Kittens Aren't The Only Reason

I've been MIA with several animal issues, plus trying to finish my book.  Still in the process with both, but here's an update.

I neuter and spay all my dogs and cats.  I don't say that to get a patronizing round of applause, but to explain why it took me more than three years to spay Abby.  I adopted her and her brother, Simon, when they were about 4 months old, rescues who were found living under a deck, trying to survive on birdseed.  Both were frightened of people and terrified if touched.  I worked with them on that.  Simon got over it; Abby didn't.  After three years, we could touch her, but attempting to pick her up resulted in a terrified dive for cover. 

So spaying was delayed.  No big deal, right?  Everyone else was neutered.  Uh, wrong.  This is why you want to spay your cat:  (If you can't see the picture, press play anyway.  It works.)

Abby is complaining to Penny that none of the 4 male cats in the house is man enough to see what a hot babe she is.  Penny just wants her to go away so she can play with her leaf.  She will, but she won't shut up.  She'll cry like this constantly for a week.  Let me repeat that.  Constantly.  Then she might be back to normal for 6 months.  Or maybe for a week.  You never know.

 It gets old after 3 minutes.  After 3 days you want to crawl out of your skin.  After three years you say the hell with her terror level, bait a cage with catnip, and let her whirl, cry, and climb the walls until you can hand her over to the vet. 

This is Abby now.  She's not happy.  The rest of us are.

Horse Ripples?

I'm hoping some horse person can tell me what this is.  Or even if they have no idea what it is but have seen it before.

Remi has been developing rippled areas on his skin.  They aren't hard or callused feeling, and don't seem to bother him.  After a couple weeks skin will begin to pull away like a scab.  He has four areas like this.

The lower area here has already lost a section of skin in the center of the rippled patch.  To the right (sorry about the glare) is a patch that looks wet or rough - that's how they start.

This is low on his side - an older patch and a new one beginning below it where some skin is already off, even though it doesn't show rippels yet.

If it matters, Remi is a 15-year-old gelding.


I have Googled this and couldn't find anything about rippled areas of skin.  I can not accept that Google has failed me - I must be doing something wrong.  If anyone has better luck, or has seen this before, please let me know!  If the comments won't work for you here, send an email to starrambrose@gmail.com.  Thanks!

Mowing The Lawn - Large Scale

It's 90 degrees.  Not a cloud in the sky.  Humid enough that walking from the house to the barn will make you break a sweat.  A swimming pool sounds great.  So what so farmers do?  Cut and bale loads of dry, itchy hay, then stack them in airless barns where the chaff fills the air, your nose, and your bronchial passages.  Then let the hay grow for a few weeks and do it again.  All for low pay, no health plan, no pension, and no such thing as an 8-hour day.

Jets In Fur

OMG, she didn't really put a picture of a steaming pile of poop on her blog, did she?  Of course not!  That's day old poop.  How crude do you think I am?

I knew raccoons had been in my barn overnight because I saw all the dirt and grass they left in the cats' water dish.  Raccoons have a reputation for being clean; that's only because they dirty up every body of water they pass with their filthy, curious little paws.  I don't sound prejudiced toward raccoons, do I?  Just because they slaughter my chickens, poop all over my hay and rafters, and break into the horse and chicken feed.

One raccoon I can handle.  (Although my last Aricauna chicken couldn't.)  But there had to have been more, many more.  Here's your story problem for today - how many raccoons does it take to leave three random piles of poop in a 150 foot span between my house and barn?  I doubt they all got the urge to go at the same time.  So I'm thinking it takes a gang.  A knife-toting, swaggering gang.  Singing and dancing. 

"When you're a 'coon, you're a 'coon all the way, From your first Aricauna to your last dying day . . ."

Nope, not fond of raccoons.

Silver Sparks Studies Abroad

. . . and enjoys the beach and view of Vulcan Mederas in Nicaragua while the students work on cultural and language studies.  Life is good.

The (Cover) Art of Selling

I've been absent because I've been busy writing.  That's a good excuse, isn't it?  I like it.  Sadly, it's not true.  Mostly I've been freaking out about how much I'm not writing, because the creative portion of my brain is frozen and I'm not doing much of anything.

In case my editor's reading this: don't panic.  This paralysis is normal for me when my book is due in six weeks.  I always find something wrong with the way I said the story would end, and I have to re-think the whole thing.  I'll annoy everyone around me with my anxious hair pulling and distracted muttering, but I'll figure it out.  My creative process isn't pretty, but it works.

Meanwhile, my publisher has revealed the covers for my next novel and my e-novella, both in the Barringer's Pass series.  We had some disagreement over the cover for the novel, Gold Fire.  They want to change the style from the first novel in the series, Silver Sparks, and I don't like that they no longer seem to go together.  But it's not about what I like, it's about what sells.  (By the way, this is the answer for ANY disagreement in publishing; get used to it.)  Since odds are they know what they're doing, I'm good with it.

So these are the covers:

This is the e-novella, about a horse trainer who has no intention of giving her heart to a man who won't stay in her small mountain town, and a man who has no intention of staying in the small town he left years ago for a successful career in Boston.   

  

This is book two in the Barringer's Pass series, Zoe's story.  She's the ambitious, image-conscious assistant manager of the prestigious Alpine Sky resort.  He's Jase, a washed-up athlete and the current owner of the Rusty Wire Saloon, who's most far-reaching ambition is planning his next fishing trip.  He has what the Alpine Sky wants - the land under the Rusty Wire - and it's her job to convince him to sell.  Her repeated failures don't seem to deter the handsome owner of the Alpine Sky from espressing a personal interest in Zoe.  He's the opposite of Jase - polished, ambitious, and attentive.  And his kisses are more than nice.  But one impulsive clinch with stubborn, irritating Jase has her head spinning.  She might need to get the wrong man out of her system before she can concentrate on the right man.

The big question is, how much does a book's cover influence your decision to buy it?  Or to even pick it up?  Marketing research seems to indicate that it matters a lot, and I'd have to agree.  The question is whether these covers will work well for these stories.  In the end, it's all a gamble.  (My publisher would probably call it an educated guess.) 

What makes you reach for a book?  If you'd never heard of it before, would you take a second look at these books based solely on the cover?

Brave New e-World

I have recently agreed to a new contract with my publisher, Pocket Books, for the third book in my Barringer's Pass series.  It will release early next year as a digital-only book, with the possibility of going to print later.

When I first began writing for Pocket Books, Pocket Star was a line of mass market paperbacks.  Then the name disappeared.  Now it's back, with an impressive list of authors like Cindy Gerard, Laura Griffin, and V.C. Andrews, and featuring new titles you will only find in e-book form.  Including mine!  I'm honored to be included in this group.

And a bit embarrassed - I think I need to buy an e-reader!

That Certain Point In The Book

You can always tell when I get to the sexy parts in my books.  Most of the time that dark blue dictionary sits on top of the pile and gets occasional use as I double-check meanings or whether to hyphenate.  But when I get to the sex scenes, that thesaurus flips open and stays that way until the hero and heroine get their clothes back on.

You wouldn't think it would be so hard to write a sex scene after you get over the fact that your mother might be reading it.  Or your daughter.  Standard disclaimer here, and I cannot stress this enough - it's fiction!  When I kill a character I am not writing from my own personal experience with murder, and when my hero and heroine get into bed they aren't consulting my personal playbook.  Like any other scene, what happens depends entirely on what came before and what sort of characters they are.  So you'd think I could do what I do in every other scene - just imagine it and write what plays out in my mind.

Nope.  Can't do it.  I can see it, alright.  But have you ever tried to describe a sexual encounter without veering into porn or sounding like an anatomy book?  Not so easy.  How many ways can you say "lust" or "desire?"  And how many "heated looks" can he give her without sounding like the bed is about to go up in flames?  Forget "pulsing" and "throbbing"; some words are just too descriptive.  But trust me, readers don't want to be yanked out of the story just when it gets to the most emotionally charged part.  They want to see what happens, and they want it to take a few pages, not a couple paragraphs.  So out comes the thesaurus.  And yes, there's one built into the Microsoft Word program, but it thinks "lust" is the same as "hanker after," so unless I start writing about old ranch hands who sit around the bunk house saying, "By jimminy, I've got a hankerin' for that gal," I won't be getting much use out of the Microsoft thesaurus.

In case you're wondering, the papers under the dictionary and thesaurus are my notes on things to go back and change.  Also my outline so I don't lose track of what's supposed to happen next. 

Oh, and the squirt gun?  That's for cats that think digging their claws into the family room chair while Mom's not watching might be a good idea.  Surprise, it's not.

Harley's A Winner!

My local Tractor Supply store is running a promotion for their new line of cat and dog food. You submit a picture of your cat with a bag of their food, and each month it goes into a drawing for a free bag of cat food, value $17.50. Today I got a call that Harley had won! Actually, that I had won, but it was Harley's picture that did it.

Here's Harley, showing her winning form.  I didn't tell her it was a random drawing because, really, isn't that a good picture?  She's interested in the cat on the bag.  (Or in Frieda, who was on the other side of the bag, but why quibble over details?)

I lined the other 8 cats up and told them it was time to start earning their keep, like Harley.

Kittens At 5 Weeks

Cute trio!  And they're all so different you might not guess they came from the same litter.

Giving her brother a hug

How could anyone resist this face?

Scratching?  I have no idea what you're talking about.