Sleeping on the Job

Simon's book just went off on submission! It's a bit shorter than previous works, but it sort of needed to be, I think. A lot happens though. Simon has a lot of growing up to do, and this is the book where the training wheels come off, so to speak.

In other news, I have another submission out in the ether, a high fantasy novel of epic proportions which I think everyone will enjoy. Different from my usual fare I'd say but the humor is still there and there are several darling boys for you all to fall in love with.

I'm working on How to Breathe Fire at the moment, which will be the next in the YA, Guidebook series. It's more of a prequel than a sequel, as it deals mostly with William, the dragon introduced in Vampirism and You! He has quite a backstory and it's been a blast digging into his past.

In other Night Shift news, I've started work on  The Evil Eye, which will be Jack's book, and I'm hoping to finish and submit it time for a Christmas release date. Prior to that will be The Hellfire Boys, which at this stage is turning out to be an anthology from Ian's perspective.

I'm trying to finish twelve drafts this year (one a month, I'm crazy), and I'm a bit behind so I'm racing to catch up. I moved house last month, so things were a bit more hectic than usual, not allowing for much writing time, blogging time or really, any time that wasn't spent packing and/or getting things ready to move.

I'm happy to say that I'm settled into the new place with Sophia and we're much happier. Location is everything.

In the meantime, here's a little snippet of Sleeping on the Job.

“Simon, I’m heading to work, you want a ride in?” Gabriel asked.

I’d spent the night at his apartment, which for all practical purposes was a warzone. He wasn’t exactly a neat person. We’d been doing this a lot these last couple weeks. Spending the night. Sometimes at his place, sometimes at a hotel. I couldn’t take him to my place, Fynn would find out and never let me live it down. It kind of sucked living with two other guys sometimes.

Well, two other guys and their adorable eight and a half-year-old daughter and demonic seven and quarter-year-old son. And a pixie. Fynn and Jack saved my miserable ass so I had to be appreciative, they also saved my job, which was why I was living with them—well that and Fynn was bound and determined to be the father figure I’d been lacking and keep me on the straight and narrow.

Once you’ve started taking strange purple pills from hobgoblins, it’s a clear sign you need serious help. Lucky for me, Fynn had provided. Unlucky for me, until I got my shit together, really together, I was stuck living with them.

So I spent the night at Gabriel’s.

I rubbed crud out of my eyes and blinked at my beau. “Coffee?”

He shook his head. “You are the most hung-over looking sober man I have ever seen.” He walked into the kitchen and poured me a cup while I peeled myself off of the couch. My back creaked in several places a nineteen-year-old shouldn’t be creaking.

“We are so never fucking on that fucking couch, ever again.” I stretched, cracking vertebrae back into alignment. “That is the couch the devil built. Why do you not replace it?”

“Why are you talking like that?” He emerged from the kitchen and pressed the warm mug of black coffee into my hands. “Drink. Wake up. Answer my original question.”

I took a drink of coffee, he pushed hair out of my face with a sort of lazy smile. I managed to smile back.

“Sure, I could use a ride. I think my wallet is in my office.”

“Given that I paid for dinner last night, yes, yes it is.”

“How is it I forget shit even when I don’t drink?” I shook my head. “It makes no sense.” It made some sense though. My ability sometimes overloaded my head, giving me sort of a hangover, only worse. “Did I leave any of those pills here last time?” My meds were supposed to help. I had no idea what was in them. Dr. Chan, the Night Shift’s shrink and doctor, cooked them up with Bronson, House One’s resident witch. I think they were mostly ancient herbs and things I didn’t really want to know about.

“I think so.” Gabriel headed back into the kitchen and looked through some cabinets, coming up with a small orange bottle with a prescription label on it that was totally bogus. “This it?”

“Yeah.”

He popped the top off and poured me out a pair. I opened my mouth and he rolled his eyes, but placed both pills on my tongue. I drowned them with coffee and he tucked the bottle into my front jeans pocket.

“Thanks.” I gave him a quick kiss, took another drink of the coffee and set about finding my shirt and shoes. “And what the hell is up with your music selections for sex? While I’m on the topic of things that bother me during sex. Couldn’t we, I don’t know, throw in some Tool? ACDC? Anything but Garth Brooks?”

“I like Garth Brooks.”

“Dude, you’d marry Garth Brooks if he swung the right way.” I found my shirt under the couch and put it on, relieved it was mostly clean.

“And you have an unhealthy obsession with that kick boxer.”

“Mixed martial arts expert,” I corrected. “And who wouldn’t? He’s all—fit.”

“Uh huh. Your shoes are by the door. Let’s hurry along now, I have a big meeting to get to.”

I stifled a yawn and gathered up my shoes, black and white Converse that looked out of place in the forest of black and brown dress shoes and dusty cowboy boots already next to Gabriel’s front door. “Yeah, yeah. And I have to—do something. I’m sure.”

“I bet Fynn has something for you to do.”

I shrugged. “Things have been pretty quiet recently. Mostly we’ve just been getting things more settled. The renovations at the last station wrapped up last month so I finally got my own space back—it was no fun at all sharing with Fynn—probably spend most of the day shifting papers again.”

“The exciting life of a government employee.”

“Very.” It was better than what I’d been doing before Fynn dragged me out of the fucking gutter. The days when I was still a thief, dodging my way out from under my father’s thumb.

 

The Night Shift

It's the Night Shift cover art folks! Look, shiny! Finally got a man in a scarf... I hope this is enough of a teaser for you folks at the moment, but in case it's not, here's an actual teaser:

Enjoy!

 The Night Shift

        Sharp, sweet and smoky tendrils of scent followed us. The stone floor beneath my feet was getting slick as Simon bled on it -- he ran just in front of me. Behind us the howls were starting. Throaty, piercing sounds that made your hair stand on end and burned into your memory as surely as that time you walked in on your Great-Aunt Shirley in the bathtub.

          Simon -- my partner in this case and an unhealthily good looking young man several years my junior -- had been injured during what had been supposed to be a simple reconnaissance trip. The creatures behind us were ghouls; a nest of them had gotten together in a section of the Old City, and we’d been trying to make a count before taking affirmative action.

            I wanted to set fire to the whole damn complex, but somebody overruled me.

            “I see the stairs!” Simon shouted over his shoulder.

            I looked up, spotting the sliver of sunlight that was our escape hatch. The ghouls wouldn’t be able to follow us out into the light, thank God.

            After a moment’s thought, I caught up to Simon and slung him over my shoulder with a grunt. “You see one, shoot.”

            “Yes, sir.” He wasn’t particularly surprised to be manhandled, I’d done it before -- not to say the boy was injury prone but… He rested the butt of his shotgun against my shoulder, and I went for the stairs. The howls were getting closer as I took the first step, and Simon fired a warning shot that sent a sharp blow to my shoulder as I absorbed the recoil. I ignored it for the time being and kept going.

            At the top of the stairs I set him down, shoving him through the open doorway and turned on the crowd of ghouls that had paused just out of reach of the sunlight. They were ugly bastards. Unlike zombies, ghouls didn’t rot after they dug themselves out of the ground -- they dried. It was particularly unattractive. Several of them had huge distended stomachs to go with the long claws and pointed teeth. They’d fed recently.

            “Hi guys.” I smiled and pulled the grenade I’d been saving out of my pocket. “Bye guys.” I jerked the ring out and tossed the grenade amongst them, throwing myself out the door, slamming it shut and running. “Fire in the hole!”

            Simon took off and the explosion went off about five seconds later, blasting bits of building, and ghoul, into the air. Simon and I continued our retreat to the van, climbing in and shutting the door. The reinforced panels would keep off the worst of it, though I could hear the tinging as bits of stone and wood and bone struck the exterior.

            “That was fucking insane!” Simon snapped, lounging against the wall of the van and panting. “You’re nuts.”

            “Aw, it wasn’t as bad as the siren in Humbolt Park and you know it.”

            “One of these days, Adder, you’re going to get me killed.”

“Not today.” I took a closer look at his injury, a nasty gash along his side. “We’re heading to the hospital. Bronson, start her up.”

            The slender, salt and pepper redhead started up the van without further prompting and took off fast enough to leave tire behind on the concrete. “You blew something up again,” he complained.

            “No choice.” Well, there’d been a choice, but I’d liked mine.

            “How bad is it?”

            I looked at Simon, noting he had passed out. “He’ll be okay, just hurry.”

            Simon wasn’t particularly stalwart about pain, it seemed he’d pass out at the drop of the hat -- if you didn’t know why. Simon had been diagnosed with narcolepsy, because what was really wrong with him was too unbelievable for the medical community.

            “Is he out?”

            “Like a light.” I maintained pressure on the wound. “I’m fine too, thanks for asking.”

            “I assumed you were, because you weren’t complaining.” He took a sharp turn that knocked me into the wall. “Now hush.”

            Bronson wasn’t technically my superior; we were basically equals, but I still tended to do as he said. For one, I was almost certain that if I pissed him off he’d curse me. Bronson was, after all, a witch.

            I refrained from mouthing off and concentrated on keeping Simon from bleeding to death. All in all, not a bad day of training. 

 

Sleeping on the Job

For fans of Fiends in Low Places, wondering where the hell the rest of that story is, when you're going to get it, etc. I've decided to break the ice a bit. The novel, which is in progress at the moment, is tentatively titled Sleeping on the Job. 

Here's a teaser, enjoy!

 Sleeping on the Job

I first met Gabriel Sheppard when I was a punk kid still boosting jewelry stores to piss off my father. We had an unconventional first meeting, I’ll grant you that. Far be it from me to ever be conventional. It was the first time I ever woke up handcuffed to a couch. I was seventeen-years-old, and I’d just broken the law.

            “You know there’s a kid asleep, handcuffed, on your couch—to your couch? Right?”

            “My fine deductive powers did deduce that fact, yes.”

            “Why is there a sleeping kid handcuffed to your couch?”

            “Remember the job at Margot’s?”

            “Yeah.”

            “That’s our thief.”

            “Him?”

            “Yup.”

            “Why is he asleep?”

            “He has narcolepsy.”

            “Really?”

            “Really really.”

            I took a deep breath, eyes still closed. The handcuff was cold against my left wrist, and the arm was a bit stiff from the angle it was being held at—as the metal arm of the couch was a bit higher than my head. I licked my lips. They’d taken my lock-picks. The empty feeling along my leg, and the sticky residue from the tape sticking to the fabric of my shirt just under my arm told me that. I could still feel the cold of a pin against my scalp though.

            I cracked open an eye to take a look at the two guys talking. One was on the tall side, slender and wearing a cheap black suit—hair cut by a barber just down the street from his house I’d bet. His watch was new;his shoes were wearing thin but well taken care of. The dust on his shoes and the water on the cuff of his pants—added to the slight odor of garbage around him meant he was Agent number one.

            The other man was shorter, stockier and dressed better. He looked like his nose had been broken a couple times. I got the feeling he wasn’t much of a lady’s man. By the thickness of his right wrist against his left I’d call him a chronic masturbator. Gross. His lips were too thin.

            The first man was the sort of guy a girl would coo over. He had a bit of a lost puppy air, and his eyes were just the right shade of blue. Mussed hair and the hint of stubble on his chin gave a touch of devil-may-care and his job made him exciting, but safe. The perfect boyfriend I bet. He and the other one weren’t friends, but one probably invited two to social gatherings because that was just the kind of guy he was.

            “Well, in any case, Spinelli wants a word with you.”

            “All right, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

            The masturbator left the room and the puppy turned to look at me. “I know you’re awake, kid.”

            I opened my eyes and gathered myself into a sitting position on the incredibly uncomfortable grey upholstered couch. “Good morning…” I glanced at the name placard. “Agent Sheppard.”Really? That made the dog analogy more apt. “Gabriel Sheppard?”

            “And you are Simon Murphy.”

            “You got a fetish I don’t know about Agent Sheppard? Cause, handcuffing me to your couch…that’s kind of kinky.”

            He frowned, “You need to be less smart ass and more cooperative. Where are the jewels?”

            “What do I get if I tell you?”

            “A pat on the head.”

            “Come on Agent, throw me a bone here.”

            He scowled. “Where are the jewels?”

            “I don’t do well in high stress environments. They trigger the narcolepsy.”

            “You robbed four jewelry stores—you can survive me asking you a few questions.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

            “So, what? Sit, stay, and you’ll give me a treat if I behave?”

            “I know you think you’re funny.”

            “But?”

            “But I have a gun.” He raised an eyebrow, and headed out of the office, shutting the door behind him. At least there were no glass walls or anything. That meant I had plenty of alone time. I pulled the pick from my hair and snapped open the cuffs in a flash.

            The single door led out to the bull pen, no help there. The desk held a phone, a computer and papers. The bookshelf next to the desk looked more sentimental, although the law books looked like they’d never been touched. A window had a small ledge, and a long way down.

            I took another deep breath, and opted for the phone.