Have a WIP, an EIP, an MS, or a published work you want to share on your blog, eight sentences at a time?
Want to sample other people’s WIPs, EIPs, MSs, or published works, eight sentences at a time?
Be a Weekend Writing Warrior!
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Since I posted my last bit from Anti-Cupids last week, I decided to post the first eight sentences from another project that’s just a tad different from a romantic comedy about two cynical people bonding over their sibling’s wedding, and also gnomes of a caffeinated nature.
This story is about an ex-military P.I. with a touch of PTSD, who’s operating in a world where a substantial wereanimal population has managed to keep itself hidden from the general public. But “hidden” doesn’t mean “safe”, and Tom learned a long time to suppress the flight instincts of his own prey animal and use the fight of his human side.
In [a yet-to-be-named city not unlike St. Louis], there’s a niche for a discrete detective agency that understands the biological drives of the two-natured, the rules of admissible evidence, and the silverclad laws of the Council. So Tom and his human partner are doing all right, pulling in business from the local pack and some society gigs, too.
Yeah, everything’s going pretty well.
But then the book starts.
I wonder sometimes how many private detectives go into the business hoping for a femme fatale-based clientele, a steady stream of danger in tight dresses and red lipstick, in dire need of protection, especially from themselves.
Instead, we get a flood of insurance company reps, suspicious spouses, bail bondsmen—and intermittent thugs in dire need of electrolysis and deodorant.
I blame Raymond Chandler.
“You Tom Mahon?” the thug said, resplendent in warm-up pants and a tight black wife beater.
“Guilty,” I said.
He lifted his nose to sniff the air and if his body hair and B.O. hadn’t been enough of a clue, that would have done it. “Bryan Mahon’s your brother?”
I slid my hand into the desk drawer I always kept partially open.
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I started fiddling with this because I like shifter stories, but there aren’t many about what it would be like to be a prey animal in a weretiger-eat-werewolf society.*
And I like ducks. Who, despite their lack of natural weaponry, carbohydrate-addictions, and well-deserved place in international cuisine, are also remarkably nasty, randy, opportunistic bastards.
I also like hard-boiled private detectives, who share a lot of the same qualities, though I wouldn’t put them in a cassoulet . . . unless this thing veers off into an entirely unexpected genre.
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*Yes, Destroyer Duck, Howard-the-Duck, and Usagi Yojimbo are awesome, but they aren’t shifters.
Earful of Cider 