Meet Mimi from THE SILENT ROAD

Word Count: 37K

Mimi illustrated by Cynthia Hlady

Meet Mimi

Mimi does not have her own character sheet. That's not because dogs don't have personalities─they do. It's because Mimi is modeled after my own Korean Jindo. While Mimi is adorable, the real thing is much more so. Hence, I don't need to discover Mimi, she's already part of the family and I know her well. 

BUT...

I have news! 

Isn't every blog news, though? 

Let's try this again.

I have... a new and wonderful thing that I want to share!

​Are you waiting on pins and needles? Or is that just my wishful thinking?

Wishful thinking. Got it.

Okay, here is my wonderful awesome news...

Cynthia has agreed to work with me to make a webtoon out of The Silent Road!

The Silent Road will become a comic!

Art has always been a large influence for me. I've worked with many illustrators. I've had an illustrator do my first M/M/M romance book. Countless scenes of my books have been illustrated so this next step only makes sense. Even in my real life, many of my pets get their own water color, oil or professional photography portrait. 

Stay posted on where it will "air". It may be at Line Webtoon, Tapas, or on a new website. I'm still not sure. 

But you got to see the character creations first here!


SO, I'm nearly done with writing THE SILENT ROAD and what's next for it is... sitting on my hard drive. 

Nothing exciting, but I need to walk away from this story, edit another and come back to this once before I send it to anyone. 

Of course I'll be keeping you updated on it and Cynthia will be working on it so don't think it's just going away. I'll be taking a break and editing this next week. Until then... enjoy the except below!  

Excerpt Time!

Please note: This is a Contemporary M/M Romance
Which means this relationship is between two men. Here's the premise:

Heterosexual truck driving trainee must complete his training in time to send his daughter to college and finds love with his homosexual truck driving instructor. 

© S.N.McKibben

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote passages in a review, without written prior permission from the publisher.

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*PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT. SPELLING, PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR ERRORS WILL BE CORRECTED BY A PROFESSIONAL EDITOR WHEN THE FINAL VERSION IS PUBLISHED.*

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The Silent Road

​I regretted my stubbornness three hours in. Muscles I never knew I had in my shoulders started complaining—despite the nice bed I’d slept in last night. My head was fuzzy and damn road signs, the kind that flashed a jumble of words, did not help me navigate through traffic. I stayed in the right lane until absolutely necessary, but I kept my speed up. Good thing we were up high and I could see the lane ahead.

One moron kept time with me in his Toyota Tercel. Letting up on the accelerator would mean losing momentum. Once I let up an inch, Tabasco would slow to a crawl. New Mexico might look flat, but it had a slight uphill grade going East. It would take another fifteen minutes to get back up to speed if I let up on the accelerator. We had to move over, now. But the moron wasn’t concerned about me or his own self-preservation. Guess he didn’t pay attention to the traffic arrows pointing left. Everyone’s got to move over into one lane genius, and your next to a semi. I put on my blinker and started drifting to the other lane to say hey buddy, slow down or speed up.

The Toyota Tercel’s engine whined higher, sounding as though it would explode if any more pressure were applied. Great. Moron decided he was going to surpass us in his four-banger. This was going to be close.

Jake seemed oblivious to my plight. Mimi was up in his lap, giving his face a wash down with her exuberant tongue. The mutt was sweet when she wanted to be.

Finally, Moron was ahead of me enough to pull in behind him. I failed to hit the traffic cones by the span of a trailer.

“If you’d moved over when the signs told you to, we wouldn’t be having such a white-knuckle ride.”

Not as oblivious as I perceived. “The law states that a truck should only move to the left lane when necessary.”

“Reciting standard procedure is my territory. You’re not going to win if that’s your strategy. Necessary does not mean last minute. You are well within your right to move to the left if you have reason to be in that lane.”

I kept my jaw clamped. Father taught me long ago never to reveal my condition. As far as he was concerned, men had no weakness. I learned too late and too set in my stubbornness to realize men were not infallible.

“Hey, take the next exit.” Jake pointed ahead. “We’ll switch.”

“We’re not due for another two hours.”

“You’re exhausted, Mimi needs a potty break and we really should fuel up.”

I looked over at the gauges. We had a left and right tank. The right was empty when I started driving. But we still had half a tank on the left. “We can go for another five-hundred miles.”

“Um…” Jake tapped the glass. “That isn’t exactly true.” The needle dropped all the way until it hoovered just before “E”.

“What the hell.”

“It’s a quirk.”

“Why didn’t we fill up at Love’s?” I made a hasty right off an exit claiming to have an Exxon station and food two miles ahead.

His cheeks pinked a pretty as a Gala Apple. “Ummm… hmmm…I decline to answer.”

“What fucked-up-ness is that?” I mimicked Jake adding a high nasal pitch. “I decline to answer.”

But he squinted ahead. I set my eyes to the road and saw what looked like tumbling leaves crossing over the pavement.

Tabasco was considered aero dynamic for its’ time and she did well, but if we were in as much of a wind-storm the brick side of our cargo would toss us from lane to lane. As it was, the drive was smooth sailing. Not even a breeze.

“What is that?” I threw my chin in the direction of the weird leaves.

“Dan, stop.”

“Why?”

“Just stop.”

“We don’t have time.” Then I got a closer look at this column of leaves. Black blotches spanned terrain from the left as far as I could see, over the road, then to the right beyond the raised ditch in an unbroken line. Those weren’t leaves. It wasn’t two sides of fallen foliage spilling over the road. They were hairy spiders. What shimmered as if brown tumbled over yellow were their eight little legs. Millions of them. Hell, billions.

“Dan!”

Too late. Tires and crunchy insects intersected. Law of physics proved once again, the greater the mass, the greater chances of not being squished. Tabasco rolled right over the spiders and through their ranks.

“Oh come on!” Jake held his head in his palms. “Those were migrating tarantulas.”

“Your truck is fine.”

“Of course my truck is fine. But those tarantulas. I love tarantulas.”

“Ewww.”

“What? They’re awesome hunters.”

​“Except when they are crossing the road.” I chuckled, but a part of me did feel bad.

Silent Road will be coming out in 2019. Watch for details on the blog OR Join my Very Important Readers (VIR) Group for updates!

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