TITLE: The Gatekeepers
GENRE: Urban fantasy
Megan Dupree was a lot of things. Unnoticeable wasn’t one of them.
“Beeee-na, where are we going for lunch?” she called in her silky, singsong voice from across the room.
Every male in the room and one female, I noted—looked up. I sighed. From my station four windows down, I could see the buttons of her short black skirt and matching blouse screaming in protest against the pulling material as she sauntered towards me. Halfway across the room she stopped, dropping her pencil in front of Hank’s desk.
“Oopsie,” she crooned.
I cringed, knowing exactly how big an eyeful poor Hank got when she bent over in slow motion to retrieve the pencil. He watched her, wide eyed. Every male in a thousand mile radius, was in love—or lust, with Megan Dupree. Our boss was no exception. She straightened up and gave Hank an innocent wave, waggling her hot pink-tipped fingers before closing the gap between us.
“You’re evil,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. I tried to keep a straight face, but honestly, Meg’s antics cracked me up, despicable or not.
She knew the game. Tossing her hair, she pretended to scoff me. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have the guts to unleash your inner man-eater. And you haven’t answered me.”
“Only because I was worried about having to perform CPR on Hank. He looked like he was going into cardiac arrest. Mind repeating the question?”
Meg couldn’t hide her grin. “Where. Are. We. Lunching?”
Miss Snark's First Victim
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
24 Secret Agent
TITLE: Indigo in the Know
GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy
Indigo heard the radio humming down the hall, as she got dressed, picking a plain t-shirt. It was too warm to wear long-sleeves, which she preferred to shield her skin from unnecessary contact. She sported a pair of faded jeans and plain white sneakers. Indigo was sure she’d blend right in.
Moseying down the hallway that separated the two bedrooms and bathroom from the living room and kitchen, she could hear the sizzle of bacon and sounds of jazz pouring out of the radio. It was as if the bacon and jazz were meant to play together. When she reached the kitchen, Indigo opened the fridge door and got some juice and butter for the toast, sat at the table and poured orange juice for two. Setting down the plate filled with bacon, eggs, and toast, Mama kissed Indigo on the head with a loud smooch. Indigo flinched from the flash of knowing her mother’s greatest fears for a moment, but recovered quickly. With repetition, the force faded and Indigo learned to live with it, like an annoying fly. Indigo longed to touch people without the static of her secret curse, as she had long thought of it.
“Morning, Baby,” crooned her mother. “Thanks for the breakfast, Mama,” Indigo obediently said, knowing her mother demanded respect more than anything. “I may not get respect at work or out there, but I sure as hell demand it in this house,” Indigo was reprimanded if she got out of line.
GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy
Indigo heard the radio humming down the hall, as she got dressed, picking a plain t-shirt. It was too warm to wear long-sleeves, which she preferred to shield her skin from unnecessary contact. She sported a pair of faded jeans and plain white sneakers. Indigo was sure she’d blend right in.
Moseying down the hallway that separated the two bedrooms and bathroom from the living room and kitchen, she could hear the sizzle of bacon and sounds of jazz pouring out of the radio. It was as if the bacon and jazz were meant to play together. When she reached the kitchen, Indigo opened the fridge door and got some juice and butter for the toast, sat at the table and poured orange juice for two. Setting down the plate filled with bacon, eggs, and toast, Mama kissed Indigo on the head with a loud smooch. Indigo flinched from the flash of knowing her mother’s greatest fears for a moment, but recovered quickly. With repetition, the force faded and Indigo learned to live with it, like an annoying fly. Indigo longed to touch people without the static of her secret curse, as she had long thought of it.
“Morning, Baby,” crooned her mother. “Thanks for the breakfast, Mama,” Indigo obediently said, knowing her mother demanded respect more than anything. “I may not get respect at work or out there, but I sure as hell demand it in this house,” Indigo was reprimanded if she got out of line.
23 Secret Agent
TITLE: GRIT OF HEART
GENRE: WOMEN'S FICTION/ROMANCE
I was simply too tired for his charm to be charming. In fact,
since I’d already bludgeoned the medical code of ethics today,
overdosing him just to shut him up seemed to be an acceptable degree
of wrong.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, I didn’t have enough morphine to
do it. The last injection would neither shut him up nor take the bite
out of what I had to do next.
I tightened the tourniquet around his leg. The blood oozed from his
nicked artery, an improvement from the pulsating rush it had been just
moments before.
“This is morphine,” I told him even as I injected it, breaking
another hindrance of a rule.
He shrugged, impersonating composure to the point of
disinterest. He sat against one of the four wooden beams charitably
holding up the makeshift hut, shifting often. He tried to smile, but
I knew he was in pain. And if he wasn’t in pain, we had bigger
problems.
“You’re the doc,” he drawled. Apparently he was out of
wisecracks. That only solved one of our issues.
An explosion outside rattled the hut, my nerves, and the gloves
in my hands. I picked them back up, and pulled the makings of
stitches out of my kit.
"We’re winning,” he told me confidently. “We always win.”
“That’s good,” I commented neutrally. By ‘we’ I had to assume
he meant the other black-clad soldiers littering the field and aiming
their guns at Team Khaki. Whether that really was good, I couldn’t
say.
GENRE: WOMEN'S FICTION/ROMANCE
I was simply too tired for his charm to be charming. In fact,
since I’d already bludgeoned the medical code of ethics today,
overdosing him just to shut him up seemed to be an acceptable degree
of wrong.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, I didn’t have enough morphine to
do it. The last injection would neither shut him up nor take the bite
out of what I had to do next.
I tightened the tourniquet around his leg. The blood oozed from his
nicked artery, an improvement from the pulsating rush it had been just
moments before.
“This is morphine,” I told him even as I injected it, breaking
another hindrance of a rule.
He shrugged, impersonating composure to the point of
disinterest. He sat against one of the four wooden beams charitably
holding up the makeshift hut, shifting often. He tried to smile, but
I knew he was in pain. And if he wasn’t in pain, we had bigger
problems.
“You’re the doc,” he drawled. Apparently he was out of
wisecracks. That only solved one of our issues.
An explosion outside rattled the hut, my nerves, and the gloves
in my hands. I picked them back up, and pulled the makings of
stitches out of my kit.
"We’re winning,” he told me confidently. “We always win.”
“That’s good,” I commented neutrally. By ‘we’ I had to assume
he meant the other black-clad soldiers littering the field and aiming
their guns at Team Khaki. Whether that really was good, I couldn’t
say.
22 Secret Agent
TITLE: Perspective
GENRE: YA Urban Fantasy
They check me out as I exit the building – one of the small bars that consider the eighteen-year-old drinking age to be more of a recommendation than a rule. Something about the way these guys survey the area rubs me the wrong way. The shady way they watch wouldn’t catch many other people’s attention, but years of self-defense classes have trained me to notice.
They walk when I do. My leg muscles tighten. I want to bolt but I don’t. I know the odds are I’m being paranoid.
There’s truth behind Mom’s constant worrying, even if it is annoying. She speaks from experience. I’m not about to take my safety for granted, so I walk faster and try to enter a nightclub. I hope to lose my possible pursuers in the crowd. But the bouncer asks me for ID I don’t have. He turns me away. The drinking age for some places around here must still be more than a suggestion.
I continue up Crescent Street cursing Lucy and Patrick for not being where they should have been. If they hadn’t stood me up, again, I wouldn’t be walking the streets of Montreal by myself. The guys following me, if that is in fact what they are doing, are most likely just trying to scare me as a joke. It happens all the time. My heart pounds. There’s another option for what they’re doing, and that happens all the time as well.
GENRE: YA Urban Fantasy
They check me out as I exit the building – one of the small bars that consider the eighteen-year-old drinking age to be more of a recommendation than a rule. Something about the way these guys survey the area rubs me the wrong way. The shady way they watch wouldn’t catch many other people’s attention, but years of self-defense classes have trained me to notice.
They walk when I do. My leg muscles tighten. I want to bolt but I don’t. I know the odds are I’m being paranoid.
There’s truth behind Mom’s constant worrying, even if it is annoying. She speaks from experience. I’m not about to take my safety for granted, so I walk faster and try to enter a nightclub. I hope to lose my possible pursuers in the crowd. But the bouncer asks me for ID I don’t have. He turns me away. The drinking age for some places around here must still be more than a suggestion.
I continue up Crescent Street cursing Lucy and Patrick for not being where they should have been. If they hadn’t stood me up, again, I wouldn’t be walking the streets of Montreal by myself. The guys following me, if that is in fact what they are doing, are most likely just trying to scare me as a joke. It happens all the time. My heart pounds. There’s another option for what they’re doing, and that happens all the time as well.
21 Secret Agent
TITLE: Just Jezebel
GENRE: Contemporary YA
If life were a ship, my mother was the suicidal passenger. She just had this amazing ability to always end up overboard, whether she was already there or just working her way toward it. I didn’t know if she did it because she knew no better or if she did it for the simple fact that she could and no one would stop her. When I was old enough to realize this and recognize the signs, I made it my job to stop her before she could get that close to the railing. But my mother was a character and I spent more time fishing her out of the water than holding her back from it.
Once upon a time, this sort of limitless behavior had scored her the successful husband, the big house in Upper Eastside Manhattan, and all the money. But now all her extravagant and needy nature got her was a nasty divorce, a troubled daughter, and an affair gone wrong.
He was my father’s business partner and I met him in a less than likely place. Before that, I’d always known him in a not-so-important way. Name: Kennedy Myer, alias: Mr. Myer. To me, he was the man my father worked with, the man he spent all his time with. But one snowy night at a Manhattan social scene, Mr. Myer had earned a new name: the man my mother was having an affair with.
In some sense, I’d known she wasn’t happy.
GENRE: Contemporary YA
If life were a ship, my mother was the suicidal passenger. She just had this amazing ability to always end up overboard, whether she was already there or just working her way toward it. I didn’t know if she did it because she knew no better or if she did it for the simple fact that she could and no one would stop her. When I was old enough to realize this and recognize the signs, I made it my job to stop her before she could get that close to the railing. But my mother was a character and I spent more time fishing her out of the water than holding her back from it.
Once upon a time, this sort of limitless behavior had scored her the successful husband, the big house in Upper Eastside Manhattan, and all the money. But now all her extravagant and needy nature got her was a nasty divorce, a troubled daughter, and an affair gone wrong.
He was my father’s business partner and I met him in a less than likely place. Before that, I’d always known him in a not-so-important way. Name: Kennedy Myer, alias: Mr. Myer. To me, he was the man my father worked with, the man he spent all his time with. But one snowy night at a Manhattan social scene, Mr. Myer had earned a new name: the man my mother was having an affair with.
In some sense, I’d known she wasn’t happy.
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