Rosi S. Phillips's Blog

Writing has helped me so much in my everyday life that I want to give back. I've learned so much from reading others' works (Christina Lauren, you know what I'm talking about) that I really want to give back to the community at large. That's why, for the month of August, I'll be doing a reading and critiquing binge. *Happy dance in session*

If anyone wants a beta reader to look over their stories, someone to commiserate with on the hard life of writers, or just someone to work with on character or plot development get in touch with me.

I got better at writing because I had people cheering me on, helping me work out my issues (Fanfare, Raven, Kira (My first ever editor and supporter!), John D., Archangel_M (My biggest supporter of Grim and one of my fav editors!), and searchingforperfection), and because a community of people took a chance on my work, told me they liked it and told me how I could make it better.

So, it's Give Back August for Rosi. Send an email, retweet me (@RosiSphillips), Facebook message me—however you want to get in contact. I'm here for you, so thank you for being there for me.

I pushed open the door to the dining room and lounge area, and gave my eyes a second to adjust to the dimly lit interior. David Banner’s Play poured through the speakers throughout the club. On the stage, Billy’s newest hire—a leggy blonde nicknamed Nevaeh—stripped off workout clothes on the stage and tongued the handle of a jump rope. I rolled my eyes at the g-string she sported under her jogging pants. Yeah, because every time I go to the gym, I make sure to wear a hot pink thong. Nothing says comfort like butt floss.I moved down the steps to my section, and stopped in front of a table of office drones. “Here boys,” I whispered in a voice I hoped sounded sultry and not hoarse. “Be careful, they’re hot.”The men eyed my breasts as I passed out the plates, which was great. If they’d seen my face, I was sure to get a shitty tip. I was getting over a cold, and working a double had pretty much made it come back full force. Runny nose, watery eyes, and sweat pouring off me like a fat man in a sauna was not the most attractive thing to see. Thank god for my 3Ds—Double D Distractions. I winked at the men as they dug into the feast of steaks and fish. Tucking the tray under my arm, I cast a quick glance at the people in my section. Needs more water. Another scotch. Need to check in on them, and—“Lauren,” Billy huffed as he hurried up to me. The sick feeling in my stomach increased, but for a completely different reason than my cold. Billy was the owner, and he was just as sleazy as the movies depicted. Anything he wanted from me wasn’t good.“Yeah?”He dabbed at the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief. “Sparkle called in sick, and that means we’re short three girls.”“Well, it is that time of the year.” I stopped myself from flat out running to the kitchen only because I was sure I’d break my ankles in my heels.A meaty hand clasped my shoulder and spun me around. “I need you to do it. You’re the only one who fits Sparkle’s costume.” And I wasn’t proud of that.Sure, other girls would be over the moon to be a size six, but I hated it. I’d been a solid 14 all my life, and only lost weight for my wedding. Then Durell ran off and stole all my money, I’d lost the apartment we’d worked so hard to create, and my job fired me for making mistake after mistake. Now, working three jobs, eating was a luxury and an expensive one at that. “No way, Billy.” I pushed away from him and continued to the kitchen, slowing down as carpet gave way to smooth tile. “I’m not taking off my clothes. Go ask Tif.”He snorted. “Tif couldn’t fit into the outfit if she tried. And it’s hardly taking your clothes off.”“Nipple tassels are not clothes.”“Lauren.” He placed a hand over top of mine when I reached for the pitcher of water. “I need you.”“No.”“I’ll pay you double.”“No.”
“Triple.”Check out my other works on Amazon!

I found Asher right where he said he’d be. Elbows balanced on the railing overlooking the water, his eyes were open and focused on the dark waves lapping at the concrete edge. He didn’t look away as I took up residence next to him and brutally dashed away the tears that had started to fall the minute I left Daphne and Robin. They were still close though, and I knew they’d heard me. “Appearance—”“Don’t fucking talk to me about appearance,” I yelled angrily. “If I want to fucking cry then I’ll fucking cry. Get used to it.”“What is it you want, Vera?” he asked softly, gently. His tone reminded me of his fanged smile. Both were warnings.“To fuck you from here to kingdom come.”“Profanity doesn’t make you sound smarter.”“I don’t want to sound smarter.”“Like a prepubescent teenager? You’re doing a great job then.”I whirled and shoved him hard. “Can I do anything right or is my whole life just one big mistake?” He reached forward and violently bound my wrists, pinning them at the small of my back. My breasts thrust out to meet his chest, shoulders to his pectorals, head tilted all the way back. “All about you, isn’t it?” he remarked coolly. “So fucking easy to have remained a pawn in Redkin’s game and let others suffer for you. The world bleeds for you, Vera.”“Shut up! You don’t know shit!”He moved closer, until his lips brushed mine with every word they formed. “Get your head out of your ass. This is life. There is no easy way through it. Anyone who has it that way needs to kill themselves because that’s not living. Be hurt. Get scars. Live through it all and see the person you become. Think your life is miserable because other people get hurt? You can’t vicariously adopt scars.”I faltered, knees giving out. He let me go. Let me crumble to the ground and puddle like blood from a wound. His words were too raw, and hit way too close to home. I didn’t want to be hurt and get scars, I did want to experience them through others—as if the pain would equate. As if hearing about Robin’s father’s death would impact me like it did her. Pain hurt so freaking much, and I wasn’t strong enough to deal with it. Not the emotional part.Cut me, bleed me, punch me, but for God’s sake don’t hurt me. Because everything else was superficial. Knowing my father was a killer and that the people I called friends were forced to be by my side caused the most pain. My identity was linked to others, and without those threads holding me, I was a swiftly sinking ship.“Your identity is linked to you,” Asher whispered, squatting in front of me.I flinched, hard. “Reading my mind?” God, I wasn’t even surprised and that worried the hell out of me. Nothing Asher did seemed to surprise me. “What else can you do?”“It’s what you can do that matters, Vera.”I looked up at him, pissed that he evaded my question. If he could read my mind, that posed a whole new issue—one I wasn’t ready to deal with. Sweeping it under the rug right now worked for me. “What can I do?” I didn’t know how to fly, and even my knowledge of who I was as a succubus was tied to my father. I’d never been tutored on my powers, never been able to explore either side of my demon identities. A muse was the same as a human as far as I was concerned, and being a succubus just meant I was a little stronger, faster, and harder to kill with wings and a wicked sex drive. Asher looked calm and removed, comfortable in his skin like no one I’d ever met. “I’m not here to indulge you in your pity and self-loathing, or tell you answers you already know. I’m not your father and I’m not your friend. You want to be led on a leash, go find someone else to do it.”My hand was faster than my mind, and I slapped the shit out of him. His cheek turned, and an angry red welt blossomed on his pale skin. For a few tense seconds we were frozen, my hand still raised and his cheek still turned. My voice was chilled fury. “If you ever speak to me like that again, I’ll play jump rope with your ligaments and use your eyeballs as handles.”

cc Jill ArcherSummer is right around the corner . . . after Spring that is, and I'm all geared up for NEW BOOKS!

What can you expect?

Two new novels! What will those be?

Fall Thru, Book One in my Tilly Series

&

She Knows, A stand alone novel for my Succubus in the City series

As for my Grim Love Series:

Given the emotional toll it takes to write each novel, I budgeted a year per book. While I would love for my readers to get the third Grim novel, Can't Fight Nature, it will take me longer to write. But longer to write—for me at least—means better quality work.

Those of you who have traveled with me from Literotica, where I posted Lunar Dance until now with my second Grim novel Can't Fight Fate know exactly what I mean.

Peaches fans rejoice!

There will be another Peaches book coming out Late Summer/Early Fall! Be on the look out for that.

Stay connected for daily and weekly updates through my twitter page and Facebook page.

Ereshkigal purred contentedly next to him, her small hand curved over his heart. “What are you thinking, mu’er?” Samuel looked at his wife. Not wife. Such a paltry human word couldn’t encompass everything Ereshkigal was to him, and his own language failed equally. She had the look of youth, one unmarred by time’s fickle hand. And her smile—so glorious it started his un-beating heart. When she laughed, it was a sound of creation, the notes carrying small universes of endless joy. “Muha,” Samuel whispered the endearment across her forehead, pulling her naked body closer to his. “My thoughts are not for one such as yourself.” She arched a petite raven brow. “Meaning?” He indulged her with a patient smile. She was yet tried, burdened with exuberant youth. Barely out of shedding, he’d fallen in love with her intelligence and ability to surprise him in an otherwise dull world. “My thoughts are unpleasant.” She laughed and rolled on top of him, her reaper power throbbing with excitement. Propping her arms up on his chest, Ereshkigal let her curls spill around them in dark veil. “We are unpleasant, Samuel. Both you and I are Death. Can your thoughts be worse than the ceasing of life?” He sighed gently and let his hands roam her lower back and hips. “We do not cease life, we transition it.” “For a brief time it is gone.” “And then it is back,” he countered. “Nothing is ever permanent.” A flash of pain crossed her gray eyes, and Samuel realized his error. Their death was. When a reaper went mad from too long an existence they experienced the ‘true death’. It was the only absolute is a world of possibilities. Once Death was gone, it was ad finem. “Tell me,” she coaxed. “Do not carry this burden on your own.” He relented. “I obsess over things I cannot control.” “Such as?” “The future. The past. Other’s actions.” “Why do it?” “Habit.” He reached forward and ran a hand through her hair. “I have done it so long, I know no other way.” She was silent for a long minute, forcing him to look at her. Even for a reaper she was pale, skin translucent against his. They could not be more different. He was dark skinned, a mix of an African human and a newly made reaper, Samuel had inherited most of his mother’s looks. The power was all his father. It flowed through him with the ease of water near the bottom of the ocean. He was settled, used to the current and not controlled by it, whereas Ereshkigal was the opposite. She prefered riding the waves instead of settling with them. And what should have made her wild and untamable did not. It was why he considered a reaper several decades his junior his partner; he was controlled because of practice and experience, she was controlled because it was her nature. “Habits,” she began slowly, “like rules are made to be broken.” “Rules are made to be followed.” “No, Samuel.” She smiled. “There will always come a time when rules are broken and new ones created, because rules fail to keep bad things from happening. At the end of the day, one will do as one wants.” __________ © Rosi S. Phillips

Hello Everyone!
Can't Fight Fate is now on sale! Yay!
You can get the book on Amazon now!Nina nodded, understanding what she meant. “So, how do you know those colloquialisms?”EXCERPT“Oh!” the Darklore Queen laughed. “Big fan of How I Met Your Mother and The New Adventures of Old Christine. Whenever I reap, I always set out time to marathon watch each show. Sucked when Christine got canceled though. Got to find a new show.”
“How do you marathon watch? Do you have a place to live while you’re there? I thought reapers weren’t able to stay on Earth very long, or weren’t allowed to.”
The queen raised a brow, set down her tea cup on the side table, and folded her arms across the back of the couch so she could lay her chin on them. “Curious, aren’t you? We aren’t supposed to stay with humans because we reek of death. Drives some people crazy, makes them do crazy things. We either reap or we take a human here. We used to anyway. When they’re saturated with death, it just doesn’t affect them anymore. They become desensitized to the compulsions of our power.”
Nina nodded and reached for the glass of milk beside her empty plates. The Darklore Queen made a noise, and Nina looked over the rim of her glass at the woman. “You sound old, like you’re pushing eighty.”
Huh?
“I’m older than dirt, honey, and I can talk just about any way I want because I’ve been through every life cycle.” She pointed to Nina. “You, on the other hand, are a twenty-something-year-old human. You’re young and pretty and smart. I don’t know why you’re trying to suffocate those traits in lieu of the impervious, cold bitch persona you got going on.”
She flinched back at the description and the queen softened her words, “All I’m saying it that you're in your twenties. The world shouldn’t be on your shoulders yet.”
The words staggered Nina, and she set down the cup. “You’re right.”
“Course I’m right. I’ve had over a millennia to say what I mean and mean what I say. Words are great like that. Real comforting. Real beautiful.”
Tears welled up in Nina’s eyes at the thought of her age. She wasn’t as old as the queen, but she looked it. Haggard, bags under her eyes, weariness in her step. She’d gone from twenty-three to sixty-two in a few months. It wasn’t surprising, just a little sad.
Every day was a fight against some new threat, that threat had a couple of years on her. So Nina had started to shed everything that resembled youth in favor of wisdom gained with age. Maybe if she started looking and acting a hundred, all the wisdom and power that came with the age would come to her.
“Oh, Nina,” the queen sighed softly as she rose from her side of the couch and came to crouch in front of Nina. “Age does not make you inherently wiser, it just makes you older.
“And sweetheart,” she added gently, brushing a stray curl behind Nina’s ear, “you don’t have to be what everyone wants you to be. You’re not going to like that person. And sooner or later, the people following you won’t either. You’re young, but that’s not a bad thing. We are all children until we are tested. We just might not look it.”

Since I've been posting my stories and poems online. I've met a lot of wonderful writers. That is why I have decided to do an author/poet spotlight whenever I meet a truly remarkable individual over the web. I'll do an online interview with them,  post some of their work, and links so you can read more of their stuff.

Today's author is Emily T. I physically sat down with Emily and asked her a few questions.
NOTE: this is a transcribed face-to-face interview. If you would like to listen to the recording, please click here.

All comments from Rosi (myself) are in red.

***
Okay, well, thanks for coming Emily! Super excited, I love your poetry. As you—as you know.

Thank you.

So let's just jump in right now. What does your writing process look like?

My writing process is very, very hectic. It's—um—people always say that inspiration comes at like the most random of times and that is completely and totally accurate. I'll be sitting in, like, the middle of a math class, and all of a sudden, in my head, I'll like notice the way the like teacher is writing something on the board, and I'm just like that looks really cool. Then all of a sudden, my math notes start turning into like little versus and like poems, over and over and over.

And so—if you actually look at the back of all my notebooks, like, you actually—like I write my actual notes in print and my poetry in cursive, so I can tell which is which, just, like, on a glance. 'Cause it really just—whenever, just, like, the mood strikes me I have to write poetry, right then and right there and right now. And if I actually try to like plan it, and sit down, I'm never going to write anything down. And I'll never get anything down.

Yeah, I have—I mean, I do the same thing with writing. I just have notebooks filled with, ya know, thoughts and ideas and—Ooh! So many things. 

*Laughter*

Hmm, cool. So do you, um, have any strange writing habits then? Like standing on your head or writing in the shower?

Let's see...strange writing habits. I think...*blows out a breath*. I think the only strange writing habit I can think of is that whenever I get writers block in the middle of a poem—like, if I'm on a roll and all of a sudden I just stop, I'll sketch eyes. In the margins of my paper. It's the only thing I can draw

Huh.

And like, so they'll just be eyes randomly in the middle of the paper just like—I'll like try drawing different ones and do different shadings and like I said, I'm a horrible drawer, but just like, there are these eyeballs everywhere on my paper. It's the freakiest thing, but that'll be like my strangest habit.

Very cool.

*Both burst out laughing*

I mean, I haven't heard that one yet. 

I swear I have no idea where it comes from, it's just a bunch of eyeballs. I tried to write a poem about it once, but it just lead to more eyes.

*More laughing (we had fun!)*

So, that's very cool. So! Just as you inspire other poets and poems inspire you, what poets have inspired you?!

Ah, the very first poet that inspired me was Emily Dickinson.

*Awh*

Uh, my mom actually named me after her. My namesakes after Emily Dickinson.

Very cool.

And emily Bronte as well. She's my mom's—it's cause my mom loved Wuthering Heights. Um, I—When I was in seventh grade, I found a book of her poetry randomly on the table. And I started reading it. And the rhythm of all of her lines really stuck with me, and I started writing with this rhythm. And Emily Dickinson is why I wrote my first poem. And when I showed it to my teacher—my teacher asked me if I copied it down from the book.

*Laughter* And I was just like, "No, but I think that's good right?"

*Burst of laughter* 

So, um, I love Emily Dickinson. Um, Sylvia Plath. As much as morbid as it is.

I love Sylvia Plath too. Ariel—

Yes!

—After my heart. 

Oh, she is absolutely fabulous. I love everything about her work. She is one of my inspirations and role models. Uh, I mean, other than—*laughter* 

But, I also love prose writer that write like poetry.

Mm-hmm.

Like F. Scott Fitzgerald. The images in like The Great Gatsby are phenomenal. And just like—when you're able to get that much depth it is like writing poetry in the form of prose.

Yes.

And I think that is fantastic. Um, Robert Jackson Bennett is a contemporary author. He wrote, um, The Troupe. And it's this fantastic, fantastic novel that just like—after every chapter I have to pause because just the images are so dense and the plot was so intense, it was just like really sticks out at you.

So I think as of now, those would be the people who just—

Just are—

I worship them! Worship the ground the walk on.

*Rosi's laughter*

Awesome, all right. So, what do you consider to be your best accomplishment?

Ooh! Best accomplishment...? In all honesty, I think becoming part of the Jimenez Porter Writers' House. I think a lot of times, no matter how many times people may say they like something, there is always gonna be that little bit of self doubt there. I think that no matter what you do, and no matter what you write, there's always going to be times when you look and you wonder if what you're doing is, like, really good.

So...by getting into the University of Maryland's Writers' House and having someone say, "You know what? Not only is your work good, but we think your work is good enough to be with other writer and to share your writing and to help your writing with them. I was really honored by that. I think that maybe one of the things I'm most proud of, thus far.

Yeah. I mean it really is an achievement. As you know, it's an honors program, very specific, very special. Um, that is really—that is really a great achievement. 

So then, where do you see yourself in ten years?

In a perfect world, I just wanna be writing.

*Mutual laughter*

I was actually talking to my friend about this the other day. I was talking to her—we were talking about career paths. And I'm just like, "You know the strangest thing? I've never seen a future where I'm not writing in some way, shape, or form." So, in a perfect life I'd like to have like published a few things.

Yeah.

I love poetry. I love prose. I love all that. Um, but I also am really into editing. So, I would love to be in a really great position with, like, a magazine or something like that. I absolutely love—um, not only reading people's work, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgzlp... I love giving them constructive criticism. I love, just like being able to have—'cause like art is a dialogue.

It is...


More from Emily's interview will be transcribed soon. If you want to listen to the recording please click here! You can read some of Emily's work here. 

Since I've been posting my stories and poems online, I've met a lot of wonderful writers. That is why I have decided to do an author/poet spotlight whenever I meet a truly remarkable individual over the web. I'll do an online interview with them, and post some of their content, and links so you can read more of their work.

Today's poet is Emily T.

Enjoy!
Rosi

***
The Accident The doctor stuck the scalpel into my father’s tattered leg like the aproned tattooed muscle men did behind the counters of butcher shops at the grocery store.
He dug around the hole in his knee like hamburger meat,Pale pink tendons pulling taut against the foreign object;Serenaded by the sound of the IV keeping time Like a dire biological metronome. 
To my six year old brain,Traced thick in wide crayons,Cheerios still caught in the folds of the layered lobes,It was hard to imagine what could have caused it,
What could’ve splattered crusted red scars Over his half shaven face.What could have made his glasses break instantly,Making him temporarily blind.
What could have made his limbs, bent tightly like mangled McDonald’s straws,Tangle so strangely in the gory modern art display of flesh and silver paper balls?
When the doctors said ‘there’s nothing more you can do,’ my mother drove us back.Silver car moving slower than usualThrough the highway patchwork of exhaust fumes tail pipes and phone calls.
After a moment she looked overAnd saw my eyesWideNot blinking for minutes at a time.
She asked me if I was all right, but I said nothing.I was afraid if I lost focus of the dark gray streetIf I looked away even for a moment
Then an asphalt monster would rise from the depths of the tar and the potholes.
It would pick us up like ants and toss us down, Twist our limbs and crack our joints like brutal two years old with Barbie dolls
Just as it did to him.So I didn’t blink .Instead I looked from tire to tire as the world raced by,Each car becoming another robotic tumbleweedOn the long winding road of a million Tiresias’s, Blind to the dangers Right under their feet.

***

Counting Down To Midnight I could never find my pulse,but tonight I can hear my heartbeat.I grasp my head with my hand, use my blue laced inner wrist as a kind of fleeting pillow and suddenly, I can hear it.A telegraph tapping strange SOS signals over my hardwired arteries.I can feel my chest move like a nine years olds bike going over the edge of a stunt-ramp. A big BUMP BUMP of rubber tires, But a shaking feeling of rusted handlebars;the simultaneous power of motionand the fear that any moment it could fall. I grip my hair and try not to lose it This proof of myself, lurching underneath thin skin Thinking maybe if I can grasp onto mineI can find you in some briny pond of a dream,put my hand on your thin wristand then, with rusted fingers, grasp gently onto yours. 



***


The History Professor  He had a cavernous voice;One that resonated deep in his throat But stopped one echo too short in the air,The oscillation pulled taut against thick calcium stalagmites.
The turns he took on his dirt road mind,The manipulations he played Like splintering keys on a paper piano,framed his thoughts expertly,Like a wax laurel wreath on a Grecian statue.
Students stare with blank dry erase eyes hazily As he paces back and forth of the podium like a queen’s sentinel.
You couldn’t tell where his speech startedAnd where his story had ended,Smooth words like a tidal wave, sitting regally on a San Franciscan Atlantis.
I pay more attention to his voice than to his speech--
Perhaps that was what he meant
When he said everything was poetry.

*To read her interview. Click here!

Since I've been posting my stories and poems online, I've met a lot of wonderful writers. That is why I have decided to do an author/poet spotlight whenever I meet a truly remarkable individual over the web. I'll do an online interview with them, and post some of their content, and links so you can read more of their work.

Today's poet is Emily T.

Enjoy!
Rosi

***
The Accident The doctor stuck the scalpel into my father’s tattered leg like the aproned tattooed muscle men did behind the counters of butcher shops at the grocery store.
He dug around the hole in his knee like hamburger meat,Pale pink tendons pulling taut against the foreign object;Serenaded by the sound of the IV keeping time Like a dire biological metronome. 
To my six year old brain,Traced thick in wide crayons,Cheerios still caught in the folds of the layered lobes,It was hard to imagine what could have caused it,
What could’ve splattered crusted red scars Over his half shaven face.What could have made his glasses break instantly,Making him temporarily blind.
What could have made his limbs, bent tightly like mangled McDonald’s straws,Tangle so strangely in the gory modern art display of flesh and silver paper balls?
When the doctors said ‘there’s nothing more you can do,’ my mother drove us back.Silver car moving slower than usualThrough the highway patchwork of exhaust fumes tail pipes and phone calls.
After a moment she looked overAnd saw my eyesWideNot blinking for minutes at a time.
She asked me if I was all right, but I said nothing.I was afraid if I lost focus of the dark gray streetIf I looked away even for a moment
Then an asphalt monster would rise from the depths of the tar and the potholes.
It would pick us up like ants and toss us down, Twist our limbs and crack our joints like brutal two years old with Barbie dolls
Just as it did to him.So I didn’t blink .Instead I looked from tire to tire as the world raced by,Each car becoming another robotic tumbleweedOn the long winding road of a million Tiresias’s, Blind to the dangers Right under their feet.

***

Counting Down To Midnight I could never find my pulse,but tonight I can hear my heartbeat.I grasp my head with my hand, use my blue laced inner wrist as a kind of fleeting pillow and suddenly, I can hear it.A telegraph tapping strange SOS signals over my hardwired arteries.I can feel my chest move like a nine years olds bike going over the edge of a stunt-ramp. A big BUMP BUMP of rubber tires, But a shaking feeling of rusted handlebars;the simultaneous power of motionand the fear that any moment it could fall. I grip my hair and try not to lose it This proof of myself, lurching underneath thin skin Thinking maybe if I can grasp onto mineI can find you in some briny pond of a dream,put my hand on your thin wristand then, with rusted fingers, grasp gently onto yours. 



***


The History Professor  He had a cavernous voice;One that resonated deep in his throat But stopped one echo too short in the air,The oscillation pulled taut against thick calcium stalagmites.
The turns he took on his dirt road mind,The manipulations he played Like splintering keys on a paper piano,framed his thoughts expertly,Like a wax laurel wreath on a Grecian statue.
Students stare with blank dry erase eyes hazily As he paces back and forth of the podium like a queen’s sentinel.
You couldn’t tell where his speech startedAnd where his story had ended,Smooth words like a tidal wave, sitting regally on a San Franciscan Atlantis.
I pay more attention to his voice than to his speech--
Perhaps that was what he meant
When he said everything was poetry.

*To read her interview. Click here!

I've gotten similar questions, and I thought I'd finally answer. When I first started Can't Fight Time, I wanted to write a horror novel, but my concept of horror was blood, guts, and gore. I didn't realize that what I'd be writing would be physiological, testing the bounds of forgiveness. Nothing I've written I can relate to, and it's been hard to find the words to describe what these characters are going through. Nobody dies easily, and no death is without consequence. There's always that stupid blond chick in horror movies who dies in the first ten minutes while running half naked and tripping every two seconds. We anticipate this, we expect it. That was sort of what I expected when I started Grim. That wasn't what I ended up getting. I do love what I've written and how complicated each character has become, but at the same time I don't think I'm a good enough writer to do my characters or plot justice. That's why it's taken me a long time. Words are still alluding me. My only hope is that I will be finished with this book and able to move onto the next on. That should be easier to write, but that's all relative.