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Daisy Lockhart escapes to Paris after her long-term boyfriend ends their relationship via email. As her meticulous, purpose-driven personality (she travels with supplemental oxygen) is challenged, so are her mind and heart tested by brooding, beautiful Mathieu, who's as enigmatic as the city itself.

Plum Blossoms author Sarah Hina

I've already finished Plum Blossoms. If your favorite thing to do is watch WWF, if your favorite food is a bag of Cheetos, if your address is mobile, this book is probably not for you. Everyone else should jump at the chance to read this, Sarah Hina's debut novel.

Plum Blossoms in Paris will be officially released on August 1. Stay tuned for my review (5 stars) as well as an interview with Sarah.  Also, check out the Flash Fiction contest (see below) to win your own copy!


Sixteen-year-old Evie's job is bagging and tagging paranormals. Possessing the strange ability to see through their glamours, she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency. But when someone--or something--starts taking out the vamps, werewolves, and other odd beasties she's worked hard to help become productive members of society, she's got to figure it out before they all disappear and the world becomes utterly normal.

Paranormalcy will be released September 21. Win an ARC (see below) by dazzling the pants off Kiersten White!



I submitted to get born magazine on a Friday and by Monday kne

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wholly stolen from Co-Dictator of the Universe B

New Fun Game! Rhyming! Guessing! Road-trip friendly!

2+ players, Age unlimited.

It's all about the rhymes, folks.

You think of two related, rhyming words (fat cat, bird turd, stable table). Based on the number of syllables in each word, you say "hink-pink" (1 syllable), "hinky-pinky" (2 syllables) or "hinkity-pinkity" (3 syllables, ultra-rare).

Then the clue! The Co-Dictator's SIL insists that the clues must be one-to-one and not phrase value, but We (as in the Royal "We") think that "my uncles" is a better clue for "Mother's brothers" than "parents, siblings."

After the clue giving, pandemonium breaks out and everyone calls out guesses. A lot of the time, there are some really good pairings that you hadn't thought of, but stick to your guns for the phrase you picked.

The winner gives the next hinky-pinky and the games goes on. While it is kind of silly on the internet with rhyming dictionaries galore at the click of a mouse, it's a lot of fun and can be quite challenging in person.

Also, it's a break from I-Spy.

Now We are trying to get this going viral, so please join in!  Make sure you link back to me, and also link to the next challenger.

ROUND 1:  Hinky-Pinky, Scary Tent
WINNER: Aerin, with "creepy teepee"

ROUND 2: Hinky-Pinky, duck pile-up
WINNER:

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Dear child, welcome to this world, in all its beauty and savagery.  You'll hear the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words" (and then your da will show you a picture and teach you how to write flash fiction about it.)  This picture by Maxfield Parrish is my (half of a) thousand words, and here's what they are:

I wish for you strength, in big things and small.  An elephant cannot carry its own body weight, but an ant can, and ten times more.  May your body be strong, to run and to jump and to climb mountains.
 
I wish for you freedom, to discover yourself and be what you choose.  I hope you will make mistakes, and learn from them.  I hope you will know the feeling of wind in your hair as you run through the grass, and that that feeling will find its way into your soul.

I wish for you love, to give and to be given. I wish for love to make you its conduit - love poured in and love given freely out, made purer by the filter of your heart. 

I wish for you patience, for you to retain a sense of the movement of the eternal that you no doubt experience as you sleep an infant sleep.  I ask you to be patient with your parents, who love you and do everything out of that love.  Be patient with yourself. There’s no finish line, only the steps from one reality to another.

I wish for you impatience, for you to reject assumptions of inequality, to challenge with fierce heart the oppression of so much of humankind, of art, of faith.  Learn only the impatience that is born of seeking justice.

I wish for you faith.  May you ever feel the embrace of the Divine.  May you experience the Divine for yourself, choose to believe in the One who exists beyond us but loves in and around and through us.

I wish for you wisdom.  Sadly, you will lose your infant wisdom.  But its impressions remain inside of you.  As you grow, you’ll find pieces of wisdom, and you’ll know where they naturally fit inside the leftover spaces of yourself. 

I wish for you bravery.  Against the dark, against spiders, against aggressive four-legged creatures and bright, bold winged things.  Have courage during storms, both inner and outer, and remember that while slaying a dragon is sometimes necessary, it’s never, ever easy.

I wish for you thankfulness.  For a moment, for a lifetime.  For the smallest gesture and the grandest gift.

I wish for you books.  Skyscrapersful of books.  From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I wish for you inspiration - from art, from music, from science, from history.  A sense of the world as it is and as it was and as it could be.  A dream, that captures your passions and changes when it needs to and propels you into places of risk and ambition for the sake of the dream.

I wish for you peace.  Peace in your world.  Peace in your soul.  A calm, quiet sense  of “forever” and the luxury to languish in it.  Peace on the journey, and peace to where, eventually, you will cross into yet another reality, surrounded by the same love in which you entered this one.

You are loved.  Be well.

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I have woefully neglected the Co-Dictators of the Universe, so to appease them, I offer this (hastily written, once-edited) entry to their Story Sharing awesomeness.  It shocks even me.

The door sticks, so I jam it hard with my hip, and it opens onto the alley with a light rain of pale green plaster. The usually comforting smell of burned cigarettes and urine is tinged with a sour, acrid tang. Vomit, just in front of the dumpster, which is on my left, the south end of the library. On the north end is access to the street, so I move that way to escape the smell of someone else’s puke.

“Assholes,” I mutter, lighting up. I can’t smoke on the front steps: “it’s bad for the patrons” and Williams nearly pissed herself trying to stay all sweet apple pie while she explained, my first day, that I couldn’t smoke in the stacks. Shit, I have a library degree, does the woman fucking think I’d endanger the only extant copy of 聖教初学要理 in America? She seriously needs to get laid.

(Oh, and for those of you who don’t read Japanese, that title is: A fundamental Catechism of Christian Doctrine. Did I mention it’s the only copy in America? I mean, the volume is a wood-block print made up of Japanese paper with Japanese binding, printed at Nagasaki. I might vomit just thinking about anything happening to it.)

That’s the problem - not people not reading Japanese, or needing to be laid, but people thinking that librarians are all cardigans and bobby socks and don’t smoke. Like, if you’re intelligent enough to read, you’re supposed to think smoking is a cardinal sin, a crime, a waste of your goddamn youthful health. Bullshit.

Librarians aren’t supposed to have tattoos, either, I think, looking fondly at the newest ink, a flower-bedecked swastika. Its vibrancy stands out against the rest of the ink covering my right arm, varying degrees of darkness depending on their age.

Fucking stereotypes.

It’s my dinner break so I have 20 more minutes than when I sneak a usual cigarette break. And anyway, I’m not hungry lately, not for food. I light up again, concentrating on the sky changing colors so I can pretend I’m meditating instead of just being lazy. I name the kaleidoscope hues: mauve (from Latin, the color of the mallow), amber (from Arabic ʼanbar, ambergris), violet (from Latin viola, a violet, not the musical instrument, whose origins are Old Provençal, from viula).

What a crappy week. Leaving my diamond nose stud at Carl’s and knowing that he’ll hock it because he hocks everything to pay for his disgusting habit and it doesn’t even matter how many times I deep throated him. Bastard.

The sky’s going from mauve to indigo, and I’m getting skeeved by these deep shadows that look like they’re vomiting black on the graffiti.

And the dissertation committee asked the most inane questions about my theories on 3D imaging and rare manuscripts. What will it cost? Who the fuck cares? Those cocksuckers have no imagination. This is why God made rich patrons who want their name on a library building even though they use books to wipe their asses.

As I pull out my third cigarette (and last, I swear silently to my mother, but I am skipping dinner and I need satisfaction somehow), I notice a little pile of grey lint. No, not lint, some kind of finch. Bombycillidae, maybe? Unlucky guy is dead, his eyes squeezed like someone’s popping a zit. Which reminds me of my dead Uncle Ernie, God rest his sou

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Dear Betty,

You win.  (Okay, Pete helped.)  Rather nasty trick, there, invoking the Boss's name.  You know I am powerless against the Co-Dictators of the Universe.

My entry to the current Clarity of Night contest is here.  Or you can read it in the postscript.  I keep hoping for one of those magical epiphanies that write themselves, 250 words of such depth and perfection that it reduces Parrish to tears.  Sadly, no such epiphany occurred for this contest.  I will jump cartwheels if only I can stay in the Forties Club (do not even dare to suggest that has anything to do with my age).

I've read but not commented on all the entries.  Some, like this one, are way too profound for my summertime brain.  Some (like Tessa's, and Sarah's are poetry: I stink at appreciating poetry.   

Quite a few of my peeps entered: Merry, Ello, Chris, Aniket, wolfie, Paul, Pete, Parrish, J.C., Precie, Angelique, Dottie, Sandra, Absolute Vanilla, Surly Writer, Whirlochre. Am I well-connected or what? (Yes, I hobnob.)

My current favorites are da Boss's and Sylvia's and Tre'von's.  I think.  At least right now.

Not only is my Clarity entry not to the level I'd hoped, my word counts on the WIPs are lagging.  McKoala's going to claw me soon, I'm afraid.  I know your own poetry and Rumpelstiltskin writing is going well, even if I haven't left comments.  I'm all-knowing that way.

I hope that your home ownership and kitchen remodelling are going well.  You will certainly need to get ahead of things in order to fill the Boss's shoes when he's on leave.  First thing you can do is raise my salary.  Royalty needs bling, you know.

Do give my best to Mrs. Betty and to Zora.

Cordially,
the Queen

PS - I haven't mailed your books yet, but I also haven't forgotten.

PPS - Here's my entry:

Presage
by Aerin Rose


Twenty-two hours from San Francisco to Kathmandu. Four hours until the layover in Hong Kong. Caelin will have finished grading papers by then. She arches her back, stretching, then wiggles her toes, and catches the eye of the flight attendant.

“More, please.” She indicates the travel-sized wineglass. The remaining ruby droplets glisten in the spotlight of her reading lamp. The attendant nods from the galley.

“You realize that’s basically grape juice?” Chloe peers around the headrest as her business class bed reverts to its upright position.

“It’s a second growth Bordeaux and you know it, O Queen Food Critic,” Caelin retorts. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not well. Looks like fourteen bottles of questionable Bordeaux didn’t help you sleep, either.”

“Excited?”

“And nervous. What if she hates us?”

“Sweetheart.” Caelin strokes her wife’s cheek as Chloe unfolds the passport she’s been clutching. A little girl with dark eyes and copper skin gazes at them, unsmiling and unafraid. “She liked us well enough before. Any kid will hate her parents at some point. Let’s just focus on getting her home.”

The flight attendant materializes with the bottle of Château Cos-d'Estournel 1989, which streams like scarlet silk into the stemware.

“Like the orphanage is going to let her come home when you show up drunk,” Chloe teases, leaning close. Caelin smiles into her spouse’s black curls. Points of light play on the surface of her wine, casting images against the back of the seat in a rosy haze.

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