This is, once again, the video my daughter made for The Long Way Home.  This book was kind of a labor of love for me.  It’s long, for one thing, and takes place in all the California beach cities where I grew up.  I used to stay at the beach with my family, mostly my mom and sister because my dad worked, in the summer.  Now we take the kids camping at the Dunes.  I worked in Lido Village for a while, and ate in all those restaurants.  When it comes to partying on the boats, lashed together in the ‘Rhine Channel’?  Been there, done that. (But don’t tell the kids 😯 )

The book itself can’t be considered a mystery, it’s more romantic suspense.  Kevin meets Connor while working on the disappearance of several boys from California beach cities. While he’s going over the case, it begins to dawn on him that unresolved issues in Connor’s past have a direct bearing on the case.  Not just that they’re connected, but that Connor himself might be the key.

When they meet, there’s no real reason to imagine that romantic sparks will fly.  On the contrary, Kevin is taciturn and dismissive, and Connor feels plain put out… but sometimes those beginnings can be the most auspicious…

*****

Dougal knew when he finally spotted Quinn, not by his looks per se, but his bearing.  He had heard from Lubbock that Quinn had been in a terrible car wreck that blinded him in one eye and left him a little awkward.  “Quinn?” he asked the man, reaching to take the garment bag he carried.  “I’m Dougal.”

“Thanks, Dougal, I got it,” said Quinn, slinging the bag over his shoulder and wheeling his pilot case.

Dougal looked at Quinn, who had a laptop case in addition to the two bags.  “Have you been catching up on the case?”

“Yeah,” said Quinn.  “Grim.”

“I was kind of expecting you to know who I am,” said Dougal.  Some psychic, he’d practically had to hold up a sign with the guy’s name on it.

“This is an airport.  There are other plain-clothed cops here,” said Quinn, looking around.

“Don’t I get a demonstration?” said Dougal.

“Sure. Let’s see,” Quinn looked him over.  “You’re a skeptic, you wear nerdy clothes, probably drive a boring car, and read novels by… Ana Wexler,” Quinn read the name off the book Dougal carried under his arm.

“How am I doing so far?”

Dougal smiled with an equanimity he no longer felt.  “What can you tell me about what you don’t see.”

Quinn looked at him with a kind of disinterested contempt.  “I can tell you that whatever I can’t see interests me not at all,” he said, effectively ending the conversation.

Intensely irritated but refusing to show it, Dougal led him to his Chevrolet Malibu.  He opened it remotely, allowing Quinn to put his gear in the back seat.  He waited patiently for the man to settle and fasten his seat belt.

“I guess you know where to go, cause I don’t,” Quinn said as Dougal pulled out of the parking garage into the gridlocked stop and go traffic leading out of the airport.

“Yes, I do,” said Dougal, wishing to heaven he’d never wanted to be a police officer in the first place.

“Lubbock told me the Prime Directive is to keep you unofficial.  You are to stay at my place for the time being.  I have a two bedroom and I live alone.”  He cringed, waiting for a tirade that never came.

“Did you say prime directive?  Are you a Trekkie, by any chance, Dougal?” asked Quinn in his dangerously soft voice.  “My new roommate’s a Trekkie.  We’ll have to have some kind of signal if you bring home any beautiful alien girls, like a towel on the door or something.”  Dougal looked uncomfortably at the man sitting next to him.  Did he know how close he came to the truth about his college years, especially about the towel on the door?  That was a little unnerving.

“Don’t get bent, Trekkie.  We all put something on the door, you seemed like a towel man.  I went to a private Catholic boy’s school back east, and we used our ties,” he said.

Dougal stomped hard on the breaks at a yellow light.  He hadn’t been paying too much attention, and now, he’d just caught up.  This man was trying to unnerve him, and was doing a pretty good job.

“What do I do when I want to bring a boy home?” Quinn asked, almost daring him to lose control again.

Dougal knew it was some sort of test.  “Make sure he’s legal and glove up, I guess,” said Dougal with more confidence than he actually felt.  “It’s not in the statutes anymore I don’t think.”

“Well thank you,” Quinn said lazily, “we’ll get along just fine.”

Dougal doubted it, really; he doubted it very much.

I’m available for sale at Aspen Mountain Press… Here.  This has been so strange!  I had this day as a release date, but edits got lost and things went awry.  Murphy’s law seemed to prevail.  And yet there it is!  Right on schedule!

And Here’s a little excerpt, just a bit, to go with it!

The Long Way Home
Z.A. Maxfield

Ever since the accident that cost him his job on the Seattle police force, Kevin Quinn has been living with psychic abilities he refers to as the ‘gift that keeps on taking’.  His attempts to use his talents to help the police have met with limited success.  Yet, when teenage boys start going missing from the beach cities of Southern California, Kevin gets on a plane.

Connor Dougal has every reason to believe all psychics are fakes and charlatans.   He’s still numb from the disappearance of his first love, a boy who went missing ten years earlier.  Everything he aspires to is a direct result of that tragedy, even the acquisition of his detective shield.  The irony of having to babysit Kevin Quinn is not lost on him.

These two suspicious men must develop trust and respect for one another to solve the case and, on the way, maybe fall in love.

* * *

“Wait, back up… Carl wants to see me at the office?  Again?  Crap, that can only mean one thing.”  He sighed, knowing it was the beginning of the end for him.  Carl would have him brief the investigators and he’d be mocked and ridiculed,  “What’s the Mary Liz?”

“My dad’s boat.  You know, you’re not very observant.  It’s written right there on the stern.  We’re going to spend New Year’s Eve in the harbor, and probably hook up with other like-minded water-enthusiasts and party.”  He got the cheesiest chili fry seconds before Kevin grabbed it.

“I’ll have you know I was on that boat, not looking at it from behind,” he slapped Connor’s hand when he went for the next one Kevin wanted.

“I thought you had the all-seeing eye though, Kev.”  Connor smirked.

“You’re trying to distract me from the sure and certain knowledge that I’m going to be the main course at the unbeliever’s buffet Carl is holding tomorrow.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.  Anyway,” Connor slid his now shoeless foot up Kevin’s bare ankle.  “Is it working?”

“Not yet,” said Kevin, “but I’ll bet you’ll escalate if I resist, so I’m resisting with every fiber of my being.”

“Ooh, then let the games begin.”  Connor smiled a wolfish smile and took a large bite of his burger.  The man did have lips, Kevin thought, that were to die for.  Connor licked them as if he heard Kevin’s thought out loud.

“You live here, let’s go dancing,” Kevin said suddenly.

“What?” Connor asked, around the straw in his shake.

“Let’s go dancing, someplace we can touch in public and get all hot and bothered.  You know anyplace?  I haven’t lived here in a while.”  He watched the flush creep up on Connor’s cheeks.

“Do I get to drive your car?”

“What?” said Kevin.  “My car?”

“Well, you know, I do know of some places… but I’d only take you if you let me drive your car.”

“Well, you are a sworn officer of the law,” said Kevin.

“And, I have two eyes, which almost makes it seem like I could drive better, doesn’t it?”

“I am going to let that go… if you don’t let me go for the rest of the night,” he said, finishing up the last of his shake.

“What will happen to my career, I wonder, when my brethren in blue see me with you, tomorrow, blushing like a schoolboy.”  He dropped a napkin by his plate.

“Connor, I’m so sorry,” Kevin said, “I didn’t think.  Maybe we should just call it a night, huh?”

“And miss the coolest ride in town?  And an opportunity to drive your car?”  He picked up the tab, leaving money and a nice tip.  “Not a chance.”

Lights flickered and the boom-boom of the dance music blasted away all conversation in the club Zigazig when Connor and Kevin entered.  The cover was light on a Thursday, which was good, but apparently since it was the winter break at most schools and universities, the place was crowded with college age boys and more than a few half-dressed young women.

Connor, he noticed, appeared breathless and uncertain, so Kevin muscled his way to the bar for two Coronas, and handed him one.  It wasn’t like he could reassure him with words, he couldn’t hear himself think, so he took him to one of the tall tables, and just stood by him, brushing him with his body lightly in time to the music while they drank and checked the place out.

It didn’t take long watching the other couples dance for Kevin to realize that they weren’t doing the Texas two-step.  Not long after that, his body was reacting, asking him to jump into the pile of people rubbing each other and playing in the throbbing, shifting, and anonymous crowd.  He took his time finishing his beer, and let Connor watch the dancers, wondering if the eroticism of their movements was having an effect on him too.

Kevin was standing behind Connor a little to one side, when he lightly slipped an arm around his chest and moved in to sway behind him.  Connor put an arm up over his shoulder to cup Kevin’s head and moved with him, rocking back against him to the beat.  Kevin pulled him to the dance floor and they continued their dance there.

Kevin held Connor close to his body, noticing the minute changes in his breathing, the rapid heart rate, the hint of a flush that was stealing over his cheeks.   Connor seemed sensitive to touch, to the heat radiating between them as they circled slowly together.  Kevin liked the taste of Connor’s skin, the way his hair smelled, and the way he sighed and leaned in, presenting his neck.  Kevin could see the pulse ticking on the long column of Connor’s throat, and wished he could mark him there.

“Mmn,” Connor moaned as Kevin grasped his hand, interlacing their fingers. They left the dance floor and found a small table away from the speakers where they could almost hear each other.

“You dance even better than you cook,” said Connor, accepting another beer.  “It’s been forever since I danced in a club.”

“Me too, people didn’t always dance this nasty did they?” he asked, earning a double take from Connor.

“Where’ve you been?”

“I don’t know, I used to think of these places as more of a means to an end, you know?  I spent more time out in the parking lot.  I guess that’s bad, huh?”

“Well, not good, really.”

“If it’s any consolation, I’ve spent the last five years playing ball with my dog.  Tonight I just wanted to go somewhere with you where I could look at you and want you.  Someplace we could flirt.”

“So you brought me to this den of iniquity?” asked Connor.  “With all these dry- humping barely post-pubescent hotties?”

“Um, as I recall, you brought me here,” Kevin reminded him.

“Right.  I forgot.  Well, be that as it may, Kevin,” Connor looked stern, “this may backfire on you.”

“Why?” Kevin was almost afraid to find out the answer.  He took a sip of Connor’s beer, just to wet his lips.  He hadn’t ordered a second so he could drive.

“Because I don’t want to be arrested for sucking you off in an open car,” said Connor, and Kevin did a classic spit-take.

“My car has a top,” Kevin said. “It does.  Have a top.”

Connor laughed at him, and pulled him back on the dance floor, “You, I’m afraid, aren’t going anywhere soon,” He wrapped both of Kevin’s arms around him.  “You have mad skills, and I am only now discovering what they are.  We are here to dance until one of us caves and throws the other against an alley wall.”

Kevin practically had to shout for Connor to hear him.  “Are you issuing a challenge?”

Connor nodded.

“Sucks to be you tonight, little man,” said Kevin tossing his jacket onto a chair next to the bar.  He didn’t care if he ever saw it again.  His man wanted to understand the power of dance, and it was well within his ability to show him.  “Just don’t blame me if you can’t walk out of here, and know up front, that I don’t do bathroom stalls.”