Something I've been working on, if people are interested, I'll post more:
The Farm
It was a warm day on the farm. The type of heat that makes you willing to walk around with nothing but shorts on, bare chested in the sun. The temperature was tempered by a slight breeze that had nearly evaporated the sweat off Jason Knauer’s chest and back before he left the intensity of the sun for the cool of the air-conditioned indoors. The chilled air gave him a slight shiver and gooseflesh, his bare nipples hardening against the cool of his kitchen. Jason grabbed his t-shirt off the back of the bar stool, poured himself a tall glass of iced sun tea and headed up to his studio.
To call Jason’s property a farm was being overly descriptive. Craving space from the chaos of the city, Jason had purchased 35 acres out in the countryside on which he grew a modest amount of vegetables and housed four horses. But he considered it his farm, referred to it that way. It was his escape from the rest of society, an isolated space he could work and focus. His routine, especially in the warm days of the summer, included getting up early, tending the horses and turning them out to pasture, weeding and various chores in the vegetable garden and then heading up to his studio to work. Lately, he was working on a novel.
Jason was a writer of what he considered moderate success. Since his second book was published to some acclaim, he hadn’t had to work a day job in years. After his third book, a collection of short stories did better than he’d expected, he purchased his farm and relocated to the country. He kept an address at a small studio in the city which he used only on the occasions he needed to be in for various meetings with publishers. Since the city was over an hour drive away, it was often easier to stay at least overnight, depending on the length of his stay.
When he stayed in the city, Jason employed a neighbor kid, Ashton, (thirteen or fourteen years old, Jason could never keep up) to come take care of the horses in his absence. He also had this kid, teenager or young man really, come over several times a week to muck the horse stalls and mow the lawn. For his labors, Jason paid the kid well, more than he could make for any other summer job. He saw it as a kind of retainer. Since Jason could be away at a moment’s notice, it made sense to have a kind of beckon call situation with the boy.
Jason sat down at this computer and opened his word document containing the novel in progress. He began to write. His main character and heroine, the young twenty something girl navigating her way through college as a poor student had found her way to paying the tuition costs by stripping at a club in one town over. Unfortunately for her, she had seen one of her professors in the audience, and more importantly, he had seen her. When her grades began to slip in this professor’s class, he had offered he
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