Disclaimer: Jeaniene and I are BFF.

There are many Draculas but there is only one Vlad. Hehehehe.

Loved it. It reminded me of Halfway to the Grave in the best possible way: it has the same blend of action and intimacy. There is a lot of violence, but the focus is on Vlad and Leila. This book is like watching the leading couple lost in a kiss while things are blowing up all around them.

I really enjoyed it.

Tried reading another book in the genre and had to stop.  The hero was obviously a wish-fulfillment fantasy and it had a touch of Toby Keith flare for me.  Toby Keith gets on stage and gets all patriotic, “Yeeeaah, let’s go kick their asses.”  Toby Keith never served in the military.  Toby Keith never had to fish a fighter pilot’s helmet out of the bay with the pilot’s head still in it.  Toby Keith’s wife never had to deal with deployments and a horrible realization that a war started and your husband might die.   She never had friends come apart, because their spouse is in a thick of fighting, hasn’t called or emailed for a month, and his buddy came home in a coffin.  I remember one woman just started crying hysterically in the middle of an elementary school, and we had to very carefully get her out before the kids panicked. And an E8′s wife took her aside and read her the riot act.  You suck it up.  Your job is to hold it together.

Gordon was in when Toby Keith did his whole Chickenhawk song and dance.  The military spouses would sit together – we did a lot of bake sales to help the unit – and watch him on TV from across the hall and talk about how much we’d like to punch him in the mouth.

Anyway, I despise Toby Keith.

So back to the book: the author was never in the military, so his paramilitary outfit guys do some things that just go against the grain for me, like surrendering authority to a student during a lesson.  I got hung up on that and some other things.  I may come back to it.  Not a bad book, just not good right now book.

What was the last book you read and finished or not?

Disclaimer: Patrice is a our friend and while I haven’t read her YA work, she totally promised me a copy if I put her blog post up.   You get a chance at a copy too.    Enjoy! – Ilona

Thank you Ilona and Gordon for inviting me on your blog today! Ilona and I got to know each other at a Romantic Times conference a few years ago, then later we became blog buddies on the ODD SHOTS blog.

For today’s guest blog, I thought I’d talk about a subject near and dear to both authors’ and readers’ hearts, book covers.

When I decided to publish my Young Adult book, BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS, one of the aspects I was super excited about was having FULL control over the book cover. From concept to design to implementation (ahem, I did hire a professional to make my mock cover NY worthy), it was all mine! That was quite refreshing considering I hadn’t had control over my books’ covers during my last seven years of publishing with small presses and a NY publisher. Yes, I’d had an opportunity to express my opinion, but most of the time I didn’t have any say-so in the final outcome.

YA books are ALL about the cover, so I wanted to make sure mine conveyed the story. Here’s a quick one-liner about my YA: Brightest Kind of Darkness is a dark paranormal novel length YA full of mystery, adventure, romance, and even a touch of horror. And below is the cover I came up with…

BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS

Nara Collins is an average sixteen-year-old, with one exception: every night she dreams the events of the following day. Due to an incident in her past, Nara avoids using her special gift to change fate…until she dreams a future she can’t ignore.

After Nara prevents a bombing at Blue Ridge High, her ability to see the future starts to fade, while people at school are suddenly being injured at an unusually high rate.

Grappling with her diminishing powers and the need to prevent another disaster, Nara meets Ethan Harris, a mysterious loner who seems to understand her better than anyone. Ethan and Nara forge an irresistible connection, but as their relationship heats up, so do her questions about his dark past.

Thankfully BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS‘ cover was well received by readers, but that also really put the pressure on me for book 2! I had to: one, come up with a cover for book 2 that was just as visually beautiful as book 1,  two, make sure that the cover flowed well, matching the “series” look, and three, make sure the cover matched the story inside. It was a tall order, but I was determined.

This past week, with the help of over fifty book bloggers (yay, book bloggers rock!), I revealed BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS’ cover LUCID. Did I hold my breath? Absolutely! I was anxious and tense. It’s great when you have total control, but that also means, it was all on me if book 2′s cover flopped. Ack! WHEW, I was so happy the overall response was very positive! And here is the cover for LUCID. It will release in Spring 2012.

How do you feel about book covers? Do you immediately click on a book cover link when an author posts a new cover reveal? I do. Every single time! I’m such a visual person, book covers really help me connect with the story. I’d say the book cover, along with the blurb, are what draw me in. Where does the book cover fall in your preference as a reader? I’d love to hear your thoughts on covers. I’ll be giving away one eBook copy of BRIGHTEST KIND OF DARKNESS to a commenter, so let’s hear your thoughts!

ABOUT P.T. MICHELLE

P.T. Michelle is the young adult pseudonym of Patrice Michelle, author of fifteen romance novels and novellas. When P.T. isn’t writing, she can usually be found reading or taking pictures of landscapes, sunsets and anything beautiful or odd in nature.

Links:
Website
Blog
Goodreads

The contest will run until Saturday. Please comment to enter.  The winner will be drawn on Sunday.  Also Patrice’s YA at the moment is $.99.  – Ilona

“My lady?”

Charlotte looked up from her cup of tea at her bodyguard.  Short, petite, and dressed into beige tunic and loose trousers, Mualinde looked like a companion or a young governess, the last person one would expect to thrust herself in front of an attacker.  But she came from an old bloodline and her flash, the pure burst of her magic, would kill most assassins in a fraction of a second.

Mualinde’s hands held a heavy envelope.  “This came for you.”

A sudden pain pierced Charlotte’s chest, as if something vital had broken inside her.  She felt cold and jittery.  It was bad news.  If it was good news, she would’ve gotten a scryer call.

“Thank you,” she made herself say.

Mualinde lingered, concern stamped on her face.  “Can I get you anything, my lady?”

Charlotte shook her head.

The bodyguard studied her for a long moment, reluctantly crossed the balcony to the door, and went inside.

The envelope lay in front of Charlotte.  She forced herself to raise her cup of tea to her lips.  The rim of the cup shuddered.  Her fingers were shaking.

She focused on that rim, calling on years of practicing control over her emotions.  Calm and collected, that was the mantra of the healer.  An effective healer is neither callous, nor tender-hearted, her memory whispered in her mind.  She doesn’t permit herself to succumb to passion or despair, and she never allows her craft to be compromised by her emotions.

She had lived by this creed for twenty years.  It never failed her.

Calm above all things.

Calm.

Charlotte took a deep breath, counting each rise and fall of her chest.  One, two, three, four… ten. The cup in her hands was motionless.  Charlotte drank from it, set it down, and tore the envelope open.  Her fingertips had gone numb.  The ornate seal of the Adrianglian Academy of Physicians marked the top of the paper.  We regret to inform you…

Charlotte forced herself to read it, every last word, and then stared at the garden below.  Down there, a sand-colored brick path ran to the distant tress.  Short silvery grass trailed the path on both sides, flanked by a row of low emerald hedges, beyond which flowers bloomed: roses in a dozen shades, their heavy blossoms perfect; constellation shrubs with bunches of star-shaped flowers in crimson, pink, and white; yellow knight spears, their delicate flowerets shaped like tiny bells…

She would not be blooming.  The last door had slammed in her face.  Charlotte hugged herself.  She was barren. She would never feel a life grow inside her.  She would never pass on her gift or see the shadow of her features in her baby’s face.  The irony was so thick, she laughed, a bitter brittle sound.

Her family was neither old nor wealthy.  In the country of Adrianglia two things mattered most: one’s name and one’s magic.  Her name was ordinary.  Her magic was anything but.  At four years old she had healed an injured kitten, and her life took a sharp turn in an unexpected direction.

Medical talents were rare and highly prized by the realm.  When she was seven, her parents explained the situation to her:  she would leave them to study at the Ganer College of Medicinal Arts.  Adrianglia would house her,  educate her, nurture her magic, and in return upon completion of her education, Charlotte would give the realm ten years of civil service.   At the end of that decade, she would be granted a noble title and a small estate. Her parents, in turn, would receive a lump sum of money to soothe their grief at losing a child.  Even at that age, she realized she had been sold. Three months later she left for the college and never returned.

At ten she was a child-wonder, at fourteen, a rising star, and at seventeen, when her service officially began, Charlotte was the best the College had to offer.  They called her the Healer and guarded her like a treasure. By the time she emerged, now Charlotte de Ney, Baroness of Ney and owner of a small manor and a ten square mile estate, she had healed thousands.

But she could never heal herself.

Neither could anyone else.  After eighteen months of treatments, experts, and magic, she held the final verdict in her hand.  She was barren.

Barren.  Like a desert.  Like a wasteland.

Charlotte rose.  Elvei would have to be told.  He would be crushed.  Children meant so much to her husband.

She took stairs down to the garden, heading down to the northern patio.  The old house sprawled in the garden like a lazy white beast.  She had to do a few renovations when she’d moved in, and the western suite and staircase were still being worked on.  It was faster to just go through the garden.

She had just been settling into her new life, when Elvei Leremine came to her with a proposal.  She was twenty eight at the time and lonely.  The life of a Healer didn’t leave much time for romantic pursuits.  The idea of being married, of sharing her life with another human being, suddenly seemed so appealing.  Baron Leremine was considerate, gracious, and attractive.  His means were modest, but he was a true blue-blood and he stood to inherit the family estate.  He wanted a family and so did she. It seemed like a good match.  When a year had passed with no children, she underwent an examination, taking the first step on the grueling eighteen month journey.

A week ago, exhausted from months of treatments, tests, and waiting, she had gone back to the College to speak with Lady Augustine.  During her years there, the Lady was her mentor and often her surrogate parent.  She hadn’t changed much: her poise was still regal, her features were elegant, and her magic, which could soothe a most violent psychotic in a breath, still as potent as ever.  They had walked through the gardens together.

“Do you think this is a punishment?” Charlotte had asked.

“Punishment?  For what?”

Charlotte clenched her jaw.

“You can tell me anything,” Lady Augustine murmured.  “I will not betray your confidence, child.  You know this.”

“I carry something dark in me.  Something vicious.  Sometimes I feel an edge of it, looking through my eyes from inside of me.”

“Pardon you for being human.”

Charlotte glanced at her, shocked.

A smile curved the older woman’s lips.  “My dear, do you think you’re the first to have these thoughts?  Our talents provide us with means to both heal and to harm.  It’s in our nature to do both.  Yet we’re not permitted to do harm.  We’re asked to shut half of ourselves off and heal for years and years.  This creates an imbalance.  Do you think I haven’t imagined what I could do if I unleashed my power?  I could walk into a room full of diplomats and plunge the country into war.  I could incite riots.”

Charlotte stared at her.

“It is natural,” Lady Augustine said.  “What you feel is normal.  It’s not a cause for punishment. Unless you act on these urges and turn into a walking plague, and then, my dear, I’ll personally come after you and take you down.  The power of healing is a terrible thing when used in reverse. Do not become an abomination.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Charlotte said.

The older woman shrugged.  “Why do you think the realm takes us from our families so young?  To indoctrinate us.  And even with all the careful upbringing, they ask only ten years, because what we do wears us out.  We give so much of ourselves.  We are the last hope and we’re exposed to horrible things: wounds of violence, dying children, families torn by grief.  It is a heavy burden to bear and it has an effect on you, on me, on all of us.”

They walked in silence for a few moments.

“Let us imagine the worst,” Lady Augustine said.  “You’re infertile.”

Charlotte’s heart had skipped a beat.  “Yes.”

“It doesn’t mean you have to be childless.  There are hundreds of children waiting to be loved.  You can’t give birth, Charlotte.  That’s only a small part of being a parent.  You can still be a mother and know all the joys  and torture of raising a child.  We get too hung up on bloodlines and family names and our own stupid notions of aristocracy.  If someone dropped a basket with a baby on your doorstep, would you really hesitate to pick it up, because the baby wasn’t of your blood?  It’s a baby, a tiny life just waiting to be nurtured.  Think on it.”

“I don’t have to.  I would take the baby,” Charlotte said.  There really wasn’t any choice.

“Of course you would.  You are my daughter in everything but blood and I know you.  I think you’ll make an excellent mother.”

The words sunk in, shocking, but she had practiced for years to hold her emotions in check.  Nobody wanted to see a weeping Healer.  No matter what horrors she saw, she met it all with a calm face.   “Thank you.”

“What does your husband think of all of this?”

“Children are very important to him.  His inheritance depends on producing an heir.”

Lady Augustine studied her.  “If he truly cares for you, he’ll deal with it.”

They took another step.  The mix of worry and anxiety exploded inside Charlotte.  Heat rose behind her eyes and she clamped her hand over her mouth.

Lady Augustine opened her arms.

The last defenses snapped inside Charlotte with a quiet crunch.  She stepped into the welcoming embrace and cried..

“It will be alright,” Lady Augustine soothed, holding her.  “It will be alright.  Let it all out.”

But it wasn’t alright and now Charlotte had to tell Elvei about it.

He was always kind to her.  Considerate.  Genteel.  She could use some of that kindness now.  She felt weak and helpless.  So helpless.

The path brought her to the northern patio.  Her husband sat in a chair, drinking his morning tea and peering over papers.  Of average height and muscular build, Elvei was handsome in that particular way the bluebloods sometimes were: precise features, carved with perfection that seemed a touch distant, square jaw, narrow nose, blue eyes, brown hair with a hint of red.  When she woke up next to him, with the morning light playing on his face, she often thought he was beautiful.

Charlotte came up the steps.  Elvei rose and held out the chair for her.  She sat and passed him the letter.

He read it, impassive, his pleasant face calm.  She had expected more of a reaction.

“This is unfortunate,” Elvei said.

That’s it?  Unfortunate?  Her instincts told her something was seriously wrong with that placid expression on his face.

“I truly care for you,” Elvei said.  “Very deeply.”  He reached over the table and took her hand in his.  “Being married to you is effortless, Charlotte.  I have nothing but admiration for what you do and who you are.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Please don’t be.” He leaned back.  “It’s not your fault or mine.  It’s just an accident of chance.”

“We can adopt,” she said.

“I’m sure you could.”

Alarm blared in her head.  “You said you.  Not we.”

He pushed a piece of pare across the table to her.  “I thought that things might turn out this way, so I took the liberty of preparing this.”

She glanced at the paper.  “Annulment?”  Her composure shattered.  “After two and half years, you want to annul our marriage?  Are you out of your mind?”

Elvei grimaced.  “We’ve been over this before: I have three years from the beginning of marriage to produce an heir.  My brother is engaged, Charlotte.  I told you about this.  He’ll have three years to have a child.  If I divorce you and remarry, I’ll have six months before becoming ineligible to inherit.  You can’t make a baby in six months. I need an annulment, so my three years can restart, or Kalin will get there before me.  He still might, all things considered, as marriage takes time…”

This wasn’t happening.  “So you’re just going to pretend that everything we shared in these years doesn’t exist and discard me?  Like trash?”

He sighed.  “I told you, I have a great deal of admiration for you.  But the purpose of this marriage was to have a family.”

“We are a family.  You and I.”

“That’s not the kind of family I require.  I can’t lose the house, Charlotte.”

She was cold and hot at the same time, hurt and anger iced over by shock.  “Is it money? You do realize that I can make us as much money as we need.”

He sighed.  “You’re so flawless most of the time that occasionally I forget you’re not a blueblood by birth.  No, of course, it’s not the money.  Whoever owns the house rules the family.  It’s my inheritance; I was born first, I studied most of my life to take care of our family interests, and I won’t let it slip away.”

“It’s just a bloody house!” Her voice snapped.

“It’s my childhood home!” he yelled back.  “My family goes back sixteen generations!  Do you have any idea what Kalin will do to our legacy if he gets the upper hand?  He can’t walk and talk at the same time.  So I’m supposed to just let my idiot brother get it while you and I pretend to play house here, in this decrepit ruin?  No thanks.  I have higher ambitions in life.”

The words burned.  “Is that what we were doing?” she asked quietly.  “When you and I made love in our bedroom, we were playing house?”

“Don’t be melodramatic.  We both enjoyed it, but now we’re done.  I’ve gone with you to all the tests and treatments.  I listened patiently while you got excited over this specialist and that, I sat in the waiting rooms, and I gave it as much time as I could.  There are no more treatments left.  I just want to have a child, like a normal healthy adult.”

Every time she thought she reached the limit of hurt, he twisted the knife a little more, digging deeper and deeper inside her.

“So I’m abnormal?”

He spread his arms.  “Can you conceive?  No.”

“I’m curious, what’s the next word you’ll reach for.  How cruel can you get, Elvei?”

“You cost me two and a half years.” He surged to his feet and leaned over the table. “Had I married someone else, I would’ve inherited by now. I tried to end this with as much civility as possible, but you’re decided to cause a scene. I need an heir, Charlotte, and you can’t give me one.  What’s so complicated about this? I’m done letting you waste my time.”

He finally done it.  He’d pushed the blade so far into the wound that he reached the darkness she hid deep inside and it poured out.  “You will sit down now and apologize to me.” Menace suffused her voice.

He stared at her.  “You’re hardly in the position to give me orders.”

Her magic slid out of her and wrapped around her arms, curving around her body in rivulets of dark colored back lit with deep, intense red. She had never seen it red before. Pale gold of healing, yes.  Furious terrible red?  No.

“I can blight your entire family, you moron. I am the Healer.  Pick a plague, and your sixteen generations will end right now.”

Kid 1, tearing into the house: What’s for dinner?

Me: Broiled chicken breasts, marinated in Italian dressing, salad, and ravioli.

Kid 1:

Me: Grrrr.

Kid 1: Are you going to actually like make some spaghetti sauce for ravioli?

Me: I don’t know.

Kid 1:

Me: GRRRR.  Here, I will make sauce.

***

Later, upstairs after I had gone upstairs and Kid 1 came to tell me that food was yummy, and she was sorry, and she was just having “low blood sugar.”

Gordon: You didn’t have to go upstairs.

Me: My feelings were hurt.  It’s your fault.

Gordon: ?

Me: Your genes ruined all my babies.

Gordon: Really?

Me: Yes! My kids were all sweet and polite and considerate until your genes got involved.

Gordon: You must have some kids I don’t know about.

Me, hitting him with a pillow: Your DNA, your fault.

Gordon: Aha.  Well, our daughter chocked somebody out at school today.

Me: What?

Gordon: Everybody in theater class wanted Kid 2 as an extra for their movies, so she had to wear scrubs.  Apparently she liked it. So she was walking around in scrubs and for some reason she ended up putting this boy into a choke hold and when people became concerned, she told them, “It’s okay, I’m a doctor.”

Me:

***

Before bed

Me: So did the boy actually do anything to her?

Gordon: I don’t think so.  She did it because she thought it was funny.

Me: That’s you. That’s pure you.

Gordon: It was pretty funny.

Me: Don’t come around me with your genes.

Gordon: Hehehe.

Me: I mean it.

]]> http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2012/02/03/on-genetics-unusual-properties-of/feed/ 64 http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2012/02/01/its-cool-cat-you-can-lay-by-me/ http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2012/02/01/its-cool-cat-you-can-lay-by-me/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:02:17 +0000 Ilona http://www.ilona-andrews.com/?p=11212

Last Thursday I was surfing the net and got a Malicious Software warning from my Avast anti-virus.  Avast Pro has successfully blocked threats to our PC safety forever.  We have to search the net constantly, looking up odd things for books, and typically our PC’s are covered with armor and bristle with spikes.  Bad stuff usually bounces off without a scratch.  We haven’t had a virus infection in the last four years and we frequently scrub stuff out with Malwarebytes and Spybot.  So I did what I always do: shut down the browser before the nasty bugger could do any damage.

And then my computer blew up.  The desktop went twitchy, the shortcuts vanished, and two dozen false alerts popped up, telling me that the guts of my Alienware were collapsing.

I disconnected the Ethernet cable to keep it from spreading and got on my laptop.  A quick search identified the  culprit: the System Check Virus, a nasty critter engineered by a couple of guys in Europe.  It holds your PC hostage until you pay them to activate their fake virus removal software.  The procedure for removal was long and complicated and there were several versions of it.

I tried the standard operating procedure.  Ran Avast.  It found nothing.  Ran Malwarebytes.  Four infected files.  I quarantined them and shut down as prompted.

The PC rebooted to a completely black desktop.

Tried Regedit to manually edit registry keys.

Denied.

Tried to run Malware again.

No infections found.

The false warnings continued to cascade at me in regular bursts.  Clearly I needed someone who knew more about it than I did.  We took the PC to the shop.

Gordon has been rather gracious about the whole thing, even though he had to carry the big super-heavy desktop back and forth.

Friday night I get my PC back.  It is clean and beautiful.  I fire it up and of course log into Star Wars.  I have weird crap on auction and I want to know if my colored light saber crystals had sold.  The connection is painfully slow.  Something isn’t right.  I back out and fire up the Firefox.  I try a sample search and I am immediately redirected to four different windows.  Google Redirect virus.  Damn it all to hell.

I disable all of the Firefox extensions, install the script blocker add-on, and run Malware again.  Malware comes clean.  The problem is spreading: the virus keeps trying to open IE to send me to new windows and Avast keeps stomping on those attempts, sending frequent warning flares, screaming about malicious sites, and asking for air support.

Checked registry for Firefox trouble extensions such as Xulrunner.  Nothing.  Everything comes back roses.

Argh.

So yesterday we took it back to the shop.  I don’t blame the repair guys – they clearly purged the System Check from the PC but it apparently came bundled with Google Redirect.

Here is hoping I will get my computer back today.

Why don’t you do writing posts anymore?

I think most of us go through stages in our professional life.  It’s a little cycle that goes likes this: I learn things -> I know things -> I need to explain things I learned, because they’re awesome ->Wait a minute, I don’t actually know anything ->I learn things.

I’m at the point where I’m back to the learning stage and I don’t feel pressure to share what I know, because my knowledge is subjective and my tricks of the trade work for me, but they may not necessarily work for anyone else.  If you ask me a specific question, I will answer to the best of my ability, but again my answer may not work for you.

M writes,

What do you do when you’re feeling creatively empty? Not necessarily writer’s block, but just lacking inspiration completely?

And here comes a specific question.

Warning: read at your own risk.  You may not like the answer.

The question to ask yourself is why do you feel the pressure to write?

For some people, it’s something they must do.  Writing, like most creative pursuits, is addictive.  When a writer is telling a story, he or she are almost like a locomotive on the rails.  Sometimes it’s fast and furious, sometimes it’s slow and plodding, and sometimes the locomotive stops for a while.  But the goal is always there, just beyond the horizon.  It draws you in; it beckons.  That’s why stopping is so annoying. When the train stops due to a writing block, the inability to produce eats at you. You become listless and irritable.  You sit and stare at the page, and you’re annoyed because nothing is happening.

Occasionally the creative train derails.  The locomotive flies off the tracks into the bushes.  Sometimes it explodes and sometimes it just lays there in a crumpled heap.  That’s when inability to write turns into hate for writing and books in general.  It’s a painful thing to experience and to watch.  Creative crashes aren’t fun for anyone, whether they happen to you, your spouse, or your friend.

But for some people, writing is just a hobby.  They don’t feel the compulsion.  They think it’s cool and the like the idea of being a writer.  Or they simply have less of a pull and are able to walk away from it easily.  I like to knit.  I don’t feel the need to knit all the time.  It strikes me once in a while and I can leave it alone for weeks.

Not that long after we started trying to get published, I was hanging out on one of writer boards and this woman posted a question.  It went something like this, “What do you think a good genre would be for me to write in?  Also what kind of story should I write?  Like what kind of characters and what they should do? I want to be a writer.”

I, being a smartass, replied, “Why do you want to write, if you don’t have anything to say?”

Mean, but true.

So the problem here is, are you a locomotive or are you a casual knitter?  Does the inability to write interfere with your quality of life?  If it doesn’t, then no need to stress.  It will return on its own.  If it does, and you need a fix right now, I have one, but apply it at your own risk because it may make you miserable in the immediate future.  It doesn’t work one hundred percent of the time either, so your mileage might vary.

I assume you’ve already tried the writing block fixes.

We, the human beings, are emotion junkies.  We read for that emotion: we wants to experience a wide range of it, from suffering to triumph.  Writing is a response to life and the writing locomotive runs on emotion of the writer.  That’s our fuel.  In a sense, we vent our emotion on the page, and the readers live it through our writing.  When a writer becomes emotionally flat, the inspiration vanishes and the locomotive derails.

Yes, I’ve beaten the metaphor into the ground, leave me alone. 

The key to getting unstuck is finding something you feel strongly about. You need two things: brain food and a trigger.  Do not do this if you are severely depressed or have suicidal tendencies.  This is a last resort fix and by clicking the Unstuck button below, you agree to absolve me of any responsibility for the consequences of your emotional distress.

It is spectacularly crappy out there.  I woke up several times and saw bluish-white lightning flash.  Thunder rattled the glass, rain drummed on the windows, and Oliver, upset with this situation, decided to caterwaul about five in the morning and had to be kicked out of the bedroom.

It is nasty out there.  Cold and nasty.  Brrr.  It was kind of comforting to be in a nice warm house.

Miss Salem, however, insisted on going out this morning and is now sitting under a wet bush.  I tried to get her to come in, but no dice.

I am not sure if I am even allowed to complain, since Texas has awesome weather about 90% of the time.  What’s the etiquette on that?

Of course, compared to some other parts of the country – cough, snow-storm Portland, cough – we got off easy.  The PSA announcement said hail was spotted here and there, so I am really glad the car is in the garage.   It’s kind of shocking to me.  For the first time in our lives, the garage is clean and empty enough to park the car in, heh.

The kids have half-days today and our editor gently queried about character descriptions and synopsis.  We keep meaning to work on it but things keep not working out.  I got the character half done, though.

This is a kid who works exceptionally hard, but only on something she loves to do or on something that has dire consequences.  She combines the utterly female fashion sense with her father’s crude humor.  I blame Gordon for this, as he is laboring under assumption that he is a raising a teenage boy.

She also inherited his love of messing with people.

She has also granted permission for this post. She says it’s funny.  It wasn’t very funny at the time.

The weekend before last, we had some friends stay over at out house: Ericka, whom we first met in Georgia, and Ying, whom you probably know as one of the Moderators of Doom on the forum. This is kind of unusual for us, because Gordon and I are both very mindful of our real life privacy, and when we have guests over, we’re never sure if we’re entertaining enough.

So it was a big deal and preparations were made.  House had been scrubbed from top to bottom, guest bedroom has been cleaned, sheets were freshly laundered, and children had been warned that we wanted the visit to go smoothly. Kid 2 took it to heart and said, “What if I go and sleep over at Lissa’s house?”

(This is not the friend’s real name, but I am not sure her mother would approve of me putting it into the post.)

Since Lissa is Kid 2′s best friend, and they migrate from our house to hers and back every weekend, permission was granted.

We picked up our friends from the airport and took them to County Line, because it’s Texas barbeque and when people come to Austin, you have to take them to County Line or the Salt Lick. We’re new to the area, but we aren’t heathens.  The barbeque was a big success. We drove home and settled on the upstairs couch.

Cell phone rings.  Kid 1 picks it up.

“What? What?!”

Oh no.

Kid 1 appears, thrusts the phone at me, and says, “Mom, Kid 2 needs to talk to you.”

I can tell by her face that it’s not good.

Me: Yes?

Kid 2 in a very loud but super-calm-and-reasonable voice, which could probably be heard by our neighbors across the street: Mom, could you please come to Lissa’s house. The policeman won’t let me leave until he speaks to you, because I’ve been detained.

Me:  Why are you detained?

Kid 2: People were smoking drugs on the playground, but I’ve been searched and I don’t have anything.  Please come and get me so I don’t get arrested.

Me: Do not say anything to the cop, we’ll be there in 5 minutes.

Ying has opened her eyes really wide and Ericka, who is used to us, is trying hard not to crack up.

Me to Gordon: We need to leave now.

We excuse ourselves, jump into the car, and race across the mile and three quarters that separates us from Lissa’s house.   Lissa lives in a town-home development, and there are speed bumps every twenty five feet.  Small children are darting into the path of the vehicle.  We’re not sure where the playground is.  We’re maneuvering between the house at a breathtaking three miles per hour, because of the speed bumps and I’m grinding my teeth.

Phone rings.

Me: Yes?

Kid 2: You just passed us.

Me: Stay on the phone with me.

We turn around, make a left, and finally see a group of children surrounding a tall cop.  Everyone is waving at us.  We park.

I look at Kid 2: big eyes, pale, mouth pressed closed – my kid is seriously freaked out. Lissa is next to her, and she’s on the verge of crying.

Gordon: Go to the car.

Kid 2: Dad…

Gordon: Car.  Now.

Kid 2 scrambles to the car.

The cop introduces himself and he couldn’t be nicer.  Apparently there is a new street drug out there called spice.  It’s a very potent synthetic cannabis.  A boy at the playground decided that he wanted to smoke some.  Except the name of the drug is a bit confusing and he raided his parent’s spice cabinet for it.  Because that’s where spices are.

Me: What was he smoking?

Cop, making a valiant effort to keep a straight face: Oregano.

Apparently the boy made such a huge deal out of his spice smoking, that someone called in the cavalry.  The police descended upon playground, children were made to turn out their pockets, the Ziploc baggie with offending oregano was confiscated.  Everybody’s parents were called.

Cop:  We just wanted to make sure that you know the intent to get high was there.

We thank him, get into the car, and drive the heck out of there at three miles per hour.

Kid 2, in a tiny freaked out voice: He knew Kevin’s name.  The cops get called here all the time.  They keep a car here.

Me: Are you okay?

Kid 2: Yes. Am I in trouble?

Gordon: Why didn’t you and Lissa split when he started smoking that shit?

Kid 2: Because we’re dumb.

A short lecture on dangers of drugs and bad friend followed and Kid 2 was taken home.  She was shell-shocked for the rest of the day and ended it wrapped in a blanket next to us on the couch.

I need to redye my hair.  I think all the dye has evaporated from it under the stress and half of my head is grey now.

And that’s how you do weekends with guests at our house.

I thought we could take a week off. I said, please talk amongst yourself.

Haha!  Not so fast.

Ok we are ready for you to come back and talk to us…lol

Where are you?  You stopped posting…

I just want you to know that if something happened, we’re here for you.

Shiloh became concerned.

recovering?
hiding?
okay?

And the coup de grace

Are you dead?

We are not dead! We took a week off.  It’s called vacation.

So then we come back and load  a new theme.  The old one was creaking a bit under the strain of WordPress updates and those super long thumbnails kind of drove me nuts.  They look nice, but getting a new thumbnail image of at least 600px in width for every post proved to be too much work.

We load the new theme.  Oh noes!  We don’t like it.  Your paper stack isn’t perfectly stacked – it’s not meant to be, btw – and the sidebar is in the wrong spot and there is too much and not enough space in the comments, and fuss-fuss-fuss.  Cry-cry-cry.

If you don’t like change, just wait until you read the Edge 4.  We’re killing everybody.   You guys said there wasn’t enough angst in FATE’S EDGE.  :

:rolls up sleeves::

I’ll give you angst.  Just you wait.

On a more serious note, I’ve reloaded a different theme with the exact same images.  This one has a little more power under the hood.  The comment page link is now more clearly marked: it’s right where the comment number is.

Today will be the prep day – tomorrow we officially start on Edge 4, so today we need to get the synopsis down and the character descriptions.

And how was your week?

PS.  For people who asked: this theme is very slightly modified News Theme, which can be found here: http://themehybrid.com/themes