How To Be A Slacker

April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 / Diane Henders / 64 Comments

*F-BOMB ALERT* – CONTAINS (more) COARSE LANGUAGE (than usual)

My internet research frequently goes off into the weeds and/or down rabbit holes, so I wasn’t particularly surprised the other day when I found myself reading a list of impromptu speech topics.

I used to enter public speaking competitions when I was a kid, and I enjoy presenting prepared talks to audiences large or small. But I’ve always loathed impromptu contests, where they assign a random topic and you get one minute to prepare before giving your speech. (Or, in my case, you get one minute to sit frozen in sheer panic before standing up to mumble humiliating gibberish.)

So it was with a shudder of sympathy that I read the list of topics designed to torture juvenile victims: Deadly stuff like “Why I deserve an allowance” and “Interesting things you see in the sky”. Then I came across this one: “How to be a slacker”.

Wait, what?

Where was this topic when I was a kid? Not necessarily for an impromptu speech (nothing could have helped me through that) but as a life-skills course. The more I thought about it, the clearer my realization dawned: I don’t know how to be a slacker!

I mean, I guess I know the basic recipe: Sprinkle incompetence liberally over the task at hand, lock up your flying fucks and rat’s asses (you don’t want to give any of those), and marinate the whole thing in apathy before leaving it half-baked.

But it just doesn’t seem to work out for me.

I’ve never quite managed to chase every last flying fuck from the vicinity – there’s always a little one hovering around somewhere. And I’ve been down to my last pox-riddled rat’s ass a few times, but I’ve never been completely out of rat’s asses to give.

I’ve got a decent supply of incompetence, but I prefer not to use it – it leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

And by definition apathy is hard to procure: as soon as you attempt to generate it, you’re trying too hard.

There must be some trick to slackerdom. Maybe I need to drink more. I’ve heard that rat’s asses and flying fucks dissolve in alcohol, and booze also seems to bulk up incompetence nicely. Even the elusive apathy precipitates well from an alcoholic solution.

When I told Hubby I was writing a post on how to be a slacker, he inquired, “Why didn’t you ask me? I could have advised you.”

I replied that I didn’t think he was good enough at it… but on second thought, I’ve reconsidered. After all, he’s the one who introduced me to this concept: If you do it badly enough the first time, they won’t ask you again.

So far he’s successfully applied that technique to dusting, being my administrative assistant, shovelling snow, and bookkeeping. I guess I should’ve been watching him and learning; but every time I try, those pesky flying fucks keep getting in my way.

Any advice? What’s the best way to be a slacker?

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New topic in the VBBC discussions: Do you trust Hellhound? Click here to have your say!

Subversive Shorts

April 20, 2016 / Diane Henders / 63 Comments

I was chatting with my nephew about university and its associated hi-jinks, and he mentioned Bermuda Shorts Day. It’s been an end-of-term tradition at University of Calgary since the 1960s, but there was a kerfuffle this year because the administrators prohibited the campus pub from serving alcohol during the event.

My mind boggled. It’s a university end-of-year party and they’re shutting down the pub?!?

I guess I’d understand it if I pretended to be a responsible adult for a moment. A massive piss-up isn’t healthy for the participants or pleasant for those who have to clean up afterward, but still. The twenty-something rebel inside my brain was scandalized. It’s university! End of classes! It’s supposed to be a piss-up!

The funny part was the apparent implication of Bermuda shorts as culprits, as if none of these mature and responsible students would ever even consider partying hearty except while under the influence of evil garments.

I made some crack about ‘subversive shorts’, and my nephew laughed. “That sounds like a title for one of your blog posts,” he said.

Well, dang, he’s right.

So what constitutes subversive shorts? Judging by the news photos in which they’re wearing either long pants or Daisy-Dukes, these kids wouldn’t recognize real Bermuda shorts if they crawled up their legs and gave them a wedgie. But that’s okay. I wasn’t sure what was so special about Bermuda shorts, either, so I looked them up. Turns out the only defining characteristic of Bermuda shorts is their length, about 1” above the knee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_shorts. How anti-climactic.

But I speculated that since the military have worn them for so long without causing chaos, there must be something else about them that incites people to the kind of uncontrolled drinking and mayhem that the U of C apparently fears.

When I envision Bermuda shorts, my mental image isn’t of the restrained and dignified version described in the Wikipedia article. I tend to think of them in bright madras plaid, which might be enough to incite violence among those opposed to plaid. So maybe the psychotropic component of Bermuda shorts is loud patterns paired with pasty white legs:

Okay, now I need a drink. And those aren’t even Bermuda shorts.

But maybe this is all merely the deranged imagining of a heavily medicated mind. I’m currently stoned on antihistamines, so my brain function isn’t to be trusted.

In fact, neither are my optical functions: A few days ago I served myself a slice of pizza at the table before turning away to replace the pan in the oven. Hubby’s laughter made me turn, only to realize that the plate I’d seen in my mind wasn’t actually there at all. My hot slice of pizza was lying in the middle of a naked placemat.

And get this: I had modelled those loud shorts only a couple of hours earlier.

Coincidence? I think not. The shorts must’ve subverted what was left of my brain. An uncontrollable drinking binge can’t be far away.

Loud shorts: Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

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P.S. The first VBBC (Virtual Backyard Book Club) discussion starts today! Check it out here!

Hedge-Sabres And Sky-Mice

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 / Diane Henders / 41 Comments

We watched Star Wars Episode VII a few days ago. I’m not a rabid Star Wars fan, yet I still found myself re-enacting the epic lightsabre battle in my front yard for the amusement (or possibly bemusement) of the neighbours.

It started with a shrub.

Our house is one of those crappy layouts with vehicle access from the front, resulting in an unattractive “garage-with-house-attached” look. Most of our front yard is occupied by the concrete driveway, but we’ve created a perennial bed beside it. The bed contains a bunch of flowering plants, plus a single cotoneaster shrub that I keep trimmed to a manageable size.

The cotoneaster is not, however, in a convenient location. The driveway is on one side and there’s a stepping-stone path on the other, but the shrub is smack in the middle, just out of comfortable reach.

Enter me, stage left, wielding an electric hedge trimmer.

I had two choices: step into the perennial bed to get close enough to use the hedge trimmer with both hands the way it was meant to be operated… or balance precariously on one leg while leaning over to decapitate the cotoneaster with one-handed swipes of my deadly hedge-sabre.

Yeah, you know which one I chose. (For the record, about the worst time to get the giggles is when you’re balanced on one leg, flailing around with a power tool that’s capable of shearing off twigs the diameter of your finger. Fortunately I managed to escape a well-deserved painful injury.)

We also have a small decorative pond and waterfall in front of the house. We take the pump out for the winter, but the piping remains year-round. Somehow the water in the pipes manages to get stagnant and stinky even though it’s been frozen solid for six months, so we usually restart the pump on a breezy day. Even so, the area around the front of our house always reeks for a few hours.

The pond last spring. It looks benign, but don’t inhale for a day or so…

So imagine me, surrounded by stink and locked in a duel to the death with the cotoneaster, then add this to your ridiculous mental image: a swarm of frenzied sky mice swooping and chirping around me.

What are sky mice, you ask? Maybe you’ve heard pigeons described as ‘sky rats’; I call sparrows ‘sky mice’. They’re just as annoying, useless, and prolific as pigeons, just not as big. (I exclude song sparrows from this category – I’m talking about Chipping Sparrows, the little brown-capped guys that relentlessly repeat the same strident tuneless chirp from dawn to dusk. It’s like a dentist’s drill to the eardrum.)

The Chipping Sparrows love our pond, our sheltering trees and shrubs, and the bird-friendly seed and berry plants in my garden. I enjoy watching them through the window, but outside their incessant chirping drives me nuts. I once christened a scare owl ‘Rodney’ because he got no respect from the sky mice, but they don’t respect me, either.

Maybe I oughta go after them with my hedge-sabre. There’s a tiny chance that it might throw a scare into them, but more likely they’d just crack up with birdy giggles that sound just like their regular irritating chirp, only more derisive. They’re laughing at me, I know it.

Then again, considering my performance a few days ago, I can hardly blame them…

P.S. The Virtual Backyard Book Club kicks off today! Please click here or use the new Book Club button in the right-hand sidebar to join me on my virtual backyard patio for introductions! (I’m still ironing out the last of the wrinkles, so please bear with me…)

UPDATE: Speaking of wrinkles… If you tried to access the Book Club site and got stymied with logins and passwords, that was my fault. I messed up the settings, but they’re fixed now – please try again. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience! 😦

Coastal Cogitations

April 6, 2016 / Diane Henders / 43 Comments

I’m on vacation this week! We’re on Vancouver Island, and I’m enjoying both the change of scenery and the change of pace. My senses seem sharpened by the glorious sea air that smells so good I could make a meal of it.

Sometimes the enhanced sensory experience is wonderful; sometimes, erm… not so much. Here are my observations to date:

My paranoid writer’s mind never quits. Doesn’t this look like a concealed camera to you?

It’s in the ceiling of our hotel room and the rest of the knots are solid, but not this one. And you guessed it, it’s right above the bed. There’s even a shiny thing that looks like a lens inside the knothole.

Suspicious as always, I stood on the bed and poked my finger into the hole. All I could feel was plastic vapour barrier, so I’m hoping that’s the source of the gleam. But if you happen to discover amateur porn videos featuring Arlene Cherry on the internet, please don’t tell me. I’d really rather not know.

Pacific loons are the Fonzies of the ocean. Clad in sleek black, they kick back casually on the waves, far too cool for the rest of the seabirds. When they dive, it’s with a laid-back ease that makes the mergansers look like skinny little punks who are trying too hard.

I love good oysters, but there’s nothing worse than a bad oyster. And once it’s breaded and fried it’s impossible to tell the difference until after you’ve eaten it. You don’t want to know how I discovered this. But, as the saying goes, “This, too, shall pass”. And it did, quickly.

‘Moving’ right along…

I can’t decide whether I like the ocean better…

…in the sunshine when it’s blue and beautiful:

Or under cloudy skies when it looks like molten silver:

I love it when it’s stormy, too, but we’ve had beautiful weather the whole time we’ve been here so I didn’t get to photograph any big waves. Maybe next time.

I don’t know this for certain, but I suspect that the designer of the Hyundai Elantra’s seats sneaked into my house while I was sleeping, measured every inch of my body, and designed the seat contours specifically to torture me. (Fortunately the car rental company exchanged it for us, or I’d be in serious pain right now.)

No matter how devastating the damage, nature will eventually recover if it gets the chance. I was lucky to have visited Cathedral Grove before the big storm of 1997. It was still majestic after the storm, but the mossy grotto beneath the towering trees had become a brighter place criss-crossed with the massive trunks of the fallen giants. Now, nearly twenty years later, I’m happy to see that it’s slowly returning to its green and shade-dappled glory.

And best of all, the trilliums and daffodils and camellias are in full bloom, along with cherry trees, magnolias, tulips, hyacinths, forsythia, and just about everything else. I could keep snapping photos all day long, and the scented air is divine!

What’s blooming in your neck of the woods this week?

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P.S. We’ll be on the road today, so I won’t have a chance to respond to comments until we’re back this evening. “Talk” to you then!

P.P.S. If you haven’t had your say on the format for the Virtual Book Club yet, please click here to offer your comments. The Book Club will start next week!

Ping-Pong Brain

March 30, 2016 / Diane Henders / 32 Comments

It’s a small feather-weight sphere containing nothing but air, and it ricochets wildly off hard surfaces (such as the inside of my skull) at approximately Mach 2. Yep, I’ve got Ping-Pong Brain.

Between the release of Book 11, a Bookbub¹ promo for Book 1, and my website redesign, the past few weeks have slowly drained my brain’s contents while accelerating its activity until there’s nothing left but a frantic sense of urgency and the attention span of a super-caffeinated gnat.

For instance, moments ago I clicked over to the internet to find out whether the Style Guide recommended capitalization on the word ‘Mach’, and I found a site dedicated to those pesky word usages that are so easy to screw up: http://stage-door.org/stampact/traps.html. The first few paragraphs are standard fare, but if you scroll down to the alphabetical list below there’s a fascinating (and immensely time-sucking) list.

I got sidetracked and wasted a good 15 minutes before I smacked my brain back in the direction I’d originally intended.

After a few more attempts at concentration, I realized that the probability of producing a coherent post for today was approximately equal to that of being picked up by a squadron of flying pigs for a nice aerial tour of the frozen flames of hell.

So I’m not even going to attempt it (neither the coherent post nor the scenic flight with AirPorcine). Instead, here are a few random things that have made me giggle lately:

The following article is a few months old by now, but I still find it funny (in a sad sort of way) that the people of Siberia preferred Barsik the cat to any of their other political options: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/barsik-cat-siberia-russia-barnaul-1.3373334. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a follow-up article, so I don’t know whether Barsik actually won the election.

Next there was a salvo in the ongoing good-natured culinary skirmish between Hubby and me. I tend to get creative when I’m cooking, while he prefers to follow detailed recipes. This creates a certain amount of friction when he’s trying to duplicate one of my dishes:

Hubby: “How much (ingredient) do you put in?”

Me: “Um… a bit… Maybe, um, a teaspoon? Or maybe a bit more. This much.” *dumps ingredient into palm and displays the small heap*

Hubby (long-suffering): “And how long should I cook it?”

Me: “Until it’s done…?”

Hubby: *grinds teeth*

So he sent me this:

Measuring spoons for a tad, dash, pinch, smidgen, and drop

These are the official conversions:

Tad = 1/4 teaspoon = 1.25ml
Dash = 1/8 teaspoon = 0.625ml
Pinch = 1/16 teaspoon = 0.3125ml
Smidgen = 1/32 teaspoon = 0.15625ml
Drop = 1/64 teaspoon = 0.078125ml

(He thinks this will help, but in fact he’s only given me more obscure units of measurement with which to annoy him. Shhh, don’t tell.)

And finally, my diminished concentration resulted in yet another silly misread. A couple of days ago, this article came up in my news feed:

I must have a nostril-hair fixation, because I read “Your Nose Hair Is A Bad Conditioner”. It speaks to my disordered state of mind that my mental critic said, “Well, yeah; duh. Who’d use nostril-hair as a conditioner?” I had actually scrolled down about three articles before I went, “Wait, what?”

And that’s my brain this week, ping-ponging from cats to cooking to conditioners. How was your week?

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If you’re interested in the Book Club, I’ve posted a few thoughts about the format for discussion. I’d really appreciate your input on 4 questions – please click here to reply. Thanks!

¹ If you haven’t discovered Bookbub.com yet, you may or may not thank me for mentioning it. It’s a bargain e-book notification service, and you can sign up to receive emails (daily or weekly) containing free and discounted e-books in the genres you select. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to my to-read list… but then again, I’m happy at the sight of 50 books piled up ready to read. If a burgeoning TBR list stresses you out, you may want to skip Bookbub. 😉

A Sticky Situation

March 23, 2016 / Diane Henders / 61 Comments

Adhesives hate me. No matter how they’re ‘guaranteed to stick’, I’ll somehow create a situation in which they won’t. Or they’ll stick exactly long enough to lull me into believing they’re set, and then fall apart. Or worse, they’ll create an unbreakable bond at the wrong moment, in the wrong place, and with the most unpleasant consequences possible.

Take Crazy Glue, for example. “Glues Anything!” they shout. “Super Strong! Bonds in Seconds!”

Maybe that’s true for everybody else, but not for me. They don’t call it Crazy Glue because it’s crazy-strong; they call it that because it’s guaranteed to make me crazy in short order.

I carefully peruse the instructions. Prepare all the surfaces as directed. Apply the glue, hold the pieces together…

And hold.

And hold…

Five minutes later, I’m still holding the damn thing and it’s still not stuck.

Apply more glue. Repeat the process.

Nope.

Then, after the third attempt, it finally sticks… long enough for me to breathe a sigh of relief and gently, carefully, place it on my workbench to cure.

Then it falls apart.

If I’m smart, that’s when I quit. But I’m not good at admitting failure.

So I try one more time. By now glue is oozing out of the joint and it sets up like stone, creating great gobs that are far more durable than the original material. So there’s no way to clean it off without damaging the item (farther) beyond repair.

I don’t have any better luck with other products.

Shoe Goo is supposed to be ideal for repairing boots or shoes (unless you’re trying to repair hiking boots that have been waterproofed with mink oil). Tuck Tape will stick to vapour barrier without fail (unless you’re outside in sub-zero temperatures trying to rig up a plastic shelter to keep the snow off your grapevines).

A few days ago I tackled a simple project: mount a 2’x3’ poster on a painted wall. I asked Hubby for some of the sticky poster-putty he’d used (successfully, I might add) only last week.

Putty in hand, I eyed the poster. It wasn’t thick or heavy, but it had a glossy finish. Already I sensed impending doom. But I squished it onto the wall, hoping for the best.

By the time I got to the fourth corner, the first one was already peeling off.

Not off the glossy poster. That would have made sense. No, the putty was peeling off the painted wall, where it should have stuck.

I tried again.

Failed.

Fine.

Got out the masking tape and taped the poster to the door instead. Done deal.

I’d walked a whole ten paces away when a derisive whisper reached my ears: the sound of a poster slithering to the floor.

The masking tape had let go of the door. It bonded permanently to the poster, though, so of course it wrecked the edges when I tried to peel it off.

But wait! I will wrest triumph from the jaws of defeat!

I’m gonna wash down my door and walls, bottle the result, and sell it to politicians in a fancy canister labelled “Spray-On Weasel Grease – Inconvenient Promises Will Never Stick To You!”

And then I’m gonna NAIL that goddamn poster to the wall.

I anticipate this:

Note: I’ll be doing website updates over the next several days, so expect some changes around here! I hope it’ll all be fine, but I never quite know what’s going to happen until I press that final button. If the site looks odd or doesn’t seem to be working properly, please comment below or email me. Thanks in advance for your patience and assistance!

Serious, For Once

March 16, 2016 / Diane Henders / 73 Comments

(Don’t worry, this is a temporary aberration. I promise I’ll be back to my usual foolishness next week.)

I try to avoid being serious whenever possible, but my father-in-law lost his battle with cancer last Thursday so I’m not quite myself this week. We knew his time was getting short so we were able to say our goodbyes, but many people aren’t so lucky.

The following is a post I wrote ‘way back in 2013. I didn’t share it at the time because it was more solemn than I generally like to be, but today it seems fitting.

* * *

I’m at the age where mortality starts to get up in my face a little more each year. One of our friends just died of a heart attack at age 47, another at 50. Other friends are being diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, you name it. “Catching up with the news” used to mean hearing about happy things like weddings and babies. Now it’s diseases and funerals.

You just never know when your time is going to run out.

I drive the highways quite a bit, and I see lots of memorials beside the road. One I pass frequently is a white cross with a hard hat and safety vest hanging from it. There are bouquets of flowers beside it in the ditch, along with hand-lettered signs that say, “Miss you, Dad”, and “We love you, Dave”.

The little roadside shrines always make me sad. Sad that somebody lost a loved one in an accident, but sadder still that Dave’s buddies probably never said, “We love you, Dave” while he was alive.

Why is it so hard to tell people what they really mean to us? Imagine how Dave would have felt if one his buddies slapped him on the back and said, “Man, I love working with you. Your sense of humour makes my day.” Or whatever they loved Dave for.

Maybe he made up rude song lyrics and sang them off-key and it made everybody laugh. Maybe he bought a round for the guys every Friday night. Maybe he was always willing to swap a shift so a co-worker could go to his kid’s hockey game. Or maybe he was the sympathetic ear everybody turned to when they needed to blow off steam. Whatever it was that made him special, I’ll bet Dave never knew how much they appreciated him.

And now it’s too late to tell him.

We’ve got so many commercialized occasions for “heartfelt” cards and gifts. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day are fine, but they’ve become obligations and you’re in trouble if you miss them. So you stuff a card in an envelope; buy some flowers; go out for a nice dinner; bang-boom-done-for-another-year. All the “heartfelt” your money can buy.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we created a new occasion? No cards or gifts allowed. Just one day out of the year where our only obligation is to say something nice that we’ve thought to ourselves but never said.

And not just to parents or spouses. How about to co-workers, doctors, baristas, teachers, or cleaning staff? No big embarrassing fanfare, just a quiet, sincere “You make my life better”. Or “We love you, Dave”.

Nobody else even needs to know we said it. Only the person who truly needs to hear it.

Maybe we could do it more than once a year, too.

It’s just a thought.

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And on that note, thank you to all my readers. I don’t blog because I like flapping my virtual gums; I do it because you wonderful folks brighten my day with your comments. Thanks for taking the time – you’re the best!

My Life’s A Thriller

March 2, 2016March 2, 2016 / Diane Henders / 60 Comments

The weeks leading up to a new release are always stressful for me – so much to do! So little time! And after spending the last five years immersed in writing, I’ve developed a few habits that spill over into my ‘real’ life (such as it is). For example, the habit of building as much tension as possible into even the smallest events.

Sometimes I get a little too caught up in my work…

caught up in my work

And, in other thrilling news:

First: Is that a turtle in your pants, or are you just happy to see me? http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/ont-man-fined-for-smuggling-nearly-40-live-turtles-in-his-pants-1.2792723

I suspect it wasn’t much of a thrill for the turtles, but, as my blogging buddy Beth Younker points out, if one of them had been a snapping turtle it might have been an exciting time for both smuggler and border guards alike. Sadly, no snapping turtles were included, but the article does have a rather questionable reference to ‘red-eared sliders’. Sounds like a euphemism to me…

And this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/wynne-photo-op-goes-wrong-1.3470752. ‘Cause seriously, how often do you get to see a premier posing with a giant pink phallic object? I doubt if it did much for her, but the media got a cheap thrill from it… and the rest of us laughed our asses off!

Any thrills in your life this week?

Pre-orders are available for Book 11: The Spies That Bind! So far Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and Apple are up, but I’m still waiting on Kobo (as usual). As soon as they’re all available, I’ll send out an email to everyone on the New Book Notification list. I’ll also send a second email on March 18 when the book is released.

If you’d like to sign up for new release notifications, just click here. (If you already signed up for a previous book, you’re still on the list unless you unsubscribed or changed your email address.)

…And That’s My Cover Story

February 24, 2016February 24, 2016 / Diane Henders / 47 Comments

Woohoo! The cover art and blurb for Book 11 are finished! As with any process where I’m involved, there have been some giggles along the way.

Rick Hand of Hand Crafted Images always makes it fun to shoot the cover photo, and luckily he’s got a great sense of humour. He needs it when he’s working with a so-called model like me.

I’ve mentioned my uncanny knack for twisting my face into the world’s goofiest expression at the precise moment the camera clicks. (At least I prefer to think I only look goofy for that instant. If it’s all the time, please don’t tell me – I prefer to cling to my illusions.)

But apparently I also have a gift for twisting my body into poses that make a photographer (and everybody else) go “WTF?!?”

For example, Rick was testing the lighting levels when I did this:

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking but apparently it was something like, “‘Scuse me while I stick this cardboard gun up my own ass. And if I place my left hand just so, it’ll look like a giant schlong hanging out the front of my jeans.”

Yep, I’ve got a real gift for modelling. It’s a lucky thing Rick’s good at arranging me because my sole talent is holding still once he’s got me in place.

Moving on to the title selection:

You probably already know that my geeky OCD personality requires spreadsheets for everything, including titles. I’ve itemized every word that rhymes with ‘spy’, along with a list of common phrases that include those words. So when it’s title time, I consider the themes in the book I’ve just written and try to match up a phrase that works.

But apparently there’s an easier way: An app at portent.com generates titles automatically based on user-supplied keywords. So I entered ‘female spy’ and sat back to wait for the perfect title for Book 11.

Here are the contenders:

“How Female Spies Make You A Better Lover”: I do my best to make my sex scenes hot, but I didn’t realize I was providing such a valuable service to society. Go, me! *buffs fingernails against shirt and looks smug*

“Doing Female Spies The Right Way”: Is it me, or does Portent seem to have a one-track mind?

“True Facts About Justin Bieber’s Love For Female Spies”: Okay, now they’re just scaring me.

“The 12 Biggest Female Spies Blunders”: This one’s pretty appropriate since Aydan does tend to blunder into situations, but it’s not really the catchy title I had in mind.

“Why Female Spies Are The 51^st Shade Of Grey”: Why Portent, you kinky thing! You’ve been peeking through my blinds again, haven’t you?

“Why Female Spies Are Scarier Than Dating Taylor Swift”: I’m not sure what level of fear we’re talking about here. It seems reasonable to be more afraid of female spies, but then again I don’t know Taylor Swift.

“Shocking Ways Female Spies Will Make You Better In Bed”: I’m sensing a theme here…

“How To Fight Lex Luthor Using Only Female Spies”: Superman, are you paying attention?

“How Female Spies Killed Kenny”: I’ve never watched an episode of South Park but apparently Kenny has died in all sorts of creative ways, so this seems plausible.

But I guess I’m just set in my ways. Despite the stellar appeal of Portent’s shortlist, I decided to stick with my spreadsheet even though one of the above titles could probably have made me famous. (Or infamous. It’s a fine line.) So voilà, Book 11:

Secret agent Aydan Kelly is hoping to resume her peaceful life as a bookkeeper, until her director issues an ultimatum: Go undercover as an arms dealer or go to jail for life. But when Aydan realizes her co-worker’s son has been taken by a serial killer, she defies orders in an attempt to save the child.

Neglecting her undercover assignment may cost more than just her freedom. When the gunrunner she’s been baiting threatens her loved ones, Aydan must choose between protecting them herself or entrusting their safety to geriatric amateur vigilantes while she closes in on the killer.

How much will she risk for a child who may already be dead?

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The release date is March 18, 2016, and The Spies That Bind will be available for pre-order in about a week. If you’d like to receive an email notification when it’s available, please click here to sign up for my New Book Notification List.

Size Does Matter

February 17, 2016February 17, 2016 / Diane Henders / 71 Comments

Well, it had to happen. After a couple of months in which my daily life provided no trouser-snake humour whatsoever, the unnatural clean streak has finally broken. This week provided a veritable plethora of penises. A cornucopia of cocks. A deluge of dicks; a wealth of wangs; a surfeit of schlongs…

Oh, okay, fine; so it was actually only two minor references. But that’s more than enough to get me started.

First off, though, I’d like to note that it wasn’t my fault. For a change, my juvenile sense of humour was under control. But fate had other plans…

We were sitting in the bar on Friday night when I mentioned Iceland. It’s a place I’d like to visit, since I love wild and lonely landscapes and Iceland has that in spades: volcanoes and glaciers; fire and ice.

So I innocently brought it up, and one of my friends (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) turned to me completely straight-faced and said, “Did you know Icelandic men have the largest penises in the world?”

Well, how does one respond to such a statement? With a hint of disapproval and a dignified change of topic, of course…

*insert uncontrollable laughter here*

Oh, hell, no. You know me better than that.

Snickering and raunchy remarks abounded, along with a pointed inquiry as to how she came by this gem of information. She swore it was a result of scholarly medical research, and that a world map actually exists showing each country colour-coded by average size.

I called bullshit.

I was wrong.

Here it is: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-3naDJj52v8/maxresdefault.jpg. (There’s nothing risqué in this link, just a colour-coded map of the world… but if you’re someplace where people might sneak up behind you and read the giant heading “25 Countries With The Largest Average Penis Size”, you might want to wait a bit. And for those of you who are looking at the legend and going, “What the…? Yikes!”, the measurements are in centimetres, not inches.)

Just in case you don’t dare look at it, I’ll satisfy your curiosity: Icelanders are actually second-largest with an average of 16 to 17 centimetres (6.3 to 6.7 inches). Columbia, Venezuela, and the Congo are the ‘big’ winners at 17+. (Also; Canadians, while not as well-endowed as the Icelanders, nevertheless average a centimetre or two larger than the States. Just sayin’. )

Anyway, the whole ‘measurement’ thing segues nicely into another exchange that made me giggle last week:

Hubby was getting ready to trim my hair. (Yes, I trust him with scissors.) I had asked him to cut about an inch and a half off the ends, and he inquired, “Is that a male inch-and-a-half or a female inch-and-a-half?”

Which, of course, was a reference to this old chestnut:

Q: Why are women so bad at judging distance?

A: Because men keep telling them that three inches is actually six.

How did things measure up in your world this week?

* * *

Book 11 draft is finished and the beta readers are hard at work – woohoo! Tentative title is “THE SPIES THAT BIND”, and it looks as though the release date will be sometime during the week of March 21^st. I’ll post the cover and blurb next week, so stay tuned!