Shadow Rising & Haunted Moon

The blurb/info for SHADOW RISING

And the playlist for HAUNTED MOON (Camille's 5th book, book 13 of the OW Series):

AJ Roach: Devil May Dance
Adele: Rumour Has It
Air: Napalm Love; The Word 'Hurricane'
Alice in Chains: Man in the Box
Amanda Blank: Something Bigger, Something Better
Android Lust: Dragonfly; Follow
Audioslave: Set It Off
Avalon Rising: Where the Sunset is Golden
Average White Band: Got The Love
AWOLNATION: Sail
Beck: Emergency Exit; Dark Star;
Black Label Society: Rust
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Fault Line
Black Sabbath: Paranoid
Blind Melon: No Rain
Bravery, the: Believe
Bret Michaels: Love Sucks
Chester Bennington: System
Chris Isaak: Wicked Game
Cobra Verde: Play With Fire
Cynthia Smith & Ruth Barrett: Faerie's Love Song
David Bowie: Fame; I'm Afraid of Americans; Sister Midnight
David Draiman: Forsaken
Death Cab For Cutie: I Will Possess Your Heart
Dragon Ritual Drummers: Black Queen
Eels: Souljacker, Part 1
Faun: Punagra; Konigin
Finger Eleven: Paralyzer
Fleetwood Mac: The Chain; Gold Dust Woman
Flight of the Hawk: Bones
Foster the People: Pumped Up Kicks
Gary Numan: Dead Sun Rising; When the Sky Bleeds, He Will Come; The Fall; The Angel Wars; Hybrid; Before You Hate It; Halo; Walking With Shadows
Godsmack: Voodoo
Gorillaz: Dare; Demon Days
Gypsy: Spirit Nation; Morgaine
Hanni El Khatib: Come Alive
Heather Alexander: March of Cambreadth; The Garden
Hedningarna: Tuuli; Ukkonen; Raven; Gorrlaus
Hugo: 99 Problems
In Strict Confidence: Silver Bullets; Forbidden Fruit
Jay Gordon: Slept So Long
Julian Cope: Charlotte Anne
Lacuna Coil: Daylight Dancer; Devoted
Lady Gaga: Paparazzi; Born this Way; I Like It Rough; Poker Face
Ladytron: I'm Not Scared; Paco; Ghosts
Lindstrom and Christabelle: Lovesick
Little Big Town: Bones
Loreena McKennitt: Mummer's Dance
Marilyn Manson: Personal Jesus; Tainted Love
Missy Elliot: Get Ur Freak On
NIN: Deep
Orgy: Blue Monday; Social Enemies
People in Planes: Vampire
Puddle of Mudd: Psycho
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Rob Zombie: Foxy, Foxy; Mars Needs Women
Roisin Murphy: Ramalama (Bang Bang)
Rolling Stones: Give Me Shelter; Miss You; Sympathy for the Devil
Simple Minds: Don't You
Stone Temple Pilots: Sour girl
Sully Erna: The Rise; Avalon
Tamaryn: The Waves
Thompson Twins: The Gap
Tina Turner: One of the Living
Todd Alan: Gently Johnny; We Are the Walking Breath
Transplants: Diamonds & Guns
Troggs, The: Wild Thing
Turisas: The March of the Varangian; Hunting Pirates; One More
Warchild: Ash
Who, the: Behind Blue Eyes
Woodland: Rose Red; First Melt; I Remember: The Dragon; Morgana Moon; Golden Raven's Eye
Zero 7: In the Waiting Line

New Moon Daughters Comic Is Up!

The new page of the Moon Daughter's Comic is up!

Of Allergies and Colds and Low Carb and Living With a Special Diet

I feel like I’ve been in no-woman’s land since last April. First, I had to deal with going gluten free, dairy free, and all of my food allergies and intolerances (and yes, there is a difference). Then, just when I was getting comfortable with the gluten free thing, and adjusting, I found out I had to go low carb. My doctor put me on a low carb diet because I'd just passed over the line into mild Type 2 diabetes, and I had no desire to get to the point where I needed medication of any sort for it.

So since April, I’ve been learning to adjust, yet again. I’m supposed to keep between 30-50 carbs a day, occasionally allowing myself to go up to say 100, 125, on very special occasions. That was hard—very hard—but my health required it. And several things have happened. My body got a lot happier. For one thing, I’ve finally been losing weight—so far I’ve lost three sizes and about 55-60 pounds. The weight is starting to come off a little slower now, but that’s okay, it’s an on-going process and I’m doing fine. My joints stopped hurting--due to the fact that starch apparently hits my joints and muscles with a nasty inflammation factor.

Another thing that happened during this time, is that I really thought my dairy allergy had calmed down. And yes, it did. For a little while. But apparently letting myself actually EAT cow dairy when it died down was a mistake because the reaction is back now. And once again, I’m back off cow dairy, only this time it’s for good. Milk almost killed me as a kid and I’ve had problems with it causing lung problems since I was in my twenties. Even if it seems to die down again, I can’t chance another challenge. Time to just accept that it’s not going to go away.

So far, goat cheese and goat yogurt are still okay. Goat dairy doesn’t give me much of a reaction at all, and I’m crossing my fingers it stays that way.

Because cream cheese is a great ingredient when you’re low carb, I was using it. So, when I went back off dairy, I tried the “soy cream cheese” in place of cow dairy cream cheese and boom, my soy intolerance flared up. I can have a little soy, but that was too much. So, now, unless somebody comes up with a coconut milk cream cheese, I can no longer make the yummy sugar-free mousse I was making. Which makes me sad, but it’s just the way it’s going to have to be.

 
This also means, I’m back to coconut milk sugar free goodies for frozen/creamy desserts. I want to find some recipes to see if I can make sugar-free coconut milk pudding without starch—and also to figure out how to make my own coconut milk sugar-free ice cream. I have an ice cream maker attachment for my mixer and am going to start playing around to see what I can do.

This balancing act drives me nuts, but I think I’m getting to the place where I realize it’s going to just have to be that, for the rest of my life. And I know it can seem crazy to people who don’t have food issues (and count yourself blessed if you don’t!). Some people don’t understand that ‘cannot have’ means ‘cannot have’ and not just “I don’t want it.”

And I know it’s frustrating when you make suggestions to people and they always come up with a “yes, but…”

Sometimes there are reasons for that ‘but.’

While none of my actual allergies are strong enough to cause anaphylaxis, thank gods, (though I know that can change at any time), they do cause problems. And so do my food intolerances, some of which are worse than my allergies in terms of symptoms. In addition, I have some environmental allergies, as well as medicine allergies/intolerances. So it’s a constant juggling game, especially like, now, when I get sick with a cold.

So here’s what happens when you mention you have a cold. Acquaintances who don’t quite grasp your situation try to be helpful.

“Drink ginger tea!”

Can’t. Allergic to ginger. Causes a nasty allergic flush and aggravates my asthma.

“Eat garlic!”

Can’t. Allergic to garlic. Garlic makes me sick as a dog and gives me horrid cramps that threaten to put me in the hospital, and oh yes, again, really bad asthma attacks.

“Take Nyquil!”

Can’t. Have really bad reactions to most over the counter medications, including ibuprofen, aspirin, decongestants, antihistimines, etc.. Nasal membranes swell up so bad I cannot breathe and again, um, the asthma thing.

“Honey! Honey in tea!”

Well, I can do some herbal teas, but no honey—not since I’m low carb. Blood sugar nixes things like honey. Agave nectar? Truly, is as bad as corn syrup in how it affects the triglycerides, and is NOT a low carb food.

“Drink orange juice!”

I can have lemon, but no orange. Bad reactions to orange. Gives me an odd dizzy reaction and again, reacts on my asthma.

And so it goes. I feel bad for telling people no—I appreciate that they want to help—but sometimes I just want to say, “I said I had a cold, not to ask for suggestions, but just because hey—I have a cold and I want a pat on the back and an It’ll be okay.”

While I could just say “thank you” and let it go at that, well… I might as well use the chance to educate that not everybody can try everything. My nixing the suggestion is NOT a rejection of the person making the suggestion. It’s just the way things are.

So where am I at, at this point? A place I never thought I’d get to. Resigned to the way I have to eat. Accepting that I’m low/lower carb for life. Accepting that no, I won’t get to go back to eating grains because grains hurt my body and inflame my joints. I can’t have sugar again for the same reason, plus it would nudge my Type 2 diabetes, which is now pretty much in remission, back out and up again. Oh, on my birthday I shared a dessert with four other friends—and that was the extent of that. On Thanksgiving, I had a good sized serving of mashed potatoes and gravy, and I had gluten free pumpkin pie. But only that day—not the next day or the next. And now and then, I hit 60 or 70 carbs but not usually. I miss fruit, terribly, but content myself with berries because it’s better for my body.

Accepting that my allergies/intolerances are, with a couple exceptions, pretty much here to stay—that my body isn’t shaking them off with the change in health from me getting my blood sugar/thyroid/etc. under control.

Mind you, it really can suck to have to be low carb AND deal with the food issues. Not all the time, because I’m a good cook and I can usually find something to eat if we go to a steakhouse or a seafood restaurant. But sometimes it's frustrating.

Like today, when I’m sick and really would LOVE to have a big bowl of chicken noodle soup (using rice noodle, because, you know, gluten affects me), yeah, it sucks. But I simply can’t have the rice noodles.  I can, however, make a delicious, steaming chicken soup without garlic or starchy foods in it—and I think I will do that tonight.

Yasmine

Of Typewriters and Closet Manuscripts

My friend Jeremy Wagner , a horror author and death metal musician, gave me the idea for this blog, with a post on Facebook about when writers used typewriters. Well, looking back, I can tell you, I was one of those. I have often talked about the seven novels I have in the closet—no, they’ll never see the light of day. You’ll never read them and I guarantee, you wouldn’t want to. They aren’t the quality of my work now, and I’ve plundered them for characters and ideas.

But this blog is about how those books were written, rather than what they were. I wrote dozens and dozens of short stories, and then, in 1985, I wrote my first full-length novel. Tales of the Fae Queen—the first book I wrote—was written on a manual typewriter—and was very long. Liquid paper was my friend.

Second book, The Gates of Ouaga, I wrote the same way—on an old manual typewriter. I remember pounding on the keys—and I do mean pounding. (When I switched to an electric, I had to relearn how to type). I hated making mistakes because my OCD meant I wanted to rip up the page and retype it. I soon learned to let it go and just correct by hand during the early drafts.

The Legacy of Katherine Harriage—the third book, and Breakaway Farm—my fourth book, I wrote by hand first. Each book I wrote in 11 days—I took all the time I could off from work, saved up my vacation and took it next to a three day weekend. And I wrote. And wrote. And wrote like a maniac. After that, I transcribed them onto the (by now electric) typewriter in the evenings after work and revised and reworked them.

Breakaway Farm, I wrote six different times in six different ways and it still wasn’t right. But I culled wonderful excerpts out of it—the Autumn Lord in the Otherworld Series got his beginning in Breakaway Farm. And Laurel and Galen from my short story Man in the Mirror also got their start there. Some day I may want to re-write it again, but totally changing it out.

Winterborne, the fifth book I wrote, I had a Brother word processer. That book never even got printed off—I lost the disks and the book is long gone.

Dark Huntress was my sixth novel and I also wrote it on the Brother, all 900+ pages of it. Cost me a fortune in ribbons. I plundered Dark Huntress also, for the Otherworld Series. A lot of the cities in Otherworld are from the Dark Huntress world, only much more fun to write now because I know what I’m doing. Enough agents told me I needed to cut it in half and eliminate one entire subplot and main character. So I did. I took it from 225,000 words down to 120,000 and 420 pages. It still didn’t sell but I kept trying.

And The Unwinding Woman, the seventh novel? I wrote it on a computer. By the time I wrote The Unwinding Woman in 1998, I had broken into nonfiction and from 1996 to 2000, I sold and wrote eight books on metaphysics, magic/witchcraft, tarot, sex magic, meditation.

But, I wanted into fiction. That was always my first love and I knew I was destined to be a storyteller. All in all, I accrued over 600 rejection slips on my novels and the massive pile of short stories I had before I was offered a contract with Berkley for my Chintz ‘n China series.

Then, in 2001, after burning out on writing nonfiction—eight books that I wrote primarily on the computer, I wrote Ghost of a Chance, and this time, something worked. I didn’t realize I was writing a mystery until I was mostly through—I was just writing for fun, to recapture my love for the art and craft, because I was so exhausted and tired from the year 2000, which was my ‘year from hell.’

An agent friend of mine helped me learn how to edit/pace it, and I paid attention. Shortly thereafter I found my agent (not the same one), and  a couple of weeks later, I had a three book contact with Berkley.

So Ghost of a Chance went from a gritty paranormal mystery/thriller to the first of a cozy paranormal mystery series (cozies were big, it wasn’t ‘the book of my heart’ so I was willing to make the changes when requested). And that was the beginning of my foray back into what I love to write—fantasy and paranormal.

Answers to some common questions:

So, what genres were these books? Tales of the Fae Queen, The Gates of Ouaga, and Dark Huntress were all epic fantasy. The Legacy of Katharine Harriage was a gothic romance. Winterborne and Breakaway Farm—magic realism/contemporary fantasy. The Unwinding Woman was magic realism.

Do you ever write by hand anymore? Seldom. I have bad tendonitis and it’s too hard on my wrists to handle a pen for more than signing books or jotting down a few notes. Typing is much easier. I use an ergonomic keyboard (the old ones Microsoft came out with—the natural elite, I think it’s called, I buy them off ebay whenever I can find them because I don’t like the newer versions). I also use my iPhone’s voice recorder for notes when I need to remember something and am where I can’t really write it down.

Do you journal? I used to journal a lot, but don’t have much time for it anymore. However, when I do journal, I use my Waterman pens—I have three. I love them, and they’re like good friends. And I love blank books, even though I don’t use them much anymore. I now indulge my love for them by buying them for contest baskets.

Why don’t you publish these books yourself? Because they simply aren’t good enough. Not every book written needs to be published, and these aren’t the quality I expect out of myself now. They’d take more work to rewrite than to just write the new work, the work that I love to write. Plus, I no longer have a couple of them. I threw away one of the books along with a pile of short stories trying to appease my ex, trying to make the relationship work. It didn’t help and that is one of the few things I regret doing in my life.

Also, since I’ve plundered them, I’d have to rework them. They’re better off left just as they were—rehearsal. You don’t expect to play with a symphony without putting in hundreds and thousands of hours of rehearsal. And I think writing is the same way. You pay your dues by putting in the hours until your skill level reaches the point where it’s good enough to offer to the public.

So there we have it. And if I could have had a computer back then, with the Word program? I’d have snatched it up in an instant. There may seem something romantic about writing by hand long hours into the night, but I think I’ll leave that for love letters and the privacy of a diary.

Yasmine

New Moon Daughters Comic Is Up!

The new page of the Moon Daughter's Comic is up!

Cream of Cauliflower-Sausage Soup

I had made a version with cow dairy, but my reactions came back and I realized I was playing with fire. So here's my new version of this soup. VERY low carb--you could eat the entire pot (which is HUGE) for 50-60 carbs if that.

Cream of Cauliflower-Sausage Soup

1 head cauliflower, remove leaves, core, and cut into pieces

1 bunch asparagus, remove ends and break into pieces
2 medium zucchini, peeled and diced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup baby carrots,diced
3 ribs celery,diced
1 bunch green onions, clean and dice
2 cans of shrimp(do not drain)
1 lb. mild sausage links
1 quart chicken stock
1 tsp onion powder
1 tbsp parsley
1 tsp paprika
1/4 cup sherry
2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
1/4 cup dairy free margarine or goat butter
1 cup grated goat mozzarella or soy mozzarella

In stockpot, put:cauliflower, asparagus, zucchini, and chicken stock. Set over med-high heat.

Microwave carrots for three minutes. Remove.

Cut sausage links into bite-size pieces and brown in large skillet. Add olive oil, carrots, celery, green onions, and herbs. Saute over med-low heat. After about ten minutes, add sherry. Cook for another ten minutes.Add shrimp and heat through.

By the time the carrot mixture is done, the cauliflower-etc., should be done. Do NOT drain. Stir to cool a little for about ten minutes then divide into halves or thirds and puree in blender (do NOT fill blender too full each time and be careful when blending hot vegetables--I leave the top cocked a little so steam can escape).

After the cauliflower-chicken broth mixture is fully blended, pour back in the stockpot. Add coconut milk, butter, and mozzarella and stir. Add in sausage mixture and stir. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Makes...a lot.Probably about 10 servings.

More Exciting News

I found out that Shaded Vision ALSO hit the Publishers Weekly bestseller list, as well as the USA Today. So that's all three big lists! I'm stoked!

Yasmine

WOOHOO!

SHADED VISION hit #16 on the massmarket New York Times bestseller's list! The first non-Menolly book to hit the short list (which appears in the actual paper rather than just online)!!!   

Thank you!!!!

Yasmine (too relieved and excited to go on right now)

New Moon Daughters Comic Is Up!

The new page of the Moon Daughter's Comic is up!

Fire and Ice

Blogging Over At Between Fire and Ice today.

New Moon Daughters Comic Is Up!

The new page of the Moon Daughter's Comic is up!

Shaded Vision Excerpt #4

We’re counting down to SHADED VISION’s February release with a snippet from Chapter 2!

You can read the first chapter of SHADED VISION in the back of COURTING DARKNESS, or up on Yasmine's site. So we'll be posting snippets from chapter 2 each Monday until the release date. If we find anybody reproducing this on other sites we'll stop and everybody loses out. That means: NO cutting/pasting/copying/sending through email.

Remember, you can pre-order SHADED VISION from Amazon.com or BN.com!

COURTING DARKNESS
CHAPTER TWO Excerpt #4
copyright 2011 Yasmine Galenorn, all rights reserved, do not reproduce
First Chapter
Excerpts Already Posted

As the elevator descended with a silent rush, a somber mood settled over the group and I stared at my feet, Shade’s hand on my shoulder. I didn’t want to go in— didn’t want to look at the faces of my fallen friends. The Supe Community was tight-knit; everybody knew everybody else.

The doors opened with a swish and we stepped out onto the hard tiled floor, our boots leaving a series of staccato tattoos echoing in our wake. The walls here had been recently painted sterile white. Whether they thought the color made the atmosphere brighter than the pale blue had, I didn’t know, but now the complex felt cold and hollow. As Chase pushed through the doors, Sharah right behind him, I watched them go in.

They fit together . . . they really fit. Both of them had to deal with the leavings of society— the aftermath of battle. Whereas I was on the front lines, Chase was better suited to picking up the pieces and making sense of it all, of organizing the back lines. We’d never found our niche together. And yet we both had our place in the battles we were facing. And we’d become blood brother and sister. No matter what, we had each other’s back.

Chase glanced back at me, his eyes shimmering, and he blinked, then slowly smiled and inclined his head, as if he’d heard me speaking. He was changing, evolving, and none of us knew what he was becoming. Not even him.

He stood back, holding the morgue doors open for us. Sharah headed over to examine the bodies and talk to Mallen, her right-hand man, who was also an elf. He handed her a series of charts and she flipped through them.

I slowly approached the tables— fi ve of them, each covered with a snow white sheet. Or what had started as snow white. Blossoms of blood spread across them, petals staining the undersides of the sheets, and as I watched, the patterns seemed to form the silhouettes of flowers. Or perhaps it was my imagination— like some gruesome Rorschach test.

The bodies were still, no breath, no movement. No fear they’d turn into vampires, like when Menolly had come here to identify victims. Just . . . dead. Cold, forever gone. I took a deep breath and looked up at Mallen.

“How bad are they?” Swallowing my fear, I tried to remind myself that I was a Death Maiden. I escorted— or would soon escort— souls over through the veil as part of my duties. I would be leaving the empty bodies of not just my enemies, but anybody whom the Autumn Lord ordered me to take.

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They aren’t good. It’s not . . . it’s bloody. But the faces are fairly intact. I think they’re recognizable enough. The bodies were pretty mangled and burned. Four of them were right near the blast. The fifth . . . he never made it through the ride to the hospital.”

Menolly and Camille joined me. I reached for Camille’s hand as Mallen pulled back the first sheet. I flinched. I knew the face. “Tom. Thomas Creia. He’s a member of the Verde Canis Clan. They were a group of Weres working for environmental causes. He’s married. Two children.”

Sharah jotted down the information as we moved to the second table. Again, the sheet came down. Again, a familiar face.

“Crap. Trixie Jones. One of Marion’s sisters. Coyote shifter. Single. I think she might have been engaged, but I’m not sure.” The fire in my belly began to burn brighter. Whoever did this, I wanted to find them. Now.

The third sheet. Another man. This one, I knew by name but not to call friend. But his death had not been pleasant, and the grimace on his face told me he’d died in pain.

“Salvatore Tienes. Werewolf. He recently moved up from Arizona. I don’t know what pack he was with, but he’s been staying with a werewolf family up in Shoreline.” I bit my lip, wanting to stop. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t want to see who was left— an irrational fear took hold, that it would be someone even closer. Mallen drew back the fourth sheet.

I stared. Menolly and Camille squeezed my hands, and Camille let out a little gasp. Even Chase moved closer, hanging his head.

“Exo Reed,” he said quietly.

Everybody in the Supe community knew Exo. He ran the Halcyon Hotel, catering to Supes. He’d called us in on several jobs and was an upstanding member of the NRA and a member of the chamber of commerce for the greater Seattle area. And now, he was so much fodder for worms. Bloody . . . gone to whatever afterlife awaited werewolves when they died.

Tears threatened, but I sucked them back, holding myself rigid. Camille was doing the same, and Menolly had one of those horrific looks on her face that told me she wanted to do nothing less than hunt down the scum who did this and rip them to shreds.

“Show us the last, Mallen. Then we should talk to the survivors.” Chase glanced over at the elf but paused when Mallen held up his hand.

Mallen barely looked old enough to be in high school, but he was far older than most of us. “They aren’t in any condition to talk. They may not be for a long time. But I’ll do my best to have them conscious by tomorrow.”

“Crap. We need to know everything we can about this blast.” Chase looked flummoxed but then shrugged. “Whatever . . . we’ll play it as we go. So, who’s our last victim?” We were all afraid that it was going to be someone else we knew, but this time it wasn’t a Were, but an elf, unfamiliar to any of us. Neither Mallen nor Sharah recognized him, either.

“We’ll have to go through the records of who came over from Otherworld recently . . . track down anybody who might have seen him come through the portals.” I was shaken, and I hated to admit it, but I’d been relieved that our last casualty wore a stranger’s face. Somewhere, he had to have family or friends who would miss him. But for us, he was easier to handle— a cold statistic in what had become a terribly personal crime.

“Did the fire or explosion kill them? I know it’s an obvious question, but is there anything we overlooked? That we don’t know?” Camille spoke up, looking to Mallen for answers.

“Good question,” Chase said.

Mallen consulted his charts. “Toxicology is still out, but the most obvious cause is massive trauma due to whatever explosive device this was, and third-degree burns over most of their bodies. Although . . .” He paused.

“Although what?” I pulled out my notebook and began making my own notes.

“The odd thing . . . when a bomb detonates— a homemade bomb like those commonly used by hate crime groups— they usually make sure it’s loaded with shrapnel. Now, there are injuries due to shrapnel here, but it wasn’t from the bomb. The fragments obviously came from the surroundings. Wood from the beams, metal from the tables that exploded. Whatever blew up doesn’t seem to have left much of a residue.”

“That’s because the explosive factor was canya.” I watched as Mallen’s expression turned from perplexed to horrified. “Yeah, we’re thinking sorcerers. The question is: Who did it, and how did they get hold of this crap?”

“Then toxicity results aren’t going to show anything.” He closed the folder and set it down on the table. “The fact is, the amount of canya needed to blow up a building the size of the Supe Community Hall points to some very powerful enemies. If they have enough canya for that, I wouldn’t put it past them to have other tricks like this up their sleeve. You have to find them, or I predict a body count like we haven’t seen in a long while.”

Chase let out a long sigh. “We so didn’t need that information. Okay, let’s go have a talk with the families. I know some of them are waiting upstairs.” He shook his head, looking resigned. “I’m used to breaking bad news to people, but the sting never goes away.”

Fire and Ice

Blogging Over At Between Fire and Ice today.

Blessed Imbolc

May your Imbolc be lovely, and may the coming season be one of growth and joy.

Yasmine

Adventures in Cat Land

Sometimes having cats is an adventure. Like yesterday, when Caly and Brighid decided to get into it.

Caly likes to sit on the top of my hutch in a three-tiered metal in-basket. Yesterday, Brighid decided SHE wanted up there. Caly got jealous. Brighid didn't want to get down. Caly got up there with her. They were both trying to fit in the basket and neither wanted to share. Finally I chase Caly down. I look away and I dunno WHAT the hell happened, because next thing I know there's a tremendous crash. I look up in time to see two of my collectible faeries (including one expensive one) go flying off the printer table next to my desk, along with a dragon statue, the new lamp I got, the tape, and gods knows what else. The lamp ended up upside down and thank goodness it didn't break--it wasn't cheap.

My SAD lamps still works (the lamp ended up hitting it on the way down)--thank the gods. My faeries both lost their wings, but at least the resin wings are in one piece so we can glue them back on (but that sure took the value of one of them down, it was a limited edition, out of stock, piece that I got off E-bay and NOT inexpensive...however I collect them because I love them, not for the monetary value). The dragon statue was amazingly unharmed. The other stuff didn't break. Caly and Brighid BOTH managed to shed their collars when they jumped...Caly’s landed on my desk and a while later, I finally found for Brighid's...

It was total mayhem at my expense. And both were so puffy tailed that it was hard not to laugh...after I calmed down. My assistant ran in and when she saw that both cats were okay, she was just saying, "Breathe...now just breathe..."

I looked at the cats--who were slinking away--and said, "Yeah, you'd better run!" But you know, that’s what cats do. Because…they’re cats.

OH...and Shaded Vision releases in just a few days--next Tuesday! You still have time to pre-order. *grins* (Yeah, that's a suggestion). And my Shaded Vision contest runs through the end of next Tuesday. (No, you cannot enter on the blog--don't even try or I'll ignore it).

Yasmine