Today is the day -- over at the Uncial Press birthday party, you can win a free copy of Phantom of the Operetta, just by answering a (not very hard) trivia question.  And even if you don't win the ebook, you might end up winning an Amazon Kindle!  Phantom is just one of the two ebooks I have with Uncial Press; both are part of what we're now calling the "Expatriate Sidhe" series, featuring -- surprise -- expatriate Sidhe and stage actress Juliet McKenna.

As noted last week, there's also a related story up on my Web site.  Here's a quick tease for "Supernatural Timing":

The first of the Halloween afternoon’s ghosts clearly believed in the principle of inciting fear through gratuitous display of gore. A tendril of pale pink steam rose from the jagged remnant of its headless neck, its right arm hung scarcely half-attached from its owner’s shoulder, and the head cradled in its left arm lacked one eye, the opposite ear, and half its nose. Trails of sticky red crisscrossed a badly slashed white tunic and the loose gray breeches below it. The thing moved slowly, though with odd grace considering its assorted handicaps. Silently, it shuffled forward, slightly lifting both its head and its free arm so that its one good eye and three twisted fingers were aimed accusingly at the lone figure seated only a few feet away.

[Read the rest here....]

There is a pantry/closet in my kitchen, next to the refrigerator, in which I keep a great variety of things.  There are old cardboard boxes, decks of playing cards, boxes of papers, a small cooler chest, my collection of Christmas supplies (tags, ribbon, stockings, gift wrap, etc.), aprons, decks of cards, light bulbs, the backup paper towel supply, assorted surplus groceries (I probably have enough boxed pasta just now to last me until approximately next Memorial Day) and my vacuum cleaner.

It is, in short, very full, though not so full as to produce a Fibber McGee effect.  Imagine my startlement, therefore, when I opened the pantry door late this morning...

( ...and a cat leaped past me from inside the pantry. )

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, I am in fact a resident of Darkest Suburbia (for metaphorical values of "darkest").  While I'm technically inside the Portland city limits by a few hundred yards, my neighborhood is interspersed with some moderately dense forest and steep hillside.  Forest Park proper is over some of the hills and on the other side of a freeway, but you definitely don't have to go over the hills and far away to find woodlands -- and, correspondingly, woodland creatures.  Indeed, some months ago I spotted a raccoon in my back yard.  And when said raccoon noticed that I was watching it, said raccoon cheerfully clambered up onto my back porch and came over to look at me through the glass window in my back door.  This is a little friendlier than I like my woodland creatures, notwithstanding a childhood in which I happily read about a raccoon named Ranger Rick in one of the magazines my parents ordered for me.  After making a brief investigation of my back porch, the real live raccoon went on about its business and did not return.

( Or so I thought.... )

The week has slipped away entirely too fast; in an effort to catch up with the rest of the pack, we'll do two days at once this round.

Day 3 - The best book I've read in the past year

Ouch.  Singling out one title for this kind of tag is always a challenge for me, ( Read more... )

Day 4 - My all-time favorite literary series

There are a number of series I enjoy reading and keeping up with.  ( Read more... )

( The Once & Future Meme (aka the Index of Days): )

It is, of course, actually Day 3 by now -- that post will go up shortly, but this one is late.  Ah, well, it happens sometimes.

Day 2 - A series more people should be reading/talking about

This choice was harder to make than I originally anticipated.  The trouble is that while I've read a number of intriguing books recently, many of them already have a sizeable degree of buzz attached to them, and so arguably don't fit the category.  And when I looked backward to consider older or more obscure titles, the titles I looked toward first arguably belong in categories we'll get to farther along in the meme.

And then I thought of two books that have just come back into print, and I had my answer: The Night of the Solstice and Heart of Valor by L. J. Smith, who's mostly known at present for having written the books from which the Vampire Diaries television series was adapted.

( The present volumes are of a different kind. )

( The Once & Future Meme (aka the Index of Days) )