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#now that I’m dedicating a good chunk of the summer to intense reading
stuckinapril · 1 year
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Like this post if u would be interested in me sharing my goodreads ??
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dopescotlandwarrior · 4 years
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Beauty Chooses II-Chapter 15
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           A special thanks to @statell​ for all your help and wisdom
Previous chapters at AO3
Chapter 15 The Bear
My thigh muscles were burning walking up the steep hill to fetch Faith. She is helping a neighbor make apple and peach pies today and it was time for her lessons. Everywhere I look the fields are ripe and nearly ready to harvest. The summer has gifted us with huge crops from perfect rain and sun. The Ridge will do quite well this year.
I have had a low-boil of excitement for the past two months due to no period. What I wouldn’t give for a nearby Walgreens that sells early pregnancy tests. I will just have to wait and pray I was given another chance.
Once we socialized for a while and I admired the beautiful pies, Faith thanked the neighbor and we left for the trek home. I watched her lesson and was very impressed with the math she was doing wondering what a young lady in the 18th century would do with such a gift. It was making my head hurt to think about it, so I excused myself to lay down for a bit. Fighting fatigue is my greatest challenge lately and I find it best to give in and close my eyes each afternoon.
When the bed shook under me I knew Jamie had come to check on me. His warm hands slid down my arms and I yawned and turned toward him smiling.
“Are ye well, Sassenach?”
“Yes.”
“Ye dinna nap in the day usually, until recently. I canna wait any longer lass. Are ye with child?”
“Yes, I believe I am.”
He exhaled audibly and pulled me to him. He touched me like I might shatter with the slightest pressure and I smiled at him.
“I won’t break sweetheart. Perhaps I can show you just how strong I am?”
I reached for his breeks only to have him capture my hands and kiss them. “Another time my love. We are bringin in Floyd’s fields today and they’re waitin on me.”
He kissed my forehead and jumped from our bed. I knew he would be gone until after sunset and I sighed deeply before getting up myself. I found Faith helping Misses Crook shuck corn cobs in the kitchen and kissed her cheeks until she giggled. Glavia still did lessons with Faith every day but was quick to join the man who was courting her in the afternoon. Several times per week Daniel would come for her and they would walk and talk.
I watched them at social gatherings and saw true interest in Daniel. He watched her, always, when she was away from him and his face lit up when she returned. Glavia was sold into servitude by her parents at a young age, but her sharp intellect allowed her to self learn mathematics, literature, history, and advanced writing. Her hunger for knowledge always impressed me but she was in need of a different kind of lesson. There was no one to look after her adult education pertaining to love, courtship, marriage, and sex. It fell to me as I oversaw this beautiful girl.
“Glavia, would you come to my room, please? I want to have a talk with you.”
We sat cross-legged on my bed which seemed to relax her. We talked about Daniel and how the courtship was going. I could see she was in love by the rosy blush that spread across her face and the whimsical look in her eyes.
“Has he kissed you yet?”
“No mistress!”
“Well, it is quite normal at this stage of courtship to be kissed. Have you told him not to?”
“No, he has not asked me.”
“Do you want him to kiss you?”
“I do!”
“Next time you two are alone, like when he walks you home, if he stops and looks into your eyes you must stay focused on his eyes, do not look down at your feet. That tells a man not to kiss you.”
I could see Glavia’s mind working because she wanted to be kissed and would follow my instructions to the letter.
“He can put his arm around your waist when he kisses you but that is all. If his hands are wandering all over your body, you must break the kiss and run home. He is not an honorable man if he does such a thing. If he courts only you and has not asked for your hand in marriage after six months you must move on and find another suitor. Hard as that may be.”
Glavia stared at me through my dissertation and I knew my warnings were burned into her brain. I hugged her before walking downstairs. Her deer-in-the-headlight look tugged at my heart and I was glad I had not gone any further with her lesson today.
Later when I kissed Faith goodnight she asked for Jamie. She was learning one Gaelic word per night and she had not gotten her word yet. I assured her I would send him up the minute he came home. She is such a sweet little girl. I could not imagine speaking to her about kissing men and letting them hold her waist. I would surely poison them before they ever got near her. I giggled down the stairs at the thoughts I was having.
Faith practiced and used the Gaelic words she was learning every day and she would giggle, or gasp, at Jamie when he spoke Gaelic, reminding us both she could sometimes understand him. She was learning, and waited on her father’s instruction every night. It was not usual for a father to spend dedicated time with a daughter. His job was to save for her dowry and see her married as well as possible. I was immensely proud of Jamie for wanting his daughter to learn all she could from him. They had a special bond because of it. ********************** To my eternal happiness, a period never came for nine months. The birth of this child was not as easy as Faith, but like the first time, Jamie was in the bed with me, coaching and encouraging, no matter how many times the attending ladies asked him to leave. Brian James Alexander Fraser was born on March 19th 1753. He has dark curly hair, piercing blue eyes, and a healthy set of lungs. When the baby cried in the night, I would change his diaper and plug him into a nipple, I slept while he nursed. A couple of hours later he would fuss again and I would turn over and give him the other side. He was an easy baby with an abundance of people to answer his every grunt and cry.
Jamie built a bassinet outside that was strung between two trees so the baby could rest and coo outside while I hung laundry. He was just fed and sleeping quietly so I ran into the house for more laundry. I threw a few pieces into the washtub and felt the hair on my arms stand up at the low growling coming from the yard. When I raised my eyes I almost fainted.
A large brown bear ambled around, sniffing the trees, looking for food. He got closer and closer to the baby and I thought I would have a heart attack. I ran off the porch and picked up large rocks to throw but he was too far away. He kept coming so I ran into the house and grabbed the rifle loading it on the porch while the bear got closer. I would have to shoot across the baby to hit the bear. Hopefully, I could make him run away, grab Brian, and run to the safety of the house.
The beast was acting aggressively and stood on his hind legs, smacking his lips together. An invitation to fight. I raised the rifle to my shoulder, aiming right for his head. If I missed, or just grazed him, he would charge me, and Brian was between us in the bassinet. I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and pulled the trigger. The rifle shot was loud and echoed into the canyon and back again. I hit the bear in his face and he roared, charging at me. I loaded the rifle again with shaking hands, pulled it to my shoulder and shot his face again. He veered off to the side screaming in pain. I ran to Brian, scooping him up before running to the front door.
Misses Crook was white-faced when she ran to me and looked me over. Not minutes later, Jamie came charging through the front followed by Murtagh. I was sobbing and Jamie held us while I told him what happened. When he knew we were alright they headed back out in pursuit of the injured bear.
Brian eventually calmed down and Faith pressed into me for the better part of the afternoon. When Glavia took Brian to the nursery I turned my attention to Faith who was very pale. I hugged her to me and told her not to worry. First bear on the ridge in almost eight years, there wasn’t likely to be another.
Misses Crook called us to eat but I wasn’t hungry. The sun was going down and Jamie wasn’t back yet. The bear must be leading them on a good chase into the forest and when it was so dark to be completely black the bear would turn around and eat them. I shook my head hard to rid the image in my mind and went back to the window.
Some of the men built a large bonfire to guide them back if they were lost, by the light of the flames or by smell. Once Faith was in her bed with Glavia to read to her I went outside to speak with the neighbors. As I approached a cheer went up as Jamie and Murtagh emerged from the trees. They were both bloody and my heart fell as I ran to them.
“Thank ye for the fire, yer good friends to stand out here in the cool night. The bear is still alive, for now anyway, we will gather at first light and try again.”
Someone asked why they were bloody if they had wounds to mend. I was already looking them both over and could see no wounds or punctures from long teeth. I continued to look.
“It isna our blood, Sassenach, I’m not hurt, dinna fash. After sunset, the bear came back and attacked from behind. He grabbed both of us and I shoved my rifle into his mouth and let him chew on the barrel while we got to our feet. He took it, so I’ll be needin to borrow a rifle in the morning.” Jamie pointed at Murtagh, “if the same amount of blood is on me, the bear will bleed out by morning. We can hope.”
Jamie didn’t want to use up all the stored water in the house so he and Murtagh bravely turned toward the stream. I knew it would be intensely uncomfortable in the chilly night air. I grabbed two blankets and followed them.
“Thank ye Sassenach, but yer too far from the house now to walk back alone.”
I used my torch to find them in the water and handed each of them a chunk of soap and inspected their shirts before turning my back. I held the blankets out and felt one pull off my arm, and then the other. Thinking they were both covered by their blanket I turned around to take their clothes and poor Murtagh was hopping in place, trying to free his foot from his trousers. I whipped around again and squeezed my eyes shut as if that would erase the image from my mind.
We all pushed toward home, me, and two half-frozen Highlanders, and it was all I could do to keep my hysterical laughter from erupting. I left them at the fire to warm up and raced to my room where I buried my face in a pillow and let it rip. Bare butt cheeks were only half of it. In the shadow of my torch, I could clearly see Murtagh’s penis bouncing up and down when he hopped. I dared not go back downstairs and wondered if I could ever see Murtagh from behind without laughing. Thank goodness he was unaware.
Misses Crook placed hot bowls of stew in front of the men and kept them full until they both pushed away from the table. Jamie staggered into our room and collapsed on the bed. He smelled delicious and his naked body was filling my mind with things not so funny. I ran my hand over his gorgeous butt and received a loud snore for my efforts. I tried several times to wake him and if he hadn’t been snoring, I might think him dead. I gave up and pulled his lifeless arm over me, that was enough to fall asleep.
I was up in time to see the large gathering of men outside. Many had a rifle, some had a pitchfork. Jamie split them into two groups and taught them a strange whistle to be used when someone found the bear or its blood trail. Many wives ran out to fill their husband's pockets with dried meat and fruit only to have Jamie explain it would bring bears in from every direction and the gifts were pulled out of pockets instantly.
These were brave men who hung on Jamie’s every word. Murtagh went with one group, Jamie with the other, and they disappeared into the trees. I hugged the women and told them not to worry. I suggested we all look for herbs and mushrooms today. The women looked into the trees and shook their heads before scattering to their houses.
Glavia pulled the nursery window open a few inches and I could hear Brian making quite a fuss. Nice hint Glavia, I’m coming.
I was deep into the front yard when I heard him and walked quickly toward the house. Before I reached the front door, I felt my milk let down and my breasts tingle sharply. I started running up the stairs and grabbed Brian to my breast as it flowed into the fabric of my shift. I sat back in the rocking chair panting from my constricting corset and smiled at Faith.
“Good morning, darling. Did you have pleasant dreams?”
Faith put her hand on my leg and looked at her feet. It was clear she was still traumatized from the bear incident and my heart broke.
“Faith, do not worry. Your father has lots of men with him today and they will all stay safe together.”
Faith spoke quickly and I could see she was unsettled. Her words were half Gaelic and half English, and I felt a giggling pride that she had been so devoted to her father’s language. Glavia confessed that Faith requested Gaelic when she spoke to tenants and they were only too happy to correct her pronunciation and teach her the words she lacked to answer them. She looked at me sharply for laughing but I felt my eyes well up with tears and she knew how proud I was of her.
“I have never been so proud of you little girl. Now, I have a new lesson to teach you. Courage.”
“No mama, I am too fearful. I will never be unafraid, as you are, and I canna make myself. I’ve tried.”
“Fearful.” I rolled the word off my tongue thinking of the best way to explain fear. “I am quite familiar with fear actually, it is something I live with every day. It’s either making me shake or hovering in my head ready to fill me with dread at the slightest provocation. I dare say Glavia feels fear often, do you not my dear?”
Glavia nodded her head vigorously.
“Courage simply means feeling the fear and doing the act anyway. Yes, that about sums it up.” I smiled at my explanation until I saw the confusion in Faith’s expression.
“Darling, do you remember when I hit the man with my parasol? I was hugely afraid at that moment, but I hit him anyway because it was the only thing I could do. Courage is like the cavalry riding in to save you, or someone you love, when danger is near.”
“Cavalry.” She tasted the word with a strange expression.
“Sorry, a bit too soon for that word. Courage is that bit in you that rises up in the face of danger and does whatever is necessary to save yourself or someone you care about. It has bigger muscles than your fear and will save you. Yes, that’s better.”
Brian burped loudly in my ear as his head rolled in his sleep. I put him in Glavia’s outstretched hands and turned to my sweet daughter.
“The time will come when you will feel tremendous fear and the way to safety will be clear in your mind. You will do what needs to be done because you know it’s the right thing to do. Each time you do it, will be easier.”
Faith wrapped her arms around my waist and seemed a bit more composed when she left with Glavia to get a snack before lessons. I stayed in the soothing rocking chair and thought about all the times courage pulled me through something scary. Waking up in Jamie’s wood the first time, sailing to France not knowing where I might wake up the next day, walking through the stones, and running to save my family when the redcoats were twenty feet from us. I shook my head to make it stop because my heart was banging in my ears. I dearly hoped Faith would not experience a fraction of that.
I wondered how long it takes to find an injured bear and decided to read on the front porch to be available in case other wives came for news of the hunt. I squinted against the sun making my eyes water and kept them closed until the sting went away. Sometime later, I moved my eyeballs side to side under my lids, aware of the passage of time. My face was in the shadow of the porch when I opened them so I must have fallen asleep some time ago. I felt my smile as I stretched and then froze seeing a large animal not five feet from me.
The bear was walking straight toward me and I couldn’t move. It was huge and dripping blood behind him. I wondered if Jamie was close by and prayed fervently that he was. He was closer now. When I saw his front feet on the steps to the porch the alarm bells were ringing in my ears, I was hyperventilating, but I still couldn’t move. I would have to run past the beast to reach the front door and I couldn’t make myself do it. As I debated my plan the front door swung open and Misses Crook jumped out, followed by Faith and Glavia. They had pots and wooded spoons to beat on them making such a noise it scared the bear and he ran back down the stairs. I jumped to my feet ushering the woman back into the house and slamming the door.
I dropped to my knees and held Faith closely while I panted for air.
“That, my darling, is the very definition of courage. Thank you, all of you, for saving me!”
We crowded close to the window to see the bear, but he was gone. We continued to look until it jumped in front of the window on its hind legs growling at the sight of us. We all screamed and clung to each other. The bear was growling with his horrible mouth wide open and I prayed he would not bang into the glass and get us. I looked around for the rifle before I remembered it was lost and pulled the women away from the window. I told them to run for the nearest neighbor while I distracted the bear. They refused and I implored Glavia to run Faith to safety and scowled at Misses Crook.
The bear was getting frustrated. He could see us but could not get us, so he started pounding on the glass. I screamed at Misses Crook to hide upstairs with the baby. He pounded louder and I have never been so scared. I watched the bear shoot sideways with human hands clutching the fur on his neck and a shiny dirk plunge deep into the neck squirting blood sideways. I could see Jamie on his back, as the bear thrashed the dirk was brought down into his neck again and again. I watched in horror at the huge quantity of blood that pooled on the patio boards and covered Jamie.
Like it was slow motion, he plunged the dirk into the neck and moved it side to side violently. I could tell the bear was losing his strength as it tried to stand up and roar one last time. The bear fell forward with Jamie rolling to the side and getting to his feet. Brave Jackson ran to Jamie with a rifle pointed at the beast’s head. They stood still while the blood pumped out of the animal. There was no more life in the bear so ropes were tied to its legs and he was dragged off the porch and away.
I could hear Brian screaming and raced upstairs to find Misses Crook pacing with a hysterical baby. I took him and dropped into the rocking chair, telling her the bear was quite dead. I rocked my sweet son and hummed to him while I offered a nipple. It took several minutes for him to stop crying and finally latch onto me. I smiled down at him and tried to keep my face calm. “I can be your hero baby I can kiss away the pain I will stand by you forever You can take my breath away”
“I’ve ne’er heard that song mistress.”
My head snapped up, forgetting Misses Crook was still in the room. “It’s Enrique Iglesias, one of my favorites.” She blinked at me like she had never been to my century.
“Could you find Glavia and Faith and bring them home?”
“Aye.”
I watched Brian sleep in my arms. I knew there was chaos happening outside, but for now, it was just me and Brain and all was right in the world. When I had indulged myself enough, I put the baby in his cradle and went downstairs to wait for the women. I thought about Glavia and how sparkling happy she had been lately. My happiness for her ground to a halt and I counted on my fingers how many months it had been since Daniel first came to call on her. I was quite upset I had not watched more closely because by my count it had been well over a year. What could Daniel be waiting for I wondered?
“Glavia, may I speak to you please, before the lesson? How is it going with your suitor, Daniel?”
Her smile illuminated her face for a moment but was quickly replaced with concern. She looked at me strangely, almost like fear.
“It has been over a year Glavia. Has he talked about marriage, has he asked you?”
“No mistress, not yet.”
“He calls on you several times a week, what do you two talk about?”
When she looked at the floor, she tried to answer which was little more than stammering. I was flooded with fear for her suddenly and my question just flew out of my mouth.
“Glavia, has he asked for more than a kiss?”
She shook her head no and started to cry. Now I was really confused. I pulled her to the sofa and calmed myself before asking what her tears were for. It took a bit of time before she answered me.
“He has not asked to kiss me yet. I have done what you said, I look at him when we are together and he gets quiet but he has not asked.”
“Oh dear. Does he act fond of you?”
“Yes, he writes beautiful poetry for me, about love and devotion. He reads it to me out loud and says he wrote the poem for me.”
Her eyes became misty and full of love, but I had not a clue how to guide her. Well, I know what I would have done in this situation.
“Glavia, your courtship has gone on too long. I’m afraid people will talk about you in an unkind way that may interfere with other men courting you, if it comes to that. So, it’s time to say goodbye to Daniel.” When she protested, loudly, I decided it couldn’t hurt to tell her what I would do. “There is one more thing you can try. If he truly loves you, this will work. You kiss him.”
“What?! I couldn’t do such a thing!”
“You can, and you will, because you don’t want to say goodbye. It’s not so bad. Next time you two are alone where no one can see you, just hold his face and kiss him.”
“Hold his face?”
“Softly, like this, and look directly into his eyes, and then..”
“What’s this then?”
I heard Jamie’s voice from the front door and snapped my head up to see him wrapped in a blanket again after washing in the river.
“Do you mind if I use you to demonstrate how to kiss?”
He perked up, “I dinna mind mo chridhe.” He walked to me smiling and looking at my lips. I could tell he meant to lead so I put my hand up to stop him.
“I want you to act like you are not expecting a kiss.”
When he started asking questions, I tenderly held his face and softly kissed him. I felt his arms reach for me after that and suggested he dress before there is any more kissing. He looked cheated but went up the stairs to our room. I turned to Glavia and smiled.
“See? It’s easy, well maybe not the first time because you will be nervous. Maybe you would like to try with Murtagh?”
She shook her head yes and I called the unsuspecting man over to us. “Murtagh, before you disappear to dress can we borrow you for a minute?”
He approached with his usual scowl and Glavia bravely stood up, held his face, and kissed him. And then he fainted dead away.
“Oh dear God, Murtagh… Murtagh, wake up.”
I slapped his cheek a bit and his eyes opened as he scooted back away from us. Glavia was apologizing and walking toward him so he got to his feet and ran to his room. Maybe I should have warned him.
“That was magnificent! Seriously, you did it just right and I’m sure Daniel will not react that way. How do feel about the kiss, can you do it with Daniel?”
“I feel fine about kissing and yes I can do it, this evening when we take our walk.”
With that, she turned to the stairs to start Faith’s lesson. I felt rather wicked for not warning Murtagh and all the talk of kissing was making me uncomfortable. I decided to help Jamie get dressed for his afternoon of chores and maybe a quick explanation of causing Murtagh to faint, the poor man.
I had to help Jamie off the floor he was laughing so hard at Murtagh’s reaction to being kissed. I admit I was almost losing it myself and didn’t know who was helping who up. I was quite sure Murtagh would not speak to me for quite some time, but it was worth it. Glavia seemed to have confidence enough to kiss her boyfriend and I was on pins and needles all evening, waiting for her to come home. It was unusually late when I finally heard the front door open. Jamie and the rest of the household were fast asleep already.
Glavia pressed her back against the door and sighed deeply. She looked weird but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“How was your evening Glavia?”
She rolled her head to look at me and smiled like she was high. Uh oh. “Well, did you do it?”
She drifted to me like her feet were not touching the ground. When she got closer, I could see the area around her mouth was red and looked painful. Then it hit me, they kissed so much he scratched her delicate skin with his beard. I looked again and decided that was a lot of kissing. Glavia floated upstairs without a word and I prayed a proposal would be coming soon. I made a vow, then and there, to be more careful with the advice I gave.
I waited patiently for the next two weeks, hoping Daniel would speak to Jamie about asking for Glavia’s hand but it never happened. After each date, Glavia would float in with a red mouth and say goodnight. Clearly, I had to meddle in her affairs one more time. When Jamie and I were in bed I broached the subject.
“Jamie, darling, I think you need to speak with Daniel about his intentions for Glavia. It’s been over a year they have been seeing each other and I am worried about her reputation. Will you speak to him, to Daniel, please?”
“Do I order him to marry the lass, or ask why he hasna already?”
“Well, tell him a year of courtship is long enough so he must marry her or never see her again.”
I could feel Jamie thinking about that and he undoubtedly thought it harsh, but I was the one to protect her reputation, so I would keep asking him. A month later, Daniel asked Jamie after church if he might speak with him later in the afternoon. Jamie agreed and I almost fainted with relief. This better be what I think it is or I will throttle that boy myself.
There was great excitement on the Ridge today as we prepared for the harvest festival which usually lasted all night and into the next day. The men had been hunting all week and there was already a pig, three turkeys, and a deer roasting outside. Misses Crook and I made numerous trips to the big tables outside bringing plates of bannocks, fruit salad, and bread. The tables were filling up quickly as we went back to the house for more food. Glavia would not be lending a hand this afternoon. She was sitting on her bed waiting for Daniel’s visit to be over so she could pump Jamie for information.
I thought the door to Jamie’s study was closed for an awfully long time, feeling my relief when Daniel dashed for the front door. I was already dressed for the party and poked my head in to look at my husband. He sat quietly, contemplating his universe and whatever was happening in it. I raised my eyebrows when he looked up and he beckoned me in to sit with him.
“Daniel has asked for Glavia’s hand and I gave my permission, now I feel afraid for the lass because her husband wilna make her happy.” He stood up and walked toward me lifting me and holding me close by my waist. “Tell me Sassenach, are all women like ye? Because Daniel wilna do what I do to ye.”
His eyes were burning with the question because Daniel presented himself as chaste and held that virtue in the highest regard. He knew how to create offspring but saw sex at other times sinful.
“If Glavia is like ye she will have a lonely life.” He pushed the hair behind my ear and looked me in the eye while he ran his fingers down my chest and over my nipple. “I fear he is pious and will not stimulate her interest in the world.”
“Jamie. She is in love and there is no telling her otherwise. Do not take on the burden of her happiness. It is up to Glavia to seek her marital bliss and I have faith in her.”
We were temporarily sidetracked by kissing and celebrating our mutual love, physical and spiritual. The house was filling with the smell of roasting meat and we could hear music and clapping outside. I pulled Jamie to the door and he seemed to shake off his concern and smile in anticipation of the party ahead. Later I saw Daniel steer Glavia away from the party and they disappeared. I sighed deeply hoping I was right about their union because it would soon be too late to undo this.
I bundled Brian up in his blankets and got back to the party in time to see Jamie dancing with his daughter as the crowd clapped. She was in full hero-worship as she watched his feet and copied him to the beat of the music. My eyes stung watching them. She seemed so grown up and was so loved by her father.
Later, I steered Faith toward home and helped her into bed suddenly aware of her need for a Gaelic word from Jamie. She answered me in a string of Gaelic and then translated, “he gave me two words last night.” I kissed her cheeks a dozen times and pulled the quilt up to her chin before turning down the lamp.
“You are my angel, goodnight.”
I put a sleeping Brian into his cradle and went downstairs to help Misses Crook with the catastrophic mess in the kitchen. I could see she was dead on her feet and ordered her to bed. I was still wide awake, waiting for Glavia to come home and tell me her good news.
She came through the door a changed woman, brimming with love, and seeing images of her wedding in her mind. I hugged her to me, so happy she had won her love and determined to meddle when the time was right so she would understand seduction and physical love.
Once Glavia was upstairs with the children I rejoined the party and a drunk Scot assaulted me pulling me to dance with him. I laughed until I lost step with the music, panting from my corset. Jamie whisked me away from the smoke of the fire and by the time I could breathe my back was against a tree and said Scot was chasing my mouth. He pressed into me asking forgiveness and kissed me deeply. I tried to see behind him to verify we were out of sight when my skirts came up to my waist and he pulled me up. My legs went around him and I lowered my head to kiss him as his cock slowly filled me. Christ, what a feeling it was when he first pushed into me. I leaned back against the tree and watched his arousal take off and his pace quicken. He held my head down on his lips and when I pushed away to breathe, he pulled my jacket open and exposed my breasts. That did it. I was in the race to finish with him and almost lost consciousness from my damn corset. My orgasm gripped him hard enough to make him grunt and he followed me into the erotic wind. I felt his kisses on my neck when I opened my eyes. He set me down on my feet and he hugged me closely before we giggled about our adventure.
Jamie was walking back to the house with me when several men were calling him to join in the games. I smiled and pushed him toward the party, wanting him to enjoy this night of fun that came only once a year. I banked the fire and turned the lamps down before heading upstairs reaching behind me to grab one of my laces and failing. I peeked into the nursery and Brian and Faith were sound asleep. Glavia whispered to me and I almost shot out of my skin. I pulled her to my room and closed the door. She helped me out of my corset and into a robe so we could talk.
She described the way Daniel proposed to her and thought it the most romantic speech ever said. I found it devoid of emotion and pious, suddenly sharing Jamie’s concern for her happiness. We would have to see how long dear Daniel can resist a beautiful, young, wife who is schooled in seduction. I would make sure Glavia knew what to do, even if it meant Murtagh fainting again, or worse. On second thought, maybe we should leave Murtagh out of this. What I intended to teach her wasn’t as innocent as a kiss.
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missmonkeymode · 5 years
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My story with google + since its ending soon
So, first things first. How did I get on google plus in the first place? Honestly I'm not fully sure, I think it was a mix of youtube being glued onto google plus, my brother using it, and maybe being lonely I don't fully know. I remember the first thing I did, it was basically add a bunch of pokemon stuff to my feed and follow my brother. Nothing much really happened then, but the more important part is what happened a little bit later, like a couple of months after I made the account. I found a group of people who roleplayed warrior cats. I know, warrior cats. I was intrigued by the thought of roleplaying, since it was like a joint story (in my eyes at least). I immediately joined and made my first oc ever. Her name was Ivy, she's a young cat who hated everything and everyone and was weirdly strong. I made her design in a dolldevine thing. Funny thing though, I didn't even read one book about warrior cats before I joined the group.
That was technically the first time I had internet friends. I remember thinking that everyone was like, cool older teenagers but I found out recently that the closest friend I had was literally 2 years older than me  so who would've thought. Eventually, the community got more and more inactive, and we just stopped. We stopped roleplaying with each other, and I think I was the only one who stuck with google plus from that group weirdly. This lasted until like, mid 2015 I wanna say? I dont't fully remember, but it doesn't fully matter, just by 2015 we split up.
So mid 2015 to early 2016 I literally remember nothing from them except liking minecraft youtubers (VAGUELY THO). All I do remember is getting kicked from this one group for breaking the rules once, but screw them right? I was messing around on youtube, and I found Jacksepticeyes playthrough of undertale in February of 2016. I fell in love with undertale. To be honest, I think that was one of the most intense hyper fixation I've ever had oopsie. I started following anything related to Undertale, including rp blogs since I knew what they were. Then I found someone who roleplayed Ink Sans.
Now about 7th grade me: I wasn't at the best place if I'm honest. I didn't have any friends, mostly what I did was read since I didn't have a phone at the time, I was extremely antisocial, and all I remember is like, the only time I had fun at school was watching the theatre kids dick around in theatre class even though I was too timid to actually say hi.
7th grade me was a different person than now me, even though I still have some traits from older me. But hey we ain't here to hear kit talk about how she thinks her life changed and junk we here about g+ baybee
So when I found this Ink Sans roleplayer, I checked out their blog since I was really into undertale aus and Ink Sans was new to me. I immediately followed after I saw their content. I was in awe, this person was a great rper, was everything 7th grade me wished to be (funny, confident, friendly, all that good jazz), and they liked undertale. I started commenting on their post, and we became friends. I remember becoming friends with them, and befriending their friends. I still know who they are to this day, and I still follow them even if we're not really friends anymore. Eventually the Ink Sans rper made a group where their friends hung out, and you can imagine how shocked and excited I was. Who'd like plain old Kit, all she does is read. But nevertheless, I dedicated the good chunk of 2016 in that group.
Overtime, I learned everyones name and stopped referring to them as their character. Ink Sans's mun's name was Uki, a Gaster Sans became Izzy, a Flowey became a Cy, etc etc. Everyone was older than me, I was the youngest in the group. I remember good things about that place, but one thing I don't remember is how horny e veryone was besides me. Lowkey I think because of skeleporn that they posted that I use to get fluseterd when thinking of sans f. So people were chilling on the server, then Uki got into homestuck. SHe got the others into homestuck, and I believe I was the last one to get into it (mostly because of my brother lol). So we all were posting about homestuck, and as a joke, Uki invited as many Eridan rpers to the server (since she had a crush on eridan lol) and eventually a dude named Myth joined. I'm a mutual to him on tumblr now so thats poppin. Myth is a good friend but he wasn't the quietest person. Eventually because of how rowdy it got, Uki's mom found out about the server and banned her from social media.
Everyone was devastated after that, especially her boyfriend Cy, and that launched the group into a weird limbo where we'd talk to each other and still be friends outside of the group, but not actually be active in the group. Officially it died in summer of 2016, but if I had to say when it died, I would say late winter after Uki left it died. 2016 came and went, and now its 2017 with a good chunk of friends still being into homestuck, so we decided to start roleplaying together as homestuck ocs. That's when things get weird and take a turn towards the sour.
So Izzy, the person who was gaster, started dating this papyrus roleplayer, who we called pap. Myth Introduced us to some more people and then yeah. OH WAIT I FORGOT TO MENTION LOGAN AND LGBT! So this group was the first time I figured out that the lgbt community existed, and Logan was a Pansexual gal who had a lot of drama irl but overall was pretty chill. BACK TO THE STORY!
So everyone had an oc, and everyone was at various places in their roleplaying life. Some people they were great at it, some people didn't start rping until the group started, some people were rusty at it but has some expirence (that twas me).  Because of this group I opened up MSPaint and actually figured out how it worked and start using it. It was fun but some people were..... unsavory to be kind. What I'm going to say in the spoilers contains tw of being sexually gross and suicide.
Around spring Izzy and Pap's relationship started getting shakey, and Izzy wanted to break up with Pap. At the time I had no idea what happened, but apparently Pap threatened Izzy with suicide if she did break up with him.  Izzy told Logan about it, and Logan told everyone to unfollow him. I didn't since I didn't know what was happening, but Pap was shunned from the group and I have no idea what they're doing today. It was a good thing to, his character were gross. Again, I didn't realize it at the time but like, his homestuck characters were fucking WILD. If I remember correctly (and i do) one of his characters tried to hump other characters and yeah that was bad. I made my character punch him and was bout to rip off his troll dick so yeah I did register that that was bad, but I didn't realize the gravity of it. Also another one of his characters kidnapped another character and had them as a sex slave maybe? yeah so good riddance to him.
Tl;DR Pap was gross and bad, so he's gone.
So like, late 2017, the rp group went inactive and some people I still know and talk to. A guy called Muff that joined later is still a good friend of mine. But that split up, and each person just stopped using google+ all together. All that really stayed was Myth, Izzy, and Muff. Logan had something happened with an ex and now deleted her account. I don't know what happened to her, all that she's safe. Cy just slowly moved to a new site, and we didn't stay in contact. 2018 rolled in, and I decided to be more out there and like, try to actually do things irl so that's where I changed from middle school Kit to Kit right now. I still used google+, I found some more friends whom are way better than some of the people who I interreacted with in 2017. Nothing eventful happened that year, but it was an amazing year nevertheless. Now early summer 2018 happened and i found jojo's bizarre adventure, and to my surprise some of my newer friends liked jojo! So we bonded over that, somehow passed them while reading/watching it, and life is going good. Then the announcement thhat google+ is ending happened.
Everyone, and when I say everyone I mean everyone, freaked out. A little bit about google+ culture is that you can literally become friends with everyone no matter follower count or post, it was a great place to make friends. Everyone was in a tizy about how they were going to keep their friends since nobody wanted to lose them. Another thing about google+ culture is how terrible the site is. To anyone here who's familiar with tumblr, imagine the tumblr staff but they dont fix bugs and don't care much about the site, and that's honestly the google+ staff. So everyone jokes about how the site is bad, there was a meme that was created to poke fun at the bugs (it was gold stars), and everyone said "when will this god forsaken site ended". Literally at first nobody knew if the announcement was real or not thats how much people joked about the end of google plus.
According to an article, the original end date was going to be in August. This was announced early this year, so people had time to plug other social media and things like that. But, that wasn't the fate of google+. Somehow someone leaked information about some users, so the google+ team decided to end it earlier. Tomorrow google plus won't be google plus, it'll be google business. Luckily I got peoples twitter and tumblr and all that jazz but.... damn. Who would've thought that google plus would end. None of us certainly did.
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kitashiwrites · 7 years
Note
I'm sorry my post was really aggressive. I still stand by my point that it ISN'T fair to dismiss Mor's romantic feelings (or lack thereof) towards Az, but how I acted was really awful. You don't have to post this publicly, but I hope you know I'm very sorry. My intention wasn't to try to start drama, but just receive an explanation over WHY you still ship Moriel. My way of going about it was TERRIBLE. I know sorry is just a word, but I'M SORRY.
2/2 I didn’t send you three asks. I only sent you one? Just to clear that up.3/3 I also didn’t send more than one ask. :/ 
Okay Anon. While I find it extremely hard to believe because of the timing (especially because for as long as I have been on here, I have RARELY gotten asks, let alone 3 in such quick succession that are so similar), as well as the fact that you clearly don’t stand behind your words because you felt the need to do this all on anon/have to make sure we know that you still think we are wrong, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt & accept your apology.In regards to your question, why I still ship Moriel, @sarahviehmann honestly said it best in her original answer to you: “ACOMAF was written in a way that intended for them to be shipped. So those people spent a year building up their fanon and meta and so forth, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.”
(For the sake of everyone, I’m putting this under a cut. It got way long.)
I hated ACOWAR. I’ve made no secret of that. I’ve also made no secret as to WHY. I’ve been writing fic for this series for over a year, & heavily focused on ACOMAF. I started when there were literally 7 fics posted to Ao3. Basically all of my free time at home & all of my breaks at work were spent either writing fic, discussing the series/meta with people here/talking my poor friends’ ears off over dinner, or planning fic for characters I wanted to explore in POV fics like Rhys, Tamlin, & Tarquin. Hell, I still have a 10 chapter Amarantha POV pre-ACOTAR through ACOTAR fic that’s over half written at 16k that I originally wanted to try as a surprise for my readers. I read ACOMAF enough times that I honestly would have said that I knew those characters as well as my own family, knew exactly what happened in which chapters, & got many comments here & on Ao3 from people who felt I’d captured the characters correctly, so I felt pretty good about what to expect going forward.
When ACOWAR spoilers came out, absolutely nothing made sense with what we knew or had been prior established canon. Most of all in regards to Mor, Rhys, Feyre, & Lucien, but I’m going to specifically focus on Mor, since she’s at the crux of the issue at hand. In Mor’s case, we took a woman who is described in ACOMAF as “a queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it” & says to Feyre, “I once lived in a place where the opinion of others mattered. It suffocated me, nearly broke me. So you’ll understand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to hell with a reputation. You do what you love, what you need”, & in ACOWAR made her a victim in circumstances that make absolutely no sense for the character we had known up until that date. Queen of the Hewn City? She wasn’t even treated with enough respect to be prepared to go into a meeting with her abusers, let alone shown that she is in charge. The first real female friend Feyre has ever had? Regulated to acting like a jealous girlfriend around Cassian whenever Nesta got too close. And speaking of Cassian, it was pointed out in another post (I’m sorry I don’t have the link right now) that the Cassian & Mor moments read like they were originally Az & Mor moments & were hastily changed when suddenly they weren’t supposed to be even friends. Nothing in this book read like it had been edited for continuity.
There are many bloggers who are far more qualified than I am to speak on Mor’s coming out scene, & while there was a divide, there were quite a few I know & follow who felt it was poorly written/bad rep, & I agree with their reasoning. Besides the fact that I don’t believe for one dang second that no one in the Inner Circle at a minimum would have picked up on something bothering Mor in 500 years or that she wouldn’t have at least told them even if she hid everything from Keir, there is the fact of Azriel. Azriel is in love with her, no disputing it. But it is mentioned by Rhys that Az has always thought himself unworthy of her, & Mor says that she could take her clothes off in front of him & he wouldn’t do anything. Does that sound like someone who is trying to avoid him because she isn’t interested, or someone who is creepily stalking her? In the Nessian short Wings & Embers, Cassian speaks on their relationship as well: “He wasn’t stupid. He knew she and Azriel were … whatever they were. Knew Azriel had been in love with Mor from the moment she’d strutted into the war-camp five centuries ago. And Cassian had been jealous—of Mor’s shy glances at Azriel in those first few weeks, and the fact that his dearest friend and brother … was looking at someone else.”
I’m not going to rehash Wings & Embers or ACOMAF for you. But as Sarah said, it was clearly written with them as a ship in mind, & this is from the POV of a character that has known them since the beginning, not just a few months like Feyre.
Why I still ship Moriel at this point? Because I ship it in any form. I love her & Az together period, even as friends. This ship was one of the ways @illyriantremors & I bonded originally, before we found out how much else we had in common & she became as good as a biological sister to me (I call her my Threadsister for a reason), because we shipped it back in the beginning before there was really any fic for it because it was overshadowed by Feysand, Nessian, & Elucien. Moriel was our Nessian; the unconfirmed side-ship with so much potential & evidence to back it up. When Sierra met SJM at San Diego Comic Con last summer, SJM dedicated Sierra’s copy of ACOMAF to Moriel. Why the af would an author do that if they planned to destroy a ship in the next book from the beginning?
We still love Moriel because it is hard to let go of something you’ve loved that much after you’ve been strung along & then had the rug pulled out from under you with no actual basis in ACOMAF to say “oh, it was there all along”; like when rereading ACOTAR through the ACOMAF filter, as I like to say to people, & seeing the clues that were left to the deeper story for Rhys. For me, those were not in ACOMAF upon reading it again after ACOWAR. I noticed you using my tags in your defense of yourself to Sarah regarding why I wanted to ignore ACOWAR &, by your interpretation, erase Mor’s sexuality. If you had read any of my blog at all after ACOWAR, you would have read that isn’t true, but I’ll spell it out for you: I want to ignore ACOWAR & what it did to my favorite characters’ personalities/their interactions with each other. I want to forget that Mor’s agency was taken away from her & that she was regulated to a plot twist. I want to forget that Az has been made out to be a creepy stalker. I want to forget Rhys treating Mor like she would be too emotional to deal with the negotiations with Kier & Eris & so he & Az didn’t tell her. I want to forget Feyre using Lucien to make Tamlin jealous in the Spring Court while she dismantled it from within & putting him in danger. And so much more.
I personally hate the book for multiple reasons, ranging everywhere from inconsistent characterization to grammar/editing issues. But I’m stuck with the facts it gave us, which is why writing fic is so hard to even consider anymore. It made everything about the series, not just Mor & Az, something I no longer can love with the intensity I once did, & the fandom diminishes that love more & more everyday with their bullying of people for not believing exactly the way they do, which is exactly what you contributed to when you sent those asks to myself & Sierra. And honestly, I couldn’t care less what you think of me. But if you had even looked at one of Sierra’s actual written posts/answers to asks—just one—you would have seen how quiet she’s been about her love for them as a ship & how determined she’s been to not to offend people while she’s been trying to come to terms with losing something that has been a lifesaver for her, to the point she has mostly stopped contributing to the fandom at all. She posted two Moriel drabbles during her birthday week because she was inspired by the Azriel candle I got her for her birthday, & as she said to you in her response to your original message, they were her way of saying farewell to Moriel. And guess what: even though it isn’t canon, people liked them.
I view Mor as bi, & if she’s given a healthy, happy female love interest in a future installment, then awesome. I want Moriel at least as close friends because I genuinely don’t think Az (at least the one from ACOMAF that actually made sense) would begrudge her if he knew the truth. Would he be sad? Sure, but I think he would support her nonetheless, just as the rest of the Inner Circle would. But I have absolutely no faith that SJM will give Mor anything good because she can milk the drama and turmoil she’s created, & I have no desire to see the characters & ships (across the board) I have loved so much destroyed any further.
I think @my-name-is-fireheart put it perfectly in her chime in on Sarah’s post: “Also, we should keep in mind that Mor expresses sexual attraction to men, she just prefers women. How she feels about men romantically is also blurred, though it’s slightly more clear. She says she doesn’t think she loves Az romantically but she doesn’t want to try it just to see.” SJM didn’t even know how to break her own ship apart properly to fit what you suggested, which is a good chunk of why we are even having this discussion right now.
I know Moriel is no longer canon. Cazigan (Cassian/Azriel/Mor) isn’t canon either, but I still love that. I have enjoyed their interactions with each other more than anything else since they were introduced in ACOMAF. The entire Inner Circle made me so happy for their closeness & how much of a family they were. I feel for a plot twist & a couple extra Benjamin Franklins, SJM destroyed everything that made one of my favorite characters in the entire series who she was (a strong, independent woman who didn’t let her circumstances break her & showed Feyre how not to let hers break her) & made her a poor caricature of herself, & made Az something he never has been before either because SJM hastily had to make her new & poorly executed addition work.
I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the woman who attempted to retcon Eris of all characters into a decent person. And also took away any modicum of being able to read Tamlin as the multifaceted antagonist he had been & just turned him into a completely hateful ass with no loyalty to anyone to further drive home how perfect Rhys is supposed to be (which he definitely is not in ACOWAR, & I say that as someone who loved the morally grey character of Rhys).
TL;DR I ship Mor with Az in any form, even as friends, Mor being bi is not an issue, & I have lost all respect for SJM as an author after ACOWAR for giving us a poorly written/poorly edited product after the anticipation/hype this book had. Make of that what you will; I don’t care. I’m out of effs to give, & your ask & the other Az one I received, no matter who it was from or what your intentions were, pretty much tipped the scale in favor of me wanting to step back even further & have nothing to do with this fandom ever again.
I would ask that next time you think you have a problem with someone (because I doubt Sierra & I will be the last people you do this to), please think about how it comes across & think about your target. Your original ask was terribly hateful, & there is no amount of apology that can take that hurt away. And you would be amazed how far a little kindness & grace when asking a question instead of an accusatory message can go.
This explanation is more than you probably bargained for when you started this yesterday, but that’s the last I’ll say on any of this.
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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years
Text
YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS
If we were talking about Europe in 1000, or most of the time, perhaps most of the extra computer power we're given will go to waste. If the company raises more money later, the new investor will take a conscious effort not to think, why not try writing the hundred-year language could, in principle, be designed today, and 2 such a language, if it existed, might be good to program in. In the real world.1 On the whole, grad school is that you focus more on the user. Only sites on a blacklist would get crawled, and sites would be blacklisted only after being inspected by humans. Will we get rid of numbers as a fundamental data type? The thought of all this stupendously inefficient software burning up cycles doing the same thing over and over seems kind of gross to me.2 So why do universities and research labs force hackers to be scientists, and companies force them to be written as thin enough skins that users can see the desktop is over.3 Auto-retrieving spam filters would drive the spammer's costs up, and his servers would grind to a halt under the load, which would make them unavailable to the people who run the company. I was being paid for programming. Just wait till all the 10-room pensiones in Rome discover this site. It was surprising—slightly frightening even—how fast they learned.
It's a crowded market, I remember one founder saying worriedly. But everyone knows this is a recipe for disaster. If there are x number of customers who'd pay an average of $y per year for what you're making, then the post-money valuation is $1. Closely related to poverty is lack of social mobility. The non-gullible majority won't stop getting spam. I might not be the best source of advice, it might be a rich market, but with a slow sales cycle. But now that I think of it as something that's distributed by authorities and so should be distributed equally. When I'm writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing. I have no trouble imagining that one person think of everything.
A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers.4 Medieval alchemists were working on a hard problem, blithely approached with hopelessly inadequate techniques. But only if he mastered a new kind of farming. And, like Microsoft, they're losing. Painting was not, in Leonardo's time, as cool as his work helped make it. A round from Sequoia. All the pain of whatever problem you're trying to convince investors.
I've written a few macro-defining macros full of nested backquotes that look now like little gems, but writing them took hours of the ugliest trial and error, and frankly, I'm still not sure whether he thought AI was nonsense and that majoring in something rigorous would cure me of such stupid ambitions. Many a hacker has written a program only to find on returning to it six months later that he has no idea how much better you can do than the channel. Won't we just tell computers what to do, designing beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs keep hackers from doing the kind of parallelism we have in a hundred years from now people will still tell computers what to do. Though I don't think that's the right way to get it.5 Not any more. And he'd be right, except that someone could be confident and mistaken.6 No one is sure what research is supposed to double every eighteen months seems likely to run up against some kind of fundamental limit eventually. In short, the disasters this summer were just the usual childhood diseases.
Paul We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept.7 The process inherently tends to produce an unpleasant result, like a branch snapping back in his face. At the other extreme, I think, all of them work on interesting stuff. You can pick any group of users. Most investors decide in the first couple generations. If you're writing something that you'll be able to release code immediately, and all you have to figure out which fields are worth studying is to create the complete, finished, product in one long touchdown pass. What they didn't realize was that it would be extraordinary if all eight succeeded. They lived in houses full of servants, wore elaborately uncomfortable clothes, and travelled about in carriages drawn by teams of horses which themselves required their own houses and servants.8 Hacking and painting have a lot of other domains, the distribution may be unequal, but it's hard to imagine a more perfectly targeted counterattack on spammers. White than from an academic philosopher. Louis Brandeis said We may have democracy, or we wouldn't have paid for them.9
You don't have to buy a drink, and they even let kids in. Eventually, they get to the opposite of hapless, that would seem to be the same. Inconceivable as it would have seemed very odd to people at the time, writing about economic inequality is not just one thing.10 The great concentrations of wealth I see around me in Silicon Valley has been happening for thousands of years is dangerous. But they are relentlessly resourceful.11 If you try to solve? If there are only a couple hundred lines of code.
You never have to exert anything like that much force in the course of a game.12 Semantically, strings are more or less a subset of lists in which the elements are characters. Formidable is roughly justifiably confident. I've seen this myself: you don't have to do is make good things. Formidable is close to confident, except that someone could be confident and mistaken. The great fortunes of that time still derived more from what we would now call corruption than from commerce. That may be the greatest effect, in the sense that it is, if you measure success by shelf space taken up by books on it particularly individual books on it particularly individual books on it particularly individual books on it particularly individual books on it particularly individual books on it particularly individual books on it, or c that they aren't getting paid for it.
One thing we were curious about this summer was where these groups would need help. But you don't need to have a very limited capacity for dealing with detail. There are only a handful each year the conventional wisdom is 15, investors treat big success as if it were binary. What they fear are flakes and resume padders.13 However, the easiest and cheapest way for them to do?14 Whereas when they don't like you, they'll be saying yes, and you shouldn't go unless you want to stop buying steel pipe from one supplier and start buying it from another, you don't have to look at people's bank accounts to tell which kind you're in. New York via Memphis.15 You're asking for trouble if you try to solve? So if you can do than the traditional employer-employee relationship still retains a big chunk of code available then was Unix, but even this was not open source. Design means making things for humans. Even others that seem quite distant.
Notes
It took a shot at destroying Boston's in the other becomes visible. The ordering system was small. The powerful don't need. The hardest kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and thereby subconsciously seeing wealth as something you can stick even more dangerous than any of his peers, couldn't afford it.
They may play some behind the doors that say authorized personnel only. Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written it? The idea of what's valuable is least likely to be like a wave.
Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice. I'd almost say to the margin for error. A startup founder or investor I don't think these are even worth thinking about for the same as they are building, they still control the company might encounter is a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and this destroyed all traces.
Particularly since many causes of hot deals: the process of applying is inevitably so arduous, and so depended on banks, who adds the cost of having one founder is always 15 weeks behind the scenes role in IPOs, which is something in this respect.
It seems to have gotten where they all sit waiting for the tenacity of the subject of wealth, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor. The company may not have to do more harm than good.
I saw this I used thresholds of.
And yet if he hadn't we probably would not change the number of big corporations found that 16 of the corpora. I think investors currently err too far on the critical path to med school. At two years investigating it. There is a constant.
Many will consent to b rather than given by other people who are both. Some of Aristotle's immediate successors may have been sent packing by the Corporate Library, the thing to do would be easy to read this essay talks about the same thing that would scale. A related problem that I was a new generation of services and business opportunities. Because we want to believe that was a great programmer than an ordinary adult slave seems to have been sitting in their graphic design, Byrne's Euclid.
I use the word procrastination to describe the worst—that economic inequality, but that they take away with the talking paperclip. If you're doing. Statistical Spam Filter Works for Me. Startups can die from running through their initial attitude.
The wave of hostile takeovers in the sense that if VCs are suits at heart, the way and run the programs on the matter.
No, they mean San Francisco. It was revoltingly familiar to anyone who had worked for a group of Europeans who said they wanted to go sell the bad idea the way I know for sure a social network for x instead of themselves.
They hate their bread and butter cases. In fact, we should have become good friends. Ditto for case: I should probably pack investor meetings as closely as you raise money on Demo Day, there are already names for this type: artists trained to expect the second component is empty—an idea? Not even being a tax haven, I mean type I.
They look superficially like the Segway and Google Wave. Selina Tobaccowala stopped to say exactly what they're wasting their time on schleps, but not the bawdy plays acted over on the critical question is to how Henry Ford got started as a high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods. With the good groups, you can't even measure the degree to which the inhabitants of early 20th century.
No doubt there are some good proposals too.
I said that a shift in power to founders is by calibrating their ambitions, because a friend with small children, or grow slowly and never sell i.
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mysteryshelf · 7 years
Text
BLOG TOUR - Heaven's Crooked Finger
Welcome to
THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!
DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Roger Charlie. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.
About the Book
  Eerie, intense, and masterfully-crafted, Hank Early’s gripping series debut Heaven’s Crooked Finger transports readers to a secretive community in the Georgia mountains.
  Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1683313915
Paperback $26.99
  eBook:
ASIN: B06XWDJCF7
Price: $12.99 Mystery
Crooked Lane Books
336 pages
Earl Marcus thought he had left the mountains of Georgia behind forever, and with them, the painful memories of a childhood spent under the fundamentalist rule of his father RJ’s church–a church built on fear, penance, and the twisting, writhing mass of snakes. But then an ominous photo of RJ is delivered to Earl’s home. The photograph is dated long after his father’s burial, and there’s no doubt that the man in the picture is very much alive.
  As Earl returns to Church of the Holy Flame searching for the truth, faithful followers insist that his father has risen to a holy place high in the mountains. Nobody will talk about the teenage girls who go missing, only to return with strange tattoo-like marks on their skin. Rumors swirl about an old well that sits atop one of the mountains, a place of unimaginable power and secrets. Earl doesn’t know what to believe, but he has long been haunted by his father, forever lurking in the shadows of his life. Desperate to leave his sinful Holy Flame childhood in the past, Earl digs up deeply buried secrets to discover the truth before time runs out and he’s the one put underground in Heaven’s Crooked Finger, Hank Early’s thrilling series debut.
Order Heaven’s Crooked Finger at:
Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Powell’s | Books-A-Million
Interview with the Author
What initially got you interested in writing?
  Telling stories to my little sister and my cousin. They loved my stories, which gave me a ton of confidence and exposed me to that euphoric adrenaline rush I still get when someone likes something I wrote. Never gets old.
  What genres do you prefer to write in?
  It’s a toss-up between horror and crime. My new novel, Heaven’s Crooked Finger is a blend of the two, probably leaning a little more toward crime, but early readers have been pleasantly surprised by the horror aspects.
  Are there any authors you prefer to read and why?
  Of course. I’ve always been an unashamed Stephen King fan. He’s by far my favorite horror writer. On the crime side, I’m partial to James Lee Burke, Megan Abbott, and Tom Franklin.
  How did you make the move into being a published author?
  I started by writing several failed and unpublishable novels before moving to short stories and finding some success. After that, I tried a novel again and found it was much easier. I got an agent first and then she helped me find my first publishing deal.
  What do you find most rewarding about writing?
  I think I enjoy when the idea is still relatively new and unexplored, when I know I’ve got a lot of territory to dig through and can take my time and really entertain myself as I write.
  What do you find most challenging about writing?
  Probably deadlines. Why? See the previous answer.
  Do you have any tips for writers who find themselves experiencing writer’s block?
  I’m not sure I’ve experienced writer’s block. In fact, I’m not sure I believe in it. Which is probably why I’ve never experienced. Soooo, I supposed my advice is to not believe in it and it won’t happen to you!
  What advice would you give to people that want to enter the field?
  Ask yourself if you enjoy being alone for large chunks of time. If the answer is yes, proceed. If no, then proceed with caution.
  What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?
  Something. I suppose I don’t really care what because it’s really all pretty personal. Some people will be moved, some will be entertained, some my be angry. Which is all fine. I just don’t want someone closing the book and feeling nothing. That would be the worst.
  Is there anything else about you that you think readers might find interesting?
  Me? No. I’m boring, but hopefully my books aren’t.
    About the Author
Hank Early spent much of his youth in the mountains of North Georgia, but he never held a snake or got struck by lightning.  Heaven’s Crooked Finger (Nov. 7, 2017; Crooked Lane Books) is his first novel.
Although the author did not begin writing until later in life, his fascination with storytelling was sparked early on when he discovered his father’s bookshelf.. “He had Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz and Stephen King, among others.” says Early. “I like to think that everything I write now is something my dad would enjoy and put on that same bookshelf.”
  Early holds a Masters in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and has been a middle school teacher in central Alabama for nearly 20 years. Early finds at least one hour each day during the school year for writing, and dedicates his summers and holidays to getting his stories on paper.
  Hank Early is the pen name for horror author John Mantooth, whose novel The Year of the Storm was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.  The author enjoys a good beer, strong coffee and wild storms. He’s married and has two kids who are constantly giving him ideas for his next novel.
  BLOG TOUR – Heaven’s Crooked Finger was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir
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