German Cover!!

I think it looks kinda cool!! Maybe a bit too film noir-ish, but still pretty nice!!

Valley of the Dead - Signed, Limited Edition

Since I just signed the contract, I can now announce that Valley of the Dead will first be produced as a signed, numbered edition by Cargo Cult Press!

http://www.cargocultpress.com

There will also be the super deluxe lettered edition.

I can also announce that Alex McVey will be doing the cover AND interior art! He's done art for a lot of the really big names! Check out his super-creepy, super-cool art:

http://www.alexmcvey.com/

This is my first foray into this kind of publishing and I look forward to working with the ultra fast and efficient Brian Cartwright on the project!

Big Day for the Other Zombie Guy!

A nice email about some marketing possibilities.

Another nice one about an interview with a podcast.

Nice edits for The World Is Dead and hopefully that can be sent to press.

AND...

BEST OF ALL...

A really great offer for a new project! You'll hear it here first, gentle readers!!!

World Is Dead Update

Some contributors have been asking. Operations at Permuted were knocked out for like a month back in February to early March by the huge ice storm that hit them. They are back on the job, but the backlog is significant. But things are again moving through the pipeline (as for example, the Cthulhu Unbound volume that just came out). I am going over the PDF right now looking for typos.

And now, let's give non-contributors some teasers!

Lots of dead folks at the office!

Lots of dead folks in the family!

Lots of dead folks falling in love!

And watching old movies!

And going to church!

And to baseball games!

And to Walmart!

Gee - not much changes when we die, huh?

It's a fun bunch, I promise.

2008 Stoker Final Ballot

Denied again! Good thing I won the first time, or I'd be insufferable the last two years.

Superior Achievement in a Novel

COFFIN COUNTY by Gary Braunbeck (Leisure Books)
THE REACH by Nate Kenyon (Leisure Books)
DUMA KEY by Stephen King (Scribner)
JOHNNY GRUESOME by Gregory Lamberson (Bad Moon Books/Medallion Press)

Superior Achievement in a First Novel

MIDNIGHT ON MOURN STREET by Christopher Conlon (Earthling Publications)
THE GENTLING BOX by Lisa Mannetti (Dark Hart Press)
MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin (Delirium Books)
THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS by David Oppegaard (St. Martin's Press)
FROZEN BLOOD by Joel A. Sutherland (Lachesis Publishing)

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction

THE SHALLOW END OF THE POOL by Adam-Troy Castro (Creeping Hemlock Press)
MIRANDA by John R. Little (Bad Moon Books)
REDEMPTION ROADSHOW by Weston Ochse (Burning Effigy Press)
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. ZACH by Gene O'Neill (Bad Moon Books)

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction

PETRIFIED by Scott Edelman (Desolate Souls)
THE LOST by Sarah Langan (Cemetery Dance Publications)
THE DUDE WHO COLLECTED LOVECRAFT by Nick Mamatas, and Tim Pratt (Chizine)
EVIDENCE OF LOVE IN A CASE OF ABANDONMENT by M. Rickert (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)
TURTLE by Lee Thomas (Doorways)

Superior Achievement in an Anthology

LIKE A CHINESE TATTOO edited by Bill Breedlove (Dark Arts Books)
HORROR LIBRARY, VOL. 3 edited by R. J. Cavender (Cutting Block Press)
BENEATH THE SURFACE edited by Tim Deal (Shroud Publishing)
UNSPEAKABLE HORROR edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder (Dark Scribe Press)

Superior Achievement in a Collection

THE NUMBER 121 TO PENNSYLVANIA by Kealan Patrick Burke (Cemetery Dance Publications)
MAMA’S BOY and Other Dark Tales by Fran Friel (Apex Publications)
JUST AFTER SUNSET by Stephen King (Scribner)
MR. GAUNT AND OTHER UNEASY ENCOUNTERS by John Langan (Prime Books)
GLEEFULLY MACABRE TALES by Jeff Strand (Delirium Books)

Superior Achievement in Nonfiction

CHEAP SCARES by Gregory Lamberson (McFarland)
ZOMBIE CSU by Jonathan Maberry (Citadel Press)
A HALLOWE'EN ANTHOLOGY by Lisa Morton (McFarland)
THE BOOK OF LISTS: HORROR by Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley (HarperCollins)

Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection

THE NIGHTMARE COLLECTION by Bruce Boston (Dark Regions Press)
THE PHANTOM WORLD by Gary William Crawford (Sam's Dot Publishing)
VIRGIN OF THE APOCALYPSE by Corrine De Winter (Sam's Dot Publishing)
ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER by Mark McLaughlin and Michael McCarty (Skullvines Press)

The Year in Review

I had to calculate my business related travel for 2008 for our taxes. Boy did I get around!

MARCH 14-15, 2008 – LunaCon, Rye, NY

MARCH 27-30, 2008 – World Horror, Salt Lake City, UT

APRIL 4-6, 2008 – Religion and Lit Conference, Syracuse, NY

APRIL 18-20, 2008 – EerieCon, Niagara Falls, NY

JUNE 13-16 – MoCon, Indianapolis, IN

JULY 18-20, 2008 - NECON

AUG 15-17, 2008 – HorrorFind, College Park, MD

AUG 22-24, 2008 – FanExpo, Toronto, ON

OCT 3-6, 2008 – FenCon, Dallas, TX

OCT 11-12, 2008 – AlbaCon, Albany, NY

OCT 25-26, 2008 - ZombieFest, Monroeville, PA

NOV 1-3, 2008 - Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL

NOV 22-24, 2008 – PhilCon, Cherry Hill, NJ

Now on Twitter!

Um, okay. I filled out the form. Then I gave the update that I'm now on Twitter. I'm underwhelmed by the experience so far.

The widget's on the right, for following me. I hope you enjoy it. If that's the desire effect.

Back from LunaCon!

Conversation:

"Hi. So you're an author?"

"Yes. Kim Paffenroth. Pleased to meet you, Tracy." (Seeing the woman's name badge reads "Tracy") "So are you an author? Or an artist? Or a fan?"

"No. I'm poly."

"Great!" (And SO glad I'd just been to Arisia, or I would've said "Polly? I thought your name was Tracy?" Ba-dump-bump!)

The zombie panel was great. Others a little slow going at times. All very well-attended, however. Easiest con for me to get to, as it's about 10 minutes from work.

Off to LunaCon!!

Off to LunaCon tomorrow. Panels tomorrow night and all day Saturday. Hope to see some nice folks there!!

Just Like Every Cowboy...

"Sings a sad, sad song."

"Every rose has its thorn." (BOOM!)

(That's the mortars going off in the darkened stadium amidst all the upraised cell phones and lighters.)

Them - plus Joe Elliott and the gang? PLUS Rick Nielsen and his well-nigh infinite supply of guitar picks?

As Pepe Le Peu would say - "Le Swoon! I am in zee love, my little chou-chou carrot!"

Why'd Rowling Name It "Quidditch"?

Anybody know? I'm reading another philosophical paper, and it keeps talking about "quiddity" (a term I vaguely recall from undergrad readings) and it sounded so close, I can't think she didn't know the relation, especially as she loves Latin references throughout.

That being said, I always wondered in general why the game was there at all. It really seems to have little to do with the main plot(s) and is just a kind of comic relief or bit of trivia about wizardly life.

Auf Deutsche!

My German publisher has a page up for Dying to Live!

http://www.festa-verlag.de/HORROR-Tb/Dying-to-Live-vom-Ueberleben-unter-Toten::245.html?XTCsid=2300355893f397fac83b01056f17fd37

Spiffy!

(Little loose, though: "from the survival among dead people"? I usually like German when it has one word for our four words [economy!!], but here it seems to have gone the other way - three English words to four German.)

Cthulhu Unbound - Preorder!

Cthulhu Unbound, vol. 1, is up for preorder at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934861138

I have a short story in the anthology, so check it out if you're into Lovecraftian mash stuff.

St Pat's!

It made me think of the one time I went to the Emerald Isle. I was there with some other faculty from Villanova (back when the Templeton Foundation still paid for such junkets). And we went to a local bar. Which meant, rather than getting blasted by Irish music and drinking overpriced booze, we were treated to the lone Irish drunk chatting us up so we'd think he was so cute and gnomic and buy him drinks.

And, I'll give him credit. He got the vibe from me immediately that I wanted him to get lost. How do I know? Because he said so! (More points, for a kind of belligerent candor.)

"You don like me much, do ya?"

"Nope."

"You don like many pay-pul, do ya?"

"Nope."

"Cuz you don't impress easy, do ya?"

"Nope."

"Then drink with me!"

"Yeah. Okay."

It was a good evening. Alcohol should make you belligerent, and make you tell the truth. What else would be the point?

Augustine, Heidegger, and Derrida

I'm proofreading a brilliant essay (not by me) on these three gentlemen, one of whom I barely understand parts of, the other two of whom I haven't a clue. And that's why the essay is brillian - it makes them seem so clear, relevant, and timely, like you've sat down with them and had a nice conversation.

Like WOW - a sentence like this! - "Derrida finds in Augustine not the virile militancy of a spiritual battlefield but bodies bent by sorrow and grief, not the brawny bravado of Eigentlichkeit but the woman weeping at the foot of the cross, not the combative strength of a Christian soldier but the weakness of a suppliant begging for God’s help, not a masculinized Kampfsphilosophie but love, not a soul whose mettle is fired by a war with concupiscence but saintly eyes blinded by tears."

That's great!

Cooking and Sympathetic Magic

In the dead of winter, I find it most comforting to make what I think of as Winter Foods - chili, beef stew, chicken soup, a roast, a baked chicken. It runs the oven or stove for several hours and helps warm the house and fills it with good smells.

But as the winter winds down, we need to engage in what is called "sympathetic magic." This is when you do something, trying to get the higher powers to imitate your behavior - sprinkling water on the ground to try to induce it to rain, for example. In cooking, this involves making a very summery meal, even though (like today) it's 40 degrees and sunny. So I just boiled some rotini for a pasta salad, gonna cut some lettuce and spinach for a tossed salad, I got a can of baked beans, and I'm gonna make some hamburgers. Yay!!

Horoscope

Mine for today read "You will close a huge business deal today. Now is the time to advance your career."

So, all you editors, agents, publishers, and college deans - get to it! The celestial powers have spoken! Who are you to argue with Them?!

If You Doubt the Marketability of Zombies...

Consider this.

I can spend months on a really nice, complex story. Lots of human drama. Hurt feelings. Pathos. Love. Death. The meaning of life. Things that matter to people.

It's gonna be hard to sell. I think I will eventually, and even sell it well, but it'll take some convincing and some work and lots of rewrites and more sweat.

I can scribble a zombie idea on the back of a cocktail napkin and be told the check's in the mail.

Kid. You. Not.

Well, at least I got my niche, and it's secure. Now I just have to work a bit to reach out of it to other places. That's not such a bad position to be in.

ZOMG! CONCERT!!

I have to finalize some plans for where I'll be this summer, but I am definitely going to hit one of these shows:

http://www.defleppard.com/

Do you see this monster lineup?! Def Leppard PLUS Poison PLUS Cheap Trick! That is MEGA!

Yay for the Endcap!

A nice writeup by someone suitably surprised and happy to see an endcap of Permuted titles in their local Borders:

http://wdprescott.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/horror-side-display/

I Feel an Idea Coming On...

So quick, before it dies of loneliness, let's give it some O2 and help it live!!

The last zombie antho I edited, I was a little surprised at how many subs were political. (Most of them too blatantly so for my taste.) And they fell into the two extremes, of course:

The Left Wing zombie fantasy, in which the Governor of Florida, while trying to create a zombie army to take over Cuba, has them get out of hand and eat everyone.

The Right Wing zombie fantasy, in which bad terrorists who've been coddled by the Left unleash a zombie apocalypse, and then, once it's under control by the brave, well armed citizen-soldiers of the USA, those lefties start up again by giving the Metabolically Challenged rights and protecting them as an endangered species, rather than shooting them in the head like any red-blooded American would.

Now, as I say, not too many of the last bunch made the cut, and it wasn't the stated focus of the anthology, but what if it were? And what if the book were divided in two halves, along the above lines - sort of an equal time for Left/Right zombies? Maybe even invite some folks from the respective sides of the aisle? Sort of a Politics Is Dead kinda thing. Hmmm...

Epic Errand Running!

You know how sometimes, when you run errands, you kinda waste time and you don't get what you want and you have to go to extra places and it's frustrating?

NOT TODAY!!

Took about four hours and hit NINE places I needed to:

The liquor store for CHEAP booze (got to survive this economy!)

Borders for viral marketing (sticking bookmarks in every book in the horror section!)

Dragon's Den to pick up some World of Warcraft cards to put in Easter baskets

Post office to mail Jim Lanpher's prize

Meet Slam-n-Sway of the Hudson Valley Horrors Roller Derby to drop of promo items for their home bouts (I am the official Horror Author of the Team!! - http://www.horrorsrollerderby.com/sponsors.htm)

Lunch (new sushi place - yum!)

Pier One for some more Easter basket-y stuff

Lowe's for a return (Yay, no hassle!)

ShopRite for cheap food (see above on booze)

Score!

Winner!

Jim Lanpher of Trinity, FL, is the winner of a ultra rare copy of Thin Them Out, after posting his review on Amazon! Congratulations!

The rest of you - don't be shy about posting more reviews there! And keep checking here for more giveaways!

Horror Homemaker Is Live!!

The lovely and talented Carole Lanham - horror author extraordinaire! - has gone live with her new website, The Horror Homemaker:

http://www.horrorhomemaker.com/

Please check it out! You'll get to know this great new author a little better and I think you'll want to see more of her work once you sample her tasty treats!

Secession!

And it couldn't have been suggested by a better person for the part of "Clownish Has Been Who Desperately Needs Attention"!

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91103

I've said it before: that's the trouble with us liberals - we just don't do "Crazy" as well as our right wing counterparts. I mean, who you gonna pick on the left, to say something as outrageous as this? And no, you don't get to pick people who are actually in jail for trying to overthrow the government. I mean, a left wing celebrity equivalent to Chuck, calling on secession during the Shrub years. Did Al Franken say it and I missed it? I'll admit to it if I did. Post a link here.

Funnier Post

Here's one that amuses me.

I have, I don't know, about three or four recurring dreams. Some details vary, and they can even be combined, but their plots or setting are always recognizable:

I can't remember the combination to a lock.
My children are in some peril and I can't get to them.
I'm blind and groping in the dark. (Definitely the scariest)
I find my old 1980 Toyota and drive it away. (Definitely my favorite)

And

I'm at St. John's College, where I went to school. If you're not familiar with the curriculum there and why I turned out how I did:

http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/main.shtml

In the dream, I'm back there, not because I work there or go to school there, but either for an interview or to give a guest lecture. It is a very jarring dream - not frightening like some of the nightmare ones listed, but jarring because I don't know what to make of the place and the people there (and oddly, there are never any of the people I went to school with present, nor any tutors I know). Everything seems comforting, yet forbidding and threatening, in a way. I wake up feeling the most disoriented from this one.

In the Mind of God...

At any given moment, there are 1-2 thread on Shocklines, listing bad laws from the Old Testament and why it's absurd to follow them. (It's a board supposedly about SpecFic, not religion, BTW.) Well, obviously it is. But there is sometimes the further implication that any system of belief or practice based on that book is therefore also absurd. I'll try to respond as briefly as possible, and as generally, rather than quibbling over the specific texts.

GIVEN: I believe that somewhere in the Mind of God, or among the Platonic Ideal Forms, or in the Pure Land that some Buddhists believe in, there resides the Perfect Good for Humans. This Good is unachievable by real, physical humans; even if they lived only as disembodied souls, they still could not hold on to and pursue this Good w/o interruption or diminution.

Q1: Then why believe in it at all?
A1: Because even the most depraved of people seem to retain some sense of decency and some ability to distinguish right from wrong. No one is devoid of all Good, so it seems to exist, if only as an Ideal.

Q2: All right, suppose it does exist, so what?
A2: This Perfect Good has been expressed in many pieces of human literature, philosophy, and religious texts, with varying degrees of imperfection.

Q3: Okay, again, so what? How would we detect it?
A3: Well, if even the most depraved retain some sense of The Perfect Good, then "normal" people should be able to detect even more of this Perfect Good, through discussion and debate with one another, often using the human texts that contain It as a touchstone.

Q4: Well, if you're just going to reach a consensus on The Good through dialectic, why even use these old texts at all?
A4: Because I find when I or other people reason completely in the abstract, w/o any text or tradition to anchor us, we usually don't get too far. Also, it is a way of showing continuity with our past and respect for who and what's gone before, even as we build on it or change it. We are not giants - we are pygmies standing on each other's shoulders. It is text + tradition + ongoing interpretation that imperfectly intuits and presents The Perfect Good to each new generation.

Pretty tame stuff, I know. So much more bland than saying "Every word of the Bible is TRUE DAMMIT!" or "The Bible is just WRONG DAMMIT!"

Thorough Edit

Went through and trimmed over 7k words, taking the final version of Closes at Dusk down to 85,300 words. It reads much better now.

Watchmen

I don't know that I'd recommend it for those who haven't read the book, or for a younger crowd. I mean, an eternal Nixon presidency is to me just barely at the edge of being something fearful, at my age - I can't imagine anyone younger would really see that as a big, scary problem. The really young wouldn't understand nuclear armageddon: they'd understand the fear of there being a big hole in the middle of NYC (a graphic visual late in the film), but why that might, in anyone's mind, be preferable to possible war with the Soviets - a country that doesn't really exist in their minds and hasn't for decades - that would escape them.

Now, to take the story to the personal level and out of the political (and it was amazing to me how many levels it worked on), that might still work for anyone, because of how powerfully and viscerally it's portrayed here. For a cast of people in really goofy outfits, they come across as believable and poignant - that might be the big score triumph here. Rorschach stands out - the sociopath whose only real value now is his quest for truth, uncompomising to the end. Nite Owl makes you feel sorry for him, as the most normal of the bunch, who's constantly surrounded by psychos and trying to bring some semblance of restraint and sanity to the project. Dr. Manhattan? I can't get into characters with that level of superpower (infinite) and therefore no motives or psychology to them. The brief epiphany he comes to doesn't accomplish much of anything, except to reaffirm what's already happened (as in the earlier scene when he scolds The Comedian for murdering, but doesn't do anything about it).

So what it comes down to, "message" wise, is - Is a bland utopia based on a lie and the deaths of millions, worth it? (And I do mean bland - the prospect of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre settling down to normalcy with comical drunken mother-in-law in tow strikes me as deliberately absurd.) To Dr. Manhattan's questions about what is the value of life, I could imagine more compelling and interesting answers.

As a reader of the book, I was struck by how visual an impression it left on me (I read it when it first came out and not since) - I remembered the thing with Rorschach and the dogs, and the fight in the prison, but didn't remember a lot of big plot details. I think that will always be the Achilles heel of comic books - the visual still dominates.

Fight choreography - A++ (though there isn't much)
Sex scene - OMG. Funniest you've ever seen. Felt sorry for the people involved.

All in all, a very powerful movie going experience. I don't think it's a profound book, but it is a powerful and stunning one, and this has rendered it faithfully (I know, minus squid) and compellingly.

Happy Birthday!

Let's see what the action-packed day holds for me!

WATCHMEN in IMAX (early matinee, since all Saturday shows were already sold out when I went online at 9am yesterday)

Shoot some zombies at Dave and Busters

Early dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (it's my new favorite chain restaurant)

Open presents at home

Boy, that's pretty solidly middle class bourgeois. Oh well.

Snip-Snip Here, Snip-Snip There!

And a couple of la-di-das!

A certain air of savoir faire, in the merry old land of Oz!!

With snips and edits of the first third, the manuscript is down to 88k words and I'm thrilled.

Dialogue?

I worry about mine in my fiction, that it's fake-sounding and not realistic. And then I listen to a popular show like ER last night, and my gosh - that's fakey dialogue! (For those of you who watch it, I'm thinking especially of the break-up dialogue between Neela and the Australian guy. Just sounded like a disquisition on emotions in the abstract, rather than a conversation between two flesh and blood people who are distraught.)

So, what I'm saying - I'm not the only one with problems!

Watchmen?

A. O. Scott and Ebert, my two favorite film reviewers, split on WATCHMEN. Ebert gushed like I haven't seen him do in ages, and Scott said it was all pretty adolescent, stupid, irrelevant angst that we all might have thought was cool in 1985 when we were 19.

Now, not that I follow reviews for things like this that I'm definitely going to see either way, but it's still daunting to go in with such ambivalence hanging over one, especially when I'm going to plunk down the forty bucks for IMAX tickets. (My son and I both appreciate the IMAX effect; I'm much more ambivalent about 3D and don't usually bother paying the extra for that.)

All That God Talk

A hilarious parody of it -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCuc34hvD4

And a thoughtful, unorthodox defense of some of it -

http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/pagenum/all/#p2

Upcoming Appearances

I don't know how to keep track of these, except to post them here!!!

MARCH 20-21, 2009 - Lunacon
http://2009.lunacon.org/

APRIL 3-5, 2009 - ICON 28
http://iconsf.org/

MAY 1-3, 2009 - Texas Frightmare
http://www.texasfrightmareweekend.com/

MAY 28-31, 2009 - BookExpo
http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

JUNE 5-7, 2009 - Fango Weekend of Horrors
http://www.creationent.com/cal/fangocon/index.asp

JUNE 12-14, 2009 - Stoker Award Weekend
http://www.stokers2009.com/

JULY 16-19, 2009 - Camp NECON (unconfirmed)
http://www.campnecon.com/

SEPT 18-20, 2009 - Horror Realm (formerly ZombieFest)
http://www192.pair.com/lifeless/HorrorRealm/home.htm

OCT 9-10, 2009 - AlbaCon (maybe, if I get to it and then scoot down to the next gig)
http://www.sfsnnj.com/index.html

OCT 10, 2009 - Zombie Panel with the Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey
http://www.sfsnnj.com/

Texas Frightmare!!

I'd been hemming and hawing about it, but here it is!!

http://www.texasfrightmareweekend.com/lifetype/

Travelocity hooked me up pretty good! MSN has a headline today shouting "Airlines Slash Fares" - I guess it's true! Air and 3 nights hotel for $330? Wow!

So I'll see -

The Lovely Gabrielle (http://www.gabriellefaust.com/) - hubba, hubba!

The Suave Lee Thomas (http://www.leethomasauthor.com/) - he's dreamy!

The Lone Star Lawman Joe McKinney (http://www.joemckinney.net/) - and I don't usually like cops!!

Plus my college friend Dan, who is not a horror author and does not have a blog or website!

What a great weekend!

Thought for the Day

Creon, speaking to Oedipus after the latter has had a meltdown and started verbally abusing everyone around him:

"Natures like yours chiefly torment themselves."

Not just the truth of the statement, but the elegance of saying it in six words. (I don't have the Greek in front of me, but usually Greek comes into English with a few extra words, so it might even be less in the original.)

Old Review

But it popped up on my automatic Google this morning:

http://www.yaybooks.com/0979700019_Orpheus-and-the-Pearl/

That's really one of the nicest reviews I've read of my work and gets at so much of what I'm trying to accomplish.

In the Email Today!

Started out kind of shaky. Just some crap from someone that pissed me off. No big deal. But as the day wore on, a series of nice things:

-- Old friend from high school saying she's sorry she didn't reply sooner. Yay! Hopefully we'll get that out of the way and correspond more now.

-- Publisher saying he's still interested in my stuff and wants to see something soon. Well, that's alway nice!!

-- Permuted's back online, after being knocked almost completely out of service for almost a month by the ice storm back in February! I can finally start communicating about The World Is Dead and other projects.

-- The fabulous zombie novella ROT from Michele Lee arrived,, coming soon from Skullvines Press - http://skullvines.com/. A goodie that I got to see early so I could blurb it! You all are in for a treat!!

-- And a list of interview questions from Dark Recesses Press - http://www.darkrecesses.com/, since people care why I write what I write. Cool!

Good day, overall!

Chuck E Cheese!

And costumed mascots everywhere! Beware!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493309/?GT1=43001

Reminds me of the time I was Clifford the Big Red Dog at Borders, and some crazed eight year old got a running start, punched Clifford as hard as he could in the stomach, then followed it up with a kick to the Big Red nuts.

When will people understand? You can't see a damn thing in those outfits and you can NOT defend yourself!!!

Ah, Borders - good times, good times....

THE END!

The spirit is placated.

The kids are safe.

Mom and Dad finally kiss and make up.

Not bad!!

92,700 words.

Chapter 37

Brings us to 91,200 words total.

Pant, pant. Almost there!

See What I Mean?

Those last sentences of each chapter really get my waterworks flowing:

"The heavy drops sizzled as they hit the embers at their feet, steadily enough that the sound became an undulating hiss. The smell crept up to her, as mysterious and familiar to her as her own heart."

Extended Cut!

My book trailer I think has circulated mostly in its shorter version. Here's the full version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmSYAcC4pKo&feature=related

I like the shatter and scream!

Chapter 36

Brings us to 89,500.

Go Kimmy, Go!!

Last Sentence of Each Chapter

Is always the one I work on the most. And they bring tears to my eyes when I reread them.

Man I'm a big softy.

Oh - but I have really pretty green eyes. It's the only compliment I remember getting from a woman, and I've gotten it a lot of times, so either the ladies are colluding together to trick me (I wouldn't put it past them, guys!), or it's true! Yay!