Amy Lane's Blog: Writer's Lane, page 151

Round the Bend

Okay-- first of all, I must have gone around the bend, because I signed up to go to RWA in July.  I figure of all the cons, this one is the least invasive to the family.  The kids are out of school, and Big T will be home for child care, and all Mate has to do is make sure there's food in the fridge and a play pool in the back yard.

Of course once I signed up for it I went, "Why did I do that again?  What's in this for me?"

Honestly, not much.  I think I mostly signed up so I could be there for my publisher.  She's the sort of person you want to do for.

And speaking of "Round the Bend"-- summer is almost here.  Squish has a birthday party tomorrow that involves her at the pool.  I'm planning on hanging out and watching her and bringing my knitting.  I'm sort of head-buried in my WIP right now (uhm, Ethan, for those of you who are curious and might recognize that name!) so pulling my head out is going to count as a major parental moment for me right there.  So is going up to Tahoe with the family.  I know that sounds selfish-- and believe me I feel it-- but I could have stayed up all night, completely, and done about 15 K last night-- I was on a roll.  I stopped at 1:30 and came to bed, and I'm ready to go today, but when the dragon is riding-- well, I've done this long enough to know that sometimes, that fucker just does not feeling like getting out of his cave.  Sometimes you have to poke and prod and kick and shout, and then he'll up and take you for a ride.  So if he's raring to go, I'm reluctant to put him back in the cave.  What if he goes to sleep in there and gets comfy?

But then, Squish and Zoomboy aren't going to be Squish and Zoomboy forever, so sometimes that fucker has to work to the bell like the rest of us, right?

Anyway-- Mate took the kids to a King's Rally yesterday.  The entire city (okay, 10,000 people) were just psyched to have their team stay in Sacramento.  There was entertainment and food and a lot of joy and a sobbing Zoomboy (because heaven forbid it all be flowers) and eventually some celebration when he could see.

And an earthquake.

Now Mate and the kids did not feel the earthquake, but I didn't attend the celebration, and I did.

It went something like this.  I wiggled in my chair.  The entire table swayed.  I thought, "Did I do that?"  And then I spent the next ten minutes (dog in bosom, mind you, just like the picture shows) wiggling in my chair to get the table to do that really cool thing again.

So, as far as disasters go, it could have been worse.  (Have we all donated to Red Cross for Tornado Relief?  I know I have!)

And about that summer vacation thing?

I went to Squish's class to help donate some fruit and some time making fruit plates as the kids had a "book reading and tea".  They loved it, but afterwards, I talked to Squish's teacher about "Hey, summer's coming!"

The look she sent me was haggard.  "Yes," she said, obviously at the end of her proverbial rope.  "I've only got eight days teaching to go!"  (She's taking next Friday off--smart girl!)

If I had her class, I'd be haggard too.  Seriously-- the thing about first grade is that only the most obvious of disabilities and problems have been identified.  Next year, the first quarter is going to be spent evaluating and assessing the kids that have been giving her fits this year and getting them into a more appropriate place in the class.

But until that happens?  This year was a nightmare for her.  She had kids in this class I wouldn't wish on a scorpion--and she's a nice person!  And it's hard, too, because the kids are sweet.  They're really sweet.  They're huggers, and excited about school, and happy to learn-- but they're so needy.  They can not be in a class with thirty-one other students and thrive.  They can't.  It's not fair to anyone in that room, and I'm back where I was fifteen years ago, wanting to throw some shit-for-brains government pigfucker against a wall and scream in his face until I spit.  People wonder how kids can graduate without knowing how to read.  I don't.  These kids do more homework than I ever dreamed of as a kid-- Zoomboy, who is pretty damned smart, is falling out of his chair with frustration by the end of the day.  But I swear, if he was in a class with twenty kids instead of thirty-three, he'd need to do twenty minutes of homework instead of an hour, and the whole class would take a test score jump.  And my kids are the good ones.  My kids are the ones who get the "Oh, your child is such a joy, I wish we had a whole classroom of him/her!" reports.  What about the kids who are physically incapable of sitting still for an hour?  (And as adults, we should all remember that we feel the need to get up, get a drink of water, go pee, and pet the cat at least once every 45 minutes, right?  What must that be like for a little kid?)

Seriously-- my stance on this has not changed since taxes got painful (and they were, this year-- sayin'.)  This country will never succeed until it pulls its collective head out of it's money-tightened sphincter and educates its populace in a fair and effective manner.  Just sayin'.

But in twelve days total, that will be moot.  My kids are gonna be television watching, book reading, wading-pool playing slackers and we're going to encourage the holy hell out of that.  Sure, we'll take them to the ocean, and you bet your ass there will be trips to the zoo, but as soon as the kids are done with recital and on to Camp Grandmas, we want them to recharge.  We want them to get bored.  Kids who are chronically bored get into trouble.  Kids who are periodically bored play until their little noggins expand, and we want that kind of boredom.  It's good for them!

And, of course, I'm going to write my ass off.

A lot of people have been asking about Quickening. I had a sit-down with Mate, about income, and how much we can expect and what I want to do with the writing and various parts of it.  We decided that we will have a very concrete place in our finances where I can spend three months writing the book, and another month fluffing and dusting the rest of the series and re-releasing it, and when we get to that place, I can work on my Little Goddess.  So those of you who are waiting-- there will be a Quickening.  Believe me-- when I actually have to look at a spreadsheet and calculate income, I am damned serious about something.  We have a goal now, a place to aspire to, and I think I can make that happen--and maybe sooner than later.  So now you know.

P.S.-- I just got my author copies of Racing for the Sun.  Now, the last time I did this, the copy of Bolt Hole remained unclaimed, so that's still on the table.  I will run the randomizer on Tuesday morning for a paperback copy of Bolt Hole and one of Racing for the Sun to anyone who comments between now and then.  If you don't claim your prize and e-mail me your address w/in three days after I post the winners, the book goes back into the pot!

Oh yeah-- and anyone who wants a bookmark packet of Racing for the Sun, Bolt-Hole and my ubiquitous banner, contact me via my website and I'll set you up!

Pasquinade

So, am I the only one who gets the dictionary.com word of the day?

See, vocabulary used to be my thing.  I could go over a list of words, word, synonym, part of speech, word used in a sentence, brief etymology, connotation/denotation-- I had three lists, one for 10th, one for 11th, one for 12th grade.  Each list had fifteen words a week, for 17 weeks a semester.  Some of the words were recursive, but by no means all of them, and yeah.  I knew them all.

I was pretty good.

So anyway, when I no longer taught school, I got dictionary.com, and learned just how pedestrian "pretty good" really was.

Every morning I wake up and there's a new word in my inbox.  And I have one of three reactions to it:

A.  I know what that word means.  I can delete that message.

B.  Not only do I not know what that word means, but that word is so far outside of my experience as to not even be English.  If I looked that word up (and I sometimes do) I will find that the last time this word was used was in the 19th century, inside a textbook or a political treatise by someone I barely remember.  If I actually used that word, my editors would accuse me of making it up, showing the fuck off, or smoking some really good weed and not sharing.  I can delete that message.

C.  That word is vaguely familiar to me, but obscure enough to be a challenge.  I might be able to use that word, and, more importantly, I might be able to remember that word while I am engaged in an occupation which usually precludes me from remembering things like taking a leak or basic hygiene.  I shall open that message.

And sometimes the words stick!

Today's word was "pasquinade".

Now I like this word-- it's a word with satin and lace in it, redolent of sweetmeats and the smell of hair powder and body odor in a crowded ballroom.  This word has repressed venomous seductresses and politically jaded rakes all buried in its latinate decadence.  I want to live this word.

And then I look up the definition, and, sure enough, it means a satire or a lampoon, a skit or a piece of comedy designed to show someone at their worst light.

This word is a gourmet word.  It is delicious.  I adore this word.

Not only does it sound decadent-- the thing it means?

Is one of the things I believe most in the world.

Power is abstract.  Suffering is concrete.  Statistics are abstract.  Empathy is immediate.  Politics are abstract.  Laughter is action.  I am a very human believer that the only way to change the world is to affect the emotions of the human beings in it.

If you want the people in power to see themselves as ridiculous, you must laugh at them.

And hence, the pasquinade.

People will do almost anything to avoid being laughed at.

Now, sometimes this backfires.  I'm pretty sure that history is littered with the bloody heads of the people who enraged their leaders with a poorly timed snarky joke--but, on the plus side, bloody heads can be just as effective in rendering change as a vicious satire.  But, even then, it all started with the pasquinade.

And it gets even better than that!  Imagine the complexity of the society that could build, sound by glyph, such a complex word!  We had to have a government, and we had to have arts and culture, and we had to understand that concept (and it's a tough one, trust me!) that what someone says is not always what they mean.  Entire books--hell, entire genres--hell, damned near whole societies have been built on that concept alone!  And then, we had to take an example of government and irony, and we had to give it a name.

Am I the only one with the chills?  (Yes.  Amy you are the only one with the chills.  Go put on some slippers and stop pretending you have a brain.)

But see, I've always loved a good satire.  Teaching students to look beyond the "Please don't eat the babies!" horror of A Modest Proposal was one of the highlights of my teaching year.  I loved that you had to listen to the tone of voice in that essay to hear the biting satire.  I loved that Gulliver was a satiric hero, and that so are Forrest Gump and Charlie Brown and Homer Simpson.  I love that we have formed a heroic archetype around the wide-eyed, ingenuous person that we are when we discover that government is corrupt and that the leaders around us fail.  We expected people to say what they meant, and when we discovered that we were a wide-eyed rube, being betrayed, oh fear our intellectual wrath, because we were gullible and easily mocked for a day.  The fuckers who did that to us are going to be mocked forever.  

And hence, pasquinade.

And hence, my wet-panties at even a hint of an exotic tryst with the English language.  Ah, words, you were my first and most creative lover, and I'm sure you will be giving me plenty of thrills when the joys of the flesh are long forgotten.

And you're awfully fun when you're playing dirty, too.

Drabble

Okay-- I spent all week editing.  First there was Forever Promised, which is on it's second edit and will probably get one more.  Then there was Bitter Moon I&II, which Harmony Ink, the LGBTQ YA imprint is going to look at.

Shaking my editing coma is rough.  I seriously didn't realize I'd forgotten to post on a posting day!

Anyway, I've spent part of my day doing some fanfiction to work out my angst kinks, because the next thing I'm working on is Ethan's story, and it's sad.  I figured some Dean and Benny would work the 'nots' right out of my work, and I was right.  I'm dying to write it now, and Ethan makes me want to hug him, no sex necessary.

I spent the rest of my day taking the kids to gymnastics and then to the dollar store, where Zoomboy stocked up on fake mustaches, because you never can get enough of those, am I right?

 Anyway-- some highlights I've missed, in no particular order, while I spent time in the editing coma:

Last weekend was Mother's day-- the kids took me and Alex out to lunch, which was nice, and the day before we went to a movie with Auntie Wendy, and spent part of the day looking for a chair to replace the one in the living room that I can't sit in because it breaks my person.  In the meantime, we found our favorite furniture set ever.  Squish even agrees, see?

So Mother's day was awesome, and I loved it, and I was well taken care of, and I took care of my mother's too.  (Okay-- I did call my stepmom and wished her a happy day.  She was grateful and understanding.  She got me and mine for Easter, and I had my family call her when I was gone for her birthday.  As long as I have my kids at her place for Camp Grandma and we show up for my nephew's graduation party, I think we're good, karmically speaking.)

Also this week, was the great bowel purge.

No-- it was even less glamorous than that.

See, I had to have my drain snaked, just to make sure all was well in the internal combustion, and as we all know, the prep os the worst part of the process because it leaves us spacey and hungry and irritated and bored.  Hell, even eating vegetables during writing time is better than eating nothing, right?  And after all of that, and the sleeping I did after the purging, you know the thing that irritated me the most?

The co-payment.

Seriously-- I was like, "Okay, so I starve myself, I purge myself, and then you charge me to shove something up my sphincter and take a picture?"  It's like they don't realize that in all of the movies I've been watching, we're actually paying to watch exactly that!  Which reminds me-- don't ask what the magnesium nitrate tastes like.  Uhm... just don't.

So all of that, just to get a compliment on my sigmoid:  See?  Look how pink and healthy it is!  That's really quite impressive!  You don't see sigmoids that healthy in middle-aged women, really!"  So my hair is gray but I have the sigmoid of a twenty-year-old.  Let's hear it for snap peas and hummus!

Anyway-- on the way back from the procedure, as Mate and I were looking for a restaurant, we discovered this--it's Gatsby's Diner.  Since we saw the movie the other night (and I loved it, although Lurman should be fined for pacing without a rhythm, but that's a whole other post) and, more relevantly to me, anyway, since I named a fictional club in Sacramento "Gatsby's Nick", I thought that Gatsby's Diner was close, and should get mention.  The place actually had cars and everything.  I was impressed.


 Oh-- and Zoomboy.

After parading my sigmoid for it's photo-op, I went to the volunteer tea held by the school, and I was really sort of honored, both with fruit and cake and music and a nifty keychain-- I think the tea is a lovely gesture for the volunteers and it sure is great to talk to the teachers.  The school choir was lovely as well, and I was thrilled to hear them.

Twice.

Because, you see, ZB is in the band, and that night was their annual recital.  (We have a lot of fuzzy pictures, which I will spare you, showing ZB playing the flute.  I figured his close-up as he's telling us to "go away!" will have to do!)

So yeah.  Thursday was busy, and last night we went and saw Star Trek (and again-- we're talking a whole other post on the awesomeness of reworking tropes and expected plot elements and making them new and amazing) and today...

Well, today I took the kids to gymnastics, and then to visit their dad as he signed up soccer players, and then to the dollar store.

Where Squish bought a recorder, and ZB bought fake mustaches.

Because you never can get enough of that sort of thing.

Also today, I finally got to hear the Bibliojunkies CD's for Keeping Promise Rock and Chase in Shadow.  Sheer.  Awesomeness.  I'll post the songs here, but keep a look on their site-- they're going to make a list on Spotify, and fans of Chase in Shadow, especially, are going to want to hear Belinda's amazing picks for this story.  The fact that I wrote the song hearing Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" in my head and she put that song on the soundtrack is an eerie testament to how well she nailed much of the mood of one of my darker stories.  It's a real talent and I'm grateful she shared it with me--and then let me share with you, right here:

Fa Fa Fa - Guster
Percussion Gun - White RabbitsWays & Means - Snow PatrolGod Put A Smile Upon Your Face - ColdplayFeel So Close - Calvin HarrisGo All The Way - Perry FarrellRide - Cary BrothersImpossible - AnberlinCrazy - Alanis MorrissetteCracks - FreestylersHurt - Johnny CashSense - Pete YornTake A Picture - FilterHere's Where The Story Ends - the Sundays 

Also something cool--

Sometime while exchanging with Marc Smith, who is a fan, I inspired a brief story which he published on his blog, right here. It was gorgeous, and I thought I should share that too!

So, *whew*  I'll go off on movie tropes tomorrow.  Now?  I'm down for a nap!

Shot my dog and stole my bible!

Okay, so I have to admit, that the more I do this writing gig, the more sympathy I have for Kathleen Turner at the beginning of Romancing the Stone.  

She awakens from her writing trance sobbing with happiness, and can't find any tissue.  Her house is a mess, she's a mess, you can tell she hasn't showered in days, and the only thing she has to blow her nose on is the post-it that says, "Buy tissue!"

Yeah.

It's just like that.  

I'm used to that writing hangover.  I even get it with the happy stuff, because if I've done my job write (get it?  Write?  Because, they're homophones, right?-- Sorry-- was channelling Zoomboy there for a second!) I even get a little verklempt at the end of those.  I know that there was a moment in Left at Saint Truth-be-Well that had me just smiling until my eyes water.

So, uhm, the end of Forever Promised.  

Just had me sobbing, and that was on the third edit.  

And the thing is, while I was signing books at RT, a lovely woman came up to me and said, "A lot of authors have made me cry tears of sadness, but you are the only author who made me cry tears of joy.  I loved Gambling Men so much."

The writer next to me (Regina Lamm, whom I've already squeed about 'cause she was awesome!) loved that compliment so much she wrote it down for me, and I keep it here next to my soundtrack CD's, for whenever I feel depressed about my writing or things in general.

So I was editing (that's phase four, mind you--I've written it, edited it myself, and am now on my second round of publisher's edits) and I got to the end of Deacon, Crick, Shane, Mikhail, Jeff, Collin, Benny, Drew, Jon, Amy, Kimmy, Lucas, & Parry Angel, and I found myself crying.

Sniffling even.

There might have been a sob.

And the thing is, this book ends happy.  I promised people that this book ends happy.  That doesn't mean that there aren't a few grim reminders of how unhappy it could have ended, and how actions have consequences--sometimes even consequences that are out of proportion to the action in the first place--but for our people, there is happiness.

And it still made me cry.

And I am going to be fretting, because so many people loved the first three books, and saying goodbye to all those characters was really hard.  I mean, think about it--I started and finished three books while I was working on this one.  It just didn't come easy.  Everything was intricately plotted, and although I can predict critics saying, "It sprawls!  It needs focus!", the fact is, every scene was painfully chosen to point to one climactic speech by Mikhail and the final, deliriously happy moment that I won't spoil for you all for the world.

Oh-- and there's some tears--hard tears--in the middle.

So yeah.  I finished my edit, looked around my trashed house, and sniffled.

And my husband said, "Okay, Joan Wilder, are you ready for your trip to South America now?"  Well, no-- he didn't say that.  But he did hand me a tissue.

And just like Joan Wilder, I sent it to my editor thinking, "Read 'em and weep.  I always do."

Always.

Excuse me while I Snoopy-Dance in the kitchen

Okay--

So you probably all fathomed that I got home okay (YAY!) and then that I promptly dropped off the map.

Well, see, I sort of did.

Getting home was, well, long.  I left at the equivalent of 2:30 a.m., California time, after two hours of sleep, and got to California around 11:15.  Mate picked me up, we went to lunch, I took a nap, and Mate woke me up to go get the kids.

That's when I realized how truly I had beaten myself the fucketh up.

I could barely wake up enough to walk to the car, and once there, I fell asleep on the way to the school, and on the way back.  I had to wake up to go have dinner with Mate's delightfully chatty Aunt, and then I got home, and crashed, and tried to get up and crashed again.

Boom.  Bang.  KABLOOEY!

And all of this sleeping would have been just swell, really, except for two things.

One was that I missed some REALLY GREAT details on the blog about Kansas City, and I need to put them down or people will be hurt, because they'll think I don't appreciate the holy hell out of them when I do, and the other was that I had a deadline to meet.

I know, I know-- what the hell was I thinking, right?  Well, I was actually thinking that my dedication to Rusty and Oliver, and the  Christmas novel that was supposed to be a novella had put me way behind on my usual queue, and I needed to get my next project done stat.  It was a good plan, especially because this one really was a novella, and I managed to get it done on time--but, well, I had to pretend I was a dead turtle in order to do that.

But I really am alive.

So let's start out by my HUGE thanks to B.A. Tortuga and Julia Talbot, who love me.  They must.  These two lovely ladies, the founders of Torquere Press and friends who still want me to write this Green's Hill Novella that I've been dyeing to put down, gave me yarn.  And not just any yarn-- Mongolian Yak Yarn.  I shit you not.  They're LYS owner actually goes to Mongolia.  And I have the proof!  I'm going to knit me a basic sherpa hat, and then send it back to them with scads and scads of love, because seriously-- Mongolian Yak Yarn.  It's too delicious, too amazing, too... FUCKING AWESOME not to reward with knitting.  Love you ladies!  *big smishy schwacking kisses*

And then let's move on to a celebration of something sort of magical that happened that I forgot to mention.  Ms. December Rain (also known as Historical Lie) who helped me edit Rampant a few years back e-mailed me and asked if I could get a cup of coffee with her while I was at RT.  I said sure, and she was coming for the signing on Thursday, and that was great.  And then I realized I was sort of double booked--I the event was at 2:45 pm, and I was supposed to meet December at 3 pm.  So I did what any mother would do-- I consolidated my activities.  This means, I ran out into the lobby at 3, grabbed poor December by the scruff of the neck and said, "Great to meet you!  Come with me!"  And she did, and was promptly rewarded by a zillion free books, a free T-shirt, lots of writers she recognized and got to talk to and a little bit of conversation with me, which I treasured.  Now I know it cost a lot to go to this convention, and parking was outstanding, so I felt pretty good about that.  I got to meet December, and she got lots and lots of free stuff, and, well, she gave me a mug with my Little Goddess people on it, and I love her.  I hope she had a good time--I really love that she got to do something sort of amazing because I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and said, "Come here--it'll be great!"

Oh-- and did I mention the soundtracks?

I need to mention the soundtracks!  Bibliojunkies  Bel and Nat are amazing fans--and they're trying to convert Shel, the third person in their trio, into an Amy Lane fan too, which is sweet of them, but Shel is by no means obligated.  Anyway-- Bel put together some soundtracks (and I'm pretty sure Nat helped!) for Chase in Shadow and Keeping Promise Rock-- and I'm so excited!  I can't wait to listen to them-- I'm like, saving them, for sometime when I'm not writing hell for leather-- but I have them right next to my computer, and every time I look at them I tear up.  I love that-- you all know I love that--I love music and books and the seamless way they fit together sometimes.  *sniffle*  Thanks, Bel.  Meeting you and Nat and Shel was an awesome experience, and I really needed to get that out there and tell the world.  You ladies are just a triangle of loveliness and I'm honored.

So that was what I'd forgotten to say about Kansas City.  *whew*

And now I get to go spend some more quiet moments with my kids.  Mother's Day is Sunday-- it's going to be busy, since I haven't seen Alexa in some time, but my kids are going to take me to a nice place with red meat (my one requirement in a restaurant actually) and I'm going to relax a little, and maybe not take the whole thing so seriously for a day.

And I'm also going to pet all the animals all the time-- after my absences of the last month, they seem to think they have that coming!

Oh-- and about the pictures--

Zoomboy's gift from Kansas City was the Chewbacca Angry Bird-- he thought it was awesome, and wore his Chewie Outfit in celebration.  (Although I don't think quite so much of Chewie's underwear was showing.

And as for the Warrior Hamster?  So, see, Chicken sent me that as part of her homework, and I sort of adored it.  Since I'm the hamster on her tumblr page, I loved that it was for me.  When I told her I was going to by golly finish this novella by today, she said, "Go little warrior hamster, go!"

So I brandished my little sword and jumped into the fray screaming "AIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Which, sometimes, is how you get shit done!

LIfe in the Habi-trail.

The habit-trailSo, for those of you who have never been to Kansas City, their two biggest hotels, the Sheraton Crown and the Westin, are connected by a glass covered walkway that extends over a course of two blocks, about two stories off of street level.

We call it the Habi-trail.

The habit-trail from the insideWhen I first arrived, I was extremely taken by the habit-trail.  It's pretty, for one thing-- and after Chicago, I'm sort of a sucker for pretty buildings and innovative architecture, and this, to me, seemed extremely innovative.  For one thing, the Westin stands above and connected to an extremely extensive, pretty, high-end mall, and the habi-trail gets you from the Sheraton Crown (where Mary and I are staying) to the Westin (where the shopping is) without ever having to go outside.  And since we have seen snow, fog, and icy rain here in the first week of May in Kansas City, that seemed to be an extremely good idea.  Wonderful!  Especially since the Dreamspinner part of our party was staying at the Westin.  It meant that as our day progressed, Mary and I went back and forth between the two hotels between two and six times a day.
Frickin' snow in May
As my daughter's hamster said, the one that lasted one day before it ran out of the cage, out of the house, and out of our lives, "QUEEEEEEEEKKKKEKKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKK!!!"

MistIt's still a trip, journeying from one hotel to the other, and I still sort of think it's cool and innovative, but I have to say, I'm feeling sorry for hamsters everywhere.  Unless you change that big habit-trail tube every day, believe me, the hamsters are bored out of their freakin' skulls.

And I think I might have still loved it, if it hadn't been for the sneaking suspicion that it made me sick.

I mean, I've had allergy attacks before--I have.  I've had the slow and the sneaky, and the quick and the brutal, and I think I've mentioned that, until recently, I could refuse to admit that I had allergies--I just got a nasty cold once a year, when the wind picked up after the rains.

Okay--my allergies that I used to deny even existed just spent the last four days picking me up by the back of the neck and shaking me like a dog.

They mauled me like a cheetah mauls a nik-nik, they jumped down my throat and my head exploded, they chucked my brains through a blender puree and my logic through a meat grinder they...

Ohmygod, I canNOT remember the last time I felt so incredibly shitty.  Okay.  I can.  Mate, Big T, Chicken and I all had the CRAP, and we had it so bad, none of us moved for a WEEK, and when we were done,  I had to bleach the furniture before I sat on it ever again.

THAT was the last time I felt this bad-- except, uhm, I don't think I had quite the plethora of drugs at my disposal at that time in my life.
Still frickin snowing
Seriously-- Claritin, two kinds of Sudafed-- I've been a walking pharmacy, but I'm TAME compared to what some of the other folks here at RT have been taking.  (Vanessa "The Jeep Diva"-- babe, I SO felt for you.  I just wanted to cuddle you and put you to bed someplace that DIDN'T give us all the itchy-stuffy-snots.)  Anyway, I think by now it's a universally acknowledged truth that something in the hotel has made us all horribly sick, and while my own personal nik-nik-mauling cheetah is finally getting tired and allowing this tuckered widdo nik-nik to toddle around in stoned circles with semi-coherent bleats, there are a couple of days of my life there which will forever be a blur.

A good blur-- don't get me wrong.

The adorable JessieThe smiles are real-- I LOVED meeting people here.  Kat "The Book Tart", Jessie Potts "The Book Taster" and her cohort in crime Mary Greznik, Katie Lane, Gina Lamm who was my adorable het-peddling pin-up girl neighbor through two signings--I could not have been happier to meet you all.  Fans came up to me and said WONDERFUL things and generally people were as kind and as decent and as funny as I've always suspected they could be.  The people have made it worth it (I guess, unlike the hamsters in the habit-trail, who as a whole seem to be pretty anti-social) so I'd call this week a complete success!

I just sort of wish I'd felt better for it, you know?

Of course, there WERE some funny moments, even WITH the drugs (or, sometimes, especially with the drugs!)

Me and Kat the Book Tart*  As Mary and I were getting ready for the Saturday signing, I put a scarf on with my outfit and Mary said, "That scarf and that shirt?  Are you high?"  And then we both paused and reflected upon the stunning amount of pharmaceuticals I had in my system to even stand up.  "Wait," she said.  "You very well might be.  The scarf is a mistake, just know that."

*  One poor woman had the misfortune to sit in and watch BOTH panels I participated in--one on M/M Romance and one on Broken Heroes.  Apparently I came out of my stupor enough to make an impression, because when I met her in a random pass of the habit-trail, she was like, "This girl needs some caffeine!"  Now, I knew she was being SARCASTIC, because she'd already said I had too much energy.  However, the people I was with who had seen me desperately trying to medicate myself out of my phlegm were like, "Oh no-- she's had enough drugs already."

*  I FINALLY got to meet Marianne Morea who used to head the PRG and who started writing when I encouraged her on the amazon.com boards.  I loved her.  She was open and up front and funny and acerbic and our lunch with her and Ariel Tachna and T. Lynn Tolles was entirely too short.

*  I got to watch Jesse Potts (who, along with Mary Greznik gave us some lovely mention here and here ) win one of the BEAUTIFUL baskets offered by Dreamspinner Press at the Fan-tastic Day Party on Saturday-- Jesse chose the yarn
Belinda, Tara, Z.A.Mone because (and my knitting people will love that I passed this on!) I told her that beautiful yarn helps your knitting rise to the occasion.  It was like perfect karma-- Jesse had been so lovely, and so charming-- she acted as time-maven during one of the panels because I asked her at the last moment, and she was a delightful companion during an impromptu lunch with Ethan Day, Belinda McBride, Z.A. Maxfield, Tara Lain, Carol Lynn, Mary Calmes and myself, and generally, made mine and Mary's week brighter with her enthusiasm for all books and her excitement and enthusiasm for all aspects of the convention.  That much contagious goodness deserves to be rewarded, and we were so happy to see her get that gorgeous yarn.
Mary, Ethan, Carol Lynn
*  Gina Lamm got to watch a fan come up to me and say, "Lots of books have made me cry over sadness, but only yours have made me cry for happiness."  She loved it so much she wrote it down, because she said her goal is to have someone come say that to her.  She's only at the very beginning of her writing career--- but she has so much personality and charm, I have faith that it very much will.  (Okay-- not funny, but touching, and I was just so taken with her.  My friends were a little worried that I had "fallen among het peddlers" as it were, being put in alphabetical order at the signings, and I had to reassure them that those who wrote het were really very kind and did not bite at all!)
Gina, who is gorgeous.
* Katie Lane and Kimberly Lang (other het peddlers, but, again, I'm starting to think that might not be a bad thing, and that the world has changed enough for het to be, perhaps, acceptable in the world of GLBTQ lit) were also seat-mates, and Katie was an adorable owner of a Cairn Terrorist... erm, Terrier, and we swapped dog stories in the quite moments.  Kimberly wore a bride's veil in a spunky reenactment of one of her story's moments, and they were both fun and kind to me.  We shared things like Sharpies, tape, water, and chocolate, and you forget how much fun it is to make new friends for no other reason than you're humans in the same space.  Thank you ladies-- I had fun.

The train. Delivered. The Food.*  And, of course, I got to spend time with my Dreamspinner family.  Elizabeth, Ariel Tachna, Nikki Bennett, Nessa Warrin, Connie Bailey, and Tammy May were mine and Mary's companions for dinner every night, and I can not think of better people with whom to be wholly myself.  They were also unafraid to say, "Oh look!  Amy's allergy medication just died a violent death and if someone doesn't cough up some Sudafed, we're all going to get caught in the forensic phlegm spatter!  Quick everyone, drug her!"  Seriously-- you know you're in the best of comfort and the truest of friends when they're not afraid to say, "Honey, you look like hell.  Take a pill and go to bed."  Oh-- and we also got to eat at a place where the trains delivered our food.  THE TRAINS.  DELIVERED. OUR FOOD.  I mean, we ate at a place that was so elegant a force field almost slammed down and denied me entrance, but these people are so awesome, they still got excited when the trains delivered our food.  I'm not joking about best company EVER.
And this was so elegant, we
took a picture. We ALL took pictures.
*  And don't EVER piss off Tammy May.  Seriously.  There was a hotel snafu, wherein I was told I couldn't get my books when I SHOULD have been able to get my books and you know something?  Tammy had hits put out on people's lives until I got my shit.  (Maybe not, but damn.  DAYUM did she take care of that quickly.  I fall at her feet like the goddess she is.)

*whew*

Anyway-- that's what I've got.  I'm tired, I'm still drugged, and I'm looking forward to a quiet lunch.  I'm also really looking forward to going home tomorrow.  I have a Mate and a little dog and two small children and a big son who all need me, and if they don't, tough.

I need them so badly, I could cry with it.

I mean, this is Zoomboy being Chewbacca with his sister's belt and a vacuum cleaner part.  Who doesn't need that?

Guest Post from Daisy Harris: The Time My House Burned Down

Folks, I hope you love this story as much as I did--I know Daisy from around the net, where her sense of humor and her snark have already made me a fan!

The Time My House Burned Down

(Otherwise known as the inspiration behind From The Ashes)

Hi, Amy Lane Readers!
Since Amy is out of town this week, she’s kindly allowed me to hang out on her blog to entertain you with my stories. Like Amy, I’m an author of MM Romance and I have kids. Unlike Amy, I don’t knit.
Knitting failures aside, if you’re happy to hear a story of loss and redemption, pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea and chill a while. I’ll tell you about the time my house burned down. Believe me, it’s a doozy.
So, where to begin? I could start at the chronological beginning when I was chauffeuring three kids around town and received a phone call from a neighbor that my house was on fire. Or I could start closer to the end, when I struggled to come up with a story idea, and realized—WAIT!—I can totally write a story about a firefighter, because I had a house fire once.
The first starting point is depressing, while the second is funny. But in the interest of keeping the time-space continuum intact, I’ll start from the beginning.
One sunny summer Sunday in 2008, I was driving home with my 2 year old and 5 year old daughters, and their six year old friend, when a neighbor called to tell me my house was on fire.
Luckily, I was only a few blocks away. I say luckily, because driving any further than a few blocks would have been dangerous with my vision blurred from stress and my hands shaking on the wheel. By then, I could do nothing about the candle I’d left burning on an upstairs dresser four hours earlier.(And yes, as soon as I heard of the fire, I remembered that candle. Have you ever wanted to turn back time so badly you almost believed you could do it with the force of your mind? Well, that’s exactly how I felt.)
I got home to find firefighters running in and out of my house, my belongings being flung out windows, police and half the neighborhood standing around and watching my top floor go up in flames.
I wish I could tell you I was sad, or that I felt angst over the tragic loss of my kids’ baby clothes. But the main thought that ran through my mind as I wandered into the street was, “My husband is going to kill me.”
Maybe other people react differently. Hell, I’m sure other people react differently. The only things I could think of were, “Oh, fuck!” “Oh, damn!” and “Oh, shit!” The kids? I have no idea. I was in too much shock to think about them. They certainly weren’t crying, at least not yet, because they were just as confused as I was.
Somehow, people took care of me. My neighbors watched my kids and held my hand while I talked to the police. The woman who lived in the house behind us let me come inside to make phone calls. She even pet-sat my dog so I could stay at a friend’s house until we found something permanent.
The thing people don’t realize about a house fire is how quickly one’s concerns shift from “Oh my God, my stuff!” to “Shit, I have no stuff.” I may have had a sentimental attachment to my kids’ slide bed, but no clean underwear jumped to the top of my concerns pretty darn fast.
I was a wreck that day, and honestly, I can’t tell you everything that happened. I have a vague recollection of my in-laws driving down from Bellingham to make sure me and the kids were okay and to take us out to dinner. I know I slept in my best friend’s nightgown because I didn’t have any clothes.My husband was on a boat in Alaska when the fire happened, and until he came back, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the neighborhood. I’d drive to the top of Capitol Hill, have a panic attack, and decide that whatever it was I needed I could get within a mile of “home.”
Only the top floor burned. Most of our first floor belongings were salvageable, as were the things in the basement. We couldn’t live there, though, as there was too much charring. You know how they say it pays to be connected? Well, it does, because some friends of ours had a small guest cottage we could stay in for a week, a place nicer than our actual house.
I wish we could have stayed there the whole time it took to rebuild, but our friends had guests coming, so I managed to find us a rental place nearby. Second words of wisdom—it pays to have good insurance! Allstate covered the repairs to our home, paid our rent… No one re-emburses much for clothes and bedding. But expenses? Allstate was golden. They even covered the cost of movers to come in and pack up our stuff.
All’s well that ends well. Sort of. I got offered a new job a couple weeks later, so that was good. But I hated the job, so that was bad.
The real benefit of having a house fire was that I learned something important about myself: namely, that I needed a break.
I’d been taking care of kids almost non-stop for six years. My husband travelled for work. I barely had enough daycare to cover the hours I needed for my job, and had often worked while simultaneously watching toddlers.
The story truly started the night before the fire: I’d been alone with the children for two weeks. In summer, so no school. The kids had had a friend sleep over the night before and both my kids had gotten sick and thrown up. Unfortunately, since the extra child at our house lived across town, I was too tired to drive her home.
In the morning when my kids asked to play spa, I grabbed a candle, put it in a cup, lit a match, and…Yeah.
Seriously bad things happen when mommy is overworked. Now I fear missing sleep almost as much as I worry about accidents. All it takes is one match, and a moment of distraction.
To this day, I hate leaving my house empty, and have to fight off waves of anxiety any time I take a trip. But I’ve never let myself get that run down since. I sleep eight hours a night, and use babysitters liberally. I’ve given up worrying about what I “should” be able to handle, and focus on understanding what I “can” handle.
So some other mom works full time AND coaches soccer AND blow dries her hair every day and shaves her legs more than once a month? Well, good for her. I’m happy for her. I really am. I, on the other hand, am going to get myself a cup of tea and watch The Rachel Zoe Project before my kids come home from school.
In the end, I’m happy my house burned down. It made me the person I am today—someone with better boundaries and a stronger sense of self. Sometimes we all need our lives shaken up a little.In my upcoming novel, From the Ashes, my hero Jesse’s house burns down, and I wonder whether readers will question how he reacts. Perhaps readers will think, “Well, if it were my house on fire, I’d do X, Y, Z.” But I’m not sure how many of those potential critics will have experienced such a disaster firsthand.
Maybe readers will feel Jesse bounces back too quickly, when they would have rolled into the fetal position and rocked in hysterics for a few days before being functional. To that, I say—the basics: food, shelter…it’s pretty hard to ignore those things for long, no matter how upset you are. And sex? That first night after the fire, I would have given a lot for a sexy, mysterious firefighter to keep me warm.
I’ll close with a clip from the start of From the Ashes, but first, let me share some advice.1.     Homeowners/renter’s insurance. You want this.
2.     Your friends and family will come through for you better than you could possibly imagine, but it pays to know people with a guesthouse. J
3.     Child care. Yes, child care. If you’re a mom, you need rest, and there is a real cost to running yourself ragged.
4.     Don’t ever put a candle in a plastic cup.
This ends Daisy’s Story of Woe/Fire Prevention Hour. Hope you enjoy this clip from my upcoming release, From the Ashes.Cheers!


Pre-order FROM THE ASHES on Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/from-the-ashes-daisy-harris/1115084890?ean=9781619217980Pre-order FROM THE ASHES on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/From-Ashes-Fire-Rain-ebook/dp/B00C4U6MOCDaisy’s Website: http://thedaisyharris.com/
Oh my God. Oh my fucking God.Jesse stared up at his house, the duplex where he’d been living for the two months since he’d moved to Seattle. In thick, black clouds, smoke spilled from the windows.Firefighters streamed in and out of the building. Someone punched through his skylight to toss boulders of his charred and damp belongings onto the concrete.Underwear he’d left on his bed when he’d gone to work that morning lay on top of the burnt remains of his grandmother’s hand-knitted afghan.Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.He couldn’t think.Someone was talking to him. The voice asked about Jesse’s landlords, if Jesse knew there was a meth lab in their basement.“No,” Jesse said. But once he’d started, he couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. “No, no, no, no, no. Fuck, no.” Mindlessly, he sprinted toward the front door. He could get something out before the fire ruined it all. The coffee table he’d bought at a secondhand store. The Christmas sweater his mom had given him even though his father wouldn’t look at him anymore.Something.
He couldn’t let it all burn.
From behind, someone grabbed him, clutching Jesse in a bear hug. Jesseknew as soon as he felt the stiff, flame-retardant material of a firefighter’suniform that they weren’t going to let him back inside. Sobbing, he collapsed in the guy’s arms.That single-room studio had been the first place he’d ever felt comfortable, where he could be himself. He could be a gay man in his gay apartment and not worry about his father kicking him out.“You can’t go inside. It’s not safe,” the firefighter said in his ear. “Do you have someone you can call? A friend or a girlfriend? Um...a boyfriend?”Jesse blinked back tears. He had a few numbers in his phone, friends he knew from class or work, but he didn’t know any of them well enough to lay on them the fact that his motherfucking house had just burned from the inside out.The only number he could think of calling was the one he refused to consider. No, Jesse was not calling his parents. No fucking way. He’d live on the streets first.“I can’t. I don’t...” He wiped the back of his hand across his face. “I just... Give me a second.”
“Take all the time you need.” Tomas kept a hand on the kid’s arm in case he ran for it again.Everyone panicked when they got home to find their house on fire. The initial “No, No, No,”—the first stage of grief—was universal. Sometimes victims sped past denial directly to bargaining. Older women fell to their knees and started praying, as if God could turn back time or fix their faulty wiring. Men were more likely to fly into rages, shouting at neighbors or firefighters. Even their wives or kids. So Tomas wasn’t surprised by the wide glassy eyes and erratic behavior of the queer kid who lived above the Central District meth lab.Tomas shouldn’t have noticed the fit of the kid’s skinny jeans or that his hipster T-shirt was pockmarked with holes. And he definitely shouldn’t have found it cute that his sandy-brown hair hung long in the front but was shaved in back. Eight hours past the end of his shift, Tomas was running on adrenaline and coffee. He needed to keep his mind on his work.“You lived here, right?” Tomas gestured behind him to the damp and burnt- out shell of the duplex.The kid looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. Pinching his lips together, he nodded.“You’re okay.” Tomas rubbed the kid’s arm, trying to calm him down. “No one got hurt. There was no one inside the building.” He wanted to drag the kid into his arms for a hug. He looked like he needed it, but responders weren’t allowed any unnecessary touching of victims. Tomas hoped that one of the kid’s friends or neighbors would show up soon to hold his hand.Lips pale, the guy shivered.“You didn’t have any pets right? We didn’t see a dog or a cat.” Sweat slicked inside Tomas’s clothes from his time rushing through the building earlier. The last few guys were snuffing out the fire on the top floor, and half the team was already loading equipment back on the truck.“No.” The queer kid sucked in air in giant gulps. “But the landlords. They had a... They had a dog.” He shook his head again, like he was clearing his mind enough to talk. “She’s in a cage out back. Her name is Chardonnay. Oh my God, is she hurt?”Tomas put his arm around the kid’s shoulders, urging him to sit down. “I’m sure the dog’s fine. The fire never worked through the outer walls of the building.”The guy’s narrow shoulders trembled.“I’ll tell them to check, okay?” Tomas pulled out his intercom and asked one of the guys inside if he could see a dog out back.Rick, his buddy on the other end of the line, replied yes.Tomas smiled. “The dog’s fine.” He wasn’t sure if the kid heard him, though, because his eyes were unfocused.“What’s your name?” Tomas rubbed his back.The guy blinked up at him, as if he couldn’t remember. After a swallow of air, he said, “Jesse. Jesse Smith.”“Okay, Jesse.” Tomas kept his voice low and soothing. At any moment Jesse might flip from his current mode of denial into a volatile burst of anger. “I’m Tomas Perez, and I’m not going to leave until I’m sure you have a place to stay tonight, okay?” He tried to make eye contact.The gaze that met his was hazel green—beautiful and rimmed with light brown lashes. Blinking, Jesse glanced away. His focus bounced around the yard, house and street in a distracted jumble. “You’re sure Chardonnay is okay? Can I go check on her? She’s probably freaking out.”Tomas put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. He squeezed, feeling Jesse’s sinewy muscles under the material of his T-shirt. No. He shouldn’t have noticed that, either. “We’ll go to the backyard in a second. Just let them finish the work inside.”

Kansas City Here I Come

Okay-- so yeah.  I seriously haven't finished Chicago laundry and I'm getting back on a plane tomorrow.  My mind boggles.

The good news is, the AC went out and it's 95 degrees here this week, and I miss it-- the repair guy comes Thursday, and I'm going to be in nice, temperate (flooding!) Kansas City.  (The AC is a whole other story-- there's a special place in hell for repairmen who come out to do routine maintenance, break your shit, and then disappear for two weeks.  God puts them in THIS HOUSE when it's 90 degrees. Trust me.  There's vengeance involved.)

Anyway-- as John Lovitz said in League of Their Own, "I've got enough time to go home, give the spouse a little pickle tickle, and then I'm back on the train."  (Okay, he said "wife".  I think Mate would disagree with that.  I paraphrased.)

But while I was here, there was cuddling, freaking out because the house has reached terminal devastation, freaking out because (what else?)  I have SEVERAL deadlines, and freaking out because the dog has decided that if he CAMPS OUT ON MY BREASTS I might never leave him alone again. (Co-dependent little bastard.  I'm sort of blown away.)  Oh-- and knitting.

This is the chain mail rib scarf for Jeremy.  Because Aiden needs to make something that will protect his bunny, the next time he decides to be brave.

And, of course, rainbow sheep, because Alex W. sent them to me, and everybody needs some rainbow sheep.

There was also the following conversation over Rubio's on Saturday:

Squish:  How come Mr. Krabbs has a daughter but no wife?

Mate:  Maybe she died in childbirth.  If mom's a whale and dad's a crab, that can't be an easy labor.

Zoomboy:  Died in childbirth?  Like the princess in Star Wars Episode 3?  

Me:  Omigod... my life!

You know... just to remind me that family is family after all.

Oh, and THIS happened, and suddenly people are offering to send Jason Collins copies of The Locker Room.  Hey-- I'd buy it and sign it if someone could tell me where to send it!  Oh yeah-- and Chris Kluwe did something awesome too, if we're talking about sports!

And I suddenly became addicted to fingernail polish--on my fingernails, don't panic-- because before I left for Chicago I made the heinous mistake of getting acrylic tips.  They looked lovely, but by the time I popped them off because they were annoying the hell out of me, what was left underneath was brittle and icky, and I bought every nail polish bottle that said, "strengthening" "conditioning" and "revitalizing"-- in pretty colors of course. I'm going for professional help in the nail department-- I'm not exactly sure I should have ever given up my original hygiene routine, which basically involved ripping my nails off when they became inconvenient.

Oh!  And don't forget Daisy Harris is going to guest blog for me on Wednesday!  She's awesome, funny, and smart-- you'll enjoy her very much!

And as for me?  Well, I've got two youtube videos to speak for me-- enjoy.

Racing for the Sun

 Some of you will not be surprised to know that I took a film class once, one with a teacher who had sort of a thing for Elmore Leonard.

After watching The Grifters and Out of Sight and Lone Star (I know, not all Elmore Leonard, but still) I began to have an appreciation for characters that blurred boundaries, but whom you still rooted for.

When I started writing, those people were fresh in my mind.

Ace Atchison is that kind of character, and so is Sonny.

Ace is blunt, direct, and very aware of his rank as bottom-middle of the pecking order.  He doesn't particularly care.  But when Sonny shows up on the scene, Ace uses whatever resources he can to shelter Sonny from what they both know can be a very cruel world.

Sonny doesn't make it easy on him.

I loved writing Ace and Sonny.  This book is told from Ace's POV, and while I was perfectly aware of what was going through Sonny's head, watching Ace flounder through it, try to come to terms with who he thought Sonny was, and with all the places he got that wrong-- that was a fascinating puzzle, and I loved it.

At the same time, there were scenes that left me shaking as I wrote them.  The scarring on their arms is one of the places.  The first sex scene is another.  Those weren't the only ones.

These guys got deep under my skin, and they did it quickly, and they did it without mercy.  This won't be the only time we see them-- they are a hard couple to shake.  But I warn you, just like this time, the next time we see them they'll be doing things we're not ready for, things we might not like, and the rawness of what they feel, what they think--that's not going to change.  Oh yeah-- and next time?  It's going to be from Sonny's point of view.  Because reality in 3-D is overrated, I want to go for the fourth dimension of crazy!

That being said, here's the blurb-- and enjoy.  If I've done my job, this one will seize you by the throat and shake you around a little.  I understand some of us like that!

Available at Dreamspinner Press
Available at ARe
Available at Amazon.com   (You may have to wait a little for the Kindle link!)

The Blurb:

"I'll do anything." 

Staff Sergeant Jasper "Ace" Atchison takes one look at Private Sonny Daye and knows that every word on paper about him is pure, unadulterated bullshit. But Sonny is desperate, and although Ace isn't going to take him up on his offer of "anything," that doesn't mean he isn't tempted. 

Instead, Ace takes Sonny under his wing, protecting him when they're in the service and making plans with him when they get out. Together, they're going to own a garage and build race cars and make their fortune hurtling faster than light across the desert. Together, they're going to rewrite the past, make Sonny Daye a whole and happy person, and put the ghosts in Ace's heart to rest. 

But not even Sonny can build a car fast enough to escape the ghosts of the past. When Sonny's ghosts drive them down and run their plans off the road, Ace finds out exactly what he's made of. Maybe Sonny was the one to promise Ace anything, but there is nothing under the sun Ace won't do to keep Sonny safe from harm.


The Excerpt:


The Meet




MY NAME is Jasper Anderson Atchison. People call me Ace.
I am a murderer and a thief, but if Sonny still wants me, I will call myself a good man.
Right now, I am driving a rented car through the Mojave Desert toward Bakersfield from Barstow. There’s a girl next to me who I should have left in Barstow, but I may be taking her home for a spell before she moves on, because that seems to be my job. I seem to be the one who will fix what is broken. But that is not important—in fact, the girl, bless her, isn’t important. What is important is that I get us back to the hospital in Bakersfield before Sonny wakes up and knows that I am gone. That’s important, because if anybody asks, I don’t want Sonny to lie. He’s not no damned good at it. He needs to think I was right there, watching over him as he slept, like I promised. But I promised I’d keep him safe too, and he is in a hospital right now, so that’s not saying much.
Then, we never did say much, me and Sonny. Never did say much at all.




MY FOLKS were all right people—not warm, but not rough. Fed us, clothed us, gave us stuff for Christmas. But I was the youngest of six, and that makes things crowded, and it makes you damned near invisible.
By the time I graduated, invisible was the only thing I was good at.
I decided I might as well be invisible someplace else. I got good marks, but Dad worked a factory job and Mom worked register in a gas station. Good marks, bad marks, there weren’t no money for school. I signed up for the army, shipped out to the Mideast. Wasn’t great, didn’t suck, I signed up again. Got promoted to staff sergeant with the re-up, and there I was, in charge of new recruits, when Sonny showed up in my unit.
Now I ain’t that tall and I’m not that wide—five feet ten inches when I stretch my neck, maybe 180 when I’ve been working out—but I still felt bigger’n Sonny. He’s maybe five six, and if he’s taller, it’s ’cause he’s lying, and 120 soaking wet.
Sonny made himself small. He was standing just as straight and looking just as stiff as the other recruits, but something in his stomach or his shoulders—he was wishing I’d just ignore him.
He looked like a dog slinking outside a gas station, hoping he gets fed more than he’s fearing he’ll get the fist.
Made me squirmy, that look. Like he was thinking I’d be the one to give him the fist. Now it’s true I don’t go around adopting orphans, but I don’t go around kicking ’em either. So I gave the new guys the spiel, sun up, sun down, where the schedule was, where the rifle practice was, how soon they’d be expected to report. The other rookies I sent to their bunks, but Sonny I asked to stay behind.
“Private Daye—wait? Really? Someone named you Sonny Daye?”
Sonny has gray eyes in a poky sort of face—the kind with the cheekbones poking out and the chin poking out and the edges of the eyes sort of poking over the side of the temple—and he narrowed those gray eyes at me and scowled.
And didn’t answer.
Well, hell. I had to get power-tripping on his ass, and that was not what I’d had in mind. “Private, it was a simple question—did your parents really name you Sonny Daye?”
The boy’s face twisted in agony. He was eighteen—eighteen years and three months, if his reg papers were any close to right—but he looked younger ’cause of his size. His face was small and his teeth were crowded, and the looks he kept giving me… well, I backed up a step so as not to spook him into running out into the damned desert and stepping on a land mine.
“That’s not your name, is it?” I asked, shooting in the dark.
He broke attention to look me full in the face. His mouth was open, moist and full, and he licked his lips with purpose.
“I’ll do anything,” he said, and no man in the world could misinterpret what he meant by that.
I swallowed.
There was a temptation there, a growing knowledge I wasn’t ready to face.
But whether he knew it or not, he was offering me more than sex right then, he was offering me dishonor, and whether I was invisible or not, my folks had raised me right.
“You are not at ease, Private,” I barked, and he went back to being at attention. I stood there for a second and watched, scowling, as a drop of sweat traveled from his temple, down his cheek, and near his ear. There was the barest amount of stubble there to get in the way of that sweat, but the skin was tanned like it had seen hard weather. Eighteen? I could see it. But it hadn’t been eighteen easy.
“You had to be desperate,” I said, “to risk prison time by lying to the US government.”
He swallowed and kept his eyes trained forward. I was only a little smart. Someone who came before me had to have noticed that this boy had lied to be here. That same someone had to have helped him fake it too—Social Security number, ID, checking account, birth certificate—someone with connections.
“You’re eighteen, though,” I said, making sure.
“Yessir!” he snapped out, with so much force I could tell he was relieved to tell the truth.
“Boy,” I said, though he was a bare three years younger than me, “have I beat you?”
His gray eyes grew large in that tanned face. “Sir-no-sir!”
“Has anyone in the service beat you?”
He jerked his head back with so much surprise that, once again, I was relieved. “Sir-no-sir!”
“Do you want to be beat?”
He cringed sideways like he knew what it was like to dodge a blow. “Sir? No, sir.”
I nodded. “Then you will stand tall when you are at attention, and you will behave as though there is no beating—none—waiting around the corner, do you hear me?”
“Sir-no-sir?”
I sighed and stepped into his space, lowered my head, and spoke personally. “Sonny Daye? You want to last a week here in this fucking oven, where people are either bored, trigger-happy, or just fucked in the head from both? Then you need to act like you will not get beat. You have to tell people your sergeant will get them for you? You do that, but it won’t make you popular. But you tell yourself what you got to so that you stand tall, or you will not last here, do you understand?”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob. “Sir-yes-sir.”
“Good. It says here your specialty is machinery and cars. Great. You stow your shit in your bunk and report to Master Sergeant Galway by the auto bay there with all them Hummers. He’s a fucker, and he ranks me, so you walk in there like you own the fucking place, and if you’ve got to pick up a wrench and kneecap him, you don’t let him lay a finger on you. I’ve got your back.”
He swallowed and actually looked at me. “Thank you, Staff Sergeant,” he said, nodding. “I can defend myself.”
I nodded. “Good. Now you gotta act like you deserve to be defended, or that won’t help you. Hear me?”
And he nodded again and set his jaw.
“Dismissed.”
He marched out of there with his shoulders set and that aggressive jut to his jaw, and I breathed a little easier. Yeah, sure, he might be an asshole to his bunkmates, but they’d leave him alone. He needed to learn, I thought, irritated. He needed to not be meat.
I kept a weather eye out for him, as they say. Saw him sitting alone at mess but scowling at anyone who sat next to him. I’d walk by, bend down, say a word—who would give him hell, who was good to know. He took my advice and pretty soon, I sat with my rank, he sat with his, but he wasn’t alone. I felt like I’d done my job then, and it felt good.
Master Sergeant Galway, just like I thought, had it out for him just for breathing.
Galway was an evil fucker, with red hair he kept brutally buzzed, big green freckles he protected with zinc oxide in that violent sunshine, and a scar—one he’d signed up with—ripping from the corner of his mouth to the corner of his eye. He’d told recruitment it had been a car wreck he’d survived. All that time I’d spent invisible? I wasn’t always a good boy. I knew a knife wound when I saw it.
Last boy who’d been under Galway’s care in the auto bay had walked in front of a bank of sandbags during a shelling.
Galway said the boy was weak. I suspected he had a way of making men weak.
Two weeks after my boy got there, he walked into mess with a black eye. He met my eyes as he stood in line for chow, and I nodded.
He nodded back.
That day, after mess, I paid a visit to the auto bay. Said I needed to requisition a Hummer—and I did—for Master Sergeant Kennedy, who was putting together two teams of recon to make sure no one was moving in on us. We were outside of Pakistan, and I wasn’t high enough to be in the know, but I knew people were running around like headless chickens and that the privates were running message after message that they didn’t know about and didn’t want to.
There was going to be action, something big, and if the good master sergeant wanted to check for bogeymen, I wasn’t gonna tell him no.
I got there just in time. Sonny was standing in the corner, a lug wrench in his hand, looking at the other two privates and Master Sergeant Galway like he was going to take them down. Galway was holding onto his arm, furious, while Daye’s jaw was clenched like this was his last stand.
“Private Daye!” I snapped out, and without flinching, without questioning, he jerked his spine upright, dropped the wrench, and stood at attention.
“Staff Sergeant!”
“Master Sergeant Kennedy needs his Hummer ready, complete with ordinance, as well as two other vehicles. Go out and start outfitting those, and I’ll come help in a moment.”
“Sir-yes-sir!” His voice rang in the hot confines of the concrete-floored auto bay. Then he turned, grabbed his box of tools, and trotted out to the Hummers.
“Master Sergeant?” I inquired courteously. “Is there something I should know about?”
Now, if Daye had been insubordinate or had asked for what had just been happening, this would be the time to say something. But Galway turned his head and spat, the spittle steaming on the concrete.
“You’re not in position to know shit,” he snarled, and the look he cast behind him to the other privates said volumes.
They were scared of him too. I was only a little smart, but I knew that.
I shook my head and went out to Sonny.
“Private?” I said as he busied himself with loading ordinance into the Hummer.
“Sir?” he said, looking sideways.
“There a Hummer we can outfit?”
“Yessir.”
“You want to see more of this godforsaken desert?”
A smile pulled at that flat, grim mouth. “Sir-yes-sir!”
I nodded. “Then set about that when you’re done. I’m off duty for the day.”
Suddenly the military crispness relaxed a little. “Sir?” he asked conspiratorially, and I liked that little half smile so much I leaned in for the conspiracy.
“Yeah?”
“Do I have permission to modify our vehicle?” he asked, his gray eyes growing big enough to almost glow.
“We don’t have that much time, Private.”
“Meet me back here in an hour,” he said.
“Will do, Private,” I said, nodding. I turned back around and saw Galway giving us the hairy eyeball, so I saluted smartly and walked back to my bunk for my flak jacket and helmet, because it was fucking Afghanistan, and even a joyride didn’t come without body armor.




TWO hours later, I rode a rocket through the desert.
Yeah, it had all the outward appearance of a gas-fueled Hummer, but you stepped on that gas pedal? There was nothing but wind and grit in your face and a steering wheel that read your mind.
I swear that thing was soaring, off-road—I swerved around rock outcroppings, small stands of brush, and once? A motherfucking cobra—and Sonny sat in the passenger seat, hanging on to the roadie bar for dear life, fingers turning white he was clutching it so hard. If there wasn’t a look on his face like he was flying, I woulda said he was scared to death, but there was that look, and all I could hear in my head was my own voice going, “Faster! Faster!” when my brother took me out for a ride when I was twelve.
He wanted to go faster, and I obliged.
The cliff wall, the same color as the sand, brought us up short. I didn’t see it, and the abrupt 360 I pulled to keep us from slamming face-first into a hunk of rock left us breathless and shaking with adrenaline as I pulled the thing to a stop in the shade.
I half laughed, not really afraid, and looked at Sonny. His eyes were squeezed shut with fear, and I felt bad.
“Sorry ’bout that, Private,” I said, trying for courtesy.
“I’m gonna hafta change my shorts,” he snapped, only half kidding, and I squashed a smile down.
“Well, I hope you did your laundry,” I told him soberly.
His grin caught me by surprise. “Sir-yes-sir!”
I laughed. “Man, Sonny, I do not know what you did to this thing, but it’s like magic. If anyone else drives this vehicle, they will think they stole a flying carpet instead.”
Sonny ducked his head, looking bashful. “Thank you,” he mumbled. “You drive like a tornado.”
I laughed some more, happy like I hadn’t been since I was a little kid and Jake was still my hero. “My brother taught me,” I said. “He used to street race. Damn, he was good.”
“Was?” he asked, and I looked away.
“Was,” I told him, because Jake had driven his car up on the railroad tracks to be hit by an oncoming train when I was a senior in high school. He’d been twenty-six then, with a job at the cannery and his second baby on the way. People said he’d turned off the ignition and just sat there, head back, eyes closed, waiting. But I didn’t want to talk about that, not to Sonny, not now. “But I miss racing,” I said to fill the silence. “Best time ever.”
“You can make money on it,” Sonny said, sounding glad he had something to contribute.
“Yeah? Yeah—Jake used to make money. Said he could make more if he could forget he wanted to live.” But he’d forgotten at the end, hadn’t he? “Maybe when I get back, I’ll do that. Just buy myself a car, soup it up.”
“I’d trick it out for you,” Sonny said, and I looked to my side to see him looking at me earnestly. “I’d make it fly. You’d dust everyone. We’d make a shitload.”
“Enough to—”
“Start my own garage,” he said, his voice dreamy, and I knew this was something he’d thought about.
I smiled a little, thought to give him his pipe dream. “Yeah, sure, Sonny. We’ll do that. Take the pay we save, buy ourselves a car, a little garage. Make us some money. Get a bigger garage and live someplace nice. Why not?”
He looked fierce then, like I’d given him a dream and a backbone, a reason to sink his teeth into the world.
“That’s a promise,” he said, his voice guttural. “You can’t go back.”
I blinked. I hadn’t realized I’d married the guy just by feeding his dream. But then…. “Why not?” I shrugged. “Got nothin’ better to do when I get back.”
He nodded and spat into the dust. “Good,” he said, as if we’d sealed something. I guess maybe we had. “Now let’s get back and I can fix the mods on this thing so no one knows I’ve been fucking with it. Galway’ll fuck me sideways if he knows.”
Something hot and alien stopped my breathing then. “He’d do that?”
Sonny shrugged. “Sure. Why not. Those guys, they’ll do anything if it hurts you.”
He sounded like he knew.




SO NO more black eyes after that. But neither of us stopped watching his back. Unfortunately we were at war, and things had a way of stabbing you, shooting you, or reaming you from behind, no matter how hard you tried to sprout eyeballs in the back of your head.
Sonny adapted to the army, though. He didn’t fit in, but he adapted. There were locals that slept near the camp. The official rule was not to encourage them, not to buy from them, not to get attached to them—but they were folks, same as us. Some of the boys, the ones who grew up with those parents who watched their every move? Those guys had trouble watching the ten-year-olds with the M16s. Me? My folks didn’t know what we were doing, as long as we got home in time for dinner. I watched my brother slice a piece off his best friend once just because the guy was standing too close to him. The guy ended up with a scar that looked just like Galway’s, except across his chest, and he didn’t stop wanting to stand too close to Jake. Jake just stopped objecting, that was all.
So I didn’t mind the boys with the guns, but I did mind watching them surf through our garbage to eat, so I started sneaking food to them. Sonny saw me and started doing the same.
On the one hand, it didn’t feel honest. It felt like feeding cats, and they weren’t cats, they were people, starving people, children running in linen diapers and nothing else, their feet bare on the burning sands of the road.
On the other, we didn’t make the world and we didn’t make the war. We just pulled a trigger in it when we were asked, and that was all we had. We wanted to feed people like cats? Well, it was better’n shooting them like cats, and I knew guys back home who would do that too.
So we fed the children, and knew they brought the food to their parents in their little tents, and knew that sometimes it went to feed the babies and sometimes it went to feed the dads. All we could do was bring the scraps. It had to be enough.
You feed a cat, and it gets attached, and it was the same for Sonny. He had a little girl, thin, brown, swathed in lengths of cloth like they all were. This one, though—she had a red ribbon, soiled and limp, tied to her wrist like a bracelet. Sonny gave it to her—I think he got it from one of the girls, a copter pilot—and she wore it all the time, smiling at him with quick flashes of white teeth. She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten.
She followed him around when she could, and he let her carry his tools and gave her money for the help. The money was good, and the food was probably better, but mostly? She was like me, I guess. Her mom had a thousand kids, and there were a thousand thousand people in that camp by our base, and she was lost, another set of bare feet and a high-pitched voice, unless she was with Sonny and he made her feel special.
The day we got hit, the fuckers attacking us, they didn’t give a damn about all those locals hanging near the Americans. They just ripped right through like butter.
We had bunkers ready for the attack, and there I was with all the new recruits, listening to the fire and the screams and the chaos, when I looked around and realized I couldn’t see Sonny.
Something horrible roiled through me. He would have been in the auto bay—that was safe, wasn’t it? With his little barefoot shadow in his wake?
I looked at my guys. They were safe, they had ordnance—and there was a Marine Special Ops guy who had stopped for a shower, shit, and shave and gotten caught with us Army grunts when the firing started. They were safer with him than with ten of me.
“You got these guys?” I asked, listening to see if the shelling had started up on the other side of camp.
Lance Corporal Burton looked at me as though that were the stupidest question on the planet. He was a black guy, pleasant round face, light-brown skin, shaved smooth, which he didn’t have to do as a jarhead, but he had the kind of head it looked good on, so why not?
“Good,” I said, taking his silence for acquiescence, which was stupid, but I was worried. “I gotta go check on my buddy. His guys don’t have his back.”
Burton raised his eyebrows. “Your guys don’t have his back?”
I squinted at him. “We don’t all come from a fire cradle, like you all,” I said, thinking about the way those Marines had each other’s backs through fucking lava storms and ice bombs and shit. “Sometimes we’re just grunts and bullies, same as any other schoolyard.”
Burton looked at the new recruits, who were sitting, a little shell-shocked, but sound, cradling their M16s like newborn children.
“Yeah. We’ll live,” he said sourly, and I had a feeling they’d live because he knew how to aim, but still. It was Sonny and he was alone.
“I owe you,” I said, and he shook his head.
“Man, just have your guy’s back,” he said in disgust, and I took that for what it was, and ducked out of the bunker and held my breath.
It was about a hundred yards from that bunker to the auto bay, and maybe the longest run of my life. There were some portable buildings in the way, the mess hall, the showers—I wasn’t all that exposed, but everyone else was behind barriers, and I felt as naked as I’ve ever felt in my life.
Still, my breathing didn’t get any better as I slid into the auto bay. In fact, if anything, it got worse.
I could hear Galway taunting Sonny, even over the retreating shellfire.
“C’mon, Daye, give her up. Your little raghead friend, she ain’t got no business here. You kick her outta this here bunker or I’ll shoot her myself!”
“She’ll die out there!” Sonny protested. It was about the only time I ever heard him stand up for someone.
I ran full tilt into the auto bay and saw that Galway’s other cronies were nowhere to be seen. It was just him, Sonny, and a terrified nine-year-old girl.
“Galway, stand down!” I snapped, and it might have worked, but he’d studied ranks same as me, and his stars and bars were more and better.
“What did you say to me, you insubordinate little shit?” he snarled, and I looked up to see Sonny, his back to the little girl as she wept in the corner. A shell went off, nearer than the last one, and she screamed a little and whimpered, and I thought about what a shitty thing war was, especially for this poor kid here.
“I said leave ’em alone! It’s not like he can fire his weapon!” And it was true. There were tiny little window ports on the shelling side of the auto bay, supported by sandbags, but at the moment? There were two latrines and a shower between the auto bay and whoever was throwing shells at us. Unless someone snuck in past our outer defenses, there wasn’t nobody to shoot at through that little window.
“And I said he’s got a little raghead girl in here and that’s against regulations—that kid needs to go!”
“She’ll be killed,” I said, and I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that it was the same thing Sonny had said. It was basic, wasn’t it? Basic humanity? But then, Galway wasn’t hardly human.
At that moment, the guys throwing the shells got smart and added some extra oomph to their ordinance. The two latrines went up in a spatter of sun-boiled shit and a corner of the auto bay, pulverized in an instant. I was thrown down face-first, and so was Galway, and I pulled myself up when I heard Sonny’s wail from under a pile of rubble.
Oh God. He was hurt. I imagined him, bloody, ripped, dying, and for a moment my world became a telescope, me on the far, small end, all the bad things I imagined about Sonny on the big-seeing magnified end, and I thought my breath would stop.
I started digging through the rubble, ignoring Galway, and when I pulled up the sandbags under the broil of the sun, I saw he might have had some scrapes and bruises, but he wasn’t hurt.
The little girl, though, the one with the red ribbon on her wrist—her skull was caved in. Her tiny little face didn’t hardly look human, and the blood was seeping up through the gray dust that covered them both. Sonny was cradling her and weeping even as Galway pulled himself up off of the ground.
“Shut up! Stop whining, you little faggot!” He was screaming, which was stupid because our ears were all ringing and he couldn’t hear his own voice. I know everything I heard sounded like it came from the bottom of a pool.
I looked up, and he was advancing in on us, his M16 in his hand and a look I didn’t like at all in his eyes.
I don’t know what I would have done then. At least that’s what I tell myself. I had my own weapon, a standard-issue Beretta, in my hand, aimed straight on Galway with the safety off. I stood there, finger on the trigger, yelling although I couldn’t hear my own words, and that’s what we were doing when the next shell hit us.
My gun went off and Galway’s face dissolved at the same time. The explosion pitched me forward and buried me under sandbags, and this time, it was Sonny digging me out of them.
“My gun,” I said when I could pull myself to my knees.
Sonny said something, but I couldn’t hear him. I must have asked “what” about six thousand times, because finally he turned me, and what I saw….
He’d taken the little girl’s body and laid her facedown in the puddle of her blood. He’d put my gun in her hands.
The angle was right, I realized, my head ringing, a pain in my ribs and my shoulder I couldn’t seem to breathe past. The angle was right. She could have shot him as he was advancing on her and Sonny. But that’s not what had happened. What had happened was I had shot my own man in the face and I wasn’t sure if I meant to or not, but I’d been aiming, I’d been aiming when the shell went off.
The shells weren’t going off anymore.
I shook my head, dazed, short of breath, trying to figure the story, trying to figure what Sonny had planned with that little girl and my gun and a dead master sergeant. Sonny, tears tracking through the grime, was yelling at me something I couldn’t hear.
I stood up and said, “I hope they go easy at the court-martial,” and it was the last thing I managed before my knees gave out and my lungs were set fire and I looked down and saw I’d taken shrapnel and I might not survive to see this mess untangled.

Wait... you mean someone didn't move the house?

My husband is so many shades of awesome.
Flowers?  For ME?
He came to pick me up at the airport at bumfuck a.m., looking exhausted and sleep-touseled.  First there was the kiss, then there was the hug, then there was the...

Standing in line while I went to see what in the fuck happened to my luggage.

See, the thing is, I ended up on the wrong flight.  On Monday, I split a cab with the lovely (and delightfully snarky) Julianne, and we got to visit before her flight took off, and then I was there.  At the airport.  Balancing my laptop on my carry-on and writing like the frickin' wind.

Anyway, after doing that for a while, I hauled ass to the other side of the airport (in O'Hare, this involves going underground and walking a football field or two) and found my gate.

Kat, Nessa, and Ariel, and the really bad waitress.Except it wasn't really my gate, because my plane was going to be an hour and a half late.  Now, after the supreme fucked-upped-edness of incoming and outgoing flights during the big storms and the heightened security, this may seem like no big deal, except my connecting flight from LAX to Sacramento only had a thirty-eight minute layover.  Which meant that I'd be stuck in LAX with no way to get home.  (Oh the HORROR.  The only good thing about that would be calling up Rhys Ford and whining to have her come get me so I could visit Chicken.  If I hadn't just spent two weeks away from home, it would have been tempting.)  So, after a little bit of whining, I managed to get a non-stop to Sacramento.

Please don't kill me for this pic,
Julianne!My luggage, however, was bound and determined to visit L.A., take in a show, and do some morning surfing.

So, Mate waited while I did that, and then we got in the car and he took me home.

"It's not clean," he apologized, and I wanted to kiss him some more.  Man, who cares if it's clean.  It's got my kids and my cats and my booby hamster--it's perfect!

But he lied a little.  He DID clean.  I didn't really notice it until the next morning, after my three hour nap (three hours-- I spent thirteen hours in travel the day before, three hours about did it!)  but he'd seriously cleaned off the table.

And brought me flowers.

And I wanted to cry, because even if it's just for a week, baby, I'm home!

Yesterday was all about the sleep and a little about the dance lessons and very much about wearing the dog like another shirt.  Somebody did not get to sleep on people's chests for two weeks, and apparently I'm going to be paying for that.  (He's curled up in a little embryonic ball as I type.  Which is inconvenient--I need to pee.)
*hugs*
Today is all about the laundry and the visiting the post office to mail swag and tomorrow I'll be back in the pool, oh baby!

And then, hopefully a trip to get my nails fixed (oi!  Long story. Accidental acrylic tips that I finally just clipped off in pique--I swear, they slowed my writing down in immeasurable ways.)  And maybe, if I'm really good, a trip shopping.  I hate packing.  Especially for these trips.  There is a whole "change for dinner" thing.  I woke up this morning, put on knit shorts, a holey T-shirt (and not the blessed kind), and a sweater with holes and a Chiwhowhat in the bosom.  If I decide not to shower (always a possibility when you don't see real people all day long) I may wear this outfit to bed.  At conventions and conferences?  I have to pick not just one, but two outfits for any given day that do not make me look like a fat housewife doing laundry.  Can you hear me whine about the injustice?  *whine*

Anyway, in the middle of that?  Well, I finally finished my Christmas story for Riptide, and now, thanks to Shannon, Julyssa, Camille, Katriona, Tammy, Lynn, and Elizabeth, I think it's finally time for some of this travel to pay off in literary ways.  Now that Rusty and Oliver have their happy ever after in Christmas Kitsch, I think it's time for me to get to know Carson and Dale--two waiters, whose real life counterparts have enlivened my travel in recent months, and who deserve a story of their own.  "Carson", in fact, is based on the sweet young man who waited our table on our last day in Chicago.  When he found out that our entire table was crushing on him, and that everybody wanted me to put him  in my story, he actually helped us come up with his name.  He was tickled!   Shannon gave him some cards and told him to keep a look out for an Amy Lane story over the summer.  I guess that means I have to haul ass and write it, right?

And anyway-- Friday, I'll be totally pimping Racing for the Sun and, well, Tuesday I'll be on the road again.  *sigh*  The good news is that I'm going to have a guest blogger while I'm gone-- I'm so excited.  Someone WANTED to guest blog for me!  And I know you'll all be nice to her-- it'll be awesome!

But in the meantime?  Baby, I'm home!