Sneak Peek! An excerpt from Lilac City Lunacy

Sneak Peek! An excerpt from Lilac City Lunacy

Hey everyone, if you’ve been looking forward to Volume 2 of the Luna Chronicles – Lilac City Lunacy, here’s a quick snippet to whet your appetite. An unedited scene with our favorite werewolf sheriff, Stan McKenna. Enjoy!

Spokane County Sheriff, Stan McKenna was having a bad week. A bad month if he were to be honest. The Lilac city, as Spokane was known, was inundated with hostility. Small fights had been breaking out more and more frequently. At first, Stan had chalked it up to increased gang activity and people working out the agitation of cabin fever after such a harsh winter. There was always a period between the winter chill and summer heat criminals took advantage of, but things had continued to happen.

            He realized something was truly messed up when he responded to what he thought was a prank call. There were a few on the force that might feel they owed him payback for bringing in donuts glazed with sour sugar and jalapeno dust. His fellow officer’s faces had both mottled and puckered while they cursed him out roundly. At the time he’d laughed so hard he thought he might have strained something, so he wouldn’t put it past his fellow officers to create a strange scenario just to mess with him. Unfortunately when he pulled up in front of his aunt Gena’s Sew Easy Too fabric shop, what he saw through the big front window was no joke.

            Four old women were facing off with each other. Two against two, all hollering at the top of their lungs while brandishing knitting needles. One of the ladies stepped forward and poked her opponent as Stan was getting out of his car. He moved faster when the poked woman’s eyes grew wild and her knitting hand turned the needle from a parrying position to a thrusting position. Good grief, she might just kill someone! The chimes above the doorway tinkled loudly as he entered. The sound distracted the women just long enough for him to place himself in the middle of the group. He unleashed a touch of Alpha charm hoping to diffuse the situation then put his hands up and spun in a small circle to smile at every one of them. His physical size forced them all to step back a bit. “Now, ladies. What’s going on here?”

            If he’d expected the torrent of clucking, spluttering, ferociousness that would spew from them he’d never have asked. At first, he couldn’t make out a word they were saying. After a moment he was sorry he could. He heard phrases drop from their sweet, grandmotherly lips that he hoped he’d never hear again. Betty White couldn’t do as well if she were fully drunk and witnessed someone beating their dog. There are just some things you can’t un-hear and Stan was wishing for a gallon of brain bleach when he finally caught onto a thread of the real problem. They were arguing over whose grandchildren were the smartest!

            He almost started laughing at how ridiculous it was, but as they continued arguing those knitting needles were again put into use. One of the ladies, a 4’9″ Latina with dyed brown hair in a loose bun, reached around him with her shiny red implement to prod another woman. He thought he heard one of them call the poker, Rosalinda, and the pokee, Agnes. Rosalinda was wearing a soft pink t-shirt and black shorts. Her target, Agnes, had short silvery hair and big coke bottle glasses. She was wearing a white, short-sleeved blouse and khaki slacks. She was also holding a long, olive green knitting needle low and at the ready.

            The other two women facing off looked like twins. Both stooped with age, they had short, curly, gray hair and baby blue eyes. One had a pair of glasses dangling from a chain, the other had them propped on top of her head. Both were wearing floral pattern cotton dresses topped by pale blue, loosely knit cardigans and both had short wooden knitting needles. From the cacophony of bickering, he plucked the names, Janet and Jess, before he’d finally had enough.

            Drawing himself to his full 6’5″ height, Stan quickly plucked the knitting needles away from each woman, put his hands on his hips and shouted. “SILENCE!”

            All four women turned their eyes upon him and if he hadn’t been such a big man, or a Sheriff, or a Guardian, Stan might have run away. Instead, he cleared his throat and with all the authority he could muster he tried to reason with them. “Ladies. . .