How to Stop an Exploding Dog

Every morning, I take my horrible state-mandated ward Tessie the Dog outside for a constitutional. Most mornings, this is distasteful yet brief. Yesterday morning, I upheld my part of the bargain, but she did not. Not wanting to be late for work, I accepted my fate. I knew I would be mopping up pee when I got home.

Instead, I found the apocalypse.


Tessie the Dog is ill. Frighteningly ill. Eye-bleedingly ill. Face-meltingly ill. Tessie the Dog stood in her crate, amidst a sea of bile and other horrible manner of tummy rumblings and poopy. My plan had been to mop up, feed Tessie the Dog, and go get the kiddo from school. Instead, I tied Tessie the Dog outside, donned my haz-mat suit, and proceeded to clean up a crime scene. When things were sufficiently clean (meaning there was a path), I got the kid and launched her down the hallway with one arm, where gentle television could soothe her wounded eyes. I mopped. And mopped. And bleached things. And mopped. And threw away some adequate towels. And bleached.

I am home today with Tessie the Dog. Not out of any particular affection for her, but because I have no desire to ruin any more towels, my eyes, or my nose. Not to mention my shattered psyche. She seems to be feeling better (meaning most of her innards have remained innards), but this is pathetic. No, this is beyond pathetic.

Reading: Not Just for Eyeballs Anymore

For those of you not devoting the next month of your lives to NaNoWriMo (or, if you are, for those of you who need a well-deserved break), two excellent authors are launching new podcast novels this week.

Mur Lafferty's Playing for Keeps launches November 1 (though the first chapter is available a little early ... Happy Halloween).

Keepsie Branson is a bar owner in the shining metropolis of Seventh City: birthplace of super powers. Keepsie and her friends live among egotistical heroes and manipulative villains, and manage to fall directly in the middle as people with powers, but who just aren't strong enough to make a difference. Or that's what they've been told. As the city begins to melt down, it's hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad.

Mur is offering several subscription options for this podcast. You can get just the novel, either through her feed or through Podiobooks.com, or you can subscribe to the Playing for Keeps Experience, which offers each chapter in PDF as well as audio, and a supplemental podcast called Stories of the Third Wave.

Scott Sigler, meanwhile, wants to kill you.

Something lives deep beneath the streets of San Francsico. Something that has been there for centuries, something that comes out at night ... to feed on the dregs of society. A sub-culture, with its own myths, its own legends of leader named The King that will lead them out of bondage, and their own demon, a hunting shadow known only as Savior.

But the legends of Savior's brutality have faded, the fear passed into stories told to frighten the young ones. When The King finally appears, just as foretold, the Nocturnals know their time has time -- the time to come out from under the streets and hunt humanity in the open.

Scott's new novel Nocturnal is scheduled for a print release in 2010, but at the stroke of midnight tonight, the podcast launches. If you've heard any of Sigler's other podcast novels, you know what you're in for. If you haven't, I encourage you to subscribe on an empty stomach.

National Novel Writing Month

November is approaching far too quickly, and with it comes NaNoWriMo. I gave this the old college try last year and fell on my face, only getting 6,000 of my 50,000 words on the page.

This year, my strategy has changed.

I'm taking November 1 and 2 off work and locking myself in with the words for my entire user-created four-day weekend. Only one of us is coming out. Either I'll be well on my way to finally getting this novel out, or I'll be eaten by the cat.

If you're interested in following my progress, or if you're insane enough to do this too and want to add me as a buddy, go here.