“Cymodoce” now in Shelter of Daylight

My story, Cymodoce, is in Shelter of Daylight July 2023.

What if the only man you’ve ever
given yourself to isn’t a man
at all?
And
what if you gave birth to
twins, the son wholly yours,
the daughter wholly his?
And
what if your daughter needs
to return to her father in
order to survive?
And
what if her survival means
never seeing her again, and
her brother losing his sister
forever?

 

 
Yeeha for me!

“Nothing Ever Dies of Old Age in The Wild” now on BizCatalyst360

The kind folks at BizCatalyst360 just published my Nothing Ever Dies of Old Age in The Wild, about recognizing and understanding how The Wild sees to itself and thereby sees to us.

Regular readers know my experiences of The Wild are documented under WildLife on this site’s menu.

 
Enjoy!

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 6 (Brand new!)

Yeah. Well.

The Alibi continues to grow and get restructured.

Surprise!

Quite a bit got added and edited in June. The throughlines are pretty well established, individual character plotlines are merging. Characters are changing and growing, allegiances are shifting.

The Alibi‘s Boston is a fun place to be.

This chapter is one of the ones added while you were busy doing other things. Everything from this point on got shifted. At least once. Often more than once.

It’s interesting playing god. Ever seen Kevin Bacon’s The Big Picture. It’s worth a watch.

For that matter, I’m not sure if The Alibi had five sections the last time we chatted…

The Alibi – Chapter 6

 
Virginia Lister hated fucking Briggs Lane. She cherished the days he had lunch appointments because it meant he wouldn’t call her on the intercom with that sickening, slightly husky voice and ask her to come in and review something with him.

She kept his calendar so she knew the days well in advance. Sometimes something came up, sure, but he was usually meticulous in his scheduling. Rarely did anything happen without notice.

She called him her BACMan: blowjob, anal, cunt. Three times in three different orifices and all in less than an hour.

She knew where he kept his Viagra.

She kept making plans and backing down.

Lane recruited her on one of his “scouting” missions. He kept a series of low-to-mid level plants in all the tech companies within an arc stretching from Providence to Amherst to Brattleboro to the Upper Valley to Portland.

And because he was Old School, he kept a squad of stringers employed out to NYC, Troy, Carnegie, and Chicago; south to Reston, Roanoke, and Duke; and north to Montreal, QC, and Dalhousie.

If it happened, and it was valuable or had potential value, Briggs Lane knew about it.

Ginni started as one of his plants at a mid-level biotech. She demonstrated other assets he found worthwhile and the deal was done.

He didn’t travel far to find her. Emerson’s Theater District campus made for easy pickings and her studies in the Visual & Media Arts, Performance Production Center, Advanced Projects Lab, and Communication & Marketing Labs made her a valued addition to any company’s digital marketing initiatives. He visited saying he was scouting schools for his daughter.

Ginni knew Penny. She’d never get into Emerson.

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Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

Stephen Parrish and the Editors of Lascaux Review’s “The First 100 Words”

This gem is must reading for any authors, wannabes, and students of writing. Probably because I agree with 99% of it (I question some of the examples).

First, it’s a guidebook to getting past editors’ and publishers’ bullsh?t meter. I stress getting the opening correct when talking with writers and few get the message. Read this book and if you still don’t get the message, get out of the game.

Second, I learned from it (sometimes painfully). Some of Parrish’s suggestions caught me in an “Oy. I do that” and I had to ballup to my own inadequacies. Never fun, always necessary, definitely joyful when I realize the lesson’s stuck.

Third, I earmarked and highlighted the book to death. I haven’t commented on a writing guide in quite a while and this one is definitely worthy.

Give it a read if you’re an author, writer, wannabe, writing student, and learn!


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