First I want to say thanks to all the lovely readers who continue to read my stories over at FF.net and leave reviews, and to those of you who keep PMing me for updates here and over there. You guys are just the best. It really means so much to me that you guys want to read my work. You have no idea.

And as for updates- Well, imagine my shock when I got near to the end of Book 2 in the Bronwyn and Cadel story and the characters told me something had to happen that seemed to contravene a plot element woven through a significant portion of Book 1. So basically, the long silence has been due to having to rewrite sections of Book 1, increasing the role of one character and introducing another far earlier than I thought I'd have to and changing the sequence of several events to smooth all of that out. The rewrite has been a serious undertaking and resulted in at least some changes in about half the chapters in Book 1. The result is, I think, going to be a better book, but it set me back quite a bit. I'm not promising an Amazon release date right now because I'll still have to have my friend edit for me. But I am close to finished on the Book 1 rewrite, however. It's been quite a challenge because my mind was all caught up with Book 2 and progressing things forward into the final book. Going back and looking at where it all started has been interesting. I know further delays are frustrating to everyone, though. To try to make up for it all, I leave you a brief snippet and the prospective cover for Book 1.


“I’m sorry if you were worried.” I hesitated a moment and then said, “You know, I can give you a set of keys to the apartment if you want. Unless you enjoy breaking in, that is.”

He gave me a dimpled smirk.

“You really know me, Glasgirl.”

It's looking more and more like I'll publish with Amazon. I don't want to make fundamental changes to the structure of my characters to suit an agent or publisher's need to pigeonhole my work firmly in one genre or another. I'll have more details later in the spring. But the added advantage to readers if I go with Amazon is that the cost of the novels will be lower.

So this is part of a makeup sex moment. Bronwyn has her reasons for being seriously annoyed, and Cadel, as always, answers just about everything with humor. Without further adieu, from deep in the first book:

_______________________________________________________

He looked at her slender back as she started to make her tea and watched her smoothly reach over, open the microwave, take out his bottle, cap it, turn it over several times, reopen it and heat it for another 10 seconds, remove it again and then pour it into a wine glass, and push it aside. All without even looking at him. She’d taken it out of the refrigerator without looking at him, too, when he’d padded into the kitchen, wearing only his boxers. Who did she think she was fooling with this stuff? It must be that she was fooling herself because she certainly was not fooling him. Since the Revelation and the advent of bottled synthetic blood no one taken such care with what he drank. It was greater care than he’d ever take for himself.

He leaned forward, putting his left hand on her waist, as he reached for the glass.

She flinched as if she was unused to being touched.

As he straightened again, he inhaled her scent, in all its bizarre mixture of salty sea air, bluebells, damp, earthy moss and something like clove. He closed his eyes fleetingly. It had been almost a week, hadn’t it? Almost a week since he had lost himself in that scent, in her, or entangled himself in her long, dark hair.

He turned and leaned against the counter to drink, while she was measuring tea. His eyes strayed over her breasts and the bit of cleavage that showed at the neckline of her shirt. They lingered on the fine bones of her clavicles and ribs that were again peaking through. She’d lost weight. Several, maybe even five pounds. He mentally converted it. Almost half a stone. Too much. She was already fragile looking again. At one point during the summer she’d proudly commented she’d actually gotten a size medium item of clothing for the very first time in her life. So long, lean and slender-boned. She needed to eat more, he told himself. She was clearly not eating enough. Of course, it had been a very stressful two weeks.

“Did you already eat lunch?” he asked casually.

She shook her head no.

“Would you like me to call that sushi place that Stacia found? They deliver.”

“I’m not really hungry, thank you. Don’t worry. I promise I won’t haul off and do anything awful to anyone when I finally get hungry.”

“Oh, I’m just trembling in my socks with worry…” he said, barely keeping a straight face as he looked down at his bare feet.

She didn’t even smile. He sighed.

His eyes traced over her profile and the line of her neck. Her delicately pointed ear. The faint freckle near the corner of her right eye. The soft spot of her temple, with its wispy charcoal hair.  As his eyes traced over her face he realized that even her face looked thinner... <snip>

She stood with her hands on the counter, watching her tea steep. So silent.

He put down his half-finished glass and swept her into his arms and kissed her, his hands enmeshed in her hair, loosening the low loose bun she had made by simply knotting her hair. With his mouth locked on hers, he expected the same resistance she’d shown two nights before but instead she was soft, yielding and he felt a jolt of pleasure and greater desire as she scored her tongue across his sharp fangs, giving him a taste of her blood. What woman had ever done such a bold thing with him? He felt a further surge of energy as her fingers wound themselves into his still uncut hair and pulled him closer to her. They kissed and her long fingers slipped inside his boxers and he gasped with the pleasure of her touch. He looked into her lavender eyes and was swept away with a sigh. She was magic. Everything about the woman was magic.


It was already dark outside, he suspected. They still lay in the tangle of sheets, his head on her breast. His fingers were laced into hers and he brought her hand, his lady’s hand, to his lips.

“I love you,” he said quietly.

She was silent for several minutes and then finally said,

“I am so totally screwed,” she murmured softly.

“I thought you liked calling it making love? I thought it was so quaintly human of you. Well, at least I was thorough, right?”

She sighed heavily and then seemed to be evaluating something in herself as she wiggled her fingers in his hand.

“I am… starved. Geez. Maybe I really should order something from that sushi place? I feel like I haven’t eaten in days. I’m ravenous.”

He grinned like the Cheshire cat as he lazily reached over and picked up her phone from the nightstand and handed it to her, reciting the number from memory for her. After she had ordered an absurd amount of food, which he was sure she’d eat in its entirety, having seen how much she could eat when she finally realized she was hungry, she sat up and stared down at him.

“After I eat, I have to summon someone. I’ll need to be alone for a bit. It’s private business. Sort of a family thing.”

He shrugged, then pulled her back to him and started kissing her again...

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I hope all have been well. I've been writing up a storm and am actually even working on portions of Book 2 already. Book 1 looks to be about 375 pages in length. Book 2 will likely be longer because there is more action in it. The story of Bronwyn and Cadel is, without question, a trilogy. And as a few of you know, the ending was already foreseen some time ago, so it just embroidering the middle to get the ends to meet!

Merry Christmas to all!

____________________________________________

Somehow or another it was only a day later that Cadel seemed to know exactly what Tony had been up to. I couldn’t figure out how he’d found out.  We argued about it on the way to seeing a French film in the University District.

“I’m not talking about it with you, okay? It’s none of your business. I thank you for your concern, but really, it’s not your business, Cadel. And your way of handling it is not likely to be to my liking. So, no.”

He came to a standstill in midstride.

“Let me ask you one question on the matter, then. Did he or did he not follow you on multiple occasions?”

“I’m not discussing it.”

“You don’t have to discuss it. Just give me a yes or no answer, Bronwyn.”

“I’m not discussing it.”

“So that’s a yes, then. The bloody fucking bastard… Okay, then. You’ve had dinner, right? We’ve got an hour before the film.
Do you want to go to the University Bookstore? I’d suggest walking about and looking at shops, but it feels like it will rain, don’t you think?”

He started walking on ahead, pulling on my hand. I stood my ground and wouldn’t budge.

“You better not go after him, Cadel. Do you hear me?”

He wheeled around and stared down at me. I was so mad I’d worn flats because he was so tall and he was just staring down at me with eyes that glowed ever so slightly with temper and fangs fully descended, as if I was supposed to somehow just agree that he could do whatever the hell he wanted.

“And you’d better not be telling me what to do or not do,” he said, menacingly.

“This isn’t your problem, Cadel.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe I don’t like him going after you. He’s stalking you and I don’t like it. That’s a problem for me.”

“No, it’s not. It’s still not your problem whether it bothers you or not. Stop acting like I need someone to take care of me, okay? I can take care of myself much better than you realize.”

 “Yeah, I can see that you’re much improved over when you were seventeen and inviting who knows whom into your apartment, trusting that they wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t know how or why you got involved with this guy, but he’s stalking you, Bronwyn. It isn’t safe. You broke with him months ago and that it keeps impacting your interaction at work, right? Do you know how strong they are? Perhaps you don’t have any experience with them? I do. Of course, you’ve got no sense about me, so I’m assuming you’ve none about them, either. To top it off, he’s unbalanced and he’s around you for hours every day. You’re in a building with him, alone at times, at night and on the weekends, right? It’s one of those situations that can take a seriously unpleasant turn.”

“Still, I’ll deal with it my way, Cadel, okay?”

“Oh, I can see what a smashup job you’ve been doing of that.”

“I’m going to be really mad if you do anything and I’m not kidding.”

“Well that’s just too bad then, innit?”

“Why are you arguing with me about my problem? It’s not your business Cadel! I’m your friend, not your girlfriend and it’s not your problem.”

I tried to pull my hand away from his but he wouldn’t release it. Instinctively, I bared my glamoured teeth at him. His eyes went absolutely glacial. I couldn’t tell whether my glamour slipped a wink or if it was something else.

“Fine, then. I’m not arguing with you. Come on, put a move on if you want the bookstore. It’s starting to rain and I rather prefer to be dry in the film and I’m not warm enough to dry quickly. Plus, you’ll just get cold if you get wet and then go into the A/C.”

Then he dropped my hand and just walked right on ahead. I watched his tall figure recede and with a groan finally followed after him. At least he’d quit hanging onto me when we were mad.

For a few minutes in the bookstore we stood looking at the new arrivals shelves, barely even acknowledging each other. Or so I thought, until he draped his jacket around my shoulders because I was so wet from the rain, which grew heavy just as he’d stormed off.

“I’m not cold,” I protested, trying to strip it back off.

He glared at me and said,

“Just cut it, you hear? Just cut it,” with a surprisingly strong accent.

Giving him what my mother used to call the stinkeye, I nonetheless relented and left the jacket on.

We sat through the movie and eventually relaxed, in part because the film was rather unintentially funny. Afterwards, we stopped at an Asian café to get something to eat, but the hostess gave us a nasty look and then said they didn’t have any bottled blood, looking warily at Cadel, as if he had leprosy or something far more communicable.

“Then I’m not hungry after all, and frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry enough to eat here,” I announced with a frown at the hostess, as I turned on my heel and walked out the door.

Cadel, on the other hand, looked unabashed by the hostess’s attitude. He nodded cordially and appeared to wish her a lovely evening as he departed.

“Oh, it happens all the time,” he said, briskly. “We can go to that sushi place if you like,” he offered, looking down at me while we stood outside the restaurant, on the sidewalk.

“No, that’s too far and it will be packed this late. All the movies have let out and the shops are closing. It would take too long. There’s that bar on the corner of 42nd,” I offered, knowing for certain they’d have something he could drink.

He looked at me with a frown and said,

“You said you weren’t hungry and I’ve never seen you drink. If you’re not going to eat, I’m sure you won’t be at risk on the way home if I don’t.”

I gasped at the implication that I thought he’d go after me.

“To quote you, just cut it out. I’m trying to be nice. And I won’t put up with people being rude to you, okay? Let’s just both go and have something to drink.”

I took his hand and pulled him along to the bar, which was called Hell’s Kitchen. I drank a ginger ale while he had something to “take the edge off,” as he put it. The bartender laughed at my having just a soda, given my companion.

“Don’t like them having alcohol before, eh?” he said snidely to Cadel, with a wink. “Guess you don’t really need it, to get them to give it up though, right?”

My jaw dropped as I gaped at the bartender, who was beyond rude and presumptuous.

“It’s more like I don’t like nosy bartenders, actually,” said Cadel, catching the man’s eyes in his gaze for several long seconds.

The bartender walked away without saying another word. I heaved a sigh and glanced away, saying softly,

“I guess he kind of deserved it, since he was being so fresh. He’s not getting a tip. It’s really our evening to encounter rude and biased people, isn’t it?”

“I’m glad we finally agree on something tonight, my prickly friend,” he said, clinking his glass against mine.

I didn’t rise to the bait.

“We both agreed the movie was overblown? Though, it was all very French,” I said, quietly.

“Oui, ma chère. That we do,” he said. He studied me for a bit and then said quietly, raising his glass to me, “You’re a fine person, Bronwyn. ‘Tis an honor to know you.”

“I think you’re fine, too,” I replied with a smile. “Except for the parking, driving and some of the music issues. And the book issues. And…”

“Are you sure I can’t get you to have some whiskey or something in that?” he chuckled, interrupting me, with a wry grin.

“Quite sure.” I was silent for a bit and then said, “I’m glad I saw the movie with you. This was practically a satire of French films as a whole genre. Stacia probably would have liked it as it was intended to be. Art films with Stacia are a trial for me. We only agree on horror and comedy movies. She likes romances and all that stuff. She loves the sappy stuff.”

He shook his head and chuckled.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m taking the Fifth, sorry,” he replied.

Three days later Tony was acting completely different and behaving noticeably more professionally. He was even cordial again. I looked up into his amber eyes with amazement as he nudged me teasingly about the fact that he didn’t have to deal with Mercy wrecking his side of the lab. Actually, I decided, he was even nicer than he’d been before.

I wasn’t sure what he’d done but I was certain that Cadel had done something. He was very resistant to talking to about it initially.

We’d already started the evening off with a bang, since he’d jumped down out of nowhere, right next to me, as I stood opening the lock on the entry door to the building. Holding his cell phone in his left hand, he gave me a very puzzled look.

“Evening,” he said, eyeing me intently.

“Hi,” I said leaning over on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Sorry, but I’m running really late, I have to change, and I need to feed the cats.”

I started to dash across the entry hall to my apartment door and he said in an odd tone of voice,

“You never jump. When I show up, even as just now, you never jump. It’s very odd.”

I was too busy fussing with the keys and dropped my purse while hanging on to my laptop bag to even reply. I was just getting to the end of my very long tether. I had had a very long and very bad day.

“Shit!” I said as my purse fell off my arm and my things spilled out over on the floor.

He leaned down and picked up my bag and put the spilled contents back inside and handed it to me slowly while looking at me very intently. His nostrils flared subtly.

“Why is that?”

I grabbed my purse to enter the apartment and the cats glommed onto me immediately.

“Why is what? The jumping? No idea. Do you want to scare me or something? No, no, Roberts, no!” I brushed him back out of the doorway with my foot, dropped my things on the hall table and then walked off toward the kitchen. Buttercup and Roberts trotted after me, meowing. I took out their sack of kibble and handed it to Cadel.

“One scoop into each bowl,” I said pointing. “Demands for anything more is all manipulation and lies, no matter how they plead.”

I raced back to the bedroom, kicked off my shoes, shimmied out of my dress, tossed it in the dry cleaning bin and started rooting through drawers. I got into a pair of jeans and took out a lavender long-sleeved shirt. I turned as I started to put it on and bumped right into him.

“What are you doing in here? Get out of my bedroom. You’re not allowed in here. Out!” I pushed him toward the door and stomped off to the bathroom. “And stop trying to startle me. It’s rude,” I called out.

I pulled the shirt on and brushed my hair, put it up in a ponytail, put on a bit of perfume and turned around to push him back out, through the bathroom doorway, this time.

“You’re really annoying, you know it?”

“Why aren’t you ever afraid of me? Why can’t I glamour you? Why don’t you startle? There’s something extremely odd about all of it…”

I drew back in mock horror.

“Oooooh! You’re so scary! Why would you want me to be afraid of you if you ‘enjoy my company’ so much, huh?” I asked, referring to a statement he’d made after we’d dissected the Michel Gondry film the other night after we’d finally stopped being cross with one another. I had joked in zee fine French accent about the “serieuse and dramatique” nature of French everything and made him laugh. By the time we’d walked back to my apartment, he’d been all grins and dimples again.
He stood looking me over.

“Where are you rushing to? I thought we were looking at the video footage and going over the traffic on your computer?” he froze for a moment and got a dark and guarded look on his face. “Perhaps you’ve other plans? Are you going out with someone?”

“I have to make sure my tenant upstairs took his medication and that he ate something for dinner. His wife is at the hospital with her sister, who had a stroke.  He’s in his eighties and a real pill. He’s more docile and pleasant when I look nice and approachable rather than like a doctor or something, in my work clothes. Just hang out down here and I’ll be back, okay? I’ll probably have to watch him eat, because I’m sure he didn’t, based on this morning. There are a couple of bottles in the refrigerator for you. They’re French, ironically, and I got it at a liquor store I went to with Stacia yesterday after work. Remember to push in the microwave door while you push ‘start’ because the connection is still wonky. And I want to talk to you. About Tony.”

He blocked my path to the door still. For such a slender guy he could seem to take up a huge amount of space when he was of a mind to do so. This aspect of his magic, or whatever it was, was extremely annoying. I was sure that to just about everybody else not like me, that it was probably really intimidating, but I was in too rotten a mood to even care what everyone’s else’s more typical reaction might be and to emulate it. I watched as he seemed to take a deep breath or something. Deep breath? Flaring nostrils? What the hell? He was trying to figure out from my scent if I was something more than human? Ha! If I could fool Tony when I’d made the mistake of sleeping with him, I could certainly cover my scent well enough to fool just about anybody else, anywhere else.

“It’s not natural that you don’t startle. I want to know why you don’t.”

“And I want to know why you’re so damn annoying. Any answers?”

I dodged under his spread arms and past him into the hallway. He spun around after me.

“Answer me, Bronwyn!” he called out gruffly after me.

I made a disgusted grunt as I tramped toward the living room, dodging Buttercup, who was running around all worked up because of some new mouse toy that he’d evidently given her. He easily caught up to me, cut in front of me and blocked my way yet again. He gave me a challenging look, arms crossed.

“What are you? Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“I’m a very annoyed female. And I reiterate: Do you want me to be?”

 “No, but I want to know why you’re not. And I want to know why you don’t even get startled when I sneak up on you. It’s unnatural. It’s supernatural, in fact…”

“It is unnatural to sneak up on people, you’re right. Unnatural and rude! You’re blocking my way and I need to go out that door. I suggest, since you’re my guest here, that unless you’re planning to get invited to leave that you get out of my way. Immediately.”

He stepped aside so swiftly I hardly even saw him move.

“How do you even know it’s me? What if I were someone else jumping down out of nowhere?”

“Well, who the heck else is going to end up on my doorstep, Cadel? What are the odds? The US census says there are less than 25,000 of you in an entire country with a population of 310 million. But if you want to know how I know it’s you it’s because you smell like the heath itself. My life is plants and you smell like heather all the time with whatever that fragrance is that you wear or have in your soap or shampoo. It completely covers the scent of what you are and so I can smell you coming. You’d been on the doorstep earlier, right? I could smell you’d been around. So why am I going to worry if I know it’s you? You’ve never hurt me. You are always looking out for me, almost intrusively so. Why the hell,” I whipped open the door to the apartment, “would I worry unless you’re at the steering wheel of a car? Roberts! Oh, for Pete’s sake! Can you catch the damn cat for me? This whole day has been like this! The whole entire fucking day! I want to string up my technician and dance around her chanting and exorcise her! She ruined my electrophoresis gels at 9 am and from there on my entire day went wrong! And Stacia won’t shut up about the fact that I should listen to her more often!”

I stormed up the stairs and gave the very cantankerous Mr. Benton his medication after breaking down and using glamour on him to make him more cooperative. I couldn’t take another moment of strife. Not a single one. He was really old, and really ill with cardiac disease, and I decided it was more moral to get him to take care of himself than to let him be himself. At least for Mrs. Benton’s sake, anyway. I heated the soup she’d left in the refrigerator and sat with him while he ate and talked about their great-grandchildren in Minnesota.

I came back downstairs thirty minutes later to find Cadel, drinking his French bottled stuff,  listening to my stereo, watching TV, and streaming video on my laptop and his, while evidently playing some sort of game on his phone. All at the same time.

It was even worse than the way he drove.

“About seventy-five percent of this needs to stop immediately,” I said with a frown. It was so visually and aurally overwhelming I couldn’t stand it.

“You’re really in some mood, aren’t you? Extra prickly tonight. I fixed the microwave for you by the way. It was the not completing the circuit when the door closed because of a problem with the hinge. Most welcome.”

“Prickly? Fucking prickly? You try having a day in which everything you do goes wrong… really, really wrong… and then coming home and having friends dedicate themselves to annoying you. And thanks for the microwave thing.” I looked around at all the screens and covered my ears. “Seriously, how can you stand to have this much stuff going?”

“It’s called multi-tasking? I don’t allow people to annoy me. And I’m not trying to annoy you. I can do more than one thing at a time, is all.”

I stared daggers at him and tried to think about how I was multi-tasking just about every waking moment of my life by glamouring my appearance, not using magic unless I absolutely had to and doing my very best to live a nice and ordinary human life here. I could tell him a thing or two about multi-tasking.


_________________________________________________
#2:

I was silent for a moment. It sounded like lectures I’d received when I was a very self-centered teenager. Maybe I was a very self-centered adult for wanting something real, with a mate, before I was say… 5700 years old?

“Yep, it sucks. What’s the point of being supernatural if you’re gullible, stupid and get blindsided by people? What’s so super about that, hmmm?” I asked.

My father looked at me and said,

“Sometimes, people surprise you. But you ought to remember that maybe you surprise them, too.” Then he turned and walked away.

Sorry ladies, no Cadel in this one...



After scraping off some moss and carefully placing the pieces between pages of the small notebook I carried in my purse, I climbed down from the bridge and gathered some river rocks from the Llugwy, and then I followed the path along the river, deeper into Gwydyr. After walking some ten minutes, I arrived at a copse of elder trees. Murmuring thanks to the trees, I carefully removed some leaves and was lucky to find, so late in the season, some drying elderberries. Just as I pulled them away, I heard a quiet step behind me.

“Building a ward, are ye?”

“MmmHmm,” I sighed. “My cousin broke mine.”

“That tall, pushy one? Aye, clumsy he always was.”

“I’ll trade for what I take,” I said, quietly.

“There are some very fine toadstools in Ffos Noddun this season. I have a few to spare. Quite a nice punch. I’ll show you how to do with them.”

“Gwydion, why do you talk to me? Why do you teach me things?” I asked as I knelt and shuffled through some ferns to find some with spores.

“Ah, child, you needed to talk. A lonely thing you were and are. Turned in on yourself, you will do more harm than good, to be sure. It is a community deed I do.”

I snorted.

“Well, I made a really good fetch a few weeks back.”

“Aye. How long did she last?”

“A whole week. And she was so real she even made my mother worry.”

“You were always a bright one,” he chuckled.

I pocketed the ferns and moved on to looking for a bit of hazel.

“How is your ash?”

“The acid has damaged her again. A wet year. She’s looking yellow in places. Her leaves drop early.”

 “I’m sure I can heal it.” I sighed. “Humans have really made a muck of this planet, haven’t they?”

“I’ve no love for them, to be sure.”

“Well, we’ve let them do things badly though, haven’t we?”

Now it was his turn to sigh.

“Aye, child, that we have.”

This is from part of the opening of the book...

___________________________________________________________

As I sailed into my office and plopped down in my desk chair, still turning Dr. Gant’s words over in my mind, a voice emanated from on the floor behind the other desk.

“I just knocked all the applicant files over the edge of my desk. Seriously, no more coffee. How did it go?” A pair of sparkling blue eyes popped up over the edge of her desk.

“Fine. Just fine. Do you think it’s really obvious that there’s a problem between Tony and me?”

“Shit, are you saying even Iceman Gant noticed?”

I slumped in my chair. Just wonderful. Even Stacia thought it was bad.

Stacia McKee, my office mate, colleague, friend and frequent partner in mischief, was a whiz at growing things, just like I was. Though I’d never mentioned it, I was pretty sure that Stacia was part Fae, just like I was part Fae. At only five feet tall, with her slender build, she even looked like a fairy. But I wasn’t at all sure she knew she was. She didn’t have some of that arrogance that so many Fae did, although she had plenty of the mischief and humor.

“Let’s skip talking about it Staysh. Who are we interviewing first?”

“I am not interviewing anyone. You’re interviewing them. Your stuff grows no matter what happens. Ain’t nobody but nobody touching my babies. And besides, you’ve got that whole Zen thing going on when it comes to teaching and stuff. I most certainly do not, as you will recall.”

She walked around her desk and plunked all the file folders back on my desk.

“Fine,” I said, with a frown. “I’ll interview three or four. And if you don’t teach, there will be no new techs or even scientists, Staysh. Someone taught us, remember?”

“Dr. Bronwyn Gower, you and Dr. Stacia Marie McKee are brilliant, careful and inventive. Teaching us was pure pleasure. Remember?”

I raised my eyebrow while frowning yet again.

“Definitely no more coffee. Or tequila, or whatever it is that you’ve been imbibing.”

I opened the file on top that I’d flagged with a hot pink Post-It tab. “Mercedes Ramirez. Age 22, senior at UW, dual major in botany and information tech. Sounds like a winner to me… At least on paper. Let’s get the ball rolling.”

I picked up the phone and called her, along with four other applicants. Mercedes, or Mercy as she liked to be called, was indeed the winner by later that afternoon. I passed the remaining files down the hall to Radha, who’d also gotten funds for a technician.

Stacia took one look at Mercy and decided she was a disaster.

Sometimes Stacia could be so much more perceptive than I am.

This is actually from an outtake that won't be in the book (you know how I write other characters and scenes to flush things out in my mind...)

---

“She’s making due just fine, happily even, if you ask me.”

“You will never give her children, so happily does not appear to be sufficient. Though, I hope this is not a long enough term business to make that a concern.”

“Yeah, definitely short term. Like you and your wife, I take it. Just the blink of the eye. Quite surprising you’d take up with someone so short lived, really. The past thirty odd years didn’t give your family many qualms, I take it? But found a way to have a child, nonetheless, didn’t you? And a fine one too, you’ve said. Odd how that worked out okay, innit?”

“You’re really quite confident that I won’t kill you, aren’t you.”

“Not exactly. I’m far more confident that you can’t stop being insulting.”

He rose from the bed.

“My aunt approaches. You may go or leave as you wish.”

“Why thank you, Bertram. I think I’ll stay here in my apartment, with my girlfriend, who’s been in my care.”

With teeth bared he replied, “How she could attach herself to such an insolent miscreant, I will never understand.”

“I believe she finds me quite entertaining. We’ve got interests in common. It’s quite the little things, don't you know.”

Still no title but at 169 pages so far.

Ah, Cadel.... He never changes.

"… is that your car?”

He glanced at the vehicle I was pointing to and nodded, puzzled.

“Yeah. Would you be expecting many grey Jaguar XKR convertibles to be parked on your block?”

He turned off the alarm and put his briefcase in the passenger footwell then closed the door and locked the car again.

“But, you’re illegally parked. You parked at a hydrant. And…” I walked around and pulled the yellow citation off the windshield, “you’ve gotten a ticket, for $354.45 if paid within thirty days, as a result. Didn’t you see the fire hydrant?”

“It was the only space on the block. I don’t like to park the car too far away. It’s the best car I ever had. It cost a bloody fortune and I really like it. I need to park it close enough to hear its alarm,” he said, tapping his ear.

I just stared at him.

“You knew you were parking illegally? Didn’t you realize it’s a three hundred plus dollars ticket?”

“Yeah. But I’m not going to pay it, so…” he snatched out of my hand and tore it in two and looked dangerously close to dropping the shreds on the ground. He seemed to watch me, watching his hands, and stop short. With a smile he put the pieces in a trashcan on the corner and then offered me his hand. “You’re really peculiar about the car business, aren’t you?”

“Not as peculiar as someone who thinks he’s going to keep his car from being towed or from losing his license from getting speeding tickets.”

“Oh, I don’t get speeding tickets.”

“What does that mean? Any time I’ve been in a car with you, you’re speeding nonstop.”

“I’m not sure I should say. You look disapproving enough already. But I assure you, I don’t get speeding tickets.”

He glamoured the traffic cops? I shook my head and he firmly took my hand and we walked to the market.

A story in which the central character is Bronwyn Gower. And drop everything you remember from the entire Dead Wrong thru Paradiso series.

The love interest is one Cadel Gurdin.

Set in San Francisco, Seattle, and elsewhere. Call it... Urban Fantasy with Sci Fi elements.

At 16,500 words and 42 pages currently. When I get it in better shape I might let you guys see some snippets.

I'll be shopping it.

I'm curious.

So this was written after Dead Wrong, before Dead Certain was extended, tightened and finished, and around about the time I wrote Snapshots. I wrote it as part of the rationale of how Cadel gets so attached, so quickly, to Sookie. Like Cadel, Sookie isn't easily bought. It's something he relates to, and he likes it that she's the way she is. This fragment sort of sketched out, in my mind, how things went down with freeing Stefan and the brothers coming to Louisiana to help with the takeover. It's still not exactly spot on for the character voices, though. It wasn't written for publication. (Sometimes it's really helpful to write fragments from other character's points of view. You can let that backstory inform what your main story is through their character.) Anyway, for the Cadel fans:



August 2009

His eyes coursed over her while she was distracted with answering some message on her phone. She really had quite the figure. He felt a stirring of all kinds of hunger just looking at her. But as his eyes traced over her face, that faintest scattering of freckles just threw him. Pamela had said she was really a blonde and used to be quite tan. He looked away and sighed. Eric’s wife, and therefore very unavailable was all he should focus on. Although… if he was honest, it wasn’t exactly a sexual attraction. He just felt at ease with her, somehow. Even if it was a peculiar assignment to be guarding her, he looked forward to her visits now. He enjoyed watching over her.

As he leaned against the back porch wall, suddenly she glanced up at him and smiled a bit. He gave her a rather noncommittal look.

“Well, you’re sure silent all of the sudden,” she said giving him a puzzled look.

“It happens sometimes. Even to me. Consider it downtime.”

“I dunno, Cadel. You just don’t seem like a downtime kind of guy. I don’t know if a person into downtime could drive the way you do. The autobahn is back in Europe. Eric explained that, right?”

He smirked but didn’t reply.

He'd been here nine months now. Though, without question, the business of helping Andor set up security here for the past eight months was a refreshing change of pace compared to scrounging in Munich. Being a bodyguard for Eric’s human wife a week out of every month was somewhat odd, though at least she was an amusing creature. However he looked at it, he really owed Eric at this point. First, Eric had engineered the rescue and funded the complete rehabilitation of Stefan and had never mentioned it again, even after almost two centuries. Eric hadn’t even let him participate in the plan. He was to ‘stay out of it, in case a backup plan was needed to help Stefan out’. In a really rare instance for Eric, so far as he’d seen anyway, neither he nor Stefan appeared to owe Eric a debt for it. That, in and of itself, was rather unusual. Eric really liked being owed and he’d asked Eric to help him free Stefan. Eric had gotten Andor to help and they didn’t owe Andor, either. Though really, Andor owed him for so many things, that debt might have been canceled. No, the point was that Eric had engineered the rescue and also supported Stefan financially, for more than a decade while Stefan recovered. But he’d never acted as if either of them owed him a thing, even when asking them to come and help him take over this bizarre state of Louisiana. And now he had a fairly swell situation on top of it. Although he wasn’t held in quite the same standing as Andor, Eric treated him, and treated Stefan, as if they were both invaluable members of his team and in private he acted as ever he had. The four of them horsed around as he’d played with his brothers when he was human. Really, it was like they were brothers. In public Eric wasn’t looking for any deference from them. He wanted mutual respect and demanded everyone working under them to treat them as if they were genuinely his brothers. Eric did the big brother business so easily and well.

So yeah, he’d happily watch Eric’s very attractive wife. Although he had to say, even if Eric considered himself married to her, she didn’t seem like she quite bought into the whole thing. Not that she wasn’t into Eric. She definitely looked like she was from the way she looked at him and didn’t seem to notice any other men at all. Odd, that, considering the fact that she couldn’t be glamoured. She looked at Eric almost as if she had been. She looked at him with… what was the right word? Maybe adoration? It was striking to see a human who so clearly loved a vampire without being glamoured even a bit. But the really odd issue was that for all that, she didn’t seem at all convinced that living here was a good idea. Didn’t seem swayed by the fancy lifestyle, the money, the cars. She seemed not just disinterested but as if she thought the whole business was rather off-putting. She told anybody that bowed or scraped to cut it out and if they continued to do it she told Pamela to make them cut it out. When Rasul had mistakenly lapsed back into calling her Sookie (the fact that he was calling her by her first name at all was amazing) she’d apologized to him for the complication of her new name and told him it was fine when they were in the compound.

It looked like Eric was being very cautious about presenting things in a carefully controlled manner, as if she’d startle and run. They’d all been forbidden to mention any of the hangers-on, no fangbangers were allowed anywhere near him at all and her friend had been instructed to increase the boundaries of the wards around the compound substantially. She was also kept well away from any of the media and Eric never went out in the weeks she was visiting. It was amusing to all of them that she didn’t seem to really know much about all the media frenzy surrounding Eric. Stefan thought she seemed naïve to an extreme. Pamela had said that she was always reading or studying and was much more serious compared to when they knew her several years before. Since she traveled so much that she only watched films, listened to music and read. There was no time for magazines and TV. He'd overheard her telling Pamela that she'd been so ignorant when she'd started her job and still thought she'd never catch up to where she needed to be. But she still had a good sense of humor from what he'd seen. She loved to laugh and be playful with Pamela, a bit with Rasul and sometimes even with him now.

Even so, she seemed slightly uneasy with Eric’s displays of affection and almost peculiarly self-conscious for someone who had her… assets. Of course, Pamela had said that she’d been gravely harmed by those fairies. But she didn’t look scarred from what he’d seen of her. Considering her age, the season and who she was hanging out with, though, she kept herself quite covered and acted fairly reserved. Her public manner with Eric always seemed slightly cool, but that way she looked at him gave it all away. It was really incredible that he couldn’t glamour her. Even Andor was impressed that Eric couldn’t glamour her. Impressed, but troubled.

To Andor, and to him, the working reality of her staying here was simply astonishing. Eric, Eric of all people, had gone and gotten himself so attached to a human that she was sleeping in his bed, even during the day. She'd had free access to come and go from his rooms after the first week she'd arrived. Every time he thought about it, he told himself that it was inconceivable. Eric, who’d never had anyone live with him, other than Pam or Andor? And Eric and Pam were convinced, beyond any shadow of doubt, that she’d never harm him.  Andor still didn’t care for the idea and had said so to Eric’s face.  The look on Eric’s face when Andor had suggested quarters for her downstairs… That had been quite the argument. Andor had ended up apologizing. When had he ever seen Andor apologize to anyone about anything?  Of course, Eric had been rather antagonized at that point. It was really quite something to see the two of them glaring eye to eye at one another.

But here it was, August, three months later. She was sleeping in Eric’s rooms every day she was here. Making suggestions, that he had to admit were clever assessments, on how to improve their security. She did seem a bit more comfortable among them. Yet she didn’t seem the least inclined to move back from Virginia, where Andor said she was living in a one bedroom apartment and driving a practical car. She’d spend only a week and then go back. From talking to her, it was obvious she liked her work. She seemed to travel a fair amount, all over the Middle East, he gathered. It clearly bothered Eric that she wouldn’t just quit her job and move to New Orleans. Eric was quite ticked off that she kept leaving, even though he was making a good show of acting unperturbed. He was irritable for days after she left, though. Had he ever even heard a woman say no to Eric? Centuries of watching the man charm the knickers off women and yet he’d apparently fallen for the woman who’d clearly been heard in an argument the previous night to say “You better stop trying to tell me what to do, do you hear me? Oh no you don’t! I’m mad and I’m not interested. Push it, and I’ll go stay in a hotel. And I’m not kidding!” He and Stefan had been chatting in the hallway and when they’d heard her and they’d been barely able to repress their laughter. To Eric! He chuckled to himself just thinking about it. Yeah, she really was a spitfire this one. He had to give Eric credit, though. Obviously if she was with him, it was because she really wanted to be. It felt better when someone wanted to be with you without glamour (a point rather lost on Andor). He felt wistful about that thought but then pushed it to the back of his mind. That was the past and he was moving forward.

A moment later, he was distracted by her rising from her chair. She looked back up at him with a broad smile, her blue eyes twinkling. She pushed his arm in a playful fashion with her elbow. He looked at her eyes, which were aquamarine colored, with little copper flecks, and at the tiny freckle on her upper lip. That was the one. It made him remember. That and elbowing his arm, regarding him with the playful smile. She’d done that before and it was just jarring. No vampire would ever be that way and few humans in his experience had ever treated him that way in the past three hundred and fifty years. Most were afraid of you or they disliked you. She didn't dislike vampires a bit, it seemed.

“You look so bored, Cadel. You’re acting so serious. This has to be the pits of an assignment. If you want to bail, it’s fine. I’m carrying my service weapon. I really don’t think anyone’s out to get me because no one, other than my boss, even knows I’m here. Even Amelia's going to be surprised I'm here today. So if you want to skedaddle or something, I’ll be fine. Amelia should be here any minute and she says her boyfriend has this place warded like all get out. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.”

He took in her face, eyes lingering briefly on the funny way she bit her lip as she waited for his response.

“Eric told me I’m not to take my eyes off you. I don’t think you quite understand what that means in his mind. If anything happened to you, I’d be bloody toast.”

“Is that like a vampire joke, or a British thing?”

“What?”

“The bloody thing. One of my best friends grew up in the UK. I mean, he’s Saudi and all, but he’s really a Brit at heart. It's always the ‘bloody this’ and the ‘bleeding that’? I have to say, it’s pretty funny to hear a vampire say that stuff.”

“I’m from Wales. I’m not so sure I’d go as far to consider myself British. I’m Welsh. One of the Cymry. The original Britons. But it’s an excellent expression for a vampire. Never much thought about it before, actually.”

“You know, it’s really odd you’re not blond.”

“What? What are you on about?”

“Well, Eric, Andor and Stefan are blond, right? I was thinking about it again earlier. Eric makes your sire sound like a real piece of work. Andor, too. But Eric said just about all of you were blond. Was it just bad luck that you got turned?”

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

“You know, you don’t just go asking people about their sires. It isn’t done, that. Are you always this nosy?”

“Well… sure. I mean, I really have to be nosy for my job. I’m an interrogator, remember? I get paid to ask questions and dig for information. Keeping this country secure since 2006,” she said with a wry smile. “But I didn’t mean to get too personal. I mean, Eric and Andor talk about him, so I didn’t realize that it was rude. I’m sorry. And seriously, I’m fine here if you want to take off for a while. I really feel bad that Eric has you watching me. It seems sort of… working below your pay grade, so to speak. Pam says that you’ve got all kinds of security and computer skills. I enjoy chatting with you, but I was fine with Rasul. And I really just don’t think anyone’s going to get me, you know?”

“I’m perfectly fine doing what Eric tells me to do,” he said giving her a sidelong glance.  She apologized for being rude?  What an enchanting human Eric had found...  “And he told me not to take my eyes off you. Pamela says you’re rather prone to getting into trouble. Seen a bit of it back in June and I’m not looking forward to more of it. Eric gets a bit tetchy when things go wrong with you, as you’ll recall. I’m not having that on me. You’re not hard to look at, so don’t worry about it.”

"But he didn't get upset other than about that time in the bar, right?"

"Let's say I'm strongly motivated not to have him upset and leave it at that."

Really, it was amusing. Eric was none too fond of being questioned and yet it appeared that all this creature did was question. In fact, she seemed to question Eric a fair amount. That fact appeared to amuse Pamela to no end. Maybe Eric just liked the challenge? Getting a human woman into his bed, and even to love him, when she couldn’t be glamoured and didn’t have any interest in all the trappings of his position definitely seemed like a challenge. Stefan, cautious in his judgment of the whole situation as always, noted that Eric had seemed, overall, much happier since she had started coming to visit. He said that Pamela had implied that she’d loved Eric for years and that perhaps it had been mutual for years. As he stood there looking at her, he wondered whether it was possible that Eric actually loved her. But what else could it be? She was sleeping in his rooms! Ah, that was just incredible. It went against everything they were used to doing. Centuries of keeping safe and sound and now he was letting an unglamoured human stay in his room during the day with him. He just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Eric! Almost 1100 years old…

Andor frankly appeared put out about the entire business still and had been ever since Eric had gone to Virginia in May. He had even gone so far as to suggest that she was part of the reason Eric had taken over The Swamp, as Andor was given to calling the state. Personally, he had to say he thought Andor was more than a bit hurt that Eric hadn’t said up front that he’d married her. When Pamela had told them that she was Eric’s wife, you could have knocked Andor over with a well-placed puff of air. It was the first time he’d seen Andor genuinely shocked in several centuries. On the other hand, he could definitely understand Eric's point of view. There were certainly similar things that Stefan didn’t know about him, for instance.

“See, that would be the major difference between you and me, Cadel. Sometimes, I swear, Eric could drive me insane when he tells me what to do. It’s an excellent reason not to be a vampire. I don’t have to listen. He’s not the boss of me. Anyway, there’s Amelia, coming round the drive.”

He looked at her again and let out a small snort. The very idea that she thought she didn’t have to be bound by his wishes because she was human was really rather funny. How many humans had he ever met that thought it was fine to argue with a vampire? Let alone one over a thousand years old...

“I hear the car, how’d you know it’s her?” he asked.

She looked at him and chuckled.

“Um, her thoughts?” she said with an amused smile. She laughed when she saw his perplexed expression.

“From down the drive? Are you serious?”

She nodded.

“Dead serious.” Then she burst into laughter at the pun, elbowing him again.

He groaned internally while looking at the wrinkle on her nose when she laughed. She was so sassy, contrary, and playful. Really, it was everything about her, her whole manner, that reminded him of Angharad. Oh, now he'd gone and done it...

“You look completely dismayed by me tonight, Cadel. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you be so serious.”

And this is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that you’re the spitting image of my sister. If she’d just made it to thirty, that is, he said to himself with a sigh.