Quick review: Melanie's Marvelous Measles

Seriously. How fucked up do you have to be to write a book about how kids should get life threatening diseases and to outright fucking copy the title of a book written by a man whose daughter DIED from the illness you're pushing?

I discovered this piece of dangerous stupidity during the coverage of the Disneyland epidemic, where a bunch of unvaccinated kids (and adults) contracted the measles during their trip, and kindly took it around the country to share with the rest of us. The book is based on something that was probably a good-ish idea several decades ago: to have your kids get illnesses like measles and chickenpox when they're young and healthy, so they don't get them when they're adults with exhausted immune systems and potential health issues.

The problem with this? We have vaccines.

I have talked about this before: being anti-vaccine because of autism is like being anti-breathing because of arthritis. Not only is the supposed effect completely divorced from the supposed cause, but avoiding the cause does more harm than good. There's no supporting science whatsoever, the paper that kicked the whole thing off was a proven, admitted fake, even if it weren't the study group (Twelve kids) isn't nearly large enough to be statistically significant, and even if it were you are effectively telling autistic people that it'd be better to be dead or suffer horribly than to be who they are. You know, because people like this, this or this have obviously ruined lives and therefore shouldn't exist.

That last part was sarcasm, by the way.

Add in the utter necessity of herd immunity--which provides cover for people who cannot be vaccinated because their immune systems are too low to handle it--and you begin to see how utterly fucking wrong the vaccination arguement is.

But there are some people who want to have control over the uncontrollable, and that brings me to Melanie's Marvelous Measles. 

I bought it expecting a massive amount of science and medical fail. It has that. I bought it expecting it to be quite biased towards its author's POV and it is indeed. What I did not expect, however, is how absolutely terrible the book is. You know Mystery Science Theater 3000, how some of the episodes have shorts about safe driving or sales or those old Rocketman vs the Moon People shorts? Yeah, it's that kind of bad. It'd be hilarious...if it weren't setting kids up for a medical nightmare.

It was written by a woman named  Stephenie Messenger. I have no idea who this is and I don't really want to know. It was published by Trafford Publishing, which is yet another of Author Solutions many hats. This tells me exactly how good Stephenie Messenger is at her research, because if you spend three minutes researching the publishing industry you learn to stay away from Author Solutions and Publish America/American Star Books, because these are scams and you can do a better job on your own for far, far, FAR less money. Guys, do you really want to be taking medical advice from someone who can't work out what a scam looks like?

The illustrations are terrifying. Serious uncanny valley territory. In fact, it looks as if the artist ran photographs through filters, traced them, slapped some paint on top and left it.

This is the nicest one of the lot. Also, is it just me or does this kid have a serious pot belly?

The book is dedicated to the author's dead son. Nobody should lose a kid, and she has my condolances.

However, so do all the parents of kids who will die because of this book.

The story is not actually about Melanie. It's about Tina, Melanie's best friend, who discovers her friend had to stay home sick that day. The book goes out of its way to let us know that the teacher is pregnant. The teacher announces that Melanie has the measles.

In a normal school setting this would probably be met with either apathy or envy (It's a kindergarten-ish class.) but in this school it is immediately met with utter fucking terror.

Some children in the class began to worry that they might catch measles and others were getting quite scared.

Then, because the book needs a "bad" guy, and because Ms. Messenger obviously comes from the Jerry B. Jenkins school of storytelling, a little jerk in the back row starts being a pill to the other students:

Travis said that he wasn’t vaccinated, but didn’t mind, until Jared then told him angrily, “Well, you’re going to die if you don’t get vaccinated.”

..."Well, I know that isn’t true because I haven’t had any vaccinations and I am still alive!”

 Jared didn’t know what to say to that!

 I buy Jared being an asshole in class because I've worked with kids that age and that's kind of what they do, but the thing is, intellectual opponants, especially six-year-olds with that kind of self-righteous asshattery going on, don't back down because of your snappy comeback. Also: trying to prove your POV by setting up a badly thought out character to play your perfect virginal angle MC off of is very, very lazy.

Tina, meanwhile, isn't vaccinated because her brother got sick and her parents decided that

vaccination was too risky,

Yes. Because Polio, whooping cough and the lifelong complications of chicken pox (Shingles, herpes zoaster outbreaks) are fine and dandy, but flu shots are risky.

But we are quickly assured that Tina had a very healthy childhood. Yeah, kids do usually have very healthy childhoods. Right up until they get sick. Then it stops being healthy. And the great thing about living in a society with regular vaccinations is that most kids won't get sick, which in turn means the odds of your kid meeting a kid sick with something serious they can catch is usually pretty low.

Tina goes home. We get her snacking habits (HEALTH FOOD!) in great detail. Her mom asks her how her day was. She tells mom that Melanie wasn't at school because she has Measles. Then Tina gets...erm...kind of stupid.

“Will I catch measles and do they hurt when they catch me?” Tina asked.

This is accompanied by a big illustration of a spotty blob monster chasing a little girl. So this kid is bright enough to know that she's not being vaccinated but doesn't have any concept of germs.

I think I understood what germs were when I was six. Tina's school's health ed really sucks.

It also must have sucked for Tina's mom, because she explains several points that are kind of full of it. One is that measles is not a life-threatening illness for most children. This is true. But for some children it becomes life-threatening without any warning whatsoever. Roald Dahl, the dude who wrote George's Marvellous Medicine, was playing a game with his daughter when she had the measles. He noticed she wasn't playing very well and asked her if she was okay. She said she felt sleepy. An hour later, she was in a coma and twelve hours later she was dead. So her parents were attentative, they had money, and at least one of them was sitting right there when the complications began, and the kid still died. Which means that measles can go bad so fast you don't get nearly enough of a warning to save the kid.

Mom's second point is that

“Many wise people believe measles make the body stronger and more mature for the future,”

Getting measles means you will never get measles again. This ensures that you will not contract them as an adult, when the disease can be much, much worse than for a child. THAT SAID: getting sick is not like lifting weights. It's not like your body goes "Huh, we've had measles AND chickenpox, now we can bench press HIV". Your immune system is not made of magic unicorns and fairy dust.

And then Mom decides to go for Worst Parent Ever Award, 2015:

“When I was a child, if one child had measles or chicken pox, many parents would take their own children over to play with them,” Tina’s mother explained.

And the REASON they did that is 1. so the kid would get sick when their immune system and basic health is at its peak and NOT when they are an adult with all the complications you get as you get older and 2. BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE THE MEASLES VACCINE WHEN YOU WERE A KID.

And what the fuck do you think a vaccine is? Straight strychnine? YOU ARE GETTING THE ILLNESS WHEN YOU GET A VACCINE. Either a dead version of the virus or an extremely weakened strain. You won't get the symptoms because the virus isn't strong enough to do anything, but you get the immunity, because the same mechanism that kicks out a live virus cleans up the dead one.

So you REALLY want me to believe that the .0000001 microns of chemicals used to kill the virus are more dangerous than the live virus itself? That the potential complications of chemical dilutions so small they measure them in millionths of a gram are more severe than the potential complications of getting a real live virus? You want me to believe that autism, a disorder that makes someone's life slightly more difficult than mine, is a worse fate than measles encephalitus, a preventable disease that can kill in twelve hours?

Fuck it. Tina and Mommie Dearest here go to Melanie's house so that Tina can catch the measles. BUT! Mom brings Melanie a melon and carrot juice! That will make everything better!

Melanie, of course, is running around like a rabbit on crack, because she's getting all that maturity pumped into her system and shit. She shows off her belly to Tina while Melanie's mom implies that Melanie was vaccinated against measles and that the vaccination failed, rather than just giving Melanie a very mild case of measles, as evidenced by her bouncing around like a ping-pong ball full of helium. Melanie's mom says that the doctor proclaimed this the worse case of measles he's seen in years.

Well, it probably is, given how fucking rare measles is now, but the fact that Melanie ain't dead and she's all energetic says that her case is not as bad as it could be (Again: See Roald Dahl's daughter)

And magically, Melanie's measles don't itch. They're just spots that, Tina assures Melanie and her audience, look really cool and are really fun to have.

BTW never google "measles scars". EVER.

THEN Tina's mom explains that if you eat a lot of vitamin A you'll never get sick. Because somehow this creates a magical force field or something against germs. Giving your immune system its basic building blocks is a real good thing. You know what else is good? Giving it a safe immunity so it doesn't get sick in the first place. Like a vaccine.

Both Melanie and Tina drink carrot juice and love the fuck out of it. Because OF COURSE no child would EVER turn their nose up at carrot juice.

Tina's mom reveals her son with the sickly immune system is off at football practice. Sounds real sick to me.

Tina does not get measles. Tina's mom proclaims this a result of her diet, but both she and Tina are deeply dissapointed that Tina did not get an illness with potentially life-threatening consequences.

Stephenie Messenger forgets midparagraph that she's writing a kid's book, not preaching, and takes a sentence to go on about "nature's gifts" because nature never came up with anything like elephantitus and AIDS.

Jared, the asshat kid who did get vaccinated, does get the measles, because proper strawman deployment is important. Tina hopes that the measles will make him more mature. The illustration with Jared has a bunch of traced over junk-food on his nightstand, including cheetoes, potato chips, a soft drink and a random-ass hamburger that's been sitting out for God only knows how long.

The book closes with a creepy picture of Tina smiling over a glass of what has to be radioactive orange sludge and this paragraph of stellar dialogue:

“Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to catch measles next time someone we know has them!” exclaimed Tina.

The entire premise of this book is wrong, but it's pretty clear that Messenger had no clue how to present her argument without insulting stuffed-shirt variations of her opponents. It's a health issue, not an us-vs-them emergency. I haven't read anything as poorly constructed since Left Behind forgot about World War Three between books.

As for the arguement itself...doctors do a lot of studies before they allow someone to eat medicine or have it injected into a body part. Sometimes they're good studies, sometimes they're bad. But most of the time the doctors look at the list of side effects, look at the thing they're trying to treat, and decide if the side effects are worth treating the illness. Doctors calculated the risk of vaccines vs. the risk of being unprotected against disease and decided a very, VERY long time ago that the risks are worth it.

The fact remains that Polio is back, Measles is back, and we are all one airplane ride away from a global pandemic every single goddamn day. The Spanish Flu killed a third of Europe back in 1918. The Bubonic plague still exists. Stating that healthy food and cheerful positivity are enough to keep the nightmare senario away is about as wise as saying that thinking happy thoughts will treat suicidal depression (SPOILER: It won't).

Vaccinate your fucking kids, and vaccinate yourselves, and if you want to self publish an irresponsible children's book, use Createspace and KDP instead of an Author Solutions tentacle. That way you won't be blowing several thousand dollars on a losing bet.

Book Sample the Second

I've decided to post multiple sample chapters this time, due to the long wait.

The ms itself is going through final revisions (as in final final final) and Ivory Scars, Iron Bars should be up for pre-order by the end of this week. There will be two more sample chapters in June, and it'll go on sale July 4th, 2014

 The  first book in the series, Silver Bullet, Black Hounds, is...well, under the link.

Chapter one is here.  Chapter two is beneath the cut. Read away, my lovelies.

THE BOOK. IT IS LIVE.

Now, as I have said quite frequently before: FORMATTING HO

EDIT TO ADD: STARBLEACHED LIBERTY IS NOW LIVE ON SMASHWORDS

AND AMAZON IS NOW A GO 

Please note, my lovelies: I am having a LOT of trouble getting Nook Press to work. This one may take several days. So if you just cannot wait to get an e-pub copy, it might be best to go to Smashwords for it. Sorry.

Starbleached: Fortitude---BOOK SAMPLE!

Alright, my lovely book-readers, here's a long awaited sample of the next Starbleached book! (Long awaited, mostly because your humble writer-friend is a lazy ass. Sorry, my lovelies)

Note: Still in the process of editing this, but I wanted to get off my sorry duff and give ya'll something so you know I am working.  ETA is mid april or early may, depending on when I get my computer up and running again.

Enjoy, my dears.

Then: 

Bryan closed his eyes when the lights came on. 

They had given him control of the room's lighting system. Just another disturbing kindness humans seemed capable of. Wasn’t it in their best interest to keep something as dangerous as himself disabled? And Human lights were so blinding. Not nearly as bad as starlight, but a burn by a wild fire is just as painful as lava. Past a certain point, one lost one's tolerance for pain. A human room at full brightness was like being trapped in a room full of Brightminds, or worse, being made to kneel at the feet of the Eldking himself. 

Overseers would have done so. He would have done so. 

But humans weren’t like that. When they had decided to keep him, they gave him his own room with the environmental controls where he could reach them. They could override those controls if they wanted to, and frequently did, but he could make the room dim as a proper compartment. This room was cool and humid as it ought to be. He was even able to set the bed controls to fit his rather generous frame. What right did they have to be so kind? 

BOOK UPDATE+ Pretty arts!

The Perilous Choice is almost ready. Edits are nearly done (Either tonight or tomorrow) and I'll be doing the formatting and artwork over the next several days.


Drop date will be the fifteenth. Mark your calendars.

Here's a WIP of the coverart. I'm really proud of this.

Ships and water will figure predominantly in this one.

The thing that I enjoy the most about the Gray Prince books is that it's literally world building. Leythorne is building a civilization out of necessity. He's utterly fucking clueless when it comes to that, though, so that's where things get interesting. I'm shooting for a steampunk with magic kind of thing with his world, and what made this really, really cool (for me, anyway) is how much of the technology we use every day is based on something in the textile industry, which means, hey, this is something I kinda know and can build on.

Anyhoo, the best part about this book is that the groundwork for what's to come is now officially DONE. And I can move on from here.

Also: Isn't that a pretty boat?

To sum: Fifteenth, book drop, if you're interested you can go nab the other two books and get all caught up in the meantime. Enjoy, my lovelies, enjoy.

It's almost that time, guys

Locked and loaded and ready to go. Dragon Breath drops August 5th.

And PLEASE don't forget to support the campaign to fund the editing for part two. It's really important.

Cover Art Time!

First of all, the Starbleached Omnibus, which is totally cheating except not really:

Yeah, that very first cover is too good to abandon. If there is ever a movie
then I'm gonna insist there be at least one poster that imitates it.
(Oh, come on, guys. By now ya'll should know I absolutely do have my head jammed that far up my own anatomy. I gave my books their own soundtrack for god's sake.)

And now for Dragonbreath's WIP:

Yeah. I know. It's not much to look at. Yet. But hey, I'm working on it. And oooh, lookit that! Countdown has updated! Yes, sports fans! We are moving towards the drop-date on my One year self-publishing anniversary.

I think if I say that a few thousand more times, I'll believe it.

Anyhoo, the Omnibus goes live EARLY tonight/tomorrow morning.

Have a real good day, have a great day tomorrow!

Self Publishing Numbers for ya:

As I said yesterday, I've made my goal. I've sold over 365 books in my first year of publishing. As of right now it is 372. Let's see if we can't make 400 by July 17th, mkay?

Starbleached is the leader with 123 books sold, and the other books in that series aren't that far behind.


In my first six months (July to Dec 12) I sold 110 books.

In my second, (Jan to June 13) I sold 266.

Sales are more-or-less consistent for every book.

I've also begun getting sales from places OTHER than Amazon, which is TOTALLY AWESOME.

These numbers are not hugely successful, but it's time for a little confession: Right now, no bullshit, this is exactly what I am looking for, and what I wanted to see when I started out. My goal for my first six months was to sell, for money, 100 books. And I did that. Then I wanted to break 300 books by the end of may. And I did that. And now I broke my June goal with lots of time left in the month.

These are not the books I wanted to publish. Oh, I love them all, my lovelies, do not get me wrong.  If I did not like the books I would not publish the books. But The Book, the one with the many many rejections, is the one that I really want to publish. The books I've published so far are not the ones I want to make successful. That book is the one I want to make successful.

I think I feel safe in saying that you guys will see that book sometime within the next two years. I would say, at my current pace, sometime in July of 2015.

I am so glad that I get to take you guys on this ride with me.

Here are the hard month-to-month numbers in case you are curious.

I have no idea WTF is up with that thirty book jump between March and April. 

 

July	1
August	3
September	17
October	36
November	27
Dec	26
Jan	45
feb	24
March	20
April	54
May	65
June	58

Why I Did It--Part the fourth

So now we're to the part that is hard for me to write about. I do not like remembering any of this. I do not like trying to remember it well enough to drop it into chronological order. I don't like the obvious insanity, or the not obvious insanity. I DO NOT LIKE THIS PART OF MY LIFE. 

And yet if I were given a "redo" button, I'd do it again. Because this was absolutely something that needed to happen. Because life.

Also: DREAM AGENT was and is forever awesome. This is not a slam against agents in general or them in particular. 

Anyway.

The first problem with the April Incident, ironically enough, was getting the money.

I had a week to get it together, and I was absolutely positive that I'd have my income tax check well before then.

Yeah, let's just say a quick google ended that right quick.

So now I turned to my Dad and asked if he could make good on his promise of getting the money through.

He hesitated.

This was not a good sign. There was a long, long history of "OH SURE SWEETHEARTS" that all eventually ended in pain and tears and little else. And this was the most important "oh sure sweetheart" I'd ever had.

Panic set in.

I will spare you the melodrama (too late!) but to sum it up, if anything could go wrong when I wanted something, it would. I was (and still am) not used to good things happening and working. Something, I was sure, was going to go wrong. And it would be all my fault when it did.

This was it, you see. This was my miracle. My whole life I'd seen it happen for other people. That promotion, or the missed flight that crashed, or the random check when you Really Really Need It. And this was mine. I had failed the year before, there was utterly no reason for me to have been successful this year, so now something would go wrong. Something had to go wrong. For some reason, I had to fail at this. Because that's just who I was. Good things just don't happen to me. 

But I reminded myself that only that Sunday I'd been told that this wasn't a test of me anymore. This was a test of God. And that meant it would work out. I would get that money. And finally, finally, finally, not just any agent but THE agent, MY DREAM AGENT, was going to read my book from cover to cover. And then everything I wanted would come true. Because God wouldn't let it get that far without going all the way. He wouldn't. He didn't do things like that.

And so I prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And while I was praying I called my dad. I priced how much my tablet would pawn for ("shit" was the general consensus). I talked to an aunt about loaning me money. I talked to my mom and we pooled resources. I called my dad again. I began researching short term loans. I thought about asking my boss for a loan. Mom and I realized that we could do it--barely--if my aunt could come through with part of it. I began to believe that maybe, just maybe, this all might work.

And then my dad showed up with all the money.

 All of it.

I don't know what he did, and I will never ask. This was the time for him to come through, and that was something that usually ended in failure, and THIS time it worked. This felt like rolling all sevens. After promising to pay him back once the income tax check came in (Which I did) I sent the money to the charity auction, and then sent my information and my manuscript to the person who would then send it to Dream Agent.

I was not profoundly happy. I was in a state beyond happy. I was in a state of full glow. None of that should have happened. I should not have won the auction. I should not have gotten the money. Things like that just did not happen to me. If just one thing had gone wrong, the way things usually go, everything would have fallen apart. But it hadn't. For the first time in my life everything had come through beautifully. I was thrilled. It was my very first miracle. Oh, it wasn't done yet but when it was, everything would come true.

The agent, I was told, would probably get back to me sometime in May. I thanked the contact and prepped for my first real vacation in a year. The restaurant where I worked would be closed until Memorial day weekend, so my boss could go to South America and relax. My mother and I would be traveling to Waco to visit my grandparents. We went. It was the first time in two years I felt really happy and really relaxed. I tried to remind myself that things could go wrong, but that little voice inside of me said "Would He have brought you this far if it were going to fall apart later?" and I couldn't shake it. My hopes were up. They were up so far I didn't think I could ever get them back down...and I didn't care. Because this was my miracle, and miracles never end badly.

I probably should have read my own fucking book.

Two days into vacation I got the e-mail from Dream Agent. I couldn't open it. I made my mom get into our rental car and drive me around half of Waco until I felt steady enough to read the e-mail. I reminded myself of all the things that had worked along the way. I reminded myself of all the things that usually went wrong once I got involved.

I opened the e-mail.

The Dream Agent hated my manuscript.

They saw no value in my writing.

They recommended that the novel be trunked. All of it, of course, was coached in that wonderful positive double-speak people use when they are trying oh-so-very hard not to hurt your feelings.

And in reality, it wouldn't have mattered what the Dream Agent had said. It was negative. It meant that the miracle, my miracle, the thing I had thought was impossible, that I had thought I had finally gotten, had turned out to be nothing at all.

Why I did it, Part the Third

So when we last left our heroine, I'd just gotten my very second partial. And it felt MUCH more real than the full request the year before. Sure, I thought, it's just a partial, BUT THEY LIKED IT. I repeated this to myself as I carefully followed their instructions. I repeated this to myself as I moved from Corpus Christi to Small Little Hick Town (of AWESOME) and started a new job. I repeated it to myself through six long, long months of e-mail tag, in which I asked if I were still on their radar after two months, and they said "Yeah, we're busy" (BTW this is normal, and a little pushy on my part) and I went back to repeating BUT THEY LIKED IT to myself.

And then this happened:

BUT THEY LIKED IT?!?

I did not cry this time. I hibernated. I stopped everything for three months and waited for the feels to return. Because the depression this time wasn't that "Oh, I feel sad" kind. It was the "I am numb, and I'd like to stay that way" kind.

So then I went back to normal Queries, and I went back to flat out rejections. It continued. And continued. And Continued. And eventually the problem became not the rejection letters themselves, but the conversations with my family. My father in particular felt I should have pursued the agency that asked for the partial. I should, he said, e-mail them back and ask if I could resubmit. I replied that you don't DO that. That's not how agencies work. (For the record: You don't DO that. That's not how agencies work.) After about three, four months, he stopped asking and started manipulating.

Around the same time that this is happening, I decided to try to get somebody with street cred to tell me what I was doing wrong with the novel (read as: Say "OMG I LOVE IT" and publish it), and I tried my damndest to win a full manuscript critique by DREAM AGENT at a charity auction. I even got my boss to let me keep my laptop on the property so I could bid on the auction, a request that she granted against all odds.

 I lost.

I bought a bottle of wine from my boss and got completely shitfaced that night.

This becomes very important later in the story.

The next day I discussed this with my dad, and he repeated the "Why don't you ask the agency that liked your work for a second chance?" refrain. I told him no. He kept pushing. I began crying. I told him no again. He asked me "What do you have to lose?" and I hung up on him.

And then I decided he was right, and I sent them another e-mail:

I expected a "not just no, but HELL no," which was what I'd been told to expect from agents when presented with this request. So I almost didn't even bother opening their reply. I can't repeat it here without either blurring out 90% of the text or providing enough info to identify the agency, but the gist of it was "Yes, if the rewrite is significant enough".

I sent them another sample of the manuscript. I sent, I think, three follow up emails between August of '11 and Feb of '12, and received one reply back. After that, it was radio silence until later. MUCH later.

I quit submitting entirely in February, if my records are right. I think that was the point where I was just fucking sick of it. I was tired, several major people had quit at my job and I had to cover for them, I had every word of the book memorized, and THAT Agency still hadn't responded to the partial or the follow-up emails. Which wasn't their fault. I was just stressed out and tired and tired of being stressed out and tired, and I was ready to explode.

February became March.

March '12 became April.

I began thinking about querying again. I also discovered that I had failed to file my taxes properly the year before, and that between getting that fixed and changing jobs, I was going to be getting quite a bit of money on my tax return this year. I spent ALL of April 13th, which was a Friday, getting that taken care of.

And then I went to church.

And this next part, I warn you, is fucking insane.

This was the first time I'd gotten to go to church in over a year. To say that I was tired is to understate. In reality, I needed to be on serious medication. I wasn't just suicidal. I had a plan. It was a very well researched, if highly melodramatic plan, and the only reason I hadn't put it into place was I didn't know what I'd do with my cat. I didn't want to make her live without me, and I didn't want to hurt her. I also didn't want to die because of The Book. If I died, the Book would never become a thing, and I felt like I owed it more than that. And so I went to church fresh off researching things NOBODY SHOULD EVER RESEARCH, and trying to think of solutions to the cat problem and the book problem.

(NOTE: Suicidal thoughts are not things. They are symptoms. Your brain is having the chemical equivalent of a seizure and you need medical help NOW. It's not something to be ashamed of. Please. If you're thinking like that, go get help.)

I remember that the message was on Daniel in the Lion's Den. NOTE TO MY NON-CHRISTIAN READERS: This is like going to school and getting a lecture on two plus two. It's not just information you've already covered, it's information you had memorized by second grade. Daniel and the Lion's Den is Baby's First Bible Reader level material. I pretty much tuned the first half of it out. Then the pastor said something along the lines of how the first part of the story is a test of Daniel, and the second part (the part with the lions in it) was a test of God.

And suddenly I became convinced that this was why I'd finally gotten a Sunday off for the first time in a year. Was so that I could sit there in  that chair, hear that, and understand what the last two years had been about. The whole submission-rejection cycle had been a test of me. To see if  I were emotionally durable enough handle it (...that'd be a big no) and if I could still believe in God after a whole year of not getting my own way. Now, God (or my own brain, whichever you want to go with) was telling me that it was His turn. He was the one who would be tested now, and I needed to sit tight.

 Monday came. Monday went. Tuesday came.

 And for some reason I cannot remember, I went back to that charity auction site, and discovered that they were holding another auction.

 DREAM AGENT was holding another auction for a full manuscript critique.

It had started that morning.

I realized that I had an insane (to me) amount of money coming, and that meant I could probably afford to bid up to an equally insane amount of money. But I had bid the previous year. There was no way I could do it.

I called my Dad and asked him if he could help to spot me the money. He said yes, he could. I spent that entire night at work jittery as a bug with this blend of religious mania and stage fright. Could this be it? Could this be what God had wanted me to wait for? No. It couldn't possibly be. It was just another of those stupid things, like that annoying surge of hope every time I opened what turned out to be a rejection letter. It wouldn't work.

I went to a local bar after work rather than going home. I sat down on my smart phone and I started bidding at the five-minutes-to-go mark.

Four minutes.

Three minutes.

Two.

One.

Zero.

And I stared at the screen in resigned disappointment as, once again, somebody had gotten the higher bid. My last bid was at 11:59 on the nose, and the next one was at midnight. Midnight was the end of the auction. I had been beaten again. Not because I didn't have the money, but because I wasn't fast enough hitting the fucking bid button. The familiar I'm-numb-so-I-won't-cry feeling returned. But that was what was expected. I don't get to win these sorts of things. I hit refresh on the auction page and ordered another fruity beer.

The page refreshed.

I was wrong. The auction ended at 11:59:59, not midnight. Which meant I had the highest bid.

In other words, for the very first time in my life, I had won. 

And once again, I was the happiest little girl in the world.

Of course, given how much I've whined about "Last April", you all know this isn't going to end well.

Why I Did It--Part the Second

So before we go on with this, I want to make one thing very clear: I think that agents and trade publishing is awesome. If I had a chance to make it there, I would definately take it. But as I am about to SLOWLY slog through, I no longer believe that I have that chance, and that makes me rather sad.

But I've done well-ish as a self publisher, and that makes me happy.

So I sent out my very first batch of Query Letters over the course of a couple of days. I tried to keep my hopes down, not understanding that my hopes were unreasonably high already, and that getting them down to sanity would require multiple lead weights (and probably a massive does of reality). I carefully added each agency's e-mail address to my contacts under the words "Rejection (agency)" so that I'd be in the right mindset when I opened the email.

This didn't work, by the way.

I had my little excel sheet with the agencies contacted, and the very first item after "date sent" was of course "rejection received".  I reminded myself each time I hit "send" that this would be YET. ANOTHER. REJECTION. and that I shouldn't get too depressed.

Again. This did not work.

Of course, it wasn't all suck. One of the good contacts I got from the Dennix Hall Incident was a WONDERFUL local fantasy writer who deserves all the praise in the world. She invited me to be her helper at a con in Houston, and when the con-runners found out I was a fantasy artist, they upgraded my status from "pig iron lugger" to "Guest" and let me run a couple panels, even.

I met Steve Brust there. He was very cool. I fangirled.

Another interesting thing that happened between '10 and '11 was my decision to leave my job as an overnight dougnut fryer and become a waitress. At the time I thought it was just a lateral move, but in reality it was the best thing I could have done at the time. The money was much better, the people I've met through that job are awesome, and it gave me much more free time with which to work. It also interrupted what had become a long, steady stream of rejection.

The first one to crush my soul was the rejection of my first (and only) full manuscript request. Of course, I didn't count it as a comment on the quality of my work. For one thing, I was twenty-three and I was still firmly convinced that I was an underappreciated star destined for greatness. For another, the agent-assistant who had requested the full left the agency, and the one who replaced her was the one who did the rejecting. At the time I assumed it meant that one assistant liked it and the other one didn't. Now I assume that meant the first assistant was accepting fucking everything and that it got on the agent's nerves.

I also began to notice a very steep decline in my mood. I have never been the most stable person. Winter of '10, though, was my first year On My Own. I was receiving an average of one rejection a week, moving into two or three if I'd been especially industrious. It was also the year I was assaulted, so dealing with that really didn't help. By January '11 I asked my dad to help me find a counselor, and instead he got me on anti-depressants. They helped. A lot.

The whole time I kept revising the book. And revising the book. AND REVISING. THE BOOK. I changed the title three times. I redid the query letter more times than I can count. And of course, I prayed. Because I'm a good little Christian girl, and I knew--and this is still true--that writing was MY GIFT FROM GOD (I'd put /crazy but this is the crazy part and it hasn't even really started yet. You may either assume that there's real spiritual stuff behind this or that I had a mental breakdown halfway through this story. I don't care either way, but the religious stuff is just part of the story). I knew it because I couldn't stop writing, my attempts to get God to take away my gift of writing never worked, and because it was the one thing I thought I could do.

Ironically, the one thing all my research into publishing did was convince me that Self Publishing was the one big no. You'd be better off flushing manuscript pages down a toilet than self publish. You threw away all your rights, and nobody would ever want your story...and most of the self publishing services were cheats, anyway. You were better off just waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

And writing more query letters. And waiting some more.  And keeping the rejection letters because...Stephen King did it, I guess.

Rejections flowed like a river.

In March of '11 the new job and the move put a stop to everything for a while. I stopped sending out query letters and started packing. I know now that this move--a suggestion from my mother that I move closer to her--was more for my parent's sanity than for mine. I was in BAD shape at this point, not so much from rejection letters as I was rejection letters, night shifts, a shit job, a bad manger, an unaddressed sexual assault, a lack of good nutrition, and probably kicked puppies. I saw human beings I did not work with MAYBE every other week, on the rainy days when I needed a ride. The move was a good thing.

Of course, my computer was the very last thing that I was going to pack up. I did one last check of my e-mail and I saw I had a letter from an agency. I had chosen it mostly because they represented Fantasy Author I Worship, and it was one of the rejections I'd been dreading. I did my usual grit-my-teeth-and-repeat-"rejection" -a-lot preparation and then I read the letter:

 You could hear the squeeing from outerspace, I swear to God. 

Why I did it--Part one

So we're moving in on my one-year anniversary of Self Publishing, and holy shit a lot changes in a year.

I figure it's time for me to write down as much of the full story as I can stand. I've put off doing this (This is like the third edition of this post that I've started) because a lot of it sounds crazy. In fact, a lot of it probably is crazy. But it's my story, and craziness is a part of it.

So what on earth made me decide to self publish my books?  Well, let's rewind. A lot. A whole lot.

I finished my first novel in 2008, a few days after starting my very first job. It was (and is) the story Exiles is eventually going to turn into. And I loved it. I still love it. I thought that it (and the two books that follow it, both of which are written) was the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, and that I would get published and I would make lots and lots of money. And there would be a movie. I even had the soundtrack all picked out.

(this is the theme song, for the record:

And yes. I absolutely did have my head jammed that far up my own ass.)

I was twenty two years old. I had no fucking idea what I was doing, I had no idea how much I didn't know. I let it sit for almost a year while I moved to Corpus Christi, a town just big enough for me confess I lived there on the internet. Corpus meant I had access to a bookstore and could buy books on editing.

I did. Several dozen. The only one I can recommend is Elements of Style, which you ought to already own, loyal writer-readers, and Chicago Manuel of Style, ditto. Everything else was very much YMMV. I was lost. I had no idea how to do any of the things these books were talking about, and I had no idea how to ask for help. I know about the Absolute Write Water Cooler (have you bookmarked that yet, Writer-Readers?) from my research on agents, because of course you do that before you have a fully edited book (Protip: No. You don't.) but I didn't have the guts to ask anybody there for help.

So I did what I always (and still) do: I prayed.

And if He did anything, God threw the Absolute Write Water Cooler at me a couple more times, and then got real quiet.

In the meantime, my mother was working over in a little town as a graphic artist for a print shop. A gentleman by name of Dennix Hall came in and ordered business cards. I am mentioning him by name in case anybody googles him, so they can find out exactly how good an editor he is according to this self-published writer. He claimed--and I cannot emphasize that word "claimed" enough--to be a freelance editor, AKA a book doctor, and he wanted business cards to give to all the little old writer ladies in this small town.

My mother passed his card on to me.

I had no idea what I was doing, so a little help sounded just effing stellar. 

It was not.

To put this very politely, Dennix Hall had no idea what he was doing as an editor. He talked a good game about publishing, and given that he knew slightly more than I did it sounded real good. Anybody with enough knowledge to, say, avoid Author Solutions-owned fronts like the plague or figure out how KDP works would be able to pop his facade real quick. Neophytes like me, though, were easy pickings. He had become the freelance editor for a publishing company somewhere up north, in an M state (Missouri, Mississippi. Not Maine, I know that much) and another local fantasy author was using him to edit her books. He also had a collection of short stories and was willing to trade artwork for editing. I'd do his book cover, he'd help me beat my book into something like shape.

I thought "Great deal!" and agreed. Without doing any background checking at all, because that's, like, wrong. You trust people, right?

Ha ha. Ha.

I'd love to say that my first clue was that he lived on his boat, but a lot of people live on their boats down here. I'd love to say my first clue was that he owned no computer and had to make do with the boat house's for everything from internet to basic word-processing (Seriously. What writer would go three days without Word, much as it sucks?) but that sailed right over my head. And what really should have been the biggest red flag was that he had NO INTERNET PRESENCE WHATSOEVER. But at the time I didn't know how to properly background check a flea, let alone an editor, and I was working nightshifts, so I was under-rested, underpaid, and half starved for about two years. Meeting him in the daytime meant going without sleep for over twenty-four hours. I was ripe for this.

He introduced me to Very Nice Local Writer, who needed art done, and Very Nice Fantasy Writer, who needed art done, and I've maintained contact with them. They were very nice people. Dennix was also very nice. Flatteringly nice. Kiss-your-ass level nice, especially about my writing. He loved my writing. He loved every bit of it. The weird-ass punctuation. The bizarre word choices. The fact that it was a very bloated 190 THOUSAND words long. His biggest contribution to my editing process was to advise me to remove the word "was" wherever it appeared. And I don't mean in the deadly pairing "Was doing". I mean EVERYWHERE. This resulted in descriptions like "Her hair. Red." and a manuscript that basically read like it was acted by William Shatner.

Fortunately I had contracted for artwork, not money. Even better, while we were (snort) "working" on the manuscript--our weekly sessions were basically "Let's kiss CW's ass for an hour", something I got sick of FAST, but not nearly as fast as having to pay for his lunch--I was researching editing so that I could keep up with the changes he wanted me to make. I found Anne Mini's  Author! Author! blog, which taught me a lot, and I kept researching agents and publishers (and in the process, publishing) on the AW Water Cooler. And then noticeable red flags began appearing.

Like the time I excised twenty thousand words in one week and he asked me "What happened?". I had to inform him that I'd made it better. I hadn't changed the plot or the dialogue one iota.

Like the time Very Nice Fantasy Author offered me better advice than he'd ever given--I credit her with the piece of POV advice that saved the novel--and he pouted for an hour.

Or the business with Very Nice Local Writer and her cover, which went very well for me, but she was publishing via iUniverse, which even I had figured out wasn't a "real" publisher. I got the feeling that both Dennix and Author Solutions had sold it to her as one. They were going to charge her a THOUSAND DOLLARS for a custom cover, and that's why she hired me for much less. That is, by the way, the last time I will contract with a first-time self published author for cover art. I felt, and still feel, like I robbed the lady blind. There's no way she ever made her investment back.

There was the fact that we were always invited out to lunch by Dennix and he never paid. EVER.

There was the nonsense he pulled with Very Nice Fantasy Author's small-press publisher, which I heard about second-hand through VNFA. Suffice to say that short story book I was doing the cover for? It never happened.

But the biggest red flag was when we stopped working together, I had to redo everything we'd done. All of it. Every choice he had suggested was wrong. Every bit of pacing. But I was confused. He had sold himself as this experianced editor with a couple bestsellers under his belt. There were no bad reports on him on the internet (By now, I was smart enough to check) not that there were any in the first place, and he'd done so much for the Very Nice Local Authors I knew. How could I be closer to right than he was?

Finally I did the first smart thing in the whole debacle and I asked Anne Mini a question about Dennix on the blog. Without mentioning names, I said that my editor was giving me advice that felt wrong, especially that whole "was" buisness, could she give me some advice? She gave me something better: a free review of ten pages. I sent her the pages Dennix had carefully reworked, then sat back and waited patiently for the result. It was educational, brutal and everything Dennix had done had been outlined in three different colors of ink as being wrong.

Which was how I learned the first rule of being a writer: ALWAYS check the track record and ALWAYS run if there isn't one. And never, ever, ever go with an editor who has no computer and who works out of their boat.

To end the Dennix Hall chapter of this story, about six months after our last "Kiss CW's Ass" session, he called me. My mother had told him I'd heard good things back from agents. I had not, but she did not understand this. He called me looking for money because he was about to blow town.

All I remember was that I was half asleep, and that I got really whiny at being dragged out of bed at three PM when I'd only gotten to bed at ten AM after a long, long overnight shift frying doughnuts. And that's the end of the Uninteresting Dennix Hall Saga.

Of course, NOW I assumed that I had all the knowledge I needed to rewrite and sell my Very First Novel and make it big. I didn't even need to invest much time in my day job because it would very soon be my former job. I'd get a big six figure advance, and then that dream movie deal, and then everything would be fantastic!

I worked on my Query Letter, following every rule (or so I thought) that Janet Reid outlined on Query Shark (Again, you've got that bookmarked, right?) and carefully researched and selected my first round of agents. They were all the best of the best. I picked the ones that represented fantasy, that repped the books I had read (or at least, recognised from my trips to Barnes and Noble). I avoided the ones with fees, the ones with bad sales records, the one with no sales records. In my mind, all these agent blogs and submission guidelines and posts on Absolute Write had outlined a Plan, a step-by-step guide to getting published and as long as I followed those rules obsessively, I would become more famous than Elvis.

With brave heart and a WHOPPING dose of over-confidence, I sent my first query letter on July 17th, 2013.

I got my first rejection less than twelve hours later.

Yes. I've saved every rejection letter I've ever gotten.

I cried. Of course I cried. You get rejected, that's what you do. And then I reminded myself it was probably just those damned first couple pages and my inability to write a Query Letter. This was like a video game puzzle. I just had to find the right combination of phrases and I'd win the level.

I was an utter fucking idiot.

I was twenty three years old.

(To be continued)

STARBLEACHED 4: VALKERIE FREE SAMPLE!

And so Starbleached winds down to it's conclusion. Not over forever, my loyal book-readers. Consider this the season finale, and look for it June 4th, 2013

VALKERIE

 A force field kept the shuttle bay pressurized while the bay doors slowly cantilevered closed. Space glittered with ten thousand points of light, while explosions bloomed like nebula roses and pieces of alien ships spun into nothing. Violent confetti. The human world beneath it all shown sapphire bright. A chain of evacuating spaceships tried to get even a handful of survivors out of danger. For the moment it was alien-on-alien, the Overseer Cold Faction battling the Eldking. They hadn’t started shooting the human ships yet. Overseers regarded humans as an indispensable resource; they wouldn’t want to destroy too many of them by accident. It had to have been a lucky shot on their part. Nobody should be targeting the lone human ship this far from the actual battle.

They can’t know we intend to mop up once one or the other gets defeated. But we’re not letting them take another human world. Not again.

COVER IS DONE! COVER IS DONE! YAY YAY YAY!

There you go. We are go for cover.

Now. We just need to get go for book.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 35

 So. Last chapter ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL HAPPENED. How does this chapter start?

THEY’D ONLY BEEN following me for one day, as far as I knew, so why such determination to find out why? One: It’s usually better to know than not to know when people are following you, and two: I was in a truly foul mood.

With Laurel K. Hamilton's subconscious telling her that her writing sucks.Why do I say this? If a character is justifying their moves to themselves ONSCREEN? This is your brain's way of shooting off road flares and screaming HEY STUPID THE ROAD UP HERE IS OUT. Anita does not have to justify squishing unknown stalkers to me. If she feels she does, that means she knows there's something wrong with her next move.

Also: she's committing violence because she's in a bad mood. What?

And then she goes off on how she doesn't know what to do about Asher. Uh, Anita? Stalkers? Car crash? Girl bonding? Can we forget about your love life for a few paragraphs and focus on the fake car crash you're about to do?

And speaking of that, somehow this now involves road blocks and professional drivers, which somehow qualifies Claudia and disqualifies Anita without any more information than "Anita can't drive" being provided. Whatever. Car crash happens, Anita has guilt trip, Bad guys start car and drive off BECAUSE:

They must have smelled a  .  .  . rat.

Dear Laurel K. Hamilton:

Also: Sookie Stackhouse is a flaming idiot, but at least Charlene Harris explains why her vampires like puns.

So basically they just wrecked a couple cars for absolutely nothing and could have gone charging out with the guns anyway. Which is exactly what they do, and it is less badly described and more "not described at all".

Laurel K. Hamilton. Cannot figure out how to summerize her main character walking from one side of the room to the other. Summerizes the first action scene to not involve sex since this book began.

I hate this book.

Anita tries to bad-ass the strangers into submission, and decides that the fact that they won't put their hands up means that backup is on its way. Okay, fair enough. As long as you don't summerize that fight scene we'll be okay. Except the fight scene doesn't happen, the guys finally put their hands up, and we get a play by play explination of how to roll down a manual window.

Because we absolutely needed to know this.

So Anita lets them know that she spotted her, and they let her know that they know that somebody in her car turned furry (how? I mean, they were swerving all over the road, but that was less because of fur and more because of Anita's libido)

Also: Laurel K. Hamilton believes that only Americans can swear. I. Shit. You. Not:

The blond said, “yes,” the other one said, “Crystal fucking clear.” Oh, yeah, he was American, only we have that poetic turn of phrase.

And then finally, finally, FINALLY, AFTER TWO FUCKING BOOKS WORTH OF NONSENSE, we get a taste of the old Anita. Somebody (probably these dude's backup) calls the cops who come, sirens blazing. Everybody curses, the foul mouthed American says "If you put your guns away we'll all pretend this never happened" and Anita rediscovers what a backbone is:

I smiled back, and his smile wilted because I looked too damned pleased. I wasn’t smooth at digging my badge out of my pocket yet, not one-handed anyway, but I managed. I flashed the metallic star in its little case. “Federal marshal, asshole. Keep your hands where we can see them until the nice policemen arrive.”

You're probably misusing that thing, Anita, but Haymitch still approves.

The cops arrive and are being uber careful. Given that LKH has Anita at almost-more-famous-than-Elvis status and EVERY cop in St. Louis has to know who she is, if for no other reason than to hide the evidence collecting kits, I have no idea why it takes a lot of screaming from Anita to get the cops to stop trying to take guns away from everybody, or why the first responders to the Circus do not by default include Zerbowski, but it happens. Anita gloats over the guys in the car, who look very very Humble Tigger at the moment, and the chapter ends with Anita being smug.

Well. Something kind of happened this chapter, if you squint at it side--

---wait.

Was that the doorbell? Is that the mail?

 Oh my goodness. It is the mail. And a package. Just for me.  I wonder what this could be?

Yep. See you tomorrow, kids.

Black Hounds--SAMPLE!

Alright, guys, this is embarrassingly rough, but it's well past time I posted something from the new book for y'all to peruse. You're seeing me without what passes for my makeup on. Ah, well, hope it's enjoyable anyway. 

Also: This is how Gray Fox ended when I wrote it in October, this is how this book started when I wrote it in February. It's got nothing to do with the Boston Marathon Bombing. Sorry if it creeps anybody out. 

Broken glass sparkled like ten thousand diamonds, flashing red and blue as more police cars pulled up the church drive and parked beside the damage. There now were more emergency vehicles in the parking lot than Casey Winter had seen in her entire life. It was almost like magic. Explosions, danger, violence…yes. It was definitely like magic. Dazed, she stared at a red splattering that, for once, wasn’t hers. The color was drawn into black by the lighting. It must be close to ten p.m. now. Maybe even midnight. More red congealed over to the left. That was where Pastor Rick had been before the ambulances had taken him away. Shrapnel to the lower leg.

They were lucky nobody had died.

           The exploded trash can lay like some freshly unearthed skeleton. A dinosaur. A dragon bone. Pieces of it covered the ground, and more pieces of it were in the walls. One of them had almost pierced the indoor mural like a spear. The church’s tall front windows had been shattered. Lights played over the settees and in-house bookstore. Several of Pastor Rick’s tapes were still on fire.

It’s because of me. They blew up my church all because of me.

A paramedic tried to turn her head. A spot on her scalp itched. Probably a cut, judging by the red dribbled over her blouse. Part of her wanted to laugh. Raziel had only just gotten the bloodstains out from the last disaster, and here was a fresh set. The paramedic made a disapproving sound and gave her a gauze patch to hold. They were helping the wrong person, Casey thought. She’d caused this. The church windows were the wound, gaping and broken and strewn across the pavement.

That’s not true. Someone else chose to do this, not you. Rational internal dialogue. Who listened to that anymore?

They still aimed at me. If I’d been elsewhere—If I’d never come here at all--

Someone was speaking to her, voice muffled by the tinnitus echoing through her head like a bell. She turned her head further away from the paramedic.

“Are you alright?” Raziel mouthed.

She nodded, her lips quirking. For the first time since she’d met the Elestrin lady, Raziel was wearing glamour. Raziel was faerie, an Elestrin member of the Great Hunt marooned on Earth due to her own negligence. Her natural coloring was gray. Gray skin, gray hair and eyes the color of a hurricane on a tear. But there were police and paramedics everywhere. Casey figured the FBI would show up within the hour; bombings always got their attention. And so the Gray Fox herself finally appeared human. Her chosen disguise was Indian, tall, statuesque and still recognizably herself. Detective Baker had arrived with the rest of CCPD, looking about as tired as Casey felt, and he’d recognized her right away.

The name on Raziel’s driver’s license was “Rachel Hunt”. She’d been asked to show it four times in as many minutes. Baker was on the other side of the parking lot.

She hadn’t changed her eye color, though, and her lips a tight line outlined in bronze lip-gloss. Her brow had one crease between the eyes, like a chip in a statue of marble. If the concern had been more dramatic Casey would have known it was an act for the paramedics, but her expression was almost masklike. The glamour was the act. That little chip was real.

“Graphile?” Casey mouthed.

The frown returned. Raziel shrugged. Either she wasn’t sure, or she didn’t want that name dropped in front of sixty different kinds of cop.

Graphile was a power-made Wizard. His own power destroyed by his own misdeeds, according to Raziel, he’d been trying to awaken magic in Corpus Christi. Casey, Raziel and an elf named Marco Creed had just stopped him. Nobody had told Casey exactly what the freed magic would do, but the idea had shaken both of Casey’s Faerie acquaintances. Marco had a kind of dog-eared safety to him; his worry could be dismissed as concern for humans. Anything that scared Raziel, however, had to be filed under “Very Bad” and cross-referenced with “Run Away”.

But Graphile had sworn he wouldn’t do anything else in Raziel’s territory. Would he hold to his promise? Or would he risk destroying what little power he had left through oath breaking?

Casey wasn’t sure. Graphile and her ex-husband Jack had apparently clashed when the Wizard was still Atlanta’s problem. Yes, he and Raziel had once been “together”, but it was awfully convenient that the former Mrs. Reverend Winter was living down here too. Not that there wasn’t a lot of bad blood between Casey and Jack. She figured he’d throw a party when he knew she was gone. Graphile just hadn’t gotten that “enemy of my enemy is my friend” memo.

Had he set up the bomb as a parting gift? A shot at Raziel and Jack, two birds with one boom?

A police officer asked Raziel for her ID. I need to get away from these people, Casey thought, looking at the police. And then something squirmed in her hand, a softness that should be comforting and wasn’t. She swallowed. And then I need to get away from Raziel.

“Where’s Lisa?” Barbara Hanson’s strangled whisper floated past ambulance doors. Casey slipped away from Raziel, cupping that tiny piece of warm life against her breastbone. A paramedic helped her into the ambulance. Counters and drawers were stark, white and utilitarian; the gurney looked like some quasi-skeletal cyborg holding its patient hostage. Barbara Hanson’s burnished bronze skin looked green, and her eyelids fluttered.  “Lisa?” She asked again.

“She’s here,” Casey said, though she didn’t loosen her grip on the tiny animal. She glanced back once; Raziel’s view was blocked by the ambulance doors. That was good. She couldn’t feel confident about Raziel’s reaction when she saw Barb’s pet.

After all, the warrior woman had been looking for this thing for six months.

Barb’s comfort was, for the moment, more important than Raziel’s politics. Casey lowered her hands to Barbara’s chest and opened them.

A tiny pink nose and whiskers appeared. They sniffed around cautiously, and then a tiny brown and white sugar glider sped for the curve of Barbara’s neck. Brown and white, black at the corner of gleaming eyes, and of course, heart meltingly cute,  nothing could be more harmless—or, technically, illegal, given Nueces County’s exotic pet ban. A little color returned to Barbara’s face. She tilted her chin down and closed her eyes.

“Her heart’s not doing any better. Sorry, ma’am. We can’t take the animal to the hospital.” A paramedic carefully scooped the creature up and gave it to Casey. “She needs to go right away.”

“Lisa” stiffened. Casey swallowed. The “sugar glider” was Faerie, alright. Faerie and dangerous. She was one of Corpus Christi’s two phookas, and she’d been missing since before Casey had been let in on this whole “Faeries in Exile” thing. Her real name was Prix. She could probably have eaten Casey, and Barb, and most of the police officers trying to keep the crime scene in some pretense of order.

And she had apparently been living as the cute little critter in Barbara Hanson’s purse.

She didn’t have to reveal herself, Casey thought. Put herself at risk for the rest of us. She could have just let the bomb explode.

Prix had put herself between Casey, Barbara, Rick, and the bomb. Her protections weren’t perfect. Shrapnel had gotten to Pastor Rick. Barbara had a heart condition Casey hadn’t known about, and the blast had aggravated it. But they were alive, all of them, because Prix had decided their lives were more valuable than her secrecy.

Barb grabbed Casey’s wrist and held on tight. “Take care of her.” She hissed, before the paramedic quickly eased Casey out the door.

“I’ll try!” she shouted. The doors closed. The engine revved for speed.

Does she know? Casey thought, as the ambulance pulled away. Does she even know that “Lisa” is a sentient creature?

She shuddered.

The only other Phooka she’d met was Ero, Marco Creed’s employee. He spent half his time as Anderson-Creed’s guard dog, and the other half disguised as a child. Somehow he had talked two humans into acting as his legal guardians. Before she met him, Casey thought it was a kind-hearted, warm union between parents in need of a kid and a lost soul in need of a haven. Having met Ero, she was amazed that anyone was willing to house the little psychopath.

Prix stirred in Casey’s hands. The small, dark eyes glittered with intelligence and a twitchy kind of fear.

Prix had been missing for six months, Marco had told her. She’d gone missing because she didn’t have the magical power to pose as a human, and Nueces County’s exotic animal ban made it impossible for her to pretend to be a tiger. And so she’d posed as Lisa, a harmless sugar glider that was still illegal as hell…and so was still special.

And so obviously, heartbreakingly loved.

Raziel had blackmailed Casey into finding Prix. If Casey didn’t agree, the Elestrin leader would tell the McHally family that Casey had killed their daughter. Lyrene McHally had been trying to murder both Casey and Marco at the time, but that wouldn’t matter. Casey was mortal, Lyrene had been a Merrow, and her family wanted blood for blood.

Security lay in the palms of her hands. Raziel was right outside the ambulance. All Casey had to do was hand her over.

Prix would be killed. At minimum, she wouldn’t be allowed back into Barb Hanson’s handbag.

“Shouldn’t you be going to the hospital too?” Raziel asked, dryly.

I must look like shit, Casey thought. Well, in the last thirty-six hours or so she’d been attacked by a Boggart, exposed to dark magic, stabbed by a Faerie wizard, haunted by a homicidal fox, nearly electrocuted and blown up by a bomb. She’d earned the right to look a little frumpy.

 “I told them no,” Casey said. She’d had enough of hospitals for one lifetime.

Prix whimpered again.

“Goddamn Graphile.” Raziel said. There was a pause, and then she said, “And damn Prix too.”

“What?” This shocked Casey out of her reverie.

“Puck.” Raziel sighed. “The prototype for Puck was a Phooka. Robin Goodfellow. Powerful, scary. Benevolent in theory but in practice…” she shivered, though her expression didn’t change by one hair. “Graphile allied himself with a Phooka. One of my own. Ero is accounted for and loyal. So that leaves…” Raziel trailed off.

Prix. The tiny warm thing curled in her hair had gone very still. “That’s why you let me off finding her.”

“If her power has increased enough to be attractive to a wizard, she’s too dangerous for you to handle. And I do owe you.” A soft, simple smile touched Raziel’s features. “I would not have my savior forced to die in a task I knew she could not accomplish.”

Casey ignored the compliment. “But how do you know it’s Prix?” Casey asked. “How do you know it’s not Ero?”

“He has been out of town since Sunday morning, visiting with his ‘parents’. I had just called them when I saw the explosion, you see. They said he has been visiting with their families and that all has been well.”

  The Boggart is probably giving him indigestion, Casey thought.

“You will go home when the police are done questioning you,” Raziel said, softly. “You will not participate in this any more than you have to. This is no longer your business.”

“Friday night you didn’t care whether or not I lived or died.” Casey said tightly.

“Friday night you had not proven yourself to me. Last night, you did. A good warrior. A brave fighter.” For a moment Raziel’s words filled Casey with a kind of sick pride. Then the gray lady added, “And a fair target. Graphile will go through anything to harm you. This is not something I will put up with.”

“And my being home is safer than my being involved,” Casey said, sarcastically.

“No one has attacked you there that you have not brought in yourself. It’s possible no one knows where you live. Marco will ward it. Leslie Fielding and Abbey McShay will be there in the morning, and Doug Greene will follow as soon as he is released from Christus Spohn. I want all my humans in one place where I can make sure they are safe.”

“Or where we can all be shot at once.” Casey said.

“This is not up for discussion. Leslie will be there in the morning. If I cannot insist you go to the hospital, I can insist you stay out of Exiles business.”

Tiny claws tightened on Casey’s neck when she would have spoken out. Just give her Prix. Just give it to her and this is over, and you can tell Barb…

Yes. Tell the woman who had pulled her out of soul-killing depression that she’d gotten her pet killed. And that was the bigger problem. She could not see Barbara Hanson shielding a Phooka like Ero from danger. She’d been keeping Prix in her handbag, for God’s sake.

But Prix is a Phooka. Cute as she looks, that’s no guarantee that she’s not eating people anyway.

So we’ll compromise. God, I wish I wasn’t so tired.

The problem with knowing what the right move is, is living with yourself after you make it. Casey reached up, curled a hand around the tiny, warm body, and said “Barbara Hanson has a pet. A very illegal pet that she’s had for six months. You cannot kill her while Barb is in the hospital. Okay?”

“I don’t see why—”

She opened her hands, and Raziel sucked in a short, quick breath.

.