Laila Blake's Blog, page 13

Release Updates August: New Novella!

Hello lovelies!

Yes, I agree, I don’t address you enough in this blog. It’s all me me me all the time and I am afraid this post, really, won’t be much different. Leave some comments somewhere and I make blog-posts all about you, promise!

Interesting things have been happening this month and I thought I should keep you up to date on those.

First item: I have a new book coming out!

It’s called DRIFTWOOD DEEDS and it’s an erotic novella and a love story for those of us who are either D/s and bdsm beginners or simply enjoy the kinder, sweeter moments of that lifestyle. It’s very much about consent and equality in a D/s relationship – and about letting go, trusting each other and being cuddly, it’s also about that.

Here’s the official blurb:

When young journalist Iris Ellis visits a sleepy sea-side town to interview recluse screenwriter Paul Archer, he offers her insights into never acted-upon fantasies. Too curious to deny herself a taste of them, Iris lets Paul initiate her into the world of dominance and submission. But when she realizes that a taste can never be enough, she must try to protect her heart before he has a chance to break it.

I’ll show it off the moment there is a cover but, so far that’s all there is. It will be published in November 2013 through A Hotter State, the new imprint of Ladylit Publishing, created by the always lovely and talented Harper Bliss. As the book is somewhat personal and meant a lot to me for reasons I will go into below, it was really important to me to publish it with someone I trust, and I have absolutely no reservations of putting that trust in Harper, with whom I have been working on short story anthologies for a while now.

In a way, I wrote this novella years ago. In fact, at 18, it was my first finished piece of writing and the only thing I was actually proud of. It was originally titled Stains of Blue, and those of you who follow me on more than one social media platform might recognize that as my online handle on tumblr. I have been using that for a long time for the simple reason that just writing that novella had taught me a lot of things about writing and about myself long before I ever figured them out outside of fiction.

DRIFTWOOD DEEDS is not the same text,; I wrote it from scratch because nobody should have to see those scribblings of me at 18, but I think the intent, the feeling and the story progression remained intact and I hope it still stands as a bit of testament to my mindset at that time.

It is complete at just under 30k, so about half to a third of the site of regular novel. This is because I am not a big fan of novel-length works just focussed on sexuality and erotica, I get a bit bored and I wouldn’t know the first thing about writing and structuring them. That makes it a nice, fast read that I hope you will all enjoy.

I will be contacting reviewers and book blogs about this soon, but if you would like a free copy in exchange for an honest review on a blog or on amazon/B&N and/or goodreads, let me know!

In the mean-time, remember that my last involvement with Ladylit Publishing – a beautiful lesbian anthology called ANYTHING SHE WANTS is still out and purchased wherever there are ebooks for sale.

 

Second item: More Shortstories on the way.

Please be on the look our for next months releases of SHAMELESS BEHAVIOR, edited by Lana Fox and SWEAT, edited by Harper Bliss – two more anthologies that feature stories of mine.

All in all, there are thirteen of those on the way, to be released during the Winter of 2013 and the Spring of 2014. Among those are Violet Blue’s BEST WOMEN’S EROTICA 2014, published by Cleis Press and Shawna Kenney’s BOOK LOVERS, by Seal Press. For the full list, please consult my Publications page.

I have to say, I am terribly honoured and humbled to be included with publishers like Cleis Press and Seal Press who have been doing really important work for women and the lbgt community for such a long time.

 

Third Item: What about the Lakeside Sequel?

This is a little more complicated. It is finished, that’s the good news. But after some long talks with my publisher, we mutually decided that my series doesn’t actually fit into their romance line and that both the line and especially the Lakeside series would do far better if we parted ways. So right now, I’m waiting for my right to revert back to me early in 2014. At that point I will  make some of those extensive revisions I had been wanting to from the beginning, self-publish the first book and re-brand it a little. Later in 2014, I will then publish the sequel as well.

I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience but I promise it will come out.

On some brighter news, together with L.C. Spoering, I am working on a more classic Paranormal Romance series that takes the world laid out in By the Light of the Moon, and fast forwards it to our time, where we’ll write about Fae and Blaidyn in today’s world. Like our zombie-apocalypse series, we can’t yet say whether it will be self-published or traditionally published, but they are definitely coming to a book-store near you in the not to distant future.

Lilt Podcast Episode 8

A new week and a new episode of Lilt, the chatty lit podcast with me and L.C. Spoering. Remember that we moved lilt to its own webspace, and I just post it here as well for reference

 

Lilt — Episode 8

in which Laila and Lorrie discuss writing novels together, the advantages, the joys and the setbacks of creating something with a friend.

Lilt Episode 8 – Laila Blake / Lorrie Spoeringmap :: {skin:’red’, animate:true, width:’500′, volume:0.4, autoplay:false, loop:false, showVolumeLevel:true, showTime:true, showRew:true, downloadable:true, downloadablesecurity:false, id3: false}

(If the application doesn’t work for you, please click here for the audio-file!)

The novel we mention is called After Life Lessons, and I recently posted the first chapter here on my blog for you to read or listen to.

And now it’s over to you – are you collaborating with someone and how? Could you imagine doing it and under which circumstances? Let us know in the comments!

Our intro music was taken from the Free Music Archive:
GeeNerve - Pink Fish Signs (Take Two).

We are also spending August participating in a Book Challenge on our tumblr accounts (Laila’s | Lorrie’s) — why don’t you join in?

The Lies We Tell

I lied to my dentist this morning.

A very small minority of you (i.e. those who know me in real life and read my blog, or those of you who literally read every post in this thing for some reason) may be aware that I have a bit of an anxiety condition. This condition is why I lost/had to give up my teaching job and am now translating from home. I don’t talk about it much because – well, I suppose because I hate sounding weak, and also because I generally feel like there is too much whining about mental health on the internet and far too little of it outside, so that a lot of lucky, healthy people attribute this whining to the over-imagination or the attention seeking efforts of a few vocal bloggers rather than a massive, world-wide phenomenon we just stay silent about a lot of the time.

Me too. I hate being known as the girl with massive panic attacks. And this is why I lied to my dentist – or rather one of his receptionists. I lied because I slept for about half an hour before my alarm clock went after tossing and turning, some throwing up and more tossing and turning all night. While I was still lying in bed, my head went through a kind of super-fast druggy movie-montage of all the dentist appointments I’ve had already and all the possible ways to get out of this one. At that point I couldn’t really move.

I stumbled out of bed to throw up again and then sat in front of my computer crying for about 15 minutes because the dentist didn’t have an email address that I could cancel on (making uncomfortable phone calls being another thing I tend to avoid). Slowly I decided to try and get a grip, I’m a grown-up after all, I have lived with this for a long time and damn it if I couldn’t beat that sucker. So I got dressed, feeling dizzy and like I was about to faint and by now my stomach hurt like crap from all the throwing up and I really just want wanted to sit here and cry. But I made myself walk to the bus station – where the bus just left as I walked up to it.

The next one would have made me 20 minutes late anyway and the idea of standing there for half an hour, shaking by the side of the road decided things for me. So I went back home and finally did pick up the phone, into which I babbled some well-rehearsed lie about a stomach bug, all the while expecting her to call me out as a big liar and a coward and a baby. She didn’t, obviously, they never do any of the things I’m so afraid of. She just gave me a new appointment in two weeks for a do-over and now I am sitting here with an overwhelming rush of relief and shame.

I’m not writing this because I want you to feel sorry for me. I’m okay. I have it far less bad than others and this was pretty extreme, I assume because I am trying a new kind of medication at the moment. This doesn’t happen every day and really, most of the time, I do manage to fight it down and do what I have to do.

I am writing this, because whenever someone else describes their ridiculous fears – like Aubrey Plaza mentioning her fear of opening letters (it starts at 8:00) and weird ways of getting over that (hi there, that’s one of mine, too!) – I feel better. I feel I’m not alone and so sometimes, I get seized with the desire to do that for other people or at least to not contribute to staying silent. So here it is, my story about lying to my dentist.

What am I working on Wednesday! 8/14/2013

What am I working on Wednesday is a new bi-monthly meme of snippets and excerpts that should keep you updated on my current projects. To listen to a recording, please click on the application below.

http://www.lailablake.com/Podcast/waiwow/waiwow3.mp3

Today: After Life Lessons, by L.C. Spoering and Laila Blake

an NA/mainstream post-apoc novel

Excerpt of Chapter 1:

Something was dying in the flurries of snow.

Emily couldn’t see five feet of road in front of them, but the desperate howl pierced the wind. A dog maybe, or something altogether wilder. It seemed to harden every muscle along her spine, forcing her body into a more awkward pace, one hand firmly around Song’s, dragging the boy along. Just a little more, just a little further. She coaxed and prodded him, bargained and begged—but his legs were short and his strength running on empty.

The map had promised an old campsite somewhere along that road, and it was that hope that kept her going, one step at a time—coughing and forcing her eyes to stay open. She vividly remembered a time before all this snow, a time when they’d had bikes and tiny trailer. Now they were on foot, heavy loads on her back.

The dog howled again, and Emily forced her legs to quicken the pace.

When they did stumble onto an old camper van, she pulled the small crowbar from the side-pocket of her backpack. The frozen iron stuck to her gloves but once she found the proper angle, the door gave way with minimal force. The place smelled. It was poorly insulated and tiny, but it had a roof, and a half-rotted mattress. Instructing Song to get out of his wet clothes and into marginally drier ones, she managed to close the door again, with brute force and curses and a long stretch of rope she kept around for exactly that purpose. She couldn’t take chances with something dying so vocally out there.

The two of them huddled together on the bed, under a pile of blankets with a can of beans she’d found under the counter. It wasn’t much, but more than they’d had in days, and they each ladled spoonfuls into their mouths, slowly, ignoring the metallic taste for the comfort of their stomachs settling, their toes prickling back to life. With food, the memory of the last meal faded: a few cracker crumbs and one withered potato. She’d dug out the eyes that had sprouted, threw them out, with some old and vague knowledge that they were poisonous, and fed it to Song, bit by bit, between weak and pointless protests.

Emily held back; she always did. It was more important to keep Song fed than herself, and watching him cry with hunger took far more out of her than a missed meal, even now. She rubbed her face and pulled a blanket over her mouth before she yawned, fearing the cold air. It still made her break out into a short, hacking cough. She pushed the can into Song’s hands to make sure they didn’t spill anything.

“Are you okay, duck? Getting warmer?” she asked, voice still rough even when she had her breath back.

Song nodded, watching her with wide eyes; something about her being sick made him even graver. It was why she usually did her best to hide her coughs as well as any other sign of weakness.

“Are we gonna stay here?” Clearly, he was about as impressed by the place as she was; it was a far cry from the beautiful lake houses they’d ransacked over the past weeks—before Emily had decided to try and take them further south.

Emily sniffed and rubbed at her nose—she could still feel the hardened little channel where a piercing had been, but she hadn’t worn a ring in there in months. Somehow she managed a smile before she leaned in to kiss his temple. It never failed to make her face look terribly young, especially now, freckled cheeks and nose still bright red from the cold.

“We’ll see okay? We’ve got to warm up at least and I don’t wanna be caught out in the snow.”

“We already are.” Was he really only seven? He talked just like his father, with that unflinching sort of honesty that made it difficult to lie to him, to recall he was a little boy. “You mean more snow.”

Emily scrunched up her nose and gave him wry smile. More snow, indeed.

“Well, it’s not entirely impossible that it’ll clear up in the next hour or so… and it’s better to be caught in here than out there.”

She tried to smile, tried to infuse a little bit of hope into her words but she knew that Song’s cold was coming back now that they didn’t have anywhere warm to stay and even after months of practice, she still had a hard time quelling the worries from her voice.

“We could sleep for a while?”

He nodded; what else was there to do? In that kind of cold, after trudging for miles in deep snow, with little in their stomachs, sleep was about the most inviting activity either of them could think of. If he remembered snowy days in New York, of curling up under covers with hot cocoa and books and music, it didn’t show on his face.

“I don’t like beans,” he mentioned, sucking in a wheezing breath, head wavering on his skinny neck like on a bobblehead-doll. Still, he ate several more, scattered over the bowl of his spoon in a dark formation.

Emily watched him, feeling the pressure of tears behind her eyes.

“I know,” she said quietly, the only way not to trigger another cough. “We’ll find somewhere better soon, I promise, with like… pasta and spices and… and canned pineapple.”

“Peaches?” he suggested, dubious, but he knew the drill: he put more beans in his mouth, most of them sliding down without chewing. Song had never been an easy child to feed, to get to eat, and Emily had never been good at being strict about his diet. That he was eating beans, even at the end of the fucking world, was a little like winning the parenting jackpot. Still, Emily’s sense of victory was short-lived: they were, after all, stuck in the snow with no dry clothes to change into, she only had cold beans to feed him and couldn’t even remember the last time they’d had anything fresh. That was important for growth, wasn’t it? So Song would probably end up a petite little thing like her, not the near giant his father had been. Nurture over nature. Even his wet and greasy curls looked far more like Emily’s dark brown now than the honey tone she remembered from happier times.

“Yes, peaches,” she whispered, stifling a yawn. “And cherries, and we’ll fish them out of the can and it’ll stain our fingers red.” She sniffed again and when she heard the spoon scrape against the bottom of the can she gave him a bracing smile. “Thank you,” she told him gently and pulled him into her arms.

He gave a serious little nod, still clutching the can; they’d both turned into strange little packrats, afraid to let go of anything, lest it be useful someday, sometime, in some strange fashion. Who knew what you could do with a tin can that they’d not discovered yet?

“I’m tired of it being cold,” he announced, as though she could do anything about winter still lying over the region. “I hate my hat.”

“I know, ducky,” she whispered, exhaustion keeping her calm. “You know I love you right? I love you so much and I’m so proud of you because you keep going anyway.”

His breath caught into a little hiccup in his throat and he nodded, biting rather viciously at his lip. He’d needed her from the beginning, ever since his mother had dropped him off at Sullivan’s place those years before, and she’d been the one he’d clung to when he was scared, long before the world ended.

            “It’s okay to be angry and sad. I’m angry and sad, too. But soon spring will come, and we’ll be further south and we’ll find more stuff to eat outside and it’ll be warmer…” And why in the world had she not started to move them south weeks ago just like they had planned, pouring over maps in the old New York apartment? The lake had been like fixed mark, a place on the map where she knew exactly where she was—a dark, deep, hypnotizing fixture.

“When are we gonna be close?” He’d stopped asking so much, but, like every child that came before him, likely back to the cavemen, he was compelled to cough it up, that variation on the eternal question: are we there yet?

Emily swallowed the I don’t know. Instead she smiled, liberated the can from his hand, put it on the ground and then tucked the blanket closer around him.

“Soon,” she lied.

“When’s Daddy coming?”

“He… I don’t know, baby.” She drew a sharp, wet breath in through her nose. His question burned in her gut and behind her eyes, the guilt of a dozen half-truths and avoidance tactics. And yet, she would have given the world for that glimmer of his hope; to be able, just for a few minutes at a time, to believe Sullivan was just on their tail.

“He needs to hurry up,” Song sniffled. “We’re supposta be together. And I miss him.”

He buried his head against her neck and shoulder. Just like when he was a little kid, his cheek rested on her clavicle, so close to the colorful bird tattoo that his nose touched the little tail feather, and his fingers had just enough room to draw along the outlines of its wings. Emily squeezed him again.

“I know… I miss him too.” Emily had long lost the ability to sound anything but empty when this topic came around. But Song was used to it; he nodded his knowing and ancient face, curling closely to her for a long time, fingers winding in her hair until they were both breathing mostly normally and he patted her chest. He was feverish, again, and she felt no small amount of shame for enjoying the warmth, her own personal hot water bottle. She could easily remember the days that he’d crawl into bed with her, when he was tiny, sick, and it had felt like some kind of special torture to have his steaming body against hers, and, certainly, that irony was not lost on her now.

Drifting off was easy, frighteningly so, even sitting up, even supporting his dead weight when Song sunk under in slumber. Hours passed like water flowing, and she was floating in some groggy world between waking and sleeping when she became aware that they weren’t alone.

It was one of those things that was more instinct than knowledge, and she froze, arms protectively tight around Song without waking him. Holding her breath, she checked on her rope contraption but the door was still tightly shut. Then she turned her head, slowly, so slowly, to look out the window.

Five. Five of them. Something was dying out there and so they came, like vultures.

Lilt Podcast Episode 7

A new week and a new episode of Lilt, the chatty lit podcast with me and L.C. Spoering.

Today, we have more than a new episode to announce: we also moved Lilt into it’s own web-presence. Please find us on wordpress, facebook and twitter and say hi!

 

Lilt — Episode 7

in which Laila and Lorrie discuss their methods of

planning novels vs. not planning them.

Lilt Episode 7 – Laila Blake / Lorrie Spoeringmap :: {skin:’red’, animate:true, width:’500′, volume:0.4, autoplay:false, loop:false, showVolumeLevel:true, showTime:true, showRew:true, downloadable:true, downloadablesecurity:false, id3: false}

(If the application doesn’t work for, please click here for the audio-file!)

What about you? Do you plan novels or not?

Also, next week, we’ll discuss co-writing so please leave us any questions or comments you might have!

Our intro music was taken from the Free Music Archive:
GeeNerve - Pink Fish Signs (Take Two).

We are also spending August participating in a Book Challenge on our tumblr accounts (Laila’s | Lorrie’s) — why don’t you join in?

Erotica and Me

My first title for this was “Erotica and Society” but then I figured I need to work a lot harder and write something a lot more coherent to earn that title .

When I was about 17 years old, I wrote my first erotic novella. Yes, it was real person fan fiction (what can I say, I was terribly into Viggo Mortensen at the time), and it was in a way the culmination of pushing the limits of adult scenes for a few years in the little fan writing community I was part of at the time. Even then, I never thought that erotica was the height of my ambition as a writer, but it was something I thought I was good at, something I wanted to do.

And so I did some research, I stumbled across sites like Ellora’s Cave and other just emerging digital erotica publishers – this was before the big eReader revolution and long before 50 Shades of Grey pushed it further into the mainstream. I would be lying if I said that this illicitness, the writing on the fringes, the slight punk-rockishness of erotica hadn’t weaved its own spell on me.

Now, here we are, 10 years later. I wrote a novel that got published by a small imprint of a mid-sized publisher and with every project I work on, I want to get better, less tied to genre, hone my skills more and more until maybe, one day, I might be called literary and then I might die happy. And still, I love erotica, I love it in a way I love no other genre – and I may not always love the actual products that do well, I may only really like one novel in over a thousand but I still adore the idea, the point of erotica. For me, the point is to take the idea of sex, of gender roles of arousal, of what turns us on etc. into our own hands (lol literally and figuratively). It’s honest and raw and in a world in which female desire is still oddly taboo while at the same time ridiculously fetishized and objectified, this means a lot to me.

And I believe that erotica can be written well, can feature deep and honest characters who are more than bland puppets to act out fantasies. I believe that erotica can express more than that, can tell real stories driven by sex, not just featuring it. It’s a challenge and it’s fun and yes, I like it because I’m not bad at it.

The issue is that I get bored when I only write erotica and I have other stories in my head. Some of them are YA and I love those ideas. So now I find myself having to wonder whether my writing erotica might become an issue and this both scares and angers me. When my first erotic short story was accepted into an anthology, I had a choice whether or not to go with a pen name different from the one I use for my novels – the clean solution many reach for to protect their privacy and their writing reputation. I decided not to. I suppose it was that punk-rockishness of it all: I don’t believe being good at writing about sex makes it less likely that I am good at anything else, nor do I believe does it cast a bad light on me. But then sometimes, we want the world to be something that it might not be.

I want to live in a world in which nobody censors erotica searches or porn tumblers and where the very idea that someone who writes stories for teenagers might be a full human being with varied interests, some of which include video games, other of which include writing erotic stories, doesn’t make the hairs of certain people rise with indignation. I am just not sure this is the world I live in. Not in times of the UK porn ban and blogger deleting blogs that refer to anything even remotely adult.

Why is this so scary? What is it about sex that makes people lose their minds like that?

All of that is a very round-about way of saying that Violet Blue, a porn blogger and activist I have long admired, accepted a story of mine into her Best Women’s Erotica 2014 anthology today. And I jumped up and down and danced around the flat, I was so happy and so proud, because I believed it was a good story and I loved writing it and it’s fun when that is recognized.

This is the 10th erotic short story of mine that has been accepted for publication and as such, erotica is clearly the area that I am most successful in at the moment. It just works for me, and it makes me happy and I need that in between all the worries and the rejections for everything else I produce.

So here we are: I’m an erotica writer. And I’m proud of it.

Lilt Podcast Episode 6

A new week and a new episode of Lilt, the chatty lit podcast with me and L.C. Spoering. Lilt is a short, weekly show about our experience of reading, writing and the publishing industry. We’ll discuss books we like, writing concepts that interest us, and the ever-puzzling publishing game. We’ll also give tips on all things writing, editing and promotion.

 

Lilt — Episode 6

in which Laila and Lorrie discuss their physical writing set up and writing habits.

Lilt Episode 6 – Laila Blake / Lorrie Spoeringmap :: {skin:’red’, animate:true, width:’500′, volume:0.4, autoplay:false, loop:false, showVolumeLevel:true, showTime:true, showRew:true, downloadable:true, downloadablesecurity:false, id3: false}

(If the application doesn’t work for, please click here for the audio-file!)

What about you? Do you have any habits or set-ups you need to write?

Or do you have any questions or comments on planning a novel?

Programs mentioned in this podcast:
Scrivener
Write or Die
Written? Kitten!

Our intro music was taken from the Free Music Archive:
GeeNerve - Pink Fish Signs (Take Two).

We are also spending August participating in a Book Challenge on our tumblr accounts (Laila’s | Lorrie’s) — why don’t you join in?

What am I working on Wednesday! 7/31/2013

What am I working on Wednesday is a new bi-monthly meme of snippets and excerpts that should keep you updated on my current projects. To listen to a recording, please click on the application below.

http://www.lailablake.com/Podcast/waiwow/waiwow2.mp3

Today: Where the Wind Settles, a high concept lgbt YA novel

Excerpt of Chapter 17:

 

Ingrid stumbled out of the library and ran a few blocks, stopping only when her lungs absolutely refused to carry her any further. She hugged the long pole of a street-lamp to catch her breath but the metal alloy smelled vile and she pulled away, leaning against the side of a building and pushing her fingers against the painful stitch in side. At the far end of the street and across the stretch of park, she could already see the lake, glittering in the rare November sun. It made Ingrid look up at the sky; there were clouds but of a far less aggressive color than those which had dominated the it for most of October. She remembered running along that same street in the pouring rain just two weeks ago, except her lungs had held out far longer that time. Maybe it was because iron bands hadn’t kept her from breathing because she was just so embarrassed wanted to die.

Even when she could walk again, she couldn’t quite believe she had done that, planting one foot in front of the other and shaking her head. What had come over her in those few seconds? Her fingers had curled around her pen, scratched a few quick words on the page and she had held it tightly against the underside of the book at the bottom of her little stack before lifting it onto Chinook’s desk.

Maybe it had floated to the ground? Stuck to someone’s shoe? Someone who’d take it far, far outside the building? It wasn’t very likely.

Only once, Ingrid slammed her open palm against her forehead and an elderly woman next to her on the pavement jumped, and then muttered about the youth of today. Ingrid ignored her, not even trying to regain her fickle cloak of invisibility in this mood. There was no point when her face wanted to scowl and blush and scream.

When she pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, she came upon the few coins from the night before and she ducked into a coffee shop to buy some hot chocolate even though she knew better. She paid up in full, though, tugged her threadbare gloves out of the side compartment of her backpack and then reached for the paper cup. Even through the wool, it warmed her hands and it felt much nicer, walking down towards lakefront park like this, just as though she was one of any number of young interns, yearning for a few lungfuls of fresh air during their lunch-break. She was too young, of course, but who could tell these days – some of the girls in her grade used so much make-up and artificial tan, they could pass for almost thirty and whenever Ingrid remembered the way Chinook had looked that day Ingrid had woken up on her sofa to watch her bite her finger-tips in front of her screen, she’d thought that in the right light, Chinook could easily pass for Ingrid’s age. And there they were again: Chinook thoughts. It wasn’t he first time, that Ingrid wondered whether it was this quality of hers, that she was named for: the ability to blow into someone’s mind like the wind, melting away all the icy layers you piled up for protection.

Ingrid felt a little nauseated with embarrassment – or possibly the hot chocolate – and she slowed her steps. She was almost at Buckingham fountain now – dry of course, in winter. She touched her gloved fingers to the curved fence and looked out over the strange little world ahead: all the pipes, discoloured from water and chemicals, the dry concrete bed beneath. It always reminded her of winter, of Christmas shopping with her mother holding her hand and dragging her behind, of the last time they’d been here, a heavy shawl wrapped around her mother’s bald head as she wanted one last look over the lake, even though it was grey with heavy clouds that promised snow. Ingrid shivered. With a little plop, the lid of her paper cup came loose under the pressure of her hand.

She had the sudden urge to return to the library, to apologize — or something, to find some way to feel close to Chinook again instead of being so far away. Gently, she pressed the lid back onto the fragile cup and then almost dropped it.

“I always liked the sea horses,” a voice said beside her, warm and deep and heavily accented.

Ingrid spun around to find Pablo, smiling down at her. His hair looked more blown about than usually, and he was carrying his guitar in a case on his back. For a moment, Ingrid was so stunned, she lost control of her mouth, opening and closing it ineffectually. She took a gulp of hot chocolate to buy time, to get over the shock.

“I…” she shook her head, “I think they are creepy,” she whispered, staring at those bottomless, fishlike mouths on a horse’s head that looked like they could clamp over someone’s face and suck the light out of them. That’s what she had thought when she’d been there with her dying mother, that it might have been the sea horses for all she knew. Surely, with her bald head and sunken, hollow face, that’s what it looked like when you had the light sucked out of you by vicious sea monsters.

Lilt Podcast Episode 5

A new week and a new episode of Lilt, the chatty lit podcast with me and L.C. Spoering. Lilt is a short, weekly show about our experience of reading, writing and the publishing industry. We’ll discuss books we like, writing concepts that interest us, and the ever-puzzling publishing game. We’ll also give tips on all things writing, editing and promotion.

 

Lilt — Episode 5

in which Laila and Lorrie wrap up their reading month July and chat about

The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird and Slaughterhouse Five.

Lilt Episode 5 – Laila Blake / Lorrie Spoeringmap :: {skin:’red’, animate:true, width:’500′, volume:0.4, autoplay:false, loop:false, showVolumeLevel:true, showTime:true, showRew:true, downloadable:true, downloadablesecurity:false, id3: false}

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What about you? Have you read any of these, what did you think?

And what did you read last month?

The books mentioned and discussed in this episode were:
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger;
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger;
1984 - George Orwell;
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee;
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut;
Slapstick - Kurt Vonnegut;
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut.

Our intro music was taken from the Free Music Archive:
GeeNerve - Pink Fish Signs (Take Two).

We will also spend August participating in a Book Challenge on our tumblr accounts (Laila’s | Lorrie’s) — why don’t you joing in?

My Calm Place: Looking at Kittens

This of course is my very own, my baby Nookie, who is about 11 months old and who shares my apartment and every once in a while, gets so needy to bite my fingers that she’ll try to catch them off the keyboard when I’m writing. Of course she only does this when I am deeply engrossed in a story – now she’s still calmly lying on her scratching post, watching me (she always knows when I’m talking about her, she’s a wizard).