Author: Jonathon

The car comes in about fifteen minutes to take us to the airport. I volunteered to combine several trips in one. My agent, who knows me, asked if I were sure. Weeks ago, I was sure. Now — what the fuck was I thinking? I will have three to four plane trips in that many days, if you count lay overs, more. What was I thinking? I was thinking, well, I’m getting better. And wouldn’t it be better to combine trips so it doesn’t keep disrupting our lives, my life. Once this is out of the way not another trip until the end of October. It sounds like a good plan, but it is not. Because, if I hadn’t decided to be brave I would go out, and come back tomorrow to my home, my family, my dogs, my office, my schedule, and my stuff. Now I won’t be back for days. I won’t do this again. I ran it up the flag pole of bravery, and the artillery of phobias is kicking my butt. Help. Shit. I’ve gotta to go and finish getting ready. AAAAH!

Jon and I are about ready to leave out tomorrow for businessy meetings in several states. When I last went out on tour I made one compromise to the t-shirts and jackets. I wore a minimizer bra under it all so it didn’t ruin the line of the shirt and jacket. Ruin the line of the t-shirt and jacket? Why should my body conform to the clothes? I’ve also been watching a little more current television. When I was a young girl a woman did not wear a shirt that strained across her chest. It was considered slutty. Now, everyone on television seems to be straining the buttons on their blouses. And most of these women have small chests. Those are push up bras under there, because most do not have enough body fat to have enough chest to threaten their clothes. But nothing fits my curves without straining a little unless I tame those curves. I was actually happy that I’d found some under stuff that allowed my curves to fit into the ever smaller and narrow shirts that seem to be out there for women, but no more. I’m striking a blow for women with curves. I’m tired of clothes making me feel like I need to hide some of me. No more. No minimizers on this trip. Maybe some designer out there will take pity and actually make clothes that fit and look good on someone that has a chest, and has arms, and thighs, and calves. All of me is round and bodacious, and I am tired of the fashion industry making me feel like I should apologize for that.

We didn’t get to go to the Pirate Festival here in St. Louis. Saturday it rained hard, and Saturday night I came down with a fever. Apparently, I’ve caught a bug. The fever is finally below a hundred this morning, but I feel like crap. I did not sleep well at all last night and nothing I took broke the fever. It was like it just had to burn itself out medicine be damned. I have an appointment to get my nails done because we’re going to be flying out on Wedsneday for a lot of business meetings. One of those meetings will include an on camera interview commercial sort of thing. Please do not bother Darla about when this will be on. I don’t know. She doesn’t know. This is a first time for this, and when we get details we’ll let you know. You now know almost as much as we know. Okay? God, I do not want to get my nails done. I never want to get them done, but when I feel this bad, I really don’t want to use up my energy doing primping stuff. Trinity was sooo excited about Pirate Festival She had an outfit ready to go on Friday night. Then it rained. Then I got fever that night and we couldn’t go. I asked her be grown up about it, that I was disappointed to. She rallied and we decided to make Sunday a pirates party at home. We picked out pirate movies here at home, and found we had more than we thought we had. Started Sunday with her choice of Haunted history’s Ghost Ships. Pirates of the Caribbean next, then I had to take a break. I tried for a nap, couldn’t sleep. Finally, a soaking bath with lavender and salts in it, helped. She waited the movies on me which I told her she didn’t have to, but she wanted to. Very sweet, especially after my being sick ruined her fun. We watched the live action Peter Pan, that is my favorite version, the most recent one. We still have a stack of pirate movies to go. Blackbeard’s Ghost, several animated Peter Pans, Treasure Planet, and if we can find it, The Crimson Pirate.
I hope everyone had fun at the Pirate Festival, sorry we missed it. I look forward to it next year, and hope they have better weather. Now I’m going to go lay down, just doing this has made me feel not so good again. Damnit.

The St Louis Pirate Festival starts this weekend, and continues next weekend. Laurell and I plan to attend sometime while it is going on, but we’re not sure when. Reguardless of if you see us, go and have fun on your own. There’s nothing like a Piratical Day, and her’s an oppertunity to have one.

As a writer you often agonize about a decision to rewrite especially before the first draft is finished. Sometimes it is the kiss of death. A way to tell if the decision that you made the day before is in actuality the right one, is how you feel the following morning. I felt great. I felt more eager to get to work than I had in days. So many things that I’d been struggling to include in the end of the book were being delayed or made almost impossible by the addition of hordes of police. No police, and we can do a lot of things that would wreck Anita’s reputation among the police. Okay, wreck it more than it already is. She’s sleeping with vampires and lycanthropes, to some of the police that’s like sleeping with the enemy. Anyway, I’m happy with the rewrite. Twenty pages, and a little over, two chapters lost, and I’m okay with it. Cool.

I’m doing the rewrite. Two chapters down the drain. I think we’ll keep this to vampires and shapeshifters, and Edward and his friends, for the back-up. I talked it over with Jon and Darla, and I think the bad guys are more likely to kill hostages if the police show up. I think the vamps will think they have more options if they believe Anita is there in her capacity as Jean-Claude’s human servant. Afterall in Anita’s world there is only one penalty for vampires that harm humans – death. If they see police they’ll know that death is all she can offer them. If they see other vampires and shapeshifters, they may believe they have other options. It would at least give them hope. Hope is important in a hostage situation. You need the bad guys to believe there’s a chance they can walk away. If they don’t believe in that chance, they have nothing to loose. You don’t want people with hostages to feel they have nothing to loose.

Today, so far, knock wood, is a better day. No one had to go to the emergency room. Strangely, I’ve actually gotten fewer pages, which I didn’t think was possible, but I did finish up a piece of editing. I got the dedication for MISTRAL’S KISS off, as well. The original one I wanted to use turned out the poetry was not in public domain. It would take weeks to get permission for use and we’re down to the wire. I actually held the advanced reader’s copy, ARC, in my hands today. So the dedication can’t wait for weeks. I am sitting here in my beautiful new office, with one pug snoring beside me. The rest are in the main part of the house, probably snoring over there. Anyway, I’m in an exceptionally bad mood. I’ve been in a good mood for days. I’ve managed not to be my usual moody self. A new attempt to clean up those murky areas of the psyche. It’s been going well, until today. Nothing big, if I had a back slide it should have been yesterday when the injured list around us kept growing. But I was cool yesterday, took it in stride. Today something small set me off, so small in comparison. Darla asked me, “What are you mad at?” It seems like such a simple question, but I couldn’t answer it. I don’t know. Why am I this angry? When you over react to something small it’s not about the small thing, it’s about something else. Something that may not even be related to what seemed to trigger it. I’ve thought off and on while I worked for two hours, what am I mad at? I still don’t have an answer. Anita’s anger issues are very close to home. Would shooting up people on paper help? Would doing some violent scene help this anger? I don’t know, but I do know that the scene I’m in isn’t about violence. It’s about thinking, about using our resources in an intelligent manner. Anita and the police have hostages to deal with, and that means the whole shoot first, ask questions later, is not a viable option. I’m wishing Anita hadn’t called in the cops. I could still rewrite it, so that she doesn’t. We have Edward with us, and his back-up, so could we go in just us? Would that work, or would it be putting the hostages at risk? That was the original call, that Anita didn’t trust her and Edward to negotiate for hostages. I mean, they’re great at killing, but saving lives . . . Sometimes not so good. We don’t want to endanger the nice people, but including the police is a major hassle for Anita. This is a problem that might be easier to solve without the law looking over her shoulder. Yeah, she has a badge, but being an executioner means that her idea of law enforcement can be pretty simplistic. Bad guy, have warrant, dead bad guy. Simple. Once you invite in too many different flavors of police you loose control of the situation. It becomes complex. I don’t want complex today. I want simple. If Anita didn’t call in the major back up, would we be able to keep the damage to the civillians lower? Hell, would Anita be in too much danger without the police back up? I’m not sure. I’m really not. I guess it’s a matter of deciding are we going to negotiate for hostages, or just kill these bastards. Wait, I know the answer. Kill them. Okay, can we kill them before they take innocent lives? Answer, no. And that’s with or without the extra police help. It’s a situation that if the bad guys want to take hostages down, they can, and there is no way to stop them completely. Do I rewrite it so that there are fewer people in danger? One of the nice things about only playing a federal marshal on paper is that if the situation gets too out of hand I can rewrite it tomorrow. In real life police work doesn’t have a rewrite button. I can be brilliant on paper because I have days to plan it, redo it, until it works. My hat is always off to the real police, who react to impossible situations every day, in the blink of an eye, because that’s how fast real life happens. I like fiction, you can always fix it later. I’m outta here for the day. I don’t know what to do with the bad guys, or how to save the hostages. I don’t like the idea of there being no way to save all the hostages, but if the situation remains as I’ve written it, then some will die. If I’m going to do the police work on paper, I’m not going to cheat. If it’s a bad situation then it’s bad, and it will be as realistic as I can make it, except for the vampires. But other than the vampires, I’ll do it right. But right, sucks sometimes.

I managed to get three pages of new stuff done. This is the finale in many ways. The end to the big chase and stuff, but yet there are issues I’ve raised so I know that this can’t be all there is to the book. So after the big scene there will need to be at least one, or two scenes, that answer some questions.
I’m going to hand this blog over to Jonathon to explain the title.

Jon here:
Its been a day.
Food poisoning, Broken bones, sick dogs.
To calm everyone down, none of the principles in the house are sick, or injured. And Darla didn’t break anything and should be back tomorrow. One of her dogs got sick and so she stayed home. My parent’s dog also had an emergency trip to the Vet, but the prognosis looks good, and we’ll know more in a few days. (the joy of owning an older rescue can sometimes be hard to see.)
That was the cloud. The silver lining was that we’ve had a chance to implement a slight change and improvement in our inventory system here at Ma Petite, and soon the orders that go out will have a (in my opinion) slightly more professional feel to them. Not to say they haven’t been professional before, but that the professionalism is going to increase.
Enough of my yammering, I’m going to sleep.

News from Derek Ruiz, Marketing Communications Mgr., Marvel DBPro:
1. All the original orders have been canceled.
2. If you preordered at a shop go there with the new order numbers and tell them you still want the comic…
3. If you Pre ordered the 3 original covers tell them you want to put your money toward the issues after one instead of a refund…Since the comic only has one regular cover and 2 incentive covers (Which some shops will sell for more money).
Please use the folowing Item numbers in your new order:
REGULAR COVER BY: Brett Booth (JUL068380)
INCENTIVE COVER (1:10 RATIO): GREG HORN (JUL068380)
SKECTH INCENTIVE (1:50 RATIO) BRETT BOOTH (JUL068381)
The Ratio is how many regular covers a retailer needs to order to receive a given incentive cover.
e.g. an order for 50 regular covers gets the store 1 sketch cover and 5 Greg Horn Covers.
Hopefully this will clear up any and all confusion regarding the Pre-Orders since the Marvel announcement.

This is a Dual Effort Post© Laurell and I are going to split this blog.
so anyway: the Comic
better covered in the following links:
http://www.dabelbrothers.com
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=83670
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/001633111.cfm
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=8340
http://dabelbrothers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=293
or
http://forum.laurellkhamilton.org/showthread.php?p=392459#post392459
All in all, this is the news that we haven’t been sharing about the comic. We’ve known for a while, but were told not to share until the official announcement.
Now that the official announcement is done, we can say how excited we are about the news. The deal with Marvel will get the comics out to a greater audience that was possible before, and there will be a bigger push on the business side to get the word out.
So, I’m done and I’m going to let Laurell Type now.
I tried to do a blog last night about the comic news, but realized that it’s a comic, so the visual is important. Jon had already gone up ahead of me, so instead of dragging him out of bed to do all the links above, I thought, we’ll do it tomorrow. It’s tomorrow. I hope you enjoy the art work as much as we have over these last months. We’ve been seeing Brett Booth art across our desks for weeks. Now you can see why we’ve been thrilled. The Greg Horn cover is new to us, just got to see it this week, but again an exciting new take on Anita. Sorry we couldn’t share the news earlier but they made us promise not to tell. The flash trailer I found particularly cool. Maybe technology isn’t all bad, after all.