What’s Up?
I have carpet!
To explain my excitement, I’ve spent nearly three months without carpet, three weeks of which involved a half-carpeted hallway with gripper rods on the stairs that I stepped on in my bare feet more than once! So, you know, the fact that’s over is exciting!
I’m not, in case you ever wondered, a graceful woman.
Other news?
Still writing!
I’ve also arranged MOST of the Dead Man Stalking blog tour and have started to put together the bumph that I email out to the blogs. This will be my OFFICIAL tenth book with DSP, so I am planning to do something a bit exciting for it. Stay tuned!
Oh, and I finished the first edit on Swipe by TA Moore, which will follow Dead Man Stalking and I hope you guys enjoy. It was a ridiculously fun book to write, I gotta tell you.
And as I head into the last pages of the final book in the Wolf Winter series, I just thought I’d share this.
If you were wondering what our Wolf Winter lads look like in the fur-skins…
Danny as a little dog-shifter.
Jack and Gregor have their first fight.
Nick during the awkward teenager-shifter years he skipped.
Comic Rec of the Week
Slight change of format! Hope you don’t mind, but well…I do as I please! Unsounded by Ashley Cope is one of my favourite comics on the web, or just generally in existence. A sprawling, clever, exhaustively realized high fantasy world is delivered three times a week (usually! She takes a break at Christmas, you have to give her that). Not only is the art amazing and the story gripping, Cope has created a comic that, while enjoyable in print, is truly native to the web and makes full use of the flexibility of its format.
It is definitely adult fare with adult themes throughout, fair warning, but if you like high fantasy with a gritty edge, political and moral themes, and a fierce, lion-tailed child-thief out to prove herself to her thief-lord Da then check it out.
The Ron Perlman of cats! He DELIGHTS me. He delights you too. Don’t lie. (I mean the cat, although honestly Ron Perlman is one of the actors who would devastate me if they brought shame on themselves somehow. He always seems like a GENUINELY good guy…and makes an awesome cat).
I would just suck this out of the wrapper, but unfortunately they all have bicsuit in them. So that makes them Not Safe for Tamm. I have been told they are delicious though…which is sad :D.
Must Read of the Week
I always find these stories as fascinating as they are sad. I feel for the people who’ve been hooked and reeled in, some of them have ruined their lives and are left with nothing, except public scorn for being fooled.
I also find it intriguing how con-artists have evolved into their new ecosystem. The cons are the same as they ever were, but social media and the internet has changed how the con plays out. It used to be the con artist had to cold read most subjects (unless they had a public persona), but now they can research their mark online and find out what they like and what they hate, where they’re tender and how to stroke them. It also lets them turn what would have been a one and done con into a long con, that lets them keep tapping the mark’s wallet over months or even years.
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — On a Monday afternoon in June 2017, Renee Holland was draped in an American flag at Philadelphia International Airport, waiting for a soldier she had befriended on Facebook.
The married 56-year-old had driven two hours from Delaware to pick him up. Their blossoming online friendship had prompted her to send him a care package and thousands of dollars in gift cards. She also wired him $5,000 for plane tickets to return home.
Now she was looking for a buff, tattooed man in uniform, just like in his Facebook photos. But his flight was not on the airport arrivals board. Then a ticket agent told her the flight didn’t exist.
Facebook Connected Her to a Tattooed Soldier in Iraq. Or So She Thought.
I had something similar to this as a kid. It was a playhouse/shed in the garden where I was allowed complete (sans matches, because I had set myself on fire twice by that point) autonomy. It was my space, and that was very cool for a kid. Still, if I’d had this in the house I doubt my mum would have seen me from one week to the next!
Useless Site of the Week
Koalas to the Max! This is weirdly satisfying. I’ve done nothing, but I feel like I have.