Off and running

Right so, after a slightly rocky anniversary on the first (yeah...fun) the time to actually buckle down and work on this thing has come. Which means...I just totally copy pasted everything I had of my sequel into my NaNoWriMo account (username: Misszaius, book title: Hounds Thorn) like today. Which means the 10k words I had struggled to write for ages and ages are totally like already out there for all to read. And that means that I only have 30 days to write another 40k. Considering the time it took me to write the first fifth of the thing...this is going to be a crunch. A mad crunch.

Alright so I haven't yet added any of my possible friends that are also doing this because ah, I am technologically incompetent. Super secretly true, I totally didn't even know where I was supposed to put the damn novel to begin with. BUT that is not going to deter me from totally working on this today. Which is to say that after I go to the doctor's and paint a commission for a lady I'm going to write. No more "oh it'll be fine if I write ten words as long as I write something". Now is the time for writing like a damn 1.6k words a day. The horror. Procrastinator me, meet your nightmare.

This'll be fun.

Well this is embarrassing...

So I haven't died. I have been in fact going to physical therapy. And looking for work. And other hobbies. What I have not been doing...is writing. Which I intend to totally start doing again. For real. Know why?

I totally signed up to participate in the 2012 NaNoWriMo. I am 100% taking a write a novel in a month challenge to get me to work on my sequel. And, for extra fun, you can totally follow me and my progress and whatnot at http://www.nanowrimo.org. My handle is Misszaius. Right like Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes only Miss cause I'm a girl, right? So you can add me, follow me, stalk me, yell at me for being a major procrastinator, whatever you like. And of course I will attempt to update this blog with my progress from this whole write a damn novel in a month challenge. Cause holy hell it took me a year last time and they want fifty thousand words in thirty days? The math on this makes my brain hurt. And if the sequel is anything like the first book (hint: it is) it will be closer to double that size. Which I guess means I need to stop obsessively watching Honey Boo Boo and actually get to work.

For anything else taking the whole NaNoWriMo challenge, holy shit good luck. And good luck to me. Cause I am totally going to need it.

And now for something not entirely different

This I found when I was digging through my pile of random, mostly unfinished story fragments. It has vampires, and line cooks (write what you know apparently) and actually is something I might go back one day and fix. Because, oh god, the errors in it. And the style of writing...it's close but it isn't quite right. But I think some of it is at least entertaining enough to share. This would be the first chapter of a completely different story in a completely different universe and a only slightly different style. I forget when I wrote this but it's gotta be...oh like at least three or four years ago now.

The headphones were digging into my ears, but I was willing to put up with the pain as long as they kept blasting hardcore music therapy into my brain. Ten hours in a kitchen on a Friday night in August is pretty much the seventh circle of Hell in New Haven. At least with the drowning loudness of the phones I could numb out the sad fact that I had no life outside Jim’s Deli.

            I was a line cook at the deli, and Friday nights were the worst. Followed only by Saturday nights, oh great. I had started working at Jim’s when I was eighteen and a dishwasher, which is worse than a line cook but only slightly. The main reason is because as a line cook, you didn’t have to deal with Harriet, the industrial strength washing machine from Hell. By the way, it’s called Harriet because that’s Jim’s wife’s name. I’ve never seen the woman, but if her shrieks over the phone were any indication, the dishwasher was actually the nicer of the two. At least it couldn’t talk.

            Three years ago, on a Friday of course, one of the normal line guys hadn’t shown up to work (We found out later that he didn’t show up because he got eaten but that’s beside the point). Jim pulled me out of the clutches of Harriet and threw me into the line, and it stuck. Despite having no culinary background, I’m not ashamed to say I am a damn good cook. Not that it really takes a culinary background to make one hell of a hamburger, but hey.

            The bonus to being a line cook was more hours, more work, more stress, and a tiny bit more money. Joy. I kept working as a line cook because, despite it all, I really enjoyed cooking. Hell, I might even love it. As a guy, that’s a pretty big thing to admit, especially when you used to be the star forward of the New Haven Angels. Haha, the Angels from New Haven. Get it? The town thought it was cute. The guys on the team thought it was bullshit. Not to mention the baby blue uniforms. And the cherub mascot.

            Like I said, it was Friday, I had been on the line, and Jim’s is famous for being a hole in the wall restaurant with more customers in a night than any hole in the wall restaurant should be allowed in a year. I was wiped. Add to that I was trying my best to make my ears bleed with my favorite band on shuffle. I was pretty much walking pulp by that time, so I have to cut myself some slack that I jumped six feet in the air when a paper white hand materialized out of the black and wrapped itself around my arm.

            I hadn’t seen or heard anything, besides the music, and all of a sudden I was in the death grip of some druggie or another. Not the best place to be. I tried to pull away; no dice. The arm was much stronger than I could have anticipated. Hell, it was stronger than a bodybuilder on roid-rage. What drug could do that to you again? They had said it on the news awhile ago but I don’t really watch the news and that important bit of information seemed to have slipped my mind right now.

            The hand tightened, and I freaking winced. I am not a weak guy. I am 6’2” of still-in-shape line cook, kept that way by constant gym time and tossing around heavy duty cast iron pans in a 6 o’clock rush. My mouth opened involuntarily the same time my head dropped and I finally got a look at my leeching companion.

            It stayed open as my brain took in long, lean, delicious paleness. Tight jeans, black tee over nicely perky C’s, leather jacket, and yellow eyes… Yellow eyes? Fuck shit shit fuck yellow eyes. That meant one thing: vampire.

            This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening. Not now, not in New Haven, not to me. I started running through the options in my head. Demon? Demons had red eyes, damnit, and didn’t blend in with humans so nicely. Except succubi, but she was wearing way too much clothing for that. Were? Full moon was out, she wasn’t furry. Not a Were. Ghoul was right out of the question, as was zombie, since there was a distinct lack of rotting flesh. Vampire? Pale skin, yellow eyes, strong enough to snap me in half. Check. Fuck.

            New Haven is a small town in the middle of no where. The biggest city around boasted a whole two movie theaters and a bowling alley. This was not a town where vampires would want to even drive through, let alone hunt in. What in God’s name was she doing here?

            While my brain was screaming outrage at the absolute wrongness of the situation I was in, my vampire friend hadn’t been standing around waiting for me to come to my senses and scream. She had pulled off my headphones (How? I hadn’t even noticed she’d moved) and was pulling me along the road.

            “Don’t. Scream.” Oh, great, thanks lady, I’m sure you say that to all your future meals. I didn’t though, which was to my credit, since I’m pretty sure it would have sounded something like my soul escaping through my mouth. “You’re being hunted. Just shut up and follow my lead.” Well no duh I was being hunted. I was already caught. What was the big deal anyway? Right in the middle of my train of thought, she tilted her head up and just kissed me.

My brain shut down. It had had enough apparently. Too much to take in at once had forced it to just shut down and I now saw the world through a veil of numbness. Which was sort of neat, except that it made logical thinking pretty much impossible.

            “…and then Jess was like, no way, you are so not gonna wear that! And I was like, oh my god just shut up already, you know?” She was going on about something; where had I been for the first part of this conversation? I was suddenly aware that she was talking really loudly for some reason, like she was projecting to someone across the room. Didn’t vampires have super sensitive hearing? What the hell was going on?

            She looked up at me, a very human gesture, except she was a vampire. She was a vampire god damnit she wasn’t allowed to have very human gestures. My brain clicked just enough to realize she wanted a response, so I let loose some sort of primal grunt. Apparently, it worked, because she started talking again. Her Valley Girl voice would have normally been a cheese grater on my ears if I wasn’t completely disconnected from my senses; as it was, it was still annoying as hell. She kept it up the whole time she was dragging me to some unknown destination, presumably to eat me. My bad, drink me. Vampire, after all.

            I felt her tense for just a fraction of a second, then release. She even let go of my arm, which was nice since it had lost feeling five minutes ago. “He’s gone.” She stopped walking, and in my state of numbness I stopped right along with her. “What in God’s name is wrong with you? Do you want to die?!”

            This was new. Valley Girl was gone and in her place was this pissed off bad girl in leather and heels. I’m sure in any other situation this could qualify as a fantasy but right now, not so much. Whatever it had been that was keeping me numb snapped and I did something exceptionally idiotic. I yelled back.

            “What the fuck is wrong with me, what the fuck is wrong with you?! This is New Haven for Christ’s sake! What the fuck are you even doing here?!”

            “Saving your life!”

            “So you can eat me yourself?! No fucking thanks!”

Stupid stupid stupid. It’s in the Book of Common Sense somewhere that if a vampire grabs your arm, drags you somewhere, and then lets you go that you have an obligation as a human to run the fuck out of there. Or there would be if any vampire had ever let a human go. I was failing this test miserably.

            She didn’t get mad. She didn’t scream. She got very still. The still that isn’t human kind of still. The still that only a corpse can be. “I’m not going to eat you.”

            Do not antagonize the vampire, please please please Josh for once be smart and do not antagonize the vampire. “Yeah, and I’m screwing Margaret Thatcher.” Oh goddamn.

            “Go home. Get a cross. Do not go out after sunset.” She turned away. She started walking. She was walking away from me. Why was I not running as fast as I could in the opposite direction?

            “I can’t.” I was suicidal. That was the only answer I could come up with as to why I was continuing to talk to an undead killing machine.

            And she stopped. Oh hooray, my brilliant get-away strategy had worked in that she was coming back. “You do not understand. You have been marked. If you go out after sunset again, you will be eaten.”

            “I’m a line cook. I work nights. There is no way I can all of a sudden just ask to switch hours.”

            “Quit.”

            Why was I continuing this conversation? “Give me another option.”

            She shrugged, another one of those human gestures that was just completely wrong coming from a dead body. “Die.”

            Fantastic choice there. My brain, already planning my body’s death, continued on and tried another angle. “You said I was marked. What’s that mean?”

            She was walking again, and I was following. At least she hadn’t eaten me. Yet.

            “The vampire who was following you was alone. There are no vampires in New Haven normally, but he must have wandered in. He marked you, and now you are a beacon to any vampire within fifty miles. If he does not eat you...” She let her sentence die midair. No sense in finishing what we both knew. I was a walking hamburger.

            “But, how? I didn’t even freaking see anything.”

            She just stared at me like I was being retarded. Which I was, of course. I hadn’t seen her either, and she had been close enough to grab me. “Technically, he threw a bit of his aura over yours. Human aura mixed with vampire aura to create a beacon for any vampire in the area.” 

            “Well…how do I get rid of it?” It seemed like the logical thing to ask, and she was still not eating me, so why not?

            Something akin to surprise crossed her face. I realized with a sudden start that I had been staring into her eyes the whole time. Not looking a vampire in the eyes is like, rule number one to survival. “I…do not know.” She stopped at the foot of a set of porch steps, and hesitated. “Can I…come in?”

            “Yeah.” The word was out of my mouth before my neurons could fire the correct response, which of course, is HELL NO. If I hadn’t said that one word, I would have been home sweet home and safe in my bed. She wouldn’t have been able to come in. Except that I invited her in. Now it didn’t matter how many times I changed the lock or doused the threshold in salt, she could come in. So why wasn’t I pissing my pants in fear?

            Because I believed her when she said she wasn’t going to eat me. Call me the biggest sucker in the world, but I believed she was telling the truth.

            “You have no wards at all.” The phrase came out disappointed, but not necessarily surprised. I guess I hadn’t made the greatest impression on her.

            “Yeah I don’t uh…” How was I going to finish that sentence? That I didn’t place wards on my house because then I’d be acknowledging that the magical world wasn’t a fantasy? That it was part of the real world and that I wasn’t willing to accept that? That not buying wards was my small way of rebelling against that fact? And how the hell exactly was I going to explain that to a vampire, of all things?

            “You will. Crosses?”

            “Uhh…”

            She snorted, which was actually kind of funny. “Those too. Silver.”

            “And garlic too?” Sarcasm is apparently my default tone in hanging-out-with-a-vampire situations. Since I seemed to be having so many of those lately.

            “Not everything they write in books is correct.” She stepped right in the line of salt on the threshold. So much for that line of protection. “Sea salt, not iodized.”

            I really wish I had known earlier that a vampire was going to come into my apartment and inspect my defenses against the supernatural. I might have made an effort to clean. I worked so much that the apartment tended to collect...things. Like half-eaten sandwiches and dirty laundry. Although, when I did clean it, it looked like no one lived there, since I owned almost no furniture. Maybe there was a happy medium somewhere in-between.  It only occurred to me after the thoughts had already run through my mind that that was an absolutely idiotic thing to be worrying about since I had just given an undead bloodsucker free access to my home for all time. Priorities, you know.

            “How long will this marking thing last?” I flipped the light switch on and cringed at the trash lying across the living room floor. Of course, she already saw it, since that whole vampires-see-in-the-dark deal. Still. This time I didn’t bother to think why I was concerned with what she thought about my living conditions.

            She didn’t settle down on the couch, not that I could blame her, but instead went to the windows and started inspecting them. “Well, taking into consideration the fact that no one who has been marked has lived more than a week, I do not think that is the first priority.”

            “A week?” She had just given me a death sentence. Why was I so calm? Had she charmed me? Weren’t vampires supposed to be able to do that, if you looked into their eyes long enough? And believe me, I had looked long enough.

            “I am being generous. The longest is three days. There was torture involved. I am hoping you can avoid that bit though.”

            “Why did you even bother saving me if I’m gonna die in a week?” No answer, just the deathly stillness that was still unnerving as hell. “What were you doing in New Haven?” And here is Josh. He likes to talk to walls. Man, I would have never guessed vampires could be annoying. “You are a vampire…right?”

            I didn’t see her move. All I know is one second she was staring out the window (which her reflection didn’t show in by the way, creepy) and the next she was on the doorstep. “Do not go out after dark, even to work. Ward your home. And buy yourself a cross.” And then she was gone.

            I slumped down onto my couch, pushing a pizza box onto the floor in the process. I had just been stalked by a vampire, saved by another one, invited her into my house, and then had her tell me I had a week to live. Well, a week if I was very very lucky. I had to do something about this.

            So after my fifth beer, I was starting to be more optimistic. Whoever the vamp I had invited into my house was, she wasn’t interested in eating me. Or at least, hadn’t been tonight. I was willing to go on faith that she’d keep on that path, seeing as how the alternative involved a very nasty death and then potential rise from the grave. Maybe not as a vampire, since she probably wouldn’t be interested in turning me, but possibly as a ghoul. Lots of violent death victims came back as ghouls. Or a zombie. I had always suspected my landlord of being a Voodoo priestess; maybe she’d raise me so I could keep paying rent.

            Ok, I was being ridiculous, but seriously, how would you take the news that you’ve got three to seven days to live? My solution just happened to involve alcoholic beverages made from grain and some morbid thinking. Not the best, but it was all I had on short notice.

            I wasn’t going to work tomorrow, of that I was damn sure. I was going to march my pansy, refusing-to-use-wards ass down to the charm store tomorrow morning and buy as many protective wards, charms, and crosses as I could afford. Since a vampire had given me tips on how to keep vampires out, I figured they were reliable and at least worth some monetary investment. Then maybe I’d go to the nearest church and bathe in holy water.

            But what was she going to do? Stupid. She’s a vampire, she’s going to eat other people, not worry about your retarded, left-for-dead self. Why did that bother me? I should just start making plans to check myself into a psych ward because I was seriously unhinged if I was upset about a vampire standing me up.

            I stood up to lock the door before I went to bed, but the spinning nature of the floor was a bit discouraging. And besides, if I really was marked by a vampire as a happy meal on legs, one itty bitty bolt lock wasn’t really going to do much.

            I stumbled to the door and locked it anyway.

I'm totally not dead

For reals. It's been awhile. And progress has been amazingly slow mostly because life is kind of odd. I got distracted by things like: coming to terms with the fact that according to the state I am disabled, figuring out that the state will actually help me get a job because I am disabled, working out like a fiend to try and not be so disabled, willing nerves to grow faster, playing video games and watching movies with boyfriend who is okay with the fact that I have a cane, giving advice to no less than three couples who have broken up despite having no qualifications to give advice on relationships, and also I decided I want to buy a fish. That's random but I found a fish bowl while cleaning my room (another thing I did instead of write) and decided it should be a home for a fish. Even though I have a cat. Who may eat it. Or at least mess with it enough to give it a tiny fish heart attack. But hopefully he will do neither of these things because then I'd be a fish murderer and mostly I just want a fish.

But honestly I write best when I am upset. When I got dumped, I started book one. And loved it. Because it was totally my escape. My life was shitty because my emotions were just wrecked so I wrote and wrote and wrote and could disappear for awhile. Currently, despite the fact that I am still technically partially paralyzed (there's such a thing as partial paralysis I swear), I am really happy. I like my life. It isn't shitty emotionally or even physically and so I have no need of an escape.

This is the test then of actually writing. I have to force myself to do it even if I'm NOT doing it to hide from the real world. Or doing it sneakily on my breaks during work because then it's like they're paying me to write a book on their time. I also have to find a job, move out, live independently. And honestly, ALL of these things are important. I suppose if I had to prioritize it'd go job, move out, live independent, write a lot. But writing is kind of the one thing I can do on my own without any requirements (aka I don't need a job to write). So....it boils down to I need to get back to some serious fantasy writing work. If only because I want to know how the series ends.

A wishlist...of sorts

I am a tiny bit of a mythology nerd. Tiny bit. Maybe...50%. Well ok maybe 75%. On my giant bookshelf that took over one wall (and we aren't the books stashed in the attic because those books are dead to me now understand?) one whole shelf is dedicated to mythology from around the world. And costume design. I don't know where that last part came from but I have quite a few costume books and sewing books. I can't really sew and my costume design is only so-so but I digress.

Mythology books. Love them. Love love love. Encyclopedia style, bring it on. Chinese fairy tales, have 'em. Really bizarre Celtic myths with heroes that have names no one can pronounce, got them in spades. I've even got the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manuals (don't you judge me) and a whole encyclopedia on vampires because apparently there's more than one type (none of them sparkle).

Which brings me to my next point. With the world of myths being so huge, I'm kind of sad to see that there are so few of the monsters involved in literature. We get a flood of vampires, hordes of werewolves, a scattering of elves and fairies and demons and witches and then that's...pretty much it. So, if I have the skill and time and drive, here's some that I'd like to throw in a book. Possibly even the one I am writing.

Mermaids. No seriously, don't judge me. I love mermaids. I am irrationally terrified of sharks but I love mermaids. Why I do not know. Possibly because I swam in the ocean an insane amount as a child and also because The Little Mermaid came out when I was growing up and seriously, singing fish. What's not to love? But I think it's impractical to make them look just like humans so they'd have to still keep the fins. And fancy ones, like lionfish inspired ones. Artistic mermaids, if you will.

Harpies. Oh yeah, half bird half woman all mean. From World of Warcraft oddly attractive and definitely mostly naked harpies to The Last Unicorn baggy saggy horrifying harpie queen, I like all of them.

Naga. Alright, this is cheating because Mama Jones is a naga. But she only had one scene and so in future books (that's right multiple books if I ever get to writing) I want her to have a much bigger part. Snake people are great people.

Gorgons. A la Medusa. Bit hard to pull off what with the snakes and the turning to stone. And it varies as to whether she is human below or snake below but the main jist of the story is the Greek gods are terrible. Seriously.

Red Cap, or at least the significantly more horrifying version of fairies the Scots have. His hat is red because he rips open your stomach and shoves his head in your intestines while he begins to eat you still alive. Sometimes I wonder about the Scots...

Demons. I like demons. I like the concept of them at least. I threw in my version of a succubus last time and that was fun. But I don't think all of them would be like that because ya know, Hell is a big place and it takes all types to fill it I suppose.

Nymphs. This one I'm only so so about because nymphs mostly pine over lost lovers and hang out in nature. This is also probably because I'm still playing Skyrim and spriggans are just annoying as fuck.

At one point I totally had more monsters to this list but the constant banging and machine humming going on in my house as they rip things apart and put new wood floors down is driving me insane. In short, I gotta get the fuck out of here.

And now for something completely different

This is not Witch Bloom. This is not even the sequel. This is just something I wrote out for kicks. No idea where it's going though, or if it'll ever get finished (doubtful). Enjoy!

My lungs were burning in stark contrast to the bitter cold outside. I took another drag on my cigarette, since years of smoking and drinking and general bad habits weren’t doing anything to help in my current predicament, I might as well enjoy my vices. I was holed up, on the run for my life from the bloody guard dog that was hunting me down. I damned well deserved to get some comfort for that. I mean, sure he had his reasons to want me dead and sure, I probably deserved it, but since it was my head he was after I was hoping he’d fuck up just this once.

It wasn’t freaking likely though. I’d screwed over the Dark Lady, the goddamn banshee queen of the northwest. I had debts to pay and in order to get the other various people who were hunting me down off my back, I’d struck up a deal with the Lady. She’d given me asylum and sent Byleth’s demons packing back to Panama. I had originally planned to skip town and skip out on another debt I owed. It’s what I usually did. And it had worked like a bloody charm in Singapore against Wakaun, the naga king there. But the difference between Wakaun and the Dark Lady was something I hadn’t thought of. The Dark Lady had the one thing that had made the past six months of my life a constant hell of running and hiding: the Reaver.

Hanging out in mage circles, I’d always thought the Reaver was a boogeyman, something other sorcerers told you so you didn’t fuck their wives and steal their grimoires. Not that it would have ever stopped me from either. The idea of a big bad knight in bloody armor coming after bad warlocks and witches was too elementary to be real. So, you can imagine my surprise when I found out not only did he exist, but he worked for the banshee queen who was howling for my head.

In six weeks I’d travelled across the U.S. twice and the man still hadn’t lost my trail. I’d tried Mexico and Canada even to no avail. I didn’t have enough money to hop a plane somewhere else. Even if I did have the money, I didn’t have a clean passport. Little Mr. Byleth had made sure that my last identity was too royally fucked to use again.

That had left me stuck in Flint, Michigan, holed up in a condemned house, boards nailed to the windows, no electricity or heat, with a foot of snow outside and temperatures in the twenties. I almost wanted the damn guy to find me just so I’d be able to know what warmth was like for a split second again. Except that meant the Dark Lady would get a hold of me and that was something to avoid. At all costs.

I almost wished I’d stayed in Panama. Byleth would probably only flay me alive and be done with it. But the Lady was more…creative. She liked to torture her debtors, slowly using torture to drive them insane. Then, once they died, which they always did, she liked to reanimate them just for kicks. She had a whole army of mindless thralls, testament to how no one who tried to break their deal with her got away with it for long. At six weeks, I was pushing my luck past its breaking point.

I was a sorcerer. Not only that, but I was pretty famous in the right circles. Or wrong, depending on how you looked at it. There was no spell too black, no risk too great, no rule too sacred for Nicky Skinner. I’d made more deals with demons than I could even remember, cheated more necromancers out of their sigils than strictly necessary, and stolen more grimoires from hapless warlocks than any other sorcerer out there. Course, that meant just about everyone was gunning for my head, but I’d always relied on quick wit and some raw talent to get me through.

None of that had worked on the Reaver. I’d doubled back on my trail in Ohio, reanimated a look alike in Nebraska, and faked my death in California. None of it had even bought me so much as an extra week. The guy was like a terminator, and I was his John Connor of choice. In Michigan I’d finally said screw it and decided if running wasn’t working, then I’d give fighting a try. Maybe if I got really lucky, I’d die in the attempt and save myself the thrill of being turned into a mindless thrall for the banshee queen.

I’d mostly picked the town at random, but it’d been a pretty good guess. There was a lot of death and depression here, a lot of restless souls. If it came down to it, I could use them to give me an edge fighting against the Reaver. And hell, if the cold was affecting me so much, maybe it’d slow him down a bit too. Somehow, I didn’t think that was something I could count on.

The night went still, not the usual still of a condemned building in a snowstorm but the still that came from the presence of one very pissed off magical being. I could feel the air around me heat up, then freeze. Great. The bastard had made it even colder. He wasn’t even going to give me the satisfaction of getting my ass kicked in above freezing temperatures. That pissed me off.

I didn’t give him a chance to open the door. I slammed my leg into it, feeling the shock rush all the way up my body, hitting me with recoil. I was getting old damnit. But the door was rotting away and gave, coming off rusty hinges to fall out with a bang.

There was a curse on my lips and the black slickness of magic welling up in my palms before the door had even finished crushing the man. I flung it at my target, shattering the wood into unrecognizable splinters. At least now I had a look at what I was dealing with.

Full metal armor. Black. Like a freaking medieval knight. If that knight also happened to be from hell. There wasn’t a damn inch of the stuff that was decked out with spikes, runes, or skulls. There was a whole series of lines cut crudely into the breastplate; I was guessing it’d be the exact number of strays brought back by the Reaver. I couldn’t see any gaps in the plate, any hinges, any possible way anyone could wear that getup and still move. I watched, dumbfounded, as it bent and molded, more organic than metal, as the thing got to its feet. It didn’t occur to me that maybe I should do something else until metal fingers were gripping my by the throat and tossing me back into the house, hard enough to hit the back wall.

I fell to the ground gasping, pain shooting through my chest with every ragged breath. Shit. Now I’d have to fight with broken ribs because I’d pulled a dumbass rookie move and hadn’t kicked him while he was down. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me twice. I whipped out my jackknife and slashed the back of my left hand without so much as a wince. The scars on it stood testament to how much I’d done it before.

I needed about three heartbeats to draw the sigil I needed. I got two before a metal foot connected with my jaw, sending my neck snapping back with a lovely crunching sound and reducing my vision to black for a split second. My jaw was hanging loose, and out of habit I swiveled it to check to see if everything was alright. It popped back into place painfully, but at least it wasn’t broken. If he knocked any of my teeth out, I was really going to get mad.

I finished scrawling the sigil and poured my magic into it, igniting it in a burst of black flame. Instantly, the shadows crawled out of the cracks in the floor, the holes in the wall, from the very air itself. They wrapped around the Reaver, forming inky black claws to tie him down and try to drag the bastard back to hell. That pretty little number had cost me sixteen stitches and a pretty new scar on my neck when I’d stolen it from a rather unwilling necromancer. He wasn’t unwilling anymore though, he was dead. Just like all the poor bastards he’d sacrificed to work into the sigil. Sick bit of work, that. Worth it though, since it was holding the Reaver down now.

I wasn’t going to give him another chance. I pulled on my magic, forming the slippery energy with my will. Filled with power, I slammed my palms down onto the ground and directed all of it into a circle around the Reaver. I watched, satisfied, as a dim black bubble closed over the Reaver, my magic turning him into a glorified snow globe.

“Take that ya fucker.” All I had to do now was pick which spell I wanted to end him with. Fire maybe, burn the whole damn house down and be done with it. Bit tricky in snow though. Poison maybe. Would leave a body though. I always hated leaving a trail behind. Maybe I’d just cause him to bleed to death and summon up a corpse eater to take care of the evidence. Corpse eaters were a messy lot though, and always a hassle to send back to Hell once you dredged them up.

All my plans didn’t mean shit though, because he was getting up. Shit, there was no way he should be able to get up. I’d called up all the horrible sacrifices made by a dead necromancer, bound them to my will, forced them to take form and hold that fucker down. And he was getting up still.

He still had to break through my circle. I’d done the same thing to pissed off mages and it’d taken them hours to break through my circle. If you couldn’t cast a damn near perfect circle every time, you didn’t live long as a sorcerer. I’d just have to settle for burning the house down, fast, while it was still trapped.

Calling up an invocation of flame isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. Getting a candle to light, that shit’s easy. Getting a flame hot enough to burn down a house in minutes? Not so easy. I needed time to scribe the right symbols, time to invoke the right words, and time to get the hell out of the inferno once I started it. I didn’t have any of that because what I got, was the Reaver standing up and bursting through my circle as if it didn’t even exist.

“How-” I also needed to learn to stop freaking talking during a fight because it was not helping. Faster than I could even ask my dumb question, the guy had cross the room towards me and rammed me through the wall. The foot of snow cushioned my fall with about as much efficiency as using a squirt gun against a tank. I spit blood onto the white ground and scrambled to my feet. The Reaver was already walking out the nice me sized hole in the wall to join me in the winter wonderland of Flint.

I got treated to another nice fist to the stomach, doubling me over and knocking my ass back onto the ground. I was wheezing, blood and spit pouring out of my mouth and down my jacket freely, legs scrambling to get enough strength to pick my body up and run. I didn’t care where I ran to, just away from here. Away from him. Fighting had obviously been the stupidest goddamn decision of my life and I was completely willing to go back to our little game of hide and seek if only I could just stand up and run, damnit.

Another swift kick to my ribs shot that plan to hell. It knocked me on my side, curled up into the fetal position, snot and blood and spit covering my face now. So this was how I was going to die. Curled up like a bitch, bleeding in the snow? That was the end of Nick fucking Skinner? Not if I had anything to do with it.

I held up my hands in what I hoped was the universal sign for please stop beating me I’ll go easy now officer. It worked apparently, because I didn’t get any new punches to the face. I motioned the Reaver closer to me, and the damn guy got right down on the ground, straddling me in his black suit of armor and holding one very wicked looking gauntlet spike to my throat. Well, since we were going to be all nice and civilized about it…

“Let’s make a deal.”

The line between fact and fiction

So it's no lie that there are some similarities between my life and what I wrote. Minus the fact that vampires aren't real nor have they ever been (despite what the Sci Fi channel really really wants to believe). I've decided to release some of the obvious ones and some of the...lesser known ones.

McLaughlin (Roses's last name) was the last name of a kid who used to live down the street from me.

Connell's job as line cook at Top of the Hub (a real restaurant in Boston) was a job I used to have.

There are, to my knowledge, no hot dog stands with lines that long in Boston. Rose and Connell's fake date is from my experience at Pink's, a hotdog stand in LA that ultimately...just sells hotdogs.

Rose and Connell's car are a combination of the two cars I've driven. One of which is a maroon Buick with a baseball sized dent in the front that I didn't put there. The other is a Toyota with the gas tank cover ripped off (though that didn't make it into the book).

The apartment on Snow Street is real, in Brighton, and where I used to live for two years. It does have a garden and a porch but the sizes have been skewed for fiction (because who would give renters that much land?) The landlord was a guy though and he did not live downstairs.

The vast majority (if not all) of the dialogue is how I would actually talk. I do in fact physically say, "yeah, no" and "wolf-ified". I have no apologies to make for that.

Celia's entire character is kind of awfully based on my brief but horrific attempt at being a goth/punk. Yes I have dyed my hair every color under the sun. But no I did not wear black lipstick.

Bamboo is an actual restaurant in Boston but it is neither fancy nor sushi. It was the local Thai food place I went to with roommates when I lived on Snow Street.

There was in fact an angry old Italian man who lived across the street from us who did in fact swear at us in Italian. To my knowledge though he did not speak English. And I think he was married. But I figured it'd be nicer if he had a little redeeming scene in the book. The real angry old Italian man across the street yelled at a pregnant woman parking her car. Less nice.

Rose tells Connell to fuck off, which after doing he replies that he likes her and that she tells him to do that a lot. Not exactly true to life but...pretty close to how I met my boyfriend. I did in fact tell him to fuck off and instead of doing so, he asked me what was wrong. Several weeks (and several more fuck offs later) we were going out. Funny how that happens.

Spoilers for the second book (gasp!)
Sedona, Arizona is in fact going to be a straight up location. No I did not grow up there and no I definitely do not have a psychic mom who lives there (though she's...pretty close) but I did visit there and it left a big enough impression on me that I want to include it.

Connell's home town is in, yeah that's right, Maine. The south of the north if you will. Where you can go far enough off the grid where your closest neighbor is half an hour or more away. And of course, the locations that I remember from visiting Maine and New Hampshire as a child (and as a slightly older adult but let's be honest both versions of me have a terrible memory).

Los Angeles is...undetermined as to whether it will be a location. I did live there for about a year, though a month of that was in a hospital. And they do call it Hollyweird for a reason. But I think I am forsaking it for a different California location that is...

San Francisco. Ok so I only spent like two days in San Francisco and one of those was spent at the Skywalker Ranch (yes of Star Wars fame) but it was neat. And plus how can you make a cross country journey book without actually crossing the country?

Yup that's it for spoilers. For now at least. I'll hit 50 pages in oh, say, thirty years or so and then I'll put up more.


Just kidding. I am trying to write more regularly. I swear. It was even my New Years resolution.