A Rose by Any Other Name is newly released contemporary romance from Alana Lorens

Up-and-coming mommyblogger and single mom Marisol Herrera Slade returns to her old hometown in western Pennsylvania for her 20th high school reunion in 2005, reluctant and yet compelled to see her high school sweetheart, Russell Asher, who dumped her for the homecoming queen.
Russell’s marriage to the golden girl, however, ended in a nasty divorce, and he has been systematically excluded from his sons’ lives. In his Internet wanderings, he’s found feminist blogger named Jerrika Jones, who glorifies single motherhood, essentially putting a stamp of approval on what’s happened to him. His group of single dad advocates have vowed to take this woman down.
What Russell doesn’t know, when he thinks to rekindle what he had with Marisol, is that Marisol and Jerrika are one and the same. When his group discovers the truth, will their drive for revenge derail any chance the couple have to reunite? Or will they find they have more in common than they ever expected?

Analisa took her into the cheery kitchen with its yellow gingham curtains and tablecloth. She let go, finally, to fill two tall glasses on the counter with tea from a crystal pitcher. Marisol glanced around. The appliances were all upscale, all with extras she longed for but couldn’t afford just yet. Everything in Analisa’s kitchen matched. The realization provoked a little sigh of envy.
“So tell me what you’ve been up to down in Florida. Sun and fun, right? It must be true, with that bikini body.” Analisa shared her own envious sigh, and Marisol felt somewhat better.
“Just work. And Mark. That takes all my time.” She sipped the tea, the bite of spice and sweet tang of citrus refreshing her, if not sparking her tongue to chat. Analisa, always the talkative one, hardly let Marisol get a word in, and that worked just fine. Her forte was the written word; even back home, she remained shy and soft-spoken.
What I need is a little Jerrika Jones in these face-to-face conversations.
The thought reminded her of her resolve to reveal herself this weekend as the popular blogger. Analisa was asking her where she worked. Time to try out the truth. The words tripped over her lips, though, when she attempted to speak. “I… Well, you know, bloggers. I mean… Do you use the Internet?” She flushed red. “Stupid question. Of course you use the Internet. Who doesn’t?”
Analisa stared at her blankly. “Mira, I’ll show you.” Marisol pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on the table. “Do you have wireless?”
Analisa cracked up. “Wait, wait, wait. Little Marisol Herrera, who sewed her own finger on the machine in Mrs. Martin’s home ec’ class? The girl who couldn’t figure out which end of a plug to put in the wall? You’re a computer whiz?”
Marisol rolled her eyes. “Please, querida. Just hook me up, and I’ll show you.” A few minutes later, she pulled up Jerrika’s bold page. Mothering Without a Man splashed in strong white letters across a dark red banner at the top of the screen. In the corner above the sidebar, posed the cartoonish drawing of Jerrika—a tall, thin, sharply-dressed woman with features reflecting Marisol’s own ethnic heritage. A friend of hers created the toon, drawing the image chic and sassy. Definitely all Jerrika Jones. She turned the small computer screen to Analisa.
Her friend’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the page. “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about her. She was on the radio with Katy Blaine last summer. We were all listening on the floor in the nurses’ lounge. She was funny as heck, that Jerrika. Giving men in general what-for, ragging on deadbeat dads. She…”
Analisa trailed off as Marisol looked her steadily in the eye. “She… Dios mio, Mari. Are you telling me you’re…her?”

A Bite Of…  Alana Lorens

1. Do you believe in character autonomy, or are you very strict with your creations? 

As I’ve matured as a writer, I’m trusting my instincts and characters more and more. I used to be much more “we must stick to the outline!” The last several books I’ve written, I didn’t even have a plan where I wanted to go with the story. I created the characters and gave them instructions, kind of like the improvs where Drew Carey throws a situation out on Whose Line is It Anyway? Then I followed them along their adventure.

2. Who are your literary heroes? How much do you think their writing has impacted on your own efforts?

I’ve always been a genre reader as well as writer. As a teen I read gothic romance and suspense from Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels and the like. Those books taught me about how to make sure there is an interesting plot in addition to the romance, and also how NOT to make them all develop exactly the same, so your story would be predictable.
Then I found Dean Koontz and Stephen King, who instilled a deep love of exploring the unknown and unbelievable.
Science fiction and fantasy also were instructive, learning about how to catch a reader’s sympathy for an underdog who rises to success, like the characters in Anne McCaffrey’s dragon tales, and the way Tolkien separated his characters so that chapters would alternate among them, drawing out a whole well-rounded story.
I think we can learn from all of them.

 3. In the box of chocolates that is life, what flavour will nobody in your house eat?

We’ve had a lot of flavors in our life, when we had three kids on the autism spectrum—some are sensitive to sound, others are unable to control themselves, some learned to speak super early and others not until they were four or five. In the last few years, my last daughter and I have been quite hermit-like, so I’m going to extrapolate that we are avoiding the flavor of people. Ha! Even without COVID, we were already cultivating a quiet, quiet life with little disturbance. And face it, people can be bloody annoying. 😊

Alana Lorens has been a published writer for more than forty years, after working as a pizza maker, a floral designer, a journalist and a family law attorney. Currently a resident of Asheville, North Carolina, the aging hippie loves her time in the smoky blue mountains. She writes romance and suspense as Alana Lorens, and sci-fi, fantasy and paranormal mystery as Lyndi Alexander. One of her novellas, THAT GIRL’S THE ONE I LOVE, is set in the city of Asheville during the old Bele Chere festival. She lives with her daughter on the autism spectrum, who is the youngest of her seven children, and she is ruled by three crotchety old cats, and six kittens of various ages. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Bookbub and her own website.

Sometimes it felt as if the world had eaten her heart and soul, and left her as empty as a discarded tin can.

She tried to make herself believe that everything was right. Only it wasn’t. Even when she crawled into bed the void echoed until she temporarily filled it with tears.

She left the empty, house thinking only to seek some peace beneath the plane trees in the park.

But the music called her, high and sweet. A young girl singing for pennies. Standing beside the child she opened her own mouth and her song returned – in simple harmony.

©Jane Jago

A brutal fantasy tale of piracy, friendship, romance and revenge on the high seas…

It had begun before dawn when a rough-looking type tapped on the door of the only smart house in town. When the door opened a crack he spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Word has it there’s folk in here as would pay well for news on the whereabouts of Tall Jack Stainless.”
The door opened further and he was hustled inside. Within ten minutes he was speaking to an unshaven hidalgo who wore only his nightshirt.
“Do you tell me you know where I may find Stainless?”
“I do.”
“So why have you not brought me his head?”
“Two reasons. One. I’d need a ship, and I don’t have one. I’m only a ship’s carpenter. Two. I’d like to keep me own head attached. Bad enough selling his whereabouts if anyone finds out what I’ve done.”
Don Esteban eyed him with contempt. But he still unrolled a map and weighted its corners with bags of gold. “Show me.”
“Money first. I been cheated before.”
A bag of gold having changed hands, the informant put a stained finger on the pristine parchment. “Yesterday he was here. By my reckoning he will be about here by now. And if you leaves on the tide, you should meet up with Midnight Runner about here.”
Don Esteban scoffed. “Do you think me a fool man? He could be anywhere by now.”
He made to snatch back his gold only to find himself looking down the barrel of a duelling pistol.
“One thing I never mentioned. His ship is floundering like an old bathtub. He has a broken rudder.”
“Oh. I see. How inconvenient for him.”
Even as the arrogant hidalgo started shouting orders his informant slipped away into the misty early morning never to be seen again.
The three black ships from San Sebastián were anchored out in the bay and crewed by a mixture of professional sailors and mercenary soldiers. It wasn’t a good fit this mix, and by the time Don Esteban got wind of his quarry there had been sufficient desertions to mean that there were only enough men left to properly crew two ships. The argument about whether to leave a ship behind or not raged for so long that they almost missed the tide. In the end, even the hidalgo was brought to understand that he couldn’t sail out after a notorious pirate without fully crewed ships. As the two galleons finally slipped their anchors and turned towards the open sea, Don Esteban stood at the bow of the Santa Hosefina vowing to make examples of all the deserters as soon as he had dealt with the bastard who killed his brother.
The Santa Anna followed the lead ship at a respectful distance, with its captain more than a little displeased by the unflattering things the arrogant hidalgo had called him during the argument in the harbour. He wasn’t at all happy about being called a spineless poltroon, or a cowardly moron, so he fumed inwardly and stared at the blue horizon with unseeing eyes. His thoughts only returned to the job in hand when he heard the unmistakable sound of canon fire and his ship lurched to port. A cry from between decks had him rushing to the companionway.
“Dios ayudanos, capitán. We are hit and taking on water.”
“How much water, cretino?”
“Very much.”
It was indeed ‘very much’ and even a fool, which nobody aboard was, could see that the ship was damaged beyond repair and sinking rapidly. A hail from the starboard side alerted the crew to an approaching square-rigger. For a moment they thought themselves saved, then they realised she flew the Jolly Roger, and had the mouths of a dozen canon pointing at their ship. They abandoned all hope. To their surprise the ship came alongside and held station with the stricken galleon. When nobody dared approach, a villainous looking gent in a frock coat peered shortsightedly across at them.
“We can’t hang on forever, chaps. Not when your boat is sinking fast. Just hop over here and we’ll ferry you back to San Christo. You’ll be fine as we’re being paid to see you safe.”
Whether it was the pirate’s words or the gurgle and sickening lurch from the sinking ship, but the crew of the Santa Anna suddenly found their courage and leapt aboard their saviour.
The Blood Boar dipped her oars and pulled strongly away from the sinking galleon, only just in time to avoid the vicious undertow as the once proud ship sank.
“Right chaps. I have a word of advice.” The pirate captain barely raised his voice, but every Spaniard hung on his words as if their life depended on paying attention. And by the time he finished speaking every man jack of them realised it did. It was their captain who found his voice first.
“If I have this right, señor, once you get us back to land we have two hours to persuade our colleagues on the Santa Francesca to victual up and be ready to leave on tonight’s tide.”
“That’s about the size of it. You would appear to have worn out your welcome.”
“And what happens if we cannot persuade them?”
The pirate ran a single finger across his own throat. “Zzzzzzzzittt,” he said.
“I think we can promise to be ready for the tide.”
The pirate smiled. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

Jane Jago

There will be more from Bony Mary and her crew next week…

Reposing hands
Rest on the word
Sleep at last
Like resting birds
And wisdom comes
As quiet begins
The truth of ages
Wrote on skin

©Jane Jago

Some things are built with love. ST/1/KIL was built with hate. She was built with hate, and absolute precision, by a very old man who had been, in his time, the best goddamn mechanic in the country. She was built to an exacting specification in the back lot behind a run-down truck dealership smack in the middle of Bible Belt USA. When she was finished her creator broke her down and crated the parts, sending the crates one-by-one to various accommodation addresses across England.
When the final crate left his hands, the man took a photograph out of his wallet and kissed it.
“They gonna suffer too my boy,” he mumbled.
Then he went and sat in the last remaining truck where he put the muzzle of his Colt 45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It was six months before anybody even thought to look for him.

In the meantime, an even older man drove a vintage Volkswagen campervan the length and breadth of England collecting crated parts. It took him the best part of a year to amass them all, but he was in no hurry. Better to potter along looking aimless and harmless than to attract the notice of the authorities. If you are planning a murder, it’s a very bad idea to draw attention to yourself.
When he had collected the final piece of the jigsaw it was time to contact the assembler. A carefully nondescript message was sent to an address in Spain and when the recipient flew into London, there was a hire car and a map awaiting him. The assembler drove carefully through the green countryside, stopping punctiliously at checkpoints and presenting his travel documents for examination. He arrived at his destination crumpled and travel worn and his host fed him and showed him a comfortable bed.

The next morning the Spaniard began opening packing cases. It took him three months to open all the crates and reassemble the American’s master work. When he was done, he kissed his fingertips.
That was the last thing he did in this life, as his host slid a knife through his ribs into his heart.
“Loose ends, amigo. Loose ends…”
When he had tumbled the body into a pre-dug grave and filled it in, the killer made a very short phone call.

In the dead of the night a helicopter landed in a broad meadow a mile or so from the house. It took just seconds to upload one item of cargo and the ‘copter was gone long before anyone even realised it had landed. Once the aircraft was safely in the sky, the old man took himself back to his comfortable home where he sat beside the fire and poured himself a special drink. He raised his glass in an ironic toast.
“You are avenged my darling daughter. Wait for me at the pearly gates, I’m on my way.”
He tossed off the drink in one gulp.
The next morning when his housekeeper arrived she found him in his favourite fireside chair, with a faint smile on his face, quite dead.

In London, the precious cargo was delivered to a specialist dealer in Soho. The man examined the goods then smiled unpleasantly.
“She really is a work of art. Now we just wait for the client.”

It was actually more than half a year before the American ambassador walked into the premises. After the normal courtesies, the dealer led the way to a back room, where three androids stood. Deactivated. The ambassador smiled thinly. He pointed to one.
“Not that. Activate the other two.”
One droid was rolled out on its trolley and the trader activated the other two. One was a lush-bodied six-foot blonde with a slightly trailer trash look, the other was smaller and slighter and somehow a pale reflection of its larger sister.
The ambassador spoke to the smaller doll first.
“Name?”
“Annabelle sir.”
She cast down her eyes with proper modesty.
“Strip!” he ordered and the doll slowly disrobed. She was perfectly formed and pink skinned and the ambassador nodded just once.
“Deactivate.”
The doll stood stock still.
The American turned his eyes on the taller doll.
“Name?” he barked.
“Bella, sir.” The voice was husky, throaty, sexy, and distinctively southern, sounding for all the world as if Scarlett O’Hara had stepped down from the silver screen to tempt a man to his fate. There was no modest casting down of the eyes here. The doll looked at the burly ambassador and dropped him the ghost of a wink.
He felt himself reacting, even though he knew ‘she’ was no more than some circuitry and a great many plastic components.
“Strip,” he snapped and Bella obliged him. She drew her clothes off slowly and with every evidence of a sensuality there was no way she could actually possess. When she was naked under his gaze she pulled back her shoulders making her large breasts stand out even further from her narrow ribcage. As he watched, her nipples hardened and extended. He exhaled swiftly and opened his fly with shaking hands.
“Mouth!” he ordered harshly.
The doll moved towards him with undulating grace, before dropping to her knees in front of him and doing precisely as he ordered. He fisted his hands in her hair as he ground his crotch into her face. When he achieved his orgasm he pushed her away roughly.
Reassembling his clothing, he turned to the trader.
“Stocks. Whip,” he grated.
When Bella was fixed firmly in the wooden whipping frame, the ambassador smiled and laid the whip across her firm rounded buttocks with a will. He was grimly pleased to see the red welts form on what looked like unblemished skin. After six strokes, the dealer grasped his wrist.
“Enough, I think. You have tested the merchandise past what would have been allowed for anyone else.”
It took the red-faced American some several minutes to collect his scattered wits. When his breathing had evened out enough for him to speak collectedly he spoke in a gravelly whisper.
“Battery life?”
“Fifty years. Minimum.”
The ambassador snorted. “Yeah right. And I suppose she eats and drinks too…”
“Doesn’t eat. That will come in the next model. But she does drink. Needs liquid for lubrication. In various areas. No alcohol though.”
The red-faced man cleared his threat. “Okay. How much?”
“Five million.”
The American swallowed. “Dollars?”
“Pounds.”
For a moment the two men glared at each other, then the dealer motioned his men to cut the doll down and disassemble the whipping frame. The crew worked in silence, and the owner of the shop examined his expensively manicured fingernails. The American broke first.
“I don’t have the authority to spend that much.”
“Then you’d better get authorisation. That’s the price. Including your boss’ discount as a valued customer.”
“Okay. I hafta make some calls. How long do I have?”
“I can give you twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll be in touch.”

© jane jago

With frosted flakes and crystal glaze
Swathes of snow and chilling haze
Crunching ice on hard pathways
Coldly creep the winter days.

Grey the colour of the season
Grey the skies above the trees and
Grey the mist and fog that’s freezing
No one’s without without good reason

Time of coldness, time of dearth
Time to measure life’s true worth
As suspended stands the earth
All awaiting spring’s rebirth

E.M. Swift-Hook

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

It’s the morning after.
You stagger from bed at 6am, with a bladder like a Harrods’ carrier bag, a face like a badly folded napkin, a mouth like the bottom of Primrose’s loose box, and a headache of the sort that screams like a toddler on a sugar high.
The rest of the household still slumbers, but you know there’s no more sleep for you – although you have yet to recall quite why that is the case.
It isn’t until you are halfway down a restorative Bloody Mary that you remember today’s the day when the Hon. Rodney and his chums are to be out about the moor on a shoot. Your loathing for the man you were foolish enough to marry reaches epic proportions as you grapple with the concept of driving a Land Rover out across the frozen wastes, laden with lunch for a bunch of red-faced townies – most of whom couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo – all toting shotguns and large appetites.
Opening the refrigerator your eye falls on the obscenely naked bones of a goose, the scrag end of a once noble ham and several plastic containers of assortedly repulsive vegetables. That part of your brain which hasn’t be atrophied by three days of conversation with the wives of Rodney’s work colleagues recognises the makings of game soup, and, more immediately, a bubble and squeak breakfast.
Undaunted, you grasp the largest saucepan the kitchen can provide muttering ‘bloody soup’ as you throw every bone and scrap of unwanted meat into said receptacle and haul it over to the range. Just before you drop the whole thing onto the hot plate and walk away, your brain adjusts sufficiently to the vertical state of your body to understand that liquid of some sort may prevent a conflagration.
Water seems tame and unfestive and you remember a gallon container of truly awful red wine that some oik brought along for the festive bar. It fits the bill without a doubt and you chuck it into the pan alongside a dozen or so onions and the same number of large peeled potatoes.
Leaving that to do its worst you move swiftly onto the bubble and squeak which is comprised of every leftover vegetable you can find, shoved into grandmother’s huge cast iron frying pan and bulked out with a large packet of repulsive instant mashed potato. Add a large knob of butter and turn the vegetables over. Get a drinkie. Add more butter and turn again. Eat something or you will be too pissed to get breakfast on the table. Add more butter to the frying pan and turn some more. Stir soup pot and add any of the following that may be found in the refrigerator: cranberry sauce, gravy, fruit salad, stuffing, bread sauce. Add more butter to the frying pan and turn over the vegetables – you should by now be getting lots of ice crisp brown bits. If you aren’t. Turn on the hot plate and have a nice cry.
Stir both pans and contemplate cooking bacon. Decide you can’t be arsed and shout up the stairs to the effect that breakfast will be on the table in ten minutes.
Make neat depressions in the top of the bubble and squeak and break an egg into each depression. Liberally sprinkle with bits of whatever cheese is still lurking and shove the whole thing into the oven to cook the eggs.
When the men arrive, dump the pan on the table and let them help themselves.
Into the soup pot add a couple of handfuls of pudding rice, a tetra-pack of passata, and about half a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Leave to simmer.

Alternatively, look in the fridge. Feel sick. Find cornflakes and milk. Surreptitiously open six cans of Baxters Game Soup.

Look out for more tips on how to cook like a toff next week!

If Antonia’s boss hadn’t been an asshole she’d have caught her usual train home, and she would never have met George.

But he was, and she wound up in the grotty little station cafe, drinking awful coffee and laughing like she hadn’t laughed in years.

It seemed natural to climb into a taxi at his side, and to laugh breathlessly in the lift to his hotel room. 

When the door closed behind them she melted into his embrace

If Antonia’s boss hadn’t been an asshole she’d have caught her usual train home, and she would never have met her killer…

©Jane Jago

The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Private eye and augmented android. Me and my holographic sidekick, Sugar, operate out of an office on the fifty-fifth level of The Last City. We do okay. But some days are a bit bumpier than others…

When a dame whose everyday walk is as smooth and studiedly sexy as a big jungle cat, and whose make-up is as immaculate as a well-pressed designer suit, arrives in your office at a shambling run with her face all over tears and snot it’s a safe bet that something pretty bad is wrong.
I was lost in thought, with my feet propped on my desk and my hat tipped way down over my eyes, when my office door was thrown open in a dramatic fashion. I barely had long enough to wonder why in the hell my holographic door was now making an eldritch shriek, when Katie Scarlett O’Halleran and her exceptional bosom landed almost in my lap. She was crying, and her face was a mess.

She grabbed me by the lapels and tried to shake me.
“Sam. Sam. You have to come. Somebody has taken Daddy.”
I sat bolt upright and squared my shoulders. Anybody brave enough to mess with Mister Aitch was certainly a big fish, and I guessed I was about to go shark fishing. I grasped the sobbing girl by her slender shoulders.
“Calm down Katie Scarlett, and tell me what happened.”
“I already told you,” she all but screamed, “somebody has taken Daddy.”
“Details Katie, details.”

I gently compelled her to sit down, and held onto her until her chest stopped heaving and she took two steadying breaths. Then I got the bottle out of my drawer and poured her a stiff one. Her teeth chattered against the side of the glass, but the act of drinking calmed her almost as much as the bourbon.
“Daddy’s personal alarm sounded about an hour back. Me and the twins ran, but his office door was locked. When we broke the door down he was gone, and there was blood all over.”
“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t think anything was okay. “Where are the twins now?”
“Flirting with your holographic floozie. We set droids to watch on the office and came straight here.”
I decided now was not the time to react to the slur on Sugar’s character. Instead, I reached into the locked drawer of my desk and pulled out two extra weapons, a mini blaster that I stuck in my sock, and a weighted sap that slipped into my pocket.
“Let’s go then.”

The twins and Sugar were in animated sign language conversation.
“Sugar,” I said, “if anybody comes looking…”
“I don’t know where you are, and I certainly never saw these folks.” She flashed me that empty-headed smile that I knew hid a mind like a steel trap and wiggled her assets. I gave her the raised eyebrow and we left.

The trip down the glides was tense and silent. Katie had herself together but she was only holding by a thread, while the twins obviously looked to me for a lead. I’ll admit it. I was worried. So much so that I didn’t even bother to exchange words with the young chancer who thought it would be a good idea to put his hands on Katie Scarlett; I just broke his wrist before I threw him off the glide. Myk gave me the thumb, and Zig grinned a tight grin.

At Hood’s Bar, everything looked smooth on the surface, the booths were full, the bar droids were just about run off their feet, and the holographic pianist was playing that damned song. Again. The undertones of worry were there if you had the eyes to see them, though. The droids were jittery, and every security guy had a hand on his weapon. Oh yeah. It was tense and they were all looking to Sam Nero for a lead.

“Office,” I said and followed Katie Scarlett’s long legs down the familiar corridor. She signalled to a guard droid, who opened the door.
“You all wait here.”
I strode into the office then stopped in my tracks. The blood was wrong, it smelled wrong. I rolled back the plastic ‘skin’ from my fingertip and bent to touch the red fluid. It was blood all right, but not human blood. It was rat blood. Somebody had recently killed one of the rats that inhabit the tunnels that honeycomb The City. So why was that blood artistically splattered all over O’Halleran’s office?

From ‘Sam Nero and the Case of the Dutiful Daughter’ one of the stories in Sam Nero PI by Jane Jago

Alejandro had lived all his life in north west Columbia, so when he arrived at a top British university, as well as being incredibly proud and excited he also had some trepidation about making the move.
In the event, he settled in, made friends, did well on his course and became a very successful student.
But at the end of his first year he told his tutors he wouldn’t be coming back. “It’s seasons,” he explained. “Back home we have the same temperatures all year around. I just can’t get used to it changing so much. Does my head in.”

E.M. Swift-Hook