I can finally talk about this!
So, a few years back, I began hinting that I wanted to work on a harem trilogy specifically featuring cougars, aka mature women, for those who might not be familiar with the term. Specifically mature women (usually over the age of 40) who go after noticeably younger men (usually in their 20s).
If it hasn’t become obvious by now, I really like the idea of a cougar and I have been dying to write a cougar harem. So much so that I tried it back in 2020 with Like A Fine Wine. That one didn’t really pan out and didn’t get to the heart of what I was aiming for. It had a number of issues, but the biggest problem was that it kind of felt like a copout in the sense that the women were certainly all much older than the protagonist (even the youngest was over twice his age), but because it was a sci-fi setting, they had all settled into that strange agelessness of ‘not young but not old’. All of these issues came together and ultimately resulted in that series not being what I wanted when I thought of a cougar harem.
For a while, I had ideas kicking around in my head of how I wanted to handle it. What I kept coming back to was something modern with no fantastical elements at all. But I kept stopping short, because that seemed too difficult. Not enough story, not enough action. I didn’t think I could make even a trilogy of contemporary harem.
And then Our Own Way happened in its original incarnation in 2021.
After that, I realized that not only could I do it, but people would actually like it. Especially after Our Own Way’s rewrite. I began planning this trilogy seriously in 2022 and I was intending to, well, to have it long since finished by this point. I had finally settled on a 2023 release date, and then everything went crazy in the ‘Does this title contain adult content’ Amazon fiasco. Since then, I’ve been doing bits and pieces of work on it, and I finally began getting more consistent work done this year.
So, this is what I can say about Lakeside Cougars: it will be a trilogy, there won’t be any bonus shorts (unless I get a really, really good, strong idea), it features an indie game dev as the protagonist, and I’m intending to release the first book on June 1st, 2024. Ideally, Lakeside Cougars 2 will come out July 1st, and Lakeside Cougars 3 will come out August 1st. I’m aiming for 100,000 words apiece (for reference, Our Own Way 1 & 2 were both about 100,000 words).
Below is the first chapter. I’ll be posting five chapters a week to my Patreon instead of the usual ten per week I aim for.
I hope you enjoy it!
People often associated dreams with fantasy.
Atticus had come across some variation of the phrase it was like a dream in the fiction he consumed time and time again.
Sometimes it meant something else, but the prevailing implication was a positive one.
As he hit the turn on the interstate, the one just past the sign that read LAKESIDE 2 mi. it hit.
A feeling of dreamlike unreality.
How it made him feel wasn’t something he would associate with a fantasy. As he came around that curve and saw that same landscape, shockingly unchanged from his last time here, he felt a curious dislocation settle across him.
There was the old abandoned building that might once have been a warehouse, tucked up to the edge of the forest.
There were the huge power lines, standing like monolithic metal sentinels against the skyline.
There was that same old trailer home that he always used to wonder about. Was it abandoned? Was it lived in? Was someone squatting there?
Somehow, it looked different and yet still the same. Even the crappy old pickup truck was still parked next to it.
Atticus took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel.
It had been about a dozen years since he’d last made this trip, and at twenty five, that meant quite literally half a lifetime ago.
As he drove on down the interstate, he suddenly wondered if this had been a good idea.
Everything about it had certainly seemed like a good idea all the way up until now. He’d been working harder than he ever had in his entire life, this was a well-earned vacation, he had everything he needed…
“Dammit,” he muttered as he almost missed his exit.
Hitting his blinker, he got off the interstate and moved down the off-ramp, coming to a stop at its end and looking around. Not a car coming or going, also just like he remembered it. They had installed a real stoplight, though.
He made a right and headed for the town.
Again, he was hit with that intense sense of…
He didn’t have a word for it.
Nostalgia was almost accurate, and certainly that was a portion of what he felt, but there was something else. Some indefinable dread, some subtle foreboding that lurked along the shadowed edges of his perception.
Its existence was more suggested than verified, and that made it all the more unsettling.
Why would he be afraid to return back to his own personal paradise?
Atticus let out a sound of inarticulate frustration as he realized that he had almost missed his next turn yet again. Slowing as he approached the first structures one would see as they approached Lakeside from the highway, he saw that they remained the same.
Pat’s Bar and the old Luna Gas Station.
He laughed softly as he pulled into the gas station, passing by the towering Luna sign with its half-moon logo.
Old and worn, but still there.
He pulled up to one of the gas pumps and killed the engine, then got out. Fishing out his wallet, he slotted his card and then set the gas to start pumping.
For a moment, he felt utterly stymied, frozen in place, unsure of what to do. As he looked around, it suddenly occurred to him that all of his experiences in this place were viewed through the lens of a youth.
He’d been in middle school the last time he was here, and the world looked so much different back then.
Maybe that’s what was throwing him off. He’d grown and changed so much, but this little slice of Oregon seemed to have remained the same.
Locked in time.
Finally, he shook it off and pulled out his cellphone.
He expected things. Missed calls, missed texts, emails, and he knew that they were there, just hidden. Today was a day of isolation, at least from most of his life. He called up his list of contacts and found Kate’s number.
I’m officially in Lakeside.
He fired off the text and waited, listening to the gas pump. To the distant sound of people talking, cars driving, some powerful piece of machinery thrumming away. Somewhere, someone was hammering away at something.
All the sounds drifted and carried over the town, everything presided over by a clear blue sky.
Atticus yawned and rubbed one of his eyes. He’d actually gotten a lot of sleep last night but he hadn’t spent four hours in the car since, well, his last time coming out here. And he’d never spent that long personally behind the wheel all in one sitting before.
He had existed almost exclusively within his home town of Hawthorne for so long now.
Why should he be spent after just four hours of sitting there driving? Well, he supposed it had required near constant focus, even if it was easy in every sense of the word. And that could be draining.
His phone buzzed. He checked it.
Great. I’ll head out now. You still remember the way there?
He felt his heart falter and his guts tremble slightly as he realized that he was actually going to be meeting Kate in the flesh again for the first time in a dozen years.
I do. I’ll be there soon.
The pump thumped as his tank finished filling, making him jump slightly. He sighed, replaced his phone, and then put the pump back.
The little screen and the number on it caught his eye and he felt that instinctive reaction of fear at seeing such a large number with a dollar sign attached to it.
It isn’t a big deal anymore, he thought and got back in the car.
A hundred bucks in gas would’ve broken him financially even a year ago. And while he was no millionaire, he could definitely afford it without any real problem. And that felt closer to fiction than the games he designed.
Atticus got back into his car and started driving.
Getting back onto Main Street (because did there exist a small town that didn’t have a Main Street?) he began making his way through Lakeside.
It was all still here.
Bargain Burgers. The gift shop. The old motel.
Damn, even the bowling alley was still there.
He’d looked that up online, because he desperately wanted to go bowling there again. The experience stuck in his head as a highlight even among the significance that his summer vacations here held. And while they’d said they were still open, he hadn’t trusted it.
But it was still there, and it even had some cars in the lot.
There was something new, though.
Farther on down the road, he saw a new building that had the vague shape of a franchised restaurant but was clearly not.
As he passed by, he saw that it was now a used book store.
A welcome addition, as far as he was concerned.
Atticus made a mental note to check that out.
But later. He wanted, needed to see the lakehouse.
Onward he drove until he hit the central nexus of the town. Not everything was all as it had once been. A Tex-Mex place he could never remember the name of was gone. One of the gas stations had been bulldozed.
He found a new feeling creeping in as he hit the primary stoplight and hooked a left onto Lake Way, the other big road in town.
That feeling was excitement. He was going to get to explore all of this, not just with new eyes, but with the knowledge that at least some of this had changed in his absence.
And then, suddenly, Lakeside was behind him.
Lake Way terminated in a brief rise that quickly gave to a gentle slope in the land.
He crested it, the road becoming Lake View Drive because right as you came up over that rise you saw it.
Bluestone Lake.
Probably the most beautiful thing to actually see in the small town. It spread out before him a few hundred yards away, and Lake View Drive was named as such only for some of that distance before it split into two and became Lake View Drive North and South.
Seeing that view: the lake, the houses, the big hill that was almost a mountain off to the left, the forest that spread out around and beyond the lake…
It awoke something of immense power within him, something that only amplified the strange feelings he was experiencing as he returned to this mythical place.
Looking to his right, he saw it: the lakehouse.
The Green House, as he and his brother had always known it.
How many dreams had he enjoyed and endured of that building?
How many times had he wished to be there, wished not to be caught in whatever wretched, godforsaken, minimum wage nightmare he currently was?
Far too many.
And now here it was. Here he was. In real life at this place again.
He saw a white four-door pulling into the driveway. Kate. It was so weird to think that she owned this operation now, but at the same time, it definitely made a certain kind of sense. She had always been so focused, so driven and intense.
Well, it was time to meet her again.
Atticus finished his drive and pulled into the driveway beside her car. Kate leaned against it, wearing a pair of sunglasses, a t-shirt, and cut-off jean shorts.
“You fixed it up,” he said, glancing at the house as he got out.
“I did,” Kate agreed happily.
“I’m still really surprised you’re in charge of it. You really made it, huh? Property manager at twenty five.”
She laughed bitterly. “No. I mean...okay, yeah, yes. But I could’ve really made it if I’d given in to the Bushmore people.”
“What all happened? If you don’t mind getting into it?” he asked.
“I don’t. You know my mom and dad owned all these lakehouses. It was really dad’s passion project. Mom...tolerated it. They were making a fair amount of money. Then he died last year. Heart attack.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I, but...weirdly, I’d mostly made peace with it by the time it came. It just-I don’t know. I knew it was coming. The way he lived his life. Just the way he looked during the last few months before it happened...I’m sorry, I’m getting too into the personal-whatever. Mom wanted to leave the town after he died, me and him were the only reason she was still here.”
“Did you have any trouble deciding how to handle the properties?”
“Not really. I agreed to split the life insurance seventy-thirty with her if I got to keep the properties. I wanted to keep the legacy going, because he’d gotten me into the business, and I like it here. Bushmore Incorporated swooped in shortly after she left and legally signed it all over to me. They offered...a lot. I still sorta kick myself for not taking it…”
“Are you happy?” he asked.
She sighed and leaned against her car, looking at the lake briefly. “Yeah,” she said finally. “I’m happy.”
“Then I think you made the right call.”
She laughed. “It’s that easy?”
“I think so.”
“Lucky for you, then. But yeah, most days I agree. Didn’t get out clean, though. There were a few debts I had to settle up, and some serious renovation work. I ended up having to sell two of the five houses anyway to make it truly work. And...one of them is your neighbor.”
“Huh,” he murmured, looking down the road to the only other house on this side of the lake.
It sat about a half-mile away. It didn’t look like anyone was home at the moment.
“What do you know about them?” he asked.
“It’s Miss Silver. Do you remember her at all?”
“No. Can’t say that I do.”
“Makes sense, she only came back to visit a few times. But she’s our town’s claim to fame. She got married like...twenty five years ago and became some bigshot romance novelist. She’s divorced now and wanted one of the lakehouses. She offered more than I was asking. She remembered my parents, liked what I was doing, I guess. So it’s hers now.”
“What’s she like?” he asked.
“She’s cool, I guess,” Kate replied, something shifting subtly in her tone.
He glanced at her. She looked a little more guarded now. Maybe their friendship wasn’t so smooth. Or maybe it was something simpler, like jealousy.
Although would someone his age be jealous of a woman twice their age?
He supposed they would be if she was a particularly hot mature woman.
Also known as: his kind of woman.
Though he seriously doubted he had any kind of a chance with a famous romance novelist.
“You want to hang out sometime?” Kate asked suddenly.
“Yeah, maybe tomorrow, or the day after. I’m...really tired,” he replied.
She nodded. “Okay. Well, you have my number. Let me know if you need anything or anything’s wrong with the house.”
“Will do. Thanks again.”
She passed him a key. “Enjoy.”
He just nodded as he accepted it.
She got into her car, backed out, and drove away.
Atticus stood there in the driveway for a long time, staring up at nostalgia personified, but made new again, like how it was in his memories, and some of his better dreams.
And worst nightmares.
Finally, taking his suitcase and laptop case from the trunk, he headed for the front door.
