Zombie Day

It’s inevitable, isn’t it?

After what amounted to eleven days of travel (and I counted the two days I spent at home in the middle, packing and doing laundry and getting ready to leave again) the first day back would be a zombie day.

I napped, I edited, I picked the kids up from school, I edited, I communicated with people I needed to communicate with on the phone as I drove Big T to his job interview, I edited, and I went to the bathroom frequently so the cat could molest me, and then edited.

And then I cuddled for an hour with the kids, because we needed it.

And edited.

It’s weird how work piles up up while you’re working, right?

But it’s also lovely how reality asserts itself.

If my head (which, in reality, is way too big for a hat just by virtue of fat and hair) was ever going to swell because of ego, nothing would shrink it quite so much as coming home:

From Zoomboy:  This cuddle is one-onethousandth of the cuddles you’ve missed.  You owe me a thousand more.

From Squish:  I like the T-shirt, mom.  Did you get one for Chicken?  She needs one.  Good.  You got one for Chicken.

From Big T:  Yes, I know you’ve been traveling for ten hours, but I really need to talk about why my high school crush is texting me two years later and how that gives me a free license for melancholy and angst.

From Chicken:  Where were you last weekend?  Because your texting was particularly shitty.

From Mate:  Yeah, I saw the pictures on Facebook.  Some of them were okay, but that white shirt wasn’t particularly flattering.  You had three of them made special for promo, you say?  That’s a different white shirt you wore for three days?  Oh yes.  I see now.  In all the pictures.  Oh.  Well then.  I guess that was smart.  But I still like the other outfits better.

From my Step-Mom:  Interesting.  I’ll have to go with you one of these times.  (For the record?  That last one?  0.0)

And that’s about it.  Like I said.  I’m relieved.  The world spins on, and I need to do my laundry and my cat won’t stop molesting me.  Life is on it’s way to returning to normal.

Of course, normal is relative, right?

I sort of got home right in the middle of release day, and I need to do a spotlight on something that actually came out almost a year ago.

Last year, for the Advent Calendar, I came out with a little novella that involved a grumpy alpaca rancher and his brand new neighbor.  Rance and Ben were really very beloved, and people wanted two burning questions answered:

A.  Were Jeremy and Aiden really gay, and were they really seeing each other?

B.  What did happen to Stanley, the snottly little man-slut that Rance threw over for Ben?

Well, although I certainly didn’t plan for Rance and Ben’s story to have sequels, but it seemed I’d already pre-written them, and that’s what’s about to come out both tomorrow (October 24th) and on November 14th.

How to Raise an Honest Rabbit is about Jeremy, no last name.  In Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur Bearing Critters, we know that Jeremy is an ex-con and a con man, and that he started working with Craw in order to find “honest work”.  Oddly enough, although Winter Courtship was not angsty at all, I found that just setting this up gave Jeremy a certain amount of angst.  I tried to balance it out with both a rather droll tone overall and the character himself– who is hopeful and quirky enough that I hope he’ll make you smile, but there are moments in this one…

Well, they’re not even very angsty, but they are so dear they’ll make you tear up.  I still can’t explain why, but they do.

I refer to this one as my Jeremy Bunny story, and when I saw this cover, that’s what I called it– my Jeremy Bunny cover.  I yearn to protect my Jeremy Bunny, and I hope that I do a good enough job telling his story that you yearn to protect him too.

The other story– and this one is coming out on November 14th, so very very quickly–is about Stanley.

Now for both of these covers I got a wide variety of bunnies in mittens and sheep in sweaters (my request, but the incomparable Catt Ford put out the amazing art work and you can’t blame her for wanting to just play with those wonderfully playful ideas a little bit.)  Anyway, I had to pick a spring lamb, because although Stanley laments that he is old, jaded, and used up at thirty-six (thirty-five!) he is, in fact, just beginning his sojourn, both as a knitter and a faithful lover, and he will discover that even someone as innocent as Jeremy Bunny has hidden reserves of strength that he’s willing to give Stanley so that Stanley can have his own happy ever after.

A Knitter in his Natural Habitat is a slightly darker story than Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur Bearing Critters, although, again, I used a faintly ironic storyteller’s voice that I hope takes the sting out of some of the sorrow.  (I will say this once–nobody dies!  There’s some danger, and someone gets hurt in the third one, but he survives, and it’s going to be okay!!!)  Anyway– I’m interested to see what people say when they get done.  I loved all three of these stories (although, I have to say Jeremy Bunny is especially dear to me) and I’m wondering if they’ll see that I planted the seeds of the darkness against the charming snow-colored first story in one or two little words.

So Honest Rabbit is out tomorrow– and I’m falling asleep I’m so excited!  (Okay– so Zombie day is catching up with me a little–I don’t think that nap was NEARLY long enough.  Saying!)  But otherwise, I really AM excited about these two releases.  And, as people at GRL can tell you when they saw the bookmarks, I was ALL about squealing “OMG!  It’s a BUNNY!  With MITTENS!” when people came up to look at them.  And, well, I”m sort of right there in the same place now!!!!

It’s a bunny.  With mittens!  And a writer!  Writing in her sleep!  Ignore the second one, please–she’ll make it to bed eventually!  But please, do give the first one a long look!