most of my friends and followers on FaceBook did. I’m going with FaceBook. With it being all of a sudden, I can’t imagine there was a meeting of the “We Hate Lane Society” and it was determined that all of the members would no longer follow the links. They weren’t following the links anyway.

That leaves the theory that FaceBook decided to cut the exposure of my posts. Punishment… I doubt it. Nothing controversial there. Frankly, I think it is because I’m not advertising on FaceBook. I did for a little while, and my traffic didn’t go up, but a few weeks after I stopped, it sure did go down.

MeWe and Gab traffic is the same as it was before.

If you’d like to share my posts among your circle, that’s cool. It would be interesting to see if we can overcome FaceBook’s desire to limit my exposure. If not, I understand. I hope you still visit.

listing in my post directly. It gives the option for a free preview of the book, as well as sending you STRAIGHT to my book’s Kindle listing.

It’s kind of spiffy.

If you haven’t read this one, feel free to hit up the free preview and check it out. If you have read it, check out one of my titles you haven’t read, and/or share it with a friend.

As I mention sharing… there are two meanings to this. You can actually share my book if you bought it… once. You can send a friend the book for free for 14 days for them to read it. There is no additional cost to either of you. But I’m pretty sure you can only do it once.

Also in the vein of sharing, I would LOVE it if you shared any of my posts, or that you enjoyed any of my books, with as many people as you dare.

Getting noticed without a giant ad budget is tough. The deal I made with myself when I started this was that I wouldn’t spend more to market than what was coming in from sales. And that is a rough road. Even effectively giving away free books is expensive. Some of the “book deal” newsletters charge over $100 to give away FREE books. And there is no type of guarantee of a single future sale.

And then there is the whole business of buying artwork for covers, paying editors and all of the other gears in the mechanism. I will say that the background stuff (not the marketing) gets a little easier with each book.

Miss Keller was the stuff of dreams.  When she walked into the skating rink, every guy would turn to watch her.  Skate Dads would always try to sit by her when they were watching figure skating practice.  He’d never been this close to her before, and close up she was even more beautiful. 

“Please, Nick, call me Linda,” she said as she sipped her own Coke.  “Let’s go move some furniture.”

He followed her back out to the living room and spent the next hour dragging furniture from one spot to another, interspersed with carrying boxes to and from the attic as she completely made the room over, the two of them chatting the whole time.  By the time she called a halt, they were both sweaty and tired. 

“I really appreciate it, Nick.  It sure was nice to have a strong man around for a change,” she said with a wink.  She handed him another Coke and dropped onto the couch next to him.  “Kat told me that you and Heather broke up.  Bummer, you guys were so cute together,” she said between sips of her margarita.  It had been a few weeks since the break-up.  He and Heather were still friends, but he wasn’t sure what had happened. 

They sat together, continuing the conversation they’d had while working.  Linda was on her second margarita when she asked Nick if he was hungry.  “It’s the least I can do.  You have been here all afternoon and you won’t let me pay you.  At least let me take you out for dinner.  Nothing fancy… ok?”

“I guess,” he replied. 

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said, jumping up from the couch.  “Let me clean up and change.  Back in a flash,” she said as he watched her sweep up the stairs. 

Nick stood up and went to the hall bath.  He combed his hair and checked his pits to see if he smelled bad.  He quickly rinsed his face before going back to the living room to wait for Kat’s mom. 

Linda came back down the steps and Nick struggled to keep from doing a double take.  She was in tight jeans and a curve-hugging, long sleeve t-shirt.  If he hadn’t known she was his friend’s mother, he would have sworn she was a dozen years younger than he assumed she was. 

“We can take my car, but you’re going to have to drive.  You drive a stick?” she asked. 

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied.  He’d seen her little blue BMW convertible, and was looking forward to taking it for a spin. 

She led him out to the garage.  The car was sitting there with the top down, ready to go.  She quickly put her hair in a ponytail and climbed into the passenger seat as Nick went around to the driver’s side of the car.  A moment later they were backing out of the driveway and heading toward Espinoza’s Taqueria, Nick at the wheel. 

“I know that Kat is at skating practice, where is Nicole?” Nick asked as they pulled up to a traffic light.

“Spending the weekend with her friend.  You know the Tolivers, don’t you?  She hangs out with Chrissy.”

“I know Chrissy Toliver.  I drive all three of the Toliver kids home sometimes,” Nick replied. 

Linda sat up a little and turned toward Nick, “How many kids do you drive home after skating?  Kat has said you had a carful most of the time.”

Nick laughed.  “Depends.  I’ve had a dozen in the wagon before.”

“Right after we moved here last year, when I was at the rink, one of the moms pointed you out and said that you were a ‘nice, reliable boy’ and that I could trust you with my girls.  She said you drove half of the figure skating team home after the Saturday and Sunday sessions.”

“Maybe.  It changes from week to week,” he said as he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. 

“How did you end up being the rink’s transit system?”

Nick laughed, “I never thought of it like that.  But… I guess…  I don’t know.  Someone’s parents asked if I could take their kid home, I guess and then it spun out of control.  It’s no big deal.”

He parked the car and they both headed into the restaurant.  A moment later they were seated in a booth in the back corner.  Before long they were talking as they munched on chips and queso, sipping their drinks.  Nick had been a little surprised at how easy the conversation was with Linda.  By the time they’d finished dinner, he knew a lot more about her, and the struggles she’s faced owning her own photography studio.  He didn’t understand some of it, but she seemed to enjoy being able to vent to him. 

She’d also had four margaritas in two hours, and they’d hit her a little harder than she would have expected.  Nick walked her to her car and drove her home as they continued to talk.  He pulled into the garage and gently helped her from her car.  When they walked into the kitchen, she turned to hug him. 

“Can I tell you something, Nick?” she asked. 

He was leaned back against the kitchen island, hands casually resting on the edge behind him.  As she talked, she stepped toward him.

“Sure, Linda.”

“Kat has a giant crush on you.  She has for a while.  But you can’t tell her,” she said, holding her finger in front of her lips.

“I won’t say a word,” he said, zipping his fingers across his lips then smiling. 

“And I don’t want you to date her, either,” she added, looking into his eyes.  He could see just how serious she was.  “To start with, she’s just too young.  She’s terribly mature, but she is barely fourteen.  There is no way she has the strength to deal with a man like you, Nick.  I know about you getting stuck in Heather’s room.  I know a lot about you.”  She took a step toward him, standing just past his feet.

“We didn’t do anything, Linda… Heather and I, I mean, we just kind of messed around a bit, but nothing serious.”

“I know.  But, Nick, you are a hard man to resist,” she said, smiling.  “Like right now, if you don’t leave, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist you.  But you should also know that I have thoroughly enjoyed spending the afternoon and this evening with you.”  She stepped forward again, now standing between his feet.

Nick smiled, uncomfortably.  As he looked back at her, Kat’s mom looked incredibly beautiful.  There was no more than six inches between them.  Standing in her kitchen, she was between his knees as he stood leaned back against the counter.  Her perfume was intoxicating.  Her lips were inviting. 

She reached over and wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer to her.  As he felt her body squeezed against him, she gently kissed him on the cheek, then the neck.  “You should probably call me Miss Keller around everyone else, Nick,” she whispered.  She pulled away from him and then pulled him back into her and kissed him passionately. 

The kiss was over too soon for both of them.  “And we can’t ever talk about what just happened, ok?” she said, a slight slur in her speech. 

“Ok,” he responded shakily. 

She melted into his arms and kissed him again.  And again, it was over too soon.  She moved closer and they ended with a hug.  “You need to go, Nick.  I need you to go.”  Her arms were still draped around him and he forehead resting against his.

Kat walked around the corner from the living room, seeing her mother wrapped around Nick.  She could see that they had kissed. 

“Mom!”

“Oh, hi Kat.  I didn’t know you were home yet,” she replied, her voice quiet.  

“I guess,” Kat said back to her mom, her voice holding a quiver. 

“I should go,” Nick said as he hustled back through the garage to get to his car.  He could hear a heated discussion in his wake. 

***

The next day Nick was in the skate room, building a pair of skates for one of the figure skaters.  Kat rolled into the skate room and over next to him.  She hopped up onto the bench next to the skates he was working on.

“Have a minute?” she asked.  “We need to talk about my mom.”

“Can I meet you on the floor in a minute?  I’m almost done with this,” he replied.  Then quietly added, “and Doug is on the other side of the rack and might hear us.”

“Ok.  I’ll be out skating.”

Nick finished up with the skates he was working on and then slipped his skates on.  He grabbed a whistle from the hook next to the door, told Doug he was going to work the floor for a bit, and rolled out of the room.  A moment later he slipped up behind Kat and tapped her on the shoulder. 

“What’s going on between you and my mom,” she said quietly.  He could barely hear her above the music. 

“Nothing, Kat.  I helped her with the furniture, and then we grabbed some dinner.  We had a nice talk… that’s all.”

“Right,” she said sarcastically.  “Whatever.  You can’t say anything to anyone, ok?  She has enough trouble with some of the moms here without adding you to the mix… and what you are saying didn’t happen.  By the way, she told me that she kissed you.  We tell each other everything.  So… I know that you are lying about nothing having happened.  But I also know why.  It’s ok… but you can’t tell ANYONE, ok?” she said, a nervous look in her eye. 

“Kat, I really like your mom…  She’s really nice.  I mean, not like, like, but like friends, ok?  I’m not going to say anything.”

Nick took her hand and spun her around facing him as the lights dimmed for a couple’s skate.  She dropped into the skating Waltz easily, as if they had practiced it. 

“You, know,” she said, “if you ever decide you’ve had enough of the speed skating, we could use some more boys for dance skating partners.”

“They want me to skate on the hockey team, too.  The girls are cuter, though,” he joked as she blushed. 

After that, I read off and on until a few years ago. My tablet and Kindle really pushed that. I started reading just about every day. I was ready books that were mostly free or cheap… and there are a lot of them. I read classics (public domain and free) as well as bargains I could get my hands on.

That was when things changed. Some of the books I read were not terribly good. I tracked one and had noted hundreds of mistakes in grammar, spelling and word usage. And I am NOT an English teacher… sorry, Language Arts. Anyway, the vast majority of those were science fiction and fantasy. There were a few literary fiction/thrillers/action books for good measure.

And then I said something to myself that changed my path…

Hey, self, you ought to write a book. You could do better than at least some of these… and they are selling them.

Lane’s bad idea

So I wrote a book. I wasn’t done, so I wrote another. And I had many of the pieces that had been culled from the first three… so I wrote another. That was the first four.

Number 5 was work. I actually had two other “books” in progress and needed to take a break because they weren’t ready yet, apparently. The real number 5 popped out.

Back to the point…

I started reading mysteries, thrillers, suspense, romance and other genres in order to help me better develop parts of my storylines. I went from enjoying mostly science fiction and fantasy… which is what I wanted to write… to reading and enjoying a much wider selection of genres… because that is what I was able to write.

A comedy, science fiction book is what I really want to write, but I haven’t found the story yet… I’ll keep looking, though.