Ah, Church. Your driving skills are the stuff of my nightmares….
Seriously, this woman is a menace behind the wheel. Who may or may not have been inspired by some of the insanity I see on the roads on a near daily basis. Just sayin’.
What amuses me is that I’m thinking this while editing a section in which Church is driving, but… more or less sanely.
(At least by her lights. Myrrh and Aidan may have different opinions.)
So why don’t one of the other two drive? Heh. They like to live. Church has a bit of a control streak; if she weren’t driving, she’d be twitchy. They don’t need a twitchy detective. Really.
Not to mention it’s been twenty-five years since either of them have been behind the wheel and I suspect they’re a bit daunted by the current driving styles. I know I am!
Forty-eight pages of Seeds of Blood down, and I added some of the key reference books I used in the back. I’ll have to hunt around and see if anything else ought to go there. 😉 One of the sources in there is a book I picked up decades ago, James Mooney’s book on Cherokee mythlore; an incredibly handy text for critters and magic local to the area. If anyone wants to poke that, apparently some of his stuff is available for free download online. Or if you want the reference for yourself….
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
I love your bibliographies, I always find such interesting reading in them! And the most memorable thing about cars I’ve ever read was, “cars are for going fast. If I wanted to take my time, I’d walk.” The character had been taught to drive by a race driver boyfriend. Thankfully I have never been as crazy a driver, but I did do crazy speed as a teen.
Princess of Wands by John Ringo if you’re curious about the book. Interesting masquerade book, that and the Monster Hunter International series. That one is also Lovecraftian, so mileage on the Nightmare Fuel may vary. But by all the stars can that man do a subtle foreshadow!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hmm. So far my experience with Ringo has been a bit too heavy on the HE and light on the character relationships for my taste, but thanks. I have read two of the MHI books, but…
Well. It’s all well and good to have the main characters bringing out modern weaponry to slaughter monsters. Yet it brings up the worldbuilding question of, “If you need high-velocity silver ammo to kill werewolves, why are there any humans left alive?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Actually, my question for MHI is, if believing/knowing about the things that go bump in the night strengthens them, why are they not howling their existence from the sky?
Princess of Wands is a bit, well. Interesting. You have a suburban housewife who stumbles into demon slaying. Only she spends quite a bit of her life in many, many different forms of lethal. It’s also implied in the sequel Queen of Wands that she’s the avatar/champion of St Michael. At least that’s if I interpreted it right.
Speaking of, have you read the John Ringo/David Weber collaboration series The Empire of Man? It starts with March Upcountry. It plays to a lot of Weber’s people and political skills, while Ringo has a humor and action sense that really merge well.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve read the Empire of Man, yes. It had some very neat stuff.
And yes. That bit of MHI gets to me too.
LikeLike
I once rode with someone who was trying to cross a mountain ASAP. When asked about his driving technique, he responded that his taxes paid for both lanes in the road and he was jolly well going to take full advantage of it all. Also, he apparently drove like that on a regular basis. I take the fact that he is still alive as proof of the divine.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Or that other saying, about someone looking after their own…. 😉
LikeLike
Reminds me of a quote about driving like a nun. “Like God is in the passenger seat, and damn everyone else.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
*Thumbs up*
LikeLike
Never heard that quote before. Absolutely going to shamelessly steal it for my own use. 😂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Google idioms, and/or “The devil looks after his own.” 😉
LikeLike
My mother worked with a woman from Tunisia on her dissertation back in the 90’s. They were both medievalists and did a lot of joint research the various Griselda tales, specifically those popular in Morocco and the Iberian peninsula. Because of this when there was an opening for an English teacher at the University in the capital city of Tunis my mom applied there, along with several other universities.
Mom ended up taking a different teaching position here in the states (a Spanish department from a Big 10 college replied to her application and hired her first), one she’s held since then. But since the University in Tunis responded positively she did end up filling a temporary position there and the whole family lived in Tunisia for about six months back in ’99. There was so little going on in the region at the time that we actually got to meet the then American Ambassador to Tunisia, were given a brief tour, and were basically welcome at the Embassy whenever we felt like it. I may have raided their English Language library for fantasy books – though honestly I can only vaguely remember reading The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks and Voyage of the Dawntredder by C.S. Lewis.
I was 8 at the time and don’t have the clearest memories of everything – I tended to tune out boring talk that didn’t interest me for whatever I was reading at the time – but I do remember the American Ambassador, while trying to sing Tunisia’s praises, mentioning that Tunisia did not always have the highest yearly vehicular homicide rates for the region. I also remember my mother’s friend doing something we quickly realized wasn’t unusual among Tunisian driver’s which was driving down the center of a two lane road with the car perfectly straddling the dividing line. She called it: ‘commanding the road’.
In hindsight, there are reasons we walked everywhere we could while we were there.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yikes.
LikeLike
I spent a year on a ranch in a more rural area of the state and the approach to driving to some extent was ‘Great it’s nighttime! That means we’ll see the other drivers coming which means we can drive down the center of the road.’ It was rather alarming the first time I encountered it. Although, to be fair those roads had lots of curves but, you could see others from a ways off and the most common accidents were motorcyclists misjudging some of the curves where the 25 mph sign actually meant 25 mph, not 35 mph is fine too.
I’m so looking forward to Seeds of Blood and my friend who I introduced to the series is as well 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yay! Hope it reads as well as I’m trying to write it. 🙂
LikeLike
Road Rage/Madness? Russian car accident videos. Walking isn’t that safe either. God help you when you cross a street.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mmm, David Weber!
I pretty much devoured the Honor Harrington ebooks last summer and fall, along with the Crown of Slaves and Shadows series.
And the Narnia Chronicles are a perpetual favorite.
When I was a teenager, I loaned the whole set in English from a friend on friday evening, finished Dawn Treader on Saturday at 5AM, and was done with The Last Battle at about 2PM on Sunday. Personal record!
And English is not my native tongue…
On driving in Europe – Italy is the top contestant for sheer recklessness.
Catania (Sicily) has even the locals twitchy…
LikeLiked by 2 people
Haven’t read the last one of the Crown of Slaves, yet.
LikeLike
I haven’t been keeping up with your Seeds of Blood updates but I wanted to say that I just finished reading A Net of Dawn and Bones and really liked it.
LikeLike
Thanks! I’m hoping to have Seeds of Blood out in September. 🙂
LikeLike