Anne Rice – Bodacious Copy

My Pet Dumbo Rat Rowan’s Very Special Easter Gift!

I don’t usually blog about things going on in my personal life or even the fact that I’m a big animal lover, but to be honest, this is just too special to not share with you!

For those of you who don’t know, I have a six-year-old, female Goldendoodle named Scully (after Dana Scully on The X-Files, on which I was an extra way back in 1994, Season 2, Red Museum episode) and two rats. I’ve had pet rats since May 2009 when my then six-year-old niece and nephew, who are twins, Erika & Ethan, convinced me that I should get some so that they could play with them when they came to visit me. As a child, my father let my sisters and I have all kinds of pets, and my sister Karen has quite a few for Erika & Ethan. I love mammals so I went for it.

On January 23, 2013, I bought my 5th pet rat (they only live for

Dumbo rat Rowan — Rowan the day before she delivered.

about 2-3 years +/-), a beautiful white & black hooded Dumbo and called “him” Rowan. I thought Rowan was a male as that’s what I asked the staff for at The Pet Store in Kingston where I bought “him”. The Pet Store in the Cataraqui Town Centre does not separate its baby male and female rats, which is very irresponsible, and apparently not all of its staff know how to tell the sex of a rat either.

Two weeks later I decided that Rowan needed a friend and on February 7, 2013, I bought a male Fancy rat and called him Lestat (both names are from Anne Rice novels). Rowan and Lestat lived contentedly together for a while until one evening I noticed Lestat mounting Rowan. UH OH!!! I had my suspicions that Rowan wasn’t a boy and sure enough, she’s not!

On Easter Sunday, Rowan delivered 11 baby rats, which are called “kittens” or “pinkies” (that a Facebook friend commented looked a lot “like marzipan” and I have been keeping a photo diary of their

development ever since. I’ve learned all kinds of things about baby rats that I didn’t know before. For example, those tiny white bands across the pinkies’ abdomens indicate that they were nursing and had received their mother’s colostrum, which is very important.

Rowan has been a superb mother and has nursed all 11 in her litter to good health. There are six blonde & white hooded ones that look like their dad, four black & white hooded ones that look like their mom, and one mostly white female with black specks on her head that’s unusual and the runt (I’m keeping this one and call her Claudia.). They are now two weeks old and have just opened their eyes. They’ve grown so fast and are super cute!

Yesterday, Maria Offin of Maria Offin Photography came over with her three children to decide which babies they would like to adopt into their home as their new pets. They picked two beautiful male youngsters, one blonde hooded and one black hooded and they’ll be able to take them home in a little over two weeks time, once they’ve been weaned and can eat solid food. My nephew Ethan’s friend Jason and his mother Holly and his sisters came over to pick out two wee male ratties to be their new pets too. There are seven males and four females in the litter.

Maria is an excellent photographer and she took these wonderful photos of Rowan, Lestat and their family that I just had to share with you. Please take a look at her Facebook page and LIKE it if the spirit moves you.

The good news is that I’ve found loving homes for all of them but one, so far! I’m going to keep at least one of each sex so that they can be companions for their parents who can no longer live together in the same cage.

This has been an unexpected but absolutely wonderful experience and I highly recommend rats as pets, especially to people who live in apartments and don’t have enough room or time for a dog or cat. Rats are very smart, sociable and sweet and make for excellent companions!

You can learn more about rats and other interesting rodents in The Rodent Reader Quarterly magazine, published by my friend Mil Scott, who has been a superb source of inspiration, encouragement and support to me and thousands of other rat lovers.

Claudia, the unusual runt that I will keep!

A bundle of Easter love — A bundle of Easter goodness

The Reckoning by Alma Katsu

Book Review
Title: The Reckoning
Author: Alma Katsu
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada
Release: June 2012
Pages: 352 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-4516-5180-5
Stars: 4.0

The Reckoning by Alma Katsu picks up where the first book in her supernatural, gothic trilogy, The Taker, ends. Katsu describes The Taker as “a story about desire, obsession and the dark things we sometimes do for love.” It’s also about the curse of immortality and the price paid by its victims.

I didn’t realize that The Taker was part of a trilogy when I read and reviewed it for Simon & Schuster Canada, but now that I’ve read the second book, I can’t wait for the final piece of this extraordinarily compelling puzzle which is currently known as The Descent. This trilogy is a Twilight for adults (R-rated) although its main characters are not vampires. While I found The Taker to be quite melancholy because of its focus on an unrequited love story, The Reckoning, is more visceral and suspenseful in the way it expresses Lanny’s terror in being reunited with her maker, Adair, which is her worst nightmare made manifest.

The Reckoning opens with main character, Lanore “Lanny” McIlvrae, a 200 year old immortal, living with her latest human lover, Dr. Luke Findley in London, England. Lanny has just donated a collection of lost 19^th century artifacts to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the featured treasure being a fan autographed to her by the poet, Lord Byron that had been given to her by the love her life: the astonishingly beautiful Jonathan St. Andrew. We learn more about why Jonathan begged Lanny to release him from the chains of immortality, why she agreed, and the ultimate price she has to pay for her actions.

Near the end of The Taker, we discover that Lanny and Jonathan have sealed their maker, Adair (the Count cel Rau from Romania), in the walls of his Boston home, but two centuries later, the house is demolished and Adair is free to seek revenge on his imprisoners. Only Lanny knows the horrors that Adair is capable of inflicting and she realizes that she can’t allow Luke to stay with her and continue to live as a fugitive when it’s only a matter of time before Adair catches up with them and unleashes his vengeance. The narrative unfolds primarily between London and Boston with pit stops in ancient Venice, Casablanca, Marquette, Michigan, Maine, Barcelona, Pisa, Aspen, Colorado and Lake Garda, Italy as Lanny tries to keep as much distance as possible between herself and Adair.

Adair’s minions, the greedy Jude, the fiendish Tilde (who is exquisitely demonic!) and the deceptive Alejandro are back in this volume, and we meet two other immortals bound to Adair: the long-suffering Savva and his newest convert, Pendleton. These secondary characters are integral to the story and are tremendously entertaining, but it is Adair who you will never forget. He’s a 21^st century Lestat, only far less charming and much more vicious.

The Reckoning is Adair’s story and it’s the tale of an immortal man who has existed for almost 1,000 years in a body that doesn’t belong to him. He’s a man who is so morally bankrupt and inherently evil that everyone who knows him fears him for the monster that he is. What makes him truly captivating is that although Adair essentially still possesses a human soul, his is a soul who might just be the only soul in all creation who has never been loved. This is the story of a soul whose battle is against his desire to change and his inability to overcome his intrinsic nature.

Could a person like that change? I didn’t want to be uncharitable; I wanted to believe everyone is capable of change, of acting selflessly, of becoming a better person. The longer we live, the more we understand and develop empathy for our fellow man, and are moved to change our selfish ways. I would hate to meet the person who was forever inured to the misery of others.

Adair, who is well-practiced in the art of alchemy, is so powerful that not only is he capable of astral travel and lighting fires with his mind, but he can raise the dead. And he just might have to spend all of eternity engaged in penitence for his sins. Even though he’s a rapist and a murderer, Katsu writes him with such complexity and compassion that we can find empathy for him as he endures his own torture.

By the end of The Reckoning, we realize that Lanny, who on the outside appears as a kidnapping victim suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, is bound to Adair for eternity, no matter where she goes, what she does, or who she loves, and therein lies her fate.

I love a good paranormal mystery/romance and this trilogy by Alma Katsu will fit perfectly between my collection of Anne Rice, Clive Barker and Stephenie Meyer novels. I see movies of these books being made and envision Rufus Sewell as Adair and Mia Wasilkowska as Lanny, but I can’t yet imagine what actor could be considered beautiful enough to play Jonathan. Johnny Depp is unfortunately now too old for the part.

I feel privileged to have been able to read an advanced reader’s edition of The Reckoning and will be a die-hard fan of Katsu’s for as long as she continues to write.

Chronicles of the Undead by A. F. Stewart

Book Review
Title: Chronicles Of The Undead
Author: A.F. Stewart
Publisher: Lulu.com
Released: July 2009
Pages: 168
ISBN 10 – 0557026709
ISBN 13 – 978-0557026708
Stars: 2.5

Chronicles of the Undead by Nova Scotia author A. F. Stewart is a captivating, quick to read horror novella that pays homage to the master of all vampire tales, Bram Stoker, and will also immediately bring to mind the author of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice.

Set in London, England, at the end of the 18th century, and the first quarter of the 19th, A. F. Stewart has chosen the diary format. She writes with no dialogue in the first person of her main characters, Samuel Harrington, his son, Edmund Harrington, and granddaughter, Charlotte Harrington with an authentic voice for the time period.

Chronicles of the Undead begins with the diary (1793-1795) of Samuel Harrington. Harrington is a stockbroker who has just met his new neighbours, the mysterious Henri Forain and his beautiful cousin, Eleanor de Burgh. He embarks upon a close-knit friendship with Henri based on their shared interests, including carousing in the local brothel, drinking and gambling, much to Harrington’s wife Eliza’s dismay.

Harrington soon reveals that he is not happy in his marriage to a disapproving wife and yearns for the life he led in his wilder youth. Indulging in his newfound hedonistic delight, Samuel spends his days working on his financial interests and nights with Henri at Dame Montague’s brothel.

The estranged Eliza frequently complains about Samuel’s vices and his friendship with Henri, so Harrington takes to giving her sound thrashings, and she becomes very meek and amiable, which pleases her awful husband. But, shortly after, Harrington discovers that his dear friend and partner in hedonism is a vampire!

Will Harrington ever be the same? Will he allow Henri to make him a vampire? What is the exact nature of Henri’s newfound relationship with Harrington’s teenage daughter, Flora?

I won’t give away all the plot, but these are old-fashioned, nasty bloodsuckers who feed on human blood with no remorse.

Stewart’s story continues in part two with the diaries of Harrington’s son Edmund (1795-1797) and concludes in part three with those of his granddaughter, Charlotte (1825-1826).

“Chronicles of the Undead is an intimate portrayal of family, weakness, the lure of evil, and how one selfish act can have horrific consequences.” Although it is not unique, it is a satisfying read that ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, although one can figure out the ending for themself. Unfortunately, the book is poorly edited for grammar and punctuation. Still, it is a fine effort from Ms. Stewart, who has a terrific imagination and whose main writing focus is on the fantasy and poetry genres.