Hello, and thank you, dear subscribers, for opening and reading this newsletter. I hope you've had a nice March so far. I've been in spring cleaning mode for the past week or so, both inside and out. Yesterday I put the swings back up on the frame, much to the delight of my granddaughter. I'll probably get the sandbox reopened sometime in the next couple weeks.

How about you? What have you been up to?

It's almost here! Are you as excited as I am?

They have to find him…but how?

A former member of an elite military special forces unit, Leo Bailey can handle anything life throws at him. Except maybe approaching a certain gorgeous, purple mohawk-wearing, heavily pierced artist. Not without his three eye-rolling wingmen along to push him in the right direction.

One look at the mouthwateringly muscled, military buzzcut-sporting man with the endearing blush, and Vincent Noland is in love. Or at least in lust. Love comes later. Then marriage…and sweet, adorable Oscar.

Life is perfect—the stuff of fairy tale happily ever afters—except for Arthur Fletcher, whose unsettling reactions to them threaten to upset the happy balance of their lives. But it isn’t Arthur who throws their life into turmoil.

A freak event causes Oscar to go missing and leaves both men frantic to rescue their son. As they piece together the clues, they discover that Oscar isn’t somewhere. He’s somewhen. And Arthur Fletcher holds the key—or rather the glass beads—to their one chance of finding Oscar.

Will Leo’s training, Vinnie’s determination, and Arthur’s knowledge help them rescue Oscar, or is the little boy doomed to spend the rest of his life at the mercy of a primitive civilization? Could there be a third possibility?

Watch for the 14-day blog tour hosted by Other Worlds Ink beginning on release day, March 7. There'll be guest posts at a number of stops on the tour, and multiple chances for a nice giveaway (Amazon gift cards along with winners' choice of backlist ebooks)!

If you missed the tour signup process but would still like to receive an ARC to review, reply to this newsletter, and we'll work something out.

You can read the first two chapters on my website, or a shorter excerpt from later in the story on the publisher's website. Things look grim at the end of that shorter excerpt, but don't worry...I guarantee a Happy ending!

Flash fiction and bonus scenes used to be a regular feature on my blog. I've got pages on my website that collect them all.

Eventually, the scenes I'll be including in my newsletters will end up in those collections, but you, dear subscribers, will get at least a month's worth of exclusive sneak peek at them.

Pretty, pretty please, submit up to five prompt words to be used in next month's newsletter flash/bonus scene.

Either reply to this newsletter or submit your words via this Google form: https://forms.gle/9kbbhoDt6mqA34zo7, whichever you're more comfortable doing.

I usually manage to use them all, but will only promise to do my best to do so and strive, at the very least, to use at least one from each respondent.

You guys didn't come through with any prompt words last month, so I drew 10 prompt words from a random word generator. This set brought to mind a particular fun scene from Weekend at Bigfoot's, so I decided the thing to do would be to write an alternate POV bonus scene using those words.

It's mildly spoilery, but I wouldn't worry about it. The blurb pretty much tells you (or at least very strongly hints) that Wilson will come across Oliver in Bigfoot form, and this scene takes place after that discovery. The story's fun is in the journey getting there.

If anyone had told Oliver yesterday that today he’d be giving a piggyback ride—biggieback ride?—to Wilson, the sexy tabloid reporter he’d fallen for against all attempts to listen to the commonsense corner of his brain—not to mention his sister—he would have snorted an unbecoming, untwink-like laugh right in their foolish face. Hair glitter would’ve scattered from the sudden spasm of his head. Yet here he was with Wilson’s arms wrapped around his neck, and legs around his waist, traipsing through the woods surrounding one of the family’s remote cabins.

To say the leadership council in his ubiquitous extended family would be vexed by this turn of events was putting their expected reaction mildly, because who the hell knew what kind of headline the tabloid would dream up if Wilson went back on his word. But he wouldn’t; Oliver felt that to the center of his fat, furry soul.

“What about werewolves? Are those real, too?” Wilson’s voice was tinged with a twelve-year-old boy’s excitement.

Oliver spied a miner’s lettuce patch, gave a non-committal shrug, and came to a halt. Wilson’s inner twelve-year-old needed to chill until Oliver was capable of forming actual words again. Not to mention was less susceptible to the barely-controllable cravings that came with his shift into Bigfoot form.

Wilson hopped off and Oliver tore up clumps of the greenery and stuffed them into his mouth.

“How about vampires?”

Oliver affected a shiver.

“What’s that? A ‘you hope not’ or a ‘you’ve encountered them and they’re scary bastards’?”

Oliver tipped his head and heaved a sigh.

“Right…one question at a time. Was that a ‘you hope not’?”

Oliver gave a firm nod. Who knew for sure? Most people would scoff at the idea of Bigfoot existing, yet here he was. Just because no one he personally knew and trusted had ever encountered them, didn’t mean vampires and other shifters didn’t also exist.

“How much werewolf lore applies to Bigfoots? Is it all hereditary or can you bite someone and turn them?”

Again, Oliver tipped his head to the side and sighed.

“Sorry. Is it all hereditary?”

Oliver nodded, then some of the lettuce leaves still on the ground twitched. There was no delay in his instinctive reaction as he plucked up the small toad—whose camouflage green didn’t quite match the vegetation it was hunkering down under—and popped it into his mouth.

Dammit.

No catch and release for any hapless little critter that didn’t have the good sense to stay out of a Bigfoot’s sight. He narrowed his eyes and gave a vigorous chew as Wilson covered his mouth but manfully managed not to gag. Oliver kept his mouth closed and suppressed the sarcastic impulse to say, “Mmm, zesty,” because there was no call for rudeness and it would’ve just come out as a Chewbacca-like wail anyway.

Wilson’s face wasn’t quite as green as the leaves surrounding him. “Right. Not judging. Sorry.”

Sure. It was nice of Wilson to say, but would he really be able to keep himself from judging?

Oliver swallowed, winced—out of worry rather than from the toad’s taste—grumbled, and stood. He looked to the west. The sun was getting lower in the sky. He cocked his head in the direction of the cabin.

“We should get back?”

Oliver nodded, and oddly enough, he was disappointed that his time in Bigfoot form was coming to an end. Would Wilson still be with him for the next one?

~ ~ ~

All prompt words used!

match – vex – catch – fat – crave – delay – zesty – vigorous – mouth – ubiquitous 

~ ~ ~

Thanks so much for reading. Remember to either reply to this newsletter email or follow this link to a Google form to give me prompt words for next month's flash/bonus scene!

(Huge congratulations to Ginger C., the February winner!)

Thank you, again, dear subscribers, for opening and reading my newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it, and hope to see you here again next month!

Until then, I'll leave you with this picture of one of "my" feral kitties. This one was born sometime early August of last year. She's got a solid white sister and solid white mother that also hang around.

How about you? I would love to hear about your pets!

Take care of yourselves, dear subscribers. Do the things you love.

AuthorAddisonAlbright.com