What I'm Working On: Raising Shawn (Off Schedule)

Hey Vicksters!

I know that today is Thursday and I was supposed to give you a "Tate Pack Thursday" diary entry but I forgot and I've been so caught up in my latest WIP that Tommy, Richard, Alex, Michael, Maurice and the other pack members gave me a free pass.

I thought I'd share the unedited prologue of "Raising Shawna" with you guys and let you see why I'm so focused on this story. I have an idea of which publisher I want to sub it to, but I have to finish it first because it's a contemporary, supernatural, interracial, transgender, gay romance story that full of angst and I'm just not sure who would accept that. I'll let you guys know who accepts it once it's finish and I sub it.

Here's the WB (Working Blurb):

Shane Occena's life spirals out of control at the age of eighteen when his twin brother, Shawn, is killed in a gang-related incident. Having lost his parents six years previous, Shane is now totally alone. Not wanting to deal with the pain and loneliness, he gives into temptation and accepts a bag of cocaine from a drug dealer, hours after burying his brother. He spins out into a world of drugs and alcohol for two years before hitting rock bottom and going into rehab. Eight and a half years after taking that first hit of cocaine, Shane is clean, sober, and working towards getting his Juris Doctorate.
While leaving the office one day he hears sniffling and the soft cries of a child in the alley next to the building where he works. When he goes to investigate he finds an orphaned four-year old girl, who pulls at his heartstrings and reminds him of... someone.
Even after getting social services involved, Shane can't seem to stop thinking about the young girl and eventually applies to adopt her. When he is awarded custody, he begins to notice different things about the little girl that makes him think of his dead brother Shawn. Even the little girl's name reminds him of Shawn, especially since her name is Shawna. But when Shawna tells him that she is the reincarnation of his twin brother, given a second chance at his life, Shane doesn't know how to handle it so he takes Shawna to a child psychologist.
Child psychologist, Doctor Tucker Ames, is a specialist in child gender issues and sexual trauma and has seen many cases of Gender Identity Disorder in children, but when he meets Shane and Shawna Occena it's the first time he meets a child who says they are the reincarnation of someone else and trapped in the wrong gender. He agrees to take Shawna's case, even though he finds himself wildly attracted to Shawna's adopted father, Shane. But when the two of them give into their attraction and Tucker is forced to turn Shawna's case over to another doctor, neither Tucker nor Shane are prepared for the consequences.
So when someone makes accusations that Shane is unfit to care for Shawna and is in fact brainwashing her into believing she is the reincarnation of his dead brother, thereby abusing her, will Shane and Tucker be able to fight the charges and help Shane keep the only family member he has? And will Tucker be able to get Shane to agree to take a chance on love and add another person to his new family?



Prologue:

The sound of birds chirping overhead couldn’t drown out the sound of Shane Occena’s heart breaking as his twin brother’s coffin was lowered into the ground. He was truly alone now. His parents had died in a tragic car accident when he and Shawn were only twelve and the next six years Shane and Shawn had spent in a group home in Tampa whenever they weren’t being bounced from foster home to foster home. While Shane had missed having parents, he was glad that he and Shawn had been able to stay together. But now? Now what was he supposed to do? His parents were gone and so was his brother. He had no reason to go on.
He ignored the sounds of sniffling coming from the other attendants and instead focused on the burning rage building inside of him. He was only eighteen. What had he done in his short life to warrant losing every member of his family? He balled his hands into fists as he silently raged at the heavens. His parents had been good people. They had in fact been on their way home from watching Shane and Shawn play in an away basketball game when they’d been hit head on by a semi-truck driver who had fallen asleep at the wheel. Not even the massive settlement Shane and his brother had received from the company for “wrongful death caused by one of the drivers of the company” had been enough to soothe the gaping hole left in their hearts by their parents passing. The money from the settlement and the life insurance had been placed in a trust fund for him and his brother and not revealed to any of their foster parents, for which Shane was grateful. There was no telling what kind of treatment they would have received from their foster parents if they had known that the boys were worth millions.
Shane and Shawn had been biding their time until they could age out of the system and strike out on their own. They’d had no illusions that they would be adopted. They had both been older when their parents had died. They were African-American and living in Central Florida. They had just been happy they’d stayed together. So the day they’d aged out of the system Shane had allowed his brother to talk him into going out to celebrate with their friends. Shane’s friends were a little more low-key than Shawn’s band of thugs, dealers, and delinquents that he’d felt an affinity for. Whereas Shane’s friends were all in after-school activities, had jobs, were on the honor roll, had been accepted to prestigious colleges and had plans and goals for their futures beyond “gettin’ head and fuckin’ some chicken head.” Shane still wasn’t sure what a “chicken head” was.
He’d spent weeks trying to talk his brother into applying himself in school. They’d both attended Lake Region High School and while Shawn had been on the school’s football team, Shane had been on the basketball team as well as the debate team. Shawn would constantly tease Shane about being a nerd and trying to make something of himself in a world that won’t let him forget who or what he really was. Shane hadn’t listened to his brother, however. He’d studied until he passed out, gotten involved in every activity he could get involved in, done community service, had a job, applied for scholarships, applied for the top colleges in the country, and saved every dime he could.
The day they’d gone out with their friends to celebrate Shane had received four acceptance letters for college: Harvard, Howard, Yale, and Berkley, all of them had offered him academic scholarships for a full degree for which Shane had been beyond excited. It was that excitement that made him go out with Shawn, his friends and Shane’s friends. It was that excitement that made him drink illegally with them all. It was that excitement that made him so buzzed he didn’t pay any attention to his brother when Shawn wandered off with his buddies. The gunshots that rang out fifteen minutes later and the sound of footsteps running towards him had sobered him up quickly. He’d stood outside of the Southwest Complex, where they’d been drinking and celebrating, and felt a fog envelop him. A moment’s hesitation, of disbelief and denial had kept him from running in the direction where Shawn and his friends had gone. When he’d finally snapped out of it, he’d run faster than he ever had before falling to his knees over the bleeding form of his twin brother. Clutching Shawn’s dying body to his chest, screaming and crying for help, for someone to call 0-1-1, and yelling at God “Save my brother, please, please, not him,” had yielded him no results. It was over thirty minutes after he’d felt his brother take his last breath, thirty minutes after Shane’s heart had shattered into a million pieces and he’d slipped into a fog, that the police had arrived, and only because they’d noticed Shane outside of the complex.
His brother’s death was ruled an accidental gang-related homicide and the check Shane had received the day before the funeral for his brother’s life insurance hadn’t done anything to stem the flow of tears on his face. He’d woken that morning and looked around the apartment he’d just rented with a detached glance. Dressing, traveling to the church for the funeral, and even looking down at his brother’s lifeless form had evoked no emotion in him whatsoever. He’d stared through everyone who had come up to him to offer condolences and had barely been aware of someone putting him in a car to drive him to the cemetery. And now, standing at his brother’s graveside as people walked by to drop in roses, Shane could only feel one emotion: rage.
He narrowed his eyes at every person that stopped to touch his arm in sympathy. He glared at the pastor as he said a prayer over Shawn’s soul and when Jennifer, the social worker who had been assigned to him and Shawn, offered him a ride home, he jerked his arm out of her grasp.
“Fuck off,” he hissed, before turning back to face his brother’s coffin, or rather, the whole where his brother’s coffin now lay. He heard her gasp and a part of him cringed at his treatment of her, but that part was so small and soft the bigger, angrier, louder part was able to drown it out.
He stayed at the gravesite until everyone left and then, and only then did he throw back his head and let out a loud, heartbreaking scream. He screamed until his voice was hoarse and his throat ached. Then he collapsed to his knees and sobbed. He pounded the ground with his fists until they bled and only then did he stand and turn to leave the cemetery. He ignored the workers who watched him with sympathy in their eyes and the other families in the area who watched him warily as if afraid of what he might do. He walked down Havendale Boulevard in Auburndale until he looked up and found himself in Winter Haven. He sank down in the parking lot of an abandoned building and let out a deep sigh.
“What ‘chu lookin’ fuh dawg?” a voice asked from behind him and Shane turned to see who was talking to him when his life had fallen apart and wanted to snarl at the trench coat clad man leaning against the building.
“Nothin’ mother fucker,” he growled, pushing to his feet, hissing at the pain that shot up his arms. His legs trembled and exhaustion washed over him. He had another three miles to go before he got to his apartment, but he didn’t think he was going to make it. He’d have to call for a cab.
“Aye man, chill the fuck out. I’m just tryin’ to help you out. You look like you need to forget. I got somethin’ to help you wit’ ‘dat.  It’ll make all the bad shit not hurt so bad anymore,” the stranger said as he stepped towards Shane.
Shane refused to step back even though a voice yelled at him to turn around and run away. He watched as the tall, broad-shoulder man, his skin a dark brown and covered in tattoos, a white tank top, jeans sagging below his ass, his green and white plaid boxers showing, walked towards him.
“I ain’t about to buy no drugs from you, man,” Shane said, crossing his arms across his chest stubbornly.
“Did I say you hadta pay? I’ma give you ‘dis fuh free. Just ‘cause you look like you need it,” the stranger said, holding out a small bag of what looked to Shane to be crushed powder.
Cocaine, his brain processed and Shane trembled as he thought of doing something that could be so harmful to his body. Didn’t people usually start with marijuana? Nobody jumped right into the hard shit did they? He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it. That was not the way he was going to deal with his brother’s death. It wasn’t.
But even as he told himself that he wouldn’t deal with losing his brother with drugs, his hand reached out to take the offering from the drug dealer. He tucked the small baggie into the pocket of his suit jacket and looked around, a frisson of fear curling around his spine.
“G’ahead man. Go enjoy it and if you want so’more, you just come find me out here, my name is King. My office hours are six at night until five in ‘da mornin’ when ‘da cops come out here,” the drug dealer said before laughing at his words.
Shane wanted to roll his eyes at the other man and tell him that it wasn’t funny, but his eyes took in the sight of a gun sticking up out of the dealer’s pants. So he merely nodded, turned and hurried away, running like the hounds of hell were chasing him, ignoring the burn in his legs until he got to the Pizza Hut down the street. Coming to a stop, he pulled out his cell phone and called for a cab, the tiny baggie burning a hole in his pocket.
“When I get home, I’m going to flush it down the toilet,” he promised himself. “It’s good that I have it. That just means that’s one less bag of product he has to sell to someone else.”
He had every intention of keeping that promise as he climbed into the cab and gave the driver his address. Even through walking through the door of his house. But his fingers found their way into his jacket pocket and pulled out the baggie and he walked over to the counter in his kitchen and grabbed his glass cutting board. He watched as if he were having an out of body experience as he opened the baggie and poured the drugs on the cutting board. He stared at it, not really sure what he was supposed to do now.  Thinking of all the movies he’d seen and even the parties he’d attended with Shawn where people were doing drugs, he went into the bathroom and grabbed a razor blade.
Coming back out to the counter, Shane cut the powder into sections, enough in the bag to make three long lines of powder. He stepped back and sighed. Shaking his head he walked away from the counter and walked into his living room to sit on the couch. His right leg bounced as he nibbled on his thumbnail. His gaze took in the sight of his television, blu-ray disc player, coffee table, covered in magazines, his guitar sitting in its holder against the wall and finally he looked to his right at the end table and swallowed back a lump of tears as he saw a picture of him with his parents and his brother. He reached out to pick up the frame and felt tears roll unbidden down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized to the image of his parents and turning the frame upside down on the end table he walked back into the kitchen and leaned over the counter where the cutting board sat waiting with his three lines of cocaine. Placing one finger over his right nostril, Shane inhaled the first line of the narcotic. His head buzzed delightfully as his fingers and toes became numb. He closed his eyes as bliss began to settle into his bones. Euphoria, the likes of which he’d never experienced before swamped his senses and he trembled with the need to have more. Leaning back over the cutting board he inhaled the next two lines in rapid succession.
Shane’s body trembled and he barely had the presence of mind to stumble towards the living room. Collapsing on his couch, he sniffed, pinching his nostrils and wipe away traces of the powder. His mind buzzed and his blood sang with the sweet oblivion of the drug high. He closed his eyes as he sank into the cushions of his couch.
“No wonder people do this. This is fucking amazing,” he mumbled to the empty room. The ache in his chest from his brother’s death eased as he sank into a state of forgetfulness. He floated on clouds of bliss and wonder as his limbs grew heavy and his fingers twitched as if he were being electrocuted. As sleep began to wash over his senses he wondered why he hadn’t been getting high sooner.

Weeks, months, and years went by and Shane sank further and further down a hole of drugs and alcohol. Pretty soon all of his savings from his job at the coffee shop were gone as well as his employment there. But he had millions of dollars with the settlement money and the money from his parents and his brother’s life insurance. Even after being kicked out by his landlord because of the “shady characters” hanging out in his apartment, having loud parties at all times of the night, Shane merely bought a home in Haines City and continued to get high.
And if that frame that contained the picture of his parents, Shawn and him was never turned over again in the next two years, Shane was really too high to give a fuck.