Amy Lane's Blog: Writer's Lane, page 81

Kermit Flail--November Style!

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!
We have quite a selection here ladies and gents--all the November goodness your e-reader needs!
Elizabeth Noble presents book five in her Circles series, Andrea Speed ventures into the shadows (where she's most comfortable;-) with Hearts of Darkness, J.T. Rogers makes an awesome debut with a spy thriller, and the amazing and kind Aisling Mancy is playing to strengths with an alternative universe thriller!  
And if that weren't plenty,  Kim Fielding and Venona Keyes, two of my all-time favorite people and travel buddies, have a joint venture out that Kim assures me is "No angst at all!"  (If you knew Venona, you could see how this would be, because she is one of the top three most positive people on the planet.)
*whew*  
And I have to admit--November is a bit of a big month for me as well--I have two brand new releases and a re-release this month, and I'm pretty excited about them.  I shall yammer about them at another time, but for now, you can find the initial buy links down at the bottom :-)
And all that being said, I shall let you have at it--enjoy the pretty cover art, the exciting blurbs and the all around romance goodness!
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!

















Bait 
by Elizabeth Noble
Tyler McCall has made mistakes. He was a teacher—before he fell for a student in his school. That misstep cost him his job and everything he’d worked for. He moved to the Black Hills of Wyoming to start his life over, and he’s happy working at the Big Rock Inn near Devils Tower.
Linden Bourne, a no-nonsense FBI agent Tyler had met before, returns to Wyoming hot on the trail of a killer. The previously unexplored attraction between them grows—which is good considering they’ll be spending a lot of time together when a blizzard strands them at the inn. Cut off from the outside world, with no power, they’ll need to rely on their wits and each other to survive.
Especially when it becomes clear they’re not alone—and the danger they face comes from more than the elements.
BUY HERE


In From the Cold
by J.T. Rogers
Robert Flynn abandoned a sterling military career when his best friend and fellow soldier, Wesley Pike, died under his command. More than a decade later, Flynn’s quiet life is disturbed by the troubles of a fledgling CIA and Alexander Grant, a flashy agent with a lot to prove. As the space race between the United States and the Soviets heats up and the body count rises, the two men fight to find common ground. Grant knows Flynn believes in the cause, but all Flynn sees is the opportunity to fail someone like he failed Wes. An attack by a Soviet agent spurs Flynn to action and a reluctant association with the agency, and tilts Flynn’s world on its axis with a shocking discovery: Wesley Pike may be alive and operating as a Soviet assassin.


With Grant to bankroll the operation, his superiors looking the other way, and Flynn’s hard-earned peace officially forfeit, Flynn reunites his old team with the singular goal of finding Wes. But they get more than they bargained for—Wes is amnesiac and dangerous, brainwashed into becoming the perfect weapon. Flynn struggles to reach his friend, lead his team, and navigate his charged relationship with Grant—something neither of them expected and aren’t sure how to parse—while coming to grips with his long-buried feelings for Wes.


DSP Publications

Amazon 




Heartifact
by Aisling Mancy
Harper Kidd is a highly respected marine archaeologist. Yet, with the economy in a slump, he’s trapped working in an oil company’s exploration division. Now, at the ripe age of thirty, Harp is disgusted with his employer’s damage to the undersea world he loves, tired of his ATM-card-filching ex, and tormented by beautiful dreams of an undersea lover. It’s time for a change and when his best friend, Stick, pleads with him to assist on a deep-sea dig in the Mediterranean, he jumps at the chance.

Harper’s sprits are high when they discover the ruins of an ancient civilization, and soar to the heavens when they discover a statue of an ancient pelora, a mysterious hybrid creature said to mediate between the worlds of reality and fantasy—and the very lover who holds the starring role in his dreams.

When the crew discovers the site is teeming with unexploded ordnance from the conflicts in the Middle East, and the excavation turns deadly, Harper must choose between saving his best friend and saving the pelora he’s fallen in love with.


Read an excerpt on Love Bytes Reviews!
Men Over the Rainbow

Amazon, Amazon UK, All Romance eBooks, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords

en français

Men Over the Rainbow

Amazon FR, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords



*  Note from author:  
As many of you know, I advocate for abused kids.

The net proceeds of this book benefit those kids.

Please help me support them.



Releases November 24th!

Net proceeds benefit the The Trevor Project in the US,

le Refuge in France, and Arcigay in Italy

en français






Hearts of Darkness
by Andrea Speed
Kaede Hiyashi is sick and tired of living in the shadow of his father, supervillain Doctor Terror. Brilliant but crazy, Doctor Terror sends his son to Corwyn, California, for reasons Kaede can’t imagine. Sent to accompany and protect him is Ash, a genetically modified supersoldier raised and trained by an infamous death cult.

Corwyn is lousy with superheroes, led by the obnoxious Dark Justice. Kaede finds himself dancing around Dark Justice as he digs into his father’s mysterious business and teaches his socially awkward—but physically lethal—bodyguard to acclimate to “normal” life. Can these two wacky supervillains figure out what Doctor Terror wants them to do, solve the riddle of the villain known as Black Hand, and keep Dark Justice from raining on their bloody parade? The course of love—and world domination—never did run smooth.


Hearts of Darkness by Andrea Speed | DSP Publications






Kyle Green is on top of the world. He and Matt have been together for ten years, and—as the voice of Ecos, the wildly popular anime character—Kyle is treated like a rock star in anime circles. But in an instant, a stroke leaves him blind. When photographer Matt gets the opportunity of a lifetime, Kyle reexamines their relationship, discovers it has been a safety net rather than a true romance, and sets Matt free to pursue his dream. Kyle’s life and career as he knew them are gone, and he must now find the courage and creativity to draft a new plan.
After being away for fifteen years, Seth Caplan comes home to Chicago to care for his mother and to partner with a small start-up tech company. He and Kyle meet after Kyle’s collision with a child’s sidewalk toy, and they hit it off. Kyle wants to get back into running, and Seth becomes his guide. As they get to know each other, they start seeing each other beyond their three-times-a-week runs. But Seth’s revelation of the dark reason why he left his career in California sends the relationship into a tailspin and leaves both men running blind.

Dreamspinner Press 
Amazon 



Freckles
by Amy Lane

Carter Embree has always hoped to be rescued from his productive, tragically boring, and (slightly) ethically compromised life. But when an urchin at a grocery store shoves a bundle of fluff into his hands, Carter goes from rescuee to rescuer—and he needs a little help.

Sandy Corrigan, the vet tech who helps ease Carter into the world of dog ownership, first assumes that Carter is a crazy-pants client who just needs to relax. But as Sandy gets a glimpse into the funny, kind, sexy man under Carter’s mild-mannered exterior, he sees that with a little care and feeding, Carter might be Super-Pet Owner—and decent boyfriend material to boot.

But Carter needs to see himself as a hero first. As he says good-bye to his pristine house and hello to carpet treatments and dog walkers, he finds that there really is more to himself than a researching drudge without a backbone. A Carter Embree can rate a Sandy Corrigan. He can be supportive, he can be a hero, he can be a man who stands up for his principles!

He can be the owner of a small dog.
Buy at Riptide




Summer Lessons
by Amy Lane
a Winter Ball novel

Mason Hayes’s love life has a long history of losers who don’t see that Mason’s heart is as deep and tender as his mouth is awkward. He wants kindness, he wants love—and he wants someone who thinks sex is as fantastic as he does. When Terry Jefferson first asks him out, Mason thinks it’s a fluke: Mason is too old, too boring, and too blurty to interest someone as young and hot as his friend’s soccer teammate.

The truth is much more painful: Mason and Terry are perfectly compatible, and they totally get each other. But Terry is still living with his toxic, suffocating parent and Mason doesn’t want to be a sugar daddy. Watching Terry struggle to find himself is a long lesson in patience, but Mason needs to trust that the end result will be worth it, because finally, he’s found a man worth sharing his heart with.
Buy at Dreamspinner

Buy at ARE






Rampant Volume Two
by Amy Lane
Little Goddess: Book Four
Vol. 2

Lady Cory has carved out a life for herself not just as a wife to three husbands but also as one of the rulers of the supernatural communities of Northern California—and a college student in search of that elusive degree. When a supernatural threat comes crashing into the hard-forged peace of Green's Hill, she and Green determine that they're the ones in charge of stopping the abomination that created it. To protect the people they love, Cory, Bracken, and Nicky travel to Redding to confront a tight-knit family of vampires guarding a terrible secret. It also leads them to a conflict of loyalties, as Nicky's parents threaten to tear Nicky away from the family he's come to love more than his own life.

Cory has to work hard to hold on to her temper and her life as she tries to prove that she and Green are not only leaders who will bind people to their hearts, but also protectors who will keep danger from running rampant.

First Edition published as Rampant: The Fourth Book of the Little Goddess Series by iUniverse, 2010.
Buy at Amazon

The stages of a blog tour...

If I start to sound a little brief and distracted on the blog in the next week, it's because I'm actually promoting two books this month-- Freckles and Summer Lessons. 

That being said, I am currently writing blogs in the morning for my blog tours, and then writing in the evening for Nanowrimo.

So, yeah.

I'm desperately afraid of running out of things to say...

So tomorrow is Kermit Flail-- yayayayayayay!!!-- and right now?

I've got the five stages of a blog tour...

Cause I'm at stage three.

Stage 1--Denial: Blog tour? I don't have no stinking blog tour! There are politics to worry about and kids to shuttle to soccer and oh yeah, I'm trying to write/edit/freak out about this book I"m working on, and who has time for a blog tour. Besides, it's not due for--*checks phone *-- another two days.

Stage 2--Ideas: That's it. I'm going to have to write fifteen posts of teeny tiny excerpts, because dude. I'm not that interesting. People are tired of my bullshit. And I don't have anything interesting to say. What am I going to talk about--I already wrote the book! I mean, I spent a month or so, writing the damned book. I mean, it wasn't, you know, like I spent a month completely immersed in this world, and Carter and Sandy or Mason and Terry didn't dominate my thoughts, my conversations, my waking dreams until I was quoting them and thinking like them and bursting into illogical laughter over nothing because I imagined something they would say...

Yeah. Okay.  I might have a few ideas.


Stage 3--The actual writing: Bring me chocolate, caffeine, and takeout. The diet can wait, the heart problem's just a theory, and dammit, I've got shit to do.

Oh! And pull out your old college and high school style guides to expository essays, because essentially, you are writing a personal expository essay--complete with thesis statement and conclusion leading to your book--every time you write a blog post.

Unless you get clever, and then, remember that everything you want to do from a top-ten list to a character interview to improv beat poetry via the internet has some sort of precedent and some rules to help it go smoothly.

Stage 4--Organization: I have to admit--sometimes, I just have to send the whole package to one person and say, "Uh, hereyago!"  But sometimes I have to send it to all the different bloggers myself. I know, I know, for some of you, it's like, "But, you just send them one at a time, what's the difference?"

For me, it's a nightmare of talking to myself while sticking my tongue out from between my pursed lips as I regard my word program and my e-mail like foreign entities that have taken over my computer. I don't even have any tips for this but, "Make a list, check it twice, and cross your fingers to hope for the best."

There you go.

The end.

And finally, Stage 5:  Check every blog for replies for at least three days and comment back at least once on each blog.

Okay--I had a lot of grandmas and I'm telling you--that whole etiquette thing goes a long way in correcting the fact that you wrote these blogs at four a.m. while pounding ibuprofen after aggravating a chronic blog injury. (Yes, these are a thing--shoulder splangs and calf cramps abound from hunching over your computer for hours at a time.)

Be nice. Thank the nice bloggers for hosting you. Thank the nice people for showing up and, hopefully laughing, crying, or somehow responding to what amounts to a series of personal expository essays you wrote so they'd think you were an interesting person and would buy your book.

-  -  -

So there you go.

The five stages of a blog tour.

I'm on Stage 3. 

BRING ON THE COFFEE, PEEPS, I'M GETTING THIS SHIT DONE!

Deconstruction

The first time someone told me they did this, I was stunned and flabbergasted--and a little embarrassed.

The second time someone said this, I wanted to hide under a bed.

By the third time, I was a teeny bit proud and still baffled.

I remain at the baffled stage.

What I'm talking about is deconstructing a book to see how and what I did with it.

I've heard this from a couple of people, and I'm always flattered--but also always wishing I would have thought of it that way before I'd written it. "Oh my God, what would I have done differently if I'd known someone was going to dismantle my book and then see what the building blocks are made of?"

Of course, by now, I know not a damned thing.

But I will always--humbly--wish for better materials, better words, more knowledge, a better brain so that my edifice might be as enduring as possible.

Of course the one thing I've always found really fascinating about this is that the people who do it don't write anything like me.

In the most wonderful way possible.  They write stunning, miraculous books with their own unique power and voice. Why would they look at my little project and try to make a pattern out of it?

I figure anything they got from my book they worked an amazing synergy over, a complete transformative wave, and I boggle at what wonderful writers they must be to take what I have and use it in something completely different. It's magic, like taking old milk bottles (me) and creating dazzling runway quality faux-fur coats with them.

See?

Amazing.

I bring this up because of this pattern here on Ravelry; http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dragonscale-gloves

Which is beautiful and stunning and gorgeous.

And these products on ETSY:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/466847968/crochet-dragon-gloves-dragon-scale?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_c-accessories-gloves_and_mittens-arm_warmers&utm_custom1=7556a917-59fd-4490-adf6-7fffee5a64b5&gclid=CJOOz5S_jtACFQqPfgodO3UD6Q

Which are a little different, but still amazing.

I'm not great at reading patterns, you see.

I mean, I've done it--I have blankets and the kids have sweaters to prove it.

but I've always had to change something up.  The yarn, the length, whether there's a picture of a duck on the front, as the pattern says, or if I can modify that pattern to be the front AND back.  Squish's TREMENDOUSLY outsized sweater that I made a few years back ended up that way because I was practicing the raglan increase on a poncho, and Squish suddenly wanted a sweater instead.

It's always something different. About the only thing I follow religiously is the standard sock pattern, and I still add patterns every now and then to spice it up.

Anyway...

All this to say, I looked at those pictures and deconstructed them and made something similar but different.

Unlike the people who have, say, looked at my books to see what made them go, my version is worse not better


But I'm still proud like a little kid.

And Squish is an amazing model.

And I had fun. And I'm pretty sure I learned something too--I'll let you know the next time I try to do this. Although next time, I may break down and look at the pattern instead of just the picture.

If nothing else, doing this sort of thing sort of shatters your delusions of grandeur, whatever they may be.

Unless you're one of those people who broke down my books--in which case, all your grandeur is 100% non-deluded and awesome.

It's my knitting grandeur that always takes the hit.

Squish's Zinger

Okay-- first listen to the commercial clip--it's important to the story.

Second, we do live in a family for smartasses.

Squishy has been dying to join our ranks, but humor isn't always the easiest thing in the world.

Today, she has achieved her first steps into adult smatassery, and it was beautiful.

Per usual, Gordie decided to make sweet lurve to my drying knitwear, and I found myself having to weave in a snag.

Damned cat!

Anyway, I screamed out my favorite epithet for this occasion--

"AssHOLE!"

And Squish sang,

"The butt that smiles back!"

And Chicken, ZB, and I all sang back, "Asshole!"

And then we highfived and hugged her and welcomed her into the illuminati.

And--pleased with ourselves--repeated the joke about six million times.

With any luck, it shall become a family classic--no big pink eye will ever be flashed with disdain without it.

The butt that smiles back!

Heh heh heh heh heh...

Off to nano!

Look, I Made a Thing!

Yes, it's late at night so I'm going to pretend I'm a knitting blog (which is sort of what I set out to be, given that I wrote one book a year then, and I had a newborn) and showcase "things".

One of the things is, of course, this GIF set of two new books out in November (go me!) and Winter Ball which is, of course, the prequel to Summer Lessons.   Freckles is a stand-alone, but you may recognize a couple of Easter Eggs who work in PetSmart when you read it ;-)

I have to admit, I sort of love the GIF mostly because the covers are so pretty!

Anyway--

The GIF set isn't the only thing I made-- I also finished a knitted dog sweater and a pair of fingerless mitts, crochet style. Now, originally I was going to put dragon scales on the backs of these--and we'll see. I still might do it. I'm just afraid I won't have enough yarn to scale both mitts, and it's sort of a singular ball, so that would be unfortunate.

On the other hand, I REALLY want to try.

We shall see.

But I just started Nano, I need to get my writing on, and I'm going to leave you with the pictures and run!

MUAHAHAHAHAHA...

Well, not really.

I don't know how Mate and I do it--but it's been a Halloween tradition for 24 years now, that we be frickin' out of money when Halloween roles around. I'm sure there's a confluence of analyzable data to explain this phenomenon, but all I know is that going into Party City, telling our kids, "Hey, the sky is the limit!" and pulling out the credit card like a BOSS has never been an option.

But our kids do okay.

We always add one more thing to the outside decorations.

The kids always have a costume they helped create.

And we always have a pumpkin.

This year, we were in the Halloween Store (Spirit) and asking Squish, "Okay, ZoomBoy is going to be Papyrus from UnderTale, but what are you going to be?"

She looked around for a moment, and said, "Wait. I have the perfect thing. And we don't need that much."

One pair of tights. One pair of gloves. One set of suspenders. And a makeup kit.

Oh.

And a Sharpie.

She made such a good broken doll that one of the neighbors gave her extra handfuls of candy.

ZB's sister did his face--and I wasted a can of white paint on his non-tintable hair (his father has the same hair-- it won't register grays until Mate is completely gray) but the rest of it?  Well we bought makeup and gloves.

And Chicken's outfit was made for her by her grandmother, for her birthday.

Once more, with Twitter... Oh! And for our outdoor decorations?

We got two rat skeletons and a scorpion skeleton to go in our dead-pet cemetery.

Dudes.

It's like a weird, non-transferrable skill--although it does relate directly to my ability to make yarn projects without going yarn shopping, and have the stuff I throw together with odds and ends turn out better than anything I've planned.

I can't explain it.

But I like it.

They had the best time :-)

Weekend Update

*  Let's start out with OOPS! A fan freaked out a little when she saw the list of stuff coming out and DIDN'T see this book.

This is part two of Rampant, and it will be out November 22!

And yes-- Quickening is coming, folks! In the first half of 2017 :-)

So are The Green's Hill Werewolves.


*  On Friday, Squish was supposed to dress for her future career.

She went as a writer.

I'm not kidding.

I was vastly amused.


*  Yesterday, ZoomBoy's soccer game got moved from nine in the morning to one-thirty in the afternoon.  Squish's soccer game was from twelve to one-fifteen.

Mate coaches both teams.

The plan was for me and Squish to hang around and dispense snack (it was our week) and for Mate to leave the girl's team in the hands of his assistant coaches while he ran across town to get the player cards to the refs so he could coach the boy's team.

My parents came to the game--which was fun-- and Mate stopped by where we sat to remind me to collect the wagon and the player bench and to meet him at the next game.

And then he left.

Fifteen minutes later, the game was over and my parents said, "Okay, so where did Mate go?"

"He went cross town to coach ZoomBoy's game."

"Wait," ZoomBoy said, standing right across from me. "He went where?"

The lot of us stared at him.

Squish in a soccer coma--
At ZB's game.He'd been right there with me when Mate had run off.

About that time, I got Mate's phone call, the one saying, "DON'T FORGET OUR SON!"

Oops.

On the one hand, yes, he left our son at the soccer field.

On the other, well, he left the kid with B team while he went and did his job.

Honestly, after that moment in which we all stared at ZoomBoy--I laughed my ass off.

I think we shall give Mate a ration of shit about this for years.

Right up until I do something similar, of course.  Then it's just too sensitive a subject, right?

*  Friday I met with the Sacramento Writer's Group again--I do enjoy these monthly meetings, but we were missing a couple of people.

One of whom--Kim Fielding--sent me a picture of her flooded street in Turlock, which sort of held her back. (I think she put it on FB.)

All I can say is Best. Excuse. Ever.

* I'm knitting a dog sweater for a friend--and I pretty much looked at pictures and de-constructed the pattern.  So far, it fits Geoffie--a little snug, but this is for a dog about 3 lbs smaller--so it's good.

And I had a moment of pause. "What should I do? When should I do it? Start rib now or later? Do I finish this with a bind off or an attached i-cord?  OH NO! WHAT IF I DO THIS WRONG?"

And then it REALLY hit me.

Yes. These dogs need sweaters.It already fits the dog. The rest is personal preference. This isn't even a sock--I don't even have to remember what I just did so I can do it again for the second one.  There is no pattern I'm following--I shaped it according to my own tastes.  There's not a picture this is supposed to match



EVERY DOG SWEATER I MAKE CAN BE DIFFERENT.

You know.

Just as long as it fits the dog.

*  About that last deal?

It's a little scary not to have a pattern.

Yeah. Every time I start a book.

That.

EVERY BOOK I WRITE CAN BE DIFFERENT.

You know.

Just as long as I write to character.

*mind blown*

Peace!

Stuff That's Out, and Stuff That's Coming out:

Okay-- I've got some new releases out--and some old stuff being released in new ways.

Because it's 1:30 a.m. and my day was deliciously uneventful with nothing to do but write and knit (seriously-- doesn't get better than that!) I figured I'd put these up now so you could get a feeling for what's coming.

Also--and I'll link you to it--there's a book on Amazon called "Three Nightmares" by Amy Lane. THIS IS NOT MY BOOK. Gonna say it again. NOT MY BOOK.  

I thought I'd mention it twice, because I DO have a lot of stuff coming out, and I didn't want any of my readers to think, "Oh, hey--maybe she just didn't mention it."  Nope. Not my book.  May this other writer do as well as she deserves--but I just didn't want anybody to buy the book and feel cheated cause, yanno, not me.

Anyway-- off to bed now--but here's a preview of things to come!





Audiobook for Fish Out of Water--Out Already













Freckles, Out November 15th













Summer Lessons-- November 25th, 2016 

















The Granby Knitting Bundle-- This includes all four stories-- The Winter Courtship of Fur-Bearing Critters, How to Raise an Honest Rabbit, A Knitter in his Natural Habitat,  and Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair-- November 4th. 


The Virgin Manny--

January 1st. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You the Crash Test Dummies...

Now, some of you may remember when Mate showed me the design for this jersey. At first I was like, "EW, no-- that's creepy! It looks like a crash test dummy!"

"Well yeah. It was supposed to. That's the team name."

Well, this is what the jersey looks like.

This is also Mate, talking animatedly about soccer.

And the ZB, trying to look scary in his Halloween costume skeleton mitts.

And Squish, pointing out that it's only ZB.

And generally, I really love this sequence of pictures.

So I'm leaving you with them today.

Because they're so darned cool.

As is my family, and my Mate for that matter.

OH--I'm also leaving you with the music video, because ever since I realized the name of his team was the Crash Test Dummies, I couldn't get the song out of my head!

The Tile Couldn't Help With This...

So, a couple of days ago, I posted on Twitter/FB how excited I was about the Tile.  https://www.thetileapp.com/mate?opt=SEM&gclid=CI7-38_3988CFUiRfgodUdkBaw&gclsrc=aw.ds

This is an app and a little gizmo that makes it harder to lose your keys. You put the tile on your keyring and when you can't find your keys, you push a button on your phone and the gizmo beeps. When you can't find your phone, you push the gizmo and your phone beeps. It's very handy-- people online responded with stories of putting them on necklaces and putting the necklaces on children and being able to find your children at a crowded event. Fun stuff!

Anyway...

So this morning, I thought I had my keys--they should be right in the pocket of my sweatshirt, so I put it on and went out to my car and...

Looked inside at my keys on the console as I pulled fruitlessly at the door to unlock it.

But... but... but...

"Click your Tile mom!"

"Doesn't do me any good," I told Squish. "They're locked in."  This only happens when I leave the keys in the car and Mate gets home, sees the car unlocked, and locks it.

Awesome.

  I got out my phone and texted Mate that I needed him to come unlock the minivan. While I was doing this, I told Big T, "Sorry, big guy--you're going to be walking to the bus stop in the rain."

"You know, you should really keep your keys somewhere you'll remember them," he said bitterly, stalking away.

Mate texted back. "You know, this is why purses were invented."

"Big T already yelled at me," I told him.

"Sorry."

Even the dogs were sending me recriminating looks. I didn't even blame them.

Mate got home and gave me the keys--and an "I'm sorry" kiss, and I went to take Squish to school. As I got into the car, I had to adjust the seat back. Way back.

Wait a minute...

"What are you doing, Mom?"

"Texting your sister."

"Why?"

"Because she took you out for ice cream last night, left the keys in the car, and got me in trouble!"

"She did it?"

"Yup," I said grimly. I texted Mate this info, and got a "D'oh!" in return.

I texted Chicken, and got an "I'm SO SORRY!"

Well, fine.

"It's okay. Dad yelled at me."

"I"m sorry."

"The dogs yelled at me."

"Assholes."

"Everybody thought it was my fault."

"I'm so sorry!"

I sighed. "Yeah, well. It's not like there wasn't precedent."

"You've done it a lot, Mom."

"Yeah."  I brightened. "But at least today I knew where they were!"