I’ve completed the second draft for “Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble” and continue to revise parts of it before moving on to copy editing and polishing. The sequel to “Streaks of Blue” is set in 2018-19; has scenes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Florida and South Africa; and is currently around 76,000 words. I have a short prologue, which I’ve teased below, and 48 chapters, which I’ve listed below the prologue with the 5 POV characters and chapter titles. I’m still shooting to have the ARC out on NetGalley late this year and publish it next spring in both e-book and paperback formats.
PROLOGUE
Nikki Janicek
Life sucks sometimes. It can start at an early age and even young children can detect the varying degrees of suck. They don’t let the rigid restraints of their new language stop them from reacting with brutal honesty either.
I still think about the boy in the cereal aisle of the supermarket. He must’ve been 3 or 4. His mom had tried to steer him away from a chocolate marshmallow cereal and sell him on two healthier ones. She held them up, one in each hand, as he stared her down while standing in the back of the shopping cart.
“That’s bad,” he tapped one box.
“And that’s worser!” he slapped the other, knocking it out of her hand and onto the floor.
It was raw. It was awesome. Rawesome.
My bad was getting shot by Thomas Lee Harvey on the night of September 14, 2014, outside our New Hampshire high school.
Not being rawesome and allowing myself to be coerced (more like bribed) into talking to him nearly four years later, even via Skype from two states away, was worser.
There are cereal killers, and then there are serial killers. From my perspective, Thomas was worser. He’d wanted to kill everybody in our school and he ended up killing nobody … thanks to me.
I reached out to Adam Upton — his utterly depressed friend and accomplice at the time — and derailed their massive shooting plot on the night before it was supposed to happen. Thomas shot Adam in the ass and me in the side, but we both lived.
Adam told the police everything, testified against Thomas, served less than a year in jail and eventually got hired as an unarmed mall cop near where we grew up. I emerged as a hero for saving countless lives and even appeared on “AC 360.” And Thomas, who fled after shooting us and nearly made it to Vermont before police apprehended him, got locked up — along with all of his unquenched bloodlust — in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men until 2039.
He still had 21 years to go. I bet he didn’t expect to spend any of that time staring back at me, the person he once called Dead Girl Walking.
And yet there we were, face to face in cyberspace … thanks to The Bridge.
Scientology is bad.
The Bridge is …
INDEX
PART 1: All Nikki Janicek’s Point of View
CHAPTER 1: Enterprise Story
CHAPTER 2: Weirdos Make the World Go Round
CHAPTER 3: Hot Tip
CHAPTER 4: Silver Sands
CHAPTER 5: Busted in Bridgeport
CHAPTER 6: 25 Grand
CHAPTER 7: Money Trail
CHAPTER 8: Coffee in the Lobby
CHAPTER 9: The Other Kind of Auditing
CHAPTER 10: Rainbows and Unicorns
CHAPTER 11: Your Enemy’s Enemy
CHAPTER 12: World Cup Breakup
PART 2
CHAPTER 13, Adam Upton’s POV: Lion and Truth
CHAPTER 14, Roger Janicek’s POV: Captain Rookie
CHAPTER 15, William Osborne’s POV: Howl at the Moon
CHAPTER 16, Steve Pearson’s POV: Nikki Blue
CHAPTER 17, Nikki: Earth Wing
CHAPTER 18, Nikki: Mars Wing
CHAPTER 19, Nikki: I Crashed My Car into The Bridge … I Love It!
CHAPTER 20, William: Cruise Missiles
CHAPTER 21, Nikki: Adam Bomb
CHAPTER 22, William: Nikki Beach
CHAPTER 23, Nikki: Loveless Fascination
PART 3
CHAPTER 24, Adam: Channel 77
CHAPTER 25, Nikki: Cape Town or Crash
CHAPTER 26, Nikki: A World Without Guns
CHAPTER 27, Nikki: Boundaries
CHAPTER 28, Adam: Bury the Truth
CHAPTER 29, William: Premature Wisdom
CHAPTER 30, Adam: Go to Jail, Collect $20K
CHAPTER 31, William: Jarring Threat
CHAPTER 32, Roger: The Graduate
CHAPTER 33, Nikki: Nikki Sapphire
CHAPTER 34, Steve: Trojan Horse
CHAPTER 35, Nikki: So Human, So Alien
PART 4
CHAPTER 36, Steve: The Interview
CHAPTER 37, Nikki: Dead-end Street
CHAPTER 38, Adam: Book Brawl
CHAPTER 39, Nikki: Scared
CHAPTER 40, Adam: In Stitches
CHAPTER 41, William: Little Candle of Hate
CHAPTER 42, Nikki: Tentacles
CHAPTER 43, William: Peephole
CHAPTER 44, Adam: Trap
CHAPTER 45, Nikki: Felicia
CHAPTER 46, Roger: Roy Roger
CHAPTER 47, Nikki: No Room to Heal
CHAPTER 48, Nikki: Fireman’s Carry
Happy St. Patrick’s Day,
Jack Chaucer
jack chaucer books and screenplays 