Deborah Woehr

Theo scratched at his face. I knew what that meant. My place was in the sidelines while the men gloated over their victory. That was all right because I knew I had won mine.

I would be teaching in a brand new church that my lover had built. “Are we going to have a gala afterwards?” I asked, more out of curiosity and to change the subject.

“Yes.” Theo’s smile returned. “The pig is being slaughtered as we speak.”

“Good. I’ll meet you at the church.”

Theo waved before he left. I raced upstairs to change and freshen my makeup, excited to see the church in it’s splendor and my man cutting the ribbon. As I stripped out of my soiled dress, I envisioned Theo on those steps with that fat, glutonous mayor. He was smiling at the crowd the entire time, a better politician than the mayor could ever hope to be.

A smile broke out on my lips before I had a chance to touch them up. We had worked so hard and been through so much together. God was rewarding us for our efforts. I may not be at Theo’s side during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, but I would be at the gala.

Everyone would be there, smiling at us and talking to us. I wouldn’t be so brash as to latch my arm around Theo’s, not with everyone still expecting his wife to come. Appearances were everything. That’s what Theo told me when he wouldn’t allow me into his house.

I accepted this, although I didn’t like it. All of this sneaking around had grown tiresome. Soon, it would become apparent to the townsfolk that Cora wasn’t going to come.

I left my room with this thought on my mind. It buoyed my spirits as I walked down the mahogany staircase and into the lobby. Randolph looked over his shoulder when he heard my heels clacking against the hardwood floor.

“You sure look nice,” he said with faint disapproval.

“Thank you,” I replied on my way out. Immediately, I saw the throng of people standing in front of the church, clapping and shouting. I saw the scissors in Theo’s raised hand and knew that they had started without me.

Tears sprung to my eyes, and it wasn’t because I’d missed out on a victory ceremony. A blond-haired woman stood by his side, where I should have been standing. She held a little girl in her arms, no older than five.

My insides felt like they had been shoved down my throat backwards. It hurt to breathe. Flashes of light lit up their faces in short bursts. I forced the muscles to relax on mine as I walked up to the crowd.

The mayor finished his speech. Then Theo gave his, expressing how blessed he felt that his family was able to share this important event with him. All I could think about was how that man had looked me in the eye, smiled at me, and told me bold-faced lies.

I smiled at Cora and her daughters. The girls smiled back.

“It’s good of you to join us, Miss Kelly,” Mayor O’Flannery shouted for the benefit of everyone. “Mrs. Sonnet, Miss Kelly is our teacher.”

Cora looked at me, her eyes as black as onyx stones. A slow smile came to her lips, those eyes filling with mistrust. “Hello.”

“I look forward to teaching your girls next Fall,” I said with a strong, clear voice. My smile grew wider as I looked at my lover, who refused to look directly at me.

“Myra, why don’t you join them up there.” James Nettleton wanted to snap a picture for his society page. He waited until I stood beside Cora.

The flash went off, filling my vision with stars.

You’ve underestimated me, you philandering bastard. I will crush her and spill her blood all over your pristine church steps. I promise you that.

The next flash blinded me.

I hate you.

I love it when people comment on the posts I’ve written. What’s better is when the subject sparks a discussion between readers. The only post that’s done that was my Living to be 100?.

I was thrilled with last week’s traffic hike on Supernatural. Unfortunately, it attracted two teeny-boppers from MySpace who started off okay but wound up turning the site into Skid Row with their childish behavior. In the space of 24 hours, my email was flooded with notifications of their comments.

I’ve been busy with the details of the last day of my kids’ schools, so I wasn’t here all day to monitor what was going on. I uploaded the blog this evening to find back and forth discussions about which star of the Supernatural TV show was cuter (who cares), which escalated to a fight.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any way to blacklist the ISPs of these girls. I’ve deleted over half of their comments (keeping the ones that sounded reasonably intelligent) and have turned on the moderation feature. Since WordPress doesn’t come with a blacklist plugin, I’ll be searching for one.

This summer will produce two landmark birthdays: mine and my grandmother’s. I’ll turn 40 next month, and she will turn 80 in August. Out of all of my relatives, I feel the closest to her. We’ve always been able to connect, even if we lose contact for weeks at a time. We just simply pick up where we left off.

I’ll be taking my boys down to Texas to see her for a big birthday bash. I’m looking forward to seeing my aunts and uncles, whom I haven’t seen in a couple of years. The boys have never met most of them, so this trip will be a real treat for them. I just hope that my birthday gets lost in the excitement of my grandmother’s.

Quoted from WUSA9.com

The early evening dust storm rivaled anything a monsoon could kick up, even though a National Weather Service forecaster said it is far too early for the monsoon season to arrive.

The dust storm I drove through in April is nothing compared to this storm, which occurred during rush hour traffic last Tuesday. I did a bit of research on dust storms for an earlier draft of Prosperity and knew the danger they posed as far as the dust was concerned. What I didn’t know is that they can create microbursts, downdrafts that can cause the same damage as tornados.

Click on the link above to watch the video.

This is a redo of last night’s tryout. I thought I wanted a church theme, but that was a small quibble compared to the fight for survival this town winds up going through.

As you can see, I became a woman obsessed today. The cover above symbolizes the old photo albums that Bud is hiding from Amanda. On the surface, the cover has a somewhat elegant look to it . . . until you look at the woman’s face. Right now, I’m leaning towards this cover because I love the deceptive subtlety of it.

This symbolizes Amanda’s sleepwalking jaunts to the cemetery. The green stuff is supposed to be ghostly orbs, but it doesn’t look very convincing to me. And the title font is bothering me. I’m not sure why, but I’m going to look at this again tomorrow.

Which cover would be more likely to grab your attention if you saw this book sitting on the bookshelf?

I finally broke down and bought the ecover software that I mentioned on On Book Design last month. This decision was made after I tested a free script that produced the same cheesy results as the others I’ve tried. Do you like this better than the first cover?

I’ll start off with the failure because I like to end on a good note. You may have noticed that the link for Americana Dream is no longer in my sidebar. I just couldn’t get it going in the right direction. And the more I tried, the more of a struggle it became to write on this blog.

John came to the decision this weekend to pull it. See his post on blog funerals as well as Darren’s post How to Kill Your Blog Successfully.

I saw Americana’s demise coming, but it didn’t hit me until Tuesday. I was in a funk all day Tuesday, and I wasn’t sure why. I’ve flopped with several of my own blogs, whether it was the time factor or not knowing enough about the material to continue. My attitude was stupid and self-defeating.

I churned out my latest post on Numinous off and on all that day, wondering if my direction was on or off the mark. Then I decided to forget about it for the time being and focus on Supernatural. Since it was 6/6/06, I decided to surf the web to see how people were reacting and wrote 666 Around the World.

Last night, I almost fell over when I check out the stats on the blog, which had risen sharply. Today, the stat count has doubled. Not only that, but my post on the Waverly Sanitorium received a bunch of comments from people who had watched the show last night. I was in the middle of writing and had forgotten about the show.

So, it looks like my timing was right not once, but twice! I’ve learned several things here. The Number One (and most important) thing is that reader feedback is essential to me as a blogger. I’ve come to rely on my reader’s comments to gauge whether or not a particular blog is working. Stats aren’t enough, and they’re not always accurate.

Not only that, but I enjoy building friendships with people who share the same interests as me. With that, I’ll close by saying thank you to those who have visited, commented, and/or linked to this blog.

This plugin is loaded with all kinds of features that can give you the stats on your blog in at least twenty different ways. As good as this plugin is, it isn’t without its problems. First of all, it took about a week for the plugin to kick in and start culling the data on my various blogs.

Then I read a comment in one of my readers’ blogs who said that this blog was running slow. If that wasn’t enough, he couldn’t post a comment last weekend. I had no idea why until another blogger who told me that he was having similar problems with his blogs. I’ve since disabled the plugin.

While it provides excellent data for WBA, it’s overkill on my personal blog. Hopefully this will solve the speed and commenting problems.

His latest book, The Husband just arrived on my doorstep on Friday. So, guess what I’ll be reading this week?

Like Stephen King, this guy is strange looking and yet quite funny. My favorite part of the interview was when he talks about his father’s inventions. Go see for yourself.

Dean Koontz Interview