Welcome Guest: Angel Martinez

And again... give a big welcome to the very brave Angel Martinez!

Tell me five things I probably don’t know about you and that most folks wouldn’t guess.

1. I am forty-six years old and still frightened by the basement monster. Yes, it’s true. Granted, it helps when the cats come down the stairs with me, since anyone who has watched Alien or various other horror movies knows, cats are the most reliable monster alarms. But if I’m down there on my own, I still hear it lurking in the corners, back behind the furnace, and under the stairs. You have to go back up the steps slowly, or you’ll hear it coming behind you…

2. Once upon a time, when mastodons still roamed the planet, I joined the National Guard to help pay for college. So, yes, I have had the unique experience of having a drill sergeant bellow in my face, have low-crawled through the dirt, learned to fire a weapon (heaven help you if you call if a ‘gun’) and slept in a tent with a compatriot who had forgotten to take her clothes out of the dryer. They had mildewed. Ever smell mildew in a tiny, enclosed space all night? Don’t ask me to do any of these things anymore. I’m not deluded enough to think I’m still eighteen.

3. Killing things in my house or in my garden is not acceptable. This is a routine the three of us, hubby, son and I, have arrived at slowly over the years, which began with my inability to kill spiders and my hubby’s reluctance to. Spiders are beneficial and so on. We have a bug jar on the bureau in the upstairs hall, used for corralling arachnids, coleoptera and hemiptera alike in a catch-and-release program just for them. Ground hogs are permitted to remain under the shed unmolested. The bats have their own house hanging under the eaves. You get the idea.

4. There are several guilty pleasures I hesitate to mention, simply because, if you know me, you’d laugh your head off. I’m the first to growl about television as pandering to our basest instincts and lower brain functions. And yet…there are reality shows that I’m glued to. I watch every minute of Survivor. Every season. At least with The Amazing Race, I have the excuse that the show will take us to other lands and cultures. Oh, the shame.

5. My very first crush was…well, my first serious crushes were all on fictional characters. Should have known early on that this signals the fiction writing bug. Robinton, the Masterharper of Pern. Aragorn, long before Viggo played him (which just rekindled the flames.) Dracula. You heard me. I think I was ten or so when I read the big D for the first time.

Finish this sentence: "Last night I dreamed ________"

Last night I dreamed of baby bunnies that resembled bicycle reflectors and miniature sheep with Popsicle-stick legs. Spaghetti sauce too close to bedtime is a bad thing.

Write me a paragraph using the following three words: Cat, Mittens, Apple

Caroline settled under the shelter of the yew bush and pulled the last of the summer apples from her skirt pocket. Purloined from his lordship’s cellar, the tiny, wrinkled orb demonstrated how far she had plummeted. Beheading awaited thieves like her, even when the theft was so small and meager. Since the daughter of the house had married and the lady had dismissed Caroline as no longer needed, beheading seemed preferable to starvation. She clutched the apple between her threadbare mittens, prepared to take a bite, when a soft sound stopped her. Startled, her head jerked up and encountered beautiful, inhuman eyes, as golden and as curious as any cat’s.

“Share with me,” the fae youth murmured in a rich, musical voice. “And I will return the favor.”

(OK, I cheated with the extra sentence, but I couldn’t resist.)

Thanks Angel!!

Angel Martinez is the erotic fiction pen name of a writer of several genres. Currently living part time in the hectic sprawl of northern Delaware, (and full time inside the author's head) Angel has one husband, one son, two cats, a changing variety of other furred and scaled companions, a love of all things beautiful and a terrible addiction to the consumption of both knowledge and chocolate.

You can find out more information about Angel and her work at:

* Official Site: http://www.freewebs.com/angelwrites

My books currently live over at Red Rose Publishing (redrosepublishing.com) where you can find Finn and Finn’s Christmas, (our resident pooka has been popular with readers and reviewers alike) my last release Aftermath, and the upcoming collection Lioness on the Knife, releasing 3/11/10.