R.A. White's Blog

Because I'm Lazy

I should post my newsletters here on the blog for those who happen to stop by, but I'm just too lazy to add one more thing to the weekly schedule.

If you want to know what's going on and get in on the deals, you'll have to subscribe. I know, I'm a big meanie, but life is short, and I don't want to spend it posting the same thing all over the internet. I have a kid to take care of, not to mention the critters.

Besides, being an subscriber automatically takes you up two notches on the coolness scale, AND it comes with perks. You can sign up by clicking here.

Happy Wednesday!

I hope this post finds you well as we plow through the holiday season!

I just have a couple of quick things to share that might interest you, and then I'll let you get back to your exciting workday.

First off, T.J. Deschamps, an author who writes several genres including Paranormal Women's Fiction, invited me for an interview on her blog!
It's not real long, so if you have a minute you should check it out. Also, if you like PWF, urban fantasy, of fairytale retellings, you might want to look her up. Click here for a bit of entertainment. 

Second, if you didn't already know, Teddy Kluger: Nightmare on Oakstreet was released to great fanfare and acclaim! (Well, they were mostly crickets, but they were happy crickets!) If you want to check it out, you can find it here. 

Last but not least, I just sent a novelette off to the first round of readers, and should start getting feedback tomorrow. The novelette will be an exclusive giveaway for subscribers who are enjoying the Just West of Orlando series and want a story all about Taye and Harvey.

And that's all I got! If you want all the silly interaction stuff, join us in the Facebook group by clicking here. It's a lot more fun than the occasional blog post.

Hugs and high fives to everyone!

Teddy Kluger: Nightmare on Oak Street

Book 4 in the Just West of Orlando series is coming soon!

We've already begun the editing process, and it's right on track to be released in the middle of December or sooner. This is perfect timing because it's set during Christmas, and will for sure provide plenty of laughter for the holiday season.

I hope you all are well and finding joy in life,
Rebecca White

Won't You Be Mine?

"Mum, do you spell the 'f' word F-O-K?"
 
"Yep. You sure do."
​ 
Life with Renee’s quirky eight-year-old son is sometimes embarrassing and often frustrating, but having a vampire move into the neighborhood really put things in perspective. Of course, she didn’t realize what Vlad was at first, and proving it turned out to be difficult, dangerous, and moderately illegal. 
Pick up this funny, warm-hearted paranormal women's fiction novel and escape to a world just west of Orlando!

Wednesday, September 15, Won't You Be Mine? It's a Beautiful Day in the Nightmarehood will be zero dollars on Amazon. Click here to get your copy!
As always, I could really use some good reviews on the series to make advertising easier. I'd appreciate it if you consider reading and reviewing.

Grunge Bob Bromance

Grunge Bob Bromance: Who Lives by the Penanggal Under the Tree? is now available on Amazon...
Book Three in the Just West of Orlando Series
"Do you mind if Juana and I go out vampire hunting tonight? I won't be too late."
Blyth sighed. "How likely are you to get arrested?"
"Geez, Louise," I grumbled. "It seems like you ask that every time I want to make plans."
"It's a valid question."
I thought for a moment. "I'd say not very likely. Maybe a thirty percent chance."
There was a moment of silence, and I knew he was trying to decide if I was serious or not.
"I'll be extra careful," I promised.
"You better be. I couldn't handle being a single parent."
 
 A series of vampiric deaths in the area make Renee wonder if her reluctance to invite Vlad into the house was justified after all. He insists that he hasn't killed anyone in years, but if Vlad isn't the killer, who is?
 
Pick up this funny, cozy, warm-hearted paranormal women's fiction novel and escape to a world just west of Orlando.
Click here to find it.

The Fun Continues!

Just West of Orlando, book 2, is available on Amazon as a paperback or ebook!
Please click here, The O'Brady Brunch: This is the Story of a Mean Old Lady and give it a read. Sample below.

Blurb: 
 "What happened to the toilet seat?"
 I flipped on the light to make sure I wasn't mistaking the situation. Nope. The seat was gone.
 "Taye, did you take the toilet seat off?"
 "No, Mum, why would I do that? That's not the kind of thing a little kid would do."
 I sighed, my hand on my forehead. "The same reason you took apart the ice machine. The same reason you opened the pipes under the kitchen sink. The same reason you put all the cleaning products in the freezer! Which is to say, who knows?"
 Taye's little boy face looked so innocent. "It wasn't me. It was probably a gremlin."
 I rolled my eyes at him, about to scold him for his nonsense, but then I thought better of it. If a vampire could buy the farmhouse up the road, and if the cranky leprechaun woman across the cul-de-sac could harass fairies, why couldn't a gremlin steal my toilet seat?
 
Pick up this funny, warm-hearted Paranormal Women's Fiction novel and escape to a world just west of Orlando.
Click here to find it on Amazon.

Sample below:
I coaxed my worn Explorer through our Central Florida neighborhood with the windows halfway down, the rumble of its engine echoing back at me off the vehicles on either side of the road. It's a working class neighborhood, and since most people were home for the evening, the street was lined with cars on both sides in many places. Getting an SUV in and out of my house can be a little like driving a garbage truck down a European alley in a Borne movie.
Most people had their Halloween decorations up and lit even though the big night had just passed, but I didn't judge. Most of us wouldn't get things put away until the weekend, or maybe the one after that. That's one of the things I love about this neighborhood. It's nice and generally well-kept, with landscaping ranging from patchy Bermuda grass and wild palms to immaculate lawns and Disney-like flowers and shrubbery. As long as we don’t let the grass go to seed for too long or leave our garbage bins in front of our houses, the HOA usually leaves us alone.
It was Thursday night, and I was on my way to Vlad's house to pick him up for his first recovery meeting. There are fewer houses at his end of the neighborhood because it borders a swampy wooded area, so as I got closer, the road opened up and I picked up the pace a little.
Having more nature and fewer people is usually nice in that it's quieter and less likely to smell like cigarette smoke, but in this case it only makes Vlad's sprawling, rundown farmhouse at the top of the gentle hill all the more intimidating. Unlike the rest of the properties in our neighborhood, which range between a quarter and a third of an acre, Vlad has several acres of unkempt grass, broken down fences, and woods that have been wild for decades.
The house itself is a haphazard pile of additions covered in gray-green mold, and has few windows that haven't lost at least one pane over the years. I turned left into his long, unpaved driveway, not for the first time glad I had an SUV for driving through the sand and patches of grass.
I pulled up in front of the sagging porch and waited, rolling the windows all the way down to allow for plenty of ventilation to support my deep breathing. The air was cool and crisp, but this close to the house it had a musty smell. I'd spent a lot of time there over the past few days, and I might have even said that Vlad was becoming something of a friend, but this was going to be my first time alone with him, and that made it a completely different thing.
Vlad genuinely intended to never drink blood again, but having multiple people around gave him some accountability, and me a sense of security. Being in the car with just me would be something like leaving an alcoholic alone in a hotel room with a free wet bar.
And that's why I had eaten a heap of garlic at dinner. Actually, I had been going crazy with garlic for weeks, ever since I began to entertain the possibility of Vlad being a vampire. It was getting to the point where I felt self-conscious about it leaking from my pores.
The truth is that I have loved garlic since some time before adulthood, and always ate more than my husband thought was normal, so eating tons of it didn't seem too terribly far out of character. But even if it wasn't out of character, I was starting to smell it on myself, so it was probably time to consider cutting back. Soon.
Now that I've confessed my garlic-related insecurities, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Renee Marie Morales. I'm a home school mother of one unusual child, wife to a handsome and loving husband, and an avid cook and baker, wannabe gardener, aspiring artist, and budding paranormalist. My life had never been boring, but it was getting to the point where a little monotony might be nice.
Now that introductions are out of the way, let's get back to Vlad and his creepy old house. Vlad had exceptional hearing, as well as other heightened senses, so I felt confident he knew I was there. When he didn't appear, I gave two polite taps of the horn to let him know I was waiting. He had made it clear that he was nervous about going to a recovery meeting, so I figured he was taking his time to come out.
Finally, he emerged from the shadows of his vast living room and locked the warped front door behind him with a click. As he plodded down the stairs, I saw that he was wearing his typical dark dress pants, shirt, and jacket. At some point, we were going to have to do a makeover of not only his house and eating habits, but his wardrobe. We tried not to laugh at him, but sometimes it was hard. This is Central Florida, just west of Orlando, and you're much more likely to see a manager or churchgoer in shorts and a T-shirt than in the kinds of clothes Vlad wore.
As he settled into the seat beside me, Vlad gave me a sideways look with those big green eyes of his. "You didn't have to eat a head of garlic," he said, twitching his long, pointed nose in discomfort. He has a deep voice, and speaks with a stereotypical vampire accent mixed with something else. Why? Because he's the epitome of a stereotypical vampire—originally from what is now Transylvania—with the exception of his being in recovery.
"No offense, man, but it seemed like a good idea. We have a ten minute drive, and I didn't think it would be right to tempt you."
He leaned toward the window. "I am not some teenager trying to quit smoking, and you are not a box of cigarettes I can't live without. Blood empowers me, and of course I enjoy it, but I can stop drinking."
My aging Explorer jerked as I put it into reverse to turn around, but then shifted smoothly into drive. We started back down toward Sparkling Lake Drive. We were cutting it awfully close to daylight for Vlad. In a flatter area, the sun might still have been above the horizon. I said, "Actually, it sounds a lot more like a typical addiction than you might think. Not everyone uses substances to get high or forget their troubles."
"Do they use them to live forever?"
"Well, no…" The conversation wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to change the topic. "Are you feeling okay? You always look a little washed out for a non-white guy, but I think you look worse than you did yesterday."
"Why, thank you," he said sarcastically. "On the contrary, you look much better."
I really did look better. My tan skin was still a bit blue from being dyed, but it was barely noticeable, and the swelling in my face from being shot pointblank with paintballs had almost completely healed. I hadn't yet decided how to deal with the blue that had contaminated my hair's usual red streaks, but that was a job for another day. "I'd like to keep it that way. No more sneaking around in people's houses or chasing paranormals. But seriously, how are you?"
"I feel tired," he sighed. "It's been three days since I've had anything but non-animal sustenance. It makes me weak. My senses are going, too."
"Maybe when you don't have a superhuman sense of smell, my garlic breath won't force you to hang your head out the window."
He barked a sharp laugh. "Even if I had no sense of smell at all, I could still taste it."
With a frown, I reached into my purse for some gum. It was possible that he was just pulling my leg, but I couldn't help worrying that he was right.
We took back roads and streets all the way to the church building where the meeting was held, and pulled into the lot right on time.
"It's a shame they have to host it in a church," Vlad said.
"Most of these kinds of things are," I said with a shrug, creeping along as I waited for a parking spot to call to me. "Don't worry. Sure, they preach a little, but no one is going to force a confession out of you, or douse you with holy water or anything." I laughed, but he looked stricken. "They don't even do holy water here," I assured him.
"I'm more afraid of burning up when I cross the threshold."
We jerked to a stop as I slammed on the brake. "Is that really a thing?!"
He swallowed hard, looking away into the orange sky. Then he burst out laughing. "That was wonderful!" he gasped. I had never heard a genuine laugh come from him, and there was something magical about it. "Your face!" he cried, still laughing.
He was hundreds of years older than I was, but he was a child telling his first real joke, and I was a surprised mother relishing his development. I started laughing, too, and didn't stop as I parked and got out. "That was a good one," I said, although I laughed more from joy than from his teasing. It was amazing how he had transformed over the past few days. Yes, he was still himself, but he was a better version. He wouldn't learn how to build relationships overnight, but the fact that he wasn't planning to feed off of us was already helping him interact less awkwardly.
Fortunately, he was right, and he entered the building without being incinerated. I introduced him to a couple of men as we worked our way to my usual seat in the large group meeting in the auditorium, making a point to catch the man who led the men's chemical dependency support group so Vlad would know who he was going with later.
It had been a couple of weeks since I had made it through the worship without crying, but my stress level was so much lower now that Vlad wasn't my enemy. Vlad looked out of place to me, his washed out vampire skin giving him a decidedly dead appearance, but it's possible that I saw what I knew was there, and not what other people would see. He was clearly uncomfortable throughout the musical portion, but he listened to a woman's testimony with interest.
After that, we went our separate ways for our support groups. It was nice to share some good news, although I couldn't help thinking about how I hadn't told my husband about Vlad being a real vampire. I don't know why it was so hard for me, but it was. My husband, Blyth, had thought our son and I were nuts for suspecting Vlad of being 'off', and for breaking into Vlad's house and everything. Vlad would have been willing to prove his vampirism to ease my conscience, but I knew he wasn't comfortable with the idea. The fewer people who knew about him, the safer he was. Anyway, he wasn't acting as a vampire anymore, so it didn't really matter, did it?
Vlad was hungry after his meeting, and I can always use a cookie, so we went to the fellowship hall for snacks. I wondered if Vlad would end up gaining a bunch of weight from eating in place of consuming blood, like people often gain weight after quitting smoking and other drugs.
While I chatted with friends, Vlad sat and ate his vegetarian snacks, not engaging. This was a change for him. In the past, he had been quick to try to make friends (otherwise known as meals).
"So," I said as we got back into the Explorer. "Do you think you'll come back?"
He had changed, but he still looked sinister in the cab's overhead light. Then again, a Gerber baby might look sinister in that light, so it probably wasn't worth remarking on. "It was weird," he said. "But I think I understand what you find appealing about it."
I grinned. Spending three to five minutes sharing one's emotions without interruption was indeed both weird and appealing. "Good." I backed out of my space and started home. "Hey, do you want me to come over tomorrow when the inspector is there? I'm not an expert, but I might be able to help come up with questions."
"You are unnervingly interested in getting my house in shape," he said.
I had not-so-secret plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast. "It's just exciting, that's all."
"Of course," he said dryly. "But yes, I would appreciate your presence. And I always enjoy Taye's company." He sighed. "I'm glad you gave up on killing me, even if you do stink of garlic."
"Me too."
​Click here to find it on Amazon.

Get Ready for Some Laughs!

'Won't You Be Mine? It's a Beautiful Day in the Nightmarehood' is releasing this Friday!
This book is tons of fun, and sure to provide relief from whatever darkens your day. It will be available in ebook and paperback, and at affordable prices because who has money to throw around these days?
I'm only sharing the first chapter with you here, but keep in mind that it starts with 'cute funny' and builds to 'laugh out loud' funny. Early readers were literally calling and messaging me about how much fun they were having with the book.
Read the sample below, or go straight to Amazon to order your copy by clicking here. Also, if you check my facebook, you can listen to me read the first 4 chapters.

Chapter 1
I've heard that a book should start with an action scene, or catchy dialogue or something. But unless I want to start with the part where my eight-year-old son and I stalked an undead man armed with nothing but kitchen skewers and chopped garlic, or when I took dance lessons from an irate bat, and then flash back to the beginning, I can't.
So I'll start here, before dawn on a Tuesday morning more or less like any other morning in our neighborhood just west of Orlando. I strolled along Hamilton—the four-lane highway near our house—on the narrow sidewalk going south. My dog's leash was in my left hand, my son Taye's oversize hand in the other. The whoosh of traffic passing at fifty miles an hour almost constantly blew air against our backs and muted out my son's constant chatter, making his already impeded speech impossible to comprehend. Headlights reflected off the chain link fence to our right, repeatedly casting our shadows in dizzying arcs, which made Taye cheer and made me queasy.
I squeezed Taye's hand in a reassuring 'I love you' gesture, sensing that the flashing lights and roar of engines in the dark were exciting, but might also be making him anxious. The dog, named Drax after the Marvel superhero, didn't seem to notice the noise and lights. He's seventy-five pounds of mushy Pit Bull and Rottweiler, with a bark like mastiff on steroids.
Taye squeezed my hand back, but he didn't pause his monologue or his shuffling gate. I mostly tune him out when he's like this, but I caught something about a flatbed truck and KW. When Taye talked, all of his 'w', 'l', and 'r' sounds were the same, so it sounded more like 'fwatbed twuck and K-doubowoo'. I don't know how he could tell what kinds of trucks were passing when there was nothing but light rushing through pitch black, but he has a gift. He also has a gift for causing trouble and spotting vampires, but back then, I didn't know about the vampire part.
Walking before sunrise isn't something we normally do, but as always we were up early, and I had been wanting to see the sun come up over the lowland now that morning was coming later. It was early October, and cool enough that I had temporarily forsaken my tank top and sandals in favor of a T-shirt and sneakers.
Here in Central Florida, it's not unusual to see people wearing next to nothing even in October or November, but that's usually tourists from up north who aren't acclimated to the weather. Now that I've been here a couple of years, I have to wear a sweatshirt if it gets below sixty-eight degrees.
Taye, Drax, and I waited for the walk signal at a three-way intersection while drivers hurried to get their kids to school and themselves to work. Intersections make me nervous in the dark, but despite the screech of tires as a Jeep took the turn onto Hamilton almost fast enough to leave a flame trail, we survived the crossing.
"Burn rubber!" Taye shouted. (It sounded like 'bun wubba', but since I generally don't notice his diction myself, and trying to imitate it constantly would be disruptive, I'll only spell out his pronunciation when it seems pertinent.) The sharp odor of melted tire did in fact linger in the air, mixing with exhaust fumes and the fresher air that sought to flush the pollutants away.
There was no fence along the sidewalk south of the cross street, just a grassy hill that sloped down to meet the bike trail that would soon rise to intersect our path. The oncoming dawn was nothing more than a vague, gray lightening of the sky over Orlando to our left, so it was still plenty dark enough for things that go bump in the night. We can't quite see Orlando from here in the hills, but it's close enough to make this a fantastic home base for commuters. Commuters and centuries old men who want to hide from their pasts without giving up civilization and easy meals.
Of course, when we paused to exchange pleasantries with Vlad for the first time, we didn't know that he was hiding from his past or that he was looking for an easy breakfast. We were trudging up the long, subtle hill toward the next light when a pause in traffic allowed the step of his hard shoes to reach my ears over the sound of Taye's rhythmic scuffing. In the dark ahead, the man was nothing more than a shortish form, the headlights of a passing car briefly blasting him with light and flinging his shadow toward us. I was surprised that I hadn't already seen him. I can be a little paranoid, and tend to notice potential threats.
Threat or no threat, I nudged Taye ahead of me and moved to the right of the sidewalk so the dark figure could pass safely. I'm paranoid, but I'm not the type to run screaming at the sight of a stranger, even if it is dark, and even if something about the way he walked brought to mind a creature from a black and white horror movie. Which I would never watch.
Traffic, as could be expected on a weekday morning, was heavy, and I didn't want the man to feel forced to step onto the shoulder to avoid our dog. Drax is about as dangerous as a bacteria-free dish sponge, but he looks like a monster, and I always give people plenty of space. Drax obliged by following behind to create a single file line. Usually, I have to hold the dog back from stealing kisses when we encounter people, but I admit that at the moment I didn't see anything ominous in his cooperation.
"Good moaning," Taye said politely from his place at the front of the line.
"Good morning," I echoed.
In the light of passing traffic I saw a fiftyish tan-skinned man with large eyes shadowed by bushy eyebrows, a long nose, and clothes that looked too dressy for exercise. When he'd gotten within a few feet of us, he stopped as if to speak. Oh, crud, I thought. Here we were walking in the dark, and a strange man was going to give us trouble.
"Keep walking," I urged. We shuffled past him, repeating our good mornings, while he watched us. I got the feeling like he wanted to say something, but for some reason he stayed silent until we were several strides beyond him.
Then, a deep, strangely accented voice behind me said, "Wait! Excuse me, do you live around here?"
I didn't stop. Drax either startled or got a sudden case of the boogitty-boogitties, and flung himself past me, yanking on the end of the leash and propelling me forward. The question struck me as odd—why would we be walking down the road before 7:00am if we didn't live nearby?—and set off my danger alarm. But fighting an upbringing of politeness over self-interest can be surprisingly difficult, so I called, "Yep!" over my shoulder and kept walking. I took Taye's hand again and hurried my steps, giving a nervous chuckle as I urged him to move faster.
"Was that guy weird?" Taye asked the question in a way that indicated he thought so, and wondered if I agreed.
"Seems like it," I said.
"He talked like a vampire. Oh, look at that flatbed truck!"
"Please don't stereotype people by accents." I hate that he likes to categorize everyone, but at least he hadn't said anything in front of the man. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were truly out of earshot.
There wasn't anyone on the sidewalk behind us.
"Now that's weird," I said, stopping. We were about halfway between traffic lights that were maybe a quarter of a mile apart, with nothing but grass to one side and traffic to the other.
"What?"
"That man is gone, but how could he get across the highway with all that traffic?"
"Maybe he went through the grass."
"To where?"
"He probably jumped on the flatbed truck 'cause he's going to the construction site! That truck was probably going to the same construction site as…"
I stopped hearing his chatter, distracted by the disappearing man. When a man asks me where I live, it's normal for me to spend the day looking for a tail, but this wasn't me being paranoid. It was weird.
I shook it off, letting the rush of vehicles and Taye's monologue wash over me. "He must have made it across Hamilton," I finally said. It was dark, but I could see well enough in the intermittent light to know he wasn't lying flat in the grass, and anyway, why would he?
"I think he flew across!" Taye shouted, waving his free hand in the air to simulate flight. "Vampires can turn into bats!"
"Stop!" I scolded. "It's not nice, and anyway, there's no such thing as vampires."
"Mum," he said in his eye-rolling tone. "He can't hear me anyway."
"Because he flew away," I said sarcastically.
"Yep." Sometimes Taye recognized sarcasm, but more often than not, he took things literally.
"Let's go," I sighed. I led the boys toward the next light, Taye scuffing and hanging on my arm slightly as he talked about the differences between straight trucks with flatbeds and semi-trucks with flatbed trailers. I glanced over my shoulder again and promised myself it would be the last time I turned around. If the man had walked out into traffic, I might have expected to hear horns honking at the very least, but there hadn't been even a squeal of brakes when he vanished.
As we ascended the slope, the eastern sky to our left began to fade from charcoal to the gray of wet sidewalks. The darkness was no longer complete enough to be sliced by low-beams, and I started to shake the ominous feeling of a man sneaking up behind me. A cricket took up his violin somewhere in the grass nearby, so enthusiastic in his search for a mate that he could be heard over everything but the largest passing trucks. "Isn't this nice?" I said with a genuine smile. "You get traffic, I get a sunrise, and we all get live music."
"Music?" Taye asked, breaking off from whatever he had been saying.
"The cricket. He's playing that music to get himself a wife."
"Oh." His dark face became serious. "He should play the Beach Boys."
I choked on a surprised laugh. "That might work better."  
By the time we reached the light, where the sidewalk finally merges with the paved bike trail that comes over from the west, a few wispy clouds had begun to turn pink above the eastern horizon. "Let's hurry to the top of the hill!" I urged. "It's going to be beautiful from up there."
Hurrying for Taye was kind of like being normal for other people. He walked a lot like a toddler, and Drax wasn't much better. The dog had been nursed back to health by a loving foster family before coming to live with us (shout out to Lee Ann and Tim!), but he still tired easily, and often suffered from sore tendons and joints. It wasn't a good idea to push him.
A handful of bats were now visible swooping overhead, but I didn't mention them to Taye or he would probably get back to talking about vampires. He might have trouble sleeping if he became convinced of a blood-sucking monster lurking around Clermont, and that would not be cool. We were practically vampires ourselves, with his insomnia waking us up at all hours of night and morning. I hadn't had a good night's sleep in eight years, and I wasn't about to do anything to jeopardize what little I could count on.
We reached the top of the rise just as a stripe of neon orange split the pink clouds in an irregular pattern, limning everything in salmon pink. Taye's glasses reflected the spectacle, and suddenly I wished I had thought to bring my sunglasses since I wasn't cool enough to wear transitions like him.
Taye is a cute kid, and even more so with his brown skin glowing in the early light. At the moment, he fidgeted almost non-stop, reacting to every passing vehicle and whatever dialogue he had running through his head. His dreadlocks were starting to get longish, hanging over the tips of his ears, and bounced animatedly with his movements. His glasses and awesome hair give people something other than his trach tube to talk about.
It used to be that people would talk about how we don't match each other, but as he got older, that dropped off. I don't know why. I suspect that when he was little, people didn't feel awkward about mentioning it in front of him. I can only assume it wasn't because they were afraid of letting him in on the adoption secret; his eyes are pretty bad, but he'd have to be completely blind not to notice that his dad is a white guy with blue eyes and his mom is Latina.
My husband, Blyth, says the only feature of Taye's he can take credit for is his smile. I disagree. Half of that smile is mine, and Blyth is definitely at least partly responsible for Taye's impish streak.
"That's pretty, Mum," Taye said, drawing my mind back to the sunrise.
It was. It might have been prettier on a hill where traffic didn't interrupt the view and the cricket's song, but it was beautiful all the same. Puffs of cotton candy filled the eastern sky, highlighted with veins of orange and hot yellow, broken up in patches by the intense cerulean blue behind the clouds.
"It must be pretty amazing if it can distract you from the trucks, huh?" I asked, amused.
He gave me an indignant glance. "It's not like I only think about trucks."
"Really?" I asked, hiding a smile. "What else to do you think about?"
He turned back to traffic. "I think about cars, dump trucks, and front end loaders…And those trucks that have big tubs and tankers on them—I think they're for the gutters…"
I laughed. "Yep, you think about lots of different things. Remember when you look at the sky that the world is a lot bigger than vehicles." After I said it, I wondered if maybe I shouldn't have. There was a fair chance that his obsession with trucks and cars was a way of blocking out the size of everything else, a way to cope with the anxiety that might otherwise overtake him. But he nodded sagely and waved at the cars as they passed.
Taye has a rare genetic syndrome that makes him, among other things, ventilator dependent when he's tired or sleeping. That's why he has a trach, and why our life together is a little unusual. I'll refer to various consequences of this syndrome throughout, but I won't bore you by explaining it all right now.
When the colors had dulled and the morning rush had slowed, we turned around and headed home. It didn't take long for the morning to reach full-on daylight, and I relaxed in the mild sunshine on the side of my face, smiling at my child's chatter and my happy, panting dog. When we got home, it would be time to eat second breakfast, clean, and try to get some education in before Taye's occupational therapy appointment, but for the moment, I soaked up happiness. Twice, I caught Taye holding up his thumb like a hitchhiker, trying to catch us a ride, but other than that, it was a nice walk.

New Book Series!

Dear friends, the Kergulen series has come to a close, and I'm launching a comical, Urban Fantasy series called Just West of Orlando.
For so many people, this has been an incredibly difficult time, and the Just West of Orlando series is the epitome of escape fiction. As the name implies, it's set west of Orlando in a diverse and sometimes whacky neighborhood where some of the neighbors are more than they seem. The tone is light, the characters are fun, and the endings are happy.
The first book, Won't You Be Mine? It's a Beautiful Day in the Nightmarehood is in the final round of edits, and book two is over halfway through the first draft. Book one is available for preorder in ebook, and will release in less than two months. I'm on schedule to release at least three books a year, so no long waits.
Click the cover below to preorder your copy today!

The Hordes of Haran

Hello!
The Hordes of Haran is just about a week from release!

I hope you've reserved your copy. If not, it's not too late. I mean, it's not like there's a deadline.

In all seriousness, I believe you'll enjoy it. It packs a wide range of emotional experiences, as well as plenty of action, humor, and creepiness. And it's a long book, so plenty of bang for your buck! I'm proud of the final result.

Happy reading!
​Find it here. Available as a Kindle e-book or in paperback.

The Hordes of Haran is Available for Pre-Order!

Hey!
You all have waited so long for this book to come out, I'm offering the e-book for pre-order at a discounted price of $2.99 until July 22, 2020. It's on sale for you, so grab it before it goes up!
Click here to get it on Amazon!