TMI: Play Me

Lana Franklyn and Andre Adkins have been best friends since their college days.

Over the years they remained so close and connected to each other that everyone- including their friends who should know better- thought they were already a couple with blissful years of dating under their belt.

Unfortunately for Lana ,those opinions couldn’t be further from reality.

Now after two months of separation, Lana can’t hide the truth from herself or Dre any longer.

She’s romantically in love with her best friend.

Although super nervous, Lana is ready to confess her true feelings, but her plans hit a major roadblock when Dre drops the bomb that he’s planning on proposing to his beloved, unintentionally making Lana choke on her last sip of beer from the sheer shock of the announcement.

“The first icy tendrils of fear and anxiety began unspooling within her lower gut, licking at her heart, ringing all kinds of alarms in her mind.

She didn’t respond, simply waited for him to hit her with this decision, already suspecting that she wasn’t going to like where this was going at all.

Dre angled himself more towards her, took a deep breath, then, “Lana”.

He looked straight into her soul, “I’ve decided to marry the woman I love”.

The cold sip Lana had just taken as if also shocked by his declaration slipped down the wrong path burning her throat and choking her”. Excerpt taken from Play Me.

Try as she might to hide her pain and be happy for her friend, it is all too much and she does the only thing she can- she tries to escape.

“Trapped between the hard, heated firmness of Dre’s wide chest, and the wooden door she was trying to escape through, Lana felt a frisson of desire bloom within her.

She hadn’t been expecting Dre to just bodily trap her against his door, especially not when he had just declared his desire to end their relationship.

Therefore, she wasn’t prepared for the sizzling sensation of Dre’s other arm wrapping itself around her small waist, drawing her away from the door and more solidly against his hard wall of muscles.

Imprisoning her against his tempting body and stealing her breath.

“You can‘t go out there, it‘s raining,” He mumbled into her hair, hugging her to him.” Excerpt taken from Play Me.

Suddenly, Lana finds herself trapped in Dre’s arms, hoisted over his shoulder and being taken to his bed.

Confused, frustrated and sure she is missing something, because despite Dre’s playfulness and his desire to keep her close, she is sure of one thing from this night, Dre will never belong to her.

Determined to put space between them, while also getting to the bottom of what she feels in her bones Dre is still hiding from her, what will she do once she learns this secret?

Is there still a chance for Lana and Dre to become more than friends?

It all hinges on what Lana does once she learns the truth about Dre and his engagement.

Read the steamy romance, Play Me now.

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TMI: The Conspiracy

By Ashlee Cox • November 12, 2024

One day in my Creative Writing class in College, we were challenged to create a short story using an article from the newspaper as the basis and inspiration for the tale. I had never done this before, but was excited for the opportunity to peruse the newspaper and recreate an event from my own imagination. Wasting no more time, I remembered I had grabbed an old newspaper, spread it across my desk and got busy looking for an exciting story. I had already decided not to look into the court cases, but wanted something that would jump out to me. What I found was the news article about a suspicious fire. As I read the article, I felt myself becoming suspicious of all that was reported. How did the fire start? Why was the older brother who didn’t even live with them the one talking to the media? I fired up my writer’s brain like nothing before and the next thing I knew, I had created a pretty wild short story. Years later as I look through this work, I still feel the same suspicions, but this time I get to really bring up the emotions through my improved descriptive capacity. It is my hope that as you read this short story, you connect with the characters, feel the loss the community will feel and understand the dichotomy of what her sons actually experienced. When a fire consumes the house of Mavis Walker, a stalwart in the small, close knit community of Baker’s Lane, it plunges the community into deep mourning and heralds huge life changes for Mrs. Walkers’ two sons.

TMI The Hurricane Lee

By Ashlee Cox • October 4, 2024

The short story Hurricane Lee was initially concocted from the twisted mind of a seven year old child- me- who wanted to write about the worst possible hurricane ever. As with most of my short stories, this one was concocted on a seemingly harmless and innocent day at Summer Camp back in the 90’s, where we were tasked to write a short essay/ story about a hurricane or a storm. I of course- with very limited knowledge of the real destructive power of such a weather system described a real monster of a hurricane! It was fun to just throw terrible things on a page and give this an unrealistic apocalyptic timeline for the mayhem. As an adult who not only now understands what a hurricane is, how it can affect people and most importantly, understands the difference between an essay of terror and a full story of misery, editing this story was wild! In this improved story, of The Hurricane Lee, not much can scare 25 year old Amy, who has just become the legal guardian of her little sister 8 year old Carey, but Lee might prove to be the terrible exception. Amy has only just buried her mother who had been battling cancer for years, which has made huge changes in her life, including raising her pre-teen sister all by herself, despite initial assurances from her relatives to support and help her when needed, as well as finding a minimum wage job to make ends meet. She is somehow keeping it all together, but a category 5 hurricane called Lee might just be the disaster that breaks Amy’s hardwon resolve after all this time. When Lee hits the island at unforeseen speeds, drowning it in torrential rain all the while threatening to destroy the only home the sisters have ever known, Amy and Carey have to decide to either continue to endure, or be swept away in the chaos.