Tuesday Tales: From a Picture.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday Tales. Tuesday Tales is a weekly blog where a small group of select authors share their works in progress with you. Some weeks we write to a word prompt; on others, we use a picture and limit our scenes to 300 words.  This week, I’ve chosen this picture for my post.

While I have quite a few irons in the fire at the moments, new works yet to be completed, I decided  to start a new novella, which I hope will be published along with three or four others, each named after a specific cocktail.

The first book, Tequila Sunrise, is part of a box set and will be available soon from Amazon. Writing in the first person is somewhat new to me. The story is titled, Buck’s Fizz. Here is the recipe for that drink! Although similar to a Mimosa, the fact that a Buck’s Fizz requires quality champagne and no extras makes it a classy drink. Like my heroine Jewel Wellington, it’s the last thing you would expect to fins in a honky tonk bar.

DIRECTIONS
Chill your Champagne & Orange Juice.
Select tall and elegant shaped wine glasses!
Pour about one third of orange juice into the glass first and then top up with champagne.
Serve as a toast or as a celebration cocktail.
Enjoy!

Here’s your first sip of Buck’s Fizz.

Tired and irritated, feeling like a fish out of water, I stepped into The Squawking Tomcat.

I inhaled—and choked. The air was rife with the aroma of stale beer, even staler bodies, and a scent I recognized as eau de horse. I removed my prescription sunglasses and looked around. Sure it was lighter, but everything was fuzzy.

“Fat lot of good that did,” I grumbled.

What the hell was I doing here? I was a soprano, not a honky tonk singer. I was also on the run from parents who couldn’t imagine their thirty-year-old daughter without a hand-picked husband, Montgomery Reginald Harris, to be exact. “Monte this, and Monte that.” It was enough to make me vomit.

Sure Monte’s pockets were lined with gold, but he had this sickening sense of entitlement to go with it. He never asked for anything—he demanded it—and rudely. The last time we’d been matched up by Mommy Dearest had been at my cousin Tara’s wedding two months ago. He’d made a scene because the poor little server had dared to allow the condensation on the outside of the water jug to drip onto the sleeve of his shiny new jacket.

That was it. If the only way I could have my inheritance from Grandmother Mitchell was to marry that slug, than the rest of the eligible girls in the family were welcome to the money. I’d had enough.

Desperate to get away, I’d packed my bags and run off. No, I hadn’t joined the circus, but after the last four weeks, I wasn’t sure what I’d done was that far off. I’d agreed to fill in for an old college friend with Suzy and the Silvertones, a country and western cover band who toured the Southwest each summer. It wasn’t The Met, but I needed a change.

Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.