But It's a Dry Heat

Author Archive

White Cat by Holly Black

Is it just me (usually is), or do all of Holly Black’s characters love coffee, including, day old, been sittin’ in the pot, stale coffee? In Black’s books, you can almost count on someone slurkin’ down some nasty, black coffee with zeal.

Black’s Tithe is one of my favorite books.  In particular because of Black’s unflinching depiction of the realities of teenage life.  She doesn’t shy away from drugs, alcohol and violence.

In White Cat, Cassel is the youngest son from a family of Curse Workers.  Curse workers can alter a person’s emotions, memories, and in rare cases, their form. Not surprisingly, curse working has been outlawed. Those who still ply the art tend to gravitate toward less-than-legal vocations. Mobsters, con-artists, etc.

Cassel, however, has no power.  He does, however, have a secret, one which could shatter the normal life he’s worked so hard to maintain.  A few year ago, he killed his best friend, Lila.

But, like old bones, secrets have a way of poking through the surface. Dreams of a white cat and sleepwalking, signal the end of his brief time of normalcy.

While it’s obvious, early on, who, or rather, what Casel is, Black’s engaging style and no-punches pulled approach kept me reading. Black doesn’t burden the story with much exposition.  She presents the world, one much like ours but with Curseworkers, and then gets down to business.  Cassel, as with most of Black’s protagonists, is a young/old man, wise beyond his years. He’s pragmatic, but still quite compassionate.  Despite that, he isn’t my favorite Black character, so White Cat isn’t a keeper.

But I’ll definitely be reading the next book.

Excuse the Mess

I must have run out of whatever I was smoking, as I’ve come to senses and realized the cutesy, pink template was unreadable and seizure-inducing.  In the midst of trying out different themes….

The Music of Chaos, Now Available!

I spent the weekend on yet another home improvement project.  Some people tithe at their local house of worship.

We tithe at Home Depot and Lowes.

Anyway, come Monday morning, I find that my debut novel, The Music of Chaos is now available from Decadent Publishing.

****

Here’s the blurb:

Regan O’Connell seems to have it all. She has a PhD and a good paying job as a project manager with a consulting company. Unbeknownst to her co-workers, she’s a one hundred and thirty-year-old demi-human, with a magical pedigree that includes vampires and elven royalty.

Harnessing her magical ability has never been easy. Immature by the standards of immortals, she has little-to-no control over the magic that simmers in her blood. For more than a century, she has worked as a secret operative for the vampire syndicate the Grey Brethren. For just as long, she has hidden her magical disability, struggling with one paranormal misadventure after another. Tired of her shenanigans, the Grey Brethren station her in Albuquerque, far out-of-the-way by paranormal standards.

The arrival of a mysterious user of chaotic magic—a world destroying power—spells the end of Regan’s trouble-free existence. Soon after, her vampire employers issue an ultimatum: find and neutralize the chaotic magic user or find a new job. To make matters worse, she has inadvertently started a war and developed a surprising attraction to a human. Sorting the mess out will require a little help from her friends, some growing up, and acceptance that she will never be a practitioner of conventional magic.

*****

It is available from Decadent Publishing and in Kindle format over at Amazon.  You can also get it at Smashwords.  (Hint: It’s about a buck cheaper if you buy it directly from the publisher.)

Like the Hippos in Fantasia, Not

Seriously?  This is fat? I’m referring to the recent uproar over a NY Times critic who took issue with a ballerina who deviated oh-so-slightly from the standard prepubescent girl body type. From where I’m standing, the only way to find fat on this ballerina is with an electron microscope.

Granted, she isn’t the usual willowy, pelvic-bones-threatening-to-burst-through-thin-skin, body type.  But she’s hardly fat.

Of course, if she were the standard scrawny ballerina, some would accuse her of being too thin and projecting unrealistic body standards to young women.

Sheesh.  We women just can’t win, can we?

In unrelated news, I’m amused to note that spammers have so far scrupulously avoided my post about comment spam.  It seems they lack a sense of irony. Heh.

I’m Magical. I Made Food.

This is comic gold.  Especially for dog people.

Packing all of your belongings into a U-Haul and then transporting them across several states is nearly as stressful and futile as trying to run away from lava in swim fins.

Casa de Kirby made the move across this big nation twice.  Our dogs, who shall forever be known as the greatest dogs ever, enjoyed the entire adventure.  Of course they did.  They didn’t have to worry about finding a rental housing with two dogs, one quite large.  They didn’t worry about starting a new job in a strange city.  They weren’t bewildered by strange regional vernacular.  I.e., the practice of calling a pickup truck a “rig.”  Que?

Me?  My ulcers had ulcers.

(Pictured: Our current grey and his birthday present, Mr. Squirrel.)

Like a Dinosaur, But Stupider

When I grow up, I want to be a paleoartist.  The “when” in that equation being rather nebulous.  My mom and my husband have both been waiting years for any hint of maturity. But, if I were a betting person, I’d won’t lay much money on “soon.”

In the meantime, I get to exercise my artistic talents on guinea hens.  Yeah.  Guinea hens.  During this weekend’s art show, I got a request for a guinea hen crossing sign.  The requester wants the sign as a gift for a friend.

Guinea hens are a small miracle.  As in, it’s a miracle they haven’t gone extinct.

My exposure to guineas has been limited mostly to road encounters.  It’s not unusual to round a corner on our little country road and find your car fender deep in a flock of guineas.

In our little slice of rural semi-suburbia, there’s usually some misguided soul who’s decided that having a flock of mentally retarded birds is just the ticket for dealing with insect pests.   A friend of mine acquire a flock hoping they’d eat all the insects plaguing her garden.

They did just that.  And then they ate her garden and promptly took to roaming around the neighborhood, annoying the neighbors, becoming coyote Happy Meals, and occasionally, road kill.

When I was a kid, we had horses.  Since we lived in the city, we boarded our horses in a pasture on the outskirts of town.  At some point, the owners of the land must have had the usual delusions of pest control and purchased a few guinea hens.  I don’t think the flock lasted more than a few months, quickly becoming the meat du jour for local predators.  But in the meantime, one particular hen loved to sit in the fence.

My horse loved to sneak up on this hen and, with a casual flip of his nose, send the stupid bird flying in the air.  Either this bird loved being turned into a projectile, or,  more likely, was dumber than a bag of hammers, but it returned for more abuse, day after day.

I wonder if guinea hens make good eatin’?

Nothing a Little Jack Daniels Won’t Cure

Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday and I’ve got nothin’.  So I figured I’d take a looksee at this blog’s accumulated comment spam.  Most spammers, of course, aren’t even trying.  In the comment approval window I find the usual suspects: links to naughty sites, cheap meds, knockoff Rolexes, etc.  The new trend in comment spam is complimentary gibberish, written apparently by people for whom English is a second language. Just barely.

For example, this bit of word salad, left on a posting about my greyhound.

With thanks for talk about really good informations. Your internet is amazing, (My internet?  I own the internet?  Who knew?) I am satisfied by the details that you simply have on this blog. (You’re satisfied?  Really?  Now I can die happy.) It shows how well you appreciate this subject. (Well, he is my dog.) Bookmarked this page, will appear again for much more. (Uh…Yippee.  I await, with bated breath.)

But the winner, thus far, for most creative is this one:

Hi, What can I take for this horrible heartburn I have? OH MY GOD… [replica watches/link redacted] It feels like the baby has lit my intestines on fire! It is horrible, even tea, water, like when I drink water and burp the water comes back up, it is horrible. The heartburn is the worst, it hurts so bad! What do you girls take for heartburn while pregnant that works for sure? help will be greatly appreciated!!!!

Booze, sweetie.  The really hard stuff.  Yeah.  That’ll do the trick.

(My comments are in moderation.  Anything with even the faintest taint of spam never sees the light of day.)

Imponderables

Why is it, when you’re in a huge hurry, every steenkin’ traffic light is red?

On the other hand, if you’ve just spilled something on the passenger seat, or worse yet, all over your lap, and you really need to stop and mop things up…every steenkin’ traffic light is green?

Writing with No Brakes

In which I embark on the adventure known as NaNoWriMo.

I’m giving it a go.  November.  Thirty days and thirty nights of literary abandon.

In other words, I’m going to try to crank out 50,000 words of mostly coherent story in thirty days.

My NaNoWriMo profile is here, should someone who isn’t a spammer stumble on this post and want to join me.

As usual, I’m working with a bare skeleton of a synopsis.  Where “skeleton” is the kind that archeologists find: a tibia, part of a scapula, a jaw, a rib.  The trouble is I can’t really write a synopsis  until I get to know the characters.  And I can’t do that until I write the bloody novel.

Onward!

Fifi, Is That You?

This is clearly a case of what happens when you give a dog access to the Internet.

To ‘Your Retail Store’:

Today I went into your store, and I was appalled and disgusted that you blasphemed Almighty God Jesus Christ and His Most Holy Nativity Christmas by selling from your store shelves a filthy pornographic lamp that said “Christmas” Story on it. REMOVE THAT PIECE OF FILTHY, PORNOGRAPHIC BLASPHEMY FROM YOUR STORESHELVES AT ONCE!

The blasphemous object in question being a lamp shaped like a leg. Yep.  A lamp.

My mom once had a dog who like to hump the throw cushions on the couch.  That dog never developed a lust for legs, but if it had, I imagine this lamp would’ve been well loved.