To Save the Worlds
by Monica Rose

Chapter 3

There were a couple of additional salutes to the lost soldiers before Alexa was able to break away. Losing a teammate had always been difficult for Michael and it affected Alexa just as hard. She was essentially on the outside looking into a mission that had gone very wrong.

The Family Business UK
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Let me tell you what the family business used to be. Shit. That was our business. Pumping shit. Granddad used to have a saying from up north: “Where there’s muck there’s brass” (meaning money). And he would add to that: “And where there’s more muck, there’s more brass.” There is plenty of shit, so we did pretty well.

Diva Dismayed 12: Chapter 12 – A walk in the park
The next morning I woke to find that Rachel was up before me. When I surfaced I saw that she was engaged in looking through my closet.

She noticed my wakefulness straightaway. “Sorry if I disturbed you. Sleep well?”

I nodded drowsily. There seemed to be a golden haze about her and I heaved a sigh of deep content as I gazed. My friend however was in a more practical mood.

Blurring the Edges and Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Carrie is off and running. Alex wrestles with his feelings about underdressing and wearing lingerie, and his alter ego gets Christmas presents. Meanwhile, Alex gets a look at just how feminine he can look when Carrie blurs the edges of his masculine face with makeup. Oh, and pictures

“I never can remember which of your dragon-girl forms is and isn’t ticklish,” Britt mused.

Precision driver Simon McKenzie’s work week started reasonably normal with a job in Queenstown, New Zealand, driving a vehicle for a new TV ad being filmed there.

After only a few days, and a series of events that seemed to quickly snowball, the 23 year old found himself standing in a bar waiting for his new girlfriend to arrive… But, what wasn’t normal, is that it's him wearing who's little black cocktail dress…

Chapter 18

She dug into her bag, brought out six boxes, and then handed them out. When I opened mine, it was more than I could take in. It was a pendant, yes, but what a pendant! It was gold filigree with ‘Stable Sisters Rule’ in diamonds and emeralds.

This won’t be joining the one now resting in a drawer at home. It would be front and center most of the time. Almost in tears, we had group hugs and cheek kisses. We all put them on and carried on with our meal, ordering more coffees as the originals had gone cold.

Diva Dismayed: Chapter 11 – At the hop

Authors Note: This story is complete and sitting on my hard drive. The novel is 49,188 words long in twenty chapters. I will be posting two chapters per week, roughly 5,000 words per post, on Fridays.

Alex comes home one day and his wife, Carrie, tells him of a problem in Mike and Lisa's marriage. Mike is his best friend since middle school. It seems that Lisa caught Mike cross-dressing and came unglued. She had come to Carrie looking for solace and support for divorcing Mike. But Carrie told her about a Phil Donahue show she'd seen as a teenager featuring married cross-dressers and said that cross-dressing really was no big deal.

Lisa was offended that Carrie wouldn't back her up and said, "If it was your husband, you wouldn’t think it was so cool," and left in a snit; part of her anger now directed at Carrie.

Carrie, on the fly, hatches a plan to help Lisa see that if it was her husband, she'd still think it was no big deal. Alex somewhat reluctantly goes along with it and discovers things about himself that he never knew existed.

A group of friends streams their gaming on Wednesday nights. But not all the action is on the dining room table.

“Are you like that because your mommy or daddy was a beringer, or did you decide to be a beringer after you grew up?”

 

Mx. Herschel laughs. “I’m glad you think I look that young! No, when I was born I had a girl type body — almost everyone had a girl or boy type body back then. I was several years older than you when I told my parents I didn’t want to be a girl, but they didn’t like that, so I didn’t get to change into a beringer body until I was eighteen.”

Life and Love are far more complicated than we can possibly understand. For one young cop, a journey of self-discovery will teach them that true strength was inside them all along.

“Last time Brenda and I played backgammon,” Grandpa said, “we talked about venning into little bitty bodies, maybe two or three inches tall, and seeing how the board would look from that angle. Big enough to roll the dice and move the pieces, but small enough that it would be as good a workout as an hour at the gym.”

I wrote this in response to a comment about nasty dads. I've included quite a few of them in recent writings - Seven Dresses, Candy Crush etc - and I'm not sure I can justify it, apart from a mentioning the general impression I have that rigid attitudes and unbending beliefs are more of a masculine trait than a feminine one. I realise this isn't true in all cases, so I wrote a story with a father who's more supportive than the mother, although she doesn't do too badly. Of course that dad's a bit trans, so not a typical male.

Please visit my Amazon store. The UK author page is here
and the Amazon US author page is here
Or just search for Maeryn Lamonte on Amazon

Chapter 15

Richard came to the wings and escorted me to the center of the stage. I could see an audience of more than the dozen or so I had expected.

He went to the microphone, “Tonight we welcome Edweena as our pianist for the piano concerto, but now you will see the violinist in her.”

A group of friends streams their gaming on Wednesday nights. But not all the action is on the dining room table.

“Zoe, bring up some pictures of me from about ten to fourteen years ago,” Daddy says to the household AI. Zoe complies, projecting an array of four pictures on the opposite wall. Three of the four show Daddy holding a baby, either Sebastian or his big sister Stella, who lives with Mommy now. In one of them, he’s nursing the baby. “Sebastian, do you see what’s different about me back then?”

I’d originally been going to title it “Venn-Splitting for Long-Distance Relationships,” but Sophia had come up with a snappier title, “Splitting for Togetherness.”

Life and Love are far more complicated than we can possibly understand. For one young cop, a journey of self-discovery will teach them that true strength was inside them all along.

Remember Me?
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

She looked at me in a special way, as if to say that she knew me, or she wanted to. She had already been pointed out to me as being the boss’s wife. I guess she was what I might have expected from a guy who asks so much of his sales force – nothing less than the best.

Chapter 11

“We should go to London,” Grace said after a while.

Greg didn’t move, but said, “We’re descending right now. We’re almost there.”

Grace sighed and turned to look at him. “Look. I know it was tough seeing what happened to Gracie, but we’ve got a job to do here.”

The Disappeared
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Quinn was off work. Injured in the line of duty they call it. Shot himself in the foot in the locker room. I like Quinn but he can be a klutz.

They paired me for a week or two with Gayle. Gayle is a lesbian, but you cannot deny that she is good at her job. She is just not the cheeriest soul on the planet. It makes you wonder if lesbian sex can really be that satisfying. But people’s private life is their own. I make no judgments.