Take-A-Break SHORTS!

Yippee! I got all the current batch of Take-A-Break Shorts! uploaded to Kindle and they’re coming LIVE as we speak! They’re a great variety, why not try one?

Soon I think I’ll put some together in a print book too; I love print books.

Next will be more in the Otto & Sock series about the Mennonite guy and his mod girlfriend and how they manage staying together on spaceships roaming the solar system!

 

Oh, I have bee mulling ideas about historical fiction featuring Ma as she was growing up in the South Carolina barrier islands. She used to tell me wild stories about her and her brother Joe! I’m sure she would not mind me embellishing…lots. We’ll see, there’s so much to do!

Wow, if you get any of the Elise t’Hoot series be sure to start with The Might of Defiance about how Elise gets from Earth to communing with weird aliens far our into the galaxy.

Shameless promotion I know, but gee whiz I’m so proud of them all!

Stupid Cupid!

heart-sheepI had crush on a shy guy

I’d seen him look my way

I felt the arrow of love

But how to say be mine? Kiss me! Say the word, you got me!

Light bulb, a Valentine!

I picked one out that said ‘You’re on my mind’ with pink hearts all aglow

I looked high and low, where’d he go?

Then in the bushes, his bare behind bobbin’ up and down

I tore that card up fine as snow

Stupid Cupid

 

On my own, my first job heart-pan

Imagine my surprise to see

My desk was right beside a man

Who could make me do handstands

All week I felt a barb in my heart

What a way to start!

When he offered to take me to lunch my heart was smitten

He opened up some catfood and called me his kitten

I never went back to that dump

Stupid Cupid

 heart-pitcher-pictureAt my sister’s wedding

I thought the photographer was hot

He finished with the wedding party and said

he’d like a few shots of just beautiful me

I felt the arrow again, okay I replied                      June 13 016        

I followed dreamy to his studio

But wouldn’t you know

He wanted all my clothes off first

I have the feeling I’m utterly cursed

Stupid Cupid

 

I’ll never marry

Never in my life

Never have a husbandheart-cup-close

never be a wife

and if I ever find that cherub

I’ll jab him with a knife

Stupid Cupid

Stupid Cupid

A Single Wild Blossom

Greta sweltered at the keyboard, trying to get one more article done. Just one more! Think! She worked full time plus at the factory at salary, meaning they didn’t pay overtime. She sold books from her mother’s outrageously huge library online and did copywriting for six Keysbusinesses. She also had to care for her increasingly senile mother and keep the house and property up, all hundred acres of it. In all her spare time, she tried writing articles to sell to magazines.

She put the laptop on standby and leaned back to wipe the sweat from her chin, under her nose and off the back of her neck. Though she felt guilty, she woke the computer up and opened her silly romance story. She knew it was plotless and didn’t care. This story came as close to holding the man of her dreams in her arms as she was likely to get.

He did not meet the ruggedly handsome stereotype. He appeared tall, pale with dark hair, and walked with easy, mindful grace. He proved strength did not required bulging muscles. He did not flaunt his intelligence or his advanced degree in some physical science.

Annoyed to find herself rereading this stuff again, she clicked her article on how the local town worked to support the Little Brown Bats that were having a hard time. Every time she went to laud the townsfolk for erecting a hundred gaily painted bat houses, her subversive mind veered over to why the bats were failing: Bulldozing the forests to sell off the timber and let a contractor build cheap houses. No snags, no natural bat houses. No forest with streams and life – no bounty of insects for food. What good would a million bat houses be when they nailed them up by heavily sprayed farms?

Single BlossomRicky had a fun sense of humor, witty, and he smiled often. He often simply touched her as he walked by. He never bought her an expensive, plastic shrouded bouquet of hothouse flowers; he would bring her a single wild blossom and smile with his blue-violet eyes.

Lawd, if she couldn’t get the damned article written, she should mow the grass. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and went to the front door. Heat shimmered above the car and the dog lay sprawled on her back in a scrap of shade. On second thought, she decided to keep her intended late evening appointment for that. A vision flashed before her and soon she had the bowl of rocky road cradled in her hands.

Ricky volunteered to make dinner and asked whether she preferred cheddar or Swiss in the soufflé. Swiss, sweetheart. He would use fresh eggs from their own little flock of Cochins. She scraped the last marshmallow from the bowl, remembering how some refugee predator from a cleared woodland had killed her four hens one at a time, one a week, never able to get the heavy birds over the inadequate fence. Ricky would put a fence over the top and fasten it well, he’d know how to do it right and get right on it.

A knock on the door made her jerk and her heart race. She stood and pulled her wet tank top from her body. On the front porch, the retreating brown van had left a box. She bought it in and unpacked her super tornado whirlwind fan. She plugged it in and plopped in front of it. She wiped the tears from her eyes.