You can find A here.

Brody had done every ‘all hands on deck’ meeting he ever wanted to do. More than. Added to that general feeling, this one was honestly edging toward torturous.
 
If he could have done something, to protect Libby from the growing realization that someone she’d considered a friend, even a distant one, was one of the bad guys he’d have jumped on it. He’d been in that position more than once, having to stand in the decaying ruins of a plan or a situation and accept that someone hadn’t been what he thought they were.
 
Anyone who told you that didn’t hurt was a goddamn liar.
 
She wasn’t running from it though. She was standing tall and straight, in a room full of people there to judge her intelligence and honesty at the least, answering their questions in a soft, intentionally pleasant voice. He watched them more than he watched her, it hurt to watch her and know there wasn’t really anything he could do to make this easier for her.
 
He couldn’t help with the part where she was having to answer questions like she somehow should have realized the harmless dude who wanted to be her friend was really a bad guy. He could be her eyes on the crowd. He could watch everyone else while she was having to focus on the person who’d asked her questions.
 
He counted at least four people who clearly thought she was in on it, and he was going to watch them extra closely, obviously. Three more he was relatively sure thought she’d been sleeping with “James” and another two thought she was sleeping with him.
 
Thankfully Inspector Hussein was at least marginally in control of this thing, and she didn’t fit into any of those categories. She was just super frustrated because they’d found Libby on facial recognition just fine, in all the places she’d said she’d been.
 
James was somewhat conspicuous in his absence.
 
“Why should we believe you that he was there?”
 
Libby rubbed her face, finally starting to get frustrated. “Because I wasn’t the only one who saw him? My boss had more than one conversation with him. The building receptionist.”
 
Inspector Hussein sighed. “We’ll keep checking. At this point I’m convinced he’s dodging the cameras and we’re going to have to find some other way to figure out who he was.”
 
Half of the other people in the room got up, swept their things up, and left. Libby sat still and serene and watched them. Their eyes met for a second and he tried to give her a smile. Inspector Hussein sent her people in some different directions, looking for ways to track James and ways to track the explosives they’d found. They were apparently still looking for a body.
 
Eventually it was just the three of them, taking up the meeting room.
 
“Did he ever talk about politics?” Inspector Hussein asked.
 
“He wouldn’t have,” Brody answered, scoffing.
 
Both of them looked at him, waiting.
 
“He wouldn’t have talked about politics, that’s not how you work a trap. If you’re thinking he wormed his way into her life to get here… he would have been exceedingly careful never to be anything other than nonthreatening. If Libby had said something about politics he’d have agreed with her, but he wouldn’t have offered anything.”
 
Inspector Hussein sighed. “So how would you find him?”
 
Well, his best bet would have been to watch Libby, see who decided the fact she was still breathing and still speaking to the police was a problem. But he definitely didn’t want to say that right now. He wasn’t thinking too deeply about it, but he very much did not want her to think that was why he was staying. It’d taken all of his self-control—honed by twenty years of doing what he was supposed to do and not what he wanted to do—not to haul her into a hug as soon as she’d opened the door to her hotel room. To sit down and talk through what she’d remembered in her dream, and not actively do anything to make her feel better.
 
Because the job wasn’t over yet, and he wasn’t supposed to be doing things to make her feel better.
 
“Well, for a start I’d be doing a lot of work to see how someone adjusted our search programs, and where that particular rabbit hole went.”
 
Inspector Hussein cocked a brow at him. “Yes, I’m doing that. That would be sort of standard, I was looking for more specialist information.”
 
And that sentence right there told him there was no way he was going to get away with saying he didn’t have that sort of specialization. Which meant she’d checked up on him. Brody could push that. He was relatively sure he knew Libby well enough to know she wasn’t idealistic, wasn’t the sort to find out what he’d spent the last twenty years doing and not want to speak to him anymore or anything like that.
 
That didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it.
 
He didn’t know how to give her any of that specialist information without making Libby feel…worse. Without trotting out all the ways this dude she’d potentially liked enough to at least be friends with had spent months getting close to her and twisting that until he could use her. Brody wasn’t even sure what they’d been using her for, thought he was pretty sure it was supposed to finish with Libby dead.
 
“Because you’re not all watching me like the likelihood of them trying to finish the job is high,” Libby muttered.
 
Inspector Hussein had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Well, I would be if Captain Halliday here wasn’t better at that than anything I’ve got to use.” She cocked a brow at him. “For his own reasons.”
 
“He’s been pretty clear the job’s not finished,” Libby muttered.
 
Inspector Hussein gave him a dark look, and nodded her head toward Libby a bit, like he was supposed to correct that somehow. Like there was any way for him to, based off a couple of days of acquaintance.
 
“I said I wasn’t going anywhere and I meant it,” Brody settled on, after thinking about it for a minute. Maybe that didn’t feel like it was just about the job anymore, but it probably wasn’t the right time to be too self-reflective about that. 

Well, it's not really a question of smell. I don't know, sometime titles are hard.

The Book Lover's Bazaar went wonderfully this weekend. We had panelists, and people wonder in off the streets, and lots and lots of booths. We raised a nice chunk of money (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say how much we made, but it was nice).

We hope next year will be even bigger, but we've got a lot of work ahead of us in other places before we get there. 

Come back Wednesday, when we're going to talk about new challenges like we don't already have enough on our plates.

There are only about a million and a half reasons why I am unreasonably busy this week. In the last two days I've hand-painted a sign (which reminds me, I have to finish that tomorrow), knitted 3 bunnies, wrapped two boxes of book (with major, beloved help from the Chief Minion), made 30 some buttons, and fielded a whole gigantic ridiculous mine-field of things that weren't actually related to writing or the Book Lover's Bazaar or anything of the like. 

Obviously my bandwidth for writing blog posts is a little lacking this week. 

And yet here I am. Writing a blog post about how I don't have the bandwidth to write blog posts. Yes, we have officially sunk that low. 

Next week is a 5 post week, and I'm promising all five. No lazy double posts or regurgitated extras. 

Right now I'm going to bed. I have to chant my way into some bunny rabbits tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, COME TO THE BOOK LOVER'S BAZAAR! On the off chance you missed that everywhere else from me lately :)

I vaguely recall, a couple of days ago (alright, so it was nearly a month and that's how lost I am) that I was going to stop missing days, on this whole blogging thing.

I'll wait until you're done laughing.

We're getting closer to the point where I can be honest about that giant project in the background that's eating my life. Granted, I'm relatively sure everyone who actually reads this thing already knows about it...

But we're not quite ready for launch yet, and I'm keeping quiet until we are. 

It's Well Written Wednesday and since I'm allowed to talk about writing (spuriously) I'm going to talk about what it feels like to have an 'author's' life on the internet anymore. 

There are currently, on that nifty little panel that Google gives you to pick which username you want to sign in with, eight choices. My to-do lists in Wunderlist consistently exist about a half-step away from being utterly out of control. I am either responsible for--or nearly responsible for--four blogs, three twitter accounts, probably more like twelve email addresses if you count the non-google ones, one web forum I have utterly failed at for months, and three websites. Not counting the giant PROJECT OF DOOM I'm not actually owning up to yet I've got Nano, some involvement in First Book, my own writing career, a position as the Enrichment Coordinator for my son's school, the Book Lover's Bazaar coming up in September, and another nine and a half weeks as a full-time childcare person.

Arguably, at the end of all of that I should be talking about the impending crash, should I?

But I'm fine. Not even pretending at fine, I'm actually fine. Sure, there are moments where it feels a little big. Like tonight, when I signed out of Google for a second and got slapped in the face with way more directions than I needed right then. There's a sort of constant cloud of things that haven't made it on a to-do list yet swimming around in my brain, and I'm still having dreams about the PROJECT OF DOOM that basically equate to my brain getting caught in circles because I'm spending a lot of time staring at the same information is sixty different ways. 

Someone mentioned Camp Nano, next month, the other night and I just laughed hysterically. We won't tell anyone I was laughing because it should be 'oh god NO' but I will absolutely, I nearly promise, be writing something. 

Welcome to life as a modern writer. I'm decently hopeful it's not like this for everyone.