She Has to Trade the Car In

My fantasy author found a spider egg sack.
In the car.
Now, because she's just absolutely insane when it comes to this spider business, I can't laugh at this (much), but when she touched it (because she thought it might be a worm of some sort...and I don't understand that...), it moved and tiny baby spiders erupted from it. She let out a sound that I don't ever want to hear again.

Needless to say, the car will smell like Raid for a month.

She is actually considering trading in the car. I don't see how she can afford to do this with the foreclosure taking place, but she's persistent, you know. Oh, and she's also fussy. She's informed me that I can't talk about spiders anymore. We'll have a new topic tomorrow. (And, really, she has so many neuroses to choose from...)

Tags: fantasy author

She Had Another Spider-in-the-Car Incident

I probably shouldn't make fun of her this way, but my fantasy author just stepped away from the writing den, which means I have full command of the computer and keyboard. She can't stop me. Yesterday, Sandy Lender had another one of those spider encounters that raises her blood pressure. The creature's gut-smear is still on the driver's side window...

Let me set the scene for you so you can appreciate this as much as the witness did. Oh, yes, there was a witness to the whole thing this time. She had just checked the mail (which became the weapon that created "the smear") and returned to the driver's seat. She closed the door, drove about twenty feet, let out this ear-piercing shriek, threw the car into "park", flung the door open, and swatted the spider (which was moving at a pretty good clip) mere inches from her head.

For those of you who know Sandy, you might think she was brave in killing the spider (about an inch long, including bent legs, she said afterward). But I think she killed it for lack of any other recourse. Think about it. She couldn't get out of the car because she'd have to get past the spider. (I think we can all agree that wasn't happening.) And she couldn't climb over the gear-shift and the passenger seat to exit the car that way (which she's done in the blink of an eye once before when escaping a spider) because a friend was sitting in the passenger seat.

So she looked brave (except for the scream that frightened her friend into thinking she'd just run over a child) for a moment, but she's nervous every time she gets into the car now. This is the third spider-in-the-car incident in a year. She's considering trading the car in...

Tags: fantasy author, Sandy Lender, spider

She Hasn't Repressed This One, Careless Memory #2

A Glimpse into a Writer's Life
I still think she's messed up, but she gave me another article to use in this series about the past life of the Fantasy Author Sandy Lender. She said I could share this because it makes the case for how writers are influenced by little things that happen in their lives. (that and I think she's mocking me for talking about her spider fear all the time)

In the summer of 1976, Fantasy Author Sandy Lender was six years old and living in Sterling, Ill. A "common area" of grass and weeds grew between the apartment complex where she and her parents lived and a row of homes behind the apartments. One hot, sunny day, she and her friend Debbie (she thinks it was Debbie) were playing in that common area when Sandy developed her insane fear of spiders.

The girls happened upon a brilliant red plastic fireman's hat in the field. It was a toy, something one of the neighborhood boys had probably dropped while playing. But he must have dropped it very recently prior to the girls finding it because the sun had had no time to bleach out the vibrant color. Inside the hat was a large black and yellow plastic spider, glistening in the sun, its long spindly legs reflecting light as if the legs were wet with spittle from some demon's mouth. Sandy was instantly attracted to the contrast in colors before her. "How neat!" she thought. The startling black and yellow of the plastic spider practically filling the mouth of the red toy hat must have made her eyes sparkle with the same dewiness of the spider's abdomen. And as she reached down to grab the hat…the spider moved.

I can hear her shriek even now…

She learned later that it was a banana spider (not poisonous) and they can get pretty large (leg span). I asked Sandy if she planned to include any spiders in my bride's story, the Choices Meant for Gods trilogy.

"I would never do that to Chariss," Sandy said vehemently. "I may have an evil sorcerer teaming up with an ancient, evil goddess to track her down and kill her, but I would never make her deal with spiders."

If you'd like to read the story of Amanda Chariss, you can pick up the epic fantasy novel at www.amazon.com or www.archebooks.com. There's also information about the novel at Sandy Lender's main blog at www.todaythedragonwins.blogspot.com and my mother's blog http://choicesmeantforgods.wordpress.com.

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, fantasy author, fantasy novel, writer's life, Amanda Chariss, Today the Dragon Wins, dragon, sorcerer, goddess, spider

She has Different Screams for Different Sizes of Spiders

I didn't realize this until Tuesday night when she got home from work (late, by the way) and set a bag on the kitchen counter. She claims she saw the hairy thick leg of the beast under the edge of the counter and that's what set off the first scream. I was in her writing den and knew we had a big one.

I swear, she chased it all over the living room with the Raid can, coating it until it was snowy white…

The good news is she won. The wolf spider did not. What gets me is she won't touch the things for at least 24 hours after they've stopped twitching. She just fears them leaping up and skittering up her arm or something as she goes to collect their carcasses. (What's this? Well if you didn't read over my shoulder you wouldn't get "the heebie jeebies" over what I'm writing, now would you?)

Here's my question to all you visitors out there, whether you have authors or not: do all women do this? Leave the carcass for a day? It's kind of disgusting… But she insists it must lay there until she's absolutely sure it's dead. She used to make the moron that lived here show her the dead carcass if he killed one of these things. If he couldn't produce a body, she didn't believe he'd killed the spider and, oh, didn't we have a nightmare then? She can't tolerate one of those things alive in the house. They really can get quite large…and the larger the spider, the more piercing the scream. The faster the spider is moving, the more clipped and rapid the succession of screams. I'm not kidding. It's insane. She can fire off a series of four or five of these piercing shrieks (What? Well you won't let me write about anything else…)

Woah. Next…I'm going to post a blog about the author's childhood. (Wait a minute…I thought you repressed your childhood.)

Tags: spiders, childhood, author

She's Taking No Prisoners

Imagine my complete surprise when we opened the door to Sandy's house last night to the sight of one of those enormous wolf spiders on her ceiling...and she didn't scream. In fact, she spoke to it in one of those voices that sounds a bit demonic. I don't remember her exact words, but it was something to the effect of, "No, you don't get to live. And you get to die now." The bird was screeching, the spider was trying to lie flat against the ceiling (which is difficult when they're so amazingly large), and she was brandishing the can of UltraRaid. She marched over, lifted the can, and wasted the thing. Of course it tried to get away, which is the point where she usually starts screaming again.

I'm rather proud of her. She says she's had enough crap coming at her in life. She's done accepting it.

No more prisoners.

I think I'll lay low this weekend while she's traveling and just make sure she doesn't land herself in jail...

All my best,

Nigel

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods

She's Not Spiderman

Or Spiderwoman, as the case may be. See, she almost wrecked the car—again.

This seems to be a problem for Sandy. Luckily, no one was in the lanes (plural) next to her when she started swerving around screaming like an idiot. She truly has a problem with spiders, especially when they’re the size of mice and running across the sun visors in the cabin of the car while she’s trying to drive. The good news is she had the presence of mind to use a turn signal, pull into the far turn lane, pile out of the car, and do her little spider dance in the median where many people saw her and stopped to help.

Oddly enough, there weren’t any police officers around to help her today…But there was a wonderful lady with her son, Conner, who stopped to help block traffic (because Sandy just stopped the car there in the middle of the lane).

Anyway, the spider went up under the console of the car and she had to drive to Walgreens to get bug spray to deal with it. I’m pleased to announce that the people in this society will stop to assist a woman screaming in a drug store parking lot. I’m not so pleased to announce that she’s nursing a migraine over the ordeal. She had to take a nap. A nap. Let me reiterate that. The woman was so distraught over a simple spider…oh…here she is. I’m being censored now.

Sigh. Let me re-explain that the spider was the size of a mouse and moved very quickly. And let me further explain that two of the full-grown men who stopped to assist her in the parking lot while she chased said spider around the cabin of the car stated that they were also afraid and informed her that wolf spiders bite. So she had an extended period of time this afternoon during which her blood pressure and adrenaline system were elevated and operating in fight-or-flight mode. And then she had to drive 30 minutes home with what she “hoped” was a dead wolf spider under the driver’s seat because that’s the last place it darted, coated with Raid, and from which it never emerged.

To be honest, I truly felt sorry for her. She’s terrified of these things. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast, while screaming, as she did when it dropped from the console to the floor mat by her foot (You might start wearing less-sexy footwear, hunh? Something that covers your feet, maybe?). She literally bolted over the gear shift, over the grocery bag in the passenger seat and out the passenger door in under two seconds. I think this may have been the episode that drew everyone’s attention in the parking lot…

When she got home, she rolled all the windows back up on the car in an effort to suffocate the beast and sent her ‘significant other’ out to search for the body when he returned from his trip to the Midwest. He failed to return with a corpse, so she’s distraught again, worrying about her drive to work in the morning. I wish I had one of the carriages from home but I can guarantee that would take a very long time…

Oh for pity’s sake. I’m being asked to share a spider fact with you all. Did you know that spiders can hold their breath? That’s why having an exterminator bomb your house…what!? Oh…bug bomb? Having an exterminator bug bomb your house is useless for killing spiders because the demons (demons?) will merely hold their breath until the poison danger passes. (One of the gentlemen who stopped to help her suggested she get a bug bomb in addition to the can of Raid and bomb the car, and she thanked him for his advice, but she didn’t waste her time and money to set off something that would, no doubt, damage her central nervous system.) Know thy enemy.

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender, Spiderman