Two rough drafts in 2018, and here's an excerpt from one

I had a productive 2018, for me, with two rough drafts completed (though the latter just made it under the wire). I'm posting short excerpts from both to celebrate -- and here's the first.

While you wouldn't know it from the excerpt, this book will be (my first venture into) historical romance, and no, I have no idea how that happened . . . .

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Joshua Gibbs felt sun on his face and thought about opening his eyes. He decided to wait. He had some blessings to savor that wouldn’t need sight.

He was in a bed, a four-poster with a well-stuffed husk mattress, instead of a tent; the sound nearest his right ear not the whistle of a shell or the wails and screams of dying men, but the soft grumbly snore of his Irish Setter. And the dog’s name might be Major (or, to give its full grandiloquent moniker, Reginald Phineas Major), but that was the closest to an officer he’d find for miles around.

And what Joshua smelled, when he took a slow, lazy sniff, was a mix of Major and almost-clean bed linen, and not . . . well, no need to sully a brand new morning with the thought of what he’d have smelled this time nine years ago. 

But the thought put an end to his pleasant catalogue. He opened his eyes and sat up, stretching out his arm and laying a hand lightly on Major’s side for the warm breathing comfort of it. Major’s eye twitched, and his tail, but that was all. A dog knew, without having to think about it, what safety meant. 

Joshua levered himself out of bed. He’d get dressed and take a walk with Major before frying himself some breakfast.