And I’m back to FURY 🙂 I’ve chopped and changed what I was going to post, but I’ve settled on this:
He stretched. Firelight licked around him, moving with the slow ripple of the muscles in his back. Her deep teeth marks lined his shoulders and bruised his upper arms. The taste of his skin, the hint of flesh and the sweet stickiness of his blood still lingered on her tongue.
Everything about him was delicious. It was fucking irritating.
As always, you can read more Six Sundays here.
I’ve been looking through my books on magic again. I think this post is more bunny fodder than something I’m going to use in my fantasy romance world building. Still I thought I’d share.
(I will admit to The Enc. of 5000 Spells being addictive…as well as weighty 😀 )
This time it’s tips to work into money spells that caught my interest:
Colours: Green and Gold. (I think this being a US book, it’s defaulting on cash colour. For a Gaslight Romance would it be white, for those vast sheets of white fivers? 😉 )
Numbers: 2. To hold the idea of doubling and increasing.
Planets: Jupiter. As the planet of good fortune. The Moon. As the body of magic and wish fulfilment. Mercury. For the Roman god of prosperity.
Timing: Spells should be performed under a waxing moon.
And now I have the start of another bunny. Damn those white fivers…
I can finally reveal my cover for SYNTHETIC DREAMS:
Isn’t it pretty? It’s a creation of the wonderful Frauke at CrocoDesigns. She also created GAMBIT (another cover that I love)
Here’s the unofficial blurb (The novella is due out 27 February, so the cover copy is still being polished 🙂 )
With no past to turn to and no hope for the future, Vyn Somerton does what she always has: she survives on her skills, hidden away from the prying eyes of the Corporation. Until now.
Vyn has created the ultimate in illegal gear, simulacrum, the perfect virtual lie. It’s untraceable, untouchable, and until recently, impossible to create. She has plans to make herself rich beyond her wildest dreams…that is, until the Corporation turns her life upside down. Again.
Paul Cross is a part of that upheaval. Catalyst. Corporate Mercenary. Incredible and forbidden. He’s been watching Vyn, knowing that she’s the key to finding and rescuing his brother, a brother the Corporation he works for has replaced with a stranger. She’s a means to an end. But watching her, moving though her life, he finds his thoughts becoming unexpectedly…carnal.
With their enemies closing in, Vyn’s life is in chaos. Can she trust Paul or is he the key to the destruction of all her worlds?
In wip, news, FURY has crawled kicking and screaming over 44k. It’s feeling like the endless wip…always 20k before it’s done. I also got whapped by another bunny–paranormal romance this time. I wish they were still little bunnies. This one is another series (Me? Series??). Evil things.
I have a slight reputation amongst my follow chatterers at writechat.net of attracting plot bunnies. They do seem to appear from the most innocuous things. But when I read the likes of the following from Project Boreas my brain explodes with them:
‘…spring [on Mars] might be advanced if the polar ice caps were destabilised, for instance by reducing their albedo with a layer of dust of plants. More speculatively, the planet’s precessional cycle might be adjusted with an artificial moon.’
I don’t think the science the first idea was based on stands up anymore, but it doesn’t mean you can make a planet that would react in that way. I love terraforming. Or better yet, altering people to survive in a particular environment…
And creating an artificial moon? Whose brain went straight to the Death Star? 😀
The idea of life aboard the moon at various stages…though I have to admit, the idea of the moon at the end of its life, past its prime is fun. Having to keep it going on limited resources when their work is vital to maintain the health of the planet they serve…
Nope. I am ignoring you, Bunny…
ENERGY released this week, so here’s a snippet from that 🙂
“Was I a pleasant fuck?” She twisted against him, hating his strength and the fact that she could still taste him on her tongue, feel the ghost of him on and in her body. “Did you enjoy the fact that I knew nothing about sex? That I slavered over you. How shitty was it for you? Really?”
You can read the blurb, excerpts and links for ENERGY here
And as always there are more sixes here
On my hunt to flesh out a fantasy city, I need to people it. I need trades and jobs from the past, which will make it sound more authentic. Here are a few I’ve come across in my hunt:
Malkin: A medieval female kitchen worker.
Skep Maker: A maker of beehives.
Puggera: One–usually a child–who treads clay into paste.
Cutty: A wanton and/or short woman.
Lidster: A dyer
Fistic: A bare knuckle fighter.
And the one I’d most like to be: Concher: One who smoothes chocolate.
Book four in the Planetary Bodies series.
Callie Thiago lives for gossip. And her crew aboard the CMC Theseus provides her with enough lurid tales of sex to keep her lonely nights warm. It sates her curiosity. Mostly. She has no experience of her own to draw on as shyness plagues her…until sheen smashes into her ship.
Now she’s stuck on a small outpost with Aaron Blane, a man she’s wanted for all her adult life. But she knows sheen can’t work through her as it does others. She’s different. And it’s this difference that Blane is more than eager to explore.
Buy here from Ellora’s Cave
You can also read an excerpt here
At my website there’s a little sneak peek behind the series, Planetary Bodies
Energy is part of a linked series. Books 1, 2 and 3, Magnetism, Friction and Current, can be found here.
I wasn’t sure where to place this post, either here or Preternatural Bites. It’s useful stuff for a number of genres. And mainly I simply like knowing this sort of thing. What’s worn is only one aspect. The huge tome I have on covert surveillance covers so much more. 😀
Following a target on foot, usually in a team, means that they can’t all be dressed the same. They’d stand out and it’d look like a gang on their way to a convention. In suits, the urge to ‘Reservoir Dogs‘ it would be beyond temptation…or is that just me?
A target is going to see you. That can’t be helped. Whether he notices you is another matter. The aim is that he shouldn’t be able to remember you or describe you to someone else. You’re shadowing someone, so you become indistinct. Grey.
Ref: Surveillance Tradecraft
Research has dragged me off into divination. Yes, I’m a shiny information magpie. 😀
Divination–the art of getting future information in the present–works, as does other magics, on the idea of synchronicity. Carl Jung called it ‘…an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.’. Synchronicity rejects the idea of coincidence. As in events happening at the same time could reveal something about each other.
In divining, questions have to be precise. Writing them down enables an easier comparison later. And there are numerous ways to seek and find those answers.
Lunar Divination is a simple form. Stare at the moon, pose the question in your mind and keep staring, until the answers and inspiration come.
The I Spy Oracle needs a touch more preparation. It’s a Scottish spell that can only be performed on the first Monday of the month, before sunrise, on an empty stomach and with bare feet.
Walk sunwise–clockwise–around the house, with your eyes shut until you’re back at the entrance again. With your eyes still shut make a circle with your finger and thumb and put it to your eye. Open your eye and the omen is the first thing you see.
Hmm, I could see that one being open to abuse… Yes, I am actively ignoring the plot bunny. 😀
Of course there are a plethora of love oracles. The classic is “He loves me. He loves me not.”
My favourite has to be asking your love question from Apple Peel. The skin is cut away in one, long coil. If not complete, start again. When finished, the peel is thrown over the left shoulder without looking. When it lands, the shape of the peel should offer inspiration to the love question you asked.
And I really like the idea of Tongue Stones. I think it’s the name. It simply brims with possibility… 🙂 These are small meteorites, strange rocks or found artefacts. The stones are sacred and not meant for trivial use.
Finding an answer involves smearing the stone with animal fat at nighttime. Then bury the stone under a mound of grass and earth. Pee on the little hill and let the tongue stone rest over night. The next morning, dig it up.
If the stone is greasy, whatever you have asked an answer for should be a success. Dry and rough and it won’t succeed. Reddish marks would show that your plan is dangerous. And if muck and grass stick, then whatever you plan will find success, just not in the way you thought…
I think my heroine will have a tongue stone. I can’t resist it. Not the classic type, though. Possibly something a little more sentient…
I am the first person to admit I an very bad at mathematics. I couldn’t hope to achieve any sort of serious grounding in the ‘hard’ sciences, but it’s the power of scientific concepts that grab me. Which is probably why I write science fiction romance 😀
I was looking at quantum mechanics and quantum probability recently to help me underpin a story. I needed more depth…but, wow, it’s a subject that makes you stare off into space and frown. Hard.
The quantum world is a weird and slippery one. Erwin Schrodinger got tired of its weirdness and proposed a thought experiment. His most famous one. He shut a cat in a box.
In with the cat is a device that can deliver a lethal poison and a radioactive atomic nucleus. The particle emitted when the nucleus decays releases the poison and kills the cat. The moment of decay can’t be predicted, the only certain outcome is that at some point in time it will decay. When the lid on the box is closed, the cat is alive and the atom undecayed. They become quantum superpositions. The atom is in the state of being both decayed and undecayed. The cat both alive and dead.
Until the lid is opened, until the observation, the measurement is made, the cat exists in the probability of both these states. Surprisingly, with the lid lifted, they never seem to find zombie cats…
I have to say I play quantum probability in real life too. The pause before a lottery email is opened, where the answer exists in a probable state of me both being a millionaire and not.
I’m still trying to open the lid on me becoming insanely rich. I can count zeroes 😉
KIM KNOX 