THE LONELY HIPSTER—Excerpt

We're getting close to the release date of my next mystery novella, The Lonely Hipster! To whet your appetite, here's an excerpt from the book. And, if you're a member of Goodreads, The Lonely Hipster has its own Goodreads page! Feel free to add it if you're into that sort of thing.

And now here's a peek at our lonely hipster detective in action. Enjoy!

Dubiously, Adam closed his eyes. He felt Moira touch his hand and a zing traveled up his arm.
“Okay, now. In your mind, I want you to replay finding Old Man Stanton, starting from the beginning, and describe it to me. But instead of telling me what you see, tell me what you smell and hear, and touch if it’s applicable. Ready?”
Adam took a deep breath. “Cut grass. Bad Books.”
“Bad Books?”
“It’s a band. I was listening to music. Ummm vibration from the mower. Then a loud pop. Silence. Too much silence, not even a bird. Cool grass on the sides of my feet. The slap of my flip-flops on the stone steps. Rough stone under my left hand. The faintest tinkle of falling glass.”
Adam stopped and swallowed hard. Moira reached out to squeeze his hand again, and he squeezed back.
“There’s a strange smell. Gunpowder? But that’s only part of it. There’s something else, something I’ve never come across till now.”
“Keep going.”
Adam drew a shaky breath. “The curtain on my face. Stiff, rough. Crunching as I walk in to the study. The glass cutting the bottoms of my feet. There’s that smell again. It’s perfume.”
He opened his eyes a found himself staring directly into Moira’s. “Whoever was in the room before me wore perfume.”

Will Adam be able to sniff out the killer, or is the perfume a red herring? Questions! Find out later this month when The Lonely Hipster is released.

Wrong Place, Right Tie

Waves of heat roll off the blacktop. Diego adjusts his tie, his cheap suit clinging to the skin of his back, and sits on the edge of a dried-up planter, dropping his briefcase between his feet.

He runs a hand through his hair and checks the clock on the bank sign. Thirty minutes late. Across the plaza, a small park beckons with the lure of shade.

In the distance, there’s a screech of tires and the wail of sirens. A white sedan shoots around the corner, nearly tilting onto two wheels. Diego jumps up as it speeds past him, staring at the license plate.

A second later he’s surrounded by cop cars, lights flashing. “Down on the ground! Down on the ground!” someone orders.

Before Diego has the chance to think about what he’s doing, he’s running, the briefcase clutched to his chest like a shield. He can hear shouts and the slap of combat boots on pavement behind him.

The roar of a shot fills the plaza. Diego doesn’t feel a thing: one moment he’s running, the next his cheek is pressing into hot concrete. With what seems agonizing slowness, he pushes himself up and sees blood. A boot kicks into his back, forcing him down.

Diego looks into the barrel of a shotgun, then the lined face of the old man holding it.

With a rush, his hearing comes back. The cops are shouting in the distance. Diego locks eyes with the old man, grabs the barrel hovering in front of his face, and tugs. When the man stumbles forward, Diego pushes back, smacking the old man's cheekbone with the butt of the rifle.

The guy who fancies himself a Clint Eastwood character lands on his ass on the sidewalk and Diego struggles to his feet, pulling the rifle out of the other man’s hands. A quick survey of the blindingly bright square reveals a 1985 Buick running, unoccupied, at the curb. Definitely and an old man car.

Keeping one hand pressed to his side, Diego limps to the Buick, tossing the rifle and briefcase into the passenger seat before sliding behind the wheel. He peels off just as the blue-clad arm of a police officer darts into the open window and grabs hold of his tie. The polyester slips from between the cop’s fingers as Diego stomps on the accelerator and pulls away in a burn of rubber.

Excerpt from THE SEA QUEEN'S DAUGHTER

We are getting perilously close to the release of my next novella, The Sea Queen's Daughter. It's an adaptation of the fairy tale The Little Mermaid, set in 18th-century Venice.

Here is a short excerpt from the beginning of the book, where our hero and heroine meet on a tòpo, a Venetian-style barge:

Marco pulled the mysterious woman into the dance, her slim form seeming to fit against his like water to the shore. The complicated patterns of the Hunt dance required them to part, but Marco couldn't bear to release her. Instead, he wrapped his arm around her waist and spun them away from the other dancers, to a corner of the ship relatively shadowed.



"I'm not sure what we're doing is dancing," the woman said. He looked deep into the clear glass of the eyes of the mask but saw only the faint movement of what might have been her eyelashes.



"It will be. Just trust me," he assured her.



He mapped out the steps to the dance and she copied him, their torsos brushing against one another until Marco pulled back, afraid of embarrassing himself. The impenetrable mask she wore tilted, but she said nothing and kept the distance between them.



Eventually he pulled her back and she settled against him, the press of her mask cool against his heated cheek. He set his gloved hand against the side of her head. When she didn't pull away, he ran the back of his fingers down her neck and over her collar bone.


She stirred then. "I must go," she said, pulling away.