Okay, I’m done fooling around. There’s been a definite hiatus in output lately, I admit. I’ve been hacking away at a novel that JUST AIN’T WORKING…so I finally threw in the towel. Fuggedabowddit. Tank it. Trash it. Give it up, already. Ignore the MONTHS spent trying to make a diamond out of a pig’s ear.
It’s back to all Yeager, all the time, until #3 in the that series is done. Happy to report, progress is being made on Yeager’s Getaway, where Abel and Charlie go on a much delayed honeymoon to an island paradise that turns…well, nasty. There is no easy day in Yeager’s world.
Sample from Chapter One:
An epic hangover cracked Abel Yeager’s morning egg of contentment. The yolk of good cheer dribbled out, leaving nothing but an empty shell of misery. His head squatted atop his shoulders like a bowling ball, heavy and hard, while chimpanzees trampolined off his stomach lining. The pocket-sized cruise ship, Fair Breezes, bobbed more than a cork on a fishing line, and the only thing keeping his insides from erupting in a volcanic expulsion of stale beer and pretzels was the uncertainty of making it to the head without falling over from dizziness. The bed of their stateroom embraced him in sweat-damp sheets, and there he planned to stay until the paramedics came to carry him away.
He groaned and covered his eyes in the crook of an elbow.
“Serves you right.” An e-reader braced on her belly, Charlie reclined near the balcony doorway, sunlight streaming through her coppery hair and a breeze ruffling the collar of the cotten cover up she wore over her one-piece swimsuit. Her long legs were propped on the corner of the bed, crossed at the ankles, treating Yeager to a view of the soles of her feet. “How late did you stay up drinking with your new best friends?”
“I don’t know,” Yeager mumbled. “One o’clock, I think.”
“No, you came in at three a.m.”
If you knew, why’d you ask? He kept his mouth shut.
“Reeking of beer, I might add.”
You just did. This, too, he kept to himself. The warning flags were out: Charlie was a tiny bit PO’d and didn’t need any nitroglycerin added to the tank to get her going. Normally, Charlotte Buchanan Yeager was a joy to live with. Smart. Funny. A naturally happy person. Like Victor. On the rare occasions when she did lose it, Yeager found it best to lock up the breakables and hunker down for a storm. His bleary-eyed reading of today’s weather indicated a squall approaching, and it could either blow over, or brew up to hurricane force.
“Just my luck,” Charlie spoke without looking up from her reader. “I finally ditch the kids and go on a much delayed honeymoon cruise with my husband, the Marine. And guess what? The ship is packed with Marines.”
“Three is hardly packed,” Yeager said. “And those guys were salty. Vietnam vets. Telling stories of the Rockpile, Ca Lu, Hill 881. Hue City. Khe Sanh.”
“And while you’re out swapping war stories with the Leatherneck Legends, your wife is waiting up for you in her brand new nightie. See-through, like you like it.” Charlie stabbed her reader with a finger and “flipped” a page. Yeager could almost hear the page snap. He lifted his pounding head with ponderous effort.
“I’m sorry I missed that.” And he meant it, too. Charlie could make his heart race wearing a spacesuit and face cream; Charlie in sexy lingerie made him lose his mind. He groaned again and flopped back. “I really, really am.”
She must have taken pity on him, because she got up and brought him a bottle of water from the mini-fridge. “Here. Rehydrate, caveman. You’re going to need it today.”
“Why’s that—? Wait.” A memory clawed its way up through the corpses of dead brain cells. “Oh, hell no.”
“Oh hell yes, Staff Sergeant Yeager.” Charlie stood by the bed with her hands on her hips and a smug expression painting her face. “We hike the nature reserve today. Three hours of exercise should sweat all the beer right out of you.”
“God hates me,” Yeager groaned.
Texanation 