Tuesday 19 November 2013

Break in

I am not someone that is known to follow and uphold the law to the letter. I often find that it is restricting in so many ways, but I do appreciate that it is there for a reason. It separates the bad guys from the good guys and gives everyone the opportunity to choose which side of it they wish to be on; or if they want to jump between the two like I do.

When it comes to those who uphold and enforce the law, there should be no choice between good and bad and definitely no jumping back and forth between the two. Those in law enforcement should be impeachable bastions of honesty, justice and would sooner die than break the law that they serve. This is why I despise individuals like Gary Rogers, Richard Ellis and Ross Turndune as they have thrown aside all decency and loyalty when accepting money from criminal organisations whilst they are serving members of the police force.

Yes, another reason I find them so unbearable is the number of times they have tried to get Fred and Harry, but mostly Fred, fired.

Equally I find myself feeling the opposite of this vile repulsion when it does come to Fred and Harry, mostly because they have chosen life in the police and they do uphold the law without compromise - at least that's what I thought.

I spent an entire week coming home to my office and apartment to find things were not quite right. Yes the place was still decked out in the ridiculous decor that Fred and Harry had chosen when they had forced themselves upon me as house guests, but that wasn't what made it feel strange.

It felt as though someone had been there and had been moving things around as though they were looking for something. Items were not missing, but several things were not where I had left them as I had gone out earlier in the day.

I decided that the only way to find out if someone was coming into my place or if I was just becoming wildly paranoid, was to set up a surveillance point in the abandoned building across the street. The first thing I did was retrieve my sniper rifle from the super secret weapons stash and the second thing I did was break into the abandoned building.

I spent three nights not sleeping and watching my apartment through the sight of the sniper rifle without seeing anyone and I honestly began to think that I was possibly as crazy as most people assume I must be. But on the fourth night I was rewarded with someone breaking in.

Oh all the people I had thought it might be, Fred was the last person I would have named, though in hindsight, with the number of times I have broken into his place, I should have expected it. Never-the-less he stood there, as clear as day and began to carefully search my apartment. I would say I was speechless, but I was too angry with him to be speechless.

I picked up my phone and called Fred, I watched him look at his phone and answer, I then screamed at him down the phone for at least ten minutes before taking a breath and when all he did was laugh in response, I fired a warning shot through my window.

I should really start to think before shooting, especially when I am firing at Fred in my apartment...

I didn't hit him, but the bullet may have gone straight into my bathroom and shattered the toilet bowl. Now my apartment is flooded and I am having to stay at Fred's whilst the damage is being fixed - and when I say being fixed, waiting for me to have the money or leverage to blackmail someone into fixing it for me.

The worst part is, I still don't know what Fred was looking for or whether he was just breaking in and moving things to drive me up the wall.

Looking for the perfect Christmas present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further!  The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble. For more information about the Nicolette Mace universe please visit the wiki.

Monday 11 November 2013

Cushions

Soft home furnishings have never been something that I have considered to be high on my priorities list. There are many theories that have been posited as to why this it - my mother was killed when I was just a girl, I never had a soft feminine influence in my life, my father was a private investigator, I never had nice things that I wanted to keep nice, that I am psychotic, I was never handed a Dunelm or John Lewis catalogue to leaf through...

Personally I don't think me being psychotic has anything to do with my lack of interest in interior design.

However my lack of caring about this turned out to not be a lack of caring, but liking my place just as it was. After the invasion of Harry and Fred and the subsequent the death threats and the throwing of several items they may have bought for my place out of the windows, I was left with a very odd situation.

There were stacks of paint charts, furnishing catalogues and wallpaper samples that had been left behind, taking up vital space in my office. There was new furniture that didn't creak and threaten to give way the moment it was used. The smell of rising damp seemed to have been replaced by a floral smell that emanated from a pile of colourful dried petals and scraps of fruit that had been purposefully made into the state - not just left in the corner of the room and forgotten about.

In short my wonderful, comfortable, grotty, damaged and dingy apartment had been turned into somewhere that approached being habitable.

What was the strangest thing of all was that there seemed to be things that looked an awful lot like overstuffed pillows now sitting on the sofa. Fred had called them cushions and I had called them a waste of time, well until I threw them at him and then I discovered they were really quite useful.

The very disturbing part about all of this is I actually quite like what they have done with the place, it is nice to not smell rotting mice corpses when I open the door to my home. It is really comfortable to snuggle up on the sofa surrounded by the overstuffed cushions. It's reassuring that not all furniture threatens to break when a feather is laid on top of it.

I'd never tell either Harry or Fred any of this. They don't need to know I am grateful for their interference in the design and decoration of my home, but I may just start carrying one or two cushions around - never know when I'll need to hit one or both of them round the head.

Looking for the perfect Christmas present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further!  The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble.

Monday 4 November 2013

Home Sweet Home

My place may not be much to look at, but it is home. It has been set on fire more times than I can count, had explosives planted beneath the floorboards, had burst pipes, hosted any gunfights and even been redecorated by an RPG. And yet it is still standing...sort of.

It's the one place that is mine in this whole world, the one place I can come back to and shut out everything on the outside and not have to deal with it. Yes, that is by close a very thin connecting door, and yes, the moment I open it again the world is sat in my office with guns pointed at me - but the differentiation is very important.

Everyone goes on about how you need to take time to rest, to have a space to relax in, well this is mine.

No matter how many times it gets invaded by annoyingly inquisitive police officers, and overly sexually active police officers. No matter how many times I have walked in to find Mexican drug dealers playing Russian roulette with delegates from the UN. No matter how many times it has been burnt to the ground, blown up or used as a shooting gallery - it is still my home and my quiet place.

Here there is nothing that does not belong, the mould on the window frames, the unwashed dishes, the small rodents that scurry about their daily business, the four automatic weapons strapped to the underside of my mattress - all of it belongs in this delicately balanced place of my harmony.

At least it was all these things before Fred got termites and then Harry got woodworm - I'm not entirely convinced there is a difference between the two - but apparently neither of them can stay in a hotel because they might be transporting the insects about so instead they have both decided to stay here.

Isn't it just wonderful how they both decide that it's okay to bring invertebrates into my home that will devour my belongings and not into a hotel where they pay to use the facilities so they can afford to replace things that get destroyed.

So now I have no place of tranquillity, no refuge from the outside world because my home sweet home has been taken over by two men that have been hunting the rodents, cleaning the dishes, destroying the mould and making my home into somewhere that most people would want to live in and not avoid. I walked in the other day to find them both looking at wallpaper samples and paint charts, a new three piece suite sat in my living room with a new laminate floor, standing lamp and 56 inch flat screen up on something Fred referred to as the 'feature wall'.

It always concerns me when men seem to know more about interior decorating than women do, normally when it comes to me that's okay, but when the words 'feature wall' are mentioned in conjunction with my home, there is something very wrong.

If the two of them don't stop soon, they'll find out very quickly why it is exactly that I keep four automatic weapons under my bed...or I would if my bed was still there...

Author Note: If you enjoy the blog entries of Nicolette Mace: The Raven Siren then check out the new Siren Wiki. Books of the adventures of Siren are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, iBooks, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and many more.