Re-blogging one of my favorite blog posts about a knife fight I walked into, the mysterious goats I kept hearing, and my sweetly smiling neighbor 🙂 Happy reading!

Everything I Can Possibly Cram into a Single Blog Post

Alright, so these are the sections in this blog!

• Betty-Homemaker-Don’t-Quit-Your-Day-Job
• The Knife Fight I walked into
• I Found the Goats!
• My Sweetly Smiling Neighbor
• O Ye Seeker of Chastity Belts
• Heiress of Magic Cover Reveal along with a Humongous Apology (and not for the girly cover)

In the end I have decided to separate it into short(er), more or less easy-to-digest sections so you can read the ones you’re interested in and pretend you read the others (or not). How’s that for service from me to you? I bow and take a moment to appreciate the deafening applause. Thank you, why, thank you. You’re too kind *blush*

So, shall we begin?

Heiress of Magic Cover Reveal along with Said Humongous Apology (but not for the girly cover)

Whoo hoo! I’m super excited about getting ready to release another book in my Heiress of the Seven Cities series, and now, with much trepidation and equally as much excitement (alright, so only with trepidation), I present to you my (hopefully you’ll think it’s) wonderful, absolutely, unabashedly, totally and in all ways GIRLY cover for Heiress of Magic!

If you order a print version, you’ll get all that loveliness in one sweet package, containing this story (cue drum-roll and street-crier – the blurb is coming!):

In the city of mages a guild slave dances, magical stars drifting from her hair that whisper secret persuasions into the minds of those watching. Every evening she writes down her memories before a shadow in the night takes them. This is where the division begins.

For centuries, the walls of the Seven Demesnes have protected men from weirs and shadow-hungry alike. But those eager for the walls to come down are ready to strike, and those who must defend them stand divided. Guild plots against ruler. Mage plots against mage. The powerful vanish. The weak are enslaved. The survivors keep secrets.

When a mage is murdered, blame is thrown – on the wrong person. Lines are drawn – in the wrong places. Unions are made – with the wrong allies.

And when the enemy strikes, not one is prepared.

(cue sinister music)

I’m still wading through the edits, and as I am, I realize that I owe my readers a humongous apology. Apparently last year around the end of summer / beginning of fall I started reading All Our Yesterdays, and as I was reading the reviews and the book, I had this thought: “Hey, why don’t I write a love triangle?”

Next time I have a thought like that, SOMEBODY STOP ME! STOP ME QUICK! STOP ME IN MY TRACKS, HIT ME WITH A BRICK WALL, SOMETHING! ANYTHING! I’m begging you.

The love triangle has been written. And I will  never, ever, ever, EVER write something like this again. As I’m editing, I feel like someone is slowly wringing my heart out like an old rag. I now know why I don’t write love triangles and have heretofore avoided them like the Vaxen plague. Don’t do it, children. Just – don’t. Don’t. And again, don’t.

So. Readers. I’m sorry for the love triangle, but it’s still an awesome story – there are actually four other story-lines to follow, too, and I think there’s some interesting stuff happening (don’t want to hype it up too much, of course, but I think this is hands down the best story climax I’ve ever written).

As to the rest of the books in the series, I’m really, really super enthused about them! If you’re curious about what each book deals with (or at least the plan so far, which may change depending on the characters), read the following sections. If you couldn’t care less, then skip ’em!

Heiress of Magic, Heiress of Shadow and Heiress of Rebellion all take place at the same time but follow characters in different parts of the demesnes. Each can be read as a stand-alone, and the order you read them in shouldn’t matter.

Heiress of Magic

Mainly in the Seventh Demesne, aka the City of Mages, Heiress of Magic follows several storylines and intertwines them:

* Lysium, a guild dancer; Loren, her husband and dance partner; and their friend Lothram, a fire-seller and fire-mage
* Essence, a powerful sorceress with white hair and red eyes who is shunned by her peers and pursued by a mysterious mage visiting from the Third Demesne
* Melynda, a sorceress who hides her pregnancies and her children from the other mages and whose lover is an assassin who can steal faces
* Olsen and Felevia, two mages from the Second Demesne who are trapped in a pendant trying to get out (and essentially discovering along the way that everyone in the Seventh Demesne is a total freak)
* Jolina, a girl trapped in the schemes of the guild Director

Heiress of Shadow

Set mainly outside the walls in Weir territory and in the Shadowlands (at the shadow-hungry stronghold Grimfell), Heiress of Shadow follows two main story-lines and one minor one:

* Ara, half shadow-hungry, half-human, exiled from the First Demesne, pitted against her shadow-hungry father and traveling the rich, dangerous yet vibrant land beyond the walls with a man who fascinates her and two weir companions she doesn’t trust
* Char, a weir taken captive by the shadow-hungry to breed hybrid weir-shadow-hungry creatures for their army, only her fate isn’t quite that simple
* Zara, a spirit who was the lover of the shadow-hungry ruler and still seeks to find a way to stop him from destroying the human race

The book is a finished in a first draft form but still needs to be edited.

Heiress of Rebellion

This one is set in the First Demesne and follows:

* Seriah, the only daughter of the First Demesne Magnate and the official heiress of the demesnes if no septuplets are conceived. I don’t have her story all written, but she’s already marched outside the city walls and bargained with the weirs for the life of an ambassador, and she’s going to end up fighting (with?) Evander. She’s going to be totally awesome! I think my favorite character.
* Iminique, probably the most powerful healer ever existing and lover of the magnate’s wizard, Quentyn, who isn’t quite good and is probably responsible for the mysterious plague decimating the poor and turning them into mindless shells (but we don’t know yet if it’s really him!)

Heiress of the Seven Cities

This is the planned finale that should follow most of the characters mentioned above (definitely Seriah, Iminique, Ara, Char, Zara, <character not named>, and Lysium. I’m not sure about the others just yet).

Oof, didn’t mean to make that section so long! But for anyone interested in the books, I think this is a good overview of them! So, onto the next section…

Betty-Homemaker-Don’t-Quit-Your-Day-Job and the Knife Fight

I’ve been a regular Betty Homemaker recently, baking the occasional evening away the past few weeks because I want something sweet but I’m too cheap to dish out the cash (alright, too strapped for funds to whip out the cash, otherwise it would be junk-food city in my pantry! Oh, yeah, baby).

Anyway, mostly my creations are fairly edible, even the tasty, addictive cookies that I forgot to store in an airtight container and they ended up drying out so they were as hard as – let’s just say my teeth ached after eating about five of them and the guy at work dubbed them “Dentists’ Moneymaker”. I told him he was strengthening his teeth.

In any case, speaking of dentists, this is where the knife fight comes in.

On my way to a dentist appointment a few weeks ago, I saw two guys in the metro (subway) in the middle of an altercation. One was yelling and shoving the other, who hung his head, hands shoved in his pockets, and was mumbling things probably intended to be placating.

That, however, only incensed the first even more and he kept pushing him backward, closer to the stairs I needed to go up.

Not too concerned, I kept walking. After all, I’m used to the occasional person shouting on the streets in Prague – you just avoid eye contact and mostly you’re okay (except the time the homeless dude grabbed my ex-boyfriend’s throat and started throttling him in the tram and then stalked him until my ex busted his mouth and knocked him down and jumped on a passing tram before the guy could get up and come after him again. But that isn’t usual).

So I approached these two guys… and the angry one pulled a knife.

He swiped it at the other, who jumped back. Moving them closer to the stairs I was headed toward.

I was almost at them by now. My mind was finally registering that a knife had entered the fray. I should have stopped; somewhere in the back of my mind I probably even said stop, but I was so shocked that my feet kept walking – and the knife kept swiping, and the guy kept jumping back, closer to the stairs, and in that distant way you have where you feel like you’re not really in a situation, I realized we were on a collision course. But my mind was too busy thinking ‘Damn, he’s an agile bastard!’ Because the blade didn’t touch the one being attacked once. He was so quick.

Then he jumped back and nearly rammed into me. And all I could think then was that if the he dodged now, the knife would slash straight down my arm.

There wasn’t much I could do by then.

But fortunately the knifer wasn’t in the mood to slash innocent women, because he jerked the knife back, may even have taken half a step back. The other dude then seized his chance and ducked out from between us and took to his heels in the opposite direction.

The knifer then pivoted with the knife still clenched in his grip and stalked after him, not even running, as if thinking, “I know where you live.”

And then the wall blocked him from view and I was walking up the stairs asking what the hell just happened?

Moral of the story: (I’m trying to think of one. Um…) Just stay calm?

I Found the Goats!

Yes. I live in Prague. In an apartment building with a view over a park. And the past half year or so there has been a certain phenomenon occurring.

I’ve been hearing goats.

Definitely goats. Not dogs, not weirdly mewling cats with unexplained problems. Goats, I tell you, goats!

But I’m like – I’m in the middle of a city. Who in the world would be raising goats here?

I’m not the only one hearing the goats, either. A few months ago as I was walking outside, I overheard a conversation where someone was saying, “Yes, yes, I saw a pen, and in it, five goats!”

And I thought to myself, Justified! I’m not the only one hearing the goats. Someone else has apparently gone a step farther and is seeing them.

And so, armed with that knowledge, whenever people came to visit and they were like, “Is that a goat I hear?”

I would say very sagely, “Why, yes. Yes, that is a goat you hear.”

But I never set eyes upon these elusive goats – until the other day. While on the elliptical. Looking out the window at the park, which is separated from this other area where it looks like a building was demolished. Being on the fourth floor, I can see into that area, too, and this man was walking there with two dogs. Only the dogs were jumping weirdly, and had goat legs – and what the heck – they weren’t dogs at all! No animal jumps around as crazily as that but – a goat! And so, I must conclude…

“I found the goats!” I cried jubilantly, my feet pumping the elliptical ever faster in a furor of excitement. “I found the goats!” Not stopping to wonder what anyone would think seeing me alone in my flat on my elliptical shouting about goats. I was too busy thinking, Yes! Justified.

Totally justified.

Moral of the story: Trust yourself. You’re not hallucinating. You just haven’t found the evidence yet.

The Sweetly Smiling Neighbor

A few weeks ago I’m walking down the apartment stairs when I see him.

The guy who lives in the apartment below me.

He’s standing at the door, his back to me, key in the lock, turning it. He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie with the hood up. I’ve never seen his face – or him at all that I remember, and I’m curious as to what kind of person lives below me.

Turn around, I think. Turn around, turn around, turn around. I think my footsteps slow.

Then he does turn. Not fast, just casually – he probably hears my footsteps, maybe hears them slowing – and his eyes look down first so that his eyelashes brush over his cheeks, then he looks up and meets my eyes.

And then…

He smiles.

A genuine, happy smile. At least it looks genuine. It’s enough to conjure one from me, as well, because a definite smile rises to my lips and spills out into reality. That kind of smile that happens when you see some unexpected kindness on a random day at a random time.

I’m reeling a bit at how lovely it feels, and then he turns back and I turn at the landing. He goes inside and I keep on down the stairs, and I’m thinking what a great start to the day.

Moral of the story: Smile! You never know whose day you’ll make just that little bit more wonderful.

O Ye Seeker of Chastity Belts

So. I checked the stats on my blog and found the search terms that bring people here, and now I’m looking at myself in a whole new light. For those coming here looking for stuff on chastity belts (also incidentally the entry about Frowzy the pellet-shooter, sperm-sprayer, and Let-me-bounce-off-the-wall-while-I-pee critter), here is the link to that post: https://sonyalano.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/mens-chastity-belts-and-cats-in-cages/ As to the search terms that bring people to my humble blog, here are some of them:

• chastity belt torture stories
• men in cages
• large walk in cat cages
• hymen pic
• where to buy a chasity belt for cats
• sex toys for men
• men in chastity being teased
• defeated by chastity belt (what the heck? Come forth, querulous foe, and I shall smite thee with my mighty chastity belt!)
• boy+woody+penis (Search engines, really? You send this to my blog?)
• pussy+horses+woman (Search engines, again, really? See above.)
• husband locked in chastity cage (anyone know what a chastity cage is? I just looked it up and OOOUUUUCH, those things just look like the literal embodiment of male hell on earth)
• what do to with old fondue oil

When I saw that last, I actually did a search for fondue oil on my blog and found this lovely entry:

[I’ve found] A toxic fondue dish with noxious, living cultures growing it. As I write, there are probably still spores from those underdeveloped new micro-organisms floating around the flat. The cats might start sprouting odd appendages soon. I promise to take pictures if they do.
I must relinquish all claim to the formation of this particular virulence. My ex-hubby left the fondue behind due to the several-years-old oil congealed in it that aroused his scorn and disdain. My attempt to clean it (the fondue dish, not the ex-hubby’s scorn and disdain) resulted in an unnatural goo that clings to surfaces with the tenacious adhesiveness of alien matter.
It has been successfully combated with vinegar.
And now that the fondue threat has been neutralized, it is on to newer and better things for me! That new thing being: I am resolved to be resolved.

Let me tell you now. Being ‘resolved to be resolved’ does absolutely nothing for you.

You just have to DO.

Like I did. I published a book. Now I’m going to publish another. You should buy them. Really 😉

Moral of the story: Buy my books. Just in case you missed the previous sentence 😛 Although really I’m just happy if you had at least a bit of fun with this blog!