Hello, December. Per usual, the weather in Ohio is crazy back and forth. Super cold for several days then sixty degrees then back to super cold again. And rain. Lots and lots of rain. Bleh.
It's been another busy workweek with a rush job for a holiday release and finishing up another manuscript. Throw in car trouble on Friday with not one but two vehicles and, yeah, lost the whole day. LOL
Television was a mixed bag of viewing pleasure. I finished out last week with Pensacola Wings of Gold watching a pretty interesting episode where one of the marines got set up by another government worker. Lexx's second season is at the wobbly part where one episode is great and the next is not so much. Also caught a Hallmark movie, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, which has three of my favorite actresses. Should be following up with the Christmas movie this week if my schedule doesn't blow up again.
I have to take a moment and rave about The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. This show always ends up making me smile, even when the storyline is somewhat sad. The fifth episode ended up making laugh out loud and I needed it this past week.
I followed up the funny with some serious emotional drama in Strike Back. Almost through season five, which should catch me up for season six. I gotta say this show does a great job at not letting the members of section twenty save the day in an easy fashion. Two steps forward and five steps back is things usually go for them.
Chicago Fire is kind of losing me with this whole deputy commissioner bullshit. Kind of like Chicago PD lost me with sticking someone in just to put a leash on Hank. I'll finish out this season but if there isn't a big change, I'll be skipping the next with the exception of crossover episodes. I love crossovers.
I'm almost finished with Luke Cage's second season. I'll be honest, I'm really disappointed there won't be more and supposedly it's because of the whole Disney + streaming service that's not even launched yet. I'm all for choice and options, but when services get overly proprietary, they sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. I hope that doesn't happen here.
Passionflix debuted another Quickie with Dry Spell and it was funny and sweet but not sugary. I enjoyed it.
I also caught Murdoch Mysteries and liked seeing Terence back again. Finished out the night with a Christmas Belle, a holiday spin on Beauty and the Beast.
Not a bad week of viewing. Tonight's post is from To V or Not to V, a V-World novella that dives in the world of virtual reality and puts my main couple in danger.
Here's the mini-blurb:
Mallory Biden and Surge Tempest work side by side to police crimes in V-World, a virtual reality recreation area where anyone can live out their wildest fantasy. But when Surge goes rogue to track down an old nemesis and enters the Void Zone, a dangerous, untraceable place he helped create, Mallory will risk getting trapped inside to pull him out.
And a sneaky peek…
"Hey, Mal. We got him."
The voice came from outside the office and Mallory Biden looked up from the report on her desk expecting to see her brother Rex in three, two, one…
He burst through the door, winded, and skidded to a halt.
"You tracked Surge?"
Rex nodded, breathless. He must've hauled ass from the monitoring station, two floors down.
"Where the hell is he?"
God, they'd been trying to find Surge for days. She'd been so prepped for bad news she didn't know how to respond to the good.
Rex sucked in air and gave a quick shake of his head. "Uh, you're not gonna like it." He pulled out a chair and collapsed in it.
Okay… not so good then. At least she knew how to deal with that.
Then it hit.
"Dammit. He's in V-World, isn't he?" Virtual World could take him anywhere and her job, hell… their job... gave him jurisdiction to do whatever he wanted. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Rex grimaced. "Worse. Surge is in the VZ."
The urge to punch something took hold of her. "Son of a bitch." What the hell, Surge? Did the man want to drive her mad?
Her best friend, fellow soldier, and lover couldn't just go off the grid in V-World for a few days. Nope. He had to really screw shit up by hitting the Void Zone—something he had no business doing. Not when he recently battled with an old employer—the Nemesis and hadn't quite recovered yet.
"Stupid, stupid man." Mal got up and paced the area behind her desk, worry mixed with anger, and concern merged with frustration.
She stopped abruptly and looked at Rex. "Wait. How did you track him in the VZ? That's not possible."
Her brother's smile was grim. "It is now."
Well… hell.
Rex had finally done it. Cracked the wall that made it so bleeding hard to find anyone once they hit that particular virtual setting. In V-World, they traced people via their log in… not an easy thing. Back tracing took time. Lots of it.
But the VZ didn't use a log in… users entered via hacks. And once in, they could go anywhere, either by jumping on someone else's stream and splitting off from it or by simply hi-jacking it out from under them when they stayed idle too long. If that happened, the hi-jacked user only had to log back in, none the wiser to the theft of their data.
The process made it very, very hard to trace or monitor anyone's activity in the zone. And the VZ users wanted it that way. They didn't want to be tracked or watched… it defeated the purpose of the Void Zone.
But her genius brother found a way to do it.
Shit.
She'd have to deal with that crisis later. They had some time… but not much. Once word got out, everyone, everyone would be after Rex for the knowledge. The government. Corporations. Criminal gangs.
And word would get out. Somehow it always did.
Right now though? Surge came first.
Mallory put her hand on Rex's shoulder. "Okay… show me where he is."
I'm having fun with this story. I started it over five years ago and I'm loving how far VR has come in those five years!
That's it for this week. Catch everyone on the flipside.
ML Skye
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