Cooking the Hook - NEW

Too near death today... I rolled up to the red light at Rt.29 and Killian/Indian Trail today, heading back from the park in Lilburn. It's a broad, busy intersection. I was first in line in the left northbound lane, the lane to my right was empty. Some kind of police activity going in the gas station on the corner there. Two cars, blue lights. First responders. There were no cars passing through the intersection. A pedestrian crossed in front of me. He had the light, he was in the crosswalk. I saw this: a man, sixty-ish, silver-haired, tan, fit and smiling. Taking a pull from a soft drink. Crisp, striped short sleeved shirt, pressed khakis, a gold watch on his wrist, he was close enough that he might have gotten crud on his pants from my bumper. He was watching the cop show too, head up, eyes front, not stuck to some damn gadget. He was in line with the passenger seat of my car ready to take a step into eternity when a flatbed truck - the big kind that can carry tw...

"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...