Hello Everyone, and welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, the blog hop where writers from a wide variety of genres share from their work in excerpts of ten sentences, with maybe a little more tacked on for your reading pleasure.

I’m sharing from my soon to be released gay romance, Shameless in Seattle. To be honest, I’ve been neglecting my writerly duties in order to worry, fret, doom scroll and binge watch Netflix. But I have resolved to suck it up, put the final polish on this baby, and release it into the world. The world could use some more love and laughter, and that is mostly what Shameless is about.

I’ve skipped ahead from last week, as the intervening paragraphs are a bit spoilery. Aaron is thinking about who from his childhood might know about his deep, dark secret, and what the connection to Olympia, author of the Shameless series, might be. (note: Emily was his sister’s best friend in high school)

***

He pushed aside the list and flipped open his laptop.  Time to check Facebook and find out which of his old school mates were on his friends list. He had over 2000 “friends” so it was easy to forget, especially since he never checked the damn thing.

“Come out, come out, whoever you are,” he muttered, scrolling the list and the tiny photos beside it, thinking his mouse might land on the guilty party like a digital ouija board.

Turned out he had thirty-seven classmates from Pullman High on his friends list. There were several he had no memory of. Emily was there.  She seemed like a likely source for a leak.  He wrote down all the names and highlighted the ones who lived in the Seattle area.

Then he googled Olympia.

That’s ten. Here’s a bit more.

For a writer at a small press struggling to survive in the social networking frenzy of indie marketing, Olympia had very little presence on line. She had the obligatory website with links to her books and not much else.  Her author photo was an illustrated Greek goddess profile. She didn’t appear to give readings or ever show herself in public, according to one frustrated fan.

She answered reader questions on Goodreads wittily and succinctly, but did not otherwise engage with her adoring public.

Aaron’s fingers itched to send her a message. So who are you and what gives you the right to steal my life story for your trashy het-roms?

But she wouldn’t answer, obviously, and this tiny, tenuous connection would vanish.

Instead he created a fake Goodreads profile. Two could play this game, he thought, giving himself the name Gloria Ferrari.

He typed I absolutely adore the character of Eric Slater.  What was your inspiration for him? and then sat back as if expecting Olympia to leap to the keyboard at the ping of her computer and answer immediately.

***

Shameless in Seattle ~ coming in January 2021!

Aaron Schafer, star reporter for the Seattle Times, is shocked to find out he’s the inspiration for a series of bodice-ripper romances written by a reclusive author no one has met.  He’s even more surprised, and disturbed, on discovering intimate secrets from his past buried in the pages of Shameless in Seattle. Who is this mystery author, who has clearly been stalking him and stealing details from his life? Are they dangerous? And worse, will they reveal Aaron’s darkest secret to the world? Aaron decides to stalk the stalker, a decision that might just change his life.