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Giveaway!

I'm doing a giveaway through Goodreads for a week, very exciting stuff!  <div id="goodreadsGiveawayWidget11176"><!-- Show static html as a placeholder in case js is not enabled -->

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    <a href="http://www.goodreads.com" target="_new">Goodreads</a> Book Giveaway
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          <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11354719">Hotblood</a>
      
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          by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4754377" style="text-decoration: none;">Juliann Whicker</a>
      
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            Giveaway ends June 07, 2011.
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            See the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/11176" style="text-decoration: none;">giveaway details</a>
            at Goodreads.
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Poison

Slips between the cracks in the sidewalks, spreading fingers, green, brown, palely glistening like toxic pearls pooling over pavement. Itch nix and brown soap, soap that doesn't sud, but leaves a yellow hint behind. Today I tangled with the poison ivy in an attempt to hang a kittens sign on our poison tree. Some day I'll find a weapon, a tool that will wilt, wither, destroy and vanquish the dreaded foe. Til then, I have my duct tape, flip flops, and an urgent prayer that I will not slip and plunge headfirst into the foliage.

Life is a picnic

Softball vs. Soccer, House of Bliss vs. House of Slide, Lewis vs. the Nether, who I think should have a name. I am at this part where Lewis melts off Satan's face, and you can see the ligaments and chunks of bone mixed with blood and muscle, very evocative of the kind of thing you should not think about while preparing potluck. Tomatoes? No, nothing red, thanks very much. Carrot sticks? Better, but still, the crunching might sound too bone snapping. My peas are nearly to the snapping point. That's exciting. I cleared some weeds and discovered that deer have been nipping my grape down to the hoary vine. Hoary? Why not.

fury

All right. So. Bad haircuts. We've all had them, we've all wept, screamed, had to go home and get the dog grooming scissors to manage the damage. And yet, we keep trying. I tipped her, oh yes, because she had to take a break from this two hour tortuous debacle to weep. I was strong, I waited until I was out in the car. At least I can find some satisfaction in the fact that she had as miserable a time as I did. Sigh. Scream. Pull my hair out. Oh well. I will be wearing makeup--lots, until this mess grows long enough for me to recruit someone more capable of communication. Seriously. No ability to hear, listen, integrate understanding from her perspective to mine. Like going to a stylist who makes everyone look like them. What is the point!?!? Anger. Yeah. Besides which, it was such an easy haircut that I wanted. Simple. Exactly like the one I had, only trimmed up. Seriously. She had it all sleek and bobbish, like I should wear an executive suit and sunglasses, hop in my BMW and have lunch with some nasty catty women. Not me. At all. So I turn around and look at the woman beside me who is raving about how much she adores her hair. Guess what? Same exact haircut as the one I didn't want. No one accused her of originality. Or artistic sensibilities. Or... exhale. It's all good.

Brown

True love, like cookie dough malts or the caribbean blue of my cupboards is the passion. Brown used to be a color to hate. Who would paint their house brown? I didn't understand. Growing up in the desert where the sun beats down while you drowse, soaking up the color of dirt, it's everywhere. You step into some shade, the color green filtering the beating sun, the cool beneath your feet of prickly drought resistant grass, green was the color of my heart. Now it's brown. Here the green explodes at you from every side, a continual assault that never ever gives your eye rest. My house is brown. When I first moved here I wanted to paint it almost any other color, now, remarkably, I'm satisfied, no, pleased with its dun color.

Hit and Miss

Mostly miss. Somehow I never thought I wouldn't be happy with a love triangle going the way I wanted it to go. I mean, Unearthly by Cynthia Hand, I read, very much liked, and yet, I am dissatisfied with the resolution. It's not that I don't like how it ended, I do, but I'm not satisfied. This makes no sense, even to me. In the Phantom of the Opera I root for the Phantom, mostly because he's more interesting even if he'd make a terrible boyfriend. So her decisions are actually very intelligent real world wise, but not as interesting plot wise. I suppose that's it. It's like if Bella met Mike and they hit it off and Edward was a cute guy that Bella crushed on but didn't actually like. Hmmm. Unless she still got sucked into vampireland, it would be a cute story without anything dynamic. Two people being together who are good for each other is really great, and we want that in real life, but it lacks the torment that sucks me into fiction.

Pea Soup

It isn't morning, it isn't evening, it isn't noon, or night, or any other time at all. It's pea soup time, when the world is so thick with fog you can't see yourself sneeze. Every time I opened my eyes there it was, pea soup, and so my eyes closed right up. I can't keep my eyes open when that thick glaze fills the space between myself and every other object in existence. Three times, I tried to wake, arise, all that, each time conquered by pea soup. It's humiliating.

Hotblood Hat Party!

Oh, it was MARVELOUS! Of course I did not do cream puffs or anything else like that, but Jamio brought shortbread, so that was all right. Jamio also was the exciting winner of my hat contest. She won the  grand prize. One copy of Hotblood, and a Freud magnetic doll. There were some exceptionally fine hats in that doll. There was a civil war hat, several pageboys, three widebrimmed hats, two straw, one felt, two cowboy hats, one camouflage hunter's cap, one ruffled knit cap, two bucket hats, and of course Jamio's flower wreath. Not technically a hat, but I okayed it since she made it out of blackberries, clover and daisy. She is very Cool. I mean, if they existed, she'd definitely be one. She's also cool, but of course, everyone who came was. Cool, Wild, Hot, all of that. None of us were Hollow though after we ate the gorgeous pineapple salads. Three people brought pineapple salad. I think that's completely appropriate considering how hatlike I've always found them. It's a fruit with a hat.

Delivery

Every time a UPS driver pulls up in his ridiculously sexy brown truck/van (what do you call those hulking frigates?) my heart rate accelerates and my mind races. What could be inside the package? Is it something exciting, a misdelivery for someone who orders tights from Stockholm, or is it something I ordered long ago and forgot about? Is it something about rhetorical theory? Oh, the options are endless, and tantalizing, like eating chocolates with hidden depths.

Florence and The Machine

"A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my mind" unless it's eye.

I love this song, Cosmic Love, in this twilight, the shadow of your heart. I love it for the slow buildup that comes to a magnificent crescendo that makes me want to haul myself into a perpendicular position, suspended weightless by the drums. I'm not sure it's a love song. It actually reminds me of my character, Dariana and her relationship with her brother, Devlin. The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out, in the shadow of your heart. No, not really romantic, at least not my kind of romance, but the tune is so super cheerful that the lyrics should be a little happier to go with it, or they're shooting for contrast. Hmm.

Demons or Demon killers

I stared transfixed as the creature leaped towards me while my body fell backwards into empty space. A hand grabbed my wrist; a hand that burned on my flesh, and another on the black coat that I could feel the heat through while I dangled over an abyss gazing into the blood red eyes of a horse that couldn’t be a horse. It screamed and steam came out of its nostrils warming my face. The sound of the scream scraped over my nerves his open mouth showing teeth that were curved and pointed like fangs.


 I like this bit. Hotblood was originally more about the Nether Rider than about Lewis. Seriously, sometimes I wonder if he wouldn't make a better primary love interest. All that darkness and riding around on a demon killer horse. 

Rain

Where I live it seems like it's always raining. When the sun comes out, it's a momentary lull between cloud and precipitation. This means that on days like today, a day of wet perched between a week of more on either end, there's nothing to do but curl up with a good book while the soup pot boils in the background. The good book should probably be one that I'm writing. It's an insulated day, the kind of day when my characters whisper assiduously. It's a day when hisses and thumps work their way onto the page in a variety of scenes. My curiosity is piqued. Anything could happen.

Hats and Muscles

I still have glue on the bottom of my sock. I spent all morning making hats out of crepe paper to glue them to Satan's head. He's reveling, particularly in the zebra striped one.

Dracula's Kiss

I have an iris, a sixty dollar iris named Dracula's kiss. He waits for me in the garden at dusk every evening, when the grass is silver and the air drips with the scent of iris, lilac, and fresh mown lawn. He whispers nothings as he silkily caresses my cheek, intoxicating my senses one by one. He's the color of grape suckers, darkly glistening, a blood red streak falling down his chin.

Yes, that is a dab of purple on my nose, spotted by the wily eyes of inexperience. Why do I have a purple nose? It goes dashed well with the purple prose:)

Stowaways in First Person

I have a cat. I suppose. Maybe it's like the Beatles song, and she has me. At first we saw the kittens, then voila, hissing crazy mama cat who had her babies in my garage. The kitties are adorable and after a few hours of sitting and staring at each other, Mama rubbed against my legs and stopped hissing, and even let her babies climb all over me. So... the trouble with Iron King, is that although it's a first person narrative, I lose track of who it is that's talking. The writing is lovely, description, ditto, but I haven't got the slightest idea who this girl is, and I'm in her head. Hmmm. Inner monologue? Generic reactions? I don't know, but it makes me want to delve into my own first person narrative and see if it has the same issues. I'm sure it doesn't. I'm sure it's perfect;)

boxed love

Dog ears? Very soft. Not so soft in paper. Along with my shipment I received an anonymous gift, a book called... never mind what it's called. I flipped through it, curious why my printer would include something as random as a fiction book with one of those white blurb boxes on the back. The best worst line went: Her bad feeling senses were tingling. Unless it was: He was slowly but surely erasing her perfectly drawn picture of herself so that he could dip his hands into outrageous colors and sling them onto the canvas. Or this: The first press of their lips wasn't what we expected. No, the last is a tense change and doesn't qualify for particularly noticeable badness. I'm going with the second one. Oh, the acknowledgements were fun: Back in May, I hadn't planned on publishing a book, let alone writing one- This is probably the general breakdown of this story's problem. I am rather new at this whole publishing thing, but I think it might be a good idea to plan on writing a book, before you plan to publish one. Otherwise, you're so rushed to publish, you might simply have a book full of words instead of a story. Hmmm. A warning to all of us...

You Wish, Young Adult fiction Mandy Hubbard

Just finished Mandy Hubbard's You Wish, and I found myself laughing repeatedly at the ridiculousness. Completely ludicrous situations the girl gets into. I met Mandy Hubbard at the writer's conference in Columbus last month. She was really sweet and encouraging. She's now agenting and I almost wish I hadn't gone ahead and published, an agent like her would be so awesome. Oh well. At least I get to hang our with her characters.

Real stuff!

I am doing a blog tour. This is exciting and adventurous. I'm taking my companions, the pink tent and the bucking camel, along with me. I'm going to drop by a different site each and every week, and at the end of that time, I'm going to give out a grab bag for someone who follows the conversation with a vast amount of wisdom and cleverness. That means comments. Except at Backseat Nightmares where I started last week where the comments thingy didn't work. You see what an adventure this is? Why, we didn't know it was an adventure until we were already well on our way. This week it's the author M.L John's blog http://mljohn.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/guest-post-from-juliann-whicker/  and it's fabulous, her blog I mean. My post is a little bit weird, but that's normal. Right. Stay tuned for next week's exciting destination!