The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

The difference between being a part-time writer and a full-time writer is like the difference between dating someone and living with them. Some of the romance is gone, but you learn things you'd never know just by dating.

With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

The man was allergic to sleep.

Oh, this beast? It's...perspicacious loris. 'Perspicacious' meaning 'wise or canny'."
"Get stuffed," Bovril said, then giggled.
"And it insults people," Telsa said. "How peculiar.