Saturday, July 21, 2012

Sister Napped outtake #3

Frances has just met her kidnappers, a cult called The Lambs of the Apocalypse.....

“Come on,” a gentle voice said next to her elbow, “I’ll take you to your room.”
Frances, reassured by the kindness of the voice and Ken’s defence of her – and that there must be a “room” somewhere in this wild Gondwanaland (hopefully with a flushing toilet) - pocketed Des. She didn’t protest as Zeke took her by the elbow.  She was utterly knackered, her wrists, ankles and now knees hurt like hell and she needed to pee so badly her sphincter was barely holding its own.
But tomorrow, these so-called-lambs were going to fear her silence!
“Zeke, is it?” Frances asked as she stumbled along beside him trying to see by the light of one flame.
“That’s right.”
“Is there a loo in my room? I really am very desperate to...”
God, the final indignity, having to talk about bladder function to a strange man who was part of what she could only assume some elaborate kidnapping scheme, or at the very least a bizarre form of practical joke.
Just as well they’d kidnapped her instead of Joni. Her sister’s Woolworth’s bladder would never have withstood the rigours that Frances’s has been put through – there would have been an accident in the back of the car for sure!
“Spend a penny,” she ended lamely.
“We have drop toilets,” Zeke informed her. “This way,” and he peeled off to the left.
How on earth he could even see where he was going was beyond Frances. She did notice that Zeke, who towered over her and whose hand at her elbow felt as big as a meat cleaver, also had the most prominent eye-balls. Remarkably so. They could surely have won him the part as Geoff Goldblum’s stunt double in The Fly.
They were obviously an asset in this apparent black hole.
“Here we are,” Zeke said as he opened a door Frances had practically run smack bang into.
A waft of composting waste, human and vegetable, permeated the dank night air and sat in her nostrils like giant globs of fetid snot. 
Frances, who had quickly become reaccustomed to five star facilities, guessed suddenly that drop toilet was not a euphemism for a loo with an adjustable seat height. But considering she was ready to squat where she stood and empty her bladder in front of a bug-eyed man, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Zeke placed the torch handle through a metal ring inside the door. “That should help you see what you’re doing.”
Frances smiled weakly, not absolutely sure she really wanted to know what the inside looked like or even what she, Frances from Kew, looked like inside it, but human bodily functions knew no dignity. “If I’m not out in a minute you have my permission to come in and get me,” she murmured as she held her breath and went in.

Monday, July 16, 2012

More Sister Napped: down to business...

Another taster of book two, Sister Lit-ers.  And it's not all beer and skittles for Frances and Joni...


Joni held the paper bag against her face as the paramedic had instructed, but it was just so hard to do it and scream at the same time.  It required the kind of multi-tasking her father, Carter, had always accused her of being incapable of.  Maybe he was right after all.
Anyway, fuck deep breathing.
“We shouldna called the cops, they’re gonna kill her, they’re gonna fucking chop her up, it’s gonna be like those fucking serial killer movies or the fucking ear thing with Van Gogh,” she wailed piteously through the bag.  Each time she made to take the bag away, Lex’s steady warm, brown hand guided it gently back again. 
“And God knows what they’re gonna do to poor Des.”  Visions of Des’ furry corpse hanging from the rearview mirror of the kidnappers’ white van like a macabre trophy danced before Joni’s eyes, and she screamed again.
Nick spoke firmly.  “No, Joni.  Lex did the right thing.  They know we’ll call the cops.  They expect it. It was just an… ambit claim.  They’re just trying to spook us. Keep the upper hand.”
The truth settled like acid in Joni’s stomach. Mission Accomplished, arseholes.
Nick spoke again.  “They’re not gonna do anything to Frankie that might risk their investment in this.” His mouth was a forbidding line. “And we’re gonna need the cops right now.  And all their resources.”
Joni knew he was right but she felt a moment of crystalline clarity and her tears dried instantly, like liquid paper.  She looked Nick and Lex right in their eyes.  “Just so we’re clear.  If my sister dies because you suck-arses called the cops, I’m never speaking to either of you again.”
Lex and Nick both nodded earnestly.
“We get it,” Lex confirmed.
“Check,” Nick echoed.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Sister Pact - the sequel!!

So, we’ve finished writing the sequel to Sister Pact – working title Sister Napped.
Because Frances gets kidnapped.  By a cult.
As you do.
And Joni has to come to her rescue….
Hijinks ensue….
The book is currently with our fabulous editor Anna and nothing's offical yet but we wanted to post some sneak peeks here to give everyone a little taste of what happens to Joni and Frankie after they leave the Island. Any or all of them may not make the final cut - hell the entire book may be thrown out the window!! - this is just for fun!
Set up - it’s the morning after their arrival in Cairns the previous evening, their first night back in civilisation and on a proper mattress in over a month. Which Nick and Frances have put to very good use.....
Frances woke to the rude shrilling of a telephone the next morning. She cracked open an eyelid, rolled on her side and reached out, groping for the phone in the darkened room.
Nick stirred beside her as Frances tucked her legs up. He dropped a kiss on her shoulder blade and curled himself around her.
“Hello?”
“Frances, this is Bernice Trotter, Endurance Island’s publicist, we met briefly yesterday? Your first interview is in an hour.”
Frances groaned. “What time is it?”
“It’s six am.”
“Six?” Frances groaned again. “I thought I was done with rude awakenings?”
She’d lost count of the number of times she and Joni had been woken in the dead of night or crack of dawn for some form of ritual humiliation. She hoped this media stuff wasn’t just another way to make them look like idiots.
“All the morning shows, want a piece of you. I’m sorry.”
Frances didn’t think Bernice sounded very sorry at all. Yesterday, Bernice had reminded her a little of her father’s secretary, Geraldine Merriweather. On the phone, at half past stupid hour, she sounded exactly like the old harridan.
Polite. Unflappable. Immovable.
Good old Gerri (as her father fondly referred to her) had regarded her boss’s daughter’s with spinster-like suspicion and spoken to them with a frosty, unamused, upper-crust voice. Even as an adult, Gerri spoke to Frances as if she were the Queen and Frances was the toe-sucking party girl.
She could quell rebellion or erase sticky finger prints with one look. Like Mary Poppins’s evil twin.
Even Joni had been terrified of her when they’d been kids. 
Nick skimmed his palm over her hip and Frances squirmed. “But we came second,” she ended lamely, feeling ten years old again.
“Quite. Make up will be along in twenty minutes.”
“Who’s doing the interview?”
“Someone called Mel and Kochie from Sunrise. I believe they’re the Australian equivalent of Richard and Judy.”
Frances was left in no doubt that Bernice found such a thing laughable. That anything Antipodean could be remotely comparable to the stalwarts of British television was an outrageous transgression.
 Nick’s hand drifted lower and Frances eyelids fluttered closed as she lost her place in the conversation.
“Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”
Frances sighed as the imperious voice snapped on a mental chastity belt and tightened it several notches.
“Yes, thank you, Bernice.”
“I’ll see you in the Daintree Room in forty minutes.”
Oh goody, Frances thought as the efficient publicist hung up and she settled back into the curve of Nick’s body. A day with uptight, straitlaced Bernice.
She’d much rather spend the day with easy-going, debauched Nick.
Stay tuned for more snippets from the second book! And if you cant find Sister Pact in your local bookstore please go and ask them to order it in - you'll make our day!