Exchange Rate: 2-Allyson

Exchange Rate: 1-Jeff
Exchange Rate: 2-Allyson
Exchange Rate: 3-Jeff
Exchange Rate: 4-Allyson
Exchange Rate: 5-Jeff
Exchange Rate: 6-Jeff

2 – Allyson

L’Tasha Allyson Mosley trudged along SR50 toward the truck stop. Her arm still hurt from where her stepfather had nearly yanked it out of its socket. The sting from her mother slapping her face had faded twenty minutes ago, but the emotional sting was still raw and painful. Her mother never listened, never took her side. All she cared about was Steve, her stepfather. Steve was the most important person on the planet. Steve paid the bills. Steve was a good man and Allyson was an ungrateful little bitch. Steve was God and Allyson was shit. Lower than shit.

She kicked an empty beer can as hard as she could. The can plinked and bonked off the rocks in the barrow pit lining the road, but there was no satisfaction for her. Kicking a can didn’t fix the problems in her life. My problems are soon to be solved, she thought. Her eyes wanted to release tears again, but Allyson clenched her jaw as hard as she could and willed them away. She was done crying. That time was over.

Her feet led her off the highway and into the parking lot of the Snake Flats Oasis & Rest. She wondered if there was a more redneck place on earth than a truck stop saddling the freeway in a barren stretch of a conservative, religious state like Idaho. Her feet kicked a few pebbles and a stray plastic bottle cap as she made her way around the massive storefront. Allyson kept her head down as she approached the convenience store doors. The looks that followed her everywhere were old hat by now, but they always hurt, and she didn’t feel like dealing with it today. Her mother had warned her when she’d moved them both to Borah from Orlando that there was going to be a bit of culture shock. “A bit” was possibly the biggest understatement that Allyson had ever heard.

She was ten when they had packed up and moved in the middle of the night, escaping her real father and his fists. Maralyn, her mother, had met some guy on the internet, and he must have convinced her to bail without warning and head all the way to Idaho. Allyson had only heard of Idaho a couple times during school. It might as well have been Sweden. Except in Sweden she wouldn’t be stared at, teased, insulted, and even bullied like she had been since the day she set foot in what she called “Hillbilly North.” Continue reading

Exchange Rate: 1-Jeff

Exchange Rate: 1-Jeff
Exchange Rate: 2-Allyson
Exchange Rate: 3-Jeff
Exchange Rate: 4-Allyson
Exchange Rate: 5-Jeff
Exchange Rate: 6-Jeff

1 – Jeff

Maser, Franklin, Waters, & Charles. Jefferson Taylor Charles loved the sound of it. He said it out loud a few more times, each with a different accent or enunciation. He’d finally made full partner, and only seven years after joining the law offices of Maser, Franklin, & Waters. Karina was going to erupt with glee when he told her. Jeff thought about calling her from the car, but he wanted to surprise her.

He watched the glare of lights from the Snake Flats Oasis & Rest grow from a dim glow to the equivalent of a NASA launch pad in less than a minute as he drove south along SR50. “The Rest” was what the locals called it. Karina called it “the eternal eyesore,” since the lights never turned off, never dimmed, and typically had what seemed like a thousand other lights from cars and trucks orbiting it at all hours. Jeff was inclined to agree with Karina’s assessment, but it was incredibly convenient at times to have it anchoring I-84’s eastbound off-ramp. Not to mention he passed by it every night on his way to their new home on the south rim of the Snake River Canyon.

How many times had Karina called after he’d left the office in Borah and needed milk, eggs, even Diet Pepsi? Jeff Charles was a wise man, and a wise man didn’t deny the love of his life a one-liter, ice cold plastic bottle of her favorite soda when she asked for it. Besides, he might be an attorney, but he fancied himself an amateur sociologist, psychologist, and human geographer. The sheer amount of different types of human beings he had ended up in line with at The Rest was infinitely interesting considering that it was located on the Snake River Plain in rural southern Idaho. About as far from real civilization as one could get, according to Karina.

Jeff’s BMW pulled into an empty parking space in front of the convenience store section of The Rest. The party his new partners had thrown for him had left him full of shock, happiness, and triumph. It had also lasted until almost midnight. Karina had been slightly miffed at first because it would be another dinner Jeff wouldn’t get to share with her or Jessica, their nine year old daughter. His little girl was growing up and seeing less and less of her father. Continue reading

Chronvalescent (a story in the “Departure” universe)

If you’ve never read “Departure,” then this story might not make as much sense. Then again, it might not make much sense mostly because I wrote it…

NOTES: Not edited, so there will be mistakes/errors. I am around 85% finished with the story, which has sort of come on strong over the last few days out of nowhere. I AM planning on a sequel to “Departure” (and in effect, this story as well), which will be titled “Arrival.” This story together with “Departure” will give a more complete backstory to “Arrival.”

CHAPTER ONE

“We have to go, Drea,” Melly said, tugging my arm.

“I don’t want to,” I said. She heard the sulking, near-whining in my voice. “Well, I don’t. I want to stay here with you.”

“You can’t,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. “You know you can’t. We’ve talked about this for years.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Bullshit. You DO care. You’ve seen what happens when you miss your departure.”

“I don’t care,” I said again, feeling every bit the petulant child that I sounded.

“Then you lied all these years,” she said with sudden anger as she let go and pushed me away. “Because if you cared, you wouldn’t do that to me. You wouldn’t make me watch it.”

“It’s not fair, goddammit!” I nearly screamed. I only kept my voice down because the Hackers were everywhere in this part of the Bower.

“I know, baby,” she said, her face immediately back to the crushing defeat she’d tried to hide from me for the last few months. Hell, the last year or more, but it really began on my 39th birthday. She stroked my cheek, trying to wipe away my single tear without allowing herself to shed any. The heartbreak in her face made me want to fall to the floor and just give up. I would just lie on the floor and cry until I missed my departure. The memory of what happened to the unlucky (or stupid) ones who missed their departures was ingrained in us from childhood. Even without the instructional holos we were forced to watch at various intervals in school, there would be one or two who drove the message home every month when they refused to depart.

“Come on,” Melly said. “We have a ways to go just to get topside.”

When I refused to budge, she cupped my cheeks and pulled me in close. I stared into her eyes for an eternity while she nearly brought me to orgasm with an intensely passionate yet soft, loving, slow kiss. My mind whirled as her tongue gently flitted against mine. Time became nothing. My departure became a worry for someone else. I was no one and nothing, my only thought on Mellisandra and how much I loved her. Continue reading

My Novella = Gay Agenda/Propaganda?

I guess I’m proud to announce that my first book published is hereby declared ‘gay propaganda’.

I’m going to say, “Good.”

The book of course is NOT gay propaganda, but it does have an LGBT-friendly…story? I don’t know how to explain it. Some of the characters are gay. Like…so what? Because there are gays in this real world, there shouldn’t be gays in fiction / science fiction?

Here’s how I see the world, and in turn, how I write stories: Continue reading