Holly Chism's Blog

Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells is the second (of three planned) in Building a Life, following Fixing Up Love.

Amaryllis and Chris have been in love since…forever. Even if Amaryllis didn’t realize it until Chris fell off a ladder. A year later, they’re working and planning toward a wedding. Eventually. When they get enough money built up, and can take the time to do it.

Unfortunately, Amaryllis forgot Thanksgiving. Her mother decided that since she forgot it, she could make it. And that would have been fine, if the turkey hadn’t suddenly been the worst thing ever.

Now, she’s got three weeks to plan her own wedding, and only four hundred dollars to pay for it. But she’ll manage. It’ll work.

It just has to.

So, the kids are back to school, as of mid-August. I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things. Had started the last chapter of Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells…and had to switch projects because my mom’s birthday hit, and I couldn’t write Amaryllis’s mom right then. No, not writers’ block. Couldn’t see the screen through tears. So, yeah. I’m feeling some better, so that’ll be brought back up and finished off this week.

Of course, I’ve had complications arise. Namely, that the last chapter wasn’t. I’ve already added a few more, and more characters have butted in…but I should be able to finish the first draft today.

I’m nearly 2/3 of the way finished with Street Snacks (Liquid Diet 5). The complications in Meg’s life are unfolding, and she’s working on keeping all the balls she has to juggle up in the air…and working on handing off the ones she doesn’t have to handle herself. Or knows she can’t because she lacks the base knowledge. As soon as I’m done with Sleigh Bells, I’ll work on finishing Street Snacks. Should be a couple more weeks, assuming I can get the damn MP3 player to actually work. Stupid fucking thing keeps turning itself OFF while I’m LISTENING. And writing.

And of course, I’ve had yet another story jump into my head. I keep having to write little bits on it to get it to let me write other things. This one’s going to be…weird, even by my standards. One of the characters doesn’t even have a voice, yet, and won’t for a while. My son is intrigued by the concept. So is my other half. I don’t have a title for it, yet. But the fog around the plot is starting to clear.

Beyond these projects, I’ve got another Modern Gods book in the works. I wasn’t expecting one, but…there you go. I guess that one’s coming back to life. Slowly. And it’s not like there isn’t a lot that can still be written in that world. There are so many pantheons to play with, and so many stories. I’d forgotten, for a long time, how much fun mythology can be.

And with all of that, I’m still trying to get back into the swing of a solid routine, between writing, dealing with kid stuff, and housework. Seriously, all those idiots trying to push for AI to do writing? They’re looking in the wrong direction: give me an AI that can run my house and do the housework–the laundry, the dishes, the picking up and putting away, vacuuming, mopping…the stuff that drags. Not the cooking–that’s kind of fun, and definitely emotionally satisfying. Not the writing, either. Writing doesn’t drag. Writing is the fun part, even if I hate the editing (wouldn’t mind an AI that could edit…so long as we could get one that’s totally unbiased, doesn’t lean left or right, and doesn’t lean toward gray sludge, or romance-only).

I’ve got two and a half hours before I have to go get the kids from school. Therefore, it’s time to get back to making the words go.

(Later, after I get the kids home, I’ll need to mix up all purpose gluten free flour for bread, cake, and cookies, and make supper. And bread. And maybe cake. Because my sales keep improving, year by year–thank y’all for that–and I feel like celebrating.)

I’ve been a writer since I could hold a pencil and form words. I’ve been a storyteller for longer than that.

I’ve been a published writer (independent) since 2012, when I put together a collection of short stories and a novella that I’d written in college. That’s thirteen years. Thirteen years I’ve been published, and probably six years longer that I’ve been doing this as a targeted fiction writer. I’ve played around with a lot of different tools, and finally hit on the best tools for me. It took a lot of trial and error, but things do shake out as you try them, and hang onto what works.

When I started doing this as more than “hm. I need to turn something in for creative writing,” I was still in college. I had a character march into my head and demand to be written. I used the second-hand desktop that an uncle gave me. It didn’t connect to the internet at all, but it ran a bootleg copy of Office 97 just fine. And that worked. I wrote three books and several short stories on that machine before it died. Then, my junior year, my future husband gave me an old laser printer. A brother. Ancient machine, but damn. I fell in love. I could print my work (one sided, but hey) for editing. And I could edit without anything smearing!

Fast forward to grad school. The college I attended for my BA degree had computer labs in every building; the ratio was 49 students per computer. The ratio that the grad school bragged about…wasn’t nearly so good. It was almost double the number of students per computer, and the computer labs were in the library or the computer sciences building, with a couple of six-computer labs scattered here and there, restricted to grad student use. I bought my first laptop to ensure I’d be able to get my work done (and a tiny, portable inkjet printer that was slow as shit to print, but saved my ass a couple times).

The other thing I discovered in grad school was that I love using fountain pens. Love the silly, finicky things. I can write with them longer without my hands and forearms cramping up. Started with a Sheaffer calligraphy pen with a .5 chisel nib in undergrad, then moved to a Parker Vector with a fine nib in grad school. Went through a cartridge a week, taking notes, but ended up taking more and better notes (and notes on stories and plots) because I could write longer at a given time.

I’ve stuck with a laptop, for the most part, since then. It’s a lot handier to have a laptop, and there’s no need to have a desktop as well. I mean, there may come a time when that changes, but it hasn’t come yet. Behind me, there’s a laser printer for drafts–and it prints double-sided. Yes, there’s also a color printer, but that’s as much for kids’ homework assignments as anything.

I stuck with Word for years. Even bought licenses a couple of times, when it didn’t come free as an employee of a university. But there’s a problem with that, now. I can’t outright buy Word, anymore–I mean, yes, it’s possible, but cost-prohibitive. By cost, I’d have to rent it. I have sincere distaste for that. I mean, it’s one thing when I had to replace a laptop every year or so, but the last one lasted me three years. This one is halfway through year two. I do not want to rent programs for a year at a time. And the office clones work, but not as well for publishing. They’re great for some things, but not for all. So I use LibreOffice Writer for some things, and Atticus for actual formatting and publishing (and some drafting).

Not all the drafting. Second, and then third. First drafts…as the kids have been in school, I’ve found myself doing more and more first draft work by hand, while I wait in the car for them to come out. It’s surprising how much you can get plotted out in ten or twenty minute segments. Yes, I use fountain pens for that. The pens I use, however, have evolved. I was using basic, pull-cap fountain pens, but the ink was horrifically limited in volume, and the pens I used…I couldn’t see my ink levels without disassembling the pens to look at the cartridge. I switched to piston-filled pens…and discovered that the enormous ink capacity came with a different issue: what to do with a cap that you can’t post without risking an ink geyser trying to get it back off.

The paper is also a consideration that most people wouldn’t think of. I mean, generally, people use ballpoint pens. Or rollerballs. Those come with a thicker, viscous type of ink, rather than the liquid inks that fountain pens use. Those write on pretty much any paper without issues. Fountain pens, and liquid ink…not so much.

I’ve tried a lot of different papers. Loose-leaf in three-ring binders (worst paper for fountain pens), Moleskin notebooks (also surprisingly bad paper for the cost), cheap journals (sometimes thicker paper is better, sometimes it’s just thicker). I’ve heard very good things about some European brands of paper and notebooks, but damn. Those are STUPIDLY expensive.

The best paper I’ve found for my purposes? Carrying in my purse and sitting and using while I’m waiting? Walmart’s Pen+Gear composition books and junior composition books. Their mini-comps are fine, too, but too small for much more than lists, notes, and reminders. Their legal pads are pretty good, too, but I’d need a protective cover for purse carry, and those are generally larger than I want to mess with. Their wire-bound notebooks are just as good, but snag.

So, the tools I carry now are capless fountain pens, with extra-fine nibs to extend the ink capacity as much as possible. Clicky pens. Two Pilot Vanishing Points (a blue one with purple ink, and a red one with burgundy), and two Jinhao 10 clones of the Pilots (with Noodler’s x-feather blue in the tan one, and x-feather black in the green one). No, the ink capacity isn’t wonderful, but I can generally tell when they’re starting to need refills by the behavior, and I don’t have to keep track of a loose cap. And if I carry four, I have the same general ink capacity as one piston fill, so I’ll generally have ink in one of them. And I carry at least two full-size composition books (one for novel projects, and the other for short stories), one junior (for if I need something less obtrusive to jot things down when I’m supposed to be doing something else), and a mini-calendar for keeping track of what’s going on in my writing/publishing schedule, and in the kids’ schedules.

The tools I use at home are a basic laptop1, the laser printer (and sometimes inkjet), LibreOffice Writer2, and Atticus. Oh, and my old piston-fill fountain pens, and the snap-cap Plasir pens. And whatever notebook/binder comes to hand.

(Yes, there is a composition book and a TWSBI Eco3 fountain pen on my nightstand. I do not control when/how the characters walk into my head and start talking.)

Preferences, and situations, change. And the tools change with them. It’s taken years of trial and error to optimize the tools for my daily needs. I think I’ve found a good setup for what I need, and for what I do…for now, at least. It may change again as the kids get their licenses and start driving. And working.

1A laptop really is the best option for me: there are days I can work at a desk, with a wireless usb keyboard in my lap…and days I can’t work at a desk (some of those I can’t even work in my recliner).

2OpenOffice is also an option, free, and easily available. I just prefer the user interface of LibreOffice. Your mileage may vary.

3TWSBI Eco fountain pens are awesome. They hold double the ink that the biggest cartridges do, and the barrels are clear, so you can always see how much you have. They can post without engaging the knob that moves the piston, so that makes them specifically good as nightstand pens. HOWEVER. They tend to vomit ink into the cap if they’re dropped, shaken, and generally banged around, which makes them bad as carry-in-your-purse pens. They’re probably fine for shirt pocket carry, but not for how I carry pens.

Yes, it’s been forever since I posted. I’m sorry. I have reasons, but they honestly feel like excuses. I know, I know: they feel like excuses because the black dog has been chewing on my ass for months. I’m trying to get/do better.

So. Last January. Published The Law of Magical Contagion.

The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.

And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.

Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.

In March, I put out a collection of short stories. Science fiction, this time. Title is Escape Velocity.

An optimistic collection of six stories revolving around leaving Earth, or living (and making a living) further out in the solar system.

Xanadu–Sometimes, making a profit just needs an outside perspective for why it hasn’t yet.
Turing’s Legacy–It takes love to make a person. And maybe an accident.
Theory in Practice–Psychological care may well be more important in a closed environment.
Reasonable Accommodations–Microgravity could be an answer to some disabilities.
You Can’t Go Home Again–The effects of long-term isolation on asteroid miners explored.
Everyday Miracles–What could push someone to emigrate to a new off-planet colony?

I got my brain hijacked by what I THOUGHT was a short story. It wasn’t. It turned into a full-blown novella-length coming-of-age story. Which normally, I can’t stand, and don’t write. I didn’t have a choice on this. It came out whether I wanted it to or not.

The final product was put up for sale in May: The Passing of the Age. It even spent a little bit of time on the Amazon best-seller’s list for its category.

Once, gods and Titans went to war because humanity existed and the Titans…didn’t like that. Will, the blacksmith’s apprentice, was born long after the war’s bitter, destructive, last gasp. It left the land scarred, leaving behind the Wastes, a massive pit in the landscape, dug by poisoned magic. The old world was lost in the ashes, and survivors were left with so little that any who didn’t pull their weight (or had something someone powerful wanted) were exiled to starve in the Wastes.

Just. Like. Will.

Cast out to the Wastes because his father remarried and his stepmother had wanted her children to inherit, he turned to his master, the smith. The smith, who had held Will back to keep using his labor for free, refused to go against the rest of the village, angry though he was to lose Will’s labor. In lieu of the honestly-earned status of journeyman that would have protected Will from exile, his master gave him a bag of grave goods: a hammer (but not a good one), tongs (that were rusting to pieces), and a file (more than half worn out). And two small coins to pay the ferryman when he reached the river dividing life from death.

Will entered the wastes with the clothes on his back, inadequate grave goods, and determination to live through it, in spite of his village. And a mission given him by the Land, and by the god of the wild places, to take the knife he made with his grave goods to the very center of the Wastes. There, he will find his destiny.

Then last month–July–I put out another type of story I don’t write. A romance. A ghost story romance. I was not planning to write it. It just came out.

That was Soul Inheritance. It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought, and…wholesome. Definitely a clean romance, and a lot more religiously inclined–openly so–than most everything else I write (even though it’s in the background of literally everything I write).

Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.

Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.

Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…

I am still working on Liquid Diet 5. Current title for that one is Street Snacks. I’m about a third of the way done. I thought I had a good idea of the full plot, but it jinked a bit. Like my characters tend to do, I had a bunch insert themselves, and run away with the plot a little bit. I’m no longer sure where things will end up. Or how. I’m hoping to have that done and out by…October? Maybe? I know my daughter’s poking at me to hurry up and finish it. Kinda hard to do that, right now–the kids are under elbow, and…I can’t write like that. Thankfully, school starts next Wednesday. I should be able to write better after that.

The other issue is…well. Technology-related. Laptop is partitioned (which either is a recent development, or I didn’t know about), and the C drive is…stupid. It’s literally the smallest partition. And it decided that there was insufficient room to update about a month ago, and I had to delete EVERYTHING THAT WASN’T MS PROGRAMS off of it to have room for updates. Which included my music. And my music player can’t FIND the damn music I write by, now.

(I got an MP3 player. I’ll be putting the rest of my music on it soon, but right now, it contains just my writing music for the Liquid Diet Chronicles.)

Also planned for November is Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells. It’s a follow up to last year’s romance, Fixing Up Love. I’ve got it 3/4 of the way written. It’ll be a novella, and I might–MIGHT–publish the two together in one volume in paperback. If there’s interest.

(I might do that anyway, for the sake of my daughter and her best friend, who both love romance, and are fourteen.)

I think that’s it for this year’s projects. I will say this: I can’t keep going at this pace. I’m going to have to slow down how many books I push myself to write and put out. I think maybe next year, I’ll aim at four, with one of them being a collection of short stories, one Liquid Diet book, a slot for a “hi, there, I’m ambushing you!” idea (there’s one or two that are nudging), and…a Modern Gods book. I have an idea for one that I’m working on getting written. I’ve got about four chapters done, with another two started. And I have a plot.

I am going to try to keep everyone up to date a bit better. And to do that, I’m going to add “update blog” to my to-do list. I’m aiming at monthly, for now. May go to weekly, once I get that habit built. Wish me luck on everything. I have the feeling I’m going to need it.

What’s going on:

I haven’t caught my breath, yet. The kids have gone back to school for the spring semester…sort of. Monday was an ice day–ice under snow on the parking lot made it really unsafe, so they canceled–and Friday was a snow day. Which…we had warning, so the school had the two of them bring home all of their books, and have an AMI* day instead of a snow day. And Wednesday, my son had a doctor’s appointment.

That means that I’ve had two days that I was able to settle down and write. Only two.

Hopefully, this week will be better. I don’t have anything that eats the kids’ school day, which is the only time I can really get work done, this week. Just an after-school dental appointment yesterday. Next week…the kids have a short (very short: MLK day on Monday is out entirely, and Friday’s a half day) week, and Other Half has a thing I need to help him with mid-week. I have no idea how productive I’ll be able to be next week…but I’m gonna try.

The Law of Magical Contagion went live, this morning, if you’re interested. It is, of course, KU, since that’s the only outlet I sell through, so you can borrow it and read it instead of buying (and if you like it, buy it later!).

Finished (or almost) but not:

I’ve got the revision nearly finished for Escape Velocity (planning on March). I’ll see if I have anybody willing/able to beta read it real fast, and get it out for pre-release ASAP. Hopefully, before the end of the month.

The current WIP is almost first-draft finished. I think I’ve got two chapters to go. The bastard fought me hard yesterday. I wrote around 3600 words, and deleted most of it, for a total of maybe 600 words kept. But I think I’m going in the right direction, and barrelling toward the end. I think that one will be Waking Mister Right or something. I’m not sure. Title is very much not set.

Works In Progress:

I have a log-jam of other projects. I’ve got a follow-up to Fixing Up Love about half finished (aiming for November), and I have a fifth in series for both Modern Gods and The Liquid Diet Chronicles bouncing around.

The first story/central idea for the Modern Gods book is set, and I’ve got two or three others up the spout. I’ll see how it all shakes out when I get finished with the two that are either almost finished or half-finished.

Meg’s pestering me, too. The beginning of the end of the Covid lockdowns–and hers–are going to be central to that one. Pre-election,** so really, the politics central to the book are vampire politics, not human. Like they have been all along: the last one was about how the lock-downs were affecting a race that not only doesn’t but cannot catch human illnesses. I mean, if there’s a blood supply shortage in hospitals, that’s absolutely going to hit the grocery delivery service. Hard. I’m not sure, yet, if it’s even still in business. It’s that nebulous. Unfortunately for Meg, she can only hold her borders inviolable until…well. Fall. October, at the latest.

Oh, there’s a long-ish short story set in the Liquid Diet world, from another character’s perspective, that I’ve got about half finished, too.

I think that’s pretty much it, for now. I’ll see what I’ve got to tell y’all next month

*AMI–Alternate Means of Instruction, aka, work at home and turn it in online.

**No fucking way am I touching the ’20 elections. You either were watching, or you weren’t.

Once again, I have a desk. It’s not an enormous desk. Which is, in all honesty, a good thing: I don’t have much space where I could put it. It’s in a corner of the library/living room, behind the high-backed loveseat.* It has a slanted shelf across under the desk, acting as both shelf and stability brace. It’s a good place for draft books, dictionaries, and a battered thesaurus that’s seen better days.**

The desk isn’t new. Like my stand mixer, I inherited it from my mother. It’s a solid wood piece, not pressboard, but she painted it because she couldn’t get the previous paint totally stripped off, and it stained the wood teal, and because she thought the grain of the wood “wasn’t pretty.” She wrought better than she knew, though; the paint is enamel, and the cats (hers and my sister’s) didn’t use it for a scratching post.

I have an office chair, too. Like the desk, it’s also not new; my other half bought it years ago, when he owned a small business in his hometown. Like, decades ago. This chair predates our marriage. But it’s in better shape than anything newer we have. It’s not adjustable in height, and is, quite frankly, tall enough that I can’t rest my feet on the floor if I wanted to do that (I don’t–I’ve got my feet propped up on the shelf under the desk). But it fits the desk’s height, and works well enough.

So, I have my office all set up, right?

Yeah…not yet. I still need organizers for the drawer, a decent pencil cup, organizers for files/notebooks on the desk, and I should find the prop/book holder for my draft books, for transcribing.

But I do have the major furniture pieces in place. And I can work at the desk, even without the little fiddly bits finished.

So. What am I working on?

Active writing projects

I’m working on a follow-up to Fixing Up Love. No, I hadn’t planned it, but there it is. I’ll probably put it up next fall, since it covers Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I’m also working on a sort of a ghost story/mystery/romance…thing. I haven’t really got a good title worked up for it yet, but it’s kind of fun. I know where that’s going, so I’m aiming at next summer.

Meg’s starting to pester me. Next up in the Liquid Diet Chronicles is going to be Pub Snacks (aiming at September), with a side-short-story in that world, from a third person POV of a new character.

Oddly enough, I think I’m starting to see the shape of another Modern Gods book. I’m not sure, yet, so we’ll have to see.

Finished projects

In January, The Law of Magical Contagion will go live on the fifteenth.

And in March, Escape Velocity will come out. (I’m working right now on an edit for that.)

Last but not least, I am going to be busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest for the rest of the month, and for the first week of next month. I’ll try to update on how the current active projects are going, but I won’t promise anything.

*Think a wingback chair, streteched out double its width, and you’ll have a general mental picture of the loveseat. So it actually works fairly well to separate my “office” from the rest of the room.

**The thesaurus is one I’ve had since slightly before college, when I found it on a free to a good home bookshelf in my home town.

Yeah, not doing wonderfully. For the past several months, I’ve been having worsening hypothyroid symptoms. It’s been creeping up on me for like a year to be honest. I thought it was just depression, which would have been reasonable, given the past year, but then the physical symptoms started getting more and more obvious. So, I asked for a doctor’s appointment to discuss that, and another issue. And I’m back on natural thyroid, and had started feeling better. I’m less than a month in, and the clouds have lifted. My energy hasn’t come back, but I can think and plan again. And write. Back on the writing bandwagon. There’ll be news on that front later in the post.

Week before last, the kids’ school decided that since the soccer team made the Final Four playoffs, they were going to cancel the Thursday and Friday before Thanksgiving Break (decided this on TUESDAY, by the way). Grandma immediately kidnapped them (Pixie had piano lessons Wednesday night, and she just snitched them both, and took them home with her). Thursday, when they came home, Imp was sick. He was fine by Saturday, but he spent Friday pretty miserable.

Then Pixie caught it. And passed it to Andrew. Yes, half the family (including my mother-in-law) were sick over Thanksgiving.

Now I have it.

Right when I need to be starting with Christmas baking. (Bake a batch of cookies, freeze half or more, repeat. Oh, and bread. Lots of bread. And same: bake a loaf, freeze a loaf for when I feel too crappy to make bread, but I’m out.)

On the upside, I finally found a second bowl for my stand mixer, which I’d inherited from my mom. It’s a Sam’s Club-sold Kitchenaid…and it’s an odd size, which meant finding a bowl to fit was a lot more complicated than it could have been. But I found one, and it arrived (a week early) yesterday. Which means I can do more baking a lot faster, given that I can have one in the wash, and use the other. I may get a second beater paddle; I don’t need a second dough hook, considering that gluten free stuff does not form up into a dough ball. Ever.

So. On to writing. Since my last post, both Light Up the Night and Liquid Diet Chronicles: Meals on Wheels went live. I revised and published a short story in the Modern Gods universe: “Universal Donor.” (I think that one may have spawned an idea for book 5 in the universe…but I won’t know for sure until I actually start writing whether it’ll be a full book or just a short story.) I finished the surprise novel that started out a short story–initially titled Dogfather–and it’s up for pre-order as The Law of Magical Contagion. I have a collection of sci-fi shorts almost ready for beta readers titled Escape Velocity. I’m working on another novel (and having issues with the name), and got pounced on by a followup to Fixing Up Love…which I had never intended to do any more with. Sometimes, though, I don’t get a choice about that.

Also since my last post, I’ve acquired new writing software. Last April, my laptop failed. I ordered a new one, one which came with a copy of Office 365, which I could use for a year. Then I’d have to rent a copy of the software to use for another year. I deeply, deeply resent that: I do not want to rent software. I hate having to buy a new copy when I buy a new laptop; I will not rent software by the year when I have to replace it every three years. And LibreOffice or OpenOffice, while they work well enough, don’t play well with Amazon for publishing. So I purchased a software app that came highly recommended by another writer whose work I greatly enjoy: Sarah Hoyt.

I cannot speak highly enough of Atticus. First of all, it’s a one-time purchase. Yeah, it costs more than a year of Office, but again, it’s a one time purchase. Second, it beats Word, hands down, with formatting for both E-pub and Paper. Because with it, I managed something that I’d failed to do with Word: the hardcover of Certified Public Assassin will be out as of 12/10. Yeah, since it’s print on demand, it won’t be shipping in time for Christmas, but if you get an Amazon gift card for Christmas and want that one in print, it is available. Now. Finally.

(Atticus also works quite well for writing books, too. I’m using it for the sequel to Fixing Up Love, and for the other one I’m working on, which doesn’t have a firm title yet.)

Guys…please pray for me that I don’t lose another elderly relative this year. I have two aunts left and an uncle by marriage on my mom’s side…and an aunt and two uncles left on my dad’s. I don’t need to lose any more just yet. Or, if you don’t believe, or don’t pray, send good thoughts and cross your fingers.

God, it’s been a rough year. Really, really rough.

January, my mom passed. That kicked my feet out from under me for a while.

Then Mother’s Day kicked them out from under me again. So did waking in a panic at the beginning of the month because I had no idea what to get her for her birthday, two weeks from that day.

Two days after Mom’s birthday, her youngest sister died.

One of Mom’s other two sisters had her cancer come back. Virulently. Complicated by cirrhosis.

The blows…just keep coming.

I’m trying to roll with them, but man, I’m feeling flattened. I will honestly admit that yes, it’s somewhat affecting my writing. Because I’m doing more reading, less writing, than I should be doing.

That said. Certified Public Assassin seems to be doing well. And I’ve got a novella coming up in September. It almost made novel length, but not quite. Light up the Night is currently available for pre-order:

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

It goes live September 18.

And Liquid Diet Chronicles 4: Meals On Wheels is in the hands of my beta readers.

I think that’s it for now; I’m bracing for what’s coming next, but fully expect to get knocked off my feet by life in general a few more times before the year’s over.

So. As of now, I have one fewer short story than I thought. I pulled it up to play with while I was poking at Word 365, and…my 9.5K word short story turned into a 35K word first draft novel. Working title is Light Up The Night.

With that, I’ve written three full, first draft novels so far this year. And the year isn’t over yet. And I’m getting tackled by short stories, and other pieces that I’m not sure yet what they’re going to do.

The kids finished the school year as of the 22nd of last month, so I’ve got them underfoot (and elbow) until the middle of August (barring about ten days of fun off with Grandma). Not particularly conducive to first draft writing, but fine for editing/revising. And I’ll be doing plenty of that on the novels I’ve got first-draft finished. NO more short story editing. Not right now. I do not need another surprise novel jumping me. I’ve sort of had enough of those.

Today, I’ve got work other than writing to be doing: my beloved other half has an appointment for which he’s being drugged silly, and to which I need to take him. Nothing big, just some dental work.

Which means I’m going to need to ask the kids to pick up the slack on the housework, while I’m taking care of their dad. They’re capable of it, capable of far more than they really want to admit. And that’s okay–they’re teenagers.

Right now, CPA is up for preorder–I posted the first sample chapter last week. I’m working on revising Dogfather. Next on the list will be Meals on Wheels, then Light up the Night, along with whatever other short stores (or longer pieces) jump me in the meantime.

I’ll be posting another sample chapter sometime probably next week. Cheers!

Certified Public Assassin is available for pre-order. Once it goes live, it’ll be available KU, too. Right now, I can’t seem to get the formatting to NOT bleed into the margins, so I can’t make it available to order in hard copy…but I’m HOPING to figure it out later.

So. Without further ado:

Molly wished she could wear sneakers. It would make the fire stairs so much easier. Especially when carrying slightly more than her body weight of dead weight over her shoulders and upper back, as well as her attaché case resting against her hip.

The best she could manage, with corporate camouflage of slacks, blouse, and blazer, was comfortable loafers. Unfortunately, no loafers had arch support designed to deal with an extra two hundred pounds, give or take fifty, on top of her own weight.

Rather, no loafers she could afford on her portion of her salary. The lion’s share still went to the massive monthly debt payments. And almost all of the rest went on student loans, interest, and fines.

She’d taken over the payments on the medical debt completely this past year, since Amber had committed suicide. Sex work wasn’t easy work, even at the top levels where sex wasn’t the point as much as arm candy in public. Amber had never been suited to it, mentally or emotionally, even if she’d had the looks for it. It wouldn’t have bothered Molly the same way, but she readily admitted she lacked the looks to pull off the top levels.

The last of the debts would be paid off at the end of the fiscal year…which was in four more months.

Their birth mother had no idea what an utter bastard she’d married. She was lucky he’d loved her, or she would know. Or it might be would have known. Briefly. Because that woman was irritating enough to make a saint lose their shit.

And Molly’s father had never been a saint. More a serpent.

The target she was currently carrying down to the dumpster was a man very much like her father had been, only without a family. No, this guy had been doing illegal shit in business, and in such a way that there was evidence, but never enough, of the right kind, or found in the right way, for any of it to result in charges. Her attaché case held a four-inch-thick file of the proof of the bastard’s deeds, a psychological profile, and the few pages of termination paperwork, sitting on top.

A door two floors down opened, and Molly froze on the landing, easing the soon-to-be corpse down and squatting next to him. Out of habit, she glanced back up the stairs, looking to see if there was a blood trail—there shouldn’t be, of course, since she’d arranged for the bastard to ingest a strong soporific in his coffee, but she might have knocked him against something, moving him. She’d be putting a .25 bullet behind his ear when she got him down to the dumpster. It wasn’t just blood that leaked, and other leaks tended to draw attention by the smell.

Her phone vibrated in her blazer’s inside breast pocket. She sighed, pulled it out, and checked—Uncle Jack was texting for an update. She sent back a message that she was waiting in the stairwell with the package for an obstruction to move, and she’d be down as soon as she could.

The smell of cigarette smoke wafted up the stairwell, and the clack of stilettos marched down the stairs to the fire door out to the alley, the one she’d noted had its alarm disabled. The door slammed open, and the footsteps went out. She eased down just far enough to be able to crouch and look past the floor of the landing she’d left the package on to see the smoker—a woman in a red skirt-suit, with a very short skirt—squat to put a piece of a brick in place to keep the door from closing all the way.

Molly hustled back up to the landing, and heaved the bastard over her shoulder, then moved as quickly and quietly as she could past the first floor landing, into the parking garage beneath the office building, where the dumpster for the business documents was placed. She manhandled the load into place, and turned his head away from her. She pulled out the tiny, suppressed .25 loaded with sub-sonic rounds, and put the round into the soft spot in the angle of the jaw behind the ear, aimed up.

The loud pop was like stomping an air-bag from shipping packaging echoing through the basement. Suppressors were all about protecting her hearing, not preventing her gun from being heard altogether. She pulled the file out of the case at her hip and dropped it on the slightly up-slope side of the new corpse, so that any leakage didn’t get on the paperwork.

She waited for a few minutes until she heard the door on the first floor slam shut, and the heels go clacking back in through the door to the main part of the building. Then, she made her way up and out the same fire door, opening and closing it quietly as she left the building, and headed for the end of the alley.

A dirty white rented Toyota Camry—three model years old—sat idling in a loading zone, just past the end of the alley. Uncle Jack’s salt-and-pepper hair was visible above the driver’s seat head-rest. She picked up the pace and slid into the passenger seat. She glanced over her navy blazer, khaki slacks, and white blouse for any dirt or smudges, finding nothing but a few creases. She flipped the passenger side sun visor down and checked the mirror. No makeup smudges around her dark eyes (which was one of three reasons she didn’t wear much makeup), and her simple, chin-length bob only needed her to run her hands through it to smooth it out.

Jack glanced at her for a second, flipped the signal, and pulled smoothly into traffic as soon as she was buckled in. “AAR, please,” he said, signaling to make a right at the light.

“I inserted into the temp office that the business hired from two weeks ago. This office hired me out of the temp agency this week.  I gave it a couple days, so that I wouldn’t seem out of place. Yesterday, I added a really strong emetic, and a laxative, to the normal secretary’s last latte, so that she’d call in sick this morning—she should be back tomorrow morning, after her little bout with food poisoning—and I got tapped to take her place. I put a very large dose of Rohypnol in the subject’s plain, black coffee, and subject was out within minutes of ingesting half the coffee. I poured out the rest, and carried the subject down to the parking garage’s secured, shredded documents receptacle, and left the paper work with the terminated contract, next to the dumpster.”  Molly thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t think there were any witnesses. The woman smoking in the alley was the closest possibility, and I know she didn’t see me, either loaded down or…afterward.”

Uncle Jack nodded, easing into the left-turn lane. “Sounds like it went off without a hitch,” he said. “Your usual attention to detail means there likely won’t even be an inquest. Well done.”

Molly nodded, and looked out the window. “My rent’s going up,” she mentioned casually. Since she’d gone in through a temp agency, she’d get paid minimum wage for the forty hours she’d worked for the week, and that would help. Unfortunately, temp agencies put the money directly into her bank account, flat refusing to consider issuing a paper check. Her rent got pulled automatically, before even her student debt payment…which would take literally everything but the rent from her account.  And she didn’t have anything left to sell for the minimal groceries she got.

Jack snorted. “Everyone’s rent is going up. Get a second job. You don’t have another hit scheduled for a while—there are possible targets, and we’re in negotiations, but we’re still in the evidence-gathering stage.”

“Anything interesting?” Molly asked listlessly. She wasn’t surprised by Uncle Jack’s response. It wasn’t like she talked to him about her problems.  Maybe she’d start buying Ramen packs when she got meals on the expense account while she was working…just to make sure she’d have something to eat, even if she didn’t get protein. 

“Only the normal fools that haven’t read the fine print beforehand, and attempt to schedule a hit on a political figure,” Jack snorted.

Molly hummed. “You’d think they’d realize, given how news coverage never mentions currently serving politicians among the serviced, that the politicians deliberately wrote the bill to specifically exclude themselves,” she mused.

“You’d think,” Jack agreed dryly. “The problem is that most people don’t. I’m not sure most people are capable of thinking.” 

“How long do I have to run a second job?” she asked.

“Likely about two weeks. Long enough to do some restaurant delivery.  You could do that.”

She snorted. “No. I can’t.”  She’d had to sell her car. The last time the rent had gone up, she’d had a choice between taxes and registration on her car, and rent. She hadn’t bothered mentioning it. Uncle Jack was her handler, not her friend. Only barely family, and that only by blood not sentiment.

“You could always move back in with your mother,” he pointed out.

“I’d be headed for prison in a week,” she said, voice flat. “Less than a week, if she talked to me.  At all.  I mean, everything is her fault.  If it wasn’t for Mother’s stupidity, Amber wouldn’t be dead, and I’d be a paralegal.”

Jack sighed through his nose, nodding tiredly. “There is that. She calls me about you, you know.” 

Molly raised an eyebrow. “Mother. Calls you. About me. Why?”

“Your father let her know that you and Amber were going to take on the debt. She’s not stupid, you know. She knows exactly how you girls would have had to be able to do that. Well, not Amber, but you. She wants to know how you’re doing.”

“I’m just peachy,” Molly said sarcastically. “Never mind that I’m pulling high seven figures and seeing in the lower third of five because of her stupidity. I’m living in the type of apartment Mom deserves, right now, and subsisting on Ramen and hot dogs. How the fuck does she think I’m doing?”

“You’re not suicidal,” Jack pointed out, “and that’s what she’s worried about. Just…call her.”

“No.”  Molly’s voice was flat and final. “You’re my handler, not my owner.”

Jack sighed, and the rest of the drive to the airport was quiet. “She loves you, you know,” he said as they parked.

Molly shrugged. “No, she doesn’t. She never loved either of us.  She only cares about how it looks for one daughter to have committed suicide, and the other daughter to have abandoned her.  I care about Mother about as much as Dad did about Amber’s well-being,” she said, stepping out of the car and stretching. “So, no, Uncle Jack.  She doesn’t love me.  She didn’t love Amber.  I’m not sure she loved Dad. She loves her image—which has taken some serious damage with both her daughters fleeing her presence and cutting off contact as soon as they could.”

“The next job could clear the debt,” Jack said quietly, “if I find the right one. What will you do after that?”

Molly sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Find a different handler. One that doesn’t bother me about things that are flatly none of their damn business.”

“And if I never mention your mother again?” he asked.

Molly shrugged. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It’s kind of hard to think that far ahead when I’m living on Ramen in a concrete box smaller than my college dorm room, and far less friendly.” 

Jack frowned. “Your take-home is…more substantial than that. I thought.” 

“It used to be,” Molly said tiredly, climbing into the small charter jet. “And then, the interest on my student loans jacked up. The student loans for a degree I only used for a year, before Dad and you rearranged my life to suit him. And somehow, the records show I’m in default, and I can’t afford to get that untangled.”

Jack walked up to the cockpit door and tapped on it, then back to the other seat, frowning thoughtfully. “How long has that been going on?” 

“About a year,” Molly said, leaning her head back against the seat. “After the interest, principal, and penalties payments, I’m left with just barely enough to pay for the box without a window. I’ve been subsisting on packet ramen, with a package of hot dogs once a week for protein, when I’m not using the business expense account while I’m on a job. Next job, though, you said pays for the last of what Mom owes, then I’ll have mine paid off in no more than one job after that. Even with the fines, penalties, and interest. I think.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me about it any sooner?” Jack asked as the engines spooled up and the plane started moving into position for takeoff.

“Why would I?” Molly asked, baffled. “I don’t talk to you about anything but the next job.” 

“I’m actually responsible for your well being as far as it impinges upon your job performance,” Jack reminded. “I’d noticed you were losing weight, and I was assuming it was because the job was getting to you, not that you were on the verge of fucking starving to death on a fucking seven-figure salary.”  He shoved both hands into his hair and swore quietly. “I’ll look into untangling your student loans.”

Molly nodded once and turned to look out the window to watch takeoff. She didn’t really think anything was going to come of that. He’d never actually helped her before.

Really, the job didn’t bother her that much. It might have at first, but…yeah, it just didn’t anymore.  Some of that was the way she planned and carried out a contract. The rest was on the type of contracts she accepted. She read through the files when she was assigned a target. Always. And she did her own research, as well. Most of the time, the contract was beyond warranted: her targets were almost always the type of scum she’d seen skating as a paralegal. However, there were a few times where, when she did her own research, the evidence just…wasn’t there. Those contracts she refused, and made sure Jack knew why.

And when someone else took and carried out the contract, the person who put the contract out almost always either went to prison for murder…or their file landed in her hands.

Those contracts she took with positive glee.

And one of her early contracts had named one of the worst scumbags that had ever skated out of being charged when she was a paralegal for the prosecuting attorney’s office, just after she’d graduated and gotten a job. She didn’t bother reading the paperwork for that one—she knew way more than was listed. And her reaction had had Jack concerned enough over her sanity to make sure she went through a thorough evaluation immediately after fulfilling the contract.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been her very first, before she’d figured out the best and easiest way to fill the contracts. That very first contract had…very nearly gone wrong.

She’d never told him she’d had prior contact or experience with any of her targets, much less that one. It simply wasn’t germane.

Molly sighed and settled in to doze for the rest of the two hour flight. The seat wasn’t particularly roomy, but it was soft, and she was comfortable, and her breakfast hadn’t been that long ago at the hotel they’d stayed at. And she’d made sure to eat more than enough, so that she’d sleep for the flight, and might be able to skate out of eating on her own dime for at least one more day. She glanced over at Jack without turning her head—she didn’t want to draw his attention because she didn’t really want to talk about it anymore—but Jack had his laptop out working, and ignoring her. She closed her eyes, and drifted off.

She woke as the plane started its descent. Maybe she’d be able to get a night job for a few weeks at the Stop-n-Rob down the street from her shoebox to cover food. Might even be able to negotiate being paid under the table. Since the shitbox was a government shitbox, they got first dibs on her account, even before the student loans that took the rest.

The seatbelt light blinked off, and Molly stretched, standing and pulling her bag down from where it’d been loaded for her while she was working. Jack looked up at her. “I have your student loan issue resolved. You’re done paying on it. If they send you a bill next month, bring it to me.”

“They haven’t been sending me a bill,” she bit off. “They’ve been taking it out of my bank account. Which I am locked out of, because it’s garnished on everything above the increased rent.” She blew out a frustrated breath.  “And the increased rent would have seen the fines and fees on the loan jack up again, making it take longer to pay off.”

Jack scowled. “I’ll deal with that. I’m shifting your account from the bank you were working with to the one I use. You’ll get your new card in the mail in two days. In the meantime, I want you to settle up with your building’s manager, and pack your shit. I’ll pick you up tomorrow, and you’ll sleep either on the hide-a-bed in the living room or on the twin in my guest room until everything is dealt with.”

Molly shrugged. “Rent’s paid through tonight—tomorrow’s the start of the next cycle. All I’d have to do would be clear out, and leave my keys. I don’t have much left, and it won’t take more than ten minutes to get everything together.”

“You don’t…have much left,” he said softly. “Did you sell everything else?”

She nodded. “I had to eat,” she pointed out.

Jack closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. “You were supposed to have a subsistence budget, not…what happened.”

“I don’t even fully understand what happened,” she snapped.

“The student loan repayment department of the government assumed you were shorting them because of how your payment plan was structured versus what your income was,” he explained.

“But…I explained what was going on, and where the rest of everything was going,” Molly said, confused.

“That never got entered into your records,” he said, shrugging. “No telling why. I’ll be investigating, though. It’s fixed, now, and all penalties have been retroactively rescinded, and the money applied toward the principle. Your student loans are gone, and you’ve got your original income back. I’ll give you half of this contract’s salary on a prepaid visa, and create your new bank account with the rest.”

Molly nodded, feeling whiplashed and numb. “Thank you, Uncle Jack.”

He smiled, briefly, but warmer than usual. “It’s no problem, Molly. Next time, bring things like this to me. I am responsible for more than just your paperwork, you know.”

“Sure,” she said.

She didn’t mean it.