Cooking the Hook - NEW

"It's the heart that makes the heat."

A drug dealing ladies man and part-time assassin with psychic skills meets the woman he'll mend most of his ways for. A new age con artist herself, she's got her own brand of psychic ability, and a troubling history of being on hand for untimely deaths.  When they meet, he’s on the lam from the life and she's married to a gangster wannabe who's blackmailing her to keep her in line. Cosmic lust comes before trust, but they must learn to work together if they hope to thwart her husband's plans to sell her and her secrets to settle a deadly debt.                  “So, just how do we turn this darkness into light?" she said and shuffled the cards. The deck was old and soft and made a purring sound in her hands. He picked up her thick braid, squeezed it gently and whispered in her ear,            "One well-deserving motherfucker at a time.” Then he wrapped the braid around her neck, tilted her head bac...

I have very quietly put the lid on the hot basket of snakes that is my first rough draft. I'm going to sing them to sleep for a few days and lose myself in a book I've wanted to read for some time. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving.

When you get to that place where you realize that a pivotal scene is as bad as any network TV crap you've seen a thousand times and has to be hacked out and burned and you knew it when you roughed it out.

While I'm supposed to be thinking about the final chapters of the current book, the bones and nerves of another have been rattling around in my empty head. Not the story so much as the characters. Anxious, they are, that I not leave them in limbo. Again. taking notes.

          They took the stairs down three flights, then a long hallway to the elevators. So far there were no sounds of alarm, no sirens. Anna went directly to the restroom and, finding it empty, pulled Jack inside behind her. His bow tie was undone, the top stud missing from his shirt.  He pulled a paper towel, wet it and wiped Ray’s blood from her forehead.          “You are going to have to get rabies shots, babe.” he said, as she took a stud from the bottom of  the dress shirt and moved it to the top position. “Here, turn around, I can’t tie this looking at you.” He turned and looked into the mirror as she reached over his shoulders and tied the bow tie by feel, her head down. She pressed close against his back and he could feel her pulse, slow and steady, the chill of her body. “Are you okay?” he said watching her fingers blindly but deftly pull the sculpted ribbon of black cloth back to perfection under his ch...

Do we really remember or do we conjure up the magical past?    Well after dark Bea leaned back in the wet clover and considered the stars which were largely obscured by the yellow wash of the street light. She also considered shooting out that street light. One well placed shooting aggie should do the trick, but she wasn't that good a shot and a miss would probably take out the Republics plate glass window. Mr. Mckinley had enough to worry about. Brucie would come talk to her if he felt like it, stars or no. She was patient.   Since Brucie died, his mother, Audra, had taken to passing out drunk in any number of public places; the grocery store, the lobby of the post office and, just last week, Nell found her laying flat on the sidewalk halfway up Maple avenue, her butt on the high curb and her legs sticking out in the street like a dead goat. Lord only knows how many passersby clucked their tongues and made note that she had gone out with no drawers on.  Nell dr...