Welcome!

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I will be posting special preview chapters for the current works in progress I have (I typically work on two books at one time).

To kick things off, I'd like to introduce you to a new character. Do you know that crazy cat lady that lives down the street, the one that shakes her cane at all the kids in the neighborhood? Well, her name is Florence Valentine and she's about to have a very interesting day.


The Unlikely Dungeon: Book 1, Cat Core (the title is a work in progress).

 

Introduction: 

“Why hello there Mr. Binkie, aren’t you a little sweetheart this mornin’. Ohh, don’t get all uppity there Jingles, you know momma loves you as much as the others,” Miss Florence Valentine cooed to her pets as she shuffled her way into the kitchen. With a sigh, she headed toward the pantry where the dry cat food was kept. She did have some cans of the wet food, but those were saved for special occasions like Christmas when the little lovelies deserved a treat. For day to day, she gave them dry food, it was far too much work to clean up the mess from the wet food and if there was one thing Florence Valentine abhorred, it was a mess.

Mornings were the Good Lord’s way of reminding her that she had graced this world with her presence for the last eighty-six years. Every little ache and pain seemed to make itself known in the morning. If it wasn’t for all her little fur babies, she didn’t think she would find the motivation to get out of bed. 

Hiss

Rrroooww 

The troublemaker was at it again. Of all her eighteen cats, it was always Tater that seemed to cause trouble with the others. This time, he had worked himself up into quite a tizzy, the little monster had decided that a certain food dish was his and wouldn’t let none of the others near it. 

“Why, settle down there, Tater, you’ve got to share with your brother’s and sisters like a good boy,” Florence chided as she opened the pantry door. The memory hit her at that moment, revealing itself through the haze of just waking up. It was the worst thing that could happen…she was out of cat food. 

“Lordy, I was supposed to head on into town yesterday. Looks like it’s a cat holiday today boys and girls, wet food it is,” she said with a forced smile, shaking the nearly empty bag of dry food to gather her babies for breakfast. The bag rattled with the remaining handful of nuggets which she poured into one of the bowls before throwing away the bag. Her limited dry food distribution caused even more ruckus among her feline family as she began to pull a half dozen cans of Kozy Kat brand food out of her special occasion shelf in the pantry. Six cans should do it, they didn’t need to scarf down too much of the wet food, or they’d be yacking it up all over her carpets. 

“Here you go, my loves, Kozy Kat Chicken and Cheese flavored today for everyone,” she would have more cleanup to do when she got home, but for now she had to head out before it got close to noon and all those inattentive drivers looking at their fancy phones got out on the road. Just thinking about those phones made her blood boil. Why couldn’t people just be satisfied with what they had, her good old-fashioned rotary phone has worked perfectly for over fifty years. How can these kids say their phones are new and improved, she’d like to see one of those flashy things last fifty years and still work as good as the day it was built? 

Her car keys were on the pegboard by the front door like they always were, and her pocketbook was by her favorite recliner. Checking to make sure she had enough cash for a two-week supply of food and litter, Florence fired up the 1991 Buick Century and headed into town. As Florence turned onto the main highway, she forced a smile and waved at old Tabitha Long who had foolishly bought that corner house with all the traffic noise so many years ago. 

“Yes, hello you old bitty. You’re the biggest busybody in Logan County I’ll have you know,” Florence whispered to herself. She gave the woman a smile and a polite wave, because that was what a lady did, and if Florence Valentine was anything, she was a lady. With a sigh, she realized that she would have to stop by and visit Tabitha at some point this week or become the target of her gossip to the other ladies in town. She really didn’t like the woman, and if she were honest, she didn’t really like anyone, except for her babies that is. Cats never let you down and were always there for you with meow and a comforting purr. It was the Good Lord’s grace that the little critters were placed on this Earth, and it was Florence Valentines’ duty to make sure her little ones were well taken care of. 

A few impatient drivers honked at her on the way to the small strip mall where the store she liked to buy her cat food from was located. Randalph’s Family Pets had opened back in 1975 and she’d been going there ever since. The old man died a while ago and his son was now running the place. She didn’t like him either, but at least the man showed some respect to the elderly, not like most of the useless kids running around these days. 

Another driver honked at her as she pulled in. Why? Couldn’t these folks see her car required a large turning radius when it pulled into the narrow parking lot? They should just back up and give her room. The pair of handicap spaces in front of the store were full…again. What was wrong with people, everyone and their uncle had a handicap placard and most of them weren’t disabled or elderly, they were just fat pigs that didn’t have a lick of common sense or the willpower to put down their fork. 

Parking several spaces back, Florence made her way from the car and toward the store, giving the cars in the handicap spaces a good shake of her cane. At the door to the pet store, a young man exited the building, eyes glued to his phone, and lacking even the decency to even hold the door open for an old lady. After almost getting bowled over by the wretch, she decided to give him a piece of her mind.

“Well, I never! Your mama sure didn’t raise you right, young man,” she chided. The young man looked up at her with a moronic scowl. 

“You talking to me old lady? Mind your own business,” the hooligan spouted before going to his car, which happened to be one of the ones parked in a handicap space. She was going to call the authorities, that young man needed a ticket for what he had just done. 

“Get me Mr. Randalph, he needs to call the police on that young man. That criminal was parking in the handicap space and forced me to park all the way across the lot, you know my knees can’t take that much walking these days. Mr. Randalph, where are you? Useless as his daddy was, I fear to say,” Florence stopped mid diatribe. Something was wrong with the store. Gone were the shabby shelves and scuffed linoleum floors. Gone were the rows of pet supplies and toys. Gone were the pets. 

“Lady, do you mean the old pet store that used to be here?” A young man asked her. 

“Of course, the pet store’s been here for near close onto fifty years,” Florence replied. 

“Oh, that place was closed a week ago, this is Mad Dog’s Games and Vaping, lady. Want to try out a game or a vape?” The young man asked. She was aghast, only just now noticing the place was full of young wastrels playing card games, smoking those electronic devil’s cigarettes, and generally doing nothing productive. 

“Why I never! The nerve you cheeky little,” Florence sputtered. Several young men had their phones out and were audacious enough to be filming her without her permission. 

“Games or vapes lady, that’s all we got here. I’ve got a few starter decks for Mayhem the Get-Together if you want to learn to play,” the young man said, gesturing toward the collection of poorly groomed youths playing some kind of evil card game. Why there were demons and all kinds of horrible things on those cards. How was something like that even legal? 

“No thank you! I’m a good church-going woman and will not partake in your intoxicants or waste my time playing games with such disturbing pictures. Shameful, the lot of you. I hope your mothers have passed on into the Good Lord’s arms because it must break their hearts to see all you young men engaged in such dissipation,” she said with an emphatic shake of her cane to show she was serious.

“Woah, this lady’s a trip. Come on grandma, join us for a game and a smoke,” one of the kids playing the card game taunted. The others gathered around the table chuckled and only the young man that she had first talked to, whom she gathered oversaw this den of iniquity, managed to keep a straight face. Florence exited the horrible establishment, only to find another of those young hooligans had stopped in front of her, impeding her progress. She made a point to speed up, despite the pain in her knees and lower back, shoving the young man for all she was worth. 

“Oh no!” she sputtered as her bad knee locked up and she fell into the parking lot. The squeal of brakes assaulted her hearing as a large delivery van skidded toward her downed form. Florence closed her eyes and prayed, waiting for the inevitable impact. 

“Woah did you see that crazy old lady, I got that on my phone, this is going to rake in the views,” an onlooker said to the gathering crowd. Those useless miscreants should be calling an ambulance and checking on her condition, not playing with those cursed phones. She opened her eyes, her vision strangely crisp and very much as it had been in her youth. She was standing and could see a body was wedged under the delivery van that had nearly crashed into her. Strangely, she was moving without feeling it. Someone started pulling on her as the fog began to roll in. It wasn’t supposed to be foggy today, she didn’t want to drive home in this mess. 

Her mind was fuzzy, and she knew something was wrong with her, but there wasn’t any pain. The feeling was surreal, she had lived in constant pain for nearly half a century and to be without it was almost disturbing in a way. She was beginning to think that the delivery van didn’t miss her after all when a voice called out, the voice had a strange accent she couldn’t place. She must be okay, the voice sounded like some city slicker and she figured only good old country folk would be there to greet her in the afterlife. It must be a doctor and she was in the hospital, that’s it, there’s lots of fancy folks with accents that worked in the county emergency room. 

Welcome human! You have been selected among the billions of your kind to be granted a great honor. 

Uh oh, something definitely wasn’t right, and Florence Valentine was not going to take it. Oh no, someone was about to get a piece of her mind!