Coming Soon!

I had some issues breaking the story of the next project, and I thought I was going to have to go with something else instead, but everything fell into place, I'm ready and I feel good about it.  This book will be published in a cleaner, more readable format.  There will be fewer errors and it will be fact checked and edited before being posted.  It will still be a first draft, but a 1.5 draft instead of the 1.0 one. 

I'm writing it already so I'll have a bit of accumulation before I start posting it.  Look for it starting on January 1st or so.

Author's Note: All Done!

Just put the finishing touches on the first draft of the adventures of T.K. Anderson. Still don't have a title.  I am damn happy with how this project turned out and the final count is 36 chapters, so there are four more to go that will not be posted here.  Inquire about them today! 

Also, I would like to say I have a pretty solid idea of what my next project will be, so look for further announcements in a few weeks. If you're a gmail user, become a follower of my blog and stay in the loop!

For now, I'll tell you that the story will largely take place in a house in West Seattle and will involve a young writer and a horror novelist.  It's an idea I came up with several years ago and I'm excited to share it with you and sure it will be a more substantial story than November's.  I don't have a working title yet, but the story involves nightmares.

Author's Note: So here we are

And there you have it!  The end is within sight, but this is all that will be posted here on this blog.

If you wish to read the final few chapters, please contact me personally.  I will ask you to PayPal me a few bones, and I will give you the option of reading the ending in one chunk or continuing to have it sent to you in serial format.

Please leave any comments on the work in general or anything in particular after this post.

I appreciate your patience and support with this project.  The people who told me they checked back every day for another chapter particularly kept me relatively honest and definitely motivated to keep up with their demands.  I hope you found the exercises as satisfying as I did. 

I found that this style of writing lends itself to stories that want to be told at a fair clip, and I have several ideas for several more of those, so check back later in December or in January for another novel to be told in serial format.  The idea that I am currently batting around will be longer, so it won't be told in a month, necessarily, but I'll start with it in the same format.

As always, thanks for reading.  Love and kisses.

Part Three: Pursuit. Chapter Thirty-Two

Alex had a full gun in one hand and a knife on his hip. It was early yet, but he could tell this would be a good day. It took all his focus to keep his mind from wandering away to that cabin in Vancouver where he would soon be building exciting new memories.

He practically danced up the walk, knowing they were expecting him, knowing they could recognize him, and somehow even more exhilarated by the knowledge.

He stood before the stoop for a moment, thinking, then smiled. He wondered what they were doing inside. Were they waiting for him? Were they panicking? Were they ready?

He stepped into the well-maintained garden to the left of the front door and rang the bell. Then he tromped through the garden to the second window. The first was a small affair, frosted, and clearly leading to a bathroom. The second window was larger and clearly led to a larger room.

There were two shots from inside the house and he jumped. From the sound of it they had fired at the door. He grinned.

Then, he banged the base of the gun's handle into the glass twice, shattering it with the second blow. He snatched the curtain aside and looked in. It was a dusty study, books piled about, a shelf of trophies, and there was a desk just beneath the window. It would be easy for him to climb in, but he was not ready for that yet. Instead he waited, conscious of the fact that soon he would have to get inside. If the shots had not caused anyone to call the police yet—but of course, the police themselves would have called the police, as soon as they had heard gunshots, and police officers would recognize gunfire, wouldn't they?

He would waste no more time then. He would take the fight to these two, kill one and take the other. He would have minutes, now, at the most, but he could take the blond man's car if necessary, it was standing just outside the house. There was nothing about his car that would attract suspicion. That was a good plan, he thought, as he watched the door to the study, his mind racing with possibilities. He would take her, run to the car, and then—

The doorknob began to turn, ever so slowly. He aimed above the knob, where he envisioned a hand must be, and opened fire.

Then, dropping the curtain back into place, he began to run around the house. Time, time, he had very little of it left. Still, as sweat dripped from his hairline, he was grinning like a madman. He was having so much damn fun!

Around the back of the house, he saw two more sets of large windows. He fired a round through each, weakening the glass, then bashing them with the gun to get them to shatter. As he approached the next corner of the house, he could see a large glass sliding door that entered off a small concrete patio. He didn't want to enter there, he wanted to be more clever, to create more of a trap, but he did not have time. His destruction of the other two windows would keep their attention, at least keep them distracted. There was a propane tank by the glass door, standing next to a gas grill.

He picked the cannister up in his left hand, hefting it. With his right hand he fired a round through the glass door, then he hurled the tank after. There sound was much louder, somehow, than the other windows he had broken, and the tank swept the drapes up as it tumbled into the house.

There was no gunfire in return and Alex could not wait any longer. Time was slipping away. Still grinning, a vein throbbing obscenely in his forehead, sweat burning his eyes, he ducked through the curtain himself.

He immediately smelled the tang of cordite in the air, from the rounds they had fired through the door. Perhaps they had fired more rounds and he had missed them in his excitement.

He entered on the dining side of a kitchen pass-through, and he immediately dropped to his knees, staying out of sight. He tried to slow his breathing, it was difficult for him to hear, but he was too excited.

He heard a yell, a man's voice, high and scared, from deep in the house. “I think he's inside!” Oh, yes, he was inside alright.

He began to edge his way to the corner of the dining room, which opened into the living room. To his left, he knew, would be the entry hall, where they had shot at him, and the rest of the house. He hadn't heard them, so they must still be down there. They must be waiting for him.

He pictured them, the two of them, in one of the rooms he had shot into, holed up like frightened rodents, waiting for him, hoping he would leave them alone. His grin widened, envisioning their terrified faces.

He knew he must leave. He did not have the time for a protracted hunt, not today. He wanted the woman badly, and he knew on some level she must realize this as well, as he fired round after round into her house, she had to have known he was coming for her. Could he bring himself to leave? Did he have that much patience?

His smile began to subside. He did not want to leave. He had built this up in his mind, this final triumph of his, this visible, incredible assault, his coming out, his announcement to the world that he would do what he wanted when he wanted. But there must be some logic. His desires must wait upon sensibility sometime. And right now was that time.

As much as he wanted, no, needed, this, he knew that he was not ready to stop. More than that, he was not ready to be stopped.

He backed up to the end of the dining room wall. He could just lean out now and look into the glass door of the range in the kitchen. There was no one in the kitchen watching him.

He would take two steps and be outside. He would jump the fence at the back of the yard, walk back to his car, and he would be gone. Like a wraith. No, he told himself, like a myth. Like a boogeyman that would haunt people, whose memory would live on far longer than he would. That sounded right. Alex began to smile again as he stood to walk to leave.

Part Three: Pursuit. Chapter Thirty-One

Anderson had somehow known that Antonov would follow her, without even asking her if he could and that was what he did. No doubt to critique her suit and assist her with her makeup, she thought bitterly.

She waved at Larry and Moe as she jangled her keys. The middle-aged rambler was in good shape and she was proud to see it again, as she always was. She had been left in something of the lurch, being required to maintain and keep up the place and it always stirred her to see what a good job she was doing. She thought often of what a poorer job another, lesser daughter might have done.

She placed one key, and then another in the lock and the two deadbolts, then threw the door open and ushered Antonov in, mocking his careless assumption.

“Do you trust me to put the damn thing on by myself?” she asked.

“Look, I know you're not running on a lot of sleep and you're fueled by nothing by stress and coffee, but cut me a break, okay? I know what I'm about.”

She shrugged.

“Seriously. Half the time I wind up working with idiot cops who get small awards and I have to tell them not to pick their goddamn noses. Maybe you think I'm a dick, but I'm really enjoying the opportunity to work with someone who A: Has a career ahead of them and B: Doesn't think I'm gay.”

She chuffed a small, short laugh. “You and me both, you pretty bastard.” She turned and went to find her room.

“Good genes should not be punished!” he called after her.

Her room was cluttered, the only room that ever was. The public rooms, including the bathroom, she kept immaculate, even though she rarely had visitors. Her father's den and her mother's sewing room were almost never opened, so keeping things clean was never much of a chore. Except for this hole, she thought, kicking a drift of clothes to one side. She hadn't lied, she had a clean suit, but she had several more that were shamefully wrinkled and she just hadn't gotten around to taking them to the dry cleaner.

She took of her work outfit, dumping it in the pile, and set her gun and other personal items on the bed. She changed out of her backup, comfortable travel undies and found something a bit more befitting a suit. Black. She always wore the same shirt with the suit, and it all hung safely together in her closet, safely covered in plastic wrap, still hanging on a 'We Love Our Customers' hanger. She tore the plastic off, balled it up and tossed it into a corner.

Then, she heard a shot. Anyone else on the block might have mistaken it for a backfire or some other pedestrian, ambiguous noise, but not her, and she hoped not Antonov.

She looked down and grabbed the first pants she could see, blue and gray striped pajama bottoms.

From outside, there was a string of further reports, right on top of each other. Someone emptying a gun.

She tugged a t-shirt over her head and ducked out into the hall, gun at the ready. Antonov was already there, safely around the corner from the entry corridor, across the hall from her, his own gun out.

“I called it in,” he hissed. “Do you think it's him?”

Anderson was taken aback. Her training had kicked in, she was just ready to start some shit, it had not crossed her mind that the gun fire might be HIM. But as soon as the thought cross her mind, she knew it was right. Poor Larry and Moe were either under fire or laying down fire themselves, and either way it had to be the son of a bitch they were after.

She edged to the corner and threw open the coat closet there. Inside, resting in the corner, not quite hidden beneath the sleeve of a trench coat, was a shotgun. She placed her gun on the upper shelf in the closet, next to a locked case that she knew also contained a Smith and Wesson .44 revolver. She jacked the first shotgun round from the magazine into the chamber, feeling a cold satisfaction roll over her. It a Remington 10-gauge pump, loaded with double-ought buckshot and armed with a choke to lessen spray. It was not a gun for hunting wildlife, it was a gun for hunting men.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said to herself.

“Papa Anderson was not fucking around,” Antonov said.

“No, he was not.”

“Now what?” Antonov asked.

The doorbell rang and both of them leapt. After a moment, both of them made to aim at the door and she hissed. “Put a round through it,” she whispered to him.

He nodded, leaned around the corner, and fired not one, but two quick rounds through the heavy front door, which, now that she thought about it, was probably not locked. The two reports were loud in the hall and punched small holes in the door. She noted with some satisfaction that even though the deadbolts were still open, the doorknob was still in the locked position. It was the only door they'd come in, so the rear door, in the kitchen, should be open as well.

The sound of smashing glass came from down the hall, away from them.

“What room?” Antonov asked her. After a moment he dashed across the hall to join her. She nodded down the corridor to her father's den. “You don't have another one of those, do you?” he asked, looking at the Remington.

“Sorry. One of us should be able to pivot, anyway.”

“Lucky me.”

She led them down the hall to the door of the den, just past the door of her bedroom, but on the other side of the hall. The took places on both sides of the door and she reached for the knob with her left hand, the shotgun held in her right. She began to turn it slowly, ready to push in as soon as the catch was clear.

Several more reports rang out and she jerked her hand back purely on instinct. Antonov cringed back from the shots, crying out. Her hand stung, and she was certain she must have been shot. She looked down and saw that the last three knuckles on her left hand were bleeding, skin torn off them as if she'd been in a slugging match. She couldn't tell if the bullet had grazed her or if the splinters from the door had ripped her up, but either was much better than the alternative. She looked over at the blond PR agent next to her.

“This is bad.”

Antonov nodded, his cheeks hollow and his eyes wide.