It's time for me to slowly reveal the new novella which I'm almost finished with. This will be different, though, as I will only be posting once a week to start with, so as not to overwhelm you Faithful Readers.

We start Chapter 1 with art by  Crux, and I welcome your thoughts.

* * *

Ted held the phone away from his muzzle, hoping his mother didn't hear his quiet sigh. She didn't, as she continued to rant on the other side of the phone. "And another thing, why can't you be more like your brother Reginald? He's something you can be proud of, that's for sure."

"Mom, he serves coffee. Coffee. How's that anything to be proud of?"

"He's working forty hour weeks and still has time for his website business and has time to exercise! He's got the drive to succeed. You aren't even in college."

Ted rolled his eyes, something he would never dare do in front of his mother. Reggie (who prefered to be called "Venti", perhaps as an in joke to his job) admitted his website business was something less than puritan, being more of a exhibition of his well developed body. A body he, himself, didn't have, being five foot four and weighing a little over one hundred thirty pounds. A stiff breeze could knock him over. One time it actually did. "I'm working, mom."

"As a stock boy at the Sprawl Mart. On the graveyard shift!" The tone in her voice made it sound like Ted was kicking kittens and puppies for Satan.

"I also started college a year ago, remember?"

Silence. Then: "It must have slipped my mind."

"Mom, I'm not going to be like Reggie. Ever. Him and me are totally different people." Not to mention he's adopted, he thought. Reggie was their first son back when the doctors told his parents they could never have children. Of course, the doctors were wrong, but not until sixteen years later.

Still, he loved Reggie, who did more than his fair share in raising him.

"You're going to disappoint your brother, you know."

Ted knew without a doubt that wasn't true. Last night he was on the phone with Reggie, who said to him "Whatever you choose to do, little brother, just do what you feel is right. You've got your whole life ahead of you. Cherish every day like it was your last."

"Mom, can we please not bring Reggie into this? You know how he hates it when you try to use him to guilt me into doing something I don't want to do."

The sharp intake of air from his mother almost made Ted smile, then he immediately felt guilty for saying those words. "Well! If that's how you feel, I suppose you don't have to come over for the holidays."

"Mom, I..." his words were cut off by the sound of a dial tone. Sighing, he folded his cell phone closed, placing it on the glass table, a hand me down from his older brother. Laying on the futon, he stared up at the ceiling, wondering how everything could go so wrong with his life.

He was twenty-one.

He was far from doing what he felt was right.

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