Short Story: The London Kiss

Again, I used the Weekly Short Story Contest on Goodreads as an excuse to write another bit of backstory for Alongside the Enemy. The topic for this week had been "The London Kiss" with no other description. To this end, I modified the tradition of the first kiss after a tour to fit my world and to provide insight into the relationship between Mercy Lyons and her "friend" Cordelia Leduc. Leduc has gone through more than a few name changes and if you head over to my post on creating cultures you'll see why.

“The London Kiss”


“All hands, this is the Captain.” Commander Bracegirdle’s voice sounded throughout HMS Foxhound. “As you know we are due to dock at Outpost Behn in a few hours where you are to enjoy your well earned three weeks shore leave.”

Midshipman Mercy Lyons lay on her bunk, one hand behind her head, the other holding to a data pad with the day’s gun deck duty roster. Her bunk mate, Midshipman Cordelia Leduc was on the bridge, as she often was when Mercy was not. The two former classmates, while sharing a tiny stateroom, had never been in it at the same time during their entire eight week tour.

“Since the age of sail,” Cmdr. Bracegirdle continued over the ship’s public address, “It has been tradition for one member of the crew to be drawn by lots to be greeted first ashore by his or her sweetheart.”

Short Story: The Next Best Thing

As I work on my next novel I've been doing a lot of short stories to help flesh out the world and the characters. I've debated a lot about posting them here on the website and come down on the "share them" side of the debate."

So here we have a chance to meet the novel's protagonist Mercy Lyons when she was still at the Naval Academy and still just a first year Midshipman. This was originally written for the Good Reads website Weekly Short Story Contest Group.


"The Next Best Thing"
1600 Words

I was in my second year at the Academy.

Alexandria, this beautiful thing from Tyson 4, dumped me that morning because she said she knew her cat better than knew me.

Commander LeGrange had just lit me up in front of my entire Terraforming seminar for missing two equations in my draft term paper.

My roommate was back in our bunk with the Hanover twins, and he let me know that I was not to come home that night.

So there I was, at the junior officer bar, two beers into my charted course to complete inebriation.

Short Story: Missed Connections

Hey.  You see me every morning.  I order the same coffee, and the same breakfast.  We make small talk while you make it, and you ask about my day, or my night, or anything to pass the time.  I doubt you even really notice me in the crowds that pass through every morning.  But I have noticed you and hope against hope you’ve noticed me.  If you have, and would like to make more than small talk across the counter, email me back, and tell me what my morning coffee is.

Goeff stared at the screen and the words he’d typed in.  They had joked so much about Craigslist and the dramas.  She let slip that morning that she’d always considered the Missed Connections postings to be sweet and romantic.

“Wouldn’t it be so romantic,” Micky had asked, “to see someone, and share that look?”  She had handed his coffee over, her eyes lost in thought.  “And then see later that it really wasn’t just in your mind, that you really did have a connection?”

“Do people really check those?” he had asked.

She had blushed.  “Well, it’s not that odd to just skim through them for the stories.”

He had nodded and smiled and said something that he had hoped sounded witty.  He couldn’t remember now what it was.  In hindsight he was convinced it was anything but witty.

He reviewed the ad again.  It sounded corny.  It sounded desperate.  He clicked into text box and highlighted all of the text in the ad.  His finger hovered over the delete key.  This was a horrible idea, really.  

But instead he moved his hand to the mouse and clicked “post”.  Now it was just a matter of time to see what happened.

Short Story: Another First Date

Rebecca smiled back at her date, easing herself down into the car seat.  She tried to swing her legs into car as demurely as she could; this was the first date she’d been on that the guy had insisted on opening the car door for her.  He eased the door shut and then gave it a firm shove to latch.  While he jogged around the front of the hood, she smoothed her knee-length skirt over her legs.  So far this was the perfect night.