Although many of the characters in the novel are greyhounds, I think the story will appeal to a lot of different types of readers whether they like fantasy stories, dog stories, greyhound stories, or just a good adventure story. I think it will also appeal to younger children since the main human character is a twelve-year-old boy. Early drafts of the first four chapters are available on The Greyhounds of Aeravon website if you want to get an idea of what the story is about.

My hands are still bothering me, so about the only thing I can do on the computer right now is write and edit using my speech-to-text software, but that’s good news for the stories I’m working on since I can’t do much else. Because of that, I hope to have the first draft of The Greyhounds of Aeravon finished in the next two to three months.

My plan has always been to self-publish the book, but an agent has asked to see it once it’s finished. So, while I’m not holding out much hope that it will be picked up by the agent, I will give him a chance to look at it before I dive into the self-publishing mire.

And now, I’m off to work on the manuscript.

Today is release day so there’s a lot going on. Hop on over to my writing blog for news and links.

And don’t forget that for every copy of the book purchased before December 8 December 31, 2010 (donation offer extended), I will donate $1 to a greyhound adoption group.

Help support greyhound adoption. $1 from each copy of my new fantasy novel, The Silver Cage, sold during the first week month it’s available will be donated to a greyhound adoption group. The group will be chosen by the contest winner. Click for details.

Since I last posted about the novel, I finished the book trailer and launched TheSilverCage.com where you can see the trailer, read the prologue and first three chapters, and find links to places where you can buy the book (once it’s released, that is).

I also created a Facebook fan page, so if you’re on Facebook, stop out there and “like” the page. You can also follow me on Twitter if you’re so inclined. I’ll be happy to follow you back. Right now, my followers are heavily weighted toward fellow writers. Imagine that.

And, yes, I do still plan to get that final Halloween post and Honda post up one of these centuries. I’ve actually got the pics for the Halloween one ready, it’s just that I’ve needed to save my (still) aching hands for more writing-oriented stuff.

It’s absolutely HILARIOUS! And the illustrations are awesome.

If you value your keyboard and/or monitor, don’t drink anything while reading it, and you might want to have some tissue nearby to dry your eyes after laughing so hard.

Sadly, my hands are still being mean to me, so the time I spend on the computer has been extremely limited. I’ve been devoting what little time I get to working on stuff related to the book so it well sell millions of copies, make it onto all of the bestseller lists, and give me enough money to live on since my hands won’t let me work. Then, once the money starts rolling in, I’ll be able to hire someone to do the promised Halloween and Honda posts for me.  ;-)

I promise I’ll get the final Halloween pictures and the long-awaited new Honda pictures posted soon. It’s just that my hands have not been cooperating when it comes to doing things on the computer.

Pics from Halloween night coming soon, as well as the Honda post I promised awhile ago.

The spider garden at night, lit by two green floodlights and some orange LED lights along the top of the fence.

The bones at night.

I added this gryphon gargoyle to the spider garden to keep one of the floodlights from shining into the porch. Nice lighting effect, I think.

On Thursday, my friend Carol and I made some egg sacs for the spider garden. You can see one of them here, crawling with baby spiders, and the proud mother spider looking on.

Hopefully, Peaches the werewolf will come home in time for Halloween.

The spider victim, now named "Dingus McGee," and the spider who'd like to give him a hand.

A medium shot of the spider garden at night. The orange light in the background is from an orange CF bulb inside one of our front sconces.

The spider garden from behind (taken from in front of the porch)

A daytime picture of the front of the porch. We'll add more webs and some spiders on Halloween day to prevent the wind from destroying them overnight.

A flash picture of the front door.

The front door (from the opposite angle) lit by two black lights and a few battery-operated tea lights. The bat's red eyes blink on and off. The "BEWARE" sign is sound-activated and can be set to just turn on the lights behind the words or turn on the lights and play scary noises.

To the right of the door. The pleasant-looking fellow sitting on the bench is Steve; the neighborhood kids say he's an alien. Steve is ready for Halloween with his candy bucket. The gargoyle perched over his shoulder is Wally. This picture is lit only by black lights and phony tea lights; the colors on the walls are cool but totally inaccurate.

Steve's finger food - literally. Yes, those are severed fingers surrounding the tea light in the bottom dish.

Steve with his candy bucket and his fleecy Halloween blankie and "Boo!" pillow - just in case he needs to take a nap.

Wally. I painted his eyes and fangs with glow-in-the-dark paint. He's underlit by three phony tea lights.

A cauldron of foaming, frothing, bubbly green goo sits over a banked fire in the corner of the porch. Yum!

This creepy dude hangs over the cauldron. I touched him up with some glow-in-the-dark paint to make him stand out a bit in the darkness.

So that’s how things stand the night before Halloween. Tomorrow, before the trick-or-treaters (TOTs) arrive, we’ll be putting up a lot more web and spiders. Hopefully I’ll have time to get a few more pictures. If I do, I’ll post them along with any fun stories about terrifying TOTs and/or their parents.

And, no, it’s NOT a haunt. It’s just some yard decorations and a scary porch. Really.

Oh, and my husband is working on a custom “soundtrack.”

Still not a haunt, though.

The doctor says it’s time to stop. I’ve had to cancel all of the remaining 2010 Carpe Canem benefit auctions and tell all of my work clients that I can’t work for an indeterminate amount of time. The good news is that there’s no permanent damage to the nerves and muscles; the bad news is that doing nothing is boring. However, my hands are slowly getting better. So…hurray.

One advantage to not being allowed to do most of the things I’m used to doing is that I have free time to do a few things I don’t normally get to do, one of which is decorate for Halloween, something I haven’t done for several years, even though Halloween is my favorite holiday.

You see, Halloween is such a favorite holiday that I used to host a pretty significant home haunt, Greyhaunt Manor. Unfortunately, while we were doing the haunt, Greyhounds of Fairhaven got invited to participate in the Doña Ana Arts Council Renaissance ArtsFaire in Las Cruces, New Mexico – and they pay us to be there. The ArtsFaire is always held the first full weekend of November, putting it in conflict with Halloween most years. So we had to decide whether to stay home and spend lots of money and time having fun with the haunt, or get paid to go to New Mexico and have fun there. Since the money goes to the hounds, the decision was obvious – we had to choose the ArtsFaire over the haunt.

Once we made the decision to cancel the haunt, we sold nearly all of our props and equipment, and I spent the next several Halloweens (the ones when we weren’t on the road to New Mexico) either at a friend’s house or hiding in my own darkened house. It’s not that I didn’t want to do something for Halloween; it’s that the neighbors for miles in every direction loved the haunt so much that I figured doing anything less would be a terrible disappointment to them, and I didn’t want them to get their hopes up by seeing me decorating for Halloween.

Ignoring my favorite holiday has been rough, and I came really close to doing something last year when Halloween fell on a Saturday, putting it a full week away from the ArtsFaire. Unfortunately, my greyhound BJ got very ill around that time, so I had to cancel my burgeoning plans before they ever fully took shape.  (BJ’s fine now, BTW.)

Last weekend, I started to get the Halloween bug again and decided I had to do something this year, even if it was just put on a costume and hand out candy. Since I can’t work, I spent Monday shopping for Halloween goodies. I wasn’t sure what or how much I wanted to do, but I knew I’d figure something out based on what I was able to buy.

The shopping went well, and Tuesday at noon I started to decorate the yard.

I had hoped the neighbors would have forgotten about the haunt so seeing me decorating the yard wouldn’t mean anything to them. No such luck. Everybody who passed by on foot or in a car stopped to ask me if we were going to “do the haunted house” this year. Even people who weren’t living in the area when the haunt was active stopped to ask about it, because they’d heard about it from their neighbors.

Sadly, I had to tell everyone there wasn’t going to be a haunt, just some decorations, but we’d still try to make it scary with what we had. To my pleasant surprise, everybody was very understanding and happy that we were doing something.

I worked from noon until about 6:00 pm, and I managed to get a nice little “spider garden” scene set up in the front yard, including some eerie lighting.

The spider garden, complete with encased victim - probably one of the visitors from a past year. DANGER!

Closer view.

While I was setting up the fence, I stumbled upon the remains of a dead bird in the yard. It was thoroughly desiccated – really nothing more than bones and feathers – so I hung it from the webbing and added a plastic spider. I think it adds a nice gruesome touch.

A touch of realism - Mother Nature's contribution to the decorations.

The bones of a previous spider victim scattered in the yard.

I took the hand bones of the previous spider victim and gave them to one of the spiders to hold. It’s hard to tell because of the angle of the photo below, but the spider is holding the hand bones out, perhaps offering them to an onlooker.

This spider would like to give you a hand.

By the time I put the final touches on the yard decorations, it was getting dark, so I only got a few things done on the porch; I’ll finish it tomorrow and try to get some more pictures, including pictures of the spider garden at night.

I can’t wait for Sunday!  :-)