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Today's Featured Artist: Michael Godard
Transform your photos into one-of-a-kind, hand painted masterpieces!
by Otto Rapp
Quiet Afternoon At The Studio by Otto Rapp - 10.000" x 7.125"
Acrylic Print
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Acrylic Print
Quiet Afternoon At The Studio acrylic print by Otto Rapp. Bring your artwork to life with the stylish lines and added depth of an acrylic print. Your image gets printed directly onto the back of a 1/4" thick sheet of clear acrylic. The high gloss of the acrylic sheet complements the rich colors of any image to produce stunning results. Two different mounting options are available, see below.
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Love this painting,great.Leon
Light and airy, the future of surrealism.
Mounting Option #1
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Bring your artwork to life with the stylish lines and added depth of an acrylic print. Your image gets printed directly onto the back of a 1/4" thick sheet of clear acrylic.
The image is the art - it doesn't get any cleaner than that!
All acrylic prints ship within 3 - 4 business days and arrive "ready to hang" with four aluminum mounting posts (Option #1) or hanging wire (Option #2).
The high gloss of the acrylic sheet complements the rich colors of any image to produce stunning results.
There are two different ways to mount your acrylic print.
Option #1 (Mounting Posts) - Attach your print to your wall with four aluminum mounting posts. The cylindrical cap of each mounting post can be removed, allowing you to thread a small screw along the center axis of the of post and into the wall. When you're finished, simply reattached each cap, and you're done. The mounting posts act as stand-offs and keep your print separated from the wall by 1". All of the required mounting hardware (i.e. posts, screws, and wall anchors) is included with your print. Click here for mounting details.
Option #2 (Hanging Wire) - With this option, your acrylic print is attached to a 1/4" thick black board which has a wooden frame and hanging wire attached to the back. There are no metal mounting posts at the corners. Simply put a nail in your wall, hang your print from the hanging wire, and you're done. Due to the thickness of the black board and mounting frame, your print is separated from the wall by 1.50" Click here for mounting details.
Average Rating (5 Stars):
Brenda Tincher
August 16th, 2018
I purchased this photo in a 30 x 28 Acrylic print of my family marsh which my mother still owns. It is Spectacular beyond words. I want to Thank Peter for an absolute beautiful photo and also Fine Arts America for the beautiful job of the photo and their packaging. I will be purchasing more. This is a family heirloom my family and grandbabies will appreciate now and in the future. Thank You.
Allen Jeroy
August 15th, 2018
I just love my Floral Explosion. It works perfect. It works so well in the bedroom so it matches all the sheets and bedspreads. Now shipping and waiting and waiting for this print. I think it was two months before I got it. The said a sofa size takes a lot longer. Not the 2-3 day. Try 2 to 3 months. I so want three others but I won't give them my money and shipping takes forever
Caitlin Schulzke
August 15th, 2018
This is my favorite painting and I waited 6 years to finally purchase. I spent extra in order to have oil paint added in order to have a 3D effect and that was not what showed up at my home. It was very unfortunate. I still love the painting but it wasn't what I wanted and haven't had the heart to hang it in my home yet.
Kat Fentiman
August 15th, 2018
it said that you declined my first order of this giraffe. i am reordering it as you asked. i only want one of these be sure you only send 1 do not send order 1048608. just send 1048526. i have ordered with you many times for thousands of dollars.. What's up here??? I am decorating another place. Please send ONLY ONE!!!!
Kat Fentiman
August 15th, 2018
Initially created in 1976 this painting sustained damage and was restored in 1996 by mounting the canvas on masonite and retouching as well as additional painting.
THE MYSTIC OTTO RAPP Born in 1944 in Felixdorf, Lower Austria, I lived and was educated in Vienna, where later I worked as a clerk in the Transport and Insurance Business. After completing service in the Austrian Air Force, I traveled throughout Europe, eventually settling in Stockholm, Sweden. As a Painter I was initially self taught, studying in the various Galleries and Museums. In Vienna, I was often hanging out at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste, where I admired the work of the Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus represented there by the Professors Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner and Arik Brauer. In Stockholm, I found out that I was washing dishes in the very same Restaurant where years earlier another Viennese...
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The best way to keep up to date with Southwark Rugby
3rd XV Captain: Richard Tromans
Kent Metropolitan League » Master Brew
All new players welcome. Contact a member of staff below or feel free to turn up at a training session.
Cobourg Road Southwark London London SE5 0JB View with Google Maps
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subset: commoncrawl


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Connecting your Eleventh Avenue store (formerly GroopDealz) to your ShipStation account is super easy! Just follow the steps below:
First, login to your Eleventh Avenue account here.
Then, click Shipping on the left. You should see a ShipStation tile located underneath Ship with one of our partners. Please click on the ShipStation tile.
After clicking the ShipStation tile, Eleventh Avenue will display your automated Username and Password in a new window. These credentials are what you will need to connect your store to ShipStation.
Head to your Account Settings (the wrench icon in the upper right).
Next, select Selling Channels and then Store Setup from the sidebar on the left.
Click the Connect a Store or Marketplace button and choose the Eleventh Avenue tile.
Paste your autogenerated Username and Password from Eleventh Avenue into the appropriate fields. Please note that these are NOT your primary Eleventh Avenue login credentials.
Now click Test Connection in ShipStation to see if the steps you followed worked correctly. If successful, click Finish to make your store active in ShipStation! Then, you'll be prompted to fill out your store settings in ShipStation.


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In development: Schwab Advisor Portfolio Connect™
A new approach to portfolio management
Launch the interactive demo below to learn more.
Technology and workflows designed for the way you work best
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We are currently testing the application with client firms using their data. Their input is helping to ensure that when we deliver this solution, it will meet your needs both today and in the years to come. For more information on availability, or to let us know you are interested in testing, please contact your Schwab Performance Technologies representative.
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Sabrina Strong
is a suicide attempt survivor.
I survived a suicide attempt.
Sabrina: I am nine and a half years out from my suicide attempt.
Des: That's a long time.
Sabrina: I don't know how that happened. It's kind of a momentous thing.
Des: You'll have to have a party in six months.
Sabrina: In some ways, it feels like a big accomplishment. In some ways it's, "Well, what have I done with myself?"
I'm trying to think where I even begin, cause this was so long ago. It feels like this has been my whole life. I've thought about this a lot lately—at some point it would be nice to do something else, and have suicide not be my whole life.
The first time I got depressed, I was nineteen. It was the first time I knew there was something not right, but no one really knew what to do with me. It got bad by the time I was a junior in college.
I was with the same man the entire time I was in college. In retrospect, I put him through some really horrible things. I remember one day I actually took the safety razor apart in the bathroom, and realized that I couldn't actually cut myself, because [I don't like] pain. I was so upset then, I couldn't get the thing back together. I sort of put it in a bunch and threw it back under the sink. I remember him coming out, going, "What is this?" I burst into tears and then he knew.
Transition periods are always tough. That transition from college to real life sucked. That relationship was ending and I knew once I left, we were not going to see each other again, which is pretty much what happened. I moved back home, had to go get a job. I had a really hard time getting a job because I didn't know what I wanted to do.
For a while, things were okay. I was being treated for another medical condition by using an anti-depressant, so I was getting a little boost from that. I thought I was better, but I didn't understand that I was being medicated. That worked for a while. Things were great. I was organized and I was great at work, but then the side effects got to be too bad. I was piling on weight. I didn't need [the medication] anymore because the other medical issues had resolved themselves. I said, "All right, I'm going to stop taking this." Then I started to slowly decompensate.
I hated my job, I hated everybody I worked with.
I hated my job, I hated everybody I worked with. I was doing case management for a psychosocial rehab program. Most of the folks on my caseload had schizophrenia or psychotic issues. They were great. The staff? I didn't know what their problems were. I loved my clients, but I hated working there, and I got picked on. They had a way of giving feedback that was incredibly harsh, and I would be shattered every single time.
Then, a really unusual opportunity presented itself. In our family, we would give scratch tickets for holidays. We've done it for years. I was living in Massachusetts through all this, where I was born. There's this magical place there called Vista Donuts that does more volume for lottery than you can ever imagine and, therefore, they have a lot of winners.
My mom comes back with two scratch tickets; she gives one to my dad and one to me. She's like, "Just do 'em. You can have them now."
So, they're chit-chatting. I'm scratching off my ticket. I'm looking at it and looking at it and thinking, "Is this real?"
Finally, I said, "Does anybody want to know what I won?" I'd hit for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
My mom's like, "No! No, no, no!" She looks at it, and she goes, "Oh my god." To my credit, I figured I'd have to split it, and they were like, "No, this is your money."
I quit my job and I went to graduate school. I was able to go to a school that I would not have been able to afford. I went to Boston University to get my Master's in public health. I moved out, bought furniture, and paid off my student loans, which never would have happened. It's funny, my mom will yell at me for talking about this more than talking about my suicide attempt. It ended up being just one of those random things. It was really cool for awhile, but it didn't fix all my other problems.
In the meantime, I had met a man online. It was a bad idea from the beginning, but I didn't know. I was twenty-four at that point. I was too stupid to understand that I should have let the opportunity pass me by. It's one of those things where you say, "I don't know if I would do that again..." There's a part of me still wishes we could skip it because it ended up being one of the worst things that happened to me.
He was very upfront about the fact that he was leaving the country in three weeks. I had just had my heart broken by somebody else. I said, "Okay, that's fine. Let's just have a fling. It'll be fun." We liked each other instantly, and immediately had a problem. We spent a lot of time together in those three weeks. Then he left. He was gone, except we were having a sort of long-distance thing going on because he would occasionally come back.
It was bad. What I didn't realize at the time, what I figured out later, and what he eventually copped to, was that he had a girlfriend back home in Germany. A girlfriend, the entire time, who he was cheating on with more than just me.
He was one of the last people I disclosed to, because I needed him to know. It was the last time I saw him. I needed him to know that I was not okay, and that he needed to let me go. He changed the subject. That was hard, and probably two years before I attempted, give or take. I never told anyone again after that. I was done talking to anybody, because that was so awful. Even then, he didn't take the hint. I still had to be the one to tell him to fuck off.
After being totally debt-free, I managed to rack up all my credit cards again, because I ran out of money. It wasn't a lot of money. It sounds like it. Two hundred and fifty thousand sounds like a lot of money. After taxes, I saved some. Tuition to Boston University wasn't cheap. I think it was about forty thousand dollars a year. It took me two years to pay off student loans. I got used to having nice things because shopping was one of the ways I dealt with how bad I felt, because I was basically just a walking open wound all the time.
I just couldn't handle anything, even basic stuff, so if I could get through the day, it was because I was faking it all the time. Every single day, "I'm fine, things are fine. I'm great, I'm just tired. I'm okay." I put on a show for everybody, because I didn't want them know. It was embarrassing—I knew I wasn't right. I knew I wasn't okay. That was not the way everybody else lived their lives.
I had enough friends in my life with problems that we sort of commiserated, which was also probably not what I needed. A lot of them sort of drifted off. Someone I was very close to met a man, decided she didn't want to deal with me and my problems anymore, and just stopped talking to me.
Eventually, I had almost no friends because I always wanted to talk about how bad I felt, or, "I still miss this man," or, "I hate my job, I hate my boss, I hate this, I hate that." Nobody wanted to hear it because no one wants to deal with that. You become that person, and no one wants you around. You become an emotional black hole. Nothing makes it; you keep throwing all the positive reinforcement and anything into it, and it just goes nowhere. There is no bottom. The slightest anything would cause me to spiral out and be shutting the door, putting my head on the desk and crying, because I felt just awful.
I eventually graduated. How I made it through school, I do not know. I didn't make any friends. I have friends that go all the way back to elementary school, and I did not make a single friend in graduate school. I sat by myself. I would write. Everybody knew I was off. I was weird and it was a fancier school. A lot of people had family paying their way, people who had free time to hang out and have fun. I had a job, so I could have health insurance.
I was working in a group home at that point. I was doing overnights, [but] I was asleep overnight. The pay was crap, but it was money coming in, and again, I could have health insurance. So, I slept somewhere else four nights a week: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So, when everyone's like, "You should come out with us!" Really? No.
I ended up picking up another part-time job doing pretty similar work, and filling in, because if I was working, at the very least—one, there's money coming in, and two, I couldn't think. [If I was] thinking, things went bad.
Up through that first year of graduate school, I was still going back and forth with this man over email. "Gonna be in Boston. I'd like to see you." I wasn't getting it at the time. Everybody got it, that was the worst part. Everybody understood. Just about everybody was afraid to tell me. Everybody knew I'd lost my goddamn mind, that he was no good. Everybody!
Around the time I started graduate school and things got really bad, I started going to talk to my primary care doctor about the fact that I was just not okay. I wasn't sleeping. I'd always had problems with insomnia, but it was getting out of control. I would just not sleep.
That's when we started with sleeping pills and Ambien. She started basically playing psychiatrist, which was not good for me. She didn't know psych meds well enough to be guessing as much as she did. She tried me on an SSRI for a long time. It really didn't do the job. I said finally, "I'm having side effects, but I'm not feeling happy. Can we be done with this?" She started eventually just medicating whatever symptoms I came through the door with.
What I didn't understand is that it was all depression. This is the many faces of depression, which people don't seem to get. They don't advertise that. That's really when we were into heavy direct-to-consumer advertising for antidepressants. My favorite one was the one about, "Depression hurts everybody," and they have a poor dog who doesn't get to go out and play, and I was like, "Yeah..."
I felt like that a good portion of the time, but also, I couldn't sleep, I was anxious all the time, and I would just drive and drive around. Every night I would drive, because I couldn't stand still, couldn't be with myself, I couldn't just be. Every night, no clue where I was going. I knew all the back roads for a fifty mile radius where I lived. Music, screaming and crying, and doing whatever.
I commuted to Boston for two years to school, and I would have days where I would cry all the way there. I'd think, "This is ridiculous. What am I doing?" I would get into the parking garage and I remember sitting there one day, saying, "Okay. Well, class starts at two. It's decision time. You either suck it up and go to class, or you turn around and go home and kill yourself, but now you have to make a decision, because we're here now."
[Then I'd think], "Okay, pull it together. Let's go."
Every day. Every day I fought that fight. "Aw, I'm just gonna go kill myself. I'm done." I always say the thing about depression: it just sorta takes everything. It slowly takes everything away. The last thing it tries to take is your life.
I'm an only child and one thing I've heard my entire life is, "I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you." I hung onto that for a long time because, at the very least, I could hear that voice in my head going, "Okay, this is where I have to stop, because I believe that. That makes perfect sense."
I'd say, probably about two years before I tried to kill myself, I started to convince myself that I was actually doing my parents a favor. If you tell yourself that lie long enough, you will start to believe it. They would understand by virtue of how desperate this act would be. They would understand, I was sure of that.
Which is so fascinating to me, doing this work now in suicide prevention and working with folks who are suicide [loss] survivors. The biggest question is always, "Why?" That's the question I'm asked is, "Why?"
[I'd say], "What do you mean, "Why?" 'Cause life sucked. Isn't it evident in what we tried to do, and what people have done?"
They're like, "No, I don't understand."
[I'd think], "How can you not understand? Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know? That you can't even conceive of how you could get that far down has to tell you how bad our lives are."
But that's not how it works. I struggle always to explain it to people in a way, but the thing that I find interesting is how many people will talk about every other struggle they've had in their life. No matter what it is, they'll say, "But it's still better than being suicidal."
When I was in college as an undergraduate, I had ulcerative colitis. It went into remission. Within the year after my suicide attempt in 2005, I started to have a lot of GI problems. I started having weird allergy problems, and I was having weird, almost anaphylactic reactions to all kinds of stupid things. It eventually got so bad that I was running out of sick time at work—I was having to use vacation time. I would be in bed, disoriented. I couldn't think, I couldn't remember anything, my joints hurt, my head hurt, and I couldn't eat anything, virtually. I couldn't digest vegetables. My diet was so bizarre and out of control. Life really sucked for years.
Now that we've started to kind of piece some of it together, obviously something happened where trauma triggered some response that has either brought my ulcerative colitis out of remission, or triggered an irritable bowel syndrome, or some kind of weird autoimmune thing. Regardless, we're here now. I'm intolerant to basically every grain—wheat, corn, any of the alternative stuff. If it's a grain, my stomach just can't deal with it. I have weird allergies to most fruit, onions, peanuts, some tree nuts. Dairy is questionable. It's not always consistent because it's not my primary problem. It's a weird autoimmune thing that happens.
Even with all of that, it is still not as bad as being suicidal and wanting to die all the time.
Even with all of that, it is still not as bad as being suicidal and wanting to die all the time. People always wonder how I coped with [GI problems]. I was like, "Because I've dealt with so much worse. You have no idea how much worse life can be. I'll take this. I will live like this. If this is the penance I have to do to never have to feel that way again, then I'll take it. If that's the deal on the table, I'll take it. Anything to not feel like that again."
It got so bad, and I was so alone.
It's so weird. We have all these conversations about which states are doing better in terms of suicide prevention. It's a really weird conversation because New Mexico is really at the bottom in terms of per capita mental healthcare spending. Our mental health system was gutted recently. We now are third worst for suicide rates in the nation, but then people start talking about, "Oh, Massachusetts is a wonderful place," like it's magical, and I'm saying, "Yeah, and I tried to kill myself there." There still aren't people talking about it. Yes, they have number one in per capita spending and all these great, innovative things happening, but not where I was. I didn't have anybody that I knew of, and I was in the mental health field. The stigma in that is so intense. Who do you go to?
I graduated from school in 2004. I can't believe I made it through. I should have been really happy at my graduation, but I couldn't feel anything. It was a great thing, and I could fake being happy, but I couldn't feel what everybody else around me was feeling. My parents were proud, my grandmother was proud. She said, "Your grandfather would be proud of you," but I couldn't feel anything.
I had two jobs. I was working at the group home, and I had a new job that someone I knew had pulled me into, because I needed a public person with a public health background working on a federal grant. Both of those things ended up being disastrous.
We start the program. I'm doing the best I can. The community's totally dysfunctional, the group doesn't want to do anything, the program plan the person wrote the original grant for was totally unrealistic in every way. We were supposed to be getting technical systems from the State Department of Health Promotion. The woman who ran that program was such a bitch, and she had such a dominant personality that people either fell in line with her right away and worshiped the ground she walked on, or there was a problem. I was one of the people she had a problem with, and she made it her personal mission to let everyone know how incompetent I was at every chance she could possibly get.
At the same time, I'm working at the group home, and I start dating somebody that I'm working with. In the beginning, it was okay. I didn't really think it through. But, that was 2004. [I was] headed towards absolute disaster and I didn't care. I needed somebody. I needed something. In retrospect, I feel really horrendous about that. I think, honestly, at one point he might have saved my life.
There was a night where things got really bad. I was writing a suicide note, and that was when it was so much cheaper to just get your medication [in large quantities]. What I had on me would have done the job.
The worst part is when I talked to my doctor about it. I was like, "Well, I got [a lot of] pills."
She said, "Oh, that won't do anything. This other thing that you're taking, however, we'd have a problem with that."
I actually do training with physicians [now], and I say, "Please don't do this." They're so used to doing patient education, they don't think before the words come out of their mouths. Don't tell me what will do it and what won't.
I got so upset writing the note, I ended up calling him instead. He talked me through it, and it was okay. At some point I realized that we were totally incompatible. We were too different. We got along fine. It was sweet and fun, and then I realized we didn't have the same value system. It was not going to work. I broke up with him, and I felt like I broke his heart. It was right before Christmas, because I'm a bitch. He started writing me letters. He'd send one every day. I just stopped opening them because I felt so horrible.
Somewhere around that time, my doctor had the brilliant idea that maybe I had some kind of bipolar disorder because of the mood swings which, in retrospect, was stupid and ridiculous, but she didn't know what she was looking at. She medicated whatever I came in with. I got anxious, I got agitated, but I don't get manic. My mother might disagree with that, but...
I definitely never felt good. I definitely knew something was wrong when it was happening. It's that agitation that comes with being suicidal that I recognize in other people. Most everybody knows that feeling like you can't calm down. You can't stop. You're in it. When I see it in other people, it scares me. It's like, "Okay, we're gonna sit and we're gonna wait for you to come down." I remember every time that's happened where it was almost an action, and it's scary and terrifying every single time. You don't forget that.
So, my doctor had this brilliant idea. There was a new medication at the time which no one was going to pay for because it was only a combination of two meds, so she put me on Prozac and Zyprexa. That was my first experience with antipsychotics, and I became a zombie. I was not psychotic, but I think taking antipsychotics is the closest I will ever come to experiencing that feeling.
When I was still working with people who had psychosis, I felt bad every single time I had to hand them Zyprexa. Now I realize why you don't want to take it. That shit's awful. It's just awful. I would just sit and zone out. I would fall asleep on the couch, drooling. Side effects were so bad that I was so out of it, but at least I felt better… and they had convinced me that I was bipolar, so I was obviously screwed up beyond belief. "Just take your pills and shut up."
I finally quit the group home, which was good. I don't have to deal with the wreckage of breaking this poor guy's heart, which is good because, of course, as much as he drove everybody nuts there, he's such a sweet guy. It's sort of like kicking a puppy. I kind of knew I would not be welcomed back there, so I was glad I didn't have to show my face again.
At my other job, it was time to reapply for a federal grant. I'd never written a grant before, much less a federal application, which is the most complicated grant you can possibly do, and I was getting no help. I didn't know how to ask for help. I had this horrible woman from the State Department telling everybody how horrible and incompetent I am, and here comes the deadline. I don't have anything, and I'm not really with the program.
At this point, I'm not sleeping. I have built up a fantastic tolerance to sleeping pills because one doesn't work anymore. I needed up to three to get any sleep. It was wintertime. It was the end of March. I don't actually remember the exact day, I kinda guesstimate every year. A week or so before my birthday, everything came together.
I hadn't done anything. I had brainwashed myself to believe I was doing everybody a favor. This deadline is coming up, my finances are a mess, my apartment's a mess, my life is a mess, and I'm high on sleeping pills because that's what I would do. That's a problem I developed years before, where I realized that if I took one before I went to sleep sometime, it would do this thing where my emotions would just shut off.
It was the only peace I had, ever, and if you mixed [the medication] with a bottle of cheap wine, you could ride that feeling out for a few hours. It was the only peace of mind I ever had, and I knew better than to tell anybody that—that's how you get your sleeping pills cut off. That's how people start doing an intervention. At that point, I didn't know that there was an intervention to be had.
I had to move the year prior because my apartment flooded. I had no insurance, so I lost basically everything I didn't pull out in the first two or three days. I had to start again. I was living in a place where I was basically by myself all the time. I had the nights to myself, so I could be as loud and weird as I wanted to be. I had the whole house to myself.
It was the weirdest thing. We'd kinda found it by accident because a friend, who actually was the woman who sold my parents their house, worked for an agency that had this three-story house. Their office was on the first floor, an engineering firm was on the second floor, and an apartment to rent was on the third floor. I ended up at the apartment, but to get in and out, I had to walk through somebody's business all the time. It was so bizarre. After five, six o'clock, everybody was gone, and I had this creepy house to myself.
The music is blasting, I'm totally jacked up on Ambien, and numbed out on antipsychotics. I just said, "I'm done. I'm disconnected enough that I'm aware enough to be able do it, but I'm checked out enough that I won't talk myself out of it." I took every single pill I had. It wasn't a lot, so I figured, "Well, then I have to take everything. I don't have enough of anything. We're just gonna take it all."
Music was on, I was drinking, and then I blacked out. At one point, I remember lying on my bed and hallucinating. Because of a certain combinations of medication I had taken, you get what's called serotonin syndrome, and that's when you start to see things. I was lying on my bed, watching things come out of my closet. My apartment had either mice or rats—they never did find anything—but I could hear them scratching at night, so I think I was hearing the noises and my brain was filling in the blanks of things just coming out. Then I saw a snake come out of my closet, and bats.
The next thing you know, I'm on my kitchen floor and I can't get up. I keep trying to get up, because I realize what's happened. I know where I am. My very first thought is, "Oh shit, I'm alive." My second thought is, "No one can know about this." I don't even know where I am, what day or what time it is, what's going on. I can't even get up, but I knew—no one can ever know about this.
I keep trying to get up, but I can't because I have no motor control whatsoever. Every time I fall, I fall down on my knees. A good six, eight inch section of both knees were just solid bruises by the end of that night. I don't know how many times I fell down. Maybe half a dozen.
I would get enough traction, and then I would lose all control and slam all my body weight down. I didn't feel anything and I didn't realize I was still high. Of course, there's work going on [downstairs]. They told me later, "You know, we heard you. We thought you were moving furniture or something." Which was fine—I would've been horrified if anybody had come and seen that.
I finally managed to come out of it at five or six o'clock at night, maybe closer to seven. The engineering firm is gone. I can stand up, but I'm still high and I don't know it. It's at least twenty hours later. I throw on some clothes and my eyes are as big as saucers. I'm bleeding out of one knee because I don't know what I did here. I broke something or fell on it.
I go downstairs, and the woman who runs the real estate agency is still there. I would [usually] go down and talk to her because she was my landlady, and we would just chitchat. I didn't realize that I wasn't normal and that I wasn't okay. I start talking to her and telling her about the things I was hallucinating because I felt like she needed to know that we needed an exterminator.
She said, "Are you taking any medication?"
Now, I don't understand what I'm presenting as. I don't understand that what I saw was a hallucination, but I still have enough sense to lie. I say, "Well, I had a migraine, so I took a couple migraine pills." That was sort of, kind of true.
She says, "That's nice. What's your mother's telephone number?" I'm stuck, but I tell her because I think, "Okay, this will be fine." She tells my mother, who lives five minutes up the road, "Something's not right. She's got a migraine. She's not okay," and my parents show up.
My mom takes one look at me, with my eyes as big as saucers, and says, "We're going to the emergency room."
I say, "Okay, I'm just gonna go upstairs and get my bag."
She says, "You get in the car right now."
I think, "Oh shit. Okay, I think I can pull this off. I can do this. They don't have to know. I don't know what to do now. I'm sort of stuck."
Between the ride from there to the emergency room, during the waiting, the whatever… my mom's still not getting it. I sit down with the triage nurse and she asked, "What happened?"
I spilled everything. I said, "I took all my pills."
I mean, I've got scratches all over one wrist. I'm bleeding out of one knee. I'm bruised, I'm beaten, and just a mess. I couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation. I just started to talk because I didn't have enough sense to not, and then things started to happen. They got me a room right away. I didn't realize it at the time, but my mom told me later that we had a guard outside the room.
I think I had the most amazing, heartfelt conversation with my mother ever, and I can't remember ninety-five percent of it because I was so high, which sucks. She said, "Why?"
I just said, like, "Everything. I'm done. I'm tired, and I'm tired of feeling like that. I'm tired of everything. I can't sleep. I can't do anything."
Then the social worker comes in and they give me two choices, which I actually can't even interpret because I'm so high. My mom told me later, "To your credit, it's a good thing you knew you needed to go somewhere."
What [the social worker] said was, "You can go to respite or you can go to inpatient," and I literally heard, "You can go to respite or you can go do outpatient."
I said, "Inpatient sounds good to me."
They were starting to make arrangements and it finally dawned on me what I'd agreed to. My mom said, "But you knew."
I said, "I did not. I didn't want to go do that!" I knew I was too embarrassed to say I really just didn't know what was going on to say, "Can I change my mind?"
Because, of course, now I'm going to the local psych hospital, which has so much stigma. There was a joke, like, "You're gonna end up here. You're gonna end up at Fuller."
"Oh, look. I'm at Fuller. I am crazy."
But I've also been doing all this work with these rehab programs, there's still a good chance I could end up in the hospital with one of my clients or my former clients. I was so terrified the entire time. Every time someone new would come in, I'd be afraid it would be somebody that I knew, and then they'd go back and say, "You'll never guess who I saw at the hospital. She finally cracked up. We knew she was crazy, but we didn't know she was that crazy."
I didn't really start to sober up until I was in the ambulance. It was the longest ambulance ride ever, and nobody talks to you. There's two paramedics and they both ignore you. They talk to each other, and you're strapped down and have no idea what's going to happen because they literally have to wheel you in to the locked ward. You've really done it this time.
It was about 2 A.M. [when I arrived]. Thankfully, the woman who worked the night shift was so nice. She brought me a sandwich, and then I got a room assignment. I just laid awake and stared because that's when I was really starting to sober up.
Everything was starting to hurt. They had pretty much just slapped a bandage on me and said, "Oh, that wound is fine."
I was like, "Um, but what about the giant fucking bruises that I have?"
[They said], "It's soft tissue damage, it'll be fine."
It's still not fine, by the way.
My mom's perception of it, because she was more aware of all of these things, was that, "Seriously, the second they knew that you had done this to yourself, they couldn't get away from you fast enough. They just wanted to throw a bandage on it, be done with you, and hand you off to the social worker."
Which is something we've actually heard of a lot: it's hard for emergency department staff to understand how to deal with people who are in accidents and victims of violent crime, and then you're the idiot who comes in who did it to yourself. They look at you and go, "Really? We don't have time for you."
I spent about four days in the hospital. The first two days I didn't really sleep. I laid awake and looked at the cinder block walls, because I wasn't getting any sleeping meds. In retrospect, that was the best thing that could have happened, because I broke that addiction. I refused to go back. I actually slept the third night. I started to get a normal sleep rhythm, which was so nice. It felt like I hadn't slept in years. They stopped the antipsychotics, which was really nice. They kept the Prozac.
My parents kept bringing me books. They came to see me. They were really great, which was kind of surprising, and so interesting.
I read a lot. My parents kept bringing me books. They came to see me. They were really great, which was kind of surprising, and so interesting.
I try to talk to my mom a little bit about it. It's hard for her, and it took me a long time to even grasp the trauma for her, because she's still there. She's always trying to remind me that this will never go away for me. She still doesn't understand. I finally realized that I'm not going to ever make her understand all the things that came together that went wrong. She starts to see little pieces of that and she gets nervous. It's like, "Oh, you're not sleeping. I know what happens when you're not sleeping."
"Okay! Let's, uh… let's not do this. I'm fine."
We went through this phase where my phone had died over a long weekend, and I didn't realize it. I finally charged it up and turned it on, and I had three messages from my mother, with each of them getting increasingly like, "I'm about to send your father over [there]." I get a lot of welfare checks every once in a while. It's my joke—she just wants to know I'm okay.
I tell this story all the time when I do training. I remember being in the hospital. I don't know what happened. I'm still in the emergency room. I was trying to get my mom to tell me the other day, and she wouldn't fess up to it, but I feel like she must have pulled my dad aside, and said, "Goddamn it, we almost lost that kid, so you go in there and you tell her that you love her," because my parents came in. They were crying. My dad was crying. He was hugging me, telling me he loves me. I'm thinking, "Who the hell are you?" We don't do this in my family. We're not touchy-feely people.
We're crying and hugging, and I remember realizing how badly I had miscalculated their understanding, and how they didn't understand that I was trying to do them a favor. I was so far gone in my own head that I had convinced myself of that. I realized how badly I had misjudged that, and that maybe I wasn't really seeing things as they were. It's incredibly jarring, and the only way I can explain it to people is to say, "No, you convince yourself."
I managed to get out of the hospital and immediately moved back home. We made up a story about me having a bad medication reaction and falling. That's the story we went with for a long time. I didn't really want to keep doing that forever, but I was too out of it to have an opinion about anything.
It took me a good month to even have an opinion about the fact that I was alive. I don't know, it's one of the things that bugs me. People get frustrated or they don't understand how they should be feeling. They don't understand why they don't feel, like there's this feeling that you should be so excited to be alive, and it's like, "This is not a Christmas movie. This is not that kind of thing; it doesn't happen like that."
You had a trauma, you go into shock, and you can live there a good, long while. To be honest, that was the first peace I'd had.
I hear this all the time from people. They say, "How do I break somebody out of there?"
I say, "Leave them. They have some peace and quiet. If they've tuned out, if they've gone numb—perfect."
I remember that being the calmest time. I couldn't understand how or why it had happened, but I was just really relieved to have had it happen, relieved that I wasn't feeling anything.
They managed to find me a psychiatrist. It took a little work because they said, "Oh, what kind of insurance do you have?"
I told them, "My mom used to work here, and I used work here, so the two major counseling agencies are out."
They found me a place in Rhode Island. I drove down to Providence, got to see a nurse practitioner, and she was amazing. We talked about sleep and she said, "We can give you something that's an antidepressant, and it will help you sleep." I was on a fairly higher dose of Prozac. They were decreasing one and increasing the other, and I walked in the office one day, and she said, "How do you feel?"
I said, "I feel really good."
She said, "Great, we're gonna stop right there. These are your meds."
I said, "Okay!" I was having feelings that were even positive. I'd kind of thought, "Okay, it's a good thing."
I was floundering on my own, so I moved back home. I was saving money, so I was starting to pay all my debt. With a week to go, everybody realizes that I need an extreme amount of help with this grant. We pull together and pull an all-nighter. We submit it. We get it done.
It initially gets rejected. I'm okay with that because my dad had a job offer in New Mexico and my mom had been putting pressure on me to come with them. I said, "Okay, maybe this is just the thing," but I think, "Am I going to have a job?" I don't know.
My agency decides they want to keep me, so they absorb me into other departments and let me kick around. A friend of a friend has another grant-funded program. They picked me up part time, too. So, that grant position ends, but all of this is part of a bigger political issue on the federal level, where this particular grant program moved from one funding agency to another, which promptly changed eligibility requirements and defunded about a hundred communities. It didn't go over well. They didn't have enough money to undo what they had done. To appease people, they funded their top six grantees, because I think that's what they had left.
Since we had written one of the best applications, we got our money back. This friggin' application that almost killed me, that we pulled out of our asses—they scored out of a hundred, and we had a ninety five. It was good. Not only did we pull it out, but they got to keep their money.
I realized I could actually write a federal grant, but I had enough separation at that point to know I had a new start coming. My dad had already left, because he had to come to New Mexico to get set up. It was the world's longest move—my mom was really into it until it actually had to happen.
I started saving money. We came out to visit and I fell in love, which is what happens. They don't call it The Land of Entrapment for nothing. People come on vacation, and they just get caught up.
At that point, I said, "Okay, I need to be away from everybody who saw this slow nine year descent into total insanity." Very few people knew at that time, so I get a new place to live. I get this new start. Eventually, I deal with my debt, get it somewhat sort of under control; it's an ongoing process.
After I'd been living here a few years, this man tracks me down. I ignore him for a while.
Des: The German?
Sabrina: The German. I ignore him for about six months, and finally, I can't. It's still on my mind. I said, "What? What do you want?"
He wanted to apologize.
I said, "What the hell? That was the shittiest thing you could have done. You ignored me. I told you how bad I was doing and that I wanted to kill myself. I needed you to know that you needed to let go. Hang in or let go."
He said, "I honestly don't even remember that conversation. You know, I was not doing that much better. I was so self-destructive. It wasn't just you."
I had figured out there was obviously somebody else. I flat out asked him, and he said, "Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you… I had a girlfriend the entire time."
There were obviously other women. I didn't ask. I didn't need to know. He continued self-destructing long after that. He ended up in therapy and on medication, and then spent all this [time] finding people and basically making amends. I was the last holdout on his list because I'm that damn stubborn. He had finally met somebody he was going to get a second chance with, and he wanted to get on with it.
Believe it or not, I'm Facebook friends with all these people now. He had no hard feelings.
I eventually tracked down the other guy I dated, to apologize to him. Believe it or not, I'm Facebook friends with all these people now. He had no hard feelings.
All of these problems that were so awful—some of them took years, but every single thing I was dealing with ended up resolved eventually. It seems so stupid. How tragic and pointless it would've been. But you can't know that. At the time, driving all this is that, mentally, you're not okay. It's not just the things that happen—it's the thing after the thing after the thing, and you're not mentally stable enough to handle the first two or three things, but it just keeps piling on.
Within a year of my attempt, I'm in New Mexico. About two or three years after that, I get connected to the Suicide Prevention Coalition, because I always knew I wanted to tell my story.
When I was in high school, I was a peer health educator. I talked about HIV and teen pregnancy, and if they needed sex advice, everybody knew to come to me. I could teach it better than the teachers. Through senior year, I always did an event for World AIDS Day. My senior year, I brought pieces of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was just amazing. I never have shied away from [being vocal], but I remember people always kinda saying, "Why this?"
I was a huge Queen fan. I still am. Freddie Mercury had passed away from AIDS, and that was sorta my driving force. It's been interesting because Brian May, their guitarist, who has had lifelong struggles with depression, was the first person I knew that talked about it. I remember thinking how cool that was, and how much I needed that—[for] the person whose picture hangs on the wall to talk about what you can't. People weren't talking about it, and he would just talk. He had this total mental breakdown, he was suicidal, he ended up having to check himself into rehab, and he just told everybody! That's nuts! I've written to him over the years, and he's actually written me back, which is really cool. I met him a few times now. You couldn't have a better hero.
I realized that that helped me, and I don't even know this person. I need to start talking, because I don't have a fear of this. I don't have a fear of saying anything, actually. Someone needs to start talking about this because there are all these people feeling by themselves, and the isolation drives you nuts. Thinking about what it felt like to be in that situation, the thing I remember is how alone I felt. Like [I was] closed in on myself all the time and nobody understood.
The people who knew didn't know what to do, or didn't care. I think they didn't know what to do. It felt, at the time, that they didn't care… because you can't interpret things the right way, you're just by yourself. You don't understand that everybody else is feeling the way that you feel.
I remember all the time thinking, "I don't have symptoms that match up with the TV commercials, so I'm depressed plus I'm crazy. My behavior is so out of control—just driving around, roaming around, all hours of the night, not sleeping, drinking, and abusing prescription meds. This is not normal."
I didn't understand the agitation I had, or the psychache. The first time somebody explained psychache to me, I almost fell out of my chair, because that's what I felt like. It hurt. It just hurts to exist, and I talk about it all the time now to explain to people that it just hurts.
Stop asking people, "Why?"
If you ask somebody why, you'd better be prepared to sit for a couple hours with somebody, because it's not simple. People don't come to these decisions lightly. It is not a decision you make just once. You make it over and over and over again. You're always bargaining, and you're always weighing your options. You're always ambivalent. I try to explain ambivalence to people. You're always there all the time, because you want everything to be okay.
I fought hard for my life. I didn't just give up after nine years and way too many drugs, way too many bad life decisions, and way too many shitty people. You don't just decide to do it one day. You decide and then you change your mind, and you decide again and you change your mind. You can hang onto that. The option's always there on the table.
Probably three years ago, when I started to do really serious peer recovery work, I said, "If this is what I'm going to do, then suicide needs to come off the table. It's no longer an option. You made your bed." In a way it's actually helped to have that. I've embedded myself enough that I know what people would feel like. I'm too connected to people now that it's not an option.
It's not that I don't feel it. The past year has been rough. I think it's just forward progress. I did so much of the work, and at some point, I did stop because I was actually doing really well. I kind of just outgrew therapy, and learned how to feel bad without the whole world coming undone.
It was time to do the really hard stuff. For a while, I came off my meds. I made it six months because I got real feelings again. I'd forgotten what those felt like. It was time. They were doing more harm than good at that point. I'd packed on a good seventy to eighty pounds from side effects. I was emotionally blunted enough that it was kind of allowing my personal relationships to be unhealthy, and then I kinda woke up and went, "Oh my god! You suck, you're an asshole. No wonder I'm unhappy."
I walked away from a few people, which was hard. That hurt a lot more than I thought it would because in my mind, they were part of my support system. Mostly, they sucked and they were inconsistent, but in my head I had these people I could go to.
It's been a strange year. Forward progress is scary. I've really gotta know that in advance, because that's not a very good reward. They need a better reward system for feeling better than, "Oh, you can feel miserable again now. Good! Oh, okay. This is what feeling sad really feels like."
Des: Robin Williams died recently, and working in the suicide prevention field, sometimes you feel forced to comment. What response do you give when a high-profile person dies by suicide?
Sabrina: I have nothing to say, except that any time you need me, you come find me. Anytime. This sucks. I know how much it sucks. I can't possibly know what you're going through, but I know what this feels like. You come find me, or call somebody. Do something. Fight, because I know you want to fight.
Usually what I do is try to appeal to people's sense of hope because there usually is always something about, "Well, maybe tomorrow could be different." I always tell people, "No one should ever have to die in despair, alone, because they couldn't get what they needed."
Most people want to live. If you want to live, you should be able to find a way. There is this assumption in the suicide prevention field that we don't want to live, that we don't value our lives, or that somebody needs to do something for us—and they do—but there's a total discounting of how much we do for ourselves. We're actually the ones who keep us alive. There's no one going home with me at night to make sure I don't try to kill myself. Even if they are, you only need a few minutes by yourself. I have to do it all on my own, just like anybody else.
If anybody knew [the amount of energy it takes to fight with yourself], they would just go lie down and take a nap. I always tell people, "No one fought harder for my life than me." I saw my doctor, at the most, a half hour at a time. I talked to friends, at the most, a couple hours at a time. I stuck with this bullshit in my head every second that I was awake. I did everything I knew how to do.
Sabrina: The ten year mark is going to be emotional because it's sort of like the end of an era, I guess. I almost didn't make it to twenty-seven. I celebrated my twenty-seventh birthday with my mother—that was it—because I had no friends. I had nobody. My dad was gone. He was out here already, doing something, and it was just the two of us, kinda realizing that I almost didn't make it.
Nine years was a big deal, because it was like, "Nine years of suffering, nine years of recovery." Now I'm into more recovery than suffering. Now, it's like, "Well, what do I want the next decade of my life to be? Because now, I'm going to be thirty-seven." I don't know. Some days, that bothers me, and some days, it could be anything, you know? Could be anything.
I don't know where I'll go from here. I try to remember that, usually once a week, I get something from somebody that says, "Thank you so much for sharing." I mean, our website is so out of date. I haven't had time to look at it. I feel guilty every single day, but people are still saying, "Thank you so much, because I felt like I was the only one." [In the suicide prevention field], we forget because we found each other, but there are some people out there who are by themselves, all over the world. I've gotten emails from Australia, England, Iran…
Des: Every single day.
Sabrina: Just somebody. We need that connection with each other. I don't know where I'm going, but I know that this next part of my life has to be more connected.
For a long time, I felt like I wasn't. Then I spent some time, actually. I pulled out all my ten-years-ago music—my Linkin Park, my Evanescence, and my everything. I could remember, because those are my triggers. I remembered how alone I was, how hard school was, how shitty my friends were, and how awful this man was to me.
I have amazing friends that I could go to who will not let me fall down. That is my new bottom.
I realized, "You know what? I am in a really easy graduate program. I am not coming unglued, I'm just busy. I have amazing friends that I could go to who will not let me fall down. That is my new bottom."
I don't want to admit [when I need help] to people, but if I have to, it's because it's out of necessity, and they will drop everything to do what needs to be done. My parents know what's up, and they try to stay connected to me. I have a great doctor. I have a therapist I can always go back to. I even met a decent guy. Nothing about my life is the same as it was then. It's gonna be okay.
Sabrina's story is sponsored by a grant from the hope & grace fund, a project of New Venture Fund in partnership with global women's skincare brand, philosophy, inc. Thanks also to Andy Dinsmore for providing the transcription to Sabrina's interview, and to Sara Wilcox for editing.


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Students and learners, parents and guardians, teaching staff and management now have a great deal of choice within education. Whether this is how a budget is spent, which examination board is used, or where someone wishes to study, if your business is not providing the right service in the right way you are going to struggle and could lose your place in the market.
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Sir George addresses Fringe Meeting at Party Conference
6 Oct 2004
Cllr Simon Hayes, Cllr Peter Adams, GY, Ian Willmore (ASH)
Click for a full size picture
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) sponsored a Fringe Meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth. Headed "Smoking and Public Health: can it be a Vote Winner?", it focussed on a ban on smoking in public places.
Ian Willmore, Public Affairs Manager of ASH, drew attention to the health risks that faced those who work in pubs, clubs and restaurants and said that passive smoking accounted for more deaths at the workplace than all other accidents put together. He hoped that the Government would not exempt pubs and clubs from a proposed ban. Peter Adams, a Poole Borough Councillor, said that public opinion hasd swung behind a ban, once the local authority had started to consult and inform. A huge majority now supported a ban.
Sir George said he hoped there would be a free vote on this issue in Parliament when - whichever Party was in power - he believed a majority would support a ban. "It may not be a vote winner; but I believe there are occasions when politicians should do what they believe to be right, rather than ask if it is popular with focus groups."
Next news: Former Mayor re-opens Clatford Shop
Copyright Sir George Young Bt. 2015


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dark fantasy
Working on Delphinium
We're up to 19 pre-orders on Delphinium, yay!
And I am working on it every spare moment I can get (and given that I have two other jobs, that can be quite random). Putting it up for pre-order was a great way to get my ass in gear (I think I'll be doing it with future books from now on), even though a good half of me is still terrified about the release. But I have myself on a tight schedule, with plenty of days set aside for editing and polishing.
So far it's been fun and good to be writing under this deadline. Delphinium keeps expanding- getting new characters even this late in the game, new points-of-view, more backstory. This is not how Delphinium would have been written even several months ago, much less two-and-a-half years ago when I first wanted to finish it asap after Larkspur. I know it sucks waiting for books, sequels especially, but I truly think this is worth it.
In similar news- I put Larkspur and Delphinium in new categories on Amazon! It seems to be a new category on the site in general, but Gaslamp Fantasy is now something you can find both books in. That's the 19th century-ish 'ghosts and spirits' version of steampunk where it's more about the supernatural than the tech. It fits perfectly (and is what I tried to evoke when I use the term 'gothic' for it).
They also have their own series page now too:
You'll notice the series is "Stories of Clandestina" and not "Larkspur" (it was actually Larkspur for a little bit until I contacted Amazon). I did this on purpose since after 'The Larkspur Series" there are more books that will be coming out about this realm and really they will all be connected. There are stand-alones set in the past and then future series that move forward. I have two 'past' novellas in mind, and two more series set in the future- making it 14 books total.
But right now I'm furiously working on book 2 and we'll work on books 3-14 after.
Delphinium is up for pre-order!
Fairies, disease, and the heir's return.
Pierre Salvador and his beloved, Elizabeth Anne, travel to his childhood home for the summer. They intend to spend some time alone together before he becomes the ruling duc (perhaps with her at his side). But Pierre finds himself set to inherit a mistrusting people with an uneasy history, and duties cannot be put off any longer. A fatal illness is spreading, he is being claimed by the fée, and someone has already tried to take his life. Though, with his being a Lord of Death, it will take much more to kill him.
The book will come out on August 31st!
I love this book so much. At first it was supposed to be a shortish 30K sequel- have a few small things happen, but nothing too substantial. Now it's going to be ~120K. So it's 8 times the length of Larkspur and filled with a number of new characters, plots, and magics.
It isn't entirely done yet (or else it would be out) but I am finishing it up. A hard deadline like this should help and motivate me (it seems to be helping). So far I've gotten several pre-orders, so I'm glad people are still interested. I WILL NOT take this long for book 3. I hope getting into a nice groove with finishing this up helps me get book 3 out a lot faster.
Return (Clandestina)
Lord Dorian, Steward of Piques, sat across from Duc Felicien, who had been his childhood friend so very long ago. They had been playing in a creek in the woods when the younger boy disappeared at Springfinding. Dorian himself could barely remember it, but the after-effects had been grand. The duc and duchesse had held out hope for several years, every great change in season bringing with it a wish that their only son would return, but the hope faded as time went by. The steward at the time, his father, took over more and more duties as the grieving couple found themselves unable to. With their deaths came an end to the noble line of Piques. Until now.
It seemed as if only a fraction of the time had passed for Félicien, though. He was still young, a boy, and Dorian's own children could now be his peers.
"How long were you there?"
"Ten years. Or maybe a hundred," Félicien replied with a shrug. That those two measurements were vastly different did not seem to bother him. "Time flows, but rarely at a steady pace. How long has it been in this plane?"
"Sixty years. Exactly. You disappeared at Springfinding and today is—"
"The first day of our Midspring, yes," the young man interrupted. "The celebrations began last night. We escorted those out who would help prepare this plane for Spring, and I went along because I reached my majority." He smiled and his grin broadened as he added, "I came to cause some mischief, but it seems I have brought much of it with me."
"It is less you," the steward said, "and more your return, that has us all.."
"In a tizzy?"
The boy was enjoying this far too much. But he was, after all, still a boy. He was too young to be an adult in Piques, but a fée's majority was at the start of puberty. So he was fourteen or fifteen. That he considered himself fée was also disturbing.
"Well then," Félicien said, spreading his arms and leaning back in his chair, balancing on the hind legs in a way that should not be possible. "I can always put things to right by just going back—"
"You cannot. You are the rightful Duc of Piques, you have duties."
"I, duties?" His chair slammed down and Félicien laughed. A dangerous glint entered his eye. "You say this land is mine to do with as I desire?"
"In a way." Dorian tried to chose his words carefully. "I have been handling the affairs since your parents deaths, but there has been no duc for many years. You have been returned to us, please, perhaps you may take some time to be here. Do this for me."
"You? And who are you to me?"
"Dorian Louis, your steward. And a friend, from when we were young. It was on an adventure together that you were lost."
"Dorian Louis," Félicien repeated softly. A chill went down the steward's back as he realized he had told someone of Faery his whole true name.
"Very well, then." Félicien inclined his head. "On our friendship, I shall stay a time. Perhaps there is a reason I have returned after all."
"Thank you." Tension eased from his shoulders and Dorian leaned back in his own chair. This would be difficult. He was tempted to let the heir go back, make Ophion continue his duties as planned, but it would be wrong to deny the land its proper ruler. A steward was all well and good, but they were not the duc.
A soft knock had both looking over to the door. Dorian bade them enter and a young girl in rich clothes came in. His daughter, Ophélie.
Out of the corner of his eye Dorian saw Félicien stand and bow to her (more than he himself had gotten).
His daughter curtsied in kind, and then gave her attention to him. "Papa, forgive the interruption, but I was told to come give you aid? Brother has already left."
"Ah, yes, well- my dear, this is His Grace, Félicien, the rightful Duc of Piques. If you would be so kind as to show him around his home."
She turned now-curious eyes to Félicien and smiled. "Of course. Your Grace, if you would like to follow me."
"Thank you, mademoiselle. And thank you, Dorian."
"I am not the duc yet, am I?" Félicien asked as they left the room. "Surely there must be some sort of ceremony."
"Well, yes, but as both of your parents are deceased, it is your title already. Though you do not seem of age, so perhaps the actual duties shall not fall to you for a while yet."
"I am sixty-four," the boy said proudly. "At least, I was born sixty-four years ago. But I feel not a day over fifty." When she looked back to him, unsure of how to take his words, he laughed once more.
"And how old are you?" Félicien asked, walking beside her, focused more on her than the path they were walking.
"Fourteen years and a month," she said. "The month is important."
"Of course it is."
"Now, I will show you around the domain and tell you what I know. Brother shall help you after, he knows more than I as he is Papa's heir, but is not home right now."
"Oui, mademoiselle, as you say!" Félicien stepped out in front of her, walking backwards while facing her. She tried to ignore him, looking over his shoulder, but it was difficult.
"Your name, my dear?" he asked, having studied her from head to foot. She was pretty, with chestnut hair that was pinned up, and almost-violet eyes.
"Ophélie, though you may continue to call me Mademoiselle."
Félicien grinned. "Ah, but if I understand this, I am your duc. I may call you as I please."
"And I am your guide for the day. Without me you shall be lost and confused and the cause of much trouble."
"I like being trouble."
She stopped at this and he continued for a few paces before hitting a stand that held a decorative vase.
"Like that?" she asked, as he whirled around to make sure it did not fall.
He turned back around a bit sheepishly. "Yes, just like that."
"Well then, if you shall follow me?"
He returned to her side, taking her arm and gesturing with his free hand that she should lead the way.
"And your name?"
"Félicien Faunus."
"Is that your true name?"
"Of course not."
Pierre's parents weren't really characters whose stories I had in mind for a long time. But when I started to elaborate on backstory things began to come up. I am falling more and more in love with Faery and its land and people- something that I didn't have as a part of Clandestina not that long ago. My favorite part is the messing with time- Félicien has aged only about 10 years or so, but a lot more time has passed for Piques. Time to forget what it was like to have a duc, time for the distrust of fée to simmer. And Félicien does not even care much at all for politics, and from the earlier Scene you'll know he disappears in another nine years to leave Piques alone again with Ophélie's death. Pierre is inheriting a lot of baggage. Fortunately he takes after his mother and finds people and politics interesting, even if sometimes he's selfishly busy with dark magic.
Excerpt from Delphinium (Happy Valentine's!)
"So what did you do this last year?" she asked as they began to walk around the clearing. They heard water and made towards the stream.
"Surgery work," he replied. "We had corpses to practice on, to be able to know what went where, and why, and how."
"How did you receive corpses?"
"Several people and families generously allowed us to use their loved one's bodies after death."
"I can not imagine that is popular. Did you share each.. Body?"
Pierre grimaced. He had not wished to inform Lizzy of this specifically. "Truthfully most were criminals whose deaths were not deemed important enough to give full funerals. At least this way they would be… of use."
She took this in stride, nodding her head slowly though shuddering.
"A grim year, then."
"Quite. Though it was not all gloom and horror."
"Do tell?" While they had walked their hands had linked and she leaned against him as they found the river.
"We were students after all. Pranks were pulled, curfew ignored, alcohol drunk in excess. I was among the oldest so I mainly watched over the younger men."
"And when you were younger?" Lizzy probed, reading into what Pierre had not said. He did not meet her eyes, staring up at the trees quite pointedly.
"Your brother and I had our fun at times."
She laughed. They had gotten into enough trouble as children to guess the level of possible mischief Pierre and Piers could do when alone and bored.
"Anything illegal?"
I killed a man, he thought immediately. Several in fact, but one stood out to him in that moment. A prisoner taken straight from his hanging to his slab, so the students could see what was as close to a living body as possible. He had been not quite as dead as they had thought. After seeing the blood flowing and hearing the man let out a moan, even opening his eyes, many of the students turned away and one ran to alert a professor. Pierre had made it seem that he checked for a pulse, but he squeezed the very damaged windpipe. By the time someone with more authority was in the room the man was well and truly dead. It was deemed a delayed hanging. Pierre remained to finish the lesson even though he had been offered a pass at seeing a man die right before his eyes.
"No," he told her.
"A pity. I hear from Piers that the best moments are those that might get you a night in jail for your troubles."
"Oh, did he? What tales did he tell his dear little sister?"
"I believe there was a time when the boys in your dorm snuck in strong wine, or went out on the town. Perhaps those were actually in chronological order, it would explain much."
"I never did such things."
"Of course not. Though I now shall have to find myself another companion," she said with a smile and glance to him. "I would like a partner with experience in such things so I have some guidance when I deem to try."
Before he could answer she dashed ahead to where the stream was in view. He gave chase. At the edge of the bank she did not stop, pulling up her skirts and jumping to a rock that jetted out in the middle. She made it, arms waving to keep her balance and getting one shoe wet, but staying on the rock. With a laugh she turned and curtsied to him.
"And you think yourself safe there, Lizzy dear?" he called.
He took even less care of his attire, jumping straight into the water, mud, and stones. She gasped, looking around for another place to go, but the far side of the bank was, as named, too far.
He reached her then, grabbing her and swinging her in his arms as she shrieked.
"Hush or I shall drop you!"
"You would not!"
He pretended to, getting another shriek from her that had him laughing as he carried her back to shore.
"No, my dear, I would not," he agreed, finally, placing her down in the grass. Not after she had been ill. Another day, perhaps.
They were the same height at the moment and he kissed her before getting out himself and looking down at his ruined clothes. His shoes were wet and the feeling was quite uncomfortable out of the water. He knelt down and began to untie the laces.
Lizzy bit her tongue to keep from asking naughtily if he would also take off his trousers, seeing as they were wet up to the knee.
When barefoot Pierre hopped back into the stream with the shoes in his hands.
"What are you doing?"
"Leaving my shoes," he called over his shoulder, going back to the rock. He made sure they would not fall into the water before again returning. "They are quite nice shoes, but hardly my only pair. I am sure there are fée around, perhaps the gift would be appreciated. We cannot spare much food or drink."
Her one shoe was hardly as wet as his had been but she sat and began to undo her laces as well. Without a word he bent down to help her.
"I shall buy you an even lovelier pair when we reach Piques," he promised as he turned back to place her shoes next to his.
"Oh, you do not—"
"I insist."
Not exactly a Scene as it's from Delphinium and not a stand-alone, but I thought it fitting for Valentine's. You'll recognize Pierre's thoughts from the Scene 'Hanging.'
So many promos! Now back to me :)
I thought I'd check in and ramble about myself and my work for a little bit to break up the other indie folk.
That said this cross-promotion thing is amazing. All the great writers that I'm showing off are also showing off Larkspur. In October I had 160+ downloads, 101 in November, and in December I have 425 so far, and it's only the 4th! I'm sure I have a few more promos set up for December too, and I'm not-so-secretly hoping to break 1000.
I have most of the major scenes for Delphinium written and pretty polished, now I'm just trying to tie them all together coherently. Sometimes I explain something in a chapter only to find that I wrote something similar already, so that all has to be fixed and redone. Some of the chapters take place over a day and others might be several weeks and I need to summarize, or expand, and make it flow right. I'm feeling really good about this story though- I have fewer "this sucks, what the hell am I even doing" days than I used to have. The story itself, by the way, takes place over 4 months and almost a week. I am gradually scaling up the time for each book, Aconitella should take place over a year and a half, and a few of the vaguely plotted stories for after the Larkspur series may cover five to ten years. I am working with a lot of time, generations here, so going week by week might not be the best idea in the world.
The Wolf Within has been put aside so I can wrap up Delphinium, but it will be written alongside Aconitella. I want to try dealing with more than one world at once, outside of Scenes. And even with Scenes I tend to fall back into the realm I'm working on at the moment. I've not been able to stick to another realm long enough for a good coherent Scene in a while (sorry about that).
I do have a pretty finished opening page to The Wolf Within though, so I'll go ahead and share that here! 🙂
The pups were coming out of the den. They were less than a moon old and had only opened their eyes a few days past, but the alpha-mother was letting them come to meet the rest of the pack. Their alpha-father stood at the opening of the den, tail wagging his entire body as he made himself wait for his mate and puppies to appear. It was their first litter.
The other two wolves of the pack stood further back, not part of the family and not wishing to intrude, though keeping away from new puppies had proved too difficult to overcome entirely.
Alpha-mother came out first and greeted her mate. An uncertain whining was heard from the den and she yipped, telling her little ones that it was safe. Alpha-father had had enough waiting and stuck his head into the den, sniffing and licking the bundles of fur. He grabbed one by the scruff and pulled him out, setting him down before covering him again in licks.
The other two siblings ran out then and all descended on their father, licking at the corners on his mouth and pressing to him, showing him deference and love.
"Come," the alpha-mother said to the two sitting off to the side. She nudged one of the puppies, a solid black one, in their direction if her beckoning had not been enough. "You are pack too."
The elder, a golden wolf with suspiciously blue eyes, looked to the younger white wolf before taking a step forward.
The black puppy moved to him, tail low but swishing, shy and trying not to show her fear. The golden wolf dipped his head and licked her in greeting, and she nuzzled him back.
"Smell different." The pup sneezed and stood back to look at the other pack members, then back to his mother. "Wolf-not-wolf."
"Man-wolf," his father explained. "Pack."
The golden wolf laid down to be less intimidating and all the pups decided it would be a grand idea to tackle him at once.
Finally the black pup went over to the white wolf and sniffed her curiously. She was different than the golden wolf still, and reminded her of her parents in how she sat.
"Alpha-not-wolf?" she asked.
Her father walked over and bent his head, exposing his neck. "Man-wolf queen. She is the alpha of all the alphas. Wolf and man-wolf."
The queen nudged alpha-father to stand and snorted in annoyance. "I am still young, and a guest of your father's. I am not here as his alpha."
Hope everyone is having a great Christmas season! ❤
I'm working on a new project, a secondary book that I won't really start until after Delphinium is done, but will let me take my mind into another place when I need it. I know I tried the 'other project' thing before with Incubo, and while that's still on the table it fell through as my next-in-line book (it worked better as a stand alone that comes after a series, rather than the start to a new series).
Anyway, I had time to think and plot last night and went quite deep into the land of Astrarctia, where 'Wolf Girl' takes place. While the name has changed over the years it was my first mediaeval world that wasn't totally a rip-off (just mostly). Inisaira was one of my first characters ever. If Clandestina is how I learned to write well (with lots of roleplaying online, Pierre was a role-play character I had intended not to have as a book-character way back when), this world is how I learned to worldbuild and write in the first place.
I'm quite glad I can consider it back on the table and with a 'next' marker placed on it. Already working out the timeline and the vague ideas for book 1.
I think I will also make another section here on the blog sorting out my intended projects, naming the ones I have named, and giving short summaries about what is what.


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New Hong Kong bishop's cross removal [and underground Catholic Church] comments spark anger
Bishop Michael Yeung of Hong Kong meets the press on Aug. 2. Bishop Yeung has upset some over his remarks on cross removals and the underground Catholic Church in China.
[The new Hong Kong bishop follows the NewVatican Ostpolitik towards the Communists in China]
UCANews.com reporter
Hong Kong, China
August 4, 2017
Christians in mainland China were enraged by remarks on the cross-removal campaign that the new bishop of Hong Kong made in a press conference, just as news broke that a dozen church crosses had been removed or received notification for removal in central Jiangxi province recently.
Bishop Michael Yeung, in his first press conference as head of Hong Kong Diocese, also gave only qualified support to China's repressed underground Catholic Church and admitted he would never stand up to Beijing.
When asked about the cross-removal campaign by China's ruling Communist Party in Christian-heavy Zhejiang province between 2013 and 2016, Bishop Yeung said it was just a local issue at the very beginning but later involved many political elements which made it complicated. [The Hong Kong Free Press headlines it as New Hong Kong bishop says forced removal of crosses in China may be because of building safety and reports His Excellency's words implying that he would not oppose removal of the crosses at his cathedral if they did not comply with building safety regulations or "if they are an illegal structure and the government has to remove them, I can't say we are always right."]
More at www.ucanews.com/news/new-hong-kong-bishops-cross-removal-comments-sparks-anger/79923


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|DO NOT REPLY [Bug 41111] - New option for filters: run only if there are spare CPU cycles
|Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:20:35 GMT
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL, BUT PLEASE POST YOUR BUG· RELATED COMMENTS THROUGH THE WEB INTERFACE AVAILABLE AT <http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=41111>. ANY REPLY MADE TO THIS MESSAGE WILL NOT BE COLLECTED AND· INSERTED IN THE BUG DATABASE. http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=41111 ------- Additional Comments From firstname.lastname@example.com 2006-12-06 12:20 ------- Ah yes, I think I did see a reference to mod_load_average some time back when I was researching Apache throttling options, but I'd forgotten about it. Seems to be undocumented and not supported by its author, though. It's not featured with his other modules on http://www.outoforder.cc/, for instance. Sounds good to make this general-purpose for filters. Thanks for the pointer to mod_cache. It might be good to add a note about it to the mod_deflate documentation, as it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to people who aren't experts on Apache internals that it would cache output from mod_deflate so it wouldn't have to be recompressed next time. I was confused as to how caching would work with mod_deflate (without having a separate caching proxy instance) -- for instance, a lot of the stuff I read online (outside of httpd.apache.org) about it claimed it did its *own* caching, but I couldn't find any evidence of that in the documentation. Yes, good point about "instantaneous CPU usage", a la 'top', being a misnomer, since clearly it has to average over some time period to be meaningful -- it's just a shorter time period than with load averages, without any extra factors thrown in to the calculation, and expressed in terms of an easy to understand 0-100%, rather than load averages which can go arbitrarily high. And yeah, I hadn't really thought about this on Windows -- load averages would be even harder to understand for Windows jockeys. -- Configure bugmail: http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the assignee for the bug, or are watching the assignee. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: email@example.com For additional commands, e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
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Welcome to my website! My name is Lucas Flaton. I am a 22-year old animator, illustrator and director, currently studying animation in my final year at The Willem De Kooning Academy, Rotterdam. In my short past I have been part of numerous projects, many of which have been well-received in either The Hague, Rotterdam or Amsterdam. During these projects I have mostly created self-drawn animations, using shapes and colours which one could also recognise in my illustrations and portraits. With each project I try to keep a balance between having fun and being the professional that is normally expected of me. If you like weird stuff, please, take a good look around and see where it gets you!
Do you have any questions? Call or send me an e-mail and you'll get your answers asap!


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Villages cover more than 65 % of Indian population, and hence this big percentage of end consumers can't be easily ignored,if you are planning to make your product launch across the nation.We at TheMediaBazaar provide advertising and marketing platform specific to Villages like Wall advertising and kiosk product display etc..
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Your shopping cart is currently empty. This is the topic Named: emptycarttext. You edit this in the ADMIN site.
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St Peter's Brewery, has revealed two new products — Plum Porter and Citrus — launched for the Brewed for Morrisons Beer Festival 2017.
More than 6,000 cases of the beers have been supplied to the retailer, to meet customer demand for new and more unusual beers.
Plum Porter is a dark, sweet, full-bodied porter with background notes of damson and blackcurrant, followed by the fruitiness of the plum in flavour and aroma. A perfect, warming beer for the winter season, says the brewer.
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Both of these beers will be available in 500ml bottles in Morrisons stores nationwide until October 25.


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11 Days Spiti Valley Road Trip
Available from
Spiti Valley Road Trip Highlights
Cost per person
Meandering roads through the snow-clad mountains.
Turquoise rivers flow down in the valley.
A few travellers venture ahead.
To a land where peace prevails, and galaxies appear up in the sky at night.
Enter Spiti Valley – known for some of the highest inhabited regions of the Himalayas.
Walking through wilderness in the middle of nowhere.
The most beautiful mountain stories.
The world's oldest Monasteries.
Songs of the Himalayan locals.
Eleven days in the mountains of Spiti Valley.
And no itinerary to restrict your footsteps.
Ask yourself -- how many times has the wilderness called and you have said no?
That's about to change as you embark on this unforgettable eleven-day Spiti Valley Tour – no plan and no itinerary – just a group of like-minded photo-explorers, finding one story after another, while traversing into the unknown pockets of the far-flung Himalayan valleys of Spiti Valley.
This tour is hosted by Abhinav Chandel (@AbhiandNow), one of India's leading Instagrammers. This former city boy now lives in the mountains and chronicles his life through his stunning photographs and poetry. He describes himself as being "constantly on the move; trying to uncover and collect stories from corners of the world".
The last Winter Exploration Tour happened in February 2018, where Abhinav and Spiti Holiday Adventure collaborated on a Winter Exploration Tour to Spiti Valley with sixteen photo explorers.
If you hate being a tourist and want to explore (truly explore) Spiti Valley, this tour is tailored for you. No fixed plan. No itinerary. Just the explorers with their cameras and an insatiable hunger to know Spiti Valley - lead to the most enchanted lands with spellbinding views, and a never before experience in the mountains.
You may want to spend time interacting with the locals or find a village where no one goes and listen to the stories from there, or who knows maybe spot a Snow leopard. Whatever it is that the group feels like doing -- that's what you'll end up doing.
It's highly likely that on this 11-day holiday to Spiti Valley, you'd spend time in a monastery and learn about Buddhism through conversations with monks or spend a day with the local farmers in their farm. You could trek from one village to the other or spend a day driving through the valley. Also, if herbs and ancient science fascinates you, you could meet and interact with the Amchi (a local medical practitioner) and learn about the ancient form of Spitian medication or spend the day interacting with the postmaster from the highest post office in the world at Hikkim; Volunteer for a day in an old age home or spend a day in a village school. The possibilities are limitless. The maps are with no horizon.View Full Itinerary
Vaishali Bhat
The 6 day Spiti holiday we had in the month of August 2016 was one of the most exciting, hassel-free and filled with enriching experiences.Big Thank you goes to each and everyone in Spiti Holiday Adventure for the amazing time we had.It was indeed a pleasure to meet Rahul Mansur who organised the trip for us at a very short notice.Special thanks to Team at Hotel Spiti Serai, Rangrik for their hospitality and our driver Tilak.Would definitely love to experience more off-beat destinations organised by you guys.
Sally Anderson
Do yourself a big favour and visit Spiti Valley using this company. The whole team is extremely professional and just a lovely bunch! We did 7-day jeep ride which provided a great itinerary to see a lot of what this amazing place has to offer. Spiti Valley is a once in a lifetime experience and totally worth the effort to go!
Nilesh Saigaonkar
Thank you for an amazing "Spiti" experience. This was one of the well arranged and managed travel experience that I have been part of. Still missing the hospitality of all the people who hosted us at all places be it Khansar at kaza, Home-stay at Kibber or Mountain Trail Hotel at Manali. Once again a thank you very much and of course hope to travel with you guys once again. As JRR Tolkien says... Home is behind, The world ahead; And there are many paths to tread…
29 years of experience in organising tours within Spiti valley
The only local Spiti travel company to be Recommended by Lonely Planet
The best local prices minus any middle man or commissions.
No Itinerary
You might want to keep a copy of the itinerary with you!Download the PDF
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Will travel 40 miles
$40 per hour.
5.0 2 ratings
I have been teaching Adobe Flash for over 8 years. I initially taught Flash animation and then moved over to teaching Flash Games. I can teach such subjects as how to create your own animation, including tweening or frame by frame. With animations we can create a small game or banners or ads. I have been teaching students both traditional and digital art instruction for the last 8 years for ITT Technical and Arts Institute at Pittsburgh. I have a BFA in Computer Animation and Multimedia and an MAE in curriculum design. I am also working on my second Master's in Conceptual Art, of which I only [more]
Will travel 10 miles
$50 per hour.
0.0 0 ratings
I teach Adobe Flash for ITT-Technical Institute. Hello! I have been a distance educator for over two decades, teaching students from all over the world. I am also a mother of three school-aged daughters. I am passionate about teaching and tutoring students. I have a Master's Degree in Education Design and Technology. I am passionate about the use of technology in education. I am on the board of directors of a regional STEM organization which highlights the positive use and community impact of using science, technology, engineering and ma... [more]
Will travel 20 miles
$50 per hour.
4.83 41 ratings
I am Mary. I am very good at Adobe Flash CS4, Adobe Flash CS4-ActionScript, and Adobe Flex 3-ActionScript. I can teach you Flash Banner, Moive, Website, Radio, Video, Game, Email, and E-commerce site. If you want to learn them from me, please send me a email. My name is Mary. I am originally from Beijing, China. I am a native Mandarin Chinese speaker. I know Chinese history, culture, geography, and economy. I enjoy working with my students. Do you or your kids want to learn the Mandarin Chinese language and culture? Do you want to travel to China? Do you want to teach English in China? Do [more]
Will travel 40 miles
$55 per hour.
4.88 17 ratings
I have taught Flash at a college level and used it for website development, individual elements and marketing materials. I have over 20 years of web experience for Fortune 100 companies. I have managed large and small-scale sites from the design process to launch, including usability, search, online advertising, metrics and day-to-day operations. I also design and develop many site for small businesses. I'm experienced in not only sites but Search Engine Optimization, Metrics, email marketing, social marketing, Pay-per-click advertising and running eCommerce sites. I also teach college-level [more]


text: Iron on patch **this listing is for one patch only*All orders of $20 and more receive trackingNOTE: The Copyright of the patch image belongs to their respective copyright holders and/or creating artist (ie. Disney, Nickelodeon, etsy artist, etc.). The cost of this creation is strictly for materials used & labor time for creation, CustomBling313 does not own nor claim ownership of these images.


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The Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Yildiz Technical University is proud to host the 3rd International Conference on Electric Power and Energy Conversion Systems (EPECS 2013) in Istanbul.
The purpose of the 3rd International Conference on Electric Power and Energy Conversion Systems is to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners from all over the world, interested in the advances of power systems, energy conversion, power electronics, and electric drives.
The objective of the conference is to provide scientific and professional interactions for the advancement of the electric energy field. Recent development of complex systems such as smart grid, distributed power systems, electric vehicles and traction systems, and renewable energy systems are encouraged.
The conference will feature oral and poster presentations. Invited speakers will focus attention on future trends in areas of interest to the conference. An exhibition area, with technical facilities, will be considered.
Important Deadlines
Full Paper Submission May 31, 2013
Author's Notification July 31, 2013
Final Paper Submission and registration August 16, 2013


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Attorney Pope Represents Defendant in Tick Tock Diner Case
The Anthony Pope Law Firm recently played a significant role in the high-profile murder-for-hire case involving the former manager of the Tick Tock Diner in Clifton. As was reported by several news media outlets, Georgios Spyropoulos was accused of attempting to hire a hitman for $20,000 to kill his uncle, who co-owns diner. The hitman,… Read More »