Weekly Edition-Mid February Blues

This week I got some feedback on Embers and Flame and did some editing accordingly. Now, to get some more feedback from some more beta readers. Please feel free to let me know if you are interested in giving it a read. Anyway, I did a little work on Headphones, played with some ideas on a couple of other stories I've got percolating, and basically let the events of the last few days bog me down. Does writing rants on Facebook count towards my weekly goals? I don't know, but Grammarly says I wrote more words than I can account for on Google Docs, so at least there has been an offering of words!

How about for this week's excerpt I share the first page of the first (very rough) draft of Cut Shot? I'm thinking it's going to be my CampNaNo project:

Jebediah could feel the man’s gaze as if it was a physical thing. There was weight to it, a lowering of air pressure, a buzz behind his ears. He bent over the pool table and studied the balls, doing his best to not turn and stare back. If he was bent over more than he normally would when lining up a shot, curious if he would get a reaction, there was no one else to notice. Old Frank and Jim Tag were sitting at the other end of the bar, flirting with Margo. The bartender was thirty years younger than the two, but she laughed at their jokes, doing her best to up her tip. Hell, for all he knew, she might even have been honesty amused. He didn’t know her as well as he knew the two older men. They’d been friends of his dad's and regulars at the Shortstop since before he’d been legally old enough to drink and would probably still be there long after he was gone from this podunk town.

But his attention only wavered for a moment as he sank the 2 ball and then moved from the north end of the table to pick up the 5, his back no longer to the stranger. He wasn’t the kind of man that Jeb would normally accord a second look. He definitely had a type--tall, skinny, light headed--and this man was none of those things. The piercing gaze was enough to raise goose bumps on his forearms, making him past uncomfortable and his palms grew moist with sweat, to the point that he miscued the shot, sending the ball in a weak spin.

Shit. That was nothing short of embarrassing, especially after the guy pushed off from the stool that he was leaning on more than sitting, and placed a couple of quarters on the table. “Mind a game?” he asked, his voice smooth and a bit posh. His accent wasn’t local, but despite Jeb’s extensive traveling, he couldn’t quite place it. At least not after only three words. He didn’t say anything, just gave the man a sharp nod of his head and turned his attention back to the table. He only had the 5 and the 8 balls left, and with a nonchalance that he didn’t feel, he drove them both to their pockets and stood up, finally giving the man his full attention.

“Rack ‘em, then,” Jeb said. He leaned on his cue stick where it sat wide-ended on the floor, letting it hold his weight as he studied the too-clean-cut-to-be-hanging-out-in-a-dank-bar gentleman. A couple inches taller than his own unimpressive 5’7”, dark hair cut professionally short, movements confident but not cocky. And his hands, at least from where Jeb stood, looked soft and manicured. Someone who sat at a desk all day, if he were to guess. Maybe some slumming billionaire, here to sweep him off his feet. He almost snorted a laugh at his inner joke before giving a nod to shake the nonsense out of his head. He must have been past bored to pick up that book his sister had left at the house. Half-way through he’d given up, wondering what all the hype was about.

“What are we playing?” the man asked.

Okay, that was four more words and it confirmed he wasn’t from the Mid-west. Upper New York, maybe? “8 ball slop?” Jeb asked, curious if the man was familiar with the term.

“That’s fine,” he said as he walked around the table towards Jeb. “It’s been years since I’ve played, I'm sure I'm rusty. By the way, name’s Ian,” he said as he held out his hand.

“Jeb,” he replied. The handshake was firm, and just as Jeb had suspected, Ian’s hands were callous free.