Midlife Undercover Series

Meet Attie Nichols. A middle-aged spinster and accountant, her life has never been easy. Now she's ready for change, but how much can she cope with?   Midlife Undercover. Regular citizen by day, and monster hunter by night.   My life hadn't been easy, but it was mine. Mine to share with my husband. Too bad there was no husband. Ever. Apparently, I was a handful. I wasn't good at connecting with people. Freud would have suggested this had something to do with my parents. And he would've been right. These were the first people I failed to connect with. They made sure I always knew I was adopted. In fact, they made sure everyone knew I was adopted. No wonder we weren't close. The minute I turned eighteen, they decided their job was done. And since I was ready to be done with them, I didn't mind going off on my own. I was ready for a big adventure. I thought. My idea of adventure was dating, getting married. Sadly, that adventure never came to fruition. When I realized I was never going to have a conventional family, I created a non-conventional one. I was an accountant because numbers came easily to me. I bought a house in a nice new subdivision because I could afford it, and I wanted a place of my own, to do with as I pleased. I adopted Mo, my Cairn Terrier. We were inseparable. I found Mo to be comforting, even if he was too tiny to be any sort of protection. I had never struggled to protect myself. Of course, that was before I met Liz Connelly, head of the Homeowners' Association. According to her, I couldn't do what I wanted to my house unless my plans fell within the parameters outlined in the Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions. Apparently, I would have no purple door. I couldn't even have an indigo door. Secretly, I thought she was pure evil. Outwardly, I played along...until I couldn't. I only followed her to talk, but when I found her attacking one of my neighbors after she changed in front of my eyes, I realized I wasn't wrong. For the first time in my life, I didn't really know what to do. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That much I knew. So when life gives you monsters, what do you do? Monster hunters aren't born, they're made. And I was made of tougher stuff. Soon enough I'd find I was more than human, that monsters came in all shapes and sizes, and that I was better off selling my house and moving than staying around these tightly wound people. Never in my worst nightmares did I think by running from this life, I was actually running toward my destiny. Life was full of surprises. And death was a long way away.

Meet Attie Nichols. A middle-aged spinster and accountant, her life has never been easy. Now she's ready for change, but how much can she cope with?   Midlife Undercover. Regular citizen by day, and monster hunter by night.   I should've known better than to think that my luck was changing, especially when it came to real estate. My first real estate agent glossed over what life was like living in a subdivision with an HOA. She thought I'd love it. She was wrong. So, you would've thought that I'd have been a tad more wary when it came to my second major real estate purchase. For the price, I expected a swamp land. Instead, I found quaint cottages on a lake. I made sure to double check that there was no HOA, no city ordinance that would prevent me from painting every cottage whatever color of the rainbow I desired. Still, even as I handed over the check, I knew something had to be wrong because...when something seemed too good to be true, it usually was. Sure, the howl that first night in the main cottage gave me pause, but nothing circled my home. I was going to chalk that up to a win. Then I met my long term renter. I hoped to reassure him that the rents weren't increasing. It was a good plan until I looked through the open screen door and watched the big furry mound on the living room morph into a man. A hot naked man. This was nothing I needed to handle before coffee, and without a weapon. Mental note: apparently, I wasn't going to survive this life without a stockpile of weapons, some research, and a whole lot of actual notes. I'd have to document my kills, track what worked, and hope I survived long enough to record what didn't. So, I made my way into town, saw a disturbing amount of vandalism in the town square, and grabbed breakfast at the diner, office supplies at their version of a dollar store, which was all I could afford given the renovations the resort needed. I was in the hardware store when I ran into my realtor. She hoped to pop by later with a thank you gift. Standard practice. My first realtor brought a cheese board. The way Esther was smiling, my bet was on a bottle of wine. One of these days, I was going to learn, but not today. Today was all about hard knocks, hard fights, and hard hearts. I once thought myself tough, but I wasn't sure I was tough enough to survive all of this. The alternative, as far as I was concerned, wasn't an alternative at all.