Another snip­pet.

I’m fin­ish­ing up the first draft of the book today. This is excit­ing. Home stretch. I will prob­a­bly do an awe­some give­away on Face­book tomor­row to cel­e­brate this huge achieve­ment when it’s all said and done, so stay tuned.

Here’s the third teaser from The Devil’s Metal. Sage and Dawn’s rela­tion­ship doesn’t exactly get off to the smoothest start. (keep in mind this is unedited).

When I hung up the phone, I spied Sage leav­ing the Astro van with one of his gui­tars in hand. It was black, sleek and sexy, just like the man him­self and his intricately-tattooed fore­arms bulged as he han­dled the musi­cal beast. I shook my head lightly, snap­ping out of my strangely lust­ful daze, and decided to take my chances with him.

“Sage?” I ven­tured care­fully, walk­ing toward him. He had seen me com­ing and seemed to be form­ing excuses in his head already.

“What is it?” he said, barely glanc­ing at me, and walk­ing off toward the back­stage doors lead­ing into the building.

I trailed after him. “How are you feeling?”

The ques­tion sur­prised him and he slowed down a bit. “How am I feeling?”

“You seemed a bit snap­pish at break­fast,” I said. “Last night too. Thought maybe you have an object lodged up your ass or some­thing. Some­thing a doc­tor should remove.”

I couldn’t believe I just said that. Nei­ther could Sage. He didn’t just slow down, he stopped and gave me an incred­u­lous look. “Excuse me?”

Way to go Dawn, I thought. As if he couldn’t hate you more.

I licked my lips and tried to smile. “Well, do you?”

He seemed speech­less. This prob­a­bly wasn’t good.

But then, he did some­thing I hadn’t expected.

He smiled.

And then he laughed. It was short and brief, but gen­uine and made the dim­ples stand out in his scruffy cheeks. It was the best sound I’d heard all year.

Then he shook his head and con­tin­ued walk­ing off toward the audi­to­rium, strum­ming his gui­tar as he went, leav­ing me with a view of a tight ass in tight black pants.

What I had meant to do was ask if him when a good time to inter­view him would be. I totally messed that one up.

I watched him go for a few beats, then I decided to give up on him for the day and try again tomor­row. Tonight I was going to con­cen­trate on the music and just the music. If the band wanted to play hard to get with inter­views, fine (and if I was going to bun­gle up some inter­views with my big, fat mouth, fine). That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to observe and then com­pose the best damn live show review. Ever.

I shuf­fled back to the bus, gath­ered my purse, my notepad, my tape recorder and the venue’s All Access pass, and went to go catch Hybrid’s soundcheck.