Home to the Brazos Giveaway, December 18
Here's the beginning of this novel, set in Palo Pinto County, Texas:
Chapter 1
He could feel her lips on his, her mouth covering his
face with hot wet kisses. As he touched her, he realized she
hadn’t taken off her coat, and it was coarse and furry to his
touch. Her breath was coming in long pants, and he opened
his hazel eyes to gaze into her large brown ones. Then,
suddenly he realized…
“Yuck,” hollered Bill out loud. “Damn it all, Lobo,
get outta this bed right this minute.”
Lobo, a 150-pound wolf-shepherd mix, was in bed
with him, and his dream of Marci was just that, a dream.
Rolling over to the other side, Bill Routh wrenched
himself from his bed and realized that the heater must not
be working. The room was cold enough to hang meat.
“Man, this is just one more thing I’ll have to deal
with if I decide to stay here and not sell out,” he thought.
“Does a wood stove really heat a house this big or do I need
to install a gas furnace? Or could we use solar heat? What
would be best out here? Gee, it used to do the job.”
Since Bill slept in the altogether, it behooved him to
hurry as he rushed outside to the woodpile to get some logs
to restart the fire in the wood stove that was supposed heat
the whole house.
“What in God’s name made me think that living out
here could be some kind of bed of roses, anyway?” he
mused. He cast his mind back to his warm, comfortable
condo in Dallas where the manager handled all these sorts
of problems, but then the cold of the morning got him
moving quickly again.
Bare foot and prancing he moved back toward the
house, noting in all his extremities, that the weather, which
had been sunny and mild yesterday, had turned cold and
blustery this morning.
“Hey, how am I supposed to know what weather to
expect when I can’t even get the local Weather Channel this
far out in the sticks?” he wondered, forgetting his parents‘
satellite links to the internet and television. Here in western
Palo Pinto County, Texas, the weather was pretty variable,
late in the fall. North Texas wasn’t really far enough north
to have much real cold in winter, and the summers were
long and hot, but it was a long way from being tropical, like
down in the valley. At the end of October, now, you might
have anything from T-shirt weather to icy cold that bit to the
bone, like today.
If you would like to win a copy of this novel, please post a comment here on my blog. I will be giving away one copy on my 71st birthday, December 18!
Good luck!
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