I did not take a traditional path to get here. Most people start out writing shorter stories, then work their way up to longer pieces. Not including assignments and (non-fiction) blog posts, the first thing I wrote was a novel… actually a pair of them encompassing one story (Planning Vengeance and Dig Two Graves). Then I wrote a novella to give away for blog subscribers (if you subscribe, you still get it for free). After that I started writing short stories on Vocal, aside from the ones I compiled for Who, What, When, Why?.

For my purposes, a short story is under 10,000 words. A novella is over 10k, but under 60k. A novel is over 60k… and I usually shoot for 80k to 100k on my novels.

Mostly I work toward writing novels, but I won’t pad the word count just to hit a goal. Grafton had four stories that I felt were complete, but each was well short of a novel on its own (obviously since the total is under 129k words). So, I use novellas to complete a collection. I also had a novella that I dropped in to complete You Don’t Know Jack, and another that anchors Who, What, When, Why?

On Vocal I tend to write around 2000 words per story, although I have written some multi-part stories.

So, depending on what you read, there are a lot of options. If you want to knock out a quick story, check out Vocal. If you are looking for something to spend a little more time with, check me out on Amazon.

Grafton is part of the Dixon-Prince series. It has stories relating to Gunny Grafton and his family, including Melody Grafton’s backstory. We are also introduced to his daughter, and find out her backstory. Of course, we get to see some more of Gunny and his merry band of former special forces operators, as well as the Dixons and Princes. This is an excerpt from Hostage Situation. Gunny has agreed to spend some time as a substitute teacher, but of course there is drama…

Right on time a few students started filtering into the classroom. He quickly finished checking over the lesson plan one last time and walked over to look out the window. As he gazed out, he noticed a few people loitering just off school grounds… people that weren’t normally there. A couple of them seemed to be pacing back and forth. He couldn’t put his finger on a good reason, but alarm bells were triggering in the back of his mind.Read More

He turned to the class, “Put on coats and hats if you have them. There are two threats in the hallway. We are going to sit tight for the time being, but if needed, you will be ready to run. Understand?” he said calmly and quietly.

Grafton is part of the Dixon-Prince series. It has stories relating to Gunny Grafton and his family, including Melody Grafton’s backstory. We are also introduced to his daughter, and find out her backstory. Of course, we get to see some more of Gunny and his merry band of former special forces operators, as well as the Dixons and Princes. This is an excerpt from Melody’s backstory… how she ended up meeting Gunny and working for Bill Prince.

Melody walked out of the arena with her diploma. After four years, she’d managed to earn her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She had bent the structure to also have credits toward Criminal Justice as a minor course of study. Greeting her outside was Harv Adams, along with his son Karl. It was the first time she’d seen Karl since the night after his sister’s funeral…Read More

“Apparently, you really need to do this, Melody,” Karl said. “I’ve not seen my father this excited about the prospects of someone for… ever.

Writing is hard sometimes, but like many things, it is harder to pick back up than it is to keep going.

In real life, I have started going to the gym. I am carrying too much weight, and I am not in the shape I want to be in, so a couple of months ago I started going to work out. It has been challenging at times, but I have been trying to build and maintain the habit that I need in order to get where I want to go with my health.

After our last vacation, I hadn’t stepped into the gym in ten days. I had been active on vacation, and hadn’t really picked up weight… but I knew I couldn’t let time pass. I picked up on Monday and jumped right back into it. A good bit of that was due to accountability. The owner of the gym is a friend. I don’t show up and he will probably mention it.

Also when we took the vacation, I wasn’t writing for a little while. On the blog, that didn’t show up until after we were back… I had pre-staged several posts to automatically post while I was gone. Of course, I couldn’t do a lot to promote them, so there wasn’t much traffic.

But when I got back, I didn’t jump back into writing fast enough… on the blog. So I missed a few posts and could see the numbers trail off. When I’m not writing, it is easy to not write.

On the book front, I actually had an idea on the vacation and couldn’t shake it, so I kept rolling after getting home. And I have written on the books I am working on almost every day.

Momentum.

When I am doing something, I think about doing it… and am more inspired to keep doing it. When i’m not, I’m really not.

Habits are hard to make and easy to break.

Grafton is part of the Dixon-Prince series. It has stories relating to Gunny Grafton and his family, including Melody Grafton’s backstory. We are also introduced to his daughter, and find out her backstory. Of course, we get to see some more of Gunny and his merry band of former special forces operators, as well as the Dixons and Princes. This excerpt is from Mali’s story. Jakob had proposed, but things hadn’t gone as planned. One of my absolute favorite characters of the series, Nicole Dixon Richter steps in to help.

Jakob walked out of his dorm building. It was thirty-five degrees, but he was just wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt, shorts and running shoes. It was his day for a long run. He figured he’d go fifteen miles. He set a timer on his watch forRead More

Be sure to check out the full book…

This is from one of the pieces I’m working on at the moment. Part of it was inspired by our recent vacation, if that isn’t obvious. I think it is actually going to mesh with another story that I have been working on called Jilted… also unpublished. Currently, between the stories I have about 20k words. But we are far from any conclusions. I don’t think this will be in the Dixon-Prince series… and I think it will be more romance than action. But I really don’t know yet.

I leaned back against the railing, standing next to the boat’s captain at the rear of the boat. He had invited me to stand there as the view was better… and I think he was bored as we sailed along the western shore of Kauai, approaching Barking Sands beach. I looked to the right and saw the four-wheel-drive trucks slowly driving along the sand, the drivers heading to the favorite spots to fish or just enjoy the beach.

“The adventure part of the trip is about ready to begin,” the captain said into the public address system. “Now is a good time for those last ‘before’ pictures, because it is about to get real. We are approaching the Na Pali coast, and as we come around the next point, we will be hitting bigger swells and catching more wind. Be sure to hold on as you move around… and for those of you on the trampolines on the front of the boat, it is going to be a wet ride.”

Three minutes later I was being hit by spray from front of the boat. Despite it being a fifty-five-foot catamaran, we were being tossed by the seas. The captain leaned over and told me that the swells were running about twelve to fifteen feet, much more and he wouldn’t have brought to boat that far north. 

“After we get to our turn-around point, we’ll deploy the sails, everything will calm down and we can serve dinner while we make our way back to Port Allen,” the captain said over the PA. “But for the next hour and a half or so, welcome to the Snorkeldome.”

We were about forty-five minutes into the rough part when my little brother came sliding down the port-side hull, laughing. He looked like he’d been swimming, salty water blowing off him as he walked. At fourteen, he was tall and rail thin, with long, flowing hair and a quick wit.

“I just needed a break,” he said to Mom as he sat down at the table “inside.”

It wasn’t really inside the boat, but was covered from above and enclosed on three sides, protected from the spray. My father had retreated into that area as well, but it hadn’t lasted long as it had started to make him seasick. A few people stayed down there, but I decided that being wet was preferable to feeling sick.

Off to our right, I spotted the fluke of a baby Humpback whale, swimming with its mother. They were a couple hundred yards from shore, closer to us. The captain announced the whale’s location, but most of the passengers on the front of the boat were too busy battling the sea to take notice. A moment later I spotted another off to our left.

“There he is,” the captain said excitedly into his microphone as a large whale breached just off the port bow. “That’s what I’m talking about. That one probably goes forty tons and forty feet. The males are putting on a show for the females… it’s mating season… and he is trying to catch the attention of the ladies.”

My head was on a swivel as we suddenly seemed to be surrounded by whales. Most were just surfacing for a breath, blowing water twenty feet in the air as the surfaced briefly, but there were a few that were showing their flukes or waving a pectoral fin.

That was when I saw her… ok, I saw her before we even got onto the boat, and I knew where she was almost every minute since. I wasn’t trying, but she was hard not to notice. Flaming red hair, tall and slender; dressed more for a beachy dinner out than for hanging out in the splash zone for a few hours. Like me, it looked like she was on vacation with her family.

But at that moment, what I was seeing was her feet flying up in the air and over the side of the boat. She had been trying to get her sister to shoot a picture of her with a whale tail in the background… and the boat had lurched, sending her over the side.

I tore off the light shirt I was wearing loose over my t-shirt, and pointed toward her, yelling “Man overboard,” to the captain. In three steps I was diving off the side of the boat, just over her as she floated back along the side of the boat. She had been stunned by the fall and came up coughing salt water before disappearing under the waves again. I turned in the water and dove down to grab her. I wrapped an arm around her, just as I had learned and practiced in Scouts, and kicked toward the surface.

She struggled in my grip, trying to push herself higher out of the water when we broke the surface. She elbowed my in the eye as she struggled against the terror of drowning. A moment later I grabbed the life ring that was only a yard away.

“Easy,” I told her. “I have you. Hold onto this. Do you know how to swim?”

She shook her head, her eyes still wide with shock and fear.

“Then just relax. I’ll pull you to the boat,” I said to her.

As we swam, I felt something brush under me, one of the whales we had been watching. She screamed when she felt it brush her foot. I stopped kicking my legs and pulling the ring and wrapped my arms around her again. She clutched to me as if I were the only thing between her and death, and I guess in that moment I might have been… although we were in no danger from the whales.

“It’s just a whale,” I said quietly. “And they won’t swallow us like Jonah. We’re ok.”

She nodded and loosened her grip on me, allowing me to start pulling her toward the boat again. She turned and looked at me, still clutching to me, and unloaded the complete contents of her stomach right at my face. I dipped under the water after catching all the spray and rinsed it away without missing a beat.

As we got close, one of the crew members was folding down one of the platforms at the back of the catamaran that they used when people snorkeled. I pushed her to the platform and then helped her from the water as the crewman lifted her up. A moment later I followed onto the platform and up onto the back of the boat, now just as wet as my little brother. Applause broke out from those that were able to see her climb back onto the boat in front of me. She was swept away by her parents and her sister, all crying and hugging her. She looked back at me for a moment and smiled, embarrassment evident… then she was gone.

“Good job, dude,” the captain said, clapping my back. “That was fast.”

My parents and my brother were there a second later, my mother almost in tears. I had to tell her over and over that I was fine.

“Well, that was exciting,” the captain said over the PA. “Everybody is fine, but I think the best course of action is to make the turn and start the trip back.” Then he started telling everyone about the scenery… the beach and arch that were used in Pirates of the Caribbean, and the next little section of beach that was used in Six Day, Seven Nights.

Meanwhile, I pulled off my t-shirt and wrung out the saltwater, then resumed my position next to the cockpit again. I wanted to go talk to her, but she was still surrounded by her family as I had been surrounded by mine the moment before. The next best thing was to stand in the sun, warming back up and drying.

“You need to give this one a raise,” her father said, stepping up on my perch next to the captain.

“Jax doesn’t work for me… he’s a customer just like you,” the captain replied. “Quick, though.”

“Well, son, thank you. Quick reaction. Military?” her father said, looking at me for the first time.

“No, sir. I’m seventeen.”

“I could never thank you enough.”

“Honestly, sir, I didn’t even think about it.”

He shook my hand and then stepped down to the main level and disappeared under the cover.

“Seriously, Jax, that was fast. My crew didn’t even see her go over. I barely caught the flash of her feet as she flipped. You kept my safety record intact,” the captain said.

The boat had turned to run with the wind, and he shut the engines down as he sat on his bench, controlling the wheel with his feet as pulling ropes with his hands to set the craft on a downwind reach. The two crew members were both busy getting the food prepared for the dinner portion of the cruise.

***

“I really didn’t get to thank you,” she said, sliding up next to me at the port-side table under the cover. She looked up at me, her green eyes shining in the late afternoon sun. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Jax,” I replied, trying not to get lost in those eyes… a battle I was losing. “Anyone would have done it.”

“My name is Crystal, but my friends call me Crys. Since you saved my life and all… you can call me anything you want.” Her smile was warm and genuine. I couldn’t help but smile back as she looked at me. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Scouts. I guess… ‘be prepared’ and all that,” I stammered.

“Is your eye ok?” she said as if she’d only noticed it.

“Just I shiner,” I grinned. “Not my first. And this one will have a way better story.”

“I’m so embarrassed… you saved my life and I hit you and then barfed on you.”

Her blush was not lost on me. In that moment I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful girl. “You can barf on me any time,” I replied, weakly.

We sat there in silence for a few moments, then I offered to get her a drink. Everything was a blur as we sat together, eating the dinner that was served, neither of us talking much. I knew she was so far out of my league I wasn’t even in the same stadium, but I enjoyed feeling her next to me.

After finishing the dessert, I think it was Key Lime pie, I found out she was seventeen, too. She seemed shocked that we were the same age. I was also thinking she had to be older. The more we talked, the easier the conversation came. Soon we were talking about bands and books and what we had been doing on the island. I found out she lived in Los Angeles but was from Minneapolis, while I told her I was from Atlanta.

“You look cold,” I said as I draped my overshirt over her shoulders. She leaned in as I wrapped her with it, leaving my arm around her shoulder. I loved the feeling of having her in my arms and was too scared to move. I felt like any second she would realize what I was doing and pull away. All too soon, her mother appeared and pulled her away to watch whales again.

“Careful around the railings,” I laughed. She blushed and smiled before following her mother away.