A Snippet from A Dark & Stormy Knight

New releases always come with sneak peaks. It's part of how authors try to entice readers. Don't hold it against us. It's a fine line to walk. I try to pick amusing moments, but at the same time, I don't want to put the best of the story out there either. I never want anyone to feel the way I sometimes do after I see a movie, as though I'd already seen all the best stuff in the previews.

So with that in mind, this snippet comes from the middle of the story. Georgia has done a favor for Tommy, a guy she and Sol went to high school with. Tommy is in the process of getting a divorce, and Georgia has begun to feel as if they're friends. This occurs in Tommy's living room.

They laughed together. As their laughter cycled down, he bounced their still-clasped hands lightly against her thigh, and suddenly, his hand holding hers didn’t feel so chummy.

Before she could find a genteel way to withdraw, he pulled her into his arms. Her body went stiff then relaxed. It was only a hug. Friends could hug. She put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him back. After a few seconds, he loosened his grip and she drifted away. She answered the smile on his face with one of her own.

See? she told herself. Friends.

Then he leaned in and kissed her.

Oh, hell.

If his arms had been made of galvanized steel, he might have been able to hold onto her, but the next thing she knew, she’d shot to her feet, leaving him alone on the couch, his arms still shaped for an embrace.

Hope you enjoyed it.

BTW, A Dark & Stormy Knight is now available on Barnes and Noble and other outlets.

Another Except from A Dark & Stormy Knight

Georgia McKnight would do anything for her daughter Eden, but the one thing she's failed to do is to provide her daughter with a model of a good marriage. To remedy that, she's set her sights on converting her friendship with Daniel, the divorced father of Eden's best friend, into a romance. Unfortunately, she has to leave Dallas for the summer to help her parents in Hero Creek, where her ex-husband waits, scheming to win her back.

Sol McKnight has three passions in his life: riding bulls, his daughter, and the woman he married right out of high school. He's pulled some underhanded tricks over the years in order to keep his ex-wife single. He doesn't regret a single one of them because, well, they worked. But now, she's come home and he has a chance to win her back for good. If he's smart about it, maybe he can make her see that she belongs with him.

That's the back cover blurb from A Dark & Stormy Knight. I love second chance stories myself. I'm hoping you do, too, but just in case you're not hooked yet, I thought I'd share another excerpt from A Dark & Stormy Knight.

This occurs after Georgia is back in Hero Creek. She's stressed from dealing with her parents and runs into Sol at the local watering hole. The temptation to spend the night with him is too much for her to resist. Sol is, of course, delighted and is eager to get her home before she changes her mind. Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly for Sol.

They were a mile from Sol’s trailer when the red and blue lights flashed in his rearview mirror. “Shit, damn, and hellfire!” Sol ground out from clenched teeth. “We’re on a back road, for pity’s sake!” He eased over to the shoulder.

Georgia slid away as he reached into his hip pocket for his license. “Registration’s in the glove box. Would’ja get it for me?” 

A flashlight shone in through his window. “In a hurry, Sol?” 

“Not anymore,” Sol grumbled as he offered his license. “How you doing, Tyrone?” 

“Better’n you.” Tyrone flashed the light at Georgia. “Then again, maybe not.” 

Georgia shielded her eyes from the glare, and Tyrone lowered the light so it didn’t catch her dead-on. Sol stifled a growl as it lit up her chest. 

“Hey, Georgia. I heard about your mama. How’s she doing?” 

Georgia hesitated as though shifting mental gears then said, “She getting better, but it’s a slow process.” She pressed the registration into Sol’s hand. Sol offered it up, blocking the light that illuminated her chest. 

“Heard you was taking care of her,” Tyrone said, talking around Sol. “How long you figure to be around?” 

“You gonna write me a ticket, Tyrone?” Sol interrupted. This wasn’t a damned class reunion.The flashlight shifted to the license. “You been drinking tonight?” Tyrone’s voice lost its chatty quality. 

“Not me,” Sol lied.

 Tyrone pursed his lips and waited as though a little silence could get Sol to confess. 

Sol kept his gaze steady and his mouth shut. 

“You gonna keep driving like you got a bear on your tail?” 

Sol sighed heavily. “No.” 

“I should write you up anyway.” 

Sol ground his teeth. Tyrone was one of the good ol’ boys, but Jake had gone out with Tyrone’s girlfriend a couple of months before when he was home on break from Texas A&M, and Tyrone wasn’t above making Sol pay for his brother’s indiscretion. 

“You promise to slow it down, and I’ll let you go with a warning.” 

“You got my word,” Sol said, grateful to the bone that Tyrone wasn’t pulling him out of the truck and making him do stupid human tricks to prove his sobriety. “Slow and easy.” 

He took his time pocketing his wallet. By the time the registration was back in the glove box, Tyrone had driven away. Sol watched the patrol car’s taillights disappear down the road ahead of them then glanced at Georgia. Looking at her, his chest went all hollow, and he had to struggle to breathe. He couldn’t believe she was there with him. Then he saw the look on her face and knew she was about to change directions on him. 


He reached over, hooked her neck, dragged her over to him, and laid a hard, wet kiss on her mouth before she could say it. He kissed her until he felt the resistance pass out of her, like an evil spirit being exorcised. 

I love you. If his lips hadn’t been busy, he would have said it out loud. The close call made him pull back. 

She didn’t want to hear that. At least not from him.

Poor Sol. He's really going to have to up his game if he wants to win Georgia back. 

A Dark & Stormy Knight is available at Amazon and will soon be available at other major online retailers.
 

It's Release Day!

Okay, make that release day plus one. A Dark & Stormy Knight went live on Amazon around 5 p.m. yesterday. I'm still working on the file to load to Smashwords who will distribute it to Barnes & Noble and other venues, but that should be done soon, but it's there on Amazon, so I'm counting it.

To celebrate, I thought I'd share a snippet and introduce you to Georgia's grandmother. She's a feisty old lady. A lot of fun in her own right.


“There you are,” Grams said. “I wanted to let you know I’m leaving as soon as Delores gets here.”


“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat before you go?” Georgia brushed off the seat of her jeans before following her grandmother inside.
  
“Not a chance,” Grams said, walking and talking as she checked the contents of her purse for the forty-seventh time. “Cecelia’s son was up from the gulf last week, and he always brings her a butt load of cracked crab that she serves on these fancy crackers. I ain’t spoiling my appetite when I can pig out on that.” She closed her purse. “Oh, there’s Delores.”

Georgia looked out the living room window to see an older Cadillac pull in. Grams hung the handle of her purse over her arm and headed out. Georgia stood in the open screen door, ready to grab for her if she missed her footing on the steps. When Grams reached the yard without mishap, Georgia looked toward the car. 

Had Delores gotten out? She didn’t see her anywhere. A movement from inside the car caught her attention. It looked like . . . She squinted. A hand. Was someone waving at her? 

Holy hell. Delores had always been petite, but age had shrunk her to the size of a squirrel. She could barely see over the steering wheel. In fact, she probably looked through it. 

Georgia’s hands itched to grab Grams and forbid her to ride with Delores, but since she wasn’t Grams’ mama, grounding her wasn’t an option. Grams would just call her a worrywart and insist on going anyway. Hoping this wasn’t the last time she’d see her grandmother alive, Georgia waved hesitantly back as Grams got in the car. 

Her daddy’s pickup pulled in as Delores and Grams were about to pull out. The pickup stopped next to them as though her daddy planned to talk to Delores from his open window, but Delores pulled out as if she hadn’t noticed, and Georgia again questioned why she’d let Grams get in that car. Was this a preview of what she had to look forward to when Eden and her friends started driving? Hell, no, Georgia decided as her Daddy parked the pickup to come in for dinner; Eden she could ground

I can't help wishing I'd had a grandmother like this. Hope you like her. 

A Dark & Stormy Knight is available at Amazon.

Dialog: What Goes Unsaid

Dialog is my favorite part of writing. Probably because I'm good at it and people tend to enjoy what they're good at.

If I'm at a loss about how to start a scene, writing the dialog is my go-to response. I may go back later and write an opening for the dialog, but the dialog is often the first thing I write. I've found that dialog gives me the rhythm of the scene. It shows me the characters' state of mind and the direction the scene will go. For me, the story takes shape through the dialog.

As an added bonus, the characters sometimes reveal things to other characters through dialog I didn't know about them. It's a joy to let them talk to each other. It's even better if they're talking to cross purposes. But even better than what they say is what they don't say. The secrets they keep.

Protecting those secrets, whether they're rooted in fear, ego, shame, or any of the other emotions that cause us to hide who we are, can lead to arguments, and that's conflict, which are what good stories are made of.

So when I reached the place in the climax of my WIP A Dark & Stormy Knight where my heroine has privately faced her fears and is ready to own up to her mistakes with her ex-husband, I was shocked when the dialog was lackluster and boring. I couldn't even get a good argument started.

It turned out that the problem wasn't with her side of the conversation, but with his. Even though she's ready to own up to her mistakes, that doesn't resolve their estrangement. Emotionally, she wants the answer to a question she should have asked twelve years ago, but none of his possible responses worked. If he said, "Yes," everything resolved too easily. "No," wasn't even an option because it destroyed that illusion so vital to romance that they are meant to be together. I even tried "I don't know" (which I still think is the most realistic answer), but that was too wishy-washy for a romance novel.

My solution turned out to be having him say yes, but letting her not believe it while he focused on her failure to ask the question before they wasted those twelve years. What neither of them focus on is the question that really needs answered: What would his response be today?

This decision turns the climax into a two-parter, which seems much more satisfying to me, because it's unrealistic to have him say the things I want him to say unless he has time to think it through and come to his own set of realizations, just as she has.

But what my characters say isn't what I enjoy the most. It's the things they refused to say before the climax. The things the reader knows they feel but that the character is holding back in an effort to protect their most vulnerable sides. They have to expose that soft, white underbelly eventually, or the character arcs are unsatisfying, but holding back on that makes them feel more real and increases the tension.

At least, that's how I hope it works.

So what sort of things do your character leave unsaid?

A Dark & Stormy Knight - First Peek

I finally have a finalized cover for A Dark & Stormy Knight. Isn't it pretty?

I planning to release in December (God willing and the creek don't rise).

To celebrate, I'm posting a snippet. This book  has a little different tone than what I've previously published because the humor in A Dark & Stormy Knight comes more from the context of knowing the characters rather than being stand-alone scenes, like the one in Knight of Hearts where Mac goes shopping for body oils. 

So . . . just the tiniest of set-ups. Georgia is back in Hero Creek, helping her parents while her mother recovers from a stroke. Her feisty grandmother also lives with them. 

“There you are,” Grams said. “I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving as soon as Delores gets here.”

“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat before you go?” Georgia brushed off the seat of her jeans before following her grandmother inside.

“Not a chance,” Grams said, walking and talking as she checked the contents of her purse for the forty-seventh time. “Cecelia’s son was up from the gulf last week, and he always brings her a butt-load of cracked crab that she serves on these fancy crackers. I ain’t spoiling my appetite when I can pig-out on that.” She closed her purse. “Oh, there’s Delores.”

Georgia looked out the living room window to see an older Cadillac pull in. Grams hung the handle of her purse over her arm and headed out. Georgia stood in the open screen door, ready to grab for her if she missed her footing on the steps. When Grams reached the yard without mishap, Georgia looked toward the car.

     Had Delores gotten out? She didn’t see her anywhere. A movement from inside the car caught her attention. It looked like . . . She squinted. A hand. Was someone waving at her? Holy hell. Delores had always been petite, but age had obviously shrunk her to the size of a squirrel. She could barely see over the steering wheel. In fact, she probably looked through it. Georgia’s hands itched to grab Grams and forbid her to ride with Delores, but since she wasn’t Grams' mama, grounding her wasn’t an option. Grams would just call her a worrywart and insist on going anyway. Hoping this wasn’t the last time she’d see her grandmother alive, Georgia waved hesitantly back as Grams got in the car.

I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peak.