Up until today my cats have been locked out of my home office. There was too much chaos and too many things for them to get into. So, thwarted by not having opposable thumbs, they resorted to sitting outside the door, pawing at it and yodeling as only a donkey attempting an operatic aria or an annoyed cat can. I admit it, I did laugh at their expense. But today I felt sorry for them, especially my sickly skinny cat that’s probably not going to be around a whole lot longer. It’s cold and he’s skinny and loves to lay on me but can’t when I’m working in the office and he’s not allowed in.

So I caved.

First Harley (the skinny guy) came in and very nervously sniffed all through the room and rubbed his chin on anything and everything he could claim for himself. It was HIS, dammit. After several trips in and out the now mysteriously open door, he discovered the reading chair’s ottoman and the fluffy warm blanket I’d laid on it for him. He was happy to nest there for a while.

Then, just as he got comfortable, we had a brief visit from Nettle. Nettle is one of the Scaredy Cat Club — she’s semi-feral and not at all willing to come within 20 feet of a human. I heard a cat come in and turned to look around the side of the desk. When she saw there was a HUMAN in this mysterious room, she bolted. No pictures of her, sorry.

Another twenty minutes or so later, Merlin showed up. Merlin is our oldest cat and would gladly knock off all other cats so he had all the pets and humans for himself alone. He and Harley are arch enemies most of the time though lately they’ve devolved to a more “willful obliviousness” state. He pestered me for pets for a while and then discovered the ottoman and blanket when Harley went out of the room for a bit.

They danced around any need to acknowledge each others’ presence for quite a while, even ending up on the ottoman and blanket together, until the unthinkable happened. Meeps, our dominant girl kitty, discovered the office was open. In she saunters! Again some requisite exploration, then she hopped up on the ottoman and pestered the boys to groom her by meowing and kneading them until they got disgusted and ceded the rights to the ottoman and blanket to her. She is Queen! Note the laser eyes, too.

I needed more tea after this and the whole group trouped down the stairs after me as if I were the pied piper. When i got back up to the office, they started getting into things and got booted out for a while.

Such help.

Sometimes flash fiction happens to me.

Hoarfrost
(c) 2011 Maura Anderson

As the crescent moon sets, shadows deepen to ebon velvet and the relief of dawn seems a lifetime away. The night sky is now decorated only by the faint shimmer of distant stars, their meager light unable to warm the sharp, freezing air.

Slowly gathering in the depressions and hollows, a light mist begins to blanket the land. Icy tendrils flow out and fill the valleys, deepening from silver to grey as the growing fog works to block out even the light of the stars until the very land beneath it seems isolated from the rest of the world.

A place between the worlds of Sun and Moon. A time and place so temporary and so rare it bears no name of its own, yet it’s the only time she can walk the lands of man again.

The fog thickens and roils into a column, then a vague form emerges and solidifies into a tall, gracile female form. Clothed in flowing robes that changed from white to grey to midnight black in a shimmering pattern, her presence makes the very air weigh heavily and the residual warmth of the earth fades into a dusting of frost. Her white hair streams out behind her like tendrils of clouds and glistens with drops of ice.

Released, at least for a short while, from the prison of her own making, she wanders this small part of the land of man. All the life she has missed, all the plants and animals she lost through her own attempts to manipulate others. Slow tears flowed down her face only to drop frozen to the ground, a trail of diamonds to mark her path. A gently caress coats a crocus in glistening frost. A slight brush against a bush freezez tendrils water dripping from its branches into tiny icicles.

The first faint colors of dawn begin to drain away her cloak of fog and she knows her time here is over again. As she fades from the land of man, her last heavy sigh flows out over the branches of a tree and freezes instantly into the lacelike tendrils of her namesake, fragile and delicate. Even that beauty is doomed to disappear at sunrise, leaving only a memory and the faint scent of the wild and regret.

She is Hoarfrost.

This week is Steampunk week on Selena Illyria’s blog and she’s graciously allowed me to guest blog about my upcoming m/m steampunk novella – Impressed! This is coming soon as part of Renaissance eBook’s Sizzler Edition’s anthology “Ride the Rocket”.

Come on over and read about my inspiration for turning Honolulu into an airship port complete with pickpockets, opium dens — and press gangs!

Impress Guest Blog

Happy New Year and Welcome to 2011!

I have plans and some promises I’ve made to myself for 2011 but I’ve never been prone to New Years Resolutions. For some reason, every time I’ve made a resolution, told it to one or more people in an effort to make myself keep it, and then not perfectly kept it, I’ve just given up and tossed it fully aside.

This year I’ve made promises to myself on things I want to work on, not necessarily fully achieve but to see an improvement in. We’ll see how I do this time :)

2010, especially the last month, has been very hard for me. Not particularly an excuse for being a crappy blogger, I realize.

Things started to go bad on December 2nd when I was leaving work to go home, stopped behind another car at a crosswalk near my office to allow a pedestrian to cross, and was seriously rear-ended by another car (who did NOT stop). My poor car ended up being totaled between the severe rear-end damage and the fact I was pushed so hard into the car in front of me that my airbag went off. I had a huge bruise over most of my lower right leg and it swelled up to a huge extent. Only in the last week has it gone to almost looking normal again. Add in my head bending the support bars for my headrest and a severe case of whiplash and I was pretty much useless for weeks.

Then the great dealing with insurance companies started. The property settlement meant I had to kick in several thousand dollars to get back into the same model car in a current year (no used cars in acceptable configurations and colors were anywhere on this coast). I’m really annoyed at this – I paid cash for my car, it was less than 2 years old, had 19K miles and was in perfect condition. But I basically had no real choice on that settlement. It SUCKED. All for an accident where the person who hit me said he was doing under the speed limit, wasn’t distracted and had plenty of room. If you’re like me, the first question is “Then why didn’t you stop?”

The police officer who came to record the accident said he was being sent a citation. Good. This was a stupid accident that was totally preventable and hosed me over.

Then my niece was in a single car accident at highway speeds and totaled one of her parents’ cars. Thankfully she was banged up a bit but okay.

Then my sister-in-law was in an accident where she was hit by another car who was turning into a retail driveway and didn’t “see” her. She was okay and that car, at least, wasn’t totaled. It was still driveable but has front-end damage. She’s okay, if a bit stiff.

Then, just as I was getting better, one of my cats had a crisis and I rushed him to the vet. We first thought he had developed diabetes and when his blood glucose was getting under control, things looked good. Then we ran more blood tests and his kidney values went from “bad” to “truly terrible” and he got more anemic. I went from hope and prepping to care for a diabetic cat who could still have a good life to having to make a decision to euthanize him that day. I had a meltdown, seriously. It was one blow too many.

Mr. Maura has been my rock, though. He’s had to take time off work to ferry me around, hold me when I cried and pass lots of Kleenex. He also got stuck taking photos of The Ugly Leg on a daily basis for our records and photos of my poor totaled car.

I’m holding out hope 2011 will be better. I can’t take that many ongoing crises – really. I have things to do this year and am trying to get things back in order to get back to work. I’m even allowed to go back to the Evil Day Job on the 4th – and I’m HAPPY to be getting back to normal!

I know readers are often curious about the inspiration for stories or characters and with my newest release, Forsake Not, out now, I wanted to take a moment to talk about what inspired it. I won’t talk about all parts of it, though, because I don’t want to put spoilers out there yet.

When I write, I’ve found I have to have a title to hang my story off of. The title is the story’s embodiment and, as I write, I often think about the title or how what I’m writing centers on that title. It keeps me grounded and on track. So I MUST have at least a good working title to focus on. I also tend toward short, simple titles. You can see that in my backlist. I don’t have a concrete explanation for that other than I think it gives both myself and my readers room for interpretation and different views.

In the case of Forsake Not, I’d already been thinking of the issue of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and I happen to have a son who is a US Army Infantry soldier. When I went to his OSUT graduation (the equivalent of extended bootcamp for the infantry – One Station Unit Training), these new soldiers all recited the Infantryman’s Creed and it really tugged at my heart.

Infantryman’s Creed

I am the Infantry.
I am my country’s strength in war,
her deterrent in peace.
I am the heart of the fight-
wherever, whenever.
I carry America’s faith and honor
against her enemies.
I am the Queen of Battle.

I am what my country expects me to be-
the best trained soldier in the world.
In the race for victory,
I am swift, determined, and courageous,
armed with a fierce will to win.

Never will I fail my country’s trust.
Always I fight on-
through the foe,
to the objective,
to triumph over all.
If necessary, I fight to my death.

By my steadfast courage,
I have won 200 years of freedom.
I yield not-
to weakness,
to hunger,
to cowardice,
to fatigue,
to superior odds,
for I am mentally tough,physically strong,
and morally straight.

I forsake not-
my country,
my mission,
my comrades,
my sacred duty.

I am relentless.
I am always there,
now and forever.

I AM THE INFANTRY!
FOLLOW ME!

When I remembered this recitation and thought about those serving in our military under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and forced to make choices between their personal lives and their sworn duty and this creed, I couldn’t help but have “Forsake Not” haunt me. They forsake not, but has their own country forsaken them?

So now you know where the title came from :)

You can purchase the Honorable Silence anthology, which Forsake Not appears in, from MLR Press NOW.