novellas stories and histories

This is a reworking of the first stories I wrote about Linda. It covers the last half of her senior year in high school, the beginning of her exploration of her sexuality to the loss of her virginity. Some new parts have been added, but it has all been re-written and hopefully improved. I will continue revising and extending what I have already written now that I have a more clear idea of how the story will develop. Chapter two will follow her story into her first two years or so in college. The plan is to ...

Welcome back gentle reader
Every D&D campaign I've played in always had its own flare of how the DM interpreted the rules. One of the campaigns I ran had a couple DMs playing in it, and at times the rule debates would get heated. Usually over the dumbest things. Like the volume of a fireball. A 20 foot radius sphere equates to 33 ten cubic foot sections on a map--if you're underground. It was fun screwing with the party by determining where that spread actually went. Above ground was a different matter. ...

The Slap
Scene One
Bar, late night. Rain slicks the windows. She's at the corner, tall glass of something neat, legs crossed like a throne. You walk in like you own the air.
She catches your glance but doesn't hold it. Too proud. Too used to weak men falling at her feet, giving her the illusion of power. You let her live in that illusion--for a minute....

"Real treasure!" Luke exclaimed, taking the offered dirty gold doubloon from Jake.
The stocky detective turned to pick up the second doubloon that had fallen out of the fleeing car. However, while he bent over, another person barreled into him. The impact sent Jake and the other man to the asphalt parking lot. A third man rushed over to pick up the doubloon....

"AAHHhhhhhrrghhh!" Kate screamed in frustration, pushing back her chair to thump her forehead against the dining room table. "Why is it so fucking impossible to find a decent apartment in this city? I thought, you know, 'wait until after the holidays and there should be openings' but noooooo...."
"Welcome to Southern California hunny," drawled Savvy, coming in from the kitchen to sweep away Katie's coffee cup and start setting up for dinner. She paused beside her girlfriend, rubbing her hunched back with...

The Architect


Mitchell Imhoff

Ethan Maynard regained consciousness slowly, painfully aware that someone was putting staples into his scalp but unable to complain about it. Gradually he understood that he was in the hospital and why.
It all goes back to his early childhood, he thought. He was born slow. Not unintelligent, but slow moving. What a disadvantage in a world based on speed, a world of timed tests and sports. He had a strong, biology-based conviction that in any endeavor, it wa...

Act I -- The Afterglow Isn't Always Gentle
Introduction
Zariah didn't plan to stay. Malik didn't plan to forgive. But one blackout, two bare bodies, and a decade's worth of tension later--plans don't mean a damn thing. Between the sheets, they find fire. In the daylight, they find everything else: secrets, old scars, and a dangerous ex who still thinks "no" means "try harder."...

Chapter 10: MARRIAGE AND MORE
Johnnie and Gertie marry
It turned out that Gertie's mother Dotty and Johnnie's mother Milly got on together like a house on fire and made all the arrangements for the marriage, very much following the traditions of the Standhope family. Apparently they both shared a love of music hall songs and would spark each other off with snippets of tunes that they loved to elaborate on or even make up as they sang along in harmony. Their meetings to discuss the wedding at either St...

Disobedience Has a Price
It had not taken many years since ordered societies' demise for the institution of slavery to again take precedence. At the onset of the war, the strong were already beginning to lean towards slavery as an ideal. Many survivors would, after all, do anything to be accepted into the communities that had survived the initial destruction. If they had to bow and scrape to be admitted they most often did, and in a very short time it became the norm, the strong, exploited the weak, and ...

Chapter 3

Leaving Bavaria, I headed east over the border to Salzburg, Austria. I spent a few days there, attending a Mozart concert and seeing the sights. Classical music wasn't what I usually listened to, but I enjoyed the 'classics', and you couldn't go to Salzburg without listening to the maestro. Over the next week, I meandered through Austria and Northern Italy, eventually arriving in Venice. I was delighted with my choice of car; it was powerful and handled like a dream, and I could cruise with...

Chapter One
Clara Longley tucked a stray strand of brown hair behind her ear as she surveyed the chaos of her office. The beginning of the fall semester at Georgia State University always brought a particular kind of frenetic energy that exhausted and invigorated her. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the dusty blinds, casting golden rectangles across stacks of feminist journals, dog-eared books, and student papers waiting to be graded....

Mittens Has Class


Chapter 22 - Cats Think Better When They're Eating


**Characters and text are protected under copyright law

Though Mittens never fully stopped worrying about Valli, she was able to get herself mostly distracted from her concerns by helping Master set up scenes with Chloe and Krystal. She didn't think she could clear her mind enough to be the subject of a scene herself, so it was just easier to play 'Dominant's assistant'. It helped that she quite liked playing t...

Chapter 18 -- Here, Hold My Beer
Sunday January 1
We all came out of the terminal to find a bigger plane than I expected. Brook and I had sprung for a charter flight to LA from our local airport. With us were all our friends who were staying for the week.
"I thought we were getting something practical," I said....

My phone buzzed like a phantom somewhere under the damp, tangled sheets, relentless as a guilty conscience. Dylan's musky cologne still hung in the air, pulling me back to the shower--his mouth searing my throat, hands gliding over my soapy skin. Of course it was Mom, her Catholic panic kicking in before she'd even made it back to New Hampshire. Four hours wasn't enough distance to stop her from checking if my first taste of freedom met her saintly standards....

[Therapy Office -- Audio Recording Begins]
The door clicked shut behind her. She didn't sit right away.
She hovered. Nervous energy curled around her body like smoke, hands fiddling with the strap of her purse.
Then, like surrender, she exhaled and crossed her legs on the couch, slow, deliberate, as if she knew the angle gave a peek of lace under her skirt....

There they were. Lined up by the dozens.
Uniformly tall. Uniformly beautiful. Nearly uniformly blond.
Marching out the front entrance of their glittering sorority house in their coordinated pea coats. Casting nary a glance at the house staff attendants who dutifully held open the enormous double doors for them as they strode into the chilly evening air....

"Maybe you should come inside," Kate replied calmly. Almost too calmly. She motioned to the door. "We just finished packing a bunch of old family heirlooms to ship off to my cousin in Colorado and are about to order some pizzas. Would you care to join us?"
She tried not to notice Savvy and Jerry exchanging worried glances. The revelation of a husband's secret girlfriend usually led to a lot of screaming and perhaps a violent fight. At least in most relationships it did. Katie's relationship with her husb...

"Sir,
PSALM 14:
PROVERBS 26:11
It seems that you intend to proclaim your blasphemy in public. If you have not renounced your folly by the fateful hour, all assembled shall perceive with their own eyes an Evolutionist's degraded nature.
For the good of your soul, I am,
ONE WHO PRAYS FOR YOU"...

Chapter 74
Mitchell stared at the sprawling medieval metropolis before him. He imagined it was what London or Paris must have looked like in the Middle Ages. Or maybe even Rome since Mitchell knew that, at its peak, there were roughly a million people in the city whereas London in the Middle Ages didn't even have a tenth of that. And Lorivin definitely held more than fifty thousand people....

Chapter Ten
By my fifth conscious summoning, the novelty had worn off.
When the world froze the next evening, I made myself just as still and waited. The fire came, followed by a flash of purple, and just like every time before, I was carried away from the comfort of my apartment.
I was back in the large circle. My three masters were lined up waiting for me just a few feet outside of it....

Jaleh knocked on the door, hoping that someone would open it.
She knew Rebecca was inside the house, but did not know if anyone else was home, and wasn't sure if Rebecca would be in any mood to answer it. If she'd still had access to Jessie's powers, she could have reached into the girl's mind and make her feel an urge to get up and come answer the door....

Eva woke up to Lucas getting dressed.
"Good morning, Sweetie," he said. "I've ordered some breakfast for you. I have a short meeting this morning, and then we can walk around town a bit, see the sights, and do a little shopping. How does that sound?"
"I'd be happy to just stay in bed with you all day," Eva said, only half teasing. She did want to enjoy her trip, but she also wanted to spend lots of time in bed. "You're not really going to leave me alone are you? I don't know any German," Eva complaine...

Chapter 9: MAUDIE
Gertie meets Johnnie's Grandmother
Her friendships with her 'sisters', Evie and Milde, were firmly established by the end of the calendar year and Gertie had also found a great friend in Johnnie's grandmother Maudie, who was 81 by the time Gertie first met her in November 1948....

Many thanks to my advance readers, including Not_E and happyyy_, as well as to my editor LaRascasse.
Content warning: references to sexual assault, references to bodily mutilation
***
Litheian walked down the long stone hall, pausing as the walls gave way to the open courtyard, the summer sun shining down on the carefully tended garden on the ground floor. The royal palace in Kiridas was full of such small wonders, balancing the need for light and warmth in the lowland plains of Anderar. She smiled...

Chapter 17 -- Take a Drunk Girl Home
Saturday December 31
"Get your butt up," I said as I jumped on Peggy's bed.
"What time is it?" she mumbled and saw the alarm clock.
"Get up. We're going running," I announced. "I'll get the boys up while you change."
I overheard my mom tell Duke to get off the bed, so I knew he was doing his job by waking them up for his morning loving. When I went into the boys' room, I saw Little David standing up in his crib, so I picked him up....

Chapter 71
"Going overland, avoiding roads and towns as much as we can, I expect it to take us about two ten-days to get to Lorivin," Allora repeated as they made final checks in the pre-dawn light. She looked longingly at the pack that held her armor and Mitchell knew how much she wished to wear it again, but that would be painting a target on their backs. She'd also freshly wrapped the pommel of her sword, hiding the gemstone from view....

Author's Notes:
So the first part of this did not do well as of the time of posting this. I can't see what ratings people leave but I can see how many have rated each work. Small number of votes and me watching to see how the overall rating changed meant I can back into what the votes likely were. Part 1 got almost exclusively 1s and 5s. I think some of the low ratings are because it was originally posted in Romance and I was later informed the story does not fit that category. Regardless, my hope is tha...

Chapter 8: AT WORK
Johnnie and Gertie learn the banking business together
When Gertie started going into work with Johnnie, she thought that most of his colleagues at the bank regarded her presence as merely amusing, but Gertie sat in on all his meetings, making herself useful by making notes for her own benefit at first. Johnnie agreed that her note taking and her assimilation of the salient points were every bit as good as his own notes and he encouraged her to take over the note taking as her valua...

Chapter 1: Alaric
On the corner of Main Street, the autumnal sun lilted down through the clouds, projecting a prism of light through the changing leaves. The crisp breeze carried a hint of the coming winter, mirrored by the hues of red and orange that adorned the trees. Collingwood had always been locked in this beautiful dance between untouched nature and the technological growth of humanity....

( I cannot express my deepest appreciation to those that continue reading and enjoy my efforts here. This chapter was not as hurried as the last one was, due to indecision on my part whether to continue and then keep doing so in a timely fashion.
Also, as it was pointed out to me in a comment: these will not be 'standalone' stories. That decision was made after Ch 3. Thank You all again for your patience, understanding, votes and comments. )...