Sadie Jay

It seems the last few years, at the end of November and first of December, we get cold weather and snow. It feels very Christmasy, but it's too early. Come Christmas, it'll warm up and feel very much not Christmasy. Sigh.   This week's snippet is taken from my current WIP, Delicious . Strange things are happening at Grady's house, and Hanson keeps telling him it's just the house settling. Little spoiler—it's not! Told from Grady's POV: We stared at each other in silence, neither sure who was supposed to move or say something first, until the tension was so tangible, I could have strummed my fingers over it like guitar strings. “This is ridiculous,” I muttered as I closed the space between us. With my hand cupping the back of his head, I pulled him forward, crashing my lips into his. The kiss was short, but we were both panting when it ended. “Ready to go deghost my house?” “Deghost? Really?” “Yup. I’ve decided I have a ghost. Unless you can prove otherwise.”...

I'm at that stage in my editing where I do a "read aloud." I find it's a very effective way to find grammar errors, typos, and places that simply read rough. But I'm so slow at it! At the rate I'm going, it'll be another two weeks before I get through this. Maybe. I'd wanted to have this ready to publish back in October. At this rate, maybe I'll have it ready by next October!  This week's snippet is taken from my current WIP, Delicious . Grady returns home after spending a pleasant evening with Hanson to find all of his lights on. Hanson speculates they'd forgotten to lock the door, and some kids had come in, not realizing the house had a new owner. Grady accepts the explanation and gets ready for bed: Yawning, I glanced at the clock. Time had slipped by, and it was later than I realized. Jumping in the shower, I washed quickly and grabbed a towel. After wrapping it around my waist, I stepped to the sink to brush my teeth, but froze with my...

The week started out nice. There was sun. There was warmth. And now it's cold, it's gloomy, and we had snow flurries today. Can we not do this, please? I really need to move to a warmer climate! The sun through the window hit this basket of artificial fall leaves and made them glow!  This snippet from Headphones: Fall Out is a chapter opening that starts out descriptive with Headphones reflecting on the changes in her life since the first of the year. I wrote this ten years ago, but it feels very much like the weather we're having now!  The brittle leaves still hanging on the oak trees rattled around Headphones as the occasional gusts of wind blew her hair across her face. The trees were patchworks of fall colors–evergreens still wearing their green while some of the hardwoods were red and yellow, with many already naked and settled into their winter hibernation. It had been a damp day with thick fog rising with the dawn, and mist that turned into a light almost-drizzle. B...

My snippet this week comes from Headphones , a "vanity" project, I suppose. It was an online serial I wrote 10 years ago as a challenge to myself to finally finish something, and after, rewritten in book form. It's not polished, and kind of all over the place, but I still love the characters. Headphones was a character that came to me in high school, written in bits and pieces over 30 years before I put it all together. Originally, Scoey wasn't a queer character, but when Jay popped into my head in 2013, I knew they belonged together. Somehow, the story became less about Headphones, and more about Scoey and Jay.  The Headphones Trilogy One of the main settings of Headphones is the University bar that Scoey's brother, Richard, owns. This scene from Fall Out  takes place on Halloween night, and the crew are all in costume:      Somehow Scoey made it through the night, the crush of costumed partiers proof that Jay and Headphones were right about Halloween and wee...

 I'm leaving on vacation is just a few hours. We're taking a cruise out of New Orleans, and then spending a day being tourists in the city after we disembark. I'm both excited and nervous, which always happens before I leave on a trip. But it's good–I've needed a break! This week's snippet is from my WIP, Delicious . While Grady has spoken on the phone with the man refurbishing his house, this is the first time they've met in person. Naturally, Hanson embarrasses himself. Told from Hanson's POV:    “I’m Grady Martin. We’ve spoken on the phone.” He smiled as he took my hand. From a distance I would have thought he was in his mid-twenties, but close up I could see the lines forming around his eyes and mouth. They weren’t deep, as if he didn’t smile often. If that was true, it was a pity, because his smile was devastating.    I returned his smile. “We’ve more than spoken on the phone. You’ve basically been my sugar daddy for the last two months!”    ...

It was a rough week. My phone died, along with my oven. On the upside, I finished the first draft of Delicious ! (If you're interested in being a beta reader, check out my previous post.) It was supposed to be part of a series of fairy tale retellings, but I think we're just publishing on our own. I ended up with Hansel and Gretel, which was a challenge. How to retell a tale about sibling children without crossing a few lines? That's not my style. So, it's not really a retelling so much as "and then this happened" story. I never can stay within the set parameters!   There are strange noises in Grady's new house, but one night it becomes too much, and he shows up at Hanson's, still in his pajamas. Turns out, it was a refrigerator fan gone bad. (Or was it?!) Hanson fixes it and then teases Grady. Grady teases back. Told from Grady's POV:    “I’ll see you Monday,” Hanson said at the doorway. “Unless your ghost chases you into my bed again before then....