Plot bunnies are evil... but fun

I'd been working on the follow-up to my Outfoxed story - a longer one to be submitted to a publisher - 12,000 words so far and I still haven't got to the meat of the story. So I scheduled myself to write at least 1000 words a day while on holidays and I was doing great at that but then I got a stupid plot bunny in my head and decided to write a story for a Christmas anthology. (plot bunny was partially the responsibility of the lovely Lavinia Lewis who put the "anthology" part in my head :P) Only problem is the deadline is September 1 so I'm not sure I'm going to get it done and edited, plus my kids were all at the lake this week so didn't get as far as I'd hoped. No biggie - love having my kids here but truth be told, I'm ready for some dull quiet again.

There is another problem actually with my Christmas story - besides that fact it's a bit of a cowboy tale, sorry Ivie! - it's at 7600 words and so far is really angsty and sad rather than being all happy and Christmasy. It will have a Christmasy HEA but I'm not sure it's what the anthology wants now. Damn muse just writes whatever he freaking feels like and he veered away from the baubly-tinselly (to kinda quote one of my fave guys) plot, at least for a while. So right now I have a very tortured soul as my MC and the goal is to make him happy and fill his life with joy and sex. *snickers* Maybe I'll just have to see how it goes when it's finally finished and if it's not done on time, try to submit it somewhere else? Hoping someone will help me with that eventually. *bats eyes*

Anyhow, I'll just keep writing and see what happens - not my usual modus operandi. :) Oh and thank you to all those who supported me in during my freak out in my last post - about the co-author thing - I'm trying to let it go and not let it affect how I feel about myself and my writing.

Here's an excerpt from my Christmas plot bunny - and some gratuitous cowboy pics - let me know what you think, and yeah, I used totally stereotypical cowboy names. XD

Happy Sunday.

*****

The old weathered screen door let out a high-pitched squeal into the silence of the night air, followed closely by a squeaky groan when the thick wooden door was pushed open. Billy-Jo stepped over the broken slat of hardwood as he slipped inside the all-too-familiar farm house. That board had been broken since he was a child, someone should have fixed it long ago — maybe it should have been him.

The house smelled musty but it seemed cleaner than Billy-Jo would have expected since he recollected what a terrible housekeeper his father had been after his mama had passed on. Gosh, was it really almost eight years since she’d been gone? And now they were together again, his mama and daddy, both succumbed to the different cancers that riddled their bodies until they’d been taken to their final destination. Billy-Jo thought it was probably for the best, no one wanted to live with a mysterious monster eating them from the inside out.

Coming home again brought back all his deep-buried regrets. He supposed most people had them to some degree, but his were huge, regrets that made him feel like a goddamn failure, the biggest being not having mama cremated like she’d wanted, her ashes sprinkled in the wind beside the pond she’s loved so much. It had been daddy’s doing, the cheap old bastard wouldn’t spring for the extra cost of cremation, instead he’d put his beloved wife of twenty-five years in the cheapest casket he could find, then buried her in the local cemetery. Billy-Jo had been too young to help out, to see to his mama’s last request followed through and he’d be damned if he’d fulfill one goddamn wish of his old man’s — Christmas or not.

He slid through the kitchen, noticing the little planter of blue and yellow flowers in the middle of the old wooden table. What the fuck was up with that? Someone must have put them there after the old man died since Billy-Jo couldn’t imagine him doing it himself. The countertops were the same, deep groves in the cheap wood made long ago and never repaired, but were those new handles on the cupboards and drawers? He paused to open the fridge door — cans of beer, bottles of water, and more out of context things, milk, yogurt, avocado and other fruits and vegetables he knew his daddy would never eat. Maybe the old man had found himself a girlfriend.

Not wanting to think about another woman in his mama’s house, arranging things, buying things, taking over things, Billy-Jo made his way down the narrow hallway, the sighs and moans of the wood beneath his boots comfortable and familiar. He stopped at the entrance to the small family room, that’s what his mama had called it — the place where the family gathers to show their appreciation of their lives together. His daddy had never complied to the so-called tradition, so it had usually been he and his mama sitting quietly together talking about their day. Was probably better that way anyhow.

God, but he missed her. He’d always questioned why she had to be the first to go. She was the good one, the fun one, the accepting and loving one. She wouldn’t have snarled and spat when he told her he liked boys and not girls. She wouldn’t have called him a goddamn abomination of the Lord. She wouldn’t have shoved him so hard he’d broken the coffee table along with needing five stitches in the back of his head. She would have told him she may not understand his situation but she loved him and everything would be okay. Instead she’d been the one to go first and he’d been left to live with his old man’s chauvinistic, bastardly ways. Sometimes he blamed her for the unhappiness he’d encountered in his teenage years, he knew he shouldn’t but he did.

It didn’t matter none anymore, they were both gone now, along with any other relatives who had lived in the small, dusty town he’d been born in. He’d had an older sister but she’d passed away from leukemia when Billy-Jo had been four or five so he’d never really known her. His mama had once told him the loss had hit his father harder than anyone else, Beatrice being daddy’s little girl since the day she was born. Maybe that had caused his daddy’s abrupt turn from doting father to bastard.

Coming back to this backwards backwoods town was his last journey to his family and he never planned on gracing the outskirts of this depressing place again. There was nothing left for him here, no one left for him since his daddy had kicked him out almost three years before. He planned on getting rid of the junk inside the house, maybe nailing a board here and there, adding the odd coat of paint and selling the fucker as soon as he could. The last of his childhood memories would be gone and then maybe he could actually start over without the damaging remembrances and what-ifs hanging over his head. Put the old man in his grave and move the fuck on.

Maybe putting all this to rest was what he needed to learn to smile again, to laugh, have fun, meet someone new and forget the face that had clouded his mind all these years. Being away didn’t mean he’d built a better life, just a different life, one that was filled with solitude and at least partial acceptance. The diner he worked at was old and run-down but it was a job and the owners were decent to him considering he’d come to them without even a resume or any experience whatsoever. They’d also set him up in the tiny apartment upstairs, furnished with a single bed, a little chest of drawers and even a little desk where he did his sketching. Eventually he hoped to take some lessons at the art school around the corner from his work but that time wouldn’t be for a while considering he didn’t make much money and he wasn’t really that motivated either. He liked his simple, quiet life and for now that was good enough.

“Billy-Jo?”

The single word reverberated inside Billy-Jo’s skull, not so much for the word itself but the low, gravelly voice that spoke it. For a mere second he thought his heart might stop, the harsh reality of having the owner of the voice, the owner of the face he couldn’t get out of his head even after so long, standing right behind him. His brain even leapt to the assumption that he was hallucinating, wishful thinking that the man was so close he could smell the woodsy scent of freshly shorn hay and coffee and sweat.

“Billy-Jo?” the voice repeated just before a hand settled on his shoulder.

“Wyatt… what are you doing here… how’d you get in?”

Billy-Jo held his breath as he turned around and Kenneth Wyatt Aames stepped out of the shadows. Still slim and lean, unruly, dark brown curls falling just past his ears, full, pouty lips curled up in a grin mirrored in the bright emerald eyes that sunk deep into Billy-Jo’s soul. He tried not to rake his eyes up and down the body of his former friend, his former and present wet dream, but it was damn hard not to stare at the broad chest covered only by a thin white t-shirt and the low-slung faded jeans that hugged slim hips, strong thighs and everywhere else in just the right way. Damn, Wyatt had filled out nicely, more than nicely actually, the former one-hundred pound weakling had transformed into over six-feet of muscled stud in the time that Billy-Jo had been away.

“I knew you were coming in tonight,” Wyatt was saying. “I wanted to welcome you home.” He smiled that mischievous grin that haunted Billy-Jo’s dreams, the ones that left him hard and desperate upon waking, one hand wrapped around his dick as he cried out in what could only be described as pleasure and pain mixed together into an earth-shattering, agonizing release.

Billy-Jo tried to sweep the memory from his brain, the crotch of his jeans becoming uncomfortable and tight even as he tried. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker against another crack in the hardwood, concentrating on getting his emotions and raging hard-on under control before he had to speak.