Alec Trebane and the Toilet of Doom

Episode one-

It all started with evil Annabelle taking the last of the bacon, which was supposed to be mine. The argument was short, and Mom sided with Annabelle, so I snagged the last two pieces of toast and stuffed them in my mouth before the evil one could grab any. I would have stuck out my tongue, for good measure, but it was sort of encased in bread at the moment.

Back in my room, I reached for my backpack only to find that the contents had been scattered across the floor and Deep Dungeon VI (which I had stashed in my secret pouch) was missing.

"MOM!" Bread crumbs sprayed from my mouth, but I didn't care. Mom would make me vacuum after school, but it didn't matter. Little Jimmy, my brother and nemesis, had stolen my new game. His crib lay empty and there was no telling where the little demon had got to.

"MOM!"

"Stop yelling at me, Alec." Mom came up the stairs with a basket of laundry on her hip, completely unfazed by the tragedy at hand.

"Jimmy stole my game!"

At that moment, the little turd emerged from the bathroom, false smile in place so that Mom wouldn't know what he really was.

"I go potty," he said.

"Where's my game you little--"

"Alec," Mom warned.

I knew what she would say. Be nice to your brother. But she didn't understand what I had to deal with. "He took my game and wrecked my backpack. Why can't I have my own room, with a lock on the door?"

Mom ignored me and picked up the demon. And kissed him! Sure, that will teach him to be better behaved. His eyes darted toward me, gleaming with triumph.

"Did you take Alec's game, Jimmy?"

"No," Turd Boy answered. "It fell."

"Fell where?" I insisted.

"In the potty."

Horror gripped me as I rushed into the bathroom and looked down into the toilet. Sure enough, the black and silver square of my new game stared back up at me through the tainted water. Words failed me; I just stood there, gaping, fuming. Mom came up beside me and, about two seconds after I hoped she might reach down there and save my game said, "If you had cleaned this indoor-outhouse like I told you yesterday, it wouldn't look so bad."

Then she turned around and left me there.

"Wait," I cried, blinking back any evidence of tears. "How am I supposed to get it back?"

"You have fifteen minutes before the bus comes to figure it out."


... Will Alec brave the Pee-Pot? Can Deep Dungeon VI be saved? Tune in next time when our hero gets flushed.

Hello World

It was never my intention to leave off blogging forever, but demons sometimes get the better of folks when they least expect them. And then those folks must do nothing but sit on the couch and read unmentionable books for six months straight.

I'm still here and, more importantly, I'm still writing. There's a certain joy to be had in one's favored hobby, and I'm lucky enough to have enough of them --hobbies that is--that I should never get bored. (a very good theory, that) :) So far, this has been a year of goal setting and goal reaching for me. As soon as I'd crawled out of my personal PIT OF DESPAIR (cue creepy music), I determined to write another novel. In about three months. Which, if any of you are accustomed to writing will know is not such a difficult task. Sometimes.

And I reached it. Yay for me!

Naturally, I have other, less glamorous goals, but I won't bore you with the list. And obstacles, there were (are) many, but you don't want to hear about the gut-wrenching agony of those, or about leaking roofs and broken mowers, gremlin children and what-not. Suffice it to say that all those things exist and we'll leave it at that. In the mean time, I'm still bouncing on my cloud of anxiousness, waiting for the publishing rainbow to shine on me.

Wish me luck!

So, not only did I tuck another finished story under my belt, I also managed to get said story under the noses of a couple of agents. Whether that pans out any gold remains to be seen, but I can say that I've been checking my e-mail obsessively. Of course!