Me Being (Nicely) Wicked by J. Arlene Culiner

WICKED WEDNESDAY

I'm so happy to welcome back Jill Culiner to Discover... She has such a wickedly fun post for Wicked Wednesday. Despite knowing spiders are good guys, I still get all creepy crawlie over them. Gosh, not sure I like what that says about me. Ha!

I couldn’t stop myself… I just had to do it. One reviewer who did enjoy my contemporary romance, All About Charming Alice, mentioned that it was somewhat difficult to get used to a heroine who loved and protected snakes. She then added: “At least the heroine didn’t protect or save spiders.”

            You see what I mean? That was a call to arms as far as I’m concerned. I immediately knew I had to have a heroine who loved spiders, and that was a pretty easy since I happen to be a great lover of spiders, rescuing them and putting them in safe places. Spiders are our great friends. We need them desperately because they get rid of all the buzzing things we don’t want around us. Why are so many people afraid of them? Lucy Barnes, one heroine in my new book, A Room in Blake’s Folly, gives this explanation: 

“The more you know about spiders, the more appealing they become. So why do people hate them? Because some people associate spiders with the things they consider repulsive like lice, dirt, slime, and dust. Arachnophobia can also be linked to sexual problems and sexual repression. What’s definitely true is that half of all women but only ten percent of men are afraid of spiders. Now just try and work that fact into a discussion about sexual equality.” 

       Now let’s see what happens when Lucy first meets the very appealing hero, Lance Potter 

Excerpt from A Room in Blake’s Folly 

       Lance saw the woman doubled over in the dirt road, her legs bent backward and to each side of her in what looked to be an exceedingly painful position. Had she been hit by a car? Probably not: few enough cars passed this way. She might have had an attack of some sort. He loped toward her, thinking only of rescue and alleviating pain, because that’s what a veterinarian’s job is all about, and humans happen to be animals, too.

       He was less than ten feet away, when she raised her head and glared at him with fury. The look, as toxic as a poison arrow, halted him in his tracks. She certainly didn’t look as though she needed his help. She didn’t look as though she’d ever need anyone’s help.

“Um…I’m sorry. I saw you down there, in the road, and I thought…”

       He saw her fury seep away, transform into visible regret. “You chased it away.”

“Right.”

       Swinging her bent legs into a more reasonable position, she stood up without using her hands. For someone who wasn’t young, she looked to be in perfect shape. Or at least she had maintained an admirable flexibility.

       He knew who she was, all right. Who else had a long bushy ponytail of silvery hair? Who else had three dogs trailing after her—three dogs now sitting calmly in the shade of the abandoned laundry and watching him, wary-eyed. They knew he was one of the vets who gave them shots every year, and that meant he was no real friend.

       The woman in front of him, what was her name? Lucy something…oh yes, Lucy Barnes, and she worked in Rose Badger’s vintage clothing shop whenever Rose roared off to Reno. For the first time, he noticed the camera.

       “Look, I thought you had fallen or…”

“Yes, I realize that’s what you thought.” She didn’t look as though she were about to forgive him for it either.

       “You were taking a photo?”

       “Yup.”

       “Of what?”

       “A Xysticus.”

       “A what?

       “Oh, sorry. A ground crab spider.”

       “Of a ground crab spider?”

       She relented slightly. “They’re called crab spiders because they look and move like crabs.”

       “Yes,” he said dryly. “I think I’ve worked that one out.”

       “Right.”

       “What for? Why were you taking a photo?”

       “Because I like them. I like macro photography, I like taking photos of spiders, and this particular spider was very pretty.”

       “Pretty. Got it.”

       She looked annoyed again. “Veterinarians don’t consider arachnids worthy of notice?”

       “Did I just tell you that?” he said a little too defensively because she was right: he never noticed them. Okay, he never killed them either, because he knew how useful they were, but that was as far as things went. “What was particularly pretty about that one? I mean spiders look like spiders to me. I never thought aesthetics came into it.”

       “Really?” She even looked surprised.

       “Really.” Inwardly, he sighed, regretting his attempt to maintain chatty conversation. It was always the same when you dealt with nuts, cranks, and fanatics: they couldn’t understand how normal people functioned.

            “Most crab spiders are brown-beige so they can blend into their surroundings and catch prey easily. They do have splotches though, and this one had a nice leaf marking on its opisthosoma.” She smirked. “Sorry, that’s the posterior part of the body. The front part is the—”

       “Prosoma,” he interrupted.

       The smirk faded and, wordlessly, she stared at him. It was his turn to be haughty. “Since you know I’m a veterinarian, you’ll probably accept that, in this century, we do go to school. And while we’re there, we manage to study a little science.”

       “Sorry,” she said contritely.

            “That’s all right.” He tried not to look too self-satisfied. 

A Room in Blake’s Folly by J. Arlene Culiner

(published by The Wild Rose Press) 

If only the walls could speak…

In one hundred and fifty years, Blake's Folly, a silver boomtown notorious for its brothels,
scarlet ladies, silver barons, speakeasies, and divorce ranches, has become a semi-ghost town.
Although the old Mizpah Saloon is still in business, its upper floor is sheathed in dust. But in a
room at a long corridor's end, an adventurer, a beautiful dance girl, and a rejected wife were once caught in a love triangle, and their secret has touched three generations. 

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Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt3VkYUTVNk 

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