Hello, friends! It's been a while since our last update. I've been on a mini-vacay, if it could be called that? Pretty much all I've been doing is working and reading and writing, a LOT.
There's been a whole bunch of things that've been going on here (and just yesterday we were finally able to get our PA license plates after sooooo mannnnny setbackkkksss), including but not limited to adulthood things that really suck. If it's not one thing, it's another.
Like TAXES. Wow. How do taxes. Why did high school never prep us for taxes.
I'm also an A+ fire starter now. I have the burn scars to prove it, and boy have I learned a lot about burns thanks to the almighty east coast winter blues. Luckily for us, we were right on the outskirts of the worst of the winter storms, so the most we got at once when it came to snow was like a foot.
Luckily.
But I did get to see my first white-out blizzard-thing.
I say "blizzard-thing" because they called it a "band", and it was the first time I ever saw wind go at an upward angle. That was neat. Brushing off my car from a foot of snow in the wind was also pretty neat. Really neat. So neat.
We're spoiled here though, at least when it came to snowfall. I still got to learn what -20 felt like. Also really, very, so incredibly neat. Wind chill like that makes you feel like you're walking around naked.
But before winter, I got to see my very first autumn. I might write about it in Marionettes, but I had honestly never seen real, actual autumn before. Hills and hills of gold and yellow and red and WOW. Victoria and I drove out to my first harvest festival, where we got to walk a corn maze.
The one thing that I really appreciate being out of the city is the
air. Ain't nothing like breathing in the country air, cool and crisp and delicious. The drive itself was worth it, so fun taking back roads instead of scary freeways. I love seeing all the character that all these places have to offer, whether out in farmland or even in the city. It's just incomparable to Los Angeles.
I mean, even the SUNSETS.
I'm not supposed to be able to take a photo like that without some sort of filter?? It seriously looks like the sun is a slab of butter just melting into the ground. It's positively outrageous. I mean, LA had some awesome sunsets (thank you city pollution), but we just never had...clouds. Those white, fluffy things in the sky. Yeah. We didn't have a lot of that in LA. So sunsets like these are tough to snag.
(Of course, to be fair, I haven't been able to get a picture of sunset like this all winter because, well, that big orange thing in the sky that hurts to stare at hasn't been making very many cameos either.)
Before the cold weather began, we celebrated Victoria's birthday back in September, and, of course, what better way to celebrate it than to take her to an abandoned blast furnace?
This place was
amazing, and we had so much free reign to explore where we wanted. I was in true tourist form and got about a million photos of everything, and videos, and--well, it's safe to say that this research we did might show up somehow in the future. Cough cough.
We've also brought in a new member of the family. She's a rescue cat, found abandoned in a dumpster, and in the very beginning, she looked like this:
When she came into the shelter, her back legs were injured. We have no idea what happened to her, but she was a very gentle creature and loved to be petted. She might have had a prior family before, because she's very sweet and has never lashed out, whether in fear or anger, like other rescue cats with triggers do. When we first got her, though, she was absolutely terrified of the sound of cars, and she took a long time to adjust.
But now, she's much healthier, and so healthy that she is simply a head:
(Her face looks like that because she knew I was going to put this on the internet. I have about 30495834 more photos of her, so one day I'll just make a cat post. We have some seriously weird ones here at the house.)
We've also been total nerds. Weekly now, we've been having meetups with friends and playing this totally addicting DC deck-building card game.
This was the game I would have one if Victoria hadn't lucked into FIVE FREAKIN POWER RINGS. Here, we've bent the rules and we're playing with both heroes and villains, makes things a lot more interesting. Also did I mention I would have won if Victoria hadn't scored five freakin power rings? Yeah. But rematch this Sunday. REMATCH.
As far as book news goes, I've finally felt grounded enough to start doing giveaways on Goodreads again. If you haven't seen, you can also add the next book in the Marionettes series, and also the first book in the Monsters series. Once I do the official post for the Monsters book 1 here on the blog, the cover'll go up. Aw yeah.
As always, we're still writing, a lot. We just finished revisions on the first book of our steamy NA urban fantasy series, Empath, which has been a lot of good fun.
I've been querying lit agents on this one to see how it does, but as always, things are up in the air. All we can be sure about is that it's been a ton of fun to write, and it's even taken us by surprise all over the place. We'll see what happens!
Progress continues. We're in a continuous state of moving forward, which is always good, and there's so many things I need to do to reorganize this blog that I should make a checklist. Omg.
Until then, look forward to the official Monsters Book 1 post!
