Cherie Noel's Blog, page 14

Naughty minion!

The Boss-Lady hasn't been communicating much Minion-ward this week. Also, my little corner of teh Interwebz has been relatively quiet (I think about a quarter of it is in Atlanta for RWA and the rest of us are all feeling jealous & wishing we were there....)

Sooo... perhaps I should just find something pretty for us to look at?

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Not your thing? I can offer something a little... naughtier!

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Anyway, have a fun weekend! I'm planning on cleaning!

Happy Fourth!

There's a lot that's wrong with our country right now, but there's also a lot that's RIGHT!

So on this day of celebration of our Independence as a country to make our own mistakes, here are two videos!

Flash Mob!



And what holiday is complete without the Muppets?


Everybody have as much fun as you can, and I may be a bit scarce until this time next week as I will be having family visiting and my hubby will be leaving for three weeks.

Yuckiness

It is Minion Monday, ostensibly.

I am simply apologizing. My sinuses like to think they are barometers, and we have been having RAIN lately (I think there has been ONE day in the last two weeks that did not feature at least one thunderstorm, and most of those also included torrential downpour). My sinuses finally rebelled and went full-on swollen and congested. We have moved on (forgive me if this is TMI) to post-nasal drip. My throat feels swollen, scraped, and glued together. It feels fine as long as I don't swallow, talk, or breathe too heavily.

I am trying to avoid decongestants as they (a) don't seem to help significantly and (b) leave me drowsy -- even the purported "non-drowsy" type. So right now, there is a LOT of hot tea happening, as much of it as possible with honey. There have been a number of naps, but I try to limit them as they make it more difficult to get to sleep at night and then get up at a reasonable hour of the morning afterward. I am considering chicken soup, as well.

And in order to distract myself from feeling miserable, I have immersed myself in reading Gail Carriger's  Parasol Protectorate series. I have previously read (and loved) books 1 & 2 (Soulless and Changeless) and owned but had not read #3 (Blameless). I am not not only caught up, but had to stretch my food budget to make room to buy  #4&5 (Heartless and Timeless). Also finally read, loved, and shared with the Girl-child book 1 in her newest series (book: Etiquette and Espionage, series Finishing School). Steampunk + vampires and werewolves = love.

I am particularly rooting for Lord Akeldama and his beloved Biffy (a vampire and his werewolf).

It's not overly descriptive in the adult relations, so the books are even appropriate for, I think, teenagers of a *slightly* older vintage than my own Girl-child. Maybe once she's read all the Finishing School books (which are only just now coming out -- book 2 is slated for, I believe, this November).

Also, the Boss-Lady informs (via FB) that she has been struck down with her own ickies in the form of EVIL MIGRAINES -- I sympathise; I get comparatively mild migraines myself on occasion! SO, let's get better soon all around; & enjoy your reading! What have you glommed lately?

UPCOMING RELEASE! and other items of note...

This is a big one for me because I feel a teensy tiny bit of responsibility for this particular story. It all started with a song...


Blurb: Sometimes, a thing is so beautiful, so precious you can’t resist returning to it over and over again… sometimes it’s so wondrous you are willing to do anything to be worthy enough to finally to stay in the place where it is. Until then you return, time after time to the one heart, the one pure soul that holds your heart forever, Changeless… My name is Sean Taliaferro Allen, and for me, that one precious and perfect thing will always be Calvin Abelin.

Changeless releases Friday, June 28, from MLR Press (a special day in its own right for me, anyway; this is like inch-and-a-half thick icing on the cupcake!) -- links and excerpt to follow when available.

On Thursday, Our Fearless Leader here will be on Write on the Edge (Blogtalk radio) with Jambrea Jo Jones and other authors from the Mixed Tape series. I'll add more links when I get them!

And in various levels of WIP/edits are Quality Control, Incongruent Angel, The Soldier and the Shaman, 1000 Cranes, and Glitter and Shamrocks. :D So lots of fun stuff happening soon! Keep posted for updates!

This is a very exclamatory post. Sorry. Sorta. 

Have a fab day, and remember to check back for updates and links hot off my email!

I Love My Minion

Heh. That is all.

Minion Mondays! (Or, y'know. Whatever day I manage to find time, once a week-ish.)

Hey, y'all! Friendly neighborhood minion, here! (Sadly, not as adorbs as Gru's, but hey! We can't all be little & yellow. You got what you got, and you gotta work with it!)



So. A little bit about me. Where to start? Hmmm...

Mom of 3 (Girl-child will be 13 on the 28th. VelcroBoy *just* turned 8 and DinoBoy will be 10 in September). Wife (DH just --*just*-- cleared the Army; he's no longer active duty, but is now in a reserve unit, and he's going to be a truck driver. I'm not thrilled, but there are reasons that I'm ok with it).

I read (obviously), a lot of it m/m romance (duh; look who I'm working for...). I bake (well, I used to. I'm working on getting back to it). I do other random non-parenting, non-housekeeping type stuff here and there, and I SWEARTAGOD one of these days I'm going back to school. Don't know what I'm gonna DO there, but I'm gonna do it.

Also, since the Boss-lady is so out-of-control busy, between writing and school and parenting and what-not, and I have random odd bits more of free time, I'm taking over the blog!



muahahahaha!!

Be afraid.... be very afraid!

No, seriously, it won't be that bad! Hopefully, she'll just remember to pass on tidbits of info to me -- excerpts, cover art, release dates & the like -- & I'll share.

When there's nothing exciting on that front, I'll just share whatever pops into my head at the moment -- recipes? links? Pictures of hot boys doing the things that hot boys do? Who knows!

Any ideas? Share! Right here,  right now, Bay-bee!


(ETA: Heeeeey... When you click on my name at the bottom of my post, it takes you to my unfortunately nearly abandoned G+ page. May have to start remembering to update that. Wonder if there's anywhere it linkities-up with my personal blog/Twitter/etc.)

Keeping up with My Blog is Hard, darn it!

LOL. Well, one would sure assume so, given the way I've let the poor thing languish for the past few months.

*leans down to pat the sad, lonely blog*

I'm sorry blog, dear. I'll try very hard to take time to take proper care of you. :)

I'll start with a little video, because my brain is still fried from writing two research essays back to back for the semester length course crammed into three weeks this summer... while I was also powering through some  bizarrely hard edits for an editor I absolutely adore.

*pausing to scoop brains back up, and then pour them into a baggie to be reconstituted and placed back in my empty noggin later*

Right. What were we talking about?

*light bulb above head*

Oh, I must have been about to share my new fave musician with you. I'll bet you all already know about him, but he's knew to me, and I am in LURVE with his lyrics.

**Drumroll----And the Winner Is----Drumroll**

Picked by the handsome (tall, dark and handsome mind you... if only he would model!) Is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pointycat--you win a book luv.... and I'll give you final veto rights on the charity, okay?

As for Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome? 6'3", close cropped dark brown hair (nearly black), brown eyes, a sexy goatee... he he he, you all wish he'd picked you, admit it!!

The Slow Reveal: My fight against Homo and Trans* Phobia

To find linky-dinky goodness and the ease of having the whole hop at the tips of your fingers, take a trip (or a click) on over to the Hop's homepage... Right Here for the Hop  Go on. Click it. You know you wanna... 
Today is the first day of a ten day blog hop extravaganza dedicated to helping eradicate homophobia and transphobia. This is my little contribution...  So, there should be prizes in a hop, right? Okay. So in honor of the hop, my winner gets to pick which charity (and it has to be one serving the LGBT community) they want me to donate 10% of my earnings for the last three quarters of 2013 to. I'll send statements, receipts from the charity of their choice...
What about entering to win the prize? Um, easy peasy. Just leave a comment here on the blog.
Notification? Please check back on the blog. I'll announce the winner here on the 28th of this month. 
Also, while you are here, be sure to take a peek over here: International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (May 17th) You can find there link right here: http://dayagainsthomophobia.org


All right, then without further ado, here's my little offering. :) Enjoy.
*************************************************
Prologue~ Tuesday

Jules came on Tuesdays without fail. At precisely four o’clock in the afternoon, he arrived to read to William from books they discussed with one another back when William could still talk. Though the last stroke changed William’s ability to converse coherently, they both still treasured their time together with one another and their favorite paper friends. So now, Jules read, and William listened with varying degrees of patience tempered only by his delight in watching Jules move lightly around his room like an energetic brown and gold wagtail bird. When leaning forward in his seat as though John Donne’s words held the elixir of life and he could breathe health back into William simply by shaping the words well enough, Jules was maddening. He made something sly and devious in William want to howl and yip at the indignity of his disobedient body. Jules’s stylishly cut brown hair flopped over his forehead each time he tossed his head restively. The artfully placed streaks of light blond suited him very well. William exhaled as he wished, yet again, he could tell Jules how much the new splashes of color suited him. A mass of tangled feelings flooded up through William’s guts with the do or die insistence of earthworms pushing up through soil growing rapidly too wet for comfort only to lose their tiny lives to the puddles of a rainy day. As always, when he finally settled Jules sat parallel to the bed, in a battered old armchair whose color was so dimed with age and use it might well have been brown or green or lemon yellow—there was no telling now. He sat, relaxed as if in his own ruthlessly immaculate kitchen—and William knew full well how Jules kept his kitchen from stories told and years’ worth of pictures shared.

***********************************Right now, you’re shaking your head and wondering what that snippet of a story has to do with hopping against homophobia or transphobia. It’s pretty a simple answer. Jules is trans*. William is gay. Yeah, but those things aren’t in the snip I shared are they? Nope. They aren’t. In fact the general reader, the one that didn’t travel around this hop checking out the posts isn’t going to be aware that Jules is trans* until after the second book in the series comes out. And in the first book, especially in the early section, they’ll be confronted with William’s struggles with life or death health issues—and no, he does not have HIV—long before any issues directly related to his sexuality play a major role in his story.
Why you ask?
Life happens that way. You meet people every day, and most of the time you don’t get a big slice of their life story right off the bat. Every now and again you might, especially if the stranger on the train you’re talking to is me, but most of the time you get tiny slivers of insight. Getting to know new people takes time, and by the time you find out they’re trans* or gay or into making really strange and somewhat disturbing clay art you’ve had time to know a lot about the person they are. You found out something about their sexuality, or an odd-ball hobby where they spend hours sculpting tiny peapods devouring a person at a vaguely Thanksgiving holiday style event… you didn’t however, just stumble over evidence that they systematically kidnap young children to torture and kill. You didn’t get socked with them actually having dozens of aliases they use to defraud vulnerable elderly people, leaving them destitute. You especially didn’t discover that they are the next infamous serial killer of people EXACTLY like you. So I’m still baffled about the fear. Any decision you make at that point about how you are going to view them is just that, a decision. There’s a lot of reliable information available these days, to anyone who cares to take the time to look for it, about what being homosexual or transgender really is or isn’t. Fear? Huh. I don’t think so. More like an asp you’re deliberately snuggling with. I’d rethink that if I were you, hon. Look what happened to Cleopatra. 
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Okie Dokie. Now I'm gonna try and get all fancy schmanzty and put in a link to all the other hoppers. *cross your crossables*

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