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You guys are getting two blogs today. I’m spoiling you, but, I figured I couldn’t leave you with me going to the doctor about the spider bite without telling you what I’ve learned.
I have been envenomated. Couldn’t resist using the word. I mean how often do you have a reason to use such a cool word? It was a brown recluse. Let me say, that the bites do hurt. I’ve never felt anything quite like it. I’m on heavy duty anti-biotic, and we wait. We see what it’s going to do. My doctor has already recommended a plastic surgeon, just in case. I have a list of things to look for that will be the clue to call the surgeon. I’m really, really hoping not to need that number.
One of the most disturbing things about the whole thing is that I got bit during the day yesterday. I know that because when I undressed for bed I found the bite. Already swollen, already unpleasant looking. So, sometime during my day while I moved about my house some big, freaking, spider crawled around on me, and bit me. And I never felt a thing until that night when I found the bite. It didn’t even start to hurt until bedtime. Or maybe spider bites are like cuts; it doesn’t hurt until you see it bleed.
We’ve already talked to the exterminators about coming in for another round of spraying. And yes, I will have to be out of the house for five days after they do it. Peachy.
Tomorrow is the Wolf Howl here in St. Louis. I’ll be there. No worries.
And on the same topic, I told Darla to get the word out that the reading tomorrow is so very not kid safe. I’ve broken my rule and put a sex scene in the first thirty pages of the book. Which means I’ll be reading at least part of the sex scene to you guys tomorrow. Again, breaking a rule of mine. What rule? No reading sex scenes in front of a mixed sex group. But, you know what? I argued with this book and my characters that I didn’t want a sex scene that early in the book, and the characters win. One of the things that made this book so difficult was that I was fighting with the characters. I’ve stopped fighting. I’m going back through and filling in the blanks of the scenes I skipped because of artistic differences between me and my fictional friends.
I actually did four pages today. I was pretty impressed by that considering the day and it’s events. Part of the incentive is that one of the scenes I left blank is in the first part of the book. Yes, that means I have to finish the scene or I’ll be reading tomorrow and have to say, oops, don’t have that yet. Performance anxiety, who me?
Anyway, I’m going to finish this up, and go to bed. It has been a long, stressful, pain-filled day. I freaked some, but after I’d done everything I could about the bite, and was left with only being able to watch and wait, I was strangely calm. Calm and centered, oddly. Is it that a sign of maturity or shock?
I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to work at all today, but I knew one thing. If I didn’t put my butt in my desk chair and try to write, I would absolutely get nothing done. So, Jon and I made a deal. I’d go try to work for an hour, and if I couldn’t get anything done, then I’d quite for the day. But an hour later, almost exactly, I had four pages, and some notes for five. Cool.
I got out the Nine Inch Nails again. It seems my music of stress for this book. Hell, it’s always my music of stress. It’s the late night, and I need to finish sound track. It’s the, something fucking hurts, but the deadline looms music. It’s playing for me right now.
Those four pages were part of the sex scene I’d been putting off. It reads just fine. Sometimes pain works for me, and scare me badly enough and I’ll translate it to sex, or violence, or both. Take your pain, put it into harness, make that bitch work for you. I do.