Shiloh Walker's Blog, page 76

Circle in the Sand…

Kindle

Hey…they are at the beach, that counts, right?

 

 

Part of my FBI Psychics series…

Even before he turned his head and saw her, he knew.  Some part of him did, at least.  He didn’t even know if he could claim it was any sort of psychic knowledge.   Certain things, people didn’t need true psychic skill to know—just instinct—and this was probably every bit as much as instinct as anything else.  The instinct that trouble was coming his way.

Trouble…five feet, nine inches of trouble and most of it was leg.  Black hair was pulled back in a braid so tight, he wouldn’t have known it was curly.  Except he had spent many, many hours with his hands fisted in those curls.  She hated them…he’d always loved them.  Her eyes, a deep, strange shade of blue-violet, so much darker than his own eyes, were hidden by sunglasses and he could only imagine the derision he’d see there.  And it would be there.  He knew it just by the sight of the slight sneer on her pretty face.

Mica Greer never had much cared for psychics.  Strange, considering she was one.  Or maybe not so strange, he supposed.  Denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt and all that.

Mica’s gift, like his own, had been unstable.  Unlike him, she hadn’t learned to stabilize it through practice alone.  She’d needed a partner, and she’d turned out to make a damn good anchor.  For a while, the two of them had worked together in training.  Her gift had grown, bloomed…as had some crazy thing between them.

Then she’d decided she didn’t want all the ‘crazy shit’ in her life.

She pulled out.  Not just out of the unit, but out of the FBI, altogether.

And from him—

Don’t go there, he thought.  Blowing out a breath, he shifted his attention back to the ocean, trying to reach for some inner peace.  It wasn’t going to come, though, and he knew it.  If she was here, on top of the insane coming at him, then it was for a reason.

I can always pretend she’s here because after all this time, she realizes she’s still in love with me.  He laughed deprecatingly.  Yeah, like that was going to happen.  Fifteen years…fifteen fucking years.  How had those years slipped away from him like that?

She came to a stop next to him, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with him.  He waited for her to say something, but it didn’t happen.  Of course, he’d also waited for her to come back to him…that hadn’t happened, either.  After a while, he’d stopped waiting.  But he’d never stopped wishing.  Never stopping wanting, either.  He’d moved on, but he hadn’t forgotten.

The waves crashed against the sand just a few inches from his feet and he stooped down, raked his fingers through the wet, watched as it filled back up in eddies and swirls before another wave came.  Mica remained silent at his back.

He could feel her turmoil, if he let himself.  Even without lowering his shields.  All he had to do was concentrate…and there.

There it was.  She didn’t want to be here, she worried about whether or not his gift had gotten stronger, whether or not he could pick anything up from her and damn it—why did he…

He smiled a little as her thoughts tumbled to a stop, almost like she’d sensed him.  “You never did learn to stop projecting so loudly,” he said softly.

“You never did learn to mind your own business,” she snapped.

He shrugged.  “I can’t help that I hear people shouting at me from the next room.  You don’t like it…” He slanted a look at her through his lashes.  “Don’t shout.  You can tone your thoughts down.  You learned how.”

Yeah, she’d learned how.  But back then, he hadn’t been quite as good at picking up random thoughts, or even direct thoughts.  Not that Colby was going to point that out to her.

Mica curled her lip at him.  He hated that he still found that so fucking appealing, hated that he wanted to reach up and tumble her down into the sand next to him and strip her naked.  So what if doing the dirty in the sand got grit in sensitive places?  The ocean was right there if they wanted to clean up after.  And his house wasn’t too far away.

It was a strong enough impulse that he could even see himself doing just that and somehow, he doubted she’d resist him if he gave it a try.  Her breathing kicked up as she stared at him.  No.  She wouldn’t resist.  Not at all.

With a heated curse, he tore his eyes away.

“Whatever you want, Mica, I can’t help you.  Go away.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

He thought of the blood-splattered images, of terror, and death.  The fear, the darkness that hung over him a cloud.  “I know enough,” he said softly.

A shadow fell across him and he braced himself as she crouched down beside him.  She was still a few inches away, but closer…damn it, too close.

“You’re not with the unit anymore.”

“No.” He continued to play with the sand.  Better to do that than reach for her, he decided.  And he was so damn tempted to reach.

“Since when?”

“Almost two years ago.”  Okay, playing with the sand wasn’t going to cut it if she was going to sit there and chit-chat.  He swished his hand through the next wave to get the grit off and rose.

“You aren’t here to chat about old times, what I’ve been up to in the past fifteen years.”  Ever since you walked out on us.  He kept that last bit trapped behind his teeth.  It didn’t matter anymore—they didn’t matter because they didn’t exist.  “I’ve already told you that I can’t help you with whatever the trouble is.”

“You don’t know that,” she bit off.

“Yeah.  I do.  Because I won’t.”  He went to push past her—he had to get away from her.  Had to get away from here.

But Mica wasn’t to going to let it go that easily.  She caught his arm and that touch almost froze him.  Her bare hand on his arm—the shock rippled through him.  Memories raged.  Their memories.  Not just his.  Blood roared in his ears and a fog of need and want and a love she’d walked away from, it was rose inside him…for the briefest moment, it drowned out everything.

It faded too soon and now, it wasn’t memories that blinded him.

It was a bloodless massacre.

Lauren Dane

Leah Braemel

Caris Roane

Eliza Gayle

Lissa Matthews

Mandy M. Roth

McKenna Jeffries

Shiloh Walker

Taige Crenshaw

Delilah Devlin

Felicity Heaton



TJ Michaels

The Innocent

Kindle

So I finished this…it’s another FBI short… well, not super short, it’s about category length, but hey.  FYI, it was just finished, typos are probably there.  They’ll get caught in editing/revising.

Dunno what will come of it. Sent it to Samhain but we’ll see what they say.

Jay Roberts never expected to fall in love with a man from Hell.

But she had.

And now he’d up and cut her off.  Out of the blue.

She’d met Lincoln Dawson online and it hadn’t been at one of those hokey, online dating sites.  She didn’t mess with those.

What was she supposed to put down?

Hello… I’m a security specialist who works for a think tank/security group/troubleshooter group known as the Oswald Group and I’m psychometric.  It causes some issues with intimacy because when I touch people, I pick up on what they think and if you compare to a former lover, I’m going to know.  I’m five three, I hate walks in the rain, I kind of enjoy dirty movies, I love dirty books and I’m still a virgin. I’m kinky as hell and I’d love to find a way to get laid, but I don’t see that happening…

Yeah, it led to problems.

It had been pure accident that she met Linc.

She was online, incognito, naturally. Almost any time she went online, it was related to work.  She had been investigating the disappearance of a teenager in Florida and he’d been smacking down somebody who had been preying on a couple of preteen girls.

Granted, the predator had acted like he was a girl.

She had seen through it, just as Lincoln had.

It was a long and convoluted path, but they’d been talking online for almost a year.

He’d asked more than once if they’d ever meet.

She wanted to tell him yes, so badly.

And she’d been really, really close.

Despite the fact that she’d been…well, misleading him from the beginning. Despite the fact that she had been hiding some huge secrets.

She needed to come clean with him because if she didn’t, they had no chance at all.

And she had been this close.

Planned her entire vacation around coming down here, too.

But then, nearly three months ago, he’d stopped talking to her.  Stopped answering emails, cut off contact completely.

Sadly, one of her jobs came up that had pushed her off the grid for nearly three weeks. She’d reached out to him as soon as it was over and he’d finally called her back, only she’d been in a meeting.

I don’t have time for this, Jay.  It’s not working out.  Good-bye.

When her boss Oz offered her another short-term, off-the-grid job, she took it.  Five weeks in, but she submerged with the gut deep feeling that something was wrong.

Lo and behold, something was.

Now she was here.

In Hell.  Literally, and maybe even in the biblical sense of the word.

Jay had done a double-take the first time she’d seen the name of the little town and she’d asked Linc twice if he was joking. But as she’d driven by the little bank and saw the digital display of the temperature—a balmly 96 in June—she had to admit, Hell was aptly name.  She’d spent the past ten years living in Texas.  She was intimately acquainted with hot.

This place, though, took the idea of hot and cooked it up and deep-fried it for good measure.

Before she hunted down her man, though, and asked how they’d gone from dirty little sexts in the middle of the night to the cold shoulder and I don’t have time for this, she needed gas.  She needed a cold drink and maybe five minutes in the bathroom.

The A.C. on her car was…questionable…at best and she’d been slowing baking in her car for the past hour.  It was edging up nine and it was still boiling hot outside.  This place had to be pure torture come August.

The gas station looked like it hadn’t been updated any time this millinium.  The pumps were slower than her great-grandmother had been on seniors day at Kroger back home in Louisville and when she pushed inside the store, the cool blast of air was so welcome, she wanted to cry.

She was damn glad she always traveled with some cash on hand, because there was a sign taped to the do—Plastic is no good here.  Cash only. Yeah, definitely stuck in the last century, because there was no ATM, either.

The guy behind the counter looked like he might be stuck in the nineties, maybe even the sixties because he was staring at her like she was some alien life form. Jay was used to that.  She actually kind of like the odd attention she received over her pink and blue streaked hair, the little gold hoop that pierced her right eyebrow.  The gloves tended to catch a lot of notice, but she’d give almost anything to not need them.  Her physical appearance was weird enough that the gloves just went with everything else, but the gloves were a necessity.

Everything else was just preference.

She’d go crazy without her gloves. She couldn’t function.  Not for long, anyway.  One touch against the wrong anything was enough to put her into a state of shock, something she knew from experience.

Those innocent little touches, the things people took for granted, were the very things that could drive her insane.  A brush of a hand, even if she was shielded, could flood her with all a person’s fears, anxieties and secrets.  If the person was having a bad day, it got even worse.

And if the person was in pain, physical or mental, the effects were so much worse.

Psychometry wasn’t picky when it decided to wreak fhavoc on her life. Her gift tied into emotions and she didn’t have to take off the gloves to know the guy behind the counter was a mess.

His thoughts were…dark.

She approached him with more than a little bit of caution, wishing she’d thought to strap on her weapon, but it was a pain in the ass, even if she had have a conceal carry permit.  Although, hey… she was kinda sorta involved with the sheriff.

Well, she thought she was.

Maybe.

It didn’t matter, though.

This kid was more involved in whatever was twisting up his mind than anything else.

She pulled her money out of her pocket and peeled off three twenties, putting them down on the counter.

The kid just stared, rocking back and forth on the stool, staring at nothing.

“Ah, hey.  Can I get my change?”

His eyes skittered over to hers.

A chill raced up her back.

The lights aren’t exactly on. Nobody is home, she thought.

The door opened behind her and the kid went stiff, his gaze bouncing to the men behind her and she shifted, turning so that she had them in her line of sight and could still see the kid.

Sweat beaded along his lip and abruptly, his body relaxed and a sigh shuddered out of him.

He blinked and looked at her.  “Ma’am, that will be $57.00.”

She gestured to the counter, focused on the men who move to fill the empty space between the counter and the door.

Rednecks, she thought.  And not the hard-working kind she’d come from.  Her daddy had been a redneck and he’d busted his ass from dawn to dusk to make sure she never wanted for anything.

These guys, though, rednecks and not in the nice sense of the word.  Already, the one in the middle was eying her in that way that just made her feel dirty.  Trouble, trouble, trouble…

Some people just gave off a certain vibe.  Most women eventually learn to pick up on that vibe…it was that vibe that had them crossing the road when she saw a certain sort of guy, the one that made her realize she didn’t want to be anywhere alone with him, the guy that set off every internal alarm she had.  He was the guy that stood too close, stared too long, and generally just creeped her out.

There were three of them standing in front of her now, and the one in the middle was the worst.

And the biggest problem of them all was that he had a rough psychic skill.

In her line of work, she’d come to learn that psychic ability wasn’t as uncommon as some might think.  It was estimated that one percent of the population had some sort of psychic ability—it sounded like a low number, but that added up to one in hundred.  With billions of people on that planet, that wasn’t as low as it seemed.

The abilities varied, though and the typical ‘homegrown’ psychic, like this guy, was weak.  Most of them just had better than average instincts.  Some were going to just be sensitive to things—might feel really uncomfortable in a house where a lot of violence had happened, while another might be really good at guessing a winner at the Derby or really good at occasionally picking four or five lottery numbers.  The lucky sort of bastard.

Judging by the way he was watching her, he decided he was going to get lucky again.

And he had no idea what he was dealing with either.

Because like most of those homegrown psychics, he had no idea what he was, and no idea what he was dealing with.

She shifted her attention back to the boy and waited for her change, using the mirror mounted in the corner to watch him.  If she was lucky, she could get out of here without messing with him.

When he whistled in her direction, Jay ignored it.

She was good at ignoring things.

All she had to do was get out of there and everything would be good.

She scooped up her change, careful not to make contact with the kid behind the counter, careful not to let him touch her even with the gloves.  Tucking her cash into her pocket, she turned to go and wasn’t surprised to see all three men blocking her way.

“Excuse me.”

“She looks like a piece of candy.  Look at that pink hair.”  It was the one with the mild psychic ability and the leer in his eyes made her skin crawl.  His gaze raked over her from head to toe and then zoomed in on her chest.  She wore a tank with a fishnet top stretched over it.  It fit close.  Most of her clothing did.  Once upon a time, she’d hid behind baggy clothing, cowered in her room, convinced she was going crazy.  Her dad’s death, the emergence of her ability, it had all hit at once.  Sanity had been a touch and go thing for a while.

She might be a little crazy but hiding hadn’t helped.

So she’d stopped hiding and she’d learned how to deal.  With everything, just about. Including guys like this.

As he continued to stare at her tits, she said again, “Excuse me.”

A wide, unpleasant smile spread across his face.

She steadied herself and bolstered her shields.  She could only keep everything locked out for short periods of time.  More than ten or fifteen minutes and she felt like she was going through some sort of serious bout of sensory deprivation.  That didn’t help her state of mind.

But touching thugs like this? That wasn’t going to help either.

And she was going to have to touch one of them, probably several of them.

The ringleader stepped up and reached out.

She didn’t react as he trailed a finger down her cheek.  “You lost there, sugar?”  She felt nothing but the physical contact, his finger, rough against her skin.  She could almost imagine a slimy aftertrail.  Dirty—he was so dirty and he contaminated everything he touched.

“No.”  She lied through her teeth and did it with a smile as she angled her head away, breaking contact.  Keeping her shields up kept her feeling too much, but she still caught enough—too much—lust and greed and a need to hurt.  She wanted a shower.  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go.  I’m meeting somebody.”

“Why don’t you tell me where you’re heading?  I can give you a hand.”

“I don’t need—”

The bell over the door rang.

She didn’t look away from the men in front of her.

“Lloyd.  Why don’t you step away from the lady?”

A shiver raced down her spine.  That voice.  Familiar…

The man in front of her curled his lip, a slow, smirking sort of smile.  It was the smile of a man she wouldn’t trust at her back.  She didn’t even trust this man at her front.  “Well, hey there, sheriff…oh, wait. You ain’t the sheriff no more.  You know what?  I think I’ll stay right here.  I’m talking to this pretty little piece of candy here.”

Sheriff—

She tore her eyes away from him and stared at the man she’d come to find.

Sheriff Lincoln Dawson, the man she’d found herself falling head over heels in love with over the past year.

The man who according to this thug wasn’t the sheriff anymore.

Okay, that could wait.

“I think you’ll step away.” Lincoln’s voice came a little closer and she took a deep, steadying breath.

His eyes cut to hers.

And she watched as his gaze passed over her, and then immediately came right back.

Cocking her head, she said softly, “Hello, Lincoln.”

Chasing…

Kindle

This week?  We’re pursuing the one we love… or well, that’s the theme in the snippet.

A breeze kicked up and blew my hair into my face. I squinted and put the rag down before finding a clip in my bag.  As I was twisting my hair back, I looked up and saw him.  He was sitting closer now.  Closer than he usually sat.  The table that was only fifteen away and he sat on top of it, two bottles of water next to him. I recognized the label.  Aquafina.

And I also couldn’t help but notice that he stared at me.

That damned knot that always settled in my throat decided to make another appearance. Slowly, I looked away and focused on gathering up my supplies. I’d had over three hours.  I didn’t need to start anything else.  Soon, I’d need to get to work on the projects I had up for the day.

There was that one cover…I was going to have fun with it.  It was a male/male project and the…

My jaw dropped open.

The wind had blown the pages of my sketchbook.

And on the back of the sketch I’d just finished were the words.

If you’re going to spend that much time drawing me, maybe you could give me your name.

I’d definitely like yours.

He’d seen.

Oh, fuck.  He had seen it… that intimate picture, that dream I’d dared to let myself have while I was awake, of me, on my knees in front of him, a dream that even now filled me with longing.  He had seen.

He had looked through my sketches, just as I’d feared.

I’d definitely like yours…

(dunno what’s going on with this still.  sorry!)

Myla Jackson

Lauren Dane

Leah Braemel

Caris Roane

Eliza Gayle

Mandy M. Roth

McKenna Jeffries

Taige Crenshaw

Delilah Devlin

HelenKay Dimon

Felicity Heaton

TJ Michaels

Things that make me feel good

Kindle

Goal achieved… that was easy.  100 Comments made.  I’ll be making that donation to Girls Write Now.  

… So a racist, misogynist dude decided to use the SFWA twitter feed (it’s been deleted, don’t look for it) to further his own hateful agenda.

Freedom of speech, yadda yadda yadda, but such use of the feed was expressly forbidden, I believe.

Anyway, it pisses me off. I like to turn hate into good things. He gets lots of comments on his blog, lots of pats on the back from people who think women ruin SF and belong in the kitchen, barefoot, probably, etc. So I’m going to do this.

For every comment that blog post gets, up to $100, I’m donating $1 to Girls Write Now, a charity that serves girls/women in New York City.

Cuz while spewing bile is his thing, kindness is mine.

Comments off and I totally moderate comments, especially from hateful trolls.

Job opening

Kindle

Spam me, and I reserve the right to mock you.

Which I’ll do.  I got this in my email…seriously.  I added my thoughts in bold.

- Requires five years customer service experience or two years general office experience …well.  I do work in my office.  Sometimes in my jammies.  Or yoga pants.  Does that count?

- A strong work ethic and positive attitude … a positive attitude?  Clearly you don’t know who you’re talking to.

- Wide Inter-personal skills, organization skills, strong analytical ability … um… or gan izah shun…you got me.  I’ve no idea what this word means.  Let me go google–ack!  MY EYES… MY EYES!

- Must have experience, confidence, and ability to conduct security briefings and interviews when required … can I record these briefings and post them to youtube?

- Must have experience executing vendor contracts and price negotiation skills … so check. The vendors get the highest costs they want.  They got families. Right?

- Knowledge of word processing, database, and spreadsheet software … well.  I can help you with the word processing thing, but to the rest, you’re on your own.

- No drug misdemeanors within the past 5 years and ability to pass a drug screen … but if I’ve got a drunk driving record or broke into the bank across the way, that’s all good, right?

A break…

Kindle

This post is sticky… there may be newer posts below.

I need a break.

My brain is tired.  To be blunt, I feel burnt-out, not on writing, but on all the stuff that isn’t writing but is necessary to do in order to be a writer.  Although if I could take a month or two off from writing, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  Sadly, I’ve never caught up from how sick I was a couple of years ago.  I used to have enough of a backlog to let me take a week or so here and there.  Not any more.  Time is something I never have enough of.

So if the blog goes a little quiet, I’m just taking some downtime and I might not be as visible on twitter or facebook for a while either. I’ll be around, just not as much.

To make up for it, I’m posting a nice long excerpt from BROKEN BLADE over at the J.C. Daniels site.

I’ll be around… just not as much.  You all take it easy.

 

 

Love Hurts… Saturday Snippet

Kindle

From Broken Blade

“What the fuck?” I whispered. I flexed my hand and longed for the weight of my blade. She wasn’t there, though, and I had to make do with the gun. Mesmerized, I stared at it, barely even aware I’d drawn it. Why was I holding the damn gun?

“Kit.”

I jerked my head to look at TJ.

She was watching me sadly. “He’s hurting, too, Kit. Don’t hate me too much. I’m just trying to help you, kid.”

“What—”

It hit me then and I lunged for the back door.

Another frenzy of lightning hit and then the ward shattered with a groan. Bits and pieces of magic fell to the earth, sparkling in the air. I could see them from the corner of my eyes and the death of the ward sucked the air out of me. If I’d moved a few seconds sooner, I would have gotten away.

But I was sensitive to magic and the power of the ward death’s left me reeling. As I stumbled against the bar, I was painfully aware of the roar echoing through the bar.

The doors opened and spat Damon’s bloodied form at my feet.

I backed up, determined to get something between us.

Something. TJ. Goliath. Anything or anybody.

But TJ had disappeared.

And I was alone with Damon.

Longer excerpt coming soonish.

Myla Jackson

Lauren Dane

Leah Braemel

Caris Roane

Eliza Gayle

Mandy M. Roth

McKenna Jeffries

Taige Crenshaw

Delilah Devlin

HelenKay Dimon

Felicity Heaton

From the bratlet

Kindle

I wanted her to let me sign the bratlet.  She refused.  She’s picked up a name for her artwork.

M. Walker.

And this is M. Walker’s interpretation of Kit and Damon.

 

It’s the first fan** art I’ve seen of Kit and Damon and maybe the only I’ve ever see, but as fas as I’m concerned, it’s also some of the best out there.

I prefer to go with reader-inspired…. can we go with reader-inspired?

She’s currently mad at me cuz I won’t tell her what I’m doing with the series and she hasn’t read beyond Blade Song yet.

I’m mean that way.

Look what’s coming back out in print…

Kindle

It’s been a couple of years, I think, since they were available.

We kept the price as low as we could, two books for $12.99.

 

The other Hunter books will follow, but I don’t know when.  For now, it’s available for pre-order on Amazon, not sure if we are going to be able to get it for pre-order elsewhere… something we’re working on.  More info here…

FYI, I’ve had people ask if I’m going to reconsider pursuing the series…no.  I’m not. Sales had slumped off and unless some sort of absolute miracle happened, it’s not feasible on my end.  I’m sorry. I hope you understand.

Heads-up! Some soldiers REALLY in need of help

Kindle

This lady is needing some help for a unit that’s coming back home.  Twenty seven soldiers are coming back and they don’t really have anybody to help them settle in.  They will back to a room with a mattress, basically.

She’s already gotten some smaller things, but could use help with the bigger items like sheets, etc.  She’s also running out of time…it seems like the easier thing to do with be send donations in the form of Walmart GCs and she can just pick up everything that is needed with the GCs.

I know some people might not be too comfortable with it, but the name was given to me by Kelley, the lady who heads up the SOS unit I help out and this is likely a lot easier than sending twin-sized bedding, (sheets, pillow cases) and shower curtains, etc.

If you are able and want to help out the soldiers, this is a wonderful way… you can send a Walmart gift card or donation to

Chanel Caldwell

5244-1 Yeakel St

Ft Hood TX 76544

They only have until the 17th to get everything ready, so time really isn’t on our side.

Again, this info is accurate and up to date, passed on to me by Kelley.  She’s the lady who gives me all the info for the SOS units I help out so I do know it is accurate and any help you can give would be very much appreciate, whether you can send $5 GC to Walmart or a new set twin sheets, a shower curtain, etc.

FYI, it’s okay to post this info to blogs, but please don’t post to FB, etc.