But, naturally, our primary objective was to get rid of the nasty beasts.

Here’s what I learned.

1) The chemicals don’t work as well as you might think. The literature varies on this, giving effective rates for over the counter lice treatments of between 50% and 70%.

2) The chemicals in question are neurotoxins. And they might be absorbed in small amounts topically. Nasty stuff.

3) Even if you use the chemicals, you still have to remove the nits by hand (or, rather, by nit comb).

4) Lice eggs (nits) take around 10 days to hatch.

5) A louse can lay between 3 and 10 eggs daily. Average is around 4.

6) Nits are tan or dark when they contain a louse, but white after hatching.

7) A louse takes between 8 and 24 days to reach sexual maturity.

8 ) A louse breathes through holes along the side of it’s body. It can hold it’s breath for several hours.

9) Lice prefer clean hair for laying eggs. Eggs don’t attach well to hair shafts coated in styling products or dirt.

10) Human head lice can’t live on pets.

11) Human head lice can only live 24-48 hours off a host. They also require a blood meal (host) within 10 hours of hatching.

12) There are several effective non-neuro-toxin treatments for lice. I’ll detail 2 – but I’ll also say that if you have a boy – or a very secure girl – just shave the head. Wash the head thoroughly and without hair to adhere to, no eggs will be laid. For all treatments, it’s a good idea to wash clothing, linens and towels in hot water. Stuffed animals and other non-washable items can be tumbled in a hot dryer for 20-30 minutes. The prolonged heat will kill the lice (keep in mind that if your dryer has a cool down feature, you should extend the drying time to ensure that the high heat lasts at least 20 minutes).

13) The mayonnaise treatment. This is what we used – and it was extremely effective, though also extremely labor-intensive. Mayo works by suffocating the lice. It must be left on a minimum of 4 hours, and preferably overnight. Do not use light mayo or “salad dressing” style mayo – use cheap, full-fat, “real” mayo. You’ll also need SEVERAL shower caps. The mayo needs to be applied to the roots of the hair and all over the scalp. This is most easily accomplished by doing it in small sections and working it into the roots and scalp. Be VERY generous. Once the scalp and roots are covered, coat the rest of the hair. My daughter has short hair and we used 1/3 of a large jar of mayo for each treatment. After the hair is coated, put on the shower cap. You can seal the shower cap with gauze or something similar to hold it in place overnight. In the morning, remove the cap and comb out as much excess mayo as possible using a regular comb. You’ll want to have SEVERAL towels or rags available, since you will need to wipe the mayo out of the comb frequently. At this point, the mayo will be loaded with lice and some nits. You’re going to need to wash those towels a couple of times in hot water. After you’ve combed out most of the mayo, section the hair into small sections, no more than about an inch square. I used hair pins to secure my daughter’s hair during this process. Now, using a nit comb, starting at the back hairline, moving around toward the ears and up the head, comb each section carefully with a nit comb. I dipped the nit comb in rubbing alcohol to help unstick the nits. Again, you will be wiping off lots of mayo, so be prepared. The first time we did this it took about 3 hours – I didn’t know what I was doing so it took much longer than necessary. By the last time we did this, it only took half that. In any case, after you have combed the entire head with the nit comb, wash the mayo out. Repeat every 2-3 days for 10 days to 2 weeks. That should catch the entire life cycle. Yes, it’s a lot of work – but no chemicals and very effective.

14) Now I’ll tell you the easy way. The way I didn’t find out about until too late for us. But I’m sharing with you because I’m sure you don’t want to bother with the mayo treatment. Sure, it works, but daaaaang that’s a lot of effort. So, here’s the Nuvo treatment. The instructions are very detailed, but it’s important to follow them exactly. You will need Cetaphil cleanser, a regular fine-tooth comb, a hair dryer, a condiment bottle (the kind used for ketchup or mustard with the pointy tip), and possibly a nit comb. The treatment involves putting the Cetaphil on in a specific way, combing out the excess cleanser, then using the hairdryer to dry the Cetaphil onto the hair and scalp. The Cetaphil is left in place for several hours (overnight, usually), then washed out. This is repeated exactly one week later, and a third time exactly one week after that. If you are interested in trying this method, I urge you to read the instructions at the link above. This method is 96% effective. That’s pretty stinking good for no chemicals and not much effort.

So… now you know way more than you want to about lice. And, if you’re like me, you’ll have psychosomatic itching every time you think about it.

But, to return to my point, I noticed that I include food a lot in my writing. It figures prominently in Trusting Destiny, more as a background element in This Fire and Twice as High. So it made me think about why I feel compelled to include food and meals in these stories.

I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, food represents nurturing. It’s caring for someone and making sure they get what they need, and I find that very attractive, so I include it in my stories. But, there’s a whole other level – the foodie level.

I will admit, happily, that I am, in some ways a foodie. Well, not really. Not in the sense of being snobby about it. I just love food. The smells, the textures, the tastes, the visual stimulation, the sound of it as it cooks. It’s a total sensory experience. Which, I think, is another reason to include food with your romance. But, again, I am wandering from my point. My point on this is that writing about food allows me to venture into food fantasy and to share with my readers some of the wonderful finds I have made.

For example, in This Fire (in the Hearts Afire duology), Seth and Eden go to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. Now, I realize that most people probably haven’t ever eaten Ethiopian food, but let me assure you that it is seriously tasty stuff. The meal is served family style, with small mounds of food dotting a large piece of soft, spongy sourdough called injera, with more injera alongside. You don’t use any utensils. Instead, you tear off small pieces of injera and use it to scoop up bits of meat and vegetables. Fun and ridiculously yummy. But where else would I get to tell people about that? Oh. Right. Here.

In any case, food plays a big part in my stories – and in my life. What about you? Do you have food stories?

Not that Goofy. The other kind, silly, cutting up, hanging loose and just being… stupid.

13 things that make me laugh or in some way tickle my silly bone.

BUFFY meets Edward

Vampires suck

STAR TREK as you’ve never seen it

What interested me about this discussion was not only the fact that some peoples’ worsts reads were others’ keepers, but also the reasons the readers found stories to be such clunkers.

The reasons, I think, are instructive.

Inconsistency

In character, in setting, in dialogue. This gets a bit to the discussion going on at Dear Author about how accurate historicals need to be (do you really want to read about how badly they smelled or how wretched the teeth were, or how drafty and uncomfortable the living quarters could be?). But it also gets to inconsistency of plot, and of character. If your plot is headed one direction and then, inexplicably, takes a hard right turn, that’s going to leave a reader hanging out wondering what happened. If your character is supposed to be virginal and innocent, having her giving blow jobs to random guys in the hall is going to throw the reader off. There are all kinds of ways to be inconsistent, but it boils down to the expectations of the reader. If something in the book throws the reader completely off stride, it’s hard to come back and convince them to love the story.

Unsympathetic hero/heroine

It’s one thing to have unsympathetic villains. I mean, they’re supposed to be the bad guy, so you can get away with that. But the hero? The heroine? That’s a fast train ride to Hateville, right there. In romance, especially, the reader wants to like the characters. They want to enjoy going through the adventure and angst with them. It’s very hard to do that if the characters are unsympathetic. On the one hand, you can have characters which skirt the line – characters who aren’t angelic or even particularly good, but are sympathetic. One of my favorites like this is Linda Howard’s John Medina. He’s not really a nice guy. He does what he thinks is necessary and doesn’t have any real guilt about doing it. He shot and killed his own wife because she was about to cause catastrophic damage to US security. He isn’t tortured about it, he just sees it as necessary. Because he isn’t tortured about it, he could easily become unsympathetic. But Howard manages to make his priorities so clear, and to make his relationship with the heroine so intense, he never quite crosses the line into unsympathetic. Some authors really like skirting the lines here. Rhage in JR Ward’s Lover Eternal does a lot of line skirting. Enough line skirting that it really pissed off some people.

Breaking the rules.

There are some rules in Romancelandia. Rules like Happily Ever After (or at least Happy for Now), or like not killing off the main characters (this is how Nicholas Sparks likes to think he gets out of being a romance author). Or like the hero and heroine aren’t supposed to cheat on each other on screen. Now, with menage and open relationships, it’s not cheating. You avoid this problem because of the expectations of the characters and the openness of the interaction. But, no cheating. When authors break these rules, you often default to the numero uno rule above – veering off the reader’s expectations. And we already talked about that.

Crappy Craft

This is the most technical of the reasons, I think, and the hardest to pin down, while simultaneously being the easiest to recognize. Sloppy writing, repetition, bad flow, broken rhythm, stilted dialogue, hosed up sentence structure, odd word choices, bizarre imagery. Any of these things can interrupt the reading experience, and when enough of them stack up, the reading becomes painful. This is, I think, a bigger problem now than ever before, simply because there are more and more books being published – through the big houses, through small press, through e-pubs, through self-publishing and through vanity publishing. Many of these books are good. But there are going to be a lot of stinkers. And when the stinkers are bad enough, it can taint everything around it. But, the point here is that basic craft skills can and should be employed. And if they aren’t, the book is going to smell. Badly.

There you go – four big categories of why books stink. But flip them on their head, and you get four reasons good books are good. And that is the lesson for today, grasshopper.

TALK DIRTY TO ME by Inez Kelley and Ginny Glass

Coming from Carina Press July 19th

“God, your skin is like silk. My hands are stroking down your stomach. Run the Bullet around your bellybutton, slow. That’s my tongue, Nora. Trace your hip all the way down, sweetheart. No, I hear you turning it up. Leave it alone, medium setting. I like to take my time.”

Goosebumps erupted along her tummy, the soft vibrations channeling lust through her body, igniting a growing need at her core.

“Go right to your bikini line. Drag the tip just across it. Now up to your navel again.”

“James, please…”

“Shh, let me explore you. Turn it up just a bit. I want to nibble a line straight down your hip to your leg.”

A whimper eked out before she could stop it. James chuckled.

“I’ve got a taste of you and now I’m starving for more. I want you to slide the Bullet across your inner thighs. There and only there.”

She did what he asked, shivering. Her nipples ached with delicious pain, and her wet pussy thumped in empty need.

“Now what?”

“Imagine my fingers there, skimming across the muscles. Back and forth, back and forth. Don’t you dare touch anywhere else.”

She fell into the rhythm of his words, rocked to the low bass of a voice that had no body. He was everywhere, but nowhere. It was deliriously wicked and entirely not enough. Sweat covered her body.

“Touch me more.”

TALK DIRTY TO ME

Get it, love it, buy batteries.

I’m not sure where my plot bunnies come from – I mean, what provides the genesis that creates the little buggers in the first place. And the plot bunnies don’t arrive the same way. Sometimes I’ll get a setting first – an entire world fully built on one occasion. Sometimes I’ll get a character first. Trusting Destiny was that way – Eric showed up and just charmed me completely. Sometimes I’ll have a vague notion of a cool idea and things grow organically from that. Twice as High worked that way – I thought “What if the guys with wings aren’t angels. What if they’re ALIENS?!” The whole story grew from there. Sometimes I’ll get the plot first – though not usually. Will and Astrid (Work in Progress) came that way. Will’s character followed close behind the plot, so it was a strong idea. In a lot of cases, I’ll get a scene. A single scene that tells me there’s a story to be told. Dining In is one of those scenes, but This Fire also came that way. The first scene I had in my head for that one was the meeting room at the ball. Most rarely – only once so far, actually – the title comes first. This one is the only one I’m sure of the generating circumstance and idea, and I’m still hammering out the details of the story. It’s definitely the most unusual plot-bunny arrival method for me, as I usually struggle for titles.

What about you? How does your inspiration arrive?

But lets take fish out of water for a moment. Have you got a hold of it? Good. It might try to squiggle and get away from you. If you see it’s gills and mouth opening and closing, you might want to dunk it back in the water and give it a breath. Yes, that’s right – good. Now, on to the more interesting aspects of fish than just as a food source.

They’re cool to watch – Have you ever gone into a Dr’s office where there is a huge aquarium and tropical fish are all swimming around in their brightly colored bodies, gliding through the water so calm and serene? You actually start to feel soothed and a bit hypnotized. I could watch the little suckers for hours. The sound of the filters and pumps is also quite pleasant and makes you want to drift off to sleep…zzzzzzzzz…

What? Who? Oh, yes, we were discussing fish.

Another interesting thing about fish are they make awesome heroes – I see some of you making faces out there, but think about it. Hot, sexy hunky merman, saves a woman from drowning and it’s love at first scale. He has to decide if his love for the sea is greater than his love for a land-bound woman. Or there are other underwater heroes to admire - Patrick Duffy as the Man from Atlantis anyone? Then there are the water Gods. Poseidon comes to mind. How much fun is it to dream of taming a god and bringing down to a human level?

And the last reason, if fish are good enough for Douglas Adams, they’re good enough for me.  

(If you don’t know what I mean with that last line, you are not a true sci-fi geek.)

-Kate

I got silly. Then more people joined in! So here are some of my favorites. If they are not accredited with a @, then *I* said it.

1- If your hero announces “RELEASE THE KRAKEN” and drops his pants #AutoRejection

2- If your heroine screams her brother’s name in bed #AutoRejection

3- The word TALLYWACKER #AutoRejection

4- @jodie_who: When the ’secret baby/pregnancy’ is a secret to the heroine as well. #AutoRejection

5- If your hero ever utters the words “You’re tighter than a sheep” #AutoRejection

6- @ginnyglass: If the marriage of convenience involves a bride or groom that is inflatable #AutoRejection

7- @jodie_who: When the hero expects the heroine to get along with his sex doll. When a hero HAS a sex doll #AutoRejection

8- If the hero sparkles and runs faster than lightning… oh wait, nevermind #AutoRejection

9- @WendySparrow: If the enviable long silky mustache is on your heroine…. #AutoRejection

10- @ginnyglass: If your makeover scenes involve labia reduction surgery, please dear God #AutoRejection

11- @VivianArend: If the heroine’s 5 o’clock shadow is heavier than the heroes #AutoRejection

12- @katiebabs: If the hero wants the heroine to meet his son and it’s a sock puppet name Norm #autorejection

13- @ginnyglass: When the third in your menage is the hero’s ventriloquist dummy #AutoRejection

BONUS!  Because these are too good to miss…

@jodie_who: The fact the hero NAMES his penis. #AutoRejection

If your shifter is a dog and licks his own balls #AutoRejection

@katiebabs: When the hero breaks out the penis pump during the first sex scene #autorejection

@EbonyMcKenna: “dear sir/madam agent. I wrote this vampire fiction-novel in my own blood..” #autorejection

@ginnyglass: if tattoo’d above the hero’s belt line – “caution: choking hazard” or “may contain nuts” #AutoRejection

If each member of your menage is a different gender #autorejection

Got to love twitter when you are brain fried!

In case you missed it, yesterday was my birthday. And Monday was release day for Twice as High. I had a bit of a party for myself and readers, giving stuff away. Oh, you  did miss it? Gosh. I’m sorry.

Fine, comment on this post and I’ll chuck you into a drawing for the end of this week for winner’s choice of a backlist title. Freebies!

To continue the theme of doing stuff, after my day of sloth today (and, really, do you actually believe I will be able to avoid turning on a computer? Well,  I suppose it’s possible. Are there World Cup games? Maybe Wimbledon? I might can manage to avoid the computer), Thursday is hard core fiction lockdown. No Munchkin. No distractions. Just bust it out.

Starting Friday, I’m participating in a blog hop. The tour will feature a whole mess of eye candy and a metric ass-ton of prizes. These are always such fun – a great way to check out new authors.

I’ll retrieve Munchkin on Friday evening, and then I will be working on figuring out what a summer schedule looks like for us. Won’t that be fun?

What are you doing this week?

But I digress.

Anyhoo, as I’m writing the “ideas” section,  just letting my mind unfold and doing some free writing in the program, I came upon this beautiful myth unfolding about this civilzation that may or may not share common ancestry with the ancient Egyptians. (I say this because the myth I came up with pretty much sounds like it could have come from the Nile region.) – Though, I doubt very much I’ll even mention Earth or the Egyptians in this story.  But the entire time I’m writing this background legend, I’m amazing myself with my storytelling abilities. I looked around the living room (I was on my netbook at the time) to see if any antennea or microwaves were feeding me information from some alternate universe. No. I was alone save my dog whose only mission in life at that moment was to lick her butt.

I knew then that this story is going to kick some major arse.

Then I started writing the first scene in a shady bar room in a shit side of the galaxy, and what comes out is kind of quirky and funny. I like what I have so far, but it’s not the sensuous read I thought it would be. At least not yet. But I like it. I like the way it flows and the outragous characters that inhabit this little corner of the story. And I especially like my smart ass heroine who has totally taken over the scene like she’s Buckaroo Banzi with tits.

So, even though this might not fit the publisher it was meant for originally. I think it will be a very good story when it’s completed. It might not even make it into a menage if the heroine doesn’t want it to. I think I’ll be taking cues from her on this one. She seems pretty competent and smart, and she’s hell with a cyber-blade.

-Kate