January

Work-related:

1. Again, I didn’t write a single word in all of January, but that was the plan—wait until after I recovered from the last of my chemotherapy sessions. Chemo sucked away all my energy and ambition. It wasn’t until well past mid-month that the aftereffects of my last chemo session on December 30th waned. And then I dragged my feet as I started thinking about what I wanted to accomplish writing-wise this year.
2. I completed 1 editing project for another author in January.
3. I settled on a theme and sent out the call for submissions for the next Boys Behaving Badly Anthology—Burn!
4. So, yeah, it was a light month of work, but I’m feeling so much better, and my brain is re-engaging!

Health-related:

1. I underwent a PET scan to see how my cancer had reacted to the chemo and got the amazing news that I’m now in remission from my cancer. Further, something I didn’t think would happen because I had far too much cancer everywhere is now within reach. It may be possible to have my girlie parts removed, which would yank out the source of my cancer. Not that it might not be lurking something else, microscopically, but right now the only place where it is detectable is in my uterus. It’s got to go!
2. After that good news, I spent the rest of the month…resting. I can finally get deep, restful sleep, so I’m catching up!

Happiness-related: 

1. My family, all of whom have been astonishingly good to me over the months of my treatment, are now expecting me to pick up some slack. LOL. I’m doing the occasional dishes and keeping my own spaces clean. It makes me feel productive, and I know my dd needs some relief.
2. I’ve been working on organizing my art studio, going from table to table, shelf to shelf, putting things where they belong and clearing working spaces.
3. I painted this month. Not much, but here are a few small pieces I completed:

February

  

For work-related, I plan:

1. To complete Ignition before the end of the month and publish it. I was able to persuade Amazon to give me back my pre-order ability (Yay!), but I’ll wait until I finish the book before I let you know it’s out there. Writing is a little elusive still, which has made me feel a little…not afraid, but hesitant to slap dates on things.
2. To plot stories for the new year for my current series, Montana Bounty Hunters: Yellowstone, MT and We are Dead Horse.
3. To complete 3 editing projects in February.
4. To look at books I already have out that I might bundle together or publish in print. I’ll be assembling another Ultra collection of short stories for publication in March.
5. To begin work on the next We Are Dead Horse book, Built Like Mack. The plan is to release it in March.

For health-related, I plan:

1. To meet with a surgeon at UAMS to discuss the possibility of getting my girlie parts removed. The appointment has been made—it’s happening at the end of this month.
2. To begin again watching what I eat to drop a few more pounds. I’ve rejoined WW. Now, I just need to knuckle under and do the work.
3. To add physical activities to my daily routine so that I can regain some muscle tone. I plan to begin some daily chair yoga exercises and spend some time on the exercise bike.

For happiness-related, I plan: 

1. To get ready for the #100dayproject, which begins on February 23rd. This will be the 5th year I’ve participated in the challenge. I can’t wait! I’ll be going through art books and Pinterest pages, looking for ideas for projects.
2. To clean up my art room, which was a disaster!  While I was feeling like hell, I tossed supplies on table tops rather than storing them properly, eating up my workspace.
3. I have plans to do an online oil pastels class and perhaps make some more collage fodder.
4. To spend time with the family—more movies, meals, and flea market adventures!

Contest

Comment on anything you’ve read in this post. Tell me what you’re doing to make yourself happier and healthier, or tell me what you plan to read in February…

Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Readers still love their niches, and medical romance is still an incredibly popular one — even though expectations have changed considerably. I know! You’re thinking — surely not. Readers like to read within their niche because they know what they like, and they don’t like change. Maybe you’re a medical romance reader, and you know the genre upside-down and back-to-front, and I bet you do, too. There are still the same markers and expectations medical romance writers are expected to hit, and that’ll always be true — whether it’s a small-town sweet romance within a doctor’s surgery or a fast-paced city-hospital romance that bares all. But the genre has changed in one incredible way, and that is…it’s gotten hotter.

Way, way hotter.

You must have noticed it yourself. We’re talking medical romance meets erotica; there’s a story without the sex, but the sex is the cherry on top. We’re seeing every aspect of our medical staff; all those unprofessional moments of lust, of kisses in the medicine room, romps in the break room, moments that were traditionally fade-to-black. Thank you, Grey’s Anatomy! I fully expect it myself when I read medical romances, and I actually feel something is missing when I don’t find enough of it. Like all genres within romance, we’ve gotten much bolder with the spicy elements — we proudly call it smut, right?

But for medical romance, this is a big deal. My first introduction to medical romance as a genre was — like many — via those pocket Mills and Boon books, which are still going strong today with the die-hard subscribers who receive a handful of books in the mail every month. They’re eaten up like Smarties — and they’re definitely sexier than they used to be. When it comes to self-published medical romances, however — it isn’t even the same ball game anymore. The indie writers — who of course started as medical romance readers — knew what was missing. We knew what we wanted. Now, they’re delivering medical smut in spades — and I’m proud to say, I am too.

Lovers of sweet romances may not think it’s their cup of tea, and that’s okay. I think medical romance readers who prefer the fast-paced, heart-stopping city hospital stories — as opposed to the sweet small-town ones I mentioned — might like a little more action in the round. This is medical romance, after all. We like details. The spicy elements are desired in equal measure with the trauma, the patient cases, and those high-octane medical emergencies that have us rapidly turning the pages.

Many writers of the genre are themselves nurses, doctors, paramedics, carers, admins, staff of all disciplines. Personally, I’m an experienced patient (huge congrats on your treatment success, Delilah!) I’ve spent weeks upon weeks in hospital, endured several major surgeries — including open abdominal surgery — and years on medications to treat a dangerous condition. Countless procedures for all kinds of things. For a time, hospital was my second home, and I loved to watch everybody around me work. I even had the privilege of being a guinea-pig for student doctors in their exam, where they were tasked with examining me and diagnosing my condition. Staying in a London hospital, with St. Paul’s Cathedral outside my window, wasn’t all that bad, because the staff made me so comfortable.

I guess you could say that those difficult days were the first kernels of inspiration. My experiences made me feel much more comfortable writing about the genre. I developed a fascination with the different professions I came into contact with, and I began to read medical memoirs voraciously. Lucky for me, these memoirs became suddenly very popular, and I could read everything from brain surgery to forensic pathology and forensic anthropology. I saw the humans behind the profession, including their personal failings, mistakes, relationship problems, you name it. It’s no wonder medical romance is hugely popular today — there are so many variables, so many opportunities for relationships to blossom, and so many wild ways for that to happen!

My first attempt at medical romance was within a three-book-series called Professionals Gone Wild. I wrote about a financier’s son, a barrister, and a neurosurgeon. All books were received well by reviewers, but the medical romance one was by far the one I most enjoyed, the one best reviewed, and it was the best-seller of the three. I realized, then, that I was being given a pretty clear sign — I needed to fine-tune my genre-writing skills, lean hard into the medical niche, and really go for it.

In three weeks, I wrote The Nurse and the Neonatal Surgeon, the first of my London children’s hospital series of spicy medical romances. Writing about two medical heroes falling in love on the neonatal unit was not an easy start, let me tell you — but the readers really loved it. Even my worst review — and there aren’t many of those, thankfully — states that they still enjoyed the patient cases involving the babies, even when the love story wasn’t for them. I take that as a win, because not only is medical romance difficult to get right, but neonatal surgery was a very tough balancing act.

How to give detail, without giving too much detail? How to include heart-wrenching aspects without upsetting the reader so much that they put the book down? The fact is, I wanted to go there, and write something I loved and found meaningful — but doing so without overstepping the mark or going too far was like walking a tight-rope in some respects.

Maybe it’s because I’m a mother myself now, and because I’ve experienced loss in the past — like many of us — but I felt it was a task I was up to. I decided my old-fashioned-style titles — my nod to the old pocket-books I talked about — was a good way to let the reader know exactly what medical scenarios they’d be encountering. If a reader isn’t comfortable with reading about a neonatal unit, then they know immediately that this book won’t be for them. The same goes for the second in the series (all stand-alones with cameos, references to each other, etc.) The Intern and the Plastic Surgeon. If a reader isn’t comfortable reading about craniofacial surgery in detail, or who finds the subject difficult for any reason, they know what they’re getting before they buy or download.

I’m now releasing the third in the series, The Intern and the Orthopaedic Surgeon, TODAY! This one is the spiciest yet; an opposites-attract, teacher-student story with BDSM-flavours and, of course, medical details and patient cases. Gabriel Grant is my favourite medical hero of the series so far. He’s like Peter Steele meets Gideon Cross in appearance, but with Peter Steele’s sense of humour and a hint of the Labrador about him. Personally, I just loved writing him. My leading lady, Connie, is a faith-led woman who is dedicated to her job and her alcoholic father who, through Gabriel, finds a way of nourishing her body and soul in the ways she deserves, and craves.

I always write about dishy-daddy-doctors, but trust me, you don’t want to miss Gabriel Grant!

To celebrate its release day, I’m giving away an ebook copy of The Intern and the Orthopaedic Surgeon! Comment below for your chance to win!

The Intern and the Orthopaedic Surgeon

“I’m a good girl who follows the rules, due to graduate the orthopaedic surgical programme and start my dream career. But when mischievous rogue Gabriel Grant becomes my mentor, he shows me a deeply sensual world that threatens to derail my perfect plans…and awaken my deepest desires.”

Gabriel Grant is a young buck when it comes to Orthopaedic surgery, but he’s making waves as a maverick. Beautiful, sharp and virile, eyes linger on Gabriel wherever he goes – but his eyes are fixed on me.

I’m determined to keep focused, but he thrives on challenge – and I’m proving to be his biggest yet.

My obvious desire permits him to show me he can be what I crave; romantic, tender…as well as white-hot and dominating.

I’m a faith-led woman who craves his searing heat as much as his tenderness, but Gabriel has a thing or two to learn about that. The question is: can he be taught?

Get ready for some alpha male, forced proximity, opposites attract awakenings against a backdrop of the children’s orthopaedics department.

Gabriel Grant knows he’s God’s gift to women; there’s a reason they called him the Bone Daddy. But when his intern demands more than just his body, Gabriel must face his dark past. Will he dare to confront the abuse that still haunts him, so he can offer his heart and soul as well?

*This book is part of a series but works as a standalone novel. Contains 18+ spicy scenes throughout. Mature readers only.

About the author

Liza Collins is a wife and mother of two from the UK. She writes about medical heroes falling in love in a critical care context – and some other stuff too, just for fun.

Keep in touch:
Amazon: Liza Collins
Website: Liza Collins Books
Facebook: /Lizacollinsbooks
Liza’s Newsletter: Liza’s Subscriber Club

Hello Delilah! Thank you for welcoming me here to share my new release! Rayne Check is a short story in my Love in Mission City world.  So here’s the secret…I didn’t plan the world as it is. I didn’t plan a series. I’ll share with you how things evolved into what is now 5 books, 3 novellas, and 6 short stories with more to come.

Okay…so I’ve written and MF series set in the fictional town of Mission City, British Columbia — which may or may not resemble Mission, British Columbia — I’m not all that clever.  But my fictional world has, of course, people and places that come from my mind.  And yeah, Fifties diner in real life is Rocko’s (best burgers ever).  Much of the rest, though, is in my head.  As I would want a town to be.  I eventually published a prequel and three books in my Love in Cedar Valley series under my penname Gabbi Powell.  Same town, just I wanted to differentiate.  But there’s a huge amount of cross-pollination.  Characters and locations overlap and interact (and just to make things interesting, I tossed in some characters from my Gabbi Black In Their Eyes series).

Now, I’ve written about 20 books in what is now the Cedar Valley series — but I need to get them edited and I never have the time because I’m always writing new stories.

I hadn’t intended to transition from writing MF to queer books — but it happened.  The fifth anniversary of my novella, My Past, Your Future is in February.  I had a couple of short stories published before then, but I consider that release date as my stepping into the big leagues (relatively).  That book was for a series for The Wild Rose Press.  Then I wrote another gay novella for them for their ice cream series.  Then came the Christmas cookie books and I was all in.

Somehow, I came up with the title Ginger Snapping All the Way, and I sat down to write the novella.  I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty, but I quickly realized two things: this was a novel, not a novella, and…there was something magical about this book. In the end, I wrote the book as it was meant to be — 72k — and self-published.

Magic.  I had a launch strategy.  I had a discounted price.  I had audio release at the same time as the ebook and the audio was amazing (I still listen to it as a comfort read).  Ginger was my entry into what I saw as the big leagues.

So what next?

Just before it launched, I was presented with the chance to write a short story for a charity anthology.  I had literally a weekend.  I was like…HUH?  Then I remembered one of my lead characters from Ginger had an asshat ex.  I didn’t know it, but I was about to write my first redemption MM story.  And I did.  Stanley’s Christmas Redemption was 17k.  And reviews were mixed, but the anthology sold well and we raised a bunch of money.

First lesson — be careful when you name people.  Stanley was never meant to get a book. It’s not a name some people might associate with a hero. Second lesson — be careful when you name a book.  If I could do it over, I wouldn’t have chosen to put Stanley’s name in the title.  Anyway, long story short – the rights reverted and I wrote the story I mean to tell and released Stanley as a full length 85k novel.  Third lesson — be careful when you expand a story — fans will come to expect that with all your short work.

Suddenly, I had a series.  Well, two books.  By then I was writing short stories and novellas for promos and charity anthologies  I was writing up a storm — always short and always in the Mission City universe.

But I needed another big book.

I’ve talked about the genesis of Sleigh Bells and Second Chances before.  I had an image of a wounded soldier returning from a war he was never meant to fight in.  With the help of my plot whisperer, we came up with a story.  And I wrote it.  The rawest book I’ve ever written — and that’s saying something because I am the Queen of Angst.

Okay — book 3 released — all three in ebook, audio, and paperback.

So what next?

Well, I had a story I’d written for a traditional publisher.  The story was sitting on an editor’s desk when he quit and he never passed it along to anyone.  So I was screwed.  But I LOVE the story.  It just needs work (too short and written in third person point of view while I write in first…).  The plan was to fix it up and it would become book 4.

Right…except fate intervened.

I was asked to write a short story (don’t snicker, I said hell, yes to everyone who asked last year).  But who to write…?  I remembered a secondary character from book 3 (as well as books 2.5 and 3.5 which I won’t even get into because I’ve yapped enough).

Everett called to me.  So I came up with a short story to introduce him.  I had to find the perfect guy for him.  I had an idea (the only parameters were short and Halloween).  I knew I needed a professional cover, so I went to my favorite designer’s site and found Rayne Check.  Perfect!  I loved the name, the cover…everything.  So she slapped my name on it and I had my other guy — Rayne.  Then came magic again — a short story that has just the right touch of mystery.  Intrigue.  Hopefully enough to make people want to pick up book 4.

Which is Everett and Rayne’s book.

Oops.  Time to get a cover and start writing.

I’ve done both and the book is in edits — called Rayne’s Return.

Meanwhile, I’ve published Rayne Check.  It’s a short — meant to entice readers into nabbing the next book.  Or, if they aren’t familiar with Mission City, going back to the beginning to see how the stories have come together.

The book I wrote for the publisher will be book 5.  Books 6 and 7 are plotted.

And that, my friends, is how you make a series (although I don’t recommend this method to anyone).   Well, how I make a series — haphazard, no idea what’s going on, with stuff slotted in everywhere with characters who pop in and out.  You’ll never know who might drop by in one of my Love in Mission City books.  I hope that anticipation is what keeps readers coming back.

Many of the short stories I’ve written over the past year are part of Mission City and I have plans for another boxset.  Not a single word gets wasted, no character goes unloved, no opportunity missed…

Okay, that was — admittedly — a lot.

Rayne Check is free with most retailers.  Still working with Amazon to get the price dropped.  The audio is in quality control with Audible.  That’s next up.  I have to say, Michael Dean did a great job!

Thanks, Delilah, for hosting me! I’d love to give a prize to a lucky commenter.  I’ll happily give a copy of Ginger Snapping All the Way.  If you have that book, I can offer up something from my back catalogue from any of my three pennames — that’s more than thirty-five titles to pick from. (All published since February 2020 and man, have I been busy…)  So let me know — is there a series you just loved.  Or is there a book you wish the author would turn into a series.  Drop a comment in and random will pick a winner!

Rayne Check

Everett

I meet an intriguing man at Quinton’s annual Halloween Extravaganza. That wicked smile and the tawny-brown eyes behind his mask hold my gaze. Under his costume, the restless energy of his body promises to do explosive, unexpected things to me. So we indulge in a little fun, but when the clock strikes midnight, the man I know only as Rayne disappears into the crowd.

My straitlaced Mission City friends tell me to chalk it up to experience, but I can’t get that man off my mind, or stop hoping we’ll meet again one day.

Rayne Check is a smoking-hot 7k word short story about a buttoned-up lawyer who lets go of his iron control for one night, the man he can’t forget, and the friends who have his back. The story is set in the Love in Mission City world.

Links:
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DTJLMGQ5
KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/rayne-check
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rayne-check-gabbi-grey/1146877924
Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/rayne-check-a-love-in-mission-city-short-story/id6740942266
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=elBAEQAAQBAJ
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1693304
Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/RayneCheck

About the Author

USA Today Bestselling author Gabbi Grey lives in beautiful British Columbia where her fur baby chin-poo keeps her safe from the nasty neighborhood squirrels. Working for the government by day, she spends her early mornings writing contemporary, gay, sweet, and dark erotic BDSM romances. While she firmly believes in happy endings, she also believes in making her characters suffer before finding their true love. She also writes m/f romances as Gabbi Black and Gabbi Powell.

Personal links:
Website: https://gabbigrey.com/
Newsletter sign-up: https://sendfox.com/gabbigrey
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorgabbigrey/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/gabbi-grey
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15456297.Gabbi_Grey
Amazon Author Central: https://www.amazon.com/Gabbi-Grey/e/B07SJVFX1M
Audible Profile: https://www.audible.com/author/Gabbi-Grey/B07SJVFX1M
Facebook (page): https://www.facebook.com/AuthorGabbiGrey

This is definitely a holiday I can get behind! I looooove ice cream. Ice cream with waffles, crepes, or pancakes sounds divine!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me how you would eat your ice cream for breakfast!

Open Contests

Since I have a guest on my blog tomorrow, I’m posting the contest list early. Be sure to enter while you still can!

1. Flashback: Tailgating at the Cedar Inn (Contest–3 Winners!) — Last day to enter! Win a FREE story! THREE winners!
2. Word Search: Hot Sauce Day (Contest) — Last day to enter! Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Anna Taylor Sweringen/Michal Scott: Ellen F. Eglin — Inventor of the Wringer Washer (Contest) — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: A Wishing Well — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
5. A Tale of Two Cats (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
6. Flashback: Hook (Contest–3 Winners!) — Win a FREE book! THREE winners!
7. Memory Game: Happy Chinese New Year! (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
8. Get your F*R*E*E download! — Everyone, get your FREE download!
9. Tell me a story… (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!

It’s Friday! My, how this week has flown. I’ve gotten very little work done. I’ve spent way too much time watching the horrible news about the crash and all the cabinet hearings in Washington, D.C. I wish I could unplug, but I’m a newshound. Always have been. I was a history major in college simply because I loved knowing how things came to be. I lived in foreign countries and visited their historical sites and their museums. I met with and befriended ordinary people and often, over a beer, would talk about politics and learn more about their lives. Although my travel days are mostly over now, I continue to learn to this day. *sigh*

Well, let’s have some fun on this Friday. I love contests. I love hearing what you come up with when I give you a challenge. Here we go…

It’s such a pretty picture, isn’t it? Well, look at it and try to think of a story you might tell about what is happening in this picture. Your story doesn’t have to be long—or any good. Just have fun with it! Describe it in the comments for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card! 

After a charging bison comes between her and her latest skip, a bounty hunter must rely on the survival skills of her park ranger rescuer…

Note: This 5,400-word short story exists in the Montana Bounty Hunters world. The story features bounty hunter Martika Mills from Hardman.

Get your copy here!

Before I introduced Marti Mills in the Dead Horse bounty hunter series (she’s the heroine of Hardman), I wrote a short story featuring her that appeared in First Response: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology. Marti was fiesty and mouthy, and I loved her from the moment she appeared on the page. She was a bounty hunter, but unaffiliated with any Montana Bounty Hunter agency. The hero of the short story? Well, he’s a park ranger in Yellowstone. So, when I wrote Marti’s story, set in Dead Horse, the ranger wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I still have him in the back of my mind. He has to be part of a story set in the new Yellowstone bounty hunter books. Would you like to meet him? Get your FREE copy now!

Read an excerpt…

If not for her GPS device, Martika Mills wouldn’t have had a clue where she was. All she knew was that she was soaked to the skin, mud sucked at her boots, and two days into this hunt, she was no closer to finding Marlon Oats.

Earlier that morning, after sliding a twenty to a gas station attendant on the Montana border, she’d thought she was getting close. She’d gotten a description of the car Marlon had “borrowed” on his flight into the wilderness and had found it parked in a narrow roadside viewing point, just inside Yellowstone National Park.

After that, she’d followed the narrow stream into a deep gully off the road, knowing Marlon considered himself quite the fisherman, or so his mother had said. No doubt he intended to live off the land until the heat died down after he’d failed to make his date with the judge in Helena, where he was due to be tried for robbing a pawn shop in Springdale at gunpoint. His mother had been very helpful, liking the fact that Marti seemed like “a nice girl” who might “ask” her son to let her put him in handcuffs rather than shooting him. His mother didn’t want Marlon hurt, even though his skip might cost her the home she’d lived in since she’d married Marlon’s no-account, long-dead father.

Marti was just about to call it a day, figuring she had just enough daylight left to get back to her SUV parked behind Marlon’s at the roadside park, when she spotted a puff of dark smoke rising over the gully. Noting its direction, she climbed up a steep embankment, seeking footholds in mud and rock and grabbing vines along the sides of the rocky face until she stood at the top and realized the land on this side of the stream was flatter and filled with tall spring grass—and a herd of buffalo that didn’t seem to pay her any mind as she bent over and dragged in deep breaths. She glanced at her hands braced on her knees and grimaced because they were covered in mud, which she shouldn’t give a shit about because her jeans were streaked with dirt as well.

Marlon had a lot to answer for, but thoughts of the rich bounty she’d score kept her from throwing in the towel. Her mother liked to say that stubborn was her middle name, which was a quality that worked well in her line of work. She always got her man because she never, ever gave up. She’d been bounty hunting for nearly four years now, the last one going solo because she didn’t like sharing her bounty with a partner or an agency, although she was considering working for one again. Agencies often served as bail bondsmen, too, and therefore had the downlow first on the richer bounties. Fetch Winter from Montana Bounty Hunters had been working on recruiting her to join a new satellite office he was trying to get off the ground in Dead Horse, Montana, to service southwest Montana and into Wyoming. He needed hunters with experience, and he’d heard good things about her.

She’d heard good things about the agency, too, if you discounted the cable TV show that followed his hunters out of Bear Lodge. Fetch gave his crews a higher percentage of the bounty than most agencies did, and he’d assured her that he wouldn’t be looking to do any spin-off series featuring his other offices, but he had admitted that the bonuses for the hunters who permitted the production crews to accompany them were very generous. The job was hers, if she wanted it. But first, she had to find Marlon Oats.

Trying her best not to draw the herd’s attention, she walked along the edge of the ravine, keeping within the narrow line of trees standing along the edge of the ravine as she made her way toward the place she believed a campfire had been lit.

As she drew closer, she stayed hidden and peered into a clearing. A small tent had been pitched, one that had seen better days. One of the screen windows was torn, and one of the poles that held up the tarp over the door was missing. But she couldn’t make out whether anyone was presently occupying the campsite.

Just then, she heard movement coming from the stream below and a soft off-key whistling. Hunkering down, she waited patiently until the person climbed over the edge of the embankment and stood.

“Marlon, you sweet idiot,” she said under her breath. Her heartbeats quickened, and she drew slow breaths. She needed calm, not adrenaline, to get closer to her target.

Marlon strolled toward his campsite holding a string of four fish, which he lowered into a pot beside the fire. As he began taking them out, one at time, gutting and filleting them, and then tossing the pieces into a pan he’d filled with oil, she moved closer, choosing her footsteps carefully, grateful for the chorus of gargling grunts from the buffalo nearby that masked the sounds her feet made in the suctioning mud.

She studied Marlon to see what challenges he might present. A rifle leaned against the tent, and he held a knife in his hand. Slowly, she dropped her backpack to the ground and drew her own 10mm Remington from the holster on her thigh, and then began to work her way toward the edge of the tree line, knowing she’d eventually have to expose her position to prevent him from making a move toward the rifle.

Soft chuffing grunts sounded from the herd, but she ignored the animals, keeping her gaze fixed on the more dangerous game in front of her.

Then she stepped on a twig, and it snapped.

Marlon’s gaze swung toward her position, and his eyes widened. His gaze shot to the rifle, but she shook her head.

“I’m a Fugitive Recovery Agent, so you know why I’m here,” she said, keeping her tone low and hard.

Eyes still wide, his body tensed as though he was preparing to bolt upwards and make a run for it.

“Don’t even think about running,” she bit out.

He blinked, and his gaze went to something behind her. “Bitch, you might want to think about making a run for it.” Then a smile stretched across his face as he slowly stood and waved his arms.

What the fuck…?

Then she heard it. A deep, gargling grunt. With her handgun still held in both hands in front of her, she darted a glance behind her.

A large bison bull faced her from about twenty feet away, his head lowered toward the ground, his gaze fixed on her.

For those who don’t know, the Lunar New Year celebration marks the first new moon of the lunar calendar. It’s a 15-day festival period that happens this year between January 29th and February 4th. This year, millions of Chinese communities are celebrating the start of the Year of the Snake. There are parades, quiet moments of prayer, and lots of food. In fact, I’m going to talk my daughter into picking up Chinese food tonight so we can have a little celebration and introduce the kids to another holiday that I think needs to be added to our rotation. Any excuse to celebrate, right? More like, any excuse to eat good food. I’ll also light some incense and think about the family members we’ve lost in recent years and to wish luck and happiness to all my family and friends.

Most of us know our traditional Horoscope/Zodiac signs, right? Do you know what your Chinese Zodiac symbol is? The Independant has a nice summary for you to figure out what your zodiac symbol is. Follow the link to find out what yours is. I was born in 1958, in the Year of the Dog.  Here are some of the qualities a “dog” possesses: “Loyal and friendly, they make the best companions a person can have. Sometimes they can be stubborn but always find their way back to balance.”

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then find out what Chinese Zodiac animal you are. Do the qualities your symbol represents fit you? And are you ready to add the Lunar New Year to your yearly calendar of celebrations?

The Memory Puzzle