The Second Battle of the Grotesque Bulge

When we last left our fearless hero, Sir Remic of Littlebrain, he'd returned from the vet's after surgery to have his Bulge removed, and was on strict instructions to behave and not tear open his stitches. That was about a month ago. He's spent that time living on a bed of newspaper with a cereal box for a hide, having antibiotic injections, and being watched like a hawk to see if he poops normally. I never thought I'd be so invested in snake poop, but here we are. The Bulge was attached to his gut area, so the vet had to cut into that slightly to remove it, then stitch him all back together, so there was a chance of Rem not functioning properly as a result. I'm pleased to announce that he is pooping just fine, and let us never discuss his poop again.

So! Today was the big day. I packed Rem up in his duvet once again, and we went back to the vet to have the stitches checked and removed. He actually wasn't that keen on coming.

So here's my tip for handling a snake that doesn't want to be handled: put the cereal box over his head so he can't see you, then handle the snake as you wish. It works without fail. And of course, once he was safely tied up in the duvet, he had no choice in the matter anyway.

The vet was delighted to see "Sweetie Pie" again, and very pleased with how the surgery incision looks, so he whisked Remic off to remove the stitches. He was back five minutes later to announce that Rem was stitch-free and "getting a bit annoyed." Still! He gave me permission to put all Rem's normal ornaments and bedding back in his vivarium, and all we have to do now is check that the wound doesn't re-open in the next few days. He'll have a sexy, mysterious scar which he could use to impress lady snakes with, if he knew any. The only thing we really need to keep an eye out for now is the last few bits of dead skin around the scar from his last shed. Apparently surgery often triggers skin-shedding in snakes, but because Rem had nothing to rub against and help get the skin off, there are a few bits still clinging to him. Hopefully those will naturally fall away now he has bark to rub against. If not, we need to give him a bath and gently remove them ourselves.

We returned home triumphantly. Remic did make a break for freedom in the taxi on the way back, but the nice thing about having a snake in a duvet is you can just shake him away from the opening whenever he tries to sneak out.

I will say that I'm definitely going to buy a proper reptile carrier sometime in the future. I sincerely hope we won't need to take Rem or Ket anywhere any time soon, but it never hurts to be prepared. And now Remic is back in his usual environs, having a good old nose around his hide and branches, and seems very content with life. Huzzahs!

And sitting in his water bowl, because he's not clever. So, for now, his epic adventure is at an end. I say "for now," because there is always a chance the Bulge will return. Basically, either it was benign or malignant. If it was malignant and the vet managed to fully remove it, we should be fine. If any tendrils got missed, it could come back. And even a returning benign tumour can be dangerous if it presses on vital organs. It's difficult to really know much about cancer in snakes, because most diagnoses come post-autopsy, sadly.

So we just don't know. Going forward, all we can do is check him carefully for any lumps and bumps and keep our fingers crossed. I'm hopeful, because that's just how I am. I would tell you to stay tuned for the Further Adventures of Remic, but with a little luck, there won't be any!

"The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf merely slept."

Jack London - White Fang

My writing policy last year was to write what I felt compelled to write, not try to stick to a pre-determined list. It worked really well - 2015 is, I think, officially my most successful year as a published author. Huzzahs! So obviously I'm sticking to that policy this year. At the moment I'm finishing an Amber Morgan project...and then will probably move onto another Amber Morgan project...and then maybe another. I don't know for sure, but all the ideas at the forefront of my mind right now are Amber ideas.

That's not to say there aren't Naomi ideas. There are! But I think they all need a less pantsy approach than I normally take with my books. There's Blood Canticles 3 (probably titled Through Fire), which will probably require two POV characters and needs a whole new world built for it. I'm still putting together that second world (if you've read DARK DAYS, you know what that world is!), and I don't feel ready to start writing until I've nailed down a few more details.

There's the languishing Mercy's Gate, which I started in 2014 (then called Nightmare Moon). It's the book of my heart. The Book/Series that I most want to write and find a home for, and that alone is making it weirdly hard to write. I need it to be exactly so, which to be honest isn't a great frame of mind to write a first draft in, because first drafts are not for exactly so in my opinion. First drafts are just for getting the bloody thing out of your head. But I've been stalling for over a year now and I need to gather my courage, put aside my internal editor for a bit, and just write the damn book.

And, maybe foremost in my head right now, there's a new Urban Wolf book. I loved writing COLD NIGHT MOON so much, it made me go dig out the Urban Wolf novel I started a while back, then shoved away for reasons I don't quite recall anymore. The working title is Black Dog, and I do think this will be the next Naomi project I tackle. It's going to be a tough one - sixth book in the series, time to really, really explode the world and set Ayla some new challenges. I've had a Big Idea for ways to progress the Urban Wolf series for a while now (in fact, I even started a spin-off called In Cold Blood that was going to help me do it), but other projects took precedence and Black Dog ended up almost forgotten. COLD NIGHT MOON reminded me that I still have a lot of stories to tell for my werewolf girls (including that spin-off, which introduces a whole new cast of werewolf girls!).

So I think I can safely say that Black Dog is next on my to-do list. Time to unearth all my werewolf folklore encyclopedias!

Oh, and I'd like to introduce you to my new writing assistant. She's not as good as Fergus yet, but she's showing great promise. Meet Yuki.

"The Cat is Classic."

HP Lovecraft

Let's not talk about the name Lovecraft chose for his own cat. He was an unrepentant racist, but he was right about cats.

So it's Friday again! I still don't have a laptop! But I do have a three-day weekend, and I will have a laptop (probably) by Sunday. Mine is officially dead. The company who built it offered to give us a quote for repair, but it's more than likely a motherboard issue, which will be a bare minimum of £200 to fix. So, through a convoluted chain of events, I am buying a laptop from a friend and then swapping that laptop with one Kyle loaned to my brother. Everyone gets a laptop! Except my friend, but presumably he knew this when the deal was made.

I also still don't have a working debit card, because my bank seem incapable of doing anything right. I have a general policy of not being a shithead to people in customer service jobs, because...well, there's rarely a need to ever be a shithead to anyone, frankly. But it's been hard since this whole debacle started, and I can't help but wonder if I'd have a working debit card by now if I'd been an asshole three weeks ago when my account first got hacked. Ugh. I don't know. Complaints have been lodged. I'm sure it will make no difference, and I fully expect to still be without a debit card in a week's time, because that just seems to be my fate at the moment.

But it's not all bad news! DARK DAYS is out and quietly sneaking into a few Top 100 lists over on Amazon, so huzzahs!

And tomorrow, best of all, Kyle and I are bringing home a lovely little tabby cat from the local shelter. I'm sure every animal-lover will understand when I say it's been so hard coming home to a cat-free house since we lost Fergus. Last weekend, amidst all the bank drama and laptop chaos, I went to the shelter on impulse and fell in love with this little lady. I realised that, as much as I'm still grieving, I'm also just not happy in a house without a cat. So Yuki (née Holly) is joining us tomorrow, and I'm so excited about getting to know her!

And of course, there will be writing. There will always be writing.

"It is deep January. The sky is hard."

Wallace Stevens

Let's be brutally honest: this has not been the best start to the year. At the beginning of January we lost Fergus. On Saturday my laptop died. And yesterday my bank account got hacked, and a substantial amount of money was stolen from me. I guess if you believe that bad things always happen in threes, then I'm clear for the rest of the month, but since that's only a few days, I can't feel all that grateful.

Some of these bad things are fixable. My laptop more than likely just needs a new power supply, which is hopefully winging its way to me from Germany this week. As long as I have a working laptop by the weekend, I'll be happy...ish. With DARK DAYS releasing next Tuesday, this is a bad time to be without my faithful machine. I won't even talk about the anguish of lost writing time *dramatic swoon*

The stolen money should be reimbursed by the bank this week. I have had to cancel my bank card and online banking, which is...mildly irritating, as I now have to ask Kyle every time I want money. Hopefully I'll have a new card by the weekend. I can live with the inconvenience, but it is inconvenient, and it's really hard not to be angry about this, the laptop, and January in general.

But it's also really hard for me to stay angry when being angry gets me nowhere. I've done everything I can about the laptop and the bank situation. I can't do anything about missing my cat except miss him, so that's what I'm doing, and there's no point being angry and sad.

I'm trying to channel my energy (and my spare time, which I suddenly have a lot more of since I can't get any writing done >.<) usefully and do what I can to prepare for DARK DAYS releasing anyway. I'm really excited about this next chapter in Lola's story, and I can't wait to share it with everyone! I'm also reading a shit-ton (thank you, R Lee Smith and Mick Foley, for writing mammoth doorstopper books), and trying to lavish some attention on the snakes, who are decidedly unimpressed by my efforts.

But really, I'm just looking forward to January being over. I feel like February owes me. Deadpool had better not be disappointing, that's all I can say.

The Force Awakens, as understood by someone who hasn't seen it

Unlike everyone else on the planet right now, I haven't seen the new Star Wars film. I'm not especially opposed to it, and I'm not trying to be all "I hate this popular thing! Counter-culture!" It's just not something that really grabs me. I've also never seen the second two prequels, and haven't watched the original trilogy for...many, many years.

However, it is inescapable, unless I want to stay off the internet and avoid all human interaction for the foreseeable future, which...I really don't want to do. So I feel like I have a pretty solid grip on the film despite not having seen it. I figured, to break up the landslide of promo blogs I seem to have going on right now, I'd share my acquired knowledge with the rest of you. That way, if you also don't want to see The Force Awakens, you can still chat about it with your friends and seem hip.

So!

This is Finn:

He seems to spend a lot of the film being surprised, I guess? I would have thought his experiences defending inner city London from alien invasions in Attack the Block (which I have seen, yay!) would leave him better equipped for sci-fi. Haha, I'm confusing the actor's character in this film with a totally different character he played in another film! Hilarious.

 He appears to be a Storm Trooper, at least at first, but then he meets Poe:

Poe is a pilot, or at least someone who poses as one for recruitment posters for the Rebellion (which I remember being a big deal in the original trilogy, and I assume is still a thing, because if I remember correctly, at the end of the third film, the Empire was blown up and I'd imagine that left a hell of a power vacuum that was probably filled with endless in-fighting amongst the remaining bad guys, or at the very least, an ineffectual interim government).

Poe and Finn fall in love, I assume?

Or maybe they don't. The above picture could be interpreted in many ways, but they definitely look like they become close.

Anyway, after they hook up, they meet the new Star Wars robot. I don't know what it's called. I literally googled "New Star Wars robot" to find a picture. This is it:

I don't know how it moves. Does it roll or hover? If it rolls, what does the head do while the body is rolling? Is the head attached to the body? Did it kill and consume RD-D2? So many questions!

Anyway, they meet the robot and it (based on the sand) lives near this person:

This is Rey, who based on this picture, I'm assuming has just seen something awfully meaningful but upsetting off-screen. I'm also assuming she's a Skywalker, just because nobody else seems to be so far.

Now, I'm making a leap in logic here, but it looks like the robot blows something up, forcing Finn and Rey to runaway from...is that a cattle pen behind them? IDK, whatever. There's an explosion, everyone runs away. I guess it's also possible the bad guy did it, because he has to show up at some point. This is the bad guy (I think):

He actually looks pretty badass, like someone took all the coolest elements from Darth Vader and Darth Toad From X-Men Who's Actual Name Escapes Me Right Now, and combined them in a design guaranteed to make people think this would be a badass character. I don't know anything about him apart from his name (Kylo Ren), so I'm just going to assume he's also a Skywalker, because they seem to end up as Sith Lords a lot.

Well, just the once, I guess, but at least one third of all the Skywalkers I am aware of have become Sith Lords at any rate.

Now, the characters I do remember from the first three films...by which I mean the first chronologically released films, not the first chronologically occurring films...are Han Solo, Leia, Luke, and Chewbacca, so I'll assume they show up once the three youngsters have got together and met the bad guy at least once:

This is Han and Chewie, and it looks like Finn might actually steal Han's jacket at some point.

This is Leia, who to be frank looks 100% done with Star Wars:

I guess she should have thought twice before helping to bring down a dictatorial space regime, doubtless leaving dozens of planets rudderless and in anarchy without an over-reaching government to tell them what to do, amirite?

And this is Luke:

He's fallen on hard times, from what I can tell. But, again, taking out an entire government tends to lend to civil unrest, confusion, war, and dissension, you know? I'm not saying I'm pro-Empire, or anything, but hopefully the Rebellion had a strong, swift plan in place for replacing the Emperor after Darth Vader pushed him down a space hole and died, because I've read a lot about what happens when citizens destroy their leaders and there tends to be a lot of assassinations and bloody revolutions for the potential new leaders, and a lot of starvation and cannibalism down the line for everyone else.

Anyway, these seem to be the key players in The Force Awakens. From here my knowledge is fairly sketchy, but from what I've gathered from Tumblr, the main story seems to be Poe and Finn running from explosions while Rey watches from a distance and face-palms? It seems like Kylo Ren shows up at some point and I guess they light-sabre fight for Rey's hand, even though neither Poe or Finn are romantically interested in Rey, because they have each other. But there's almost definitely a light-sabre fight, right? Maybe Kylo Ren falls in love with Rey. Maybe they're both Skywalkers (which probably doesn't preclude him being in love with her), and they have to fight to the death to purify the bloodline or something. Maybe Rey doesn't have a love arc at all and just hangs around in the desert looking troubled but competent.

I haven't worked out how Han, Leia, Luke, and Chewie play into things, but maybe Han, Leia, and Chewie stage an intervention to get Luke off the streets and into people clothes.

I guess this is the first of a new trilogy, so probably nothing is resolved in this film. Maybe we end with Finn and Poe tentatively kissing. Maybe the neighbouring star systems realise this galaxy is a fucking mess of civil war, rebellion, and planet-sized explosions and they get embarrassed they didn't step in earlier and decide to come in and sort it all out (in way that doubtless makes everything worse, because enforced democracy is not democracy at all).

In any case, I assume the film ends on a cliffhanger, probably with everything looking great for our heroes, but with the audience knowing something bad is lurking in the near future, like maybe Kylo Ren found a spare death star? I assume they had more than one, right?

I hope this has been a helpful cheat sheet for non-Star Wars watchers. I'm sure somewhere down the line, I'll get round to seeing the film, and I'll be interested to see if my guesses are anything close to the truth, or if Tumblr and Twitter have lead me totally astray.