Grumpy Bear

Date night is already written, and when I go back to proofread it, even I'm like...

Siku had been strolling around his neighborhood for about an hour before coming across a grocery store. It wouldn’t take an hour to walk home again with his purchases, since he’d taken a roundabout path to get there, but it was far enough away that he’d want to come back with his truck in the next day or two to really stock up. When he walked in the door, he was impressed with the size and apparent variety of food in the store. He wished he’d thought to go with Gunnar or Mike on a trip t

Siku unlocked the door and let Colt in. As soon as they were both in the foyer, Charlie jumped down from his shoulder and ran up the stairs. “She’s in a hurry,” Colt observed. “She wants dibs on the big bed in the master bedroom,” Siku replied. Colt walked into the formal living room. “Fuck, dude,” he said, “This place is huge.” Siku followed him into the living room and grinned. “Well, I just moved in this afternoon. I still haven’t quite gotten used to the size

Damn! I rolled the dice in order to save my poor fingers from having to type out Francisco over and over again.

Oops! Correct. Fixing!

Siku’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the bar, lit primarily by red lighting. Most of the patrons inside were in their mid-40s or 50s, and they glanced casually at Siku, sizing him up and then one-by-one breaking out into wide grins when they got past the big bulge in his jeans and noticed the cat sitting on his shoulder. “You don’t look like the average tourist,” a jolly-looking portly fellow with a bald head and bushy beard said, standing at one end of the bar. He waved Siku to co

That interaction was based on a real-life experience of my own. I don't live in SF, but I live in the Keys, near Key West. One Saturday my hubby and I were hanging out in our usual bar when a bunch of women who had disembarked from a cruise ship for the day came in, and they kept going on about how famously gay Key West was, and they were so excited to have a drink in a real Key West gay bar and see the famous Key West gays! I managed to stay polite the whole time they were in the bar, but it was pretty exhausting. I ended up posing for pictures with the group, but I think our bartender photobombed at least one picture by climbing up on the bar behind us and pulling out his junk.

Although the story is fiction, the house itself is real...

Siku checked in with Gunnar to make sure that the house was going to be ready and vacant when he arrived in San Francisco. “The last renters are leaving today, and the cleaning crew is coming tomorrow morning. By noon, the place will be all yours.” “Okay,” Siku replied. “I’m nearly to the California border now. I had a most unpleasant night yesterday in a little desert town called Winnemucca. They advertised a campground, but when I got there the entire place was paved, and not a t

Siku headed West along Interstate 94 in North Dakota. He enjoyed the changing scenery of the flat Drift Prairie in the eastern half of the state, followed by the Great Plains and finally the stunning rock formations of the Badlands in the west. After starting his journey on the first of November, he had a few different options for the route to travel toward San Francisco once he passed Green Bay. He was not in a hurry, since the house in Sea Cliff was booked with vacation rentals until th

Gunnar and Siku sat in a pair of Adirondack chairs on the back patio of the lake house sipping beers with a crackling fire going in the firepit. It was mid-October, and Siku had been living and working with the Sturgeon Bay bears for almost two months. He had to admit, that it had been the best two months that he’d experienced in a long time. Atikokan had its advantages when it came to werebears living together as a community and allowing them to live openly and freely without secrets, bu

The alarm clock in the master bedroom went off at five o’clock. Mike swung a hairy arm over with practiced precision and gently tapped the button to make the noise stop. “Mmm, morning Papa,” Mike said rolling the other direction and throwing his arm across Gunnar’s torso, giving him a squeeze, and pressing his early-morning erection against his Papa’s ass. “Morning Cub,” Gunnar replied with a yawn. “Why don’t you go wake up our guest with that hard log of yours?” “Are you sure?”

Siku:

It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when Siku parked his truck at the Marina complex in Sturgeon Bay. He walked around the building to the back side facing the docks, and looked up at the sign hanging over the door. “Papa Bear’s Diner” it read, with a caricature of a brown bear sailor, puffing on a pipe. Siku smiled and walked through the door. “Sorry hon,” a female voice told him after he entered. “We’re closing in five minutes, so if you want lunch, it will have to be a ‘to-

Siku extracted himself from the bear pile upon his bed and padded to the kitchen to fix a pot of coffee before the others woke up. He was in the process of counting out the scoops when a pair of hairy arms wrapped around his middle, and he felt the warm breath between his shoulder blades before tender lips kissed his bare back. “Ezekiel!” Siku chuckled, “I’ve lost count of the number of scoops!” Ezekiel chuckled and ran his hands down the bear’s nude body, grasping his thick and h

All part of the long-term plan! I knew that Siku would become a main character in a future story when I was just starting to write Arctic Roots, and he didn't even have a name at that point yet. When the ex-dababbi Max bonded with polar bear Erik as his Papa, I knew immediately that the other polar bear in the village was going to feel left out and a bit of a third-wheel. I fleshed out Siku's character a little better in Serpent Mound, and now it's time for him to shine!

Photo by Maija Kovari on Unsplash

The werebear village of Atikokan was a beehive of activity. Axel and Adam had discovered another isolated werebear enclave in the far north of Canada on an island in the Nunavut Territory a year earlier while tracking down a lead on another bear ancient. After many months of negotiations, the two communities had agreed to an exchange program of sorts. There were several mated bear couples as well as Papa and Cub pairs who felt that Atikokan had grown too large and congested for their pref

Siku the polar werebear leaves his home in Canada and embarks on a journey of self-discovery, hoping to find his Mate. What the massive bear finds will surprise him, and bring two very different worlds crashing together with unforeseen consequences. Can he fight centuries of tradition and bigotry to claim the Mate that Fate has destined for him?

You'll have to wait just a little bit longer for that part of the saga, but the wait will be wort it, I promise! The next book is going to change gears a little bit and follow our lonely hero Siku on his journey to find a Cub or Mate. Along the way, he will discover a new enemy that makes the Tuath De look like playground bullies... an overbearing Mother-In-Law!

Bill and Joe stood facing Bernie on a bright, clear Friday afternoon on the baseball field just beyond the parade grounds. It was early fall, and nobody would be playing ball here for the next six months or so, making this field with its own fence the ideal location for Bernie’s special training during the fall and winter. “Okay, Bernie,” Bill said. He was shirtless and shoeless, wearing just his Marine silkies shorts. Joe paced back and forth with anticipation a few feet away, also wear

Come back tomorrow for an Epilogue with an extra surprise!

Axel emerged from his tent at sunrise, nude once again. The wolves and his mate were in no hurry to get up after having spent most of the night engaged in nocturnal calisthenics. He pulled on his favorite pair of gray cotton shorts and strolled down to the camp’s mess area for a cup of morning coffee. The only other creature stirring at this hour was Colonel Banshee, on her cell phone, arguing with whatever unlucky soul was on the other end. “I swear to Zeus,” Susie said, “If you’re

Actually @astone2292, I've already 90% decided that this will be the subject of Book 5, and I have a general idea of who Siku's mate is going to be. It will blow your collective minds! All I need to do now is weave a plot around these characters to bring them their happily ever after.

@seakinklets Thank you for the honest feedback! I can assure you that Bernie's character, while he may be revisited from time-to-time, will not become the central figure of the series. He was merely the culmination of a slow-build over the course of the first three books, subtly interweaving the history of the werebears with that of Norse Mythology. I'd been wanting to write a book involving a serpent effigy mound, similar to the one in Peebles, Ohio, but in my story it was hiding an actual serpent creature that was worshipped by a group of isolated villagers. As I thought of how to weave this into the werebear & Norse mythology that I had been creating, it seemed like a good idea to have the boy selected for sacrifice to actually be both werebear and demigod, and to bring that mythology to life for the bears. As I concepted this one, I knew that I wanted to make Gary and Bill central characters in this story. I also knew that they would be running an Academy for at-risk boys. From there it pieced together that as a small child, the boy was supposed to be a sacrifice to the beasts within the mounds, but had escaped and eventually ended up at Gary and Bill's Academy. I knew from the start that Bernie was going to be the one to ultimately defeat the Serpent, and that he was going to be a human descendent of one of the Norse Gods, tying together the various mythologies that I had already explored in the previous books into a pinnacle moment. But, that being said, Bernie isn't going to be forming a new Avengers. The Lycan Council will be heavily invested in making sure that he is kept secret from the human world, and remains a sort of secret weapon in the lycans' proverbial back-pocket. There will still be plenty of non-demigod adventures to come! Axel and Adam have more ancients to find! Siku needs to find a mate! The bears need to track down evidence of the avian lycans in Japan! I know that the Thor reveal in this story has been met with a mixed-bag of reactions, but fear not, there will be more moments like the daring drag-queen rescue from Trophy Cub to come! We may even see Susie and Apollo take on the ultimate adventure of parenting a teenage wolf-girl! Time will tell! -- 💙 Grumpy