This is an excerpt from my new two books series The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright. This excerpt is from the first book.

You can buy this series here!

     They found Colleen sitting in a corner of the Mississippi Lounge’s beer garden, her hatless head revealing her very stylized short red hair. Skye could tell the glasses on her wry pixie face were new frames, and if she did not mention her new glasses, no doubt Colleen would.
     Harp ran off to try out the new food stand in the back as Skye sat down.
     “Nice to see you again Skye,” said Colleen as she held up her multicolored cocktail.
     “It’s been a while.”
     “You don’t come here too often anymore.”
     “That’s what happens when you sober up.”
     Harp came around to the table, putting down a pint of beer before running back and retrieving a Mexican Coke for Skye and a basket of food.
     “These are vegan onion rings,” announced Harp.
     Colleen looked at the basket. “Vegan? How the fuck can onion rings not be vegan?”
     “I haven’t tried the new kitchen here.”
     “Who’s running that place?” asked Skye.
     “It was either a thirty year old lesbian or a sixteen year old boy. I can’t be sure.”
     Harp looked at Skye’s bottle of Coke and then looked down into her drink. “Jesus Skye, you’re gonna have to drag us old hags home.”
     “Don’t hit the sauce so fuckin’ hard,” sneered Skye with a grin.
     “Fuck me,” sighed Harp. “I don’t know how much longer I can deal with this shit.”
     “What’s up? Your job?”
     “I think they’re gonna fire me,” said Harp as she kept looking down into her drink.
     “I thought you were one of their best hustlers.”
     “I am!” exasperated Harp. “They have some bullshit problem with my ‘image’.”
     “Yeah, you mentioned that.”
     Colleen leaned towards Skye. “Your job is still goin’ pretty good though, right?”
     “Hell yeah. I get to jam sometimes and get paid for it.”

The cover for the first book
The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright

     Colleen started asking Harp about her workplace problems as Skye leaned back with her bottle of cola. She looked around at the young hipsters. Most of them looked like college students, but she knew some of the rougher looking ones were working class young people. There was a wide variety of secondhand clothes and band shirts around the place. There were a few punks, and a stray goth gang in one corner of the beer garden, but most of the people there were the younger crowd who looked as if they were definitely steeped in the urban scenes, yet most of them did not seem to be firmly invested in one genre.
     She saw dreadlocks, she saw punk shirts, she saw Doc Marten boots and Vans sneakers. She spied Derby jackets and chain wallets, Converse high tops and dyed black hair and leather bracelets. And there were tattoos on just about everyone in the place: arm tattoos, hand tattoos, neck tattoos, and even a few people with small face tattoos.
     Her eyes glazed over when she saw their one common denominator. Everyone in the place was drinking. Almost all of them were holding onto pint glasses, some of them with pitchers of beer on their tables. A few people here and there were drinking from small glasses with clear or brown liquor in them. Only a few had tall and colorful cocktails such as Colleen’s, but they were all drinking liquor.
     Skye turned and looked at her Coke bottle as she felt her heart drop.
     “Have you heard of miso-sogyny?” asked Colleen.
     “What?” asked Skye.
     “Patriarchal soup.”
     “Prejudiced tofu soup?”
     Colleen leaned on the table. “It’s a piece a friend of mine is working on. She’s trying to combine a punk show with an art show.”
     “Wouldn’t that work better with an industrial show or a Goth show?”
     Colleen held up her hands. “Hell, I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world, but also not the best idea either.” Colleen pointed at Skye. “Whatever happened to that one friend of yours, the one with the eye patch?”
     “You mean Sheet? That crusty who sang for Broken Vibes?”
     “That’s the one! You know where she is? I want to see if she’s willing to put some of her paintings in danger for this thing.”
     “Fuck if I know. I haven’t seen her since, jeez, last year sometime. She was gettin’ wasted at the Astroglide House.
     “What?” asked Harp. “Junk?”
     “She was smoking opium.”
     “Opium?” winced Colleen. “What the hell? Is she inside a forties detective novel or some shit?”
     Skye shrugged. “Well, she was also drinking herself into a stupor too.”
     Colleen slumped onto the table. “Damn. I was hopin’ to get her into that punk and art show.”
     “I thought you said that show was stupid,” said Harp.
     “Yeah, it definitely is kinda stupid. I still want to help them out though.”
     Skye leaned on the table. “Well, go by some of the crusty punk palaces in West Berkeley and see if you can’t scrape her off the floor.”
     Colleen waved her hands around with a look of disgust on her face. “The last time I had to drag someone out of a drug den was for Rachel Pubes.”
     “Ewww!” winced Harp. “What were you doing with that nightmare?”
     “Wait, who is Rachel Pubes again?” asked Skye.
     Harp was still grimacing. “She’s that fucked up artist who uses things like body hair and vaginal discharge to make her pieces. She had that series of menstrual blood paintings.”
     Skye winced. “Oh God, now I remember her now.”
     “What the fuck were you doing diggin’ up that nightmare?”
     Colleen held up her hands in self-defense. “Hey, she’s a big draw. Her stuff may be disgusting but she knows how to fill up an art show.”
     “Fuck me,” groaned Skye as she looked around the beer garden. “Is it just me or are the people in here starting to look younger?”
     “You old,” said Harp.
     Skye swatted Harp on the arm. “You’re almost as old as me!”
     “We old,” said Harp.
     Colleen leaned towards Harp. “There’s a young tie dye t-shirt who’s been staring at you this whole time, like you’re a full course meal.”
     “Probably a MILF hunter,” dismissed Harp.
     “The older women thing?” asked Skye.
     “I could never sleep with someone who wears tie dye anyways.”
     Colleen looked between Skye and Harp. “Fuck me, I just realized that we’re all single!”
     “What the fuck?” asked Skye. “I thought you were goin’ out with Boot Boy Jason.”
     Colleen waved her hand dismissively. “That ended a few weeks ago.”
     “Why?”
     “I dunno. We were never that serious. Besides, I think he has his eye on some young rude girl.”
     “Goin’ for jailbait!” snarked Harp as she held up her drink. “They either want ’em old or young.”
     “MILFs or jailbait,” said Skye.
     Colleen looked at Skye through her drink. “What about you?”
     “What about me?”
     “I had Boot Boy and Harp had Griff. Who was your last?”
     Skye held up her Mexican Coke bottle as if it were a shield. “Well…”
     “Been a while?” asked Harp.
     “No. Yeah. Kinda.”
     “Now you know we’re gettin’ old.”
     Skye put down her Coke bottle. “My relationships never end well. They usually blow up, or one of us ends up ghosting the other.”
     Harp shot Skye a look. “You ghost people?”
     Skye nodded. “I ghosted Yuri, and he was like the coolest boyfriend I ever had.”
     “Yikes,” said Harp.
     “Anyone you got your eye on?” asked Colleen with a raised eyebrow.
     Skye sat back as if she were thinking about it. “You ever wondered what it would be like to date a civilian?”
     “What? Like someone in tie dye?” asked Harp.
     “Naw, I mean like, I’ve been hanging around a lot of college types. Sort of like, professorial types.”
     “You’ve been hanging around German speakers, haven’t you?” asked Colleen.
     “Toby’s been having people from the UC Berkeley German Department over to the group.”
     “That’s what happens when you sober up,” said Harp. “People who aren’t total fuck ups start to look good.”
     “Yeah, no shit,” said Skye.
     Colleen screwed up her face. “I tried going out with a civilian once. I mean, it was kinda nice havin’ someone with like, a real job and a nice house that didn’t look like a crazy artist’s studio or a drug den.”
     “So what was the drawback?” asked Harp as she sunk lower onto the table.
     “Well, it can get to be a fucking drag, tryin’ to relate to someone who isn’t in that loop, who isn’t from one of your tribes. I mean, when it comes down to it, if a man doesn’t have Bauhaus on vinyl I just, well, I can’t really relate to them.”
     Harp sat back and stretched out her slim body. “I never know if those are start flags or red flags.”
     “Both!” said Skye. “You know, when you see he’s got William S Burroughs on his bookshelf and he’s obviously read it.”
     “Bauhaus on vinyl,” said Harp.
     “Sings along to The Exploited,” said Skye.
     “Knows who Brion Gysin is,” said Colleen.
     “Skull tattoos,” said Harp.
     “Is a tattoo artist!” said Skye.
     “Oh fuck me, I would love to go out with a tattoo artist. Free tats!”
     “RE/Search books?” asked Skye.
     “Oh, you mean loaded questions quarterly?” yarked Harp.
     “Has a DVD of a Guy Maddin movie,” said Colleen.
     “Who?” puzzled Harp.
     “A really cool filmmaker from Winnipeg,” said Skye.
     “Where the fuck is Winnipeg?”
     “You don’t know where Winnipeg is?” asked Colleen.
     “That’s it,” said Harp as she leaned back down on the table. “You and Skye need to go out with each other now.”
     “I’m not that desperate yet,” said Colleen.
     “Sorry Colleen,” said Skye. “I don’t butter my bread on that side.”
     “Well, if you really want some action you could always hit on Harp’s tie-dyed stalker.”
     “Hell no. Never tie dye. I’d eat my Doc Martens before I’d ever sleep with a tie dye.”
     Harp sat up straight in her chair and looked Skye right in the eye. “So you’re really thinking of going after a college professor?”
     Skye shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows. It might be a nice change from the usual working-class bohemians I always end up with.”
     Colleen hugged her drink. “An actual income and no current or past substance abuse problems. Why not?”
     “Sure,” replied Skye uncertainly.

Buy the Rise and Fall series here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B3WBDZP2

Buy Stella Maris on Amazon, Skye’s story right before The Rise and Fall of Skye Wright. Free for Kindle Unlimited users!

Stella Maris is the sequel to my previous novel. Even though it can be read by itself, check out what Skye was up to before her adventures in Stella Maris!

https://www.amazon.com/What-Hell-Ever-Happened-Rozhenko-ebook/dp/B08WC4DK6G/