The Spy I Loved, by Dusty Miller.

Not exactly as pictured.

Constance 'Dusty' Miller




Liam hadn’t realized there was a dimmer switch. He was just examining a velvet painting of some big-eyed children on the living room wall when the lights dropped and he turned to look. 

Wow. 

Lindsey stood in the arch, and his jaw dropped. 

She was wearing high-heeled shoes, sheer black stockings with a line up the back, a garter belt, also in black, and a thin, sheer teddy with a high neckline. Her breasts were just a nice B-cup, riding firm and high, with puffy nipples that would be pink when he got them out into the light. 

Around her neck was a silk bow and she had dangly black hoop earrings in some kind of polished stone segments. 

With her lips parted and her eyes locked on his, she sashayed into the room, turning and striking a pose. She had him cornered. She circled in, inexorably. There was no place to run and no way to hide. Not once he’d seen it. There wasn’t much he could do except sit down on the single upholstered armchair as she bent forward, face inches from his. 

The look in her eyes was wild, angry, abandoned. 

“Lindsey—” 

“Shut up.” 

“This is a real bad idea—honestly. You’re upset, you’ve been through a rough time—” 

“This is not how it ends, Liam Kimball.”


End of excerpt.


It’s a calculated risk for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service in the classic game of spy-versus-spy. In a game where there are no rules, sometimes even no clear objectives, it’s a question of who gets there first—and who gets hurt.

The Spy I Loved is now available from Amazon.

Shit! I almost forgot. The book is free for a limited time at Smashwords.

 

On the Importance of Not Listening.

"Ignore them? Wow."

Constance 'Dusty' Miller

I think that my first novel is done.

It’s kind of hard to say.

That’s it? It’s over?

But of course it’s not really over until the book is published.

For some reason I’m a bit shy about doing that.

It’s not like there’s a big deadline for it.

I can sit down and try to read the thing three or four times, and there is no doubt that once I tuck into it, there are changes that can be made.

I could screw around with the ending a bit.

I tried to explain the feeling to a buddy.

Let’s call him Mike.

Mike laughed.

“How long have you been doing this?”

I told him a couple of years. I didn’t know what to say.

“The problem is that you are still listening.”

“What?”

“You’re still listening.”

“To what? The book?” (Mike really is a bit nuts sometimes.)

“No.” He looked me right in the eye. “No. You’re still listening to them.”

Them.

Oh, yeah, here we go.

He sat back a little bit, and then he took a long, slow breath. There was some hesitation there.

“You’re still listening to the other writers. You’re still listening to the people who are telling you how to write a story. You’re still listening to the people who are telling you how to manage a career, and this is your first fucking book for Christ’s sake. You’re still listening to the dos and don’ts and the whatnots, the fucking adverbs and dialogue tags and prepositions and it’s all fucking bullshit.”

“And you’re saying I shouldn’t do that?”

“I’m saying you’ve had enough. At some point, it is extremely important that you stop fucking listening to all of them other voices. For if you don’t…they will go on forever. And nothing is more guaranteed to fuck you up as a writer, quicker than listening to a bunch of other writers. All the fucking time. Look. Read their stories—their fiction, for crying out loud, and stop reading their fucking opinions. They don't know anything more than you do. Ignore all that other bullshit about craft, and business, and publishing, and How to Write a Fucking Book, and all that shit about the industry. Just forget it. It’s nonsense, Dusty. All of it.”

Whoa.

Shit.

“So…so…”

“So what?”  (Man, you smoke a lot. I could see it in his eyes.)

“So what do I do?”

“Listen to yourself. What’s your next story? That's the only thing that's important. Follow your own instincts. And ignore everything and everyone else. Otherwise, you are fucking doomed to follow them. And I don’t see you as a follower at all. You've got all kinds of stuff. It's busting out at the seams. You're the only one who don't fucking see it.”

That fucking guy was dead serious, too.

(Wow.)

“Okay.” I thought about it for a minute. “You mean, everyone who comes after this, right?”

He grinned from ear to ear.

“Now you’re catching on.”

What the hell.

I will try anything once.

I have to admit, though. That was a new one on me.

It does make a weird kind of sense, though.

END

(Dusty’s just a bit shy, ladies and gentlemen. She’s put a lot of work into it. It’s not a bad book and if she can’t think of anything to add, then the thing is done, isn’t it? I promise that I won’t let her stew too long.– ed.)

Sex News Roundup, Mar. 14, 2015.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.