When and Why I Read Romance

I think I’ve blogged before about friends who grabbed and shook when I said, somewhat ignorantly, that I didn’t read romance. I’m happy to report that I have good friends. I was corrected, firmly and often, until I saw the error of my ways. Now I don’t regularly read romance, because it’s not what I regularly want. But when it is what I want? Absolutely. Delighted to take recommendations. Gimme those good books. What I didn’t get back then, and I what I do get now, is that sometimes we just need to know that it’s all going to be okay. For me, at least, if I can’t get that in the real world (don’t look around if you haven’t lately. Trust me.) then I need it in my distractions. So, romance. Or stuff I’ve read before, but I’ve been doing a lot of rereading. So. Romance. Last week (or the week before, honestly it’s hard to keep track) I read my way through the Brothers Sinister by Courtney Milan. Also in that read-a-thon somewhere were the Langham Line books by Amanda Pahorst. Romance is not, though, my favorite genre. There’s tons of good fantasy and SF I haven’t read! So I’ve been wanting to venture out of the safe haven of romance. I still want my happy endings! I just wanted…more of what I like. I was thinking of picking up the Murderbot series. Or finishing, at long last, Temeraire. Or the Wheel of Time! –okay, not the Wheel…

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(Phone) Pictures in an Exhibition(ish)

One of the main reasons I looked at the house that I now own was, as the saying goes, location, location, location. It’s very close to one of the largest parks in the city, the park where the zoo is. I love both the zoo and the park, and love being able to visit either or both after a five-to-ten-minute walk. (It’s also really nice to be one long walk through a lovely park and then a pretty, low-traffic neighborhood from a Starbucks. Love coffee. Love.) My last home was also next to a park, and just like then, now that I’m getting out and being more active, the park is a big draw. If you’re thinking I’m about to throw a bunch of phone-camera pics at you, give yourself a prize. NOTE —->>> Do not pet the palo verde tree, or at least be very careful. (you don’t pet trees? Oh, I guess that’s…maybe just a me thing?) I love our zoo. When I can, I maintain a membership to support it. It is a nice little zoo, easily browsed in a couple hours, and they work hard and do well at taking care of the animals and presenting lots of education on conservation. And currently, baby meerkats! What’s not to love? They’ve been trying to expand the zoo for a while now, to renovate and give more of the animals a better habitat. A few years back, they put it on the ballot, and people voted for it!…

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Hiding in a Book

Last time I posted, I was using Pentatonix reaction videos to get through my days. Things were rough, I said. It was a coping mechanism. Well, things continue to be rough. So I’ve fallen back on the original distraction, in my life anyway–today I am reading a book. I don’t have a lot of time for reading, usually. Or, I do, if I, you know, I didn’t do all those other things that I should be doing. So I don’t do a lot of it. I know me. If I start a book, I want to FINISH the book, and everything else can go hang. So guess what I did today? In my defense, I was stuck in a dentist’s office, waiting for a loved one to have a procedure. I had intended to write! I have a story due. But the office was loud. And hot. And did I mention dentist’s office? Very uncomfortable all around. So I tried to write, and it didn’t work. And then I tried to go on Twitter, because that’s something that only takes the time you have–but I recently came down on myself for wasting too much time on Twitter, and set my app blocker to only allow seven minutes of every hour. Locked the profile, too–can’t turn it off for ten days. Whoops. So there I sat, in the dentist’s office, trying to ignore drills, trying not to think about the bill, not wanting to use data… (yes, I know Twitter uses…

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Curiosity Killed the Cat–Part 8

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Wrapped in a net, carried by jeweled crabs, Srivasi and his companion traveled through dark passageways. They angled down for a ways—then up, in what felt like tight spirals. Once, the whole bunch swayed like seagrass in the tide, clicking loudly, then the journey resumed—back the way they’d come. No turning, just walking the other way. “Can we just get this over with?” Dasid groaned. “Be careful what you wish for,” Srivasi said, as the crabs picked up speed in their new direction, though the longer they went unharmed the more he was inclined to believe the creatures meant no harm. Why else capture them in a net, after all? “To feed us to their crablings,” Dasid said when Srivasi pointed that out. He was so young to be so cynical! A few crabs brought out glowing rocks, and Srivasi and Dasid were carried through a corridor that caught and split the light, refracting and multiplying, until the colors danced and swam about them and even Dasid gasped in wonder. Then they passed through a grey stone arch into a tunnel so low that Srivasi’s whiskers brushed the roof. It was remarkably uncomfortable until he turned his head. His nose, luckily, was not as long as the whiskers. From the close tunnel, they passed into a great chamber of rock and columns and connections, arches and spirals. The crabs headed straight for the edge of the rock, for…

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KD’s Latest Escape

Say, friend…have you experienced the fun of reaction videos? You have? Yeah, I’m not surprised. I’m always late to trends and stuff (and sometimes blog posts, oops. Sorry.) But I’m still enjoying my find! It started with…okay, I’ve been having a rough month or so. I’ve known Pentatonix for a while. A dear friend basically (through the internet, very impressive) grabbed me by the shirt and made me listen to them years ago. And I liked it! Very much. But somehow I didn’t really fall in. Last month, though, I was attempting to get into the Christmas spirit by listening to all the carols I could stand. (I can’t help it. I have a low tolerance for fifty versions of the same song.) Obviously I was putting Pentatonix on that playlist, since they change, enhance, update everything they do, and I need that variety. (Aside–it will never cease to amuse me, to see Hallelujah treated as a Christmas song.) Anyway, at some point, I was using YouTube to make it easy. You know, click on two or three videos, and then let YouTube play you twenty-seven different videos of Josh Groban singing “You Raise Me Up.” …okay, the algorithm is not that bad. But it does have its moments, which I tend to forget. So there I was, listening to the seventh time through of…oh, I think I was on yet another version of Josh Groban (I do love him, but I don’t want seven in a row, thanks) So…

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A Soothing Ritual

Recently I saw a comment pass by wherein someone asked how a person could “hate tea.” There are about a billion different kinds, so how could you know that you hate all of them? And it’s true. One can know if they hate coffee. If you only drink it with a ton of sugar and milk added (hello, roommate, child, other child…) you hate coffee and you need to stop drinking mine. No, seriously. Go get a cup of tea. We have all the choices.We do. We have a piece of furniture devoted solely to tea. We have a wide selection of teas. I usually start my deciding with considering how much caffeine I feel the need for. I try to avoid coffee every day (because I don’t want to have to have it every day, and also to keep it special.) So yes. Choices. Black, green, white, herbal…our vendor of choice is Harney & Sons, for the dual reasons of delicious tea and pretty tins. (We are almost to the point of building a house with tea tins.) Sunday morning I enjoyed a delicious Florence blend. H&S sells most teas either in sachet or loose. I usually prefer a sachet (easier), but I wanted to try this one and the cheapest way since they were out of samples was to buy a small tin of loose. Also, I do enjoy the whole process of making myself a cup of tea, on a Sunday morning when I have the time.…

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First Minion, Knitter of the Squid

You’ve seen this shirt, right? Sorry I’m late. I didn’t want to write. When you lose a friend on the internet, you may not even know it for a while. It’s sad. You meet someone, in the wilds of the internet, who lives states or even oceans away from you. You form a friendship that is very, very real to both of you, though the world still looks down on meeting people online. Maybe you exchange addresses, to exchange cookies. Send each other gifts. Mention your online friends to the people around you, but if they were into the same things your online friend and you are, they’d know your online friend. Then something happens. There is a friend-shaped hole in your internet, and you go snooping about the edges, maybe reaching out to acquaintances, lovely people you don’t talk to much, but know they shared a different passion with your friend than the one you talked to her about. If you’re lucky, you find your friend. Computer was down, internet broke, they just needed to be quiet–all’s well. If you’re unlucky, you find out your friend passed away, and no one who knew that knew enough about you to tell you. My dear friend Bea passed away last month. I will miss her, more than I think i even know now. She was my friend, and she was my biggest fan. She loved Knight Errant, saying it was one of her favorite books. IIRC, once she declared me and…

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NaNoWriMo, So Good to Me

Fifteen years ago, I did NaNoWriMo for the first time. In twenty-four days, I wrote the first draft of Even the Score. I won. In 2007, I pulled the mess that was what I had of Joss together, and wrote the first real draft of Queen’s Man. 2008 was Burning Bright. I wrote the 50k, but the book wasn’t done. I got stuck. The next year when NaNo was approaching, I thought I’d go ahead and finish it for NaNo. Instead I got inspired and I wrote the ending in NaNoPubYe’s NaNo warm-up (25k in two weeks) and ended up doing In the Forests of the Night for NaNo 2009. I wrote over 50,000 words in fifteen days. Two days later, I’d written the entire first draft. My streak of useable first drafts ended there, alas. I won 2010 with 50,000 words of my nemesis story, but I still, eleven years later, don’t have a plot. (the plot? I have lots of…things.) NaNo hasn’t only given me the impetus to write and finish a bunch of novels (Is four a bunch?) It has given me friends. I met my dear friend, my roomie, through NaNo. I met a bunch of other writing friends, with whom I still write, on the NaNo forums, or in my favorite writing forum that grew from the NaNo forums. And, of course, most important to my writing destiny, I met Siri, Erin, and Kit through that forum. We’ve been writing and publishing together for eleven…

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May the Best Ghost Win

Four Teams. Thirteen hours. One very haunted house. Team GargoyleAnton Berg doesn’t believe in ghosts, so why is he in a ghosthunting contest? Because Lammie, that’s why. Anton’s best friend since the first grade, Lammie has a knack for finding things, especially trouble. And even without ghosts, running around a two-hundred-year-old house in the dark holds plenty of real dangers. Anton can’t let Lammie go alone. Team Flower PowerQuonzhenay is a librarian. Penny has a big stick. They’re on a mission to win a bet. Team WitchRavyn Wyng Starcrossed didn’t want to come, but her Tarot cards told her to. The Four HorsemenIt started as a prank. Now four members of the Fulsom College football team’s starting lineup are spending Halloween in a haunted house, and Blake would prefer to be left behind, please. Unfortunately for all of them, ghosts do exist, the haunted house is much more than an abandoned Gilded Age mansion, and a dark power has Lammie in its sights. When the night of spooky fun turns terrifying, escape is cut off. The teams unite with one goal–survive until dawn. The ghosts may be the least of their problems.

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May the Best Ghost Win–Sneak Peek

May the Best Ghost Win will be available for purchase on October 31st–naturally. From the tiny town where signs proclaimed, “Last Gas No Kidding” and “Ice-Cold Pop” to the top of the mountain where a dark destination waited, a narrow road snaked through wilderness. On one side of the mountain, the last rays of evening turned the world pink with alpine glow. On the other side, in the only moving car in twenty-five miles, Anton Berg drove alone except for his best friend who Anton thought was only pretending to sleep in the passenger seat. It was October thirty-first. Outside the car, dim headlights picked out gnarled black-limbed trees huddled close to the narrow, twisting road. Inside, the dash lights cast a green tone over Anton’s hands on the wheel and limned the edges of Lammie’s shape where he had curled into a ball, face pressed into the passenger seat. Hell, maybe he was asleep now. It’d been hours since he’d moved. Anton pondered what besides sleep could keep Lammie quiet and decided he didn’t actually care. Quiet was good. Quiet was what he wanted. Just get the trip over and— Static spat from the radio, finally overwhelming the DJ entirely. Anton jabbed the button to turn it off. Now he didn’t even have bad music to keep him awake. Silence filled the car, only enhanced by the rattles of the canvas top in the wind, the creaking of the woods around the car, and the soft sounds of the…

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