Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead

First up, the long-promised (threatened?) Maplecroft roundup!
The Nameless Zine tackles the book - "What Priest really captures, however, is Lovecraft’s talent for documenting the descent into madness from tampering in things best left unknown..."

Kameron Hurley names it as one of her must-read picks - "It’s all that stuff you loved about Lovecraft (including the weird nightmares after you read it) without the constant facepunching. I don’t read books very fast as a rule, but I plowed through this in just a couple of days..."

A wonderful hairy arm talks about Maplecroft - Via TikiFire Book reviews. Seriously, I love this review - even though (maybe because?) he sounds so surprised that he enjoyed it so much...

I know it's just a Goodreads review BUT - It's from Felicia Day!
[:: happydances ::]

And then there's THIS. Wherein the marvelous Mr. Wheaton is kind enough to chat about it in the Tabletop gag reel.






And here's today's progress on my modern gothic ghost story about a salvage crew trapped in a doomed southern mansion - now with a crunchy murder ballad center and Bonus! clandestine cemetery where the stones don't match the bodies (and were never meant to). As inspired by a (semi)true local legend:
Project: The Family Plot
Deadline: January 15, 2015
New words written: 2025
Present total word count: 77,175



Things Accomplished in Fiction: Re-calibrated plans once more because things are basically beyond fucked up at this point, but they can't leave yet. (For actual reasons, not lame horror movie reasons.)

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Neighborhood jaunt with dog; cleaned my bathroom; unclogged my tub; vacuumed the whole house (even the cobwebs in the corners, not that they won't be back next week); dusted/wiped down everything but the kitchen/husband's bathroom, as those are *his* responsibilities; returned yet another loose dog to his people - but this round was pretty painless.

Other: Today's unexpected dog-guest was named "Tucker," and he was adorable. He showed up on the other side of our fence, trying to play with Greyson - who was all, "MOM, CAN MY FRIEND TUCKER COME IN HERE AND PLAY?" and I was like, "Sure, hang on." Tucker was towing a massive locking D-ring caribiner attached to a metal cable lead ... which he had chewed straight through in order to make his escape.

Furthermore Fuzzy Other: He was wearing a harness with a handle, for easy catching - as well as a collar with a large name-tag. When I say "large" I mean this name-tag was big enough to hold his name, three phone numbers, and a street address. Something told me this was not Tucker's first time fleeing his yard for giggles.

Resolution to Other: Long story short, Tucker's mom dashed over from work to collect him. In fact, he is a MASTER escape artist - but his family gets an "A" for effort. For real, I'm not judging; I'm just glad it wasn't (a). Rufus for the 9th time, or (b). some other pooch with no tags, running loose like a happy maniac. Dogs are wily, man. Shit happens. Be prepared.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 228,556

Dog friends





In other news, the kitty's lab-work came back this afternoon...and the news is good! There was no sign of anything untoward in the cyst's contents, and she gets a clean bill of health [:: throws confetti ::]





If I understood the vet correctly (and she talks really fast, so maybe, maybe not), it seemed to be a benign cyst on her endocrine duct(?). Not dangerous, and now that it's drained, it's likely to stay gone. Hey, better to know for certain than to wonder why your cat suddenly looks like she's smuggling M&Ms in her lower lip.

That's what I say.

And in closing...
....bonus dog friends!

Enjoy :)