Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
She wasn’t the worst cat I ever had, but the worst one was the one I hand-raised, and apparently human hand-raised cats are psychopaths.
Razzy peed everywhere. She sprayed me once. Maybe twice. On purpose, looking at us, she’d squat and pee on the carpet if she knew we couldn’t catch her.
Anyway, I knew something was wrong with her. Read more
Title: APOCALYPTIC MONTESSA AND NUCLEAR LULU: A TALE OF ATOMIC LOVE
Author: Mercedes M. Yardley
Publisher: Ragnarok Publications
Genre: Horror
Year Published: 2014
Number of Pages: 175
Format(s) Available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Amazon Kindle ASIN: B00HWMK298
Reviewed by miztrniceguy aka Dude*
Originally posted on Amazon
burn baby, burn!
This story is very dark and twisted, but at the same time it’s a sweet love story. I was surprised at the tenderness between Lulu and Montessa. I was hoping for a different ending and was surprised by it.
This is my first book I have read by Mercedes Murdock Yardley, but won’t be the last.
I am sitting at a table in my local public library, my laptop, a bottle of water, and my Galaxy Note in front of me. I have headphones on and I am listening to nature sounds because the not-very-socially-graced woman behind me (she and I have a history) is muttering to herself loudly enough that it’s clear she wants someone to ask her what she’s working on and her laptop is making funky bubble-popping sounds loudly.
I am at the library to escape loud mutterings, machine-made noises, and children who don’t care if they’re worming into my brain space.
A child, boy, ~9ish, whom I have never before seen in my life, comes up to my table as if I had birthed him and almost leans on me.
ME: [taking off headphones, trying not to look as annoyed as I am] What can I do for you, sweetie?
HIM: [looking at laptop] Can I play on that?
ME: [?] Play on what?
HIM: [pointing to the Galaxy Note without bothering to open his mouth when he actually needs to answer a question] [the exact same way XY TD does]
ME: [dumbfounded] Um… NO.
HIM: Never mind.
ME: [waiting for him to leave] [which he is not doing] I have a question.
HIM: Never mind!
ME: No, wait. I’m just curious. Why do you think it’s okay—
HIM: Never mind! [scurries off]
A child is perfectly comfortable with almost-snuggling up to a strange woman who’s obviously trying to block out the world, asking if he can play on an expensive device.
It never occurred to him I’d say no.
If the strangers won’t go to them, they will go to the strangers.
“Any halfway decent artist can outline,” she sneered.
You can’t sneer a statement.
She raised her eyes to his.
What’d she do, pick them up off the floor?
Long ago and far away, when I first had this thing called a critique group, a thing that was foreign to me, I was taught these “rules.” I had never heard of these “rules.” I didn’t know what was wrong with raising one’s eyes or sneering one’s reply. I found such phrasings helpful and I read lots of books that had such things in it, lots of books by famed (and good) authors.
They were “rules,” I was told, lectured upon at workshops and conferences at RWA by editors and agents and teachers of writing classes. Ah, well, if it came from editors, it must be true.
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You know how when you’re in a discussion and it’s really animated and you have things to say but you don’t get to because the discussion’s going by too fast and then you forget until you go home and you’re cracking wise to yourself because you really are that witty, but your timing’s shit and you go to bed annoyed because you didn’t think of it when it really mattered?
And you know how you laugh at a joke you don’t understand because everyone is laughing and you don’t want to look stupid, but you forget about it until, like, seven years later you come across the joke and you’ve lived a little between then and now, and now you get it and it’s hilarious?
And you know how you said something really stupid back in second grade and you can still see and hear that moment like it was yesterday, and your face turns red and your sphincter clenches even though it’s forty years later and you wish you could have a do-over on that moment (or any of the thousands in between, all of which you remember)?
Yeah, me too.
Hence, The Proviso, 2nd Edition.
Hopefully some time in October 2015, to pay homage to the one I published seven years ago.
Seven.