Because I'm on deadline freaking everywhere, and it's summer so I've got about zero time, and it's also my birthday, and my kids birthday, and my parents are visiting and...yeah. I'm phoning it in today. Feel free to leave your own list in the comments. 

1) Writing prompts are almost universally unhelpful.
Sure, If I'm itching to sit down and pound away some cracky fanfic or something the travelling shovel of doom might be helpful. When I need to actually write something for publication it's like everyone expects me to have my own ideas. Sheesh.

2) My Search History is terrifying.
Like someone said you can't buy a confederate battle flag on Amazon anymore, but you can buy an I.S.I.L flag and I really really want to know, but I'm not stupid enough to type I.S.I.L. flag into Amazon with the rest of my search history. Hello whole new crop of government watch-lists I just found. *waves to the feebs* This is a thing you think about as a writer. No one prepares you for that fact before you're there.

3) Twitter is almost as unhelpful as writing prompts.
Because when I tweet things about writing or questions people have this weird hang up where they will share said tweet but they will not actually answer it. I will dedicate myself to being better about this, but I will probably fail. Sorry, Universe.

4) My keyboard looks like I tape sandpaper to my fingers before I type.
Some of this is because I have fingernails and I type fast and hard, but I feel like someone would make a keyboard that could handle a fictional life without steadily wearing through the first three layers of plastic on my spacebar. Don't ask about E, D, and N. There are actual nail marks in S. 

5) The Five-Thing list is the Yoga Pants of blogging.
Not that I don't like Yoga Pants. We're all allowed to have lazy days. Am I the only one leaning on this particular thing a little hard? Yeah? OKay. I'll work on it.

Alright. That's all for today, come back Friday where we'll talk about the 5 strangest Science Fiction Cliches!

Heh. I'm joking. I have actual content for Friday, and it's about one of my favorite things ever. Mosquito Dinosaurs!

Also, check out my short story here, and give it a vote if you like it. :)

It's sort of my fall-back here, to talk about the slush when I'm having an intensive week other places and I can't manage to get off my duff and do posts. 

But today has been a crap-shack all the way around and if I started talking about the slush I wouldn't have anything even approaching nice to say. So positive thinking's a thing, right? 

Because that's what happens with this, isn't it? I'm exceedingly lucky that right now my core group of writerly friends can have these kind of discussions without it degenerating into how much we can't believe so-and-so doesn't like X or Y or "Oh My God I can't believe you read that." 

So, in the full understanding of how much I'm about to alienate half the world, here is my list of the 5 best books ever written. It'll be broad, some of them might not actually count as books. They aren't in order because I sat here for five minutes trying to figure out which was #1. You are warned.

Fade by Robert Cormier
Guys. I can't even. My obsession with this book is about the closest to actual obsession I ever get. Someone suggested it to me when I was sixteen and my high school creative writing class was going to meet Cormier and we were supposed to read like six of his books. The best thing I can say about it is that it's almost as strange as American Gods without actually being that weird. It's been *cough cough* years since I read it the first time and I still love it, it still fires my imagination in the same way it always has. It makes the list because even more than anything else, Fade is my mental landscape for life in the late 1930's. It's beautifully crafted (which is not usually a think I pick as favorite) and sometimes creepy and often really freaking inappropriate.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Okay, so I have to preface this with the fact that I've read Pride and Prejudice about four times for every one I've read Jane Eyre. And much as I love me some Austen, she's not on this list. If I listed all the things I deeply, deeply love about Jane Eyre it'd take forever. I'll contain myself to the biggest one. By the tenants of little-r romance (to borrow a phrase from John Green) This book should have been simple and sweet. Unattractive girl with no prospects meets Gentleman of Fortune and Property, he sweeps her off her feet, we're done. Elizabeth Darcy is fiery and passionate and I love her, but I want to be Jane Eyre. I want her internal compass, even when she's maybe not the smartest character ever portrayed. 

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
Everyone in Freshman English utterly hated this. It was dry and tired, and about crap that happened forever ago, and everybody already knew evolution was a thing, right? Some of you will be remembering right now that I grew up in Kansas and thinking about that statement in light of like...anything from the news involving Kansas and Schools. I probably don't have to explain why this is on the list. The short version is the quiet message I got from this about the evils of zealous, blind belief in pretty much anything. Also, I might be prejudiced because they snuck this in on us the year before we started biology and we voted on which creation/earth-origin stories we wanted to spend the most time on. Yes, you read that right.

A Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
This is about like Fade. It's grossly inappropriate, and strange, and I love it with every ounce of my tiny, black heart. Also, this is on the list because it takes talent to make me utterly hate everyone in a book, and still keep reading it. The way Rowling strings you along, hoping certain people will get their just desserts, and constantly manages to make you like/dislike/like characters is genius and almost emotionally exhausting. 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I have to admit I could only do this one once, and I read it forever ago. I suppose it gets on the list just because I can still, very clearly, remember a specific scene (not one of the bad ones) clear as crystal, and sometimes it sneaks up on me on hot summer days. There's an unutterable power to Angelou's writing I sincerely hope I master before I kick off. 

So there's my list. Come back Friday where I'll manage to pull something out of the ether. And hey, check out my new book Lost and Found if creatures of the night/dysfunctional monster hunters are your thing. 

Today's Well Written Wednesday is for Chuck Wendig's writing challenge, posted here. It was dastardly, unbelievably hard not to have this turn into a book on me. It still wants to.

The purpose of the assignment was to take someone's first sentence, from the previous weeks challenge, and write a 2000 word story off of it. 

"As Willow wiped the blood from her face, she regretted her decision not to wear a hat." Submitted by MsShonnerz.

Notes about the challenge: A, I changed the first characters name, because of reasons (mostly because I have a book on the back burners wherein one of the main characters is named Willow). And B, I'm a little over the 2k line, but I wrapped it up as quickly as a could.

As Loni wiped the blood from her face, she regretted her decision not to wear a hat.

It was a logical decision. Today she was a package delivery driver, and the muddy brown uniform only carried one hat choice. She'd toyed with the hat, that morning in the mirror. Certainly for longer than she should have. The hat made her too noticeable. Made her eyes, and her employment designation—tattooed in reverse along the lower edge of her bottom lip--stand out too much in her face.

"Honeysuckle, are you in one piece?"

She looked down at the blood splatter over her pristine uniform and sighed. "I'm fine, Henry. This is all his."

"That's wonderful," Henry, her unhelpful handler/time-keeper/assistant, supplied through the radio hidden in her ear. "You have five minutes and twelve seconds for clean-up."

Loni—short for Lonicera, the Latin name for the Honeysuckle--grumbled, because she could, and pulled the cleaning-bombs from her thigh pocket. Each one was roughly the size of those bath bombs people were so crazy about. She thought they should be equally as brightly colored and wrapped, because then if someone perchance found one in her pocket then she just seemed like a strange enthusiast of premier bathing paraphernalia. Instead, they were yellow and orange hazard stripped with advanced warnings written on them in hieratic—the writing used by ancient Egyptian priests and religious scholars.

Everything was done in hieratic. Henry and many of the other command crew insisted this was because there were only about twenty people in the world who could read hieratic. Generally speaking people didn't even tend to recognize it as writing. She doubted the man she'd just eviscerated had known what that thing on her lip was, while he was staring at it.

She contended they used hieratic because Wilber had been a priest when they built the pyramids, no matter what he said about how that was a thousand or so years before him.

Loni placed the cleaners on different sides of the room, making sure they were the obligatory twenty-six degrees off angle from each other, and ensuring everything would bounce around the way it should. She double checked the settings. She wasn't fond of these jobs. She much preferred the subtle ones. The quiet shifts from one idea or from one set of people to another. Slitting a man's throat and then erasing all trace of his still corpse was distasteful.

Yes, she still thought that nearly ten years into this business.

She pulled on her gloves and stepped out of the door, closing it softly behind her. Loni counted to twenty, until the cleaning cycle was done, and then poked her head back in the door. Just to double check.

"Clean?" Henry asked.

She nodded, gaze sweeping through the room. Everything stood exactly where it belonged, clean and normal looking. The only sign something was wrong was a flutter of papers on the floor near the desk. Reverend Ezekiel Browning had knocked them to the floor when he stood up to let her in his office. Loni hadn't touched them, and she wouldn't touch them. In an hour, when the secretary got back, she'd find everything exactly in its place.

Except Reverend Browning. He'd never be in his place again.

Well, given the file, Loni actually rather thought his place was hell, and he'd likely be there a very long time. She hoped. Judgment wasn't her shtick, just clean-up. Other, higher members of the Orisk Council decided when the humans were doing a bad job of managing their own religion--religions, technically. They were a multi-national group--and needed a helping hand.

"One minute," Henry warned, as she crawled into the large brown vehicle and slid the door shut.

"I'm gone." Loni threw the truck in gear and started off down the street. Her delivery schedule wasn't even behind.


Wilber stood in the command center and stabbed his finger into the visual representation of Ezekiel Browning's eye. "Terminated" flashed in front of his face, in lime green hieratic. Wilbur stabbed him in the nostril, and then the eye again.

"The girl doesn't like the dirty ones, but she does good work," a crisp female voice said, stepping up behind him.

Wilber smiled slowly. "I notice you do not call her 'the girl' when she is here."

Morgan scoffed. "I like my internal organs exactly where they are." She tapped away at the electronic clipboard in her hand. Most of the tech people used a stylus, or something plastic. Morgan tapped the screen with one long, blood red fingernail.

"What's next?" she asked, looking up at the display. Her eyes were as inhuman as the rest of her, bright green—nearly the color of the text on the wall display—and overly large. Her muzzle was large and hooked, even for an Apuan, and she was taller than most of them. Wilber liked the Apuans—after the Egyptian name for Anubis—as a whole. While there was admittedly something unsettling about the jackal-like head and lower body, he actually tended to find the perfect human torso much more unsettling.

Discomfort aside, he'd always found the Apuan's one of the most useful races amongst the Orisk Council. Nothing quite convinced a standard human of your right to dogmatic interference as being presented with an ancient Egyptian god. The Egyptians had traversed those cultural boundaries so much more than any of the other religions.

Or perhaps they'd just gained a reputation for being so capricious and unsteady no one wanted to risk their displeasure.

"Nothing until next week." Wilber looked at his list, printed in bright blue—just because he liked the color. "Call her in."

"What about the others?"

He turned slowly. "What others?"

"The other teams?" Morgan frowned at him, looking up from her board.

"There aren't any other teams out," Wilber answered, enunciating slowly. There weren't. There were no more jobs until next week. There was no call for teams to be out.

"Hornbeam just left a moment ago. The paperwork came through for Vienna." Morgan cocked her head at him. "And Beech left this morning. Chicago."

Wilber swallowed, his throat suddenly and irredeemably dry. "Call them back."

"What—"

"CALL THEM BACK!"

Morgan jumped, and reached instinctively for the phone nearest her, as the wail of the alarm blared into the room and the screen behind him flashed ominously. She froze, staring at the display, and Wilbur turned back slowly, already knowing what it would say.

Agent Compromised. No Life signs.

"Call Loni," Wilber whispered.

Morgan clutched at her throat, large green eyes wide and horrified. "She's already coming in."

"I don't want her to come in," he said with terrible calm. "Beech needs back-up."


"Beech," Enzo whispered in his ear. "Something's wrong."

Beech stopped, and stepped through the throng of people into the alleyway, double checking to make sure it was clear before he answered. "What's wrong?"

"My video feed just cut."

He rubbed his forehead, trying to get rid of the headache he'd been nursing for the last day. Wilbur was right. He was getting too old for this job. He'd brushed it off, because there were three of them to cover the entire western hemisphere, and while he wasn't particularly fond of Hornbeam he liked Honeysuckle—Loni--well enough he didn't want to saddle her with an utterly crap job.

"I'm sure it'll come back in a minute." There was so much signal noise in a place like Chicago they occasionally had a little trouble keeping the lines straight.

"No." Enzo gupled. "I don't mean it went fuzzy, I mean it cut. I've got nothing." He faded for a second, and Beech could picture him swiveling around in his chair. "I'm actually surprised I've still got you."

Beech stepped back out into the throng of people, his instincts tingling. Stationary was a bad thing to be, in an emergency. And his instincts maybe didn't want him headed for St Catherine's Cathedral on 12th, but alone in a dark alley wasn't a better option. "Enzo, listen to me carefully."

"I'm going to reboot the system—"

"No, don’t bother." Beech caught the black robed figure in the reflection of the bookstore window, for a half a second before it dropped further back. "Turn off your equipment and get out."

"What about you?"

"I'll manage. Go find Henry. You're in the same complex. I doubt he's useless in an emergency."

"But—"

"Now, Enzo," Beech ordered, and reached up to pull the ear-piece out. He crushed it under his foot as he took the stairs into the cathedral.

Sometimes, when all options were bad, you took the one the enemy was least likely to expect.

Beech genuflected appropriately. They were trained in the proper way to enter any religious temple in the world, trained to accord each religion the highest respect. If it occasionally intruded on him that he was according that respect shortly before he cleansed the alter, as they'd said as recruits, that was quickly pushed away in favor of all the good the Orisk Council supposedly did.

The door wouldn't open. No one would come in behind him. The Assassins in Black were better organized than that. As evidenced by the fact they'd clearly managed to send him false orders. This church didn't actually have a Father Donnivan for him to cleanse, according to the board by the entrance.

He moved to the front of the chapel, and sat easily on the end of a pew. Folded his hands in his lap and watched the sun feebly push through the old stained glass. "The others are already dead?" he asked softly.

The figure behind him stilled. "Yes."

Beech nodded, stalling, trying to decide how many of them they'd sent.

"Are you going to pray?" the assassin hissed.

"No." Beech looked up at the window. "I'm not Catholic. You know I won't go quietly."

There was a soft laugh. "We saved you for last for a reason."

He nearly turned, at the lie. No one would save him for last. In any list. Their last target had always been and would always be Wilber.

"Of the killers, in any case."

Beech nodded, and shifted his hold on the knife hidden in his sleeve. "I hope you have back-up, it'll be quite messy and hard to hide."

"We don't hide," the assassin whispered, before he lunged at Beech.

The first blow missed Beech's head by a millimeter, and shattered the top rail of the pew. Beech rolled to the side, kicking the assassin in the stomach. His foot connected with hard, well plated armor under the cassock.

"You didn't wear your collar when you came to kill me."

The hood was pulled low, somehow held in place, and the other man held up his sharp tipped staff, balancing it perfectly. "I am a monk, not a priest. What are you?" He attacked again, thrusting dangerously close to Beech's side.

"Just a man."

"You have no god!" He whirled the staff.

Beech caught the wooden handle against his jaw, and rocked back with the blow. Steadied himself against the pews and wiped the blood from his face. "If you want to be technical I have them all. Or serve them all."

"There is only one God!"

Beech feinted right, and grabbed the staff. Pulled the assassin in close and plunged his knife through the joints on the assassin's armor. He pushed the steadily bleeding man back off of him, and turned to narrowly avoid the other assassin's staff—there was always another one, waiting in case the first couldn't finish his job.

The first man's sharp staff-end sunk into his shoulder, and he struck out with his knife, slashing at the cassock, trying to find the assassin's neck. The one behind him yanked the blade out of his shoulder and if they stayed true to form it was going to sever his spine next, before they cut his head off.

He felt the displacement of air behind him, and braced for the blow.

A shocked scream rent the air, and he turned as the first assassin dropped next to him, blood leaking from his mouth and nose, a large bone-handled knife sticking out of his neck. The other raised his staff, screaming, as Loni pulled out a pearl handled pistol and shot him between the eyes.

"We're not supposed to use guns," Beech reminded, watching the dead assassin drop to the floor.

She rolled her eyes at him, retrieving her knife, and ripping a large chunk off the nearest assassin's robe. "You are unbelievable. And you're welcome." She crammed the material into the back of his jacket, against his injury. "Let's go. I already got the other two."

He winced, letting her pull him to his feet. "Of course you did."

Loni pulled him toward the back exit. "Hornbeam?"

She shook her head, lips tight. The back door opened with a loud clang, and a yellow taxi idled in the alley, waiting.

"I have extra bombs, for clean-up, if you—"

"My only order was to get you out alive," Loni interrupted, voice softening as she shoved him in the back of the cab. "No clean-up this time." 

I like doing these challenges, they always come out with something fun. 

In any case, come back Friday. We're going to talk about either secret societies or bath bombs. I haven't decided which yet.

Because people totes find bears from Darkest Peru just hanging out in train stations in London. 

In all seriousness, Paddington Bear is one of those characters that convinced me London was a strange, magical place, and firmly planted it on my bucket list as a place to go. And I want it to do that for my son, and for countless other kids. Hopefully the movie will help that, right?

Tiny side note, and critique? If you're buying Paddington for someone, the picture books are adorable and fun, but they aren't the same story. A tour of the Amazon Look Inside thing will show you a lot of that. I'm one of those strange people that feel like words matter, and I don't particularly like abridged books. If you think I'm wrong, tell me why down there in the comments, I'm interested to hear what you think.

We're to that stage of pre-nano countdown where I'm not thinking in weeks any more, now I'm thinking in days. And I'm getting itchy to start writing. This is when I start plotting, and making notes for myself that I will utterly forget about long before Nano gets here. 

Today's particular waste of time...

Wordle is a fun way to look at something you've already written, and examine how you use language. Not that I have any clue what to make of that. 
Anyway, if you click on the picture up there it'll take you to the website, where you can do your own smash of word-art. This one is from Strange Travels, Book 1: Black Watch which was my NaNo novel for 2012. Book 2: White Dawn will be this years nano novel. Horray for picking up abandoned projects, right? 

<cue deranged laughter> It'll be fine. 

Give me a second to get to the title, it doesn't mean what you think it does. 
I missed Monday this week, and nearly missed today too. I don't have anything coherent or clever to say today, so you're getting flash-fic, and probably not all that Well Written flash fic. It will also be without the accompanying picture, because it is a)inappropriate and b)of an actual person and that makes me feel vaguely creepy even if it is a publicity shot.
I'll explain the title after the fic, bear with me.

It's all Kate's fault. 
Well, any number of things are Kate's fault. The creepy doll in Jenna's closet. The hole in her entryway wall. The perpetual poisoning of her streaming video cue. Most of college, if either of them are being honest. 
This particular bit of Kate's fault is...
See, it started as something simple and fun. They both use the same pin-board program online, and when it starts letting you send people things...well. Jenna sent Kate something Kate would be interested in (a heard of starfish devouring a dead animal) and Kate sent Jenna a half-naked man sprawled over a car. And Jenna didn't mind that. It was a publicity still from a program she rather liked, and he was a decent looking guy (shush it) and it was a nice car. She maybe felt a little strange opening it in public, but despite the fact it was...racy, it wasn't actually bad. 
Jenna sent her back a baby octopus wearing a top-hat and let it go. 
But Kate is Kate, and she knows. So the next week there's another picture. Same actor, different still. He seems to consistently lose his shirt when he's around a camera. Jenna sends her back a picture of some vaguely creepy sea-creature.
It goes on like this for so long Jenna stops thinking of it as a thing. It's not every week. They're both busy--Kate is a research biologist this year (some people are too smart for their own good) and Jenna is steadily crawling her way up the ladder of tv-writers. It's not as glamorous as people assume. 
It's maybe a year after the random sending of pictures when she meets Kate's favorite subject. There's a really awkward three seconds where she has to strenuously remind herself that is not an appropriate opening anecdote when meeting someone you may have to work with someday (she's gotten on the writing board at a studio he's currently working with). She settles for an easy smile and a hand-shake. 
Kate has a glorious amount of fun, with the whole 'my best friend is actually working in Hollywood' thing over the next couple of years. Jenna doesn't mind. There was a point in their lives where she had a sort of glorious amount of fun with the details of Kate's life. It's why they're friends.
Men of Nature is when it becomes a problem. 
It's not the best show she's ever worked on. The lines are frequently ridiculous, and the actors are...well. They're actors. There's probably a reason writers have a low opinion of people who are paid to be pretty. And Jenna doesn't. Or she tries not to. It's one of those manly looking program that basically floats on the fact the main actors are stupidly attractive and have very little shame about crying on camera. 
It's a steady paycheck and while it may not be Shakespeare it's certainly not the worst thing on TV.
They're three seasons in when they shake everything up, replace half the show regulars(one of them with Kate's favorite subject) and tell the whole world they're taking it in a new direction. And maybe the new direction was her idea, and she's just been handed a head-writer credit on a silver platter...none of that was supposed to mean she had to do interviews with the actors. But she does them without complaint because the studio thinks it makes them look better to have a young woman on stage as their lead writer. 
If she sort of constantly sticks it to them because she's the only one that's nobodies business but hers. 
They're on a talk-show this time. Jenna, and the twelve-year-old who plays the damaged kid brother (alright, he's twenty, and she's only ten years older than he is, but he acts like an infant) named Micah, and Joe. His name's not actually Joe, but she calls him Joe in her head (which is also Kate's fault and she's not ever explaining that to anyone ever). The Green Room is nice, all stuffed couches and pretty lights. Micah sprawls like he's waiting for his adoring public to find him, clear across the other couch with one arm thrown over his head in careful disarray. 
Joe doesn't particularly like being on camera as himself, so he's pacing around the room like a caged lion. She gave up on trying to make him feel better ages ago. It didn't help, and she avoids talking to him when she can. He's nice, and professional, and she's got a crush the size of a Aussie football field (she's assuming that's bigger than an American one because it's Australian and...anyway). 
The three of them have fallen into a routine, where she and Joe ignore Micah just to twit him, and Joe paces, and Jenna dicks around on her tablet until it's time for them to go on. So when the program message pops up saying she's got a notification from Kate, she doesn't think before she taps it to bring it to the front. 
She's still calling that Kate's fault. 
Because Kate hasn't sent her the car picture in...probably six months. Lately it's been a string of weird internet comics about the Mantis Shrimp. So of course the one day she clicks on it without thinking her screen blinks for a second and then it's...Joe. Half naked, pants undone, sprawled out across the car from three shows ago. 
He chokes, and stumbles, and Jenna feels his hand land on the back of the couch, right next to her left shoulder.
She fumbles, and nearly drops her tablet before she can turn it off. "Shit. Sorry." She is going to kill Kate.
Micah is utterly uninterested in them. Or he's pretending anyway, for the moment she's going to take back every uncharitable thing she's ever said about him. This is embarrassing enough without witnesses. 
Made slightly worse when Joe drops onto the couch, a full cushion away from her--which is unusual for him, he's not good at personal boundaries generally--face the brightest red she's ever seen it when he wasn't pretending to be someone else. "So...Um..."
Jenna dropped her head forward. "My best friend has a really horrible sense of humor."
He quirked a smile at her. "That's not a normal thing, then?"
"No, it is." She flushed, and made herself look up. She worked with him, and this was going to be awkward enough all on it's own without her pretending it was a thing. Even if it was a thing, maybe just not... Jenna huffed out a breath. "But also she knew we were doing an interview together today."
"Well." He gave her an awkward smiled. "As long as she doesn't usually send you half-naked men."
"It's better if it's just you?" Jenna asked, before her brain thought through the question. "Oh my god just pretend I didn't ask that. That was a conversation killer line and we were supposed to go back to pretending that had never happened."
Joe laughed, like he couldn't help himself. "I think you've been writing too much TV. The scene breaks don't really happen in real life."
"They should." Jenna flushed. "It would make it much easier to work my way out of conversations."
"But if you got to edit think about all the fun things we'd miss." He smiled, secretive and sideways without actually looking at her. 
"Hey," the aide popped in the room then, looking around them, panting--they were always at a run, she remembered those days--and holding onto the door. "You guys are on next. It's time." 
Joe stood up and pushed a hand through his hair, settling in to be professional, while Micah bounded out of the room, excited to be on camera. 
"I feel like we should have to draw straws to see who goes last," Jenna muttered.
Joe cocked a brow at her.
"Well, I'd be all for slipping out the back, but if we let him on stage by himself he'll start trying to hump the microphone stand again." Jenna shrugged. "I don't dislike him that much."
He smiled, holding the door open for her. "Yeah. Have to keep him around, otherwise I'll wind up doing the car photo shoot."
She huffed, cheeks flushing. "I hate you."
"No you don't." 
"I'm trying."
He laughed. "So when do I get to meet this friend?"

So. I got somewhere near the end and couldn't figure out how to get myself out of it. Which is, I've decided, my writing super-power. 
I'm on the fence between telling you where this came from and not. Not sure which is better.
I suppose I have to now.
Kate really has more than once (probably more than three or four times) sent me that picture. And I've opened it in public more than once stupidly, once in front of my mother, which as a bit of the inspiration for this. The rest is just so much whole cloth, but it was fun for a minute. If you exist on the internets I'm sure you've seen the picture, and know who I'm talking about. 
The only person's name I used was Kate's. Because it's her fault. As things so often are. ;)

I wish that was a picture of my cat, but his ears aren't that perfect. 
In any case, I promised you a challenge, didn't I? Because we don't all have more than enough to do, hu? 

Well, you're here now, and since I've presumably gotten you, let's talk. 

It's Well Written Wednesday, and I got to thinking earlier this week that as much as I don't write in a particular genre, I tend to read in a set of them. I love to write science fiction, and watch science fiction movies and things, but I don't read a lot of it. And I should. Everyone talks about how being well written requires being well read too. And I am, I read an awful lot, and it's not like all I read are the same five authors. 

So, what's the challenge, you ask timidly (because you know better, you really do, whatever happens from here on is your own fault).

Every month I'm going to read one Science Fiction or Fantasy novel (because they get blended together a lot for a reason no matter what proponents of either genre say) recommended to me by someone who loves it. Cover to cover. No matter how much or how little I like it. The first Wednesday will be book review day, and I'll announce the next months book. 

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it (like you have a choice) is to do the same thing. It doesn't have to be science fiction. Pick a genre you don't read (it doesn't have to be the same one for the whole year) and read a book a month. And everybody who comes on here the first Wednesday of the month and leaves me a note about what they read, and what they thought about it, gets a prize. Nothing elaborate, but I'll buy you a cup of coffee or send you a post-card or something.

So, who's in? Novembers book is going to be The Peace War by Vernor Vinge. You could always read it with me. 

There are only about a million and a half reasons why I am unreasonably busy this week. In the last two days I've hand-painted a sign (which reminds me, I have to finish that tomorrow), knitted 3 bunnies, wrapped two boxes of book (with major, beloved help from the Chief Minion), made 30 some buttons, and fielded a whole gigantic ridiculous mine-field of things that weren't actually related to writing or the Book Lover's Bazaar or anything of the like. 

Obviously my bandwidth for writing blog posts is a little lacking this week. 

And yet here I am. Writing a blog post about how I don't have the bandwidth to write blog posts. Yes, we have officially sunk that low. 

Next week is a 5 post week, and I'm promising all five. No lazy double posts or regurgitated extras. 

Right now I'm going to bed. I have to chant my way into some bunny rabbits tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, COME TO THE BOOK LOVER'S BAZAAR! On the off chance you missed that everywhere else from me lately :)

I did a big, long, insightful post on The Art of Procrastination yesterday, and I seriously don’t have another one of those in me yet. So yeah, take what you can get you greedy content-wanting people.

1-- I can be critical of literally anything. Really. It doesn’t mean I don’t like the thing, or I don’t see all the things right with the thing. But when I sit down to talk about it, what spills out is some version of ‘It had so much potential!’
2-- I’ve never met a reading schedule I liked. When I want to read, I read. A lot. Until my eyes are about to roll out of my head and my brain is fuzzy.
3-- I’m very very bad at finishing books I don’t like. Sometimes I’m even bad at finishing books I do like. 
4-- I like exceedingly strange things. It's not a question of 'your mileage may vary,' there's at-least an eighty-percent chance it will.
5-- I worry way too much that I'm over-promising the thing I love, and then you won't love it. And then I'll have to judge you (I'll try not to, but it was so wonderful what is wrong with you).


That sort of fits with Well Written Wednesday, right?