Realms of the Raven - Erotic Romance Author Maura Anderson

Morgan Hawke has a great new entry on her blog about selling to and writing for multiple publishers titled “Publishers - The More the Merrier?”

As always, Morgan has terrific insight and some great analogies here. I love her posts and this was particularly appropriate for me as I think of who to try to sell RWH to.

You should read it!

I’m glad it’s Friday… SO glad.

We had some wind storms last night which knocked the power out which wouldn’t be a huge deal normally but the 4 year old freaks out (not quite sure why) and insists on climbing into bed with me. Since he squirms like crazy, that’s the end of my real sleep.

Then I dozed off and woke again at about 6 with Merlin sitting on my chest and staring into my face from about 2 inches away. I’m not sure whether he was trying to use Feline Mind Control to get treats or trying to wish DEATH on me for the vet trip. At least he came up on his own - the last two days he was feeling so icky he didn’t come up to get pets.

So C and I get up and clean the abcess drain site - yuck. Again I’m very grateful that he doesn’t tend to bite. Some of the other cats would have removed a limb or two from us by now. He just yowls. A few cat treats were administered to make the process a little more worthwhile.

By then the power had come back on and C went to check on the office computers and discovered our DSL modem was not working. Luckily the bonepile contained a 2nd DSL modem (they sent us two - no idea why) and he swapped power cords and, thank the goddess, there be internet again! I would have died of withdrawal over the weekend, I’m sure.

Then the pink stuff - that’s fairly easy with Merlin and a piece of turkey again soothed the disgruntled beast.

STILL no news from HR on my official job offer.

I wish I could sleep for a week but that wouldn’t get RWH done. I am horribly tempted to send out the first 3 and queries for it just to get that going but then life would really suck if someone actually asked for a full.

We’d noticed for the last few days that Merlin, our oldest cat and the “Dog in a Cat Suit” hadn’t been himself. He’d been shunning bedtime treats and wasn’t greeting us at the door.

Petting him, C noticed that he didn’t want his tail touched and would yell if you did so - thankfully he’s very mild-mannered and didn’t bite us.

Having had similar occurences in the past, we were fairly sure of what was going on - one of the other cats had bit him on the rear and he had an abcess. So today I got off work a little early and went home to pack him up and take him off to the evil V.E.T. for treatment.

I left plenty of time. As other cat owners know, cats have an amazing ability to sense when you are looking for them in order to do terrible things to them and hide. Sometimes it can take a while to discover the currently favored bolt hole.

Luckily I discovered where he was fairly easily and stuffed him the in the carrier. This was my first offense and failure as a good Cat Mom. He moaned, he whined, he meowed loudly all the way to the vet’s office. I kept telling him it was for his own good and he’d feel so much better afterwards but I don’t think he believed me.

After a bit of a wait, we saw the vet. I told her what was going on, explained he was antisocial and his ears were warm and his butt tender and I suspected a cat bite abcess. She felt him up, found the abcess and looked at me saying “Who is the vet here!” and laughing.

100% correct. The poor guy had a HUGE abcess on his leg and up one side of his butt. They shaved his butt, gave him a local and lanced it, leaving a pretty good sized opening for drainage. Apparently it was one of the larger abcesses they’d seen. I’m sure he appreciated that.

Now we have to keep the drain area open for a few days and give him antibiotics 2x a day - much easier for him than any of our other cats. I gave him one dose + some of C’s turkey lunchmeat (shhhh, don’t tell)!

He REALLY didn’t appreciate the hydrogen peroxide on the drain site. Lots of yelling but, again, no biting or clawing. He really is a very sweet cat.

I’ll have to get up at 5 am tomorrow to help C with Merlin’s drain site again - definitely a 2 person job, so I probably won’t get writing done (again) today. But after the weekend he should be okay to let it heal up.

I really feel bad for him. I just hope he’s feeling better tomorrow and starts being his normal self again.

And I have to remember to hide my shoes - no sense making revenge TOO easy.