Shattered - #sixsunday

Hoppy Easter, y'all!

I hope you're all having an amazing morning, and the E. Bunny has brought you plenty of Peeps and jelly beans! I've got another six for you from Shattered this week. It picks up with our mystery girl where we left off last week.

Enjoy!

"Good luck on your exam," Ainsley said to him, her voice carrying through the quiet quad and right to the girl’s ears. 

"Thanks, hermosa." Xander’s voice was soft and silky as the endearment rolled off his tongue. It made the girl’s stomach turn.

"We'll tell Mya this week, and everything will be fine."

The girl had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing out loud at his confident statement.

Methinks she's up to no good! And what are these two keeping from Mya?!

Don't forget the Hoppy Easter Blog Hop Contest! Share your favorite childhood memory in the comments here by 11:59pm CT tonight, and you could a copy of Fade when it's released! :)

Happy Easter, all!

A.K.M.

"Germs" are not for sharing #atozchallenge



Why I'm paranoid.

 One of my favorite miniseries movies is Stephen King's The Stand. The military has an accident with a highly contagious virus they're playing with, and it gets loose. Before all is said and done, the superflu kills millions. Those left are divided into two camps: The sweet old lady camp, and the crazy demon cowboy camp. I won't tell you what happens during the course of the movie in case you've never read the book or seen it, but I just love the movie.

Germs and viruses and flus, I don't love. My nephew, Aloshua (Losh) is on a ventilator and gets sick very easily, so germs are the enemy. We Lysol the heck out of everything, and then we do it again for good measure. Wipes, spray... we've got it all, and nothing is safe. We get strange looks for carrying Lysol spray around in our purses and using it on shopping carts before putting him in, but the reality is that people are gross, and we'd rather be looked at oddly than risk his health.


This is the enemy. Spray at will.



One of my biggest fears is that we're all gonna die in some catastrophe similar to that in The Stand. There may even be demon cowboys involved then, too. Inevitably, it will be entirely our faults because, as mentioned above, we're gross. We don't stay home when we're sick, or keep our kids home when they're sick. We don't wash our hands enough. And we think antibiotics is the cure all for everything.  People  use the bathroom (or sneeze/cough) without washing their hands, and then they touch stuff. And by stuff, I mean every freaking thing in sight, thus ensuring that whatever virus they're carrying around will inevitably be passed along to someone else.

That's going to bite us in the ass some day! And it wouldn't be the first time. During the 500s, the Plague of Justinian killed an estimated 40% of the population of Constantinople .When the Black Death swept across half the world in the 14th century, it killed as many as 100 million people. We've come a long way since those days cleanliness and hygenically speaking, but we're still our own worst enemies.

Earlier this year, the WHO released research on a man-made strain of H5N1 that has the potential, if ever released, to kill millions. That's in addition to the billion or so germs already floating around out there that, given the right conditions or however this stuff works, could mutate and infect humans. Not to mention any other germs we may or may not be playing with in labs.

I may be paranoid, but we've been crippled by these itty bitty germs several times before (see above). If anything causes armageddon in the future, why not a germ? My Lysol probably won't make much of a difference, but hey, at least I'll have died trying, right?!

This is me.

No A to Z'ing on Sundays, so I will be back on Monday with "H"!

Hoppy Easter to those who celebrate!

A.K.M.



Want more A to Z Challenge? You can read other Letter G posts here.

 

Don't forget the Hoppy Easter Blog Hop contest here this weekend! You could win a copy of Fade, my debut novel (you know, the one that sparked this whole Armageddon Alphabet idea)!

Hoppy Easter: Memorable Moments Contest #bloghop

It's time for the Hoppy Easter Blog Hop, and we're talking memories!

One of my earliest memories is of Easter morning. I was maybe three or four, and we lived in a little house near North Edwards Airforce Base in California. The desert spread out around the house for miles. Our front yard was desert, our backyard was desert, the neighbor lived two desert lots over, and right across the street from the house was nothing but desert. In my mind, that meant we lived in the middle of a never-ending desert.

I remember thinking it was completely awesome that the Easter Bunny really visited us that far out. For some reason, I thought he was like Santa Claus and lived in some cold place where he hibernated every day except Easter. Don't judge me. I was a little kid!

When we went out that morning to hunt eggs, we found one in a cactus across the street from the house. I have no clue which of us girls even found it, but I remember thinking the Easter Bunny was magical because he got that egg in the cactus and we didn't even hear him cry, so he must have done it without hurting himself. That egg was the holy grail of eggs for that reason alone.

We all stood around eagerly as my older sister and dad tried to wrestle it out without impaling their fingers on cactus barbs. It didn't work out so well, naturally, and the scene ended with tears and recriminations, not to mention a few nasty cactus barbs to the fingers. I didn't care though. I still had a basket full of Easter eggs because the Easter bunny had come all the way out to the middle of the desert to hide them just for us.

To my way of thinking back then, that made me a VIP. I was totally the E. Bunny's favorite. And I was totally bummed when I finally realized the Easter Bunny wasn't real. But I still remember how excited I was about the Easter Bunny putting that egg in the middle of a cactus, without hurting himself, just for us. I think about that every time I see an Easter egg, and I can't help but smile.

There's nothing like viewing the world through the eyes of a child. Unless you're Dace Matthews. Thinking about my childhood over the last couple of weeks made me realize that Dace doesn't have many happy memories of his childhood. His parents died when he was young, and he was on his own. That makes me sad. Everyone needs a happy memory from those long ago days when magical bunnies came out of hibernation just to bring you eggs in the middle of the desert.

So, I've decided we're going to spend Easter on memories! Who knows, maybe it'll shake a few loose for our wayward TA and Fade's hero. I think he could use one or two. :) And there's a prize involved for helping get him in the magical bunny mindset of happy days gone by.

One lucky commenter will win a copy of my debut YA novel, Fade, upon release from Noble Young Adult this spring!



The cover of Fade.

Here's how it works: 

• Share one of your childhood memories in the comment section of this post between now and 11:59pm (Central) on April 8th.
• On April 9th, I will put all of your names into the magical randomizing machine over at random.org.
• The magical machine will then pop out a list of names for me.
• The name at the top of the list wins the ebook.
• If you share your Peeps with me, you also win my eternal gratitude.

That's easy enough, right? 

I thought so. Want other chances to win great prizes from all across the blogsphere? Check out the Hoppy Easter Blog Hop here. Want to know more about Fade, or read an excerpt? You can do that here!

So... what's your favorite childhood memory?

Hoppy Easter, all, and don't forget the Peeps!

A.K.M. 

Who by "Fire" #atozchallenge

Way back when cavemen were trying to figure out how to make the mammoth they'd just killed edible, they probably didn't think, "Fire bad". But if there is one thing most apocalypse scenarios have in common, it's fire!

Volcano? Fire. Lightning storm? Fire. Asteroid collision? Fire. Bombing? Fire? Plague? Fire. Human-killing plants? Fire.

Now, I'm not an expert on fire or anything, but I do know that:

1. It's hot.
2. It burns.
3. It makes awesome s'mores.
4. People like it.
5. People like to sing about it.

If you've ever seen a riot (or been to a redneck party), you've probably noticed that something is always on fire. The same can be said of any apocalypse book, movie, dream, etc. If the world is ending, chances are there will be a fire at some point.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it's such a popular theme because:

1. Fire is quickly and easily made - which is why you don't throw cigarettes out the window of the car.
2. It's destructive (see 1 and 2, and 3 if your marshmallow falls off the stick).
3. It's scary (trust me, I know. I accidentally set my balcony on fire once).
4. It's also free (if you know how to rub two sticks together, otherwise, you'll need a match or a lighter, or a stove, or... you get the picture)
5. And can rage, unchecked, for days (or weeks) in the right environment.

175 million acres of forests and grasslands are lost to fire every year. As are countless homes, livelihoods, and lives. In 1923, a large earthquake hit Japan, and an estimated 30,000 people were incinerated in the resultant fires almost instantly. That's heartbreaking, not to mention downright frightening!

Those kind of numbers, coupled with our love of fire, makes it relatively easy to understand why fire is such a popular end-of-the-world item. The scene of a fire is notoriously chaotic. It's hot, it's big, it's smoky, and we all associate large fires with death and destruction so we're naturally trying to be anywhere but in the line of, well, fire. That's a pretty good reason, in and of itself, for fire to be associated with armageddon or the apocalypse.

The other reason is because people are idiots. I say that with love, but it's true. People are idiots. When bad things are happening, we're stealing TV from appliance stores, beating people up in the streets, throwing molotov cocktails at buildings, or tipping cars over and then dancing on them. Zombies? Fire. Demons? Fire. Volcano? Fire. Superflu? Fire. Robot cop from the future? Fire.

That about sums it up.

I could give you a list of reasons as to why people grab the nearest fire making item when things get rough, but I'm just going to say this: Fire bad. Planet good.

Have you ever read an apocalypse book (seen an apocalypse movie/show) that didn't have a fire?

Have a "G"ood Friday, and I will see you Saturday!

A.K.M.

Want more A to Z Challenge? You can read other Letter F posts here.

Don't forget to check back here later today for my Hoppy Easter Blog Hop post! You could win a copy of Fade, my debut novel (you know, the one that sparked this whole Armageddon Alphabet idea)!

*Title Reference: Leonard Cohen's Who by Fire.

Earthquake on my mind #atozchallenge

I grew up in California, and we were always practicing earthquake drills in school. It was no big thing to feel a little rumble every now and then. It was California, after all. We were young, but my sisters and I never panicked about it. We thought we were completely awesome.

Five days before my tenth birthday, the Northridge quake hit, and let's just say it wasn't so awesome. My little sister and I had fallen asleep in the living room while watching movies, and when the shaking started we both thought our dad was in the kitchen shaking the fridge. Weird, right? But that was exactly the kind of thing he'd do to scare the crap out of us.

Damage from the Northridge Quake

At any rate, when the shaking started, we both yelled at him to stop shaking the fridge and let us sleep. When he yelled from the top of the stairs that it was an earthquake, it finally dawned on us that, hey, the entire house is shaking.

Ever seen Transformers? You know the scene I'm talking about!

Yeah, that was us. I've had little love for earthquakes ever since!

When we moved to Arkansas I remember thinking, "Woohoo! No more earthquakes!"

Pfft, yeah. I was an idiot. We in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, and we get them here.

In high school, we were forced to watch one of those "what could happen" documentaries where scientists all get together to talk about doomsday scenarios should a large earthquake ever strike the fault-line. Suffice to say, we should've stayed in California. At least the buildings were more or less earthquake ready there. Here? Not so much so.

Last year, my wifey experienced it for herself when a 5.6 hit near where she lives. It was a relief to know I'm not the only one with a little inner voice screaming, "We're all gonna die!" when the ground starts shaking.

It reinforced the reality that nowhere is safe. Fault-lines run all throughout the world, and an earthquake can hit any one at any time. As we've seen, the effects can be devastating. Infrastructure and buildings buckle, the ground can rupture, if one hits in the ocean, tsunamis can spring up and bring an entirely new level of devastation to coastal communities. It's all kinds of unpleasant, and the bigger the earthquake, the more unpleasant it is! In 1811-1812, three large earthquakes struck the New Madrid fault, followed by over 200 5.0 or larger quakes throughout the United States.

And according to the experts, we're overdue for another large quake here. The 9.0 that hit Japan last year, and the resultant tsunami, devastated much of the nation. It's scary to think about something equally as strong hitting the United States! Remember this scene from 2012?

Let's all just pray that never happens. Because, seriously y'all, No. Thank. You!

Do you panic when the ground starts shaking?

See you "F"riday,

A.K.M.

You can read other Letter E posts from all across the blogosphere here.

Don't forget: The Hoppy Easter Blog Hop starts tomorrow. Hop on over here from the 6th to the 8th for your chance to win prizes! :)

*Title reference: Earthquake by The Used