Squee! THE CARDINAL RULE is up on Amazon now! No cover art or anything yet, but it’s listed! That makes it, like, real! Rilly real! SQUEE!
Now all I have to do is finish the AAs so that they’ve got a manuscript to make rilly real. :) Delightfully, the AAs are going very easily (she said, trusting she wasn’t jinxing herself with only 80 pages to go). I should finish them tonight, and I’ll post them tomorrow morgle.
Harold wanted to know how many books I would squee for. I figure I’m good for at *least* every new pen name. :)
There was something else I’ve been meaning to say all day. What wa…oh yeah.
There’s a place along my walk route that’s got two or three apple trees growing in the yard. I’ve never seen an apple tree before. I thought it was too cold/the growing season was too short to grow them up here. Every time I walk by the place, I’m like a little kid, staring with big round eyes at the apples just growing right from the tree! It’s like magic!
I want one of those apples so badly that Snow White’s queen would have me in a snap. I just … *want* one! I’ve never had an apple right off the tree before! But the people who live there are never in the yard, so I can’t ask, and I don’t even know how you tell apples are ripe anyway. None of them have fallen to the ground yet, but many of them are reddening up nicely. I might have to go ask if I can have one.
*Apples*! On *trees*! It’s *magic*!
miles to Mount DOOOOM: 44
Wow is it ever clear that you did not grow up with apple trees. Take it from someone who did: it’s not magic, many apple trees do not in fact produce tasty apples, and rotten apples on the ground not only stink but attract yellowjackets and wasps by the swarm. Also, apple trees are perverse and will drop most of their load all at once.
As a consequence, windfall apples need to be cleared up in the dead of night of just before dawn when the stinging bugs aren’t out. (A task
I imagine is even more difficult in the Alaskan summer) Mowing the lawn around an apple tree is an adventure in never knowing when you’ll slice through a forgotten apple and suddenly discover several very irate yellowjackets.
Oh, and apple trees that happen to have a branch hanging over the roof will manage to drop apples just the right size to travel into the rain gutter and clog it.
Hnf. *I* think it’s magic.
It *is* magic. And absolutely nothing beats the taste of a ripe apple just off the tree. Depending on the variety, you can determine ripeness by color. Generally, green is bad and red or yellow is good. Get one if you can. They’re awesome.
Do ya wanna see if my sister will let us come to her house so you can pick an apple off a tree?