Updates and a Sneaky Peaky.

Before the start of the last book in the Devil In The Waters series, let’s reflect for a moment and appreciate that we’ve made it this far. The eleven Devil In The Waters books comprise an unfinished manuscript clocking in presently at 1,557 pages (Times New Roman, 12pt, double-spaced), with a whopping word count of 407,080. There are gray areas in the story for me, places where I don’t remember why I was doing what I was doing, but I know what’s happening as we reach the final stretch here.

The twelfth book is the last book, but I don’t know how long it will be. 30k? 40k? 70? 150? Another 407,080? I’m not sure how many words it will take me, but I know where it’s going and I’m content. That Hyun stretch was horrible, so hopefully these pages will fly much faster. Right now I’m bouncing around in the opening chapters, dancing from scene to scene and back again, but soon I’ll be ready to release the finished first chapter. I remember when I wrote the end of Cherry Blossoms, I had written a bunch of the last book before the release of the second last book. I feel that’s where I’m at now. I don’t want to start releasing too soon because some great ideas are still arriving as I lay my sleepy head on my bedtime pillow and drift toward nebulous slumberland. I had some breakthroughs the last two nights and I don’t want to miss opportunities to set them up. I’m very excited about this last book. I think I’ll be ready to post chapter one tomorrow.

For tonight, allow me to entertain you with a story I’m working on for later. I will have to sneak a full-length novel in between the end of DITW and the start of the last Summer Swap book. Let’s just say the sales of “Immaculate Conception” have been lackluster. That’s the whole point of this Patreon though, so no worries! It’s expected, and I thank my lucky stars I have your support to get through such massive endeavors as a 407k+ word epic. I’m slipping this next novel in so I can pay my bills, but I can tell you already: it’s going to be a real good one. Very hot, very emotional, lots of angst in new and novel presentations. Very real.

So with no further ado, here's the first look at Chelo Bastias and Casper O'Flannigan. A third player will later be named. 

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Chelo found Casper waiting at their usual spot, sitting beside the bathing Bathsheba. He hadn’t noticed her arrive, arm draped over the back of the bauhaus couch in black leather, that rakish face turned up to study the over three-hundred year old painting of Bathsheba, Casper admiring the sable-brush work of a painter whose name she’d forgotten. Two-forty-five on a hectic Tuesday afternoon, two days into a killer workweek and about four hours before her shift was over at the medical center, when she could finally go home and hide from her fears under her duvet. Her all-white Air Forces squeaked and squished on the museum’s polished parquet floor, her ID card swaying on her scrubs.

Casper caught her coming through the gallery now—how could he not, her dressed head to toe in sky blue and these darn squeaking shoes?—and he tossed up a hand in a cool wave before rising to greet her.

“Chelo, baby,” he groaned with honest appreciation, embracing her, “how’s me girl been?”

She put her arms around him, his leather jacket creaking in her clutch. It felt good to hug her best friend, even if he smelled like cigarettes and motorcycles. “Same crap, different toilet,” she lamented. They held the hug for a while, and when he let her go, sitting again, she swished around to locate the name of the artist who’d painted “David and Bathsheba,” stooping to read it off the printed card mounted beside the five-foot tall canvas. Casper finger-flicked her butt cheek, saying, “What the hell are you doing?”

She jumped away from the snap on her ass and moved around Casper’s knees and the low coffee table to take the spot beside him on the leather couch for two, coddling her injured butt cheek. “I couldn’t remember the painter dude’s name,” she told him, leaning forward to collect the honey-vanilla latte he’d picked up for her at the roastery around the corner. She breathed in the aromatic steam, and murmured, “Ooh, they put a little pumpkin spice in too, this time of year.”

“Not a dude, but a dudette,” Casper said, shooting a thumb at the painting. “Good old Artemisia Gentileschi. And it’s very rude to stick that arse of yours in me face when I’ve been waiting here for you for almost fifteen minutes.” He eyed her up and down, the two of them sitting close.

“I’m on time,” she said. “I’m not late.”

“Still doesn’t change how it’s rude to do it.”

“Well, don’t worry, you taught me a lesson.”

“Flickin’ it? It was me politest response.”

“You can rationalize anything, can’t you?”

He lay a hand on his chest. “I can only try, the rest is up to you, love. But I’ve been getting away with it for years, so...” He shrugged and smiled smugly to one side.

She cocked her head and showed him a please-spare-me expression. Casper O’Flannigan had been “getting away with it” for years. Irish accent, icy-blue eyes, charming, handsome, six-two, and the unmitigated definition of a rogue. It had been a real spectacle to witness, being best friends with about the hottest guy on the OSU campus, observing the way some of the most beautiful girls she’d ever seen turned to jelly when Casper O’Flannigan entered a room.

And here they were, two years passed from their last days of college together, still hanging out. Casper’s college days weren’t done yet, though; he was doing his Master’s and teaching art history part time at Ohio Dominican.

Casper smiled and sipped his coffee at the same time, his brew a black pour-over. He aimed a middle finger at Bathsheba. “I ever tell you about our lady Miss Artemisia?”

Chelo sipped and people-watched, patrons of the Columbus Museum of Art shuffling from painting to painting in the quiet ambience of the gallery, pale November sunlight filtering in through opaque ceiling panels, halogen spots pointing at the artwork. “No, I don’t think so. What about her?”

Casper leaned close and bumped his shoulder to hers. “Real episode of Dateline. I fear spilling some of the more salacious details and have one of these nearby art snobs overhear it.”

“It’s that bad?”

Casper turned his blue eyes up to the lit ceiling, thinking about how to phrase it. “It’s like a Baroque Shakespearian true-crime.”

Chelo hummed in her throat. “I love true-crime.”

Casper shook out his left arm and checked his vintage watch below the hem of his jacket sleeve. “Have dinner wi’ me this weekend and I’ll tell you all about Artemisia then. We don’t have much time today, and you and I have more pressing matters.”

“Yeah, okay, we’ll have dinner. Good. . . . So what’s been happening with you?”

“Chelo,” he said in grave reminding, showing her his watch again. They had less than fifteen minutes together.

“I haven’t talked to you in a week,” she said, ignoring him. “Are you seeing anybody?”

Casper stared at her, perplexed, like he wouldn’t engage with her quest for distraction. But then his shoulders slumped and he said, “I’ve sworn off ‘em.”

“Girls?”

“Aye, I’m going to hafta start looking at the fellas.”

“Or you could take it easy for a while. Maybe take a break?”

He nodded and sighed with theatrical charm. “I suppose you’re right. Me heart wouldn’t be in it, anyway.”

She offered: “It’s not fair to the other guy. You don’t want to be a bisexual heartbreaker.”

“No,” he agreed, “they’ll soon be putting me picture up at the post office: beware this man.”

“You don’t want that,” she said consolingly, patting his leather-clad forearm.

“The life of crime’s not for me, Chelo.”

She laughed and continued to pat his arm, surmising him and saying, “I think you might be good at it.”

“Crime? If you treat anything like a real job, I suppose you get good at it. . . . But here now”—he slashed a hand through the air as if to cut through her obfuscation and get back on track—“it’s not me we’re here for. We’re here for you and—”

“I know, I know,” Chelo said, retreating to her side of the couch. She held the warm to-go cup to her chest and stared at the empty identical couch on the opposite side of the low table. “Me and Christian.”

“You’re brother’s coming to Thanksgiving dinner.”

“That he is, Casper,” Chelo said, hooking one leg over the other, foot bobbing, “that he is.”

Casper stared at the side of her head and when she didn’t turn, he said, “I’m going to be there with you.”

Now she regarded him. Even though she’d known him a long time, sometimes, when she least expected it, Casper’s masculine beauty could capture her. They weren’t baby-faced college kids anymore, and Casper was a year older than her. He was changing, his face firmer and stubbly jawline sharper, his eyes taking an even more confident look. Or maybe just as confident but a little less cocky. She patted his chin with the backs of her fingers and he closed his eyes and scrunched his nose up. “I’m glad you’ll be there,” she said.

“I’m really just going for your mother’s sangria.”

She put her hands in her lap. “Don’t make her drink too much this year, please.”

“You stay out of your mother’s and my business, young lady.”

They both chuckled and stared at their coffees for a moment, and then Casper said, “It’s good that Christian’s coming to dinner. I mean, don’t you think? It’s progress.”

“It’s going to be awful,” she said on a slow exhale, picturing herself sitting at the Thanksgiving table with her family and the brother she sent to state prison staring at her over a roasted turkey with the legs trussed up. Christian hated her.

“If it was really awful, don’t you think Christian wouldn’t even come?”

“He doesn’t hate Mom. He doesn’t hate Dad. He doesn’t hate Michael or Rosa. . . . Christian’s coming for them. It’s me who should skip Thanksgiving, maybe.”

Casper touched her hair with a fingertip, pushing it behind her ear. “Would you be offended if I went without you?”

She laughed and shot him a look. “You’re such an idiot.”

He smiled warmly. “What if you talked to Christian before then?”

“He wouldn’t see me when I went to visit him at Belmont, why would he take my calls now?”

“Have you tried calling?”

She pursed her lips, considering it, and, after a moment, she admitted, “I’m way too afraid.”

Casper leaned his head forward to catch her eye. “You want me to call him for you?” Their gazes stayed connected.

He really would call her brother if she wanted, and there was a gargantuan and glowing supportive warmth having someone like Casper in your life. There were times over the last few years where she thought it was unfortunate how nothing had ever happened between her and Casper, but then there were moments like this when she saw him at his best, and realized how terrible it would be if they’d dated. She’d be one of those cast-offs in Casper’s rear-view mirror, strewn on the road behind him with a broken heart, one of the many lovestruck victims in his wild dating spree who’d later called on the authorities to pin up his photo in the post office as a warning: Have you seen this handsome man? Consider him armed and dangerous and do not approach.

She patted his cheek and let her hand stay there on his hard and stubbly jaw. “You’re a peach, Casper. But no, this is my problem and I’m going to deal with it, even if it means taking an extra shift so I just can’t make it to Thanksgiving dinner.”

Casper gave her a stern warning: “Don’t you dare.”

They both laughed at his inferred meaning: he needed the family time more than she did. Casper’s family was all the way back home in Ireland, a pretty green place she’d only seen pictures of, but loved its name: Waterford. Casper was a foreign visa student whose family had historical ties to the area, though those ties had been severed long ago, and no O’Flannigans remained in the Columbus, Ohio region. Hopeless Romantic he was, Casper loved the idea of traveling abroad to study his passion in a place where his ancestors had some hand in forging.

“Chelo, I’m sorry to say, it’s time—” His phone buzzed in his jacket pocket and he stalled for a second before ignoring it and continuing without ever taking his eyes off hers. “Time for you to face your brother, and if he rejects you, he’s a fool. He’d be the one who’s wrong. I’ll know it, your parents’ll know it. Michael and Rosa, too. You did the right thing with Christian. You need to change your thinking on it. This whole assumption of the world’s burdens on those wee shoulders of yours is an unnecessary thing for a young woman who has so much before her.”

“Pssh. Like what?”

“I heard you’re having dinner with a lovely Irishman this weekend. Can you believe how lucky you are? I mean what more did you need? Don’t get greedy now.” Casper’s phone buzzed again and this time he reached into his pocket to retrieve it.

She could tell by the look on his face it wasn’t good news. Then he scowled and muttered, “Oh, shit.”