Yeah, it's official.  I've mostly moved my act over to facebook.  If you're there, come see me.  Truth is, it's just easier: my blog imports there, chatting is quick and simple, I don't have to know HTML... 

It's not you, myspace, it's me.  

Okay, maybe a little you...

Anyway, I'm keeping this page up (unless that last comments gets my profile booted off into cyberspace) and will keep checking in every once in a while, but, for the most part, I'll be over at facebook from now on. 

Hope to see a good number of multi-networkers/defectors there.
 
Avery at Facebook

Again absent for an extended time; I keep forgetting my little blog over here.

After my relative (very relative) success with the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, I once again started shopping Resonance to agents.  Still crashing, still burning.  For the most part, though, I've set aside that novel so I might better concentrate on the next, a contemporary fantasy/adventure set mostly in the depths of Hell.  I have a stack of books on that particular subject piled on my desk.  When visitors stare, or better yet start reading the titles aloud in a stunned voice, I tell them, "Since I'm headed there, anyway, I might as well read up.  You wouldn't go to China without consulting travel guides, would you?"  That's usually when they make some random excuse to part company.   

I'm currently reading the Otherland series by Tad Williams, mainly to help me see how he transitions from the many worlds in the series and how he handles a massive storyline with numerous POV characters.  I'm learning a lot, and really enjoying his writing style.  I think he has found a devoted fan.

I have been trying to better balance the massive renovation with my work, and succeeding only slightly.  As the weather has warmed progressively, so has the level of activity on the house.  There's the entire exterior to strip, prime and paint before winter, not to mention the interior is still at a moderate level of unfinished.  BUT, I have a closet now (whee!) and there is more plywood on the walls than exposed insulation, so that's something, isn't it?

For the most part, things are good.  The economy is not better, but not worse, and for that the Architect and I are grateful.  The sunshine is out, the air is warm and I don't have to worry about pellets or gas bills for several months.  My new herbs are starting to really grow and my back patio looks much less like a nuclear wasteland.  I have more ideas on the new novel than plot stumbling points.  And did I mention I finally have a closet?  Yeah, things are pretty good.

Another bit o' Halloween fluff for you guys. Yes, I've reprinted it from an earlier post today on my Blogger page. Sorry 'bout that to those of you who think this is fresh content (hanging my head in pseudo-shame).

Have a good Halloween if I don't post again. Be safe. Eat lots of goodies, and let yourself be scared just a little when you pass by that gnarled old tree and its shadow doesn't look quite like a shadow..
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The Love of the Job

Like a mechanical mosquito the needle hammered into his flesh, drawing out slick smears of crimson, depositing various shades of gray in return.

"Remember Nikky, this spot is mine."

Those had been the last words spoken to him by his grandfather, Sid "the Ink" Shepherd, as the dying old man patted the final bit of virgin skin on Nick's motley arm. Now only the walls' collection of flash stood as silent witness to the fulfillment of that promise, the memorialization of Nick's mentor, despite the torturous regret it fostered.

The job was going horribly wrong.

Nick's sweat-slicked right hand clung to the battered, duct taped armrest as his defiant left arm steadily worked his grandfather's prized shader across his flesh. He could no more stop its progress than will the frenzied staccato of his heart to slow. The needle buzzed into his skin with hot, jabbing intensity. The newly injected ink swarmed through the dermis, breaking lines here, joining others there, willfully reshaping his chosen design to suit its own undisclosed end. Nick could do nothing but watch.

After hours of slow agony, the maniacal tension in Nick's arm dispelled and the shader clattered to the floor. His stomach knotted with trepidation, Nick grabbed a handful of rough paper towels and wiped away the sanguine and ebony swirls. From its place in the center of his forearm, the grayscale visage of his grandfather stared sternly up at the collection of lewd cartoons pinned to the ceiling. Like a slow moving wave, the skin on Nick's arm gathered and broke, folding over his grandfather's eyes as dark, hooded lids. The tattoo gave a slow blink and then rolled its gaze down, sweeping back and forth, studying its new incarnation. Sweat ticked down Nick's face as the eyes--those eyes wrought by his own hand--turned upwards to bore into him. With a careful stretch of its mouth, the tattoo gave Nick an admonitory scowl.

"Your shading is shit, boy."

Okay, I once promised never to recycle content, but, I'm going all politician on your asses and going back on my word. See, my friend Charles Gramlich has been hosting this excellent Halloween Flash Fiction month on his blog and I've been playing along. He has three stories up, and he has posted all sorts of links to others who are playing along (lots of good reads, I highly recommend checking them out). I'm posting my story here because I know (and I know because I'm watching you) a lot of you don't feel like clicking over to my blogger page every time I say so. And that's cool. I'm just bringin' the spooky love to you.

The Empress of the Fescue

This is how a snake feels, awaiting the first rays of light to banish the insidious chill. This is how it will always feel, cold and alone. This is why my desperation grows–as hers must have-wild.

I purchased her at an estate sale to stand sentry against the hordes of sticky-mouthed candy-grabbers trampling my front lawn. My beautiful, winged, snarling chimera, the Empress of the Fescue.

With a childish thrill I ventured under the harvest moon to admire her fearsome grimace. Only a flattened patch of turf remained to belie her post. There was no time to gape, or wonder. She came with full fury, a winged wrecking ball to the back. I toppled forward against the dew-dampened grass, gasping for air.

Masonry talons clicked against the sidewalk. I heaved onto my back. She was there under the halo of light, waiting for my gaze to register her carven jaws stretched wide with hunger. Panic jolted my bones and I scrabbled away, clawed hands and bare feet churning the earth in desperation.

The grass was slick. I was slow.

Her terrible weight prematurely expelled the last of my breaths. That gaping mouth sucked deep into my own. I struggled to stay inside, but there was nothing to hold onto, no anchor to cast.

I pushed myself up with shaking arms.

Not me.

She, wearing me.

I fit her like a well-made suit, and she smiled. She did a small dance of joy, cavorting out of view as she tried her new legs. My head could not turn to follow. Cast in a haze of gray, my world contracted to a narrow strip of grass, a patch of siding, and my living room window.

It aches, sitting here with my knees hunched around my chin. A spider has built a web in the crevice of my right ear. The grass is cold against my immovable hide and I spend the long dark wishing for the following day to come without rain or clouds so I might briefly remember warmth.

I catch snippets of her through the window, clips from a movie I will never see. She seems happy. And why shouldn't she be? She has it all: my life, my husband, my flesh. And she has me, her Empress of the Fescue.

There's something about fall that sets my senses on fire. The air seems to hold the electricity of promise, and that dusky, earthy scent of cast-off leaves makes my heart beat a little faster. One would think a slightly more productive season such as spring would elicit such a response, but I've never been one to get excited at the prospect of spring. Of course, part of my excitement is due to the coming of Halloween, my all-time favorite holiday. And, of course, Halloween soon leads into Thanksgiving, which brings Christmas and New Year's--lots of reason for the tummy flutters. Yet, I don't think that's all there is to my anticipation. I think there's something deeper, the promise inherent in fall, itself.

Wiccans and other pagans call it the turning of the wheel, one season giving in to another, the coming death and decay clearing the way for new life, and new growth (and not just the allergy-triggering kind of germination). The darkness and chill of winter keeps us inside--both our dwellings, and, if we allow it, our selves. With the external stimuli of sunshine, beaches, parks and ice cream stripped away, we can burrow under the safe warmth of our covers and study our lives, our selves. Winter is a hibernation of the soul, one that can bring lush growth even to areas we once considered dry and dead. Fall is the promise of that promise. So, this fall, I'm excited to turn inward, to study what I hold dear, to practice and practice and see what I can make grow.

After I go take a jump in the leaves, that is.