{"id":2394,"date":"2012-06-09T22:23:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T02:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=2394"},"modified":"2012-06-10T11:38:35","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T15:38:35","slug":"lets-waddle-through-the-office-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/09\/lets-waddle-through-the-office-ink\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Waddle Through THE OFFICE INK"},"content":{"rendered":"

At last - at long, long, endlessly long last - my new book - Dangerous Relations:\u00a0 The Office Ink <\/a><\/em>- \u00a0is out and available.\u00a0 This is the third\u00a0book\u00a0in my \"love and the law\" line,\u00a0which we call\u00a0\"Dangerous Relations.\"\u00a0 \u00a0The books out so far aren't related, so they're not really \"a series\" - except for the fact that they occur in Myrtle Beach (my home town) and some of the characters recur and\/or know each other.<\/p>\n

Okay, maybe it's sort of a series.\u00a0 Except it's not.<\/p>\n

This one arose when my demented mind began pondering the old cliche - \"never dip your pen in the office ink.\"\u00a0 Before you'd have been able to call the little men with a padded truck and a straitjacket, the office had become The Ballinger Law Firm in Myrtle Beach.\u00a0 It came fully equipped with Mommy lawyer, Daddy lawyer and two battling lawyer brothers - Jed, the firstborn and Mark, the younger brother. The brothers couldn't\u00a0be more different - except that underneath their differences, they're an awful lot alike.<\/p>\n

For one thing, they're both very competitive - or at least they are on the surface.\u00a0 Perhaps, beneath it all, the only one competing for anything is Mark.\u00a0 Exactly what he's competing for only becomes clear late in the story.\u00a0 Mark is very much a central figure\u00a0in the tale - despite the fact that he never appears\u00a0as a\u00a0living, breathing character.\u00a0 As the story opens, Jed hears a scream, which catapults him to consciousness - much to his regret.\u00a0 He finds himself on his office sofa, where he's passed out after taking a physical beating following the emotional one he delivered to Gemma, his associate - the lady who just screamed - the lady he and his brother both wanted and neither could have.<\/p>\n

See, Joe Ballinger and Sophie Ballinger, parents of Jed and Mark and Senior Partners at the family law firm had a rule forbidding anyone from\u00a0dipping their pen into the office ink.\u00a0 Translation - no hanky and no panky at the office.\u00a0 That prohibition should've been reason enough for\u00a0Jed to have \u00a0listened to his parents a few months back at the interviews at the Law School.\u00a0 Gemma walked into the room to interview for an associate's job right after Mark hired the candidate Jed would've hired.\u00a0 In exchange for Jed backing down and letting Mark\u00a0hire the disputed candidate, Sophie promised that Jed could have first choice of the others.<\/p>\n

When Gemma Marshall\u00a0walked in the room for an interview she captured both brother's interest.\u00a0 But Jed was locally famous for his success with the ladies.\u00a0 He was the designated Damsel Delighter of the Esquire Club, a group of Myrtle Beach lawyers dedicated to the bachelor life.\u00a0 The Club would send Jed the name of the next lady he was charged with seducing.\u00a0 After he succeeded - and he always succeeded - they'd carve a new notch in the ceremonial gavel.\u00a0 There were a lot of notches.\u00a0 But Gemma?\u00a0From the instant Jed laid eyes on her, he knew she was someone he had to hold onto by any means necessary.<\/p>\n

It took some maneuvering to get Gemma to accept the job Jed insisted on offering - over his parent's objections - but finally he backed Gemma into a corner so that she had no choice.\u00a0\u00a0But once she joined the firm, the sibling rivalry became local legend and an office joke, although it was no joke to the brothers.\u00a0 Her presence created a pressure cooker for Jed - he wanted her more with every passing day but he couldn't have her and he couldn't have anyone else either.\u00a0 Jed's family and friends wanted Miss Marshall gone and Mark was convinced Jed would return to his ingrained Damsel Delighter ways, betray Gemma and then she'd turn to Mark.<\/p>\n

Well, the day did come when Jed had taken too much, been pushed too far, had changed too much from the man he'd always been.\u00a0 And his Esquire Club buddies picked the right night to push him into joining them at a strip club where they'd arranged for all the strippers to be especially friendly to Jed.\u00a0\u00a0Even though the touch and taste of her made him sick - literally- Jed ended up taking the stripper back to the office bcause he thought\u00a0it would help him get himself back.\u00a0 Instead, it cost him everything.<\/p>\n

Gemma walked in to find\u00a0Jed and the stripper naked on his office sofa.\u00a0 So Mark turned out to be right - Jed did betray Gemma.\u00a0 But Mark also turned out to be wrong - he didn't win the lady and ride his Harley off into the sunset. Because that scream that awakened Jed the morning after his go-round with the stripper and his later go-round with his brother?\u00a0 That was Gemma screaming when she discovered Mark lying bloody and dead, very dead, on his office floor - just a wall away from where Jed had crawled onto his sofa and into a bottle to try to drink away his troubles.<\/p>\n

But Mark is found holding\u00a0a bare-breasted photo of Gemma cavorting in a waterfall.\u00a0 So not only did Jed have all the motive in the world - Gemma had a few reasons to have killed Mark as well.<\/p>\n

The appearance of Mark's ghost should make solving his murder a cinch - except that he appears only to Jed and refuses to disclose the killer's identity.\u00a0 Well, he doesn't so much refuse as claim that he can't because it violates some after world code of ethics.\u00a0 Either way, Mark keeps insisting that Jed has all the clues he needs to solve the crime.\u00a0 If that's so, Jed just can't see it.\u00a0 He sees the puzzle, but he can't make the pieces fit.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0Jed better figure it out soon - if he wants to avoid being convicted of the crime.\u00a0 Because the trial has started, the Judge has named Jed as co-counsel in his own defense and all Jed can see is how he still feels about the woman who betrayed him in ways he never imagined possible.<\/p>\n

Will Jed be able to put the pieces together in time to get the real killer convicted, save himself, and see whether he and Gemma might still have a future together?<\/p>\n

Pick up Dangerous Relations;\u00a0 The Office Ink<\/a><\/em> to discover\u00a0how dangerous,\u00a0enticing, and\u00a0deadly pen dipping can be. You'll never look at ink the same way again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At last - at long, long, endlessly long last - my new book - Dangerous Relations:\u00a0 The Office Ink - \u00a0is out and available.\u00a0 This is the third\u00a0book\u00a0in my \"love and the law\" line,\u00a0which we call\u00a0\"Dangerous Relations.\"\u00a0 \u00a0The books out so far aren't related, so they're not really \"a series\" - except for the fact ...continue reading \"Let’s Waddle Through THE OFFICE INK\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2394"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394\/revisions\/2409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}