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Aries & Libra
Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo -- EXCERPT: Libra “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Velma Lou. Here we go again.” At the mention of my name, I glance up from my drawing of the new kitchen layout I’ve been fretting about for days to my father, Kip. It’s not like him to use Jesus and Mary like that. I mean, the guy probably says six words a day and right there was his quota. “What?” I stare as his head slowly lifts from the small-town newspaper he’s reading, The Zodiac Hills Gazette, and turns until our eyes meet. “They’re making that goddamn show again.” Well, sadly, that’s not enough information. He’s going to have to give me a bit more. “What show?” “That show.” Still not enough. “Dad. What show?” It hits me. “No.” I say it in a breathy, shocked way that tells him everything he needs to know. That I’ve figured it out. “Reruns?” I squeak. Please say it’s only reruns. We’ve been through those before with only minor repercussions. “Worse.” “Worse than reruns?” What could be worse than reruns of the 1980s show, 1985 to be exact, that put my little town on the map and ruined a whole lot of lives. Well, not a whole lot. Several. It ruined several lives. Like mine and my dad’s. A few people actually got lives thanks to that show, but that’s neither here nor there, because the show Dad is talking about, Love in Zodiac Hills, turned my little town of Zodiac Hills, Nebraska, upside down and sideways. Granted, I was a young when it first aired, but I know, firsthand, the impact it had on the people here. “They’re re-making it. So it’s new.” “Re-making it? Who’s doing that?” Please don’t say Netfilms, because that company is huge. So big that everyone has that particular streaming service. “That Net thing you always watch on your computer.” “Shit.” Dad gives me his best scowl. He doesn’t care for my curse words even though he too cusses when it’s warranted. But “Do as I say, not as I do” is one of my father’s favorite sayings. “Sorry,” I say with very little remorse. “It says here, it’s coming out this April.” I glance at the calendar. “Next month?” “The fifteenth. They’re gonna call it Return to Zodiac Hills.” “You read that in the paper?” The local paper. Dad nods. “Which means, everyone will know.” Which also means, the town is going to go apeshit crazy. It also means we’re going to get split in two. Again. As soon as Dad heads off to work, I reach for the abandoned newspaper. I need to read it for myself. Scanning the front page, I see nothing about the show. Weird because, to me, this is front-page news. Opening our small-town paper, I search pages two and three. Since it’s a weekly paper, it’s usually only four or five pages long. I mean, how much news can a town with the population of over three thousand people generate in a week? Finally, I find the article on the second to last page. Well, article isn’t the right word. It’s a paragraph posted in the part of the paper called Kitty’s Korner. Katherine “Kitty” Standish has been writing what she refers to as “her column” for a century. Just kidding. It’s been years and years, though. She’s got to be in her seventies by now. You can’t tell her age for sure, though, because she’s rarely seen during the daylight hours. Some speculate that she’s a vampire due to that fact, but Dad says it’s not true. According to him, “She’s a night owl. Always has been.” I believe my pops. He’s a no-nonsense kind of man. What he says, he means, and what he means, he really means. Also, don’t piss him off, because he’s a grudge holder of epic proportions. Just ask my mom. Well, I would ask her if she ever came back to Zodiac Hills after she ran off with that Capricorn. But that’s a story for another day. Lifting the paper, I read Kitty’s Korner. Hear ye! Hear ye! She always starts off announcements like she’s a town crier. I usually laugh but not this time. People of Zodiac Hills, hold onto your hats! She does that too—makes archaic references like that. I mean… who wears hats nowadays? Well, lots of people wear baseball caps, I guess. But I’m getting off track. Starting this April, that big movie-streaming company called Netfilms will be showing a brand-new version of Love in Zodiac Hills. (For those of you young’uns out there, that was a show they had on television in the ’80s. Sort of like that other show, The Love Boat, only it was on land.) Anyhoo, it was a program about people finding their one true love all based on their birthday which is ridiculous because what does that have to do with anything? They’re calling it Return to Zodiac Hills. Which means, you’d better get ready because… they’re coming.
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