Why am I NOT surprised

GAMBIT!!


Which X-Men Character Are You??
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Well he IS my favorite

Well Cool

This makes up for the day I'm having. Like my spare tire going flat as I go to get my flat tire fixed...or the dawning realization is that I'm never going to get the Back to School story done on time or that I have like three weeks to pack IF I can even take this job in WI or that it's nearly 1:30AM and I still don't have all my feedback ficathon stuff typed and the fact it took TWO hours to file for unemployment on line because Florida's system took forever to load pages.

Anyhow Touch of Grey  won the Key award at the Hero awards for best mystery fic. It's my Faith/Spike story where they try to find who's out to kill Angel. 

Feedback a Thon

I participated in bookishwench 's feedback a thon which was  a great idea. I looked through the feedback to see if anyone did it the way I did (no, of course not). I did it like I do my critiques for a writers group, go through it and pull out lines/passages I like/dislike and say why then give a synopsis of my thoughts. Others did it like Maren did mine, a nice overview of what worked and what didn't while yet others did it more like they were writing reviews for a newspaper. Interesting.

Anyhow, the stories I read were well worth reading and reccing so here goes.50thousandtearz  (a lot of us know her as missmorganpryce) had on offer The Solace of Hell which is my favorite of the three, detailing Wes and Lilah (and others) in a very Hades sort of Hell. Inevitablity a series of vignettes detailing Lilah's life and death and death and death.  And Just Out of Reach a Justine centric piece of flash fiction that really works well.

liz_marcs  had three really good and kinda longish (about 30 pages, except the Mars one which is about half that).  Into the Desert It's  my favorite. It's Post-Chosen and spans almost 20 years after that. To say any more would ruin it. Mars Rising It's Xander- Centric, Post Chosen and uses the closeness of Mars' orbit as a metaphor. Revelations Again post-Chosen and Xander centric yet it's from everyone's POV but his. It gives Xander a very interesting new background though occasionally it got a little to no one ever helped poor Xander for me but that was minor. Note: all of these are on ffn so use the drop down menu to get to the ad blocker as needed.

All 6 of these stories are well worth reading.

A little more recc'ing

Got two of my stories for ficathons (one delayed and hey one early!).crazy_girl_mary  wrote Opportunity Knocks for me for the Harmony ficathon. It's a really nice little in-between piece before Harm shows in L.A.

sasha_b  wrote Grains of Sand for me for the Back to School ficathon (yeah that one, the one I can't seem to get my story done for). It's a Giles/Jenny centric piece and deals with how Ethan keeps screwing up Giles' life. Good stuff.

Thanks ladies!

It needs to rain

That's the only way Florida cools off. It hasn't rained in a few days. It's SO hot I can't think. I can't type because my fingers either slip off the keys or stick to them because they're so gummy with sweat evil_little_dog  is gonna be so glad to hear that when she gets home.

It's SO hot that when I hung the clothes on the line to dry the arylic parts of the bras and undies MELTED to the clothes line and had to be pried off. Damn, I hate this state. I had to give up typing the Back to School story until tonight because it was an uncomphrensible mess with my fingers skidding all over the keys.

On the upside. I just found out I took first runner up in the Warm Champagne Challenge which is really cool. They give out neat stuff to the winners (not sure how this is funded but it's different). Not sure if the runner's up get anything more than a plaque but I'm not complaining. GIven the sheer amount of talent I was up against I'm shocked to take first runner up for Touch of Grey.

 

Oh and I just realized it's over 1500 miles to get to WI.

frightening

Most of you know I follow forensics very closely. It's my passion. Lately I've been noticing a rise in murder-suicides. They're all pretty gruesome. This tops the scale at more terrifying than I could have imagined. (i.e. don't read if you're easily sickened). If I had put something this nasty in my murder mysteries I'm not sure people would have believed it could happen.