Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
By L.A. Merrill
David Marks
is looking for the perfect place to film his new web series and recover from
his latest failed relationship. When reclusive writer Michael Sharp opens his
Montana ranch to paying guests, David knows he’s found the right place—but he
doesn’t expect to find Mr. Right too.
Forty years
ago, Michael Sharp’s father was murdered in front of him. No one believed a
six-year-old boy’s testimony against the powerful Carver brothers. For years
Michael has lived in self-imposed exile, the only living witness who can bring
down the Carver criminal empire. But now the money is running out, and he’s
forced to play host to a troupe of temperamental web actors and their
energetically attractive director in order to stay alive.
The Carvers
aren’t about to stand for rebellion. Michael has outlived his usefulness. Now
Michael and David have to find a way to end this fight once and for all,
finding justice for Michael’s father and meeting David’s funding deadline—all
before one or both of them ends up dead.
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon
Cat gives this one 4 Meows...
I really liked this cover. I could imagine these two men as David and Michael and it made the story more real. When Michael was six, he saw his father gunned down. He wrote a book that was made into a movie but now that the money has run out he has to do something. Against his better judgment he opens his home to guests. David is looking for the perfect location for his new web series and finds it at Michael's ranch. Even though the reclusive writer is anything but friendly, David sees something in him.
I enjoyed this story. There was a good mix of characters; the plot was interesting, but the romance was just a bit too fast. I think if the book had been a little longer it would have been even better. If you like older men/younger men, actors, writers, a touch of mystery and insta-love this is for you!
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
I gave up on going back to sleep. The silence in this place
was deafening. I slipped barefoot out of my—Michael’s—room. One lamp glowed in
the great room. I managed to make it down the stairs without breaking my neck
and, thus encouraged, stepped out the unlocked front door onto the porch.
Michael sat in one of the rockers at the side of the lodge,
nursing a beer with the dog at his feet. Neither one of us startled at the
sight of the other; in a way, I think we were expecting each other.
“Hostile Hostelry,” Michael said as I sat down.
“What?”
“The book I read. Before we opened this place.”
“Seriously? Is that a real title?”
He shook his head. “No, I just made it up. Be good, though.
Maybe I’ll write a memoir when this is over.” He looked over at me. “I’m sorry.
I was an ass when you first got here. You want a beer? There’s more in the
kitchen.”
“Thank you, no. I don’t drink.” I drew my legs up and folded
myself further into the large chair. “Been sober fourteen years now.”
He did a double take. “Jesus, when did you start? You don’t
look old enough to’ve been sober that long.”
“I’m thirty-five. I started at fourteen. Trying to kill
myself slowly.”
“Glad you didn’t,” Michael said.
“You don’t even know me.”
“Still don’t want you dead.” He met my eyes in the darkness.
I looked away first. He took another swallow of beer and set the bottle on the
porch. “So tell me,” he said, easing back, “how does one get into this web
series racket?”
“Luck and masochism,” I said.
“Like any true art form.”
“I was working in an independent hardware store back in
oh-nine, and we were trying to get a commercial together. I got them to hire
Ronni to shoot it—she’d been doing weddings for years—and then I ended up
taking over and directing the thing just so it would get done.” I looked over
at him. His hands were folded across his stomach and his eyes were closed, one
foot braced against the porch to keep the rocker tilted back.
“Go on,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“Okay, well, Ronni and I have always been book nerds. I’d
gone to school to be a director, but I hadn’t done any work since—in a long
time. There were only a few literary web series out there at the time. This was
before The Lizzie Bennet Diaries—did you hear about those?”
“No. Can’t say I kept up with the Internet, though it cost a
kidney to get that phone line and DSL run out here.”
“I can imagine. LBD was an adaptation of Pride and
Prejudice, very good and very popular. Kind of exploded the genre. You were
tripping over them after that. Before LBD, though, it was mostly just
Shakespeare, and when Ronni and I got the idea to do our own, we wanted to do
something different. The first series we did was a gay Prisoner of Zenda
adaptation.”
He busted a laugh. “Now that I have read.”
“And did you notice all the homoerotic subtext?”
“Just a bit. I can’t believe you did that.”
“Neither can I, when
I think about it. We had zero money then. Had to shoot it outside and in this
abandoned Victorian outside of town, with actors we’d sweet-talked into doing
it. Put up fliers for open calls. Ronni knew a few people from audition tapes
she’d done. Couldn’t pay anybody. But that show turned out to be kind of a cult
hit for us. Got us enough of a fan base we were able to raise money to do The
Black Arrow.”
“Mmm. Heard of it. Remind me again who wrote it?”
“Robert Louis Stevenson. I’d wanted to do Weir of
Hermiston—”
“The what of who?”
“Exactly. Another Stevenson, his last novel. Ronni convinced
me no one would know it. So we went with Arrow instead. I don’t know if nobody
had heard of that one either or if nobody cared, but nobody watched. I mean, we
were getting, like, five views a video. It was awful.”
“So you’re trying again?”
“We’re trying something different. We went with Crowdpleaser
this time, because they’re new, and they’re the only way we were getting any
money. Ronni and I posted a pitch several months ago for a Wild West version of
Lorna Doone called Doone Valley. People actually upvoted it enough that we got
our funding. Kind of a surprise—we just got the e-mail last week and had to
throw everything together and rush out here. That funding is the only way we
can be out here. She and I have no money left for this. Hell, I think I just
lost my job at Lowe’s over this, taking off for ten days with no notice. It’s a
tight schedule, one episode a day for a week with the finale next Monday, but
if our series gets enough upvotes as it airs, we might make it into the yearly
top ten, and that would get our next project funded. Otherwise….” My knees
slipped out of my hands and my feet thumped to the floor. “We’ll have to
disband.”
The dog looked up at me as if to ask when I might plan to
stop talking. Michael rocked, eyes open now. “Pretty important, then.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“And the first episode’s due out Monday? Well, if you can’t
get your Wi-Fi to work here, you could always go film somewhere nearby. The
Blacktails. Deer Lodge. One of those ghost towns a little ways north.”
“I don’t have a film permit for anywhere else,” I said,
suddenly remembering. “Oh God. I already sent it in, it’s too late to get a new
one.”
We contemplated the distant mountains and the supreme
fucked-up- ness of my life. (Or at least, I did.)
“I was talking with
Jen after supper,” he said. “She was wondering if we jury- rigged a bunch of
Ethernet cables for you, if that might work.”
“Attach the camera to a computer, you mean?”
“And the computer to the DSL,” he finished.
“It might work. It’d
take a hell of a lot of Ethernet cable, though, to be able to go anywhere.”
“I’ll cover it. I’m
not destitute yet, even if you are,” Michael said, sending a small smile my way.
“I’ll drive you into town tomorrow morning. We’ll get this figured out.”
“Thank you,” I said, surprise and gratitude showing through
my voice. Michael lifted a shoulder, shrugging off my thanks. At his feet the
dog produced a theatrically huge and long-lasting yawn and then gave us both
pointed glares. “Willard says it’s time for you to go to bed,” Michael
interpreted.
“I think Willard’s
probably right.” I stood up, stiff from the chill and the chair. “I feel bad,
though, taking your room.”
“Don’t. Terrible insomnia. I spend most of my nights out
here anyway.”
“Well, good night, then.” I hesitated, looking from him to
the dormant mountains and back again, but there didn’t seem to be anything else
to say.
“Night,” he said. I went inside, shutting the door behind me
and leaving him rocking, slow and steady, with Willard at his feet.
Guest post from Author LA Merrill
HELLO, MY NAME IS DOG-DOG
Dogs are the best thing. If I could pick a job besides
writer (and I can’t say I picked this job; more like it landed on my head one
day and was all GUESS WHAT, NO SLEEP UNTIL YOU MAKE UP SOME FUN LIES) I would
be the person who gets to play with all the dogs at the doggie day care.
Whatever that job is. Dog-person. Dog-for-a-day. Substitute dog. Dog-dog.
There’s a running joke in my family that I was raised by
dogs, because when I was little our sheepdog decided I was his to herd, and he
took his job very seriously. There
was a ten-foot limit, and then he was RIGHT THERE, nudging me back to the fold
(read: patio). My best friend, growing up, besides my sister, was our beagle,
who was small, brown, always ready to be read to, and occasionally bit the
heads off my paper dolls.
I think so far in my lifetime I have had ten dogs, and
that’s not counting the dozens I’ve met at garage sales, pet stores, and once,
in the museum where I worked. (I’m pretty sure the only reason there wasn’t a
No Dogs rule already in place was because no
one thought you’d be bringing in your Maltese today, sir.) If there is a
dog anywhere about your person, I am automatically your friend. Or at least,
your dog’s friend. Which is practically the same thing.
Some people express surprise at the level of understanding I
assign to the dogs in my fiction. They have obviously never been told by their
dog, in no uncertain terms, that it is time for them to shut up and leave now
so that Nap Day can commence. (Nap Day is a very important day.) (Nap Day is
every day.) Willard is one of my favorite dog characters that I’ve written, and
almost everything he does in Meanwhile,
Back at the Ranch is cribbed from real dog behavior I have witnessed. I
have so many dog stories—one of these days I’m just going to have to write a
book entirely about dogs.
I hope the dogs who raised me would be proud.
L.A. Merrill is a tiny blonde woman who
loves a good story. She has worked as a tour guide and an assistant stage
director, and spent one memorable summer as a camp counselor. After five years
in vocal performance, production work, and arts education, she now writes
full-time. Her work has appeared in Kansas
City Voices magazine, on the YouTube series The Blank Scene, and online. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch is L.A.’s
fourth story with Dreamspinner Press, and her first published novella. (There’s
an unpublished novella, about murderous husbands and Scottish ghosts, written
when she was thirteen, that is sitting in a file at home. It will likely never
see the light of day.)
An avid knitter, she has yet to follow a
pattern and has made some interestingly shaped hats as a result. L.A. makes
handknit and crocheted blankets and hats for local charities, as well as
leading a LGBT+ writers group in her hometown. She lives with her family in the
Midwest, where she can usually be found reading, writing, and making things up
as she goes along. Follow her on Twitter for feminism and fangirling at
@la_mer92
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