Nickie suddenly felt acutely aware of everyone around them, making their way in through the huge steel doors. “Yeah, it only took almost dying to get me here.” She indicated the arena with a nod. “You want to go and find something to drink?”
Rickie smiled. “You’re not gonna get an argument from me.”
Nickie tilted her head to look up at him, noting the fine lines etched around the corners of his eyes. “Tough day?”
“Tough life,” Rickie shot back, looking around for a bar. “But who has it easy? No one I know.”
Nickie shrugged. “Can’t disagree. I see the bar.”
Rickie held up two fingers to the bartender and received two disposable cups of something his nose told him had enough alcohol to be acceptable. He handed one to Nickie, still trying to process the difference in her. “You grew up,” he mumbled.
Nickie narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t get where you’re going with that, but sure. I’ve been an adult for a while now.”
Rickie’s face reddened. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that since we bumped into each other.”
Nickie scrutinized Rickie’s face for any clue as to what he was talking about. “Nope, you lost me. What are you thinking about?”
Rickie shook his head, waving her off. “It’s nothing.”
Nickie’s heart skipped a beat at the possibility that Rickie might be seeing her as a woman for the first time ever. “Are you trying to ask me out?”
“Um…” Rickie met Nickie’s eyes and grinned at the interest he saw there. “Shit, I think I am. What do you say? Wanna give an old dog a chance?”
Nickie considered persuading Rickie that this moment was the perfect time for his “chance.” However, this party was being held partly in her honor, so skipping out wasn’t an option. “I’m in no rush to leave Devon.”
Rickie nodded. “We could— Oh, I see your mom.”
Nickie glanced over her shoulder to see Lillian waiting patiently for her to finish her conversation with Rickie. She placed a hand on Rickie’s chest. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Rickie squeezed her hand and turned to leave.
Nickie watched him go, then turned to face her mother.
Lillian held out her arms, and Nickie found herself breaking into a half-run to throw herself into them. Everything that had passed between them previously was insignificant compared to her desire to be held. “I’m sorry,” she choked out through the lump in her throat. “I’m so glad to see you, Mom. I was such an asshole.”
Lillian released Nickie and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You’re home now,” she murmured, pulling Nickie in for another hug. “That’s all that matters.”
They broke apart when Tabitha arrived with Peter and Todd.
“How’s my favorite little man?” Lillian cooed to Todd.
Todd squirmed to get free of Peter’s hand and dashed off.
“What did I say?” Lillian asked.
Nickie snickered. “You’re the kissy aunt,” she teased. “The kid’s right to escape.” She spotted Adelaide and Keen looking a little out of place around one of the seating areas. “Excuse me? My crew doesn’t look happy. I should take care of them.”
She left Lillian and Tabitha to continue chatting and made her way over to the seating area, snagging Durq and Missy as she went, as well as a bucket of beers.
Grim came over to join them, bringing a huge tray he’d loaded with a little bit of everything from the buffet.
Nickie sipped her beer, listening to Grim and Keen bitch good-naturedly about what did and did not constitute barbeque with her mind mostly elsewhere.
Home had been wherever she made it ever since her exile, but nowhere had she felt the depth of belonging she did here. Even the furry aliens dotted among the crowd seemed to sense it.
The music went up in volume, and Nickie suddenly felt like she had to move. She put her drink down and grabbed Durq’s hands, pulling him to his feet despite his protests.
Durq turned a peculiar shade of green when she began to spin them both in time to the music. “What are you doing?” he pleaded.
Nickie threw her head back and laughed. “We’re dancing, Durq.”
Awakened
Have you read AWAKENED, book one of The Ascension Myth, the first series from Ell Leigh Clarke and Michael Anderle? Click the link below to start reading today.
Order Now at Amazon
Author Notes - Ell Leigh Clarke
June 4, 2019
Thank yous
Lots of people go into making a series such as this. I’d like to say a massive thank you to the team of folks who make this series possible.
JITers
Massive, uber thanks also go out to our JIT team headed up by Kelly for all their hard work. They ensure that the words reach you well-proofed, read and re-read, with all inconsistencies corrected. Thank you so much for all the care and attention you put into the process.
We couldn’t do this without you.
Reviewers
Mega thanks also goes out to our Amazon reviewers. It’s because of you that we get to do this full time. Without your five-star reviews and thoughtful words on Amazon we simply wouldn’t have enough folks reading these space shenanigans to be able to write full time.
You are the reason these stories exist and you have no idea how frikkin’ grateful I am to you.
Truly, thank you.
Readers and FB page supporters
I’d like to also thank *YOU* for reading. Your enthusiasm and support are what keep us working hard to bring the next episode to you.
Thank you for being here, for the banter, for reading, and reviewing. You rock, and without you, there really would be no reason to write these stories.
Thank You to Our Growing Patreon Family
Last and by no means least I’d like to say a huge thank you to our growing Patreon family.
Allan MacBain, Andrew Volz, Anne Henderson, Brian Roberts, Cynthia MacLeod, Darrell Heckler, David Pollard, Don Gannon, James Burrett, Jolie Brackett, Judith Wiseman, Kelvin Saggers, Kendra Gilmore, Lester Nye, Maps Cat, Mary Morris, Nat Thongchai, Paula Fletcher, Russell Peake, Sandra Chapman, and Suellen Wiseman.
You may also occasionally notice that a “human” name is used for characters here and there. That is because this is one of the ways we honor our Patreon members – we name characters after them!
Unfortunately, sometimes these characters die… but that doesn’t seem to bother some folks ;) They tell me it’s still a thrill to see their name in print.
I’ll look forward to hanging out with you over there – either through the Author Shenanigan videos, or on one of our live streams.
If you’d like to get a character named after you, and to continue the back stage shenanigans, feel free to join us over at:
www.Patreon.com/ellleighclarke.
What’s Next?
Wrapping up Deuces Wild – Nicky found her way back to the fold. I’m sure she’ll have many more adventures, but book 5 marks the close of this tumultuous part of her life, and the series. I’m so grateful that you join us for the ride.
So what is next? I hear you cry…
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Bentley
Well, as of writing the Bentley series, aka “The Sword Mage Chronicles” is live. If you haven’t checked it out, just search for Ell Leigh Clarke or the Sword-Mage Chronicles and you’ll find it. There are currently seven books in the series and an eighth book plotted.
Jayne
As for MA and I, we continue to spawn more concepts and characters for your reading pleasure….
Our most recent one to hit the ‘Zon was Spy for Hire, (internally known as the Jayne series.)
Jayne Austin is a spy, kicked out of the spy academy - just ahead of graduation - for political reasons. Sure, she’s a loose cannon, with a healthy disrespect for
authority, but this would be the kind of highly trained agent you’d want to keep close.
If you knew what was good for you.
Well, anyway, the dean of the school has other ideas of what is good for him (and his career), and Jayne is left to fend for herself, or head home to mom. Of course, heading home is admitting defeat, so instead she decides to use her training to make a living… err, I mean, for the forces of good.
Within hours she’s got herself into some major-league trouble, found some friends to help mitigate said trouble, and so begins the swashbuckling adventure you’d expect from a story with a cover of a girl with a gun, explosions in the background and a series title, “Spy for Hire”.
All that is great, but my favorite part about this series is the Hannibal-Clarice mentoring relationship that develops… minus the eating of humans, mind you. Now, this is three books in one, so you’ll have a few adventures before you get to my favorite bits…
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And we’ve got Jayne 02 (which in normal book lengths would have actually been Jayne 04) coming in the next few weeks. If you’re not already up to date, I’d get cracking on this one asap, so that when Jayne 04 hits you’re all caught up.
Maths, Maths, Maths
Back in November I picked up a copy of Chris Isham’s Lectures on Group Theory and Vector Spaces. These are essentially his lecture notes from Imperial back when he taught the course of the same title. I may have mentioned to you before about how in awe I was of this professor. I only ever had him for a substitute lecture once when one of our regular course lecturers was away, and Professor Isham filled in.
But this dude… He blew my frikkin’ mind when he talked about how maths are just windows onto the world. It took me the next twenty years to really understand what that meant, and as I’m studying group theory applied to physical systems now, it’s making more and more sense.
That’s one of the things I envy most about smart people – their ability to cut through the details and nuances and see what is really going on, with a sophistication but simplicity that eludes everyone else.
My whole life I’ve been acutely aware of how little clarity I have, and when I do achieve moments of clarity, it’s like a Tetris block clicking into place, which then disappears into my own personal schema of the world, never to be truly recognized again. These moments leave me longing for another moment of clarity in amongst the wash of near-constant confusion, very much like Teresa d-Avila talks about how a moment of enlightenments leaves you longing for more for the rest of your life.
I guess this is what drove me to seek out his book. Technically my degree would have covered everything in that text, but somehow I managed to struggle through the entire process of exams and thesis without truly getting it all.
I actually recall quite vividly a moment when I was chatting with one of my Quantum Information professors standing on the walkway outside the common room, and I said something DUMB about classical mechanics. Instead of correcting me, he just said I’d probably need another degree to get it all.
I don’t think he was being rude… I think he was right.
Anyway, since knuckling down with Isham’s book all those months ago, I’ve slowly been getting a grip on the nomenclature, the abstract ideas, and gradually making progress in the subject. My strategy was to nail down the basics and really get to grips with it, so that everything else that I studied later would make more sense, kinda like learning the alphabet and a few basic verb conjugations in order to learn a new language.
I feel like I need to get a proper grip on the Quantum Field Theories and explore the other string theories that I didn’t use in my thesis so that I can see the bigger picture. Already, I’m starting to glimpse how the abstract group theory, Lie algebras, and the like, fit in with Hilbert spaces and how it is going to help me understand much better where the undergraduate quantum mechanics was going. I wish I’d had more time to read, think and digest what we were meant to be learning at university – but I guess that’s what free-time is for when you’re a grown up, and no longer have exams to pass!
Anyway, my plan is to master the group theory applications, refresh QFT (QCD and QED) and then move onto the gravitational theories later this year. I also want to dip back into Quantum Information, because not only is it super relevant to technology like quantum computing and cryptography, but it’s also lends itself to a more abstract and encompassing view of the world. Like the professor mentioned above says: Everything is Information. (And he meant physically too – on an atomic level. #Mind-blowing. I’ll update you on that another time later in the year when I’ve got more of a handle on the implications!).
A few weeks ago I was just finishing a call with MA and I mentioned that I was going to take a nap and then do some maths.
He thought it was hilarious. So much so, he felt we should put it into a character.
And so we designed a news series…
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He made the main character, into a vampire. A vampire that runs a detective agency but in her spare time does “maths and science and shit”, as he puts it. “Like the English aristocracy used to.”
We’ve also got an Archer-like character, playboy turned responsible apprentice type, who is going to help run the agency during the daylight hours. It’s turning into an absolute blast.
The series is still in its early stages, but stay tuned to the email lists and we’ll let you know when it is released onto the ‘Zon.
Speaking of, here’s the link if you’re not already hooked up:
www.ellleighclarke.com
My Book Report
For those who have been following my Author Notes in the Bentley series, you may recall that I’m planning to read fifty books this year.
So far I’m around number 25 and we’re just heading into June, so I’m just ahead of schedule. I’m planning on counting a bunch of the textbooks I’ve been reading too, once I’ve completed them… but they’re a much longer read for obvious reasons.
Why am I doing this? Well, if you recall, my friend Claire reads 100 books a year, and told me that Bush (as in Junior, yep, you read that right) used to read 100 books every year, even when he was in office. I realized I really have no excuse – plus it’s really helping me fill in all the data points I’m missing to understand a ton of stuff I want to be versed in. It’s helping me get my learning mojo back too. The problem is, the more I learn, the more I want to learn.
The secondary problem is forgetting. The more I learn, the more I forget, and I’m guessing I’m retaining less than 10% of what I take in over time… despite the memory and speed reading course I’ve been plugging through.
I’m having to resign myself to the idea that at least it’s helping me fill in the blanks and build up a landscape of what I want to understand, even if I don’t have all the details at my fingertips.
Incidentally, I’m noticing that my brain is recovering as I crawl back from the adrenal fatigue. Yay! I’m able to concentrate for longer and longer periods each day, as if the fog lifts for a few hours before descending again. The only frustration with this is that I have extended periods of time at the end of the working day when I am SERIOUSLY motived to learn and understand things, and get stuff done, but my cortex kinda gives out and can’t keep up and the fog descends again. I find myself forgetting thoughts on a moment to moment basis.
Sometimes I worry I’m getting old.
Or worse… becoming my moth
er. ;-D
But I think if I put my anxieties of mortality aside, it’s likely just a hangover from the adrenal fatigue and eventually I’ll be back at full capacity, a little older, and much, much wiser.
And on that note, for those who push themselves and stay in high stress situations, let this be the cautionary tale. This is now nearly two years later and I’m still recovering.
Slack Shenanigans
It’s been a while since we last updated you with the ongoing banter and shenanigans that go on when we’re not writing Author Notes or recording episodes of our Author Shenanigans videocast.
It probably doesn’t come as surprise to you that incidents that you witness are going on behind the scenes All. The. Time!
Here’s a sample of the most recent ones. All I did was search the hashtag #AuthorNotes in my slack channel with MA.
March sometime…
michael [10:25 PM]
Ok, got to run, but here is something I'm excited about - no comments from ... well, no comments, let me have my 12 hours of jubilation before we critique it ;-)
ellleighclarke [10:26 PM]
oh you're posting smthg?
>> Ellie edit: Nothing was happening… then I realized he was uploading something and that was what was causing the delay. <<
michael [10:26 PM]
(Upload appears – it’s an image of some busty girl, touting a weapon, smiling seductively at the camera. It appears to be a new book cover. I’m very confused, trying to figure out which project this is for.)
ellleighclarke [10:26 PM]
and I've not to give you my (honest) opinion
till tmw?
michael [10:26 PM]
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