Cooking the Hook - NEW

"So, you want to learn how to dance, really dance, not that disconnected, spazzy gyrating that you could do alone at a bar and no one would notice.  I'm talking about BALLROOM dancing." She waved her hand in the direction of the street-front windows where the lurid purple neon sign burned night and day. "We have a man and a woman, moving together to music." She walked inside the circle as she talked, looking each couple over, seeing who was going to be the most work. "There's the beat, and the melody, of course. Then muscles, bones, and skin...touching! And the desire to make it all work smoothly. If it sounds a little like sex, well, there's no denying it, which is why we keep our clothes on."  Everyone chuckles or blushes to one extent or another and they relax a little. Jack and Paco study their feet to keep straight faces. If they giggled, Connie would ream them out for it later. Giggling was for girls. They were supposed to be men. Jac...

I've decided to go ahead self-publish "Prophets Tango" commando-style, right here on the web. Screw Amazon and its algorithms.  It would have been nice to have all the professional help that wisdom says is necessary, but time and money are running out. I've had the lunatic (I'm told) misfortune of crafting a saga that would run 800 plus pages in print. There's no chance any publisher anywhere will touch a book this size from a debut author who has written in a difficult to classify genre. Oh, that home-made cover will give you the first clue. First and foremost it's a romance with a sparkle of paranormal, but NO vampires, werewolves or shapeshifters. Just a couple of spirits and two main characters who have a few interesting psychic skills. Paths cross, sparks fly. It's a romp, a big, fat beach read that just might someday hit a screen somewhere. Casting suggestions are welcome! Such hubris? What do we have left, but faith in ourselves and the ...

Now comes the part I have to stop saying I hate, because what will that get me? Hives, boils, constipation - the writer's plague loosely called marketing. I've decided (the calendar decided for me) that I'm going to self-publish Prophets Tango as a serial. Yes, something a little different. I don't have time to query an editor/agent and wait six to eight months to get an email saying thanks, no thanks or whatever. Too old for that kind of waiting. Besides, there's another book waiting in the wings. Feedbacking friends and beta readers have been worth their weight in gold, but the best I'll be able to do is spell their names right in the acknowledgments and signed copies. And let them ride in the limo with me. Dear Ed. has given me a to-do list and I'm scratching things off one at a time, with varying degrees of success. One of the things I'm NOT supposed to be doing is imagining that I can do my own cover art. See? There are two distinctly di...

Just so you're sure what aisle you're in at the bookstore.

I'm coming up on the end of the first hard edit and it's giving me the willies. I'm asking myself if I were watching this on Netflix, would I scream at the TV or go down on one knee and say "yesss" with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face. Am I there yet? Nope.

"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 he...

The last hurricane left the great fountain in Audubon Park filled with brackish water and, unaccountably, a dead three-foot long sand shark. The fish had putrefied in the heat and when the power came back on and the fountain started up, the whole east end was bathed in the gag-worthy perfume of rotting magnolias and liquefied fish. Tilla had left all the window to her apartment open to help dry the floors. She had been lucky. Home at the time of the tide-driven surge, only mere inches of dirty sewer and seawater had made its way over the top step into her place. She'd had time to get things up off the carpet. Pulled all the books from the bottom shelves to the top. Picked up all her shoes and Kip's bedding, piling everything on the dining room table. The carpet, which was shitty in the first place, was doomed, as was the couch and love seat. The frilly plaid skirts carrying the rank water up into the padding. She was sick of that old shit anyway. Kip whined behind her on th...