“A conundrum. One thing he couldn’t tolerate was being expected to follow someone’s orders. That barked command instilled in Jaden a desire to pry Cheap’s eyes from their sockets, then use the eyeballs to plug the pipes. A two birds with one stone solution.

On the other hand, if Jaden was going to operate a semi-respectable business in the shadows of society, he had to “roll with the punches.” The knowledge that he could pluck eyeballs from heads with ease should be enough to keep him from actually doing it. Cheap didn’t know who, what, or from where Jaden came, and there was an odd sort of freedom in that.”

The above comes from a soon-to-be-published short story I’ve been toying with for some time. Don’t you love all the ambiguous language there? Over the past four years I’ve been unable to get Jaden off the mind, and whenever I see a small (mis)adventure of his play out in my imagination, I write it down. Then I wondered, “Hmm, would Jaden readers be interested in the story?” I floated a couple trial balloons and found out, yes, they would. To Be Safe Than Hunted is a modest 11,000 words, a short read but hopefully enjoyable. Once I’ve fine tuned and created a cover for it, I’ll release it as an ebook on amazon.com.

Am I also writing a novel? I sure hope so, but I cannot know for sure until the story has revealed all its secrets to me. And until such time as a complete novel matures, I’ll dabble in short stories for the fun.

I’ll update social media and this blog when the short story is published and available for purchase. Stay tuned!