Lowrywrites.com

365 thoughts. I have a thousand per day. Maybe more. A lot revolve around money. Or dinner. A lot more about marketing. And writing. I think about telling stories all the time. But can i write 365 thoughts as blog posts in one year? I published 85 in October. I got advice to put it out there. To share more and list ideas. I did. I made .30 cents. I don't think I found new readers. Nobody went to KU to read through a whole series.  Maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the point isn't a lot of money.  Maybe the point is to practice. Practice makes permanent. When instated running long distance, the best days were five to nine mile runs. I did them after work. They would take an hour. Or an hour and a half. I had my loop picked out and distances mapped. I knew the playlist.  It wasn't easy. But it was good practice for longer runs on the weekend. Practice made permanent. ...

CHAPTER ONE He stared at the drop of golden amber liquid on the tip of his finger. It glistened in the neon glow of a beer sign behind the bar, beaded up and hiding his fingerprint underneath. He imagined for a second he could see the twirl and swirl of the unique lines that only he owned in all the world. Fingerprints, the ultimate identifier. “Are you going to bet?” Jake shot a look at Amanda behind the bar. She had one hand behind her back, a bottle of what was on his finger hidden in her grip. “Double or nothing?” he shot her a cocky grin. “You’re on,” she snapped back with a smile. He put the tip of his finger on this tongue, transferring the drop onto his taste bud. He let it roll around a minute, savoring the miniature volcano of heat on just that one section of his tongue. It made the rest of his mouth water in anticipation. “Dewar’s,” he announced. Amanda pulled the hidden bottle from behind her back and showed him the label. “I’m impres...

Ever time travel? Most people don’t think it’s real, but if you’re like me, you believe in it. Still skeptical? Ever hear a song that takes you back to a special place in your life? How about a smell that sparks a memory? Or that shiver you get from déjà vu’? That’s time travelling. If you believe in quantum theory, there are a number of reasons for it. Parallel universe kind of stuff. Or maybe the Sherlock explanation works best. It’s just a simple pleasant memory. For me, I have a lot of fond memories. I don’t think my childhood was easy. I grew up so broke, we were just Po. We couldn’t afford the or to be poor. Single hippie mom. Cigarettes and beer were number one and two on the grocery list with food a distant third after a dime bag for Friday night. I had grandparents though and I’ve talked about Mamaw and Papaw before.   Grew their own food. Hunted their own meat. Built things with their hands. And always always had some...

CHAPTER FIVE This time he went for drinks. It was after noon which meant five o’clock somewhere by his reckoning and besides, it was his house and he could do as much day drinking as he liked. Gretchen trailed down the stairs, belting on her skirt under her untucked silk blouse. She had one of his old robes tossed over a shoulder and handed it to him as he passed her a tumbler with a stingy splash of bourbon in the bottom. He was out of rum. “Ice?” she asked. He pointed toward the kitchen and proceeded to sip his neat, like a gentleman is supposed to do. She came back with her ruined drink and sat in an arm chair opposite him on the couch. The picture window looked out over his front yard and the real estate housing development going in across the pasture. The light coming in gave her red hair a slight glow as she touched the glass to her lips and didn’t drink. Jake didn’t mind. He would just add what she left to his glass later. Waste not, wan...

CHAPTER FOUR They lay on top of the white duvet on his queen size bed under a skylight he had installed himself. The noon sun drilled through at an angle, casting an oblong rectangle of bright yellow on the white wall. It had tracked along the wall as they finished the shower and started time number two in the bed. Number three finished him for the day for good, he thought as he collapsed into a quivering heap next to her, one hand draped across her flat stomach tracing indentations in the smooth expanse of skin. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back one hand and rubbed the small of his back with the other. “Just like I remembered,” she said. “That could go either way,” Jake said. Gretchen rolled over to one side and cocked her head on her hand. “I think you know which way it went.” “You told me,” he nodded and switched to writing circles on her hip with the tip of his finger. “You were a little different.” “I’m a different man...

CHAPTER THREE Jake almost fell when the door opened and Gretchen stepped around the end of the shower. He was sure his mouth dropped because she wore the gold necklace he got her as a gift and nothing else. “Got room for me?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question because Jake wasn’t stupid, and neither was she. He had installed the shower himself. It was the width of the room, partitioned by a single pane of glass with an entry on either side that led to four shower heads. There was a giant picture window on the exterior wall, double paned for energy and tinted so anyone standing in the shower could see the width of what once was his empire and now belonged to a developer he no longer called friend. “Save me some hot water,” Gretchen scooted around the end of the glass partition and turned on a second spray of steamy water. He still thought of it as her end, he mused as his eyes travelled over the rest of her. Same Gretchen, same lines, sam...

CHAPTER ONE The phone trilled on the nightstand.  3:00 A.M. Brill rolled over and scooped it up without seeing who it was.  There was only two people who had this number and only one who called him this early in the morning. "I thought you would be running," said Carver. His deep melodious voice sounded like it belonged on a radio or television announcer, his South African accent muted but clipped after many years in his adopted country. "Another hour," Brill answered. He had planned to do heat training today, eighteen to twenty four miles that put him under the noon sun at the hardest part of the run when the willpower was sapped and the sweat stopped running.  This was the way he tested his body over and over again, working on that part of the mind that begged him to stop, begged him to quit and sharpened the senses of his bulletproof will. Carver knew he wasn't an early morning runner, so it was a constant joke between them.  Brill ...