The Chief of the Fallen

Getting back into the swing of Photoshop as I prepare for the great Patch Polish 2k14 to get the latest designs professionally made, and finally decided to sit down and give my favorite demon his very own playlist. Maybe he'll stop plaguing my thoughts on a daily basis. 

[listen]

Enjoy the Silence

This morning I woke up in an oddly nonprecarious state. My alarm hadn't gone off yet. All of the windows and doors were open for the cool air to move freely throughout my apartment. The cat was nowhere to be found, and when I pulled on my glasses, I had ink drying on my hands from the night before. My skin didn't hurt. My legs didn't feel sore. My mind felt perfectly clear. And not a single sound could be heard, even Tuscany's usual chirps fell silent when she hopped up to say hello.

It's an eerie feeling to wake up to an empty home after so many months without. But its not uncomfortable. There is freedom in the quiet spaces, sollace in the minutes I can spend making coffee and doing the dishes while it percolates where my neighbors have all gone to work, the birds have left the birch for other trees, and even the construction crew at the park (who I'm still certain were building a Trojan rabbit) have gone elsewhere.

I am a noisy creature by trade. I listen to pop music at loud volume to write articles, I put on a mix called Songs to Fight and Fuck To in the shower, (its an Erica Reyes mix in case you were curious), and when I'm stressed out or overworked my first defense is to put on the song in my bones and sing it as loud as humanly possible without going off key. And yet there is something about complete and utter solitude that makes me pause, beckons me to close my eyes and breathe deep just to take it all in, as if the silence is a vast perfection which visits only rarely, and must be cherished as much as possible before it slips away as quietly and unknowingly as it appeared.

The past few months have been a whirlwind of change. I've been diagnosed with a chronic skin condition that forced me to turn my already healthy eating habits on it's head. As a result, I've lost 18 pounds I didn't even know I had, and I may never be able to have alcohol again (sugars of any kind are my kryptonite). My roommate moved out rather suddenly, leaving me to rethink my personal quandaries as well as my entire financial set-up.

I have finally finished the first novel of the Sigil series. It stands as the second novel manuscript ever to be completely finished. I'm still not tired of it. I keep hearing Love Run's Out and I can think of nothing but Azazel and all I want to do is go back. Maybe by the third or seventh novel in this eight book series I'll get tired of him, but here were are three years later, and I am still as enamored with the world of the Sigil series as I was that manic day in my apartment when angels and demons sat on my shoulders.

I have also finally opened my Teen Wolf shop with my darling Manda, Patched & Smacked. The first line of engraved bracelets and handmade patches is up for sale, with new styles and pieces being added to constantly. I have sitting in my kitchen now metal that is just waiting to be hammered out, as well as professionally printed patches which will be up for sale by the end of the month. I look forward to adding necklaces and earrings into the engraved jewelry collection, as well as leather pieces for that hard rock/punk as fuck edge too. If you're going to Howlercon, look for us in the vendor's market. We're happy to take on custom requests too, be it patches, jewelry, or even your very own punk ass werewolf vest. If you can dream it, we can make it. 

Somehow among all of this, I have still managed to get into graduate school and even get something like a promotion at work. I have been accepted into Drexel and am waiting to see what Clarion thinks of me. Either way, I will be attending one of these top ten tech-info sci schools in the beginning of next year to start working on my Masters in Library Sciences. 

So what's next then? Hopefully some sugar-free/dairy-free baking experiments once I get comfy again, maybe an SD skin care overview for the curious few, new playlists I have had brewing for ages which will hopefully end up on 8tracks and not just as another sticky note on my desktop, some voodoo, more shop items, and for my next fic- nerd ass werewolf comedy. Stick around, its gonna be a wild ride. 

Mid-Week Words

UFO Bigfoot-
The sun was hot on the dappled leather interior, sweat mopping on the man’s brow. His hands wanted to slip from the steering wheel, but the alignment didn’t need much guidance. Despite its age, the rusting paint, the not at all shiny chrome bumper, the truck still rumbled like a big angry beast, far more lively and easily controlled than the dead one in the back. He eyed the tarp wearily as he shifted into a higher gear to roar faster still up the winding road to great house on the second most unassuming road Finn had driven on. The first most, was of course his own.
But Finn didn’t care about the heat, or the non-existent air conditioning, or the stink that would probably catch up to the corpse eventually if he didn’t get it to the ice barn soon. No, the only thing Finn needed to work was the radio. He smiled wider than most men who were covered in swamp mud and blood and other unidentifiables, and sang along to every word of the old song, drumming along in perfect tandem on the leather steering wheel, occasionally even hitting the dash in a fit of frenzy.

He was still singing, loudly and perfectly on-key, when he finally pulled up to the small guest cottage just beyond the great big monstrosity of the Ketsian Estate. He let the engine rumble just long enough to hear the familiar greeting bark before turning the key over. No sooner did his boots hit the ground than 130 pounds of male pitbull were covering him in more mud and slobber. Rocko was Finn’s second favorite greeting, the big beast laying him in with kisses and whines. He whined a lot when he left on a long job, which Finn thought was hilarious, since he didn’t actually live here.

The young woman on the porch did, tan skin and hard muscles from lifting weights and two by fours alike. Her long brown hair was pulled up in a messy bun because she hated it sticking to her skin, which was only covered by denim shorts and a bikini top. Lily rarely wore a shirt in her own home between the months of May and September. She had a beer in one hand and a tablet PC in the other, going over whatever research Ketsian had thrown together this week. On the table next to her, carefully out of the sun, was her favorite sidearm. Even at home, she still used the extended clip.

"What on earth is in your pickup today?" she asked, not even looking up as he sat down beside her, plucking a beer from the old metal cooler that lived on the deck. That Lily didn’t track every movement Finn made in her presence was a compliment of the highest order, and one he didn’t take lightly.

This was his first favorite greeting.

"You wouldn’t believe me if I told you."

Lily gave him the cop face, which Finn found deeply amusing, as most of the local police force would charge her for laws unknown to most of mankind on sight.

"The locals said it came from outerspace."

"…I’d say ‘you’ve got to be kidding’, but I know you never are. Despite the times I really, really wish you were." She finished off her beer, and simply reached for another. Whatever she was reading about must not have been any good. "But why is it still in your rusty old bed?"

"I got a buyer for it. Is your ice barn empty?"

"At the moment. Why won’t you use yours?"

"You know why. And I don’t want no suit pokin round my home. You’re the only who knows my address, and I intend to keep it that way."

"Technically, you don’t even have an address."

"Or property taxes."

"Yep. Jealous?"

"Always. You can put it in the barn, but if Zell finds it, I’ll tell him you sing every word to Don McClean’s American Pie, and let the redneck backlash fall as it may."

"You’re an evil woman."

Lily smiled, and Finn returned the look in kind.

"You wouldn’t like me if I was anything less. Now go put your corpse away before the stench drives Rocko mad. Last time you came in reeking of swamp ape and that poor creature wouldn’t go swimming for a week."
"Yes ma’m." 

This Ain't No Hymn

This Ain't No Hymn from mediotutissimusibis on 8tracks Radio.

"A southern gothic mix for werewolf women and moral outrage."

Features Nico Vega, Brandi Carlile, and Deb Talan.

This mix soothes my anxieties and awakens the soul all at once. 

Mid-week Words

the Sigil of Azazel, Ch. 29-
"David said goodbye to his fiance that morning. There were no details to warn us with, only that his life thread was to meet a very sudden end. He did not regret it. David was proud to serve."

Eve's fists balled inside her pockets, and she wondered how much he would hate her if she banished him beneath one of the arctic ice packs.

"Because you lied to him and told him he was serving God," she snarled, unable to put a bridle to her anger any longer. "You made him believe he was going to some nice shiny place, and that one day he would meet his fiance' again. But there is no God, and there is no Heaven, and he will never see her again."

"Souls have to go somewhere," Azazel said calmly, turning to look at her as if she wasn't ready to beat him senseless. "Energy created cannot simply be destroyed. Even with the particle dispersion, it is sepertated into molecules beyond the human eye can see, but they are still there, if only permanently divided."

"Well maybe that's what happens to a human soul," she hissed, pulling her hoodie off as the room was suddenly too warm. She nearly flashed him as cotton dragged cotton, but Eve had as little regard for her bodies affects on others as she did for the idea of human attraction itself. She threw the offending sweater across the room to her desk chair as she spoke again, "Permanently divided unless properly extracted and tortured to power the world of a group of outcasts who shouldn't have survived at all."

Eve threw herself onto one side, letting her body fold in to the usual tiny ball in which she slept in for warmth, and pulled the covers up to her ears. Even though she couldn't see him, she knew his eyes were the blazing green of fury.

"I do as am I told-"

"No, you don't. You do as you please to. Don't tell me Lucifer tells you how to train your little pets, he cares about as much for us as the angels who cast you into the radioactive pits do. Now get out."

"Eve-"

"I said get out. Don't make me say it again. And leave the fire."

He vanished without another word. Only the thin scent of sulfur hanging in the air was left of him.

It's a Demon World

Camp Nano starts tomorrow?! Dear Gods, where has the month gone? I haven't turned on my AC once, and I have yet to have a day over 84. It does not at all feel like it should July so soon.

Regardless, I will be making some foodie posts soon, perhaps tomorrow if today's experiment in fudgcicles goes well.

Until then, I'm going to be keeping in the habit of starting off each Monday with a song or playlist I've been listening to lately. Music is an integral part of my life, and thusly one I should feature on my blog on the regular.

In honor of my private cabin with my beloved Manda Marie, here is the mix she made me for my birthday for my wonderful novel which I will finish this month or so fucking help me.

listen

Mid-Week Words

the Sigil of Azazel, chapter 26-

The informant was not what he expected.

For one, he was not a young or inexperienced demon. He was old, in a way that had actually begun to show his age. This meant he was weak, which he had expected. And yet, this man should have been smarter than to open up to him. One eye was scarred over and sealed shut with a single jagged edge that was not clean, but thousands of years old. One arm was missing, and the other supported a crutch. Few wounds would have been left so untreated, but with the state of rags, the rasp of his cough, and the manner in which his one eye was nearly as dark as his first in command was, Azazel understood immediately why.

The informant was a veteran from the Great War, and like so many of his kind had been treated hastily as the bombs had gone off, and with minimal supplies left to treat the ill only the most powerful could be deemed necessary to be saved.

He still raised his one good hand in a salute.