Where I've Gone

I worked a 9 to 5 job for years in Florida. It was rewarding, important work that ate up all my energy and emotional bandwidth, but was worth losing myself in. Then I moved and then Covid happened, and I've been doing freelance stuff on the side, mostly grant writing, some consulting, and a lot of wishing things had ended differently with my last employer. I moved home to Southern California to be closer to my family, but that wasn't seen as a valid reason for leaving. Bridges burned, friendships died overnight, and people I'd once shared triumphs and tragedies with for years were suddenly happy to see I didn't land on my feet.

This sort of thing will fuck with a person.

I tried to take up writing again, failed, tried again, failed again, abandoned Twitter and threw myself into finding another calling only to fail at that too. My wife makes enough money for both of us to live on, but that's not what I want even if she's kinda pleased with having me be a housewife/writer again. Okay, so how do I remember how to write again?

Not a rhetorical question. I'm seriously asking.

I spent most of this week trying to turn a writing journal prompt into a short story and ended up thoroughly in my own head about the whole thing. Was it a cute idea with no legs? Did I mistake an exercise for an actual story? What clunky bullshit was I covering up by trying to make it funny? And most of all, how does it end?

That's a big one for me: I always know how my stories end before I start.

My next idea involved re-reading some of my past stuff to see if I could hear my own voice again, but it wasn't there. I picked An Undead Grift for Christmas and Ravens from the Ashes for the exercise. At the end of both, I was left feeling like I was good once upon a time, but I didn't see how it all fit together anymore. The last book I published was Pintor Noche in 2017, which means the last time I wrote fiction of any real quality was at least five years ago since there's about a year lag on completion of writing to publication and that's if everything moves fast.

What changes in us to lose what we were?

Because I was a writer. I lived, breathed, and swam through writing for the better part of a decade and felt myself glow from the creativity I was a part of. I feel like I've been cutoff from the feed somehow. The cosmic inspiration or zeitgeist or collective unconscious for the Jungians.

I'm Steve Sax and I don't even know who that is.

He's a baseball player, or was, I know that much. From before I was born, I think. But there was a TV show, I can't even remember which one, where someone talked about Steve Sax who had made the throw from shortstop or second to first base thousands of times, but then, suddenly, he couldn't do it anymore. He straight up forgot how to throw. Short throws, long throws, throws to any point on the diamond were all off the table for a guy whose entire job was catching a ball and throwing it somewhere accurately. I can't remember how the story ended in the show or movie, and I have no idea what became of Steve Sax, but that's been weirdly stuck in my head for months now. I forgot how to throw.

I've got the yips or the shanks or some other sport metaphor. Dick fingers? Is that one?

The question now is do I fight it and try to get back to making the routine throws so I can feel comfortable enough to try the harder ones? Or do I hang it up and do...whatever Steve Sax ended up doing instead of baseball? Is there advice for clearing up the yippy shanks?

A Fable

Deidre: A Fable of Coming Home

Deidre was born on an Island, but it was not where she grew up. She was taken as a baby, immediately after birth. She was of the unlucky one in fifty removed from her home and raised somewhere else.

Instead, she grew up in a harsh land, told she was from there, told she belonged there and nowhere else, and told the Island was lesser in all ways that mattered. In her heart, she knew these things were not true. Yet they stripped her of her name, gave her a new one she did not like, and refused to call her by any but the named they had placed upon her, and told her she would learn or she would suffer. She did not want to suffer, and so she tried and failed to be like them. For from as early as she could remember, she felt a longing for the Island that she was taken from on the day of her birth; the Island that she never truly experienced as others were able to but knew was her true home.

Her abductors taught her to walk in their way, talk in their way, dress in their way, and tried to make her believe what they believed. When she refused, or hesitated, or argued against these things she knew were not for her, were not of her, and which she did not agree, she was yelled at, taunted, punished, beaten, and worse until she learned to hide who she was, what she knew, and where she belonged.

During these dark years in the loud, rough land, death beckoned Deidre constantly while she lived among her captors, imprisoned in clothes, culture, and the mannerisms forced upon her. She was soft in ways they were hard, and that made them hate her, and soon she hated these things about herself. Death was an escape, truly the only door from her cage that she knew existed. She did not want to die, but she knew she could not live in the harsh land, imprisoned and forced to behave in painful, often cruel ways.

When she was still a young woman, hardened against the toxic world and its caustic ways, hiding well to avoid the pain heaped upon her whenever she deviated from the path forced upon her, she met a young man who would become her hero. This young man had been taken at birth as well. He was not from the Island, but had been raised there. He was from the harsh land and had dreamed of coming back one day. He knew of the harshness but in it he saw a beauty that called to him. He also had thought death was the only door until he heard of people leaving the Island and traveling to the harsh land.

Deidre and the young man found a quiet, isolate corner where the young man’s past of being raised on the Island and the young woman’s captivity would not be known to anyone but each other, and she asked him questions about his travels, about the path he had taken, about how she might go home.

It was dangerous and hard, she expected that and was willing to brave anything to go home. It was expensive, which would be difficult, but she would pay anything to be free. She could not take the same path he did; it would not work going the other way. There were similar paths, but he did not know them, had not traveled them, and they did not go the same direction as he had gone. She had more questions, but he needed to go. He was home and wanted to see everything he had missed. She understood that desire as it burned within her as well and so they parted as friends.

Deidre saved her money for the trip. She carefully sought information about a path she might take. There were a few people who wished to aid her, but they too were afraid of what might happen to them if they helped someone escape. Piece by piece, coin by coin, she planned her exodus. On the day she was to leave, she looked back on the harsh land where she was held captive for her entire life to that point and saw there were things she might miss about it, wealth and strength that could be found there for the right person, but none of the treasures could buy the home she felt in her heart, and so she departed.

The journey home was difficult, she got lost many times, the money she had saved to make the trip was spent quickly and had to be replaced by doing things she would never speak of again. There were mountains of pain and she bled often for there was no other way. Each step toward home, she felt herself becoming more of what she had always known herself to be. Each leg of the journey that brought her closer to the Island also brought her nearer to herself. At long last, she stood upon the shore, final leg of the journey, a boat ride across a misty ocean. Without hesitation she stepped off the shore and set sail for home.

The crossing was rough, stormy sometimes, and she felt sick to her stomach with each passing wave. She slept a great deal, ate very little, and stared unblinking into the fog, wishing to see the Island but not able to make out anything but the interminable ocean. Everyone aboard said they were coming closer, that they were on course, and she had to trust them. For they had been there, they knew the way, she paid dearly for their expertise and would have to trust it now that she was in their care, far out to sea.

At long last, the skies cleared, the water calmed, and she saw the Island. She wept for its beauty, even at the great distance from which she saw it again for the first time since her birth. Others wept as well, knowing what the Island meant to so many.

When the ship docked and she took her first step on her ancestral land, the home she was stolen from and denied to her, her heart soared. Other women from the Island saw her, they saw through the scars, both on her body and soul, and recognized her as one of their own. They embraced her with love and compassion, welcomed her to the place she always belonged but had been stolen from.

These women asked her name. She gave them the one she had been forced to use in the harsh land. They told her that was not her name. Her name was Deidre and she had been missed. She relinquished the clothes she was forced to wear in favor of the Island garb that suited her much better. They helped her change her hair to match theirs. They taught her all she needed to know of living on the Island, her home, things she’d not been raised to know. They called her sister and rejoiced in her return.

She had missteps and made mistakes. Everyone on the Island was from there, including her, but most of them were raised on the Island in one fashion or another, and knew the ways from birth, while she had been stolen, taken far away, and forced to behave in ways that were not natural to her and were not typical on the Island.

Sometimes people would see her and know she’d been abducted, know she had been imprisoned, see her often awkward, childlike steps on the Island, her scars, her fear, her pain, and they were angry. Not angry that she was taken against her will and forced to live in the harsh land, forced to adopt their ways that were not her own, but angry because she dared to come back.

“Go back to the harsh land!”

“You do not belong here!”

“You do not know our ways.”

“You were not born here and can never be from here!”

“We do not want you!”

“The Island is only for Islanders.”

They would yell all these things at her and worse. Many would attack her with more than words. Demand she be imprisoned until she was willing to leave. Punished her for being different. Hated her for the scars she bore that they did not.

She cried often and began to hide again from these people. She would not leave the Island, could not go back to the harsh land, and death once again seemed like her only door.

Other women from the Island, who knew her name was Deidre, knew she always belong there and had cried when she was abducted, who only wished for their sister, their daughter, their friend to be returned someday, they came to her.

“These people who say you do not belong, are wrong,” they would tell her. “You are here because you were born here and will always have a place among us. Do not listen to the people who demand that you leave. They are few in number and weak in spirit. The harsh land and the people from it frighten them. Their weakness makes them lash out at you, because the harsh land scares them too much to direct their anger there. They do not understand that your name is Deidre and you are of us, but we do, and we are happy you are home.”

From then on, she wore her scars not with pride, but with compassion. She still did not want them, still wished she had never obtained them, but no longer hated herself for having them. She still made missteps, although fewer and fewer as the years and months passed. She learned to ignore the weak minority of people who did not understand. Whose hatred and small minds drove them to attack one of their own because of what was done to her and not by her.

One day, she saw a crying boy. She saw through his Islander hair, garb, and name, and knew he was from the harsh land. That he’d been brought as a baby to the Island and he did not understand why he was there or how to get home.

“Dry your tears, young man,” she told him. “There are paths to where you want to be. There is a way home. I know it because I have walked them. And you can too.”

The Raven Ladies on Hold

The Raven Ladies on Hold

The Raven Ladies series includes The Gunfighter and the Gear-head, The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges, The Gunfighter's Gambit, and book one of the Ravens from the Ashes prequel trilogy all based on a short story in the Astral Liaisons short story collection. As of now, I'm sad to say the series is on hiatus for the foreseeable future.

I love Fiona, Gieo, Veronica, Ramen, Tabitha and all the other characters of the post apocalyptic old west, which makes this decision exceedingly difficult. The fact that the series is by far my best selling series and The Gunfighter and the Gear-head is arguably the only hit book I've written only makes the hiatus more difficult, but I feel it is necessary, essential really.

When I began writing the books back in 2010, I didn't really like guns. My wife (then girlfriend) was from a gun-loving family, but even though my family has a history of military service and hers doesn't, I wasn't raised with or around guns the way she was. She took me shooting at a range in Brea before we moved across country to Florida to try to get me used to the idea of the gun her parents wanted us to have for protection. I hated it. I hated shooting, I hated the gun, I hated the idea of having it anywhere near me. Since she was largely indifferent and doing it only to make her parents happy, we skipped the gun and I'm glad every day that we don't have a gun in the house.

To write these books accurately, which I desperately cared about, I had to spend an enormous amount of time looking up information about guns on the internet, talking to my in-laws, and consulting with the members of the military in my family. I didn't like doing any of this either, but it was far enough from holding and shooting an actual gun that I made my peace with the process required to depict a gunfighter like Fiona even though I'm way more like Gieo who barely touches a gun in the first book and only reluctantly when she finally does.

I could list all the school shootings, mass shootings, and individual acts of police brutality that resulted in people being shot, but I couldn't point to an individual event that has broken me. It's a combined weight and I can't breathe under it, or, more specifically, I can't write under it. I can't look up gun information on the internet. I can't talk to my in-laws about guns. I can't ask questions of military members in my family. I can't write about bullet holes, gunshot victims, or the death and destruction firearms inflict. I've spent months trying to figure this out, trying to divine a way to continue the books without guns, and I couldn't come up with anything. Guns are essential to the series in a way I deeply regret.

This wasn't a publisher's call. No editor decided this for me. No public outcry forced my hand. I made the decision to discontinue the series on my own, knowing full well it'll probably hurt my brand, my sales, and disappoint my most loyal readers. All I can say is, I'm sorry. I wish I was stronger to overcome this crushed feeling, or a more devoted artist to persevere through my discomfort for the sake of the work, or a better writer to be able to write my way out of the mess I created. But I'm not.

I'm stepping away from the series not simply out of principle, although that's certainly a more noble reason and part of what motivated me, but mostly because I can't do it anymore. I can't see what guns are doing to children and innocent people all over our country every day and then sit down to write about how they're saving the fictional world I created and the characters in it.

I'll be focusing on other projects for the foreseeable future and I can only hope people enjoy them as much as the Raven Ladies. Again, I apologize to fans of the series for this unceremonious halting mid-story, and I hope you can understand my reasons.

Pintor Noche

Pintor Noche

Alternate History / Women Sleuths / Steampunk / Mystery

Available through Amazon - Barnes&Noble - Kobo

I started this book long before all the political strife in Catalonia. If you haven't followed that situation, the basic summary is a region in northeastern Spain called Catalonia, where Barcelona is, has declared independence from Spain and the Spanish government came down on them hard. So I dedicated my book about Barcelona to the people of Catalonia as a sign of solidarity with their struggle for self-determination even as the situation continues to evolve.

For whatever reason, lesbians love mystery novels. I have a few theories as to why, but they're kind of stupid and silly and probably not at all right, so I'll skip going into any of them. The fact remains: lesbians love mystery novels. Why haven't I written one before Pintor Noche if I'm aware of this fact? Because I don't actually read mystery novels. Yep, I am one of a tiny handful of lesbians roaming the literary landscape with no mystery novels in my reading diet. Then I read a few steampunk mystery novels and realized the genre could include the tech stuff I like and often have elements of romance. Romance is my jam.

Pintor Noche is the culmination of a ton of research and talking to painters, Spaniards, detectives, and engineers. What I came up with is probably less accurate than most alternate history writing, but perhaps more historical than many mysteries...or maybe that's just what I'm telling myself. Whatever was sacrificed in accuracy was done in the name of fun, adventure, and a good story. And I'll stick by that even under intense interrogation by a Spanish Inspector.

Synopsis:
Barcelona is burning!
The police are powerless to discover the identity of the Pintor Noche, the Night Painter, who has turned the summer of 1905 into an arsonist’s masterpiece. In desperation Inspector Esperanza seeks out Desdemona, the daughter of his legendary former mentor and predecessor Inspector Amina. Implementing the latest in forensic science, Desdemona teams up with the Inspector to hunt down the Pintor Noche before one of his fiery works of art consumes the entire city. With the help of her painter paramour, Santene, and a roguish French journalist, Yvette, Desdemona struggles to navigate the perilous worlds of the aristocracy, Sephardic gangsters, and secret societies to chase the ghost of a man who paints with fire.

Sample Chapter:

Chapter 1

Sun from the trio of skylights in the studio warmed Desdemona Amina’s skin, telling her it was getting on toward noon. The task of an artist’s model was to maintain stillness in the face of crushing boredom. It wasn’t Desdemona’s preferred work, but she could not deny Santene anything. She watched her lover paint, focusing closest on Santene’s caramel-colored eyes as they wandered from her form, to the palette, and finally to the canvas. Desdemona believed she could tell which part of her Santene was painting based on the micro reactions of her face. A blush to the cheek, faint smile, light sweat on her upper lip, slightly arched eyebrow, all hinted at the different areas of the painter’s focus and the affects Desdemona’s nude form was having on the artist. Santene’s messy, brown curls falling free of the loose bun she always placed her hair in while painting, the fullness of her pursed lips when she concentrated, and the voluminous cleavage created by her corseted dress all served to arouse similar reactions in the model as she watched the artist engrossed in her process. It was only a matter of time, probably even before the sun reached it zenith, when Santene would abandon her paints to join Desdemona on the litter of pillows and sheets. Morning light in the workshop was best for painting while afternoon sun in Barcelona was meant for drinking wine, napping, and making love.

The tension building between them even as the sun warmed the little studio to an uncomfortable level was shattered by a terse knock upon the peeling white door. Desdemona let out a sigh and flopped, face down, onto the blue, satin pillow she’d formerly reclined on. Santene set aside her palette and brush on a nearby stool and rose to answer the door. Before Santene could even fully open the door, the feminine, artistic energy of the room was shattered. Inspector Esperanza charged into the studio, remembering only manners enough to snatch the bowler hat from his head within a few steps. He was a tall, slender man, dressed smartly in a pale, gray suit with gleaming copper buttons. His black hair was mussed every so slightly and a dappling of sweat clung to his immaculately tended moustache indicating he’d been walking briskly in the morning heat.

“Señorita Amina, at last I’ve found you,” Inspector Esperanza said, averting his eyes quickly from her nude form.

“At last I am found,” Desdemona muttered. She slipped from the pillows to retrieve her robe. “I wasn’t aware I was sought.”

Inspector Esperanza shifted his focus from one of the many cracks in the plaster on the far wall to look instead at Santene’s work in progress. He cocked his head to one side and then the other in much the same way a chicken might study a particularly puzzling kernel of corn.

“Why is there so much purple to the front edge of her skin?” Inspector Esperanza asked.

“It is an undertone in the process of drying,” Santene explained. “Skin has many shades to it that are built in layers. Señorita Amina has lovely violet hints to her skin in the right light.”

“She looks brown to me,” Inspector Esperanza said, “a pleasant shade of brown to be sure, but brown nevertheless.”

“Certainly you didn’t come all this way to discuss color layering in skin and paint,” Desdemona said, eager to be rid of the Inspector.

“In a manner of speaking, I did,” the Inspector said. “There was a fire last night that I believe was the most recent arson committed by the Pintor Noche. The night’s victims reside in the Moro district…” The Inspector worried the rim of his hat in his hands, trying to avoid the indelicacy of what came next.

“…and they won’t talk to you,” Desdemona surmised.

“Only enough to tell me the quickest way out of their district,” the Inspector said, forcing a chuckle. “Jests aside, I can pay you for your time. I don’t know how lucrative modeling for painters is…”

“You’re supposed to be paying me?” Desdemona asked of Santene with a flirty smirk.

“Only if I plan to sell the work, but I was going to hang this particular painting in my bedroom,” Santene said, “for personal use, you understand.”

“I believe I know the wall you mean.” Desdemona returned her attention to the Inspector, who had grown a few shades redder from the coquettish banter passing between the two women. He was a good Catholic man with a thunderous boring streak who eschewed the houses of burlesque and drinking of absinthe. Desdemona suspected she could send him into an apoplectic fit if she kissed Santene in his presence. Entertaining though that might be, she decided it also might spoil her chance at gainful employment. “Very well, Inspector, I’ll look into the matter.”

“Excellent, here is the address.” The Inspector produced a slip of paper from the front pocket of his suit vest and handed it to her. “I shall meet you at the crime scene within the hour if you are able.”

Desdemona took the paper, scanned the address, and glumly deduced she would not have time to enjoy any carnal delights with Santene if she expected to meet the Inspector’s timeframe. “Barely enough time to lace a boot,” she murmured, “but I’ll manage.”

The Inspector bowed to each of them in turn and then hurriedly exited the studio. Immediately upon his departure, Desdemona let her robe drop and began searching amid the painting supplies, canvases, and set props for her clothing. She could feel Santene’s eyes upon her the entire time, which only served to make the room feel warmer and her imminent departure more loathsome.

“I suppose I’ll head down to the docks to sketch sea birds if you’re going to be occupied this afternoon,” Santene grumbled.

“If you buy clams and wine, I can cook them for you,” Desdemona said.

“If you make me dinner, you will have to stay the night,” Santene countered.

“If I stay the night, you will have to provide breakfast in the morning.”

“Your terms are acceptable Señorita Amina.” Santene stood from her painting stool, crossed to Desdemona, and gave her a light kiss on the shoulder before collecting her sketching implements. “Until this evening.”

Desdemona dressed quickly in her yellow, corseted dress, at least as quickly as the cumbersome garment would allow, and drew up her hair into a bun to hold it beneath the matching, wide-brimmed hat. In bohemian districts she could get away with more sensible attire, but she had to cross several posh streets to get to Santene’s studio, and her skin color was already a source of sideways glances depending on the hues of each neighborhood.

She stepped from the subdued studio into the bustle and life of the city. The smell of roasting lamb floated on the air amid the dust of the ancient streets. She turned down the handle on the side of her Penny-Farthing bicycle’s rear wheel. The motor was of her own design, working in much the same way as a pocket watch to spin the small, rear wheel of the bicycle rather than forcing her to peddle the much larger front wheel. It worked marvelously well around the flatter parts of the city, especially when she was wearing a dress that required her to ride sidesaddle. With the mechanism wound, she rolled the bike forward enough to get it going, stepped onto the peg along the back frame, and swung herself up into the saddle atop the four foot tall front wheel. She flicked the drive release on the moustache handlebars and set off at a clicking, jaunty pace over the cobblestone streets. Certainly she could have purchased one of the new Rover Safety Bicycles that had the lowered frame for ladies to still peddle while wearing a dress, but she rather enjoyed the view from the top of her Penny-Farthing and the nearly unstoppable gait provided by the large front wheel.

The bike ticked like a Swiss pocket watch through the city, over the bridges, across the dusty bits of road in the unpaved sections, and around the busy corner at the La Pedrera. The rich scent of pipe and cigar smoke sat heavy atop French perfumes and colognes amid the gentlemen and women walking leisurely down the thoroughfare. The vibe and pace of Barcelona was slow and sumptuous in comparison to Paris or Berlin, but no less taken with the bohemian revolutions in art, literature, and intellectualism. A strange bit of nationalism for her city arose in Desdemona during the ride, and she found herself a little cross that someone was burning down parts of it. By the time she arrived in the Moorish district she’d come to the conclusion she would locate the vandal regardless of what the constabulary might pay her.

The Moors of Spain, especially on the Mediterranean coast, were a diverse lot inside of the larger Islamic community, although the rest of Spain saw them as one darkened group with inconsequentially different shades. Desdemona was of Moroccan descent, mixing Arab blood with African for a thousand years before her ancestors came to Spain where the blending continued until she only thought of herself as Spanish and her Muslim roots were completely lost to the modernizing influences of Europe. In the neighborhoods set aside for the Moors, who had once conquered and ruled the entirety of the Iberian peninsula, there were proper Arabs, a few Turks, countless Libyans, and Africans from beneath the Sahara—all of which had dealings with Moroccans and all of which would see her as a go-between for the Muslims and the Catholics even though she wasn’t particularly fond of either group despite being an amalgamation of both.

She could smell the lingering smoke of the doused fire long before she saw the burned timbers of the scorched section of the district. Inspector Esperanza was already at the scene with his carriage waiting across the litter-strewn street from the burned out husks of buildings that constituted the scene of the crime. The owners of the five burned buildings were already gathered around the Inspector to voice their complaints while refusing to answer any of his questions. As luck would have it, they were also Moroccan Moors.

Desdemona goosed the spoon brake on her bike to slow it and slid off the back. She tapped her foot on the motor’s release along the way and grabbed the frame of the bike to walk it to a stop so she might lean it against the side of the Inspector’s carriage. She may as well have arrived with a platoon of soldiers, waving the Spanish flag above her head for the immense relief her entrance instilled in Inspector Esperanza.

“Excellent, Señorita Amina, if you’d be so kind,” the Inspector stepped boldly behind her, armed with his little notepad and scrap of a pencil to record what information she might draw from the increasingly agitated Moros.

“Which shop did the fire originate in?” Desdemona asked.

A haberdasher, with his sleeves rolled up and suspenders bedecked in sewing pins stepped forward. “That would be mine,” he said, curtly nodding to her with his head of perfectly shellacked black hair.

“And do you have any reason to believe you were the target of the arson for malicious purposes?” Desdemona asked. “Any enemies? Recent threats made against you? Disgruntled former employees? Unsatisfied customers? Anxious lovers or an enraged wife?”

The other men chuckled behind the haberdasher’s back. He proudly titled his head back and grunted his disdain at the question. “I am a tailor of fine suits and coats for gentlemen of discerning taste but modest means. I have always worked alone, I am well-liked by my customers, respected by my competitors, and live a celibate life with my extremely devout wife.”

She was all too familiar with the haberdasher’s type since his description fit nicely many of the married couples she’d known of both Muslim and Catholic persuasions. The haberdasher’s shop may have been where the fire started, but she did not believe he was the true target for the flames. Response times for Spanish fire departments were slow and their capabilities upon arrival were haphazard; a fire in one shop would almost certainly consume several other surrounding structures before the blaze could be contained and a clever, increasingly experienced arsonist likely knew these things all too well.

She took similar statements of incredulity from a pawn broker, an art dealer, a type-setter, and an unfortunate man whose house happen to partially burn down and was then knocked completely over by the firemen attempting to stop the flames from spreading. If there was a motive to be found in the bunch, it was known only to the Pintor Noche.

“Splendid work, I suppose,” Inspector Esperanza said when Desdemona was done ascertaining that the victims were as they appeared: humdrum citizenry with unfortunate luck. “You’ve uncovered a witness description of a man in a top hat with a cane fleeing the scene at a brisk walk. This would describe every man of even moderate means within the whole of Europe and much of America.”

“Perhaps, but not many within the Moro neighborhood,” Desdemona said.

“So our suspect is Blanco,” Inspector Esperanza said. “We already believed this.”

“Of the other fires, how many struck similar businesses to these?” Desdemona asked, ignoring the Inspector’s petulance for the moment.

“Almost all of them have involved a haberdasher. Perhaps the Pintor Noche detests finely attired gentlemen or he had an unsatisfactory suit alteration that drove him to revenge,” the Inspector offered.

“How many other suit-makers are there in Barcelona?” Desdemona wondered.

“Not counting the people who do a bit of sewing and alterations out of their homes, perhaps a couple dozen or more,” the Inspector said. “We are a fashionable city, after all.”

At the very least, it seemed farfetched to her that the arsonist was targeting tailors over a matter of billing or style. No doubt the records of customers at each establishment were consumed in the flames, paperwork being entirely flammable and all. Still, there had to be more to the fire-bug’s elusiveness than simply choosing a plentiful target in a seemingly random pattern.

“I will need the addresses of all the other fires and a street map current enough to list the businesses that stood near the fires in the last year or so,” she said.

“I’ve looked over all these materials and more already,” the Inspector said, “besides, you were hired to take statements at this location and you’ve done so. The constabulary has things well in hand.”

“If the constabulary did indeed have a satisfactorily progressing investigation, I imagine the Moro district fire would have been largely ignored,” Desdemona said. “Instead you hired an outside agent to take statements in hopes of finding a lead regardless of the disinterest in the particular victims of the latest vandalism. No, no, no Señor Esperanza, you do not have things well in hand.”

The collected victims of the arson, along with several other curious denizens of the neighborhood who had congregated around the investigation to eavesdrop on a scrap of news or gossip, broke into subdued, yet sincere, clapping for Señorita Amina’s cutting oration. Inspector Esperanza harrumphed, waggled his moustache, and straightened his bowler from the fashionable tilt he’d formerly worn it in to a sterner slant. The posturing of his authority evaporated almost as quickly as he’d bedecked himself in it. She was right and he knew it.

“Your contract will be with me, Señorita Amina, and not the constabulary.” He smoothed his moustache with two fingers before producing a pad of paper from the breast pocket of his suit. “You are an outside consultant only, not a deputized or temporarily sanctioned agent of the city. This appointment most certainly does not allow you to carry a firearm or represent yourself as a figure of authority to any Blanco citizens.”

“And would they believe me even if I did,” Desdemona said.

“Let us hope not.” The Inspector scribbled out a contract on his pad of paper, signed it tersely, and handed it to Desdemona. Within moments he was back in his carriage, banging on the outside of the door with the flat of his palm to indicate to the driver he was ready to depart. “I will have the pertinent materials brought to your apartment as soon as they are ready for transport,” the Inspector said as a parting comment.

Desdemona walked the crime scene for another hour after the Inspector departed. She spoke at length with the witnesses she believed might reveal more after the Blanco authority was gone. They did reveal more, if only in placing blame on the police and the dominant culture as a whole for cultivating an arsonist they seemed incapable of capturing. Eventually, after she began wholly ignoring their gripes, the crowd dispersed to return to whatever business was left to them after the fire. She sketched the paths she believed the fire followed based on concentration of ash. Santene would have done a far more artistic job of rendering the scene, although aesthetics were not required for accuracy and she didn’t feel like bringing her Blanca paramour to the Moro district just yet, especially not when it was so justifiably riled by nocturnal arson.

When she’d finally walked and sketched the entirety of the crime scene, successfully staining the bottom hem of her skirt and her boots black in the process, she deduced that the fire appeared to follow prescribed paths through the buildings. Whether or not this was a product of fire’s natural proclivities or something the arsonist planned, she could not say. She purchased from a nearby shop a number of small glass jars and then collected ash samples from multiple locations within the scene to compare at a later date. Research and testing would be required to learn the true nature of fire; an arsonist knew the flame like a lover and so she would need to follow suit to find him.

Even a clever man would have to abide by the laws of nature that dictated fire’s behavior—in that, she believed she could find a pattern and hopefully a clue as to his motive.

How Sex Isn't the Only Form of Infidelity in Relationships These Days (the funny version)

How Sex Isn't the Only Form of Infidelity in Relationships These Days 

(the funny version)

Another blog elsewhere has a post with nearly the same title talking about time infidelity being a problem in modern culture, which is true, but it wasn't as tongue in cheek as it might have been and time infidelity isn't the only kind beyond sexual facing couples in the information age.

Breaking News - Your significant other, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, husband, accomplice in the crime called life finds out that they are the newly appointed Czar of Awesome and the first person they call...better fucking be you! Their mom, their bestie, their dog, their third grade teacher can fall into whatever order as long as they all come after YOU. None of those other people will have nearly the investment in the success or failure of whatever the big news is. Maybe the second call too, several seconds later, to share the news again and see if it still thrills.

Have you seen...? - It's the Game of Thrones song, it's time for the Game of Thrones show...those are the words I made up to go with the Game of Thrones opening sequence. Go ahead, sing them along, they fit pretty well. You're at home while your significant other is away being the Czar of Awesome, and you've DVRed Game of Thrones or some equally significant piece of pop culture. Sure you always watch it together and then talk about it, drink wine maybe, comment on how great it would be to own dragons until they ate a kid or something. They'd want you to watch it without them, right? WRONG! You've just cheated on your spouse with your DVR. When you realize this, you can either pretend like you didn't watch it and watch it again with them, but they'll see the "restart from beginning" or "resume playing" option since you know you didn't watch all the credits. Then the red wedding happens and you don't blink--they know you cheated because what sort of psycho doesn't drop a tear at that. Or you'll be on Google, desperately asking "how do I make my DVR look like I didn't watch something?" Go ahead, Google it now, cheater, it won't help you. Or you go full nuclear option, by accident or intentionally, and delete the episode and pretend like it didn't record. But your DVR knows what you did.

Binged and Splurged - Netflix, HBO Go, Showtime on Demand, Hulu, Amazon TV, whatever Starz is doing these days all allow you to race through a show like you've got nothing to do and a comfy couch, which is exactly your situation so the show you promised to watch together, you watched on Sunday, all of it, three season, by yourself...woops. Netflix is a sexy mistress, just like your DVR, and she knows you're going to watch the next episode even if you're not sure yet. She'll even count it down: next episode starts in 19, 18, 17, you naughty thing you. Don't Trust the B and Better Off Ted didn't last long for me, but I came clean, I swear! ...after I was almost done with season 2...of both. Not my fault, they were canceled too soon. If there were more seasons...I probably would have binged those too. Or, again, you can try to lie, watch and pretend like you don't know what's going to happen. Your significant other doesn't know the difference between your real laugh and a fake laugh, right? Guess you'll find out after your Neflix adultery.

Do we have any more...? - What are the rules for the last delicious whatever in the kitchen when it comes to you and your significant other? My wife and I do a dance, an avoi-dance if you will, where we both try to out polite each other in insisting the other person takes the last Oreo or shandy or whatever incredible thing we only have one left of even though we secretly both want to swipe it and run away laughing at the amazinginess we will enjoy all by ourselves. But what if your significant other isn't looking and doesn't know there's only one left? What if you just pop it in your mouth, turn quickly and walk to a private corner of the house to chew, savor, and make mmmmmmm noises? Surely that's not cheating, right? You wouldn't cheat with food, would you? Even though food is sexy sometimes, tasty, doesn't judge, and...of course you'd cheat with food! Food is fucking amazing! You'd cheat with food, walk back into the room with Oreo crumbs still in your teeth and tell your partner, "No, I think you finished those last night."

Can't even tell...from behind.

Nooooo...you're good - But she's not good, is she? She's got kale in her teeth and that shirt is horrible and really, crocs? Is she going to work in a kitchen later? But you're already late and it'd be awkward, and you just want to get going already. Noooooo...you're good, let's go. We trust our partners to have our backs when it comes to not looking like dumb asses. Your significant other can brush stuff off your face without being socially unacceptable about it (try it with strangers, it isn't appreciated). And they can also gently remind you harem pants and a cowl neck sweater wasn't even that good of an idea when it was a thing other people were doing. But if you don't tell them, if you let them walk out into the world of judging eyes and acute fashion senses, you leave them open to typically silent ridicule and disgust from people who aren't in a position to tell them they still have the better part of a salad flapping between their incisors.

Under the bus you go - There are a lot of ways you can throw your partner under the bus. Last Halloween you were going to go as Batman and Robin. Weird. Okay, but whatever. She went along with it. Then you change your mind and show up to the party dressed as a classy spy, and she's there dressed as boy wonder, which wasn't going to make a whole lot of sense in the first place, but makes NO sense without Batman. Glad she looks good in those short shorts.

You realized:  Oh, yeah, Batman has muscles and I don't

Or you don't want to go to Janice's thing on Saturday. It's going to be boring and Todd will be there. Fucking Todd with his jokes about digital cameras that nobody gets. So your partner has cramps. Those mega cramps from the worst day and heavy flow. Or she's got a thing, and you'd totally like to bail on her boring thing, but you're in a relationship. What can you do but follow your significant other to whatever lame-o thing she's got on Saturday. Sorry, Janice, you know how it is with those art/music/funeral/etc things.

Then you share, or over share maybe, an embarrassing moment. But not YOUR embarrassing moment, that'd suck. You share HER embarrassing moment. You were kayaking on vacation in Hawaii, she started getting sea sick, and you turn around just in time to see her feed the fishes with that morning's breakfast. People on the beach gasp, a few kids sprint out of the water, and since it was kind of a small resort, she's known as the chunk blowing kayaker for the rest of the vacation by everyone you see. It was funny when you two were reminiscing about it last night while looking through pictures, just the two of you, so why not share the story at the art/music/funeral/etc? Because your significant other doesn't belong under a bus, that's why.

At the heart of infidelity is a breach of trust. Trust in a modern relationship covers a lot of ground. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out a way to hide the fact that I accidentally (on purpose) lost my wife's horrible old running shoes in the neighbor's garbage can.

Crushing It

Damn right, Amy

I had a post in mind for this month. It was going to start out all cutesy about how we won on marriage equality and now we can all relax, and then I was going to launch into a rallying cry to get back on the legislative firing line and push for equal employment protection for LGBTQ+ across all 50 states...and then the EEOC did that already. Thanks for sucking the wind out of my sales Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's fine. I'll shake it off. We've got other stuff to work on. Let me look down the increasingly checked off list for equal rights...

We're not done, but we're quickly coming to the end of the equality that can be accomplished through the legal and legislative processes. As any other minority group can tell you, that's not nearly the end of it in this country--see the disrespect for America's first black President for notes on how the cultural side can lag behind the legal. The cultural discriminatory bullshit facing the LGBTQ+ community is far from settled, even though Caitlyn Jenner won an ESPY, which is a cool step in the right direction. Big congratulations to her.

Marriage equality across all 50 states in one step is amazing. No longer do we have to worry if a slightly higher court than the last one will take the right away in your state (or the voters in some cases), or if you get married in one state you might not be married in the state you actually live, and what if you travel to another state...how married are you there? Better look that up before you book the flight. By the way, all of these were actual concerns for Nikki and I because of when we lived in California, how long we've lived in Florida, and the various places around the country we've traveled as of late. It just didn't feel like marriage before. We couldn't get married in California when we were in college because we missed the window. A few years after that we could in California, but we'd moved to Florida by then, and Florida wasn't going to uphold a California marriage unless it fit Florida's version of one man and one woman. Then Florida said we could get married, but hold on, our very conservative governor and state attorney general were fighting that ruling tooth and nail, so if we did get married, who knows if it even would have stayed legal. But that's not the worst of it because any state we have to drive through to get out of Florida wouldn't recognize the marriage, and that was true for about two thousand miles in any direction--hope there's no car accidents along the way that would require hospital visitation rights because you're not going to have those in Alabama!

Now that it's real, can't be taken away, and isn't dependent on what state you're in or driving through, Nikki and I have been married, which is good, because we we're bordering on common law at this point anyway. Based on certain family complications and some of our personal history, we did it in our own way, on our own time table, and we did it entirely for us--so don't expect a Kardashian-esque E! special on our big day. Then we went on a cruise and it all felt suddenly very real.

I tried to talk her into the two Corpse Brides topper, but she wasn't going for it.

When we got back from the cruise, we still had to worry about when and where she wore her wedding ring, who we told, and how much exposure she personally had since she still has a job with a boss who didn't seem all that happy about the marriage equality ruling.

Why should that matter? Well, up until Wednesday, it would have been legal for Nikki's boss to see the wedding ring, ask her husband's name (my wife's name is Cassandra, thank you very much), ah, well, you're fired, ya big lesbo! And that would have been completely legal in Florida. Being a freelance writer, and one that writes almost exclusively for lesbian publications, that was never a concern for me--I'm pretty sure all my editors and publishers know I'm super-duper, rainbows flying out my eyes and ears kind of gay, and it doesn't bother them. Nikki didn't have that luxury. No wedding photos on her desk, no conversations about her honeymoon at the workplace, just silence, lots and lots of silence because we live in a state where firing someone for being gay is completely legal. At least, it was. Then Wednesday happened and the EEOC didn't just say LGBTQ+ had federal protections, we'd ALWAYS had them. So now, if Nikki's boss fires her for having an adorable wife instead of a strapping husband, we can literally make a federal fucking case of it.

Let's just go ahead and bring those 29 states into the modern era.

I can hear what you're saying, even through the internet and miles of distance, but hold onto your epic happy dances for the moment, because we're not done yet. Culturally, who knows how long it'll take us to reach some semblance of equality and respect. Ask any black, Hispanic, Asian, female, or other cultural minority of any kind how long it took them to reach equal cultural relevance and they'll tell you, "Not sure, but we'll let you know if it ever happens for us." What can we do to keep moving that forward? Pretty much what we've been doing. Support LGBTQ+ cultural contributions:  TV shows, movies, books, comics, magazines, etc. to keep the voices relevant and contributing. Vote for allies at all levels of government. Come out. Speak up. Be heard.

Or for our generation, continue to fight!

What's left legally, though? Not a whole lot, but what's left is important. The next big fight, the next hurdle to true equality that needs to take place, the next victory we have to win is getting rid of the adoption discrimination laws. You can check out this website for the specifics on which states ban same sex couples from adopting. Suffice it to say, the map looks very similar to the maps of other LGBTQ+ discrimination laws for marriage, hate crimes, and employment protections. Specifically Michigan very recently added new discrimination laws to ban LGBTQ+ couples from adopting or fostering.

Many lesbian couples have the option to have biological children fairly easily--all we need is a male friend with functional sperm and a willingness to sign a contract even though there were hitches for Bette and Tina and the Fosters. Or we can just google "nearest sperm bank" if we don't feel like having that awkward conversation with a close friend. Not all women have that kind of fertility, though, and it gets significantly more difficult and expensive for our gay brothers in this fight who often have to come up with eggs and surrogates and what not (enough to buy a new house kind of expensive sometimes). More to the point, there are plenty of people in the LGBTQ+ community who could have biological children but they're more interested in providing good homes and loving parents to children who need them and would rather adopt or foster children because they're fantastically giving people.

Full disclosure, I have no idea if this is how donating sperm actually works, but it seems wrong.

Next fight up on the block--equal protections for adoption and foster care for LGBTQ+ individuals and couples. You can learn more about what can be done from Human Rights Campaign and what states need the most work. I caught flack for this on my last blog, and to be honest, I don't give a tenpenny fuck if I insulted then or continue to insult now conservatives and Republicans within our community or at large. We need to vote in allies at all levels of government and those allies are almost always going to be from liberal parties like Democratic or Green. Legislatures make laws at the state levels and governors sign them, so it's pretty obvious why the states that discriminate are the states run by Republicans. Vote against them, tell them your rights and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community are a top voting issue for you, and more of them will back away from the topic or switch sides on the issue entirely. It has happened and we can continue to make it happen but only if we apply pressure.

There are children that need homes, LGBTQ+ people wanting to adopt, and the only thing standing between them in many cases are bigots in state houses who think their bigoted base is more important than equality. The best way to prove them wrong is to vote them out.

Stand up and continue to fight!

Ravens From the Ashes

Ravens From the Ashes

From the Ashes Trilogy: Book 1

I love thinking about the apocalypse. Zombies, nuclear war, alien invasions, global warming, whatever, it's all fun to think about. But, like most people who like thinking about the apocalypse, I like it only as a concept. Let's face it, I'd be totally fucked if society really did fall. I'm an indoor kitty cat who doesn't even like camping. Still, it's fun to think about from the social standpoint of what might happen to all sorts of people if society's rules were suddenly gone and challenges that nobody has ever faced before popped up...even if my fate would be to immediately get eaten by zombies because I suck at climbing trees. So it should come as no surprise that I write a lot of post-apocalyptic books, but this is my first book outlining the fall of humanity.

This book was supposed to be a prequel to the Ravens Ladies series, and then I decided it was going to be a prequel trilogy...prilogy...triquel...pretriquelogy...I'm really close to making up a word for that. This caused problems, none of which are particularly important now, but it delayed the release of the book by about a year, which suuuuuuucked. The result, however, is the first book I've actually had complete creative control over. A first for me. So if you're wanting to see exactly what my vision of a paperback is, you should spring for the hard copy since it's exactly what I wanted in a book.

I've also been toying with the idea of books with soundtracks. Movies get them, TV shows get them, and holidays get them, so why not books? Nikki and I sat down while we were working on proof copies (sorry, dear readers, but the love of my life does get to read all my books way before anyone else) and came up with a soundtrack for Ravens From the Ashes. If you want to listen to the music we decided should be the backdrop for the book, check it out on Spotify: Ravens From the Ashes Soundtrack. If you've got music you think would work for the book and would like to add to it, feel free to post your personalized soundtracks for this (or any of my books if you want to) in the comments section. Also consider buying songs/albums/merch or go to a concert for any of the musicians on the soundtrack--I only picked songs I've personally paid for and several musicians I've gone to concerts to see.

Here it is, lovely readers, the first book of the origin story trilogy for Fiona Bishop aka the Gunfighter, Veronica Vegas aka the White Queen, and the Raven Ladies. It's available in all formats through the links below, and heck, I'll throw in the first chapter right now to get you started.

Kindle   --   Nook   --   Kobo   --  Paperback

 

ONE

 

Drip, drip, drip, drip. Fiona awoke to the familiar sound of the coffeepot finishing its run. Her head felt like it was full of wet cement when she dragged it from her pillow. Were the coffeepot not automated, she doubted it would ever make coffee before noon. She didn’t actually know if either assumption was true for that morning. Daylight streamed in through the Venetian blinds on her bedroom window that overlooked the top of King Street. Her cell phone wasn’t on the nightstand so telling time wasn’t an option until she went into the kitchen to look at the microwave.

She stumbled from bed, found a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt among the scattering of clothes on the floor, and wandered out the open bedroom door into the rest of her West Hollywood condo. The coffeepot had filled the living room, kitchen, and dining room with the lovely scent of freshly brewed coffee. Fiona glanced at the sleeping form on her couch on her way past.

“Sharon, get the fuck off my couch and out of my apartment,” Fiona snarled at her mother on the way past. The bleached blond, comatose figure on the couch barely stirred at the order barked at her. Fiona nearly stumbled over a pair of daringly high wedge heels on her way into the kitchen. “And pick up your hooker shoes before I break my neck.”

A glance at the microwave mounted above the never-used stove told her that she’d awoken at 10:32 AM. Not bad considering her night ended on the barely light side of dawn. She stood in front of the coffeepot a moment before she remembered what she was doing. A white mug sat next to the white appliance. Most of the things in Fiona’s apartment were white, not for any vision of décor, but because she didn’t like trying to figure out complimentary colors and nothing in her apartment was ever used enough to show dirt even on white surfaces. She poured coffee into the mug and considered its existence. Her mother clearly hadn’t made the coffee, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have set out a mug for her daughter.

The coffee mixed poorly with the tequila film coating the inside of Fiona’s mouth left over from the night before. She spit the coffee into the sink and dipped her head under the tap to run the faucet over her mouth to suck in a few mouthfuls. She swished the water around and spit it into the sink before returning to her coffee.

“Don’t drink from the tap like some stupid animal,” her mother croaked from the couch. “There’s bottled water in the fridge. Besides, there are chemicals in tap water.”

It wasn’t even funny how many chemicals Sharon willingly ingested in the form of drugs, paid to have pumped into her face by plastic surgeons, and poured over her head to turn her red hair platinum blond, but her daughter was supposed to un-ironically beware tap water chemicals. “I told you to take your hooker shoes and get out.”

Fiona’s mother rose from the couch like a herky-jerky zombie. She glanced at the shoes mentioned as she staggered toward the hallway and the bathroom door. “Is that any way to talk to your mother?” she said. “And those aren’t mine.”

“You were telling people you were my sister last night.” Fiona sipped her coffee, wrapping both hands around the mug to absorb the warmth along with the caffeine. She took a harder look at the shoes. Upon closer inspection, they were real Jimmy Choos, which were well out of her mother’s price range or fashion savvy.

“There’s someone taking a shower,” her mother said on the way back through toward Fiona’s master bedroom and the other bathroom.

“I told you to get out,” Fiona said.

The shoes must belong to whoever was in the bathroom, the same someone who made the coffee and set out the mug. That made more sense than the automated timer making the coffee. Fiona rarely remembered to set up the pot the night before—automatic didn’t mean the coffeepot would fill itself with a fresh filter, coffee grounds, and water. Fiona hated to admit, even to herself, that she’d thought that’s what automatic meant when she bought it.

“You need to be in Las Vegas by 7 PM,” her mother said. “Do you want me to drive you? We could have a girl’s weekend.”

“You mean you can snort all my coke and dance with frat boys while I work? Fuck off, Sharon.”

“You can’t drive anymore. How else are you going to get there?”

“Stripper flight out of Burbank.” Supremely sought-after strippers and porn stars or sometimes struggling models and actresses, would fly from Burbank airport to Vegas for the weekend on cheap flights to dance in the high-end strip clubs of Las Vegas, earning five figures in two nights. Fiona never did the dancing part, but she’d taken the flights before because they were filled with beautiful women who smelled heavenly and appreciated the professional courtesy of not pestering one another. After Fiona stabbed a paparazzi guy in the mouth with a pen knife outside LAX a couple years ago, she wasn’t eager to use the L.A. hub again and she really didn’t want anyone recognizing her.

“How are you going to get to the airport?”

“Whoever is in the shower can give me a ride.”

“Maybe it’s a him in the shower and he was my date.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Not likely. My television is still here instead of at an Echo Park pawnshop sold for meth money and those are women’s shoes on the floor. You’re not coming to Vegas with me.”

“Fine, can I at least have the Camaro since you can’t drive it?”

“Chaos tic.” Fiona looked down meaningfully to the steaming cup of coffee in her hands.

“Whatever, I’m gone.” Fiona’s mother comported herself and walked out of the condo with all the grace and dignity that a hung-over hanger-on could muster.

Fiona returned to sipping her coffee. She hadn’t really had a chaos tic that demanded she throw the hot coffee in her mother’s face, but she’d indulged so many of her psychotic tendencies lately that it was a potent threat even as a lie. Only a handful of people even knew of Fiona’s particular mental affliction that required her to do most of the insane things that popped into her head; thankfully, her mother didn’t know her well enough to know when she was bluffing.

A dainty figure wrapped in a towel emerged from the hallway. Her dark brown, shoulder length hair was still wet from the shower and her face had the attractive, freshly scrubbed glow that Fiona adored. Fiona knew the woman, although she couldn’t remember how they’d met or what her name was.

“What’s a chaos tic?” the woman asked with a twinkle in her dark brown eyes.

“You know those weird urges you get in everyday situations where you feel like doing something socially unacceptable like spitting in someone’s face for no reason, or shoving a stranger off a curb, or whatever?”

“Yeah, everyone gets those.”

“I call them chaos tics,” Fiona said, “and my mother knows I either can’t or won’t ignore them.”

“Good term for something I didn’t know had a name.” The woman kicked her shoes out of the high traffic area between the bedroom and the kitchen. She leaned against the divider wall alongside the kitchen island. “How’s the coffee?”

“Good, thank you.” Fiona liked that the woman had kicked her own thousand dollar shoes as if they were five dollar flip-flops just because Fiona wanted them out of her way. Pliable was good, but being instinctively aware that Fiona’s feelings were far more important than shoes of any price range was great. It kept her calm when people picked up on her desires, however small, without her having to ask for something, and calm kept her from lashing out.

“The shower is all yours if you want.”

“Thanks, I could use one.”

“You have no idea who I am, do you?”

“I want to say Kelly,” Fiona said.

“Right so far. I work for you.”

“As an…accountant?”

“Lawyer.”

“My lawyer is a large, hairy Jewish gentleman with unpleasant breath and a weightlifter’s body,” Fiona said.

“That’s your criminal lawyer. I’m an entertainment industry lawyer.”

“Oh, right, the fucking TV show thing.”

“You’ll be the next host of ‘Model Behavior’ by the end of the month if I have anything to say about it,” Kelly said.

Normally inking a reality television show contract wouldn’t require a lawyer since she already had an entertainment industry agent, but Fiona had some legal baggage that necessitated a specialist, chiefly because of the mouth-stabbing incident at LAX and the suspended drivers license from two DUIs. Truthfully, Fiona didn’t even want the show—playing the mentor figure to a gaggle of bitchy wannabe models sounded like a shit job to her. They drove the metaphorical dump truck full of money into her living room, and she got over her trepidation.

“Did we sleep together?” Fiona asked.

“You fell asleep while I was going down on you.” Kelly cracked a smile that made Fiona flinch inwardly.

“I swear that’s not my best move.”

“I would hope not,” Kelly said. “Did you need me to give you a ride to the airport?”

“I’m driving to Vegas. I just didn’t want Sharon knowing.”

Kelly gave her a suspicious look. “I thought your license was suspended.”

Fiona leaned forward against the countertop between them. She smiled sweetly, letting a few strands of her red hair fall across her face. A little fidgeting with the handle of her coffee mug gave off the sense of nervousness she didn’t really feel. When she glanced up from the demure tilt of her head, she saw in Kelly’s eyes that her coy routine had done its work.

“You could come with me, if you want,” Fiona said shyly. “Give me a chance to make up for last night.”

“You’re not planning on hooking up a bunch when you’re in Vegas?” Kelly asked. A light touch of pink warmed the curves of her cheeks and the top of her neck.

“I am,” Fiona said, letting a tiny pause pass, “with you.”

“I suppose I can take a weekend off,” Kelly said.

“We can swing by your place on the way out of town to pick up your slinkiest party dress and skimpiest bikini,” Fiona said with a smile.

♠ ♣ ♥ ♦

After a quick stop off at Kelly’s Culver City apartment, they were on their way down the 10 heading east toward Vegas. Fiona’s lead foot didn’t know or care about suspended licenses or speed limits. She’d purchased the highest of high-end Camaros for the express purpose of feeling every single horse the car had under the hood whenever she so much as twitched a toe against the accelerator.

“Silver and black Camaro ZL1,” Kelly said. “Something like 580 horsepower?”

“Something like that,” Fiona said, not really knowing the exact numbers. Long Beach motor-head butches certainly seemed to like her ride whenever Fiona ventured down that way for an edgier date than she could get in West Hollywood. She hadn’t pegged Kelly as the type to know more about her car than her, although it was definitely a point in the lawyer’s favor. Fiona was a sucker for fast cars and fast women who knew cars.

“Am I going to get to drive it?” Kelly asked.

Fiona downshifted to fourth, slammed the gas pedal, and shot around a slow-moving BMW. The car roared and jumped forward under her expert direction. Fiona liked to think her car wanted to go fast as much as she did. The Camaro understood her self-destructive streak because it had one too. They were both built to someday end up wrapped around a telephone pole—it was in their blood and motor oil. Burnouts that fell short of anything worthwhile in life like Sharon and sweet girls with people-pleasing streaks like Kelly couldn’t understand the need to ride the edge of imminent destruction.

“Maybe,” Fiona said, reconsidering her estimation of Kelly. Anyone who would go to Vegas with her for a weekend must have some nihilistic tendencies.

They merged onto the 15 toward Barstow with the early afternoon sun beating down on the worn California highway. Kelly kept herself busy messing with the air conditioning on her side, answering emails on her Blackberry, and searching through Fiona’s iPod for tolerable music. Fiona couldn’t tell if her lawyer was nervous or just self-contained.

“So what exactly are you doing in Vegas?” Kelly finally asked when she’d run out of busy work.

“There’s a runway thing and a photo shoot,” Fiona said. “I usually just skim the emails enough to know where and when something is happening. Details aren’t my thing. It doesn’t matter since they usually let me know what’s going on when I get there.”

“Is your agent okay with that attitude?”

Fiona shrugged. “Don’t know; don’t care.”

“I saw that you packed something of a treasure trove of pills and other chemical refreshments,” Kelly said. “Are you really going to go through it all in one weekend?”

Fiona glanced over, hoping to judge Kelly’s intentions, but ended up fixating on the top of her silk blouse where the blasting air conditioner vent was fluttering the gauzy material across her cleavage. She was tan, her breasts were exquisite, and Fiona couldn’t think of anything beyond wondering what color Kelly’s bra was. There was little doubt Kelly’s breasts were the work of a surgeon and not genetics, but that had never bothered Fiona. A person in Los Angeles would kill their hookup chances if they excluded the surgically enhanced.

“Um…sure, maybe, do you have a weapon of choice against unsuspecting brain cells?” Fiona asked.

“No, I’m the squeaky clean type, maybe a little pot in college,” Kelly said. “It just made me think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The talent and her lawyer driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas with a trunk full of illicit drugs.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Fiona said. Even if Fiona wasn’t entirely distracted by the luscious view of Kelly’s cleavage, none of what she’d just said rang a bell.

“The Hunter S. Thompson book?” Kelly asked hopefully.

Fiona shrugged. “It sounds interesting, but like I said, I’m a skimmer not a reader.”

“They also made it into a movie, twice actually,” Kelly said.

As the 15 seamlessly turned into the 515 at Barstow and they dipped into the true desert of eastern California, Fiona began to suspect she was losing Kelly. The truth was Fiona didn’t think of herself as a very interesting person. She didn’t read, didn’t care about politics or causes, and she didn’t even watch TV or movies all that often. Anything that required a quiet mind to enjoy made her skin crawl. She worked hard and partied twice as hard in the hope that the next adrenaline rush or fix would satisfy her long enough to sleep for a few hours before she would have to get up and start hunting for the next jolt. Kelly was interesting, though. She’d gone to college. She’d read things. She knew things that connected to other things she knew in ways that made her seem smart and worldly when she spoke. She probably even knew exactly why she was going where she was going for work. In comparison Fiona was empty, beautiful to look at, but vacant in almost every conceivable way. When faced with that level of disparity in overall value as a human being, Fiona did what she always did.

“Let’s play a game,” Fiona said.

“Like twenty questions or something?”

“Yeah, but strip twenty questions,” Fiona said.

“Okay. You think of something first.”

Fiona could tell from the upward trill in Kelly’s voice that she was excited by the prospect and probably more than a little nervous. That’s what Fiona needed: to feel as though she’d regained the upper hand despite how inferior she really was to Kelly.

By the time Vegas rose out of the desert like an unholy abomination cobbling together a dozen cities from around the world into one, Fiona and Kelly were both mostly undressed and practically thrumming with sexual frustration. The bra Fiona finally got to see cupping Kelly’s breasts so perfectly was maroon with little lace flowers. It was as satisfying of an answer as she could hope for.

Rather than let Kelly get dressed once they pulled onto the strip, Fiona gunned the engine, weaving in and out of traffic until she shot across the oncoming two lanes to get into the Bellagio parking roundabout. The Camaro’s engine roared, the cars she cut across the front of slammed on their brakes and laid on their horns, and Kelly let out the most delightful noise comprised of equal parts nervous giggle and scream of excited fear. They passed along the side of the famous fountains, skipped the valet beneath the awning, and darted straight into the south parking garage.

Fiona loved Vegas for the parking. Finding parking in Los Angeles was impossible, required the right stickers from a monolithic parking authority, and always cost money. In Vegas, they wanted people out of their cars and into casinos as quickly and as painlessly as possible, so parking was typically free and plentiful.

It took every drop of willpower she had not to race through the crowded parking garage to find an empty, secluded spot. Near the top of the structure, away from the elevator to the casino, she finally found the dark corner she was searching for. She pulled the Camaro in, slammed on the brakes, turned off the engine, and practically leapt across the center console into Kelly’s arms.

The fiery kiss they shared was only broken momentarily when Kelly asked, “Aren’t you going to be late?”

“Only a little and I’ll look much better on the runway if I have the glow of just getting laid,” Fiona whispered against Kelly’s mouth.

“Good answer,” Kelly murmured back and their lips were once again inseparable.