Diana Pharaoh Francis's Blog, page 7

Figuring It Out

As you all know, I have been grieving my dog. It’s been hard, and I’ve not felt inclined to do much. Creatively, I’ve been drained. I’m working on figuring it out. In the meantime, we were in the process of refinancing our house and that closes next week. We’ve been also been looking for a trailer for camper, and we also get that next week. It was a litte insane and overwhelming and also frustrating. Never going back to Camping World, that’s for sure, and not a fan of Blue Dog, RV, either.

Anyhow, we went looking for one kind of thing, found another, then another, and pretty quick got all kinds of ideas and then we were miles and miles away from the original plan. But if we can hold on to this fifth wheel for a couple of decades, then it will be good. At this point, I just want to be able to get away more, a little less expensively than at hotels, and more privately, be able to go to the middle of nowhere Natureville and relax and write.

Merlin got sick after Voodoo died and that was scary. He had to get subcutaneous fluids and shots and antibiotics. I think he’s super sensitive to our emotions and also to losing Voodoo, so basically it was an emotional problem, or so I think. Figuring it out, too. So far he’s better, though and hopefully on an even keel.

In the meantime, life goes on. I’ve been avoiding news coverage because am discovering that doomscrolling really brings me down. I’m looking for an easy knitting project to be focused on to help build the creativity. It helps. Been reading a bit more, too. Not as much as I want, but at least more. For a long time I was having a tough time reading anything. I just had to fight to finish. Wasn’t in the mood for TV shows, except Hallmark, which are really low conflict and predictable. I needed that. Apparently anything else pushed my anxiety up, which is totally ridiculous if you think about it, but there you are.

I received back the editorial letter for Shatter of Light and plan to start on those next week. This week is the big grading project for my class and so that’s where the focus needs to be. Have to get those done and then I’ll be good to go again. I haven’t actually taken any sort of break from teaching in the last three years. No summers off for me. But I’m glad for the job and getting to work with the students. Most of anyhow.

Been trying to get some cooking done. Which reminds me I need to go marinate a flank steak. Never tried cooking it this way before but I’m hopeful. Still working on figuring out how to like sweet potatoes and squash. Savory is the key, I think. I don’t like sugar on them, so I need to go with other flavors. And roasting them maybe.

Gonna dive back into the grading now. You all have an awesome week! I hope you’re all healthy and safe and cozy. (We are in the middle of a big ice storm, so I’m hoping the power stays on and my husband gets home safely and hoping he doesn’t go back to work until the ice melts).

Grieving

This last week we found out my dog had cancer on the spleen and had to put him to asleep. I can’t begin to say how hard this is for me and how much it hurts. He was special. He’d chosen me for reasons I’ll never understand, but if I moved, he looked at me to see where we were going. He ‘herded’ me by walking in front of me and looking over his shoulder to make sure I was still following. He wouldn’t go to someone else’s call without me at least telling him he should. He loved me in a ways that seems like a miracle and it was.  He was the sweetest and most amazing dog an

d I can’t seem to do much, especially writing. The Elf Job is on hold for the moment until I can collect myself. Below are pictures of my Voodoo boy.

Let Me Tell You a Little About The Pixie Job

When I started writing the Job books (and yes, The Elf Job will hopefully be ready by Sunday), I wanted to do some fun, rompy, snarky, magical books with romance. I wanted to have fun writing. I wanted to giggle and chortle and look forward to you doing the same. As the other characters came to life in the first book, I wanted to play more with their relationships and interactions. I’m not going to spoil The Elf Job, but Mal and So’la have some interesting times and find something like a truce. Maybe frenemies would be a good description, with more weight falling on the friends-with-fun-to-antagonize-the-other sorts of benefits. Is that a thing?

In The Pixie Job, Mal’s at Effrayant for a wedding between a pixie and a giant. Here’s the thing about pixies. They are obnoxious, vicious, and they like to ‘prank,’ where pranks could easily end in Armageddon, or at least nuclear winter. They find these funny. With the wedding, the rats are abandoning ship, or rather, the guests are fleeing Effrayant until the world ends or the pixies leave. Mal is supposed to help keep the pixies under control and make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch. Only problem? Someone has been murdering giants and everybody’s a suspect, including the pixies. Cherry on the crap cake? There’s been a kidnapping.

Mal’s got her work cut out for her, having to solve the murders and kidnapping before the wedding while juggling her rocky-ish relationship with Law, keeping So’la from stirring the pot, and stopping a war.

I so want everybody to love this story as much as I do. I’m chomping away on my fingernails and peeking out from under my desk.

A couple little tidbits:

She, Edna, and Merrow looked for the maker of the hoof sounds: Elliot, a goat. He’d been gifted to Law by a group of Gwyll. The little people had powerful magic and an opinionated sense of right and wrong. Refusing would have been rude and exceedingly dangerous. Since Law was not stupid, he’d graciously accepted. Unfortunately, Elliot was immune to magic, and he could walk through walls. He was always getting into places he didn’t belong. For instance, he had a particular fondness for LeeAnne’s lingerie drawer and a penchant for tequila.

Drunk magic goats are nothing to laugh about.

Neither was one splashed with blood and carrying a severed hand in his mouth.

They might have just a little bit of a trust issue. Specifically, he didn’t trust her to A) not endanger herself or her life, B) not disappear on him without a word, or C) not do both A and B together. Meanwhile, she didn’t trust that he wasn’t having some kind of psychotic break and at any moment he’d wake up, find her in bed with him, chew off his arm, and run screaming for the hills to escape.

Truth be told, there were worse things than pixies. Like . . . mentally deficient gnomes who’d forgotten how to use toilets—though to be honest, gnomes weren’t generally known for using toilets. They like to squat and drop and keep going. On top of that, they weren’t actually known for their hygiene. They always had rank hair growing mildew and moss with slimy things colonizing in their greasy tresses. They dressed in clothes made of recently caught fish skins, when they dressed at all. At least the pixies didn’t smell and weren’t as depressing.

If Mal had to choose, she’d take pixies. That probably qualified her as mentally deficient. Maybe she should look into a shrink.

It was like watching a massive horde of Animaniacs on meth and acid having themselves a destruction derby, sans cars.

 

 

Time to get down and dirty with your Dirty Deeds Anthology

Time to get down and dirty with your Dirty Deeds Anthology!

It’s confession time. I didn’t quite get Elf Job finished in time for this release. I’m hoping like hell to get it to you in the next few days, but until then, please don’t kill me too hard. You can get this limited time only anthology

(it goes away in six months) now. Today. Tell everybody you know because you’re going to love it. For one final little teaser (you can read snippets from each of the authors in my previous blogs) here’s one from RJ Blaine from her Magical RomCom

with a Body Count series:

 

After a long week of work, I couldn’t really blame anyone for grabbing fast food on the way home, but did everyone in Long Island have to visit my specific branch of McDonald’s? From vanilla humans, lycanthropes, practitioners, and centaurs, to devils, demons, and even an angel, everybody wanted a hit, and they wanted me to give it to them.

I questioned the angel. How could they eat without a head? Did they eat? Why did an angel want nuggets? Why did everyone want nuggets today?
While all the lines were busy, mine had twice as many people, and I doubted I’d survive to the end of my shift in an hour.

I considered asking some divine for help, but I opted against the idea. With my luck, the devil would join the mayhem and give me one hell of an order.

The nuggets held the place as the day’s reigning champion of sales, with the smart people ordering twenty, as it was approximately fifty cents more expensive than ordering ten. Burgers took the second spot of the day, and the underdog salad came in a close third, resulting in general mayhem in the back, as we hadn’t prepared for a salad bender.

Oddly, the lycanthropes led the charge on the unexpected salad bender. Had someone slipped pixie dust into our dressing when I hadn’t been looking? While filling an insane order consisting of a hundred and sixty nuggets, ten fries, and enough soda to float a boat, I checked one of the labels to make sure.

Nope, no pixie dust.

I could’ve used a hit of pixie dust, but for some damned reason, the CDC got cranky when those infected with a contagious life-altering disease became snuggle fiends. My driver’s license specifically barred me from ingesting any pixie dust without a prescription, the cruelest of blows in my life outside of my accidental infection with lycanthropy. Pixie dust turned me into a snuggle fiend out on a mission to love everyone, making me a high infection risk.

They would consider removing the flag after I mated, as they believed I would become a snuggle fiend with my mate, something they viewed to be acceptable.

I hated the CDC, especially as my virus agreed with their idea.

 

The damsels bring the distress in this UF/PNR collection. Dirty Deeds can be had at the following vendors:

Ebooks:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple Books

Kobo

 

Paperbacks:

Mass market paperback on Amazon

Trade paperback on Amazon

Barnes & Noble Mass Market Paperback

Barnes & Noble Trade Paperback

 

Another Dirty Deeds snippet

Hi folks! The countdown continues to the release of Dirty Deeds next week. If you missed them, see my last post with snippets from Devon Monk and Faith Hunter. Today you get to read one from me. So without further ado . . . Enjoy!

 

The thing about taking a vacation is that you always feel guilty that you aren’t being productive, or someone wants you to do something you don’t want to do. Case in point: the ghost elf sitting on the lounge opposite giving Mal the fish-eye stare because she refused to go train.

“I told you. I’m on vacation. I promised Law, and the other ghosts, and So’la. I’m not supposed to do anything but relax for an entire month.”

Mal reached for her mimosa and sipped it deliberately. She wasn’t generally a drinker, especially in the morning, but Edna, another of her ghost companions, had encouraged her to try it out. She could have done without the champagne in the orange juice but whatever. She was on vacation, and apparently this is what people did on vacation. She wouldn’t know. She’d never actually taken one before.

Merrow’s lips twisted downward. She looked entirely out of place. Well, generally ghosts did look out of place among the living, especially since generally the living made sure they were exterminated like vermin. Mal used to be one of those exterminators until she couldn’t stomach it anymore. Now she had her own family—collection? cult? hangers on? —of ghosts.

She had eighteen of them, now that Merrow had joined. They fed off her magical energy, which they needed to survive. Which was sort of an oxymoron but whatever.

Anyhow, Merrow had been an elf. A militant one, part of an elite fighting force. She’d been betrayed by her own and killed, then joined Mal in order to get revenge. She’d achieved that and Mal thought maybe she’d have crossed over in whatever way elves do, but she’d stayed.

Merrow was bored.

Law, Mal’s boyfriend and the blood-bound security witch of Effrayant—where Mal was vacationing, just as she’d promised after her most recent near-death experience—had arranged charging stations for the ghosts so they could go anywhere and find sustenance. This was not an unselfish act. He’d been motivated by a desire for privacy with Mal, but the ghosts were grateful.

Most of them.

 

The damsels bring the distress in this UF/PNR collection. Dirty Deeds can be preordered at the following vendors:

Ebooks:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple Books

Kobo

 

Paperbacks:

Mass market paperback on Amazon

Trade paperback on Amazon

Barnes & Noble Mass Market Paperback

Barnes & Noble Trade Paperback

The post Another Dirty Deeds snippet first appeared on Diana Pharaoh Francis | Diana P. Francis | Diana Francis.

Dirty Deeds Gonna Get Done!

Are you ready for it a fabulous book? Let’s whet your appetite if not. Here are TWO snippets, one from Devon Monk, one from Faith Hunter. You’re going to love them! And at the bottom of this post, you’ll have some Buy links so you can rush right out and preorder. It is gong to arrive on the 12th!

Here is a teaser from Faith Hunter’s Bound into Darkness, releasing January 12, 2021 in the Dirty Deeds anthology. Enjoy!

Sometime between books 13 and 14 of the Jane Yellowrock Series…

Liz

Liz Everhart finished the email, tucked her cell into a back pocket of her jeans, ignored the weird buzz of blood-curse taint that still pulled at her flesh, and tried to decide who she wanted to call for backup on this gig. Finding a lost dog sounded easy on the surface, but it could involve hiking up and down mountain ridges, maybe camping overnight, and then hauling a seventy-pound, possibly wounded dog back to civilization. That wasn’t something she wanted to do alone. Liz dialed her twin, Cia, and discovered she was spending the weekend with her boyfriend, so help on that quarter was out. Her other sisters were covering the family business, Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café. That left asking Jane Yellowrock, who she didn’t particularly like, and who was way too busy being some big hoo-ha in the vampire world. Or she could ask the man who had been avoiding her for weeks. Yeah. Him. She thought about being rejected again. Or, not so much rejected, as suddenly, inexplicably ignored.

Staring out over the vineyard, watching her older sister, Molly, work, she remembered the various comments he’d made a month ago, ones that suggested he was now totally disinterested. She didn’t know what had happened, except that he’d been in some pretty dangerous situations protecting Jane Yellowrock. Maybe he really thought the danger to “civilians,” as he called people who were not part of Yellowrock’s vampire-human-witch clan was too great for her to handle.

Come to think of it, his apparent disinterest had come almost immediately after her bout with viral pneumonia. He’d been there for her while she recuperated, then he’d pulled back. Son of a witch! That was it. Because she’d nearly died, he thought she couldn’t keep up with the danger. If she hadn’t caught him looking at her a couple of times, she would have believed he’d changed his mind about them being together and become oblivious to her. He thought she was weak which might be worse. Stupid man.

Down the hill, Molly stretched hard and blew out. She’d been hired to talk to the vines to help them grow. Molly was an earth witch and, when she talked to plants, she actively pushed her earth magic into the soil, into the roots, encouraging them to good health, to seek out proper nutrients. She gave them a boost of life. Liz wasn’t an earth witch like Molly, but even she could tell the land here was well cared for, happy, and productive, in part due to Molly “talking to the vines.” Yellowrock and her consort, George Dumas, should have a good crop come harvest time. Aaaand she was wasting time.

Liz trudged back up the terraced incline to the big inn where Yellowrock Clan wine label originated, and which housed the Yellowrock Clan itself: a mixed para clan that did crazy stuff trying to keep the human versus para war from erupting here like it had in other parts of the world. Politics. Liz hated politics. Wasn’t real fond of vamps. But Yellowrock’s adopted clan-brother, Eli Younger, the man who had been avoiding her, lived here. That ornery man made it worth the trip from Asheville.

It wasn’t a hard climb, but Liz was huffing by the time she got to the house. It was early fall and the humidity, even in the hills above Asheville, was in at eighty percent with temps near ninety. And while Liz’s lungs were better, thanks to witch healing, they were permanently damaged from the trauma that resulted when her now-deceased elder sister Evangelina dropped a boulder on her in a magical fight over a demon. She had nearly died. Her other sisters had saved her from instant death. Yellowrock had made sure she had vamp blood to sip to speed the healing. But even with continued healing blood and healing workings, along with her niece’s prayers, trauma was trauma.

 

Here is a teaser from Devon Monk’s story, set in the Ordinary, Oregon universe:

I parked the Jeep and stared through the rain at my almost-uncle, Crow, who was actually the trickster god Raven. He was waiting just inside the mouth of the tent he’d set up in front of his glassblowing studio. As if he’d been expecting us.

“Ten bucks it’s all stolen.” My youngest sister, Jean, wore a beanie over her blue hair, the bangs across her forehead making her eyes sky bright. She had on a puffy jacket with her badge on it, just like me. Although my badge said Chief Reed and hers just said Officer Reed.

Crow wiggled his fingers at both of us. His smile was white against his russet-tan skin, and his dark hair hung past his shoulders. He’d braided that hair and added a feather earring to his outfit today. Crow feather, of course.

“I mean, sure,” I said. “At least some of that stuff must be hot. This is Crow we’re talking about. But what I can’t figure out is the whale.”

We both leaned forward to better see out the windshield.

The January wind buffeted the Jeep hard, rocking it on its springs. Rain hammered down on the metal roof like rocks thrown from the heavens. A storm front was pushing in off the Pacific. Torrential rain would hit by tonight. Then we’d see winds clocking in at sixty miles an hour and gusting to eighty.

Just another wet, windy, possibly deadly January day in Ordinary, Oregon.

“The whale I understand,” Jean said, as we stared at the tent. “It’s a tent, we’re a beach town. Matchy-match. But why is it that… color?”

“Lurid pink?” I suggested.

She nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I love me some color, but there’s something about that thing that makes me want to stab it.”

The hot pink whale flapped its obscenely large mouth, flailed its flippers, and flipped its tail like it’d just heard Jean’s threat and was trying to swim away.

But no matter what Jean or I thought about the thing, there were people moving around inside that ridiculous tent. Shoppers couldn’t resist a bargain, even in this weather.

Crow, still watching us, pointed upward with both hands.

The whale’s head was topped with a blow hole, and out of that sprayed blood red streamers. An additional banner near the startled whale eye declared: whale of a sale

“Is this an exploding whale thing?” Jean asked. “Because we weren’t the town that blew up that rotting whale in the seventies.”

 

The damsels bring the distress in this UF/PNR collection. Dirty Deeds can be preordered at the following vendors:

Ebooks:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple Books

Kobo

 

Paperbacks:

Mass market paperback on Amazon

Trade paperback on Amazon

Barnes & Noble Mass Market Paperback

Barnes & Noble Trade Paperback

The post Dirty Deeds Gonna Get Done! first appeared on Diana Pharaoh Francis | Diana P. Francis | Diana Francis.

Mid-October

I’m typing away on The Elf Job. It’s the second Mission: Magic book. It’s going to be really fun (I’m nearly done), but I’m converting it from 1st person to 3rd person and that makes for a bit of a slodge because I’m constantly fearing I’m overlooking an I, me, my, myself, our, we, etc.

I thought I’d go ahead and share a little snippet from what I’m working on today. Here you go. Enjoy:

 

The new elf stood well above six feet tall, which was about average elf height. Her hair hung to her knees. Mal had never seen an elf with black hair, though even in the moonlight she could pick out hints of blue, green, and purple. Strands of gems and gold wove through the long tresses. Maybe all that weight gave her a constant migraine.

Her clothes were white on white on white. She wore gossamer-thin layers that floated up at her slightest movement. A train flagged in the breeze. The thing that caught Mal’s attention, though, was the circlet on top of her head. It was made of a bright blue metal inlaid with intricate designs. In the middle was a star sapphire the size of a plum.

Crowns on elves could only mean court royalty or a high priestess. Both of which were on Mal’s bucket list of ‘don’t do this ever.’

She continued to look and after a minute it occurred to Mal that she was waiting for some kind of obeisance. A curtsy or maybe groveling in the dirt. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

“Why am I here?”

“I summoned you.”

Fucking elves. They even evaded direct questions. Mal bit back the urge to tell Lady Enigmatic Asshole to fuck off. She’d thought LeeAnne was obnoxious.

“Are you going to tell me why?”

“I wished to speak to you, of course.”

“Then can you say what you want to say? I’ve got things to do and not a lot of time to get them done.”

“Yes. The talisman of Cat Barf. You seek it.”

Once again name of the talisman was impossible to make out. “Like I told Merrow, I don’t know.”

Her brows lifted. “You don’t know?”

“I’m after a talisman. I have no idea what it’s called, and to tell the truth, I don’t really give a fuck.”

“Ah.”

Just that and nothing else. She continued to stare. Unlike Paeteric, she had mastered the art of the bland expression. She also had the elven appreciation of time in spades. The concept of hurry was totally alien to her.

“Why do you care whether or not I’m after this talisman?”

“I don’t care if you are after it.”

Now it was Mal’s turn to be confused. “Then why do you keep asking about it?”

“It matters not if you seek it.”

Crap. Elf double-talk again. “Okay, if I find the damned thing. Then you’re interested, correct? Why?”

“It is not for Paeteric of House Yonnarlistral to possess.”

“He doesn’t seem to agree with you on that.”

“The Talisman of Cat Barf may not be used in this war.”

The smart ass part of Mal wanted to ask which war it could be used in, but she clamped her teeth on the comment and swallowed it back down. This elf just might answer and they’d end up so far off on a tangent she’d never get back to work.

The post Mid-October first appeared on Diana Pharaoh Francis | Diana P. Francis | Diana Francis.

Back! From Outer Space!

Yes, I’ve not been here for a long time. Why is that? Well, Covid for one. It’s been tough with the family and helping out my elderly parents. We helped them sell their house and move. Well, basically we had them take what they wanted and then leave everything else and we cleaned their house out and cleaned their house and turned it over to the new owner.

I finished a draft of the fifth Diamond City Magic book, but oh, it was such a struggle. It’s super long, and now I have to revise and add a point of view, so I’m still [image error]working on that. I also don’t have a title for it yet, which is totally silly of me, and yet the title isn’t really coming together. I finished The Pixie Job, which will be out in early January in an anthology with novellas by R.J. Blain, Faith Hunter, and Devon Monk. The anthology is titled Dirty Deeds and I think you’re going to love these stories. They are so very fun.

Now what’s interesting is that The Pixie Job is the third in the Mission: Magic books, with The Incubus Job being the first. But wait, you say. Where’s the second? There is no second! But in fact, there is. It’s not quite done, but it will be out sometime before Dirty Deeds. I’m shooting for the end of October or middle of November. I’ll let you know more when I have more. It’s titled The Elf Job and it’s so much fun, I can’t even begin to tell you. Actually, both of them are.

I’m in Oregon and of course there are fires raging here. We’ve not been in any evacuation zones, but we’re really near the Beachie Creek/Lionshead/Riverside complex of fires. We’re across the river and the interstate, not to mention a lot of city, so we’re not concerned about ourselves, but I’m so concerned for some friends who have evacuated, and others who’ve lost homes. It’s just awful and I can’t seem to stop watching the news constantly for updates. On the positive side, it distracts me from the pandemic. That’s good, right?

Sadly, west of us on the coast where I wanted to go this weekend is also on fire and evacuated. But one of my friends who had to evacuate has learned their house is still standing. Hallelujah.

Dogs are doing great. Merlin (formerly bitey boy) has become super lovey and all three of them are lap hogs. My son returns to college in a week. His apartment, anyway. His classes will be online. My daughter will be doing her classes from home. She’s so thrilled (not). My husband will be losing his job soon. They are closing the machine shop where he works. We just don’t know when he will be laid off. They plan to close by the end of the year, but whether they lay him off before that is unclear. He’s taking some online classes to help boost his cnc programming skills.

In the meantime, I’m struggling with all the 2020 crap. Oh, we are remodeling our kitchen and it’s going slowly. Sigh. But progress is happening. Incredibly slowly.

With the smoke, I’ve been inside all week and have been going a little bit nuts. I really need to get on my elliptical. I’m drinking a lot of water to try to stay hydrated because it’s been so dry and hot. Some of my plants are getting really crispy. My tomatoes are going nuts and so are my cucumbers and squash and it looks like I’ve got some good peppers going on. Excited about that.

I promise to check in more. I stopped because I had this feeling that no one was paying attention. Mostly that was because I was doing the thing where everything is so overwhelming that I just sort of crawl into a cave and try to deal triage-fashion. But I’ve missed this part of connecting with people so I’m going to keep blogging here, even if it is into a void.

*waves hi to the void monkeys*

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Ack!

How are all of you holding up with the coronavirus? Got fun stuff going on at all? Want to kill family members?

I get out every day to walk the dogs, though a lot of the time I just want to hide under the covers. I have zero writing discipline. Both kids are home and the girlie really doesn’t like me homeschooling her. Sigh. I’ve accomplished things like grading for my class, writing a letter of recommendation, cooking food, and not really doing well at writing. Trying to give myself a break because all of this coronavirus thing is getting to me. I need to avoid the news and especially news from the Whitehouse, but I can’t seem to do that very well. At least in Oregon, the social distancing is helping. Right now we should have enough ventilators for w

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hen the peak gets here. This makes me happy because my husband has asthma. I’ve been making my family wear cloth masks out in public, especially at the grocery stores. It may not help us not get the disease, but it will help us not spread it, especially cashiers.

I kind of want to go for a drive up into the mountains or out to the coast, but I know there aren’t any bathrooms open, so . . . Staying home like we’re supposed to.

I have been trying my hand at amigarumi. My first project has its problems, but it looks reasonably like what it’s supposed to. It’s crochet, so that’s a little easier on my weird shoulder/elbow tendonitis thing. That’s my little dude, there. He’s a flat mouse, because it’s supposed to be a bookmark. I need to iron it a little, I think. But at least it’s looking kinda like what it’s supposed to. I’m going to make a cat next, though I have to wait for yarn to get here, unless I can find some smaller cotton yarn in my stash.

My writing is almost nonexistent this week. I’ve got to find a way to get back on task. I’d like to get outside and do some gardening, but we’ve had rain. So I’ll have to wait. I need to call an order in to the garden store so I can go pick up some things like sawdust for my blueberries, and a trough and various other things to be a planter for my cool weather veggies. It’s tough because I’m trying to work out a schedule that will work for my kids and me. You know, the me who doesn’t want to do anything right now.

I have been doing some reading. I have been reading some romantic suspense, and have a billion other books to read, so I’m going to have plenty to choose from. I just finished a book by Laura Griffin, one of my favorite writers. This one was a stand alone, except there were cameo moments from her Wolfe Security and Tracers books, which I appreciated. None of her books have to be read in order, so I’m going to dip into the series again here and there. I’m reading some Netgalley books, so I may be bringing you a review or several. I don’t review what I don’t like. I don’t want to tear authors down.

So what have you all been up to to pass the time? Been able to find all the things you need? Flour? Yeast? Toilet Paper? Cleaners? Dish Soap? (that one floors me that it’s been running out).

Stay safe!

checking in

I haven’t posted in a long while and I don’t know why. It’s crazy. Updates seem silly given the coronavirus, but yanno, life has to go on to.

But let me ask you how you’re doing? I’m in Oregon and right now we are okay in the house. Moved my college-going son home because all his classes are going online and it’s safer to have him home not going to the dining centers on campus for his meals. My high-school-aged daughter is out until April 28th, but I think it will be the rest of the school year so I’m trying to come up with some homeschool plans. My husband has asthma, so I’m deeply concerned about him, but at least he works in a machine shop and so social distancing isn’t a thing there because everybody’s distanced by their machines, so they are all very far apart. All the same, I wish I had some masks for when I go shopping so that I don’t bring it home.

In the meantime, we’ve had a seriously sick little corgi, but he’s a lot better now. Last week we were in the vet several times and I was really worried. We’re getting out to walk the dogs and I plan to get out gardening, but otherwise staying away from people.

I’m working on DCM 5 and it’s Loooooong already and getting longer. I’d hoped to be all done well before now, but I’m not, so I’m plugging away.

I’m trying to find some TV shows I want to watch, but can’t find anything I like right now. I like romantic suspense, but more in books. I like funny and light, but I’ve seen a lot of those, and some that a lot of people like, I don’t. Documentaries are my next go-to. Actually I’ve been watching some YouTube stuff where experts talk about how things are portrayed in movies and TV shows. Like a spy disguise specialist talking about spy disguises, or a jewel thief talking about stealing, and so on. I’m hoping to write some romantic suspense, so watching these are useful and also really fascinating.

I think I want to watch some how-to stuff and get some knitting projects finished. I keep stopping halfway. Cuz I’m a dork. Yes, I am.

Merlin, the bitey puppy, is a lot better and hasn’t bitten us in a really long time. He’s still working out some issues with the older dog, but he’s learned he really loves attention and doesn’t like hurting us. It’s funny because when he makes his groaning noise that could mean he’s happy or that he wants us to stop, we all do a hands up sort of thing to show him we’re stopping and we’re backing off and giving him his space. He’s finding that he doesn’t like us stopping. We don’t want to tell him not to growl because we need the warning, but we also don’t want to get bitten. But he’s figuring out that he’s in control and doesn’t have to be afraid, since a lot of his aggression was fear-based.

I hope to be reporting in here a little more often. I hope you are all doing very well and your are staying healthy. Please do that.