How Tired Was I?

I was SO tired on Friday, that I completely forgot my own darned contest!

SORRY! Sorry... so sorry!!!

Anyway, my magic cooking pot produced (with a little help from Chicken) two different winners appeared. One was Jennifer Duffy, who asked for a Marcus and Phillip flashback (much to my delight and Chicken's dismay-- she was hoping for an Adrian/Bracken flashback, and I didn't have the heart to tell her there was one on Goodreads.com but it was too raw for her to read), and the other was Catie, who gets sock yarn! (Bless you sweetheart--it's so good to know you're still out there! How's the degree going? I am still in SO much awe for what it is you study!)

So congratulations to our winners!!! (HUZZAH!) And if Catie can send me an address offline (amylane AT greenshill DOT com) I can send her the sock yarn, and if Jennifer wants to do the same, I can print out the story and send it to her when I'm done. (Can't promise it will be long, but I can promise to love writing it!) Now, the story will probably not be published anywhere but on my website and goodreads.com, but there's always an option to put it in another book in the back or incorporate it in a story somewhere. For the moment, the LG is still indie, which means, well, anything I want goes, right? (Right, Amy... that's right!)

So, well, that's good!

And, in other news... What does this song--



Have to do with this song?



Answer?

They both have a significant symbolic meaning in "Talker's Redemption", the novella I just finished. It's the sequel to "Talker", which is doing sort of terrifyingly well. People's main complaint about "Talker" is that it's short, and that they don't like the past/present structure of the book. The thing is, I sort of meant for Talker (and the sequels) to capture a REALLY INTENSE moment in the lives of the two heroes--I think the people who really really liked it, liked that intensity, and since we're literally IN THE BELL JAR with Talker for the sequel, I think people will like it. (I hope so. This one was literally sitting in front of the keyboard and 'opening a vein'--It would be nice to think that's not all for naught, right?)

So, I did that this weekend (or, well, Friday...)

And what else did I do?

Well, my parents got us free tickets to Sunsplash (a waterslide/mini-golf place nearby) but since we had two soccer games first, well, we went for two rounds of mini-golf, and the kids went on the go-carts. (I'm not a fan of those--I let the kids go with Mate & Chicken!)

And then we came home, after two soccer games and two rounds of mini-golf and did...

Not. A. Blessed. Thing.

And as for the picture? Well, that's my Squish, playing soccer as best as she can. (Her game was LITERALLY a comedy of errors. In the first quarter, she got run over by THE ENTIRE COMBINED TEAMS, and as her father reffed the knot of kids going after the ball like rabid weasels, the other coach ran over to our sobbing daughter. He turned around and was sort of upset. He couldn't get her back on the field after that either-- turns out, she was wearing the wrong damned shoes. Yup. That's us, folks. High organization, we are not.)

And as for this next picture?




This is either Chicken playing soccer one man down (her entire team was THRASHED by the end of the game--but they only lost 1-2, so it was almost a moral victory, since the other team had six subs and our team didn't even have a full field!) or Zoomboy playing soccer in the fifth dimension. Yeah, I know he's there in body, but spirit? Still not so much. Either that, or it's Mate, playing soccer with two little girls on Squish's team, who have an older sister on Chicken's team. They decided Mate was their personal daddy for the day.

It doesn't matter-- any way you slice it, you may have noticed the recurring theme here...

I knew you did!

And the real irony? I played soccer in the eighth grade. I sucked. We had no idea what we were doing--they kept putting me at half-back because they figured I'd do less damage there.

Ah, the evil in our genes...