Claire Gillian

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Hey there, me again! I’m a Weekend Writing Warrior in the middle of NaNoWriMo here to give you a little taste…not of my NaNo novel but something else, something I ~~stole~~ borrowed! Voleur!! (Thief!)

From Second Chance Layover by Sandra Bunino and Lila Shaw (that’s me), here are eight (8) sentences written from the hero’s POV:

A few keystrokes and BroadwayBoundJD in O’Hare was born. Let the ladies figure that handle out. The smarter ones might guess my occupation as an entertainment lawyer heading for New York City. The larger truth was I had deserted Hollywood for New York’s publishing community, film rights specifically. The much more personal truth was I was fleeing ghosts. I’d never believed in hauntings before. I believed in them now, the ones whose faint sobbing gasps in the still moments between sleeping and waking filled me with crushing guilt. The ones with sad, weary faces who pointed accusing fingers.

Aww poor Cal.

Most of you probably know I also write under the pen name of Lila Shaw. “She” has co-written a holiday-themed blog serial with BFF, Sandra Bunino, that will run on both blogs between Black Friday and Christmas Eve. I’m telling my readers about it too because it’s more of the type of romance I’d write. (Ha-ha, as if there’s an iron curtain separating my Claire brain from my Lila brain. She steals shamelessly from me and this is yet another example.)

Here’s the story blurb, and if you’re interested, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Lila’s blog so you don’t miss a single installment:

When the mother of all snowstorms strands journalist Charli Tierney in the Chicago airport, her boss gives her a fluff assignment to kill time–investigate the Meet-And-Go dot com social network for airport travelers. Imagine her surprise when her connection is also one of her brother’s old friends…and the boy she crushed on for years as a teen.

Cal Wheaton is no less shocked. Of all the fish in the sea, or lonely travelers in Terminal B, his O’Hare Meet-And-Go connection is Charli. The snarky little sister he fondly remembers has grown into a very desirable woman. And this time there’s no protective big brother around to keep him in line.

Reconnected, the embers of Charli and Cal’s decade-old attraction are quickly fanned into a night of hot passion. But when a ghost from Cal’s past drives a wedge between them, will the layover lovers realize in time that blame and guilt are baggage best left behind?

Go to either of these sites to subscribe:

Lila Shaw’s blog

Sandra Bunino’s blog

Or, if you are a Smashwords reader, we’ll be publishing each installment on a slight lag, so get it at the blogs first, at Smashwords later.

Here’s the current opening of my in-process NaNo novel called Mismatched Irregulars and Seconds. It’s very rough first draft material so be kind.

Never trust a man in a bowtie. He’s always up to something.

One of my mother’s many quirky proverbs popped into my head like a genie released from a bottle. True or not, the bowtie in his thumbnail-sized bio picture grabbed my attention first. The crooked glasses and cheap suit came in a close second, enhanced even more by an antediluvian printer running low on red ink. I didn’t even register the guy’s face other than his skin was amphibian green.

I jotted down my notes under the section entitled “First Impressions—Thumbnail Photo” and moved on to Griffin Spalding’s bio:

I am a number-cruncher for a used car dealership.

A groan accompanied my head drop. Why had no one already fixed this? I mean really. Were there any two other professions to catapult a woman into zzzz-land than accounting and used car sales? How old was this guy? I flipped the page back to his summary stats: Griffin Spalding, age 35, never married, 5’11”, 165 pounds, black-brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, average-sized Adam’s apple, large hands and feet, hairy chest, clean-shaven face.

What on earth…

“Who allowed you to run with those stats, Griffin?” I crossed off the references to his protrusions and phalanges, changed his eye color to hazel and his marital status to single. The hairy / hairless mentions received double strike-throughs. A vision formed in my head of Mr. Spalding on a date:

“Hey baby,” Griffin said, flashing a massive hairy paw adorned with a gawdy pinky ring. “ He winked and adjusted his bowtie before hitching his clown foot up onto the corner of the table. At that angle he presented a potpourri of eye level bulges, frayed seams, and a thin dress shirt barely veiling the pelt of dark chest hair beneath.

I shuddered. “No. No. No.”

I’m right where I want to be word-wise at a little over 11,000 words. More from this story in the weeks ahead!!

If you want to read more mid-week teasers, click on any of the links below:

http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=216142