It's heeeeeeere.....

And so it begins.

Yes, it is November.

Yes, it is NaNo time. (NaNoWriMo for those of you who just got back from Guam).

That one month of the year where anyone who fancies themselves a writer frantically puts pen to paper, fingers to keyboards, and heads to desks in an effort to complete the daunting task of finishing a novel (50,000 words) in 30 days.

Are YOU one of those brave souls? This year, once again, I will be one of them. Maybe this year, I'll finish.

For the third year in a row, I accept the challenge. Now - accepting and completing are two totally different things. Because, as with everything we WANT to do, reality gets in the way with things we HAVE to do.

Like work. Job #2 requires that I sign my soul away for ten days every November. Sleep and I become estranged, as do nutrition and I. I learn to survive on five hour energy drinks, many jolts of caffeine in different forms, nicotine, and sugar - lots and lots of sugar. All in all, once the 14th of November hits, I will have completed, between BOTH my jobs, about 130 hours of work - give or take. Which isn't bad if it was evenly spread out throughout those ten days. But it's not.

And then, factor in daily requirements - laundry, general housework - which somehow multiply in those ten days, and find the time to socialize with family where the conversation consists of more than monosyllabic grunts of "Hi." "Fine." and "G'night."...well, you see where I'm going with this.

All in all - real life does not want me to complete NaNo. But damn it! *I* want to finish NaNo this year.

And so I shall.

Somehow,

someway.


Someone said to me "But you finished NaPoWriMo. Surely you can do this." Ummm, well...did you see the word count requirement? FIFTY. THOUSAND. WORDS. National Poetry Writing Month was free form - really, the only rule was to write a poem a day. No word count.

This task is a little different. More of a challenge. More frightening, more daunting, more, everything. But I shall persevere.

I. SHALL. CONQUER.

To all my fellow scribes participating - I wish you the best of luck. If you are participating and you want to be writing buddies - you know, for moral support, bitching, and all that - just look me up.


My writing name? Angellz - of course. :D

And let's start this month off with a rocking anthem - cuz I'm gonna Do Things MY Way.



Take it away boys.

Don't Pay the Ransom!

That's something I will always remember my father for. Whenever he & my mother would come home late, he'd enter the house with "Don't pay the ransom! We're home." And it never failed to make me smile.

So, honey - I'm home.

(kicking off shoes and sitting with a glass of wine) Would you like some?

I know it's been almost three weeks since a posting. Real life does tend to get in the way of things we really want to do sometimes. My hats go off to Sommer Marsden, Aisling Weaver, Alison Tyler and the whole lot of lovely, sexy ladies that keep us knee deep (or higher) in seductive prose and erotic tales. I'm almost done my fourth class towards my publishing certificate, and I'm finding out that editing is hard work. I mean, I didn't think it was sunshine and roses, but neither did I realize what a complex process it is, that needs to be handled delicately lest you bruise the writers fragile ego.

However, I'm finding out PDQ that becoming an editor - a successful one - might not be in the cards for me. I don't quite have the analytical mind that is required to sharpen, and examine, the various elements that will make a story publishable. (I keep getting stuck on premise - for some reason, while I can get it straight in my head, it doesn't follow through on the paper).

I think I might be ok with that. If nothing else, these classes will sharpen my skills as a writer, and show me what type of editors I will need to hire when (not if) I open my house.

Until then, I am quite happy with the work I produce. As few and far between as the pieces are right now, next week is my final class, and then I will have two months in which to spend all my free time writing ( you'll have free time? who are you kidding?)

Gleep!

So the voice is right. Between two jobs, Christmas fast approaching, family stuff to deal with, and of course, mapping & planning out my website, the house business, etc (and let's not forget your aim to actually FINISH NaNoWriMo this year...), free time will be scarce.

But there should be enough time to finish a WIP or two and get started on a few pieces I plan on submitting.

So, thanks for still being here. It means a lot. I promise to be home more.

But, next time, you bring the wine.

When the Zombies hit - I wanna be doing Sommer...

Oops - I mean - I wanna do what Sommer will be doing. What will that be? you ask, eyes straining to see your screen, inching forward on your chair. You're wondering - does she have the answer for the Zombie Apocalypse? 

We shall see.....

Hurry! The zombies are coming! Do me!

I do understand those who can’t grasp how zombies (or other scary stuff) can mix with erotica. I guess those are the people who would be all “hurry the zombies are coming! Get the photo albums!” (Maybe not for real, but it sounded good).

Not me, I’m a visceral person. I’ve more than once said, even after just making a big hoopdie doo over my 4 year no smoking anniversary, that if I’m ever diagnosed terminal, I’m smoking my way out of this world. I will, in fact, most likely light a carton of cigarettes with a blow torch whilst drinking red wine right out of the box with a crazy straw.

So yes, if the zombies are coming, I want to get laid one more time. If there’s high stress, do me baby. If we might all die this week, I want to get down and dirty as often as I can before I possibly shuffle off this mortal coil. 

So, yes, laugh if you will, but the sex in these books are often touched with not just emotion but stress, anger, fear and urgency. Which can make for some mighty fine sex—you’ll know that if you’ve ever had that kind of sex. Especially when, as in the zombie exterminator books, you have a group of four friends who like to mix it up in the sex department.

I mean, come on, there are zombies all over…and by book three they are…mutating. So grab as much nookie as you can. You never know when your ticket’s getting punched. At least that’s how the exterminators feel. (And their inventor if you must know ;) )

So how about you? Do you want your photo albums or one more roll in the hay. Or the shower. Or the potting shed. Or the…[fill in the blank]. Comment and be entered to win your choice of the zombie exterminator books on pdf.

XOXO

Sommer

Poppy's birthday should be a big, fun, sexy deal. And it is, until the zombie exterminators find out that the creepers in their neck of the woods happen to be switching the game up a bit. They have a new nifty trick that keeps them from being readily recognizable. Something poor Poppy is unlucky enough to find out on her morning run. She goes from fantasizing about her birthday foursome with the boys, to running home to spread the bad news of mutation.

Her big day is suddenly full of machetes, a lady from the CDC and news of a new vaccine that might—or might not—work. Lucky for Poppy the boys won't let the new turn of events ruin her birthday, they still take her where she needs to go. Because all four of them know, every day could be your last. Sadly, Garrity, Cahill and Noah can't control what happens next. Things change, possibly forever, for their little group of exterminators. And over the next few days Poppy realizes a few things with perfect clarity: she loves Garrity, the thought of losing one of the boys terrifies her, and she's completely at a loss when it comes to one of her own being threatened. It seems to be the one area in which she can't pull off the bad ass persona.

What will she do, she wonders, if their perfect group of four suddenly becomes a group of three? How will she survive?

“Let me go,” I said, struggling to stand, but he wouldn’t let me.

“No. Calm down.”

“Do not tell me to calm down Christopher Garrity! You were the one who punched a fucking van!”

This time I managed to get up, but he came up with me, and he grabbed me to him even though I stiff-armed him to keep him away.

“Come here, Poppy,” he said, still sounding angry but also exasperated.

“No, let me go.”

“No,” he turned, using his bulk against me and pushed me to the side of the van where he’d just been. I’m not a tiny little ballerina, I’m about 5’9” and a good 140 pounds. I work out. I kick ass. But Garrity moved me like a paper doll and the movement of my head made some ropes strung from the roof sway.

“Let me go,” I said, heart pounding.

“No,” he leaned in and kissed me. It was not a sweet kiss. It was a rough, needy, desperate kiss that made me want him and want to punch him all at once.

I bit him.

His hands slammed my wrists up, and the fucker bit me back. A quick nip of my lower lip that made me taste a fleeting ghost of copper in my mouth.

“You’re hurting me,” I said, but it came out in a whisper instead of a yell.

Garrity gripped both of my wrists with one big hand and with is free hand, freshly sanitized and smelling of fucking cucumbers and melon of all things, stroked my exposed belly. “I know. And you like it.”

I started to balk, but he shoved his hand down past my belt buckle, past my black jeans, past my panties and found me slick and hot and swollen.

“I don’t,” I said, my face hotter than hot. I was blushing, and it was because I was lying.

Garrity curled a well-schooled finger into my cunt and thrust. His thumb, warm and broad found the engorged nub of my clit, and he pressed hard. My mouth popped open, and he took it in a much deeper kiss.

“I was scared, you twit, because I love you.”

I balked at the twit part, but he pushed another thick finger into me to join the first and in tandem they pressed that spectacularly sensitive bundle of nerves deep inside of me.

“I love you too, but we do this every da—”

I broke off because he was wrestling my belt buckle, and I shimmied my hips to help him. I needed him. I wanted to punch him, I wanted to make him put his head in my lap and stroke his hair, and above it all, I wanted him to fuck me.

“Shut up,” he said. Pushed my jeans down, still trapping my wrists in the bond of his own hand, working his own buckle one-handed.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” I snapped, but I thrust my hips toward him to contradict my ire.   

Thank you to the lovely Sommer for joining us today. If you liked what you read (and if you didn't, you're a zombie yourself), follow this link to add it to your collection.

Just so y'all know...

I don't respond to trolls - or cowards. I will not publish nasty comments. I don't pretend that everyone likes me or what I write. But this is my blog and I reserve the right to not publish hurtful or disgusting comments.

I have a feeling this person might be writing on someone else's behalf. Tell them to step up and do it themselves. And if you have something to say to me, don't hide behind anonymity.

E-mail me.

That is all - hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend.

The Bug in my Brain

I'm telling you - there's one in there.

Or maybe Sommer's zombie exterminators missed one of their targets, and it's eaten it - I can't really be sure.But something is definitely missing up there.

See, I LOVE to write. For years, it was how I escaped, what I did when I was bored, and something I took immense amounts of pride in.

Lately, well, I seem to have a problem dedicating myself to my writing time. Things at work are SLOW to be nice about it. And in the past, I would have welcomed the slow time to write. After all, I have about ten serious WIP's, and a few dozen ideas kicking around in my skull.

Yet, lately, when I sit to put my fingers to the keyboard - Bejeweled Blitz winds up on my screen somehow.

*hanging head in shame*

I know - it's a disgrace. And then, if I'm home, I can find a dozen or more things on the television to sit through, rather than bring to life the wonderful characters that are just waiting for me to spring them from their prison.

I don't know where my brain has gone lately. I really don't. And to be quite honest, it's pissing me off.

After work, once in a while, when I have the house to myself, it's quiet, and peaceful, and the perfect time for writing. All day, I'll sit wherever I happen to be, and I'll have scenarios, characters and plot lines springing around my head like Tigger on meth.

But when it comes time to set it all down, and create, I stall. Hell, even while writing this blog I've taken three Blitz breaks. Maybe one reason is that things I write, some get taken the wrong way. People sometimes read into it a little too much. They think that I'm always the main character in everything I write - and some important people feel that it's not complete fiction. I mean, I've never made it a big secret, I do tend to take a few things from real life. Mostly settings, personality traits from others, even secondary situations now and again. But in no way is any complete piece reality.

Maybe that stalls my hand. Even though, I can't control how people will read into things, just as I can't control if they'll enjoy it or not.

But whatever the reason, I've stopped writing lately. And it just makes me feel, I don't know how to describe it.

Empty maybe - and a little bit like a fraud.

Because maybe I'm not a writer, like I always thought I was. Maybe I'm just playing at this, playing at getting my publishing certificate. I don't think I am, but who knows what the sub-conscious is up to.

I'm kind of feeling lost.

So I'm hoping the bug (or zombie) really did eat my brain - because I don't want to think that after almost thirty years of writing, I've lost my passion.

So...what's YOUR Zombie plan?

Are you, my dear readers, prepared if a zombie apocalypse suddenly strikes? Do you know what you'd do, where you'd run, who you'd call?

I do.

In fact - I'm putting their number on speed dial. And you should too. Who are these marvelous creatures who are going to save us from the un-dead (and definitely unwashed) masses? And how will they prevent them from breaking our skulls open like coconuts and sucking our brains through straws with little umbrellas on them?

On September 28 - bring your cute little (terrified) butts back here to see. Guest blogging that day will be the wonderfully talented, incredibly adorable, and smoulderingly sexy Sommer Marsden.

With that being said, I leave you with my favourite Zombie Plan clip of all time - for those geeks out there, you'll know this one. Seriously - watch it all the way through - the ending is classic.

Where were you?

As Alan Jackson asked, where were you when the world stopped turning? Ten years ago today, the twin towers came down in the city that, in reality, is the centre of the North American universe.

I was at work when our accountant rushed in, and down to her office to turn on the news. "The bastards took out the World Trade Centre."

To be honest, I had no idea what she was talking about. Until five minutes later, when my boss called me up to her office. We sat, all of us there that day, and watched in horror as those planes changed the course of history - as they changed millions of lives.

I went downstairs to my desk, unable to watch anymore. I sat in silence, in shock, and with tears rolling down my face. I realized that I had friends in the city, people who were there for work, who lived there, who were on vacations. I was terrified, and the theories flying around were that Toronto, with our CN Tower at the centre of our city, was next.

I called the only person I would be able to reach at that time - my father. His voice was soothing, telling me that if I was that scared, to just come home. My boss would understand. He reassured me that if anything else was going to happen, it wouldn't be right away. And my boss sent me home.

The subway was eerily silent. No one talked - no one listened to music - no one moved except in a zombie-like fashion on and off at their stops.

When I got to the subway, my dad was there to pick me up. More silence on the way home, as neither of us could stand to listen to the news.

My uncle was in New York that day - a trade show for work. He was supposed to be in a building next door to the WTC. But he forgot something at his hotel and had to go  back. And we thank God for that every day. My aunt couldn't reach him for hours - as you know all the cell lines were jammed or down. We all sat in panic, waiting for her to get through, waiting for anyone to find out anything.

I got lucky. My friends and family all made it home safe, if not sound. For years, my uncle watched the terror alerts, couldn't travel with a peace of mind. I'm sure it was the same for millions of others. But for me, that's as personal as it gets.

For others, loved ones didn't make it home. Jobs were lost, personal memories altered, families torn apart.

I don't pretend to be an expert on what happened. I can't give you stats off the top of my head, or even pretend to understand why it was done. All I know is that it was done in the name of their God. Like so many wars that were started before, differences in religious beliefs caused horrific atrocities to be visited on others.

That's one of the many reasons I don't believe in religion. I was raised Catholic, but I no longer go to church. I believe in a higher power - call it whatever you want. And I believe in the end, we all will be held accountable to whomever, or whatever, we believe in for our actions here on Earth. But I don't think I should be told where, when, and to whom I should have to pray and worship to. Religion guides you, but also restricts you. I don't know a lot about different religions, but when hatred and ignorance are born out of interpretations of those, I can't have faith.

Today I pray for the souls of those lost in the attacks. I pray for the lives that were changed forever. I mourn the loss of pride, innocence and purity. But I also rejoice in the love that was shown, the friendships forged, and the support when the world came together, and started turning once more.

For all those affected - today, I pray.