Sunday Snippets #1 for May – Judging Jude :) #booksale #mmromance #mustread @leebrazil

So just for a quick rehash… My bestie Lee Brazil came up with this amazing idea of Sunday Snippets. We’ll each celebrate a book a month on Sundays.

This month I’m showcasing Judging Jude.

Jude is a man who took one too many wrong turns in his life and has given up on ever finding the right path again. In fact, he truly has given up on himself in general. Too bad for him he has a best friend and a few others that aren’t so ready and willing to judge him a lost cause.

Judging Jude will be available all month long for only 99¢ at Amazon and ARe. If you purchase it at Smashwords use coupon FD74L for the discount. :)

Blurb:

Jude’s a master of running from things: his best friend, his memories, his nefarious dealer. Billy is determined to stop his marathon once and for all.

Judas Stirlying enjoys being a troublemaker. That way, he can skip the middle man and run off people who might care about him before they have the chance to leave on their own. Life is safer that way.

Billy Walker knows the real Jude. Oh, not the strung out jerk he wants the world to see, but the man with hidden depths that forever earned him Billy’s loyalty—whether Jude wants it or not. With the help of Jude’s best friend (the one that never falls for Jude’s “get lost” vibe) and a mysterious note at a New Year’s Eve celebration, Billy will do whatever it takes to show Jude that maybe, if he changes his path, there really would be something to celebrate.

Billy plans to prove to Jude that his life hasn’t been a waste—and prove to the rest of the world that Jude is worth a damn—before the dangers of Jude’s past catch up to them all.

Snippet #1 (from chapter 1):

“Happy fucking New Year to me,” Judas mumbled to the empty apartment. He plopped down on his leather sofa, a rip in the material stabbing at his skin, again. “Son of a bitch!” He popped back up and grabbed the dark green duct tape from a water-warped hutch’s drawer. He had bought the durable tape specifically for this purpose.

Judas put the roll on his wrist like a bracelet and ripped a length off, mending the dilapidated furniture. When finished, he tossed the roll to the ground and surveyed his work. The duct tape was becoming more prominent on the couch than the leather.

Sighing, he took his place back on the sofa and reached under it for the flat, sandwich-shaped plastic container he kept his smoking accessories in. He should probably grab the want ads and circle job offers with his trusty red pen, but what for? He wasn’t qualified for anything, and his present job, though shitty as it was, at least kept his pipe filled with spice and, oh yeah, a leaky roof over his head.

You would think working at a doctor’s office would be cool and profitable. Yeah, not if you cleaned the exam rooms and toted out the garbage. Sure, they let him keep his piercings in—both ears and an eyebrow—and they didn’t give him a hard time about his tats—namely because they were good tats, not that shit that people got from a hack or when they were drunk…but, he only made a whole two bucks over minimum wage. At just under thirty hours a week, Jude smoked that up faster than his checks got cashed. No, the real money landed in the job’s fringe benefits. It amazed Jude how much people would pay for a few blank prescription papers with the doc’s signature stamp on them. He never took a whole pad; they were always locked up anyway. But between the three doctors, Jude could walk out of there on a good day with at least a couple dozen ripped off pages. Getting them stamped proved the easy part, none of the doctors locked their desk drawers during the business day, and it was his job to clean the offices.

That plus the free samples he pocketed on the rare occasion those cabinets weren’t shut down tight and he just barely got by. He might have been a thief, but he played it cool and careful like. He never went after anything they kept strict count on; the records for the free samples were never up-to-date. The pads were inventoried, but once a doctor pulled one out, the papers on that pad were fair game.

He packed his pipe with the last of his Mr. Swell Guy spice and took a hit, grimacing when it burned going down. He still preferred the real deal to this crap, but at least this crap was legal right now and didn’t show up on drug tests. Well, legal to buy, but illegal to smoke—he never understood how that worked.

Placing the pipe to his lips, he flicked his lighter and inhaled deeply. A banging on his apartment door caused him to jump while simultaneously hacking on the smoke as he dropped the pipe.

“What the fuck?” he mumbled, then coughed out as loud as he could, “Go the fuck away!” Not a person on this planet existed that he wanted to see right now. Hell, there wasn’t anyone he wanted to see later either.

“Open the fucking door, or I’ll knock it in. And, Jude, you know I will!”

The universe hated him, he realized as he listened to his ex-best friend’s voice growling on the other side of the door.

“Go the fuck away, Wally! I thought I told you I didn’t want to fucking see you around here anymore!”

Louder banging this time. Jude could actually see the door bowing in its frame. “Damn cheap-ass building.” He quickly threw everything back in the plastic container, cringing at the last of his spice that spilled out of his pipe to imbed itself in the stained old carpet. He wouldn’t be able to make any money for another four days to get more, and even then only if he could snag some script papers from work and contact his buyer.

“I’m not leaving, so you might as well open this door, or you could let your neighbors call the cops on me and deal with that mess,” Wally shouted to him.

“I’m coming, you big oaf!” He snapped the container shut and tossed it under the couch, then placed a dingy throw pillow on the spice dusted carpet with plans to pick it out after he got rid of his unwanted guest.

“Don’t try to sweet talk me. Now, open this damn door!”

“Hardy har har, asshole.” Judas unbolted the door and swung it open. “Didn’t I tell you to take a fucking hike the last time you sniffed around here?”

His back slammed against the wall as Wally pushed past him and surveyed the room, inhaling deeply. “Christ’s sake, Jude. You work in a doctor’s office, you should know better than to smoke that shit.”

“You ain’t my mother. What the fuck you doing here anyway? It’s New Year’s Eve, don’t you have a party to go to or something?” Jude noted the flat-front chinos, blue pin dot button down shirt, and leather bomber jacket. Oh yeah, this would be a short visit. Wally definitely had his prowling clothes on tonight.

“Yep, so that’s what you’re wearing?”

Jude shook his head. “Huh? I ain’t going nowhere with you.” To cement his point, he walked to the fridge in his studio apartment and grabbed a can of beer, popping the top then drinking half of it down in one swig. “Ahh.”

“That’s impressive; you gonna flex and belch next? You have two choices here. You either get changed into what you want to wear or you go with me in those stained, frayed jeans and tank. Do I need to remind you that it’s forty degrees outside and those jeans passed sexy five holes ago?”

Wally walked his way. At six feet three inches, he beat Jude’s own five-nine on the formidability scale.

“You want to test my word, Judas? Give your neighbors a show while I drag your ass out to my car? Twenty bucks says not a one of them will interfere because that would mean they would have to talk to the cops. We both know no one who lives here would openly volunteer for that.”

Jude backed up until his ass hit the counter. “You just said they would call the cops if you kept banging on my door.” He pointed out Wally’s contradiction.

Wally shrugged and stopped only inches from him. “You opened the door, didn’t you? Sue me for lying. Now, what’s your choice?”

“Why’s it so important to you? We aren’t even friends anymore.”

Wally grabbed him by his shoulders, jerked him around, and pushed him toward his closet. “Much to your dismay, dipshit, I’ll always be your best friend. I’m not the type to just ditch someone because he wants to flush his life away. Now change into something nice; it’s New Year’s! Tonight’s the beginning of the rest of your life.”

“Whatever. But I was just gonna hang out here for New Year’s and bum around.”

“And that is why you need to get your ass out of this godforsaken place.”

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Loving this book so far? Is it tickling your fancy? Swing by and pick it up for only 99¢ and enter my Rafflecopter drawing for your chance to win a gift card. :)

Amazon - ARe - Smashwords (coupon FD74L)

Oh oh oh…and visit my bestie Lee Brazil, because he’s cool. :)