Scrubbed Walls and RSI

I think I may have SRSI (Scrubbing Repetitive Strain Injury). What’s that, you ask?

It’s an injury that afflicts those who have to pry the photo frames they put up on the wall using double sided tape.

You see, we are moving apartments tomorrow, which is epically exciting. We have found somewhere with good natural light (hard to find Hong Kong, where buildings are so close to each other you could spit a cherry stone and easily hit your neighbour’s windows), with an oven (because life without an oven is just not worth living) and with an open plan kitchen (about as common as hen’s teeth). These things are all rare individually but together they’re Hong Kong Real Estate Gold Dust. The Jackpot. The Holy Grail.

When you find such an apartment the only thing to do is bring a sleeping bag with you, change the locks, and barricade yourself inside, declaring squatters rights until the flat is yours. To do anything else is to risk losing it. Which is why I won’t be leaving our new apartment, nor answering calls for the next three months, at which point the flat will become mine.

Just joking.

It takes six months.

Drum Roll Please – Bound Cover Reveal

Hello everyone!

So today I’m excited to be part of the cover reveal for Bound (Bound trilogy #1), a young adult novel from the lovely Kate Sparkes over at Disregard The Prologue.

The book will be released on the 26th of June 2014, but in the mean time here’s the cover and synopsis, to whet your appetite.

Synopsis:

Welcome to Darmid, where magic is a sin, fairy tales are contraband, and the people live in fear of the Sorcerers on the other side of the mountains.

Rowan Greenwood has everything she’s supposed to want from life— a good family, a bright future, and a proposal from a handsome and wealthy magic hunter. She knows she should be content with what she has. If only she could banish the idea that there’s more to life than marriage and children, or let go of the fascination with magic she’s been forced to suppress since childhood.

When Rowan unknowingly saves the life of one of her people’s most feared enemies, a simple act of compassion rips her from her sheltered life and throws her into a world of magic that’s more beautiful, more seductive, and more dangerous than she ever could have imagined.

Now Rowan might just get everything she ever dreamed of— that is, if the one thing she’s always wanted doesn’t kill her, first.

About the author:

Kate Sparkes was born in Hamilton, Ontario, but now resides in Newfoundland, where she tries not to talk too much about the dragons she sees in the fog. She lives with a Mountie, two kids who take turns playing Jeckyll and Hyde, three cats with more personality than most people she meets, and the saddest-looking dog on the planet. Her first novel, Bound, will be released in June 2014, assuming the dragons don’t eat her, first.

You can find her at her blog, over on Twitter (@kate_sparkes), Facebook and Goodreads.

The cover art is by Ravven

 

Shanghai, puzzles, and bladder pressure.

The husband and I went to Shanghai for a long weekend just recently. I know it sounds pretty exotic, but for us it’s actually only two and a half hours by plane, so kind of like going from New York to – I don’t know, Boston? Philly? I have no concept really. Suffice to say it’s just around the corner.

So anyway – you know when you’re on holiday with your significant other, and it’s a Saturday night, and you decide to go to a bar together for a drink, and you just walk in through the door?

Well, let me tell you, that is SO passé. So 2013. It’s boring. It’s mundane. It’s banal.We westerners are way behind the times.