There’s not been much happening lately. I’ve been working my way through my NaNoWriMo story “Across Two Divides,” by Sol Crafter. It’s a mm contemporary novel following the life of Nicholas Underwood and Christian Jacobson, and their respective romantic partners.
It’s being updated at Smashwords if you’d like to pick up a copy. It’s set your own price, so you can buy a copy now and have it available when the final copy is made available. (I’m kind of boggled that more people aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity, but there you go.) Enjoy.
IRL — So my neighbor’s dog was eaten by coyotes. There was this loud animal scream last night and today the lady was driving around the neighborhood looking for her dog. The poor thing was blind and snuck out when the garbage was being taken out. I hope it was quick. V sad.
UBIQUITOUS EXCERPT — This is an excerpt from “Star Brite,” a YA-ish novel. Enjoy:
I could feel the humming sway of the world moving beneath me. It was sort of dreamy and frightening at the same time, but there was nothing I could do about it or anything else.
I existed in a cocoon of flowing warm air and there was a series of throbbing spikes against my head. It made my stomach twist unpleasantly.
I could not have said where I was or what was going on, but there was no doubt that something was very, very wrong.
I opened my eyes with a groan, blinking away from the overhead light. I felt faintly nauseous and the gray wool blanket was rough against my bare skin. I was in a ship’s bunk, the cabin around it small and cramped with a few bright posters on the walls — I thought I recognized the sultry pout of the wild Fringe singer Pater Familias, but I had never been a fan so didn’t really know.
I sat up and woozily climbed to my feet. I clutched the blanket close around me to keep as much of myself covered as possible. The blanket was terrible, but it was the best that I currently had to work with.
Picking carefully across the floor, I looked through the drawers built into the walls for clothes. There was a lot of different things that I thought might be useful later, but it all seemed like the possessions of a teenager. Drawer after drawer of someone’s life that I was digging through. It made me feel so uncomfortable, but I didn’t really have a whole lot of choice.
It was with a sense of relief that nearly halfway around the room I found three drawers with clothes.
I dug through the clothes and held shirts and pants against myself to try and guess the sizes. It was kind of surprising that everything seemed to be my general size. It made something strange twist in my belly and it took me a moment to realize that it was fear.
Something very strange was going on here. To wake up in a ship’s bunk in a room that had clothes in just my size? It sent a creepy chill down my spine.
I quickly pulled on a pair of pants made out of some durable feeling material and a long sleeved red and white striped shirt that was only slightly ridiculous looking. Whoever belonged to these clothes either didn’t have a very developed ense of style, or just didn’t care all that much.
I had to huff a faint laugh when I realized that I was stressing about fashion while not even knowing where the hell I was. Talk about a shallow sense of survival.
Turning, I spotted a pair of heavy duty black boots tucked under the edge of the bunk. I tossed the blanket back on top of the bunk and leaned down to pull the boots out, sitting down right on the decking to pull them on over the pink and black argyle socks I was currently wearing.
It was strange to feel so relieved at having my feet covered, but there it was. These boots made me feel just a little less helpless and a little more bad ass. Though what I was going to do if I ended up in a fight, I honestly didn’t know.
I looked down at my hands — they were small and delicate fingered, definitely not the killing instruments I was going to need to get out of a bad situation. And even though there was lots of junk tucked away in the cabin, there wasn’t much I could use as a weapon, not without being laughed at. It made me feel terribly helpless, a sensation I was quickly growing to hate.
There was a creaking sound from the hatch and I leaped to my feet, instinctively going into a half-crouch with my hands ready at my sides. Scenarios flashed through my brain and I thought that maybe I wasn’t as completely useless as I’d thought at first, though maybe I was full on delusional and just didn’t know.
The hatch opened and a bearded man stepped through, limping a bit on his left leg, though my judicious eyes told me it was an old injury likely as healed as it was ever going to get without a graft. He was dressed in standard spacer fare — a gray coverall with a ship’s patch on his left sleeve and magnetic soled boots much like the ones I was currently wearing. His graying black hair was cut close to his head and his brown eyes were hard as they looked around the room — right up until they landed on me and went so warm I could feel it through my bones.
“Star, girl, you’re back with us.” He strode toward me across the room, his arms opening wide as though to engulf me. He hesitated and lowered his arms when I drew back away from him nervously. The big smile fell off his face and he looked a bit more wary. “Star, are you okay, darling?”
“Who are you?” my voice sounded rusty and strange in my own ears. For some reason I had been expecting a different kind of voice, not this girlish thing. “Where am I?”
“Oh, honey,” he said sadly, “we were worried about something like this.”
“About what?” I demanded, narrowing my eyes. I inched slowly backward, wanting to get a corner behind me just in case it turned into a fight.
“You got knocked hard on the head and Gant said there might be problems.” He shook his head. “I should have trusted him.”
“What are you talking about? Who are you?” I asked.
He pressed a hand to his chest and tried to give me a sincere expression that I wasn’t buying. “It’s me, Star, your daddy.”
My eyebrows shot up into my hairline. “What?”
Who was this guy and why was he trying to pretend he was my father? My father was… my father…
I sucked in a shocked breath. I didn’t remember my own father, and when I tried to think about it, I didn’t remember my mother either or any siblings or even any friends. All my frantic thoughts could draw on were the names of celebrities, nothing personal.
“Wh…” I raked a hand through my hair — it was short and felt vaguely fluffy, though like my voice it seemed strange and unfamiliar. “What’s happened to me? Where am I?”
He slowly extended a hand toward me and I couldn’t help the slight flare of resentment I experienced when I realized he was treating me like some kind of wild animal. “It’s like I said, you got hit pretty hard on the head. If we hadn’t been able to get you to Gant so quick, you might have been dead.”
“Who’s Gant?”
He shook his head. “Oh, right, sorry. Gant is our ship’s medic. He’s been taking care of you since you were a baby, so when he said there was something off about your brain waves I should have listened.” He blew out his cheeks, then gave me a piercing look that made me want to cringe back. “Do you know who I am, Star?”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “What, ‘Star’? Honey, I been calling you that since you were shorter than the soles of my boots. It’s your name. Jenna Star Brite.”
The name didn’t mean anything to me, though when I tried to remember my name I drew a complete blank. A surge of panic went through me and my hands trembled so bad I clasped them together over my stomach in the hopes he wouldn’t see. “My name is Jenna?” I asked.
“Well, your legal paperwork name, anyways,” he said. “You’ve always just been Star since just about birth.” He made like he was going to step closer, but stopped when I cringed away. I didn’t like putting that hurt look on his face, but there was no way I wanted this strange man getting too close to me.
“And you’re my father?” I asked slowly.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said. “Willis Brite, captain of the Maybell.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said. “There’s obviously something very wrong with me if I can’t remember anything. I mean,” I laughed, though it didn’t really sound like one, “I didn’t even know that I didn’t know anything. How screwed up is that? What’s happened to me?”
Willis made a shushing sound and carefully drew closer. This time I didn’t pull away and he slowly reached out to rest a hand on my shoulder. It felt strange, but what did I know; everything was strange. “It’s all right, Star, we’ll get through this,” he said. He tugged me and I let myself be pulled into his arms, let myself be hugged close by this man that said he was my father.
He smelled vaguely of some musty cologne that made my nose wrinkle against the cloth of his shoulder where he couldn’t see. I felt incredibly uncomfortable, but if he really was my father… How could I push him away when he obviously loved me so much?
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, pressing a kiss against the top of my head. “I promise, Daddy’s gonna make everything be okay.”
/EXCERPT