Words from the Editing Process - Mack 'n' Me: Origins

In addition to organizing new covers for this series, I'm also giving them another round of edits prior to formatting them. Since I have a few days between work-for-hire contracts, I'm putting in some long hours and focusing solely on edits every day. It's a good thing there's not a lot that needs tweaking...

 Mack 'n' Me: Origins is the first book in the Mack 'n' Me 'n' Odyssey series, and details how Mack and Cutter first met. Let's just say... Well, it went a little like this:

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“Hey!” I said, when the light of teleportation faded, and I found myself in an iron-barred cage.

“Hey, yourself.” The voice came from behind me, deep, male, and very nonchalant, and all I wanted to do was take down whoever owned it.

I turned.

“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, indicating the cage around me. “I paid the fee.”

The guy on the other side of the cage was big, as in he was taller than me and broader than me, and he didn’t look impressed.

“Money wasn’t yours to pay,” he said. “Company wanted it back.”

I stared at him in surprise, then said the first thing that came into my head.”

“But they didn’t know it was gone.”

And that was when he smiled, which was when I knew that I’d been had.

“Gotcha.” His smile said it all.

“You sonuva…”

He took a step towards the cage, and I took a step back, fetching up against the bars on the other side.

And that was when I got my third surprise for the day: the bars were electrified. Current jolted through me, and I jumped forward, stopping just short of the bars on the opposite side. The big guy just watched, head tilted to one side as I shimmied to a halt, and kept myself from touching the bars in front. I found my balance, settled myself in a comfortable stance, and waited.

It didn’t take him long to figure I was done talking.

“You’ve got some skills, girl.”

I folded my arms, and slouched a little. If the bars hadn’t been so zappy, I’d have leant on them and yawned. As it was, there was nowhere to lean, and I wasn’t either bored or tired. That didn’t stop me from trying to give an impression of both.

“So?”

I dropped my chin to my chest, and looked past my fringe at him.

“I could use someone with skills like that.”

I tilted my head, a little, so I could see him, more easily.

“Uh, huh.”

He came right up close to the bars, and stood in front of the cage.

“You have any plans?

There was something behind that question, a lot of something, and I didn’t like the idea that he knew a lot more about me than I wanted him to.

“Plans,” I said, and that was when he dropped the fourth bomb-shell of the day.

“Well, you haven’t asked me to call Odyssey, yet...”

I backed up, hit the bars a second time, and stepped smartly forward, again. I wanted to pace. I wanted to bolt. I wanted to do so many things, and I couldn’t do jack. I never did handle being helpless very well.

With nowhere to run, and the elephant in the room being given a name, I reached both hands through the bars, grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, and pulled him hard up against the cage.

Like I said, he was bigger than me—and he was stronger than me, and he was acting like he thought he was smarter than me, too. Well, I figured I’d see what happened when he got a dose of his own medicine. I might have laughed when the current arced through him, except he stretched an arm through the bars, and pulled me in close.

 “Two,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Canplay. Atthat. Game.”

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And, now, it's on to Book 2: Mack 'n' Me: Blaedergil's Host...