Like a Whole New Me...

 Do you like it?

I LOVE it!

Adore it!

Want to use it everywhere-- and I WILL!  I will put it EVERYWHERE!  It shall take over the world--
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…

Okay… I may be a little bit sleep deprived.

Just a tad.

But Reese Dante just sent me my new artwork for my logo and my banners and my WHOLE NEW ME!

You will see this logo-- or variations of it, or the new profile pic--around the internet.  In fact, you may even be seeing a new internet-- or at least a new website therein-- but that's in a couple of months, when Quickening is finished (like, a matter of weeks now) and RT is under my belt, and I can breathe.

But right now, I'm just giddy with the whole new me!

Do you like it?  Do you see the purple for Alternative Universe, and the orange for Dark Angst and the lemon yellow for Adorable Amy?

Do you like the tagline?  Not just Angst and Pain, Amy Lane anymore-- nope. Chose which Amy you want! Do you want the happy? Do you want the dark alternative universe? Do you want the serious contemporary dramas?

I am ALL THAT IS THE AMY!  (*cue more evil laughter here*  Can you tell I'm a wee bit sleep deprived?  Just a wee bit. A tad.)

But seriously-- when I spoke about intense conversations about marketing and listening to the people who know more than I do (aherm… Poppy Dennison, Damon Suede, Reese Dante, Mary Calmes--yes, you…) this is part of the result.  There is more to come-- I mean, can't remake my image overnight, but this is a good start.

Now some people are going to miss the dragons-- and, yes, I am one.  But, the plan for the new website (and I'm getting there--been BUSY!) is to have a page of "Amy Quirks"-- everything from the dragon logos to turtle sex to adorable alpacas will be there, with an explanation, of course, so people can get the "Amy in-jokes".  I mean, I've had sort of a social media presence for a while (some of that time has been classier than the other of that time, so we shall keep that. Yes. Turtle sex is classy compared to other stuff.  Just don't even ask) so I'm not going to ditch it all.

Just going to make it easier to find!

So isn't it lovely?  Look for it on all your fine Amy places-- Facebook, Twitter, my website, swag, business cards…

I'm just so excited!  WHEEEEEEEE!!!!

And now to nap.

Okay-- so I'm still damned excited about Immortal-- in fact, so excited I want to offer another excerpt.  Enjoy!

I laid my head on the table, looking around me. That quickly, with a full belly, I fell asleep.

I do not know how long I stayed, but I awakened to voices and the thumps of boots on the floorboards.

“’Ere ’e is,” boomed the smith, Cairsten. “Paid all tha’ money for the scamp, and he’s sleeping on our kitchen table!”

I dragged myself awake by the eyelids, as it were, and tried a sleepy scowl in the direction o’ that great, booming voice.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Were I to start?”

“Not much to start, lad,” Cairsten said kindly, throwing his barrel-built, muscular body into a wooden chair that looked like it were built o’ four-by-fours and halves o’ trees, but that creaked with the fierce weight o’ his body. “We were closing down for the day. Any jobs that come in can be waiting for the early morning and don’t need doing now.”

“Do ye always work so early, then?” I asked hesitantly, because it seemed a strange way to do business.

“It grows too hot in the forge in the summertime,” Diarmuid supplied. He rooted through the cabinets as he spoke, assembling, I figured, the contents o’ our evening meal. “We get used to the early hours so we can run the forge before the full heat o’ day. But in the winter, when the sun comes later, we get up later, and the forge keeps us warm after last night’s embers die.”

I smiled a little, liking the simplicity of it. “Aye,” I acknowledged. I remembering finger-aching cold and being rousted from me bed to fetch water, and this seemed a better way.

“Yer not asking about today, then?” Cairsten asked, a slight smile under his dark hair.

“Yer gonna show me my chores,” I said knowledgeably. Funny how I thought I knew so much when in fact I knew nothing, not even the shape o’ the darkness.

Cairsten laughed, a great booming noise that shook the paned windows in their frames. “Nay, boy—not on yer first day. We’ll tame ye all right, but first we gots to bathe ye.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “A bath? But there’s no holy day tomorrow!”

Diarmuid grunted. “I told ye,” he said, disgusted, and Cairsten shook his head in response.

“Tha’ ye did, but I were thinking good on the—”

“Don’t,” Diarmuid snapped. “Don’t ever ye think good on him.” Diarmuid cast me a veiled glance. 
“Not tha’ one. He dinna deserve nobbut!”

“Aye, aye,” Cairsten acknowledged, holding his hand up to forestall what looked like a flash of Diarmuid’s temper. “I hear ye.” He turned his attention back to me. “We’ll start with a bath, boy, and move on to putting sheets on yer bed, showing ye letters, finding ye clothes. I think Diarmuid’s old things might fit ye fine, and we’ll need a good suit o’ yer own. Did ye not have that at yer cottage?”

I shook my head and looked at the brown-and-gray stained jerkin and breeches I were wearing. “Is all I have,” I said, embarrassed.

“Well, now ye have more,” Diarmuid said with decision. “Bath first.”

They worked as a team, as they did out at the forge. The smith went and fetched the tub while Diarmuid pumped water, first into a pot to boil, and then into bucket after bucket that he dumped into the tub. There were steam rising from the surface before they had me strip naked and step into the tub itself.

Cairsten picked up my clothes using a pair of forge tongs. “I’ll just... just see to these,” he said grimly, and I watched him go, feeling dismal and half-drowned and sorry for myself.

“Me knife,” I said, thinking of the blade in my pocket. It weren’t really a knife, but it had kept me safe from Kump that one night, and all the kindness in the world couldn’t set my mind at ease regarding the bald, barrel-chested, black-bearded smith.

“Ye need a knife?” Diarmuid asked, pressing a piece o’ lye soap and cloth in my hands.

“I.... It were handy,” I said, trying for dignity. “What’s this for?”

“Rub the soap on the cloth, and rub the cloth....” Diarmuid grimaced. “Everywhere.”

I gazed at him blankly. “Everywhere?”

“In yer hair ’til it’s soaked, then under yer arms, between yer legs, behind yer knees, on yer manhood—everywhere.”

The water were already making me flush, or I might’ve flushed all on my own. “Are ye watching to make sure I do?”

Diarmuid grimaced. “I’ll turn me back if ye wash the crease o’ yer arse and everything in there.”

“Why?” I asked boldly, but I were already doing it. His back were broad and stoic. He didn’t seem interested in touching me, and, well, he’d fed me. Small boys are animal, feral—feed them, give them safety, they’ll curl at yer feet and never sniff another soul. I were no exception.

“Ye smell,” he said frankly. “We have to live with ye. Would be good not to smell ye, day in, day out.”

“Excuse me—”

“And ye get sores if ye dinna wash!” He must have felt uncomfortable, because his voice were thickening with that forest accent again.

I looked at my arms and realized he were right. I already had them from the stiff edges of the coarse, chafing fabric.

“They sting in the water,” I told him, as though this had just occurred to me. Well, maybe it had.

He turned and caught my eyes. “Next bath, after living in clean clothes, they willna sting so much. The next one, they’ll be near to gone.”

“How do ye know?” I asked. Aye, I were but a child—but it were occurring to me, looking at me thin limbs, me shins covered in sores from me ragged trousers, that I weren’t much good to these two great, brawny men who could make good porridge and hammer metal and bend it to their will. How could I earn my keep here, where I might have eggs for breakfast one day?

“I were the same when Cairsten found me, only covered in blood to boot. He were taking a fixed wagon to a thatcher’s cottage in the woods. He found me there. I were nobbut four or five.”

“How’d ye get there?” I asked, intrigued in spite o’ myself.

“I dinna know,” Diarmuid said, shivering. “I knew me name, and I kept pointing deeper into the forest. Cairsten said... well, he said he felt summat wrong that direction. He took me with him, cared for me. Were father to me. ’E’s a good man, Teyth. Ye’ll see.”

I scrubbed myself, careful o’ me sores, and thought on it. “I willna be no trouble,” I said after a moment. “I don’t need no raising. I can make porridge fine, haul water, herd chickens and pigs, sweep hearth....” I looked around me uncertainly. There were no chickens or pigs as far as I could see, and Diarmuid had made a better porridge than ever I could. “I....” I bit my lip. Now that some of the grime had been stripped away, I could smell the lack of the smell I’d worn on my skin. “I... would rather not go back,” I said baldly, thinking sadly on Mum. I were an evil boy—Kump had always said so. Mum had begun to agree with him at the end there. And now I’d just gone and proved them both right by turning my back on them.

“Well, we’ll find things for ye ter do,” Diarmuid said, and again I were reassured. It were wise o’ him, I thought later. He didn’t say I could stay right off, although that were what he and Cairsten probably planned the minute they looked at me. He said they’d find things for me to do. Right there, he’d known about me, about the heart o’ me.

He’d known I’d want to make a place, want to grasp a thing that were mine between my fingers and never let go.