This week let’s look at a scene from the newly released Mission: Possession, book 3 of the Live Action Hero series. Each book in this series stands alone, and additional Live Action Hero series stories will be a part of the Spicy Ebooks Membership. Enjoy this snippet and thanks for stopping by.

After eight hours of restless sleep, Hugh returned to his workroom to find everything exactly as he’d left it. Frankly, he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or royally pissed off. Adrian had pieced together a toy and gotten himself a man. Somehow Dean had found Sawyer, even though Dean hadn’t been the one to actually fix the action figure that Sawyer had been. So why the hell didn’t he get the same treatment? Sure, he wasn’t quite sure he wanted a man that way, but he certainly wouldn’t turn one down.

Grousing to himself, Hugh cleaned up his workroom. He never left it in such as mess as he had last night. Every so often he glanced over his shoulder to see the figure still sitting there. Had it moved?

He tried to remember and had to admit to himself that secretly he wanted Talon, as the name had come to him last night, to come to life and be his happily ever after. For Talon to do that meant that he would be one heck of a guy. Hugh needed someone like that. He lived for his job, plus some time with his buddies. Anything else came in a distant second in his life. So it would take a spectacular guy to compete.

Satisfied that he’d put everything away, Hugh grabbed the figure off the table. For some unknown reason, he carried it to his workbench. “Okay, buddy, let’s see how good you look.”

He waited a heartbeat, two, expecting some sort of smart-ass answer in his mind. The toy, or at least that imaginary mental voice, remained silent.

Hugh shook his head. He fired up his computer and connected the digital camera. Moments later, he pulled the photos into a folder on his hard drive and scanned through them. Not bad. Some weren’t good either, but he thought he saw a few he could work with. A bit of graphics work, some touch ups, and he might have a viable ad campaign.

As they usually did when he worked like this, slogans ran through his mind. Hugh turned on an Internet radio station, the snappy pop of 80s music filling his workroom. He thought he heard a mental groan and attributed it to his muse and not the action figure perched on top of his monitor. He worked with his graphics program, bold colors crossing the screen. He blended slogans in with the pictures. Layer upon layer of advertising creativity filled his screen until… finally! He had something he thought he might be willing to put into a magazine. He printed it out before he changed his mind, tweaked it a bit, then printed the new version. He studied his work, certain that he’d be presenting his best to his co-owners and friends later today. Pushing the chair back, he stood and, with one last lingering look at the toy, hurried down the hall to the bedroom to change and get ready to open the store.

Hugh has put his marketing talents to work for the store he owns with his friends, The Fantastic Five. He knows a hunk when he sees one, and the broken action figure has model material written all over his muscled body. Hugh repairs him and places the figure in the center of his new ad campaign. But when Hugh finishes taking the photos, the figure, magically returned to life, comes out from behind the camera and into Hugh’s life.

A model before he was a soldier and then an enchanted action figure, Talon is no stranger to the camera. The handsome man behind it, however, is completely new and all his. Talon is determined to show Hugh that a picture is worth a thousand kisses. But inside his chest beats the heart of a hero, and when he interrupts a robbery, he’s wounded, and Talon might lose more than his magazine-cover good looks, but the man he loves because he was too stubborn to take a chance.

Want to read more of this standalone short story? Check out Mission: Possession (Live Action Hero Book 3) from WM Kirkland, available direct from the Spicy Ebooks bookstore or your favorite online retailer.