Release Day! Once: Six Historically Inspired Fairytales

And HERE IT IS. Once: Six Historically Inspired Fairytales is finally released into the real world! Please, please read it and tell us how you like it! The reviews have been coming in on Goodreads and every time a new one comes out I feel a little thrill of parentship over this collection my author friends and I have been compiling since the summer. It doesn't matter whether the review is favorable or not, I just love to know that the stories are not sitting in the deadspace of Microsoft Word. Give 'em air, friends. Give 'em air! To celebrate, Suzannah Rowntree, Elisabeth Foley, J.Grace Pennington, Emily Ann Putzke, Hayden Wand, and I are sharing excerpts of our particular stories. So here, friends, is a scene pulled from my contribution: She But Sleepeth. Read a bit of it here, then scurry off to Amazon to buy your copy and read the rest! This scene occurs just hours after the main character, a modern set-designer, stumbles through a staircase into Romanian history...

(from She But Sleepeth by Rachel Heffington)

When their fruit had been eaten and coffee sipped, the queen excused herself.

“Come to me soon, Mariechen. Your father would speak with you.” She rested her gentle hand on Maria's shoulder in passing.

Supper began to sit unsafely in Maria's stomach at the thought of being left alone with that sober, wood-faced king. He was her father but when had he yet showed the slightest warmth or love for her? Was he angry at her return? Did he hate the sight of her? Those years in foster-care chalked a panicked, inaccurate score in the sudden blank of Maria's thoughts: not smart enough, not pretty enough, not young enough, not old enough. People always had a reason you were not enough to let you stay. Perhaps her father, even now, would not want or allow her to stay.

The queen's footsteps pattered away toward the sanctuary of her colored-glass music-room. Maria wanted to follow her instead of remaining here with a man no gladder in face than the peculiar Eastern rooms were in decoration, but he was her father and, she mused, her king.

Many long, unripe moments of silence. Maria kept her eyes on the empty table and waited.

“Itty, my...my child.”

Were those...tears in his voice? Maria's eyes snapped to the king's countenance. Moisture gleamed in the corners of his eyes. Candlelight sparked on something wet in his beard. Ioan, as usual, kept to his own business across the table. His long, waxen hands fingered the stem of his glass and his lips spread in that non-smile.

King Carol rubbed his thumb against his forefinger. His eyes spoke things she didn't want to guess at, they were so bare and heavy. “Come here, child.”

She hesitated a moment, then scooted back from the table and came to him, hands folded in her skirts. Her father put a hand to her cheek. Metal kiss from his signet ring, trembling flesh eager, yet cool against her face. She hardly dared to do so, but Maria raised a hand and tentatively covered her father's with it.

“Doamne, I've missed you,” the king softly swore.

It was just a flash of a moment, hardly seen before he shuttered up again behind his unfathomable face. But Maria's heart lurched happily as she nestled her hand again in her voluminous skirts. No one had ever spoken to her in that intense, immediate way. Somehow it reminded her of Heath – the same slow, slumbering fire unleashed all at once before growling back to sleep.

“I am so pleased to have you back, Maria,” her father continued. “I am not a man of gentle or numerous words, but that does not mean I lack love for you. I love quietly, by my loyal service and long peace. This is something which confuses your mother.”

“She thinks you do not love her?” The moment Maria said it, she regretted having asked so personal a question of a man who had already bent knee before her.

But the king only stood and managed a smile which wobbled on one side from lack of use. Maria thought it a darling expression, and her heart warmed even as he bade her goodnight and requested Ioan escort her to her mother, the queen.

Presently, Ioan stood and slid to her side. Everything about him chilled Maria but even she could not deny his beauty. He seemed like a white moth to her, ever fluttering in darkness, flirting with the light. What harm could he do her? If her father trusted the man he must not be a bad sort. Not likely he could have helped being born with a bloodless face and would she hate him for that?

Ioan bowed and crooked his arm. “Will you come, princess?”

“Sure.” She slid her arm into his.

He pressed her against his side as they exited the dining room and led a leisurely pace down the hall. When they reached the great hall, Maria thought her arm had spent long enough in the secretary's possession. She extracted herself and clasped her hands behind her back.

“It's a beautiful night,” she remarked. “Why don't they roll back the ceiling?”

Ioan pinched off a smile for her. “If Your Highness wishes it, I am sure an exhibition of that wonder can be arranged, though it is generally kept for parties and guests of state.”

Leave it to that bleached, brittle man to make her feel like an idiot for asking. All Maria's black dislike pooled again in her skull. “Yeah, because I'm not important or anything.”

“No.”

His answer surprised her. “Yeah, I mean, I'm just the missing princess come home. Not like that's worth celebrating or anything.”

Ioan did not answer right away and when he did, his bland disgust slapped limply at her: “You say you are the missing princess.”

“I am.”

“Are you?”

“You don't believe me, do you.”

“I watched you die. I watched them bury you.” A helpless anger swayed his body. “I watched them carefully as they mourned your passing, to be sure they did not mourn themselves into their own graves. It was finished.”

“The king and queen know I am their daughter,” Maria sad. “Why would you doubt them?”

Ioan sliced a hand through the air. “Folk will see what they most desire to see. You are but a clever impostor at best. My king and queen lost a child – their only child – and it is only the basest of people who would intrude on that sorrow and exploit it for profit.”

Maria watched the rage and suspicion war within him. He really believed her a pretender, did he? Well, she was sorry to disappoint but she'd never have attempted such a coup d'etat on her own volition.

“I am the princess,” she said quite simply.

“Impossible.”

“And yet, here I am,” Maria answered. She held his gaze for an uncomfortable moment, then tipped her chin and breathed in the beauty of the glass ceiling. “If you'd be so good as to tell the king, I would like to see what that roof can do.”

The Spindle And The Queen

Though my story for Rooglewood Press's Five Magic Spindles contest is yet untitled, for now I am calling it The Spindle And The Queen. I have begun a Pinterest board for the story for those of you who are curious for the photographic inspiration behind it. I am thrilled to have set The Spindle in Romania at the beautiful Peles Castle. I'm privileged to have been twice to this location and to have hands-on research to help me in my writing...paired with the historical research required (Princess Maria of Romania was a legitimate person and died at the age of three), I'm quite excited and stocked-up-on-ideas for this story. Let me practice pitching The Spindle And The Queen to you:

Hunted by a rabidly envious gypsy-witch, Maria, princess of Romania, must decide in which era she truly belongs. Carlotta the Maleficent meant to keep a century between herself and her arch-rival, but when American Maria Weid stumbles into the past through a shattered bookcase in Peles Castle, the gypsy's carefully-sculpted plans are destroyed. If Maria, heir to the Romanian throne, discovers her true identity, she will alter the course of a history selected for the world by the maleficent lady. With Maria's intern hunting the truth this side of the century and the young princess, in possession of The Spindle, struggling to make sense at the other, Carlotta must wage her war. 

One princess buried , one gypsy queen vanished, one hundred-year gap. One book, which achieved it all, suspended between.

And now for the snippets, because I know all of you are absolutely dying (har, har) to read about the Sleeping Beauty!


The glass casing hummed beneath her hand, its beauty physically drawing her near: hundreds of unfamiliar stories in unfamiliar languages, made friends by their livery of leather and cloth and gold-leaf. If only there was no barrier between her and the books. If only she could touch them—just touch their spines and run her fingers across a page or two…the glass…how strong could it be? Would they even have an alarm system?

Don’t panic, Itty. Don’t you dare panic. She forced several calm breaths. See, that’s air. That’s oxygen. You’re fine. It loomed behind her memories, though, older than nightmare: a great blackness—layers of it—blotting out light, just as if she’d been put in a heavy, narrow box.

“Karl!” Elisabeth’s tone stung more than she intended and her husband’s blue eyes darted, troubled, to her face. The look melted her. Cold he certainly was, but he was not cruel. “Karl,” she tried again, “do you ever wonder how different our lives might have been if…”

A high, cadenced ceiling rose up, up, up above her; a ceiling just like music.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. “P-pace.” There was no hand offered to shake so she went for the traditional cheek-kiss. The man backed away.

Monks. Right. Monks.

Heath was too clever to fall for the favorite “Americans are stupid so I will try to lie to them” trick. “Ma’am, all I know is that your bookcase swallowed up my boss and there is an entire film company in America who will be beating down the doors of this castle unless you tell me where she went.”

The tour-guide’s honey-hued eyes riveted Heath as if she’d taken her hand and tipped his chin to force the connection. He found an alluring, unsettling conviction in their touch. “Peles,” she said melodically, “is a palace, not castle.”

Could a more pleasant Alpine afternoon be asked for? Heath forced himself to notice the wide, forest-lined avenue and the sound of a river purling a short distance away. He passed a sign warning the pedestrian of possible bear sightings, and grimaced. If a bear would show up now and take care of everything for him, he’d probably not mind as much as he would have this morning. Before Maria had been so asinine. Before she’d vanished in a wall four inches thick.

“So unlikely,” Carlotta muttered. How many times had she searched through the tour groups, knowing that Maria, daughter of Elisabeth of Wien, would, by Fate’s hand, try to come home? How many times had her suspicion landed upon a woman fair in form and face, light and laughing as the child had been last she saw her? How many times had she watched such women, guided them away from the bookcase, sing-songed them to the safety of the outer court? And this one—this very American, brown-haired, green-eyed person, slightly plump and not graceful in movement—had slipped past her notice. Why? Because she had not considered a Romanian princess could have been so wonderfully…commonplace.

A young Romani boy—a gypsy, as were the rest of her household—scuttled off the front porch and came to her. She ruffled his hair and put away her golden magic for a time.

She took his hand in her own and swung her arms. “What has Tamara made for dinner?”

“Sarmali.”

“Mmm. Did you go to school?”

Daniel scuffed his toes in the clean white gravel of the courtyard and looked off to the rose-beds. Carlotta sighed and chucked under his chin.

“Daniel, you know you must attend school.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She pulled him along.

“Because why?”

“You are a gypsy. You know what they think of us.”

Daniel’s dark eyes searched her face mischievously. “What? That we cannot learn?”

“That we are too shiftless to want to learn. I know that is not true. And so do you.”

“Maybe I do not want to learn.”

Carlotta’s voice dipped to the coaxing tone to which she seldom stooped. “You want to learn to make magic, don’t you? Like your ancestors?”

His black eyes riveted on hers. “I want that.”“Mmmmm. Good,” she hummed, and pushed open the heavy, gilded door.

Out of desperation, she had traded her Toms for an ensemble resembling more a feed-sack tied with a woolen scarf than anything recognizable as fashion, and a pair of ugly leather clogs. The trade had hurt her worse than she’d thought it would. Those glorious Toms…formed exactly to the shape of her foot….gone to an old, sewage-scented woman who appeared to be growing a beard of all things!

She knew the way to the palace. She felt odd, knowing, for it was clear to her that Peles was not entirely built. Workmen and carts crammed the road which led to the castle. Here a long-eared, sad-eyed donkey looking as if doomsday drew nigh, there a random knot of sheep and a lanky shepherd. She knew more of the palace than the palace knew of itself. It dizzied and enchanted Maria, and for one fleeting moment, she forgot her terror.

The Fox Went Out: an explanation

For weeks I have been hinting around about a short story which I call The Fox Went Out. Some of you like Clara Diane Thompson and the Anne-Girl have gotten sneak peeks at it while the rest of you are sitting back thinking,
"Good grief, another plot idea? Whatever happened to Scotch'd the Snakes?"
I'm here to explain in full about this dilemma and my current writing project. A while ago, I received an email from my uncle about the Narrative Winter 2015 Story Contest. I'm not generally an enormous fan of contests because one is required to put much effort into a thing one will not assuredly win. In fact, most times the effort one puts out is not quite worth the possibility of winning, especially if said contest requires an entry fee. But with a first-place prize of $2500 at stake, I figured it could not hurt to enter Narrative's contest. Therefore, I set out to practice writing in a style and on a subject that is entirely new to me. I like playing with different voices and emotions to keep things fresh. And since the deadline of March 31 approaches and I still have not finished the first draft, I have exiled any idea of continuing my mystery until I have finished The Fox Went Out. You see how deadlines make the world go round?

So what the crumbs is this story?

Allow me to explain...

Dear God, I prayed. Give me a girl. He wants a boy, but this is my child. Give me a girl, if You love me at all. That didn’t seem quite fair, suggesting the Lord God didn’t love me, but I thought He’d see the heart of it. See that I couldn’t give John O’Grady a son. A girl, Lord, I repeated, just in case He hadn’t been listening.

Anise Clare is a young woman who, for as long as she can remember, has been denied the pleasure of owning herself. When her father assigns her to be the wife of backwoodsman, John O'Grady, Anise declares passive-aggressive war on her new husband, a man who knows nothing of honor but keeping his word to marry Anise and to destroy anyone who gets in the way of his will.

Unknown to Anise, she has an admirer in the Fox: a being about whom legend swirls as thick as smoke in a meat-house. Is he man or a creature? Legend or reality? Terrifying spirit or misunderstood human? Anise cannot know the Fox has set his heart upon having the Gray Goose and her Duckling...until the night John beats her and the Fox spirits she and her daughter away to his haunt: a new kind of ownership, but an ownership all the same. And here, with one man vowing to destroy and another vowing to keep, is the end of all things familiar for the graceful, strong-hearted woman whom the Fox loved.

I am excited for this story. It is written in style I have never used and told in a way that crawls up the backbone and puts a cold hand down the neck. Part fairy-tale, part folk-tale, part backwoods tradition, The Fox Went Out was inspired by the song of the same name and a real fox that stood in our road and stared me down. I do not expect to win any place in the Narrative contest with this story but have enjoyed playing with my words in a new way. It is a story of love, forgiveness, terror, and dignity. I am happy to have spent the last month with the Fox, Anise, John O'Grady, and Duckling. If the story does not win a place in the contest, I might be prevailed upon to offer it to my readers here, in a serial format. But for now, I must away to peck at the first draft and try to make it finish. Merry writing to you all!

The Fox watched her for three years, craned his neck, caught the moon, and laughed...She smelled of stubbornness and wood-fires, wildwood honey and sadness. Her small one smelled of protection...

Play with me, won't you?

This evening, we will be playing a guessing game! I have finally had some time to throw my back into writing. January was pluperfect CRAZY with several acquaintances dying, my own grandmother in the hospital with possible cancer (thank God they are slowly ruling that out), a visit to North Carolina, and plain old LIFE tossed in there. But as I have said, we are playing a guessing game. I have had my finger in no less than three pies this week. I want to see if you can guess what sort of stories I'm writing. I will number the batches of pictures and include one quote and you may leave a comment with your guesses below. Commenter with the closest guess wins, and Winners get Glory! You have previously heard news of at least one of these stories. Hurrah. So here it goes:

#1: "John O'Grady is a man of his word. If, in a fit of the tempers, John says he's going to kill you, why he just does."

#2: "There is a reason Australia is fit for nothing but a penal colony. If it isn't the heat, it's the snakes. If it isn't snakes it is death by shark or mauling by koala."

#3: "Last week it’d been Mackenzie Traver, week before that Brandon Keith. All her best boys showing up after she’d been stood up. Wasn’t fair. Fellow decides he doesn’t want to marry a girl, shouldn’t pop up at the very moment she was trying--and failing--to get a life of her own."

All right! Guess away!

(And congratulations to the winners of Rooglewood Press's Five Enchanted Roses contest, among whom are our dear Hayden and Kaycee! The collections sounds absolutely intriguing. :)

The House Off Quincy

While I am still not finished rewriting Anon, Sir, Anon, I refuse to bother with any real projects. In the wings, however, is an original fairy-tale with a vague outline (Toadhaven League), a rewrite of The Baby, and this. I'm not certain what this is, but I wrote it in one sitting and it amused me and I thought I'd toss it to you and let you guess about where it is headed. Oh, and because I strive not to do the obvious, please don't guess that A & B will become a couple. I hate jilting-jessies. Anyway, I give you this, referred to in my files as The House Off Quincy. (This title is strictly an organizational  ploy, not a fixed moniker.)

The House Off Quincy

By Rachel Heffington

“Would mademoiselle like me to look out for her partner in the lobby?” The maitre d’ bowed over the table, over her arm, till the white breast of his uniform nearly brushed the pink carnations.

“No, merci,” she answered.

“Mademoiselle is waiting for someone, no? Allow me to page him.”

“Monsieur is most helpful but no, merci.”

“Mademoiselle came tonight alone?”

Corinna Demarque quieted her fretful hands like white doves in the lap of her black dress, and smiled. Allowances must be made for the man’s ill-concealed curiosity. He was, after all, French. Corinna, quite American herself, had an unusually deep well of patience where the French were concerned.

“As it happens,” she said, “I am celebrating tonight.”

An expression of surprise hovered on the waiter’s lips. She could feel the shape of the words forming behind his white bow-tie.

“Alone,” she said it before him. She didn’t like it breathing down her neck. It was better this way.

Graceful lines at the corners of his eyes appeared. “Would Mademoiselle like me to bring a glass of wine, then?”

If any night occasioned wine, it was tonight. Corinna, however, did not feel that festal. “A Shirley Temple, if you please.”

The man drew himself tall, folded in half like a linen sheet, and backed away.

“No … wait.” Her cheeks felt too hot. Ordering a soda at a brand-new, rather swanky French restaurant was no way to conduct a professed celebration. “Coffee,” she said, her eyes catching a neat advertisement offering one cup for four dollars.

“One café, mademoiselle. C’est bon.”

Corinna let loose her hands and clutched her napkin instead, patting the dampness away from her palms. She was bewilderingly hot at the idea of coffee and her stomach churned at the nauseous suggestion. It was much too hot for coffee – much too hot for anything – but wine was far too daring, even for she who felt exceptionally brave tonight.

The waiter returned, bearing a miniscule cup of coffee. “Cream, mademoiselle?”

“Mmmm please. And sugar.”

“Mademoiselle will excuse me a moment, oui? I did not anticipate the sugar.”

She traced his trim, departing figure on its way kitchen-ward. Were the French snobs about their coffee? She had thought it a trait peculiar to Starbucks employees. Never mind. Nothing, not even snobby waiters, could dampen her ardor this evening.

The waiter appeared a third time, bearing a trampled, orphaned packet of sugar. It looked pitiful, sitting alone in the center of a shining silver plate. He deposited this offending object next to the blue shell-like demitasse cup and bowed.

“I made a rather large decision today,” Corinna announced. She wasn’t sure what was going to follow this, but it had better be something good.

“Oui, mademoiselle?” The waiter’s graceful crinkles were gone and his eyes wore an intensely veiled expression. Bored. Bored as a middle-schooler in mid-terms.

Corinna folded her hands again. “I’ve decided to move out of—”

“Out of my way, mademoiselle? I wish to pass.”

Corinna stared at the ridiculously rude Frenchman before realizing he looked quite as scandalized as her. Turning, then, Corinna saw a familiar pair of blue eyes looking down at her.

“Ashton.”

The waiter sailed off, noiseless.

“Miss Demarque.”

She wasn’t certain she wanted Ashton Merrill to see her in this get-up. A little black dress and her mama’s pearls were a risky enough combination; Corinna’s mouth burned at the thought of the bright red lipstick she’d recklessly swiped on in the giddy heights of her excitement. And the hat.

“Won’t you sit down, Ashton?” Immediately, she wished she’d tossed out her Southern sense of etiquette with the last of this week’s newspaper. She didn’t want Ashton Merrill’s company any more than she wanted that horrible cup of coffee. If she was rude and modern, she’d not be bothered with him.

Unfortunately for Corinna’s peace of mind, Ashton cast his undeniably well-built frame into the petite chair opposite and his eyes roved over her. “Aren’t you a picture this evening?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t look in the mirror.” Lies.

“That’d explain your lipstick.” In the up-rush of her ire, Ashton spread his hands and his low laugh rumbled. “Teasing you, Miss Demarque. You look very chic. Very Parisian.”

It had always been this way, Corinna thought. Always always Ashton Merrill got to tease her up one side and down the other. Didn’t matter what she did. Didn’t matter what she didn’t do. Somehow, Ashton had a laugh. Still, it wasn’t a terrible fate to sit in a place like La Salle across the table from a man wearing a new seersucker suit.

“He’s a nice-looking man. A nice-looking man.” Corinna’s grandmother had been a fan, whatever her own opinion might be.

“How’s the coffee?” he asked.

“Wonderful.” More lies. “Why are you here?”

“I missed Paris and Paris, it appears, had come to Terrence Heights. I couldn’t stay away.”

“Are you alone too?” she asked. “I think I’ve entirely shocked that poor man. Apparently, La Salle isn’t the kind of place single young women come to.”

Ashton kidnapped her coffee and took the ridiculous cup between his forefinger and thumb. “How scandalous of you.”

“I know!” she sounded ridiculously pleased, even to herself.

“Well, I’m not alone. Mama and Louise are in the powder room.” He took a sip from her coffee cup and grimaced.

Corinna smiled. “I was bourgeoisie enough to demand sugar. Won’t you take some?”

“All kidding aside, Corinna, why are you here alone? You told the waiter you were … celebrating?”

She hid herself behind the convenient brim of her over-size black hat. “Ashton Merrill. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, eavesdropping on a private conversation.”

“Because you and the waiter have such vital secrets to tell each other?”

“Shut up, Ashton.”

“Are you celebrating or playing tea-party? It’s a little hard to tell.” He pinched the brim of her hat and tugged it up, off her head.

She clutched it with both hands and shot absolutely pagan glances at him. “You know what? You are not a gentleman.”

“Settle down, Miss Demarque. Golly day, you’re riled.”

Riled she most certainly was. Corinna jumped to her feet and grabbed for her clutch-purse. It lay in the way of the carnations and if Ashton had not at that moment steadied the vase, her vehemence would have scattered the pink ruffles gaily across the expanse of her now-empty seat. “You are ruinin’ a perfectly fine evening. I don’t even like coffee.”

She steamed away from the table, high-heels punctuating her umbrage with sharp stabbing sounds as she crossed the marble floor. The sound of Ashton’s footsteps close on her own spurred her into an angry trot. He grabbed her elbow at the revolving door and squeezed in behind her so they were dumped on the sidewalk outside together.

“Now, hush up Corinna. Tell me what you were celebrating. I’ll listen. Promise.”

“Don’t you know I have a life?”

“Of course I do!”

“And it isn’t anyone’s to tell me what to do with.”

“Are we even having the same conversation?”

Corinna pressed her pointer-fingers to the bridge of her nose and breathed deep and slow. She opened her eyes to find real concern on his handsome face. It bugged her worse than anything.

She sighed. “Look, I’m not celebrating anything. I just made that up.”

“Then what are you doin’ at La Salle at eight-thirty on a Friday night?”

Three cars passed by in the humid night air in the time it took Corinna to boost her courage enough to answer: “Waiting for one Mr. Frederick Sherman—my date. Mr. Sherman appears to have gone M.I.A. Otherwise known as, flown the coop.”

Ashton didn’t say anything for a second. She could have ignored him after that, but then his big old hand settled on Corinna’s shoulder with the same bluff comfort he’d always been able to dish out.

“I’m sorry, Corinna.”

She wouldn’t cry. There was no reason to cry. No reason whatsoever.

“Don’t cry, Corey.”

“Don’t call me Corey,” she said in a voice redolent of the dreaded summer cold.

“Look, if he ain’t gentleman enough to go on a date, you wouldn’t want him anyway.”

“Isn’t gentleman enough. And you just don’t understand, do you? It isn’t always a gentleman we want. Sometimes a man is quite enough for the purpose.”

Emboldened and a little frightened by the accidental scandal her words conjured, Corinna continued: “What I mean is, sometimes it’d be enough to come out to Terrence Heights on a Friday night with a man and sit across the table from him and talk about the weather and just have people know you aren’t shriveling up in some big old house off Quincy Street.”

She sniffed. He shifted his feet.

“I don’t care about not being married, honestly,” she said.

A few couples enjoying an evening walk in the sticky darkness walked by and the scent of Old Spice and gardenias filled the space behind their passage.

“I just don’t want people thinking I can’t get a man.”

“Why are you tellin’ me this, Corinna? Isn’t this something you ought to be telling one of your girl-friends over manicures?” The understanding from a moment ago had died out and Ashton was once again the most provoking man in Virginia.

“Get back to your Mama and your girl, Ashton.” Corinna pulled her car keys out of her clutch and managed a little smile. “You don’t want to leave them to that awful waiter.”

Ashton obeyed and was again a part of the La Salle atmosphere, spoiled once and for all for Corinna. Her little blue Nissan was parked along the street under a lamp still adorned with a tinsel wreath from Christmas. She felt ashamed to remember she’d waxed her ugly little car so it’d shine for tonight and had scrounged three quarters to stuff in the parking meter so she’d have three hours without danger of being towed.

Corinna checked her Mama’s silver watch. One hour, ten minutes. Well that was a complete waste of two of the quarters. Not that she thought it’d work, but Corinna banged the top of the parking meter in passing and inserted two fingers in the trapdoor. No coins jangled into her hand.

She yanked the driver-side door open, feeling dejected.

Seventy-five cents wasted on a man who hadn’t even showed up. Not to mention the four-dollar coffee … for which she hadn’t paid. Corinna eyed the calliope of light caught in La Salle’s revolving door and wondered if she ought to go back. But no, Ashton would take care of her bill. He’d drunk the coffee anyway.

“Goodbye, vanity.” Corinna yanked the drooping black straw hat from her head and tossed it into the passenger seat as if it’d been a murder weapon. She balanced against the open door and took her pumps off, one by one. Through the bottoms of her hose she could feel the concrete, still warm from broiling in the sun all day. She tossed the shoes in. One hit the passenger window; the other bounced off the glove-box and dented the crown of the black hat.

The only thing that remained was the guilty red lipstick and this Corinna could do nothing about: she’d religiously followed online instructions for its application that insured at least seven hours of stay-power.

“Thank you, Google,” she breathed viciously and climbed into the seat, slamming the door behind her.

Sweet August, she needed some Advil.

Mob Ink: an experiment in humor

It isn't easy living by your pen. Writer Fizz Sheridan knows this better than most--he hasn't eaten meat for a week and a half and his last shave was three days ago. But when his novel inspired by a mob crime he witnessed hits Chicago's bookshelves, Fizz finds the real mob overly interested in his life. Kidnapped and taken to headquarters, living by his pen gains new definition when Fizz is told that mob boss Eddie Harold Howard will only let him live if he continues the story of the mob every night. Love tangles, heists gone wrong, and a covey of other problems beset the gang, and the unfortunate Fizz is left with the smoking gun...pen; every incident belonged to the story Fizz told the night before, and Eddie Harold Howard is sure his captive has an ink-vendetta.

The majority of you seemed to like the idea of Mob Ink, so I scrawled up another bit of it the other night just to find my way into the setting and characters a bit more. At the moment, I'm just toying around with bits and smidgens of things when I have the chance. I'm much too busy to buckle down to anything till I've finished editing my mystery, but this rule doesn't go to hand-scrawled things, does it? So I sat on the porch in the middle of my own beetle-flood (so terrifying) and wrote this. Enjoy.

When he stopped to listen, the tick of little beetle toes against little beetle wings filled the space between them. Fizz shifted just a fraction against the wall. Now a forgotten nail threatened to pierce his spinal cord and let his fluid, but at least his head was a bit out of prime bug-drop territory. The ticking-clickery grew louder as if the small beetle cousins were being sent to bed by those of a larger variety whose fancy ran toward having a jazzy dance on the features of the rich and famous. Party-beetles; freakish idea.

A cat—an exceedingly Dust-Bowl specimen of the breed—poked his head into the alleyway from behind an ashcan and chewed on a fish bone, reflective. He blinked at Fizz and his captor then withdrew, disinterested. He was not a very sympathetic animal; obviously entirely unable to appreciate the terror of having one’s head bludgeoned by bombardier insects.

Fizz’s captor, the one with eyes like light-sockets—not the one with the camel-forehead—lounged with him against the wall. He did not seem concerned by beetles or bloodshed. Fizz, deep in some half-frightened, wholly interested part of his mind, speculated how he might be able to put that into a novel.

“Scared of neither beetle nor bloodshed,” he murmured.

“What?” Light Socket barked.

At his silent companion suddenly speaking, Fizz jumped right into the path of a droning,whizzing beetle. He quickly shifted to the other side, directly into Light Socket’s shoulder.

“What?” the guy demanded.

“We are…there are…too many beetles,” he ended lamely.

“So?” Socket lit his third cigarette of the hour and gnawed Fizz’s soul with his eyes.

Thoroughly disturbed, Fizz thought now would be prime opportunity to inquire his fate. He braved the bomber-squadron stream of beetle-y things and stood tall. His unfortunate head brushed the base of the light in its rust-encrusted fixture by the doorway. The glad beetle society embraced his eyes and nose and mouth and ears. Somewhere through the crush, Fizz saw Socket turn just the tiniest bit in his direction as if interested to watch the insect hoards.

“Why can’t we go in?” Fizz meant to say, but with all the joyous bug population using his lips like the Blarney Stone, what came out was more of: “Vy kunt ve do din?”

“Speak English,” Socket ground out over the cigarette.

Fizz puffed a colony of adoring insects from his face and thrashed wildly with his palms as if to stay the ticklish flood. “Whycan’twegoin?” he crammed out before the mass descended again.

Slowly, gracefully, a luna moth parted the way between Fizz and the beetles and settled on the light fixture. Grateful to the moth for at least not clicking like a miniscule pair of Chinaman’s chopsticks, Fizz smiled. He’d forgotten—it all seemed so distant now—but today was the first day of April and just that a.m. he’d been heading down to Lake Michigan with a yellow tulip in his buttonhole. Somewhere between the mugging and this alleyway, the tulip had been lost, but the reflection imbued Fizz with an iota of hopefulness. This was April First after all. Perhaps this whole business was nothing but a huge joke played on him by his eternally inappropriate roommate; it wouldn’t be the first time Marvin had done something idiotic for a laugh.

“We can’t go in cuz the boss hasn’t comed out.” Socket’s explanation was terse and wasted no bonhomie.

“We have to wait for his okay? While the—” Fizz phiffed a miniscule insect off his upper lip and refocused: “While the beetles gobble our face off?”

“Smoke.” Socket offered Fizz his half-burned cigarette.

“Much obliged.” He saluted his kidnapper with the butt end then put it in his mouth and drew in a draught of tobacco smoke.

The flavor turned his stomach, but it wasn’t half bad compared to sticking out the Beetle of Armegeddon. White smoke followed his exhale. Fizz was pleased to see a distinct reduction in the amount of beetles in his immediate vicinity. Maybe this guy wasn’t so awful. He’d given him a way out of suffering…maybe Socket wouldn’t kill him after all. At least, Fizz reflected with the second draw, at least he’d not die at the hands of beetles.

Anon, Sir, Anon

   "The fireplace, the butler, and a wing chair stood at the opposite end of the room: a tribunal of domestic comfort that had assembled to judge this intruder of their peace. In the wing chair sat a man she could take to be none other than Mr. Orville Farnham. He looked at her and fingered his chin, eyes slitted consideringly."                                                          -Anon, Sir, Anon

I am here to inform you that The Baby is taking a nap until the new year. There are some exciting things ahead for me, my writing, and this blog, and I decided that writing The Baby requires all or nothing -- it doesn't thrive under pie-crust promises and a kisses. Just like a real kid takes all a parent's concentration, The Baby wants an iron fist.I cannot spare an iron fist until the new year so though I'm not sacking The Baby for eternity, it is removed to the side for a good long nap so I can stop worrying about it and focus on the things on which I need to work.
Having cleared that aside, it is time to introduce you to the new brain-child I mentioned very briefly last post. Anon, Sir, Anon, is my new project at 3500 words in the main document, plus a few here-and-theres in my writing notebook. The first in a potential series of concerning niece-uncle detective pair Vivi & Farnham, Anon, Sir, Anon is a 1930's murder mystery set in Northamptonshire, England:

Shakespearean actor and private detective Orville Farnham has been confined to his home, Whistlecreig, by doctor's orders. The extended family sends a niece, Genevieve Langley, to play nursemaid in order to get her off their hands, as Vivi was voted Most Unlikely To Make A Brilliant Marriage. Farnham is none too pleased with the prospect of a female intruding on his life at Whistlecreig.When a murder occurs within a constrained space of time and leaves a small pool of suspects--each with excellent alibis--Farnham is called and Vivi finds herself entangled as one of the last witnesses to see the beautiful actress, Lillian Bertois, alive. It is soon evident that not only does Vivi have a penchant for being present at crucial moments, she has a liberal dose of brains that are put to use in assisting her uncle with solving the mysterious death of the woman in the blue cloche.

To set the things off, I've made a few graphics of some of the cast! Just remember that they are arranged in no order of importance. I won't give you any sort of hint that might set you off on your own conclusions. Not yet. This is a mystery and I'm going to start it off properly by saying that I will play fair--all the necessary bits will be in place--but you won't figure it out till you read the book.

 

As time goes on I'll be making more of these graphic things because they're just so much fun. And I can't really think of anything that goes with Farnham better than a big fat armchair and his intense energy exemplified in one of his favorite phrases. He's a man of impeccable character, ever polite but always having the last word. For the next week I'll be doing a series of posts on detective fiction (and a giveaway!) to celebrate the start of the new regime of Vivi & Farnham. Over the next while as I write this book, you'll grow to love them, I'm sure. I am looking forward to introducing you to life at Whistlecreig, writing detective fiction, and so many more wonderful things. Stick around and if you want to start a conversation on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media, use the hashtag: ViviandFarnham. See you around!

"Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there arsenic still for tea?"