Easily Offended? Don't Read This.

You know, sometimes I wonder if God really has a sense of humor. Yeah, yeah I know--the aardvark is alleged proof of the Almighty's comedic skills but let's get serious for a second:

Huh? The war in Iraq? Not that fucking serious, moron. This is my blog so it's about me.

Do you think that maybe, just freaking maybe, someone will give me a damn break? Just for comic relief, say, or to raise funds for the homeless? Maybe even as a charity? SOMETHING.

Okay, explain this to me: my younger brother (we'll call him..........er................Stan) is the executor of my mother's estate--mostly because he lives in the same town. He moved into her house (which I had no problem with). Then I get this phone call. Here's the conversation.

"Hey, Celina, what are you doing?"
"Dying, how about you?"
"Are you busy this week?"

(nota bene: any conversation with "Are you busy this week" as the second conversational gambit is probably not going to turn out well.)

"Yes. Very busy."
"Oh. Doing what?"
Celina sighs. "What in the hell do you want, Stan?"
"The estate goes to probate on Thursday and I haven't inventoried the storage units yet."

(Pause for screaming and cussing. Allow me to point out that not only can he not SPELL executor, but is obviously incapable of looking up the definition as well)

"Stan, you live in the fucking town. Tell me: is it so damn hard to write down 'TV'??? It's only two fucking letters - "t" and "v"."

Needless to say, I have to go do it, as I've done the house and the second house in Florida already. Allow me to also point out that this conversation took place while I was driving back from the exact place that I have to return to in the morning. Neither of my brothers have helped with the whole process, which leaves me a little bitchy about the situation. Personally, I blame God--the Christian God, naturally, since according to his self-righteous followers everything is actually MY fault. Also, since God doesn't have a sense of humor about anything save torturing me (spare me the selfish comments, pal) then I have no compunction about amusing myself.

I charged a round-trip ticket on my older brother's credit card to get there. Since Dana isn't participating in this orgy of laziness save to complain and critique, he can bite my ass. While I'm there, I'm going to *accidentally* scrape my keys along Stan's car, Visine his dog, and possibly think about spilling something really foul-smelling on the carpet in his bedroom.

After all, if God is laughing then I can laugh too. Take that.

To catch you up

Ah, to kill an Elf.

That's what I do for a living, theoretically. In actual practice, I sell antiques and tend bar in order to support my Elf-killing habit. Could life get any better than this? Not until football season.

Right now, I'm finishing up Coils of the Dreamworld. It's the sequel to The Darkshifter's Empath, which is currently being *shopped.* *Shopped.* Sounds like my books are little Wal-marts. Makes me think of lots of little old people on work release from the home parking their carts in my way. What fun. At any rate, the books are designed to stand alone, although I suppose they could be compressed into a single book if anyone wanted to read 300,000 word long books that weren't required for class.

There are not, however, any Elves in Darkshifters. The Elves come into play in Asphodel, which is a ten book, two-series work I'm rewriting at the moment. I kill lots of Elves there. After a while, I began to find new and unusual ways to kill them. I fried a few, spitted a couple on harpy spears, then buried some in the sand where I devoutly hope they'll mummify. I really like the Asphodel story, all Elf-killing aside. The world is huge and strongly developed. I like the characters too. Darkshifters is...well, darker. The concept is more complex and evolves around one question: how do you turn the ultimate good guy into the ultimate bad guy? (aka Harry Potter turns into Voldemort)

Add to that a few poems, a couple of short stories, and a few checks for bills here and there and you have my current writing projects on the table. Hopefully, I'll finish them before they finish me.