writing just runs off the tracks and explodes (or gets splattered).  There's been a bit of both during the last year.  So while the pipeline has got stuff in the works, it's not quite ready to leak into our drinking water yet.

This is possibly too many metaphors even for me.

So to all my readers (I know you're out there, lurking under rocks, but it's okay because it's that time of the year), my sincere apologies.  I'm writing my brains out right now, and if you're following the New Berlin series, you're going to see some familiar faces from around Chicanery soon.  Angels, incubi, some dark fey, and a few other creatures are cluttering up the pages of my first draft pile.  They just need a little merciless surgery, and then some further botox and nip/tucking before they're ready to face you.

On a further note, Sweet is going to be free on Kindle in honor of Samhain, one last gift and one last harvest before the long, dark night.  You've probably already read it, in which case thank you!  But if you know anybody who'd like to snag a copy, they can get it now through sunset of November 1st.  Okay, midnight actually.  KDP refuses to let me run promotions based on sunset-to-sunset.  But hey, such are the trials of life as a half-assed pagan.

Now it's back to work for me, so I can pin all my hopes on finishing something in time for Yule.

Forever love, and may you all enjoy a blessed Samhain!
LF

Three Years Ago

Three years ago this week, I was in Pennsylvania on a rescue mission - literally dragging my mother out of her farmhouse where she was intent on letting ketoacidosis kill her.  It wasn't the first time I had to bully her into the hospital.  This is her pattern, passive suicide followed by the realization she might actually die, followed by a call for me to come save her.  And I always do.

But there's an amount of stress that goes along with repeatedly rescuing someone, especially when that someone is the person you feel like you ought to be able to lean on for emotional support, and never have been able to, because all your life they've been too heavily leaning on you, the child/young adult/grown up daughter.

People deal with stress in different ways.  My mother told me that her mother used to feed her whenever she was upset, resulting in her lifelong weight problem.  So instead of feeding me, she taught me to shop when I was sad/sick/stressed.  Toy shopping when I was a kid.  Later, clothes.  Mostly I've broken this habit, but occasionally it kicks back in.  I head either to Michaels for art supplies, or to the pet shop.  If I'm lucky, I leave Petsmart with a sparkly new dog collar, or a bigger fish tank.  Four years ago yesterday, I left with a new cage, water bottle, litter pan, Oxbow food, sunflower seeds, yogies treats, and two young male dumbo rats.

On day one I named them:  Sam and Dean W.  Dean hid inside the empty tissue box I gave them.  Sammy explored every inch of his cage and then started watching me instead, grasping the cage bars in his little pink hands and staring out at me with curious dark eyes.

On day two I opened the cage and offered both rats sunflower seeds.  Dean hid inside his tissue box again.  Sammy ate all the seeds and then climbed onto my arm in order to slurp coffee out of my mug.  Later he did the same with my vodka tonic.  I fell in love with him before I'd had him for 24 hours.

For two and a half years, through three job changes, two major moves, and many more motherly hospital dramas, Sam and Dean stayed with me.  While Dean always remained standoffish, his brother was an outgoing bundle of enthusiasm and affection.  He was intelligent, learning to spin on command in ten minutes, and he always came when called.  He returned kisses with tiny rat licks.  He rode on my shoulder while I cooked, and when I worked at my desk, he hunkered down in the corner of the cage closest to me and dozed there, waking whenever a chip bag crinkled or ice cubes clinked.  He had to be chased away from alcoholic beverages, because god, he was a lush.

 

Petsmart didn't know the exact ages of the boys, so I estimated their birthday as December 25th.  The first year we failed to celebrate, as the living room ceiling caved in that night, and Sammy decided the bucket collecting dirty water from above would make an excellent swimming pool.  The next year we had presents, new plush hammocks and a tiny birthday cake made from a banana slice with yogurt for icing, and sprinkles.

They never made it to their third birthday.

We had been traveling a lot.  My mother, having had a leg amputation, was never going to be able to come back to her two-level farmhouse, so I was in the process of packing up her belongings.  In between packing, the rats, the dogs, and I drove into the city to babysit my dementia-challenged grandmother,, who could never remember who I was, why I was in her house, or why I had my "hamsters" with me.  For sanity we escaped for a few days at a time to a tiny cabin in the mountains.

The boys were handling the stress with their usual curiosity and hardiness, though Dean had begun to develop health issues, arthritis in his back legs, and cataracts.  He longer enjoyed his cage-free time, preferred to remain curled up in a fleecie, but he still loved grooming his brother, and, well, eating.  He didn't nip  anymore, though of course he only ever had nipped at all, lightly and without breaking the skin, when he was frightened.  Now he seemed to have accepted that I was trustworthy.  Both rats had weekly baths, and while Sammy resisted his with a passion, Dean almost seemed to enjoy being cleaned and dried and cuddled afterward.  Sammy, despite the occasional stiff feet in cold weather, was still energetic and healthy, and I worried how he might grieve if his brother passed on.

The morning of actual farmhouse moving day, I opened the cage for feeding time.  I could see Sammy's head in the entrance to his plastic igloo, where he and his brother always cuddled up at night.  He wasn't moving, though his eyes were open.  After a few seconds of staring, hand full of food frozen over their bowl, it occurred to me that he looked very strange, very unnatural.  Then it occurred to me that Sammy looked dead.

If you've lost a pet suddenly, you know that feeling.  The shock, the denial.  Picking up the body in your hands and feeling the stiffness, the cool of it, but still thinking:  No, maybe he's just, maybe I can, maybe.

Sammy is buried in Pennsylvania, in a place I almost never go, his grave very far away from me now.  It was mid-November, thirty-eight degrees and me wearing only a hoodie, but it didn't feel cold when I was digging his grave.  All it felt like was pain, hollow, heart-and-lungs clenching pain.  Private pain, the kind you allow no one else to witness, because it's too deep.

I don't know how or why Sammy died that way.  Maybe a heart attack, and maybe that's my fault, for letting him get to be too much of a big squishy fat rat.  I don't know.  Dean followed him a month later, one week before his third birthday.  Dean was not unexpected.  His arthritis took a hard turn.  He couldn't walk, but had to drag his back half.  He developed an abscess on his jaw that grew with horrifying speed.  I told myself I should take him to a vet and have him put down, but could not do it.  So there's guilt for that, too, for letting his pain last days longer than it should have.  The night he wouldn't even slurp up his pureed chicken baby food, I knew it was the end.  He was gone by morning.  And I thought, knowing it was coming, knowing we hadn't been close the way I had been with his brother, it would be easier.  It wasn't.  He wasn't Sammy, but he was lovely and unique in his own way.  In the sly, skittish way he stole food, or cash from my purse, or pens with rubber grips.  In the way he stood back and watched his brother learn to do tricks, and then copied them very carefully, hoping he too might get a carrot stick.

I still cry over the boys.  Ugly, snotty crying, like I'm doing right now.  They left an empty space that has not been filled.  Six months, and sometimes I still look to the place where their cage used to be and expect to see tails hanging out through the bars.

What makes it worse is the fact they were rats.  If I'd lost a beloved dog, other people might understand.  But rats are undesirable creatures, spreaders of disease, nasty dirty rodents that should never be kept as pets, much less by a thirty year old woman.  Sammy never bit anyone, not me or strangers or even overly curious dogs.  When he was physically able, Dean spent more time grooming himself than a cat.  Both rats were litter trained in a single day, without ever having seen a litter box in their life.  But I cannot share these things with other people unless I want the looks--at best, carefully blank, at worst, disgusted.  I cannot understand their narrow-mindedness, and every time someone says something ignorant or condescending, I hate them violently.

My dogs are alive, thank god, and getting extra hugs and cuddles and healthy treats.  I am bonded with them.  I was bonded with the rats.  There is no difference.  I've lost a friend.  It hurts.

I thought, when I started typing, there would be a point to all this.  But maybe I just needed to get it out.  Maybe the only point is that I miss my little guys, that three years ago yesterday I looked into their expectant faces for the first time, and today I cannot stop crying.  Maybe the point is that my life is such madness right now, crying for Sammy is the easiest thing to cry for.  And maybe the point is that through all the sadness and pain in the world, you have to keep trying to push through and remember the good and the beautiful--about your rats, about your mother, about every single day of this life.

Tomatoes & Grand Maester Aleister

Life is like growing tomatoes.  You plant them, a whole lot of them, red ones and purple ones and black ones and green ones and ones that are supposed to beat cancer.  You fertilize them and mulch them and weed them and every single day you water them (and if you're really crazy, you bring a measuring stick to see how much your little darlings have grown since yesterday).  You think:  These are going to be the best tomatoes ever.  These tomatoes are going to be legen... dary!

Then one day you're inspecting your plant and you see this:

An evil monster.  Okay, a tomato caterpillar.  Either way, it has invaded the sanctity of your garden and is currently munching down on your beautiful plants.

And you can't kill it because, you know, you're incapable of killing things.  You are the person who finds a mouse in a glue trap and gently, lovingly rinses its tiny hands and tail in warm soapy water to extract it, and then let it go running right back into the hole behind your cupboard where it's presumably been storing all the ramen it steals.

So a cute little green worm that's all busy trying to look ferocious?  Please, bitch.  Get out of jail free card.

But you carry it all the way across the yard to release it elsewhere, and hope that's all there is to the tomato munching.

Then the leaves of one plant start to yellow and droop.

Another plant develops black spots.

A third plant is the victim of a weed-whacker-wielding maniac (you).

And six whole plants decide to tear their stakes out of the ground and fall over and oh god they can't get up.

And you despair, you think these plants are never going to yield tomatoes, they are all going to die and all your hard work all your tears and blood yes blood from all the goddamn insect bites and stings, all of that pain is going to mean jack shit.

And then--

Then--

The first tomato ripens.

At the same time that you have an abundance of fresh basil and a new block of mozzarella.

And all is right with the world.

The owl, in case you are wondering, is named Grand Maester Aleister.  About the same time I picked him up from the Antiques Barn, I found the first owl pellet out back in my herb garden.  Full of fur and bones and lovely things.  This, after the voles or some other tiny creatures devoured my strawberry crop.

So I can't kill living things but... beware my loyal attack owl.

I'm pretty sure I meant to go somewhere else with this post.

Swwweeeeet.

Sweetness is coming.  Like, ferr realll.

After five drafts, lots of red wine, and even more Cheetos to help me through the dark times, I've finally finished a new novel.  Sweet - a paranormal romance (light on the paranormal, heavy on the angst relationship issues) about a fairy, an incubus, and all the reasons best friends should/shouldn't fall in love.

The fully edited and polished version will be available on Kindle and in print somewhere about mid-August.  But if you're impatient like meeee, you can read a slightly more raw version for free here on FictionPress right now.  The free version will (*frowny face*) go buh-bye when the paid one comes out.  But, yes, of course there will be free days to nab the final kindle version later on.

I leave you with an image of the brand new cover...  And then I go curl up on the couch and finish watching The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All, because it's been a hellish day and only drama regarding cute men and red wine and yet more Cheetos and THE THOUGHT OF A NEW NOVEL will make me feel human again.