Thicker Than Blood an excerpt from Charlotte's Chance

Charlotte started going into detail about doing Brenda’s house, which she had finished a week ago.  Badly.  It had been her worst work yet.  That had a lot more to do with her being a frazzled wreck than anything else.  It had all seemed like such a good idea taking care of Sandra’s things, looking in on her apartment, and seeing to Penelope at the kennel.  She had accessed her accounts, and opened online bill pay funneling the money directly from her account to her creditors.  She had needed to move several thousands from her savings to her checking.  But the woman had an almost trust fund balance in her savings from royalties from her grandfather’s shipping empire.   It hadn’t even put a dent in things.  Charlotte had gone by her apartment and watered her plants a week and a half ago, and that’s when things had started getting interesting.

Charlotte had left Brenda’s feeling pretty good about the way the room was going.  She had made a brief stop by Penelope’s kennel, which had been on the way, to pay the bill.  Sandra had given her an emergency ATM card years ago just in case.  Charlotte had locked it in the safe in the house. 

Sandra had the safe installed when she had first purchased the house eight years ago while she had been studying for her doctorate in Oklahoma.  According to Sandra Oklahoma City was dead on the weekends.  So she would travel to Dallas every Friday afternoon to stay for the weekend, and then head back to Oklahoma on Mondays.  Being tired of hotels she had spent her savings on a house in Richardson.  A few years after she had returned to Dallas by way of Scotland she had been ready to get rid of the house.

Only pure coincidence could explain just why Charlotte had been in the market for a house.  Her business had started going so well after she had met Brenda who would recommend her for all of the high money projects that she had worked on.  So it was time for Charlotte to get out of the one bedroom apartment in North Dallas, and put money into property.

Charlotte and Sandra had been casual friends from their initial meeting in the nightclub.  On weekends they would get together and talk about their pet project W.A.R.M. Soon Charlotte had brought in Brenda, and then Sandra had introduced them to Deborah and Rachel.  Suddenly Sandra had been selling her house, and their friendship had taken on a new dynamic.

It had been a funny scene because Sandra had put the house on the market. Charlotte had seen the ad, and called it up.  When she had met up with Charlotte, and not some stranger wanting to buy her house, Sandra had smiled and said she knew a sign when she saw one.  If Charlotte wanted the house it was hers.  Sandra had brokered the thing herself so that closing costs and realtor commissions wouldn’t make the house beyond Charlotte’s reach. 

This had led to she and Charlotte becoming even closer as Sandra helped Charlotte fulfill a dream she had since she had been small; having her own home.  They had been like sisters since.  Being an only child, Sandra had fancied the idea of having a younger sister, and always treated Charlotte like that.  She would tell Charlotte things first, secrets about herself, and what was happening in her life.  Asking her opinion on matters, something that the outwardly self-confident doctor didn’t like to admit needing help with.  At those times she could look at Sandra, and know that this woman would do anything for her without a second thought.

It was those kinds of things that had made Charlotte uncommonly loyal to Sandra.  As Charlotte knew first hand, sometimes your own family didn’t care about your happiness as much as they cared about their own personal gain. She loved all of her family dearly, but she could count on one hand the members of her family that would’ve moved heaven and earth to make her dreams come true; the ones who already had which were her mother, brother, and grandmother. The three of them together by begging, borrowing, and pleading had made sure that Charlotte had gotten through school at the Savannah School of Art and Design.

Her grandmother wasn’t a wealthy woman.  She and the late Dougal McConnell had come to America from Scotland with nothing but three shirts, two pairs of pants, a couple of dresses, and a few family heirlooms.  So the family had never had anything but a strong work ethic, and a desire to earn their keep.  Her mother and brother had individual trusts put in place by his father, her first husband Jonathan Clangston.  They weren’t plentiful, but they made it possible for her mother to retire two years ago, and for her brother to carry on his international affairs without much fuss.  Everyone had lived a little less than comfortable when they had decided together that Charlotte’s career goals were worthwhile; her mother even more so with the added burden of providing care for her elderly diabetic mother.

Her mother’s two sisters loved her, but they had children of their own.  Bernice and Carolyn were older than Anna Marie, and they balanced husbands, children, grandchildren, and helped Anna Marie care for their mother: children, and grandchildren that Charlotte only saw every few years at family reunions.  She always felt bad about the fact that she wouldn’t even recognize the whole lot of them if they met up somewhere, and she was quite sure that it was the same for them with her.

Her father’s family was a joke.  Just a clan of Irish and Welsh that found it nigh near impossible to conduct themselves within the confines of the law.  Even worse they would steal the shirt off of the back of a blood relative without batting an eyelash.  It seems that they had been in America for centuries robbing and cheating their way through life.  So bad that even the Irish mobs wouldn’t have them.  They had no honor at all. 

That aspect of Charlotte’s blood made her very aware of loyalty, and the importance of keeping your word no matter what.  It was one of her grandmother’s rules. Only on penalty of death should someone be forsworn, and Charlotte believed in that.  She had promised Sandra when she had helped her get her house that if there were ever a time that she should need help she would not need to look any further. 

Available on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Goodreads

Not Another Bodice Ripper - The Case for Serious Romance Part Two

THE ANSWER

Love is a personal endeavor no matter how universal television commercials would like it to seem. The nature of it is idealized for some, and wide open for others. The truth is when writing about something as profoundly intimate as love, it is really bad form to try and relate love in another voice or fashion other than your own. The truth and charm to a story comes from that bit of truth that is included. That bit of truth is the relatable aspect of any story. This is the core of your own voice as a writer. Regardless of how many people 'understand' your character's plight or not, the truth of the situation will ring forth and give the story just the push it needs to really fly.

With that in mind it is very bad form for generalists to assume that a certain plotline or story premise is in line with any pre-described social agenda. The liberation of women was just that, liberation. Liberation is the right to make choices. A woman can decide if she would like to be a public figure or a private one. A woman can choose to vote, bare children, and get married or not. The claim that the creation of or reading of romance somehow 'tricks' women into believing in self destructive rhetoric is almost more offensive than any other misogynic claim as it actually feeds into the myth that women are incapable of processing thought beyond what they know to be a fictitious account.

In laymen's terms, the claim in essence says that a grown woman is not capable of separating fantasy from reality. This is a claim usually attached to mental illness, and honestly makes light of conditions suffered by those who have legitimate hormonal imbalances, injuries or birth defects that are associated with mental illness. Reading romance is not an illness. Also it no more detracts from feminist prose as it would add to it. With that being said, no romance is the same. Like all forms of entertainment and media there are levels of content. No two books actually read the same.

The romance formula is very easy to follow. Usually two people, and in recent entries sometimes more, have a great potential for a romantic relationship. They must confront each other and often times the results are not initially positive. That is because of individuality. This is an aspect of romance that is explored more than it is in some of its traditional fiction contemporaries. You have the dichotomy of a relationship as opposed to the relationship being a side car to the dichotomy of the story. In the end the essence of the story is to confront relationship boundaries and expose them. This is a very emotional plane of existence that can sometimes hold the same trauma as a tragedy. And it should. Love is a life changing event. Seeking to experience it, and be bound to another person for all time is also a life changing event. As far as I know not a single life changing event has ever gone quietly and without lessons in humility and shame. These are human emotions that bear the weight in most situations. Yet in love they are the core of what this entanglement is about.

The way a writer creates this is wide open. This sense of growing affection and intimacy is developed from one thing and one thing only, seeing the person for who they are and loving them because or despite it. This is a truth that romance novelists understand that is rarely examined in most contemporary literature where relationships seem to be of convenience and not of necessity. Others are forced attachments where the characters are bound by seemingly invisible tendrils of emotion that are strong enough to bond yet not strong enough to carry the story.

To some degree the emergence of more acceptable contemporary popular fiction, and the need to be perceived a certain way by others has taken the blush from the rose as far as sweeping love relationships are concerned. Romance novels have long been the butt of literary jokes and recently in a twisted parody of art imitating life some have even endeavored to live up to this reputation of being incomprehensible smut with bad punctuation and grammar. But what are the far reaching consequences to this? This seeming end to fairytale as it were that now blocks the heart from even seeking some idealized contentment. Is it this lack of 'romance' being taken seriously in day to day life that has enabled a lack of respect for sex, marriage, and all romantic relationships? Has the 'replaceable' mate taken the place of the 'irreplaceable' mate?

Today more than ever in a world of revolving doorlike changes we need the purity of actual romance.

Charlotte's Chance Teaser

Charlotte left her office locking the front door with her purse held high on her shoulder.  She made it to the elevator, and frowned as the door opened just as she was about to press the down button.  The blonde haired wiry man inside didn’t move immediately, but the look he leveled at her from his narrow blue eyes said volumes to what he intended if she boarded.  Charlotte took two steps back, and the man bolted from the back of the elevator.  She turned, and ran for the stairwell. 

He was right behind her having cleared the elevator successfully. Almost in surround sound she could hear the heavy fall of his feet behind her.  No matter how much she wanted to, she didn’t look back as she burst through the door into the stairwell.  The stairwell was stark white, and went down in a circular motion almost.  You could look over the edge of the handrails, and see the three floors below.

Charlotte knew that she couldn’t just flat out run the man so she threw her weight against the door she had just burst through. She heard the man’s bellow of pain from getting his arm hinged in the door.  Frantically Charlotte dug through her purse for her keys as the door started to push her into the corner behind it.  She pulled the pepper spray, and guessed where to aim.  Sticking her arm around the door she sprayed in circles hoping that it was somewhere near the asshole’s eyes.

The pressure on the door eased, and she heard the cursing, and yelling indicating that she had guessed right.  Rushing past the man wiping his eyes at the door she started flying down the stairs as fast as she could using the handrails for leverage as she hopped the corners.   Just like she used to do when she was younger, and trying to outrun her older, longer legged brother.  She almost tripped over her own two feet in her haste to get away.  Behind her were the solid thuds of his feet hitting the steps a beat or two after her.

She reached the first floor, and was about to head out to get help from Harold.  But the door flew open as she jumped the last two steps to the landing.  Thomas in his ball cap, and oversized clothes filled the space shoving her forcefully into the corner of the space behind him, and closing the doorway in the same motion.  Charlotte watched in dazed car wreck fashion as Thomas used the man’s flight to run him into the closed door.  His now limp body fell with a crash to the ground.   Thomas flipped out his cell phone, dialed a number, and then put it on the ground.  In a practiced gesture he pulled out a pair of handcuffs, fell to one knee, and cuffed the man lying on the ground before them in seconds.  Then his golden eyes lanced Charlotte’s from beneath the brim of his plain brown low worn hat.

In the next moment he leaned over to her, and wrapped an arm around her waist as one large hand pushed against the wall behind her.  He stood up smoothly pulling her to her feet, and out of the corner. The action brought her body nearly flush with his.  Her nostrils flared filling with the scents that comprised him at that moment.  A heady musky masculine smell mixed with the scents of the air, and grass outside.  It pulled her in, this strange mix of man, rain, and freshly cut grass.

“Are you alright?”  His silky voice poured over her huskily as he slid his other arm around her waist.  
His fingertips were just a hair’s breath away from her bare skin as they ruched the turtleneck sweater that she hadn’t bothered to tuck back in up a little.

The bulky heels of her boots gave her enough height that the top of her head was level with his eyes.  

She nodded, tilting her head up so her eyes couldn’t leave his.  Her arms were pressed between their bodies putting her elbows in her gut, and crowding her hands under her chin. The most natural thing in the world to do was flatten her palms against the warmth and solid comfort of his chest.  The second she placed her hands on him though, he pushed her away.

“Don’t say anything to the guard. Go home. I’ll meet you there.” He said urgently his eyes searching her face as he pushed her beyond the circle of his arms.  Oddly he pushed a wisp of her hair out of her eyes then shoved her out of the stairwell door.

Charlotte tried to carry on like she hadn’t just run down four flights of stairs from a mad man that was trying to do God knows what to her.  She passed by Harold, and stopped, coming back.  He would think it was odd if she didn’t speak to him.

“I hope that the call I sent up did you some good Miss Charlotte.”

A bubble of nervous laughter pealed from Charlotte. “Yes it did. Thank you so much for that.”

The weathered mustached man nodded satisfied. “Glad to help. You have a good one.”

She started away not really sure she was actually pulling this off.  “You too Harold. I’m on vacation so I won’t be back for a couple of weeks.”

The weathered face broke into a grin that made him look ten years younger. “Have a great time Miss Charlotte. Hard working woman like you; it’s good to get away every once in a while.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she muttered as she passively watched two men in suits enter the stairwell. 

After a few moments her eyes briefly connected with the intense golden gaze of Thomas Glendel. Smoothly he walked away from the stairwell, and out of the lobby door with the ease of air, and without one hint of wasted effort or motion.  Oddly it made her recall the way he had handled Deborah in the hospital.  Then Charlotte had likened him to a jaguar, all sinew, and tightly corded muscle. 

In the stairwell he had lifted her almost deadweight from the floor with an ease that attested to the power he held in that tightly coiled frame.  Then add the fact that he himself hadn’t even been stabilized when he’d done it.  He had pushed her away like they were strangers, and nearly in the same instant pushed that strand of hair from her eyes as if they had known each other forever.  What an odd and interesting man.  The thought was repeated from when he had walked her back from the hospital parking lot with Sandra’s luggage.

“Bye Harold.” Charlotte turned, and followed the oddity out.

Available on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Goodreads

When Sandra met Charlotte

Excerpt from Sandra's Social:

“I bet you think you’re too good for me too.” Charlotte had one of those sexpot voices that was hoarse to the point that sometimes parts of words would fade out to only slightly be heard.  When she got angry or excited it would even squeak out in some places.  And always depending on her mood, slightly tinged with a Southern accent.

Sandra side-glanced her. “I don’t even know who you are”.

“Well I know who you are.  You’re one of those women that look at me, and see a fat girl.  You see a woman who isn’t worth your space.”  She began to weep. “A woman whose boyfriend you can take. That worthless piece of donkey dung, how dare he?”

“I’m sorry you’re having a rough time, but I’m not a boyfriend stealer. I do something else entirely.”

“What do you mean?” she muttered out between sobs as she patted dry her running face.

“Can I buy you a shot?”  Sandra offered out of the blue.

While they had been having their shots, Sandra in an effort to console Charlotte, had made her privy to her theory on men and love, and what she meant to do about it.  At the tender age of sixteen Sandra had already scientifically dissected the nature of every boy in a one-mile radius.  At 18 she had graduated with the knowledge of the social preoccupations of men within the country she was in.  By 21 she had entire nations of men charted and hypothesized for good measure.  Then her adventures with Athol had settled it for her.  She had to use this knowledge somehow.  They couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

“You see Charlotte it’s very simple.”  She downed a beer.  “Men are predisposed to be cheaters.  Men are trained at a very early age to follow their instincts. Their instincts tell them to be fruitful and multiply with as many women as it takes to propagate the species.  This started thousands of years ago before technology made it unnecessary to make enough humans that nature wouldn’t just wipe out the species.”  She glanced up at the bartender, “Two more shots of Patron mon ami.  The problem is that the mental instincts and training has been continually taught because women have been placed somewhere behind cattle since the beginning of time and only what, 70, 80 years ago we actually started minding it, and doing something about it.  We are combating thousands of years of preprogramming in a span of time that it takes a life to gestate into fulfillment.  All of us girls were being told we’re equal, and we deserve the best, and not to be treated beneath cattle.  On the other side of the fence the boys are being told, ‘Don’t mind her boy, she’ll eventually realize where she belongs.’  And the training is continued.”

Charlotte gave Sandra a startled look of understanding.  “They don’t have to be jerks they’re still being taught that we’re beneath them by their fathers and grandfathers.” She toasted with Sandra, and they downed their shots of tequila.  “I never looked at it like that before.”

“Very few of us do, that’s why we’re in this situation.  We’re uninformed.  It’s in all walks of our life.  The trick is that since they can’t legally keep us in our place they find other ways to do it.  Look at our icons and superstars.  Men like Danny Devito are stars while women like Roseanne Barr are constantly trashed for not looking up to snuff.  Our American Hollywood rewards female actresses for playing whores, adulteresses, and loose women.  Think about your last 3 years of female Oscar winners. Male doctors blow off our symptoms as being ‘silly’ and label us ‘hypochondriacs’.  And guys leave decent caring women like yourself for the sake of barely literate eye candy like that whatever he left you for. Yet when a woman satisfies herself, and her sexual needs and desires she’s labeled a whore, and unfit for motherhood and marriage. The only things we are good for by the by.” She paused looking at their empty shot glasses. “Bartender, another round.” “Well I’m not gonna take it anymore. I have decided on a course of action, and it’s called W.A.R.M.”

“Warm?” She held up her shot to meet Sandra’s clank, and simultaneously down.

“Women Assisting the Reclamation of Man.  If we leave it up to them it’s never gonna happen. We have to take this one into our own hands just like we did with our equality. Not every good-looking girl is as dumb as a post.  Most of us have good heads on our shoulders, and know how to use them. If things are going to level out then this training will have to be accomplished by women, and it has to be done in a brutal, harsh, life-altering way to insure that they don’t revert as soon as the lesson is done. My idea is to gather a group of us, and we systematically start retraining men.” She glanced up, “Bartender,” pointing to their empty shot glasses, “Yo!”

“A group; like AA or something?”

“Yeah something like that I suppose.”  Sandra frowned. “I didn’t intend for it to be that big.”

“Why not?”  Charlotte’s odd blue-green eyes started to glint as her mind raced with the tequila, and the possibilities.  “How is this supposed to happen if you keep it on a small scale?  First thing we should do is get a website.”

“Charlotte, I don’t know—”

“Then we can have meetings, and when we get a membership too high for local meetings there will be seminars.”

“Charlotte, I don’t think—”

“And there has to be a fan club. You know for women who support us, but don’t have the balls to get out there and do it.”

“No fan clubs—”

“Whose gonna train all of these women?” She stared at Sandra. “It’s your ideal, so it should be you.  How does a woman reclaim a man anyway?  In a brutal and harsh fashion that is?”

Oddity of Mind

A few year ago I released a memoir style fiction called Perilous Flight. It was a coming of age thing that had a lot more reality in it than I ever wanted to believe.  This weighs on me right now.  Give a read.  Feeling a bit of melancholy, need a little direction or just want to get lost with someone who was.  Perilous Flight is the book you're looking for. It is the culmination of healing a broken heart that begins and ends with understanding what you should and shouldn't be fighting for:

I usually don't indulge in psychic flights of fancy.  I know things, I don't like it, I just do.  But every once in a while I have an awareness issue where it feels all of the world's everything is pouring into me.  So it's a haze, blurring dizzying and out of control and then I focus.  And out of the whirl comes a clear conscious stream.  Within this stream I see everything.  Not just a picture, I see people, what they are thinking, what they are feeling why they've responded the way that they have, the connections in their lives that have made it so.  I see myself through their eyes and still maintain what I'm thinking.  It's almost like watching my life as a spectator.  I remove myself from myself and then just politely, quietly watch. 

Not many people know this except for close personal friends. But I dreamed of Siegfried for years before we met.  Call me nuts, but really what use would it be. Anyway in these dreams he would murder me.  He was a serial killer, and he would come up to me and I would stand there knowing that he wouldn't hurt me, trusting him even though I knew I shouldn't and I would let him cut me down. 

He would start with my limbs slowly hacking away at me.  His face impassive and calm, indifferent.  He wasn't even really enjoying it, or paying attention truly.  He was performing a function.  And I endured it knowing that while I would die in one way, I would be reborn in another.  The sane would say that you stay away from the man that murdered you in your dreams.  I say I'm not sane and this was the path I needed to take.  Pain teaches so much more than pleasure does.  As far as my life up to this date has shown me at least.

Honestly I owe the man I'm divorcing a bit of gratitude.  I am just now becoming the woman I've always wanted to be.  And I never would've done it if he hadn't destroyed me emotionally to the point that I no longer wanted to live.  It made me find a reason to exist and forced me to find value within myself and not as a side car of what other people want from me.  The greatest gift a woman can ever give herself, is herself and herself alone.

And now my dreams are my own.  They are tempered with flirting, anticipation, longing, desire, waiting, anxiety, all of the delicious, delicious sensations that accompany being alive.  And now I'm starting to finish the dream, the one where Siegfried destroys me.  It doesn't end like I thought it did, but I never knew that before.  The pain of what I was enduring was always too much and I would end the dream early, well before he’s done killing me. You see, I always thought that this ended in my death and I always check out of dreams before I die in them.  Too Nightmare on Elm Street for me. But now, that I don’t fear the dying I can finish it, picking up from where he left off.

I watch as he pries out my heart and just holds it staring into my face waiting. Finally I yell at him to leave me alone, cursing at him, hating him.  He calmly tosses away my heart, gets up and leaves me lying there. I lay on the ground, my limbs scattered around me, they are burned and singed from my proximity to hell.  My eyes are closed and I weep, uncontrollable weeping.  But no motion, it hurts too much I can't bear the pain of crying as I normally would because heaving does me no good.  I turn to see tiny red demons with stubby limbs fighting over my heart.

Suddenly, the earth shatters around me and I hear him before he lands.  The sound of his wings ripping away as he falls cuts through my pain and stops my tears. I close my eyes as the lightning strikes, it tears up the sky and hurts to look at. And I can see him in my head, falling backwards through clouds, his black wings being torn from his back by the force of his falling. He folds his arms across his chest and lets himself fall.  His face is obscure because it’s being covered by his whipping hair. And then he's there. 

I can't see him, but I can feel him slowly putting me back together.  He starts with my legs, the putting together is almost more painful than the hacking off had been.  Because I can feel the burned torn flesh, I can feel the skin he peeled away from when Siegfried was pulling me apart.  I can feel the exposed nerves, the aching of my bones as they are being fused back together.  I feel the stranger’s hand at my brow. I want to open my eyes but I’m so afraid to stare into the face of my savior, so afraid to meet the man that will have all of me forever no matter what else is decided. He fell for me, what choice do I have. Not that I would choose anything else.  I feel his lips at my eyes telling me its okay not to look, and I feel him push my heart back into my chest. 

Through my pain I now know what to look forward to in pleasure.  I can feel it pour over me peeling away the marred, burned, sliced, and badly cauterized wounds the one who came before left.  This mystery coming into my life just unzips this heavy carcass of my despair, and carefully pulls me free from it.  Like a snake dropping its skin, my reconstructed form, starting with my feet he slowly pulls every part of me free.  His hands brushing away the debris slowly I feel the warmth of the sun combined with the coolness of water. The smell of burning flesh replaced with the onset of spring honeysuckle and lavender. Without a word, his lips to mine I am reborn.

From Perilous Flight at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords

Charlotte's Chance

Near the end of Chapter Six:

'It was a very near thing because they had almost made it out of the club.  Sparked by whatever insane notion, she stopped on the dance floor as “World in My Eyes” by Depeche Mode started to play.  All of a sudden she was 19 again, hanging out in one of these places for the last time, as she knew she was heading to design school.  That night she had let everything go.  She had danced her heart out, drank too much, and flirted too hard.  She would remember that night till her dying day as being one of the best nights of her life. 

The day after tomorrow she could be dead.  It wasn’t just a morbid thought any more.  It could be the truth.  Just like that this trip could be over.  She was in the company of one of the most delicious men she had ever had the chance to encounter.  Even if her over wrought moral code wouldn’t let her sleep with him, it would let her dance with him.  It would not only let her dance with him, it would even allow her to dance dirty with him.  She looked back at Thomas, and started to dance. She began moving slowly, seductively.  For a few moments he just watched her not moving, and not saying anything.  Then he pulled her into himself. 

Most people who witnessed what happened on the dance floor would call it what it was, vertical non-penetration sex set to song.  But it was a gothic club; there was a lot of that going on.  Most of the time he let her set the rhythm, and then he would take over by pulling her hips in the direction he wanted. When the song ended she had her arms around his neck, her body pressed intimately to his, and his hands on her ass as she nearly rode his thigh.  His hands slowly slid up, and lifted his hood just enough that she could see his lips. He then he lifted her veil only enough to settle his lips over hers.

She moaned into his mouth when he pushed his tongue between her teeth as the original German version of “99 Luftballons” played overhead. Her arms tightened around his neck as his hands trailed down her back pressing her even closer than when they had danced.  Suddenly he pulled back his eyes closed.

“Slap me,” he ordered in a husky but sharp tone.

Charlotte frowned, but more at the fact that he wasn’t kissing her anymore. She opened her mouth, and he cut her off before she got any words out.

“Just do it, hard.”

So she wasn’t waiting till they got back.  She pulled back, and wailed across his face as hard as she could.

He grabbed her hand, and they finally made it out of the club.  Thomas had needed that slap.  While he had been kissing her he hadn’t been able to find one single solitary good reason why he shouldn’t just pin her against the nearest wall, and have her.  However he had been reasonable enough to understand that not being able to think of a single good reason not to take her against some random nearby wall was very unreasonable.  Charlotte muddled his mind when she was being a good girl.  Naughty Charlotte was sending him into premature meltdown, and he needed to get her secured, and back to her old self quickly or his self-control wouldn’t last the night.

“I’m sorry” Charlotte whispered in the quiet of the long drive back to their base of operations.

Thomas was a little distracted making sure they weren’t being tailed, but he did eventually respond. “For?”

“I was an unmerciful tease tonight.”

“Yes, but you were supposed to be.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Got reminded of who you used to be. It’s unsettling.”

She paused, and nodded knowing that he was right, and that really had been her problem. “I’ve come a long way. I don’t want to start back peddling.  But with you---,” she stopped herself.

“Charlie, I’m not going to judge you, not now, not ever.  There’s a saying about whores, stones, and glass whorehouses that I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

Despite herself, and the twinge of self-hate she was feeling, Charlotte giggled a little.  Then started to laugh in earnest. “I fogged up your glasses pretty good huh?”

They came to a red light, and he looked over at her until she locked her eyes with his. “There aren’t words to describe the type of desire you make me feel. You respond to me without being ashamed of your own reaction, and that’s hot enough.  But when you bait me without feeling guilty or without being apologetic it’s like tossing out the Bunsen burner for a flame-thrower.  I was nearly unmanned.”

The light changed, and the force of his golden eyes was pulled away from her.  Charlotte tried unsuccessfully to suppress the shudder of sheer desire and awareness that flooded through her at his words.

“I can’t be the only woman that’s ever tried to entice you.”

His eyes didn’t leave the road as he answered. “You are the only one that has done this for the most basic reason.  It’s not because you want me to save you, protect you, or back your play.  You already have that from me. You bait me because you want me to want you for the sake of your own desire.”

Charlotte understood now why this was uncharted territory for him.  Honestly she had never had a man just desire her for the sake of desiring her.  There had been guys that had cared for her, but it hadn’t been insane love or even nearly unmanageable desire.  There had been the guys that had just wanted to get laid, and for them any woman would do.  Then as her self-esteem had done a real noise dive there were the guys that had wanted her to support them because of her business.  Charlotte had been in love, and in lust before, but she had never felt the type of emotions that Thomas Glendel made her feel. As they spent more and more time with each other she was starting to understand that he could say the same for her.

“Thomas—” she started.

“I meant what I said tonight. We’ll get to it.”

~ CHARLOTTE'S CHANCE Book 2 of The W.A.R.M. Front Series Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Excerpt from Charlotte's Chance

Charlotte left her office locking the front door with her purse held high on her shoulder.  She made it to the elevator, and frowned as the door opened just as she was about to press the down button.  The blonde haired wiry man inside didn’t move immediately, but the look he leveled at her from his narrow blue eyes said volumes to what he intended if she boarded.  Charlotte took two steps back, and the man bolted from the back of the elevator.  She turned, and ran for the stairwell. 

He was right behind her having cleared the elevator successfully. Almost in surround sound she could hear the heavy fall of his feet behind her.  No matter how much she wanted to, she didn’t look back as she burst through the door into the stairwell.  The stairwell was stark white, and went down in a circular motion almost.  You could look over the edge of the handrails, and see the three floors below.

Charlotte knew that she couldn’t just flat out run the man so she threw her weight against the door she had just burst through. She heard the man’s bellow of pain from getting his arm hinged in the door.  Frantically Charlotte dug through her purse for her keys as the door started to push her into the corner behind it.  She pulled the pepper spray, and guessed where to aim.  Sticking her arm around the door she sprayed in circles hoping that it was somewhere near the asshole’s eyes.

The pressure on the door eased, and she heard the cursing, and yelling indicating that she had guessed right.  Rushing past the man wiping his eyes at the door she started flying down the stairs as fast as she could using the handrails for leverage as she hopped the corners.   Just like she used to do when she was younger, and trying to outrun her older, longer legged brother.  She almost tripped over her own two feet in her haste to get away.  Behind her were the solid thuds of his feet hitting the steps a beat or two after her.

She reached the first floor, and was about to head out to get help from Harold.  But the door flew open as she jumped the last two steps to the landing.  Thomas in his ball cap, and oversized clothes filled the space shoving her forcefully into the corner of the space behind him, and closing the doorway in the same motion.  Charlotte watched in dazed car wreck fashion as Thomas used the man’s flight to run him into the closed door.  His now limp body fell with a crash to the ground.   Thomas flipped out his cell phone, dialed a number, and then put it on the ground.  In a practiced gesture he pulled out a pair of handcuffs, fell to one knee, and cuffed the man lying on the ground before them in seconds.  Then his golden eyes lanced Charlotte’s from beneath the brim of his plain brown low worn hat.

In the next moment he leaned over to her, and wrapped an arm around her waist as one large hand pushed against the wall behind her.  He stood up smoothly pulling her to her feet, and out of the corner. The action brought her body nearly flush with his.  Her nostrils flared filling with the scents that comprised him at that moment.  A heady musky masculine smell mixed with the scents of the air, and grass outside.  It pulled her in, this strange mix of man, rain, and freshly cut grass.

“Are you alright?”  His silky voice poured over her huskily as he slid his other arm around her waist.  His fingertips were just a hair’s breath away from her bare skin as they ruched the turtleneck sweater that she hadn’t bothered to tuck back in up a little.

The bulky heels of her boots gave her enough height that the top of her head was level with his eyes.  She nodded, tilting her head up so her eyes couldn’t leave his.  Her arms were pressed between their bodies putting her elbows in her gut, and crowding her hands under her chin. The most natural thing in the world to do was flatten her palms against the warmth and solid comfort of his chest.  The second she placed her hands on him though, he pushed her away.

“Don’t say anything to the guard. Go home. I’ll meet you there.” He said urgently his eyes searching her face as he pushed her beyond the circle of his arms.  Oddly he pushed a wisp of her hair out of her eyes then shoved her out of the stairwell door.

Charlotte tried to carry on like she hadn’t just run down four flights of stairs from a mad man that was trying to do God knows what to her.  She passed by Harold, and stopped, coming back.  He would think it was odd if she didn’t speak to him.

“I hope that the call I sent up did you some good Miss Charlotte.”

A bubble of nervous laughter pealed from Charlotte. “Yes it did. Thank you so much for that.”

The weathered mustached man nodded satisfied. “Glad to help. You have a good one.”

She started away not really sure she was actually pulling this off.  “You too Harold. I’m on vacation so I won’t be back for a couple of weeks.”

The weathered face broke into a grin that made him look ten years younger. “Have a great time Miss Charlotte. Hard working woman like you; it’s good to get away every once in a while.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she muttered as she passively watched two men in suits enter the stairwell. 

After a few moments her eyes briefly connected with the intense golden gaze of Thomas Glendel. Smoothly he walked away from the stairwell, and out of the lobby door with the ease of air, and without one hint of wasted effort or motion.  Oddly it made her recall the way he had handled Deborah in the hospital.  Then Charlotte had likened him to a jaguar, all sinew, and tightly corded muscle. 

In the stairwell he had lifted her almost deadweight from the floor with an ease that attested to the power he held in that tightly coiled frame.  Then add the fact that he himself hadn’t even been stabilized when he’d done it.  He had pushed her away like they were strangers, and nearly in the same instant pushed that strand of hair from her eyes as if they had known each other forever.  What an odd and interesting man.  The thought was repeated from when he had walked her back from the hospital parking lot with Sandra’s luggage.

“Bye Harold.” Charlotte turned, and followed the oddity out.

Get Charlotte's Chance on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, or Smashwords

Not Another Bodice Ripper - The Case for Serious Romance Part Two

THE ANSWER

Love is a personal endeavor no matter how universal television commercials would like it to seem. The nature of it is idealized for some, and wide open for others. The truth is when writing about something as profoundly intimate as love, it is really bad form to try and relate love in another voice or fashion other than your own. The truth and charm to a story comes from that bit of truth that is included. That bit of truth is the relatable aspect of any story. This is the core of your own voice as a writer. Regardless of how many people 'understand' your character's plight or not, the truth of the situation will ring forth and give the story just the push it needs to really fly.

With that in mind it is very bad form for generalists to assume that a certain plotline or story premise is in line with any pre-described social agenda. The liberation of women was just that, liberation. Liberation is the right to make choices. A woman can decide if she would like to be a public figure or a private one. A woman can choose to vote, bare children, and get married or not. The claim that the creation of or reading of romance somehow 'tricks' women into believing in self destructive rhetoric is almost more offensive than any other misogynic claim as it actually feeds into the myth that women are incapable of processing thought beyond what they know to be a fictitious account.

In laymen's terms, the claim in essence says that a grown woman is not capable of separating fantasy from reality. This is a claim usually attached to mental illness, and honestly makes light of conditions suffered by those who have legitimate hormonal imbalances, injuries or birth defects that are associated with mental illness. Reading romance is not an illness. Also it no more detracts from feminist prose as it would add to it. With that being said, no romance is the same. Like all forms of entertainment and media there are levels of content. No two books actually read the same.

The romance formula is very easy to follow. Usually two people, and in recent entries sometimes more, have a great potential for a romantic relationship. They must confront each other and often times the results are not initially positive. That is because of individuality. This is an aspect of romance that is explored more than it is in some of its traditional fiction contemporaries. You have the dichotomy of a relationship as opposed to the relationship being a side car to the dichotomy of the story. In the end the essence of the story is to confront relationship boundaries and expose them. This is a very emotional plane of existence that can sometimes hold the same trauma as a tragedy. And it should. Love is a life changing event. Seeking to experience it, and be bound to another person for all time is also a life changing event. As far as I know not a single life changing event has ever gone quietly and without lessons in humility and shame. These are human emotions that bear the weight in most situations. Yet in love they are the core of what this entanglement is about.

The way a writer creates this is wide open. This sense of growing affection and intimacy is developed from one thing and one thing only, seeing the person for who they are and loving them because or despite it. This is a truth that romance novelists understand that is rarely examined in most contemporary literature where relationships seem to be of convenience and not of necessity. Others are forced attachments where the characters are bound by seemingly invisible tendrils of emotion that are strong enough to bond yet not strong enough to carry the story.

To some degree the emergence of more acceptable contemporary popular fiction, and the need to be perceived a certain way by others has taken the blush from the rose as far as sweeping love relationships are concerned. Romance novels have long been the butt of literary jokes and recently in a twisted parody of art imitating life some have even endeavored to live up to this reputation of being incomprehensible smut with bad punctuation and grammar. But what are the far reaching consequences to this? This seeming end to fairytale as it were that now blocks the heart from even seeking some idealized contentment. Is it this lack of 'romance' being taken seriously in day to day life that has enabled a lack of respect for sex, marriage, and all romantic relationships? Has the 'replaceable' mate taken the place of the 'irreplaceable' mate?

Today more than ever in a world of revolving doorlike changes we need the purity of actual romance.

Perilous Flight

This is the aftermath of a fine romance. Sometimes I think as novelists we have to indulge in heartbreak to understand how something becomes so very perfect, and wonderful. The ancient Greeks called it tragedy. That aspect of life that ripped out the soul, and replaced it with bitterness, pain, and a reckless desire to hurt others. We are all capable of becoming a victim of such nihilistic thoughts, and machinations. The proof is in what you choose to do about it.

The following is not crafted as a book or novel should be. Instead it is raw, and rushed. It is hurried, and frenzied. This work is littered with bad punctuation, improper phrasing, and words that don't really exist. It then becomes what it should accurately resemble. Life.

This is Perilous Flight

Always w/love,
Sue