Elephants, Entendre and Elizabeth

Los Elefantes son Fantasticos!





*cough* My Spanish is mostly all mangly, so pardon, but I do love elephants. They are the FAVORITE of one of my twins (Thursday twin, Natasha) They are the biggest land animal in the world, but are still SO DARNED CUTE!



This little darling is the latest baby girl elephant at the Portland zoo, and of all the things, I remember when her mama, Rose-tu was born. Portland's zoo has the most successful elephant husbandry program in the country and this may be part of my love for them—when I lived there, every few years there was a new baby elephant to fall in love with and watch grow.





Entendré Entendré...



erm... or double entendré... Not sure that a single entendré means anything but 'meaning'... I LOVE words... and I love when the SAME words can take on double meaning. I find this a clever device in writing, and I ADORE it in humor... especially if one of the word uses in dirty... cuz you know... my friends and I really like the gutter best.



I try to always have my book titles have double meanings. In fact I am nearly never happy with them if they don't. My current WiP Is ENDANGERED (see, that's an e-word), and the double meaning is that it is teens in the midst of civil war (so they're in danger) and they decide to become Mountain Guerillas (guerilla being the Spanish word for warrior, and Mountain Gorillas are endangered)--It's probably too clever by half and nobody will get it without me explaining, which really takes away the point, but there you have it.





Exquisite Elizabeth (Spann Craig)



I haven't waxed poetic about Elizabeth in a while, but really she deserves it. When I first began blogging, I decided to find somebody doing it right and try to emulate THEM. I stumble upon Elizabeth, and shamelessly began stalking her and she totally WAS doing everything right. She is STILL doing everything right.





She ALSO is the person who led me into cozy mystery and gave me TONS of tips and links for writing the things (which led to my contract. She's had a few traditionally published series that have done really well, but her first series had gone out of print, and through re-obtaining her rights and self-publishing those, then continuing the series, she learned that she could do THAT well, too, so she has a couple of each... here is one just released.







And one coming this summer under the pen name Riley Adams:



There are oodles more listed at her website, so you should check her out.



Or visit her blog.