Tiffany Bernardo (of readbreatheread) has given me permission to share with you her entry for the ARC contest. It was a very close runner up. Isn’t it lovely?

(The quality isn’t as high now that I’ve loaded it to YouTube, so the first card says:

“One Day
there was a little
GIRL
who didn’t exactly
believe in
TRUE LOVE”)

I’m sitting here in my batcave-of-the-week, a manor in Normandy where I’m catsitting a grey feline named Josie who has a tail that curls like a monkey, and banging out pages of JUNEAU. The last few entries for the FIRST SIGNED ARC contest are trickling in. And let me tell you, there are some doozies!

I went over to Goodreads, where I am constantly amused by the fact that people give ratings to books that I haven’t even written yet. And there are lots of comments on the IF I SHOULD DIE page that are absolutely hilarious. People mock-furious with me for the cliffie ending of UNTIL I DIE. People thinking that it’s my fault that you have to wait a year to read the sequel. (psst…I have nothing to do with the scheduling. I’m just glad I finished it on time!) People have posted their theories of what will happen in Book 3. And it was so fun to read them. I’m glad I didn’t see them ’til now, though, because who knows if it would have influenced what I actually wrote!

So, motivated by the spirit of excitement that I read on that page, I thought I’d give you another tiny peek into Book 3 of the DIE FOR ME SERIES. Excerpt from page 105. Enjoy.

“Very well done,” Arthur said as his sword clattered to the armory floor. Georgia smiled and, placing one hand on her hip, circled her sword in a victorious flourish, causing Arthur to duck to avoid grievous bodily injury.

“Hi Katie-Bean!” she yelled, spotting me coming down the stairs. “Guess what? I totally rock at sword fighting! Just wait till all those haters see me do this—” she said, lunging in a crazed Three Musketeers move, forcing Arthur to skip nimbly out of the way.

“….do you wanna practice with me?” Georgia asked, posing her sword tip on her toe, and then recoiling as it went through her shoe. “Ouch!”

“Um, yeah. They’re sharp. Why don’t you practice with one of the blunt-tipped practice épées,” I asked.

“Oh, please,” Georgia said. “I’m not a complete wimp.”

p.s. I love Georgia. Can you tell? 🙂

I’m on my  4th full day at the Performing Arts Foundation and am getting into the routine. People have come and gone. Besides the people I mentioned in the last post, I met an Estonian dancer writing his master’s thesis. And an artist from Canada just arrived this morning.

My room is to the left of the clock on the upper floor.

When packing for the week, I had no clue what to bring. At the last second I took dresses and boots out of my suitcase and replaced them with jeans and big sweaters. And boy am I glad I did. Saying it’s casual here is understating things a wee bit. The first day I looked nice. Second day I was still wearing my shoes downstairs. By yesterday, I was coming down to the kitchen to get tea in my pajamas and slippers.

PAF's gardens

Yesterday was my adventure-from-hell. Since Nov 1 is a holiday in France, stores close early, and though it looked like rain, I needed to get groceries. So I set off on one of the PAF bikes. (Seat too low=knees in my chest.) As soon as I got to the bottom of the first hill, it started pouring down rain. Two miles later I arrived at the grocery store dripping wet and with raccoon-eyes from smeared mascara. I bought my groceries, draped my bag over the handlebars, and began to ride the 2 miles uphill through the downpour.

just one of the dreaded hills that are all uphill when you come BACK from the grocery store

About halfway back I had one of those existential moments where I was thinking, “I am * old—” (*=insert age) “—and I am riding a freaking bike uphill for two miles in the pouring rain in November and my hands are so paralyzed from the cold that I can’t even let go of the handlebars.” Not really feeling sorry for myself, but wondering how many people had lost life, limb, or their fragile grasp on sanity in the same situation. And then I forced myself on and treated myself to a 15 minute sit-down in the hot shower when I arrived. (This is where you’re supposed to applaud.)

official PAF transport

The common language used here is English, although everyone tries out their French on Toothless Eric, the handyman. Last night when I was fixing my dinner, the Antwerp musician wandered into the kitchen and asked if I wanted to come help with English lessons. I followed him up to the media room, where a handful of villagers come every Thursday night to speak English with the Foundation’s artist guests. They brought flowers and home-baked goods and the Belgian musician and the Canadian writer and I sat around and played that game where someone else tapes the name of a celebrity to your forehead and you have to guess who it is. And then we talked about the American presidential campaign, which (embarrassingly) the villagers knew more about than I did.

Otherwise, dinner table conversations have ranged from Susan Sontag to internet dating to derivative vs original art to theaters set up in people’s living rooms in Croatia to who let the peacocks in yesterday.

peacocks holding vigil in front of the window

If I only had a peacock-to-human translator, I know they'd be saying, "Let us in the fricking house, already!" They are inspiring me to write a story about a flock of dreaded were-peacocks who terrorize a small French village while the blame is placed on the inhabitants of a nearby artist colony.

Meanwhile, I am juggling writing JUNEAU with a cutthroat coffee-drinking/snack-eating contest that I’m competing in against myself. Oh and writing blog posts…when I’m supposed to be writing 5000 words per day, but only have 2000 and it’s 4pm. Which is my cue to…

I call this composition "Deadline Desk"

As I mentioned on FB, I have a new batcave for the next 6 days. I’m at the Performing Arts Foundation about an hour and 1/2 outside of Paris, trying to make major headway with JUNEAU. If you don’t want to click through to see what it is, I’ll just say that PAF is this enormous convent school with hundreds of rooms that a Dutch guy named Jan bought and renovated so that artists/dancers/writers can stay there and work.

Seriously…hundreds of rooms. Or at least a hundred. I got lost today when I went exploring, and had to cross from the east wing to the west through the (wet) courtyard in my socks, coffee cup in hand.

When I got here last night, Jan announced that he was giving me the best room and not to expect the same one next time I visit. (The taxi driver from the tiny village train station told me that EVERYONE comes back.)

And when I explored this afternoon, I found that he was right. Most of the rooms are little clean, comfy cells with a single bed. He gave me this:

double bedroom with a bathroom in it (most share an outside bathroom) attached to this:

…my own study! With a cute fireplace that I dare not test out. Which means that I’ve been sitting next to that heater that you see on the left, and not at the desk. Which is FINE BY ME!!!

People I’ve met so far: British guy doing PhD in visual philosophy. New York woman doing mystery project. Swedish girl and Croatian guy choreographing a dance that is basically about what happens to your body in the ground after you’re dead. Guitarist from Antwerp. Novelist from Vancouver BC. Italian woman doing her PhD on dance/movement and healing of AIDS victims. And, of course, Jan, who slapped down the flyer for the week-long sold-out dance performance he danced in last week in Paris where everyone is naked with headphones on. (So yes, I have seen a picture of my host’s a**.)

These are the rules:

Rule #1: Don’t let the peacocks into the convent because they will poo and smell the place up. Even though they REALLY want to come in and sit outside the windows and stare in at you.

Rule #2: Everyone buys food and cooks for themselves. And the supermarket is two miles away downhill. And here’s a bike. (Which means 2 miles uphill with shopping bags hanging from your handlebars.)

Rule #3: Figure it out yourself. Hence my spending 5 minutes in front of a coffeemaker pressing buttons in a futile attempt at an espresso. Hence my solo tour through the premises, wandering up and down dark staircases, across long hallways, past the Swedish girl and Croatian guy huddled under a blanket watching an Italian film for dance inspiration.

Rule #4: Contribute. I got in late last night. Too late to ride a bike to the supermarket. PhD philosophy guy insisted on sharing his dinner with me. So tonight I made a huge batch of Brussels sprouts cooked in bacon grease and sauteed in chicken stock (with bacon then added back in at the end), and shared it with all of the meat eaters. (All the veggies were eating early, so I hid my bacon under a paper towel so as not to offend them.)

That is the epistle of my first day at PAF. I can only imagine that it will get more colorful the more I explore. And of course, I will post it all here.