A couple of announcements and then I'm going to have story time for you all! :)

First, Signed print copies of Fearless Magic, Endless Magic and The Reluctant King are now available for pre-order through my store!!! Plus the Team Kiran t-shirts went on sale today for The Reluctant King promotion!!!! So that is all very exciting!

Here is the link to the store: Kingsley Book & Stamp

But there is also a permanent link to the right of this blog. --->

Second, I posted a Tuesday Teaser yesterday on my Facebook Page, but I feel like I should post it here too. I'm trying to be more organized. Working on it... Slowly it's coming together! :)

This is from a new Work in Progress titled The Rush. I'm hoping to release it this spring some time. And in a month or so I'll release the cover art and synopsis. But in the meantime meet Ryder Sutton.

"It was during this perusal of my environment that my eyes fell into, not to, but into the gray depths of Ryder Sutton. I felt my mouth fall open, literally my bottom lip detached from the firm hold my top lip had on it and my jaw followed.

He glared at me from across the room. Glared at me. He had his back to the far wall and one foot propped up with his knee bent. His arms were folded across his chest and even from here I could see ripped biceps tensed and flexed. He was in the same outfit he wore earlier today, the only difference was his hair was slightly bigger. It wasn’t like his hair had multiplied or anything, but it just stood out from his head a bit less controlled…. crazier…. no…. sexier. Like he had his hands in it, or someone else had their hands in it."

There will definitely be more to come from that!!

So before I officially became a writer this blog used to be my outlet for thinking. I was this stay at home mom that talked in "kid" all day long. My blog used to be me, just getting my thoughts collected and out of my head.

I have this problem with thinking constantly. I have serious ADD of the brain. It is always spinning, just thinking a million things a minute and really I need writing, I need to get it out of my head in order to feel at least a little bit together. It's kind of a curse.

But since this whole writing adventure, the blog has really been turned over to those endeavors that belong to my books.

But. Yesterday I went Christmas Shopping at the mall and went in a store I don't normally go into. I was looking for a White Elephant Gift. I didn't find one, but they had this entire piercing section.

Apparently I don't usually shop in stores with body-piercing equipment, because I've wanted a hoop for my nose for a very long time... like five years... and I've just never picked one up.

Anyway, not only did they sell nose rings, all of their jewelry was buy one, get the second one half off.

Nice, right?

You know I love my sales.

So. I purchased a variety of nose rings (Because apparently you get like four or five to a pack...) and came home and changed out my ring.

What was decided between Zach and me was that I have an oddly placed piercing or my nose is a funny shape and the hoop doesn't fit my nose exactly right.

This cemented in my decision to get my nose double pierced, something I've been thinking about for at least a year. My sister-in-law did it to her nose. It looks fabulous. For those of you that are having trouble picturing it, it would be like I had my stud and then the hoop just right next to each other on the same nostril.

Trust me when I say this double piercing is going to gain me huge points from all the parents at my children's private school. They're going to love it and finally take me seriously.

Just kidding.

They're not.

But probably that won't stop me from getting it done anyway. :)

The thing about this hoop that I currently have in place, is that I can't help but be terrified of the pending allergic reaction I am almost convinced I will be getting soon.

The ring is titanium. I feel like I should be safe from titanium. Right? I'm allergic to gold, white gold and silver is kind of hit or miss depending on the quality. But Titanium is Completely Different!

Well, we'll see.

I'm actually justified for this fear too.

Let me tell you about the first time I got my nose pierced.

The year was 2005. My marital status was engaged. My place of residence was Galle, Sri Lanka.

I was spending six weeks in Sri Lanka helping with the 2005 Tsunami Relief. I was just months away from getting married, but it was like my last relief-work trip before I said "I do." My mom was actually doing most of the wedding planning while I kind of dictated what I wanted via email and late night international phone calls.

I fell in love with Sri Lanka. It was some of the best six weeks of my life. The country and people are absolutely beautiful. If you ever get a chance, you NEED to go.

But anyway, I had made friends with this incredible, very generous family. The dad was a jeweler and they had four kids who I just became very close with. Anyway, my team and I would have tea with them practically every day and they basically just adopted us.

Well, since the dad was a jeweler and I needed lots of jewelry for my wedding, I ended up using him for a lot of different pieces, including the wedding rings.

I don't wear diamonds. And that whole journey kind of started in Sri Lanka.

Anyway, the family was thrilled to be a part of my wedding preparations. They were seriously so sweet and just so excited that I was getting married.

Throughout all of this, I had ALWAYS wanted to get my nose pierced. I think the original desire started with Christina Aguilera and her Dirty music video... but shh, probably don't tell anyone that! :)

So, I was 21 and away from home, away from my dad who I knew would have a heart attack if I showed up with a face piercing and the jeweler, Mr. Fahir, offered to have my nose pierced as a wedding gift.

Most of the married women in Sri Lanka had their noses pierced. It's a cultural thing for them.

And how cool is that?

I thought it was awesome.

So he made a piece of jewelry for my nose and took me to get it pierced. I took a friend with me because I was definitely a little bit scared and she had seen it done before.

Heather kept promising me they use a long needle and I wouldn't feel any pain. She said it goes super fast and that I had nothing to worry about.

I believed her.

Heather had no reason to lie to me.

But she also had never seen a nose pierced outside of the USA.

So....

Mr. Fahir takes us to this little clinic where a Sri Lankan doctor runs his practice out of.

It's after hours and nobody is there but us, but the facility is clean and nice and I even laughed at myself when it dawned on me there were no piercing parlors in third world countries.

The doctor has me sit down on this little bench thing and then he starts examining my nose. He sterilizes it and all of his equipment and I take a HUGE sigh of relief. Like, ok, we're doing this right.

Mr. Fahir hands the doctor the jewelry he made, and it's this gorgeous little sapphire stud set in white gold.

And the doctor sterilizes that too.

And then I start to ask Heather, "Ok, where's the needle? Do you see the needle??"

And she's asking the doctor, who speaks NO English, "Um, where's the needle you're going to use???"

And Mr. Fahir is like, "What needle? What are you talking about??"

And I'm trying not to scream out "WHERE IS THE NEEDLE??????"

I have all of three seconds to panic before he takes the stud, which is exactly like an earring and not your typical nose ring anyway, and he starts SHOVING it through my nostril.

Yep, dull earring point through soft, sensitive tissue!!!!!

Holy hell, I gripped that table so tight I thought I was going to break it in half. My eyes started streaming tears and not just because of the pain, but because there was so much pressure on my freaking face!

I mean, even when we were in junior high and girls would self-pierce their belly buttons in the girls bathroom, they would use needles!!!! Sharp little suckers that would go through skin easily!!!!

Not dull earring tips.

Like what was being shoved through my hose.

I generally have a high tolerance of pain and a low quantity of common sense, otherwise I might have stopped what was going on and changed my mind.

But I didn't want to offend anyone. I mean this was a gift! I couldn't just walk away from it!

No matter how much pain I was in!

Well, I thought that until the stud got stuck half way through my nostril... Then the doctor calls over Mr. Fahir to help him examine exactly what is going on.... They're standing over me, tipping my head every single direction and then finally ,FINALLY, right before I scream at the top of my lungs for them to just PUSH IT THROUGH ALREADY.

They push it through. Together. It took TWO of them!!!!!!

And then they practically ripped my nostril off trying to get the back of the earring back onto the stupid thing.

Good lord, that kind of pain was right up there with child birth.

Only minus the epidural...

So much pain.

And it's kind of a large stud. Most nose rings are tiny, almost so tiny you don't notice them. Mine sits off my nose pretty far.

But after all that pressure and trauma, my entire nose swelled up completely AROUND the ring. It was kind of terrifying.

Eventually it went down.

And I have loved both the stud and the piercing ever since. It's like my one seriously lasting wedding gift and it reminds me of Sri Lanka and the Fahir family.

It's my thing.

So, I told you I am allergic to white gold and the stud is made out of white gold... Well, it turns out that not quite a week after I returned from Sri Lanka to the States I got REALLY, REALLY sick.

Like, really sick. I was in and out of the hospital for an entire week, I was rushed to the ER for heart problems, I got super dehydrated and I learned years later that there was this chance I could have died.

Also I was only a month away from getting married!

It was really scary.

It also, potentially.... could have been caused by my nose ring! I mean, not only am I allergic to the metal, but I had that open hole all exposed in a house filled with rats and cockroaches and wild cats. Plus I was working for Habitat for Humanity building homes and sifting sand.

So you can see why I might have been a little nervous to change studs. After Seven years I can trust my body to be completely at ease with the stud that started all the problem in the first place.

Well, we'll give it a shot anyway.

Because there is always this chance that my weird, never-diagnosed disease could have been a strange strand of malaria since I didn't exactly keep up with my malaria pills either....

I guess only time will tell!