The Fickle Finger of Fate

Psst. Winter here. I’ve escaped from Sunlight Sucks and the iron hand (not to be confused with Iron Fist) of my editor to bring you this little peek into my life…

You ever have one of those days where it seemed like the whole world just took a massive shit on you? Can’t find clean underwear. The boss is on your ass all day, which isn’t a good thing since you’re commando. Nothing goes right at work. People are pissy. People are mean. People yell at you. You’re a hair’s breadth away from crying or quitting. Then you go home.

You walk in the door and discover one cat’s shit on the carpet. Another has puked under your desk. A third one has an eye oozing pus. You open the refrigerator to grab a cold soda and calm down, only to find that someone has drunk the last one and not put a new twelve-pack in the fridge. Feeling as if you are the recipient of Murphy’s Lawn in triplicate, you open a cupboard to get your secret stash of cookies and come up empty handed because the stash apparently isn’t a secret anymore.

Finally, you rid yourself of the work clothes and collapse at your desk in sweats and a tank top (still Commando, of course.) Turning on your computer, you wait for Windows to load. Except it doesn’t. So you fix that issue and finally get Windows to load. You open Outlook and dump the nine-thousand items in your deleted items folder that are causing Outlook to move as slow as the twenty-mule team. Eventually, you make it to your Inbox.

As you wait for 396 emails to download, you reflect upon your day and decide that even a do over won’t suffice. The Vice President made a joke about where they dump the excess dirt at the cemetery. His punch line was your car. He doesn’t realize that your car is dirty because you can’t put it in the garage anymore. The reason: your significant other now has an Infiniti SUV that puts the VP’s Camry to shame.

A teeny, tiny smirk quirks your lips. Okay, maybe the scales of justice flickered over to your direction for the first time that day. Still wearing the smirk, you begin to delete the 396 emails, briefly skimming them to ensure you don’t delete something important. Halfway through the process, bored off your ass, you almost click the delete button on a text-only email… and stop.

There in your inbox is your salvation. No, not Viagra or male enhancement products. It’s a text only email with a link. You click the link and as the site loads, you feel the scales of justice leveling out. The Fickle Finger of Fate has finally swung in your direction in a good way. You read the post on the site with a growing sense of excitement. Every crappy thing that happened to you that day disappears in a rose colored haze. Someone likes you. Someone likes your work. Triumph over the No Good Very Bad Day is at hand.

I got a great review.

So that was yesterday. Today, I’m still feeling smirky when I think of the Camry and the Infiniti. Damn, that truck is pretty. I’m feeling even more smirky about the review. Book Wenches loved Mating. I could do the Snoopy dance if I didn’t think I’d get a cramp in my calf and fall down, thereby sending the Fickle Finger of Fate swinging back in my direction in a bad way.

Getting a good review on a short story can be a tough task unless you are sending the book only to the review sites that never post bad reviews. You see, most reviewers don’t like short stories. They always want more. But the thing is… it’s a short story. There isn’t more. However, I took the time with this story to make sure it was crafted exactly the way a short story should be. No information dump. Get right to business and show the reader who the hero and heroine are. Have them fuck like bunnies and write the scene in a very explicit and sexy manner. Give them a conflict to overcome. Have them overcome it and slap a happy ending on the thing. Boom. Done.

Not everyone can write a good short. I really have to work at it because I like words. I use a lot of them. But obviously, in a short you can’t use a lot of them. Yet, when I finished Mating, I knew it was good. It had all the right elements. Having Book Wenches tell me I did it right made me feel good. Good enough to wipe away all the shit that was dumped on me.

Unfortunately, the Book Wenches review did NOT clean up the cat shit. I made my kid do that. *smirk*

This is my second time doing Karl’s Summer of Love and I do hope you enjoyed how the Fickle Finger of Fate turned around for me. To show my appreciation, I’ll choose one lucky commenter to win a copy of Mating. Well, unless you tell me you’re not into werewolf cock. Thanks for having me here!

PS: If you really needed a laugh, and I didn’t deliver for you, go read Motley’s Twilight parody. You will find the first post of Sparkly Vampire Nonsense HERE. Trust me, you will laugh until the tears stream from your eyes. She’s way more funny than the joke about the dirt on my car. *wink*