As I work to cut NO MAN’S LAND from 115,599 words down to below 99,999 words, I’m finding scenes that don’t move the plot forward. Or at least not much.

After I released ALL IS SILENCE in 2014, I posted some cut scenes. Available here on the blog: Lizzie’s debut vignette from 2011, 1st Beginning and the 1st and 2nd (Pt 1 & Pt 2) unsatisfying endings. All these will be released as an ebooks Boxed Set of all short fiction written pre-2022 (at least 1 unpublished that’s only been read by about 11 people), as well as a non-canon story where I meet Lizzie, plus some making of and Covid comparisons.

I also found one from STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS: Zach and Nev’s Wedding, which hasn’t happened yet, won’t happen in the trilogy, and which includes Duke, who can’t be in the scene. (So this must be the alternate ultra apocalOPTIMISTIC version of the universe that people asked me to write during the worst of the Covid Pandemic. It would end up with happily ever after at the end of STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS. In which case I wouldn’t need to write NO MAN’S LAND or any other Deserted Lands novels! Alas, I’m glad I didn’t go with that ending.

So, here’s the scene, titled after a rock and roll song title. This one embellishes the story rather than derails it.

Minimal Spoilers if you haven’t read Books I & II.

Feel Like Makin’ Art

Robert L. Slater

Lizzie made lazy loops with the pencil across the page as she stared at Aubri. “Can I draw you?” she blurted.

Aubri glanced up from her book, her face shifted into a warm, sensual pleasing smile that subtly changed the curves of her cheeks and the twinkle in her eyes. “Of course. Can I read?”

“Sure. But–“

“Yes,” Aubri urged softly.

“I’d like–” Lizzie’s throat had gone dry. It wasn’t like she hadn’t already seen Aubri’s entire body without clothing. “Would you–“

Aubri seemed to know what she wasn’t saying. She set the book down slowly, sliding the book-mark inside. Then she stood and started unbuttoning her blouse. “Maybe turn on the space heater?”

Lizzie hurried to turn it on, adjusting the heat to maximum and the fan to low.

“You can watch me.” Aubri chuckled. “Probably do a better job on the drawing, too.”

“Sorry. Never done this before.”

“Seduced an older woman with your art?”

Lizzie stuck her tongue out. Aubri responded in kind as she slid out of her skirt. She picked up her book and sat back nearly exactly in the position she had been in before, her legs tucked up under her butt and the book nearly covering all the parts of her body the movie producers would expose to raise the rating to R.

Lizzie sat back down, rolling the chair to a place where all of those parts were left to the imagination.

“This okay?” Aubri gestured with the book.

“Keep the book where it was.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.” She returned the book to its position, but continued to watch Lizzie.

“Read.”

“What? You can examine me in minute detail while I can’t do the same to you?”

“You’re not drawing me.”

“No, but I might be memorizing you.” Aubri again moved the book. “Just remember this in my head.” ***[Dead Man’s Hill]

“Book. Read.” Lizzie’s hands guided the pencil to sketch in the shape of the sofa bed. She smudged the soft lead into the paper. Aubri rolled her eyes and went back to reading. Lizzie let out a long breath. She’d never drawn anyone that knew she was drawing them. And all the nudes she’d done in the past were based on photos on a screen or a frozen dvd.

Aubri moved awkwardly, glancing up at Lizzie every few minutes.

Then Lizzie realized that Aubri hadn’t moved, she stared at Aubri’s eyes staring at the pages of the book, flitting back and forth. Lizzie realized she wanted her looking. Her hands filled in the shading of the fabric on the arm of the sofa part under Aubri’s elbow, waiting for the moment that Aubri’s eyes would dart up, how would she catch that?

She leaned her head back until it felt the cold, chilly hardness of the mirrored closet door. The door shifted, bumping against the track and Aubri glanced up.

There. The look. Lizzie closed her own eyes trying to take a picture of the memory. She opened them and gave the sketch book her entire attention.

Some time later, Aubri cleared her throat. “Well?”

Lizzie realized her hands hadn’t moved in some time. Aubri was there, captured on the paper. Her breath caught. She’d done it. The limbs weren’t perfect, but the face and the eyes where the best thing she’d ever done. She shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure. Don’t expect too much.”

Aubri stood unabashedly naked, comfortable. She came around behind Lizzie, still seated in the rolling chair. Lizzie felt Aubri lean into her to see. “Wow. That’s really good.”

“But?”

“What?”

“There was an unstated but in that statement.”

“There’s an unstated butt in this room.” Aubri wrapped her arms around Lizzie and gently squeezed the subject of her last statement. “Your drawing, as meager as your subject matter is, captured that moment.”

“You’r not meager,” Lizzie said. “You can see it’s you?”

Her arms slipped around Lizzie’s waist. “Yes,” Aubri whispered, “But I want you in the picture.”

“Told you there was a but.” Lizzie turned her head to find Aubri’s eyes staring into hers. Her lips found Aubri’s.

“Yes, yes, you’re very smart.”

“But I’m the artist. I can’t be in the picture.”

“Au contraire, mon amour. Self-portrait of the artist as a young woman.”

Lizzie huffed her hair out of her eyes. About time to chop it all off again, but then Aubri wouldn’t run her fingers through it.

“I’d have to see myself in the mirror and then echo it back to the other side.” She let her breath sigh out. “I’m not that good.”

“Bullshit, honey.” Aubri spun the chair and knelt in front of her, pulling Lizzie’s face to hers, her fingers teasing through Lizzie’s hair, scraping her scalp just barely with her fingernails.

Lizzie shivered and leaned in for a kiss, Aubri’s lips tugged at Lizzie’s.

A few moments later when she withdrew, Aubri smiled. “Besides how else are you going to get that good?”

“I’m going to mess it up.”

“Then we’ll have to do it again. And again and again and–” Aubri dove in for another passionate kiss.

“I want to take a picture of this first.”

“No. Please, don’t.” Aubri held her face, holding Lizzie’s eyes with hers.

Lizzie’s eyes glanced back and forth. “But-“

“Too many buts. I want to be imperfect with you. Are you ever going to write a song or draw a picture that you’re satisfied with?”

“Ever?” Someday she would, wouldn’t she? “I don’t know. That’s a long time.”

“Yeah. Which we may not have. This has been an amazing afternoon.” Aubri tugged the drawing tablet from Lizzie’s hands and set it on the table. “Pretty soon the boys in the band are going to be back and then it will be over. Please, draw yourself into my picture. Be imperfect with me.” She kissed Lizzie softly on the forehead and stood.

Lizzie let her eyes roam up Aubri’s body to her face. “Okay.” She stood, shoving the rolling chair away from the mirror. She kicked off the hotel slippers, grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt and pulled it off over her head.

Aubri grinned. “I didn’t say you had to be naked. Not that I’m complaining.”

Lizzie lay the drawing pad on the sofa bed. “Can you get back to where you were?”

Aubri nodded, serious again, and slipped comfortably back into the pose.

Lizzie slipped out of her sweats and lifted the drawing pad so that she could scoot up next to Aubri. She sat cross-legged, the outside her thigh running along Aubri’s tucked under calf. She picked up the nice eraser and took the background out of the picture, trying to will herself back into the drawing mood.

“You hummed before.”

“I did?”

“Not really a song.”

“Weird.”

Aubri’s eyes returned to her book.

Lizzie’s returned to her pad, glancing at the closet’s mirrored doors, At least cross-legged there wasn’t much difference left and right. The drawing pad added modesty for her that the book had done for Aubri.

Relax. It’s just another life drawing model framed in a room. As the pencil moved and her fingers smoothed, she found herself falling back inside. She was humming. Very off-key. The mockingbird song.

When she glanced back at the mirror, Aubri’s eyes found hers, just like in the drawing. Lizzie smiled back. She remembered some high school teacher talking about all the time you have is now. Seemed stupid at the time. Now she understood. Now.

Her hands continued with more confidence than before. Her brain played mirror to her eyes, reflecting her own character back into the drawing in reverse. If only that was how real life worked, to go back in time and flip something to its opposite.

Aubri wasn’t reading. She wasn’t looking at Lizzie in the mirror, she was looking at the picture. Stay loose. Don’t look. She knew it was taking shape, knew from Aubri’s intake of breath that this was something special. This time was all she had.

Lizzie’s hands had stopped moving, she wanted to look, but instead her eyes found Aubri’s. Kissed her and set down the drawing tablet. “Well. If all we have is now…?”

“Don’t you want to look at it?”

“Yes. But it’s not as important as you, as looking at you, as being here with you, right here, right now. I didn’t know that. Not until now.”

Lizzie leaned in, finding Aubri’s lips again.

There were no need for words, together they were communicating, sharing, being. Together. Yes. When the boys got back, the drawing pad, pencils and eraser lay on the floor next to the book. They turned the boys down for a shared dinner of room service.

NO MAN’S LAND coming soon to a bookstore near you. Might I suggest Village Books Bellingham? They’ll ship signed versions, as many books as you want, anywhere in the U.S. for only $0.99.