Novel Manuscripts
Book manuscripts
B&A
Planned as a single release with room for a second book, and even a third should the story become popular, B&A is about inheriting the responsibility of a child, in this case, a child with unique abilities and a troubled personality. I won’t go into much more detail than to present the high concept:
A twelve-year-old suspected murderer meets his match when he becomes the ward of an extraordinary horsewoman whose own lethal rage, once unleashed, could mean death for them both.
BOOK EXCERPT:
Everyone was still asleep when the contractor called at eight to say that he’d take the job. He quizzed her for details, then told her he’d be out with a crew and materials tomorrow morning. Sandy came in a few minutes later, and Deborah met her in the drive and told her about the night’s escapades. “I’ll take care of things at the barn. Just go get that foot up and get some sleep,” Sandy urged.Grateful, Deborah limped back to the house, sure that someone would be stirring. They weren’t.
It was eight-thirty when Deborah crawled back into bed, Hood snuggling in beside her, grateful to be her best pal again. But her respite was short-lived. She was startled awake some four hours later to the sound of breaking glass and house alarms. Hood woofed, then bounded down, scratching at the door and whining.
She pulled on her jeans, shoveled on her slouch-arounds, then jammed up the access code in her haste and used the door through the atrium to get out. Hood bounded ahead, but Deborah was right behind him as yelling in the kitchen mingled with the whooping sirens that meant house security was breached.
The commotion was in the kitchen. Hood stood stock still in the doorway, one ear flat, one canted over, a confused dog just watching, whining, and occasionally grumbling a growl on his breath. He cast his head back toward her, his eyes showing white. Deborah pushed past him, another disaster scene branding itself into her brain – a kitchen chair jammed through the window over the sink, a fountain of water spraying where the spout was broken off, Tony backed against the wall by the garbage can with his arm around William’s neck, his other hand on the boy’s forehead…blood.
AVS
A single release, though, again, I never create a story that can’t continue, this novel is about a young man whose desires for revenge against prejudice battle for supremacy over the code of ethics that are his blood heritage. Again, I give the High Concept only, and a tidbit from the actual beginning of the book, as well.
An angry young veterinary rediscovers in himself what his Grandma calls “heart” — that life and the love that sustains it is all that really matters.
BOOK EXCERPT:
According to the clinic map, Jameson Keller’s farm was the next to the last place on a long, winding road called Old Hickory Lane. Old Hickory Lane — the name alone sent up warning flags in Warren. He hated bumpy, dusty drives that took him way up Hell and gone in this remote northern county, but Keller’s cow hadn’t cleaned, and it was Warren’s job to take the open ranch calls — the ones where the client hadn’t asked for a specified doctor.
Most of the heavy work, the dirty jobs, were open calls, and most were with clients who were, at best, inhospitable, sometimes downright hostile. A look at the notes in the Keller file showed the telling innuendos slipped in here and there, not so much in the minority partner’s notes, but in those of the clinic’s majority owners, Jim Lewis and Bill Clark. A check in the receptionist’s log confirmed that Jameson’s was an open call. In her neat, loopy hand-writing, she’d noted, “Said just send a vet when one can get there. No hurry.” Just send a vet! In other words, what Keller wanted was an animal mechanic, not a doctor.
Top of his class, Warren Jeffreys was reduced to cleansing cows with retained afterbirths and cutting up dead lambs inside bawling ewes on farms where animals were just one more commodity to be used up and discarded. This was not the future he’d paid for with the last of his grandmother’s legacy. And the small animal side of the practice was no better — the pampered Pekes and Poodles, the temperamental Persians and spoiled pot-bellied pigs — animals their owners loved to deadly indulgence. But when their darling died, regardless of the cause, it was “the vet” they blamed.
Seeds
One of the few stories I’ve ever written in First Person, “Seeds” is a love story, or, more accurately, a story about love and the power of that love to heal and make whole. This isn’t your traditional kind of love story, though. Joan, the main character, isn’t who she’s supposed to be, and she certainly isn’t where she’s supposed to be. Why? Because….
A devastating accident claims the lives of an entire family, save one girl named Joan who, pronounced dead in the ambulance, isn’t. Her body refuses to give up. Her heart starts beating again, after the paramedics have given up. But radical changes have happened in the meantime. Another soul has been tapped to temporarily assume control of Joan’s body while forces work to persuade Joan’s soul to return. This “temp” soul isn’t human, though, and, finding itself in a very odd realm — contemporary Earth — it gets itself (and the body it occupies) into all sorts of funny…and not so funny dilemmas.
The story starts with Joan prepossessed, the temporary soul in residence and neck deep into doing naughty things which land her in trouble with the local logger baron. Things get dicey, and Joan does what any smart, modern woman would — she dials 911. Here we are midway in Chapter Two:
BOOK EXCERPT
Lights strobed, bright even in the sunshine, their sirens silent now. They were putting Tom into the back seat of one of the vehicles, his wrists in handcuffs, one sleeve rolled up where someone had wrapped a bandage on his arm. I watched them from my great room windows, shutters once more open to the world. “What about the bite?” I shook my head at the officer who was interviewing me, my eyes never straying from Tom until he was safely locked inside the vehicle. Then I turned to face the man who spoke, Scorpio at my side, standing quietly at heel. “This dog was in the house,” I said, reaching down to stroke him on the neck. “The others were in their kennel runs.”
The man — he was about my age — nodded. “We saw the others,” he said, but his eyes stayed glued to Scorpio, and I had a strange feeling that he admired the dog. “But I’m afraid this one we have to take in to have it verified that his bite print and DNA don’t match.”
“You can tell it doesn’t,” I replied.
Larry – the name on his badge — smiled. It was a warming smile. And he had kind and merry eyes. “Yeah. I can,” he said. “But Tom swears he was attacked, and his lawyer’s will be all over this if we don’t verify that it wasn’t the dog.”
More Than-
Another horsey book, this one starring Jesse, Joseph, and John, along with a very intriguing old timer and some “strange doings.”
BOOK EXCERPT
The horse warned Jesse of their presence, the gelding pulling up short and snorting at the smell of strangers where they shouldn’t be. She’d heard the dogs barking earlier, but had dismissed it to their usual jealousy of her riding without them. How the kids had gotten through the steel fencing and the thorn-apple bushes that reinforced it, she didn’t know, but there they were, hiding behind one of the large cedar trees beside the water jump.
Indignant that he must pause, Prelude jigged and champed the bit. “Did I leave a gate open?” she called, putting a smile in her voice.
The brush rustled, and the horse paused his jig, his body tensing. Head up and ears pricked, he was ready to bolt at any sign of crouching panther or fearsome bear. She stroked him calm, sooth-talking as she mentally replaced his fears with pleasant notions. With a hugh, rib-spreading breath, he relaxed then, and she dismounted, pretending to adjust some straps. “I know you’re there,” she called. “You might as well come out.”
Again, the bushes rustled and two young men, both nearly the same age of maybe twelve or thirteen, stepped out. The shorter, stockier one led. “Hi,” he said.
“How did you get in?” she asked.
“We climbed the driveway gate after grounding it out with some pipes,” said the other. …Well, mumbled. He was a tall, skinny, nervous boy with glasses.
“I see.”
“He’s nice,” said the friendly one, walking forward to put his hand under the gelding’s nose. He had an educated hand. “I like blacks.”
“So do I,” she said.
“What’s his name?”
“I call him Prelude.”
The boy nodded. “Nice. Is he registered?”
“No. He’s a throw-away. …And your names are?”
“I’m John, and he’s Joseph,” said the brave one.
Her horse began to paw, shaking his head and champing the bit again. “I have to finish the round,” Jesse said. “I’ll see you at the arena. I assume you know where it is.”
“Okay,” said John, grinning.
Joseph nodded and waved as she mounted, then touched heels to the horse and let him some rein.
They literally flew over the rest of the course, Prelude’s feet having grown wings of indignity. He was a touchy animal, proud and capable, and especially temperamental when it came to disruptions to his routine. In that way, he was much like Jesse herself. She did not like changes to her world. Nor did she like strangers. In fact, Jesse reveled in a steady regularity. Boring was not a part of her vocabulary, and ruts were cherished. She was soon to lose both, though, and her guarded privacy, as well.
