Valentine's Day Flu...

So both hubby and teen daughter went to bed Friday the thirteen feeling awful...I bought Nyquil for them and homeopathy "keep from getting sick" tabs for me...I woke up Valentine's day feeling fine...they woke up feeling worse than when they went to bed...

I have to say, my honey bunny made the best of a bad situation...

We went to see Push...with Dakota Fanning.

I loved it, can't wait for the sequel...and there will be a sequel...right?

We went to an Italian restaurant for lunch which wasn't so great but then it might have been that he was feeling worse and I wasn't feeling wonderful...
The bottle of Italian red table wine and tiramisu was the best part of the meal...

Before going home we stopped at the bookstore to get me a book...because I knew he would be taking Nyquil and going back to bed...and I'm a night owl anyway...plus it was still hours til dark...

I wanted to get Silk by Caitlin Kiernan...and I'd seen earlier in the week that they actually had it in stock...I should have gotten it then...because they were sold out.

I ended up getting a book called Sunshine by Robin McKinley and stayed up all night reading it...even though I swore off vampire books months ago...I am sooooo over vampires....and honestly, somewhere in the first twenty pages I was like, "Really?" ... "This is all you've got?" but I kept trudging through (even though it was honestly exceptionally well written...crafted...reminding me of the long luxurious build-up employed by Stephen King)...page twenty-one, twenty-two, because Neil Gaiman said in a quote on the front cover, "Pretty much perfect."...and in my world, an endorsement from Neil is like gospel...after all, he turned me onto Caitlin Kiernan. On page twenty-eight Robin McKinley got my attention...

So what happened on page twenty-eight?
A single sentence from a master vampire, Constantine, described as, "thin, thin to emanciated, the cheekbones and ribs looking like they were about to split the old-mushroom skin..." who was being kept in chains by another master vampire.

"Speak," he said at last. "Remind me that you are a rational creature."

By then I had figured out the heroine was to be dinner...and Constantine was trying to find a single reason not to eat her...which meant I had to find a reason to like her...

I started the book over right then and there without going any further and reread the first twenty-eight pages with fresh eyes, understanding that those twenty-eight pages were establishing Rae's humanity...

Page twenty-eight established a reason to not hate the vampire...he wasn't human...but he wasn't a bad guy...

It's a skill...drawing out the story...weaving magic with words...I have a new appreciation for an author i hadn't read before...

I've been told by agents and beta readers that I need to draw out the "clues"...
But I learned early on that the first five pages get you out of the slush pile...so pacing isn't my strong point...relaxing enough to really enjoy a finely crafted story isn't either...I really like it when I do though...

Falling in love with an author...
Is there a better way to spend Valentine's day?