Battle of the Bulge w/ Luke Saunders Profile
193.8
Some of you may have noticed a 4-digit
number with a single decimal place posted at the top of my blog last week. I’m
ashamed to admit that is my weight in pounds at the time of the post. In an effort
to shame myself into reducing the number, I’ve decided to post it each week
until it reaches 180.
Yes, I am one of the millions of Americans
who have been fighting a losing battle with an expanding waistline. My fight
has lasted about thirty years, when in my early thirties I noted that I had to
start wearing a size 32 jeans after having graduated college ten years before
at a size 28. I now suck in my gut each morning to cinch my belt around a size
38.
What the hell happened?
I’ve always been active, always played
sports, love to jog, go backpacking, ride my bike. I was kind of a gym rat in
my younger days, and I even did a few-years’ stint as an aerobics instructor.
Walking is one of my favorite activities and is generally what I do to relax
and clear my mind. Problem is, I love to eat.
Yeah, I guess it’s really that simple. When
I was younger I could eat as much as I wanted and burn off all the calories
with exercise, but as I got older I slowed down, and so did my metabolism, but
my appetite has remained the same. Plus carrying more and more weight has added
increased stress to muscles and joints that tend to get injured when I try to
pretend I’m still twenty years old.
I’ve known I needed to get serious about
losing weight for a while now. I hate how my clothes don’t fit, and my doctor
began to suggest a better diet some years ago. But what brought everything to a
head was what my 13-year-old son did to me last week.
We were returning home from Krispy Kreme
with a dozen assorted donuts, and I suggested stopping at the grocery for some
ice cream because… well, have you ever micro-waved a glazed Krispy Kreme and
put some vanilla ice cream in the hole? Seth shook his head at me and said,
“No.”
“What? Why not,” I questioned.
“I don’t want you to die,” he said.
I thought that a bit dramatic, and I said
so. He just reached over and patted my belly.
I got the ice cream anyway. No kid’s gonna
tell me what to do, right? And I enjoyed it while I was eating it, but the next
morning when I got on the scale and had to lean forward to peer over my belly
at the display, the evidence was incontrovertible. Somewhere along the way I
have become obese.
It stops now, folks. I’m taking the weight
off, and I welcome you all to track my progress. Feel free to congratulate me
on my success or chastise me if I don’t progress.
Now, on to the good stuff.
You would not believe the adversity I and my
team of editors, cover artists and designers, and beta readers are fighting
through to get The Dragon of Doughton
Park out to the public. Members of my team have undergone surgery,
chemo-therapy, dialysis and vacations (what?) over the last few weeks but they
persevere. My original target date for publication of late June is long past,
but this book will be available soon and
it will be worth it! Keep the faith.
Legends about werewolves abound around Troy,
N.C. Nearly every resident has or knows someone who has a story of a personal
encounter with one of the supernatural creatures, and some will go so far as to
claim the Lycan gene runs in their family. Luke Saunders, Jr. grew up in one of
those families, and although Luke’s father would often rail about how he “felt
the wolf coming on” when he was on one of his drunken binges, there is no
documented evidence of werewolves in his lineage. Still, the fear of werewolves
was instilled in Luke at a young age and particularly reinforced during the
period of his life from age thirteen, when his father crossed that invisible
line from a social drinker to a raging alcoholic, and age seventeen, when the
senior Luke Saunders started attending AA meetings and turned his life around.
In those teenage years, young Luke learned a
few things from his relationship with his Dad that greatly influenced the
course of his life. One was that some folks carried a raging, uncontrollable
beast inside them that could be unleashed suddenly and inexplicably to hurt the
ones they claimed to love. It was always best to tread lightly around these
folks and to always have an escape route planned in case the beast came out.
The other thing he learned was that if you
kept quiet, didn’t make waves, were patient and kept your ears and eyes opened,
you could learn things about people, recognize patterns of behavior, and
sometimes predict what they would say, where they would go, and what they would
do. Young Luke developed and honed such skills. He used them to avoid the
beatings that his Mom and older sister managed not to. He used them to navigate
the stormy relationships of his dysfunctional household. When Luke Senior would
disappear for days, it was Luke Junior who was eventually dispatched to track
his Dad down, deal with whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into, and bring
him home.
Nine times out of ten, he got the job done.
He bailed his old man out of jail numerous times, extricated him mostly
unscathed from a number of barroom brawls, and once even talked some very
dangerous men into forgiving Luke Senior a rather large gambling debt. He learned
to walk unobtrusively through the neighborhoods on both sides of the tracks. He
became familiar with the world of the bail bondsman and bounty hunter.
By the age of sixteen, Luke was earning
extra cash using his information-gathering skills for a local bounty hunter. He
used most of what he earned in support of his family, but when his Dad got
sober and started working again, he was able to put some money aside. When he
graduated high school, he used the money to pay his tuition and board at NC
State University.
But college, which was mainly an excuse to
get away from home in the first place, soon lost its purpose for Luke. He went
to work for a private investigator in the Raleigh area, quickly became a
partner in the business, and eventually went out on his own.
Although he maintained an amicable,
long-distance relationship with his Dad, who remained sober, he had no desire
to return to the community in which he’d grown up. Then, when he was in his
mid-thirties, he came to the attention of Roland Trudeau, who was looking for
someone who had ties with Troy and could spy on the wolves based there. Trudeau
lured him with easy money, enough money that Luke, who was beginning to tire of
the PI game, began to dream of an early retirement.
But Luke was a little too good at his job.
Trudeau began to rely on him and was reluctant to let him out of his open-ended
contract, and the vampire eventually revealed his true nature and the nature of
the “people” Saunders was investigating, choosing to retain Luke’s services
through fear and intimidation rather than making a pet of him, which would
surely make him less effective in his work.
Now, Luke fights the nightmares from his
past and his present. He walks a thin line, constantly aware that his life is
in danger from both his employer and those he’s employed to spy on.
How does he deal with the situation? Find
out by clicking one of the links below.Draculata Nest for Kindle Draculata Nest for Nook Draculata Nest in Paperback
Until next time.... Happy Reading!
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