Cozy Horror, anyone?

::Stefan voice:: Today’s hottest upcoming novella is Cinderwich. Cinderwich has everything: a dying southern town, a hotel that’s haunted af, an elderly gay academic whose girlfriend disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and the niece of said lost girlfriend - with whom the academic has (shall we say) a complicated past. You’ll find a trio of middle-aged goth sisters who live in a grand old house and get very excited about tea, an interstate Waffle House oasis, a playful but powerful Victorian ghost who knows everybody’s secrets, taunting messages graffiti’d around town for decades by unknown persons, and a dead lady whose corpse was stuffed into the crook of a black gum tree years and years ago. While you’re there, you’ll also learn what, exactly, a “clootie well” is - and why you should always treat them with the utmost respect…or else… ::end Stefan voice::

So… yeah. Coming sometime in the middle of 2024 (give or take), Cinderwich will be published by Apex Book Company - and I will finally get to introduce you all to the second Ellen Thrush. No sign of the first Ellen Thrush has ever been found, but a body that might have been hers turned up in a tiny Tennessee town in the 1970s. The unidentified corpse has been a local legend (and subject of speculation) for fifty years but the trail is cold, and clues are either thin on the ground - or written in paint on the abandoned train station: “Who put Ellen in the black gum tree?”

Let’s find out.

Look, I’m not going to lie to you: this is kind of a strange one. Cinderwich is a “cozy horror” novella I wrote after a work-for-hire project* that had me saying, “To hell with this, I’m going back to teaching, or maybe I’ll apply for a gig working the elevator at the Space Needle - that might be fun.” In short, I badly needed to remind myself that I don’t hate writing, actually. So I wrote this - for the lols, and for the love.

And I got ridiculously self-indulgent with it. I had to. I was ready to walk away from fiction altogether, if I couldn’t find even a single a shred of joy in it anymore; it’s too much work and heartache under the best of circumstances, and you can only refuse to be demoralized for so long, you know?

So I got thinking about what kind of story would give me genuine pleasure to tell. It wasn’t an easy question.

I was in a tough place at the time (from more than one angle), and I wanted something gentle, but genuinely creepy. It definitely needed ghosts. And some folk horror seasoning. And oddball locals performing strange rituals. And what if there was something in the water? There’s always something in the water, right? ::fingerguns::

So I invented a tiny, half-dead town in south-central Tennessee, and there I placed a remixed a southern American version of the Wych Elm story (a real-life mystery that happened in England, in the 1940s); then I added some haints and some weirdness and uh, some friend fan-fic. Sort of.

I’m not sure why the idea of friend fan-fic appealed to me so strongly, except that I have the kind of friends who’d probably be thrilled silly to find themselves on a little getaway, participating in a relatively low-stakes ghost story in the middle of nowhere. And that’s I was really jonesing for: I wanted to hang out with some pals in a pleasantly creepy setting. Maybe have some tea. Look for some ghosts. Solve a mystery, or something.

But here in the real world, the pals in question are scattered to the four winds - and there is no tiny southern town of Cinderwich, all et up with ghosts and mysteriousness, mwoohahahaha. So I had to invent it for myself. And I did!

And yes, I reached out to the friends in question - just to make sure they’d be cool with a caricatured cameo, inspired by their personal awesomeness. I think the fastest “YES DO IT” response came in less than thirty seconds, if that tells you anything, heh. At any rate, I’m very happy with the results - and they are, too. (Yes, of course they’ve all read it.)

These characters are not actually those people, but I wanted them to know how much I appreciated their general awesomeness all the same. And uh, they know who they are ::wink wink nudge nudge:: If you know them, you might recognize the characters they inspired. If you don’t, that’s okay - you’ll love them anyway.

And there you have it, I suppose.

Sometime in the middle of next year, you can pick up my small, quiet ghost story about how the past never stays where it belongs. I mean, Cinderwich is about other things, too - because of course it is. It’s about chance, and loss, and how sometimes it’s okay to hang on; and likewise, sometimes it’s okay to let go after all - even if you swore you never would. But mostly, I think, it’s about found community, found family, and found places… and the choices made over generations that make these things happen.

I hope you’ll give it a chance <3

___________________

• Don’t bother looking for it. My name isn’t on it.

Quinn Stared Down the Very Bad Thing, and the Very Bad Thing Blinked

Because there seems to be a lot of confusion and curiosity on the subject, I thought I’d do a post here about what Quinn’s actual chemotherapy process - and her response to it - has looked like. It’s gonna be a long one, so… heads up. No content warnings necessary unless you get squicked by vaguely described medical procedures; I was not present for the cat’s actual treatments, so I can’t go into the gory details anyway. Brace yourself for nothing more graphic than general talk of vomit and poop, and oblique references to needles.

[::ahem::]

So. Especially when we first got started on this terrible little journey, I got a lot of commentary re: not putting an animal through this sort of awful experience; but these comments are based in what folks understand about how people respond to chemotherapy.

Cat bodies and people bodies are two very different things, and they process substances/experiences very differently.

The example I’ve been using as of late, is actually one for dogs. Did you know that dog bodies process opioids differently from people bodies? I learned this when Lucy had dental surgery a few years ago, and I saw that she’d been given a prescription for Tramadol that exceeded the dosage I was given for kidney stones. I outweigh Lucy by fifty pounds! I thought her RX couldn’t possibly be correct - so I called the vet like the nervous nelly I am, and they assured me that this was well within the dosage recommendations for a dog her size. Their biochemistry just handles it differently from ours, that’s all.

Bearing that in mind, here’s what Quinn’s actual treatment has looked like, and how she has responded to it.

[This post will henceforth contain discussion of small-cell GI lymphoma and its treatment for felines, in case you, gentle reader, are looking at a similar situation with a cat of your own - and are googling around, looking for personal experiences with the process. Your pet’s disease presentation may differ, their symptoms may not be the same, the drugs used to treat it may vary, and your cat’s response to those drugs may not line up with Quinn’s. In essence: Your mileage may vary. But here’s how it went for us.]

To make a long story short - over the course of a couple months, our cat began vomiting with greater and greater frequency. Before we knew the cause (it took awhile to nail it down), we started giving her Cerenia - an antiemetic that at least put the kibosh on her puking. But then her appetite flagged, and she began to lose weight. So we added Mirataz, an appetite stimulant goo that you smear on the inside of their ear/thinly furred skin of their upper forehead. With this, Quinn started eating again, but not much - and every time we tried weaning her off the Cerenia, the barfing resumed. We’d thought/hoped that she was merely in an inflammation/vomiting cycle that needed breaking, but we simply couldn’t make it happen.

After a couple of weeks on the Cerenia and Mirataz, the doc agreed that it was time to schedule an ultrasound. During this screening, he called and said they’d found a lesion in her stomach. He asked if I’d authorize a biopsy to check it out. I said “Sure.”

A couple of days later we got the biopsy results back and learned the grim truth: our cat had (intermediate grade) small-cell GI lymphoma.

Quinn’s first oncology appointment happened on March 14th, and that’s when we found out that her bloodwork was sketchy, her lesion was growing, she had some thickening around her intestines, and so forth. We also learned that over the course of the previous month, she’d dropped about a pound. She was down from 14-1/2 lbs to (I want to say?) to about 13.4 pounds. Still a good-sized cat, but yes. We could see that she was slimming down beyond her uh, peak performance.

[As an aside, Quinn topped out around 20 pounds approx. 3 years ago… but after her joint condition was diagnosed, we had to put her on a diet to improve her mobility. 14-15 pounds is her healthy zone.]

The diagnosis was confirmed, and we were given our options. In this particular case there were only a couple, really: we could either try to make her comfortable with steroids and such - then wait out the inevitable - or we could spring for a CHOP-type course of treatment.

Obviously, we went for the CHOP - a fact which initially horrified a few of my medical professional friends, because CHOP treatments can be brutal on the human body. And I totally understand! If I thought someone was essentially torturing an animal with medical intervention just because they couldn’t bear to lose it, I would have Opinions as well.

But this is not that.

Whereas people undergoing CHOP chemotherapy are likely to experience weeks or months of bruising, nosebleeds and other bleeding, hair loss, bladder problems, constipation, numbness in the extremities, vomiting, breathlessness/difficulty breathing, heart issues, and extreme lethargy… with one brief exception - Quinn has mostly experienced a nap and a snack.

Following her first infusion of chemo (also on 3/14), Quinn came home and took a nap, then ate a few treats. She downed a little dinner, hassled the dogs, lounged on the coffee table, and did her normal cat-stuff - which by then, yes, included some hunkering and hiding. But after a couple of days passed (during which she was also on daily steroids), she seemed to improve. Less hiding. More eating. More hollering for toys and snuggle-time.

So I felt really good about her next appointment on the 22nd, a state of optimism which led to a crushing revelation: over the course of the week, Quinn had gone from “a small lesion with some thickening around her intestines” to “all that, plus a 5-centimeter mass in her stomach and she’d lost another six ounces - down to (I think?) 12.9 pounds.”

We absolutely feared the worst. The vet oncologist agreed that this was not the ideal result, and said that if it was all right with me, she’d like to switch up the CHOP procedure a bit, and use this second appointment to do the “harder” infusion (rather than an oral pill, which Quinn had been scheduled for). She told me that if the new treatment didn’t work, nothing was likely to - and she was gentle but honest about the odds, which were not super-great.

[Another aside: I am not being coy when I don’t note which chemo drugs were used exactly; I don’t remember what they were called, or which bits were swapped around. I am not an expert on this - and I don’t feel like digging through four rounds of discharge paperwork for this info. I’m just telling you about our experience, here.]

After this stronger infusion, I took Quinn home and she seemed pretty much the same. Low but present appetite, some lethargy but not as bad as it’d been previously. She still wanted treats and still stole the dog beds. Still fussed at the Neighbor Cat through the storm door every morning. Everything was in a holding pattern while we waited for the next appointment, a week later… until Monday night, when something abruptly changed.

Over Monday night/Tuesday morning, Quinn began throwing up again despite the Cerenia - and she had two rounds of diarrhea in the living room, which was a godawful first. All day Tuesday I honestly thought perhaps she was on her way out, and we would not need that Wednesday appointment for her third dose of chemo. When she wasn’t in hiding, we found her lying in strange places, appearing only semi-responsive. I reached out to our local vet, who urged me to keep the next day’s appointment in Tacoma and then let him know the results - so we could begin to talk about palliative/hospice care for her, as needed.

Then something wild happened on Wednesday morning: we woke up to a cat standing on our bed, and she was yowling for breakfast.

But since she was scheduled for chemotherapy in a couple of hours, I couldn’t give her any. (She had to fast after midnight for these appointments.) Instead I gave her the usual steroids/gabapentin and packed her up for that trip to the oncologist 40 miles south of here…and upon this appointment, the news was unexpectedly good. Not great, but good. The abdominal mass had firmed up somewhat and shrunk by about 20%. Also, Quinn’s bloodwork had improved. Furthermore, her weight had held about steady over the previous week, at roughly 13 pounds. These were small good signs, but good signs all the same.

The vet oncologist said that she’d really hoped to see a more significant mass shrinkage, but based on some criteria which was unclear to me (as I am not a veterinary oncologist) she said she once again wanted to deviate a smidge from the CHOP protocol and do a different oral chemo on that day. Since I am 100% down to trust an expert in this ailment that is trying to kill my cat, I told her to go for it.

That was March 29th. Our next appointment would be a week later, in Seattle, for bloodwork through our usual local vet. Then, Quinn was due back in Tacoma on 4/13 for a 2-week post-CHOP assessment to determine our next steps.

I took my kitty home and crossed my fingers, prepared for the worst and not really daring to hope for the best.

For the first 24 hours or so, she held steady at her new normal…and then…uh, to borrow from Hemmingway: things changed gradually, then suddenly. By the time our local vet showed up on 4/5, we were living with a shouty, playful, bottomless pit of FEED ME feline who was downing about four meals a day - and waking us up earlier and earlier in case we could be persuaded to give her a fifth one to start her morning.

Bonus: Quinn had gained about two ounces over the previous week. Frankly, I was stunned it was so little, considering how much she’d been eating - but we were delighted all the same, and a day or two later, her bloodwork came back as “pretty much fine, actually.” I crossed my fingers a little harder, and began tapering her off the antiemetic and the appetite stimulant. (At this point, she hasn’t had either of those since last Friday - but we’ve had zero puking, and um, she’s already had two servings of breakfast this morning.)

But yesterday. Yesterday was that follow-up assessment in Tacoma and I had been dreading it all week. Quinnie seemed to be doing so well! I could even tell that she’d had gained a little more weight - not as someone who desperately wanted that to be true, but as the person who daily pulled her into my lap and flipped a pill down her throat.

[She’s decided that Pill Pockets are Of The Devil, so we are experimenting with other things right now. This is not a request for suggestions. I am good at pilling cats, and we already have one potential workaround.]

So yesterday, yes. I went through the usual routine: packed up the cat, strapped her carrier into the passenger seat, and drove to the south end of Tacoma while I was called everything but a Child of God the whole damn way, at top volume. I dropped her off at the vet in accordance with the office’s preferred procedure, and drove off to a Starbucks down the street - where there free wifi and snacks could be found. I set up my laptop and tried to distract myself with work while I waited for the call.

Then I got the call.

The mass was gone. The doc couldn’t find it at all, and Quinn’s bloodwork looked “Terrific!” She’d gained more weight, and was up almost half a pound over her previous visit 2 weeks before. The doc declared “Remission!!!” and we all did a little cheer, and the other people in Starbucks looked at me funny but generally cheered along, on principle.

So. Next up.

Next Thursday (4/20) our local vet returns for another blood workup, and then on 4/26 we return to Tacoma for an ultrasound - to confirm/specify the degree of Quinn’s remission (it might not be complete, after all) and/or sort out what happens next. We are probably looking at steroids indefinitely, and routine monitoring going forward, and so forth, and so on. But I’ll know more about the particulars on the 26th.

And now?

At present, Quinnie clocks in at 13.6 pounds, visibly less scrawny than a few weeks ago. She’s also resumed her regular grooming, something we’d slowly noticed she wasn’t doing anymore - and this morning post-breakfast and meds, she’s taking her typical late-morning siesta on a new cardboard scratchy slab under the coffee table. Her energy levels are back to normal and her appetite is great - but starting to settle back down to “normal great” not a “been on appetite stimulants for a couple of months” level. Which is good, because we don’t actually want her to pork back up again - for the sake of her elbows, if nothing else.

How long will this reprieve last? No idea. The lymphoma will almost certainly return, thus the future monitoring - and when it does come back, it’ll take her. This could happen in a few months, or it could happen in a few years, but here’s my takeaway for the moment: I have my cat back. She is happy and healthy, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and very much “herself” again.

At what cost? Well, money aside (and again, I am overwhelmed with gratefulness for everyone’s kindness and generosity on that GoFundMe)… it cost me the stress and time for four trips to Tacoma, three other vet visits here in Seattle (including that first ultrasound), and a lot of lost sleep. These appointments often took all morning or longer, as Quinn had to be lightly sedated for the infusions - so I was gone from about 8:00 a.m. to sometimes 2-3:00 in the afternoon, once a week for more than a month. (The round-trip took not quite 2 hours).

“But at what cost to the cat?” you ask.

I think if you asked her, she’d say that the worst part is the car rides and the fasting after midnight. Obviously she doesn’t enjoy having her blood drawn, but that’s over in about 90 seconds and then she gets treats, so it’s not the end of the world. Yes, she had one “bad” stretch where she was visibly ill and we were very concerned - but it lasted less than 24 hours and she mostly slept through it.

So at the end of the day, yes: I think it was worth it for both of us.

It cost $$$, yes. It cost time, yes. It cost the cat seven vet appointments over the span of five weeks, some blood draws, a single bad day, and a shaved tummy. But it resulted in a healthy, cancer-free cat who’s back to living her best life - though yes, ultimately we shall see for how long.

But that’s always the case, isn’t it? There are no guarantees for anyone, least of all engine-block cats who probably should’ve never survived their ride under the hood at six weeks old.

And even if we hadn’t wound up with this astonishing remission… even if we were preparing to lose her after all that trouble… I would have deeply regretted not giving it a shot, and I’m so, so grateful that we had the opportunity to try. Quinn has been my little buddy for going on eight years, and I’d like to keep her healthy and happy for a few more, if I’m able.

In conclusion, I send all my thanks and love to the fine folks who donated to Quinn’s Cancer Care (it’s fully funded! don’t give more, unless you want to donate to Pasado’s Safe Haven - and you can do that directly through them, if you like). Likewise, eternal gratitude to the team at Summit Veterinary Referral Center in general, and oncologist Dr. Candace Pagano in particular for her brilliant gut about these things. Furthermore, lifelong thanks, big ups, and tackle-hugs to our Seattle vet, Dr. Josh Montgomery and his team (::waves:: at Austin and Mindy!) - who have been so very patient with a deeply, obnoxiously anxious pet owner like yours truly, ever since we moved back to town in 2017.

And thanks of course to all of you for reading, and following along, and rooting for our ridiculous House Yeti during this difficult time. It’s been a hell of a year so far, but here’s hoping spring brings us all a fresh start and a healthy household <3

Update on Quinn and the Very Bad Thing

I’ve been holding off posting any updates while we gave the chemo time to do its thing, but this morning we just finished Quinn’s third trip to the oncology specialists in Tacoma - and the results are mixed, but ultimately not terrible. In short, what began as a small lesion and some light thickening of her intestines… became a 5-centimeter stomach mass in the span of her first week of treatment. We feared the worst, but the doc changed her medication protocol and gave her a different type of drug last week - at which point things got both better and worse.

For a few days, she seemed absolutely fine; then her health fell off a cliff on Monday and we feared the worst even harder.

However. The Bad Days (when she seemed at Death’s door, and we were figured it was about time to settle in with some palliative care)… may have been a delayed reaction to last week’s chemo. It’s a little unusual, but apparently it happens. Because today? Today we woke up to the yowling version of GOOD MORNING QUINN(tm) who wanted BREAKFAST and TREATS and to SWEAR AT THE NEIGHBOR CAT.

I was baffled and delighted. So off to Tacoma we drove this morning for appointment #3, whereupon we learned that the mass has shrunk by about 20% and her bloodwork is good! She was described as, “Um, rather vigorous,” which I believe - as the person who drove her to and from this distant appointment while she raised her customary hell the entire time. (She hates riding in her carrier, but too bad. She cannot be trusted to roam the car’s cabin.)

So she got her third dose of chemo, completing this treatment for the time being. Now we wait a couple of weeks, during which we arrange for some bloodwork here in Seattle - then we return to Tacoma again for a more involved assessment of her progress.

After that? It remains to be seen.

As a side note, I had to lock down any tweets about this situation and process over on the bird site; or I should say, I chose to - because I was getting Twitter randos telling me how awful and selfish I was for “putting a helpless animal through this.” But the thing is, as we were repeatedly reassured by veterinary professionals: chemotherapy for cats is very different from chemotherapy for people. They simply don’t take it as hard, and they have far fewer side effects than we do.

Let me put it this way: after every treatment, Quinn has spent the afternoon a little lethargic and then bounced back fully by the next morning. Cats don’t lose their fur (though some lose their whiskers), they don’t need lengthy recovery times, and although they don’t enjoy the process, it’s not that onerous.

So yes, we made the decision to give it a try. Maybe you and yours would’ve made different choices. I can respect those choices, and I ask others to please respect ours.

You see, Quinn is almost shockingly young for a cat with this kind of cancer. She won’t even be 8 until July, and small-cell GI lymphoma typically hits them when they’re much older, even elderly. She is also a large cat who had not lost any weight and was otherwise in perfect health when she was diagnosed; and since we caught the cancer relatively early, her initial prognosis was fairly good. Therefore, my husband and I decided it was worth the expense and effort to give her a shot at a few more good years.

Realistically, we probably won’t get years. The sudden growth of the mass (despite its subsequent shrinking) suggests something pretty aggressive, but we won’t have any real idea of how long we can keep her comfortable until the assessment/follow-up scans in a couple of weeks. I suspect that the verdict will amount to “improvement but not remission” and we’ll get maybe another few months.

The oncologist says she wants to wait to see how this course of treatment plays out before she makes any further suggestions, which is fine. After all, it’s possible that something will change, and Quinn will either go downhill dramatically or somehow wander into remission against the odds. It’s also possible that some new complication may present itself. We just don’t know.

So we may or may not have reached the end of her cancer-fighting treatments, but I do want to assert that no, we won’t “put her through” anything that is minimally likely to help and/or would make her continued survival miserable. We are resigned to keeping her happy for as long as we’re able, and then letting her go with love when that time comes. It sucks, but it’s the least we owe the animals with whom we share our lives.

As an aside, since people keep asking - I’m still not sure about setting up a GoFundMe. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love the breathing room; so far, this has cost us in the ballpark of about $6000 since the new year began. (Including preliminary diagnostics/further testing/actual chemo/meds.)

But we really can eat the cost if we have to. That said, I also know that Quinn has many devotees, and that people want to help, so I don’t know. Everything is in a holding pattern right now, including this, I suppose.

At any rate, thanks so much, everyone.

Thanks for reading, and also for caring about this silly formerly stray/feral cat who came to me via an engine block in Georgia. She’s a good kid, and it warms the burly cockles of my heart to know how many distant friends and strangers are rooting for her <3

By popular demand: A cat update

I was going to hold off until at least Quinn’s next chemo appointment (Wednesday), but a lot of people are asking, so here goes: The kitty is doing… great, actually. The first night after her first chemo she slept pretty hard and was maybe a little whiny - but by the next morning she was normal again.

Now, several days down the line, her appetite is back (yay!) and she’s eating like she used to. Her litterbox usage is likewise normal, though we’ve been told to make extra certain that the dogs can’t reach it, since her poop is radioactive, haha. She drags out her toybox every evening and demands to play, climbs all over us in the morning when it’s time to get up, and bullies the dogs with her affection as per usual.

I still have to pill her, which isn’t the end of the world - but it’s nobody’s favorite ritual. I’m pretty good/efficient at it, and it only takes a minute or so. Luckily, she’s figured out that once that’s over with, she can forget about it for awhile - because she’s getting all three of her meds at the same time each day. (The first couple of days she was Very Suspicious of me, anytime I tried to pet her or hold her. Now she understands the routine.)

As I’ve been telling people, if you didn’t know she was sick, you’d assume she’s hale and hearty.

I’d like to hope that this is all a good sign for her eventual remission, but the truth is, there’s no telling. Right now she’s stuffed full of steroids, and I, for one, always feel pretty great when I’m stuffed full of steroids. (I get them for my sinus issues every now and again.) As I’ve mentioned before - but probably need to reiterate - we won’t know how well she’s actually responding to the chemo for another few weeks.

She has two more doses upcoming, one on each of the next two Wednesdays. After that, we wait a week or two, get her another ultrasound (and maybe biopsy?), and see how it looks in there. At that point we should have a fairly good idea of which way this is going to go.

People have been so sweet, offering to throw money into a GoFundMe for Quinn - and as I said in the last post, I’ll probably set one up in a bit. We don’t yet know how much each round of chemo or tests will cost, because some of them might require sedation - depending on how cooperative she feels like being. But when all is said and done, we’re probably looking at bills between $8000 - $10,000 for this effort; and it’ll be higher still if she needs (and/or will benefit from) a second round of 3 chemo doses + testing. If that occurs, we’re looking at about another 3-4k on top of that.

So, yeah. I just don’t like to ask for money until I know how much we need. But I really do appreciate it. I’m working on some medical bills of my own right now, and the money situation over here is really kind of a cluster, if you feel me.

At any rate, it’s a pretty nice day out here - so the windows are open (screened) and Quinn is sitting in one, merrily watching the world go by. She is happy and comfortable, and that’s how we like it. That’s how we’re trying to keep it.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks for caring.

I’ll keep you posted.

A difficult post

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just spit it out: Our beloved house-yeti, Quinn, has lymphoma.

(To offset any questions: this is not related to her trip to the kitty ER a bit before Christmas. That had nothing to do with this, and was only an unfortunate coincidence.) In short, early in December Quinn started throwing up, rarely and kind of randomly - which is not the kind of thing one typically gets too worked up about, when one lives with cats.

However, Quinn has never been a puker, and this was out of the ordinary for her; so by January when it’d ramped up to 2-3 barfs per week, I called the vet. He checked her out, ran some tests, and we had a little laugh about it all - because she appeared 100% healthy (and indignant!) except for the vomiting. I honestly felt a little stupid about making an appointment just to give him money to look at this perfectly healthy cat - but my gut said something was off. We got some antiemetic, treated her for the fleas we thought she might have picked up (long story, never actually saw any, but it was worth a shot), and went about our lives.

When the course of antiemetics ran out, it only took a couple of days for the spewing to begin afresh. But her bloodwork looked completely fine, and she - again, I swear with my vet as a witness - appeared healthy. She was eating, pooping, complaining, bullying the dogs, demanding treats… everything was normal. But the vomiting reached a fever pitch of “every single night” by mid-February and our vet said, “perhaps it’s time for an ultrasound.”

I don’t know if you’ve tried to get a veterinary ultrasound lately, but it’s not a “snap your fingers and a doc appears with a machine.” It took us a couple of weeks to get her an appointment, which she finally had about a week and a half ago… and the ultrasound revealed a lesion in her stomach, so I gave them the go-ahead to take a needle biopsy while they had her. The test results came back a few days later.

Finally, we had an answer - and it was an ugly one: GI Lymphoma.

Today, I drove her out to a veterinary oncologist in Tacoma (at a specialist facility our vet recommended, and conveniently, the quickest one to get us an appointment). The VO is a lovely woman who is direct but kind, and here’s the meat of the matter: Quinn is relatively young (she’ll be 8 years old in July) and otherwise healthy, she has not started losing weight yet, she still has an appetite and attitude, and is somewhat surprisingly tolerant of medical procedures. So we are trying a course of chemotherapy and steroids and we do have some hope that it might work - though it’s impossible to know her odds for remission just yet.

Quinn got her first infusion today, as they were able to work her in while we were already out there - and I will drive her back to Tacoma on the next two Wednesdays in a row for two more rounds (one more infusion, one oral, apparently). Then we take a week or two off, and do another ultrasound. There is a nontrivial chance that this could push her into remission, if we’ve caught the lymphoma early enough and if it’s not terribly aggressive. Which it might not be! We just don’t know.

If the second ultrasound shows significant improvement but not full remission, we will sign her up for three more doses of chemo/steroids and that will likely knock it out for now.

But if the ultrasound shows little to no improvement, then there’s nothing we can really do except make her comfortable for whatever time she has left - which could be weeks, could be a few months. There’s no real way to know for certain.

The reality is that even if she does go into remission, the lymphoma will likely return within another 2-3 years. But Quinn is young, and strong, and she’s worth taking the chance - so we’re racking up the airline miles on our credit cards and digging in for a medical brawl.

[Side note: Having lost people to cancer in the past, we will not be pursuing “heroic measures” to keep her alive. Humans can make that decision for themselves. Cats cannot, and I do not think that it’s a kind thing, to inflict that upon an animal. If your feelings are different, that’s fine, that’s your call. This is mine. Whenever her final months arrive, I will not make them miserable on the off chance of an astronomically improbable miracle.]

We love this little monster - this World’s Most Expensive Free Kitten - and we will do our best to do right by her. If it looks like she’ll benefit from that second round of chemo in a month or so, I will probably put up a GoFundMe and pass around the hat, because I’m not gonna lie - we’ve already spent more than $4000 on this kitty since December (including today’s visit), and the chemo appointments are roughly a thousand dollars a pop. (Never mind the next ultrasound; the last one was about $1300 including the biopsy.) We are fortunate that we can afford this treatment, but we are not rich and no, this is not easy for us.

So uh… if you’ve been thinking about buying some of my books, this is a real great time to take up an interest in my canon.

At any rate. We are home now. She gobbled down an early dinner (she’d been fasting against her will since last night), told the dogs to quit sniffing her butt goddammit, and now she’s lounging in the living room like nothing happened.

And that’s the scoop. That’s what’s going on. It’s been a hard year already, but we’re hanging in there for the moment. I’ll update over here (and cross-post this around the internet) as things progress.

Thanks for reading, as always.

End of the year, if not the road

I saw someone, somewhere, say that every year since 2020 has just been an extension of that singular year and that particular hellscape zeitgeist. It’s hard to feel like this is incorrect, really - considering ::gestures at the world and everything:: but what can you do.

2022 was a mixed bag for me, as most years are for everybody (one way or another), but I’ll focus on the positive. It’s been decidedly better than last year from a household/health standpoint: no more kidney stones for me, no more seizures for the husband, and the resident domestic animals remain well, although Quinn had a health scare a month ago (she’s fine now). Lucy continues to personify MISCHIEF. Greyson remains excessively handsome, and he’ll be eleven years old in February - but I try not to think about that.

This year has also been better from a professional standpoint, as I had two releases - Flight Risk and the collection Holy Terror, whereas last year was just Grave Reservations.. At present, I don’t have a third Booking Agents novel in the queue, but you never know, that could change. The fun little series was only a 2-book deal, so if you’d like to see more of those, well…tell your friends about them. I’d be happy to write more, but that will depend on the sales numbers.

Lately I’ve been doing some scripting for a true crime podcast pilot, and when/if it comes together, I’ll pass along the info on that project. People keep asking how to break into this particular writing arena, but the truth is, I don’t have the faintest idea. So how did it happen for me, personally? Well, I’ll tell ya: An old professor from my grad alma mater (of 20 years ago) threw my name out in the teachers’ lounge, when he heard a coworker expressing his need for a writer. I don’t have a clue how it’s supposed to happen.

It’s not the first time I’ve stumbled backwards into a project, if I’m honest - but this one has been exceptionally cool, and I hope we go to series, and I hope they keep me on board. I like the folks I work with a lot, and I’m genuinely enjoying being part of this project.

As for fiction, I don’t have any new sales to announce at this time. But stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I’m working on two new manuscripts (presently unsold) - which is unusual for me. I’m typically a “one thing at a time” girl when it comes to drafting new material. But hey, no time like the present to mix things up, right?

One is a pretty traditional haunted house story set in West Seattle: A derelict art deco mansion bought at an estate sale comes with a secret shrine to a dead silent film star and a body count. The other is something…kind of off the wall, but I was feeling like a wacky apocalyptic mystery in the vein of Good Omens meeting What We Do in the Shadows. It might turn out to be nonsense, but I needed to get out of my own head and try something different. It begins with a nice old man dying of a heart attack in a library. It’s a comedy! Anyway.

2023 looms.

I hope it works out well for all of you, and that no one gets sick, and no one gets caught in a natural disaster, and everyone is safe and warm and fed. Hang in there, everybody. These twenties are roaring like a storm but the only way out, is through - and there’s plenty left to fight for.

Things I Shouldn't Have to Say, But I Guess Here We Are, So...

Yes, I am aware that someone on Reddit has doctored a tweet to make it look like I’m shitting on fast-food workers. Once and for all: the tweet is entirely fake. I do not share its sentiment in the slightest, not least of all because I was a fast-food worker myself, for quite some time.

My very first job was at McDonald’s in the summer of 1991 (on Holden Avenue in south Orlando), the week I turned sixteen. From there, I worked at two other MickeyDs, then I graduated to Subway. I think I worked at a total of five(?) Subway stores - not because I did a lot of job-hopping, but because I often took shifts at locations that needed the help. Lord knows, I always needed the hours. (I knew procedures for both opening and closing. Closers were in particular demand back then, as most stores were typically open until midnight.)

Anyway. For the record, everyone deserves a living wage - fast food workers included, natch. If I’d had anything approaching a living wage while I was wearing a headset in the burger-slinging mines for $4.15 an hour, well, my life would’ve been something less of a struggleshow - that’s for damn sure. Not that you should have to experience minimum wage firsthand to have basic human empathy, but hey. Those are my bonafides.

In short: I support and enthusiastically cheer on all unionization and organizing efforts, as well as the push for a (considerably) higher federal minimum wage.

I realize that bad-faith folks will believe what they want, and pass around what they want, and there’s not really anything I can do about that. But I appreciate how many folks out there immediately knew it was nonsense.

Reviews, Accolades, and other Embarrassing Things

Hello, everyone - I suppose it’s time for a roundup over here, as recent reviews for Flight Risk come rolling in. Does this feel a little silly and boastful, in the style of a Dane telling an epic poem? Yes. Yes it does. But this is my job, so I’m gonna do it.

• First, you can find all the usual trade reviews here - on this very site. Highlights include Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal - all of whom had very kind things to say.

• John Land’s The Thrill List: “[Priest] hits all the right notes in FLIGHT RISK . . . A ribald ride in which the Pacific NW proves a worthy stand-in for Carl Hiaasen’s Florida . . . She’s the best at this kind of book since Donald Westlake’s fabulous John Dortmunder series.”

• Mystery and Suspense Magazine: ““I have been a fan of Cherie Priest since reading her award-winning Steampunk fantasy, Boneshaker, several years ago. She writes in several genres, always with flair and humor. Likable, quirky characters and laugh-out-loud dialogue make Flight Risk and its predecessor, Grave Reservations, winning and most enjoyable reads.”

• The New York Journal of Books: ““[Priest] does a good job of wrapping up all the loose ends, getting rid of any red herrings, and bringing her foreshadowing to a satisfying conclusion. Priest’s fans will tap their fingers waiting for the next installment of the psychic and detective search for justice.”

• Audible Blog (Editor’s Select Monthly Picks): “I can't think of a better way to keep the paranormal vibes while adding a dash of cozy than with Cherie Priest's Flight Risk…. With its fun premise and excellent narration, Flight Risk is the perfect post-spooky season listen.”

• Bookriot - 13 November Mystery, Thrillers, and True Crime Releases: “For fans of psychics and civilians paired with police officers! Leda Foley is a psychic travel agent who ends up with a missing woman case which turns out to somehow connect to detective Grady Merritt’s dog showing up with a human leg in its mouth (ewww). With the police not coming up with any leads, it’s up to Foley to think outside the box to shake some clues loose…If you want to start at the beginning of this fun series, pick up Grave Reservations.”

• PopSugar - 143 Thriller and Mystery Books That'll Keep You Hooked From Beginning to End: “Cherie Priest's sequel to the lively mystery "Grave Reservations" brings clairvoyant travel agent Leda Foley into another humorous case in Flight Risk.…With the pair teaming up to hunt down the killer, they may use unconventional methods to lead them to the right suspect. Priest's cozy mysteries are always sure to delight readers.”

All right, there you go! I’ve self-promoted, and I’ll try not to do too much of that over here. I just don’t have much else to report right now, and I haven’t hooked up this website with my phone, so it’s a pain in the ass to upload photos - but I’ll fix that, and start putting pet pictures over here before long. I bet.

Don’t mind me, I’m just a bit wiped out from last week. It was a real doozy - an event a night, most in person, and one virtual. I still have another handful later this month, but the death march of release week is over.

Well, kind of. As I mentioned in my last post, most of the print run is stuck in a port somewhere - and therefore Flight Risk won’t be widely available for another week or so (11/15). So…soon? Soon, yes. There will be YET MORE RELEASING on the part of this book. All the more promo to tease you with, my friends.

Anyway, thanks for reading - and for generally being awesome. I’ll be back soon, I promise!

Flight Risk: A book, and a General Internet Prospect

Why hello everyone and yes - I know, it’s been…uh…a year or so since I last posted over here. I could make excuses, but instead I’ll offer reasons, if that’s all right. In short, it’s been a busy time - filled with regular crazypants life stuff and health issues for myself, my husband, and even my pets (though everyone is fine at present); and I’m also rather lazy, truth to tell, so I’ve been spending most of my internet social time on Twitter… with occasional forays into Facebook, because that’s where most of my non-very-online relatives and old friends live. So to speak.

But I’ve never been overly keen on Facebook, and as you might have heard, things are getting bleak in Twitter-land - you see, we have a new Tweet Landlord and things are precarious. Tweeters are creating back-up plans.

This is not exactly my backup plan, because I am not necessarily planning to flee Twitter.

I enjoy tweeting because, well, see above - I’m lazy and inclined to quick one-liners and dog/cat pictures, which are more of a hassle to upload over here. But I did get my internet start over on LiveJournal [::pours one out::] and blogged more or less daily for years, so maybe it’d be good for me to get back in the habit. Maybe I’ll stick with it, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll occasionally post snippets of works in progress, or pet pics, while I’m at it. Maybe this post will still be standing alone at the top of the “BLOG” tab, a year from now.

We’ll see, eh?

At any rate. In actual news - the kind that publishers and agents and readers like for me to keep bringing - the sequel to last year’s GRAVE RESERVATIONS drops soon! Very soon! Maybe like, in a few days… depending on where you are. You see, FLIGHT RISK was ready to rock-and-roll for a November 1 release date - but then fate intervened, and now most of the print order is stuck in a port on the other side of the globe. At present, the official release date for FLIGHT RISK is November 15th - but if you’re lucky or sneaky or if the moon is in the right sign and you’ve burned the right incense… you might be able to get your hands on a copy sooner than that. BEHOLD. The following folks should have copies available in time for the following events:

So… to paraphrase the bard, come out and see me sometime - in person, or virtually. And if you’d like a copy of FLIGHT RISK for your very own (without the inconvenience of setting eyes on me, personally) you can click through RIGHT HERE VIA SIMON AND SCHUSTER’S WEBSITE - where you will find it in all the usual forms (ebook, audio, hardback) via links to all the usual retailers (Amazon, B&N, BAM, IndieBound, and Bookshop).

You don’t need to have read GRAVE RESERVATIONS to enjoy this one, I don’t think; I went out of my way to keep it as stand-alone as possible, though yes - you’ll pick up on a few extra things if you did, indeed, read the first book. If you’d like to pick up that one, you can do so RIGHT HERE VIA SIMON AND SCHUSTER’S WEBSITE with the exact same addendums (ebook, audio, hardback/Amazon, B&N, BAM, Indiebound, Bookshop).

Thanks for reading, everyone. I really do appreciate it, because I really couldn’t do this without you. And don’t forget - you can always order signed, personalized books via the University Book Store here in Seattle. Instructions are very straightforward, and you can find those instructions cleverly hidden beneath this tab, which says ORDER SIGNED BOOKS. If you are so inclined.

Grave Reservations

Why hello there, everyone, it’s time for my first big announcement of 2021: my mystery debut Grave Reservations is available for preorder AND it has an official, sassy-ass cover for your viewing pleasure! Click this publisher link right here for details - or keep on scrolling:

Meet Leda Foley

Devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. When Leda, sole proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, her life changes in ways she couldn’t have predicted.

After watching his original plane blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack…

Preorder Grave Reservations from your favorite retailers:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

BAM!

IndieBound

Hey Cherie, where do you you get your ideas?

Probably every author gets this question a million times, in the course of their career - I know I have, for sure. Usually it’s a tricky thing to answer - the truth is never very straightforward, and no two people come at their stories from the same angle, with the same approach.

But for me, it’s something like Katamari Damacy: one idea sticks in your head for a bit, and eventually runs into another idea. These two ideas stick together. They attract a third or forth idea, and so forth and so on. Eventually you wind up with this big, sticky, tumbling ball of ideas that’s big enough to make a book. (And if you’re very lucky, you come up with a kickass pun for a title. Cough cough.)

This particular project began with a very weird thing that actually happened to me, and I don’t mind telling you about it. So I’m gonna. Even though you might not believe me. That’s okay. I understand.

This will All sound a little far-fetched

Back in 2014, I was a guest at a convention in Galveston, Texas. It was January, and by terrible coincidence a winter storm was blowing up the Gulf of Mexico - poised to dump snow and ice across the southeast…where I lived at the time, and where I hoped to return. But by Sunday morning, that return trip was starting to look iffy.

The storm was rolling in and the airport was an hour and a half away. I hopped into a car the event had arranged for me, pulled out my phone to tweet my fond goodbyes, and settled in for a windy ride.

Then I got a text message. It was my travel agent apologizing for not catching me before I left. You see, she’d rebooked my flight at the last minute - and she wanted to give me my new confirmation number and details. But don’t worry! The new flight would leave half an hour later, from two gates over. She just had a bad feeling about the first flight, given the storm and all. Wanted to buy me a little extra time.

I thanked her for the info and for looking out for me, and in another hour or so the car dropped me off at the airport.

But in the airport lobby, a line of 127 people wrapped around the room. (I had time to count them, yes.) This was, of course, the check-in line for the airline I needed. The computers were down and we were all screwed.

Out of idle boredom, I texted the nice travel agent something to the effect of, “Thanks for trying to buy me more time, but I don’t think I’m leaving Texas tonight.” And that was okay! I actually know a lot of folks in the Houston area; I figured I’d get a hotel or find a couch to ride. But she pinged me right back: Use the kiosk. Readers, I did not see a kiosk. Before I could say so, she added another message, telling me exactly where it was located (around a corner, out of sight). It was partially roped off. So I replied: “No one is using it. I think it’s not in service.”

To which she said, “Nobody’s using it, because nobody’s using it. Give it a try.”

I checked those kiosks, and 90 seconds later I had my boarding pass. Then I told everybody in line that the kiosks were working (because I’m not some kind of monster) and made for security. I was feeling pretty good about my choices and my travel agent, when I passed my original departure gate and saw that my original flight had indeed been cancelled.

But when I reached my new gate, my optimism waned. My new flight was delayed by 40 minutes. Then, while I took a few seconds to double-check my gate and flight info, it was delayed an additional hour.

It was my turn to have a bad feeling.

I sat down anyway, and before I could even whip out a magazine my phone chimed with another text alert. “How far are you from Nashville?” the agent asked. (At the time, I lived in Chattanooga, TN.) By then, we both knew this flight wasn’t going anywhere either, so I headed her off at the pass: “If you can get me to Hartsfield, that’d be better - I’m closer to Atlanta than Nashville.”

I added that I could always rent a car from there and drive home, but she protested - insisting that if I took that route, I wouldn’t make it home that night. She wanted me to arrange for a pickup, so I called my poor husband - who agreed to the 3-1/2 hour round trip, bless him forever.

When all this was sorted, I had yet another new flight, this one to Atlanta - and a promise of a ride home. These things went smoothly, and when we pulled up to our house it was 11:57 p.m. The car’s digital thermometer clicked over to 32 degrees and as if on cue, it started to snow.

The next day, I texted the nice travel agent lady to say thank you for getting me home safely and before midnight (barely, but technically). I told her she was awesome, and joked that she was practically psychic or something.

She responded with - and I am not making this up - that being psychic was her side job, and she’d worked with her local police department for decades.

Y’all, I LOST IT. I informed her that I’d be stealing this “psychic travel agent” angle for a book someday, and she gave me her blessing. In the subsequent weeks, I told this story and showed that text chain to literally everybody I knew, and my husband will vouch for the fact that he came to get me under this precise set of circumstances.

And then I sat on this anecdote for a few years. Sometimes it takes awhile for that Katamari ball to really get rolling.

But eventually my Texas travel adventure collided with another idea - the idle thought that a downtown Seattle import business called “Far-Fetched” would make a great name for a travel agency. These two ideas knocked against a third one: that the world had become dark enough, and maybe it was time to write something a little lighter for a change. These three ideas collided with the fact that I was dying to write a mystery.

Finally, I sat down with a bunch of index cards and some legal pads and got to work.

Coming this fall from Atria Books

Thanks so much for reading so far, all you fine folks - and I hope you’ll follow me into this new and uncharted land. I’ve written a few shorter mysteries for Wild Cards, but this is my first full-length project of the sort. It’s a new genre with a new publisher and I hope you’ll join me as I take a lil’ step outside my comfort zone with something I’m terribly proud of.

Coming October 26: Click here to preorder Grave Reservations