A to Z Challenge: R is for Repellent (and Raham and Resau and Ryan and "Running from the Devil" by Jamie Freveletti)

Eight more posts to go after this one. We're heading into the final stretch. I don't know about you, but I'm running out of steam. I'm still getting the posts written, but I've slowed down on the number of new blogs I'm visiting. I'll try to do better this week.

I couldn't pick just one author today, so I pulled three authors of books for kids and young adult readers out of the northern Colorado pool of outstanding writers.

Featured Authors:  Gary Raham, Laura Resau, and Amy Kathleen Ryan

Gary earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in biology at the University of Michigan and taught biology to middle and high school students. He has written 17 books, several video scripts, and award-winning articles for Highlights for Children, Cricket, Read, and other magazines, as well as some short SF stories. He also is known for his science illustrations.

Laura earned a B.A. in Anthropology and French, then decided she wanted to go somewhere far away, so she got certified in teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) and sent job applications around the globe. She has has written several novels for YA and younger readers. Her first, What the Moon Saw, was set in Mexico. Others have been set in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Aix-en-Provence, France.

Amy Kathleen Ryan attended college in Omaha, Nebraska, and Madrid, Spain, before she finally ended up at The University of Wyoming, where she studied anthropology and Spanish language. She began her writing career with YA standalone novels, then jumped into the YA sci fi genre. Flame, the third book in the Sky Chasers series, was released January 2014.





Featured Book:  Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti

I had the pleasure of meeting Jamie at Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis when she was a debut author with her first release, Running from the Devil. The beginning of the synopsis from Jamie's website:

"Emma Caldridge, a chemist for a cosmetics company, is en route from Miami to Bogotá when her plane is hijacked and spins out of control into the mountains near the Venezuelan border. Thrown unhurt from the wreckage, she can do nothing but watch as guerillas take the others hostage."

Don't you already want to read more? The Emma Caldridge novels are fast-paced and exciting, and the author is so good she was invited by the Estate of Robert Ludlum in 2011 to write the next in the Covert One series. That novel, Robert Ludlum's The Janus Reprisal, released on September 11, 2012.


Word of the Day:  Repellent

I've had a terrible time keeping the neighbor's cats out of our yard, my raised vegetable garden beds and the flower pots close to the front door. In addition to the cats driving my own kitty crazy (she's fiercely territorial, even though she's inside and they're outside), the thought of cat poop in my vegetable garden is disgusting. The neighbor cats are nice kitties, but they're allowed to roam (which by the way is against the law in our town but I guess no one enforces it).

I tried using orange rinds scattered around the garden area because cats don't care for citrus, but the peels dried out too fast. I couldn't eat enough oranges to keep all four boxes covered with fresh rinds.

There was an anti-pet spray intended for use inside and out, so I sprayed it all around my garden boxes. It reeked so bad the first hour, then dissipated. Didn't help at all.

Finally I bought a bag of powdered repellent to use to establish boundaries against cats and dogs. It contains dried blood and red pepper. I sprinkled it around the four boxes and dusted the frames a couple of days ago, plus sprinkled a bit outside the gate that the cats usually climb over. Then Saturday, after I'd prepared the second box for planting and put seeds in the first box, I reapplied the repellent around the four boxes....just as a little breeze came up and tossed a dose of the stuff in my face. It took me four powerful sneezes to get over it.

If I were a cat, I'd find a new place to poop.