Sneak a Peek at INTO A CORNER

Today’s post is a big one, as I have some good news, some bad news, and some more good news to announce—before I even get to the meat of the post.

The first piece of good news is today you’ll get a(nother) sneak-peek at my upcoming novel, Into a Corner. Of course, you probably already figured that out based on the title of this post. (Hey, I never said it was amazing news.)

Now for the bad (but not horrible) news: Into a Corner will not be launching in early September, as planned.

[pause for you to grieve]

The reason for the delay is—and here comes the second piece of good news—the manuscript has recently drawn interest from some book people in high places, which might significantly alter the publishing path of my novel. Or not. Bottom line is I need to wait and see how things play out. But rest assured, Into a Corner will be published—I just don’t know exactly when or by whom at this point. My apologies for the vagueness and uncertainty. In my defense, I’ve never been one to know a whole lot about anything. Also, publishing’s weird.

Okay, now that I’ve thoroughly muddied the waters, let’s get back to the first piece of good news I mentioned above. Following is the latest sneak-peek at Into a Corner—coming to bookstores (or not) and Amazons near you soon(ish). Enjoy!

Warning: Adult language ahead.

 

(from Chapter 3 of INTO A CORNER)

A roll of toilet paper makes for a better pillow than you’d think. Someone was kind enough to slip a roll under my head, saving me from one hell of a stiff neck and from having my face touch whatever’s growing on this sorry excuse for a mattress. Must have been one of the guards, or maybe one of the dozen or so women in here with me. Not sure what they’re all cackling and laughing about right now. This isn’t a slumber party. I can tell by the stench of urine and vomit. And by what must be a hatchet wound running down the center of my skull.

The toilet paper pillow is nice and all, but what I could really use is an icepack. Also an eye mask, nose plugs, and a couple of Mama’s silicone ear thingies.

I feel around for my phone, but of course it isn’t on me. Hopefully I got my one call last night and used it wisely. And hopefully the guards are taking as good of care of my purse as they are my phone.

Trying to sit up, I don’t.

Another go, and nope.

My struggle catches the eye of one of my new roommates standing tall and wiry in the opposite corner, her back against the iron bars housing us. She points at me and laughs out of her burlap bag of a face.

A miniature thirty-something redhead sitting a few feet away from Burlap tells her to fuck off, then stands up and walks toward me. She looks sort of familiar, all four foot ten of her. She motions for me to take it easy as I fight my way to a seated upright position, my hands planted not so firmly on the edge of the cot, my feet planted even less so on the concrete floor.

“You probably shouldn’t jostle ’round like that,” says Little Red. “You had a rough night.”

Squinting at her paleness and freckles, then around at the rest of the women in the cell, I mutter, “Didn’t we all?” The taste in my mouth tells me toothpaste wasn’t involved.

Little Red says, “Yeah, but you in particular.”

With my eyes opened a bit more, Little Red was there last night. At Ricochet—the bar in Montrose that Griff made me accompany him to after we killed the Wild Turkey in my kitchen. The rest of the night is like my vision right now.

“Care to fill me in?” I ask Little Red.

“I can try,” she says, “but keep in mind I’m in here, too. So, you know, I can’t promise you nothin’ crystal clear.”

“Well, whatever you’ve got is better than a blackout,” I say, massaging the bridge of my nose, eyes shut tight. When will I ever learn what my favorite professor tried to teach me twenty-five years ago: paint fumes before liquor, never sicker.

Burlap and a few of the other women shuffle from their corner of the cell toward ours, stopping somewhere in the middle. What appears at first glance to be instigation or eavesdropping is actually them distancing themselves from a pretty little blonde thing all sweat and groans and about to erupt all over her Delta Zeta sweatshirt. From the looks of it, the sweatshirt already needs to be washed. Separately.

“So,” Little Red says to me, “you really don’t remember nothin’ from last night?”

I go, “Well,” and close my eyes to search for clues.

There’s me keeping my head down while pulling Griff through the raucous crowd at Ricochet. There’s me reaching the bar and asking Griff if he wants a whiskey. There’s Griff saying, “No, a light beer or Chardonnay.” And there’s me smiling and nodding, then ordering him a whiskey.

I open my eyes and, to Little Red, reply, “Not nothing, but not much.”

“It’s okay, hun,” she says, patting my shoulder. “We’ve all been there.”

That’s the nice thing about drunk-tank friends. No judgment.

“Sort of remember seeing you at Ricochet,” I say, more like a question than a statement.

Little Red nods and gives me a grin, then extends her hand. “I’m Tanner.”

I shake her tiny mitt and ask, “That your first name or last?” and Tanner goes, “Yes.”

I tell her my name and she says, “Oh, I know. Your humongous friend yelled it at least ten times last night.”

My face crinkles like amnesia.

“I was sitting at a table next to where you and your friend were sitting,” says Tanner. “Off in the corner near the restrooms.”

I nod, taking her word for it. No reason to suspect she’s lying—it’s very like me to hide in corners when out in public.

Tanner looks down at the floor and cracks her knuckles while recollecting. “You two were loud as hell, shouting and laughing and shouting some more. Was hard to tell if you were having a blast or an argument.”

I tell her probably both.

She snickers, then goes, “So what’s the deal with his finger?”

I tell her the same lie Griff and I tell everyone who asks—that he was born without it. Very few people can get their head around the truth behind Griff’s missing digit, and most of them are psychiatrists. Even if I took the time to explain Griff’s rare condition—how he’s obsessed with amputating one of his own limbs because he feels it doesn’t actually belong to him, how he screwed up and lost only a finger while going for his whole arm—it would likely elicit too many follow-up questions from these ladies.

“That sucks,” says Tanner, gazing at her own hands with a new appreciation. “Anyway, my friend was practically passed out at our table, so I was bored. Scooted my chair over a bit and leaned in to give you guys a better listen.”

“Hear anything good?” I ask.

And Tanner starts telling me things I don’t remember but already know. She says my humongous friend was giving me a ton of shit for destroying another of my own paintings. She says he was yelling about how art was all I had left and that I couldn’t let Buck take that away from me because Buck had already taken enough.

Tanner interrupts herself to ask, “Just curious … who’s Buck?”

“My dead husband,” I say. “And it’s not Buck, it’s Fuck. But really it’s Wayne.”

Tanner snorts, then covers her mouth. All serious, she goes, “Your husband’s … dead? So sorry, hun.”

I say thanks but that it’s okay to stick with her initial reaction. And to please continue.

Tanner tells me how at Ricochet I just kept drinking my whiskey and the whiskey of my humongous friend while he was busy commanding me to sell all of Fuck’s things and to use the cash to buy art supplies, and to use the art supplies to paint a giant mural in the middle of Houston, and to promise that the giant mural would feature Fuck being disemboweled.

“So,” says Tanner, fingering a few strands of her shoulder-length ginger hair, “you’re like, an artist and shit?”

I nod and go, “Emphasis on ‘shit.’”

“Do people buy your paintings?” Tanner asks.

“They used to.”

My finger draws a couple of please continue and hurry loops in the air. “Sorry,” I say to Tanner. “It’s just I’m dying to hear about the rest of last night.”

“Let me think,” she says, her eyelids fluttering. “Oh, yeah, your humongous friend, he said he had to piss and would be right back. As soon as he was up and out of sight, this dude comes up to you and—”

“Brown leather jacket?” I ask, grimacing.

Tanner nods.

Face in my hands, I go, “Fuuuck,” as the previous evening’s events unfold.

There’s me saying no thanks to Brown Leather Jacket’s offer to buy me a drink.

There’s Brown Leather Jacket going, “Aw man, you a lesbian?” and me going, “Right at this moment, yes.”

There’s Brown Leather Jacket saying, “C’mon, just one drink,” and me saying, “C’mon, just get lost,” and BLJ telling me I don’t need to be a bitch about it and that he hopes I have fun with all the fags and dykes.

Tanner pauses the slideshow with a tap on my shoulder. “Odessa, hun, you okay?”

“Yup,” I say into my palms. “Just reliving my night of glory.”

Tanner tells me not to sweat it. Says the asshole had it coming.

A deep sigh and there’s me telling BLJ if he has a problem with fags and dykes then he should probably stay out of bars built for fags and dykes. Also, that he should stop calling fags and dykes fags and dykes. Lastly, that he should never call me a bitch again, not if he wants to keep his teeth.

There’s BLJ shaking his head, then turning to his friend and muttering either, “Crazy bitch” or “Maybe switch.”

There’s me not giving him the benefit of the doubt. There’s me standing up, shooting what’s left of the whiskey in Griff’s lowball, and smashing the empty glass against the back of BLJ’s head.

And here come the screams and the shards and the drops of blood—the latter from a small cut on my pinky, not from any gash in BLJ’s solid melon. And there’s BLJ, woozy from the blow, being held up by his friend, who steps toward and glares at me.

Ah, and there she is. Tanner. Face redder than her hair, cursing at BLJ’s friend who’s cursing at me who’s cursing at BLJ and the bouncer who’s got me by the collar of the same shirt I’m wearing right now. The one Tanner’s now rubbing the back of, saying, “Chin up, hun. All we’re really facing is a drunk and disorderly. The dude you clocked didn’t press no charges. Management neither.”

“That’s good to know,” I say, peeking at Tanner through my fingers, then closing my eyes again to go back and find Griff.

There he is, returning from the bathroom, his python-thick arms up in the air, all nine of his fingers flared. There’s the bouncer barking at Griff, telling him to back off. And there’s me settling the hell down so Griff will do the same, telling him it’s my fault and that I’ll be fine and to just go to my house and make sure Mama’s asleep and okay.

“Don’t worry, hun,” says Tanner, still rubbing my back. “Your friend said he’d come and get you as soon as possible, no matter where, no matter what. Remember?”

Vaguely.

Tanner adds, “Said he’d get the money to pay whatever’s needed.”

I move my hands from my face and look at her. “Any idea how much the bail might be?”

Tanner tilts her head and purses her lips. “Aw, drunk-tank virgins like you are always so adorable,” she says. “Drunk and disorderly’s just a misdemeanor—there ain’t no bail for misdemeanors, only a fine. And in Texas, the max is just five hundred bucks.”

By the look in her eyes, Tanner can see the look in mine.

“Aw, hun, don’t panic,” she says while brushing two fingers across my cheek. “You don’t gotta have the cash to get sprung from here. They gotta let you go as soon as you sober up enough to not puke on your way out.”

My gaze moves from Tanner’s freckles to the handful of inmates chatting and laughing a few feet from us, then back to Tanner’s freckles. “So what are you and the others still doing in here?” I ask. “Most of you look okay enough to bounce.”

Tanner gives me another patronizing “aww” and head tilt. “We’re sticking around for the free coffee and breakfast, hun,” she says. “By law, the guards gotta give us some.”

More bile burps from Delta Zeta move Burlap and her posse close enough to make Tanner and me a part of it. The posse smells worse than Delta Zeta. Like onions and Thunderbird.

“So, why does your friend—Griff?—why does he hate your dead husband so much?”

I tell Tanner—and our new friends who are now all ears—it’s a long story and not one worth sharing.

“What, the bastard cheat on ya or something?” Tanner asks.

“Abuse you?” asks Burlap.

“Leave you in debt?” asks another posse member all height and girth and piercings and tattoos.

I look away from everyone, then shake my head and answer all their questions at once. “Yes.”

 

Assuming you didn’t just skip ahead to this closing note, THANK YOU VERY MUCH much for reading the above excerpt. Hopefully it has left you eager for more (that is, excited to buy the book once it’s out). If you missed or want to revisit the previous two excerpts from Into a Corner, here’s a link to the first one, and to the second one. Thanks again—I’ll keep you posted on the book’s weird and wild journey to publication!