My, How We've Grown! (Some of ) The Decadent Team

Heather Bennett (owner) ~ 2nd Grade

Colleen Beilke ~ Review Coordinator

Lisa Omstead (owner)

Kathleen Gallagher

Why don't they leave me alone? I have no time for photo shoots. There are more important things on my mind. 

Shiela Stewart:

This is back when I was sweet and innocent. And then I grew up! Muhahahahahaha!!

                               Valerie Mann 

First time in the snow... BEFORE

 

                                                                                           ...and AFTER

and what's up with the Bozo the Clown boots? I have big feet, but really??

Mahalia Levey

 

Leanne Dyck (The Sweater Curse):  "My huge head full of words waiting to put pen to paper." (Picture taken in 1962 by my Dad)

Ellen Keener ~ 

First, I always liked cars better than Barbie.  Second, can you tell that Mom always cut my hair, and I hated it? When we lived in Winchester, the neighbors actually had to explain to friends once that the screaming coming from our backyard wasn't because I was dying  - it was just Rich (my mom) cutting Vanessa's hair.

Wendy Burke

From a very young age, Wendy Burke was destined to be full of hot air.

 

Ashlynn Monroe

 Silke Juppenlatz

This was umm... 1965 or so.

Looks like I managed to water everything -- except the dilapidated plant which is crying out for some... water!
That’s what I call precision splashing, it takes a lot of practice!

Leslie Soule

Just the Facts with Silke Juppenlatz

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. I’ll try not to bore you with facts, but hey... it is called “Just the Facts”, so there. I’m going to shake things up a little, and only tell you one fact about me. It’s a funny one, though, and I’ll elaborate. I hope you enjoy it.

We used to be owned by two hedgehogs.
Fritzle and Mäxle.
This is really more their story, than mine.

Fritzle ended up with us when my dad saw a hedgehog run back and forth on the Autobahn, across three lanes, managing through some miracle not to be flattened by an oncoming Mercedes.
Naturally, the creature had to be rescued. Out of the car he gets, and manages through some miracle not to be flattened by an oncoming Mercedes—while chasing a damned hedgehog across three lanes of the Autobahn!!!
My mother was not amused. (About the flea-riddled hedgehog.)
Neither was the dog. (About the preemptive flea-busting dust jobbie)

My dad wisely kept the part about him chasing the thing across a highway, with vehicles travelling in excess of 110mph, to himself! (He accidentally let that part slip when we talked about the hedgehogs a few years later.)

Mäxle was a less dramatic affair.
I worked as an apprentice horse breeder at the time and saw my boss round the corner carrying a spade. I turned the corner just before he would have killed a very small hedgehog. I stopped him, and said I’d take it home. 

Easier said than done. Ever tried transporting a round spiky thing on a motorcycle? I had no bags, no rucksack, nothing. So I stuck the hedgehog under my leather jacket and rode home, very, verywriggling, thing stuck to my chest. conscious of the fact I have a round, spiky,

My mother was not amused.
Neither was the dog.

Wuschel probably considered abandoning these idiot humans the very second he saw the flea powder come out of the cupboard. There was a distinct “Oh, no. Not again!” expression on his face—followed by a “Could you peel that for me?” look when he saw the hedgehog.
It was October, and each of them weighed in at not-enough-to-hibernate. 250 grams, I think. They were both tiny, so they couldn’t go back out, and wintered in our apartment.
Hedgehogs are nocturnal. Even ones who aren’t much bigger than an orange, when rolled up.
I didn’t get much sleep that winter, especially not once they discovered the “joys” of sticking their spikes up, and having a race underneath some aluminium shelving in my bedroom! (There was one of those string curtain things, no door. No way to keep them out.)
The first night they did this, I swear my hair went gray. I was sleeping, quite unaware of inquisitive nocturnal hoodlums, and all of a sudden: Kchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I shot upright, half asleep, trying to work out what the HELL that noise was.

Kchhhhhhhhhhhhhhh one way. Kchhhhhhhhhhhh the other way. Rinse, repeat.
Try working that out, at Oh-my-God Thirty in the morning. I turned the light on. The noise stopped. I turned the light off. Kchhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Light on. Silence. Light off—you get the idea.

Eventually I worked up the nerve to get up and investigate—and found two innocent looking hedgehogs at one end of the shelving. I tried to pull them out. Yeah. Right. Spikes out, roll into ball—it’s like trying to pull super glued Velcro off your carpet. Not a chance.

I went back to bed and pulled a pillow over my head.

Kchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

For hours.

That spade suddenly looked like an attractive solution to the problem, you know?

Their nocturnal antics aside, Fritzle and Mäxle (who turned out to be a girl) were part of the family. They had their own dinner cooked for them (mincemeat and egg, mostly), and became quite tame. So tame in fact, that you had to watch where you put your head on the sofa, because one of them usually sprawled on the back rest, watching TV. (I am NOT kidding.) 

We learned a lot while they owned us:

You can stroke a hedgehog (just don’t do it backward, that hurts.) and they like it.

Socks are fair game, and for chewing on. Even if the human still wears them.

If the human is eating it, it must be hedgehog food, and is therefore also fair game.

That footprint in the butter means a hedgehog is in the fridge. Check the bottom shelf.

If you take a shower and leave a hedgehog sized gap in the door—watch where you put your feet.

Everything is edible. Including telephone cables.

Going to sleep inside a riding boot is hilarious when the human’s foot finds you curled up in the toe part.

It was open warfare between the hedgehogs and the dog. The hedgehogs usually won, and Wuschel would slink by with his “Peel them already!” expression, when they’d gone to sleep in his basket, under his favorite blanket, again. (Ouch.)

Spring came and with it the time to release the two of them in a safe place. We had a big field where we kept my horses, and that’s where we let them go. (I think the dog threw a party that day.)

A few years later, I’d just “imported” Paul from the UK, I wanted to show him the big cherry tree we had in the field. We’d sold the field since, so we climbed the fence and wandered around. A noise under one of the sheds made us wonder what’s there.

I saw a hedgehog’s face. Then another. I called the names, never expecting them to actually come out—and they came. Both of them. Paul stood there, his jaw slack, watching these two wild animals lie down and stretch out, while I stroked them.

I explained to him who they were, and he (and I) was completely amazed that they remembered—and even more so, when they let him stroke them.

That was the last time I saw them, but it was an incredibly unexpected (and welcome) surprise.

Never mind that one of them chewed through my shoe lace while I wasn’t watching.

  

Spotlight Sunday with...

...Silke Juppenlatz!


How did you start your writing career?

I learned the alphabet. No, seriously. My dad taught me to read and from the moment I could string a sentence together, I wanted to write. And did. Be glad all my early attempts are in German!

Does your significant other read your stuff?
I won’t let him, lol. Although I guess I can’t stop him now. He did read Smitten on my Kindle, while I was at work. He told me he did, but he only read it after I said it’s okay – and I really appreciate it. I get very self-conscious and embarrassed, and I stop writing if he’s in the same room and could –oh-my-God- catch a glimpse of what I’m writing. I don’t actually mind him reading it, as long as I don’t see him reading it.
Saying all that, he is a sweetheart and if he sees I’m deep into it, he grabs the laptop and takes it into the living room, so he doesn’t get in the way.
I really can’t explain, other than say it makes me uncomfortable. But it makes me uncomfortable no matter who it is, it’s not limited to my other half. I have to be ready to share.

Plotter or Pantser? Why?
I’m the eternal Pantser. If I plot, I can guarantee you will never see the story unfold the way I plotted it. If I know how it ends, I won’t finish it. So I just go with the flow, and usually it works out anyway.

What do you do to unwind and relax?
I uh... write. I slip into a different world when I write, it relaxes me. I don’t hear anything, don’t notice anything. (Trust me, my SO has given up trying to have a conversation with me while I’m writing. It goes in one ear, out the other. I don’t register it.) A bomb could go off next to me, and I wouldn’t notice.
I also do 3D Graphics (http://www.digitalmagic.tv is my gallery, if you want to look, but it’s not work safe, there are nekkid men on there. *watches the hit-counter go up*), and recently did a cover for one of my critique partners, Moira Keith.
Naturally, I read a lot, too.

Have you attended a high school reunion? What did you learn? I did. Well, we don’t have “High School” like you have in the US, but we do have class reunions. Our first one was about three or four years after we left school.
At the time I weighed about 100lbs, arrived dressed in snakeskin leather pants, 4” heel boots and a tight top, with long black hair down to my butt.

Everyone walked past me, frowned, walked on. The guys sat there and speculated. (Except one. I knew he knew, and he didn’t say a word. Waited and watched.) I just sat there and waited for the rest to twig who I was.

Another walked past and, three steps on, does a double-take, staggers back and goes “Silke?????”I can’t even tell you how satisfying the sudden silence was. The swivel of every head. The slack jaws. It was great.
You see, the last time they saw me, I weighed closer to 165lbs, was as wide as I was high (short), and definitely couldn’t have made heads turn.

Do you have critique partners or beta readers?
I have the awesomest critique group any writer could possibly wish for. I’ve been a member of Passionate Critters for... gosh. I don’t even know. Years. The ladies in the group are hardcore writers and the best friends anyone could wish for. Most are published, but it hasn’t always been the case, nor do you have to be published to get in (on the rare occasions we take new members.) I had the great pleasure of working with three of them on the Anthology, and I dare say that although at times we were ready to kill each other, we worked extremely well together. The ladies in the group give it to me straight, and I appreciate that. PC Ladies -- you rock!

If you could spend the night anywhere, where would it be? Ahhh actually, that’s an easy one. I would go back to a specific night, many years ago.
We were in the Maldives and one night decided to lie on the helipad, staring up at the stars. It was warm, there was a light breeze and we counted stars, watched satellites, and just lay there, just the two of us. It was magic.

Has someone helped or mentored you in your writing career?

I would say no, except I would be lying. The lady doesn’t know she helped me, and I never knew her name. I never met her. She never met me.
And yet, she lifted a huge barrier off me.
Let me explain.
When I was about eight, we had an assignment to write a story. So I did. The next day all the assignments were handed out, graded. Except mine. Then my teacher asked me where I’d got that story from. I told her I wrote it down the way I saw it. She asked what movie it was. I still didn’t get what she meant. I repeated that I’d written it down exactly the way I’d seen it. She got frustrated and asked me where I’d seen it, and I replied “In my head.”

That’s how I write. I see the story, like a movie, rolling in front of my inner eye. People talk in my head, I see them. I hear them.
My teacher told my mother to take me to a shrink, because “There’s something wrong with her. She hears voices.”

I never told anyone again how my process works, too afraid that I was a freak.

Then I went to a conference in Houston. The RT booklovers convention, many years ago. While I was sitting somewhere, having coffee, I overheard a lady a few tables over explain how she sees the story. Hears the voices.

I didn’t hear anything else. I was numb. I was shocked. Elated. I wasn’t the only one! Other people got this too!

Unfortunately by the time I got over the shock and went to seek her out, she had left. I scanned every face from then on, but I never found her. I would have loved to say Thank you. Thank you for freeing me.
If you were it, consider yourself my inspiration. My liberator. Thank you.

What hobbies do you actively pursue?

Well, I’m a horse addict. I had a share in a nice cob mare, but the owner is putting her on loan at the end of the month, so now I’m horseless again. Luckily the girls at the yard like me and I can hang out anyway, schmooze their horses when I feel like it. It’s not even so much the riding, it’s just being around horses that does it for me. Cobby mare and I played games a lot. She had fun, I had fun. That’s all I need.

If I find somewhere I can afford, I will get my own horse again, and I’m leaning toward a Rocky Mountain Horse at the moment. I’m 5’3”, and honestly, I don’t want to bring a ladder just to get on the horse. (Especially not if I want to go out bareback!) 14-15 hands is plenty for me. Although, if it’s not a Rocky, it’ll probably be a 5-gaited Saddlebred. I blame my friend Karen for this, because she let me ride Dylan, her Saddlebred, when I was in North Carolina last year. Absolutely amazing, beautiful, and I instantly fell in love.
"The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man." ~Winston Churchill

When in the day/night do you write? How long per day?

I don’t have a set amount of time to write. In fact, I forget everything else when I write and suddenly the birds are yelling outside the window, and there’s this bright round thing in the sky. And then I remember it’s not Saturday, and I have to go to work!
I do my best writing at night, when everything is quiet. I go outside to think and let thoughts form in my head, sit there with a cup of coffee for ten minutes and percolate. I smoke, but only outside, and yet when I write, I forget to smoke (which is a good thing.) I’ll suddenly look up and go “My coffee is cold.” and I won’t know how long since I made it, how long it’s been cold. I go make a new cup, and we get back to writing – until I notice the cold coffee again, or I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.

And then other days, I can barely string two sentences together.
It comes and it goes.

There you go, more than you ever wanted to know!

10Q Tuesday with Silke Juppenlatz

What would we find under your bed?

Fluff. Shoes. (Boots, mostly) A suitcase or two. I think. No books. Honest. That’s an illusion to trick you. There are no books there. None. They are not holding up the bed. It’s a lie.

Well. According to my critique group, I keep the heroes from all my books under there. And stashed in closets and whatnot. Allegedly I don’t share, which is so not true. I uh...

Oh, wait.

I don’t. *coughs*

But I release the occasional one into the wild, with an ISBN number attached (for tracking purposes)! All you gotta do is catch ‘em!

New York or LA? Why?

New York. I loooove New York. I’ve never been to Los Angeles, and I have no desire to go, either. The West Coast doesn’t grab me. Don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you. I’m pretty sure it’s a great place, but then again, I don’t do well anywhere hot.
If it’s cold, I can layer on clothes and stay warm. If it’s hot, I can only take off so much before I’m down to skin... then what?
I also like the South and I really want to go back to New Orleans some time.

What books have most influenced your life?

I would have to say, the books by an author named Karl May (1842-1912). I would hazard a guess that most people (outside Germany) have never heard of him. He was a prolific writer who created some awesome stories. I grew up reading things like Winnetou and he transported me into the desert to meet Kara Ben Nemsi, his horse Rih and many other great characters. These are mostly adult books, but I read them voraciously from the age of about seven or eight. Thanks Dad, for letting me read your precious Karl May collection.

Do you use a pen name? If so, how did you come up with it?

No, I use my real name. (Yes, that really is my real name.) I thought long and hard about a pen name, mostly because people tend to get scared when they see my surname. “How on Earth do you pronounce that?”
It’s not that hard, actually. It just looks scary. Yoo Pen Laa ts. That’s how.

The thing is, after thinking I needed a pen name, I realized how unique my name is. And when I say unique, I really mean it.

U-nique
–adjective

1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics

I am the only person in the world with that name combination. Seriously.
My surname is extremely rare. We’re not even talking thousands, but about a hundred, at most. Among those, there isn’t another Silke.

J So there, that’s my claim to fame. I’m U. Neek! See, there’s a pen name I could have used.

Do you play games? What kind?

I used to be addicted to Everquest. (An MMORPG – Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) I played for some 9 years, battled it out every night, in one of the top guilds back then. We were top of the pile, endgame, hardcore raiders. In the end it was no longer fun and I quit.
I played Horizons, another MMO for a while, which was fun. I was a dragon and I built stuff.

These days, I bum around on World of Warcraft sometimes. No longer raiding, just having fun, collecting mounts and pets and taming just about everything that moves, with my hunter. It’s fun and I can picture people’s faces on the mobs I kill. Ha! (I’m really very bloodthirsty, don’t be fooled by the “I don’t raid.” thing.)
And does it really surprise anyone that I play on a Role Play server? ;)

Tell us about your current release.

My current release is Smitten. It’s a story about an angel who lost his wings because he truly sucks at this angel thing. Worse, the reason for his wingless state comes to him for help, and he’d really rather not get involved. Until he realizes he’s partly to blame for all the things people say about Jo, and her actions start to worry him. Then he figures if he saves her, he might get his wings back. Yeah, Ash is a bit selfish at first.
Jo has a bad reputation and can’t seem to get out of town. She’s not thrilled when she has to seek out Ash. Not because he’s been nasty to her—he pretty much ignored her—but he’s the only guy who’s never hit on her and she’d like to know him a little more than is advisable, considering her history. But when he suddenly tries to be nice, her self-preservation instinct kicks in and she wonders what he really wants from her.

What is the hardest part of writing your books?

Oh cripes, finishing them. I don’t mean writing them to the end, I mean... well. I have trouble stopping at the right point. I don’t normally write short. My books tend to be 80-110k, not 20 or 30. So knowing when to stop is really hard for me.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I grew up in a very old house in Germany. As in, 17th Century old. It was pretty normal. Things always went bump in the night (and day, for that matter), and we all just rolled with it. It was normal. Aside from my aunt visiting me—the night after she died—when I was eight years old, nothing particularly spooky happened there.
The barn is a slightly different affair. It’s a house now.

I “met” that particular uh... ghost... when the house still was a barn. He’s incredibly angry and doesn’t want anyone in the upstairs room. Or maybe it’s just me, because he doesn’t bother my brother. After having things thrown at me when I lived there, and being frozen out of the room when I tried to make it my study, I just don’t go up there anymore.

I’ve had my share of encounters, and my partner grew up in a house that needed to be exorcised, because whatever was in it, had become rather violent. (Throwing people out of bed and whatnot.) I don’t think those presences are there to hurt us, but rather souls looking for closure of some kind. Echoes. Occasionally those echoes are visible, and because people can’t explain it, they get scared.
Saying that...I still won’t sleep in the upstairs bedroom in my parent’s house.

Tell us about your favorite character from your books.

My favorite character...is always the hero of the book I’m currently writing. I fall in love with them. Occasionally, I fall in love with them before I ever write their book. Occasionally, a secondary character is so alive, they need their own book. J Kaiden is one of the latter.
He’s a shady guy with a scary past, rough and jaded, with enough baggage to require a freight train. He gets thrown in with his best friend’s sister, who is not only less than half his age, but also drives him absolutely insane. He was a science experiment, and things went a little ka-ka. So now he doesn’t age like regular people, he has a microprocessor in his head, his bones are metal. As Tara puts it, “a man who looks so hot, he should sizzle, and he doesn’t have any emotions.” She refers to him as “Tin Man”. Oh yeah, he’s a regular bundle of fun, that one. Playing with him is like tap dancing on a landmine. (And she’s wrong about the emotions...)

Tell us about your next release.

My next release is called “Howl” and is currently in edits. It’s a werewolf story.
Lucia, a rancher’s daughter, saves a wolf—and that’s where the trouble starts. Because Zalin is no ordinary wolf, and his Alpha isn’t exactly Lucia’s best friend.
So when Lucia ends up at their compound, it falls to Zalin to protect her. Both from his Alpha, and apparently from her own past.

Well, I won’t tell you any more, you’ll just have to read it when it’s released in June!