Office Christmas party!  The air is filled with my favorite guilty pleasures from Mariah when my drunk-ass boss rudely shoulders me.  “You know what I want for Christmas?” he slurs.  “I want you to fall in line, Kent.  When are you gonna realize that all this writing crap is exactly that:  crap.  You need to get an SUV and binge-watch Homeland like the rest of us.”  He cups his hand over his mouth and yells, “Kent here thinks he’s better than us cos he’s single and doesn’t have a micro-phallus and he WRITES!  Oooh, WRITING!”  The rest of them voice an ugly laugh and converge on me.  I raise my hands.  “Let’s all calm down and—”  Then they’re writhing, morphing into their true lizard-people forms.  I crash out the fiftieth-story window and free-fall, wind ripping through my hair.  I look back; they’re galloping down the side of the building and catching up!  Open my eReader to Echo.  Magic flash.  A clean-burn jetpack and armored helmet snap over my flesh.  My cool-ass red visor gleams as I clench my teeth and utter, “Orbital gunnery:  Stand by to fire.”  Glowing red circles appear on the lizard-people, rotating lazily on their chests.  “Fire.”  Lances of brilliant green streak down from the sky and trace brief paths over my pursuers’ bodies.  They scream as they’re turned into blackened husks.  Crispy-fried lizard people fall in a hail of bodies.  I tilt my head up and say, “Boosters.”  The jetpack ignites, and I leave behind twin trails of glowing ion as I rocket into the distance.  Ho ho ho, biotches!

Christmas needs to be more than just forced grins and perfunctory office parties.  Clean-burn jet pack and orbital gunnery:  That’s what I’M talking about!  Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here:  Vol. 1 on Kindle.  Vol. 2 on Kindle here:  Vol.2 on Kindle. Links for Vol.2 on Smashwords/Nook/iBooks/Kobo are available here:  Echo on other platform