The Shack: An Unstoppable Man
Copyright© 2021 by Todd_d172
Chapter 18: Movie Night
I looked around the cabin as the credits rolled on Tora! Tora! Tora!. Sheree was resting against me, sound asleep, hand gripping my shirt possessively. Delaney had her head at the other end of the huge couch, her feet resting across Sheree’s legs.
Tiffany had called from Barbados, but Sheree had talked her out of coming home early from her honeymoon, although it had been a close call. I fully expected to catch hell from her pretty much as soon as she got off the plane.
As for Tara, she and Benjamin Stratton were off on a three-day excursion to the beach. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it didn’t matter. It was her choice, and that was all there was to that. At least for me. Delaney had dropped enough not-so-veiled threats on her own. I was a little worried about whether his morals would eventually get in the way of things that might have to be done, but we could cross that bridge when we came to it.
I stretched over, wincing a bit at the pain in my leg, picked up the remote, turned the sound all the way down, and flicked it back over from the movie to the regular television station, preparing to turn it off.
Something caught my eye.
Why was she on TV? And why was she between the governor and the Speaker of the House?
The governor’s wife stood nearby with a plastic smile, watchful eyes focused intensely on her.
Something scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and I took a second to make sense of it.
... Governor Appoints Widow to Replace the Late Senator Morris...
Fuck me to tears.
Post Production Notes:
We love writing this series. Needles & Delaney have a rapport that just seems to flow so easily; it is more like watching a movie than trying to write a story. It is also, by far, the longest single piece we’ve written. We aimed for 23K words and ended up with over 37K words. Obviously there are more stories in this series to write, and we are working on them.
I know I mentioned it up front, but really, special thanks again to all of the editors and beta readers who have ever helped us. This just couldn’t happen without them. The sheer number of corrections is mind-numbing, and they are necessary. When we write, is nearly impossible for us to see our own mistakes – we just fall back into the tale. This story is far better for their help and suggestions and there is no way to overstate that.
The readers here are incredible – the support you have given us is just phenomenal.
The Missus, has been, as usual, irreplaceable and irrepressible. We bounce the stories off each other, making up scenes over the kitchen counter, in the truck as we go to pick up feed and sitting on the couch with glasses of wine and scotch. We were stunned at just how much we enjoy doing this together, and our only regret is that we are always so busy that it’s hard to find the time to do more. The last couple years have been a bit crazy, but we think we can see some light and some breathing space to do more.
Finally, we’ve novelized the first three stories in the Needles and Delaney series, adding about 25K words to them, and put it up as an ebook on Amazon under the title: “Needles and Delaney.” We won’t stop posting here, of course, and you certainly don’t have to buy a copy to know what is going on in the series, but a lot of people have asked us to do this, so why not? Besides, story theft has struck several writers on many websites, and one way to mitigate that is to get it up there ourselves. We seriously never pictured ourselves putting out a book; for us, this still very much about the sheer fun of sharing stories around the campfire.
We still have an endless supply of story ideas – Amos’s story, Jinxy’s story, a couple of pulp detective pieces, a really creepy jungle adventure pulp based on real life, some science fiction pieces ... and on and on. More ideas than time to write, but we are working on them. The next story, “The Shack: Milk Run” is already at 20K words, so we hope to get it hammered out and polished up quickly.