The Dragonette gets reviewed...

Boundless Book Review--cool excerpt

from Erin Bedford at Boundless Book Review, Bachelorette does dragons

Let me just say I dislike reality TV shows with a passion. They are fake and full of unrealistic drama but I have to say that if we threw dragons into any of them I'd be watching them every night. That is what this book does to you. You will be an addict and keep coming back for more because you need to know who gets that final nose ring (yea that's right!). I loved the main character Verity and how she doesn't let the alphas walk all over her on the show. I am so happy I had a chance to read this book!

From IvaGh Forbidden Desire

Fun and sexy, as are all of Lynne Murray's books, this wonderful fantasy romance also speaks to the many of us who harbor hidden and forbidden desires that somehow, somehow, just might become reality if we magic them into being.

from Jaqueline Girdner, Both Sexy and Funny

Murray has the ability to mix love, sex, humor, and adventure in the perfect proportions.... And the TV Dragonette show was hysterical!

from Lauri Owen, You will not regret buying this book

If you haven't read Lynne Murray, you're missing something really big, and I don't just mean her characters, or the tension, or the plot that drags you page after page, until night has long fallen and you know you have to get up in -- OMG is it 2am already?? -- but you still can't put it down....It's fun, sweet, enormously entertaining, and just plain great.

from Peggy Elam, A Fanciful Romance

While waiting for another book in Lynne Murray's Valkyrie series, I was delighted to discover this new novel set on another planet in the Valkyrie universe, as well as in the Forbidden Zone (Earth). In Murray's cosmos Earth is off-limits to extraterrestrials because of Earthlings' pesky tendency to worship visiting aliens. But inhabitants of the Dragon Planet have developed a fondness for Earth's reality TV. Couple that with the dwindling birthrate among full-blooded dragons and the dragon king's desire for an heir -- or grand-heir -- and the king's daughter, Verity, finds herself the reluctant star of a Dragon Planet version of The Bachelorette. Read & enjoy.

Dragons, Reality TV and Blog Tours

The amazing Maia Silverdagger at The Silver Dagger Scriptorium is putting together a blog tour for Runaway Dragonette, the first book in my new Paranormal Reality TV Romance series. The book is due October 1st and the blog tour runs from October 1st to 15th. Here's info about the book and the tour. It also has sign up info for anyone who is interested.

I'm including the sign up link, but please don't feel even a hint of pressure. I haven't hosted blog tours myself because I suspect it might conflict with my usual routine of hiding under a rock and writing. I do appreciate the opportunity to be in Maia's event line up though! And I'm hoping Runaway Dragonette will be enjoyed by many.

Here's an excerpt:

The First Night

“WILL you accept this nose ring?” Verity repeated it over and over under her breath as she stood on the paving stones of the castle courtyard. Twenty-six dragon shapeshifter suitors would soon arrive. The Earth reality TV videos showed human bachelors and bachelorettes handing out roses to those who would continue on the journey towards finding mates. But roses would confuse the dragon bachelors. In dragon form, they might eat the flowers, thorns and all and then belch fire. However, gold in any form got all the dragons’ attention big time.

Verity’s curves, prized on the Dragon Planet, were on ample display as she stood in her human form. She wore a sparkling ice-blue gown that matched her eyes. Her dress artfully molded to her in front, open nearly down to her waist and cut almost as low clinging to her backside, although her long black hair covered most of the skin revealed in back. Verity didn’t shiver from the cold, despite the thin fabric. Her dragon blood ran hot. Any trembling was completely due to nerves.

“Will you accept this nose ring?” she muttered again. It was a simple enough phase but she just might mess it up. Torches burned in the courtyard in front of the quaint old castle. It was a historic site, not a working fortress, a confection of towers and spires perched on a remote mountainside. Lights from the village at the foot of the mountain twinkled in the darkness below. Verity would stay here for the next nine weeks.

Modern lighting illuminated the center of the courtyard where Verity would greet each bachelor dragon in turn as he arrived. Cameramen, sound crew and assistant producers circled around the edges of the courtyard. The whole planet was watching. Her every word and move were being recorded.

No pressure. V Tonight, Verity was The Dragonette, a bachelorette shapeshifter on a Journey to Love. She was also the Dragon King’s daughter. She stiffened her spine. She took a deep breath of the pine scented air carried by the breeze up from the forests below.

Each of the bachelor dragons would introduce himself as he arrived. The camera crew roamed around her, waiting for the men to arrive.

The king had summoned Verity to his throne room when he told her she would be the planet’s first Dragonette. King Harrenholtz was a big fan of reality television shows from Earth. The ruler of the Blood Claw Clan that dominated Planet Dragon had decided that a television show would promote mating in a planet with a dwindling shapeshifter population. The king’s closest councilor, his brother Cobravelos was in charge of making it happen.

“We’re gathering together the best of the best young dragons from every corner of the planet, Verity,” the king told her. “All in one place for you to choose from. It’s one-stop-shopping as they say on Earth. You’ll be able to start nesting immediately, and I hope to see those baby dragons soon.”

Verity had no answer to this.

No problem there, the king wasn’t expecting an answer. The king, tall and stately, his dark hair streaked with gray and his blue eyes still compelling even in middle age, was a hopeless romantic—when it suited his purposes. “You should be the bachelor dragon yourself, brother,” Verity’s Aunt Tryspidania told the king. Gray-haired and flint eyed with a spine of steel, Aunt Tryspi was a genealogy freak who had traced the family trees of all the contestants.

The king didn’t mind a little flattery, but he waved the idea aside. “Your Aunt Tryspi tells me that these men all come from the best bloodlines,” he said. “Also, your uncle, who knows about these things, assures me that these men are all, as he says, ‘smoking hot.’”

Verity’s uncle Cobra was just as tall, blue-eyed and handsome as the king but much more fashionable. He was gay and the king trusted his opinions on which males were hot and which were not.

“We know your unusual interest in conversation and culture and—um, ideas, Verity,” The king’s tone indicated that these pursuits were useless at best, but he was willing to indulge her eccentric tastes. “So we made sure to include some men who are artistic or...well, I don’t know, clever. These dragons are the best of the best. Your hatchlings will raise the intelligence level of the whole species. So enjoy the journey and find me a son-in-law.”

Like she had a choice.

Book Tasting Menu - Josephine Fuller in A Ton of Trouble in the California wine country

Click on the link to try a little taste of murder in A Ton of Trouble featuring sleuth of size, Josephine Fuller.

Murder in the California Wine Country -- A Ton of Trouble, now it's an ebook!

Sleuth of size, Josephine Fuller's fourth adventure A Ton of Trouble has just been released in paperback and ebook form for the first time by Pearlsong Press. The earlier edition only came out in hardcover.

We decided to take the Amazon Select option, so the ebook version will be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, but the trade paperback is available from many Pearlsong, Barnes & Noble, Powells and the Book Depository.

The book was partly inspired by what was probably the most fun job I ever had.

For several years I worked in the word processing department of a law firm whose founding partner owned a winery in Sonoma County. Each 4th of July, he invited the staff to a picnic where we could spend a day rambling through the vineyards and admiring his winery, stables, small lake, politically important guests, etc. in between competitive, picnic-style events. Alas, the job and the picnics ended with major staff cuts.

Knowing that I was writing mysteries, some of my fellow laid-off co-workers asked me to murder a particular manager who enjoyed getting rid of workers. He wasn't shy about what pleasure he took in replacing even the most loyal long-term employees. He did it with some glee.

Oddly, A Ton of Trouble is not the book wherein a character similar to the manager met his fate. But my former co-worker enjoyed that book so much she asked me to kill him again. This I could not do, one murder request per customer. She did suggest an interesting place to conceal the body though, and a wonderful line to accompany the discovery. These are in A Ton of Trouble. ,p. The winery in the book may be similar but its owner could not be more different from the lawyer who hosted us so long ago. No actual humans are ever harmed or even accurately portrayed in any of my books. I enjoy my fictional characters much more. In A Ton of Trouble, Wolf Lambert is a legendary horror movie director who has retired to indulge in his hobby--making porn films with plus-sized leading ladies. The research for that aspect of the book was interest too--but I'll talk about it another time!

As time, and ex-husbands go by....

Josephine Fuller's third adventure, At Large, has just been reissued as an ebook and in trade paperback. The first line is a nod to Casablanca: Of all the women's job skill centers in all the towns in all the Pacific Northwest, he walks into mine. To read the first two chapters click At Large sample

I'll drink a cup to Fat Friendly Fiction in 2013!

This year I'm collaborating with Pearlsong Press to put out a Fat Friendly Fiction list. The blog is in progress with information and links to all the titles. Eventually an ebook version wil be available. But I want to start by posting the authors by genre. Please feel free to visit Fat Friendly Fiction for more info or to comment.

Email me at murraymade@yahoo.com for a one-page printable Word version of the author list.

Here it is for your reading pleasure! FAT FRIENDLY FICTION

CHICK LIT & HUMOR

Backauskas, Staci

MacAfee, Stephanie

Murray, Lynne

Palmer, Liza

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Carlson, Nancy

Corum, Ann Kondo

Ka, Olivier

CURVY EROTICA

Armstrong, Mechele

Brown, Leila

Blank, Hanne

Davis, Justine

Hunter, Adriana

James, Karolyn

Lane, Gretchen

Lee, Marilyn

Lovell, Christin

Moore, Alexis

Scott, J. S.

Verdenis, Angelina

Wick, Christa

FANTASY/PARANORMAL/VISIONARY

Bertauski , Tony

Fox, Andrew

Murray, Lynne

Owen, Lauri J.

Pratchett, Terry

Price, Susan

Truant, Johnny B

MYSTERY & SUSPENSE

Ballard, Pat

Biggers, Earl Derr

Carr, John Dickson

Chesterton, G.K.

Collins, Wilkie

Dickens, Charles

Dickson, Carter

Langton, Jane

Le Carré, John

Lorens, M.K.

Lovesey, Peter

Lovett, Charlie

McKevett, G.A.

Mortimer, John

Murray, Lynne

Smith, Alexander McCall

SHORT STORIES

Bagshaw, Judy

Ballard, Pat

Blank, Hanne (Ed.)

Chesterton, G.K.

Irving, Washington

Jaffarian, Sue Ann

Jarrell, Donna (Ed.)

Koppelman, Susan (Ed.)

Ira Sukrungruang (Ed.)

UNCATEGORIZED

(LITERARY/PLAYS/WOMEN'S etc.)

Adams, Essa

Dickens, Charles

Shakespeare, William

Stinson, Susan

YOUNG ADULT BOOKS

Bellairs, John

Bennett, Cherie

Berk, Josh

Bethancourt, Ernesto T.

Healy, Karen

Hoffman, Nina Kiriki

Lovett, Charlie

Newman, Leslea

Purtill, C. Leigh

Rex, Adam

Strickland, Brad

Some thoughts on Amateur & Professional Eye-Candy

My name for the way television culture skillfully and constantly tells us what’s beautiful, sexy, and hot–and what isn’t–is “Team Entertainment-Fueled Eating Disorders,” a team whose only goal is to dominate and destroy our traditional cultures and our own personal perceptions, which I call “Team Just the Way We Are.” Continued on Body Impolitic

Image of Camryn Manheim from Curvy Her

Birds do it, bees do it...also fat people

I'm still pacing myself and using my limited stamina and the interval each day before my hands protest too much to work on fiction...and the occasional Body Impolitic blog post like this review of Fat Sex: The Naked Truth

Don't you just hate it when an incriminating murder weapon turns up in your personal space?

In At Large (coming soon for the first time as an ebook) Jo Fuller discovers a blood-coated murder weapon in her storage locker: I screamed and backed out of the storage room, slamming the door, which promptly hit the door frame and flew open again. Hope's apartment door opened, and a bleached platinum head peered into the hall.

"Are you okay?" Since she was now doing the prison visits to her boyfriend, Maxine's daughter had abandoned the rainbow hair for a platinum blond look with dark roots. She saw me staring into the storage room, and came out of her apartment. "What is it, mice? You'd think that good-for-nothing cat would—" Her words trailed off in a gasp. She stood next to me, and stared.

"Close it! Close it! Lock the door. We've got to call the police." She kicked the door closed, and I locked it, and followed her back to her apartment. I was too shocked to say a word. Not that Hope would have heard me. "It's him." She said, pacing back and forth. "I told her she was crazy to let him stay there."

I went to Hope's phone, and pulled the fresh business card Gonick had given me out of my pocket. Groucho's cage had been installed in one corner of the small front room. He craned his white-masked green-feathered head sideways to fix me with a glare from beady black eyes. As I walked past to get to the phone, he spread iridescent green wings wide in alarm.

While I was talking to the man who answered the phone in Homicide, Groucho let loose a shriek so deafening that the man asked if I was in any immediate danger. "No, it's a somebody's pet macaw. But I do need to talk to Gonick, tell him it's about the ice axe."

Hope paced back and forth muttering to herself. I had never seen her so agitated. I wondered if Gonick had even had time to get down to Police Headquarters with Griff. After I hung up the phone I meditated briefly about my little talk with Gonick about searching Nina's apartment. I put a call in to the local lawyer Ambrose had suggested. I got her answering machine. I looked at my watch. It was 6:30.

"It's that slimy creature that's living with Mom," Hope said heatedly. "He's killed before you know."

Where to find Prizes Next Week & from At Large...the wandering murder weapon

Next week check out Zetta Brown's The Full-Bodied Book Blog for "A Tribute to Pearlsong Press: Healing the World, One Book at a Time." My own contribution on Wednesday June 13: Watching Our Language what not to do if you write about characters that are “large and in charge” if you want to keep your reader’s respect.

There will be free book prizes and surprises!

Now, here's the weekendly excerpt from At Large, soon to be published for the first time in ebook form by Pearlsong Press, Josephine Fuller discovers the body of Francesca Etheridge, the woman who broke up her marriage. The police grill Jo about an ice, missing from the murder victim's climbing gear. Back in her apartment Jo decides to put her nervous energy to work:

Finding Francesca like that had riled me up so that I couldn't sit still. It was impossible to return to sorting things. I decided to take some of the boxes of Nina's things down to the basement and bring up some of my things that had been sitting patiently for years waiting for me to settle down. A little heavy lifting would probably calm my nerves, or at the very least exhaust me so I could collapse.

The storage room occupied the end of the building, and took some space away from Mulligan's apartment and Maxine's daughter Hope's apartment which faced it across the hall. As I came down the stairs into the basement, I could hear Groucho, the macaw, warming up with some preparatory shrill cries. It must be intolerable when he let loose a major shriek in Hope's small, windowless apartment.

I put the boxes down and opened the storage room door, feeling around for the string that would turn on the overhead light bulb. The room was crowded with some furniture that Nina had stored there. A table and three stacked chairs pressed up against the stacks of boxes that held all my earthly possessions. Nina had kindly stored them for me, at first when I was following Griff around the world and lately since I'd been traveling on the job for Mrs. Madrone.

An oddly angled shadow sprang into view when the light bulb went on. I realized with a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach what it was. The cardboard packing box just inside my door had my name in black felt marker with the word "BOOKS" below it. An ice axe, its leather harness trailing, was embedded in the front of the box right below the label, its claw end half buried in the corrugated cardboard, and a thin layer of dried blood coating the edges of the point of penetration.

From At Large--Bad News on the Home Front

From At Large, Josephine goes home after a rough day at the Women's Job Skills Center. Looking for her straying cat, she knocks on the building manager’s door.

Maxine answered the door. She was a short, full-breasted woman in her sixties with wildly cut gray hair. Today she wore a mauve sweat suit and hoop earrings.

"Hi, Jo. You're back early."

"I finished up. Thought I'd come home. Where's the bird? He's awfully quiet. Is he okay?" Groucho, her green Military Macaw had a shriek that could be heard blocks away and he usually made some sort of preparatory shrieks when he saw that Maxine's attention was focused into the hallway, rather than on him where it properly belonged.

I blinked in surprise when a face popped up behind her shoulder. A man squeezed up behind Maxine and wrapped his arm around her substantial middle so that her breasts flowed over his forearm, nearly but not quite covering the crude tattoo that snaked up from his wrist to curl around his elbow. Without meaning to, I took a step backward into the hall.

"I've been threatening to put him on a spit for dinner, but Maxine won't let me. Her daughter took him down to her place, the noise was driving me apeshit," the man said with a gravelly voice. "Don't worry—Bird lives!

"Can you believe I've hooked up with a literate jazz buff?" Maxine said in tones more appropriate for baby talk.

"Hope took in Groucho?" I said in disbelief.

"Oh, she was glad to take him." Maxine's new friend grinned broadly. "She hustled that cage outta here in ten minutes flat, once I told her I liked him a lot and I'd like him even better fried with biscuits and gravy."

Meeting the "Other Woman" in the Worst Possible Way

From At Large, Josephine goes to the apartment her ex-husband is sharing with the woman whom he left her for...but a stranger rushes out the door and calls out as she runs off, "Don't go in there! Call the cops, she's dead!"

I turned back to confront the polished stairs leading up into the townhouse. I took out my cell phone. The top autodial button was programmed for 911. I didn't press the button though. Instead, I kept it in my hand as I cautiously went up the stairs. Confronting me at the top of the stairway was a larger-than-life, beautifully framed print of a color photograph of Francesca. It dominated the entry. It was clearly Griff's work, and he had done her justice. It showed her hanging from a wall of sapphire ice, supported by two ice axes and the crampons attached to her boots. Her hair had been shorter in that picture, and the hood of her parka had fallen back a little to show a spiky halo around her determined face. The sun that illuminated the blue ice reflected in her blue eyes. She looked great. It was easy to see why Griff had fallen for her. She looked like a snow goddess—the petite version.

At the top of the stairs I saw a series of huge prints of Griff's pictures hanging along the back wall. Every one showed Francesca in climbing gear. From the massive peaks in the background, I guessed that these were taken during the early days of their relationship in Nepal.

The condo had high ceilings and hardwood floors. The cathedral effect was heightened by the sparse furniture, which gave the place a cavernous empty quality. The place seemed deserted except for the persistent buzz of a fly. The main room was blocked from view as you rounded the top of the stairs by a glass cabinet that must have been seven feet tall, filled with sports trophies and climbing memorabilia.

I went around the trophy display, and tripped over a black leather case that had been unceremoniously dropped at the edge. I went down sprawling on the hardwood floor, cursing myself for awkwardness. I lay for a second, assessing any damage, cringing in expectation of laughter and expecting to look up and see the petite and athletic Francesca sneering at my huge awkward self, complaining that I had scuffed the waxed floor.

Instead, cautiously getting to my feet, I saw a long oak table with a new canvas tarp half pulled off it, and what appeared to be a dummy, submerged in a welter of climber's gear—harnesses and rope, caribiners, crampons, pitons. I had never climbed a day in my life but I'd watched enough people pack and unpack their gear to easily commit it to memory. I didn't see any ice axes, although I saw the harness with the holster from which most climbers hung a couple of axes with their claw-like heads for climbing ice, the way Francesca had in that huge photo.

I went a little closer, puzzled. Mountaineers are usually very particular about their gear. After all, their lives depend on it. Someone had scattered Francesca's stacks of pitons like matchsticks. Her ropes were tangled into a spider's nest, hanging half off the table.

This was a cruel joke surely. I went a little closer, my steps echoing on the hardwood. The tarp had been partially pulled off the gleaming oak table. The climbing gear made a disorderly still life.

My stomach lurched when I realized that the totally still figure at the center of the disorder was no dummy. Francesca Etheridge, a rope around her neck, her red face distorted, lay among her gear, one of her ice axes planted in the soft base of her throat. The bloodied rips and tears in her thermal undershirt showed where she had been hacked before dying. She was clearly lifeless. The blood long clotted. Twisted where she had fallen like a broken doll, her arms were trapped by the ropes and frozen at an awkward angle, not by cold but by death.

Seven Paragraphs from At Large

Now that I'm not constricted to prune an entry to six sentences, and yet I'm still in the habit of weekendly posting here, what to do? I happen to be editing/correcting the scanned text of At Large, the third Josephine Fuller book, to be re-issued in ebook and trade paperback soon. I've no reason to impose a sentence count or even a paragraph limit, so here are seven paragraphs from page 1:

Of all the women's job skill centers in all the towns in all the Pacific Northwest, he walks into mine. It had been a rocky week already, and it wasn't Friday yet. In fact Thursday morning was moving so slowly that if I hadn't personally witnessed each second tick off on the big black schoolroom clock across from my desk, I would have sworn that time was standing still. It didn't help that no one was buying my best impersonation of a mild-mannered receptionist. As a woman who has never weighed less than two hundred pounds in my adult life, you might not guess that I can be inconspicuous, but if I keep my head down and my mouth shut, I can usually pull it off. Unfortunately the earnest blue silk pantsuit, pearls and expression of well-bred naiveté weren't working.

Something about this job skill center wasn't quite right. I needed to find out what it was for Mrs. Madrone, so that my wealthy employer could decide whether to award the place a grant. Maybe I had asked too many questions.

By the time Ted showed up, I was already on Delores Patton's radar. The center director was an African American woman who commanded respect with an attitude that could clean brass at twenty paces. She knew I wasn't your usual do-gooder. She just hadn't decided how to deal with it. Ted's arrival made up her mind, and managed to get me fired from a volunteer job—not as easy as it sounds.

Teddy Etheridge was the first male who had entered the office in the three weeks I had been volunteering there. The center was located in Bremerton, about an hour's ferry ride southwest of Seattle. I'd stayed in town during the week answering phones, helping out and nosing around.

For a split second when Teddy walked in the door I thought he might be a potential employer who had strayed in without an appointment. Not that I'd ever seen an actual employer on the premises. Though they did call from time to time to get cheap labor. then I recognized him. "Teddy!" It was always Ted or Teddy to his friends. Never Theodore, not even on his book covers. He wrote humor books for a living.

When he realized it was me, his bearded face lit up in a huge grin. "Josephine Fuller!"

"Ted Etheridge. The last of the hopeless romantics."

Six Sentence Sunday: When Fools Rush in...

From Large Target, Jo has found the kidnappers’ hideout. Now what?

I drove a few blocks and parked on a side street. I wasn't sure what to do next. Getting killed seemed like the next logical step. The lack of sleep was catching up to me. I took a deep breath and then someone tapped on the glass. I looked up and nearly hit my head on the mirror flinching backward.

A florid face with bristly white hair and a weeks' growth of beard appeared crouching outside my window.

Dozens of other writers share sentences on Sundays. For a good time in many genres check them out at Six Sunday. If you are a writer who wants to share a snippet of your own work, the simple instructions are on the site. It's free and fun and you can meet some great people!

Six Sunday -- out of the line of fire, into another danger zone

From Large Target, Jo escapes from an ambush scene where the kidnapper has shot one person and incinerated a car. She has guessed the kidnapper's identity and tricked his father, who knows nothing about the crime, into giving her directions to the kidnapper's workshop.

I heard sirens, and a fire truck raced past headed for the fire that had been Zane's car with an ambulance and a police car following soon after. I started to feel very conspicuous. I got back on Foothill Boulevard and began to follow the instructions my lie had earned me.

The old man hadn't been exaggerating about needing a bodyguard in that part of town. A small detachment of marines would have been appropriate. The warehouse sat at the end of a block that was occupied by a junkyard on one side and a dirt lot ringed by several deserted buildings on the other, chain-link fences featuring razor wire on top set the dominant motif in exterior trim.


This event lures dozens of writers to share sentences on Sundays, this weekend I saw 173 signed up to play. For a good time check them out at six Sunday

A Second Year of Six-Sentence Sundays--when the dominoes start to fall

I'm starting my second year of Six Sentence Sundays with something from the part of Large Target that I personally refer to as “when the dominoes start to fall.” I’ve never been able to outline, so it was a great revelation to me when I finally got to the last few chapters of my first mystery and realized that all the loose ends from earlier in the book started coming together in a fast and furious way. This is one of my favorite parts of novel writing because I'm often as surprised as anyone by what happens.

In this scene Jo is delivering ransom money for the admiral and one additional victim whom the kidnappers grabbed to raise the stakes.

The next thing I heard was a scream from in front of the car. I moved the door open farther to look, and caught a glimpse of Zane on the ground a few feet to the left of my front wheel, one hand still resting on the heavy backpack. The door jerked in my hand from the impact of another shot and the dashboard lights went out.

The motor was still running. I kept down but slid back behind the wheel, jammed the car into gear and gunned it, steering sharp right around where Zane lay with the heavy backpack and his parked car. I drove as fast as I could, half looking out the side window to steer and hunching down to look under the spiderweb crack on the windshield.


For more small doses of fun from dozens of other writers in many genres check them out at Six Sunday.

Six Sentence Sunday Week 48 - a family encounter while waiting for the police...

From Large Target, Jo Fuller and the missing admiral’s daughter Amy find a murder victim. They call the police and wait in outside the cottage when Amy hears someone coming out of the main house.

Amy's brother Brad, the young man with the pigtail, had just exited the sliding door to the rec room in midargument with Amber, the young woman he had dragged out of the way of the admiral's prying minicam at the party the night before.

Today they were both clad in shorts and T-shirts and clearly hadn't seen Amy and me. "You said he'd been on the scene of abductions," Amber said accusingly.

"I honestly believe he has," Brad said, "but you know that stuff is classified."

"I only just asked about the Bermuda Triangle. He said he'd get right to it and he put his hand up my ski-i-irt," she wailed.

For more fun in six-sentence snippets, check out the authors (186 at last count) sharing work in a wide variety of genres at Six Sunday.

44th Six Sunday - from Large Target, an encounter with Genghis Ron

A pivotal moment from Large Target, just released last week. Investigator Josephine Fuller has a special assignment looking for an admiral’s daughter who may be in the grip of a fanatical organization. Unfortunately Jo walks into a family house party and runs into the admiral himself, drunk, grabbing at women guests and living up to his nickname “Genghis Ron.” He tries to aim a minicam up her skirt but Jo shakes him off:

"Thinks she can get coy," he brayed, gripping my skirt for purchase and holding out the minicam with the other hand.

"No," I said as I shook the can of soda with a thumb over the hole and aimed it at his eyes. The spray at close range startled him enough to send him back on his rear while I jerked my skirt from his grip.

"Whoa!" the admiral exclaimed, shaking his head and looking around as if he weren't quite sure how he had landed wet-faced and back on the living room floor.

Several guests applauded as I retreated into the kitchen where a woman handed me a dampened dish towel and took my dripping soda can with a smile, "Here, honey," she said, "we all enjoyed that."

To party on with six sentence servings from dozens of authors in many genres check out the action over at Six Sunday.