Z is for Zoe

I've saved the best for last, and it's a picture heavy post. I'm a cat mom, and my baby is a half-crazed calico named Zoe. She'll be eight next month and keeps me very entertained. As I'm writing this on Tuesday afternoon she's in the front flowerbed drinking out of the bird bath.

She's adorable, but not very bright. Poor thing can get stuck in a tree faster than you can say bob's your uncle. She misses me when I leave, sometimes wants to go to work with me, and one of her favorite places to sleep is snuggled up with me.

When I got her when she was about six weeks old she could sit in the palm of my hand. Now she weights 12 pounds...

She was not impressed with all the snow we had this year. Almost six inches!















Guarding us from the Weeping Angel afghan. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Conked out on Mommy's legs.

 Never know where something interesting might be hiding.

 I found her in the bathroom one day making love to a washrag...

When she was younger one of her favorite places to play was in the tub. After it had been used and was still damp. She grew out of it.

 Playing with Aisling the Beast Cat. Aisling is half Zoe's size and definitely the alpha.

 The first week I had her! Such a cute little thing. She'd crawl up my covers and play with my toes at night between the sheet and my quilt.

Read More

Y is for Your Love, Oh Lord

I've been a Third Day fan for over a decade now. At a particularly horrible time in my life four years ago this song, sung in a church on a Sunday morning, was a lifeline. A God-hug, if you will. I held on to it for dear life for weeks.

And now I share it with anyone who stops here. Need a God-hug? Watch the video.

Read More

X is for Xiamara

SherrilynKenyon.com

I racked my brain looking for X. Then it hit me: Simi! Her real name is Xiamara, with starts with an X.

You might be asking who is Simi? I'm going to tell you. For A I did Acheron, the leader of the Dark-Hunters created by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Simi is his protector/bonded demon/daughter. She's something like 14,000 years old. Except her species ages at the rate of about one human year for every 1,000 years of her life.

She never goes anywhere without her BBQ sauce, which she pours on *everything* she eats. I do mean everything, even ice cream.

When she's not disguised as a human she's a dragon tattoo on Acheron. And she can move in tattoo form, which she sometimes does to try and get Ash to shiver or look ridiculous. When she knows he's upset and she has to be in tattoo form she'll cover his whole chest in her version of a tattoo hug. It's really sweet.

Sherri says someday Simi may get her own book. In the meantime she's everybody's favorite spoiled rotten demon.

Read More

W is for Within Temptation

Within Temptation

In May 2012 I abruptly switched from writing inspirational historical romance to general market science fiction romance. I know. Talk about a HUGE switch. But it's been the best decision I ever made. I went from one finished novel prior to the switch, to closing in on four finished in just two years. All over 95,000 words long.

My muse decided it needed music, so I defaulted to my perennial favorites Nickelback and Evanescence, and built a Pandora station. The station introduced me to the Dutch goth symphonic rock band Within Temptation.

The picture is for cover art for The Heart of Everything, the first album I heard any of their stuff from. There are several songs on it that are closely related to my A'yen's Legacy space opera series.

I told my crit partner to listen to them and we both fell in love. Their album The Unforgiving fits the book my crit partner was writing at the time, which came out back in November (Revenge by Winter Austin, third in her Degrees of Darkness series).

In December the first single off their new album came out. Once again, love at first listen. I bought the new album, Hydra, one week ago. The extended version. With 18 tracks.

Want to know what they sound like? Here's their official YouTube channel. I recommend The Hand of Sorrow from The Heart of Everything, A Shot In The Dark from The Unforgiving, and What About Us? from Hyrda.

Read More

V is for Victorian

By Jo Naylor (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I love all things Victorian. Clothes, hair, houses, furniture, fabrics, novels. I'm really not picky. My dream house is a Queen Anne with a painted lady color scheme and done in either period antiques, or reproductions.

This Queen Anne was built in 1896 and is in Fairfield, Iowa. It has everything typical of the Queen Anne style. Round area on the porch, tower room, loads of gingerbread trim, and dormers.

By Rebecca Palmer (Brooklyn Museum) [see page for license],
via Wikimedia Commons

I also love Victorian crazy quilts, and this is a really good one. It's so crazy! There's all kinds of embroidery on it that doesn't really show up in the picture.

Read More

U is for Unleash The Night

I've been wracking my brain for a month trying to come up with something for U. Finally, on Sunday afternoon as I was typing this up it hit me: check your books! So I did. And found Unleash The Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon, the ninth Dark-Hunter book and fourth Were-Hunter book.

I'm a die-hard Dark-Hunter fan. They're amazing books and Sherri is an amazing writer. I've never been much into werewolves, but give me a book about a werecat and I'm all over it.

This one is about a werecat, Wren Tigarian. Yes, he's a tiger. Actually he's a tiger/snow leopard cross. Which is considered an abomination in the Were-Hunter world. Snow leopards also have a tendency to go stark-raving mad. Wren can take the form of a tiger or a snow leopard.

Wren is blond, has dreadlocks, and for the first eight DH books says maybe ten words. To his pet monkey, or Nick Gautier. To see him fall in love and find out what all his backstory was, was amazing. I fell for Wren the moment he showed up.

But he's not my favorite Were-Hunter. He's my second favorite. My ultimate favorite is Ravyn, a Were-Hunter cat turned Dark-Hunter and stationed in Seattle.

Read More

T is for Tsarskoye Selo

Alex Florstein [CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0  or GFDL],
via Wikimedia Commons

Yeah, you're probably noticing a theme by now. I really do love all things Russian, and the height of Russian imperial architecture in the late 17th century through the end of the 18th century.

Tsarskoye Selo, known during Communist days as the town of Pushkin, was the summer residence of the tsars. There are two MASSIVE palaces out there, the Alexander and Catherine palaces, and acres and acres of landscaped gardens. It was built by Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth. There are other royal residences out there, too, but they haven't been as well preserved as Alexander and Catherine.

The Catherine Palace is home of the famous Amber Room, a room done from floor to ceiling in panels of amber. The Nazis looted the original panels and they've never been found. The ones in there now are reproductions.

Read More

S is for Saints

By New Orleans Saints.Kalel2007
 at en.wikipedia [Public domain],
from Wikimedia Commons

I thought about doing Star Trek, then decided not to. See, I'm somewhat of a closet football fan. And I live in Louisiana, so of course it's the Saints all the way.

People outside the Gulf coast don't really understand how much the Saints mean to this state, especially post-Katrina. The 2006 season breathed life back into a city still fighting to survive. The team made it to the NFC championship game for the very first time.

Three years later it was the Super Bowl for the first time. And we won! I was living on Long Island at the time and had no fellow fans to celebrate with. I called home during the last five minutes of the game just to have some kind of connection to home. I will never forget Tracy Porter's interception and 96-yard touchdown run.

So I present the video of the interception.

Read More