JUST LIKE JESSIE JAMES – Go click play on this 1 minute fact you didn’t know
Strategic thinking, he said.
That’s what needs work.
I couldn’t argue with him.
When you wear a lot of hats, sometimes the day work takes over so stuff gets done
Even when you should be focused on something else
Time, as ever, slips by and past and is gone too fast
Leaving too much to do
Even if the done pile is growing
So I worked on a roadmap and a checklist and a day to day
Things I should be focused on to move the needle
In business, in body, in thought
In relationships, budding or not
Mostly not
Which is sad, I think
Because despite the ghosts of relationships past
I’m pretty good at them
Most of the time
Except this past year
Playing the greatest hits of why I’m the worst over and over in my head
Wondering if they were true or just someone’s perception
Because when you do an action
Like literally take care of everything in every way
Except taking them to work and putting them in a seat to do it
Then picking them up once the day is done
I did it
And some days, I even did the taxi bit so we could hit up a happy hour
But the laundry list in my head that I did thinking it meant one thing
Was taken wrong or interpreted wrong or seen as wrong by someone else
My effort to ease
was seen as how I thought about their ability to do things and take care of things on their owner
As patronizing
and possibly too much like a sibling or father-figure
Which explains a lot to me
And maybe why I’ve chosen solitude over solicitation for the past year
Venturing up and out a couple of times to meet with women who’ve been through as much as I have
Maybe more
Deciding that I don’t have the energy for that much damage anymore
Plus I’m in a low population state that hits all the buttons on my never list
Are they active? Nope.
Do they like to play? Nope.
Limit food intake? Nope.
Into health? Nope.
Into reading? Only menus.
I mean, I do have high standards, or maybe I’m just picky.
Or I get more excited by optimizing a part of the biz than I do working through a roster of prospects.
Suggest meeting for drinks, and it’s “Oh, you’re alcoholic. My ex was a drunk.”
Suggest meeting for coffee, and it’s “Oh, you’re cheap. Don’t want to pay $100+ bucks to take a lady to dinner.”
Outside concerts? Cheap.
Happy Hour? Lush.
Say things like, “Look, let’s just meet and see if the chemistry is right and do a full body inspection of each other naked to see if we’re compatible.”
Pervert.
There’s more.
A whole book’s worth, but I’ll probably save it up for scenes in the actual book.
Suffice it to say, I’ve got too much to do for that addition to my to do list at the moment
So I’m swiping left on going out in anything other than solo sojourns
But…
I’ve been in a couple of breweries and smiled at some pretty girls and the look on my face
And the way I sit and carry myself gets a smile back and a conversation
Because I know how to ask questions and I’m generally interested in hearing what they have to say
The stories they have
I can see how that seems contradictory to a lot of folks
I’m really good at peopling, especially over a cold one
There have been a lot of cold ones in my life, just so I can go around collecting stories and tales and little tics that show up later on a page
Maybe if I started writing dark romantical erotica, I could go around collecting those tics and tricks too
Until then, I’ll stick with the day to day work of doing all the things
Someone has to do it
Here’s chapter one to WEED – Book 2 in the California Sober series
Weed
The shed in Ukiah had lasted six months, two harvests, and one dead junkie ago. Now Jace was back in Humboldt, renting a different shed behind a different tired-looking house, this one on the outskirts of Fortuna. The landlord was a guy named Sal who chain-smoked menthols and repaired lawnmowers in his driveway. For six hundred a month cash, Sal didn’t care what Jace did in the shed as long as the noise wasn’t louder than a dying Briggs & Stratton.
Inside, twenty plants were finishing up under two six-hundred-watt lights. It was a clean, tight setup. Nothing wasted. Jace had just under ten thousand dollars from his last two sales, a number that felt both like a fortune and like nothing at all. It was get-by money. It wasn’t get-out money.
He was trimming the last of the harvest, his fingers sticky and black, when he heard a knock on the shed’s metal door. Not a cop’s knock. Too soft. He picked up the Smith & Wesson from the table, moved to the side of the door.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Ellie.” The voice was young, a little ragged around the edges.
He slid the bolt back and opened the door a crack. She stood there, backlit by the gray afternoon sky. Thin, maybe nineteen, with stringy blonde hair and the wary, restless eyes of a girl who slept in her car. She was holding a half-empty bag of chips.
“Heard you were back in town,” she said. “Heard you might have some product.”
Jace looked past her, scanned the street. A rusty Camaro, a pickup on blocks. No black sedans. No quiet men with patient eyes. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“People talk.” She shrugged, a small, bird-like movement. “I need something for the pain.” She nodded at her arm, a fresh track mark near the elbow, an angry red welt.
“I’m not selling that kind of pain relief,” Jace said.
“No, man. The good stuff. Green.” She looked past him into the shed, at the hanging branches, the purple glow. “Looks like you got plenty.”
He studied her for a second. The frayed cuffs of her jean jacket, the hunger in her eyes that wasn’t for food. She was a stray. Harmless. A tool, if he needed one.
“Wait here,” he said. He closed the door, bolted it, and grabbed a small Ziploc bag. He put a couple of grams of trimmed popcorn buds into it, not the premium stuff. He went back to the door and handed it to her.
She took the bag, her eyes lighting up. “Shit, man. Thanks. How much?”
“It’s a gift,” Jace said.
Her eyes narrowed. She knew nothing was a gift. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Jace said. “Right now.”
She understood. She nodded. She looked at him, then at the shed, then back at him. “You need anything… a message run, whatever… you know where to find me. I’m usually parked down by the river.”
She started to leave, then stopped. “You look different,” she said.
“How?”
“Older.”
She walked away, tucking the bag of weed into her jacket pocket like a secret. Jace watched her go, then closed and bolted the door. He was twenty years old. He felt a hundred.
The meeting was with a man named Ray. Julian Black had set it up, a parting gift for the fifty grand Jace had paid him before the Sacramento crew ran him out of his first real operation. The fifty grand was gone, vaporized with the shack in the hills. Julian had called it a loss. An investment that didn’t pan out. He’d kept the money. But he’d made a call.
Ray owned a dispensary called The Gilded Leaf on the Arcata plaza. It wasn’t a head shop. It had recessed lighting, polished concrete floors, and glass cases displaying THC-infused seltzers and artisanal edibles. The girl at the front desk looked like a yoga instructor.
“I’m here to see Ray,” Jace said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“He’s expecting me. Jace.”
She picked up a phone, murmured into it, and then nodded. “He’ll be right with you.”
Ray came out from a back room. He was in his late thirties, wearing a crisp black polo shirt with a small, embroidered gold leaf on the chest. He had a friendly, open face, a firm handshake, and the dead-calm eyes of a crocodile.
“Jace. Glad you could make it,” he said. “Julian speaks highly of you. Says you’re a producer of rare talent.”
“I grow weed,” Jace said.
“Some people grow weed,” Ray said, leading him into a small, clean office. “Others create art. I’ve seen your work. It’s art.” He closed the door. “The problem is, my customers can’t buy art that doesn’t exist. My supply chain has been… unreliable lately.”
“Vic Torrance?” Jace asked.
Ray gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug. “Vic was a blunt instrument. Effective, for a time. But he lacked vision. And now he’s on a permanent vacation. That’s created opportunities. And problems.” He sat behind a small, neat desk. “I need a reliable supplier. Someone who can deliver consistent quality, on a deadline. Julian seems to think you might be that person.”
“What’s the deal?”
“The deal is simple.” Ray leaned forward, his friendly mask slipping just a little. “I need fifty pounds of premium indoor flower. Grade A. No popcorn, no shake. Fifty pounds, cured and delivered, in three months.”
Jace kept his face blank, but his mind was racing. Fifty pounds. From the twenty plants he had now, he’d be lucky to get four. It was an impossible number.
“And if I can do that?” Jace asked.
“If you can do that,” Ray said, “I will pay you one hundred thousand dollars. Cash.”
The number hung in the office, shimmering like a heat haze. A hundred grand. Get-out money. Get-gone-forever money.
“That’s a big order,” Jace said.
“It’s a big opportunity.” Ray leaned back, the friendly smile returning. “Of course, it’s a big risk for me, too. I’m putting a lot of faith in a young man with a… chaotic reputation. My partners, they get nervous when things are chaotic. They don’t like delays. They don’t like excuses.”
“Partners?”
“Everyone has partners,” Ray said smoothly. “The point is, the deadline is firm. Three months. You deliver, you get paid. You fail… well, let’s just focus on success, shall we?”
Ray stood up. The meeting was over. He walked Jace to the door.
“Think about it,” Ray said. “You’re the kind of artist we want to be in business with. Let me know your decision by the end of the week.”
Jace walked out of the dispensary into the bright sunlight of the plaza. A hundred thousand dollars. The number was a key. It was the key to a door he hadn't even known existed. But fifty pounds in three months… he’d need a bigger spot. A real one. He’d need land, equipment, a crew. He’d need to become the kind of man who could make fifty pounds of weed appear out of thin air. He’d have to become Vic Torrance. Only smarter. Harder.
He was thinking about land, about the mountains, when he saw the rusty Camaro parked across the plaza. Ellie was in the driver’s seat, watching him. She saw him look, and she didn’t look away. She just sat there, waiting.
Jace walked back to his shed. The deal was impossible. A setup. Ray’s partners, the deadline, the sheer volume—it was a test designed to make him fail. But a hundred thousand dollars wasn’t a test. It was a dare.
He got to the shed, unlocked the door. He stopped. The scent of weed was still there, but underneath it was another smell. Cheap perfume and chip dust. Ellie was sitting on an overturned bucket next to his trimming table. She’d jimmied the lock.
“How’d you get in?” he asked, his hand going to his hip.
“You need a better lock,” she said, unfazed. “So. How’d it go with the fancy man?”
“What do you want, Ellie?”
“I want in,” she said. “Whatever it is, I want in. I can do things. Run messages. Find people. Whatever you need.”
He looked at her, at the raw hunger in her eyes. She wasn’t a stray. She was a tool, offering herself up for use.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
She didn’t hesitate. She stood up and pulled her shirt over her head. The encounter was quick, rough, standing up against the wall of the shed. It wasn’t about pleasure. It was about confirming the terms of their new arrangement. It was a transaction.
When it was over, she pulled her clothes back on.
“So,” she said, her voice even. “Am I in?”
“Go down to the river,” Jace said, turning away from her, already thinking about water pumps and irrigation lines. “Find me three guys who aren’t afraid of hard work and don’t talk to cops. Tell them it pays two hundred a week. In product.”
He heard her leave, the metal door clicking shut behind her. He stood alone in the shed, surrounded by the smell of weed and sex and ambition. Ray’s deadline was a gun to his head. His partners were ghosts in the machine. And he had a hundred thousand reasons to pull the trigger himself, first.
Want the rest? GRAB WEED today
And don’t miss book one, CALIFORNIA SOBER
Go watch this today:
Hey friend,
If you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ve probably noticed something…
I don’t just write in one genre.
I write in seven.
That’s not chaos.
That’s the creative wildfire I’ve built my life around.
From gritty Westerns and twisty Mysteries, to epic Sci-Fi, Post-Apoc survival stories, Urban Fantasy magic, hard-hitting Thrillers, and real-world Non-Fiction—
I’ve been building entire worlds across the map.
Until now, it’s all lived in one place.
It’s 9AM
But that’s changing.
Today, I’m inviting you to choose your favorite trail—and follow it all the way.
🌎 Choose Your Genre World:
Click below to sign up for updates, free stories, bundle deals, and behind-the-scenes writing notes for the genre(s) you love:
🔫 WESTERN – Saddle up and ride into the frontier.
🕵️ MYSTERY – Solve crimes, secrets, and strange small-town murders.
🧙 URBAN FANTASY – Magic in the modern South, monsters in the dark.
🚀 SCIENCE FICTION – Galactic justice, alien contact, cosmic rebellion.
🔥 THRILLER – High-stakes chases, covert agents, ordinary heroes pushed too far.
AND COMING SATURDAY!
☢️ POST-APOCALYPTIC – After the collapse, survival has its own rules.
📘 NON-FICTION – Real-life insight, mindset, business, writing, homesteading.
🎁 Bonus: The Reading Order of My Worlds (PDF)
If you’re not sure where to start—or want to explore beyond what you already know—I made you something cool:
👉 Download the “Reading Order of My Worlds” Cheatsheet
It maps the major series, standalone books, and bundle deals across every genre.
Print it. Keep it. Use it to explore.
💬 Why This Matters
This isn’t just about books. It’s about truth.
For years I tried to cram everything into one channel, one list, one box. But the truth is, I’m not built for boxes.
I’m a storyteller who shifts shape.
And if you’re here, reading this—you probably are too.
So go ahead—pick your genre.
Or pick them all.
I’ll meet you on the trail, wherever it leads.
—Chris
writing notes for the genre(s) you love:
🔫 WESTERN – Saddle up and ride into the frontier.
🕵️ MYSTERY – Solve crimes, secrets, and strange small-town murders.
🧙 URBAN FANTASY – Magic in the modern South, monsters in the dark.
🚀 SCIENCE FICTION – Galactic justice, alien contact, cosmic rebellion.
🔥 THRILLER – High-stakes chases, covert agents, ordinary heroes pushed too far.