What are feminine length nails?

I am rereading A Vampire’s Claim by Joey W. Hill.

There is a line in it that goes:

Her nails were a feminine length with clear polish, the elegant tips drawing attention to the grace of her hands.

It really makes me wonder how long this lady’s nails are.

It is a minor thing, I suppose, and I don’t really remember caring or even briefly wondering the first time I read this book. But for some reason it’s standing out for me today.

Are her nails super long? Medium length, not long, not very short?

I can argue that every woman has feminine length nails, no matter that they are long or short or medium.

Mostly I suppose I picture my own nails, whatever length they are at the time.

Teaser Tuesday: Ink and Bone

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I just started Ink and Bone and so far it sounds pretty good!

His divine wisdom can kiss my common arse. We blind and hobble half of the world through such ignorance, and I will not have it. Women shall study at the Serapeum as they might be inclined. Let him execute me if he wishes, but I have seen enough of minds wasted in this world. I have a daughter.

My daughter will learn.

– Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

Teaser Tuesday: Diplomatic Immunity

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This is a reread and one of my favorite books ever.

My Teasers:

They had long agreed they would celebrate the date by starting the children in their uterine replicators. The debate had never been about when, just how many. He still thought his suggestion of doing them all at once had an admirable efficiency. He’d never been serious about twelve; he’d just figured to start with that proposition, and fall back to six.

– Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold

Visitation

This post is a little weird. It comes at the end of a spectacularly shitty week. At first I wasn’t even going to write one, but it is Friday evening and I thought why not? It’s mostly incomplete sentences and almost random images. It is a little strange and a new thing for me to do.  I am not sure it works.

Arms raised. Turn. Turn the other way. Look up. Look down.
 
Gentle fingers probe a soft, flabby stomach, move up to bare, sagging breasts.
 
Avoid the large protrusion on the bottom left joint. Wipe off yellow pus and red blood.
 
Get up, dress in a hospital gown and clutch the back with one hand. Lie down on a hospital bed. Get wheeled to a room.
 
Smell disinfectant. Finger is pricked. Swallow pills. Watch blood fill three little tubes.
 
Sign forms. Dress again in normal clothes. Leave.

Friday Flash: Blooded Scars

Stuff like this comes out of my keyboard when I don’t feel like writing. 😉

 

She leaned close to the mirror and examined the tattoo. It covered up the scar very well, distracted the eye with intricate whorls and angles of black ink.
 
Her man appeared in the mirror, right behind her shoulder. His tattoo was white, bright against the inky darkness of his skin. It made a pretty pattern of slashes and dots on his throat and arms.
 
He put both hands on her shoulders. “Ready?”
 
She turned, met his red eyes. The eyes of a hunter; the eyes she would soon have. “Yes.” This had been decades in the coming, but she was ready now.
 
 
 
The room was prepared, clean, the knives sharp and the drains cleared.
 
She stripped and lay down; the paper crinkled under her.
 
Her maker ran his fingers over her throat. She tracked the movement of his hands when he stroked his knuckles down her arm.
 
She gasped when he slashed her wrists open. The wound hurt. He held her down, pinned her arms to the table so she wouldn’t move. She flexed her fingers against the steel of the table, trying to block the pain. But soft whimpers escaped from her.
 
Warm blood gushed down the drains. Her vision went black at the edges. Her last sight was of her man being led in and lying down in the table next to her.
 
They would be together.

Friday Flash: Dreams

This just came to me. I am not entirely sure about it figured I would post anyway.

Color smeared the sky like a child’s finger-painting.
 
The colors were reflected in the glass and concrete buildings around. He sighed and sat on the edge of the roof, legs dangling in empty air.
 
Four stories below, people walked or biked past. Some strolled and many ran as though they were in the middle of a marathon. Poor things. Why did they bother? Nothing was going to happen tonight. Dreams shattered and it didn’t matter how hard you tried. No one cared.
 
Too bad his building wasn’t taller. He raised his eyes to the too-pretty buildings around him. Like sitting in his micro car and being surrounded by a dozen trucks. He should stay away.
 
But he couldn’t help but think of ways to sneak to the top of one. Maybe the bridge would be easier.

Friday Flash: Purple Oil Flowers

I don’t know where this come from and I had a little trouble with it, but it’s done.

 

Purple oil flowers covered the landscape as far she could see. A money maker, these fields, but so far from any shops.
 
She cast a longing glance to the west, past the big tree, picturing the town miles down the road. Her brother would be meeting with PurpleFlow’s finance people right about now. Her job was to babysit the flowers.
 
Too bad they needed nothing from her. The flowers were like a weed. They would grow anywhere at all, as long they had the right soil. But that was her secret.
 
She sighed, tucked her matching PurpleFlow phone into her jean pockets and went out to make a soil check.
 
The soil compost containers were stacked against the back walls. Faint whimpers emanated from the last, top-most crate. She detoured to check on it.
 
The young man looked fine. His blood trickled into the soft, black soil. His hazel eyes were dazed from the pain, but his still struggled against his chains. His wrists, elbows, knees and ankles were rubbed raw, but that didn’t matter. She’d made small holes in his limbs so the blood drained slowly. Too much would ruin the soil.
 
But the whimpering! She grabbed a ball gag she’d left in the box for just such occasions and stuffed it into his mouth. The strap cut into his mouth, but she didn’t care.
 
She petted the top of his matted, stiff hair and closed the crate lid. The bottom one was ready; the boy in there was just a skeleton now. She filled a container with the soil and set off to fertilize her fields.

Teaser Tuesday: Gameboard of the Gods

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I got Gameboard of the Gods at the Book Expo this past this week and I am choosing to read it before any of the other books.

Richelle Mead was very nice at the signing and she said she liked my nails. (I did them two days past.)

He regarded her fondly for long moments, amazed at    how she completely undid him. It wasn’t just the stunning looks either. He’d meant what he said: She reminded him of home. That, and she was a tangle of intriguing contradictions. A castal princess. An avenging Valkyrie. That kind of puzzle was what he lived for, a turn-on in and of itself.

– Gameboard of the Gods, by Richelle Mead.

N is for Necessity’s Child (Teaser Tuesday)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Yes, I chose to start Necessity’s Child yesterday exactly because the title starts with N and I needed an N post. Also, this book has been on my TBR list for a couple of weeks now and I figure it’s time to move the book to the top of the pile. It’s Liaden Universe book, which are usually fun.

The first two lines are:

Inside the duct, it was hot and wet – nothing new there, thought Kezzi, shifting her weight carefully. The metal snapped in complaint, and she made herself be still.

–  Necessity’s Child by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

This is a Baen book and the first nine chapters are available on Baen’s website.

Explosions of Color

This Friday flash was inspired by a photo I saw on 500 px. Here: http://500px.com/photo/28050051 The picture is called Color Explosion by Margaret Morgan. The link looks like it is not working and I think that’s because 500 px doesn’t have a link to the actual picture.

This flash is 700 words and a lot longer than my usual Friday Flashes.This is also my E post for the A to Z challenge. E is for Explosions of Color.

A child raised his gun and took aim at me from the balcony across the street. I turned, hurrying to the door. Too late! A wet splat hit my back and I looked back.

The child grinned at me, toothless and full of glee at having caught the foreigner so.

I scowled and marched inside. I would have to change. Again. This was the third time today.

Liquid blue blate dripped down the back of my shirt. The precious mineral the natives of this crazy planet considered good luck. Everyone splattered everyone with it today, the first official day of spring. It was supposed to bring a good harvest. I didn’t understand the how or why, but I didn’t need to.

All I knew was that I need a ton of pure, unadulterated blate if I was going to pay off the banks. The natives mixed it with water, with clay, with smoke and sold it on the streets for games. And for some reason they refused to sell it off-world. Why they should refuse those profits, I didn’t understand.

My brother eyed from the couch, laughing. “Leave it on,” he advised me.

I stared at him.

“They’ll take it as a challenge if you don’t,” he said.

Maybe. I still didn’t like the feel of my shirt, plastered to my skin and wet.

“Also, we don’t have time for you to change again. We leave in five minutes.”

My brother was a tech specialist on this benighted world. He had come here a decade ago and somehow survived. Most foreigners didn’t. Today, I was grateful.

“The dealer is an hour outside the city.”

He meant smuggler, but whatever word he liked. I wasn’t picky.

 

The trip out of the city was long and boring. Nothing but the same stone-and-wood buildings everywhere. Nothing but the same cobblestone roads, now liberally splashed with blate. They were colorful. Pretty, if you could overlook the weeds sprouting from between the stones.

The smuggler lived on a farm. White flowers grew in the fields. My brother led me to a barn. It was white and red. The roof sloped in that odd design most roofs here shared.

It was dark inside. The only light came from windows up high, near the roofline. The smuggler lounged on top of a wooden crate. I eyed it. Maybe it had the blate I needed. More crates lined the left wall, some open, some empty, some spilling over with the same white flowers growing in the fields.

He hopped down as I approached. “Greg. Good to see you. This your sister?”

“Yes. I told you what she needed.”

“Yes. Pure blate.” He studied me speculatively.

“I can pay,” I told him.

“Sure you can. But. Before I give what you need, you need to do something.”

He spoke my tongue very well. Better than I expected from a blate smuggler.  “What?”

He retrieved a dull metal plate from behind him. It held five pewter bowls, each filled with a different color substance. Red powder, blue liquid, yellow paste, green balls, beige grains.

“It’s a ritual,” my brother murmured behind me. “Harmless. Spread them on your face. Eyelids, nose, mouth, cheek, forehead. Right to left. Go on.”

I dipped my fingers in the cold, slimy mixture and did as my brother said.

But then the smuggler began to change. His skin looked like lizard scales. Pointy white teeth. Floppy ears.

I whirled to face my brother and gasped when he looked the same. “What did you give me?”

The smuggler moved to stand next to my brother. I saw now that a thick gnarled white rope wound around my brother’s throat and disappeared into the smuggler’s chest. “Blate, darling, exactly what you wanted.”

The room turned bright, light shining down from above where there was no light source. “You betrayed me,” I whispered.

“I had no choice, sister. I can’t . . . won’t let you take any blate off-world.”

There was so much light now I could hardly see anything, couldn’t even make out his face. “Bastard.”

“The most loyal man I’ve ever had,” the smuggler corrected. “Perhaps one day you’ll be like him. Close your eyes now, darling. Rest.”