Kat's Blog

Kat's Blog

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Summer Bash - Day 15!



Today my guest is Cam, the hero in L.J. Holmes' upcoming release Santa Is A Lady. I'm truly pleased to have him here and that L.J. let him out long enough to talk to him. So, please help me welcome Cam Drayton.




Good Morning Kat Holmes. Thank you for asking me to visit with you and your friends here on your blog.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cameron Drayton, and I am the main male character in L.J. Holmes’: any relation to you by the way: Santa is a Lady due to be released on December 1st, 2010 by that new Canadian e-publisher everyone s talking about, Muse It Up Publishing.
When you offered up your blog to anyone in the literary world, I jumped on it, for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve been following L.J.”s advance excerpts, and secondly, the character blog on the Muse It Up blog by Angie Brightwell on June 9th, 2010. I’m starting to feel a bit, well, ignored, and it’s not like L.J. would have much of a story without me.
While L.J. was writing, I tried to convince her you all really need to know my history, or I was going to come off more like a villain, but she and her editor called it Back story; not vital for the story’s evolution. Can you believe that? So when you offered me this opportunity, I naturally jumped on it.
What to tell you? I’ve really thought about this. I’m a natural born Northeringalian, and I have wracked my memory, but I really don’t remember hearing about the Brightwell family at all. We wouldn’t have had too many opportunities to meet; you have to understand because we traveled in vastly different circles. My folks are a bit bluer of collar, and I really can’t remember ever clapping eyes on a younger Angie Brightwell.
Of course, I am ten years older than Angie, so by the time she’d have been old enough for me to notice, I was already embedded with the army Corp of Engineers in Iraq. I’m one of the many who eagerly volunteered to go to war after the devastation of nine-eleven.
My skills as an engineer were much in demand. That place was pretty badly decimated. Once we entered Iraq, it was up to the Corp to rebuild the shattered Iraqi infrastructure. And yeah I can see in your eyes that you’ve guessed right. That was me you saw on the news, the guy peeking over my shoulder expecting to see incoming IED’s. while dropping the pre-fab bridges so our troops could get from point “A” across the bridge imploded waters to point “B”.
There were a lot of times when I expected to be kissing my ass goodbye…er, sorry. I forget about the language sometimes. Bad habit, and now that I have a little girl, really gotta monitor my mouth. Learning to be a good dad is a lot of work, I can sure tell you.
Johara, that’s my little girl’s name, and she’s what all this is about.
Eventually, with my butt still intact, Thank You God, I was assigned the command of a training base. I was to hire and train Iraqis so they could rebuild their own country. That’s how I met the three Hakimi brothers and their beautiful older sister Tahirah.
The brothers, wastrels and con artists, were deeply in love with money, so offered their sister, who spoke several languages fluently as base translator. Looking back, I wonder if she and I would have been as drawn to each other had we been anywhere else, not that it matters, nor would I change the time we shared.
We did fall in love, and eloped; not the brightest thing to do in that world, but is love ever bright? My friend our Base Chaplain was right there, and so he married us, and before you ask, we eloped, so yeah, we neglected to tell Tahirah’s brothers. In the beginning, things went along as usual. The brothers only showed their faces on our side of the base every two weeks to collect their sister’s pay packet.
The proverbial dark stuff hit the fan about eight weeks after we said our vows. The brothers, wanting more money, decided to sell their sister into marriage to the highest bidder, and so unannounced, they showed up on our side of the base.
We hadn’t yet had it confirmed, but Tahirah was pregnant, and her brothers went ballistic. They put our marriage through all kinds of legal challenges, but ultimately our marriage was declared legal and binding by both the US and the Iraqi courts.
The Hakimis were not pleased…understatement. Tahirah had humiliated them with her defiance, secrecy, and disobedience; and as for me? I’d stolen their pot of gold!
They waited and stewed. Perhaps if our baby had been born a boy, at least they might have been able to save some face among their former Red Guard cronies. Joahara was born an adorable girl.
My wife’s brothers commissioned her murder and the kidnapping of our daughter. After slicing Tahirah’s body up and disposing it in front of my three month old baby, they buried Johara in one of Iraq’s hellish orphanages, and then the eldest brother showed up on my doorstep demanding fifteen thousand American dollars from me to buy my baby back.
It took me almost two years to get my daughter back, and now, all I want, as we begin to celebrate this first Christmas together, is for her to have a typical American holiday. Let me assure all your visitors out there reading this, I’m not a hard man, but I am a desperate man, who finally has his little girl home—but there’s nothing remotely typical about Santa being a lady.
What happens next? Well we’re all going to have to wait till December 1st to find out. I hope you’ll join us on our holiday adventure. We’ll be looking forward to sharing our future tomorrows with you, and maybe you can convince Angie and her friend Beck that ladies are NOT supposed to disguise themselves as the jolly elf and risk spoiling the magic for all the Northeringalian children.


Thank you so much for being here Cam and thank you L.J. for letting him talk to us. I can't wait to read Santa Is A Lady coming from Muse It Up Publishing on December 01, 2010.:-)

2 comments:

Larion aka Larriane Wills said...

that is so sad. I'm looking forward to reading that his life and his daughters are making a change for the better.

Roseanne Dowell said...

I wanted to read this before, but now I can hardly wait. I'm sure they'll find happiness here.