Teaser Tuesday

        So, I've been working on a re-write of Neighborly Complications.  It's my free novella, and apparently a novella just isn't enough.  There's not enough backstory, not enough character development, not enough relationship building, not enough of anything.
        Originally, this was my first full-length novel, and it was awful.  I hated to waste the year or so that I spent on it, so I cut it to shreds and turned it into my novella to offer free as a marketing technique.  Well, that's worked okay, except based on the comments and reviews I've gotten, it's not a very good representation of my work as a whole.
        In my re-write, I'm adding in some of the character's backstories, but I'm not just pasting it in from the original, because the original sucked.  I'm actually rewriting it.  And changing a lot.
        Originally, it had six ghosts.  Claire moved into her ancestral home to live with the ghosts of her great-great grandfather, great-great grandmother, great-grandma, an aunt, uncle, and her grandpa.
        Yeah, ridonkulous.
        And there were love interests.  Lots of them.  And death.  And dreams of ghosts.  And dreams of dead wives.  And lots of bad writing.
        Hopefully, this re-write will be better.  The story is nearly unrecognizable from the original, even though I have pulled a lot of the elements from the first story.
        I've almost finished it, actually.  I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of this week.  That would make me very very happy.
        Here's a teaser from it...

        After working in her garden, Claire jumped in the shower, excited to have hot water.  She luxuriated in it.  The stream of hot water cascading down her head, running over her shoulders, down her body was absolute heaven.  After spending all week jumping in to get wet, turning off the water, soaping up, and then jumping in to rinse off as quickly as possible in the freezing cold water, this was paradise.  The mirror was actually fogging up.  Awesome.  She soaped herself up, washed her hair twice, and shaved.  As she was sitting on the floor of the tub, cleaning out from under her toenails, while the conditioner sat for the required two minutes in her hair, she saw a shadow pass outside the shower curtain.
The blood in her veins turned to ice, despite the heat of the shower.
“Hello?”  That was dumb.  No psycho-killer in his right mind would answer that.  Suddenly, Claire remembered Max’s warning about the guys that had delivered yesterday, and she realized she hadn’t locked the back door behind her when she came inside.
She peeked out the edge of the curtain to see that whoever had been in there was gone.  Sighing a relieved sigh, Claire gingerly stepped out of the shower.
A soft giggle sounded from somewhere behind her, and Claire screamed.  She looked at the mirror and saw a perfect circle drawn into the fog on the glass where there had only been fog moments before.  She screamed again and ran out of the room.
Her goal was to get down the stairs and to the back door and out of the house before the psycho-killer could catch her.  Never mind that naked women always got the axe first in all those horrible movies.  She couldn’t stop screaming. It was like she was possessed and couldn’t clamp her mouth shut.
She stumbled down the stairs, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw Max coming up them, panic in his eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”  She screamed at him.  Three steps down from her, his eyes were at eye-level with her breasts, and she watched as they darkened from the unusual caramel color to rich chocolatey brown.  Then he looked at his feet.
Claire immediately moved cover herself, finding her hands weren’t adequate.
“Well?!  What the fuck, Max?”
Quietly, still looking at his feet, Max replied, “You were screaming.  And you left your door unlocked.”
Claire’s voice chilled with dawning realization.  “You were in my bathroom.”
Max’s eyes snapped up at the statement, and she saw disbelief on his face before he snapped his gaze back down to his feet.
“No.  I was working on my deck, and I heard you scream like you were being skinned alive.  I came running.”
“You are unbelievable.  You are so far up my ass, I can’t even breathe.  Beautiful, yes, but holy shit!  Can you be more controlling?  I don’t even have anything to do with you besides live next door, and you’re like a man obsessed!  Sneaking into my house to prove a point about my locks?  Are you for real?!”