Currently working on the first book in the plotted-out Mime series. Here’s a snippet of the work-in-progress!

     Claire Fitzgerald ducked her head out of the kitchen into her new restaurant full of happy customers and sighed in weary relief. The Casablanca black and white VR theme had been enough to get them in the door, but her culinary creations would be what kept them coming back.

It was a triumph long in the making. After all the hell she’d been through, to climb out of abuse and the muck of poverty and learning to insist on respect, and finally making it? The opening reviews for her restaurant were nothing short of glowing. There had been a line out the door earlier.

Claire was a happy chef, and a happier business owner. But somehow she was still surprised that after doing the right things for so long it had all worked. She was still emotionally waiting for the figurative “other shoe” to drop.

#

There was no way for her to know that under the cover of the VR disguise she had provided, the “other shoe” was watching her.

Someone had found her cooking so good that he was planning on having her cater for him, in every way. Permanently. As in, We’re gonna take a little trip. And the theme music wasn’t gonna be “It Had to Be You,” either. “Fly Me to the Moon?” No. Much further than that.

He watched Claire put up the newly-framed reviews on the wall in the entryway, oblivious to the threat watching her under veiled eyes, so close he could almost touch her. Her soon-to-be captor could see she’d hung up a five-stars review where he sat. Stang smiled cruelly to himself.

His ship needed a cook.

And there were going to be a lot more than five stars where they were going.