Fred’s Not So Dead (part two)

 

*NOTE* If you haven’t read part one click on Myrtie and get the scoop and then come back to this one!

Oh. MY. Friggin’. God!

I sat in the living room and watched Honey come up the walk yesterday. There he was strolling along when he spotted her. *insert him halting immediately here* Then imagine him staring at her for a twenty-count before he started looking around the rock, under the African Iris leaves and by the ligustrum. Uh oh, now envision him spinning around to face the house before he marched to it.

Once he was inside with the door shut I smiled. “Hi.”

“What’s that?” He scowled and hiked a thumb over his shoulder toward Myrtie.

Wow, okay, I need to pause here and tell you something I should have mentioned before. Honey doesn’t like garden gnomes. They are second on the list of creepy things he tries to avoid. First are clowns. I don’t blame him there. And third on the list? Are antique type writers in dreary basements. This one could be on account of me covertly typing “I’m watching you” on his mother’s old manual machine and leaving it there until he found it a week later.  Hey, don’t look at me like that. Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing? The manual typewriter just happened to be in his mother’s dark and dingy “unfinished” basement, and we’d just gone to see a triple feature of horror movies at the drive-in so, to me it was kismet. Perfect timing, right? Don’t tell, though. He’s still convinced that old house was haunted.

“A gnome,” I said, and amazingly I didn’t even cringe.

“Where’s Tina?”

“Who’s Tina?

“The Turtle.”

“Oh, you mean Fred.”

“No.”

“’Fraid so.”

He scowled. “You ignored her for six years—”

“Him, and it was eight actually. Don’t you like Myrtie?”

Honey hates it when I mess with him like this. You could practically see him wanting to drag his hands down the sides of his face. “You didn’t give him away, did you?”

Oh yeah, like anyone would want the homely effer. But ugly or not it was clear both of us loved the little guy. “Of course not. He’s family.”

“She.” Honey went into the kitchen and unloaded his pockets. That’s always such a treat because there’s usually all kinds of weird shit in them. Screws, nails, wingnuts, batteries, or my favorite? Unwound safety clips. I have no idea what he does with those, but it’s something that happens at least four times a month. Picks locks maybe?

“Fred’s a he. You’re going to have trust me on that.”

He turned and pulled me into his arms, sighing. “I’d be out of my mind to trust a kidnapper. Are you going to tell me where the turtle is?”

“He’s traveling.”

“Around the property?”

“Maybe…in between his visits.”

He groaned. “Please tell me you haven’t sent him to my mother’s.

Eek, I forgot about that one. Crap, that was twenty years ago and he still remembered? Meh, why wouldn’t he? It was classic with a capital “C”. One day I’ll have to blog about the infamous item I sent her. “Nope. No worries.”

He laughed. “Yeah right. You and that concept don’t go together well.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“So how long am I going to be stuck with the gnome?”

“Until Fred comes back. I told him to drop us a line once in a while.”

“Interesting. Well, when he returns she goes.”

“Okay.” And I have the perfect destination in mind. “I’ll send her to your mother.”

I SO love it when Honey groans like I slammed his fingers in the door. Don’t know why. Oh yes I do. It means my work here is done.

Little does he know I haven’t even gotten started. Heheheh. Poor Honey.

Riley

P.S. I’ve been working on something else I wanted to share with you. I’m creating an exclusive and private group on Facebook. Some of you guys may have heard of the term “Street Team”. If not, the term loosely defined is a group of (in my case) readers who have a place to hang out with me where I can share ahead of time, things like covers, teasers, contests. That you can then share with other readers who like my kinds of books. Ultimately, what I’d like to do is be able to give my team advance copies of my new releases and get feedback and possibly some reviews posted on Amazon and goodreads on official release days.

I do want to make this clear. I do not expect a certain kind of review from any reader – even a team member. I don’t agree with asking for a certain star rating or whatever. I’m comfortable letting my work speak for itself, and my readers to have a voice with their own opinions. I know at times – even with my most loyal readers I’m going to miss the mark in their eyes with some story concepts. That’s life. It’s not perfect and neither am I so *insert big weary sigh here* I’ve learned to live with it.

That said I do have this application if you’d be interested in joining. I’ve limited the amount of space, so sign-ups will be closed once I’ve reached that amount. If there is anything on the application you are uncomfortable with feel free to email me. I have tried to make this as painless as possible – but be warned. Some of you guys know me. The people who join my team will know get to know me better. So that may be a good thing…but depending on how you look at it? It could be bad.

I wanted to post this here for you guys before I posted it anywhere else. All you have to do is click on the abs below to view and fill out the application.