Archive for 2013

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One of the things that really drives me nuts as an author is having so much to do, writing, blogging, editing, and promoting that I get overwhelmed and just want to throw up my hands. I actually love doing all of the above, but figuring out when to do each of these things can be difficult. Even when I work hard to find the time, I often have problems staying on top of all my author duties. So, what does an author do when they have too much author stuff to do and not enough time?

Most of the time we actually have the time, it's just that we don't utilize the time we have in an effective manner. Here are five tips for utilizing your time so you can stay on top of your author duties.

1. Make a list of all your author tasks, both writing and non-writing such as promotion although that can also involve writing such as my article here.

2. Make a list of everything you do each day. This will help you to figure out where you have true free time. Spend an hour each day surfing the internet? Maybe you could spend a half hour and write 1000 words instead. You get the idea.

3. Figure out how much time an author task will take. For longer tasks break these into steps so you can fit steps into smaller free time slots, and break up your tasks so they still get completed but you're not trying to do too much in a smaller time slot.

4. Once you've made your list of what you do each day and you've figured out where you can carve free time out, then look at your list of author tasks again. Test it out, choose a few tasks for the week and then plug them into your free time slots on a calendar. In other words make a schedule. How you do this is up to you, but there are tons of free online scheduling and calendar options.

5. Make sure that you don't schedule too much author task to fit the free time slot you've allotted to it. Don't be afraid to break down tasks into steps that way you can schedule two steps or three steps into a smaller allotted time slot for example and then the final steps in another free time slot.

6. Finally, don't throw out your fun to do tasks. You should always schedule fun activities into your schedule as well. If all you're doing is working then this makes authors very dull indeed. Make time to play too!

I hope these time management tips help you as much as they've helped me. I find I write more and I do more promotion when I go about it this way, rather than hit or miss.

Photo from RGB Stock

I thought I'd share a piece of a series I started about six months ago. I haven't done much with this since I'm still working on Heart of a Jumper my M/M/M/M romance, but this is something that I can easily work on in between since it will be shorter than a novel and come in chunks. This is my first attempt at a series.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. This is one of those days.

My day started with being woke at 3:00 am to my bed shaking. Yes, you read right, the bed was shaking. Not an auspicious way to start my day let me tell you.

I opened one eye and then glared at the glowing figure standing at the foot of my bed. “Goddammit, Gabe!” I snarled. “It’s the middle of the fucking night, what now?”

“Good evening to you too, Angel.” His voice was mellow, too mellow for 3:00 am in my opinion.

“I repeat, what now?” The damned Ascended had woke me up the last three nights, always at 3:00 am. I had a good mind to kick his translucent ass for doing it yet again.

I groaned and rolled over on one side before forcing myself to sit up. I pushed my hair out of my face and waited for Gabe to tell me what he needed my help with now. He wouldn’t be here unless it was important and I knew that, but I was becoming seriously sleep deprived.

“There’s a child spirit trapped on the East Side. She won’t let any of us help her, and I’m hoping that maybe you can convince her.”

I sat up straight. Children could be the worst to cross over, especially if they’ve been trapped for a long time, and or didn’t want to believe they’d died. “How long has she been trapped?”

Gabe gave me a sheepish look. “She died in 1880.”

“You’ve tried everything?”

“Yes. We think she needs a woman’s touch.”

“And you don’t have any female Ascended that could fit that description?”

“You know we do.”

“Then why aren’t you using one of them?” Yeah, I was grumpy.

“We’ve tried but the child is not responding well.”

“What makes you think she’s going to respond any better to me, Gabe?” There had to be a catch, a reason, Gabe was coming to me instead of one of the female Ascended.

Gabe sighed and his glittering light dimmed just a bit. “She doesn’t believe she is dead, and no amount of proof on the part of any of the Ascended seems to be enough to convince her otherwise.”

I took a deep breath while my exhausted mind worked things out. “So…what? You want me to convince her she’s dead? Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I haven’t had a decent nights sleep in three days.”

“I know you’re tired Angel, I do, but this can’t wait, it comes from higher up.”

“Shit.” I said quietly as I rubbed my eyes. Then I looked at him. “How high up?” I wanted to know if we were talking about Angels who were some of the closest to the Creator, or just his superiors, Ascended who were higher up in the chain of command.

“The highest.”

“So are we talking Angel high?”

“Higher.”

“Okay, higher, like the Creator higher or like between the Angels and the Creator higher?” There was a group for which I wasn’t even allowed to know the name of that was between the Angels and the Creator. If they wanted something you couldn’t say no because it came straight from the highest level of the afterlife.

I watched as Gabe appeared to take a breath, keep in mind he was already dead so breathing was out, the Ascended just liked to keep up appearances. “Does it matter?” He finally asked.

Still feeling grumpy, I muttered, “Not really. I just wanted to know.”

“You mean you wanted me to clarify just who made the request?”

I knew that this was probably not for me to know, especially if it came from that unnamed group I mentioned earlier. Humans like me were only allowed to know so much before the whole system sort of shut down and no one would talk anymore, and that included my personal Ascended, Gabe.

“Fine.” I stood up in a less than smooth motion, and tipped slightly sideways before I got my feet under me. “Let me get some coffee so I can at least think.”

I stalked into the bathroom stood in front of the sink and stared blearily at myself in the mirror. I had dark circles under my eyes and there was a pallor beneath my dark skin. In a few words, I looked like hell.

I leaned down and turned the cold water on and then cupped my hands under the free flowing stream until my hands were overflowing before lifting them and splashing the cold water onto my face. It took a few seconds but I began to feel more alert.

“I’m sorry, Angel.”

I didn’t respond right away just grabbed the towel and wiped my face dry before turning to look at Gabe who had followed me into the bathroom.

“Not your fault.” I said finally. “We all have to do what we’re asked to, and they don’t give us more than we can handle. That’s the theory anyway.” I ended wryly.

“I hate seeing you this tired.” This wasn’t Gabe my Ascended talking, but Gabe my lover, and husband from several past lives that I now only remember bits and pieces of.

“Yeah, well we both knew what we were getting into when we signed on for this gig.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier for me, Angel.”

Gabe’s countenance was sad, and I tried to cheer him up. “Hey, it’s only for another seventy years or so!” I joked.

Unfortunately, it was clear from the fact that his eyes didn’t clear that he didn’t think my joke was that funny.

“C’mon, Gabe, seventy or eighty years is a drop in the bucket for an Ascended. It’ll be over before you know it. And who knows with my line of work I may be back with you sooner than you think.”

“Don’t talk like that!” He scolded me. He hated the thought of my dying even if it meant I’d be with him sooner rather than later.

I took a deep breath, rolled my eyes at him and reminded him, “I was joking, Gabe. I have no intention of dying anytime soon. I still have too much to do on this plane of existence.”

“Oh.” Now he looked hurt and I figured I just couldn’t win. The whole thing just made me cross again.

“Look, Gabe, you can’t have it both ways. As long as I’m here and in a physical body then we’re never going to be anything more than Ascended and Student. You know that. You’ve always known that, and you’ve reminded me of it on more than one occasion.”

“I don’t have to like it though.” He said softly.

I softened. “No you don’t. I don’t like it either Gabe, but it is what it is. As I said we both knew what we were getting into, we both volunteered. You to stay behind, me to be reborn. Of course this whole ability to see and communicate with ghosts thing, I think if I knew what that was going to be like, I might’ve changed my mind.” I rolled my eyes at him before heading to the kitchen.

“Coffee, I need gallons and gallons of coffee.” I muttered to no one in particular.

I grabbed the coffee pot from the coffee maker and filled it with water, lifted the lid and poured the clear liquid in.

Just as I leaned up to reach into the cabinet to get a filter, I banged my toe on the lower cabinet door. “God damn it!” I yelled, dropping the filter and lifting my foot and shaking it, hoping that and the cuss words and the shaking would somehow make the pain zinging up my ankle stop.

I looked up to see Gabe with a little smirk on his face as though he found the whole situation humorous. Well, at least I made him feel better.

Photo from Morgue File

As an author, I know one of the most important things I need to do is build my brand. Building your author brand is how you get both yourself and your books well known enough that people recognize both. This isn't always an easy thing when you're a little known author in a sea of self-published and small e-pub published authors. But it's not impossible. Here are five tips for helping to build your author brand:

1. Use your name, not your book title. Many authors try to build their brand by using their book title rather than their name. The problem with this is that once you write your next book, then you're stuck with a website domain with the old title and people have no idea who you are. You end up having to re-build your brand based on your name all over again.

2. Blog, blog and blog some more! Blogs are a great way to build your brand. If you blog often enough, even twice a week is fine, then you'll get a following over time and people will remember your name, and hopefully your books!

3. Buy a domain. I can't stress this one enough. Domains are cheap, like $12.95 for a year. It's worth it and will help to build your brand. Oh, and make sure you use the name you write under, whether that's your real name or a pseudonym.

4. Attend online chats and get interviewed on online radio shows. Again, these help to build your brand. Even if you're not the sort to want to be in the spotlight, both of these are easy and you can do them from the comfort of your home. The more people hear about you, your books and your name the better.

5. Participate in Blog Hops and Blog Tours. Blog Hops and Blog Tours are another great way to build your brand, and they bring more new readers to your books. Blog Hops in particular since they are done with other authors will bring both your own readers and all the other author's readers as well, so they are a great way to maximize getting your name out there. Blog Tours bring in the regular readers of particular blogs who might not have otherwise seen you or your books. Both are a great way to build your brand and sell your books!

Remember it's all about the name. Whatever name you write under is the brand you want to build, so be sure and get your name out there wherever and whenever you can!

Winter Wonderland from RGB stock

NaNo for those who don't know is National Novel Writing Month and November is the month where many authors including myself try to finish a novel in you guessed it, a month. I've gotten close, but I've never quite finished a novel in a month using NaNo. I love the idea of it, but staying on task when you have a day job with a lot of overtime during the holiday season makes it tough. I work in a busy hospital OR during the day and October through February tends to be our busiest time of year since most people have satisfied their deductible by this time and are trying to get any necessary surgeries out of the way before they have to start from ground zero deductible wise.

A few things that I've found to be helpful in staying on task with NaNo are the following:

1. Get up a little earlier in the morning and write 1000+ words. Or I write when I have breaks. I don't try and have great swaths of writing time. For one thing it's not realistic and for another I hate it when I have hours and hours to write and then I can't write. I do better with short bursts of writing.

2. Play some kind music softly in the background, preferably without words. Listening to music with words I understand just takes my attention away from my writing so I tend to either listen to music without words, or if it does have words, words I don't understand. That way my attention doesn't easily become focused elsewhere.

3. Just write. I don't go back and read or edit anything I've written previously. This is hard especially if you can't remember precisely where you left off. In that case, I might read a few of the previous paragraphs just to get me started, but no more.

4. I make sure I get plenty of rest. One of the things that will easily kill my ability to write effectively is not getting enough rest. I can do it once, but if it becomes consistent I make a lot more mistakes and man do my stories take weird turns when I'm sleep deprived. When I'm tired they go places I never would have taken them!

So, there you have it. What I do to stay on task during NaNo.

Photo from Stock Xchng

So, I usually post about writing or a tip for authors or something like that on Mondays but I thought I'd just do a personal post today. Generally speaking I usually do my posts for the entire week on Saturday or Sunday and then schedule them. It's so much easier than remembering each day to do my post. I never claimed to be the on time queen! LOL I'm working on it but I know myself very well and completely organized and on time has never been me.

So, my last couple of days have been sort of weird. Usually on Saturday and Sunday I work on freelancing, but this last Saturday because it was my birthday the hubby and I went to a local Indian Casino. Hey, I figure if I'm going to gamble and let's face it give a bit of money away I'd rather do it to my own people than say Vegas, or somewhere like that where it's a big corporation or something. We had a lot of fun and I broke even, so I didn't lose any money which is nice.

46 snuck up on me really fast! Last year for a whole year I thought I was still 44 when I was 45, so that just goes to show you how much I'm paying attention. LOL My best friend Tina had to remind me that no I was not turning 44 I was turning 45! That was a real hoot, let me tell you. I guess you know you're getting older when you stop counting huh?

Sunday would have been uneventful but I decided to get in a fight with Photoshop! Yeah, I know you can't win against a computer program, but boy was I determined. I was working on a cover for another author and I swear I could not get this one photo of a couple to cut out right no matter what I did. I used the Extract tool like three times, and I'm picky so if it doesn't look just right I won't even use it. By the third time and several hours later I was about ready to tear my hair out by the roots! So then I went into another program Paint.net and tried using layers and erasing. While it didn't look too bad, I just couldn't get around the guy's face so it looked natural, I kept seeing this one little spot where I erased too close. Argh! Finally I decided to take all the photos and see if I could put them together in some kind of semblance of something that would look pretty. I even put it back in Photoshop and used some pretty filters on it. No such luck. When I was done, I hated it! Man do I ever hate it when that happens. Sometimes the muse just doesn't strike me right, so I'm back to square one. I gave up about 11:30 pm and decided to sit on it for a day or so. I'll have to tell the author I'm not going to have it just yet, but I'd rather than than give someone an inferior product. Covers are so important to how well a book sells that when I do one I want to make sure it's right even if I redo it several times!

Then this morning dawned with the light coming in much more brightly than it usually does at the same time of day since we've turned the clocks back. I did not want to get up, my brain raced all night and so I kept waking up. LOL So I finally drag my tired ass out of bed and manage to make it out the door in time and I get all the way to the bus stop and realize I don't have my hospital ID or bus pass. . So I trot back up to my apartment, get my ID and pass since I can't get into any of the restricted areas of the hospital without my ID and go back down to the bus stop. So I catch another bus and then make it downtown in record time, but...my connection to go up to the hospital? Yeah, it doesn't show, and neither do the next two buses. So finally it shows up at 9: 40am. I ended up having to call the boss and tell him I was going to be late. Go figure. Then I get here and we've got meetings galore, and a bunch of uncovered cases, and we're short doctors to cover them. And that dear readers is why I said of Manic Monday that truer words were never spoken! My week is starting off with a bang!

For everyone's sake, I hope your week is lovely, quiet and uneventful! :-)

I'll bet you think when you see photos of stone fairies that we're all female don't you? While it's true that our females are beautiful and sometimes sweet, especially to mortal males, we aren't all female. And we don't all cater to the opposite sex either. I sure don't, and that has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion. My father wants me to marry another fae, some female from a neighboring kingdom. Never mind that females hold no allure to me. He is set in his ways and convinced that the only way to ensure our kingdom's continued dominance in the region is for me to marry this princess.

So, I'm leaving. While I love my people, there is no way that I'm going to marry some princess and have more little fairies. The thought is EWW! Just ewww! I mean don't get me wrong, I like females fine, in fact my best friend Lunaria is female. If I absolutely had to marry a female, she is the only one I could tolerate. Of course there would be no little fairies to come out of that union because while I love her like a sister I cannot even imagine being intimate with her.

So, like I said I'm leaving. I've already passed the sacred grove on this side of the veil. Now all I have to do is pierce the veil and enter the human world and I'm home free. Well that's the plan anyway. If my father's soldiers catch me, I'm done for.

I can see the veil just ahead. I can hear the traffic whizzing by, and why humans drive those noisy, air congesting things I'll never know. While I'd prefer to stay in my own realm there is no bloody way I'm marrying that princess. So, here goes nothing!

Just as I'm about to push through the veil I can hear shouts behind me. Damn! The soldiers have discovered my plan, I must push through the veil now. Hiding my wings I force my body to grow to human size. While I want to get to the human world on the other side, I can't give away the existence of our world either. That means no wings and no magic once I get to the other side. With one more glance behind me I see the soldiers have also assumed human size and hidden their wings, clearly thinking to follow me.

I push through the veil which feels sort of like a gel as it moves around me and find myself on the other side with a loud pop. I'm standing on a sidewalk in what looks like a small town. Good, I was worried I'd pop out in some big city with smog and air congestion. While such a place might be better for hiding, I'd wither away and die and in such a place. Fairies need to be close to nature, plants, trees that sort of thing. Without that connection we die. That's why so many of us don't enter the human world anymore. Too much air and water pollution and too few plants and trees in so many places.

That's when I saw him. Small compared to my now six foot one frame, the human was as dark as I am blonde. Short, but willowly and slim, the human has a long black braid swinging down his back. His skin is darker than any I've ever seen before with a reddish hue. He's cutting firewood and every time the axe swings up the muscles in his arms and back bunch. Yum! Could this delicious human be the one I've been looking for?

Only one way to find out...I'm going to go and talk to him.

Photo from Morguefile

“Tiana pulled her new truck up to the front of her gallery, and just sat there as she felt herself get first hot and then cold. After a few seconds she leaned her head against the steering wheel. Damn.

She sat there for several minutes just controlling her breathing and then pulled her cell phone out of her purse. It rang once before being picked up.

“Waters Investigative Agency.” A perky voice answered. Tiana nearly rolled her eyes, she liked the teenager that James had hired to be the receptionist for his Kamiah office, but still it was eight o’clock in the morning and she’d only had one cup of coffee so far.

“Hi Dawn, this is Tiana. Can I speak to James, please?”

“Oh, hi Tiana. Sure, he just walked in a few minutes ago, I’ll transfer you.”

Powwow music played on the line briefly and then the reassuring sound of her intended’s voice came across the line.

“Hi babe, what’s up?”

“Honestly, I wish I wasn’t.” Tiana knew her voice sounded odd, but with seeing the terrible vision in front of her she just couldn’t work anything else into it.

“What’s wrong?”

“What isn’t?”

“Honey, what’s happened? You sound like you did when your grandmother was in the hospital.”

“Yeah, well this is almost as bad.”

“Where are you?”

“My gallery.” Tiana sighed and then rubbed her eyes tiredly with her other hand. “It’s toast, James.”

She heard a thump, and then James’ breath accelerated. “Someone burned it down?”

“No, but they might as well have. The front window is busted out, the door is hanging on one hinge, and from what I can see through the window, any and all stock I had is completely destroyed. Anything that was breakable is smashed. I can’t see the glass case that I locked the beadwork in but it’s probably been destroyed as well.”

“Stay right there. Don’t get out of your truck, you are in your truck right?”

“Of course.”

“Stay there, and lock yourself in. Whoever did this could still be around, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I know that James, I’m not a complete idiot.” Tiana growled.

“Sorry babe, can’t help it. I just found you again, and I have no intention of losing you the way we did Grandmother. Have you called the police yet?”

At the mention of her grandmother’s death the year before, Tiana’s heart clenched tightly before she took a deep breath and released the tension.

“You’re kidding right? After what happened last year, I think it’s going to be a long time before I trust a tribal cop again.” Tiana’s voice turned sour.

Tiana heard James take a deep breath. “Tiana, you can’t blame what happened with Starla on the entire tribal police force. Most of them are good people, she was just one bad apple in the barrel.”

“Want to bet?” Tiana muttered beneath her breath. No way was she trusting anyone but James from now on. He might not be a cop, but she would trust him with her life. He would never betray her, she knew that with complete certainty.


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Adrianna seethed, every time she awoke still frozen in the uncomfortable position her temper flared. If she ever got her hands on her ex-lover he was going to die a slow and painful death. Leave it to her to fall in love with someone who was practicing the dark arts. Her sister had tried to warn her, but had she listened no, she had not.

He'd been so handsome, and so devoted to her, or so she'd thought. But she'd been wrong, terribly wrong. While she and others like her had to be careful not to show their true talents, she had thought Donald understood. After all he was "different" too. Unfortunately, by the time she realized it, her sister Drusilla was dead and she was trapped inside the body of a stone angel, her sister's monument. She watched silently for decades while first her niece and then her great-niece had aged and become old women. Her great-niece hadn't had any children so when she stopped coming, Adrianna could only assume the old woman had died.

Adrianna was relatively certain that over a hundred years had passed. It had been 1888 when Donald had trapped her in stone above her sister's grave. If the strange inventions, the carriages without horses, and the fact that women wore skirts that showed more than her undergarments had back in 1888 were any indication, it had been a very long time.

The anger drained out of her. She knew she would only be conscious for a short period of time before the stone would pull her back into some sort of magical sleep. Donald's doing no doubt. The strange thing though, she usually never awoke unless someone was coming to visit her sister's grave. But who could it be? Her great-niece had stopped coming and she'd only been awakened with the occasional visitor to another grave after that. She had no idea how much time had passed since her great-niece had stopped coming.

Resigned to the fact that she would only be awake a short time, she took stock of her surroundings. Strangely she could see all around her though she was held immobile within the stone angel. It didn't hurt exactly, though it was uncomfortable in a strange sort of way. Occasionally she thought she felt a fleeting muscle cramp, but then it would be gone.

Suddenly a man came into view. He was different than anyone she'd ever seen before. Even his mode of dress and transportation was different. Unlike her great-niece who had driven up in one of those horseless carriages, this man appeared out of thin air. His clothing was scandalous, at least for her era. It molded to his body as though a part of his skin and was a lovely blue color. The material was unlike any she'd ever seen before. His shoes looked a bit like the ones her niece wore though with that strange symbol on the side that looked a bit like hook, but smoother. Once when her great-niece had turned to walk away she'd gotten a look at the word on the back, Nike. What in the blue blazes was a Nike? This man's shoes had the same symbol though. Strange.

The man was very handsome, tall, well over a foot taller than her five feet, with spiky blonde hair and beautiful forest green eyes. He had a square jaw and high prominent cheek bones perhaps hinting at some American Indian blood, though in her day no one would have voluntarily admitted such.

Instead of going to one of the other graves as she had thought he would, he walked directly to her sister's and stood in front of it looking up at the stone angel or her rather.

"Have I finally found you my beautiful Adrianna?" He whispered.

Shock rolled through Adrianna. How did this stranger know her name or know she had been trapped in stone all these long years? How was this possible?

"I hope I've finally found you, my love." He whispered before reaching into what appeared to be a pocket and withdrawing a small glass vial with an even smaller cork stopper.

Why was he speaking to her as if he had known her his whole life? She had never seen this man before, though there was something about him that tickled her memory, something familiar though she knew not what.

As her mind struggled with that question, the man pulled the cork stopper and poured the vile of liquid onto the stone encasing her. Wait! Was she able to move her finger? Adrianna tried to move another finger and found she could shift it ever so slightly. Was she finally going to be freed?

"Can you move, Adrianna?" The man seemed to be looking for some sign, but she had no way to signal to him that she had movment, small though it may be. Inside she screamed, "Yes, yes! Keep doing whatever you're doing, get me out of here!"

The man's eyebrows rose in surprise almost as though he could hear her, and he stared up into her face. Oh, if only she could smile, wink, wiggle her nose something! Anything to let him know that whatever he was doing was working.

A determined look came over his face and he began chanting in latin. It was a language Adrianna was well aquainted with having used it to write spells since the time she'd begun learning the Craft at her grandmother's knee.

Suddenly pain the likes of which had only felt one other time, the time when Donald had used the dark spell to encase her body and soul in stone, after he'd murdered her sister.

Suddenly there was a great loud cracking sound and she was falling. Instead of hitting the hard ground as she'd expected, strong arms caught her and held on tight.

Adrianna carefully opened her eyes, almost afraid to believe that she was finally free. The pale skin of her own hands and arms greeted her vision and she felt tears gather in her eyes.

"Finally!" She gasped, hearing her own voice for the first time in longer than she could remember.

"Yes, finally, I've finally found you my Adrianna."

Adrianna lifted her head. Why was the man being so familiar with her? She knew she didn't know him. Who was he? How had he known she was trapped inside the stone angel?

"Who are you?" She lifted her eyes to gaze into the man's face when the reason he looked familiar hit her with the force of a tsunami.

"Donald!" She hissed, her fingers curving into claws ready to scratch his eyes out.

Instead of being frightened by her sudden snarl and glare, the man simply curved one large hand over hers and said, "No Adrianna, I am not Donald, I am not the man who trapped you in stone."

Adrianna tried to wrench herself out of his arms, but her struggles were for naught, for the man was much stronger than she was.

"Stop it Adrianna!" He commanded in a firm voice. "I know I have his eyes, but I am not my great-gereat Grandfather. I don't now nor have I ever practiced the dark arts. Your own senses should tell you that."

Adrianna reeled at the rebuke. Donald's great-great grandson. How was this possible? That would mean that even more time had passed than she originally thought. She would have to be careful, this could be a trap, a trick.

As though he'd read her mind, the man said, "It's not a trap Adrianna. My family has been searching for you for the last three generations. My great-great grandfather kept a journal. In it was every dirty deed and evil thing he had done. Every dark spell he'd ever created. The only reason we kept the journal was because we knew it was our only hope to find you."

The fight went out of Adrianna. While it was true that Donald had been a dark practitioner, now that she was no longer trapped in stone, her senses were telling her that this man was a practitioner connected to the light, as was she.

"Who are you?" She whispered, still staring at the pale skin of her hands, and the white cotton material of the underclothes that were the only thing she'd been wearing when Donald had cursed her.

"My name is Ryan." He lifted her chin with one finger, forcing Adrianna to look into familiar eyes. However, unlike Donald's eyes, this Ryan's were clear and the white lightning arcing in them proclaimed him a son of the Goddess.

"I was raised to continue the search for you. I and my cousins. You see Donald married another white witch. Like you, he hid from her what and who he truly was and was aligned with. They had one son named Gregory, my great-grandfather. When Gregory was ten years old, he stumbled on his father and his mother in the wine cellar. His father had used a spell to trap his mother within a circle and was torturing her by slowly draining her magic. He found out with his mother's dying breath that his father had been doing this for years. The only reason she'd stayed was because he'd said if she didn't he would do the same thing to their son."

"That's what he had planned for me." Adrianna whispered, horrified.

"Yes, but your instincts were better, you figured it out before he could marry you and you tried to fight him. That's when he trapped and murdered your sister and then entrapped you in the stone angel."

"Why did it take so long for someone to find me?"

"Donald boasted of the spell in his journal, even wrote the spell and ritual down that he'd used, but he hid the location of your entrapment in a riddle. No one could figure it out. The riddle was in gaelic runes which made things that much harder. See, Gregory killed his father trying to protect his mother. He was too late to save her, but he was only ten years old. His training was not complete. He was raised by his mother's sister and her husband. This is who he received his training from. He didn't find his father's diary until many years later and by then his memories were sketchy at best. And since he didn't practice the dark arts, and his father had been too greedy of the knowledge to bring him into his confidence, Gregory could only use the knowledge he'd been given by his mother's family. It wasn't enough." He ended.

"How did you find me?"

"I found Donald's Book of Shadows. The translation of the riddle was inside. Even with that though, it was hard to find you. Earth's population has quadrupled since your time and this cemetery is set to be removed and relocated next month. It was the last one. If I hadn't found you here, there was no way any of us would ever have been able to find you." Ryan stroked back Adrianna's inky black hair.
"You're as beautiful as he said you were, as you look in the drawings he did of you." He whispered.

Mesmerized by his deep green eyes, Adrianna was momentarily diverted by the word, "Drawings?"

"Yes, Donald was obsessed. He drew you in every conceivable position and state of dress." Ryan's lips were closer to hers and Adrianna felt her body flush.

"Every state of dress?" She whispered the words against warm lips.

"Every state of dress." He confirmed.

"Oh, dear." Heat flowed through her body.

Ryan smiled against her lips. "But her safe now." He said. "Safe in my arms, and I'm never letting you go now that I've found you."

And so she was, forever more.

(c) Copyright 2013 by Regina Paul. All Rights Reserved.

I thought I'd share an excerpt from the novel I'm currently working on. This is an M/M/M/M romance, so if gay romance, or polyamory offends you or if you're under the age of 18 then please click away.

I was born on Earth in the year 1997, and I was a cop. A cop who was lucky enough to have a good home life, and a loving husband, son and daughter. That was the only thing that kept me centered as far as my job was concerned. At the time I was convinced that it was the only reason I was able to be effective in my job; their love was what kept me going. That all changed at 9:00 am June 23, 2037 on my fortieth birthday. It was a Tuesday and I had gotten the day off to go with my husband Eagle and our children Forrest and Jessica to the ocean and just spend the day splashing in the water and playing. At the time we lived in Portland, Oregon so the water didn’t get that hot, but in the city was a different story. It could get as high as the upper 90’s some days so a day at the ocean was a good way to cool down. I had to go back inside because Jessica had forgotten her beach ball and she was adamant that she had to have it.

I remember rolling my eyes at Eagle and then getting out of our minivan. Just as I reached the front door of our home, I heard the click of the key turning in the ignition and then a loud explosion. I knew before the shrapnel, broken glass, and fire from the destroyed minivan scored the skin of my bare back and legs that my family was dead. The noise brought the neighbors, with their fire extinguishers and horror filled cries, but it was too late to save my lover or my babies. They had died instantly and the licking flames quickly cooked through their bodies fed by the gasoline in the tank we had just recently filled. By the time I lost consciousness from the shock and pain of my own injuries, the fire trucks, and ambulances had arrived though I only know this because I was told by my partner.

I woke up a week later in the hospital suffering from third degree burns all along the back of my body. It’s fortunate I was unconscious for a week because I imagine digging all that shrapnel and glass out of me before being able to treat my burns was extremely painful. I would gladly have suffered it though if it meant I could have my beloved Eagle, Forrest and Jessica back.

It was another two weeks before I was able to arrange their funeral and attend it. Even then I was pushing it what with the skin grafts and the very real possibility of infection. But I was so numb inside I no longer cared if I lived or died.

Once my back and legs finally healed I took every dangerous assignment I could, while on the side I tracked the man who had killed my family. Because it was my family who had died the case was given to some of my fellow cops. I believe though that my partner Danny knew that I was in tracking mode. I was determined to find my family’s killer and bring him to justice.

In those days most people didn’t believe in the winagi or demons as the wasichus called them. That all changed when the winagis got bolder and bolder going so far as to possess senators, governors and one president. Since the demons were essentially immortal it was difficult to fight them. The thing is I always knew they were real and every bit as nasty as the fictional tales tell. I grew up with the traditions of my people and was raised by my grandfather who was a wichasa wakan, or holy person. Before he died, he told me that I would come face to face with a winagi, the literal translation is “ghost” but it refers to an evil non-human entity. He told me it would be my greatest challenge and that I must stop this winagi at all costs. I took him at his word. Unfortunately, I wasn’t careful enough and was mortally wounded. That’s when I found out about the Jumper Program.

Turns out the government had been testing ways to detect and fight the demons. Also turns out that my partner Danny was related to one of the scientists who developed the science behind the Jumper Program. He was able to convince his cousin to use me as their first test subject. Since I was going to die anyway, his relative agreed. After all they needed a guinea pig, it might as well be me, right?

I was out of my body and I could hear everything that was being said and decided. Honestly I didn’t really think they’d be able to do it. I mean how can you transfer the soul of one body into another body, especially one that was being kept alive only with machines? Even if you thought you could, what kind of guarantee would you have that that was really what was happening? Especially since that was what the winagi were doing. How could you be sure it wasn’t a winagi pretending to be the transferred soul? Personally, I could see them having a field day with that one.

Well the next thing I knew, one minute I was standing over another body, staring into lifeless blue eyes and the next minute I was staring out of them. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. What a rush!

Now you may be wondering why it would be important to be able to “jump” from one body to another. The government’s idea was that since winagi or demons were immortal, in order to effectively fight them we needed people who were not only well versed as cops, but well versed in the well, what they called “mythology” and what I called the “history” of man’s relationship with these things. I fit the bill on both counts. Also, a Jumper could just switch into a new body and continue to track and destroy winagis for as long as he or she wanted.

Well, that was the idea anyway. Unfortunately, the government didn’t do all their research, typical for them. You see, what we discovered was that the new body was only good for about six months before it began rejecting the new soul. This meant that the government had to provide a new body every six months. This became tricky because the program was black ops and the general public had no idea about it. Not even my fellow cops knew.

Time became an endless river to me with little change, and all I knew was jumping from one body to another, chasing the winagi that had possessed the man who had killed my family. If I got to destroy a few others along the way that was just as well.

Fifty years after jumping technology was developed man figured out how to go on deep space expeditions. Fifty years after that we were colonizing Earth like planets. As man went out into space the winagi or demons followed us, and I followed them. I continued to change bodies like I changed my clothes which after you’ve done it a few hundred times is exactly what it feels like. Eventually as the knowledge of demons became common everyday knowledge, the public was told about the program and jumpers were hailed as heroes.

But I didn’t want their adulation. I wanted my family back but that wasn’t going to happen, and the only way I could ensure that what had happened to me didn’t happen to someone else was to continue jumping.

So, that’s what I did, even going so far as to follow the younger generations into space. Interestingly enough though, most women weren’t interested in space travel, instead, they wanted to stay home on Earth. That’s not to say that a few didn’t go, but the percentage was much smaller than I or anyone else would have thought at the time. That was how I obtained my first male body. That took a little getting used to. I liked being stronger in most cases, and not having a period totally rocked, but I had a difficult time with the whole having your sex organs on the outside as opposed to the inside. That first involuntary erection was a real eye opener! For the first time, I totally got how that could happen and how embarrassing it was. Overall, it just felt weird. At first anyway, but after the first couple of times I got used to the vagaries of having a male body and in time I grew to prefer it.

So I followed generation after generation to one new colony planet after another. I saw the rise and fall of new human civilizations. I saw these new generations lose touch with Earth, and in some cases, a few who totally forgot about their mother planet, instead believing that the colony was their home world. Not surprising really when you think about it. It used to happen all the time on Earth, grandparents came from Italy and intermarried with other Americans and in four generations it could be completely forgotten that grandpa and grandma were Italian. Throw in the Plagues of the 2070’s where millions died thanks to the winagis, that was them using our own science against us, and it wasn’t hard to imagine how it could happen.

It wasn’t until sometime in the 3050’s when people were living almost one hundred years longer and bodies were in short supply for jumpers, that our scientists discovered if you put the donor body into a sort of suspended animation, then you could preserve it and the soul inside until such a time as a body became available. This in turn kept the jumper alive until he or she was needed again to fight the good fight. By this time we’d gotten very good at our jobs and there were fewer demons, or so we thought.

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