One Hot Mess

 1. I ask Karen to come and collect a delivery note from me and give it to someone else. She takes it, disappears, comes back half an hour later and says "this is fine" and gives me the note back.

2. She gives me an invoice for £28k and tells me to arrange payment. The invoice looks familiar to me, so I check and discover we already arranged payment in October. THIS IS HER JOB. HER JOB IS BUDGET MANAGEMENT FOR THE NEW BUILDING. SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN WE'D ARRANGED PAYMENT ALREADY BECAUSE HER JOB IS LITERALLY KEEPING TRACK OF THAT SHIT.

3. She asks me this morning if I ordered a bunch of custom lanyards a while back. I say no and direct her to the right person. Next thing I know, she's placed an order for a bunch more without clearing it with me or the boss. The boss thinks I must have okayed it, so I get rebuked for leaving her out of the process.

I CANNOT ANYMORE TODAY.

I'm really struggling with SAD, I keep randomly bursting into tears, my anxiety levels are through the roof, I can't make eye contact with anyone and I really really do not need Karen flubbing around failing to listen to me properly or absorb THE MOST BASIC ONE-LINE INSTRUCTIONS.

So I was going to take the rights to Undertow back, but after some emails with the new guy in charge at Ragnarok, I figured I may as well leave things as they are. Their contract is fine, and only three years, so if at the end of that there's no improvements at Ragnarok or I've decided to jack it all in and focus solely on being a highly efficient secretary, I can get the rights back then automatically.

I figure it's better to have the book out there and available than gathering dust on my laptop where it can never be found by new readers. And New Guy seems keen to talk about other Ethan-related projects, which, despite everything, I would still love to write. So it probably won't hurt to see how things play out for a while, and at any rate me and Ethan are unlikely to be worse off for it.

I think future Dawn books are off the table. I should at least try to keep Ethan alive.

So many things! Let us start with the promo-ish things:

WILD is free for Amazon Prime members right now. Free stuff is awesome. Free stuff about werewolves and drugs is especially awesome. So if you want to enjoy some awesome free stuff, WILD might be right for you!

Ethan Banning is here to save your Christmas (should it need saving). ICE, ICE BABY is my Ethan Christmas Special, in which he almost has a completely nice Christmas Eve, marred only slightly by a corpse. Like my other two Ethan short stories, you can read this without having read AFTERLIFE or DEMONISED.

I've read some really amazing books recently and you should read them too! Carolyn Crane's Disillusionist trilogy is definitely one of my top picks for the year. I adore Jusine, the heroine, and the concept is very fresh, very dark, and very cool. If you like PI books, you might also try LM Pruitt's Taken, There's a touch of the supernatural, but this is mostly a straight-up crime novel, and I loved it.

If, like me, you've heard of SOPA but didn't really know anything about it, you might want to check this video out from TotalBiscuit, and enjoy his strangely sexy voice telling you how we're all doomed if this passes.

Kit Whitfield has been analysing opening sentences of classic books. Her blog is worth reading anyway, because she's very smart and very funny, but this series has been really fascinating.

Laura Bickle is counting down the Twelve Days of Nerdmas, which involves steampunk corsets and Cthulhu sweaters, and is therefore amazing.

And that's it! Happy Monday!

Kathryn Meyer Griffith is a fellow author at Damnation Books/Eternal Press, and she's here today sharing some Christmas memories. Aww! Thanks, Kathryn, and Merry Christmas! (I know it's early, but I need to pump as much joy out of the season as possible).



My real childhood Christmas memories, in fact most of my holiday memories, essentially began in my ninth year. Oh, I have memories, scattered and muted, of earlier times but none as crystalized as those after that year. That’s because months earlier on a sultry hot August day around my ninth birthday I almost died; the whole experience changed my young life forever from that time on.

It was early August 1959 – a terribly hot and long summer pre-air-conditioning – and I lived with my six siblings, mother and father, in a rambling run-down house near St. Louis. We didn’t have much money or material possessions, wore hand-me-downs and sometimes we didn’t have lunch money or even a working telephone. Our utilities were often cut off for lack of payment, things would disappear from the house and into the pawn shop and a car would one day be ours and the next not. But we had each other and…love.

My maternal grandmother, Mary Fehrt (joy bringer and storyteller of her generation) was always there for us when it came to providing the things we desperately needed; care packages of food and cash. As much as they could give because they weren’t rich either, but frugal; both worked long grueling hours at a dry cleaner. They’d gone through the Great Depression and could stretch a dollar. I always thought it ironic they’d responsibly had just one child, my mother, Delores, but she gave them seven grandchildren. I thought of my family as a modern day Walton’s. Heck, we even had a writer John Boy (me…though I was an artist and a singer with my brother Jim before I became one) and a musician, Jason (my brother Jim), a loving mother and father and a generous grandmother and grandfather. We were poor but happy. A good hearted family.

Anyway, that August I got sick. My side hurt and I lay moaning on the couch for three days while my mother and father agonized if I should be taken to the ER. Money we didn’t have. In the end, my mother won out and they took me. I had a bad case of appendicitis and the doctors, as they rushed me into the operating room, told my parents if they’d waited another hour the appendix would have burst and I might have died. Died.

Thank God, I didn’t. Afterwards I languished in a hot hospital room (I can still smell the antiseptic, bloodied bandages and feel the pain of the stitches to this day). Ech.

My ninth birthday was two days after I returned home and my family, relieved I was alive, showered me with gifts. A brownie camera. Art supplies. Homemade cake and ice cream. Everyone was there. I, for once, was the center of attention and loved it. I look back now and realize that was the beginning of wanting to be different, to stand out, make a difference in the world, to shine, and shortly after that I began drawing pictures and singing with my brother on the rusted backyard swing set.

The holidays that year were different for me and my family as well. Thanksgiving was full of grateful laughter, a huge roasted turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and marshmallows (my favorite) and lots of my father’s special treats, nuts and tangerines. I was acutely aware of everything. I was looking at the world through new eyes and was excited at the life I’d been given back. Happy. Thankful for my loving family.

Christmas was a child’s sweet fantasy. Christmas Eve, as the snowflakes, the temperature and the night’s amethyst twilight fell, my brothers, sisters, mother, father and I piled into my Dad’s big Buick and drove through the woods and neighborhoods of twinkling lit up houses to our grandmother and grandfather’s house. We usually stayed home on Christmas Eve and opened our presents the next morning when our grandparents arrived. Not that year. Dad and mom announced it was special and we were going to grandma’s house. Opening our presents there that night. Yippee! What child didn’t want presents early. Sooner the better.
It was snowing heavily by the time we drove into their driveway and I can still see what I saw as a child as I walked wide-eyed into grandma’s house (my grandmother loved the holidays and had twinkling Christmas lights, the big fat old-fashioned bulbs, strung along the front of their house and there were decorated Christmas trees in every room). My grandmother had outdone herself and there wasn’t corner of her home that wasn’t full of Christmas.

We traipsed downstairs and into a Christmas wonderland. Grandpa had gone out and cut a huge pine tree that stood at the end of their 50’s remodeled basement in all its glory. On its fragrant limbs hung hundreds of cherished family heirloom ornaments and beneath it were piles of brightly wrapped presents, more than I’d ever seen in my life, and a miniature Christmas village with a tiny train that chugged noisily around a little metal track, blowing its whistle. The whole glittering sight took my breath away.

They made us kids sit on the floor and handed out our presents one by one. Grandma and grandpa had gone overboard, as always, and I remember sitting there unwrapping present after present and crying because I’d gotten so many of the things I’d wanted. A large drawing tablet. Colored pencils. Pastels. A watercolor set. A sparkly (some of you remember those don’t you?) paint-by-number of winter sunsets. A new blouse. A big bag of my favorite nuts, cashews. All for me. I was in seventh heaven. The other kids did pretty well, too. By today’s standards, nothing much, but small trucks, cars, new clothes and dolls meant a lot to us.

I gave my grandmother and grandfather a set of porcelain fishes; my mother an inexpensive necklace and father some gloves. My brothers, sisters and I had gone out on a cold night days earlier to the local five and dime and picked out what we could afford, not much, but it was given from the heart. After the gifts we sat down at the long table full of grandma’s delicious food and ate, laughed, and made memories as the snow continued to drift outside the windows. Later, stuffed, content and exhausted mom and dad loaded us all into the Buick and slowly drove us home on the slick streets. Magic. I’ll never forget that night and the joy of my large family. The love. It’d sustain us through the hard and bad times to come and to this day gives me a smile and a catch in my throat whenever my thoughts touch it. Merry Christmas everyone!

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 8 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres. Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith.

(I was going to make this a Writerly Wednesday thing, but I have guest blogs to post, so... I don't think it matters too much. Anyway).

So! I've been reading Carolyn Crane's Disillusionist books for the past couple of weeks. It's a trilogy; I won the first two from Bastard Books, and it's already up there with Stacia Kane's Downside Ghost books as series of the year for me. It's brilliant. Crane's writing is wonderful, the storyline and characters are fascinating, and I adore Justine, the narrator/heroine. She's a woman of principal with a moral compass she doesn't ignore, and it's a refreshing change from the typical UF heroine. Justine gets ahead, makes friends, and wins by trusting her instincts, being a good person, and doing what she feels is right, regardless of the personal cost. I really love that.

( Spoilers ahead! )

That doesn't lessen my dropped-jaw reaction to Otto. Has Justine really underestimated him so badly? Are there clues I missed or willfully overlooked? This is the problem of an unreliable narrator - we just can't be sure. If anyone else has read these books, I'd love to know what you think.

So! It's the last day of November, which means Anti-Nano ends tonight *sob* But Winter-Write-a-Thon is here to pick up the slack! Like Anti-Nano, WWAT is now housed over at squidathon, and everyone is welcome to join in. We check in on Mondays and Fridays and post writing snippets on Wednesdays. If you're working on something and would like some company over the cold, dark, lonely winter weeks, come and say hello!

My goal for Anti-Nano was to work on Undertow and Halflife. I was half-successful, in that I worked on Undertow. I'd like to have the first draft done by the end of December now, which is perfectly do-able if it works out at the same length as DEMONIZED (about 40k). I have a feeling it might be longer, but I'm planning to try out this technique to see if I can increase my wordage output. I'm not usually a planner when it comes to writing, but I toyed with this a little last week, and although I was a long way off 10k, I was definitely more productive with notes to work from. So we'll see.

I'm also planning to write an Ethan Christmas Special. It'll be one of the Ethan Banning Files - a short, self-published story, but festive! So there's a slim chance something nice might happen to Ethan. Look, it might, that's all. Hopefully I can get to work on that over the weekend (I have a novel to finish editing for Damnation Books, and a house party to avoid going to).

Dear Fergus,

I love you a lot. I really love having you live with me now. Your happy purring warms my heart and your endless piles of ginger hair lend an extra "something" to my wardrobe. You are a lovely old cat.

However, there is an issue I feel we must address.

Midnight is not breakfast time.

2am is not breakfast time.

3.30am is not breakfast time.

4am is not breakfast time.

5am is not breakfast time.

5.05am is not breakfast time.

It's not breakfast time if I get up in the night to use the bathroom.

It's not breakfast time if I roll over in bed.

It's not breakfast time if a cat outside starts yowling.

Breakfast time is 6.45am, after my alarm goes off and before I get in the shower.

There is no second breakfast when I get out of the shower.

I appreciate that you can't tell the time but you should learn from experience. No matter how many times you wake me up in the night by sitting on my head and drooling on the pillow, it will not bring breakfast time forward.

Love,
Naomi

So I was reading this news article this morning about prehistoric whale fossils in the Atacama desert (which is cool enough all by itself) and I happened upon this line:

Other unusual creatures found elsewhere in the fossil-rich Atacama Desert include an extinct aquatic sloth.

Guys! An aquatic sloth! You don't even know how much I love that idea. Here are two things you may not know about me:

1. If I were to be an animal, it would probably be a sloth because they are adorable, they sleep for about ten hours a day, and they have an "arboreal browsing lifestyle." You tell me anything that's better than living your life in a tree sleeping and eating. Because I can't think of it.

2. I love the TV show Walking with Beasts. I watch it every time it's on and I especially love the episodes that focus on aquatic prehistoric animals and giant animals. You know, like giant rhinos and giant ponies and giant sloths, say (you may now also understand why I love films where giant things fight other giant things. I just love it when animals are giant).

So, with my established love of sea monsters and sloths, obviously the aquatic sloth is the animal made for me. It's a sloth, it's marine, and it's prehistoric. It's my spirit animal, guys.

Strictly speaking, I'm not a fan of wacky sidekicks. They're usually intended to be comic relief, but they rarely work that way for me. I loathed the talking dog in The Accidental Demon Slayer and the wise-cracking demon/cat in Redheaded Stepchild. I don't know what it is, but a comedy sidekick character is usually a kiss of death in a book for me.

Which brings me to Ethan's sidekick, Mutt. Yeah, I know! But Mutt isn't a comedy sidekick. He doesn't talk or have supercanine powers. He's just a dog that happens to love Ethan because Ethan gave him a candy bar that one time. I've been very careful not to humanise Mutt. I don't want him to be anything other than a dog. Ethan might treat him as more-than-animal clever, but I don't want to turn Mutt into something he's not. 

Anyway! That aside, Mutt is a big part of the Ethan novellas since he's the closest Ethan has to a friend, and for that reason alone I spent a lot of time today looking at pictures of Labrador mixes online trying to find one that looked like Mutt. And I did!



Look at that face! He's not quite the right colour (Mutt is more grey-black) but expression-wise, this is how I always picture Mutt looking at Ethan. Like, "you're the bestest human I know and I'm sorry there's bird poop on the carpet! Let's do something fun!" And Ethan's all, "here's a chewy bone, you adorable bastard."

So as I'm working on Undertow now, having finished the gothic romance short story, Mutt and Ethan have plenty of adventures ahead. I think Ethan needs a happy dog to help balance out the angry demon. And Mutt is like the happiest dog because his daddy takes him on adventures all the time. Like this one:

( Undertow snippet ahoy! )