I’m in an alcohol-serving coffee shop, enjoying a beer as I’m doing my final edit on Echo 3, when the bartender switches the TV from The View to a Demetrious Johnson fight.  I look up, pleased to see a true technician at work.  Suddenly, I hear a drunken voice bray, “HEY!  WE WERE WATCHING THAT!”  It’s a group of Soccer Parents, and the lead one looks to be a yoked, Crossfit-evangelizing soccer mom.  Normally I’d ask her if she was single, but apparently she’s not, ‘cos her beaten-down-by-the-suburbs husband tugs her sleeve and asks, “Honey?  Maybe we should—”  “SHADDAP!”  She cracks a giant dildo across his face—wha-PAP—and he tumbles to the floor, rubbing his cheek and staring up at her in shocked surprise.  She says, “SHUT YER MOUTH OR YOU’LL HAVE TROUBLE SITTING DOWN TOMORROW!”  She gives the thing in her hand an intimidating shake and then points it at the bartender.  “CHANGE IT BACK.  I WANNA SEE JEDEDIAH AND WHOOPI!”  The bartender raises both hands like she’s holding a gun on him and says, “Yes ma’am.”  I close my laptop, rise from my seat and say, “Hey, let him change it to what he wants to—”  There’s a collective scrape as ALL the Soccer Parents rise from their seats.  The Soccer Moms brandish dildos and point them at me while their beta husbands crouch on all fours and snarl like Gollum.  “Whoa,” I say, holding up my hands, “Let’s just—”  then they’re charging at me.  It’s like a scene from Braveheart, only this ain’t no army commanded by Edward deLongshanks, it’s just a bunch of crazy-ass suburbanites that look like they’re about to jack me up, Deliverance-style.  I open my eReader to Echo.  Magic flash.  Boromir appears before me, longsword drawn and ready.  He gives me a cocky smile and says, “I can handle a few—”  “LOOK OUT!” I scream this as I see a dildo flashing toward the back of his head, powered by arms that can deadlift 2.5x bodyweight.  Everything goes slo-mo, and he reenacts his death scene from the Fellowship, only this time, he’s falling to a legion of sex-toy bludgeons.  I make my escape, hissing through my teeth in mortification.  So undignified.

If you’re ever mobbed by soccer parents with a questionable choice in weaponry, you might need Boromir to reenact a tragic but hilarious version of his death in the Fellowship.  Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here:  Vol. 1 on Kindle.  Vol. 2 on Kindle here:  Vol.2 on Kindle