We had a game the next day, which usually meant David and I helped Coach Dean get the equipment we’d need either carried over to the field or packed up for a trip to the bus. Today was a home game, which meant a lot of trips to the baseball field. Normally, the Coaches would have already starte...
2021-11-07 21:03:09 +0000 UTC View PostCamp Lemonnier, Djibouti
The flight took just over twelve uncomfortable hours. White Mountain had acquired a Beechcraft King Air that had clearly seen some miles as a cargo plane. Most of the seats had been pulled out of it to make room for cargo and replaced with jump seat...
2021-11-05 19:05:07 +0000 UTC View PostChef never made it down for my practice. I knocked on his door when I finished conditioning, dripping in sweat, and he told me to just go home and he’d talk to me later.
I messaged Kat’s disposable phone when I got home letting her know I’d talked to Chef and he was working on it, but...
2021-11-03 18:25:01 +0000 UTC View PostIf you've read Chapter 26 of Fanfare before today, go back and re-read at least the last third, as there has been a major rewrite of that section completely changing one of the building sub-plots.
2021-11-01 16:16:55 +0000 UTC View PostTaylor got to his car and pulled out his laptop. He wasn’t a computer person like Whitaker, but he had time to kill and he wanted to do some more research before he got into this. For one, he needed to find out what exactly Packer was doing here and he wanted to find out what this project was a...
2021-10-31 17:53:55 +0000 UTC View Post**The last half of this chapter has been completely rewritten to change a subplot as of 11/1/2021**
Considering what happened at the game on Saturday, I wasn’t surprised to get pulled out of first period almost as soon as it started. I swear I heard my teacher sigh in ann...
2021-10-30 02:38:31 +0000 UTC View PostMy anger over the baseball game had turned into self-pity by the time I got to the Blue Ridge to eat a quick lunch and start training. I could recognize that it was happening; but between Kat’s being pulled from school and my getting, at least temporarily, benched had thrown me. I knew it wasn...
2021-10-27 13:12:00 +0000 UTC View PostHaymarket, Virginia
Taylor called the number Claire had given him and never made it past the secretary, who left him on hold for ten minutes after getting Taylor’s name, only to return with a time and place to be the next day. Taylor tried to ask follow-up questions but w...
2021-10-25 13:27:51 +0000 UTC View PostI wasn’t surprised when I got to school the next day and Mr. Keller intercepted me and asked me to come to his office. I will say it was a different experience knowing what I was being called into his office for and knowing that I wasn’t actually in trouble. I’d been in here several times s...
2021-10-23 13:08:52 +0000 UTC View PostI started to think I might have made a mistake pushing Hanna by the end of the week. Although we hadn’t ended up on a new normal since I got my car, most days Kat and Hanna would sit in the stands together and watch my baseball practice and talk until it was time for me to go to the Blue Ridge....
2021-10-21 12:59:41 +0000 UTC View PostI couldn’t tell the guys right away, because there was a third person with them when they pulled up. I guessed he was the bass player Seth had been talking about, and I didn’t want to start talking about gigs with someone if he wasn’t going to stick.
“This is Paulie,” Seth said wh...
2021-10-19 16:40:38 +0000 UTC View PostIt took hours to round up the survivors and a full day to remove all of the bodies in the streets. Thankfully, there had been little damage outside of the palace, since all of the fighting had been either inside the palace building itself or in the plains outside of the city.
“How bad is ...
2021-10-17 17:26:46 +0000 UTC View PostEven though the crowd broke for their horses, it was still slow going to the center of town, with the mass of Romans fleeing increasing, packing together tighter and tighter.
“Leave the horses,” Ky said. “We’ll have to go on foot from here.”
They tied the horses up to one si...
2021-10-17 17:15:01 +0000 UTC View PostKy watched the centurions and Optio, who’d been sent to help work with the Picts, carry more wounded Romans who’d only volunteered to help train them. So far they had been at this all day, and very little progress had been made. For the Picts, fighting was a way of life and they went at it fu...
2021-10-16 19:35:35 +0000 UTC View PostInstead of staying in the palace, Ky relocated to the Seventh Legion’s camp, since they were the closest to where the Picts were being set up. Before settling down for the night, he made a ride through the Pict camps, to check on the conditions. Despite protests from both his lictores and Veliu...
2021-10-15 13:23:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe new song, especially the guitar intro, was still on my mind the next day after baseball practice, and I mostly wanted to just get done with training so I could get back home to work on it. All that focus meant I was a little annoyed when Hanna announced she needed to run home before we could ...
2021-10-14 22:26:25 +0000 UTC View PostAlthough he believed Talogren’s word that he would get warriors willing to go south and help defend against the Carthaginian invasion, Ky wasn’t sure he’d actually been successful until the first of those men started to arrive at the border. By the end of the morning of the third day, when ...
2021-10-13 02:56:15 +0000 UTC View Post“Have you heard from your lawyer yet?” Kat asked when I met her and Hanna by the stands after baseball practice.
She’d already asked me the same question when we went to school that morning and I didn’t know why she thought I’d somehow received a call from him since then, but Kat ...
2021-10-11 03:18:29 +0000 UTC View Post“What the hell are you thinking?” Lucilla asked as soon as they began their walk back to the Roman lines.
It had taken them some time to get all of the Romans ready to travel and Ky knew it was going to be a long and very cold night for most of them. It had taken him hours to run the di...
2021-10-08 15:44:38 +0000 UTC View PostTaylor stood there, open-mouthed.
“Who is it?” Whitaker called from the other room.
“Come in, I guess,” Taylor said, stepping aside and gesturing for Claire to come inside.
“Thanks,” she said, as he closed the door behind her and led her into the living room.
...
2021-10-07 13:14:06 +0000 UTC View PostIf you're following along with the Sword of Jupiter, I just found an error that caused some characters names to change in Chapter 31 (luckily, it was a character that hadn't had a lot of time, so he only appeared in this chapter so far. he'd been previously referenced in Chapter 30, but the...
2021-10-05 15:05:28 +0000 UTC View PostKy moved across the frozen terrain at a jog. While he was capable of moving rapidly for a long period of time before tiring, half of his concentration was on the feed from his drone’s thermal camera, showing him natives and animals crawling across the wooded landscape that he had to avoid.
<... 2021-10-05 14:15:36 +0000 UTC View PostI remained on guard around Kat for several days, wondering if there’d be any fallout from my rejection. I’d tried to soften the blow as best I could, but that was one of the major things that triggered her condition, and the last thing I wanted was to make her worse. That was the main reason ...
2021-10-03 15:04:13 +0000 UTC View PostSomalia, 20 miles east of Berbera
“Scott, do you have that list of the bids,” Cameron Lambert asked, sticking his head over the edge of his cubicle.
“Not yet. We’re supposed to get the final list by this afternoon.”
“You’re kidding? We’re suppose...
2021-10-01 13:02:06 +0000 UTC View PostI was still flying so high the next day from the gig, that it took me a while to realize Kat hadn’t come by like she said she would. While I wasn’t upset that I got out of studying, Kat had practically made a religion out of punctuality. I tried to call her a few times, but didn’t get any a...
2021-09-29 15:42:54 +0000 UTC View PostKy pinged Lucilla again, but she never answered, although that might have been because they were busy and not because she chose to ignore him. Since he’d been up the entire night before, he had to sleep this time, although it was restless, his mind showing him nightmare scenarios of what could ...
2021-09-27 13:20:22 +0000 UTC View PostEugene met us at the back door when we got to the Wild Cat. I assume he had some kind of camera set up and I do remember his office being pretty close to the back, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
“Charlie, good to see you.”
“Hey,” I said, shaking his hand. “This is m...
2021-09-25 14:50:52 +0000 UTC View PostI squished my way into school Friday morning. Mom said she could get my clothes clean, but there wasn’t much we could do about my shoes, which were still pretty wet the next morning. We’d washed them with dish detergent, so they didn’t smell, although I’m sure they would after a day of me...
2021-09-23 15:59:58 +0000 UTC View PostKy’s guards said nothing as they accompanied him the rest of the way to his quarters or as they stood watch outside his room. Had Ky not been so distracted himself, he might have noticed the looks that passed between them or realized how public the display had been, but he was preoccupied with ...
2021-09-20 14:03:47 +0000 UTC View PostThe rest of the day I thought about Rowan’s suggestions, but between training with Chef, practicing with Willie, homework, and working with Hanna to come up with some kind of plan to help Kat.
On the Kat front, we were having no luck. We went through women's support groups, forums, and ch...
2021-09-17 14:03:40 +0000 UTC View Post