Excerpt from The Cat Before Christmas

Here’s the excerpt I promised from The Cat Before Christmas:

All week long Wiki hunted the spider. He knew its scent, dry and desiccated like a cicada casing, faintly ashy from hanging out in the flue. He searched, he stalked; he lay in wait still as a statue for hours near the fireplace, by the dining room window where he picked up the spider’s scent Wednesday afternoon.

Friday morning a hastily spun web caught his right ear as he shook his paws stepping out of his litter box in the back hall. He whirled, ready to pounce, and heard only an echo of eight eyes’ laughter coming from -- the sun porch!

The door to the sun porch had a glass top half. The tallest thing in the hallway was the old microwave cart Cary parked outside the kitchen. An ivy plant in a blue ceramic teacup sat on the top of the cart. It was a tight space, but if he gauged it just right…

Wiki dug his back claws into the braided rug in front of his box and vaulted onto the cart. He turned carefully to avoid knocking the plant onto the floor and saw the spider swinging by a thread of silk from the ceiling in the sun porch.

How did you get out there? Wiki growled.

Wouldn’t you like to know, furball?

Little chilly out there for the likes of you, isn’t it?

I find it bracing.

The furnace cycled. The blower came on, and warm air fluttered up from the wall vents in the hallway. From the vents Cary kept open all winter on the sun porch, too, stirring the silk suspending eight eyes on the other side of the window.

“I’ve got the world on a string,” the spider sang, his voice raspy enough to pass for Frank Sinatra past his prime.

Wiki hissed. If I promise not to eat you will stop singing?

Eight eyes started on the second verse. Wiki raced into the bedroom. He snagged the spread with his claws, tugged it down and stuck his head under Cary’s pillow to drown out the spider’s voice.

He was still there when she came home from school, happy and humming because it was Friday and she was going to a movie tonight with Tina. Wiki had heard them making plans on the phone last night.

“I had a hypothetical, what would you think if I went skiing for Christmas chat with mom today,” Cary had told Tina. "Her face almost hit the floor, but I planted a seed for next Christmas. If you and Pam want to take another ski trip then I can go."

Ski trip? Wiki had pricked his ears. What ski trip?

Cary sat with her ankles crossed on the window seat in the dining room talking to Tina on the cordless phone. Wiki sat on the floor pretending to clean his ears. His hearing was sharp enough to pick up Tina’s reply.

"Awesome," she'd said. “For next year we're thinking about a weeklong Caribbean cruise. You'll have the time off from school, and Pam and I can save up our vacation days."

"Oooh,” Cary sighed. Wiki sat close enough that he could feel the thrill of gooseflesh that shot through her. "I'd love that."

Wiki stared at Cary. Was she crazy? She wasn’t going anywhere at Christmas! Thank the catnip gods for Lorraine. She’d put the kibosh on the ski trip. He could take care of the cruise.

That’s what starts all the trouble for Wiki, the cat who loves Christmas, and launches his plan to keep Cary from going skiing. To paraphrase the Scottish poet Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men -- or in this case cats -- often go askew.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading The Cat Before Christmas as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And remember: From now until January 31, 2011, I’m donating 15% of all proceeds to Wayside Waifs and The Humane Society of Kansas City.

Happy day after Christmas!

The Real Cat Before Christmas

Yes, he’s real, and he’s now a member of our family. He’s not Siamese like Wiki in The Cat Before Christmas, he’s just a cat, a big gray grown-up boy. He showed up the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

A few days before the idea for The Cat Before Christmas hit me like a lightning bolt. I hadn’t given a single thought to writing anything but a grocery list in four years. Interestingly, that’s what I was doing when the idea struck -- making a grocery list for Thanksgiving dinner.

That Saturday our youngest son Paul and I took the list to the grocery store and did the shopping. When we pulled into the driveway the cat appeared, a big, beautiful gray cat with green eyes and a shiny, groomed coat. He wasn’t a stray; he was healthy and well cared for. We assumed he was just strolling by and stopped to say hello.

But he kept hanging around. I’d see him when I went out to get the mail. On Mondays and Wednesdays when I met our grandson Zachery at the school bus the cat was also there to meet Zack. Zack loves cats. So do I. Cats know who loves them and who doesn’t.

The cat wasn’t obnoxious or pushy. He sat politely, looking up at Zack and me with his big green eyes. He followed us to the front door. Each time I saw him he looked thinner and rougher. This went on for two weeks. I was starting to worry. Where was his family? Why was he now, obviously, homeless? What had happened?

I checked the online lost and found notices, the bulletin boards in the grocery stores -- no gray cat with green eyes lost in our neighborhood. I was really worried about him now -- and the big coyote that sleeps in our backyard on sunny days.

When we lost the last two of our three cats, The Little Queens, Michael and I swore off cats, but this guy’s plight was driving me crazy. I talked to Michael. “If you want to let him in the house, go ahead,” he said. “But just one cat.”

The next day was Wednesday. I was prepared. I had cat food and a cat box ready. When Zack got off the bus, there was the cat. He followed us home. Zack petted him while I filled bowls with water and food. I fed the cat and I petted him.

I went in the house and came outside a few minutes later and petted him some more. I did this three times. The fourth time I simply opened the door. He looked up at me with his big green eyes, meowed and stepped delicately into the living room.

Michael named him Smokey because he's like a puff of smoke; one minute he’s not there and the next he is. Michael also calls him Senor Smoke (after the Minnesota Twins pitcher Juan Berenguer) because he’s not a kid -- he’s a grown-up. Zack calls him Gray Stripe. I call him Smoke.

He has impeccable manners. He has all his claws, but he doesn’t use them. He’s very careful if he jumps in your lap, and he hasn’t scratched one thing in my house. He goes outside, but he always comes back. He loves to be brushed. He puts his chin on my shoulder and purrs when I pick him up.

Life imitates art so be careful what you write about. I wrote about a cat, and now I have one. And I’m glad.

A New Book -- At Last!

Just in time for Christmas, barely in time for Christmas, The Cat Before Christmas is available on Amazon Kindle!

I'm so excited about this I can hardly stand it. This is the first thing I've written in 4 years, since my husband Michael won his battle with RA; it's the first sweet romance I've ever written, and it's my first published straight to e-book novella.

If that's not enough firsts for you here's a couple more. This is the first Christmas story I've written, and the first time I've written a story with a cat as one of the main characters.

I love cats so giving Wiki, the Siamese cat of the title a point of view was great fun for me. I love cats so much, and dogs, too, that from now until January 31, 2011 I'm donating 15% of the proceeds from The Cat Before Christmas to the Kansas City Humane Society and Wayside Waifs, two no-kill shelters in the Kansas City metro area.

My good friend and very talented artist Judy Johnson designed the cover. Here's a link to the book in the Amazon Kindle store, and here is the blurb:

Wiki the cat loves Christmas. Batting the ornaments, basking in the blinking lights -- he even helps choose the Christmas tree each year!

But this year there's trouble in Wiki's yuletide paradise when his mistress Cary decides to go skiing in Colorado instead of staying snug at home with him in Kansas City, Missouri.

To derail her plans, Wiki escapes to the Christmas tree lot where he's sure Cary will find him. He doesn't count on a blizzard or a huge German shepherd with a handsome and stubborn master named Ben. All three conspire to trap Wiki on the lot. For his own good, of course.

Cary is frantic, searching everywhere for Wiki -- everywhere except the Christmas tree lot where Wiki waits to be saved, and Zeus' master waits to sweep Cary off her feet. Can Wiki escape and get home to Cary in time to save Christmas?

That's the big news for now. Tomorrow I'll post a short blurb from the book and tell you a little bit more about the story. Promise! The post is already written.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving

In our family we don't pardon our Thanksgiving turkey, we eat him, but first we name him. This year's bird was Irwin. Our youngest son Paul named him.

I wanted to call him Happy Jack the Turkey, but Paul objected because "Happy Jack" is the title of a song by The Who. Anything having to do with music is sacred to Paul so the bird was dubbed Irwin.

My husband Michael, who started this turkey-naming thing, kept calling Irwin Owen, which is the name of one of Paul's three cats. Owen is a big fat yellow tabby, almost the size of Irwin who is -- er, was, nineteen and one half pounds.

Last Thanksgiving Michael came to the table using a walker between his hip replacement surgeries. (See my post "Did Anybody Miss Me?" to find out why Michael now has two titanium hips.) This year Michael came to the table on his own two feet, well again and happy, and still calling Irwin Owen just to needle Paul.

That's what I'm thankful for this year.

Run for the Roses

That's the title of my favorite Dan Fogelberg song. Thoroughbreds run races, and so do writers. Our finish line is the deadline we kill ourselves to meet. I've gone days without sleeping, skipped meals and skipped showers to meet deadlines. A writer's blanket of roses is a good review and fan letters from readers telling us how much they loved the book.

When I was a kid I desperately wanted two things, a piano and a horse. I got the piano, but I never got the horse. The closest I came was the rocking horse my dad made me for Christmas. I named him Blackie.

Hardly an inspired name, but I was only three. That's Blackie and me in the photo. Clearly I was exhausted from a breakneck gallop across the living room. I don't know what happened to Blackie (though I'll bet my three brothers do) but I can still remember riding him. His springs squeaked like crazy. I loved that horse.

I've always loved horses. When I'm in the car and "Run for the Roses" plays on the radio I get so choked up I can't sing along. I never miss the Kentucky Derby on TV. When Secretariat died I cried all day.

I've written 16 books, but only two about horses. The Dreaming Pool for Dell, originally published as Paula Christopher, which I'll tell you about later, and Second Sight for Harlequin Temptation.

I love Second Sight. It's one of my favorites. I wanted to call it Gift Horse, which has more to do with the story than Second Sight, but I was overruled. I considered changing the title when I put the book up on Kindle but decided that might mislead readers.

If you've seen the movie Secretariat -- and if you haven't, do, it's terrific -- you'll recall the scene where Diane Lane's character, Penny Chenery Tweedy, asks for a moment alone with Secretariat and gives him a pep talk. I'm sure there were people in the theater that wondered what the hell she was doing talking to a horse.

Some people say horses are psychic, others that they're intuitive. If you doubt me read Dick Francis' wonderful horse racing mysteries or ask people who've owned horses all their lives, like my cousin Dana Eichman.

"Their eyes tell you everything," Dana says.

Richard Parker-Harris, the hero of Second Sight, discovers that when he looks the filly High Brow in the eye. Interestingly, Dana made her comment to me before she saw the new cover Pati Nagle designed for the ebook.

It's a very cool cover that features High Brow and Susan Cade, the character in the book that can talk to horses. Susan is an equine vet with an uncanny knack for picking winners at the track. Richard is dead broke, and figures that Susan owes him one for breaking his nose with a riding crop when she was fourteen. That's where Richard and Susan start, but that's not where they finish.

You can see the cover on my website, www.lynnmichaels.us or in the Lynn Michaels Collection on Amazon. If you love horses and a good romance I hope you'll buy the book.

Blackie and I will both thank you.

My Big Fat Greek Decision

No, I'm not Greek. That was just to get your attention.

Okay, here's my decision -- Now that my husband Michael is well I'm going to start writing again, but I'm not going to write for a commercial publishing house. I'm not going to write what an editor wants or what my agent thinks an editor wants. I'm going to write what I want to write, and hopefully what you want to read.

How am I going to do this? By epublishing my books myself. I can do that now, thanks to Kindle, Nook and the other reading devices out there. I don't know them all; I'm still learning about epublishing so feel free to educate me.

When I realized I could do this, that I didn't have to twist myself into a pretzel to give Editor A what she wants, or what my agent thinks she wants, that all I have to do is write the book and hit publish, I got so light-headed I had to lie down.

Until I finish a new book I'm publishing my backlist titles that I have the rights to on Kindle. Here are the titles I've put up so far on Amazon:

Captain Rakehell
The Duke's Downfall
Nightwing
Molly and the Phantom
Second Sight
Remembrance

Captain Rakehell and The Duke's Downfall are Regencies I wrote for Fawcett as Jane Lynson. Molly and the Phantom, Second Sight and Remembrance are paranormals I wrote for Harlequin Temptation and Nightwing, also a Temptation, is a vampire romance.

I'm having a blast doing this. It takes time to learn the conversion process, to come up with covers and blurbs, but it's fun. The best part of epublishing is that I'm in control -- I'm in charge of everything. I'm the author, the editor, the copy editor, and the cover designer. Note that I didn't say artist. I can't draw a straight line with a ruler.

Captain of my own ship. Mistress of my own destiny at last. Woo! I'm feeling light-headed again.

Did Anybody Miss Me?

Yes, I was gone, thanks for noticing. I wasn't kidnapped by aliens, or Hugh Jackman, either, darn it. The truth is I haven't given a single thought to writing in the last three years.

About a month after I made my last post to this blog rheumatoid arthritis hit my husband Michael (now you know how I came up with my pseudonym) like a brick between the eyes.

One day he was fine, the next he was falling apart. By October he couldn't walk without a walker. He spent Christmas in the hosptial.

The doctors kept looking for cancer. They couldn't find it because it wasn't there. When a neurologist told me that Michael's sediment rate (the number of dead red cells in your blood) was over the moon I knew it was an autoimmune problem.

I was right. I should have gone to medical school. I should also write a book about what Michael went through, but I'd get sued for telling the truth.

Once I got Michael to a rheumatologist his health began to improve. He had surgery on his left hand to reattach the tendons in his fingers that were being severed, one by one, by a bone spur. One genius ER doctor told Michael that the flaming red basketball on his wrist was a skin condition, and he didn't need an x-ray for a skin condition. He's also had both of his hips replaced. He's fine, now, thank God, and our 11-year-old grandson thinks it's totally cool that Grampy has titanium hips like the Terminator.

Three years ago Michael was the healthiest 58-year-old man on the planet. He exercised every day, lifted weights three times a week (the only thing that saved his muscles from atrophy), ate right, didn't smoke or drink, and RA knocked him flat on his back.

From the Mayo Clinic website here are the symptoms of RA:

Joint pain
Joint swelling
Joints that are tender to the touch
Red and puffy hands (RA attacks small joints first)
Firm bumps of tissue under the skin on your arms (these are rheumatoid nodules)
Fatigue
Morning stiffness that may last for hours
Fever
Weight Loss

Michael experienced morning stiffness and wrote it off to this age. (Clearly he missed the 60 is the New 40 Memo.) He ran low-grade fevers and thought he'd over-exercised. His left wrist pained him now and then, and occasionally it was puffy, but again he thought he'd overdone it.

God forbid you should ever experience any of these symptoms. If you do make an appointment and see your doctor. If you don't like what he or she tells you, if it doesn't feel right to you, find another doctor. If you don't like the second opinion ask for a referral to a rheumatologist.

Thanks to those of you who noticed that I was MIA. Now that Michael is well again, lifting weights again, and most important, smiling and laughing again, I'm starting to write again.

Just thought I'd let you know. I'll keep you posted.

Fun Things To Do With Your Characters

A great place to start a book is in medias res, a Latin phrase that means in the middle of things. I've heard this likened to putting your characters up a tree and then throwing rocks at them. I did that at the beginning of Captain Rakehell (recently reissued by Delphi Books). I stuck Lady Amanda Gilbertson in a tree. The rocks I threw at her were metaphorical: three bumbling thieves and a dashing hero in a black mask on a black horse.

Another fun way to get things rolling with your characters is take them out of their element and plunk them down in a completely foreign environment. I did that in Return Engagement. Plucked Noah Patrick out of Hollywood and dropped him in Belle Coeur, Missouri, a small town on the Missouri River.

Noah is one of my favorite characters. Smart, funny, thinks fast on his feet. So does Joe Kerr, the hero of Marriage By Design, which comes out on July 25, 2006.

What if these two very different guys, Noah Patrick and Joe Kerr, were to find themselves in a very strange place. A place where no man has gone before....

Noah: Hello? Hel-looo? Where are we? I don't see anything. (Squinting, shading eyes with his hand) Just a big, empty...nothing.
Joe: We're in cyberspace. You're an actor. Think of it as a blue screen, the background they put you against in a movie to deliver your lines to a CGI character that the computer will fill in later.
Noah: You're a detective. Why don't you find a way out of here?
Joe: Why don't you relax? However we got here, we'll be able to get out the same way.
Noah: (Walking away) I'll relax as soon as I find the door marked EXIT.
Joe: I wouldn't go too far.
Noah: (Stops, turns around) Why not?
Joe: You aren't leaving footprints.
Noah: Yikes! (Scoots back to Joe.)
Joe: Good choice. I'm a detective, not a bloodhound.
Noah: I get lost going to the bathroom, but this one takes the cake. My wife Lindsay will never believe it.
Joe: Then I suggest you don't tell her.
Noah: You aren't married, are you?
Joe: Not yet. Mia and I are engaged.
Noah: That explains why you think you can keep anything from a woman. Can't be done. They have powers. Lindsay says it's in their hormones.
Joe: No. It's in their brain cells. I keep telling Mia that I'll make a detective out of her yet, but she says she wants to keep designing. When I met her she hated designing wedding gowns. She quit her father's company Savard Creations just to get out of it. Go figure.
Noah: We're alone, aren't we?
Joe: Do you see anyone else?
Noah: No. And I don't want to. I especially don't want to see Lucien Savard. Good luck to you, pal. Your intended's old man is a nut job.
Joe: Lucien wouldn't be caught dead here. There's no furniture to bust up. Relax.
Noah: That's the second time you've told me to relax. It's getting on my nerves. So is this place.
Joe: I told you. It's cyberspace.
Noah: Uh huh. And where is cyberspace exactly? Does it have coordinates? Can you show it to me on a map?
Joe: Are you trying to give me a headache?
Noah: I'm trying to get you to look for the door.
Joe: There is no door. Why should I look for one?
Noah: How about to keep me from screaming like a girl?
Joe: Why don't you just chill?
Noah: That means the same thing as relax and it ain't gonna happen, Sherlock, till you find the door. Joe: Ay-yi-yi.
Noah: It's not freaking you out just the teeniest little bit that somehow we've ended up in cyberspace?
Joe: No. Why should it?
Noah: Ay-yi-yi.
Joe: You're getting your shorts in a twist over nothing.
Noah: That's my point, Sherlock. Cyberspace is nothing. It's not real.
Joe: It's as real as you are, as real as I am.
Noah: Cyberspace is nothing but a URL, a universal resource locator. I'm not a resource. I'm a married man with a wife an kids. I'd like to get back to them before Lindsay thinks I've gotten lost again and sends Uncle Ezra out to find me.
Joe: That's the last thing we need. Lindsay's crazy uncle showing up with his shotgun.
Noah: Relax, Sherlock. Lucille is never loaded.
Joe: I don't care. I don't like guns. Okay. (Moving away from Noah) I'm gonna find the door now.
Noah: (Singing) Lucille. Why can't you be true. Oh, oh, Lucille --
Joe: Knock it off, Patrick. You want out of here or not?
Noah: You bet your bippy I want out of here. Lead the way, Sherlock. I'm right behind you.

And Joe stalks off into the wild blue wander of cyberspace with Noah trailing behind him humming Lucille under his breath...

Here's the answer to Foo Fighters:

They're a grock group, of course, but the term/phrase (whatever you want to call it) Foo Fighters is a World War II phrase coined by military pilots to refer to mysterious or otherwise unexplainable aerial pehonomena. AKA -- UFO's.

As my husband Michaels says, "You learn something new everyday if you stay awake long enough."

Could that be why I stay up till midnight almost every night? Hmmm...

Today is a Think Day.

A day when I mostly wander around the house straightening up, dusting, piddling, while the chapter I'm writing and bits of the story spool off the movie reel in my head.

Some writers only hear their stories. Others only hear them. I do both. In my head, my books are Cecil B. De Mille productions with casts of thousand and Dolby stereo soundtracks. I even fill in background music. When I'm in my car a song will come on the radio and I'll think, "Ooh! That would sound so cool playing in the background in Chapter 5, while Lily and Harry are peeling potatoes." Or whatever they're doing.

Songs inspire montages of scenes that flip through my brain like a slide show. So on Think Days I play a lot of music. Today's choice: After Hours by John Pizzarelli. Light, jazzy, playful. Good mood music for romantic comedy.

Some writers listen to music while they write. I don't because I can't hear the voices in my head. The voices of my characters, not the voices from the mother ship. I hear those when I'm not writing. The ideal office space for me would be a mausoleum.

While I'm thinking I'll make notes: snippets of conversation, some of the montage scenes that come through with the music. If I'm in the kitchen I'll grab a scratchpad if I can find one, hopefully a pen that writes. These loose-leaf notes I'll glue or Scotch tape into the notebook I keep for each book. An 8 1/2 x 11 hardcover journal, spiral bound so it lays flat on my desk. I haunt the bargain books in Barnes and Noble and buy them on sale.

Last night my husband Michael opened the fridge and said: "I can see the bulb." Sometimes he says: "I'm getting an echo." That means it's time to buy food. So sometime today I'll make a grocery list on that scratchpad, with the pen that hopefully still writes, and make a trek to Price Chopper.

I'll play the radio and hear more songs. I keep a notebook in my car in case Elton John or The Foo Fighters give me a hot idea. Usually the notebook is on the floor of the backseat. I have no idea how it gets there. Once I found it in the trunk. That still stumps me.

By the end of the day I'll have lots of notes and new ideas, which tomorrow I'll turn into dialogue between Lily and Harry or maybe some introspection on her part, or his, or maybe both. We'll see.

Till then -- do you know what Foo Fighters are? Where the term originated? What it means? If you do, here's your chance to show off. Leave a comment.

If you don't, I'll tell you tomorrow.

Hello and welcome!

This is Tuesday, February 7. I should be writing a book -- the pesky little things don't write themselves -- and I will be shortly, just as soon as I finish this post inviting you to LipService.

Writing isn't always easy, but it's fun! I'm a Libra and we don't show up for anything that isn't fun.

I'm starting a new book, a trilogy actually, so I'm working on the first book. I write chronologically, I guess you'd call it, from beginning to end. Straight through from start to finish.

If you're a fan of my books (and if you are, I'm thrilled to meet you here!) and you'd like to know how I do what I do, pull up a post and tag along while I write this puppy.

I'd also like to invite you to my website, www.lynnmichaels.us. I'm available there to chat on the message board about anything and everything. Come play!