Here I sit, two weeks later and while the basic structure is there, many of the details have changed. I was considering posting up the new excerpts, but decided it was too soon… Just glancing through the posts, one might miss all of the subtle changes.

The reason I’m explaining all of this is because of another story… “The Skater“. That one is closer to publication. But not as close as I thought. Three weeks ago, I thought it was almost ready to pull the trigger, but after getting feedback from a couple of my Beta readers, I knew it wasn’t. I might make my initial goal of having it out in March, but what I thought was a “no-brainer,” getting it out by… now… is turning into a “might” get it out by the very end of the month.

I will, though, post a coupe of excerpts of changes I made here on Wednesday and Friday this week.

What’s funny is how these two stories are connected, though set 40 years apart. The Skater is NOT a mainline Dixon-Prince story. Part of it takes place before Jack and Amy get together, and Amy never makes an appearance, although Jack does slip in and say hi. We have more of Nicole Dixon, and Terry Gates has a significant role. In fact, we have a different set of actions taking place on June 13th, 1981, the night of the party where Jack and Amy finally get together in Planning Vengeance.

It just worked out, and a future release of Planning Vengeance will get a VERY slight adjustment to mesh with Skater. Jack, Terry, Sherry and Bobby show up to dinner somewhere just before the party, and see Nicole with her boyfriend. Most people might not even notice the change, since it isn’t a significant event in the book. But I like having these little Easter Eggs in the books.

And in “The Call”, we have Colt, Jack and Amy’s son, as one of the main characters. When he graduated high school, he needed a little reality check, and Nick (from The Skater) agrees to help out, giving him job and some direction. We spend a chapter discovering the year Colt spent working for Nick in order to learn who Colt was, and why he is the person he is when he is introduced in the story.

Back to the point… As I write, stories evolve. I have posted up a lot of excerpts from works that were yet to be published. And they are always subject to change. Aside from possibly finding a typo, or maybe a better selection of words to describe the same basic action, sometimes there are significant changes. I won’t be posting the excerpt, but the big change in the (current) first chapter of “The Call”, since it was posted here, is that Ed Dixon is starting to suffer the beginning stages of dementia. I hated writing it. But it was needed. The old characters… Ed, Bill, Gunny and so on, are in or approaching their 80s. They aren’t superhuman. Ronny fell down a broke a hip and needed a replacement.

not to. It makes the story a little less “dateable”, allowing the story to more easily stand on its merits. There were a few places were a mask would have been nice. Like when JD was buying burner phones, or when agencies were looking for him and scanning cameras for him using facial recognition.

Other times, it would have made things more difficult, like when Christi was ditching the Russian kill team in the mall. Overall, I decided that masks are not a “forever thing” and the story would age better if it weren’t littered with specific references to this one short period.

Another factor is that I did NOT use current politicians as the targets and perpetrators of the conspiracy. Again, we all have out preconceived notions about which of them are “good” and which are “bad” and for the story to age well, I wanted to remove that element. I let the characters make their own way.

As I mentioned in the last post, I have a few other projects I’m currently writing. One of those, The Call, is also contemporary. In the initial writing, I had masks and the covid pandemic. I have actually re-written those sections and ignored it… and then rewritten again adding them. I still don’t know which way that will shake out. But again I wanted to separate reality a little more from fiction. There isn’t a lot of political intrigue, but there is government “involvement”, and I didn’t want to shade it with actual personalities of current politicians.

FaceBook changed their algorithm in February to curtail page posts being distributed. So, all of the pages you subscribe to… the posts to those pages are less likely to show up in your feed. You have to go look for them.

Personally, I think they did that to bump revenue for sponsored posts. I can’t scroll my feed without an ad from FB telling me I can “boost this post and get 1000% more engagement.” So, instead of posts from pages that FB says pollute the feed, I get ads from them telling me to boost everything polluting my feed…

Anywho…

Subscribing is FREE. There is a link to the right. And then, you’ll get all of my posts delivered to your inbox, AND you get a link to download Escape, an ebook I wrote JUST for this. (the link has a couple of excerpts, just to whet your appetite)

Not only would I love for you to subscribe, but when you see a post you like, I’d LOVE for you to share it. If you read one of my books, a review would be awesome as well. For Indie Authors, those simple things… shares and reviews… are like gold.

In fact, I have 6 different books in various stages of development. Only one of them doesn’t have crossover characters. (all titles are working titles and may or may not reflect actual titles):

Skater – This one is set before Planning Vengeance, and has cameos by Jack Dixon, Nicole Dixon, Sherry Cross and Terry Gates. Terry and Nicole are the ones that figure the most prominently of the cameos.

Grafton – This is after You Don’t Know Jack, and obviously revolves around Gunny. Most of the good guy crew is involved, and we are introduced to several new characters, including Mali. She’ll kind of be a surprise.

Jenny’s Death Star – This is also after YDKJ, and has a couple of cameos so far… Gunny and Melody Grafton. Dirk Bryce is most involved in the story as well. Not just a cameo, but a supporting player.

New Life – This one is still pretty early in its development, but Bill Prince and Dirk Bryce will be prominently featured. It is also of the newer generation, after YDKJ.

The Call – This one is contemporary. Jack and Amy have a son, and Nicole and Rolf have a son and a daughter. Jack and Amy’s son is center stage on this one. It looks like Nicole and Rolf’s son might be prominent, too. Jack and Amy are certainly around, and we have mentions of Dirk, Jenny and Ellen (from Triple Cross)

The one that doesn’t have any of the core Dixon-Prince characters is called The Cruise.

Jack pulled back first.  He looked down at her beautiful face.  She had the same delicate features she’d had as the fifteen-year-old girl he’d know all those years before, but they had been refined and she had aged gracefully. 

“You are every bit as beautiful as you were the last time I saw you,” he said. 

She blushed, then beamed at him.  “I know it isn’t true, Jon, but thank you,” she replied.  “And you are still the same sweet, charming and adorable guy I knew in tenth grade.  You haven’t changed a bit.”  She paused a moment, “And I hope you never do.” 

The waitress walked up to the table to introduce herself and ask if they needed a minute to order.  Jack looked over at Nancy and she smiled back.  “Let me guess,” she said, “Bacon cheeseburger, medium, only ketchup and mustard, fries, extra crispy, no pickle… and a large Coke.”

Jack laughed.  “Nailed it.  And for this beautiful woman, I would guess she wants a jalapeño burger, pepperjack cheese, medium well, a small side salad and a large diet Coke.  And you might as well just put my pickle on her plate.”

She laughed… “Smitty’s didn’t have jalapeño burgers.  But they are also my favorite now.  That was pretty good, Jon.  Impressive.”

“My husband can’t order a meal for me to save his life,” the waitress joked.  “Even if we go someplace where I always order the same thing.”

“I haven’t seen him in forty years,” Nancy told the waitress.

“I’d say that you ought to keep a guy around that remembers everything you like after forty years,” she said before she winked at them and walked away. 

“Jon, I can’t tell you how nice it is to see you,” Nancy said after looking at him for a minute.  She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.  “I don’t have words.”

“How have you been?  What have you been up to for the last four decades?” Jack asked, hoping to break the tension between them.   

He had no second thoughts about marrying Amy.  She was absolutely, without question, the love of his life.  And he loved his wife more than words could convey.  From the moment he’d met Amy Prince in fourth grade, he had never been able to shake his feelings for her.  They had a giant hiccup that kept them apart for six years, but his feelings never dimmed. 

But in sixth grade he met Nancy.  He’d seen around her before, but they ended up in the same class in school for the first time and started hanging out.  In seventh grade, she was the first girl he kissed.  She was the first girl he took to a school dance, or that he bought flowers. 

Amy was Jack’s first love, but Nancy was his first girlfriend.  And he did love her.  Had she not moved away and disappeared; he probably never would have reconnected with Amy.  As he sat across from her in the dimly lit restaurant, he knew he still had strong feelings for her. 

She looked into his eyes as her hand slipped across the table and rested on top of his.  She leaned forward and smiled.  “An entire life,” she said with smiling eyes.  “College, marriage, kids, divorced then,” she hesitated, “widowed.  I have two girls, a fairly successful gallery.  Mostly, life has been good, Jon.  How about you?”

“Close to the same, except one son, and Amy and I are still together.”

“Don’t be so modest, Jon.  You have been an amazingly successful photographer.  And I know that Amy has had a lot of success, too.”

“We’ve been blessed.  But I get the idea that you wanted to speak with me for a reason, Nancy.”

“You’re right, Jon.  Although, sitting here with you… I’ve dreamt about it for years.”  Her eyes were watery as she looked at Jack.  Tears started rolling down her cheek and she gulped back words that she’d wanted to tell him since the moment she’d last seen him. 

“I cried for a week.  I don’t know that I saw a single thing the entire drive from Virginia to California.  My family took a week, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I didn’t look out of the window a dozen times.  Leaving you broke my heart.  It still does. 

“After we got settled, I sat down to write you.  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t put a single word on a piece of paper without bawling my eyes out.  I tried to call you, but as soon as I heard your voice I would choke up.  My mom finally told me that I couldn’t call anymore. 

“Eventually, I moved on, but I never forgot you, Jon.  I heard about you getting shot by Paul Murphy, and I almost ran away to go see you… just to know you were ok.  And then, I saved up the money to fly back to Virginia.  I’d heard you proposed to Amy, and I wanted to see you one more time before you got married… to see if there was still anything between us. 

“But I was too late.  I knew I had to move on.  So, I did… but you were always on my mind, Jon.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said, a tear of his own slipping down his cheek. 

“Don’t be,” she said, reaching across the table to wipe away his tear.  “Jon, you and Amy were meant to be, and my husband was a wonderful man.  I am not here to try to win you back.  I need your help.”

“What do you need, Nancy?” Jack asked. 

“It’s bad, Jon.”

His father had talked him into buying a Sarge green Jeep Gladiator Rubicon, and so far, he was loving it.  It had made his dad a little crazy that he couldn’t leave it stock, but the old man had also been willing to hang out with him as Jack and his son installed the lift and a few other accessories.  He’d even told him that the Jeep looked good when he was done. 

Thinking about his dad made him a little wistful.  As Jack had been sweating and cussing under his Jeep, working with his son, Ed had chosen to flop out a camp chair and spectate.  In no way was Jack upset that Ed was watching instead of wrenching.  The man deserved to sit back and relax.  He had turned eighty-one a few months before.  And while Ed was a hale and hearty eighty-one, that was still a lot of candles on his cake to be sliding around on a cold concrete floor. 

For his whole life, Ed Dixon had been a rock.  He’d been Special Forces, and among the most elite of the elite.  He’d survived being shot, running head-on into a van on purpose, and too many things for Jack to count… and those were just the things he knew about.  So much of his father’s life had been a classified mystery.

But the reality was that his dad was slowing down.  His mind was still as sharp as ever, but his father had become something he’d never thought to associate with his old man.  Fragile. 

On the other hand, he knew how lucky he was.  Jack had lunch with his dad almost every week.  Just the two of them.  Where wasn’t important… it could be sitting at a picnic table with a couple of burgers from Smitty’s or sitting at the marina watching the boats come and go as they enjoyed fresh lobster, or more lately because of the pandemic, sitting on his deck overlooking the Chesapeake Bay while they ate homemade sandwiches.  What they talked about wasn’t really important, either.  Sometimes it was business, other times it was about Jack and Amy’s son, Colt.  His favorite conversations, though, involved him listening to his dad’s stories.  For the most part he’d heard them a hundred times, but every once in a while, a new detail would worm it’s way through.  But he just loved to watch his dad get excited about the old days.

Jack knew that what was important was that they both took the time to be together.  As much as he hated to face the thought, those days might be limited.  Could be a year, or it could be twenty, Jack thought, but I want to take advantage of every one of them. 

Jack’s cellphone rang, popping him out of his train of thought.  He glanced at the radio display, but it just showed the number of the caller.  That was highly unusual.  Even if they weren’t in his address book, his caller ID usually had a name.

The phone rang again. 

He could count the number of people that had his cell number.  Probably on two hands.  Even his lawyers didn’t know the number to his cell.  Wife, sister, kid, parents, wife’s parents, a few others.  He looked at the number on the screen. 

The phone rang for a third time. 

He didn’t recognize the area code.  He couldn’t place it… he knew it… but he couldn’t think of where the number originated.  Of course, now, people had numbers from all over.  Area codes meant little. 

His hand hovered over the two buttons as the phone rang for the fourth time. 

Accept.  Reject.

He didn’t like talking to people he didn’t know.  And he hated getting spam calls.  He didn’t need to renew his car’s warranty… he’d probably voided it anyway… and he knew that the calls telling him he needed to update ‘whatever’ information were scams. 

His gut said to answer the phone. 

“Hello.  This is Jack,” he said, unconsciously leaning forward.  The microphone for the hands free was near the top of the windshield, on the left. 

“Hi… Jon?” he heard the soft voice of a woman answer him through the Jeep’s stereo.  She’s hesitated, like she hadn’t expected him to answer.

He didn’t even realize he’d lifted his foot off the throttle and steered to the shoulder until he felt the rumble of the “wake-up” strips along the side of the road.  It had been forty years since he’d heard that voice, and she sounded different.  But he knew exactly who it was. 

“Jon,  is that you?  Are you there?” she said.

“Nancy?”

“You remembered.  That’s amazing,” she said.  Jack could hear the smile behind her voice.  Her image flashed into his mind.  Medium length, jet black wavy hair.  Her blue eyes were so bright that he thought they glowed.  For a moment, he could taste their last kiss, the last time he saw her or talked to her.  He could feel her tears on his chest, and her arms wrapped around him, clinging to him as she felt their last hug before she climbed into her parent’s car and disappeared from his life.  “Jon, are you ok?”

“Yeah… I’m here.  I’m fine.  How about you, Nancy?  Long time.”  A little anger crept into the back of his mind.

“It has been a long time.  Some days, though, it feels like yesterday,” she said. 

“Yeah,” Jack responded, his mind back in that day in Nineteen-eighty.  November twenty-second.  Her dad was being transferred to California. 

“Forty years, two months and seventeen days,” she said.  “But who’s counting, right?”  He heard a sadness in her voice.  It tugged at his heart, more than he expected.  Any anger he felt evaporated.

They had been together off and on… mostly on… for almost three years before she moved.  And aside from the time leading up to her move, she had almost always been full of joy.  Nancy was the girl that would laugh and dance around even when she was caught in a cloudburst.  She would look up at the sky, watching the rain zoom past her and drink it in. 

“What happened?” Jack asked, layers of meaning behind the question. 

“I tried.  I wanted to write.  I wanted to call.  I just couldn’t,” she said, her voice halting and unsure.  Jack could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks, even through the phone as she talked.  He could hear anguish in her voice.  “Every time I tried…” she trailed off.  “When I was eighteen, I flew back to Virginia.  I was looking around for you, but I found out you and Amy Prince had just gotten married.  I knew you had always loved her.  I was happy for you.”

“What prompted you to call me now?” Jack asked. 

“I need to see you, Jon.  I can get up to Virginia, but I need to talk to you in person,” she said.  He could hear desperation in her plea but had no idea why. 

“What did you need to talk with me about?”

“I can’t go into it on the phone.  I just need to see you.”

“Where are you now?” Jack asked, desperate for a subject change.  Part of him desperately wanted to see her, to look into her eyes.  The other part of him was scared to death of Nancy Jordan.  The idea of sitting down with her filling him with excitement and dread. 

“I’m in Savannah.  In Georgia.  I’ve been here about twenty years.”

“There is a little restaurant on River Street, across from the Market Place,” Jack said. 

“You mean Lizzy’s?”

“That’s the one.  Meet me there in two hours,” Jack said.  “We can have an early dinner and talk.”

“Where are you?” she asked. 

“Obviously about two hours away,” Jack laughed.  “I need to go, Nancy, but I’ll see you there, ok?”

“I can’t wait,” she said, her voice back to the velvety smooth tone he remembered.  “Bye.” 

The stereo changed back over from the call to music.  Atomic Punk by Van Halen blasted through the speakers as he pulled back onto I-95.  He passed the exit for I-26 a few minutes later. 

He tapped the screen a few times and waited for the phone to ring. 

“Hi gorgeous,” he said when Amy picked up.

“I was just thinking about you.  How’s the drive?” she said, her smile shing through the phone. 

“Good.  It’s nice to have the time just sitting here with my thoughts.”

“I missed you.  I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to the drive down to Key West.”

“Me, too, Amy.  I just wanted to hear your voice.  I love you,” he told his wife.

“I love you, too.  And you’re so sweet, calling just to hear me.”

She hung up.  He knew that she had a big project getting ready to go out, which was part of the reason he was driving alone. 

***

The lifted Gladiator rolled through the streets in the old section of Savannah, by the river.  It wasn’t the most well-suited vehicle to a narrow, crowded area, but it handled the bumpy streets well.  Jack had tried to park in a garage at one of the hotels, but he was a couple of inches too tall to fit, so he had to find a surface lot or street parking.

After a few minutes he managed to find a spot that wasn’t too long of a walk from the restaurant.  He backed into his space and hopped out of the truck, locking it as he walked away.  He glanced at his watch.  It was almost four-thirty, a few minutes early.  He slipped on his facemask for the short stroll on the crowded sidewalk.

Walking into Lizzy’s, it was just how he remembered it.  They had a carefully curated “dive” look, but he liked the food and the atmosphere.  He walked up to the bored hostess.  

“I’m meeting someone here,” he told her.

“Sugar, you are the only one here, so I can take you to a table, if you’d like,” she said, her accent sweet and very southern.

“That would be great,” he replied before she grabbed a couple of menus and the wound through the restaurant. 

“Do you have a booth?  Maybe one that is quiet and out of the way?” he asked her as they stopped in the middle of the floor. 

She smiled at him, “I sure do.  Heck, you can pick anywhere you want to sit, but this booth right over here will probably fit the bill.”  She led him to the back corner. 

“Thank you,” he said, taking the menu and slipping into the booth.  His back was against the wall, and he had excellent sightlines through the whole place.  Old habits.

He looked down at the menu.  He knew he would be ordering a burger, and he knew exactly how he’d be ordering, but he wondered if there might be an appetizer or dessert that might catch his eye. 

He was lost in the menu when he felt the presence next to him.  He looked up.  Nancy’s blue eyes still glowed, and while there were a few streaks of gray, she still had the same wavy, jet black hair.  He stood up to greet her.  She pulled him into a hug, holding him as tightly as she had the last time they saw each other, if only for a moment.