Family Law 7 – raw snippet

Lee woke up with Trish in front of her instead of behind. How she moved across without waking Lee was a mystery. Then she remembered she’d been up in the night for a couple of hours. Trish’s muzzle was buried in Lee’s armpit. It was a wonder she didn’t smother.

“Trish… ” Lee said gently. “Goy Trish,” had no impact said normally.

Lee sighed. It took shaking her by her arm delicately and then with increased vigor before her eyes finally popped open.

“If you say you were just resting your eyes I’m going to smack you,” Lee warned.

Trish looked around at the strange room amazed.

“I missed dessert, didn’t I?”

“You were going to miss breakfast if I didn’t wake you up.”

“I read that human teenagers need a lot of sleep too,” Trish said defensively.

“You read more trivia than I’ll ever manage,” Lee said.

“Well of course. You have businesses, and ships, and planets to manage,” Trish said.

It was infuriatingly reasonable.

“Watch out. I have to get up and use the bathroom.” Lee said.

“Me too,” Trish said. “But I’ll run and use the one off the kitchen.”

Lee tossed her clothes in the quick cleaner and took a shower while she was at it. When she finally came out Trish was sitting on a high stool. On the counter beside her was a package of bacon, a bowl of eggs and a bag of shredded potatoes. She was reading a fancy coffee table book with the title: The Complete Home Cook.

“You start the potatoes first because they take longest to cook,” Lee told her. “But all that won’t make a dent if you intend to feed Gandhi and Gordon.”

“Oh. That’s why there were six packages of bacon in the chiller,” Trish said.

“Refrigerator, but I knew what you meant.”

“Do we have truffle oil?” Trish asked frowning at the book.

“You’ve never cooked a meal in your life, have you?” Lee asked.

“They chase you out of the kitchen at home if you actually want to do anything,” Trish complained. “They make you sit across the table from them working.”

“Put the book away,” Lee said. “Those books with lots of pictures on shiny paper are expensive and useless. It would be a shame to get it dirty. I’ll show you what to do.”
Lee got three huge fry pans that barely fit on the huge commercial stove, a cutting board, and a two-hundred-millimeter chef’s knife from the rack.

“I’ll crack eggs and you can slice the bacon open and separate the slices,” Lee said.

Trish held the plastic package on the cutting board with her thumb hanging over the edge, reached across with the knife so close to her knuckles it made Lee’s heart skip a beat. She prepared to draw it back through plastic film and thumb.

Lee reached over and grabbed her wrist, averting certain disaster.

“You’ve never used a sharp knife before, have you?”

“My knife at dinner has some little serrations near the end,” Trish said.

“You were going to hurt yourself,” Lee said. “My fault. I might as well have handed you a loaded gun without asking if you’d been trained to use it.”

“Yes, please,” Trish said. “I’d like you to do that too.”

26 Responses to Family Law 7 – raw snippet

  1. Zebulon Dakota May 7, 2024 at 11:42 am #

    Yes!

  2. Nick May 7, 2024 at 12:01 pm #

    I thought it was Tish – no r – or is this a new character?
    Glad you have improved your fitness, keep up the writing.
    I’m dying to read the next book, love these snippets.

    • Mac May 9, 2024 at 10:51 am #

      You are right. I looked back in The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet and it was Tish. Word search and replace will fix that. The old memory never was that great.

  3. Teresa May 7, 2024 at 12:43 pm #

    I’m so glad to see you are recovered enough to write again!

  4. Samuel May 7, 2024 at 2:19 pm #

    Yay snippet! Woho!

    I believe Trish is the young daughter of “The voice” Badger whose name I can’t remember.

  5. Jerry May 7, 2024 at 8:21 pm #

    Trish is Talker’s daughter. In the last book a ship arrived carrying personnel, furniture, etc. Lee gave Trish her necklace and promised her a ride on her ship.

  6. Les May 8, 2024 at 5:06 am #

    Great to see you getting better

  7. Mike G. May 8, 2024 at 8:09 am #

    > “I’d like you to do that too.”

    Haha, nice to see some things are universal… Welcome back, hope your recovery is making good progress!

  8. Jennifer May 8, 2024 at 8:16 am #

    So happy to see you’re able to post again. Looking forward to the next book.

  9. James Crutchley May 8, 2024 at 9:16 am #

    That has me laughing at 6am in the morning. Thank you for that. I look forward to seeing the completed book when it comes out. Glad to hear you can spend some time writing after being ill. I hope you are doing well and are on the road the recovery.

  10. Dorcas Gray May 8, 2024 at 9:26 am #

    Happy to see this as I believe it means you are doing well after the surgery.

  11. Diana Black May 9, 2024 at 8:42 am #

    As already mentioned I am so looking forward to reading the full story. I am very happy to see that you are feeling better after your surgery.

  12. Melvyn May 9, 2024 at 12:27 pm #

    Thanks Mac. Great to see you’re recovering an back to writing

  13. carlton mckenney May 10, 2024 at 3:04 pm #

    Glad to see you better.

  14. Big Ben May 11, 2024 at 1:10 am #

    Splendid! All is once again right with the world!
    Hope your recovery is proceeding apace.
    Looking forward to the next book!
    Lee should give Tish shooting lessons just to tweak Talker’s tail.

  15. Harry K May 11, 2024 at 10:32 pm #

    Welcome back, Mac. Thanx for the snippet. You got an ETA for FL#7?

    • Mac May 13, 2024 at 8:54 am #

      Might finish in a month and a couple of weeks for readers. Need a title and cover too.

  16. David May 13, 2024 at 8:50 am #

    Nice to see you are recovering and returning to writing.

    Hopefully, you will be inspired to come with an amazing story for the new book!

  17. James Kelly May 16, 2024 at 8:36 pm #

    Glad to see that you are up and about. That kind of procedure can put a serious crimp in a persons life. Hoping that your recovery goes well and with minimal pain and discomfort. Always happily anticipating your next release . Thanks for the many hours of enjoyment from all of your previous releases.

  18. AntonyM May 17, 2024 at 5:32 pm #

    This looks like it’ll be such a fun read! Can’t wait.

    The virtual voice version of April is pretty good, I just pretend it’s Ruby telling her friends’ stories. Can we get some more of the April series on that?

    • Mac May 17, 2024 at 5:40 pm #

      Sorry to say there aren’t enough sales to justify doing the rest as audio books. In 4 months it has made $28.06. I’m deaf so I have to hire the audio editing and it’s fairly involved and time consuming.

      • Tom May 18, 2024 at 3:39 am #

        I am not sure of the details of how that works, e.g. what percentage you see of the sale price, or how much it costs to set up or produce. That’s not a question by the way, just a warning that I am ignorant in this area.

        I also wonder how it compares with the sales of the books read by a human narrator. I have tried a few minutes in the AI-read sample, and am unimpressed. It’s not horrible, mind you, but I much preferred your books when read by Joe Hempel. I’d buy April (all of them!) if it was him reading, or likely another human narrator.

        • Mac May 18, 2024 at 7:03 am #

          I earned out my advance and am getting payments from Hempel narrated books. Amazon AI was a bust.

          • MRE May 25, 2024 at 2:17 pm #

            This is fascinating that people organically prefer a human reader (at the moment). It’ll be equally interesting when someone finds out if this is a reaction to the AI or if a blind test would have people listening to the AI just as much as a human voice.

            Glad you’re feeling better and that we’re going to get more Lee and Gordon!

      • AntonyM May 18, 2024 at 1:38 pm #

        Yeah, I’d rather have a human narrator as well, and it would probably be less to edit. It’s such a fun series, we’ll take whatever we can get.

  19. Pcj70 May 23, 2024 at 4:36 am #

    Thanks glad you seem to be feeling better. This brings joy!

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