Stories and Shorts

Some of my favorite pieces of writing never make it into a book, so I’ve collected them here. Some are full-length stories or novellas; others are snippets and scenes.  Some are mysteries, and others are simply slices of Tai and Trey’s life. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

And if you’d like to read the books and stories in narrative order (not necessarily the order I wrote them in, but according to the progression of the events in the series) you can find that list HERE.

♥ ♥ ♥

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Trouble Like a Freight Train Coming

Tai Randolph is accustomed to murder and mayhem...of the fictional variety. As a tour guide in Savannah, Georgia, she's learned the tips are better when she seasons her stories with a little blood here, a little depravity there. She's less experienced in real life criminality, however, preferring to spend her days sleeping late and her nights hitting the bars. But when she gets the news that her trouble-making cousin has keeled over while running a marathon, Tai finds herself in a hot mess of treachery and dirty dealings. Worst of all, the clues lead her straight into the moonshine-soaked territory of the most infamous smuggler in Chatham County—her Uncle Boone.

"Trouble Like a Freight Train Coming" is a prequel to the Tai Randolph & Trey Seaver series and was originally published in Lowcountry Crime. It's set in Savannah several years prior to the inheritance of Tai's Atlanta gun shop and her first encounter with security agent Trey, who ultimately becomes her partner in both romance and crime solving.

For readers familiar with the rest of Tai's adventures, this story is a chance to watch her develop her sleuthing chops. For those meeting Tai for the first time . . . welcome to her slightly reckless, somewhat hungover, not-quite-respectable world.

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Available now on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and other platforms.

Assault & Reverie and Other Stories

Tai Randolph couldn't care less about fancy violins, not even multi-million-dollar ones.

She's at the symphony for strictly personal reasons, to celebrate her best friend Rico's current beau, a bassist making his debut with the Atlanta chamber orchestra. It's also an excuse to wear that red dress, the one her own beau—security agent Trey Seaver—has a particular fondness for, and to avail herself of the open bar at the after-party.

Unfortunately, things aren't proceeding according to plan. Though Trey is as fine as ever, he is uncharacteristically distracted by a clandestine assignment with AMMO, the Atlanta Metro Major Offenders task force. And then quicker than you can say Scherzo in B flat, Rico's on the phone with a big problem—a missing violinist—and a bigger problem—a missing violin. The legendary Brancaccio Stradivarius to be precise. And Rico's boyfriend is looking mighty suspicious.

Schemes and subterfuge, bloodstains and betrayal, it's just another Saturday afternoon for Tai—former gun purveyor, current PI-in-training—as she tackles her very first case as an almost-professional gumshoe.

“Assault and Reverie” is the title story in this collection, which contains eight other Tai & Trey stories, including several never before published:

  • “Resolution”

  • “Ici”

  • “In Vodka Veritas”

  • “U-Turns and Other Tricky Maneuvers”

  • “Zero to Sixty”

  • “The Seventh Rule of Swimming”

  • “Tarot and Tea Leaves”

  • “Gathering”

Available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo and other ebook platforms

Creature Comforts

It was a simple bet, one Trey knew he couldn’t lose. After all, Tai had other things on her mind, criminal things; surely she wouldn’t devote that much energy into discovering one embarrassing secret from his past.

He should have known better.

“Creature Comforts” is an epilogue to Necessary Ends, the sixth book in the Tai Randolph/ Trey Seaver series. Many of the events mentioned offhand throughout will be familiar only to those who have read that particular work. But it’s also a prologue of sorts, with Tai sorting out her feelings about a decision that she’s barely spoken into reality. As such, it sets the stage for the next book in their adventures, which I am hard at work upon.

In the meantime, please enjoy an idyll at Cumberland Island’s Greyfield Inn, where wild horses freely roam, salt breezes scent the air . . . and a devious criminal plot is underway.

Liquor, Larceny, and the Ordinal Classification of Courtship Rituals

After a week of murder and mayhem, Tai is eager to enjoy an actual, honest-to-goodness, sit-down dinner date with the new man in her life, ex-SWAT cop Trey. Their very first date, in her estimation.

Trey disagrees—surely by this point in their relationship they’ve already had a date—but before Tai can summon a rebuttal, she realizes that something’s going down in their quietly upscale surroundings, something nefarious, and she and Trey are right in the thick of it.

Can they discover the bad guys before the bad guys discover them? And most importantly, can they manage to have a romantic evening that doesn’t involve bloodshed or gunplay?

Small Favors

It was a simple off-the-books assignment, a favor really—discover who is threatening erotic novelist Midnight LaRue, preferably before her keynote speech at the Romance Writers of the USA convention. It should have been an open and shut case for corporate security agent Trey Seaver . . . but then the pirate with the parrot tattoo showed up. And the media-hungry protesters. And the throngs of overly enthusiastic fans eager to get their hands on the closest cover model. It's enough to discombobulate even the most disciplined ex-SWAT security professional, especially one who bears a striking resemblance to the hero of Ms. LaRue's lascivious bestseller, Crimson Sin.

Luckily for Trey, he has Tai Randolph, his partner in both romance and crime solving, to share the investigation. Many many people have reason to hate Ms. LaRue, but Tai suspects that the key to solving this mystery lies between the covers of Crimson Sin . . . or perhaps between other, more scandalous, covers. It's a tangled tale of secrets and swindles, deception and seduction, double Windsor knots and bright red handcuffs. Because unless Tai and Trey can sleuth out a determined stalker, it could be "The End" for both of them.

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Not Even Past

A lush Victorian B&B, chilled champagne for two, and a top-of-the-line metal detector—Tai Randolph is ready for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, Trey Seaver, her sexy if somewhat challenging boyfriend, is not cooperating.

Trey rightly suspects that Tai's got more than romance on her mind, and he's determined to uncover her agenda before setting one foot in the bedroom. Tai has one night to convince him that hearts and flowers and sleuthing really do mix, even in a deserted inn filled with history and stories and maybe even lost Confederate gold.

"Not Even Past" sets the stage for the fifth book in the series, Reckoning and Ruin.

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Zero to Sixty

As a mystery writer, I do horrible things to my characters. I toss corpses in their path, ruin their romantic assignations, and generally complicate their best laid plans with murder and mayhem. Tai takes it in stride, but Trey becomes downright offended if the pleasures in his world do not outweigh the pains.

Enter the Ferrari F430.

As literary bribes go, it's top notch. A black-on-black coupe, Trey's F430 has a V8 engine like a pack of racehorses, with a throaty growl that aficionados describe as libidinous. Driving one is a sensual delight—the vibration of the engine, the way the leather seat molds to your body, the heat waves from the engine shimmering up behind you. It's powerful, sensual, elegant, just like Trey himself, but unlike Trey, it was off-limits to Tai's eager clutches. She took this development in stride. She knew that as symbols went, the Ferrari was a powerful one. In Trey's mind, it represented control and discipline. Behind its wheel, the world made sense to him. It took him over a year to finally trust Tai enough to hand over the keys, but at the end of Reckoning and Ruin, he mustered the courage to relinquish the driver's seat to her . . .

And this is the story of what happened.

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The Seventh Rule of Swimming

I am lucky enough to have two protagonists in my series—my narrator, Tai Randolph, and her partner in both romance and crime solving, former SWAT cop Trey Seaver. Because I write the series in the first person point of view, I spend a lot of time in Tai's head's; "The Seventh Rule of Swimming" is the first time I've tried to write in Trey's POV.

It's a complicated place, Trey's head, but very interesting. For those of you meeting him for the first time, you need to know that he is still in recovery from a car accident that killed his mother and put him in a coma, leaving him with a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Three years later, he has trouble processing language and making peripheral connections. He has lost pieces of his memory, and his sense of identity is fractured. His recovery looks different every day, and is challenging for the people who know him, especially three people you'll see mentioned: Gabriella (his ex), Garrity (his best friend and former police partner), and of course, Tai, his romantic partner. But he has not given up. Not by a long shot.