Kittens and donkeys and dogs (plus one horse), oh my!

June 2022 

Summer is a cumin’ in . . . and I’m buried in yellow squash.

I didn’t mean to plant that many. I thought half of it was zucchini. It was labeled zucchini when I bought it. So now I’m taking four or five big yellow squash from the garden every day. And the way the cucumbers and tomatoes are growing, it’s going to be a very veggie-heavy summer. I foresee a lot of salad in my future.  

And pickles. This year I will have grown the cucumbers, the dill, and the garlic for pickles. Everything except the vinegar, and I’m working on that.  

There are many reasons why I garden – it’s a reaction to living in the suburbs for so long, a reaction to the tenuous economics of our times, an attempt at appreciating the work and wisdom needed for someone to actually live off the land, and a kind of therapy for me. You gardeners know what I’m talking about. There’s nothing like yanking a weed out of the soil to release pent-up aggression. Or chasing deer away from the garden.  

A lot has happened since my last newsletter, and I want to assure everyone that I haven’t fallen into a deep depression or am off enjoying cocktails with supermodels – I’m writing. Every day. For hours.  

But since March, when I planted the first seeds in my garden, there have been many non-writing developments I should mention, because I’m egotistical like that.  

Firstly, my youngest son Hayden graduated from high school, and I’m extremely proud of the boy.  Lettered in lacrosse, passed the HSK Mandarin test (Level 3!) and won the state band/chorus competition with his school. (He plays bass). This is important for two reasons: not only is Hayden my literary heir, but he’s also been an enormous time sink. We live a half hour away from his school, he doesn’t drive yet, and I spent sometimes four hours a day on the road picking him up and dropping him off for school and various practices, performances, and matches. That’s a lot of productive writing time I clawed back after he graduated.

That’s important, because I have a LOT on my plate at the moment. Pray attend:

I just finished edits on the FRP game book (thanks to Jonathan at Battlefield Press!) and am in the process of remastering the last two maps he needs. My deadline for Shadowheist is mere days away (no worries; Emily and I are on the final edits), and then immediately afterwards, I have to plunge headfirst into Marshal Arcane and not come up until it’s finished. I’m writing The Mad Mage of Sevendor short story concurrently as well, and every now and then I work on the short stories for The Road To Vanador anthology.

And that’s just this year’s agenda.

This also explains why I don’t do a lot of social media or spend a lot of time doing promotional stuff. It’s not that I don’t love my fans and enjoy hanging out with them or introducing new people to the series. It’s that promotional stuff like social media takes a lot of time, and right now my time is valuable if I want to get the next few books out in a timely manner. There’s also a lot of social media these days, and each one takes time. It’s as simple as that. So, if it takes me a while to respond to your posts and questions, that’s why.  

Other news is largely critter-related, actually.  

If you recall, just days after the release of Shadowplay, my brother found a black female kitten with a broken leg at a local rural golf course. I paid for the vet to get her leg fixed, and after a few weeks, she was as spry as you could ask for.  She was adorable.  So, of course, I named her Gatina.

Well, Gatina proved to not only be as cute as a kitten can be, but she also proved to live up to her namesake’s character. No, really. Gatina is Adventure Kitty—absolutely bold, unapologetically fearless, and utterly uncaring about little things like general order or gravity. She pillaged the tops of my shelves, suddenly attacked all the other cats, persisted in hiding in shadows, tripping people, suddenly leaping onto my chest with all claws extended . . . that sort of thing. I thought it was adorable – my cute little kitten.

Then Ishi intervened.

One day Gatina went from lovable kitten to hormone poisoned harlot. My daughter couldn’t handle it – she kept grabbing the yowling kitten by the scruff of the neck, hoisting her in the air, and demanding, “You need Jesus in your life, you whore! Repent!” which is a lot from a nominally pagan girl who loves animals.  

But I could totally understand where she was coming from. Gatina did not adapt to sexual maturity with any amount of grace. She was awful—howling and writhing on the floor like she was at a feline rave with a dime bag of catnip. Even the dogs were unnerved. It was distracting.  We made the call to the vet the next day.

One would think that would be the end of it . . . but no. While the hypersexual howling was done, the vet saw fit to equip the kitten with a satellite dish like collar to keep her from licking her wound. Standard operating procedure. Gatina slept off her anesthetic, and I thought things would return to normal. And they did . . . only now Gatina, thanks to the cone of shame, had antlers. Hilarity ensued. 

She returned to the bookshelves and pillaged them to even greater effect. She ran across the room and rammed into table legs. Her balance was off – that didn’t deter her. For a week, we dealt with Adventure Kitty, Expert Mode. She laid waste to every room in Spellgarden. 

But at least the howling stopped. 

That wasn’t the only critter development, however. My sainted mother-in-law decided my life wasn’t interesting enough and gave my lovely daughter,  Ellie Mae Morrigan, not one but two rescue donkeys.

Donkeys. You read that right. 

These two young geldings (2 and 3 respectively) are named Henry and Holloway. They were rescued from a meat lot (!) and are a bit skittish. And since I live on a mountain, the long livestock trailer couldn’t make it up the driveway to the stable, so we had to walk them up the mountain.  

Have you ever taken two frightened, traumatized, untrained donkeys up a mountain they didn’t want to go up? I have.  They’re a bonded pair, so Holloway wouldn’t budge – at all – unless we could get Henry to go first. Henry really didn’t feel like cooperating, either.  

So, when I tell people “I’ve been dragging my ass up a mountain,” I really mean it.  

The donkeys are fun, but Morrigan compounded the zoo-like character of the estate by rescuing four feral kittens from a hollow log the next day, along with their wildly feral mother.  

We got Mama Cat fixed and returned to the wild, but now I have no less than eight cats at Spellgarden. And two dogs. And a rescue horse.

And two donkeys.

See why I garden?

Now, as exciting and interesting as the critters are, I’ve spent every moment I can creating new Spellmonger content (see above). And while I won’t be able to spare much time for anything else until Marshal Arcane is turned in, I am going to take a weekend off from composing and attend Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC June 23rd–26th, largely because it is local enough for me to do it and I haven’t done a single con since DragonCon last year. I will have an entire booth, complete with books to sign, as well as some posters and other cool Spellmongery stuff. And you can come by and talk to me, which is always pleasant. And it will also give me an opportunity to release the new Gatina Kitten of Night art I commissioned from Wes Flanary. Wes will also have a booth and will be selling prints of his delightful sci-fi/fantasy pop culture paintings. My business partner Lance Sawyers will also be there with his crew framing art for the masses at Frame Monkey.  

While I don’t have anything official planned as of yet, I’m probably going to have an informal Spellmongrel get-together somewhere on Friday night. I’ll post further details to my Facebook page as we get closer. If you’re interested in having a beer or cocktail with the author, that will be your chance.  

And here’s a look at the Gatina picture referenced above. There will be posters available for autograph by me and Wes as well.   

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- Terry Mancour