Susan Abel Sullivan's Blog, page 5

June 09th, 2014

Meet Robin Goodfellow as you’ve never seen him before, watch damsels in distress rescue themselves, get swept away with the selkies and enjoy tales of hobs, green men, pixies and phookas. One thing is for certain, these are not your grandmother’s fairy tales.

Fae is full of stories that honor that rich history while exploring new and interesting takes on the fair folk from castles to computer technologies and modern midwifing, the Old World to Indianapolis. Enjoy the familiar feeling of a good old-fashioned fairy tale alongside urban fantasy and horror with a fae twist.

With an introduction by Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman, and new stories from Sidney Blaylock Jr., Amanda Block, Kari Castor, Beth Cato, Liz Colter, Rhonda Eikamp, Lor Graham, Alexis A. Hunter, L.S. Johnson, Jon Arthur Kitson, Adria Laycraft, Lauren Liebowitz, Christine Morgan, Shannon Phillips, Sara Puls, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, and Kristina Wojtaszek.

Fae will be available in trade paperback and ebook via Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Kobo.com, and other online retailers, and for wholesale through Ingram. You can also find Fae on Goodreads. 

World Weaver Press is a publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction, dedicated to producing quality works. We believe in great storytelling. 


Publication Date: July 22, 2014 • Fantasy / Horror Anthology  Trade paperback, 250 pages • ebook  ISBN: 978-0692207918  Publicity/Reviews: publicity@worldweaverpress.com 

Glamour: Special End of May Sale!

Get it while it's hot!

Andrea Janes' ever so fun YA novel GLAMOUR went on sale for only 99 cents yesterday starting 8 am PST.  The price will increase $1 every 38 hours until May 31 when it returns to its normal Amazon price of $4.99.

Here's my Goodreads review:

This book is CAPTIVATING! I was totally charmed from the get go and that's so rare for me as a reader. I flew through this book at lightening speed (also rare) and wanted more when it was over. Andrea Janes writes with an amazing voice, and in first-person point of view, which is often the artistic choice for debut novelists, yet is actually rather difficult to pull off. Janes not only pulls it off, she does so with talent and skill. Her narrative voice reminds me of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE--one of my top ten favorite novels of all time--if Holden Caulfield were a teenaged witch named Christina.

I also loved the stylistic choice of sprinkling in third-person point of view scenes throughout the book. This is another writing choice that can flop big time, but Janes makes it work quite wonderfully.

Five broomsticks, er, stars, for GLAMOUR!  

                
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Glamour-Andrea-Janes-ebook/dp/B00IZOEZN6

There's a Dinosaur in my Car!

 I just noticed that I haven't written a blog post in a month and a half and here's why: there was a dinosaur in my car! And not only that, but several ships have been coming in all at once which is a good thing, however blogging has had to take a backseat to more pressing priorities.

So what the heck has been going on, you ask. 

Well, firstly, I was one of 75 presenters at IAFC, the International Aquatic Fitness Conference in Tampa, Florida last week.  I led two sessions, a aquatic workshop on developing themed classes and a lecture on writing for publication.  This was my first time to present at such a large event and I had a blast! IAFC is the highlight of year and for the past two years it's been held at the ever so wonderful Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor. 

Secondly, the hubs and I took some vacation time before the conference started and of course, I couldn't pass up going to some thrift stores in Dunedin and Palm Harbor.  We found Kota (pictured above) for a mere $25.  Sure, his neck is broken and gets hung up with a robotic racheting sound and his tail doesn't work anymore, but otherwise he works pretty well with sound and motion and he has touch sensors so when you pet him he responds with sound and movement. 

He's also a BIG guy--bigger than either of my pit bulls.  They licked his face when we brought him in.  The cats like to sleep on his back and last night I turned Kota on and Sabrina pawed his mouth the way cats do when they find something curious. 

Thirdly and fourthly...these are still in the works so I'm not going to jinx them by speaking of them publicly, but if all goes well, Ship #3 is supposed to sail into port next Friday and I should be able to say more about Ship #4 in a month.

Meanwhile, I think about writing a LOT and keep scribbling ideas for books--trust me, lack of ideas is not why writing is on the backburner, but because I currently juggle three jobs plus a Victorian home with ten pets and Ships #3 &4 also require a good bit of time.  So for all those people who have those tidy 8-5 jobs and then can come home and write, well, I have the equivalent of a 6am-11pm job six and a half days a week. Plus, the hubs gets miffed when I'm all work and no play. And if you've ever seen The Shining, you know what happens when you work, work, work ALL the time.

So there ya go, four ships and a dinosaur!


I've uploaded a few photos from my trip to Florida in the slideshow below...

GLAMOUR Blog Tour: an Interview with Author Andrea Janes

I'd like to welcome author Andrea Janes to my website.  Her novel GLAMOUR is a fun, witty YA novel about witches in contemporary New England.  I absolutely LOVED it.  Her narrative voice is captivating, charming, and bewitching.


Name three items on your bucket list. Well, I’ve always wanted to see Macon, Georgia. (That’s a Simpsons quote, sorry. I’ll try to be serious.) Okay, one: take ghost tours in Edinburgh and New Orleans. Two: brew my own beer. Three: Maybe actually learn to sail! That’s about all I could accomplish without a time machine.

Secret (or not so secret) celebrity crush? Jon Snow from Game of Thrones and John Snow the 19th century epidemiologist who established that cholera was a waterborne, not airborne, illness.

What song or musical piece represents the soundtrack of your life at the moment? My husband and I have been listening to the new Eric Church album a lot recently.  

Do you have any secret or quirky talents? I’m weirdly good at remembering dates. Like, if you tell me your birthday now I will remember it forever. Comes in really handy as a tour guide, let me tell you.   

If you could have one superhero power, what would it be and why? Time travel, if that’s a superhero power.

Since you live in New York City and probably don’t have a basement or crawl space, what’s lurking in your closet or kitchen cabinet? Actually, the apartment we just moved from really did have a crawl space and I once wrote a short story about using it as an oubliette. I won’t tell you whom I wrote into the oubliette because for legal purposes I probably shouldn’t put that in writing. We have a storage unit in our basement now and the previous owner of the apartment sort of rigged up an old door into the rafters and it looks like that door is about to fall down any minute. It’s the kind with a frosted glass window in it and it always makes me think of the bathroom door in M.R. James’ Lost Hearts. Also in the basement is a warning sign forbidding us to allow feral cats into the building. They are apparently quite violent.

Favorite New England novel? Does Moby Dick count as a New England novel even though it starts in New York and finishes at sea? I mean, there is that lengthy stay at New Bedford’s Spouter Inn…. Well, if that doesn’t count then The Witch of Blackbird Pond, even though it’s a little heavy on the details of the Connecticut Charter.

If you were a witch like Christina, what spell would you cast first? Oh god, my first spells would be ALL cosmetic at this point in my life. I would cast a spell that would make me like I did ten years ago and I don’t even care how anti-feminist that sounds, I want to look twenty-five again! As the saying goes, I will do everything in my power to age beautifully except eat right, exercise, or stop drinking.

Have you ever fallen in love with a fictional character(s), and if so, who and from what novel/show/movie? Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, like everyone else! Also: Bill Haverchuck from Freaks and Geeks. Oh, and Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters.  

And since you give haunted walking tours in NYC, is there anything or anyplace that haunts you? I tend to have nightmares after giving tours of #14 West 10th Street. I dream that a man is standing in the front, west-side window either staring at me or waving at me. I’m not sure I believe all the stories about this place, but there’s a bad feeling about the house I can’t put my finger on. You can read more about it here:

http://boroughsofthedead.com/homepage/haunted-places-in-new-york-city/

Thank you, Andrea for a delightful interview! Visit http://worldweaverpress.com/2014/03/18/out-now-new-release-glamour/ for a synopsis of Glamour and list of retailers for eBook and trade paperback editions.


















Andrea Janes writes horror, dark comedy, thrillers, and historical slapstick. She is the author of  Boroughs of the Dead: New York City Ghost Stories . She is also a licensed NYC tour guide, and offers a variety of ghostly tours around the city. Her many obsessions include New York City history, old photographs, Mabel Normand, all things nautical, and beer. She maintains a personal blog over at Spinster Aunt, where she discusses these obsessions in more detail than is probably healthy.

Pet Skunks Don't Stink...Seriously!

Sid the Kid
















A few months ago I blogged about the pet skunk I had in college. His name was Sidney, affectionately known as Sid the Kid, and I finally found some of his pictures and scanned them to my laptop. 

I bought him in a pet store when I was a student at Auburn University.  Pet skunks are raised by skunk breeders and are domesticated pets.  These aren't wild-caught animals.  They're docile and friendly, although they do love to nip and nibble on bare toes at night! 

Pet skunks are also not stinky. Their scent glands are removed by a veterinarian when they're wee kits.  Skunks do have a musky scent, but that's because they're in the musk family with ferrets and weasels and has nothing to do with their unique defense mechanism. 

Skunks are near-sighted and stay close to their mama when they're young making them easy to leash train.  Once they're accustomed to wearing a harness, just snap on a leash and they're follow you anywhere. 

Skunks are quiet, playful, and nocturnal. They can be litter box trained and are omnivores meaning they eat both plants and animals.  Some states don't allow the keeping of domesticated skunks as pets so check with local laws before acquiring one.  Georgia allows them as pets, but only if they're not black with the tell-tale white stripe.  Alabama allows them, but they must be acquired from a licensed breeder in Alabama. 

I used to take Sidney on play-dates with my friend's ferret.  They'd wrestle and roll around together.  Sidney being the heavy weight of the two would eventually just sit on the ferret and the wrestle mania would be over. 

One day I'd like to have another pet skunk, especially now that I'm older and wiser and out of college!
Sidney wearing his blue harness and leash

From Choreographer to Film Director to Author: Telling a Story through the Arts

Moxie Sullivan, the inspiration behind Luna Tidwell













I've been telling stories ever since I was ten years old.  It's something innate in me, this need to make up stories.  Writers and story tellers run strong on the Abel side of my family. My great-granddad was a Methodist preacher and wrote sermons. My dad and his sisters were all proficient storytellers who could hold a body spellbound with their tales of Southern ghosts and growing up during the Great Depression.  One of my cousins has a journalism degree and has been an editor at various publications. Another has a degree in Accounting with a minor in English.  My grandmother Abel was a school teacher and taught English. You could say this urge to tell stories is in my blood.

The first medium I chose for storytelling was dance.  I began choreographing original dances and baton twirling routines when I was in the 5th grade.  My choreography wasn't just about putting steps to music, but telling a story through dance and movement. 

When the parents told me they wouldn't fund a college education in Dance, I turned my sights to the movies.  I wanted to go to film school and become a film director.  My senior year in high school I went to the movies every chance I got.  I even wrote, directed, and starred in an 8mm short film--a comedic who-done-it--titled The Black and White Panther that riffed on the popular Pink Panther movies starring Peter Sellers.  However, the parents again declined to fund a college education in Film. 

They wanted me to become an engineer, so I attended Auburn University thinking I'd major in Computer Science and do CGI for the movies.  But I'm not an engineer.  I might have done well in math, but I do not have the heart or brain of an engineer.  Around this time, I started writing fiction, something I've kept at off and on since college. 

Two years ago all that persistence paid off and I signed with a publisher and am now an author of four books with more on the way.

So, it was with great pleasure that I had the opportunity to pick my dream cast for my recent book The Weredog Whisperer for Heidi Ruby Miller's Cast Your Characters.  You can check it out here: http://heidirubymiller.blogspot.com/2014/03/cast-your-characters-weredog-whisperer.html

If you've read Weredog Whisperer, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my casting choices and/or who you'd pick to play the different roles. 

Love at SECOND Sight?

I knew I was going to marry my husband the second time I saw him. 

Which is funny because the first time I met him there was zero love connection.  I thought he was just some non-descript middle-aged man.  And I was only 25-years old. 

And he thought I was a lesbian because my roomie at the time wore her hair very short and liked to body build.  You'd think from this not-so-brilliant start that there was a snow ball's chance in hell of us ever getting together.

And yet, today is our 25th Wedding Anniversary.  And I KNEW--in a psychic news flash kind of way--that I was going to marry this man the second time I ran into him. 

I'd been engaged to be married twice before and neither had worked out.  I wasn't a lesbian when I met the hubs, but I HAD sworn off men because I seemed to be kissing an awful lot of frogs looking for that one prince. 

And then BOOM--like the proverbial butterfly that lights on your finger when you stop chasing it, the hubs walked into my life and into the branch directors' meeting at the Pensacola YMCA. 

He was late and as he rushed in to take a seat, our boss the CEO said, "Have you two met?" meaning me and him.  My future hubs and I looked each other full in the eye--just like in the movies--and said exactly in unison, "Yes...we've met."

And that's when I KNEW.  Which was curious because I wasn't in love with him or anything school girlish.  I didn't know a thing about him, whether he was married or single or had children or might be a Hare Krishna.  But I was now determined to find out more about this man that my internal psychic hotline had said I was going to marry.

We started hanging out about two weeks after that fateful staff meeting--we never even really dated--and we were engaged to be married less two months later, had the wedding another two months after that, and here we are TWENTY-FIVE years later, still married to each other, an oddity in today's culture of multiple marriages. 

So there you go, love at second sight.  It's wholly possible.  You just have to listen to your heart.  Or your internal psychic hotline.

A Goober by Any Other Name Would Still be Just a Big Galoot

Our big galoot Bo...or should we rename him Goober?












Do dogs really care what we name them?

Absolutely not.  They'll answer to anything as long as we're consistent. 

Bo was a difficult dog to name.  Originally we called him Beauregard, then shortened it to Bo, then added another Bo (Bobo) so that it wouldn't rhyme with "no,"--trust me, you do not want to name a pet anything that rhymes with no because you then have to come up with some other correctional word or sound and it's easy to forget in the heat of the moment. The poor dog does something it shouldn't and instead of hearing "no," they hear what sounds like their own name. Very confusing.

But several months after settling on the name Bo, it became evident that his true name--meaning the name that's in his soul--is Goober. 

This truth was never more evident than when Bo went in for his surgical recheck and staple removal yesterday.  The vet tech who cared for him during his six-day stay affectionaly called him Goober.  And he'd perk up at that.  After she left the exam room I told Bo, "Even B. knows your true name."

And that's when I had an epiphany.  The hubs and I need to change Bo's name.  The situation reminds me of T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Naming of Cats."  It's a difficult matter according to Eliot because a cat has three different names. There's their everyday name, their particular and peculiar name that belongs to no more than one cat, and then their secret name that only the cat ever knows. 

So I took the name Goober for a test drive yesterday.  "Hey, Goober!" I said to Bo enthusiastically.  His face lit up and he wagged his tail.  Then when I said, "Hey, Bo," it was like the sun had gone behind some clouds.  Hmmm...even the dog likes the name Goober better than Bo.

So Goober it is.  It'll probably take longer for the humans to adjust than for Bo/Goober.  Because the dog knows his true name.

Doing it Doggy Style...Dogs in Fashion

Dogs on PJs











Like Lea Michele's character of Rachel Berry on Season One of GLEE, I love wearing clothes with animals on them.  And dogs on clothing are just so stinkin' cute. 

Here's a photo gallery of my Doggy Style in fashion and accessories, including PJs, thermals, shirts, sweater vests, sleep shirts, t-shirts, socks, and handbags.


Click on a photo to enlarge...

My Dog Has a Zipper on his Belly

Is this a zipper or a stapled incisison?












Bo finally came home from the hospital yesterday. The vet tech said she wished they could put zippers in all the dogs who eat weird stuff and then get obstructed so that the vet could just unzip their guts, reach in, and remove the offending item.

And ironically, Bo's stapled incision looks like a zipper. 

He's doing pretty well considering he had one surgery to remove a foreign object from his stomach AND large intestine, and another to remove the drain inserted into his intestine during the first surgery. He's rather subdued, which is to be expected after having major surgery and being on pain meds.  Hell, I felt pretty damn bad a week after my bilateral hip replacement surgery, so I can certainly empathize. 

But he's happy to be back home with me, the hubs, and his canine pal, Moxie.  Three of our five cats--Ernie, Sabrina, and Zoe--are also glad he's back.  It's been a regular reunion around here at Casa Sullivan.

I want to thank everyone who has supported "Buy Books for Bo," from buying books to sharing the message through social media and good old fashioned conversation.  If you haven't had a chance to yet, there's still time to tweet and share Bo's story on Facebook by posting a link to this blog or by joining the "Buy Books for Bo" event page on Facebook and "sharing" it on your profile.

If you're new to Bo's saga, check out my two previous posts.




Reunited and it feels so good...