Authors needed - all genres! Are you an author who'd like to share a 100- to 200-word blurb about a current work in progress on a future WIP Wednesday? If so, please send an e-mail to Erin O'Riordan (erinoriordan AT sbcglobal DOT net).
This week I'm editing "
Sheep Shifter" for the Breathless Press anthology
Ravaged, an all-shifter anthology. The short story is accepted, but just on the first round of edits. I just went through this with my story for the Breathless anthology
Ad-dick-tion Vol. 2 - there are four or five rounds of edits.
Over the weekend, I kept running with the
Person of Interest fanfic I started on Friday (see ...
in which the term 13-inch is thrown about shamelessly). Yes, my level of obsession with a Thursday-night network TV show is a little bit sad at the moment. Yes, one does not count fanfics as "real" writing, because one receives pre-created characters from someone else's imagination. They're lazy writing, and I thought I'd given up on them forever when I became a professional in 2007.
The last TV show that I wrote fanfics for was
Homicide: Life on the Street, and that was when I was in college, more than a decade ago. Inspired by someone else's crazy
Homicide/Pinky and the Brain crossover called "Timmy and the Frank," I even wrote a
Homicide/Scooby Doo crossover. (It may be lost, or it may be hiding in a box of old diaries from the '90s.)
 |
| Guinevere and Lancelot - Free Art License |
One thing keeping me from self-censoring and forcing myself not to write these things that cross my mind is knowing that fanfics are a time-honored literary tradition, dating back at least to the days of the wandering troubadours. They would regale their audiences with tales of Arthurian legend. When the affair between Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot proved to be a crowd-pleaser, the troubadours embellished upon it. At least, this is one theory I read years ago. In more modern times, the fanfic phenom can be blamed largely on - or credited largely to -
Star Trek fans.
For an interesting fanfic that takes place right after the end of the
The Hunger Games (the first book), go to Mumfection to read Eschelle's work. The book blog
BookishTemptations collects Twilight fanfics.
This is about half of what I wrote between Friday night and Sunday night - the lead-up, the teaser. This is raw, unedited, the first and only draft. WIP Wednesday seems like as a good a place to post this as any. If you're following along, this would obviously happen before the events of
Friday's fic. I'll post the second part next Wednesday.
Next I may get inspired to return to working on
Billy's Color Palette, my interracial-erotica literary collaboration with Ken Charles. I suddenly seemed to remember working on another BWWM (Black Woman/White Man) story with Ken.
Joss Carter sighed and
looked down at her drink, which she’d barely touched. As usual, crossing paths
with John had preceded an extremely stressful night at work. They both needed
to blow off some steam. He’d taken her up on her suggestion that they hit the
bar and was on his second beer, but he’d barely said a word to her the whole
time. Typical.
She definitely wasn’t
drunk, so it must have been the tension between them that made her say it.
“John, how long has it been?”
He set his bottle down,
but he didn’t look at her. “How long has what been, Detective?”
“You know,” she said,
wishing they weren’t in such a public place. No one sat near them, and the
bartender seemed preoccupied at the other end of the bar, but the room suddenly
felt too crowded. “Since you’ve been with a woman.”
“A long time,” he said,
still not looking at her.
“It’s been a long time for
me, too. Too long.” She paused to breathe deeply. “Have you ever thought about
– you and me?”
He looked at her then, his
cold blue eyes seeming to stare down deep inside her. “Too many…complications.”
She took another sip of
the drink she didn’t really want. “What if there were no complications? No
strings, no feelings. Just…stress relief. We both need it.”
He didn’t answer her, but
turned back to face the bar and finished his drink. Her cheeks flushed, Carter
calmly reached into her purse, counted out the bills to pay for her unfinished
drink and set them down. She got up and walked away without so much as a
goodbye – she’d already said too much.
As she neared the door,
Carter suddenly felt John Reese’s arms around her. He pulled her into the hall
leading to the ladies’ room and said into her ear, “Is this what you need, Josselyn?
Do you want me this close to you, touching you?”
She closed her eyes; the
way he said her name gave her familiar shivers of pleasure. She couldn’t
remember the last time she’d felt this way. “I think so, John,” she said,
trying to sound as cool as possible as his firm grip on her loosened. “I think
I need this. The question is, do you? Could you ever be that…vulnerable…with
me? Naked?”
He made a sound somewhere
between a deep laugh and feral growl. “This isn’t the place.” He let go of her;
they stood eye to eye.
“I know a place,” she
said.
****
“Where do you know this
place from, Detective?” John looked around the motel room, and Carter figured
he was plotting an emergency escape route. “Crime scene?” He took off his black
jacket and laid it carefully on the back of the chair.
“I didn’t hear you
offering to take me back to your place, John,” she said, emphasizing his name.
So he was back to calling her “Detective,” was he? Did she make him nervous?
She supposed he had reason to be; she had, after all, betrayed him to the Feds before
her sudden change of heart.
“That would
be…complicated, Josselyn.”
She watched him take off
his shoulder holster. She was strapped too – still wearing her service weapon,
of course – but watched with fascination as John took out the semiautomatic,
checked the safety, then stashed it under the bed. Hidden in case anyone kicked
in the door, but accessible. He did the same with the large-caliber revolver
from his other side, then unbuttoned his shirt.
Carter started to undress,
setting her weapon next to the TV. She let her jacket and blouse fall into a
loose pile on the floor. John sighed as he laid his shirt over his jacket on
the chair. Underneath that suit, he looked exactly as she’d imagined him:
athletic, but not overly muscular, with a smooth chest. Since he didn’t strike
her as the waxing type, it must’ve been natural.
“I did that, didn’t I?”
she said as he turned to her, noticing the small, jagged scar on his belly that
could only have come from a bullet wound. She may not have pulled the trigger,
but it had been her fault all the same. He’d almost died that night.
“That’s complicated, too.”
He held out his hand and she took it, accepting his invitation to come in
closer. She resisted the urge to run her hand over the scar, afraid it might
still cause him pain.
“I’m sorry,” she
whispered.
“I know.” He pulled her in
closer, running his hands down her sides, and Carter wanted more. She heard –
felt – him inhale deeply as she reached back to unhook her bra. To his credit,
John didn’t go straight for her breasts.
She was also grateful he
didn’t try to kiss her. That seemed too intimate, too…complicated. It did feel
good to be pressed up against him, though, his long fingers raking through her
hair softly. Okay, he smelled slightly like beer, but also like a soft
aftershave that reminded her of cloves. He hadn’t shaved recently, though. She
could feel the barest hint of stubble on the underside of his jaw.
She wasn’t sure which of
them made the first move over toward the bed, but soon they stood on opposite
sides. She watched him unbuckle his belt, then turned her back, almost shy,
while she stripped down to her favorite pink lace panties. Carter was glad she’d
worn them, though she couldn’t quite explain why she had.
She turned back around in
time to see him unstrap the K-Bar knife from his leg. If he were anyone else,
she’d have been alarmed at the arsenal he traveled with. She’d arrested
gangsters who carried fewer weapons. Hell, she hadn’t been that strapped over
in the Gulf.
Their eyes met, and she
returned his smile. “I like to be prepared,” he said, almost apologizing.
“Speaking of which…” She
reached into her purse and pulled out a condom, then slid it over to his side
of the bed. Then she took off the panties, challenging him to step out of his
last remaining bit of clothing, those black boxers.
He accepted her challenge.
Damn – talk about weaponry.
:New Stories of Wonderland, edited by Margaret Weis.
