Careful What You Write About

… especially, if it’s a snake!

     I just finished Book 4 of the Legends of the Winged Scarab and, to clear my head and relieve my aching back from spending my life in front of the computer, I went out into the overgrown yard to cut down the wilting foliage of the spring bulbs. (Far from relieving my aching back, of course, it added a couple more spasms.)

     What does this have to do with The Crystal Curse? Well, in it I talk about the legend of El-Hanash, the Crystal Snake.

And Since you Ask - Here it is:

Read an excerpt here: http://devilwinds.blogspot.com/

     Anyway, El-Hanash wasn’t particularly on my mind when I ducked under my deck to put the buckets with the cut foliage aside until I could take them to the dump.

     The sky was getting dark with another storm threatening, so the space was quite dim even early in the morning. Still, the funny branch lying on my raked pea-gravel bothered me (don’t be a neat-nick if you do not have 20/20 vision anymore).

     Yup. There it was: El-Hanash!

     I dropped my buckets in a hasty retreat and went into the house to Google the pattern I had noticed on the snake’s body.

     Yup, yup! It was a lovely Copperhead, one of the “six most venomous snakes of Arkansas.”

     I think I will let things go natural for a while because:

"No one escapes the crushing coils

of El-Hanash, the Crystal Snake.
For such is The Crystal Curse."