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deathbyhysteria · 6 years ago

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57 facts tag !!

i was tagged by @serensims - thank you for tagging me even though i took so long because it gave me a migraine lol

i tag @gemgeminox @maplestreetsims @justkeeponsimming @all-harlows-eve @daisydezem and anyone else who wants to have a go.

facts are under the cut!

1. i just turned 21 years old

2. i am studying law in london

3. when i finish i may go and do a postgrad somewhere abroad! we’ll see

4. i have literally no hobbies now

5. when i was younger i used to do ballet, viola, piano, guitar, yoga, drama, dance, singing and ballroom dancing - not all at the same time (i.e. i was much more well rounded than i am now)

6. i have one younger sister

7. i always wanted to have an older sibling, especially an older brother

8. i used to be a big reader but i stopped. but over the summer i’ve been reading more again, especially crime books by Harlan Coben

9. some shows i’ve been watching a lot of over the summer: bojack horseman, 3%, the flash

10. s5 of bojack horseman actually came out on my birthday and i tried to rewatch all 4 seasons before then but i failed. however i just started the new season today!

11. i was admitted to hospital twice over the summer, once while i was abroad i’m holiday which SUCKED

12. i love travelling and some of the places i’ve been to are: italy, cyprus, various places in the usa, jamaica, mexico, nigeria, greece, spain, switzerland.

13. my dream destination is japan... i would love to visit so badly

14. speaking of japan, my favourite cuisine is actually japanese food, and i also really enjoy chinese and what little i have tried of vietnamese food too

15. i have only one (two?) piercings and that’s my ear lobes. but i would love to get a second set of piercing on my lobes and i’m hoping to do it in the near future

16. i’d love to get a tattoo one day but i’m not sure what i’d get and also i don’t like pain

17. i’m in and out of hospital kinda frequently because of a medical condition i have (without going into specifics, you could say i’m a little like a spoonie)

18. the only surgery i’ve had was when i was about 6 years old and i had my tonsils removed

19. i really like makeup and i can get quite creative with it, but i don’t tend to wear anything outside of mascara, my go to lipstick (which is touch by mac) and possibly eyeliner on a daily basis

20. i’m 5ft 7in (and a half)

21. i know basic french and a little more than basic spanish, and i’m a native english speaker

22. this year i’m learning yoruba, and i’m also hoping to pick up some basic german too

23. i rarely cry at movies but the only ones which did manage to make me cry were: titanic (i’m sure i was too young to be watching it at the time), princess and the pea, boy in the striped pyjamas... oh and avengers: infinity war which made me bawl like my puppy had died

24. i’m a really big fan of the mcu and i always go to watch the new releases in the cinema with my sister and my dad

25. i’ve never see the incredible hulk so idk maybe that makes me a fake fan

26. i had to wear braces for 6-7 years? but afterwards i stopped wearing my retainers so some of the gaps opened up in my teeth again 🤷‍♀️ what can you do

27. i love music and i always try to give every genre a go... the only one i can’t deal with is country music

28. my favourite thing is getting to see live music and i’ve gotten to see: one direction (my first concert!), 5 seconds of summer, little mix, twenty one pilots, hey violet and most recently taylor swift

29. i’m still taking driving lessons over a year after i first started but my driving test is booked for next friday so idk maybe i’ll have an official license soon if i don’t flop

30. i had 4 really close friends in high school but after that we kinda grew apart and i got pretty lonely and pretty bad (read: ridiculously awful) at making friends

31. i did struggle with depression and mild anxiety in the past

32. if you have mental health issues - please try and talk to someone about it. keep trying until you find someone you can trust. it took me a long time to admit i needed help and even longer to find someone i felt comfortable confiding in, but it was the best thing i ever did.

33. i did really really well in my gcse’s but since then i’ve just gotten dumber i guess because all my grades have been nothing short of average, sometimes even significantly below average

34. tumblr is basically the only social media i use now. i stopped using facebook, twitter and instagram, and i only keep the snapchat app around so i can take cute selfies, but i don’t ever post

35. it’s 2am as i type this and i’m running out of things to say

36. i used to get really painful periods, to the point where i was basically bedridden and the pain was enough to make me physically throw up. luckily they aren’t as bad anymore

37. i love the summer and i really need that vitamin d in my life

38. i really love winter clothes and big loose comfy sweaters are literally my favourite thing

39. i drink a lot of tea, especially green tea with lots of honey

40. i’m mildly lactose intolerant and yesterday i drank a chocolate milk which had some adverse effects... it wasn’t worth it tbh it tasted kinda nasty

41. i used to really love bratz and i watched all the movies and even bought some of their albums

42. i can’t really walk in heels but i’m trying... platform heels are not so bad but then i get people telling me i’m tall already so i don’t need to wear heels (as if i don’t just wear them because i like them)

43. i love lush bath bombs and i always have a few hanging around my bathroom

44. my dress size is like a 10 but sometimes i have to go up a size because of my big bust, which i hate

45. i actually really enjoy playing the papa’s pizzeria franchise online and they’re like my go to games when i’m really bored

46. speaking of games i also really love phoenix wright, i’m playing the trilogy on the app now as i had only played ace attorney before

47. i love getting manicures and idk why but i always tend to paint my nails dark blue... there’s this shade this one shade and no matter which nail bar you send me to, if they have it i’ll always pick it out without even realising it

48. i play sims on my macbook air which probably isn’t a great pc for gaming bc it always makes the fan go absolutely crazy, although my game never lags even back when i used alpha cc

49. i played the og sims but i never played sims 2 or 3 and i also never bought any expansion packs even though i was desperate to

50. i wear a lot of black, not intentionally but probably because it’s just a safe colour that you can’t go wrong with

51. i actually really enjoy getting socks as a gift but no one buys me them because i think it’s a universally accepted fact that socks are a rubbish gift

52. i don’t own any trousers that aren’t jeans and i think that’s probably a little odd but i’m not sure

53. i don’t have a great track record of keeping my mobile safe and i’ve ruined a lot of good phones by cracking the screen, dropping them in the toilet, dropping them into my cereal, or just plain losing them

54. speaking of which i currently have an iphone 6s in rose gold and i love it and don’t care all that much to upgrade it. but it only has 16gb of space and i’m desperate for more

55. i also really enjoy getting new pyjamas. and my favourite pyjamas are the ones that aren’t pyjamas at all i.e. just give me a t-shirt in size xxxl and i’m good to go

56. i wear glasses because i have a lazy eye and i’m also long sighted (which is an absolute recipe for disaster when you’re trying to apply eyeliner, let me tell you)

57. i’m genuinely surprised that i managed to list 57 facts about me!

#tags #57 facts tag #non sims

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jelloapocalypse · 7 years ago

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Could a StiB Homestar Runner ever be a possibility?

I mean I could do that but I think it’d be a really weird video since HR is so surrealist.

So people keep asking what So This is Basically videos are on the table for the future. There’s a certain criteria list that I follow when I pick video candidates.

I need to like the series at least a little. If I don’t the video turns mean-spirited very quickly and then it’s not as fun. People always go “why do you hate Pokemon/Zelda/Steven Universe/Gravity Falls???” in the comments. I don’t, that’s why I’m able to watch and parody them effectively. You want a show I didn’t like? Adventure Time. Crunchyroll asked me to take that one on and I was like “haha okay” and I think it’s pretty obvious how little I enjoy it.

The ideal candidate for a StiB is a series that I enjoy that has significant flaws that keep it from being great. Steven Universe, Star, Ladybug, and RWBY would be great examples of this. Those shows have a lot of really enjoyable elements but if I was a creative consultant I’d have a LOT of shit that I would want to rework. This kind of series gives me a lot to talk about and makes it easy to write.

Live action doesn’t work well for a StiB. The visuals for these videos are supposed to be childlike recreations of the actual series, so the more character and background references I can find online, the better. This is especially easy for cartoons and games since I can just look up the assets in screenshots and on google images. Even 3D shows are hard though. Drawing a background for something like Danny Phantom is actually 100 times easier than drawing one for Overwatch or Miraculous. If I have to spend time converting live action sets and actors into a cartoon format, that’s a lot of time I’m wasting that could be better spent just drawing.

The series needs to have enough content to make a 2-4 minute nitpick parody possible. Sometimes people suggest things like a single movie or a game like 5 Nights at Freddy’s and that stuff just does NOT have enough meat in it for a parody series tackling story structure and character growth.

On the other hand I’d prefer the series not be too long. Some people suggest stuff like Doctor Who. I try to watch/play at least the majority of a topic before commenting on it (otherwise I don’t think it’s really fair to voice criticisms) and I simply don’t have the time to burn through 1000 episodes of a show I’ve never seen before.

The series needs to be relevant. While I do like making StiB videos, they are also my livelihood. I need to make sure they’ll be able to do well. People need to know what the thing I’m parodying is. So 80% of the time when people suggest an obscure anime I have to throw that suggestion on the chopping block immediately (anime stuff never does well on my channel anyways). This is also my reasoning for not doing things that had huge booms of popularity in the past like Homestuck, Undertale, or My Little Pony. I feel like those things had their time and they had their ten thousand parody videos and I don’t need to dig up their graves, even if other people still are. As much as I love Homestar Runner and I still follow all their stuff, I’d be hard-pressed to call it relevant nowadays.

Most Importantly: I just need to want to make a StiB on that topic. There are just some franchises that are easier to write for than others. For example this month I’m making a My Hero Academia video. I watched all the anime, I read all the manga, and honestly it’s just a good show! It was REALLY hard to write a parody for! Took me about twice as long as normal to get the good lines rolling.While drawing the storyboards for StiB MHA I was rewatching The Legend of Korra because it’s one of the possible frontrunners alongside JoJo for the December/January video. That show is a TRAINWRECK. It has a ton of good ideas but executes almost none of them well, which makes it rife for StiB writing. I jotted down about 50 gag ideas in a notepad doc before I even hit the end of Season 3. Some other series I really want to tackle are Fire Emblem, Ace Attorney, and Resident Evil. They’re SO stupid, I love them.

So yeah, tl;dr it’s hard to express exactly what makes a solid StiB candidate but I know it when I hear it and if I like it then I’ll throw it on my patreon poll.

If you guys are interested in picking the next StiB video that I cover, you can always CAST YOUR VOTE HERE on my Patreon!

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malicenthightower · 7 years ago

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tagged by the lovely @evilqueenofgallifrey <3

RULES: Tag 9 people with excellent taste

Colours I’m currently wearing: grey, white and blue

Last band shirt I bought: i don’t know if i’ve ever bought a band shirt, i’ve had band shirts bought for me but that was a while ago

Last band I went to see live: i have seen precisely one band live in my entire life and that was linkin park, it was incredible and i’m so happy i had a chance to see chester perform

Last song I listened to: Molecules by Hayley Kiyoko

Lipstick or chapstick: both are good but chapstick’s great for practicality

Last movie I watched?: i’ve not watched any since i watched the shape of water a few weeks ago i think

Last 3 shows I watched?: The Sarah Jane Adventures, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Coupling

3 characters I identify with?: Amy Pond from DW, Maya Fey from Ace Attorney, Sansa Stark from ASOIAF

Books I’m currently reading?: I’m not, my book reading time has mostly been usurped by DW audios but I guess A Storm of Swords, Part 2: and I mean to read My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness soon. I also ordered three of the new Target DW novels (Rose, The Day of the Doctor and Twice Upon a Time)

I tag: @madqueenalanna, @chloeffrazer, @thedeadflag, @tiberelechat, @fangoriousfae, @scarvesandcelery, @bisexualhermionepond, @bisexualtrucy and @night-dark-woods

#tag games

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royalxiii · 8 years ago

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My Personal Top 10 Games of 2016

I know a lot people had a bad 2016, but for us gamers, it was a pretty good year (if you don’t mind all the delays that is)! So why not make a good old top 10 list? It’s always fun!

I’m also gonna have my personal “out of 10″ score for each game’s gameplay AND story, since both are equally important to me. As well as a mini-ish review and why it’s placed where it is. Without further ado, here we go!

*Contains Spoilers*

*Keep in mind I haven’t played every game, nor do I have a Xbone or Gaming PC.*

10) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (Wii U)

Gameplay: 8/10 | Story: 9/10

Twilight Princess is one of those “love it, or hate it” Zelda games. For me, even though I’m aware of it’s faults, I love Twilight Princess. Even more so without the motion controls. I love Wolf Link (even though I wish there was more reasons to use him), Midna, Zant, the darker and creepy atmosphere, I love it all! So why is it at number ten? Well, I personally don’t believe ports and enhanced versions should be on a “top 10 games of the year” list (they should be for new games only). But I haven’t finished a lot of games I got this year, and I was missing two slots. So here you go!

9) Gravity Rush - Remastered - (PS4)

Gameplay: 9.5/10 | Story: 9/10

Like TP above, Gravity Rush is lower on the list only because it’s a port/HD version of a old game. I really loved Gravity Rush back on the Vita, but I was quite confused at the story. But once I replayed it on PS4, knowing what I knew, it was easier to follow (even though you really don’t figure much out by the end). Gameplay feels so, SO, much better on the PS4! I love the Vita, but playing GR on it cramped my hands so much. It feels just right on the PS4 controller. Playing through this again makes me even more excited for Gravity Rush 2 this month!

8) Pokken Tournament (Wii U)

Gameplay: 9/10 | Story: 3/10

At last, a actual new game! Pokken is such a oddity, but goddamn I love this game. I’m pretty horrible at fighting games, especially ones that aren’t “Smash Bros.” style. But I had fun playing this, and when I had friends over, they loved it too! There’s not much of a story, which wasn’t surprising, but the Shadow Mewtwo segment was interesting enough to keep me playing. Still haven’t beaten the bastard (last battle) though. I hope to see this ported or get a sequel on the NS!

7) Ratchet & Clank -2016- (PS4)

Gameplay: 9.5/10 | Story: 5/10

Ah, Ratchet & Clank! One of the handful of games on my “Must Buy Day-One” list for every new installment. The series has been a bit on the shaky side after A Crack in Time, both in gameplay and in story. But this game (at least gameplay-wise) is a real return to form! Unfortunately, since this is a game based off a movie (based off a game), there’s pretty much no story since you’re suppose to watch it’s movie counterpart (which isn’t great). But it’s still a fun time! And there’s a in-game cheat to turn bolts into rupees, which is fucking fantastic.

6) Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero (PS4, Vita, Wii U, X1, PC)

Gameplay: 9/10 | Story: 8.5/10

Oh Shantae, you were so close to becoming a 2017 game, good for you for staying in 2016 :3 This is game is beautiful! The animation is so good and lovely! And it’s as fun as any Shantae game before it (I do miss using Risky’s gear though)! My only complaint is the slide segment that’s used twice. For me, they ruin the pacing and they drag on for a little to long both times. Other than that, I really loved it and I can’t wait for the Risky Boots DLC! Also the music is fantastic XD

5) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice - (3DS)

Gameplay: 9/10 | Story: 10/10

I love the Ace Attorney series, warts and all. That being said, I didn’t like the last game, Dual Destinies. Although I liked a lot of new characters from it (and it’s DLC Case), I never felt so out of sync with out to proceed in the Court Cases. By the end I just wanted it to be over. But with Spirit of Justice, it was like the game was reading my mind or vise versa. I was so in-tune with the cases and only messed up a handful of times! And the story is wonderful and heartbreaking, as this series is known to be. I really can’t wait to see the future for Wright and his friends :D

4) Final Fantasy XV (PS4 and X1)

Gameplay: 9.5/10 | Story: 8/10

People are gonna hate me for this, luckily this blog ain’t popular enough for a huge backlash. FFXV is game I, much like a lot of people, have been waiting for since it was first revealed as Final Fantasy Verses XIII back in 2006. So obviously, there are high, and I mean high, expectations for a game ten years in the making. For the most part, it does succeed, at least with gameplay. Unfortunately, the story is lacking. Not in plot, mind you, but in cutscenes. I know cutscenes are the bane of some people’s existence, but to them I say “fuck you, why the hell are you play a JRPG in the first place then?!” Cutscenes don’t only add personality to the main characters and depth to the story, but also to show other character’s within the story and why we should care or hate them. I know FFXV will be getting a update with new cutscenes later, but for now it’s sort of bare bones for me, and I don’t want to feel like that for this game. I see so much good in it, so it’s only natural I want to love and care for everything in it, right?

3) Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (PS4)

Gameplay: 9/10 | Story: 9.8/10

What a way to end Nate’s story, I fucking love this game! It’s so beautiful, the writing is great, the characters are great, and that fucking epilogue makes me want a Uncharted featuring Nate’s daughter. With Sam acting as her Sully. I know it wont happen, but I can dream can’t I? The gameplay is mostly the same, but it’s still fun. I love being able to almost always complete areas in stealth mode. Much like most games on here, I can’t wait for it’s story DLC :3

2) Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS)

Gameplay: 10/10 | Story: 9/10

This may seem very, VERY, odd that Kirby beat both FFXV and Uncharted 4 for me. But I have to give the number two spot to this game because, well, I just had so much fun playing it! Once I got it, I barley ever put it down. It was 100% fun from beginning to end. Hell, I was actually completing it as I was playing it! Granted, I haven’t picked it back up since I completed it. But I’m already feeling the urge to replay it as I type this, and that’s the sign of a good game. Story-wise, it’s sort of what you’d expect from Kirby, but it’s still fun and entertaining. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I just wish it had post-game levels or something to that effect.

1) Pokemon: Sun & Moon (3DS)

Gameplay: 9.8/10 | Story: 10\10

Given that my blog is mostly Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon, and all the news updates, drawings, a report of my gameplay for both games, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Even though I have some problems with it, this game is fucking fantastic! There’s a lot of upgrades to how things work that needed working on for a loooong time. From small things like your PC no longer has the useless “Withdraw and Deposit” options, to big things like no HMs! And recovering from the somewhat bland story in XY, the story and characters in SM is really fun and interesting! Hell, there were times where I was actually laughing out loud! I don’t think a Pokemon game has ever done that before! This game is just a real treat from beginning to end! As far as nitpicks and things that just piss me off from the oversight, well it defiantly has it’s fair share. But this is mostly at the Trainer Customization and some movepools for the New and Alolan Form Pokemon. In any case, even after beaten both Sun and Moon, I can hardly wait to get another copy to play my Popplio Team :D

Honorable Mentions

(AKA Games I’m Loving but Haven’t Finished)

World of Final Fantasy (PS4 and Vita)

I honestly didn’t think I’d like this game, but it does grow on you! I stopped playing because I want to wait for the Sora Summon DLC (coming out this month!) Plus Pokemon came out soon after. What makes this game great is that, unlike other non-Pokemon monster-catching games, the monster-catching part isn’t almost 100% completely random. Like Tales of Symphonia 2, Ni no Kuni, and Yo-Kai Watch to name a few. The story is kinda interesting as long as you get used to to voice acting, which isn’t bad but the dialog is kinda awkward and Tama’s the-the is so annoying. In any case, I can’t wait to get back and beat it!

Watch_Dogs 2 (PS4, X1, PC)

I got this game for Christmas, and started it after beating FFXV and Shantae. So far I’ve been loving it! So far it’s much better then the original Watch_Dogs in graphics, gameplay, and story (granted, I’m still basically in the beginning. Doing a lot of side-quest). As of now this is the game I’m currently playing in till Gravity Rush 2, which will then be taken over by Kh2.8.

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mysteryshelf · 7 years ago

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BLOG TOUR - The Grand

Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Partners in Crime Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

The Grand

by Dennis D. Wilson

on Tour October 1-31, 2017

Synopsis:

Chicago cop Dean Wister takes a forced vacation when he is on the brink of a breakdown after the death of his wife. During his summer solstice in Jackson Hole, where he met her years before, he is called in to consult by local police when a notorious Chicago mobster is found dead in the Snake River. Dean’s investigation threatens to uncover the secrets of a group of memorable suspects, ranging from rich tycoons to modern day cowboys, and threatens to derail the Presidential prospects of the Senator from Wyoming. As Dean follows the leads from Wyoming to Chicago to Washington D.C., he also struggles to cope with the personal loss that threatens his mental stability, as the nocturnal visits from his deceased wife suppress his will to let her go and make him question his purpose in life. The climactic scenes contain reveals the reader will never see coming. A funny, romantic, sexy, roller coaster thriller.

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Thriller Published by: Water Street Press Publication Date: December 2016 Number of Pages: 304 ISBN: 978-1-62134-330-1 (ASIN: B01N682LXW) Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Kindle 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

Read an excerpt:

SENATOR THOMAS MCGRAW sat back in the hand-distressed, buffalo-hide easy chair and contemplated the room around him. This was his first visit to the brand new, custom-designed mountain home of his lover. When their affair started a little over a year ago, what a sweet and savory surprise it had been to both of them. A business relationship grew into friendship, and then suddenly and unexpectedly exploded into something else— a red-hot, cross-country, obsessive romance fueled by shared erotic tastes. The senator felt sexually liberated under the spell of his exotic lover, and he was pretty sure those feelings were mutual. True, they needed to be discreet for a variety of reasons— indiscretion had nearly cost them everything— but they had worked it out. Although hectic schedules limited their rendezvous to only a couple of weekends a month, the deprivation and anxiety of anticipation made these weekends that much more satisfying. He was generally in a frenzy by the time he could get to her.

The room was the den of a typical ten-thousand-square-foot vacation home of the rich and powerful in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Decked out in nouveau western, its reclaimed timbers, Wyoming sandstone, and river rock were either complemented by— or detracted from, depending on your esthetic point of view— the original modern paintings depicting bold and most definitely non-earth-toned western landscapes and various forms of neon-colored wildlife. As Tom sipped his twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, he studied the visage of a purple and orange moose head sculpted from California mahogany hanging dispiritedly over the fireplace. Damn, any self-respecting Wyoming moose would be embarrassed to know that this is some guy’s idea of what a trophy moose should look like. His personal style was more traditional Western— big wooden beams and a glut of real dead animal heads on the walls. But, the sex was still new and novel, unlike anything he had felt before, and he was willing to overlook these stylistic differences for the time being or, who knew, maybe for a long time. As his mentor had told him a long time ago: “Pussy is a powerful motivator.”

“I am soooo happy we were able to start our weekend a day early,” his lover called from the other room. “I’ve been so horny this week that I’ve been bouncing off the walls. I brought back something special for you from Chicago. Just give me another minute, sweetie.” Charlotte Kidwell dressed, and undressed, to accentuate her best features: her big green eyes, her long, toned legs, and her perfect bubble butt. Her regular head-to-toe salon appointments, personal trainer, and strict dietary regimen were essentials to the healthy, put-together appearance that women of her age and social status often have, if they have the money and motivation to work at it. In her younger days, her insecure attempts to add sex appeal fell short, and she’d ended up with an oddly unfeminine look with her clumsy and unsuccessful experiments with cosmetics. But middle age had actually softened her features, and as she became more adept at the finer points of female grooming, she began to realize how much she resembled her sister. During what she referred to as “The Sexual Awakening,” she had finally developed the confidence in her sexuality to consciously emulate her sister’s makeup and dress. Her older sibling had always exuded effortless sexuality, and throughout high school and college had gone through more boys in most years than Charlotte had dated for her entire youth.

The senator had certainly surprised her. Although his belly professed his lust for food and drink and a disinclination for exercise, his face was the opposite, exuding an irresistible cowboy masculinity. At middle age, most people have to choose between a wrinkle-free face and a toned and youthful body. What was it her friend in Chicago called fat? “Nature’s botox.” He had chosen his beautiful face at the expense of his body, but that was fine with her, because he was a sexual artiste. Certainly no one who knew him could possibly conceive of the hot spring of sexuality that was percolating beneath his surface. In spite of their distinctly different personalities, she considered him her soul mate. The first man in her forty-four years who had ever laid claim to that title. The thought made her giggle.

“Hurry up, baby, and get your pretty little ass out here.”

Appearing in the doorway, she framed herself with the hand-on-the-hip pose so popular with women much younger than herself. “You like? I know this little specialty boutique in Chicago, and it ain’t Macy’s Intimate Apparel.”

He liked the look very much. The red lace push-up bra, matching thong panties, silk kimono, and six-inch stilettos appealed to the man who’d had a weakness for strippers in his younger days. Though the untied robe looked more like a cape than boudoir attire, and the entire outfit reminded him of a porn movie he once saw— Superslut, a parody of Superwoman, he had to give her an “A” for effort. “Wow, you look like a very sexy Little Red Riding Hood. And where in the world did you find a bra that makes those pretty little A cups of yours look like Cs? Now turn around and let me admire your world-class bootie.”

She did a little twirl for him, grinned, and pushed together her bra cups to emphasize her cleavage. “It’s called a miracle bra, and see, it does work miracles. Now you just sit there and sip your whiskey. I have another surprise for you.” She strutted over to the bookcase, flipped a switch, and AC/ DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long” filled the room. And she began to dance.

“Oh my.” Tom took a big swallow and relished the burn. “You are just full of surprises tonight.”

“Just sit back and enjoy, Senator. I’ve got a few more surprises coming your way.”

Watching her rehearsed moves, the familiar hunger began to stir below his opulent belly. And then, in a maneuver that would have been impressive for a woman of any age, she turned away from him, spread her legs, touched her toes, looked straight up at him from her bare inverted V, and twerked. She had been practicing all afternoon, and when she saw the image of her quivering butt in the mirror she couldn’t wait to see his reaction.

“Oh, my god, where did you learn that?” The stirring rising now to a different level. And he was also wondering… her dance routine looked really professional.

“I have a very good friend in Chicago who does this for a living, and she’s been giving me some lessons.”

“Judging from that pose, sweetie, your friend must be an instructor in ‘stripper yoga’.” The senator, feeling the fire down there, leaned forward and reached for that perfect ass. “Get over here and let me take you the way I like, the way I know you like.” Putting his hands on her bare cheeks and grabbing two hands full, he left his chubby fingerprints as indentations on her flesh. Crazed now, pulling off his pants and underwear but not bothering with his shirt and tie, he pulled her thong aside, mounted her, grunting, sighing. Both of them grunting, sighing, grunting some more. And now just the sounds of flesh slapping flesh. And AC/ DC, urging them on…

Hayden Smith was running late. He was always running late. It was common knowledge in town that you had to book every appointment with Hayden an hour early to get him to show up on time. Attorney, county commissioner, real estate broker and developer, owner of a property management company— all that, plus trying to live up to the moniker of Teton County’s most eligible bachelor as determined by Mountain Woman magazine, well, that could take a toll on a man, even a man as fit and athletic as Hayden. And it was taking its toll on Hayden today. Sometimes he thought there was little point in taking any time off because you had to work twice as hard just to clear your schedule.

The last item of the day on his long list was to make sure all was in order in the home of his newest property management client before their arrival the next morning. But what he really was thinking about, as he put the key in the door, was that he was already an hour late for a dinner date at the home of one of Teton County’s richest and most beautiful socialites. And so if he hadn’t been fantasizing about the evening’s upcoming sensual activities, and if he hadn’t assumed that it was his cleaning crew that had left that open bourbon bottle on the counter, and if he hadn’t been formulating the words he was going to use to chew Pablo’s ass about getting control of his maintenance team, and if he had checked his voicemail after his last two meetings instead of engaging in licentious banter on the phone with the young socialite, then he might have reacted differently to the pounding bass of one of the most iconic rock anthems of the 1980s. He might not have followed the mesmerizing sound of Brian Johnson’s sandpaper voice into the den, assuming that he would find some of his employees having an unauthorized party; and he might not have witnessed the sight in front of him that would not only drastically change his life but would also set in motion a chain of events that had the potential to change the course of American history.

If he had looked directly at the man’s face, he almost certainly would have recognized one of the most well-known faces in Wyoming, soon to be equally famous throughout America. However, Hayden looked everywhere but into his face. The man, still dressed for business on top but naked from the waist down, was humping a pretty redhead doggie style, and Hayden was fascinated that with each thrust, her red stilettos would come off the ground about twelve inches, and then at the end of the thrust, the tips of her heels would bang down on the pine floor. Thrust, bang, thrust, bang, thrust, bang. Later when he played that video clip back in his mind, he captioned it “porn star tap dancing.”

He looked all around the room, but his eyes kept coming back to those red shoes, maybe because he didn’t really want to look at the man’s jiggling ass, or maybe because when his eyes followed those shoes north he was treated to a pair of the finest legs and most delicious bootie that he had ever seen. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have just turned around and walked right out of the house and he would have been able to go back to his great life as Teton County’s busiest and most eligible bachelor. But for whatever reason— the shock of the scene, or his own perverse voyeurism— he did not turn back around. He knocked on the door jamb with his clipboard and stammered loudly enough to be heard over AC/ DC. “Ah, ah, ah, I thought you weren’t coming in until tomorrow. I just came to check on the house. Is everything OK? I mean, just call me if anything isn’t OK. Sorry to interrupt. I’ll just let myself out…” And then he backed out of the room and nearly sprinted out the door.

Tom jumped up with impressive agility considering his exertion and girth, partly hopping, definitely bobbing. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

Charlotte rolled over onto her side. “What the fuck, I left him a message that I was coming in today. What was he thinking?”

And the senator just kept repeating, “Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit.” Then, catching his breath, added to his mantra, “I’m sure he saw me, I’m sure he saw me, I’m sure he saw me.”

His lover, handing him the rest of his twenty-three-year-old Pappy, said, “Here, drink this,” trying not to let the panic sound in her voice. She thought for a moment. “We’ll call Mario. He’ll know what to do. If that asshole tells anyone it’ll hurt Mario as much as us. Well, maybe not quite as much as us, but you know what I mean.”

Tom sat down for a minute, his white dress shirt soaked through, wheezing from the exertion, from the excitement, from the fear, his heart a thumping kettle drum in his chest. Neither of them said a word for a minute, then two. Finally realizing the heart attack wasn’t coming, he took a huge breath and said, “OK, call him.”

Charlotte punched the number into her mobile phone. “Mario? Sorry to bother you, but we have a problem. Some asshole just walked in on the two of us. Walked in on us… you know. What do you think we were doing? How could he not recognize him? Yeah, he’s my property manager. Hold on. Honey, would you hand me that business card on the table?”

THE FIRST TIME Dean Wister had visited the Tetons was twelve years ago, the summer before his senior year in college. Although he said it was adventure he was looking for, it was escape that he was really seeking when he answered an ad to guide for one of the rafting companies that run whitewater trips down the Snake River, just south of Teton National Park. It was a grueling twenty-four-hour drive from his home in Chicago to Jackson Hole, the mountain town at the foot of the spectacular Teton Range, and the route that he was taking, I-90 across Illinois, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, was one of the most monotonous and boring stretches of highway across America. Hour after hour he would stare at the road between truck stops, trying to keep alert for the highway patrol and the erratic driving of drowsy long-distance truckers. He tried listening to music and audio books, but his mind wouldn’t let him focus. Lately, he had a lot of trouble focusing. He’d once tried meditation, taking a Transcendental Meditation workshop with his wife, Sara, but meditation wasn’t for him. His mind would inevitably wander from the rhythm of his breathing to some problem from work that he was trying to solve. Dean had always been more of a ruminator than a meditator. And so he ruminated for hour after hour. He ruminated about all that had happened over the last twelve years. He ruminated about the horror of the last year. And he ruminated about what the future might, or more importantly, might not, hold.

That first trip had also been a time of transition for him. His mother died after his freshman year in high school, and his dad was killed in a work accident at the lumber yard just before Dean started college. As an only child he had led a solitary existence growing up, but by the time he left for college he was officially an orphan, no parents to cheer him as the starting safety on the University of Illinois football team, and no siblings to share the empty and confused feelings of losing the only responsible adults he had ever known. His hometown of Summersville, West Virginia, was near the banks of the Gauley River, one of the most famous whitewater-rafting rivers in the East, and the gray, small-minded, and cruel little town resembled what Mayberry may have looked like if Andy hadn’t been born. Until he was seventeen, Dean had never met a college graduate outside of a classroom, and growing up with his nose stuck in a book most of the time, his peers, and even most of the adults he knew, looked down on his habit as a sign of either homosexuality, laziness, or both. Maybe it was resentment for not living the fantastic and interesting life of the characters in the books that he read, or maybe it was the bullying that he experienced from his literature-averse peers, or maybe it was his sense of insecurity and inferiority from his hillbilly background, or maybe it was just his nature— for whatever reason, there was a well of anger deep inside of Dean.

The bullying stopped the first time he stepped on a football field. He loved to play defense, and putting the hammer to the ball carrier or receiver was equally pleasurable to him, whether in practice or during an actual game. He loved the rush of power he felt when a body crushed beneath him as he delivered the blow. As he would take aim at his target coming across the field, he imagined his body as a sledge hammer and he would launch himself, helmet first, at his opponents, relishing the pain he received nearly as much as the pain he delivered. As his scrawny adolescent body matured into a six-foot, one-hundred-ninety-pound defensive back, his football hits became ever more fearsome, and attracted the attention of a recruiter for the University of Illinois. Football would end for him upon college graduation for, as a pro scout told him, “Son, you sure have the meanness for pro football, but not the speed.” But that was all right; football had served its purpose.

The first time his dad had taken him along to run the rapids of the Gauley he was only nine years old, but after that he was addicted to the river. Working as a gofer for one of the rafting companies, imagining himself as one of the cocky swaggering guides, he would do anything to be near the river. The owner of the company took a liking to him, and broke the rules to put him on as a guide at sixteen. He worked on the Gauley through high school and college. But, with the death of his father, West Virginia held too many painful memories; he needed to get away. He heard from some fellow guides that the Snake River in Wyoming, south of Jackson, could be fun. Sure, its mostly Class 2 and 3 rapids were nothing compared to the Gauley, but he had always wanted to see the Rockies, and it was about as far away from West Virginia as he could imagine. That summer on the Snake, in the Tetons, revealed another side that he didn’t know he had. He learned how to cap that well of anger, to regulate the flow, to use it instead of letting it use him, and for the next decade was able to let it out only when his job demanded it. He discovered that there was another well, an untapped well, within him. A well of love and sweetness, of kindness and generosity. And the auger that tapped that well was Sara.

He’d just sent some food back at the Pioneer Grill, the coffee shop in Jackson Lake Lodge in Teton National Park. His order of sautéed Rocky Mountain rainbow trout appeared on his plate as buffalo meatloaf. His anger rising at this inexcusable display of disrespect and incompetence, he called over the pretty blonde server and pointed at the food in front of him. “Miss, do you think you would recognize a Rocky Mountain rainbow trout if you saw one?” She’d looked first at the gravy-smothered brown glob, and then directly into his twisted angry face, and behind her best smile said, “Apparently not, but I can recognize an asshole when I see one.”

Dean was overmatched by the spunky girl with eyes of a deeper blue than the summer skies over the Grand Tetons, and he fell in love on the spot. They laughed at the story forever, and she still called him “meatloaf asshole” on occasion, either when she was feeling especially fond or, more often, particularly annoyed with him. She loved to tease him and ridicule his quirks, calling him “schizo” for the many paradoxical elements in his personality: jock/ intellectual, hot head/ sentimentalist, loner/ showoff. But when she would call him “schizo” and flash him her irresistible smile, it would always soften his mood, and he was able to laugh at himself.

As a trust-fund baby of a power couple in Chicago’s legal community, Sara’s suburban childhood was exactly the opposite of Dean’s. Her bookworm ways were admired by her parents, friends, and her community. The vivacious blond with the sharp wit and the ability to fit in with every social group was a psych major at the University of Chicago, less than a two-hour drive up the interstate from Champaign if you are a hormone-crazed college boy, more like three hours for everyone else. Her well of anger was only a fraction of Dean’s and reserved exclusively for bullies and people who abused children, animals, and the less fortunate. But if you happened to occupy that territory, her fierceness could make even Dean flinch.

When he thought of their first summer, it played back in his head like some film made from a Nicolas Sparks novel. As he watched the movie, alone in the theater seat of his Jeep Cherokee, he smiled at the “meet cute” first scene in the coffee shop, marveled at the on-location, awe-inspiring backdrops of the Snake and the Tetons, was moved to tears by the scene where he makes love to Sara for the first time. And he couldn’t criticize the filmmaker’s decision to leave every sex scene of the summer in the movie. There they are making love on the window seat in the tiny apartment shared by Dean and his four other river rat roommates. There they are making love after a picnic at Schwabacher’s landing, the Tetons reflected like a painting in the beaver pond. And there they are on their last day of the summer, on a picnic in the alpine meadow they had discovered on their long hike into the mountains. The meadow they had named “Sara’s Meadow.” The meadow where Dean proposed. The meadow they pledged to return to each year on their anniversary. They talked of it often, and relived the moment every year on that special day. But they never came back. Life, and careers, and bullshit got in the way.

Careers included the single-minded ambition they shared. Dean’s resulted in a meteoric rise to detective in the Chicago Police Department and, after being handpicked to join the Midwest Organized Crime Task Force as the only local police detective among FBI and ATF agents, his days and weeks became an unending blur of clues, criminals, and cases. Sara’s graduate degree at Northwestern led to a tenure track appointment at Loyola University. But tenure track meant running never-ending, back-to-back-to-back marathons of teaching, research, and publishing. Their career ambitions allowed no room for children, or travel, or a return to Sara’s Meadow.

And then, over the last year, came the bullshit. Dean was working eighty-hour weeks on a high-profile case involving government and police corruption, and many of the Chicago cops whom he considered friends turned away from him. And then, just when they thought they were getting close to breaking the case, the investigation was shut down and he was reassigned. He was exhausted, disappointed, stressed, and his friends treated him like a traitor.

And then there was Sara. She had been diagnosed with cancer just as Dean began the investigation from hell. After her initial treatment, she received a clean report, and he was too preoccupied to notice when she continued to lose weight. A check-up a few months later showed that the cancer had returned. The rebound was aggressive, additional treatment failed to stop the spread, and she continued to get weaker and weaker in spite of what she would call “frequent invitations for happy hour cancer cocktails with my oncologist.” She even made up names for the cocktails based on the side effects she would experience afterward. There was the Diarrhea Daiquiri, the Migraine Martini, and the Vomit-rita. No subject was out of bounds for her wicked and irreverent sense of humor. Once, when she was bedridden near the end, Dean asked her how she was feeling, and in her best Sally Field Mama Gump imitation, she said “Well, Forrest, I’ve got the cancer.”

Dean wanted to take a leave to stay at Sara’s bedside, but she made up her mind that that was not an option. And when Sara made up her mind about something, he had learned to let her have her way. So Dean was relegated to spending every hour that he wasn’t working by her side, holding her close, imagining how they would live their lives differently when she was well. The night she died, she asked him to describe that day in Sara’s Meadow. And when he finished, she said, “Promise we can go there when I get well. Will you take me there next summer?” He nodded, unable to speak. She slept peacefully that night for the first time in quite a while, and in the morning she was gone.

Strangely, although she was the center of his universe, the only person that he could say he ever truly loved, he showed little emotion when she died. He didn’t cry. He felt almost as if he were an outside observer of these terrible events. He experienced only numbness. An unrelenting, withering numbness. A numbness interrupted only by random bursts of anger that disturbed even the hardened cops he worked with. Dean was not unaware of his problem, and tried to channel the anger by hooking up with Manny Cohen, a mixed martial arts coach and self-proclaimed king of “Jew-Jitsu”. He loved the physicality of the MMA bouts, and that the jiu-jitsu moves he learned permitted him to disable much bigger and stronger fighters, even if he was on the ground being pummeled. He justified the training as part of his law-enforcement skills, but he knew what it was really about— the ability to inflict some of the horrible hurt he was feeling on others.

The changes in Dean since Sara’s death were most troubling to his boss, Carlos Alvarez. Carlos had been crushed when, on the verge of busting a Chicago mob guy who had both political and police connections, which evidently reached all the way to Washington, the whole operation had been shut down. In his heart, he knew it was those same connections he was investigating that had defeated him. He looked at Dean and watched one of the most competitive spirits he had ever known flicker out, starved for the oxygen that Sara could no longer supply. The case they had put their hearts and souls into for the last year was ripped out of their hands and Dean, who normally would be just as pissed off as he was, seemed to be only going through the motions.

But the most disturbing problem, as far as he was concerned, was Dean’s refusal to mourn Sara. Carlos watched as Dean’s isolation became extreme, and he refused all offers to talk or socialize. Dean’s robotic demeanor and increasingly unpredictable violent outbursts were scaring him. When Carlos sent him to meet with the psychologist assigned to their department, he refused to cooperate. He insisted that he was fine. But Carlos knew he wasn’t fine. He saw a man on the brink of a breakdown and finally decided that drastic action was needed to rescue the man from himself. One morning he walked into Dean’s office and handed him a letter worded as an authorization, which was actually an order, to take a three-month leave of absence.

“But where will I go? What will I do?” Dean said, seemingly incapable of entertaining any change to his barely functional routine. Carlos looked toward the picture on his desk, the one taken twelve years earlier. It showed Dean standing on a whitewater raft. Sara was sitting in the boat looking up at him with a combination of love and lust in her eyes. In the background, the grandeur of the Tetons loomed. “You have to get out of town. You have to get away from here, from all this. And I know where I would go if I had no obligations and three months off. I’ve been envying that picture since the day you moved in here.”

What his boss didn’t know, and what Dean couldn’t tell him, or anyone else for that matter, was the real reason that he wouldn’t see the psychologist— something that would make him seem crazy to outsiders. Hell, he often had that thought about himself. Not every evening, but maybe two or three nights a week, he would spend the night with Sara. He would wake up a couple of hours after he went to sleep, and she would be there, sitting in the chair next to his bed. He would get up, and they would talk just like they used to, about everything, what was happening in his life and in his job, or what was going on in the news. They would make love, and it was every bit as passionate and real as before she was sick. When he would wake up in the morning, she would be gone. At first, he tried to convince himself that it was all a dream, until one night he washed the sheets before he went to bed, and the next morning her perfume lingered on the bedding. She was really there, and she was as real as anything he had ever experienced.

He had nothing against psychologists. He had seen a therapist in college after a particularly hard break-up and had found it very helpful. In fact, he visited that same therapist when Carlos was pushing him to see the department shrink— he wasn’t about to have his craziness officially certified to his employer. And his own therapist confirmed what he instinctively knew himself. “Your hallucinations of your dead wife will go away when you allow yourself to fully mourn her.” But that was exactly the problem. Her very real apparition was the only tangible thing he had left of her. Her visits were the only thing that let him get through the day, that kept him from becoming totally out of control, and he wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from him. He was determined to hold on to whatever was left of her, for as long as he could.

Sara was the one that convinced him to take the trip. She told him during one of their nocturnal visits that he could use the time off; that she knew he was stressed out. He agreed on one condition. That she would come with him. She gave him her mischievous smile, the one that had captured him that first day in the coffee shop, and said, “That’s not a problem. I’m not going without sex for three months. And the ghosts here are too creepy to sleep with.”

That first summer twelve years ago, he had come into town from the south, getting off I-80 west of Rock Springs, approaching Jackson via Alpine and driving up through the Snake River canyon so that he could view the whitewater section he would be working. Wyoming is mostly high plains except for the northwestern part, which is an endless vista of scrub grass, prickly pear, sage brush, with occasional red-rock battleships and gargoyles. On that first trip he was able to view the Wind River Range in the distance outside his window, but he didn’t really get a good view of the Teton Range until he reached the outskirts of the town of Jackson. This time he had decided to take the Northern route via I-90, because he wanted to see the Black Hills, one of the few topographic areas of interest that is easily accessible from the interstate. So he was not really prepared for what happened when his Jeep rounded the bend on Route 26, east of Teton National Park, and he looked west. The fragrance hit him first. He had the windows in his Jeep rolled down and, as the road increased in elevation, the air turned cooler and became infused with snow runoff blended into mountain streams and the bouquet of lodgepole pine forests to form the unique perfume that his unconscious associated with his first summer there. He was looking down for a station on the radio when he felt the jolt, as if a switch was flipped in his brain, and when he turned his face back to the road, the windshield was suddenly and magically filled with the panorama of the majestic purple, snow-tipped peaks of the mountain range that symbolized all that had been true and pure in his life. All that was lost and would never ever return. The image struck him like a bullet in his chest, sucking all the air from his body. The next thing he knew, he was out of his car, on the side of the road, on his knees, gasping for air, heaving, sobbing. “Oh, Sara. My sweet, sweet, Sara.”

***

Author Bio:

After a career working in an international consulting firm and as a financial executive with two public companies, Dennis D. Wilson returns to the roots he established as a high school literature and writing teacher at the beginning of his career. For his debut novel, he draws upon his experiences from his hometown of Chicago, his years living, working, hiking and climbing in Jackson Hole, and secrets gleaned from time spent in corporate boardrooms to craft a political crime thriller straight from today’s headlines. Dennis lives in suburban Chicago with his wife Paula and Black Lab Jenny, but spends as much time as he can looking for adventure in the mountains and riding his motorcycle.

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