tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43850447460818196722024-03-08T03:48:21.986-08:00House of Beef: A NovelSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-44195291745415599202014-11-01T18:04:00.001-07:002015-01-04T06:02:51.346-08:00Free short chicklit mystery novel, complete hereThanks for checking out House of Beef. It's complete here! To read the whole, when you get to the bottom of the scroll, click on "older posts."
This was written from a rough draft for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), November 2014. It's intended as the first of three (or more) novels with a series character. I'll write more if I find a publisher or get some cash. In the meantime, if youSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-82917928615358790572014-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:002014-11-02T21:35:36.218-08:00Chapter 1Malone was nervous.
Wrapped in a few layers of tissue and tucked into the left cup of her bra was a stash of some two dozen assorted painkillers, mostly Vicodin and Oxycodone. The chunky ovals and rounds made a lumpy package, and over the course of moving through the crowd and adjusting her jacket, it had shifted and dislodged, slipping toward her nipple and threatening to get under the nursing Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-63002973729615608612014-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:002014-11-03T16:17:30.472-08:00Chapter 2As soon as she got home, she slunk upstairs into the little nursery room they’d constructed out of an oversize walk-in closet with a window. She barely dared to breathe as she watched Linney sleeping, zipped into a fleece snuggle bag, sleeves turned down and tucked over her hands, wedged between two triangles of foam specially constructed to keep babies from committing the death-tempting act of Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-29944854683583285432014-10-29T20:31:00.000-07:002014-11-04T20:33:49.016-08:00Chapter 3When she woke up, three hours later, she was coming from another direction entirely. Since Linney had made her appearance, any moment that Malone came back into consciousness was a jolt, a gut-clenching wrench of “oh my god what happened where is she what did I forget” terror. Terror was the new wake up. And this morning wasn’t any different.
But what was different was that she had something to Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-70625850413195338892014-10-28T20:56:00.000-07:002014-11-06T20:59:53.103-08:00Chapter 4Thursday mornings were Active Baby! times at the Independent Word, the large, determinedly non-chain bookstore down the street. Naturally, she called it Achtung Baby!, and it was a measure of how bad things were between she and Nils that he hadn’t noticed yet. The bookstore was the favored place for the famous-for-DC to inaugurate their book tours, and it was always ready with a banner on the Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-75174097764428126662014-10-27T23:45:00.000-07:002014-11-07T23:51:52.454-08:00Chapter 5Washington, DC, is, as George Clinton sings, Chocolate City. Most of the people who live and work there are African-American. Many of those in the elite, in the powerful and educated classes, are African-American as well; it is the home of Howard University, considered the “black Harvard.” A few miles from where Malone had grown up, just over the DC line in Prince George’s County, has the largestSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-48282272849062205202014-10-26T21:08:00.000-07:002014-11-11T21:11:14.365-08:00Chapter 6 “It’s just fiiiiiinnneee,” said Karen, lifting a happy and wriggling Linney out of her carrier. “This pretty girl is all miiiiinnne!” she cooed, and Linney seemed agreeable to that.
“I really appreciate this,” said Malone, taking the bottles out of the lunch cooler and putting them in the (double-door stainless Sub-Zero) refrigerator. “Especially the short notice. It’s really a one-time thing, Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-77197860493393855102014-10-25T21:57:00.000-07:002014-11-15T15:13:02.907-08:00Chapter 7At the beginning, it was easy to dismiss the music coming out of Brashton as surfer reggae pop; its bright melodies are why you might hear a tune by Bear Claw or Peeler piped-in at the grocery store. Brashton’s sound was on the face of it as mellow as the homeless hippie who sidles up to you on the beach and tries to sell you a joint. But the shadows show up soon enough in the coastal sunshine. Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-52286421417426699972014-10-25T20:30:00.000-07:002014-11-27T20:39:58.075-08:00Chapter 8Nils got home around midnight, and they actually got in a quick fuck before she passed out. The weekend, she remembered to mumble a reminder to him, had been claimed by his sister Kathy in exchange for babysitting favors. She had agreed to take the 7-year-old, a girl, and the 10-year-old, a boy, so Kathy and her husband could have a date night. Not to be outdone in conspicuous consumption of Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-10138183990254052982014-10-23T18:47:00.000-07:002014-11-27T20:36:51.959-08:00Chapter 9The question of what to do about the email intruded as she tried to follow the elaborate explanations of policies and requirements at the daycare center. There was one other woman with her for the “orientation,” a sleekly suited, high-heeled, glossily ponytailed lawyer, with a boy just three months old. She didn’t look any happier about the prospect of leaving her baby than Malone felt. Malone Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-64907024188771896692014-10-21T20:28:00.000-07:002014-11-27T20:36:18.008-08:00Chapter 10Daycare was alleged to give her time to not only work, but cook and clean, but she had lost a couple hours with her trip downtown. She put Linney in her bouncy chair and worked up some chicken and pasta while she threw newspapers and magazines into random baskets and clothes into closets and hampers and cranked through some laundry. Nils did at least half of everything, maybe more, and the free Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-35975516661706564412014-10-20T14:17:00.000-07:002014-11-28T14:18:13.096-08:00Chapter 11The Dome Smoker started out duller and more nervewracking than she had feared. After a half-hour of kneeling and shooting grip-and-grins, she had actually started feeling sorry for Michael Jordan. He should be excused from ever paying taxes again for this kind of charity work, she thought; grown men were actually shaking with awe when they went up to him.
Not that she was doing much better. SheSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-71047156293256124132014-10-19T06:23:00.000-07:002014-11-30T06:31:27.192-08:00Chapter 12Two nights out in a row, Malone thought, staring into the dregs of a watery vodka tonic. Though last night didn’t count, it being work, she thought, despite Nils trying to pass it off as a date night. And a Saturday night out at that. Vicodin, weed, coke, shots of tequila; the alternatives floated through her mind and on and gone; no action required. It was all under control. A man in a bright Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-22260528785411533422014-10-16T19:32:00.000-07:002014-12-09T19:33:49.792-08:00Chapter 13 “Sly Stone does not deserve this,” Malone said, with what was probably more precision than necessary, to Bebe, as they sank side-by-side into the couch in Seth’s basement chamber. She felt as if she’d been staring at the ugly chair rail, while pretending to watch the slide show above it, for an hour, but it had only been through the duration of the third gin-and-tonic, which was more like 40 Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-26879079966767388392014-10-03T05:54:00.000-07:002014-12-29T05:56:54.143-08:00Chapter 14She made it through the morning in that grace period between having the drinks wear off and having the hangover set in. She was even singing a bit as she got Linney ready for the day, packed the bottles and the spare romper and the pump and drove in, getting her settled at day care. It was during the drive downtown to work, with “Dead Finks Don’t Talk” playing on the CD player, that she began toSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-83014747707711513092014-09-29T08:02:00.000-07:002015-01-01T08:07:01.010-08:00Chapter 15It was hot—summer hot, already. She smelled something sweet and rotten in the air—maybe just last night’s spilled beer—as she walked across the lawn and then pushed into the knee-high meadow weeds on her way to the river. “He’s out back,” the bodyguard who answered the door had told her. She could see Seth on the rocks in the distance, staggering and clambering, then throwing something off the Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-51016840091662816842014-09-28T14:55:00.000-07:002015-01-03T14:56:05.892-08:00Chapter 16She should have been a wreck, a mess, falling apart. She wasn’t.
She felt better than she had in at least a year.
She crossed back to DC over Chain Bridge, across the same river, just downstream but with current much more dangerous. She was going against afternoon rush hour and the going was slow. At the light on MacArthur Boulevard, she flipped open her phone and called Andy: “Pretty much noSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-24080693219574288202014-09-25T16:47:00.000-07:002015-01-03T22:06:01.437-08:00Chapter 17Another morning spend sitting in Harlan’s office with a pounding headache. She didn’t want to make it a habit.
“It’s pretty transparent,” Andy was saying. He’d been trying to explain the situation with Jackson, that it was simply a computer virus gone wild, and Harlan seemed to be tracking, despite his constant distractedness. “Now, throwing the magazine in there, he’s just trying to get back Sally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4385044746081819672.post-65914458121719078492014-09-23T16:53:00.000-07:002015-01-04T05:56:08.779-08:00Chapter 18
She didn’t tell Nils any of it.
She rationalized that it was the kind of deep-buried item only put out there as a strongly coded throwdown between Sinclair and Harlan in any case. No one else would make anything of it. It didn’t use her name—Patriot Pages had been careful not to get sued, though if he had wanted to, Harlan could have found a way to do it.
Instead, she told Nils that she wantedSally Wildehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14818000777385527996noreply@blogger.com0