8 things you need to know about Gastro (Pass the disinfectant, please)

There is currently the mother of all gastro bugs circulating. Since I've just recovered from this one, and the damn thing would make the Terminator cry while trying not to soil himself, here's a handy guide to what you can expect during the process.

1) You will be too scared to hiccup, and you will be right. You also don't want to be on any form of public transportation, or anything that will jostle you in any way. This includes walking, stairs, and crawling. Things will get messy.

2) You will feel hungover without touching alcohol. There is something intrinsically evil about any bug that makes you feel like you made friends with a tequila bar for 5 frigging days, without any of the benefits, like actually enjoying yourself during said visit to the bar. It gets worse in bright light, and is exaggerated by working on a PC screen, which brings us to the next point:

3) If you try to work on a p.c. or laptop, you will throw up your toenails. In addition to the pounding headache, playing with any sort of backlit screen will make you feel incredibly nauseas. This includes smart phones, so the recommendation here is to wail about wanting to die on whatever social media pool you play in, and log off again.

4) Your legs will hurt. This bug has the side-bonus of truly flu-like symptoms. To make reaching the bathroom in time an extra-special adventure, it will remove your leg bones and replace them with noodles made out of pain. 

5) You can dehydrate really, really fast. Joking aside, if someone in the household gets this and they are really young, elderly, or already sickly, be very careful. Dehydration makes the headache worse (fun! not.) and it can kill. Plain water and this bug operate under the anti-gravity rule where what goes down must come up. Get some electrolyte sachets, and if needed, hit the emergency room. They may need a drip.

6) The pharmacist will give you stuff that is useless. The fun part about medicine is that you have to swallow it, and it needs to stay in your system for around 15 - 20 minutes to work. Anti-nausea tablets are as much use as a vegetarian vampire at this point.

7) You will crave weird things, and be unable to eat them. I spent nearly a week fantasising about everything from chocolate fudge to pickled herring. I have a fridge full of food that I couldn't touch because one bite triggered the return of every meal I ever ate. Once you can eat, avoid dairy at all costs for a couple of days. Just trust me on this one. Soy milk is better. Dairy bad.

8) As you get better, the rest of your house-hold will come down with it. There's nothing quite like hearing your housemate imitate a cat with a large hair-ball outside your bedroom door at 3 in the morning.

So there you have it. Hopefully this bout passes you by, since there are more pleasant ways to spend a week, like teasing Cthulhu or playing chicken with a great white. 

Holiday Weekend Freebies, & the whole word count issue

I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only author on the planet that doesn't write by word count. Just about every writer I know has a set amount of words that must go down on the page daily/weekly/monthly/by the hour, and then either do the happy dance when the goal is reached, or flog themselves bitterly when they've missed it. 
I seem to have the paddling-pool approach: I open the document, splash around as much as I can, and then get out to clean up the mess. Word count is usually the last thing I look at.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One of these is that I write on my phone during the work commute, and that doesn't give me a word count. It's just me, headphones on, ignoring the sardine crush around me, happily tapping away at the screen until my stop. I won't know the word count there until I transfer it to the laptop. This can be a bit awkward when writing shorts; the piece I wrote for Allegories of the Tarot had to be edited down by about 1K, and I had to kill a couple of nice little scenes, but it was a stronger piece for the edits. I tend to suffer diarrhoea of the keyboard, and while that can work in a book-size piece, it hurts a short.
The other reason, I guess, is that I'm a pantser, not a plotter. I have no idea what's going to happen in a story until I write it. (I've tried the plotting thing, and it was the most awkward, dreary bit of cardboard ever to hit my trashcan.) I know the story's going well when I re-read the last part and go "Cool! What happened next?" I write until the story is done, and some worlds write long (everything on the Crescent, by the looks of things) and some of them write shorter-ish (Blue Moon Detectives, although that may be about to change.)

I'm quite happy with writing this way, although it does sometimes feel a bit awkward when you're chatting to other writers and they mention their word count for the day, and then ask what yours was. Shrugging and saying you got a couple of chapters in sometimes gets you the same kind of look as the strange guy who sometimes wonders down Kentish Town road with his underwear on his head. 

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In the spirit of the long weekend, I have Blood Moon Dance and Quarter the Moon free on kindle for today and tomorrow. If you don't have a kindle, but want a bit of lip-smacking free-story goodness, hit me up in the comments and I'll happily send you a PDF. Amazon links and descriptions to whet your appetite:

UK SITE :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Dance-Tales-Crescent-ebook/dp/B00CNCUI1Y
.COM SITE :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CNCUI1Y

 Serial killers and hawks don't get on well.

A small logging village on the outskirts of the Crescent is being terrorized, and an innocent family is being blamed for the murders.

In this fresh adult take on the Red Riding Hood myth, Amber and Jadah have to match their wits against the killer before time runs out, and the killer finds another victim - or the village turns on the werewolves that have lived amongst peacefully them for years.

"This is the blood dance, this is the end dance, and the outcome is death." -Amber.


Blood Moon Dance is a novella of around 17K, and takes place shortly after the events of WolfSong, but can be read as a stand-alone piece.

This book contains strong language and scenes of violence.

UK SITE:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quarter-Moon-Blue-Detectives-ebook/dp/B0088QK72E

.COM SITE:
http://www.amazon.com/Quarter-Moon-Blue-Detectives-ebook/dp/B0088QK72E

The first Blue Moon Detectives collection. Two brand new tales from the Blue Moon Detectives characters, plus Basement Blues and Die Laughing.

House Mates - When Astrid moves into her new apartment, she has to deal with an unwanted house mate, and the dark secret she's hiding.
Yes, Astrid, There is a Santa - What happens when a centuries old vampire discovers that Santa is real?
Blue Moon Detectives - Saving the (undead) girl shouldn't be this hard...
Die Laughing - The gods are back in town - and they don't play nice. Billy and the gang find themselves fighting a Norse god with a bad habit of killing comedians.

The stupidity of evil is contagious (rant alert)

I've been lucky enough to see some really good social changes in my life. I remember the Berlin wall coming down. I saw the end of apartheid, and Madiba become president.  A large amount of LGBT folk no longer feel they have to hide who and what they are. Mixed marriage is longer regarded as a perversion in most circles.

Then there's the other side of the coin. The folk that still think women should accept a casual hiding when they ask for it, that anyone being raped or molested deserves it, and that an institution with a history of interfering with little boys and covering it up, has the right to dictate what two (or more) consenting adults get up to. The people that think that having breasts and ovaries mean that you should suck up a lower pay-cheque, that the government has the right to decide what you can and cannot do with your own body, and the ones that think that sending police into rob the homeless of their belongings is completely acceptable because they're bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood, dear. The ones that think that having a darker skin tone makes you sub-human.

On that side of the coin there are the moments of true evil, given a human face and leaving the rest of us soul-sick.

They are the men who pick up weapons, mow down an unarmed man with a car, and butcher him in front of on-lookers, and then pose for filming by those on-lookers with some sort of rabid manifesto that should chill anybody. (On a side-note, I completely fail to understand why somebody - anybody - didn't try to stop these guys. It takes a bit of time to behead a man, and a good swift knock on the back of the head with a rock might have stopped that part. I would also like to know how they were so sure he was a serving soldier, since he was out of uniform, because that implies they targeted Lee Rigby a good while earlier.)

They are also the people who riot in the streets afterwards, screaming racial epithets and attacking places of worship. Both of the guys who did this were British, but I doubt the EDL screamed "Piss off Brits!" while they were hurling bottles and charging the cops. There were two sets of terrorists on the streets that day. Unfortunately it doesn't appear the second will face any justice at all.

The idiot MPs who criticised the armed police for taking so long to get there. Pick a direction; those cops have to wade through a bunch of security including getting authorisation just to get to their weapons. Their locked up weapons, unless there was an armed car in the area; in which case they are locked in the car armoury. This is a policy that you enforced, so yeah, it'll take a bit of time. But it's a lot easier to use a man's death to get a sound-bite, isn't it?

The people who climb onto social media declaring a mini-war on an entire religion or colour of people - yep, they fall into that category too.

And the worst thing is, they did exactly what the two butchers wanted, and likely planned for. Rage begets rage, and violence begets violence, and at the end of it you have another potential blood feud starting.

Who wins, in messy, stupid little wars like this?

Any politician or government department with bad news to bury wins. Any politician pushing for less civilian rights and more police power will ride this one into the ground. 

The people who abuse a religion until it's bent and shaken and almost unrecognisable to the millions who genuinely practice it. They'll win too, and likely use these two men as poster boys in the future. 

The far right, who've already leapt all over this like starving vultures, and gone out to do a little damage of their own. They win.

The ones who seize any excuse to hate. The ones that want power. The ones addicted to blood. They win.

The rest of us? We sure as hell don't win. We bury our dead, and mourn, and rage on blogs like this over the utter stupidity of it. The futility of another man dead, and families destroyed, and if we aren't very, very careful, we just add to the hate. It's contagious that way.

How to Destroy the Prince of Darkness (Moments of Oops, Aargh, and Possible Conversion)

Before we enter the latest saga, a quick heads up on the Allegories of the Tarot project. My gorgeous Moon teaser card is up there, and will be up here, just as soon as I can get the file to save. Me and tech, folks. It's like putting a chicken on roller skates. We've hit the $2250 mark, which is amazing. Thanks to everybody who's spread the word, donated, or simply encouraged us. It's been a hell of a ride, with more to go.

Anyway, returning to our previously scheduled programming, I present the following guide :

1) Climb onto crowded tube car for trip home after long,looooong, day. It works better if your nerves are already frayed. It makes the shrieking more effective.

2) Feel something with eight legs scuttle over your throat. It helps to be severely arachnaphobic for this part.

3) Bitch-slap yourself, hard enough that other passengers turn to stare at you. (Do NOT miss this step. It is crucial.)

4) Hold your hand out to your fellow passengers, with shaking fingers lightly smeared with ex-arachnid, and screech "SATAN!".

5) In the sudden, stunned silence that descends over the car, think about what you just said, and realise there is no conceivable way of explaining you meant spider, and you really aren't dangerous, and can the guy with the briefcase edging carefully away from you be any more obvious? Really?

6) Wait out the ride to the next stop in an ever-widening space, which is actually quite pleasant. Usually at this point you're wedged under someone else's armpit, with a baby stroller trying to climb your leg.

7) Watch about 80% of your fellow passengers dog-pile out of the carriage at the next station, and stand staring at you from the platform.

8) At this point you actually have a seat. (To be honest, you have most of the tube carriage to yourself.) Waving at the people who got off as the tube pulls out is an optional extra, but shouldn't be dismissed for the sheer enjoyment factor.

9) Spend the rest of the trip thinking the little bugger that started all the trouble has revived and is now zombie-spider, because it feels like you have legs all over your throat, even places it didn't touch. As a result, you end up frantically patting yourself every 8 seconds or so. The remaining passengers get off at the next stop.

10) Realise that this being London, there is a very good chance that someone in that carriage believes you really DID just kill Satan. At this point, it would help if you actually believed he existed, but hey. Slaying the Prince of Darkness got you a seat on the tube. You can't really top that.


                                ************************************************************


You can catch up with my fictional worlds on kindle at  Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. So far, nobody has been attacked by any spiders in them, but we do have lots of violence, snark, magic, and strange events.

Character Interview : Jadah, from the Crescent series

Jadah was introduced to the world as the ill-fated younger cousin of Amber in WolfSong. Known for her sharp tongue and off-beat sense of humour, being dead hasn't stopped her following Amber and the squad around the Crescent and beyond.  

                                              *************************

Q: Thanks for agreeing to the interview. Tell us a bit about yourself?

A: You do know I'm dead, right? Life-challenged? I suppose you could call me an ex-hawk.

Q: The life-challenged thing has been mentioned, yes. What are the hawks? Can you give us some background?

A: Hawks are one of the three main races in the Crescent, the country I'm from. The other two are humans and the Clans - the werewolves. There are others, like the fey, but they tend to keep to themselves.

Q: There are exceptions, though? Brin, for instance.

A: The fey king, yah. He has a thing for Amber. I hope it passes soon, but I think he's well and truly smitten.

Q: You sound concerned. Is that a bad thing? I'd think Amber deserves a bit of happiness, to be honest.

A: He's an immortal royal who loves politics. Amber is a half-blood hawk who thinks with her sword first, and has all the tact of a drunken buffalo. There is no way this will end well, for either of them, and she knows it. Why do you think she left the Crescent so fast? Happiness would be nice, but I'm not sure Amber would know what to do with it.

Q: Why are there mixed squads on the borders and not the internal Crescent, where your squad is from?

A: The short answer is: because people can be bastards.

Q: A little more detail would be nice…

A: That entails a bit of a history lesson, then. Hawks were on the Crescent for a very long time. Then the wolf folk came, followed closely by humans. Best I can tell they were fleeing a war of some sort - you want Garliaan for the historical stuff - and they entered the Crescent as refugees.  The folk that settled on the borders mixed well and thoroughly with the hawks and the werewolves both. The ones that had a problem with the species difference headed for the interior, hoping to find their own place. The result is a bunch that don't play well with others, and there's a lot of resentment of the hawks because of certain laws. The little things, like mandatory education and women having the same status as men. There's a certain kind of person that doesn't like that.

Q: Wouldn't it be easier to just leave those communities alone?

A: Our country, our rules. And here's the thing: thoughts like that spread. It's like a disease, and it doesn't take much for them to catch hold. Even some hawks fall to it, and that is intolerable. Our job is to hold the Crescent safe, and you can't do that if you hate your charges.

Q: So the squads are the Crescent police?

A: More like a combination between your police and army. We ride the borders as well as internally, and if it comes to a war, we're the ones on the front lines. And most of your police don't use magic.

Q: None of our police use magic. They use technology and forensics.

A: You keep telling yourself that, if it makes you sleep better. We have science, and scientists. Magic and science are pretty compatible, when you use them the right way. Stating something doesn't exist because you don't believe in it makes no sense at all.

Q: But you have the Shrike cult, which doesn't believe in it either. They've caused a lot of trouble on the Crescent in the past.

A: There's a difference in not believing in something, and loathing it. And the Shrike cult is still causing trouble; that won't stop.

Q: How come you came back as ghost?

A: Because it was better than coming back as a garden slug? Because I needed a hobby? Pick one.

Q: In WolfSong, you said you were sent.

A: I was. Look, I can't go into too much detail about who runs the afterlife. But  I'm back for a reason, because if something isn't done, there won't be any more hawks. I can't stop geology, and you know what is going to happen to the Crescent. But I can help try to save my species, and to do that, I need to be with my squad. To be specific, I need to be with Amber.

Q: So whoever's in the charge of the afterlife wants to save the hawks? Does Amber know this?

A: Would you want the entire species camping out on your doorstep at once? There are some things my cousin doesn't need to know just yet. Confusing someone who likes to solve problems with a sharp blade is not a good thing.

                                                      *******************************

You can catch up with Jadah in WolfSong and Blood Moon Dance, both available on kindle at  Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

                                                

New WolfSong cover, Blood Moon Dance goes live, & Allegories of the Tarot updates.

The new WolfSong cover is done, and I think it complements Blood Moon dance quite well. I'm liking this theme, and I already know what the Raven's cover will look like, so I may work on that a bit this long weekend.

You can grab your copy here on the Amazon.com site, and here from the UK site. NB - there are no changes to the book itself; this is purely a cover change, so don't panic.



Blood Moon Dance has gone live today. It clocked in at around 17.4K, so it's a nice little chunk of story - something to get your teeth into, but not over-long. Jadah seems to have developed a streak of snark a mile-long, and she uses it a lot. She's becoming one of my favourite characters to write. I have a great deal of fun with that ghost, and she kindly gave me a character interview that'll be posted over the next couple of days.

It's a re-working of the Little Red Riding Hood fable, Crescent style, which means that everything gets turned upside down, and inside out. As usual, lots of blood, gore, and sharp pointy objects abound.

You can grab your copy from the Amazon.com site here, or the UK version over here. This one comes with a  strong language and scenes of violence warning, which is pretty par for the course in Amber's world.

Seriously folks - these are not really grandma-friendly or kid friendly books. If you like horror and dark fantasy, you'll be fine. If you don't want characters saying anything stronger than "poot" when things go pear-shaped, you may be in for a shock. 

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With 30 days of fundraising left, Allegories of the Tarot is going strong. The goodies up for grabs on the Indiegogo page are really impressive, and there's a very special perk coming up. The kind that makes you go Oooh! Shiny! and stroke your p.c. screen in inappropriate ways (although that may just be me). 
Being invited to write for the anthology was the reason I ended up with Blood Moon Dance, so it's really, really cool to see it doing well and getting the support it already has. I can't wait to read the rest of those stories.

Cover Art Reveal & Give Away- Blood Moon Dance

Blood Moon Dance will be released next week. Here's a sneak peek at the cover art for you.

The WolfSong cover will be re-designed on a similar theme; although I love the old cover, I'd like to see if a new, simpler version has an impact. 

If you'd like an ARC copy of Blood Moon Dance, I have 10 e-book versions to give away - let me know in the comments. 

Blood Moon follows straight on from WolfSong, but can also be read as a stand alone; it features Amber and Jadah investigating a serial killer mystery in a village close to the border of the Crescent.

Strange Day of the Week - Moments of aargh!(again)

Anyone reading this blog regularly know that strange things tend to happen to me. Occasionally they involve pigeons. Every so often I have a day where so many moments of WTF occur, my brain shuts down trying to process it. For your reading pleasure, I present : Thursday. (Note - although weird stuff happened during the day, it was mainly job related, so not included. Although threatening to head-butt your PC screen gets you very disapproving looks from IT.)

Moment 1 :

Reaching the train station, looking down, and realising I'm wearing my new slippers. These aren't the type of slippers that can pass as shoes if you squint either; they have fluff. And ears. Go home to change into actual boots, and realise that I can now feel every stone, slimy puddle, and bit of nastiness that doubles as a London pavement, even in this little outpost of the city. The slippers are unsalvageable.

Moment 2 :

Get home from work, and can't get my key to turn in the front door. This door has been a pain since we moved into the flat; the wood swells and warps every time it rains and I've had a few moments of struggling to get it open. Choice: call a locksmith (mucho, mucho money would go winging it's way out of my bank account. I can see the wingbeats when I think about it) or call Mandy and Tim. Tim is a big lad - I'm five three by the skin of my teeth, and the top of my head doesn't quite reach his chest. Mandy send Tim thundering down the road to my place, and I spend the time waiting visualising what sort of superhero cape he'd wear.

Tim crosses the road, rolling his shoulders in anticipation; I need in that door. My bladder is singing Ave Maria, my feet hurt, and my Nando's is staring up at me. Either we get that key turned or the door is saying fare-thee-well to this world. Tim shoves the door a few times. He doesn't want to kick it in and turns sad, puppy dog eyes on me. Then he reaches through the letterbox, pulls the door in, and turns the key in one easy motion, opening the door. I feel remarkable stupid at this point in time. My bladder thinks he's a god.

Moment 3 :

I climb into bed at the end of a long day and hear a ping. Followed by a clunk. Then another ping. When I turn on the light and look under the bed, there are a couple of bolts lying on the floor. My bed base appears to be dismantling itself. As I watch, another washer answers the call of gravity and drops, missing my nose by an inch. The bolt that follows doesn't miss at all. At which point I utter a phrase that would have my mother reaching for the soap. I picture myself trying to fix it, and decide that if the bloody thing does collapse, it's not that far to the floor anyway. I put a plaster on my nose and get back into bed. Every couple of hours I wake up to a creak-ping-clunk noise, although the bed is still standing in the morning.

My theory? Thursday was the day this week that the Universe made itself some popcorn and settled in to watch me, while pointing and laughing. The Nando's was pretty good, though.

Blood Moon Dance - sneak peek

Blood Moon Dance is a short novella set in the WolfSong universe.  It follows the events in WolfSong, and concerns Amber and Jadah getting caught up in a little bit of murder and intrigue in a village on their way out of the Crescent. 

It should be up on Amazon over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here's an excerpt to whet your appetite.

The usual caveats apply - things may change on the final edit, and strong language is definitely involved. The scene below is from the second chapter, where Amber gets to meet a family of werewolves. Tension and hi-jinks commence.

                                                                *******************

“Welcome to my house, hawk,” Grandmother said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Amber perched casually on the edge of a stool with her back against a wall. “You have a lovely home,” she said.

“Thank you. Although I regret that our hospitality has been somewhat lacking so far.”

“May I speak plainly?” Amber asked, and watched the woman’s eyes veil.

“You may.” The werewolf jerked her head at Kier, who stepped back out into the passage.

Amber leaned forward and folded her hands over the top of her knee. “I don’t harm children. I don’t kill unless it’s necessary, and I especially don’t kill people just because they’re afraid of me. But I’m guessing you knew that already.”

Grandmother said nothing.

“Are we doing with the tests?” Amber asked quietly. “You sent your lad to ask for aid, so you knew cursed well what I am. I’m not interested in a pissing match with an alpha.”

Grandmother blinked.

“So tell me, before we move onto other things, why you put a child with a bow that’s too big and heavy for her into your pantry, with her sire in a room I was about to walk through, and told her how big and bad and scary I am?” She felt her hair lift and stir and didn’t fight it. Some of the stories were true, and she was annoyed right now. Not truly angry, or there would have been blood on the floor right now, but she was hot and sweaty and tired, and she had no interest in proving herself here. She’d done her time on the battlefield.

Grandmother sighed. “There is a story that we heard, here on the edge of the Crescent. It tells of a hawk who slew her mate because he was infected with the wolf virus.” She watched Amber carefully. “Then there is a second story. It tells of a hawk who welcomed a wolf into her squad, and fought by his side when his own kind disowned him. And both these stories have been added to recently, and the bards have mentioned that the hawk now travels through the world.”

“The world is a great deal bigger than the Crescent,” Amber told her.  “And the average bard is so full of shit they squeak turning corners.”

The werewolf watched her with those half-closed eyes and waited. Amber sighed, and felt her hair subside.

“Why a spatula?” she asked.

“What?”

“Why a spatula? Sam was in a kitchen full of knives, heavy pots, and a bunch of other stuff. Why was he holding a spatula? Tell me, and I’ll tell you which version of the tale is true.”

                                                       ***************************

For a bit of background, although I've been working on the full-length follow-up to WolfSong, this little story was originally triggered by the anthology theme I was invited to submit to. (Check it out here on Indiegogo - we have funky videos and everything.) I ended up writing the first draft on my phone on the way to and from work (free word apps; gotta love 'em) and then of course, it ended up being way, waaaay too long. But I liked it, and it just kept going, so it's ended up hitting novella status instead of the 3K mark. I can live with that - and there are worse ways to spend the daily commute in London.

How to get stuck in your washing machine : A guide for the beginner

About thirty minutes before I was due to leave the house for a visit to Tim and Mandy (my guest stars from the day at the funfair a couple of posts back), I went to haul a load of washing out of the machine.
 I'd climbed out of the bath, thrown a long button down shirt on so's not to flash the guys working in the garage at the back, and realised that I needed to hang the stuff up otherwise it would reek by the time I got in.

To put things into perspective, there's a running joke about the washing machine at my house being possessed. It has moments, like trundling halfway across the kitchen floor during the spin cycle, or rocking gently from side to side, when I wonder if that's really a joke.

I got most of the load out. Stuck my hand in for last little bundle of socks and realised I couldn't pull it back out.

One of the buttons on my shirt sleeve was just the right size to fit into those funny little circles punched in the drum of the machine, and it was wedged very firmly in.

I wiggled. I waggled. I manually rotated the drum, which was a mistake. Fifteen minutes later I was lying on the floor, staring glumly at the ceiling with my cuff still attached firmly to the washing machine, and very happy that I hadn't actually dislocated my shoulder when the drum moved.   

Thankfully the shirt is loose-fitting, so at this point I gave up and wriggled out of it, then ended up squatting on the floor like a morose chimp plucking at the sleeve still stuck to the machine. Due to the layout of the kitchen, even duck-walking would have shown the mechanics a few things they don't normally see while working on a faulty battery, and army crawling would probably have given them the ultimate come-to-Jesus moment, so that was out.

I had to get the shirt out. Of course, since I was no longer attached to the bloody thing, it popped out without a problem, so I shrugged back into it, sulked back to my room, and texted Mandy to say I was running late due to an argument with the washing machine. (I have no idea what she said out loud when she saw that text, but I'm pretty sure she was giggling.)

The evening was great - Tim is the burger king, and I got devils food cake, and we watched Cockneys vs Zombies, which is one of the best giggles I've had in a while. I knocked over my first drink, quite an achievement since it was in a cup holder built into the arm of the chair I was in, and fell over my own two feet when I attempted the couch.

Then I got home, and part of the ceiling grew eight legs and dropped onto my shoulder. Being arachnaphobic, my first response was to punch my own shoulder repeatedly, so I now have a sore hand, a sore shoulder, and no clue where the Spawn of Satan actually went to.

I'm never bored. I'd like to try it sometime, preferably in a non-painful, spider-free environment.

Meet the fifth Horseman, Sniffles

It's been a long week. It started with a tech malfunction at work, where our internal computers went to the great big server in the sky until BT came out the following day and replaced the cable (it wasn't me this time, at least. IT guys said so) and continued with the tube hiccuping yesterday resulting in an hour and half journey into the office. 

Today was spent playing catch-up, and dealing with the Spreadsheet of Doom, and by the time I left I had low blood sugar from not eating and was feeling mildly homicidal.

I change onto the overland train at Walthamstow to get to my little village just outside of London proper, and at this time in the evening it's usually quiet. The sardine rush has ended, people are more relaxed, and you can even get a seat.

Tonight was, er, special. Tonight, I am convinced I had the lesser known 5th horseman of the apocalypse in the seat behind me.

Usually I write on the way in and out - I've got a great free little app on my phone, and I plug in my music, flick the screen on, and spend around thirty minutes happily jabbing at the on-screen keyboard. Tonight I was too mentally stunned to do much more than haul my kindle out and get stuck into the latest book (Annetta Ribken's The Fantasy. I love that woman's writing. Wish there was more of it.) and hope I wouldn't fall asleep on the train. Snoring in public gets humiliating, ya know?

Half a page in, the saddest noise in the world rises from the seat behind me.

"Ooooaaaahh."

Followed by one of the most horrifying sounds found on London transport:

*hack.hackhackhack.SNIFF.HACKSNIFF*

Then back to the zombie moment of the day.

"Oooooaaahoooo -*sniff* awk."

I found my earphones. Started off with The Killers.

Over the music, I could still hear it. 

*HACK*sniff* "OOOOaaaauggh!"

Moving the selection onto Queens of the Stone Age didn't help. The banshee wailing behind me grew louder. The guy standing against the door turned around. We looked at each and shrugged.

"AAAAOOOOOOOOawk." pause. *sniffsniff*

With five minutes to go I switched to Rammstein. That stuff is good for squalling babies and toddlers up to around 120 decibels.

"OOOOOOOAAAAAAOOOO. AWK. HACKHACKSNIFFHACK OOOOOOO!"

Any woman that can out-sniff, out-moan, and out-cough Rammstein deserves respect, and a very wide berth.

I lunged for the train door as soon as it opened and fled into open air.

Behind me, the wailing noise of the undercover horseman, the one that left before they got their big break, turned in the other direction and thankfully, started to wane.

"OOOOOaaaaaooooooaao!"

Thoughts for the week - equal marriage/relationship rights

1) If you are spending all of your time worrying about what consenting adults do in the bedroom, it says a great deal more about you and your private fantasies than the group you are fixated on. Get over it, or download better porn.

2) Marriage is a governmental institution. You change your name, bank accounts and legal documents for tax and information purposes. Weddings are conducted by churches. The arguments by elements of both groups against equal rights for everybody are remarkably similar to arguments posed against equal rights for people who had a darker skin tone several years ago. Hopefully in ten years time it will be considered as unacceptable as overt racism is today. 

3) BTW, church groups - you do realise you make a large percentage of your income overcharging people to hold weddings under your roof, right? You might want to think about the economic benefits you're currently trying to hit on the head with a shovel. There's a whole bunch of stuff in the bible conservatives keep waving around about not mixing fabrics, or eating certain things, or not being tattooed, and not coveting spouses or material goods - let me know how all of that's working out for you. The Sodom and Gomorrah argument falls flat on its face when you read that properly and realise that issue wasn't against gay sex, it was against the rules of hospitality. (Also, I have a few issues with someone happily offering over his daughters to get raped instead. Not exactly a fan, here.)

4) The whole unnatural argument doesn't work if you wear clothes, cook your food, and don't live in either a cave or a tree. None of those are exactly natural for a bipedal mammal. Same sex intercourse, on the other hand, occurs across a variety of species.

5) If you equate homosexuality with child abuse, see point one. Also, get a good psychiatrist.

6) If you use a position of power or a platform to abuse people because of their sexual orientation, skin colour, or religious beliefs, you are a bully. You are also seeking attention in the form of headlines and you-tube clips. Media fame is fleeting, and to keep its attention you have to come up with more and more outrageous, inflammatory statements. When the flames die down, you are left in cold ashes and bitterness, and all the hurt you caused is left for future generations to point at in horror. What you do will be taught in history books as an example of hate and misery, and at the end of it you will still be that sad, lonely little person who bullied someone else to hide their personal shame and misery.

7) If you want to change the world, stop hating. Stop fearing those different to you. We don 't hold parades for people who caused lasting harm fifty years after they've left this world. We remember the words and the actions of people who inspired us, those that stood up in the face of injustice and told it "This has to stop." Courage is found in people who stand up. Cowardice is usually found in fear of change, fear of difference. Which one do you want to be remembered for?

Shooting Tigers, and other Things to Do at A Funfair

Since my birthday next week hits in the middle of the work-day, today was declared my official "Not Birthday." Stacey and I met up with friends, Tim and Mandy, and we hit the spring fair on in town this weekend. (It may be the shortest fair visit in history, but we'll get to that shortly).

It started innocently enough. We wandered in, Mandy and I both bouncing around like puppies. I love fairs, mainly because I'm an adrenaline junkie. Fast rides are designed for people like me, and they push all my happy buttons.

The first stall we stopped was the shooting stall. Tim showed off with the rifle, and won a stuffed teddy, promptly allocated to the cat. The stall also had crossbows, and a woman running the stall who may be suicidal; she had no compunction about stepping out in front of three of us (myself, Tim and Stacey) all happily plugging away at the targets.

Since Stacey came within about a split second of shooting Suicidal Stall Lady in the butt at least once, this was not a good thing.

I needed help pulling the string back. I have no idea what the pound pull on those things were, but I eventually swopped withTim since his was easier. Being a Walking Dead fan, I kept thinking we needed a squirrel. Between that, Suicidal Stall Lady, and the variety of stuffed animals above and in between the targets, my aim was terrifying. I shot a stuffed tiger. Twice. In the same ear. I never came close to hitting the bulls eye.

Then we ended up at the tilting cups, which marked the beginning of the end.

Tim and Mandy shared a car, and Stacey and I the one just in front. It started off sweetly enough. Tim, who tops out at around 6ft7" squished Mandy into the corner on the first turn.
Our car swung genteelly around the loop on a gale of laughter, and I turned around to find a kid of about ten tugging on the back of it to spin it again. 

Turned out, the kid (obviously part of the ride team) and the older guy running it, ran from car to car and spun each of them as hard as they could for the entire ride. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

The ride lasted a decent amount of time, and I was relaxing nicely. Yes, high speeds and whirly motions relax me. No idea why, but I just find it soothing. About half way into the ride, we realised that the laughter and delight from the car behind us had dried up. On a swing around, we caught a glimpse of Tim and Mandy, slightly green around the edges, car handle clutched in a four-handed death grip. As our cup tilted away again, I saw the ride guy, grinning his head off, tugging on the back of their car.

"Oh, shame," Stacey said.
Behind us, Tim made a noise that sounded remarkably like a baby goat saying fare-thee-well to its mommy, and Mandy whimpered.
"That's not good," I said back.
Tim screamed like a little girl. 

At some point one of the ride guys exerted himself a little too much, and farted. We spent the next rotation trying not to breath, and laughing so hard we were crying.

Shortly afterwards, Stacey and I tumbled out of the car and off the platform, still giggling. After a few minutes, the sorriest looking pair of fun-fair zombies I've ever seen lurched off behind us. 
They were green. They walked very slowly, and very carefully, and went straight past us, picked their way delicately past the guy ropes of the nearest stall and found themselves on a grassy verge.
At which point they both promptly bowed in unison at the waist, and rendered their tribute unto the God of Nausea. Repeatedly. 

After several tributes, they came shambling back to us. I may have seen sorrier sights, but not by much, and it usually involved a wet cat. And yes, I have to confess that I laughed like hell. (Sorry, guys. I still love you.)

Apart from something called a Disco Tunnel (which was very strange, and resulted in me face-planting almost immediately in the first of two gigantic rotating barrels, and spending the rest of the ride on my back, practising pin-up girl poses against the side), that was the end of our fun-fair outing.

It was the shortest time I think I've ever spent in one. It was also one of the most entertaining.

I brought my two (still whimpering) friends back to my place and fed them burgers, and we're heading out to their spot for my birthday dinner. 

I haven't laughed so much in a long, long time - which proves that even short events are great when you have great people around you.

Allegories of the Tarot - New Project on Indiegogo

Last week I got an invite to submit to an anthology by the editor, the amazing Annetta Ribken. (If you write, and you need an editor, go have a look at that link. If you don't, check it out anyway; the lady is all kinds of awesome, and the excerpt of Athena's Promise, Annetta's book, is worth the visit alone.) Now Annetta and I have tortured each other on Facebook for several months; we share a similar warped sense of humour, and it's been a blast, so when the invite came through I said YAY as fast as my fingers could type. 

Then I did a happy dance, and then I checked out the other authors contributing and made a very loud squeaky noise. This bunch are good, folks. As in pure talent and awesomeness - it's going to be one hell of a ride.

The concept really appeals on every level - each author has a card from the major arcana of the tarot assigned to them, and we each write a story associated with this. It looks like we have just about every genre in the mix, from romance to fantasy to horror, and the main requirements are a quality read. Even better, the plan is for both a print version and an e-book, so nobody gets left out. 

Here's the line-up for you:

The Fool-- Peter Giglio
The Magician--Lon Prater
The High Priestess--Billie Sue Mosiman
The Empress--Spike Marlowe
The Emperor--Kris Austen Radcliffe
The Hierophant--Jessica McHugh
The Lovers--Eden Baylee
The Chariot--Annetta Ribken
Strength--Rochelle Maya Callen
The Hermit--Red Tash
The Wheel of Fortune--Joseph Paul Haines
Justice--Catie Rhodes
The Hanged Man--Matthew Bryan
Death--Timothy Smith
Temperance--Anne Chaconas
The Devil--Patti Larsen
The Tower--Jordan L. Hawk
The Star--Samantha Henderson
The Moon--Janet Sked (ME!)
The Sun--Tristan J. Tarwater
Judgment--Jennifer Wingard
The World--Laura Eno

Annetta has gone all out and put the project up on Indiegogo to raise funds for the production of the book, with awesome contributors perks, including an edit package from Annetta for your manuscript. As of writing this, we're up to $890 already - a massive thanks to everyone who's contributed, or just passed on the word. We're all getting clobbered by the economy - every time I check my bank balance, it giggles weakly and flips me the bird - but spreading the word will help us so much.

As a side-effect of the invite, I've got a novella set in the WolfSong world almost ready for publishing (it was intended for the anthology, but that world writes long. Between Amber and Jadah, I should have known better than to hope for a 3K short.) and just going through the final touches and edits. 

I'm also working on a short (please, please, let this be a short) that I think will fit in nicely to the anthology. It's completely out of my comfort zone, which is a good thing; last time somebody did this to me I ended up trying the comedy style that ended up as the Blue Moon Detectives, so it can only be good.