The stories will start going up on Goodreads in about a week. We don’t have a schedule yet, but that adds to the fun and surprise of it all.

Last Friday I posted the first part of Sign of Spring in my thread. This week, I posted the first half of an outtake from the story–a piece I started to write while I was noodling around with the idea and trying to figure out how much time it should cover. In the end, despite how much I liked this little scene, I decided to compress the time frame for the actual prompt. Edits on Knight, dealing with a snafu with Bite Me Tender and trying to keep up with the crit groups and a whopping pile of betas put the final nail in the coffin of my idea to make it into a full novel.

But this little fellow wouldn’t go away. In the end, I fleshed it out and it’s now its own 2500 word mini-story, told from Justin’s point of view. I’ll put the rest of it up next week. I call it Caps with Justin. Because I suck at names.

Here’s the first few lines, and a link to the rest on Goodreads…

I knew Robin had never stayed in a hole-in-the-wall motel by the dazed way he looked around the tiny room, with its second-hand furniture and 1970’s style everything. Poor guy, he’s never really lived, has he? That’s why he’s out here, with his broken heart and his fear.

Fretful, is what my mother would have called him. Just before she’d say, ‘You’re only afraid of what you don’t know.’ And then she’d look at me and send the unspoken message, ‘Piss or get off the pot.’

I guess I’m pissin’, because I sure do like this pot.

“I’ll walk down to the corner store,” I told him, dropping a short kiss on his cheek and upending my backpack onto the bed. “Get us some snacks and something to drink. Why don’t you settle in, have a rest. Or, if you’re feeling frisky, you can have a look in the yellow pages and order some supper. Whatever you feel like. I’ll be back in, like, twenty minutes. Maybe less.”

He glanced at me then, and I don’t think he realized how lost he looked. So I kissed him a second time, a little longer and on the lips, because it smoothes out those lines around his mouth and gets his shoulders down from around his ears.

And then I goosed him and ran out the door, laughing.

Read on…

Furface and the Boyler Room are coming along. I’ve been slowed down a bit by a food allergy–I’ve been sleeping a lot because of it and, when I’m awake, I’m not a lot of good. The good news is that the symptoms should pass by tomorrow, and Glyn has finally explained one of his ‘issues’ to me, so now all I have to do is find a way to get it down on paper without sounding like a doofus.

The joys of having characters that are smarter than you are. Meh.