Want something new to read?

If you liked the other things I wrote, you might like this. It's not so much a romance, really, as it is about the problems that come after the happily ever after. Like meeting the family that he doesn't talk to, and finding out that there's more than one feud going on. It's about finding out the hard way that when you've been out defending the homeland, and not being there, home changes until it isn't home anymore, and the people there become strangers with a shared history in the thirty years Between Two Graves.

Of course, there are a couple firefights as well, because it's me. 

The blurb:

He swore he wouldn't be back while his parents lived...

Now, almost thirty years later, AJ is going home.

Ordered to attend his mother's funeral in the rugged northern border of the Empire, AJ is baring old wounds to his new wife, and burying familial feuds.

But the past won't die that easily, and grave secrets will threaten all the survivors and the women they love. Because the Feds are after AJ's unwanted inheritance...

And they're willing to risk a war to get their hands on it.

Currently available in ebook, print edition to follow very shortly (I accidentally introduced a formatting error and it spread. The cleanup to get chapters and page numbers to agree is tedious, and I love my detail-oriented husband very, very much for all the assistance he's giving on this.)

All bank angle and speed

 As below, so above...

This morning, there was a swarm of gnats hovering above the front yard like a bait ball of feeder fish. Unfortunately for them, they were swarming directly in the approach path the barn swallows use to get to their nest on my front porch.

The air was full of flashing wings zooming in and out like dolphins taking out the bait ball, right outside my front window. 

And Ashbutt-cat in the windowsill was losing his everloving fluffy little mind...

It did not get better when I opened the window so he could hear the excited twittering of birds maintaining comms for situational awareness and coordination. No, it got worse. Much worse. 

Formative books of my childhood

The subject came up, yesterday, of formative books from childhood. Everybody usually has one or two they can think of... I promptly went and pulled my favorite off the shelf, because it has been following me around all these years. 

Yes, Dad gave this to me when it was brand new. See the publication date. 

Yeah, that might explain a thing or two about how I turned out...

Love you, Dad. And thanks.

When did I turn into my grandmother?

 ...So, I'll have you know there were reasons.

But yes, yes, I did just feed a small child Blue Bell ice cream and pineapple chunks for breakfast.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Overload flavour.

...with a little vanilla to stretch it, in case her brother also wanted ice cream and pineapple chunks for breakfast.

You see, one of her parents was still crashed out in the guest bedroom, and the other was getting precious introvert alone time on my back porch, while her brother was still al imp towheaded bundle on the couch.

Besides, they'd been asked, when they came in wearily after the Very Long Roadtrip, if they wanted ice cream now (after dinner), or later.

Breakfast absolutely counts as later!

A wave of confusion

 You know, I know better. I do it anyway.

Yes, I wrote a story involving radiation when I have friends who are actual nuclear scientists and military what worked with the stuff. The level of detail and analysis brought to bear on those scenes may resemble using a sledgehammer to swat a fly, but I am grateful for their input.

Unfortunately, getting steeped in the difference and the types of emissions from various sources with examples leaves me looking at a post talking about men in romance genre and going "alpha males? Very weak, can be stopped by a thick skin? Beta males are stronger, more likely to affect the heroine, but why do we stop there? She's not going to get knocked off her feet by a gamma male?"

Roses, Part 3

Gunny was clearly slowing down. AJ shouldered him out of the way and finished the edge of the bed where he’d been digging, while the older man straightened painfully and groaned. “The things we do for women.”

That set AJ laughing hard enough Gunny noticed, and just waited until he felt like speaking. “Used to have a matched set of scars to remember her by. The thorns tore the shit out of me when I salvaged them for her. Had to put ’em up against my skin so they couldn’t puncture the suit. Her nails did the same to my back when she thanked me.”

“Have a few mementos of my own, like that.” Gunny chuckled, and leaned on the shovel handle. “Where’d you find ’em?”

“Inshi Q-ship. Did a thorough search for intelligence before we dismantled and disappeared it. Couldn’t tell her that, since it was never here.”

Gunny grunted. “And now the evidence will be growing all over the planet.”

“Can’t prove it, though. Lots of horse trading among hydroponics techs. Even the most close-mouthed family trader will happily start comparing plant pedigrees and where they’ve been, when they’re swapping starts and cuttings. Might have been why I was hanging around Amanda in the first place.”

“Right.” Gunny drawled out the word, and grinned at him.

AJ shrugged, and started cutting open the burlap bags of soil amendments, laying them out to mix with the original soil so it went back in the hole in the right ratio. “I was getting toward the end of a hitch. Thinking about getting out, taking a permanent posting with her.”

“She dump you?”

AJ shook his head, and moistened a dry mouth. This was the part that hurt. “The Mining Hab war went hot, and while I was gone, Doing Things, ThreeFree blew out. It was a dead wreck by the time they called me back to salvage. I looked for her in every corpse… didn’t know she made it, ’til today.”

“Ah. Damn.” Gunny didn’t have to say more.

AJ shoveled, because work was better than standing there doing nothing but feeling. “I hope she was happy. Bet she was, down here, where she could put her feet in the soil and her face turned to the sun. Growing.”

Gunny grunted, and joined in. “She’ll live on as a legacy of weird miscoloured roses.”

AJ smiled at the friendly jibe. “She will. Skid would laugh his ass off at his namesake having to harden for three days before he could be planted.”

(Yes, these are the same Inshi mentioned in Business Not Bullets, in this anthology. It’s a very big galaxy out there, and entire wars can go on unnoticed by people on the surface of on one partially-terraformed planet.

…Thanks for reading.)

Roses, Part 2

Jenna had a list of everything she needed for the rose bed, and everything but the roses themselves piled on a cart. She looked around. “Where’s AJ? I want to make sure he likes the ones I’ve picked out.”

“He’ll like anything you decide. He always does. As for where he snuck off to… over there. Huh. Face down in the flowers.” Gunny was looking off toward the table of miniature roses, and Jenna realized AJ was crouched so low his head was even with the taller plants, face actually down in a rose plant.

The shop assistant who’d been helping them spoke up as they approach. “Oh! Those are officially called Hearts of Space. They have this lovely spicy scent.”

AJ did not look up from the black roses with a startling red-orange center. He spoke just loud enough for them to hear. “Like Amanda’s clove cigarettes.”

Jenna wondered who Amanda was. From the way Gunny wrinkled up his forehead, he was wondering, too. The shop assistant, though, kept right on going. “These have only been on-planet for… wait, you know Amanda Grimsley?”

That brought AJ’s head up, eyes wide open and locked on. “Amanda’s alive?”

“No, she died in a car accident about five years ago.” A hesitation, then, “Did you know her, Upstairs?”

AJ froze – a hesitation so slight Jenna knew no one else could see the way he reflexively cooled down at the unwelcome news. “Damn. Yeah, I met her up on ThreeFree.”

The assistant nodded awkwardly, and tried to fill in the silence after the unwelcome news. “She was the most amazing horticulturalist. She actually named that rose breed Strykers, you know? Because they have cold edges as black as space, but with a warm heart. Rumour says the original grafts she brought down, each one had individual names. The nursery that hired her, they didn’t want to call the breed that because, well, you know, the growers in the Fed… She took the secret of where she got them from to the grave. Do you know where they came from?”

AJ shrugged, hands spread out in what looked like a natural gesture. But he never made natural gestures; they were always premeditated. “Can’t say, ma’am.”

That was enough to make Jenna bite her tongue. Can’t say was a world different, in AJ’s careful speech, from don’t know. Before things could go south, she spoke up. “We’ll take… four?” She’d been planning on four roses in a trial bed.

“Six.” AJ said it firmly, and she followed his lead.

“Six. And everything we need for the bed, if this isn’t enough.”

As they loaded up the truck, Jenna paused to put a hand on her protesting lower back, and looked at the pretty little plants. “I’ll call the best one AJ.”

Her husband looked at her, looked at the roses, and resumed loading. “No. The best one’s Skid. He better not be the first one to die, this time.”

There was nothing she could say to that, except to give him a long, silent hug.