TORTILLA PIE, a Tasty Little Short, Is Now Available

I'm happy to announce that my short story, Tortilla Pie is now available on Amazon (1.99 or free if you have Kindle Unlimited) as an ebook.

The story was inspired by my volunteer work at Seattle's YouthCare organization, where I used to prepare and serve meals for homeless youth. I love that a romance could arise out of such a situation and the story reflects that.

Hope you'll pick up a copy!

BUY
Amazon (FREE with Kindle Unlimited, otherwise only $1.99)

BLURB
When Anderson, homeless on the streets of Seattle, first spies Josh, a volunteer at TeenCare, he immediately falls for him, even though TeenCare forbids client/volunteer interaction. Anderson thinks: "And speaking of noticed, I think I was, just a few minutes ago. One of the volunteers was coming by and we locked eyes. You know, the way two guys do. Two gay guys, anyway, who like what they see. It's not like a casual glance—those only last for a second or maybe two at the most—but when two gay dudes notice each other, man, that eye-to-eye lingers. You know what I'm sayin'?

"And that boy? He was fine. Or to roll back to one of my mama's expressions from back in her day—he was fly."

In spite of the youth center's policy of volunteers and clients interacting beyond the most superficial ways, will love discover a way around the policy, so Josh and Anderson can be together?

EXCERPT
By the time I arrived at TeenCare at the corner of Melrose and Denny, the purple-painted building looked welcoming in the cheerful sunshine. A few kids milled around outside, waiting for the doors to open in a couple of hours for lunch. One of them smiled at me, and I grinned back at him, a little shy.

Even though I was twenty-five, I didn’t look it. My build was slight and I had a baby face I thought I’d never shed. How I presented myself to the world also helped me blend in with the population we served. I had brightly colored floral tattoo sleeves running down both of my skinny arms. My hair (reddish brown) was buzzed pretty close to my skull. I had three piercings in my left ear, one in my nose, and favored ironic T-shirts (Speed Racer, anyone?), skinny jeans, and black Chucks. In other words, a typical Seattle hipster look. Whenever my mom, from conservative Bellevue on the east side, got together with me, she would lament my fashion sense and ask if I ever planned on growing up.

But I digress. I said this kid, young man, really, grinned at me when I walked up to the door, and even spoke. He was cute; I had to admit it. I would also have to admit even this tiny bit of attention from him set my strings to thrumming. But no, my attraction was not a pervy thing. He looked easily at the late-teen, early twenty upper limits of the kids we served. But still, one of the rules we lived by as volunteers was not to be too friendly with clients. Of course we could smile and chat a bit as we served them in line, but anything beyond that was expressly forbidden by the volunteer code of ethics.

I guess they didn’t want to attract the “wrong” kind of volunteers for the shelter. After all creeps preyed on these kids the moment they alighted from a bus from places with names like Yakima or Kittitas or Chelan. TeenCare was supposed to be a safe place, a refuge.

But still, this guy ticked off some boxes. His smile, his confident—and baritone—“hey” made me feel singled out, special. For a love-starved guy like me, it didn’t take much these days. What could I say?
The fact he was just my type was even more of a recipe not for tortilla pie, but for disaster. He was very dark-skinned, with the most amazing pale brown eyes, flecked with yellow, I’d ever seen. His hair, like mine, was buzzed close to his skull. And that smile? Who could resist such a wide grin? Such perfect teeth with just a hint of an overbite? That smile truly, if you’ll pardon the cliché, lit up his face with its joy and the fact that he seemed to want to pass that joy along to everyone he met.
I sighed and forced my eyes away from him.

Down, boy. You’re here to serve up, not hook up.