New Short Story: Sleeping Potion

www.carnivalheaven.com

Rita didn’t understand why anyone bothered to wear hooded cloaks to hide their appearance. In the middle of a perfectly nice day like this, having your hood up pretty much shouted “I am up to something nefarious!”

She refrained from actually saying any of this, however, as the customer slipped into the shop and threw back the hood of her cloak. Once the young woman made eye contact, she practically raced to the counter. “I need a sleeping potion. I’ll pay anything!”

Rita gave the woman an evaluating look. “I take it you’re not talking about an insomnia cure.”

“That’s not enough.” The young woman laid her hands flat on the counter as she leaned forward, desperation in her eyes. “Anything less than six months won’t be enough. I’ll take a year if you have it.”

“I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.” Rita kept her voice even as she reached under the counter, wrapping her hand around the wand she kept on hand for emergencies. The young woman looked harmless, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. “I sell healing potions, stuff to help you around the house. You’ll want to go to a licensed Evil Witch for the potion you’re looking for.”

The customer’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t trust them! And if I go home….” She pressed a hand against her mouth, fighting back tears. “I won’t survive.”

Rita hesitated. She wasn’t interested in breaking the law, but if the girl was using it in self-defense…. “Your father? Or your husband?”

She waved a hand. “Oh, he’ll be fine. He just loves her, and thinks it’s all a big misunderstanding.” She wiped her eyes. “Of course, he’ll be horrified that I was arrested for homicide, but I’m sure she’ll keep him busy telling him how right she’s been this whole time….”

Now Rita was lost. “Wait.” She held up her other hand to stop the ramble. “Who are you talking about?”

The young woman clunked her forehead on the counter. “My mother-in-law. Her house got destroyed in an ogre attack and she’s moving in with us.”

Rita turned the startled chuckle into a cough. “And you think dosing her will keep her out of your hair for awhile?”

The young woman’s head shot up. “No!” she said, horrified. “That would be rude.”

Rita let go of her wand. “Then who were you planning on using it on?”

The young woman’s shoulders sagged, and she dropped her head into her hands. “Me.”

This time, Rita couldn’t stop the chuckle. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Night owls, sleep, and making peace with mornings

http://cliparts.co/sleeping-clip-art-free

Sleep and I have a complicated relationship.

I’ll admit, I’m much more fond of it than I used to be. Going to bed was the worst kind of chore when I was a kid, somehow worse than doing dishes or even weeding the garden. I had to lie there, close my eyes and do absolutely nothing, because if I talked or read or sang that meant I wasn’t sleeping. I thought that sleeping was the most boring thing in the entire world, and I resented giving up every second my precious evening I had to give up in order to sleep.

Now, though, there are some nights when I’m utterly, gloriously relieved to collapse into bed. When I don’t have the physical or mental energy left to do more than stare at walls (or late night television, which is only slightly more interesting than the blank wall at times), sleep can feel like a glorious reward for a job well done.

Still, that’s only on some nights. If I have any kind of energy left, I’d much rather be reading a book, catching up on the DVRd episodes of my favorite show, or talking to a friend. Sometimes, I’d even rather be cleaning, because there are some nights when 1 a.m. feels like the perfect time to scrub the sinks or sweep the kitchen floor. You might question the sanity of the thought the next morning, but it’s hard to argue with the fact that your house is now slightly cleaner

Like many night owls, I’ve even made my peace with having to be functional the next morning. We have all kinds of tricks to make it through the first half of the day, most of which involve snooze alarms, large amounts of caffeine, and trying to arrange your schedule so you don’t have to do any complicated thinking until after noon.

You also get good at narrowing your sleep schedule as far as you can get away with, sneaking out a few extra minutes of consciousness anywhere you can. I’ve gotten really good at knowing exactly how much sleep I need to be a reasonable facsimile of a human being, and mostly try to stay in that general area. As long as I sound relatively coherent, no one seems to notice.

The thing is, though, that I notice. Living like this means that, while I get to keep my nights, I’m sleepwalking my way through at least half my morning. There’s a lot of stuff you miss when you’re only at 50 percent capacity, or even 75 percent, and most of that are those nice-but-unnecessary things that help make life worth living. I’m convinced that nights are better than mornings, but what if that’s because nights are the only part of my life I’m fully awake for?

So maybe I’ll start considering sleep a priority instead of an annoying chore I’m forced to do. I don’t want to give up my nights completely, but if I hand over a little bit of them – by going to bed at midnight instead of 1:30 a.m., maybe – then maybe I’ll have a little more brainpower to experience my morning with. Only then will I really be able to judge whether sunlight is worth all the fuss everyone else seems to make over it.

"Beast Charming" alternate scenes: A Sinking Sensation

This is an unused back story for James, aka Beast, from a much, much earlier draft of  "Beast Charming" (so no real spoilers if you haven't read the book). For me, the most hilarious thing about this is that there was once an entire version of the novel written in first person.

Chapter 2
A Sinking Sensation (Beast)

Looking back, it was not one of my more intelligent moments.

The entire fiasco was not, however, entirely my fault. Iliana looked at first glance exactly like every other predatory young thing that always crowded balls like this, giggling and fluttering her eyelashes at each and every available lordling in the immediate vicinity. If that weren’t enough of a cheat, her ice-blond hair had been piled on her head in a complicated style that all-too-conveniently hid the pointed tips of her ears from the unsuspecting.

I, naturally, had retreated to the library, drink in hand and a large chair blocking the only entrance. Just because Waverly insisted that it was part of my duty to hold a ball once a year didn’t mean that I actually had to attend the thing – as long as I let them use the space and paid for the hors devours, I considered my part in the festivities amply fulfilled.

Also, I was hiding. The fairy godmothers had published a list the year before rating the eligible noble males in the kingdom, and to my horror I had several gold wands beside my name – a title slightly more impressive than most of the young men within reach, a respectable amount of money to back that title and, thanks to a nasty curtain accident several years previous, no annoying father to stand in my way. Together, they added up to a picture that was irresistibly and unfortunately attractive to several members of the opposite sex, and they along with their mothers declared me the top target on their list of suitable prey

Sadly, the additional point that I was also a moody, sarcastic little snot did little to significantly change my standing, no matter how often I tried to advertise this particular aspect of my personality. Though I had managed to scare off one or two women, most didn’t have enough idea of what I was talking about to be offended. Hence the library, and the thick, heavy wooden doors ready to stand guard between me and massed femininity outside.

Unfortunately, my butler refused to see the genius of my plan. When the door creaked open, I set down my glass and picked up the heaviest book within reach, but it was only Waverly ready with another drink and a disapproving expression. “Can I get you anything, sir?” he asked in a faintly pained voice. “Perhaps some hermit rags and a long white beard?”

“Go show the guests how hilarious you are,” I hissed, taking the drink out of his hand and making shooing motions with the other. “And leave me alone until the uninvited guests are gone. Who knows who could have followed you?”

Waverly rolled his eyes. “Heaven forbid you should actually have to speak to someone, sir. Who knows what tragedy could strike.” Still, he closed the door, and with a deep sense of satisfaction I locked it behind him.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to stop it from opening again a few minutes later. “Waverly, I told you ….”

“You could tell me more.” I swore at the distinctly feminine voice, and cringed at the pale, delicate looking creature that swept into the room and shut the door behind her. “I have been looking for you the entire evening, my lord. I’ve heard so many lovely things about you.”

My eyes narrowed at her. “That door was locked. How in Grimm’s name did you get in here?”
She lifted an elegant shoulder. “Magic, my lord. What else?”

Okay, maybe that should have been a clue. Still, as warning signs went it was unfortunately small – anyone could bribe a fairy godmother and get the same effect. “Fine” I growled, returning to my book.  “Now use it to leave again.”

She frowned at me for a long moment, then smiled the smile of a person who has just completely dismissed the last few minutes of conversation because there’s no way they could have conceivably happened. “What a sense of humor you have.” She swept forward, hunting for a seat close to mine. “If you could only dress a little more appropriately I’m sure we could work wonderfully together ….”

I stood up, stopping to grab a dictionary as I approached her. “Let me be more specific,” I cut her off, glaring at her. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to look at you.” As her eyes began to widen, I lifted the book in a menacing manner. “And the mere thought of ‘working wonderfully’ with you makes me want to break out in hives. Leave now, before something unfortunate has to happen.”

”But …” Her breath hitched, and she splayed a delicate hand across heaving bosoms. “You don’t want to hear about my ….”

“The only thing I want to hear from you,” I snapped. “Is the sound of the door smacking you as you leave.”

I could see the tears start to glisten at the corner of her huge violet eyes, usually the sign that they were about to scurry away in defeat. I set the book down, but barely had time to take a step back before a wand was suddenly pointed at me. Then everything went black.

And, as I realized when I could open my eyes again, furry.

Secret Princess Training Camp, part 2

(Part 1, for those who might have missed it.)

000

It was all well and good to decide you were going to break out of a Secret Princess Training Camp, but first you had to figure out how you were going to actually pull it off.

“We don’t have a lot to work with, unfortunately.” Hortensia kept her voice matter-of-fact, and if she was worried I couldn’t see it. “They grabbed our personal magic mirrors, which means there’s no calling the cavalry until we get them back.”

Kate’s expression was grim. “They also took my wand.”

I’d assumed they had – she would have said something before now if she could have just magicked us out of here – but it was another thing we’d have to figure out how to get back. “I’m not sure how useful it would be, anyway. I’m pretty sure they have anti-transport wards….” My voice trailed off as my brain caught up with the real problem. “Oh no.” I looked over at Kate, feeling the panic come back. “Once they figure out they just grabbed their very own Fairy Godmother, they’ll never let you leave.”

Hortensia’s brow lowered. “Why haven’t they already, though? Given how obsessed they are with fairy tale situations, I would think that would be their first guess when they saw your wings and the wand.”

“And even if it’s not, they’ll think I’m a witch or sorceress and I’ll be in nearly as much trouble.” Kate’s jaw tightened. “My best guess is that our things got put somewhere else, and no one’s bothered to look through them yet.”

“Which means we have a lot tighter a deadline than we realized, at least to get our things back.” The kidnappers had my cell phone, which had no signal in this world but might be useful at some point for its strangeness factor. They’d left me with a tube of Chapstick, two tissues, a pen and a flier that someone had stuck on my windshield back in the real world.

Not a lot to engineer a dramatic escape with, even for a writer. Which meant that I needed more to work with.

“Just go with me on this,” I told them, heading toward the door. Then, taking a deep breath, I channeled every con artist character I’d ever written and pounded on the door. When nothing happened, I pounded even harder.

Finally, there was the sound of running footsteps, and a nervous-looking boy carefully opened the door. He couldn’t have been older than 16, and when I smiled brightly at him he flinched. “Did … did you need something?”

Okay, this required a slightly different pitch. I dropped my shoulders, making my voice sound much less certain. “I’m sorry, but I was thinking about how much we’re all going to have to learn to be good secret princesses and I got so worried that we wouldn’t be able to learn it in time.” I lowered my voice a little further. “Could you tell someone we’d really like to get started right now?”

He looked slightly less nervous now, his expression sympathetic. “It is really tough. Even if I hadn’t been disqualified for being a boy, I don’t think I could have….” His voice trailed off, and he squared his shoulders. “I’ll be right back.”

When he was gone, I heard Kate come up behind me. “We’re breaking him out, too, if he wants,” she said softly. “Right?”

I knew she was thinking of Ned, too. “Absolutely.”

Hortensia came up to join us. “If everyone’s in that bad a shape, we should probably just lead a revolution and be done with it.”

I smiled a little. “Now, there’s an idea.”

We cut the conversation off at the sound of footsteps. The same woman from before was coming down the hallway with that same bright, slightly deranged smile as before, flinging her arms out as if she was about to drag us all into a group hug. “Excellent! I didn’t mention it before because you dears looked a little nervous, but Thomas tells me you’re just itching to get started."

Making a mental note of the kid's name, I put on my best earnest expression and stepped forward. "Absolutely. We're not going to become the best secret princesses we can by just sitting here."

Behind me, I heard Hortensia clear her throat, pretty sure that would have been a discreet elbow jab if she'd been within arm's reach of me, but the woman just clapped her hands together again. "Perfect!" She glanced back at Hortensia and Kate. "Do all three of you feel the same way?"

"Oh, absolutely," Kate said immediately, sounding breathy and dreamy and not at all like herself. "I'd love to be a fairy princess."

There was a beat before Hortensia spoke, voice polite but nearly expressionless. "What they said."

I made another mental note – clearly, the con game was not on Hortensia's list of skills – but the woman didn't care. "Oh, I'm so happy that all of you could join us." She gestured us all out into the hallway, and it took effort to resist the urge to actively run. "Let's get you to your first class."

After she turned, I passed the flier and pen to Kate, mouthing the word "map" before setting off behind the woman. "Will you be teaching it?" I hurried ahead until I was almost walking next to the woman – the less reason she had to turn around, the better. "You seem like you know so much."

She chuckled, and the sound was nearly as unsettling as her smile was. "Oh, aren't you a dear." The woman shook her head, immediately patting her hair back into place. "Sadly, I don't teach anything but a few special classes. I'm Mother Gans, and I oversee our happy little camp."

A camp which, at the moment, consisted of nothing but a second stone hallway and other seemingly locked doors. Creepy, and not even slightly helpful. "Are we in a castle?" I made sure to sound excited, even though all my attention was focused on the tiny slit of a window we were about to pass. "I've never camped in a castle before."

"We're not camping, dear." She patted my head without turning to look at me. "We call it a camp because we hold some of the later classes in tents outside. The introductory classes are in the main rooms downstairs, and the offices and 'introduction' rooms are upstairs."

So freedom was with the advanced classes, but our things were probably upstairs. I slowed my steps enough to move out of Mother Gans's immediate visual range, ducking over to the window and getting up on my tiptoes to get as detailed a look outside as I could.

Trees. So many trees, thick enough that I couldn't see anything but their tops.

Damn it. Clearly, I had written way too many forests into this universe.

As I hurried to rejoin the group, Hortensia moved to take the spot I had vacated. She wasn't a great liar, but she was good at being thorough. "What will be learning in our first class?"

"Oh, the first class isn't really a class, per se. It's more about helping the girls understand the vision of what we're trying to do."

Kate glanced over at me, eyebrows raised questioningly. I hesitated, weighing the need to speed our way up through the classes with finding out whether or not we had any allies here. Even if we didn't have to go the revolutionary route, I couldn't leave a character here who was just as trapped as we were—

I was jerked out of the thought by a white flash in front of me where I knew there shouldn't be one. I scanned the ridiculous, ruffled edge of Mother Gans' blouse, my eyes widening when the fabric slid in just the right way to reveal the tip of a white feather.

I couldn't say for certain without Google in front of me, but it seemed pretty safe to say that it was a goose feather.

Putting my smile back on, I moved to switch places with Hortensia. "I'd love to hear all about it." 

Adventures in Meta (part 1?)

You know how easy it is to get sucked into a story when you're reading it, and even more when you're writing it? Well, blogger extrordinaire Kriss Morton asked me to get sucked into the world of my books "Fairy Godmothers, Inc." and "Huff and Puff" for her Fourth Wall Friday and spend some time with my characters Kate and Hortensia. I was happy to.

Unfortunately, I had no idea we'd get sucked into a Secret Princess Training Camp.

000

I woke up with a groan, opening my eyes just far enough for my brain to start screaming at me for making terrible decisions. I immediately shut them again, rolling over to my side and pressing my hand against the back of my throbbing skull. “What happened?”

Clichéd, yes, but head injuries wreak havoc on my ability to come up with witty dialogue.
“We’ve been kidnapped.” That was Hortensia, using that matter-of-fact voice that meant she wanted to gouge someone’s eyes out but hadn’t yet figured out the best way to go about it. Not that most people could recognize it – few people tended to be intimidated by a talking pig in a dress.

At least, until they found out what happened to her brothers.

“I still can’t tell if it’s my fault or Kate’s, but I’m leaning toward Kate’s,” Hortensia continued, having waited a respectful pause for my internal monologue. “BB’s enemies don’t tend to put people in holding cells that look like a birthday cake exploded all over it.”

Okay, that was unexpected. Deciding the knowledge was worth the suffering, I slowly opened my eyes to discover that the room we had been tossed into was ridiculously pink. There was bunting all over the place, swirled over the walls and bed as thick as icing, then tied up in a bow at every possible opportunity. On top of all that, someone had scattered tiny satin hearts.

It was horrifying.

Read more

000

If you'd be interested in reading even *more* than that, I'm considering continuing the adventure over on my blog. What do you guys think?

Being A Little Nicer To My Future Self

My future self will regret this eventually

My older self is going to be so mad at me.

When you’re young, it feels like there’s so much to worry about now that the future is the last thing on our minds. We have no time even for our lives right now, juggling our education, one, two or even three jobs, and all of our other responsibilities. The future will have to wait until we have a few minutes to spare.

We don’t have time for exercise, or to make ourselves a healthy salad instead of grabbing a too-salty chicken wrap from the local fast-food place. We definitely don’t have time to worry about retirement, especially when many of us are having trouble with month-to-month bills or even just finding a job. We definitely don’t have time to worry about forcing ourselves to drink milk or calcium supplements, especially when getting proper creamer in our coffee is sometimes more than we can manage.

At least, we tell ourselves that. What we don’t admit is that it’s hard to do things for a version of ourselves we can barely fathom, a distant figure that seems light years away. What right does that older you have to stop you from eating that chocolate bar? Will one less slice of pizza really make their life any better than it would have been? Why should we have to turn down our music? Shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now, because when we’re old we’ll be in no shape to enjoy any of it anyway?

It’s easy to let ourselves get caught up in thinking that way, to almost resent the idea that we have to take the time to care for a version of ourselves we haven’t even met yet. There’s always time to change, isn’t there?

The thing is, there’s less time than you think.

Getting healthy at the last minute doesn’t erase the years when you’ve been stuffing your body with fat and letting your bones get thin and brittle. It’s like driving a car for years without ever doing any maintenance, letting the brakes wear thin and the oil lines clog up, and then expecting it to run great after a car wash or two.

It takes long-term care to keep your body at its healthiest. True, it will start to break down anyway – even the most well-maintained car runs out eventually – but a healthy body will take longer to lose steam. Slowing down is so much harder on your heart when it already has clogged arteries to deal with. Hearing loss is that much stronger when you’ve been pouring years of loud music into them.

Even though we don’t like to think about it now, we’ll all have to deal with the mess our younger selves leave behind. And when it does happen, we’ll probably wish we could reach back in time and throttle the people we’d been.

I’m sure I will. I know how much of a mess I can make.

So maybe I’ll start worrying about my future self a little more right now, before she shows up and tries to hurt me. I’m not sure how I’ll squeeze in time for that salad, but I can make my own sandwich instead of picking up a hamburger for lunch. I can park my car further away from work, and squeeze in a walk on my lunch break. I can start taking multivitamins, and drink that extra glass of milk even though I don’t really want to.
In the end, my older self will probably still be mad at me. But at least this way, she’ll know I tried. 

Fairy Godmothers, Inc.: High School Edition

Yes, this is my creation as well. 

So, I was digging through my old papers one day, and discovered that my darling Kate is a bit older than I originally thought. It turns out that I wrote my first (albeit short-story version) of “Fairy Godmothers, Inc.” in high school, though it was only called “Fairy Godmother” at the time because my ability to come up with clever titles had apparently not grown in yet. Kate’s original name was Maeve, apparently (why, I couldn’t tell you), and the proto-Bubbles was named Glenda (okay, so she probably would have preferred I keep that).

            

The entire short story no longer survives, thankfully, but I thought you might be amused by an excerpt (the urge to edit while I typed it in was nearly overwhelming, but I resisted). It’s an interesting look at some of my early concepts, the way my style has refined over the years, and the fact that I am apparently a great deal funnier today than I was in high school.

           

000

           

First off, we had to deal with the dress. I conjured up Fairy Tale Confection #317 and held it out to her. She was just about to take it when she started sneezing violently. Not only sneezing, but coughing, shaking and in general acting as though she had been exposed to New York air. Yet another reaction I’ve never gotten before. This girl could set a record before the night’s out.

            

After some major scientific study (a wild guess) we found out the cause of her trauma. It was the dress. Okay, pick number two.

            

Soon, pick number two turned into pick number 52, all with the same response. Finally, Miss Cinderella over here finally decided to inform me of the little fact that she was allergic to silk, cotton, velvet, satin, all fabric dyes, lace, and roses. Of course, all Fairy Godmother brand dresses contain at least one of these items.

           

Then a horrible thought struck me. There was, way in the back, one dress that didn’t, but no self-respecting Fairy Godmother would dare use it. It was a natural colored polyester (is there a natural color for polyester?) A-line dress. The very thought made me shudder, but I had no other choice. With a heavy heart, I conjured it up.

            

000

           

I have more, if your courage hasn’t failed you yet. 

Getting to Know You: Bubbles, the Scary Godmother (played by Judi Dench)

Do not cross this fairy. She will cut you. 

This questionnaire is for Bubbles, Kate’s boss and the most terrifying Fairy Godmother you’ll ever meet.  As always, I stuck to the same questions for the sake of fairness (which I borrowed from http://www.humorthatworks.com/how-to/50-questions-to-get-to-know-someone/).

*Minor spoilers*

What was your favorite food when you were a child?

Oatmeal. It’s very efficient, and I didn’t have to bother with all that sugary nonsense that my parents were always trying to assault me with.

What is one of your favorite quotes?

“It is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

What’s your favorite indoor/outdoor activity?

Writing reports to my supervisors that make it clear what an asset I am to the company.

What chore do you absolutely hate doing?

Dealing with idiots. Unfortunately, that has become one of my primary job duties over the last few years.

What is your favorite form of exercise?

Mental exercise is the only kind of exercise that matters. As long as you’re not obese enough to be an embarrassment to the company, doing things like jogging around in circles is simply a waste of time.

What is your favorite time of day/day of the week/month of the year?

After the employees have left for the day. As I rarely go home myself, I consider that to be my private time.

What’s your least favorite mode of transportation?

The only transportation I find acceptable are Fairy Godmothers, Inc.-approved transport doors. With anything else, I’m forced to rely on someone other than myself to get where I’m going. There’s no way to be certain they’ll do their job competently.

What is your favorite body part?

I once incapacitated a man using only my elbow.

What sound do you love?              

Silence. It means all of my employees are out in the field earning the company money, and I have the opportunity to get some necessary paperwork done. 

Moments in Fairy Godmothers, Inc. History

Photo courtesy of Disney. A nice young man named Walt purchased many
of Fairy Godmothers, Inc.'s early company archives.

The Original Uniforms

In the early days of the company, the official Fairy Godmothers, Inc. company wardrobe was far simpler than it is now. Employees would wear a basic blue gown, with a matching pale blue overcloak, the better to let them blend in with the castle staff.

There are conflicting reports as to who added the large pink bow to the outfit, though the general consensus among employees is that a particularly hateful supply clerk sewed them on in a fit of revenge. She then said that she had been ordered to do so via memo, which she promptly lost. Since management writes too many memos to ever remember any of them, management assumed the supply clerk was correct and the bows stayed.

The uniform was later changed to the current tulle skirt when clients complained that the Fairy Godmothers weren’t sparkly enough to meet the standards of the average fancy dress ball. The new uniforms also allowed employees’ wings to show, which served as a useful branding opportunity.