Dear humans,

The female has completed her monthly transformation into the Beast of ARRRGHHHHH!!! We're sorry for any grumpiness that may come from her general location. She is female. She is definitely noticing she is female right now.

Ouch.

Send us temptations. We're going to need it. She made really funny noises when I stood on her stomach in the middle of the night, though. ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!! was one of those noises. As I am a brave feline, I interpreted that to mean "I should knead here." So I did.

That created some absolutely intriguing pained groans, so I kept doing it.

I had a good time.

She cursed my wickedly cute ways and pet me. And kept groaning.

Regarding yesterday's email: coop was a deliberate spelling choice because it's funny. Please put away your pitchforks. It's a joke. We do that. We enjoy doing them. Please don't make us put the jokes into a corner for time out. Nobody would like if the jokes went into the corner for time out.

Life without jokes and puns would be sad.

Life without toe bean pictures would also be sad.

Since we do love books, we're going to tell you about a book adventure the female went on yesterday. This story does not have a happy ending. (She is still crying in her corner.)

To the reader who enjoys the formulaic writing, this is nothing against you and what you enjoy to read. The female strongly dislikes formulaic writing. You see, there are outline formulas out there some authors use to mass produce books. They're pretty obvious. The books always have $x, $y, and $z happen in a certain order. You don't have to guess at anything. Characters always 'develop' a certain way. The books are written to a formula of progression, which means no matter what plot trappings you put it into, everything will still fall together in a very certain way.

It's usually very obvious, in that when you spot one, you can skip to a certain percentage of the book and have a pretty good idea of what will be happening in the book at that point in time.

The female ran into one of these books today. At precisely 75% into the book, there will be a very lengthy sex scene. The first 1-5% sets up some thrilling plot element! 2-74% is about how the characters really, really want to have sex with each other, but this thrilling plot element gets in the way or makes them hesitate. But they really want to have sex with each other. They can't think about anything other than having sex with each other.

Even when, you know, the other person is undergoing massive trauma from the first 1-5% of the book. (And the person who has gone through the trauma is putting aside his or her traumas to fixate on just how badly he or she wishes to have sex. RIGHT THEN. With an audience if necessary.)

The sex scene is usually like 10 pages long, and the authors will usually proclaim their book isn't erotica or smut because there's so much book without the sex!

(It's erotica or smut. The plot existed only to make the sex scene happen. We notice this stuff, y'all.)

These books can be incredibly fun. They were not incredibly fun for the female yesterday. (The writing was just so-so. Which turned potentially incredibly fun into sigh worthy.)

The female sometimes just loves writing a good insta-lust/insta-love story. They can be incredibly fun. But we recognize the formula... and we know if we pick up another book by this author, the formula will still remain.

At 75%, there shall be sex. It will be 10 or so pages long... and the rest of the book existed for those 10 or so pages.

Our search for a new, good book shall continue later today. We hope the authors we purchased books from today enjoy the pennies the female spent. For now, the formulaic books have gone into the DNF pile, although they'll be earmarked for "Smut Mountain" for those days where sexy adventures are desired.

They also serve as good hints to the male, as the female can load up one Smut Mountain entry onto the kindle he sometimes borrows.

It can be an adventure in the Blain Household.

Crap. We're supposed to be funny today, aren't we? Err... uh... okay. Hold on. I will steal a pun from the female. She posted this two days ago to her facebook profile. We thought it was hilarious. Her friends wanted to kill her.

"I'm engaging in a pun assault on one of my favorite people. It's an otter mess, things have gotten fishy, and we both may face exfurmination from my hairy behavior."

Okay, since you all have been super great, despite not getting our most stupendous chicken joke yesterday, here are some stolen snippets for your enjoyment.

Number one is from License to Kill. Completely unedited drivel. Stolen from "somewhere in the middle." Note: the food in question involves tacos.

“I swear, everyone’s worse than gossiping hens. Don’t y’all have something better to do than make nuisances of yourself and invade other people’s homes?”

“No,” a chorus of voices, all male, replied.

“Where’s Karma?” Jake growled.

I picked up my next victim and munched on it. The kitchen fell quiet, except for my crunching.

“She’s in the pantry, isn’t she?” I couldn’t tell whether he was trying not to laugh or disbelief altered his voice. Either way, he sounded startled.

“I keep putting food in there, and several minutes later, an empty plate appears on the floor, so I’m assuming someone is in there. Since all of the wolves are accounted for, I’m assuming I’ve been feeding your vixen.”

Number two is from Neck Deep, one of the Fox Witch World stories. (It's the one where Zazzle is modeling on the cover with a spiked collar.)

Saturday, December 21, 1799.

El Beheira Desert, Egypt.

A hot wind blew, and the sands danced over Egypt, sucking the life from the unwitting, the brave, and the foolish alike. I liked to believe I was a little too much of each for the wind’s taste; why else would I, a woman, accompany so many of Napoléon’s treasure seekers over his conquered land to discover its wealth and secrets?

The lead archaeologist, Phillipe Bisset, would be the death of us all, but our deaths would purchase France great wealth.

Number three... wait, why are you getting out the pitch forks? Come on, I'm being a thieving cat here. It's fun! Neck Deep is a side project, so it gets worked on as she has time or is in the mood. Her April writing isn't going as well as she would like, but we're hopeful she'll get her act together soon. She's close to finishing Grave Humor...

Oh, right. Back to Number three. This is from Murder Mittens!

“I did try to tell Uncle Henry that, as you’d fought with Dad over your choice of spa and city. He doesn’t believe us.”

“Is Uncle Henry there?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. He is.”

“Tell Uncle Henry if he interrupts my vacation to Cincinnati, I will rip out all of his fur, send it to an unmated female wolf, and write her a note telling her that he’s a hot, single man seeking a brave, fearless woman.”

“Has anyone told you that you can be pretty evil when someone tries to screw around with your plans?”

“Not recently,” I admitted.

“That’s goes beyond mean to pretty damned evil, sis. I just thought I should warn you he might like that.”

Ugh. Lycanthropes. “Please use your legal degree for something useful, like convincing Uncle Henry I am going on the vacation I want rather than the one he wants. And I’m still coming over and stealing your lunch money, so if you could leave your wallets out, with cash easily accessible, so I don’t have to waste too much time digging through them all, I would appreciate it.”

My brother growled at me. “You’re not stealing our lunch money.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“I will be over soon, and so help me, if there isn’t lunch money in all your wallets, I will be sinking my claws into your ass. You got me, dipshit?”

Yeah. The heroine of Murder Mittens is a delight. We love her. The female loves writing her. She's going to have issues sharing this one. The female also adores the love interest of this one. He's such a cat.

And from Grave Humor:

“He’s uglier than hell, Anwen. He looks like he got into a knife fight and barely escaped with his life. He is not precisely cute.”

“But look at his ears.”

“They are ears. What is special about them?”

I gestured to them, which flopped halfway. “They’re floppyish.”

“Floppyish?”

“A little floppy but not all the way floppy. They’re adorable.”

Okay. I'm done stealing things from the female now. The female needs coffee, and she needs to get Grave Humor finished so it's... well... finished. She's almost done. Most of the book is with her editor, and she might even make her original deadline. Maybe.

We shall see.

(I'd say send help and treats, but the female is already guzzling the coffee she shouldn't be having. I'm not brave enough to stop her. Please don't try to stop her. She is acting like a honey badger that's been poked with a stick, and she might be rabid.)

For those who need to hear it, today is Thursday, April 9. The year is 2020. We did not send sufficient bribes to 2020 before it began, and we are preparing to welcome 2021 with many gifts in the slim chance it will not take offense to us.

Do you think 2021 would appreciate chocolate?