Hello, all. Skye here, for another very special Feline Friday, straight from Camp Grandma. Today’s entry is special, because Anty is still recovering from said retreat. While Anty had a wonderful time, alone with me, alone time can be draining for some extroverts, like Anty, and she may need a couple days to be her regular self. This means that the real debriefing may take place on Monday, so I am allowed to do some rambling here. I do not have a problem with this.

First of all, Anty has an announcement to make. New York’s Emerging Writers: an anthology of fiction, is now officially published, and ready for purchase. This is the anthology that has Anty’s novel excerpt, “Ravenwood,” in which you can meet John and Aline, the hero and heroine of Anty’s postapocalyptic medieval historical romance, A Heart Most Errant. If you read the excerpt, and would like to see the whole book, consider letting the publisher know. If you would like to get that, and maybe discover new fiction writers, in a variety of genres, from the Empire State, you can purchase your copy here.

As always, Anty was at Buried Under Romance, this past Saturday, talking about why favorite books are favorite books. She has been thinking about that a lot, and may talk more about it in the future. That post is here, and it looks like this:

Do you?

Anty did a LOT of reading, during this retreat, and that is probably a whole other post in itself, but here are the basics. Anty read five books while on retreat, and they break down like this:

• 2 historical romance
• 2 contemporary category romance
• 1 contemporary YA (not romance)

Her Goodreads challenge is now twelve books ahead of schedule, with sixty-eight books read out of ninety, putting her seventy-six percent of her way to her goal. That is more than two-thirds of the way done. This does not mean Anty is going to coast for the rest of the year, because she is still on a reading tear. Since she has come back from retreat, she has downloaded three new-to-her e-books, all historical romance. She is going to have to put some more in her Amazon account before she can download more, but there is probably going to be a new notebook to keep track of this sort of thing.

Anty had not read anything by Terri Brisbin for a while, despite having attended several of Miss Terri’s workshops, at various conferences over the last few years. Then she saw a deal on one of Miss Terri’s books that she had started the first time around, then did not get to finish, because life exploded, and she had to give the library back their copy. She got that book for her Kindle, then read it all in one day. As soon as she got off retreat, the first thing she did was to get the next book in that series, and then pick up two more standalones. She also has a couple more books by Miss Terri on her Kindle already, so I sense a theme here. Anty also has some of Miss Terri’s books in paperback, but they are in storage.

Anty also watched four movies. Two, she liked, very much. One, she needs to understand better before she knows if she likes it or not, and the fourth, was not for her, although she had hoped it would work better for her. That is the way it goes, sometimes. Anty needs to go through a few different levels before she can fully asses a work. She will tell you more about that, and about the books she read on retreat, later. After the weekend, she will probably be up to her usual talkative self.

The reason this retreat is taking a little longer to bounce back from is that an airline made some mistakes when Mama tried to buy her and Grandma’s plane tickets. I will not go into specifics, but it ended up that A) Grandma and Mama ended up on separate flights, on separate airlines, and B) Grandma’s airline kind of lost her for a few hours. Maybe stranded is a better word, but, even though Mama’s flight was supposed to arrive a couple of hours after Grandma’s, back in Grandmaland, that is not what happened. What happened was that Grandma’s return flight got delayed and delayed, and she missed a connection, and Mama was already on her plane, so it was kind of scary for Grandma for a while. She eventually got back to Grandmaland, many, many hours after Mama was already there. I am sorry Grandma had to go through all of that, but it did mean more time with Anty, so it was not all bad.

Thanks to Anty, I have a new toy. Anty and Mama could not find a laser pointer before this retreat, so they will bring one next time. The new toy is a very fun toy, and it is called Empty Mint Holder. It is super fun. It can spin, and roll, and slide across the floor like a hockey puck. It even has two doors, and Anty is thinking about putting some of my treats in it next retreat (hm, I wonder if “re-treat” means “to treat again.” I could get on board with that. I love treats.) and see if I can get them out, on my own. I think that might be fun, but for right now, I like watching humans slide it and spin it. Greenball, of course, is a classic, and there is also Yellow Ball. It can do most things Green Ball does, but A) it does not make noise, and B) it bounces.

The best part of retreat, though, was when Anty took a nap, and I snuck close enough to ninja-cuddle her. Once, I even ninja-spooned her and I was the big spoon. That was new, because I had never done that before, and Anty was surprised to find me cuddling her from behind. She gets concerned when she wakes up and can’t see me. This is one of the reasons why, but she did not mind too much. Ninja cuddles mean that I can sneak in some extra love beams and inspiration.

That is about it for this week, so until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling (the kitty, not the book)