Mancandy Tuesday: Howard Wolowitz

Don't say anything. Just don't. I know already. I've even made a list of all the ways in which Howard Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory is completely not a Mancandy. Such as:

1. He has a haircut that roughly resembles a penis. And that's not even my obvious and by now quite out of control penis obsession talking! Behold!

And just in case my utterly scientific diagram isn't clear enough, I've created a double of his haircut using the same penis and super-imposed it flawlessly on his head:

2. He has no discernable neck. I'm not even going to attempt an incredible manipulation of a picture using MS Paint, here. You can see it for yourself without me making a fool of myself with a computer, too much time on my hands, and an unhealthy hunger for penises.

Check it out:

There's no neck there, right? It's just all head, then straight on down into body. Makes me wonder where his neck went. Is his penis so huge that the weight of it has actually dragged his head down into his torso?

Or is that just my mentulomania talking?

3. His clothes. Of course, on the face of it, there isn't anything wrong with his clothes. His belts are fantastic. I love his shoes. He wears a variety of tight pants in some splendid colours.

But the problem is, he wears them all together.

And yet...and yet...I want him. He is a Mancandy. He's practically the very definition of Mancandy, because he's small and sweet and he comes in primary coloured wrappers.

I don't even care that his head looks like a penis or that he has no neck. I don't care that he says the following to a woman on the show:

"How is doable anything but a compliment?"

I just want to rip those candy wrapper clothes off his small but weirdly angular body. I want him to hop nimbly around in front of me, like he does on the show all the time. I want him to yell at his Mother to leave him alone while he has a play date with me on his ridiculous bed.

I love his Jewishness, I love his cheeky smile, I love his pathetic attempts at wooing women. I love that he dresses up as a Goth to try and get a girl.

Oh Howard Wolowitz, I'd be that girl. And then after I'd been that girl all over you and under you and back to front with you, we could play Mario Kart all night long together.

Sounds like bliss, to me.

Writing Update

Inorite? You didn't expect me to do that. If you visit this blog often, you're probably shocked to find that I'm actually a writer, and not some insane inventor of a device called The Man Fancier.

But I swear to God I am, and I thought I should maybe talk a little bit about this thing I do in between watching The Big Bang Theory and wondering why it has to be Howard Wolowitz I man fancy.

So, on the upside:

I'm writing proposals for a super sekrit thing! And I had a dream about super sekrit thing - namely that I was only asked to maybe take part in it because someone wanted Charlotte Stevens and mistakenly asked me instead, but lets put that aside before it makes me evaluate my psych too intently. Basically, I'm hovering between massive excitement and certainty that it will all never come off, at the moment, so please wish me luck. Or failing that, please wish for me to get over my sudden, inexplicable love for a man replete with sleazy come-ons.

My novella, Carnal Craving, is out now in the anthology Mammoth Book of Hot Romance. Or at least, it is in the UK. And it's a totally exciting and wonderful antho to be in, so even if you hate me and wish you were reading Charlotte Stevens instead, go buy it because everyone else in it is orsum. See:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mammoth-Book-Hot-Romance-Books/dp/1849014671/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313467752&sr=8-1

My other novella, Guarded, comes out soon! Hurrah! Here's the link, if you want to learn some stuff about it:

http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=1352

I am in the middle of editing a novel (Telling Tales) and a novella (All Other Things). The fact that I'm editing them in and of itself isn't exactly good news (though I suppose it might count as such when you know that I'm also currently addicted to Sims 3 and The Big Bang Theory, and both things are making me not go to the toilet and not bathe and not eat until I turn into a sightless mole person who thinks she has to keep an eye on her energy bar in order to determine when to sleep), but the fact that I don't hate either of them with a passion of a thousand burning suns shining out of Michael York's butthole is. Somehow I always think I'm going to hate the books I've written when I haven't read them for a while, as though evol goblins came in and rewrote the whole things when I wasn't looking. But no, I think I'm safe.

I got a lovely review of my short story in Obsessed, from none other than the illustrious Super Librarian herself:


http://wendythesuperlibrarian.blogspot.com/2011/08/like-butterfly-wild-butterfly.html


Of course, I then did a big excitement wee. She liked it! Even tho the story's weird as fook! And she wants to read more stuff of mine! *shorts out*

And on the downside:

I don't care about the downside anymore. It's there, but I'm not even going to give it the time of day. Look: Maru!

Mancandy Monday: Brandon Routh

I'm pretty sure I've never done a Brandon Routh Mancandy. Which quite possibly threatens the very existence of our universe, and makes me a likely evol doppelganger of myself. I mean, only an evol doppelganger of myself would not have done a Mancandy about Brandon Routh, by now. Plus, she has a tiny goatee and she eats all of the mint Bliss Hershey's things that I swear were made by God himself, I swear they were.

But enough about Hershey's mint Bliss things copyright God 2011. Onto why it's so unbelievable that I've done so many Mancandies that I now can no longer remember if I've done one about him, or not.

Because seriously, he's like the most perfect man ever. I think God made him while he was eating one of the mint Hershey's Bliss thingies. He put it in his mouth, and then he had an instant orgasm, and then he made Brandon Routh.

Don't believe me? Check out this arm:

I mean seriously. How is his arm like that? It looks like it has a sexy alien growing inside of it. And I don't mind admitting that I want to hump that sexy alien. I want to hump it until it hatches out of his face.

Which probably explains why he's staring in such trepidation at the whole area. I'd be staring too, if my arm was a) that sexy and b) likely to turn into a seven foot xenomorph that eats the crew of my spaceship and leaves me crying in my underwear with a cat.

Though I've got to say, I think I cry harder when I look upon Brandon Routh's glorious visage. Or at least, my vagina cries harder. My vagina cries so much that I have to hook myself up to an IV to combat vagina dehydration. Most of the fluids in my body are halfway down my legs, because of this thing:

I can't even call it a face. It's not a face. It's a mint Hershey's Bliss thing on top of someone's neck. It's my every sexual fantasy made flesh, in so many, many perfect ways that I can't even really talk about it. I mean - he's literally like Zachary Quinto's more attractive younger brother.

Can you even wrap your mind around that? I can't. I can't even think about it without being consumed by my own groin. All I have to do is picture myself going round to Mrs Quinto-Routh's house for tea, ready to wet myself over her gorgeous son Zachary, and then THIS creature walks out of his sweaty boy bedroom and is all like:



HAI WATS GOIN ON GUYZ??

Because come on. You know the Brandon Routh in my head talks like that. He's not only vagina dehydratingly handsome, he's also somehow the most adorbs thing ever. He made an orsum Clark Kent precisely because he's so good at tripping over his own feet and being all awkward, and you know how stupid things like that turn my crank.

I want him to trip over his feet and fall face first into my fanny. Which is not half as gross as it sounds, because by this point he's spent half an hour being all vulnerable and cute and prudish, and my vagina's as dry as the Sahara because it just created a miniature Nile around my ankles.

Brandon Routh makes me have geographical locations between my legs. Tomorrow the Discovery Channel are coming around to make a documentary about this mysterious confluence of a giant river and a barren desert. Bear Grylls is going to climb my left thigh and survive on the Ruffles crumbs that I somehow let drop into the crevice behind my kneecap.

But I don't care, because Brandon Routh exists. And not only does he exist, but he also brings more visitors to my blog than any other thing does, purely by virtue of the search term "Brandon Routh bulge". And I can't even feel bad about that, because his bulge looks like this:

And also because recently the search term "Charlotte Stein" overtook it, which just makes me want to kiss the world. Stay still, world. I'm going in.









If you'd like to hear more about my obsession with Brandon Routh, you can visit these posts what I did over at Geek and Kink about him, Superman and Clark Kent:

http://geekandkink.com/2011/07/the-shit-that-destroyed-planet-earth/

http://geekandkink.com/2011/07/disco-hitler/

I have no idea if I've ever said this on my blog because apparently I have all the "my blog" knowledge of someone who's the opposite of me - like, say Cameron Diaz - but I blog every Friday there, and other orsum people blog there on other days about all things sexy and geeky. It's fun! Check it out!

More Killing of Dead Things

Okay, so you know how last week I brought you a fabulous excerpt from Sommer's zombie book? Well guess what, beetches. She's written a sequel, and it's as amazeballs as the first one. And just for you, I've got a fabulous excerpt from that book, too.

Because nothing makes me happier than spreading the Sommer love. Especially after she went and wrote the most amazing review of Control:

http://sommermarsden.blogspot.com/2011/07/control-by-charlotte-stein-book-review.html

I swear to God, I didn't pay her. I didn't even ask her. She just did it, because she is made of all that is orsum and amazeballs in the world. Seriously, one of my writing heroines saying that. I can't even.

Instead, I will just leave you with living proof of how talented she is:



Excerpt from NO GUILT (Zombie Exterminators book #2)

Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/323-201-107-489-2--no-guilt-zombie-exterminators-series-book-two-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Chapter One

“Don’t spook her,” Garrity said.

Noah was turning his big white van onto Topaz Lane, and I was trying really, really hard not to stare at Cahill. This was our first big job since moving from Maryland to Connecticut. Our first mission handed down and paid for by the county we lived in. Once we left our hometown after taking care of the Evoluminaries and their rabid leader William Tell (who had wanted to use me as a zombie baby mamma, thank you very much) we’d treated ourselves to a few weeks off.

Now the cupboard was bare, and we were itching to do something that did not involve loud music, alcohol and trading creeper war stories like old men at a veterans’ lunch.

“I won’t spook her. Why the hell would I spook her?” I snapped. Being fixated on Cahill’s offer wasn’t helping my mood. An offer of a threesome with him and Garrity—something that, yes, boys and girls, I have fantasized about more than once. It had come out of the blue after a drunken bucket-list conversation the four of us had had. Bam! In a moment of privacy, the offered was slammed down on the figurative table, and I couldn’t seem to stop poking at it. It was something I wanted, but it scared me.

I caught Cahill looking at me from the front seat where he rode shotgun to his lover Noah. I felt my face flush when I saw his cocky grin. Jeesh.

“Because you seem a bit on edge, Poppy,” Garrity said and leaned in. “Why are you so on edge, babe?”

It had taken forever and ever for me and Garrity to get together despite attraction and all that jazz. But my mother’s death and our last mission had sealed a bond that was a long time coming. So how would he feel about bringing handsome, tall Cahill in on the sex part of stuff? My brain wouldn’t let it go, but I swallowed hard and said “Don’t know. Maybe I’m rusty.”

“Nah. You’re good, girly. There’s nothing rusty about you,” he said and kissed me.
I turned my face fast—before I could analyze it—and kissed him on the lips. Part of me wanted to say those dreaded three words. I love you…part of me wanted to scream at even allowing myself to think it.

The van jumped and jittered on non-existent shocks and ripped me out of my reverie. “We’re here,” Noah said.

“Ready?” Cahill asked.

“No,” I said.

“Good.” Garrity patted my legs. “So let’s do this thing.”

We got out of the van and went to knock on Marylou Peterson’s front door.

I watched that instant—the instant that all couples seem to have—unfold. As Garrity was touching the small of my back, Cahill was touching Noah’s arm. That we-have-a-connection touch. Would Noah hate me forever if I took Cahill up on his offer? Would it ruin our friendship? Would it ruin the four of us and how we worked together? It was something I had to push out of my head as the front door swung inward. I had to focus on the complaints by the neighborhood and the county about a creeper that was loose that no one could seem to pinpoint. The last place it had been seen was Marylou’s house. I needed to focus on her.

“Hi, Marylou Peterson?” I spoke. The boys felt it better that I introduce us since I was relatively calm and a girl and there was a zombie apocalypse under way—or so the general population thought. “My name is Poppy Cooper, and we need to talk to you about a recent cree—” Garrity nudged me. Creeper was our own personal nickname for the undead. “Um…undead sighting on your property.”

“Who are you?”

“We’re county licensed freelance exterminators,” I said. Which was a fancy way of saying we kill dead things. We’re killers for hire.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“May we come inside and speak with you?” Garrity asked, flipping a piece of nearly black hair out of his blue-blue eyes. He smiled. His boy next door shtick. Niiiiice.

“Sure. Come on,” she said and took a step back.

Funny. She seemed more scared of us than the idea of rogue zombies in her neck of the woods.

People were strange.

“It was on my property?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and frightened but off. Something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t figure out what. Maybe we’d interrupted her and her boyfriend or something.

I looked at the county’s paperwork. Connecticut was way more of a stickler for paperwork than Maryland had ever been. Go figure. “Two complaints of a lone male undead subject on your property,” I said. “But when someone is sent out to take care of the call, he’s gone. There is a note that the second complaint called was only partially sure it was a male subject. Have you seen anything?”

She shook her head. Her big brown eyes wide, her fingers twirling a piece of dyed-red hair so tight I feared the whole lock would pop right out of her scalp. “No. It’s just me and my brother here. I haven’t seen anything. My dad’s long gone—has been for years, my mom…” She shook her head and looked away.

Christ, I hated this part. I always felt like a heel. Like I was pouring salt in a wound, because I was. I had lost my mother to a creeper, I knew the pain of it. I also knew I’d been slightly luckier than most simply because my mother had been immune to the virus that was infecting all these undead. She didn’t rise. Most people had to deal with the loss and unwanted resurrection.

“I’m sorry,” I said. A few stupid words that could not possibly stem the flow of pain.

She nodded, cleared her throat. “My mother succumbed to the virus.”

“And your brother? Has he seen anything?”

“I’d have to ask him. Chuck’s not here right now, though,” she said, waving her hand around the kitchen. “But I’ll ask when I see him.”

“Can we look around your property? Maybe there’s something attracting this subject,” I said. When did I start talking like a zombie cop? I didn’t know.

“Sure,” she said and gave me another shrug. “You’re not going to find much. An overgrown yard, a shed, honeysuckle bushes and an old dog house. But go for it.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to her back kitchen door. “May we?”

Marylou stood and unlocked a series of locks on the door. Finally, she was able to pull it open. “I’ll be here when you’re done,” she said.

I eyed Garrity and his gaze flicked to the locks. Five of them by count and an old fashioned cheap battery operated alarm. It simply hung on the door knob, and if jostled it would sound an ear piercing alarm to let the occupants know someone had opened the door.

When we hit the wide planted, screened-in back porch, I whispered to him “Safety first.”

“Jesus, I’ll say.”

Cahill and Noah had already hit the property, walking the perimeter like two jungle hunters. I turned to face the house once I hit mid-yard. I stared up at the farmhouse windows that reminded me creepily of the eyes of the undead. They were there, they were open, but no one was home. The windows were uncovered, the sun bouncing off the upper panes of glass. I thought I saw something in the upper right, but then a crow flew overhead and it was gone. Probably a reflection.

The house to the right was for sale. The house to the left was buttoned up like a storm was coming. “We need to check next door,” I said to Garrity.

He grunted and checked out the shed. “Nothing but lawn stuff. Mower, hoes,” he laughed.

“Are you five?”

“Hoes,” he laughed again.

“Dipshit.”

“Snippy.”

“Childish.”

“Bitchy.”

“Hey, flirt later!” Cahill called, and when I looked up, surprised, he winked at me.
It went right to my pussy, that wink. I shook my head, ashamed of myself. We were on a job. I could worry about my sex life later.

“Anyway, just some gas and lawn care stuff. Normal shed crap,” Garrity said and put an arm around me as he passed to show we’d just been teasing.

I kissed him on the cheek, and he looked surprised. It was my penance for dirty thoughts about Cahill. Now how did I make amends with Noah? I had no idea.

Not that Noah was even paying attention. Or seemed to care. Maybe he didn’t know about…

“Hello?” Garrity rapped softly on my forehead with his knuckles.

“Sorry. Spacey. What did you say?”

“I said we need to talk to that brother. But first we’ll go next door.” He cocked his thumb at the battened-down house. “My guess is at least one of the complaint calls came from there.”

“I agree.”

“Well, someone call fucking Guinness. Or the church. Because that’s a miracle.” Noah brushed his surfer boy hair out of the way and holstered his gun. We were all armed to the teeth but trying to appear like we were just checking to see what was what.

It was nice to keep everything tucked away and hidden until we had an actual creeper spotting. On the other hand, we had to have it all so we weren’t caught off guard and didn’t become lunch for some dead things.

“Seriously,” Cahill said and put a possessive hand on Noah.

It made me hot all over to see those two touch, and it instantly brought to mind the times I’d accidentally seen them together. It was easy to imagine Noah sucking off Cahill. And it was never hard for me to call up the image of Cahill plunging into pretty Noah. Holding his slim hips and pushing his cock deep inside. But it had totally been accidental, me seeing them. Okay, the first time had been an accident.

The other times had been luck.

“We’ll cut through the bushes to speak to the neighbor. When we come back here we can use the back door and talk to Marylou.”

“She’s edgy with a capital fidgety,” Noah said.

“I know. But imagine that you’re a young woman living with just your brother, and he’s not here. Maybe she’s alone a lot. Her mom died.” I felt a twinge in my gut when they all looked sad for me, and I shook my head. “Don’t do that. Don’t pity me,” I snapped, and they all fixed their faces into masks of indifference.

I cleared my throat, coughing away the ball of emotion that had lodged there.

“And she doesn’t have dad to speak of. That’s gotta be hard. And then we show up—our ragtag team of killers…I gotta say, boys, I’d be a little edgy too, I think.”

Garrity sighed. “You have a point. Lucky you, you have us.” He smacked my ass hard, and I gaped at him.

“Come on,” Noah said to Cahill, and led the way. “Let’s go talk to the neighbor before they do something like fuck in the bushes.”

It was Cahill who turned and waggled his eyebrows at me. Jesus. This was getting sticky fast.

We Kill Dead Things

So right when I was writing my zombie book, Reawakening, guess who else was doing it at twice the speed? And by doing it, I totally do not mean boffing. Except all the places where I do.

Because the person was the fabulous Sommer Marsden, and lo, I had my very own zime (see Sommer's comments below for clarification)! Hooray! And if you like zombie apocalypses, and you like hot smexing, you will love her book. Seriously, it's amazeballs. I'm hoping some of her brilliance will rub off on me, but so far all I'm getting is huh, so this idiot wrote a zombie book too, did she?

Alas, alas. I leave you with the true master, Sommer Marsden!



My name is Sommer and I like dead things. On paper, mind you. I also like dirty things, but I like those in real life as well. Somewhere along the line I got the idea to mix the two. At first I thought, Sh’yeah. Right. Naw. But then…Hmm…Maybe. Possibly. Hell yes!

So I wrote them together—sex and dead things, dead things and sex, exterminating and the horizontal mambo. Poppy is the girl I’ve always wanted to be. She wears shit kicker boots, kills things with a machete, wants Garrity but has the balls to still lust after—and admit to it—Cahill. She is a voyeur (Hello m/m action), a bad ass, a soft hearted ass buster who loves family, country and killing things that should be dead.

And she has blue hair!

I thought I’d do one—just the one. I did one. Then I thought maybe one more. So I did a second (where there is even MORE sex) and then today while out running I came across a very live (I’m almost positive) but very creepy woman who was out walking and…bam! Book three is fully formed in my head. And I have to say, the zombie exterminators are in for a sticky situation. But also…more sex!

That is the very short, very condensed, very non-earth-moving story of me and Poppy, the boys and yeah, a bunch of dead things.

Thank you, Charlotte, dead thing loving partner in zime (that is zombie crime) for having me.

XOXO

Sommer

Excerpt from WE KILL DEAD THINGS (Zombie Exterminators Book #1)

Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/315-200-107-489-1--we-kill-dead-things-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Prologue

Honestly, the whole thing is Noah’s fault. We were all doing our normal closing-time bitchfest in the food square at Parktowne Mall and not really paying attention, when the first creeper showed up. That’s what we call them—the zombies—creepers.

Anyway, the first one showed up, and I assumed it was just another stoner looking for a slushie. Nope. It took all of my college logic skills to finally realize the creeper was up to no good when it lunged over the counter at me.

Garrity—Chris to his enemies—the object of my not-so-secret lust, let out a yell and rushed out with the bat we keep behind the counter at Smash It, the slushy and juice shop we run. He hit the guy on the shoulder—intending to do no real damage—but the bat sort of sank in and then made a squishy noise.

“He reeks,” I’d yelled, or something equally brilliant.

Then Noah was running out of Mamma’s Pies pizza stand with a meat cleaver of all things. Which he promptly buried in the guy’s skull. Thank God he was carving up Italian beef at the time.

The creeper gave me a stunned look that almost made me feel bad for him and Noah gave the cleaver another little shove and something cracked deep in the dead guy’s skull.

The dead guy fell on me.

Gross.

That had been the first creeper, and Noah had taken it out (being the only one smart enough to have the news on in his food court stall so he actually had news about the suddenly mobile undead). Garrity had to take out six more before we got the main doors locked. Nick Cahill—main man at The Beef Barn—found one making the moves on a side of beef in the walk-in. He took it out with an electric knife.

The night was pretty much what bizarre is made of, and when we found ourselves clustered on the merry-go-round drinking a good bottle of wine pilfered from the gourmet place, Noah made a joke.

“We should start a new business,” he laughed. He was a business major, after all. “Our slogan could be We Kill Dead Things.”

Like I said, it’s all Noah’s fault. Because that is what we do now. A year later, and we’re pretty damn good at it. We kill dead things.

Chapter One

“Little help over here,” Noah yelled. I tossed him a small axe from my pack, and he caught it with one hand. Noah’s the one with surfer boy hair, pale skin, freckles and an ass any girl would want to bite.

I watched him take the axe and with three economical blows behead our zombie friend.

“Nice.” Garrity laughed—sometimes I think he enjoys his work too much—and did his
own damage with a claw hammer he kept tucked in the back of his jeans. How he sat on that damn thing all day is beyond me. Garrity is the one with the dark, dark hair and the blue, blue eyes. He makes you want to—well, if you’re a girl—he makes you want to take your pants off for him. Hey, he might even make you want to take your pants off if you’re a guy, too. “Head’s up, Poppy,” he called out.

I turned—and lucky I did—because a big, bad and ugly was shuffling toward me like I was his last supper. “Not today, buddy.” My weapon of choice is a gun. I find it cleaner to just put a bullet in their brains. Or what’s left of them. Since my dad was a cop for thirty years, I know my way around a firearm. One shot and the creeper was down.

The boys still think one day I’m going to shoot them. I’ve told them that won’t happen as long as they behave.

“Where’s Cahill?” I called. Noah was sweeping the perimeter and Garrity was checking on his latest kill.

“He’s out back. The owners said the creepers come in through the back bushes.”

“Great. Nothing like sneaking off away from the pack,” I growled. I waited for the boys then we went around the side of the big farmhouse as a unit.

“Where are these bush—” I didn’t need to finish that sentence because Cahill was being tugged by six waving arms into the giant stand of bushes. “Jesuspleezus,” I sighed. “I can’t get a shot. He’s all tangled up with them.”

Garrity moved forward and so did Noah. Together they waded into the overgrown foliage and tugged two of the creepers free. That left Cahill enough room to turn fast and dispatch the creeper with his favorite butchering knife from his shop.

Cahill’s arms are about as big as my thighs and freckled. There’s barely any hair on them but what is there is a ginger-colored down. His eyes are bright green, and they can see right through to your soul. Or, at least, it feels like it. I watched him behead the thing with a fierce grunt and an even fiercer swipe of his knife.

Then I plopped onto the grass trying to catch my breath and get my heart to slow down. It was too damn fast in my chest. I felt like I was floating. Adrenaline cocktail, anyone?

“Come on, Poppy.” Garrity hauled me to my feet, and we all met up around the owner’s gazebo.

“They’ll be home tomorrow. We’ve secured the area. Those are the only creepers we could find. Anything else pops up they can give us a shout.”

I nodded. “Neighbors?”

“All alive and accounted for so far.”

Unlike the movies you see about the undead, they don’t spring up overnight in waves. They spring up one at a time like a flu victim—and like any other disease, there are some naturally immune. My own mother was bitten by the guy who broke in and killed my dad a few months back when this whole thing started. She’s a widow with a wicked scar but beyond that, totally fine.

You just can’t tell if you’ll be one of the immune or one of the infected. Best bet is not to get bitten.

“Good. Now can we go home and sleep? I’m tired.” I was tired, but I felt like a wuss saying it aloud—occupational hazard when you work with all men.

“Yep. Sleep is on the way.”

Garrity ruffled my short blue hair and I felt the touch reach my pussy. Damn him.
He leaned in, pressed his lips to my ear and said “How long is this stuff going to be blue, anyhow?”

“Until I get tired of the blue,” I growled.

He shrugged, that lazy, sexy boy shrug some men have, and said “Just asking. Don’t get all knotted up.”

I rolled my eyes, and when I turned I caught Cahill staring at me. That made my stomach curl in on itself. Those vibrant eyes on me. We were all messy and gross and banged up, but Cahill wore it well. So did Garrity. Poor Noah, he was staring at Cahill as usual. Noah would climb Cahill like a tree if he could get away with it.

Hell, so would I.

“Come on. Let’s get you home. Boys check in when you get to the house. I’ll take Poppy home,” Garrity said.

We split up after one more sweep of the property. Our exterminating service would get paid pretty well for this. Corpse disposal was the job of the owner, plus it helped if they could see the work we’d done. Body count was important. Extra added bonus, the corpses served as a warning to other creepers who might stumble-shuffle-walk into the neighborhood. Garrity pulled me in with an arm to the neck. “Hanging in there?”

“It’s been a long year.”

“No girl should have to kill her dad,” he said softly.

We’d danced around our attraction since day one at the slushy bar. Now it was a steady back beat to every encounter we had. Problem was, as tongue-tied as Garrity made me, Cahill made me the same…just in a slightly different way. Lust is a funny, funny thing.

I figured it best to hang back and do nothing. Plus, we were too busy killing things to fuck. Right?

* * * *

“All’s clear,” Garrity said. We’d given the inside of my house a once over.

The good news with the infection was folks got sick first. High fever, lethargic, sores, coma even. It was pretty easy to spot them if you paid attention. And then if they did die and rise back up, you could take care of business. Problem was that apparently a lot of folks had no one paying attention to them, or they were living with people who couldn’t stomach the taking care of business part. Which I can totally understand, truth be told.

“Thanks for the help. I want a long, hot shower and then a long, deep sleep.”

“Sounds good. Got room for company?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out. “I—”

“Do you really have to think about it?”

No! But then again, yes…

“Of course,” I joked. “I don’t go jumping into the shower with just any guy.”

“And I’m not just any guy,” he said, tracing the zipper of my black hoodie with his fingertip. Garrity is the kind of guy who takes up space—big, broad, imposing, huge—all of those adjectives worked for him. “I wasn’t just any guy when we were serving up Polar Berry slushies, and I’m not just any guy now.”

“True but—”

“But you lust after the meat whacker, too.” He grinned. Clever description of Cahill. Made him sound both perverse and silly. Honestly, Garrity won hands down. There were feelings there for him, real ones. Cahill was just a hot, hot friend that I wanted to fuck. But I’d never tell Garrity that. He’d probably run around yelling I won! I won!

I rolled my eyes. “I think you’re both…” I trailed off. We were whispering because my mother was apparently asleep already. Her bedroom door had been shut when we came home so I tried to keep my voice down. The whole effect was that of a teenager sneaking in after curfew ended.

“Nifty? Sweet? Groovy? Fun?” He laughed.

“Shut up.”

“Hey, Poppy Cooper, kiss me,” he said and tugged my hoodie hard enough to make me stutter-step forward.

“Garrity,” I sighed. “Christ.”

He shook his head. “Unh-unh. Something about watching you dispatch creepers gets my blood pumping.”

He pulled me in, and I considered raising my objections. But then his lips touched mine, and I sort of oozed against him in a highly embarrassing way and got lost in that kiss. I kissed him back after a moment. It was our first kiss. All the flirting and sexual tension made it so intense, I felt like I was vibrating. I felt that kiss in my entire body. Scalp to toe and all the naughty, willing places in between.

“Let me in, Poppy. Let me in your room. Let me in your bed,” he muttered, pulling that traitorous zipper south.

“Garrity, I can’t. My mom…she’s sleeping and…”

He laughed outright, and I heard something in the distance. We both stilled, listening. Could be a roaming creeper, if so, our neighborhood watch would notice and call it in. When the noise stopped, I managed to pull free from him.

“I’m tired.”

“And I’m beat,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to take you to bed and make you—”

“I need a shower!” I blurted. “Creeper brains.”

He cocked his head at me. “I’m not going to win this, am I?”

“No,” I sighed, grateful he saw it now.

“But I will win soon,” he said, leveling a finger at me before taking it and sliding it along my lower lip so that I felt the tug of arousal between my legs.

“I don’t doubt it.” It was the honest-to-God truth.

“Be safe. Lock up. I’ll come pick you up in the morning. Not sure what we’re working tomorrow. But someone somewhere is overrun with zombies. Infestation.”

“Wow, that’s so peppy.”

“Sad, but true, Poppy,” he said.

“Sleep well,” I said, guilt staining me on the inside. I wanted to try to explain to him just how much I actually wanted him. But I sucked at that stuff.

“You, too.” He started for the porch steps and hesitated. “Last chance to take advantage of me. Change your mind and lead me upstairs and ravage me like the easy man that I am.”

I snorted and covered my mouth. “Good night, Garrity.”

“Goodnight, Poppy Cooper.”

And he was gone. I watched his big, lumbering, ugly-ass green truck pull away and patted my pockets. I had my cell, I had my gun. I crept inside being as quiet as I could and locked the bathroom door behind me. I would take a long hot shower and then hit the sack.

It was just what the doctor ordered. You know, before reporting for duty tomorrow morning to dispatch a bunch of dead things.

My Thoughts On Bridesmaids

So I went to see Bridesmaids, last Wednesday. And although I laughed my ass off and loved every funny second of it, there was one moment in the film that for some unaccountable reason made me cry. Not tears of laughter crying - real crying, of the kind you usually only do when a shark eats a seal on Animal Planet or Ripley dies in Alien 3.*

It's the bit where Melissa McCarthy's character says to Kirsten Wiig's character that she has a best friend right here, in her. And it wasn't a fake, sappy moment, and it wasn't the point where Annie turned all of her life around. It was just this weird, plain-faced girl saying to some other girl - I'm your friend.

And I just found that so...I don't know. Overwhelming. Same thing when the pretty one said she had no female friends. In fact, the whole film had this undercurrent of how hard it is to actually make friends and have them stick by you no matter what and so and so forth, and for some reason that really affected me.

In fact, I'm not even going to say "for some reason" there. I'm just going to flat out state it: I can completely relate to that. It's not because I'm too weird, either, because although there's an element of that, I know it's mainly my fault. I'm annoying, I'm abrasive. I say all the wrong things and then only later am sensible of saying the wrong things but have absolutely no idea how to apologise about them because if I apologise, it will seem as though I knew I was saying something bad in the first place.

I try to give advice, but it just comes out like I'm being a know-it-all. All my life I've been a know-it-all, and the thing about being one is you can't stop yourself. You try, but there's just so much stupid stuff in your head that most of it keeps leaking out and then it's all fuck you, apple polisher.

I am a social dunderhead.

So I guess what I'm saying is: it was really nice to see a movie where someone as wonderful as Melissa McCarthy, someone actually stranger than myself, got to be onscreen in all of her plump, weird, mad clothes wearing no make-upped glory, and was not only held up as something fun and interesting but also as a decent person. Who then just flat out asked someone else to be BFFs with them.

I don't think anyone's ever asked me to be their BFF. I can't even imagine what I would do if Melissa McCarthy asked me to be hers. It would probably make my life, because not only is she an absolutely orsum human being in Bridesmaids - she takes nine puppies! She identifies an air marshal correctly and then sleeps with him! - she's pretty much the most brilliant best friend in everything she's in.

In Gilmore Girls, she put up with Lorelai even though Lorelai is pretty much an insufferable human being ninety percent of the time. I mean I love her, and she's funny and smart and cool to watch, but in reality she would have probably driven someone as sweet as Sookie nuts in about thirty seconds and then Lorelai would have had to go live in her Mother's basement with ninety cats, or summat.

Which is undoubtedly my fate. I mean, once the zombies invade my husband has absolutely no chance - he won't even practice barring all the doors! - and all of the friends I do have are either equally as zombie unsavvy or live miles away. And though I'd like to say that I'd be able to cross the apoclaypse ravaged landscape and get to the three other people who can stand me in all the world, I know the truth.

I'd hide in a basement somewhere, with ninety cats.

But you know, I don't think it was just the friendship thing that so affected me about Bridesmaids. There was something else about it - something like the heralding of a new dawn. There were women on screen, doing things I've never seen women doing before.

And no, I don't mean the shitting in the street thing. I mean stuff like...sleeping with some guy in a self-destructive way but totally knowing it and doing it anyway. I mean like hitting rock bottom and not having some dude drag you out. In reality, there rarely IS some dude. There's usually nothing and you really do end up living with your mum, without a job or a life or any friends.

Not every woman is Jennifer Lopez in the Back Up Plan, whose biggest problem is that ALEX O'LOUGHLIN IS KIND OF UNSURE ABOUT RAISING BABIES THAT ARE NOT HIS.

I mean, really? Really? I'd be happy just to smell Alex O'Loughlin's breath. After he put it in a jar and mailed it to me. That's right: I'd be happy with secondhand O'Loughlin breath, that's really probably just a fart his assistant trapped in there, for a laugh.

I don't like "chick flicks" because for the most part, they're not aimed at any chick I know. They don't represent me. I don't even particularly like them in an escapist, glossy sort of way because in order for me to buy things like "she has to choose between Armie Hammer and Jon Hamm to raise her quintuplets" I need to believe in her.

But I believe in Kristen Wiig. I believe in Melissa McCarthy. Dear God, I hope they do a sequel, quick.



*I accept that you might cry at different, normal things. Like accidentally cutting your finger off, for example.

Mancandy Friday: Kieran and Tommy

Vastly appropriate Mancandy, today, because Kieran and Tommy are actually the heroes of the book I've just had accepted by Ellora's Cave! Hooray!

So I feel they deserve to be thanked, in the form of my copious and almost disgusting levels of drool slopped over them both.

Behold!







And yes, that is a graphical representation of my saliva all over them. Of course, MS Paint has its limitations, so this saliva sort of looks a little less like spit and a little more like...um...some other sort of bodily secretion. But that's okay, because I do feel that if my mouth could ejaculate, it would definitely do so over both of these two gentlemen.

I mean, just look at them. And now imagine them doing stuff to the heroine. And maybe also to each other. The mind can barely take such hotness, right? I think I went temporarily insane, writing this book.

Note to self: must cast less handsome men as my heroes, in my imagination. Next time I swear to God I'm going to write about Michael York doing Clint Eastwood. Even though just thinking about that pairing makes me do the opposite of a mouth-ejaculation. It makes me mouth-withdraw. Literally, all of my face sucks back into my body, in abject horror.

Sort of like I've sucked on a crusty, weird bum-faced Michael York/Clint Eastwood shaped lemon.

But anyway, I digress. About something so insane I can't even sum it up in a few words.

Back to Kieran and Tommy, who I genuinely believe have brought me back to writing life. No, seriously. I know that a menage novella about discovering your husband's naughty habits might not seem like an earth-shattering, writing-changing sort of event. But it really has been, for me.

I thought I'd lost it. I thought I no longer loved writing. But the inspiration of Armie Hammer and Michael Fassbender, coupled with a lot of watching of nature documentaries, some computer poker playing and a bout of tonsilitis has literally given me back some of my zest for it.

Of course, it might all go away tomorrow. It might. But for right now, I'm happy.

I'm a writer.