Next!

Okay, Cole, you're good to go. We get you. We get what you're doing behind the bar at Flight Risk. Even why you've got that motorcycle stashed in the alley out back instead of the Escalade. You're up, Lara.

"What do you mean, 'I'm up?' Do I look like someone who's ever held a baseball bat in her hands?"

Hmm. There's an idea.

"Yeah, a bad one."

Okay, then, what's your reason for being, kiddo?

"You know about my sister."

I need to get you into Flight Risk. I need to get you there on a certain night, at a certain time. I need to set up your meet. I need a good reason for Cole to take you to the safe house. I don't think your sister will do it. Too early to drag her into it. If we even keep her at all.

"Wait. You're gonna vanish my sister?"

Dunno. What do you think?

"Let me talk to Cole."

Your wish is my command, princess.

"What's up, baby?"

"Are you hearing this?"

"What do you want me to do, whip out my Glock?"

"You're supposed to be a bartender right now, G-man."

"Right. So what'll it be, Ace? And what are you doing here?"

"Here?"

"In Flight Risk."

"I got a tip."

"What kind of tip?"

"Yeah. Sure. Right. As if."

"You're gonna have to tell me, baby. One way or another. I can't protect you if you don't."

"I guess I could tell you. But then I'd have to--"

(to be continued)

More Changes (Healing Hearts and Emma's dilemma)

Emma, Emma, Emma, my dear girl. You MUST stop going to the cliffs to spy on Adam.

"Do you think I do not know that? I am at my wit's end. My circumstances are dire. I cannot think what more to do...But there is something about the wretch that draws me. I cannot help myself. He is...a distraction."

Perhaps you are still in love with him?

"No! Never. Not after...what he did to Michael."

You know that was not his fault.

"I know nothing of the sort!"

Perhaps if you search your heart.

"My heart is frozen. And with one scant tin of tea remaining in my pantry, I cannot think of love."

Perhaps the viscount might help you.

"Look at him! Look at the way pain twists his features. And how he forces himself to exercise his wounded limb despite it. I cannot approach a man so determined and proud. I have that much pride left. Even if I have nothing else..."

I think he will help you, Emma.

"But at what cost?"

Changes

So I guess I'm keeping Betty Boop...and Taryn Kincaid.

Right now, she exists only in my imagination. And in Twitter, where she's got her own account. (So far, there's only a "testing-testing-testing" Tweet and only @ScrltLtr is following her. Funny how that works!)

Maybe I can get her to do the actual writing for me, too!

I'm still getting the feel of her. It's kind of weird after decades of being someone else. But...considering the amount of hats I wear and screen names I already juggle...what's one more? And...at least part of the name was part of my address for many years...so it won't be that foreign!

For those of you who participated in Truckin' and Dickens, I'm taking those pages down. But watch this space. New pages may be coming. One of these days!

And watch this space ( Carina Press ), too!

The Call, Part 2

Okay, so I totally missed The Call.

But I got the e-mails!

Carina Press, Harlequin's digital first imprint, wants to publish (the tentatively titled) Healing Hearts!

(No one's suggested a title change yet. But that's what it says on their pre-contract form, "tentatively titled," so that's what I'll go with.)

I'm so malleable.

Don't you all agree?

You may now call me Taryn. Kincaid. Taryn Kincaid.

(Trying it out on the "About Me" portion of this blog...just to get a taste of it on my tongue. So to speak.)

Here's Snoopy (And, of course, Woodstock):

Happy Dance

My World

Whew. So it has been an interesting few weeks for me. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.
Mostly good.

A steady paycheck again. Ah, how I've missed that. Books, yes! I can buy you! Shoes, yes! I can buy you too. Weather muy caliente? No problemo, let's crank up the AC. And buy new clothes! And lots of iced Starbucks!

Okay, so my time is no longer my own. It's billable. And I get home late. So late that I am 20 hours behind the rest of the Twitter and Blogosphere. And I'm too tired to change the channel with the remote control. And my paralegal looks like Morticia Adams and scares me a little. Okay, a lot. Enough so that I've taken to emailing her everything in explicit detail so she won't feel the urge to come into my office and ramble on and on about nothing for 45 minutes without once looking me in the eye.

In the midst of all the readjusting, four ceramic tiles mysteriously fell off my bathroom wall. For no apparent reason. Okay, maybe old age. Maybe the heat. Maybe the humidity. Maybe they just decided to give up the ghost. Miraculously, none of them broke.
Carefully preserved them, got some goopy combo tile adhesive/grout stuff and a plastic trowel from Home Depot and decided to do-it-myself. I mean, not exactly rocket science, eh? I can read directions. I have degrees! Yeah-sure-right.
The little plastic trowel was not precisely cooperating with me. Soon I was slathering the stuff on in handfuls. Manicure, ruined. Cuticles white and pasty. Goopy stuff all over the floor and sink. Tiles, sliding like slimy escargot down the wall. Plop. Crash. Smash. Carefully preserved for a week, now all smithereens. This is why plumbers and tilers and contractors command the big bucks, butt cracks notwithstanding. Now we know.

On the fiction front, not much work. Days spent writing motions and Pre-trial Reports tend to leave your brain as mushy as tile adhesive and as fractured as the ceramic tiles that skate down your bathroom wall. And, of course, it's been muy caliente!
Trying to get back to Lara & Cole. Left them in sort of a precarious place while trying to create a new beginning for them. Think it works. At least it works for me! (Trying to take care of some of the later backstory feeds, also to set up their situation, their meet, and to provide an intro to characters who might pop up later. Evil and otherwise.) Characterization is key.

And last, but not least...

Yesterday, I got a Call. A sort of The Call, I think. Voice mail message on the machine. Nothing definite to report. Someone interested in talking about my Regency novella. Someone I'm very interested in talking to in turn!
As the weekend ticks by, I am trying not to do the happy dance prematurely. But it's increasingly hard for me to believe that any busy editor/publisher/agent on this oil-soaked planet would bother to call and leave a message on the answering machine in order to tell you why you should consider taking up tiling as a avocation, stick to reading rather than writing as a career, and never bother him/her with your worthless prose again.

So...Adam and Emma: Here's looking at you, kids!

Happy Fourth of July!