FOR TROUBLE IN MIND'S HEROINE, EVERY CASE IS PERSONAL

 Alana Matheson is not your typical buttoned-down FBI Special Agent. For one thing, she’s got a past that would make the most seasoned agent cringe, a past she keeps strapped down tight so it doesn’t blow her wide open. Then there’s her intuition, a sixth sense that has given her the best solve rate in the Nashville office, but made her the last person anyone wants to draw as a partner.

Lana takes her most difficult cases personally. She takes the kidnappings and the murders hard, for reasons she reveals to no one. The latest case she’s been given—the kidnapping of a little boy and his mother—is no different. And she has a feeling about this one. Something is telling her the obvious suspect, the husband and father, is not responsible.

But what is she to think when that suspect brings in an investigator from the outside? Has Dr. Ethan Roberts brought in a ringer to help her find his wife and son? Or to run an elaborate and professional interference?

Lana’s reaction to that investigator—her new “partner”—is anything but professional. Gabriel Cruz is darkly, deliciously attractive, and his talents are not limited to his good looks. He’s a telepath, something he’s not trying to hide. In fact, Lana’s treated to a demonstration almost as soon as she meets him, which yields a key piece of evidence in her investigation.

After that, Gabriel dogs Lana every step of the way as she tracks the men who have kidnapped her two vulnerable victims. The more time they spend together, the more they are drawn to each other. She won’t be able to resist him forever. But there is more to Gabriel than he's revealed. And it’s only a matter of time before the secrets of Lana's past catch up to her.

RT Book Reviews Four-Star rated Trouble in Mind launches February 16! You can pre-order your Kindle copy now on Amazon.

INTERSTELLAR RESCUE SQUAD RECRUITING NOW!

Want to get all the latest on the Interstellar Rescue series books, characters, plot bunnies and worldbuilding? Want the newest cover reveals first? Wanna learn how to cuss in Thrane? Join the Interstellar Rescue Squad, my new group forming on Facebook now! Just go to my author page on Facebook (DonnaSFrelickAuthor) and message me with a request to join and I’ll sign you up!

Why the group? As many of you with author pages know, it can be tough to reach everyone who has Liked your Page when you post because the Evil FB Gnomes refuse to send the post out to all those Likes. No one knows exactly why, except they want you to Boost the post for a price.

With a group, everyone in the group will see every post. Also, group members can post, too, and talk to each other! So let’s have fun and to Portal’s Hell with the perai EFBGs!

Cheers, Donna

*BTW, the “teasers” you’ve been seeing this week and last week were done by PR folks Tonigrace and Colleen at Inklings Literary Agency. Ain’t they purty?

My feathered friends and me

Osprey on a foreshore tree

I've got a thing about wild birds. If you're my friend on Facebook (and if you're not, you should be) I often share photos of my avian buddies. They're as close as I have to pets.

Anyway, what's that got to do with writing? Well you'd be amazed at what can prompt a writer. A couple of years back I wrote a long short story about Admiral Ravindra's tattoo. In his society admirals don't have tatts, you see. It was a plot point in Morgan's Choice, and I was prompted to explain how this quintessential admiral acquired a mark which was so far below his status.

You can see an approximation of the tattoo on the book's cover. It's a vulsaur, a huge, predatory bird native to Ravindra's home planet. I had a lot of fun writing this little story. And something I witnessed down at the beach helped me to flesh out one scene.

One regular photo opportunity at my local beach is an osprey. They're fairly big raptors that hunt in the shallow waters of the bay and perch in the trees along the foreshore. One day, I cam across an osprey taking a bath. It was for all the world like a big duck, fluffing up its feathers and splashing around in the shallows. When it was finished it held up its wings to dry in the sun. Then it took off from a standing start. It leapt into the air and swept those wings down hard to get lift, then turned and heading off. It was an amazing experience. Here are a few photos.
 

 

So when I needed a scene where the vulsaur lands in shallow water, then takes off - I knew just how that would work. If you'd like a look at Ink, it'll set you back just US$0.99. You'll find it at Amazon  Nook Kobo Apple.

Oh, by the way, I'll be removing the Ptorix Empire Omnibus from sale at the end of January. So if that's your thing, get it while you still can. Available only on Amazon. Four full novels for $4.99. It's a bargain.

When My Brain is as empty as my feathered friends'

This week I really could not think of a blog topic (plus I'm composing this on my phone as I'm on a two day break with hubs). Even looking through several links to suggested blog topics or suggestions on Twitter didn't help. So since someone asked about my chooks last week because I hadn't mentioned them for a while, I thought I'd talk about my girls.
Why chickens? Well, we'd been talking about pets for our kids. We've had cats but my husband didn't want more. I don't like dogs, and my 11yo is nervous of them after being bowled over by a couple of black labs as a toddler. We already had a leopard gecko, bought for our eldest. Neither of us wanted a rabbit or guinea pig, and hubs was dead against hamsters.
So we looked at chickens, or rather bantams. Bantams are half the size of normal chickens. Some breeds make especially excellent pets, don't require a huge amount of care, don't smell too much, and come with the benefit of eggs. We went for a breed called Pekins because they're supposed to be easy to hand tame and happy to be handled. The kids were enthusiastic. We researched chicken care, bought and set up a coop, and found a local breeder selling them. That was nearly four years ago now.
We've lost some along the way, three in all. Right now we have four Pekins (dark grey Scoop who is the oldest and the boss, lighter grey Chiana, ginger Kyru, and mille fleur Rush), and our white Leghorn bantam Eowyn. I love my girls. It's incredibly relaxing to watch them forage around the garden in summer making cute little clucking noises. While they hardly like to climb in your lap like a cat, you can pick them up and stroke them, though they prefer it if you feed them while doing it. They'll come when called if they think you have food. They don't like the wind - it makes them skittish.

Sulking because it's winter

And they're surprisingly savage predators. I've seen them stalk, beat and eat a frog. Hubs has seen Eowyn attack a mouse. Think they just eat worms and corn? Nope. Chickens are omnivorous, but remember there are dinosaurs in their ancestry. Have you seen Jurassic Park and the velociraptors? Bird ancestors. And sometimes, when one of my girls is eyeing me up, I wonder if she's remembering that past where her predecessors ruled the world and snapped up my furry little ancestors for a snack...
Ancestry aside, my chooks are fairly featherbrained, but the local cats won't mess with them when they encounter each other in the garden. I guess for the cats it's a bit disturbing to encounter a bird that's as big as you and doesn't run when you get face to face. My girls might be scared of the wind up their tail feathers, but they'll stare down a cat. We have had trouble with a local dog fox taking too keen an interest this winter, but we've fortified the coop and I've kept them shut in. This time of year it's too cold for me to sit outside with them, hence why I've mentioned them less. Come spring we plan to buy a few more, and I'll be back out there with them when the weather warms up. Expect more updates then.

In sunnier times

On My Bookshelf
Inspired by Riley Moreland's new book blog where she's featuring books on her shelf HERE, I thought I'd share a current list of what I've just read. I had another reading binge over Christmas and the New Year, finishing off some series books I had, plus two gifted to me by the authors.
CE Kilgore's Corwint Central Agent Files - the side stories. I'm missing just one of those currently available at the moment, but I've now read and reviewed the rest.
Rachel Leigh Smith's A'yen's Legacy series. I haven't read the latest release but finally caught up with book two and three.
Pippa DaCosta's Girl from Above: Trapped. Gritty space opera, and this third book scored a 5* rating from me after my dislike for anti-hero Caleb only earned the previous two books 4*.
And lastly Erica Hayes Scarred, the superhero sequel to Scorched. Love these. The heroine is so conflicted, and the two male MCs a complete contrast with Verity caught in the middle.


Happenings
If you aren't signed up to my newsletter, this is the time to do so! It generally goes out at the start of each month, and February's edition is packed with giveaways!

#amwriting #reallyIam

Happy Book Birthday to Farewell Andromeda!

The first anniversary of my debut book release (Farewell Andromeda), and with it the launch of my authorly career, happened on January 8th!

Woot! It's a little hard to believe a year has already flown by. (Wait, does this mean I'm no longer a debut author by definition?)

Tihara and Donner's story continues to get good reviews, award nominations and kudos.

There might...possibly...even be a sequel to their story in the works. *wink, wink*

Pippa, I Feel Your Pain

So yes, I am writing. Really, I am.

I'm about to confess something I shouldn't. The Outer Planets is three months behind schedule. Shame, shame, shame. Bad writer, no donut!

As I read Pippa's recent blog A Problem with Pantsing, I found myself nodding my head and muttering in a distinctly Yoda-like fashion, "Yesss, yessss. You know the power of the Dark Side."

I'm a Pantser too. And yes, we're certifiable. I listen to peers (some who have gone on to become huge NYT best sellers), talk about graphing out plot points and dark moments and story climaxes, and my eyes glaze over. It's not that my stories don't have plot points, dark moments and climaxes--or my personal favorite--"over-the-cliff crises"--it's just that I can't sit down and PLAN how these all unfold within the story arc and the plot. It totally kills my creative process. Totally!

So...

I can't use outlines. *Holds up cross to ward off evil entity*

I can't plot with tables. (Dammit Jim, Excel is for numbers!)

I can't use sticky notes or index cards to arrange and re-arrange plot structure on the walls.
For reals? Some people actually have that kind of wall space? Mine's all dedicated to posters and pictures of Star Wars, seashells and T-birds. (Told ya I was random.)

I have attempted all of the above. The result is the same. My creativity goes catatonic.

I'm the worst (or the best, depending on your viewpoint) kind of Pantser there is--a freaking Wild Card Pantser. I have a basic idea who the characters are and where the story is going, and then I turn my muse loose and hang on for dear life. Sometimes some pretty amazing things happen when the ol' muse gets the bit in her teeth and breaks into a gallop, and others times (*cough* the last three weeks *cough*) she's dragging along with her nose on the ground like the Indian pony in End of the Trail.

The problem with pantsing is you tend to ride that headstrong muse right into blind corners and dark alleys (yup, blame it on the muse) and then you have to FIX what you and your overzealous artistic partner broke. And that can be an agonizing and confidence-shattering thing for a writer.

Yeah, I'm kind of at the agonized and confidence-shattered part. But I'm close to wrapping it all up (minus two POVs and three stray plotlines) and sending my novel off to an editor so she can find more even more stuff to fix that I didn't even realize was broken. Yet.

Glamorous life of a writer, que no?

The scary thing is that probably some of your fave authors write exactly the same way Pippa and I do. The creative process is an uniquely individual thing. Ya gotta just go with it and learn to master the beast. *cracks whip*

Maybe I'm Writing a Universe Instead of a Series?

After reading Greta's blog Don't You Love Series, I started doing a lot of pondering about my own. Hmmmm. Maybe what I'm writing isn't so much "series" as it is "universe."

Series tend to be books that are either about the continuing saga of central characters or spin-off characters related to the original central characters. Once the worldbuilding is established in book one, it's carried through the series, with the occasional twists, surprises, and undiscovered truths.

Does The Inherited Stars Series fit that description?

Well, yes and no.

There are no central characters that carry through all the stories. In fact, the first three works--novelette Farewell Andromeda and novels Inherit the Stars and the upcoming The Outer Planets, may seem to share almost nothing in common. They have different characters and take place in very diverse timelines. Are they related? Oh yes! The threads are very subtle but they're definitely there. (No spoilers. I'll leave those for readers to ferret out.)

Likewise, the worldbuilding is different. Inherit the Stars is distant future, set on a prototype starship. Farewell Andromeda takes place two hundred years after Inherit the Stars and happens on a historically-significant, repurposed space station. The Outer Planets is here-and-now with cooler tech. The series doesn't so much build a world as it builds a history. To do that, the "series" will reach far back into our past, and then carry the discoveries into the distant future.

This approach may leave some readers, especially those more accustomed to traditional series, scratching their heads. But it also has some pluses.

1. The first three books can be read in any order with no spoilers and no impact to the overall reading experience. So, yeah. Start anywhere. Be my quest!
2. The first three books are complete stories in themselves. They don't rely on other novels to complete the tale, but compliment other works in building the history of this universe.
3. The books are very different flavors of SFR--a Romantic Mystery set on a space station, a classic Space Opera, and a Near Future Suspense--so there's no sense of "cookie cutter" novels.

How do you write a series description for something like that? Sorta like this...

The year is 3500 AD—more or less. No one really keeps track anymore. Since the fall of peacekeeper planet, LaGuardia, two centuries before, much has been lost. Few remember that LaGuardia was once known as Draxis. Fewer still have knowledge that Draxis once guarded a spatial vortex—a crossrip in time and space—and passageway to a legendary world called Earth where the human species originated. Somewhere, hidden in a forgotten archive, is the written history of the universe and the chronicles of the men and women who helped forge a future in the stars.

Have a fantastic week!

~~~ * ~~~

MEET THE HERO OF TROUBLE IN MIND!

Trouble in Mind, Book Two in my Interstellar Rescue series, launches Tuesday, February 16, less than a month from now! It’s high time you learned more about the heroine, the hero and this story of an FBI agent and a galactic tracker who must join forces to find a little boy who is the key to an interstellar power play.

Let’s start with Gabriel Cruz, half human, half Thrane, all badass. Gabriel’s been called the best tracker in the galaxy. He uses his telepathic skills, a legacy of his Thrane father, honed at the elite Youth Academy for Psychic Training on Thrane, to find and extract people in trouble—for a price. He even does occasional work for the Interstellar Council for Abolition and Rescue, mostly at his friend Sam Murphy’s request. 

When Sam asks him to help find a mother and her young son who have been kidnapped on Earth, Gabriel is reluctant. He hates working on Earth, where overfed dirtside cops only get in his way, and some agents of the government know too much. But Sam adds a piece of intel that tips the scales in his favor: a ship called the Bloodstalker is on its way to the Sol system, with the deadly Thrane hunters Kinnian and Trevyn Dar aboard. With that piece of news, Gabriel is in.

Saving this mother and her son from Earthers with a hard-on for UFOs would be all in a day’s work. Saving them from his alien brothers would be a matter of honor.

                              --Trouble in Mind

Gabriel has another surprise waiting on Earth in the form of his new partner, FBI Special Agent Lana Matheson. He’s used to circumventing or ignoring local authority, but Lana is smart, intuitive and open-minded. And that doesn’t take into account the way her wayward curls and grass-green eyes seem to captivate him. What he feels goes beyond attraction to something he can’t explain. 

It wouldn’t matter, but he’s stuck with her until Sam can return to the Sol system from delivering a very important “package”—the man Gabriel extracted on the job he just finished. Without Sam and the ship, he’s dependent on Lana for intel about the case, just as she needs what he can learn with his psi talents. He’ll have to find a way to work with her and keep his secrets— his attraction to her, his connection to their rivals in the hunt, and, most of all, his own alien nature—to himself.

So, just what kind of man is Gabriel? Intense, driven to overcome his past, hiding much of that under a veneer of charm, ultimately passionate. A scene from his childhood gives you a hint of where he comes from:

      What is your father’s name, boy? the teacher had asked him.  Gabriel had been ten.  He’d never met his father, but his mother had told him what to say.  The training was necessary, and to get the training, his lineage as a Thrane had to be undisputed.

     “Kylan Dar, Captain of the Bloodstalker, Psilord of Thrane.”  He was small, but his voice did not waver.

     There was a collective gasp among the others seated at the table before him, though the teacher betrayed no emotion.  “That is not possible,” one man said.  “Captain Dar’s mate is Thrane, not human.  His sons are not yet of trainable age.”

     Gabriel lifted his chin.  “My mother said I should give you this.”  He pulled a medical sampler from his pocket and stuck it in his thumb.  It didn’t hurt, really.  The device drew a droplet of his blood and held it in a sterile capsule for analysis.  “She said you would have a reader available.”

     The teacher’s eyes narrowed, but Gabriel thought he saw his lips curve upward as he reached down to take the sample.  The man turned to give the sample to someone at the table, who placed it under a scanner for the computer to read.  When the computer indicated the results, there was another murmur of reaction around the table.

     A woman at the table looked to the others.  “The law is clear.  The boy is obviously Dar’s, half-human or not.  Whether or not he claims him, we are obligated to train him.”

     “A law foisted on us by the weaker minds in the galaxy.”  An older man stared at Gabriel with distaste.

     “A law nonetheless,” another said with a sigh.  “What do you say, Rodyn?”

     The teacher turned to him, a glint in his gray eyes.  “I say we owe the galaxy a civilized Thrane to make up for the butcher that is his father.  What is your name, boy?”

     “Gabriel Cruz, sir.  And I am human, not Thrane.”

                                                      --Trouble in Mind

Next week Lana gets her turn! And, don’t forget, you can pre-order your digital copy of Trouble in Mind now on Amazon.

Cheers, Donna

Don't you love a series?

I admit, I love series of books. If I find an author I enjoy, a story I can relate to, as soon as I’ve finished one, I’m hankering for another book in the same setting.

Before I go any further, let’s define what I mean by ‘series’; a set of books set in the same environment, often using the same characters. The world-building has been done, it’s familiar. Sometimes main characters in one book might be bit-players in another but the reader has (probably) met them before and knows who they are. Here, I’m talking about books written by the same author. A good example is Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series which started with the dragonriders and expanded to harpers and then others as the demand grew.

Crime books starring particular detectives are a stand-out example of a series. Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Adam Dalgleish, Inspector Banks etc etc etc. Grab me with one and you’ve sold me the lot.

I should point out, though, that liking a series by an author does not immediately imply I’ll like everything an author writes. Of course, there are exceptions. I’d read a laundry list if Terry Pratchett wrote it. But I have been disappointed. Ms McCaffrey’s ‘Talent’ books (Pegasus et al) left me cold and although I loved Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano and Vatta series, her award-winning novel about autism (Speed of Dark) was a dnf. This is not necessarily a reflection on the ability of the writers. At the end of the day, the contract made between the author and the reader inevitably includes the subject matter. I only bought Speed of Dark because Moon wrote it – but perhaps I should have looked a little more closely before I spent my money.

Which brings me to another type of series which is really a franchise. One of the most famous of this type is Star Wars. Since it expanded beyond the original three movies the Star Wars franchise has gone super nova. There must be at least one hundred Star Wars novels out – I don’t know, I haven’t counted. Here, the setting in particular, is as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. The characters are bit-players in a larger scene. Only the authors are different, which means, of course, the reading experience differs. I’ve read some very good Star Wars novels and some that were (imo) total rubbish. Anne McCaffrey handed on her Pern series to her son, Todd, also a writer. For me, the transition was not a great success.

And then there’s that last type of series/franchise that frankly grates on me. A lot of the Big Names such as James Patterson and Dale Brown have developed franchises. Their names are on the books in Great Big Letters. And underneath, you’ll find the by-line “with Fred Nerk”. Which means Fred Nerk wrote it. To me, that’s almost false pretenses. And I avoid those books.

A small plug for me. I have a couple of series myself. The Morgan Selwood stories, and the Ptorix Empire novels. I've put all four Ptorix Empire novels into a boxed set. You can buy it now, from Amazon only, for $4.99. It will be withdrawn at the end of the month.

How do series work for you?

A Problem with Pantsing #amwriting #scifi #romance

Green Chaos by Piotr Siedlecki

For those unfamiliar with the term, pantsing refers to the art of writing without an outline ie rather than plot out the structure and events of a story, you just sit down and write, going wherever the muse takes you. In my case the process is even more chaotic because I don't write linearly either. Quite often a story begins with a handful of random scenes that may or may not include the opening and closing acts. Some may not even make the final version. In a bizarre way, I suppose that could be considered a form of plotting since I lay down the bare bones first, but I'd probably deny it to my dying breath.

I have tried plotting. My problem seems to be that a) I don't know where the story is going until I actually start writing, b) I get bored quickly so I need to have all the shiny stuff written down fast so I can then get down to the harder task of filling in the gaps to make a coherent story. The two times I've tried plotting I not only veered well away from the outline within a few thousand words but also found myself trying to write two very different stories within the guidelines. The second attempt killed all my interest and enthusiasm for the story, and it never got written.

So plotting hasn't worked for me. I no longer feel a failure because of it (seriously, too many people out there are willing to tell you you're doing it all wrong. Try things but in the end go with what works for you. It may change over time - I'm not saying I'll never try plotting ever again - but your writing and methods aren't set in stone or dictated by others. Don't think yourself a failure because one system didn't work out for you).

But pantsing does come with its drawbacks. When I first completed the draft for Keir's Fall, it was a MESS. The timeline was all over the place, it was full of writerly sins like headhopping (some people don't consider that a bad thing but it personally drives me a bit nuts to read it), way too many POVs, plot holes, overly done purple prose...the list goes on. It was very early in my publishing career! But the chaotic timeline was the worst of it. After hours moving chunks around trying to fix it, I still wasn't getting anywhere. So I had to print it off, cut it up, rearrange it all on my living room floor, then literally stick it back together in the right order (I think a lot of authors like Scrivener for that reason, but I've tried a similar piece of software and couldn't get to grips with it). Once I had it all sticky taped back together, I could see where each scene needed to go and rearranged my Word doc accordingly.

That wasn't the end of it. After going through professional edits for Keir and learning oh so much, I went back and stripped a secondary storyline from Keir's Fall to cut down the other POVs before working with my editor to fix the other faults. It's taken three years since book one's original release to finally put out book two, but it's done.

Do you think I learned my lesson? *Yoda laugh* It would seem not. Sometime this year I hope to release a collection of short stories--new and old titles--and take down the separate shorts (because they just don't sell, and I'm ticked off at Amazon because they only pay 35% royalties on them. They have to be priced $2.99 and above to earn 70%, and while I've seen publishers charge that for a short, I just can't justify it. The collection will be priced less than all the individual shorts to compensate for the older titles and to give everyone a fairer deal). One of the new titles is a winter SFR, started after Hallow's Eve to give me a collection of holiday themed shorts. Right now, that short is heading into novella territory, and is in as similar a mess as Keir's Fall once was. Each scene is a countdown, so specific things need to happen in order, building up facts and occurrences until the final act. Of course, I've got them a bit mixed up. Ooops? This is where writing random scenes doesn't work so well. But rather than the physical cut and paste job, I've decided to work backwards through the story instead (yeah, I'd written the final scene already). Hopefully I won't have to do anything quite so drastic as with Keir's Fall...though the scissors and sticky tape are close at hand...

Happenings
So sad to hear of the death of Alan Rickman last Thursday. I posted a short tribute on my blog HERE, but right now I still can't face saying it out loud.

Status Update
I have good and bad news, depending which way you look at it. Sadly my hot SFR short Quickshot is now homeless after the anthology I sent it to failed to reach the required number of submissions. Sigh. This is my fifth anthology submission that hasn't made it. Three didn't get enough submissions. One was pulled after authors withdrew due to a horrible contract. Only one was purely rejected. I don't think I'm willing to write for and submit to another after that number of fails because I could be working on bigger things in my Travellers Universe instead. I self pubbed two of the shorts myself, but considering cover art costs are the same as for a novel yet the small price tag on a short story means it takes longer for the short to make a return, they aren't a reasonable use of my still small budget. In the case of Quickshot, I have the advantage that it's already been professionally edited. But the cover would be a complex ask. >_<

At the time of writing, Reunion at Kasha-Asor is awaiting my attention for second round edits, while my June novel is having to have first edits redone due to the theft of my editor's laptop. Grr. Some people! I've finished my final tweaks for Revived, my Rebecca finalist and my second title in the shared Venus Ascendant universe, so as soon as I have the budget for edits and my editor has space, that'll be going off for first round, hopefully for release some time this year. I'm also hoping to complete my winter SFR in the next few days. Weeks. Um, some point in 2016...

Back to it!

ANIMAL BLOG: CATS COMMANDEER KEYBOARD

Well, I was away from my computer for just a few minutes this morning and returned to find      . . . this. I didn’t have the heart to delete it. After all, the cats did such a good job, and, you know, I could use a break! Maybe my co-bloggers can convince their furry friends to take over for a post or two in the next few weeks, too.  Next Friday I start the lead-up to my February launch of Trouble in Mind, the second book in my Interstellar Rescue series. See you then!

Cheers, Donna

Blogging is hard. Time for napz.

Ifr343w&*7 look blanca I can typez my name see s h a d o w

Of course you can, dumazz. Its Moms computer. I can use two paws at the same time, so there. I do this all the time.

kklo    no u don’t    ha this iz fun   im gonna type everything we say

Dumass.

dumazz

Stop.

stop            rftg   ow that hurt  hey, letz do something fun with the computer

We can’t. It’s blog day. Mom will be here any minute. She’ll yell at you.

shell yell at u to   louder  but the little black box sang and she ran out of the house

She went to the new house on the hill to look at strukshun.

watz strukshun

Catdaddy knows. That’s all they talk about anymore. Strukshun this, strukshun that.

mom sez we hafta move again soon.

Crap, again? I’m gonna pee all over the new place! That’ll show them.

mom will really yell then

Ha!

we shud write her blog for her              she would give us treats and not yell

Hmm. Good idea. Mom always says she’ll write it, and it will be so good they will love her. I’ll start.

no blanca  my idea i start

Me.

Me

mo;erafmrmemoersmopbei;zkkjn.jk;j;fdsvi;ervievsropersvesbtietbytesiorto

repe’ieBTpestBjbjklgzbhlrztyu;ru/trmjlzs;s9etjtr.rt8yrurtilrhiroj/r9rrrjiljklgjkuhkfjifgogjkil

[iue iets’irzop’zuzih;zbgj;lui;ri;/trxjilebuesbup’estu’pets’oesoesou’esij;estop’etsbi

dszioiklgnkgngmgrpjgrohgpj’gripgugijgriogjgnnk566186++++35

Stop!

okay okay stop  oh my Catdaddy lookit what u did to our blog

You did that. Bad Shadow. Mom will be mad.

no we can fix it   mom always fixez everything with delite  where iz delite

Never mind. We blog now. Hello. My name is Blanca. You may call me Queen of the Universe.

u not queen  ljk  ow that hurt

This is my loyal sidekick, Chat Dieu. We call her Shadow.

hello  i like petz and treatz    espeshully treatz   also watching tee vee with mom   nachur shoz   leperdz chasing gazls r awsum

Shut up. Everyone knows I get favored lap position. I don’t care what’s on tv. I especially like to interfere with book reading and Facebook. How dare Mom pay more attention to those things than me? After all, I have fluffy, beautiful fur and big, blue eyes. I can also do tricks, like putting my paws together to “beg” and “rolling over.”

well   i give good hugs  mom sez im sweet

That and a dollar will get you a piece of kibble.

u would miss me if i ran away blanca

That is true. You are fun to torment when Mom and Dad are too busy to play.

and don’t forget snugglz at naptime

Well, there is that. You are warm and snuggly and have a nice purr.

thank u   ur fur iz soft

Thank you. So our blog is done, humans. You must love us.

yes love us invizible humanz and love our mom who works hard on her computer doing things that make her laugh and cry and say bad words

Don’t tell them that.

o           sorry mom

s h a d o w    Blanca