Tra la la la la. It’s the Friday of a three day weekend. That makes us enormously happy. And why shouldn’t it? Any time we’re not spending more time at Bank of No Forks is a good time indeed. This week has been completely horrendous. Awful. If we were crying kinds of people, there might possibly have been tears at some point in the week. Instead, we tried to think happy thoughts and sang songs from

Admit it – this is a hell of a hat

Mary Poppins but changed the lyrics. We did find some things to chuckle about. Don’t worry – we’ll share.

1. Pope. It’s clear now that no one thought the Pope was allowed to quit, but apparently he can because he has. Quit. Even if he’s not allowed to quit, who’d going to tell him? Is there anyone around with the official capacity to boss around the Pope? What he needs is a bossy best friend. They’ve worked wonders in our lives and I’m sure that he would ultimately see the benefit. Nevertheless, he’s retired so now the whole world is wondering who will be next. Ava is absolutely certain her phone will ring by the end of  the week. If Ava’s the Pope then Amylynn gets to be the Camerlengo. If you don’t know what that is, look it up.  Amylynn has interpreted that to mean Boss of the Pope. So now that we have that established, we’d like to

I borrowed this from TheWriter’sCat. Follow on Twitter.

know, do we get new hats or do we have to use the old hat the other guy wore? Does the retiring Pope get to take the cool robes and stuff with him? All we’re saying is that when WE retire as the Pope et al, we’re cleaning house. We’ll be able to retire on an island after all the sales on Ebay.

2. Cat’s are evil geniuses. In Brazil the authorities at the jail in Arapiraca thwarted a cat who had snuck into a prison with a cell phone and drill bits strapped to his back. Unfortunately, the article we read was sadly ill informed. There’s never enough information in these stupid stories. Did the cat have any indicator which prisoner he was sneaking the contraband in for? Or was any inmate who could catch him allowed to use the tools? Why just drill bits? Is there some way we can’t fathom where you can use a cell phone as a drill? Is there really an app for that? Or was there an earlier cat who snuck in with the drill and they failed to mention him or he was never nabbed? Damn it, people. This is important stuff.

3. Scotland is hysterical. We love ponies. We love sweaters. It only goes to serve that we’d ADORE ponies IN sweaters. Isn’t this the cutest damn thing you’ve seen in ages? Ponies in sweaters. Holy shit people. And these sweaters are freaking adorable, too. They have buttons. Sweaters with buttons on ponies. What kind of geniuses thought up this travel-to-Scotland campaign? We’re booking our tickets next week. Do you think a Shetland pony will fit in a cat carrier for the plane ride home?

4. Richard Burton. The Sisters have never professed to be lovers of great poetry. Of course we can appreciate the famous Sonnets and we really adore a little Suess-ian level rhyming. What we generally don’t find the appeal in is poetry of the love-sick variety. We came upon this little doozey by Richard Burton for Elizabeth Taylor. “My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you. You don’t realise of course, E.B. how fascinatingly beautiful you have always

been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness.” We understand the words. We understand the pining sentiment. Perhaps we’re the only people on the planet who are not tangled in the enthrall of this poem. Well, he was often drunk, right?

5. Bonuses. Sing it with us, won’t you? Give us a B! Give us an O. Alright enough of that nonsense. Still bonuses totally rock. Bank of No Forks actually pulled it off. Everyone let’s go shopping! In Scotland!

Clearly, our sense of humor is a bit skewed.

So My Honey has a new truck. Well, new to him anyway. It’s really beautiful. And big. Really big. Gigantically, monstrously, big.  He found and fell in love with a Ford F350 3/4 ton diesel with a crew cab, four doors and a long bed. The thing is like riding in a semi. The Bandit can stand up and walk to the front seat.

The new truck is a very pretty blue – kind of a cross between royal blue and some other color blue. Now that you know the color, it will make sense that he named the truck Babe. As in Babe the Big Blue Ox.

Now the problem is that I never know if he’s talking to me or the truck. All I’m saying is it’s best if he doesn’t refer to me as a big, blue anything.

You know there are moments of surrealism in life that are just too funky not to share.

On Friday, I tweeted

Then right afterwards… AnnaCampbellOZ retweeted me. If you aren’t aware, in the world of historical Romance, Anna Campbell is huge. HUGE.

So then I tweeted…

Honest to Zeus, the woman’s book is in my purse.

After five long years of …writing and rewriting and rewriting AGAIN. Round after round after round of submitting to publishing houses in New York.  More rewriting. A bountiful amount of whining, crying, moaning and feeling sorry for myself. A hard wrought decision made with my agent to self-publish (“Because why the hell not?” she said). Interviewing and hiring a professional editor. More rewriting. Finding the MOST talented cover artist to make that gorgeous cover.

Then finally — finally…

It’s available on Amazon as an ebook and because I will require a print copy it will be available in paper in the coming weeks.

So faithful readers, click any one of the eight zillion links I’ve set up here and buy Lady Belling’s Secret.

Francesca Belling is torn between two worlds—her past infatuation with her brother’s best friend and her future obligations. She never intended to end up in the bed of her longtime crush, Thomas Wallingham, but that’s exactly where she finds herself.

Unfortunately, mail is slow during a war. She thought he knew everything. He had never suspected.

Thomas has always wanted to be a part of the Belling’s family but he was too foolish to grab the chance when she threw herself at him before. Instead, he ran off to war. Emboldened by his new-found appreciation for a grown-up Francesca, he finds that dream is within his reach.

If she thinks he’s running away this time, she has no idea what she’s in for.

Leave a review if you feel so inclined.

And before you even knew you wanted to know — the second book is due back from my editor for the first round of edits – the worst round, the round that sucks out your soul, crushes your ego, and sends you to crying in the grocery store – in the middle of this month. So it will be coming out very soon.

Keep your eyes open for a contest giveaway in the next day or so for the launch of Lady Belling’s Secret. Keep in mind, the Sisters never do anything small.

The book is out! Oh. Sweet. Lord. We can’t believe it. And wait till you see the cover for the second book – Miss Goldsleigh’s Secret. Exquisite. Also, we’d like to mention in passing that the diet continues on. Some of us have had more success than others. Some of us are NOT happy about that and have become obsessed with the internet over it. Yes, obsessed. We know the definition of obsessed and this definitely qualifies as a clinical diagnosis. Also, we’d like to know if anyone out there is a doctor who will write us a prescription for a therapy cat? Anyone? Your rewards could be more compelling than we’re willing to list out in public. Think about it. While you’re musing that over…

When they brought it back they wrapped it and tied it to this horse. Odd, indeed

1. Giant Thievery. There are a lot of things to like about Germany. Strudel for instance. Lederhosen on the right fellow can be quite fetching. Perhaps his name is Gunter and he has thick blond hair that curls around his ears and collar. Maybe you met Gunter on the autobahn when your Porsche  got a flat and he stopped to assist. It’s possible that he was so smitten with you he offered to give you a ride in his white Mercedes Van and when you looked in the back you saw a giant cookie sculpture. That would explain who stole the one from in front of a German bakery in Hanover. But who cares because it’s Gunter and he’s adorable and, honestly, if the Sisters had seen the cookie sculpture first, we’d have stolen it too. Nevertheless, the cookie is back and all is well in the world.

2. Exciting jury duty. There was an assault trial in Philadelphia that centered around a bar fight that caused one of the combatants to lose an eye. That’s awful and we’re sorry that happened, but if it hadn’t happened we wouldn’t have this unfortunate incident to be amused by. During the victims testimony on the stand apparently he cried so hard his prosthetic eye popped out – in the middle of testimony. Are they supposed to do that? We don’t think that sounds right. Thank God he has good reflexes and caught the thing otherwise the jury could have been even more traumatized than they already were. The whole event ended in a mistrial, which is probably better than ending in everyone crawling around on the floor looking for an eye.

3. Richard III. Has been found. Damn good thing because the milk carton he was on was getting pretty ripe after 500 years. What the hell he was doing dying in a grocery store parking lot is beyond us, but that’s where they found him. We understand they’re going to change the Shakespeare play to read, “My kingdom for a shopping cart that doesn’t pull to the left!”

4. Action Figures. Apparently every one has an action figure except the Quill Sisters. Ours is going to come with two plump women reading on a park bench in front of a bakery. We figure if Barack Obama gets one we should too. The president’s is titled Obama Skeet Shooting President Action Figure from a company named HeroBuilders.com. Based on the title, we imagine you can deduce the accessories that come with the doll. This company has already issued the Anthony Weiner, Bernie Madoff and Balloon Boy’s Dad dolls. We SERIOUSLY hope the Anthony Weiner doll is not anatomically correct. We’ve already seen enough of that for a life time. Anthony Weiner is no Gunter, that’s all we can say.

5. Cafe Francais. We found a new bakery. A French one. We maxed out our credit cards over there at lunch today. Tomorrow is cheat day on the diet and we take our cheating very seriously. Everything in the case looked really lovely. It’s a damn good thing because the girl helping us behind the counter was dumber than fondant. She claimed it was her first day hoping that would give her a pass on our ire. Not so much. Amylynn was going to offer her a tutorial on the usage of tongs in case that would move her training along at a reasonable rate. The owner was a plumb, thickly accented French women. That’s a sure sign of a good bakery by the way. Don’t buy bakery goods from skinny people. It’s just not worth it.  Anyway, because the brain trust behind the counter was such a disaster there was a pile up at the cash register. This caused a very old, crabby person to get angry and storm out. We’re here to tell you that it would take a hell of a lot more than that to cause us to leave a French bakery without our little white boxes. We talked it over in the car afterwards and we think someone might have to actually hit us to make us leave and even then we’re not completely sure we’d leave right away.

Bill Watterson

You know when you’re in a really awful mood and all you want to do is bite someone? And that whole if-you-can’t-say-something-nice- bullshit completely hobbles you and you can’t talk to anyone cause you’re so foul.

I don’t want to diagnose it or tell you the minutiae of my day. That’s just too excruciating.

I’m gonna control/alt/delete this day and start over.

I love this video

MINIONS!