Story Alert! Free Fiction!

According to the just-released schedule, my short-short "The Cost" will be on Daily Science Fiction July 16th.

Free stories, in your mailbox. Every. Day.

Seriously, why have you not signed up already? dailysciencefiction.com


And for those of you who misse it the first time around, my other DSF story, "Mad Cats and Englishmen" is here. If you read/like it, give it some ratings love. And, y'know, say nice things about it elsewhere. Praise makes me work harder/write more. :-)

but at night it's a different world

With the shades drawn and fans supplementing the main a/c unit, my apartment can stay reasonably cool on day 3 of a heat wave.

This is good to remember.

However, the dark and relative cool also made me want to nap all day. That was...less useful. Also: will the cats please stop trying to cuddle during a heat wave, damn it?

I can see I'll be working tonight, once the temps drop to something closer to bearable, 'cause deadlines wait on no heat wave. Meh. What I WANT to do is go out, because NYC on a summer night is par excellence. Maybe tomorrow night.

I did manage to get laundry done today, though. And clean. And deposit a check via the Magic of the Internet. Woo, domesticity.

I should have dinner but...meh. Apparently, the heat is making me forget to eat and when I do, I don't want much. Today I've eaten a chunk of cheese, a baked sweet potato, and a fruit-yogurt-dash-of-rum smoothie. Another few days of this heat wave & I'll lose 10 pounds. And be dead of the OMFG heat but hey, no plan's perfect, right?

Here, have a bit of the day's work (so far):

There was a painful sensation of free-fall, her gut up somewhere around her nose and her bowels shriveling up in fear, and then something caught her, wrapping her in thick, suffocating folds of smoky gauze, a sharp, claw-like grip pinching her skin through the folds. Adrenaline filling her veins, Jan struggled, trying to escape, but was held tight, the gauze thickening and the grip tightening in response to her movement. The more she fought, the more she was trapped.

Feeling the unnerving stomach-swoop of being carried upward, rather than falling, Jan finally swallowed hard and held herself very still, praying that whatever it was that had her was friendly, and not prone to dropping things.