I had this long post about half-written whining about how my holidays were going to be all screwed up again this year (if you’ve been around a while, you may recall that my brother’s house burned down last Christmas Eve) because my other brother got a MRSA infection after his most recent knee replacement surgery. Then I got a text saying that he’d be able to leave the hospital tomorrow instead of having to stay there anywhere from two days to four weeks, like we’d thought as recently as yesterday.
So now I’m happy again, and less likely to whine at you about my life, which when you really look at it, is pretty damn awesome. I’ve been happily married for most of sixteen years. And the rest of the time she still puts up with me. I’ve got a great budding career as a writer that is going to let me quit my day job next year and chase a childhood dream. I have a home and two cats that tolerate me. I still have both parents, although who knows for how much longer. And I have great siblings, nieces and nephews.
So I’ve got it pretty good. And I won’t waste any of our time whining about my life when there are people out there who really need your help. So instead of feeling sorry for me, when there’s no decent reason, why don’t you poke around on the internet and do something good for somebody else?
And if you want to do something nice for me, buy a book and enter to win a Kindle Fire!
If you wanna guarantee delivery before Christmas, and you want signed books, Monday is pretty much the last day you have any hope of making that happen. So put in your order now!
I’ll be signing at the Charlotte ComiCon this Sunday, come on out and say hi!
Don’t forget that the Win a Kindle Fire contest ends Monday, so get your entries in!
One of my other sites, Red Dirt Review, has a new print and ebook out – check it out. Red Dirt Review is a literary magazine dedicated to bringing you the best in Southern-themed poetry, short stories and memoirs. And you can earn the same number of Kindle fire entries by buying the print or digital edition of that magazine as any of my other books!
And since ’tis the season, here’s my favorite Christmas song of all time, by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.
So in my initial review, I mentioned that I had a long flight coming up and that would be my test for the Kindle Fire and battery life. Well, I flew from Charlotte to Las Vegas last week and was perfectly content with the battery life on my Fire. I don’t know that it would have lasted the entire flight, but it certainly lasted the part of the flight I was awake for! I watched a couple of episodes of a TV show, and I was right that the smaller size with the stand-style case was a better size than the iPad for watching movies on a plane. For me, the iPhone is too small, but the iPad is too big to stand on its own when the dude in front of me leans the seat back. The Fire was perfect for that.
I turned off the wifi in Vegas, because I wasn’t places where the wifi was free, and I didn’t feel like paying for it, so my battery life was significantly longer for the rest of the trip. I think I charged the device once during the four-day trip, and then again the night before we flew to make sure I had a full charge on the plane.
I’m still carrying my iPad on trips for the time being, because of the larger storage capacity, but you can believe that as soon as someone comes along with a Fire 2 with removable SD card, I’m there. And I’m sure that will happen eventually, just like the camera. But I’m still really happy with my purchase, and don’t forget – I’m giving away two of them!
When John invited me to write a guest post about the genesis of my favorite character in my legal thriller, Irreparable Harm, my initial thought was to write about my protagonist, a tiny but fierce attorney named Sasha McCandless. After all, I like Sasha well enough that I’m writing a series about her! After further reflection, I decided not to write about Sasha after all; before I explain why, here’s a synopsis of the book:
Attorney Sasha McCandless is closing in on the prize after eight long years: she’s months away from being made partner at a prestigious law firm. All she has to do is keep her head down and her billable hours up. Then a plane operated by her client slams into the side of a mountain, killing everyone aboard. Sasha gears up to prepare a defense to the inevitable civil lawsuits.
She soon realizes the crash was no accident: a developer has created an application that can control a commercial plane’s onboard computer from a smartphone. Now it’s for sale to the highest bidder. Sasha joins forces with a federal air marshal who’s investigating the crash. As they race to prevent another disaster, people close to the matter start to die. And she’s next on the list.
Sasha will need to rely on her legal training and her Krav Maga training in equal measure to find and stop a madman before he strikes again.
She sounds pretty awesome, right? And she is. But, I think my favorite character in this first book in the series is Sasha’s boss and mentor, Noah Peterson. Noah is a brilliant lawyer. He’s a senior partner in a major law firm with management responsibility, a solid client list, power, and prestige. He has a beautiful wife and a lovely home. He’s also an alcoholic, workaholic absent husband who has just realized he’s sacrificed his personal life for his professional life.
Noah’s my favorite character because he’s a cautionary tale. I was once on the road to becoming him; but, in 2009, my husband (also an attorney) and I left our large, international law firms in Washington, D.C., and moved to a small town in Pennsylvania. We opened up our very own teeny tiny two-person law office. Now, instead of working seventy-plus hours a week, I can play with our three young children and work on my novels, as well as practice law.
Irreparable Harm isn’t intended to be an indictment of big law firm life or an invitation to examine one’s choices. It’s a legal thriller, meant to provide page-turning entertainment. But, I have heard from multiple readers who’ve said they were more concerned that Sasha avoid Noah’s fate than that she stop the bad guys!
I can’t reveal how things ultimately work out for Noah without giving away some important plot points, but I can say he serves as a reminder to me of why I am where I am, doing what I’m doing, and he seems to resonate with a large cross-section of my readers, too.
Melissa Miller is a practicing attorney who lives in south Central Pennsylvania with her husband and three young children. She is hard at work on the next book in the Sasha McCandless legal thriller series. For more information about Melissa F. Miller and her books, please visit her website at www.melissafmiller.com. To buy Irreparable Harm, please visit one of the following retailers:
If you came here to read about fantasy literature and want to keep the political views of your authors separate from that, you should skip this post. Also if repeated uses of profanity offend you, you should go visit someplace else for a little while.
Because I’m pissed, and this is my website, so I get to say whatever the fuck I want while I’m here. I had this whole piece mostly written about my gay friends and the pain they’ve been through just for being gay and how upsetting it is to me that gay rights is still something that we even question in this country. I had a whole reasoned response to Rick Perry’s asinine campaign ad about the “war on religion” and gays in the military, but that went out the window this morning.
Because I read this. Go ahead, click the link. I’ll wait.If you want to skip my diatribe and do something about it, just scroll to the bottom. I get a little bitchy for the next few paragraphs. But I think I mentioned that I was pissed off.
Short answer, a teen in Tennessee killed himself this week because his classmates made his life miserable over being gay. Honestly, the article doesn’t say whether or not Jacob Rogers was gay, and it doesn’t matter. Even is he was straight, somebody decided he was a fag, so they made his life a living hell. They forced him to drop out of school, and eventually they convinced him that his life wasn’t worth living.
Of course he was wrong. We all know that. At least, those of us who have survived the hormonal maelstrom that is high school (and a goodly chunk of college) know that. But a seventeen-year-old boy in the backwoods of Tennessee doesn’t know that. And now we’ll never know what he would have grown up to be. He might have been a doctor, lawyer, actor, athlete, factory worker, father, husband or minister.
But now he won’t. Because he’s dead. Because he decided that it hurt too much to keep going. Because one night, he forgot that It Gets Better. Or maybe he didn’t know about the Trevor Project. Or maybe he just didn’t believe that it would get better. Maybe he looked around and saw people campaigning for President that want to keep him be a second-class citizen, despite the history our nation has of establishing freedoms, not taking them away. Maybe he heard one time too many that he was going to Hell for his sexuality, despite there being NO POINT IN THE GOSPEL where Jesus condemns homosexuality. NONE. Not one.
So yeah, I posted on Facebook that I think Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann should pay for this boy’s funeral. Because I do believe that they indirectly contributed to his death. Their rhetoric of hatred and fear made it all right for people to condemn this child. Their rhetoric contributed to the climate of fear that he had to live in, that ultimately killed him. Because when you work to remove basic human rights from a group of people, you’re actively working to dehumanize those people. And when you take away someone’s humanity, you can do whatever you want to them. That’s what this debate has morphed into. It’s not about marriage, an institution that obviously has no fucking sanctity given the enormous divorce rate in our country. It’s not about family values, which are as different from family to family as shoe sizes. It’s just another fucking sound bite to pigeonhole a section of the electorate.
Until somebody ends up dead. Again.
Here’s your part. And mine. There are several organizations that work very hard to keep shit like this from happening, and a couple of them I support with all my heart. And my wallet. This year for Christmas, I’ll be supporting The Trevor Project and The It Gets Better Project. Both of these are initiatives I believe in very strongly, and I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I’ll be donating to each of these charities, and for every $1 that you donate, I’ll give you one entry to win one of the two Kindle Fires that I’m giving away this month. Just email me a copy of your donation receipt, and you’ll be entered into the drawing. Email me at Johnhartness AT gmail DOT com. And for a $30 donation to It Gets Better, they’ll send you a t-shirt and you’ll get a bunch of entries.
Don’t let this continue. Work to fight hatred and prejudice in your community. Give to these two charities to help on a national level. Save a kid. You might have been them once.
And home for a while, this time. I got back from Vegas a few dollars lighter, but with some great times and great memories, as always. A bunch of my friends ran the marathon, and I went down to cheer them on. I drank a little, but less than on most trips. I lost some cash, but less than on a lot of trips. I spent a lot of time with Suzy just chilling out, and that was cool, especially since we coupled this trip with our 16th wedding anniversary. So for an anniversary gift I got her a pedicure and foot massage at the hotel spa, which she loved.
December’s looking like a good writing month – I’ve got a couple of short stories I want to work on, plus a couple of novels that I think I can make significant progress on if I focus. I don’t have much out of town travel planned, so I should have little or no trouble getting dialed in to those projects. In Atlanta next week, then home the rest of the month, and I’m taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off to write, so that gives me plenty of time.
And play Skyrim, which is awesome! Definitely game of the year material. I knew a little better what I was getting into with this game than I did with Morrowind, so I’m having a lot more fun this time around. Still low level right now, but I can definitely see at least a hundred hours of gameplay in this one. I’ll catch up with you guys a little more thoroughly later, but for now it’s time for some lunch.
If you know where this picture comes from, then you’re either a degenerate gambler or you’ve done waaaayyyyy too many drugs. Or both. In any case, you might recognize the Chihuly sculpture that lives in the lobby of the Bellagio. Or maybe not. But if you’re looking for me for most of the next week, I’ll be closer to that sculpture than I will to any of my normal haunts. I’m heading to Vegas for my annual pilgrimage to the city of sin to hang with some of my best friends that I don’t see nearly often enough.
I started making this trek in December of 2005, and haven’t missed a year. Next year looks a little cloudy because of my impending self-employed status, but something tells me all the poop will miraculously form into a group at the right time and I’ll be there anyway. In those six years we’ve all laughed, cried, drank, overindulged, gambled and won, gambled and lost, married, divorced, lost and found loved ones and generally lived life, gotten older, not a damn bit wiser, and richer for the friendships we’ve made. This is a special group of people I’m privileged to be part of, and this weekend is just like Merlefest for me, only completely different. It’s going home. Only a different home.
Where Merlefest is a chill weekend punctuated by great music and great friends, this blogger gathering in Las Vegas is a frenetic maelstrom of drunken hijinks, crazy prop bets, gambling on anything that moves (or doesn’t) and great meals punctuated by the magical quiet moments among the storm where you connect with someone you don’t really know, but know you should. It’s less about the poker for me nowadays, and a lot more about hanging with my friends. And I can’t wait.
If you’re anywhere near Vegas, this would be the weekend to come out and hang. I’ll be at the Sherwood Forest Bar in the Excalibur tomorrow night starting around 8-9PM. Friday I’ll be at The Pub at Monte Carlo in the late afternoon/early evening drinking and munching with buds. Then Friday night we move to the Aria poker room for mixed game goodness. Saturday we have a private tournament at noon, then I’m wide open after that. Hopefully I’ll run a little better than I did last year, but I’m not holding my breath :). My poker is teh rusty. No real plans so far for Sunday, but I’ll be betting on some football and watching some games. Sunday night I have a bunch of friends running a half marathon, so I’ll be at the finish line cheering them on. Then Monday we come home, and Tuesday I detox. So you kids behave while I’m gone, and maybe I’ll even hook you up with a scheduled post or two.
Two weeks ago tomorrow, I got my Kindle Fire. Now I’m that guy, the guy that has the newest toys, so it surprises no one that I got my Kindle Fire on release day. Since I’ve usually got an angle or two working, it also surprised none of my friends that I used a bunch of Amex points to get it for $40 with case. So I was pretty happy with it, and since I’ve been Amazon Prime for years, I took full advantage of the two-day shipping deal.So here comes my review, especially since I’ll be giving one away soon!
Two weeks later, here are my thoughts in a nutshell – super device, almost but not quite an iPad killer for me, needs better battery life. I’ve already sold off my old Kindle to a friend of mine because I just don’t see the use of having three devices to read on (technically four, since I do still read on my phone once in a while).
But let’s look at the things it does well, then we’ll talk about the issues.
Pro – Great e-reader. It syncs seamlessly to my Amazon library, and the interface is very easy to use. It’s a swipe page-turn, just like the iPad (and I assume the new Kindle Touch), so I was already used to that. I can’t say how much I love the library view of bookcovers instead of the old listing of books on my greyscale Kindle. It’s a beautiful display, and it lets those of us that care about book covers appreciate the covers to the books we buy.
Pro – Video is awesome – I got it with a case, and for video I think it would be nigh-useless without it. The case flips around to make it a stand so I can watch TV or movies without holding it, and that’s a good thing. The stand is a little cheesy, but I’m sure that better cases will come along.
Pro – sound is better than iPad. The internal speakers are better than the iPad, which makes it good to play music for a small room. The iPad just doesn’t have enough horsepower to fill even a small room and sound good, so this is a definite winner.
Pro/Con – Size – the 7″ tablet form factor is just better for a lot of things, including reading, movies and transport. Even with the iPad’s small form factor I’ve found it difficult to find a great position to watch movies on airplanes. The space between seats is just too damn small nowadays. I’m headed to Las Vegas on Thursday and am looking forward to seeing how the smaller device does, but I think it will be a better fit. But on the other hand, for some things you want the bigger screen. The Autodesk Sketch app is awesome for the iPad, but I don’t see it being very useful on the smaller screen. For those things that you want something the size of a sheet of paper to do, the iPad is the tool. For things that half a sheet of paper is a better size, then you use the Fire.
Con – Battery life – this is a big deal. I’ve yet to be able to read, surf and listen to music all day without having to recharge. I’ve been kind of a heavy user the past few days, because I’ve been home for the holidays, but I really wonder if the thing will last a four-hour plane ride. And that’s the acid test for me. I need a device that can last from Charlotte to Las Vegas and keep me entertained, dammit! I make that trip two to five times every year, and I want my toys to be able to hang for the whole trip.
Cons – Charger – the transformer is cheesy. I know, it’s a tiny thing, but the power adapter on the cheap-ass Kindle with Special Offers I bought a few months ago works as a power adapter AND disconnects to become a USB sync cable. The fact that this device can’t do the same sucks. I have to scrounge around and buy another USB adaptor, because the connector that fits the Kindle fits nothing else I own, so that’s a pain in the ass.
But those are the only two issues I’m having, and they’re not huge. I think for 95% of users, the Fire will be brilliant. And it’s almost brilliant for me. I can honestly say that in the two weeks I’ve had it, I’ve picked up my iPad less than half a dozen times, and my old Kindle not at all. The backlit display doesn’t bug me, and I read in low light much more often than I read in bright, glare-y situations, so that also is not a major issues to me. I like the compact size a lot, and the screen is awesome. I wish it had 2-3 times as much memory, but I admittedly tend to carry too much data. I wish it were a little lighter weight, but then I don’t think it could do the things it does.
The other pesky things to me are the lack of a manual volume button and no page turn buttons. I really liked the page turn buttons on the Kindle. And making two motions to get the volume control to pop up is a pain in the butt.
So there are my good and bad thoughts on the Kindle Fire, overall I love the device. And I think when you factor in the $200 price tag, it becomes a whole bag of awesome.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Here’s a little something I tossed together for your enjoyment!
Turkey Day Debacle
By John G. Hartness
I knew I was in trouble when I stepped into the grocery store. I looked over at Abby and said, in all sincerity “Remind what people eat on Thanksgiving again?”
“Well, turkey for starters” was the snotty reply from my shopping partner, a twenty-two year old newly turned vampire with a body to die for (if I wasn’t already dead) and an attitude to slit your wrists over.
“I remember the turkey, smartass. What else?”
“Jeez, Jimmy, how long have you been dead again? There’s stuffing, ham, cranberry juice, rice, gravy, biscuits, casseroles, desserts, Oh my God, the desserts! I’d almost forgotten the desserts!” She was leaning on the shopping cart writhing an a not-unpleasant way that was probably a lot more distracting to the live patrons of the store than it was to me.
“Stop that, you’re scaring the mortals.” I shouldered her aside and took the cart, heading towards the back of the store and the first mission – turkey.
“I was not!” Abby protested, but fell into step beside me. “Are you sure we can’t eat? Not even just a little pumpkin pie?”
“It’s not a good idea.” I remembered my first meal after turning, how everything tasted like sawdust and then upset my delicate digestive system for days. Even though our new place had multiple bathrooms, I didn’t wish that kind of suffering on anyone, dead or alive.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen? I’m already dead, after all!” So I told her, in extreme graphic detail, the worst that could happen. She turned even paler than normal, then shifted to a lovely shade of green before running into the restroom at the back of the store.
I parked the cart at the meat department and walked down the aisle looking at the different flavors of pre-cooked turkeys available for purchase. Cajun turkeys, smoked turkeys, spiced turkeys and Honeybaked Ham turkeys. The last one confused me a little. I wasn’t sure if it was a ham-flavored turkey, a turkey-flavored ham, or just a normal turkey-flavored turkey made by Honeybaked Ham people. Regardless I picked up the smallest turkey-style turkey that I could find. After all, only three of our six-person dinner party could actually eat food, so it’s not like Greg and I would be making a lot of turkey and O-Negative sandwiches.
By the time I’d picked up the cranberry sauce, Abby was back beside me, glaring at me every now and then for making her go barf. I was just pleased to share the misery. We picked out the rest of the supplies for our feast in relative silence, then I stopped dead in the middle of the dairy department.
“What now?” Abby asked, giving me a petulant look that she had perfected in her life as an adorable college coed. That life had come crashing to an end a few months ago at the hands of a visiting vampire, and now Abby was as (un)dead as I was. Her last confrontation with her maker didn’t turn out so well for the older vamp, so I kept the volatile young woman at arm’s length when she started tossing around nasty looks.
“Do you know if the stove works?”
“Yes. I checked it before we left tonight.”
“Do we have any pots and pans?”
“God, you’re really bad at this, aren’t you?”
“Cut me a little slack, Abby, I’ve been dead almost as long as I was alive, and I wasn’t exactly the most responsible person even when I was still human.” She must have seen something in my face, because she let that one slide. I’m not usually an angsty vampire, but sometimes, holidays in particular, it kinda sucks being dead and having abandoned most of the people that knew you when you were alive. That’s why this dinner was so important – there would be more people there than just me & Greg for the first time in a bunch of years. Sabrina Law, my almost-on-my-luckiest-day girlfriend and police detective with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and Father Mike Maloney, our best childhood friend, were joining Greg, Abby and I for dinner. We’d invited Bobby, our blood vendor from the morgue, but he was spending time with his family, all of whom were alive and unlikely to look upon him as an appetizer.
Abby nodded silently and took over cart-pushing duties while I fretted over the last few things on the list. Did I want to make fresh cranberry sauce or canned? After a brief but heated debate with Abby, I settled on canned. There’s just something a little charming about the gelatinous mass of cranberry sauce jiggling on a plate, still sporting the indentions from the side of the can. We finished up the last remnants of the shopping and headed to the front of the store. It was pretty close to deserted, there not being many people loading up on canned goods and milk at four AM the night before Thanksgiving. But when you’re the living dead you have certain restrictions on your movement that humans don’t have, and you end up becoming familiar with all sorts of places at all sorts of atypical times.
Even for the middle of the night, the front of the store was sparsely manned. I only saw one cashier working, no bagboys, and one pudgy twenty-something assistant manager leaning on the Customer Service counter. He had his phone in his hands and sported the studious look of a man very intent on an epic Angry Birds session. I walked over to the cashier and started unloading the cart onto the conveyor belt. I looked over the items and glanced back at Abby.
“I don’t think Hershey bars were on the list.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. These are not the candy bars you are looking for.”
“I’m not looking for any candy bars, and yet here they are. And don’t try to Jedi mind trick me. You know you can’t eat those, right?” She pouted a little, and I heard a little hmph from the cashier.
I looked at her and caught her giving me the kind of look that female grad students give to clueless frat boys right before they launch into a lecture on feminism. I raised my hand to her before she could start and jerked a thumb back at Abby. “Lactose intolerant. If she eats milk chocolate she farts like a basset hound. It’s amazing. Last time she ate a bowl of ice cream she blow out three windows in the kitchen.”
Abby threw a can of peas at my head, but I heard them moving through the air and caught them before I got a concussion. I put the last of our groceries on the belt and asked for plastic bags, pulling out a wad of cash that my dinner entree had been carrying around. I mentioned that on this holiday I was particularly thankful for muggers with lots of cash and not too much crystal meth in their bloodstream. Meth does nasty things to vampire teeth, too, so I was glad the thug I’d had for dinner was pretty straight-edge.
I saw the cashier’s eyes go wide a second before I heard the shotgun go off, so I had just enough time to reach over the counter and knock her to the ground when the gun went off. I ducked between the aisles and reached into my boot for my Ruger LCP. Which I immediately remembered was sitting on my bedside table, because what could happen, it’s a ten-minute trip to the grocery store in the middle of the night. I’m sometimes not the sharpest fang in the jaw, okay?
“Are you packing?” I hissed back at Abby.
“No, I didn’t think I’d need a gun in the produce section. You?”
“No, I picked today to give up on my general pessimism towards the human race.”
“Great timing.”
“Yeah, right. Can you check on the cashier? I kinda knocked her down a little.”
“A little?” Came a third, and indignant, voice. “You shoved me into the middle of next week. You’re strong for a skinny little dork!” I looked around and saw the cashier’s head poking out of the end of the aisle.
“Thanks, I think.” I replied dryly. “You wanna get back under cover before or after you get shot?” Her head snapped back behind the conveyer belt, and I glanced back at Abby. “Keep her alive.” I whispered, then I stood up.
The sound of shell racking into the chamber of a twelve-gauge shotgun is unmistakable, and that’s the first thing I heard when I stood up. Much to my chagrin, the sound was much closer than I had expected. Therefore, so was the gun. I looked over about ten feet from the end of my aisle and there stood our robber du jour. He looked pretty comfortable with the shotgun, but didn’t look like he’d robbed many grocery stores. He looked more like he’d been out hunting for his Thanksgiving turkey the old-fashioned way and decided to knock over a Piggly Wiggly on the way home.
“Hey.” I said, holding my hands out where he could see I was unarmed.
“Hey.” He said back, pointing the shotgun at my head. I knew from recent experience that a well-placed load of buckshot could in fact kill a vampire, because it can blow a head clean off a body, thus counting for decapitation. So I didn’t want to do anything that would end up with me dead. Um, deader. Or really dead. You get the idea.
“Can I help you with something?” I started moving slowly towards him, trying to keep my body between his line of sight and where Abby was hiding, and hopefully coming up with a better plan than the one I was currently exercising.
“Get me the money from the cash register! And the safe!” He ended each sentence with a jab in my general direction of the shotgun. I made my way to the register and looked for a NO SALE button. No luck.
“How do I open this thing?” I whispered to the cashier, who was curled up behind my knees.
“You need a manager’s keys.” I looked around, but the fat manager kid was nowhere to be seen.
“We’ve got a little problem there,” I said to the man with the gun. “You see, it takes a manager’s keys to open the register, and I’m not a manager. In fact, I don’t even work here.” I chuckled a little, giving the whole thing my best we’ll laugh at this later vibe, but he didn’t laugh along with me.
He aimed the shotgun straight at me and gave me a cold look. “Then you better find a manager real fast, or I’m going to spread pieces of you all over the front of this store.” Bingo. As soon as he made eye contact, I locked gazes with him and started pouring mojo into him.
I looked at him confidently and said “You do not want to hurt anyone. Put the gun down and lie down on your stomach.”
He looked at me like I was crazy and replied “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but if I don’t get some money in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to shoot you in the face.” Crap. Either my mojo was on the fritz, or Greg’s latest theory was right – that mojo didn’t work when the subject was under a big load of adrenaline. Or he was one of the rare people my mojo just didn’t work on, like Sabrina. But the adrenaline thing made more sense.
I held up my hands and started toward him, slowly. “Okay, but the last place I saw the manager was over at Customer Service. He’s probably run halfway to Charleston by now, but if he dropped his keys, they’ll be back there.”
He waved the shotgun towards the counter. “Go get ‘em.”
I never took my eyes off him as I made my way to the counter, trying to keep the counter and Abby in my peripheral vision the whole time. It worked like most things in my life, which is to say not at all, because I tripped over a buggy and went ass over teakettle about eight feet from the Customer Service desk. I went down in a gangly tangle of spiky hair, black jeans and polished chrome, making enough noise to raise the dead. If I wasn’t already risen.
Abby, being the smarter of our duo, took the diversion as an opportunity and sprang up from her hiding spot in the checkout aisle and chucked a can of cranberry sauce at Shotgun Guy’s head. He turned back to her just in time to get a shot off before the can caught him right between the eyes and sent him reeling to the floor. Abby jumped for the sky and the shotgun blast passed harmlessly under her. Well, harmless to her. A bunch of magazines about Demi and Ashton’s divorce and the Dancing with the Stars finale got blown to shreds, and her box of Hershey bars was pretty well destroyed.
I untangled myself from the shopping cart and walked over to the prone robber. I kicked the shotgun away from him and searched him for any sign of another weapon. Seeing her was clear, I tied his hand behind his back with his own shoelaces and mojo’d the manager kid into thinking the cashier had taken him down with no help from anyone. Abby bespelled her into thinking the same thing, and then erased our transaction from the register. I blew the surveillance tapes to bits with the shotgun, loaded the groceries into the buggy, and headed towards the car.
“Abby, did we just steal our Thanksgiving dinner?” I asked as I put the last bag in the trunk.
“Well, you can look at it two ways. One, you were going to pay for it with stolen money in the first place. Or two, it was our just reward for a good deed. But yeah, if you wanna be honest about it, we did.”
“I think your moral compass points north less often than mine does.”
“Says the soulless undead creature of the night with the priest best friend and a cop girlfriend. You’re a CW show waiting to happen, so don’t give me any crap, pal.” I slid behind the wheel and drove us home in silence, deciding that sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor.
*****
The next night about eight, after everyone laughed their way through the story of our shopping trip and Greg hacked the NFL network to get the game, we all settled in for dinner. Greg, Abby and I had glasses full of nice, thick blood, while Mike and Sabrina had plates loaded down with the grub we’d all spent much of the early evening preparing. It had been a good night, nobody new was dead, Sabrina had brought her cousin Stephen and his husband Alex to the party, and I stood to propose a toast.
“Tonight, I’m thankful for all of you. For old friends and new, you guys are the reason I get up every night to do what I do. You all make my world a better place, and I thank you for it.” A chorus of “hear, hear” and “you’re such a dork” rose from my friends, and I sat down to drink while they enjoyed dinner.
Sabrina suddenly grabbed her jaw and yelped. “Ow!” She spit something hard out into her plate, and Abby and I shared a look as a stray piece of birdshot plinked off of Sabrina’s plate. Then we all just looked at each other and laughed.
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