But It's a Dry Heat

Author Archive

Why Leash Laws Are Awesome (Or Why Certain Dog Owners Are Idiots)

After yet another run-in with a member of that special, entitled breed–the dog owner who refuses to leash his dog–I thought I’d post a rant about why leash laws are nifty.

There’s a certain segment of the dog-owning populace who are totally incorrigible.  But this is directed at the small percentage of irresponsible dog owners who maybe, just maybe, haven’t giving their bad behavior much thought.

Rule Number One for Dog Owners: It is rude to allow your dog to approach and interact with a person or their dog without the person’s express permission.

Repeated for emphasis: It is rude to allow your dog to approach and interact with a person or their dog without the person’s express permission.  Period.  Note there are no exceptions for bank holidays and “friendly dogs.”  Unless you are 100-percent sure the other person wants your dog near them, put him on a leash.

And this is where the off-leash crowd pulls out the same (more…)

The Canvas Thief

So I stopped procrastinating and put the contract for The Canvas Thief in the envelope.  It’s now crossing the continent, destination Canada.  Actually, the fact that Harlequin/Carina Press–yes, as in Romance novels–is in Canada is news to me.  Shows how much I know about what has (sort of) become my genre.  (There’s a long blog posting about my weird relationship with romance sitting on my hard drive. I keep fiddling with it, trying to explain my is-shoes with romance tropes in a way that doesn’t alienate every romance reader/writer out there.)

The Canvas Thief (which, I hope will get a new title because I suck at titles) is a hybrid of romance, urban fantasy and suspense. Set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, it’s the story of an artist who accidentally brings two of her graphic novel characters to life.  It’s set in the same “universe” as The Music of Chaos and Breas the vampire is a secondary character.

Since I set out to write romantic fantasy, not a romance, it doesn’t adhere to some romance novel requirements.  Like that the hero and heroine meet in the first chapter, if not first page.  In The Canvas Thief, they meet in Chapter Four.

That could, I guess, change during editing. I’m pretty malleable, editorially, but I’m rather adamant that this story not have the usual forced, first page/first chapter meeting of H/h seen in many romance novels.  It just doesn’t work. Not for this story.

The Tourist

A lovely day in Paris.  (Aren’t the days always lovely in cinematic Paris?  You’d think they never had winter.  Unlike poor Moscow, where it’s always winter.)

Anyway … Elise (Angelina Jolie) is sitting at a table in a sidewalk cafe. She is looking gorgeous in that way that even makes straight women think about changing teams. In a nearby office, Scotland Yard Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany) and his team are watching Elise.  A young bike messenger approaches Elise and gives her a message.  Acheson orders his team to apprehend the unfortunate lad as soon as he delivers his message.

Why?  Because they think he may be Alexander Pearce, Elise’s lover.  Alexander is wanted because … (more…)

Son of a Witch

A caravan traveling through an isolated part of the Land of Oz comes across a corpse.  This isn’t the first they’ve seen on their journey, but the others have been “scraped,” the faces of the dead removed with surgical precision.

Except this body isn’t dead. Yet.  Though badly beaten, Liir Thropp, a young man who may or may not be the son of the infamous Elphaba Thropp, Wicked Witch of the West, is still alive.  The caravan delivers him to a convent where he is coaxed back to health by a mute young woman name Candle.

His recovery, seen through the eyes of Candle and the maunts (nuns) of the convent, is juxtaposed with (more…)

Skyline

Recap, not a review, because it is so eye-rapingly bad.

Starts off okay.  Glowy, alien plasma zooms down into L.A. and starts giving all the beautiful people the worst case of varicose veins ever.

Several hours earlier…
Generic blond, Elaine, and hubby, Jarrod, are on a plane to L.A.  Jarrod is kind of cute. Too bad his acting sucks balls. They’re going to L.A. because Jarrod has a sketchbook full of ugly graffiti that his producer friend really likes.  (Or something … Seriously, I have no idea.)

In L.A., they meet Jarrod’s friend Terry–Hey, it’s Turk, from Scrubs! He’s living large in a penthouse with his blond wife.  Elaine and Jarrod admire the “view,” which must be L.A. for “smog.”  Husband and I both observe that wife is a bitch and “We want her to get eaten first.”

Terry has a party. Elaine confesses to Jarrod that she is pregnant. Jarrod says, stupidly, “Late? For what?” Jerry screws his assistant in the bathroom. Oh, the angst.

My husband grumbles, “This is supposed to (more…)

The Spirit Thief

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron is terribly derivative.

And therein lies its charm.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a massive reading slump, slogging through my pile of library books, finding mild entertainment, but no real joy. But The Spirit Thief, with its unabashed “D&D gaming session put to paper” approach is an awful lot of fun.

The novel’s protagonist, by the author’s own admission, is a D&D character concept. Eli Monpress, the thief protagonist, is cut from the mold of many a TSR novel, as are his companions, Josef, the warrior, and Miranda, the wizard (spiritualist). The only non-archetype is Nico, the demonseed within (more…)

Of Aliens, Site Updates and Paper Books

The couple that’s in pain together …

So my beloved and I awoke this morning with the same kink our neck.  Neither one of us can turn our head to the left.

My husband, hearing that I had the same ailment, said, “I bet we were both kidnapped by aliens.”

“Kidnapped by aliens?” I said. “And all we got were stiff necks?  No sexual stuff?”

“No cheap thrills for us,” he said.

“I got kidnapped by aliens and all I got was a sore neck.”

And an excuse for lack of creativity on this blog.  I did, however, post Chapter Two of The Music of Chaos, and I made some minor changes to the site.  My plan is to post a few “*unpublishable” stories and some cut scenes from The Music of Chaos. I”ll get the new page(s) up sometime next week.

Speaking of The Music of Chaos, it looks a print version may be in the woyks. More details to come.

*Unpublishable meaning that they were fun to write, are fun to read, but don’t have much in the way of theme or anything that takes them beyond a backstory exercise.

Plastic Prince Marries Plastic Bride

The royal wedding and all things regarding the nuptials are a perfect substitute for Ambien.

Anyone who knows me, or who’s sniffed around this blog, shouldn’t be surprise by my utter disinterest in a multimillion dollar, faux, fairy tale wedding.

Yup. Faux.  As in “fake, fake …  fake, fake.” (Elaine Benes voice.)

But every girl dreams of meeting a (more…)

Deconstructing Stupid

Ah.  Just another day on the Internet.  Where I learn, once again, that my husband must be gay*, because the person that he married can’t possibly be a woman. (*Not, as they say on Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that.)

For your consideration, I bring you this, proof of my defective girl status:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

This charming little bit of misogyny and sexism, sadly, was scribed by a woman. The target of her ire, the HBO adaptation of G.R.R. Martin’s absolutely fabulous, A Game of Thrones.

Look, Cupcake, I get it. You don’t like the show. Fine. As someone who (more…)

Beware of the Guinea Hen

Because I never posted the finished version of this, here.

The guinea hen crossing sign.

For anyone bored enough to wonder, the basic process to create it is as follows:

Again, sketch a design.  Transfer the design to plate steel with a projector.  (Sometimes I draw designs right on the steel, but it usually works better to project it onto the steel.)

Next, I cut out the design with a plasma torch. I do this by hand, although it can be done with a computerized plasma torch.  (Which is like the offspring of a printer and a plasma torch.) I enjoy this part and so I’m no hurry to go with the high-tech approach.

Once the design is cut out, I use an angle grinder to remove the rough edges and industrial scale (black stuff on the surface of steel).  I hate this part. It takes forever. It’s messy and I always end up snorking up black boogers afterward.

Then, I do any welding and assembly. For this design, that means bending the steel rod that makes up the base and stake. Then welding on the letters and guinea hen.

More grinding–ugh!–to clean up welds.

Finally, I do finishes.  My favorite finish is polished steel with heat alteration.  But it’s a pain in the ass (requires loads of grinding).  Paint is actually easiest.  Apply a primer coat. Then color.  I did this design with spray paint, and dabbed the white dots on with a brush. I then finish with a clear coat. And it’s ready to go.