BHCC Prez Victorious

A couple weeks ago in this post I told you all that Big Honkin Chickens Club President Deb Raney had responded to my challenge to read Web of Lies (which I dedicated to her and BHCC VP Robin Lee Hatcher). If she did that, I’d send her five pounds of DeBrand chocolate. Of course I expected a "No Way!" Web of Lies happens to be one of the creepiest (literally) books I’ve written. But sometimes those BHCC people can fool you. Deb replied:

Okay, I’ve responded to your challenge, Brandilyn, and to prove my intentions, I’ve just finished the prologue and Chapter 1. Okay...I gotta admit it: you’re good and I’m hooked. (Even though that first scene is WAY too much like the murder I witnessed in a grocery store 13 years ago!) I’m also home alone right now, so may hold off on chapter 2 until Ken and Tavia get home...

Not until it was too late did I learn that one Debrand chocolate truffle costs $2.50.

Hey, no sweat. Chicken Deb would never finish.

Later I received this email:

I’m on page 185, and here’s where I read yesterday. SCARY! I went with Ken on a rock hunt in his 97-year-old grandpa’s pastureland in the Smoky Hills. We were out here on this windswept Kansas hill by an old abandoned stone house with the rattlesnakes and jackrabbits and centipedes. Didn’t see ONE spider (or a snake for that matter), but unearthed a centipede that CREEPED me OUT! If you don’t have a nasty creature for your next HORROR novel, this would be a GREAT choice.

Okay, now I started to sweat.

Yesterday—another email from Deb:

I FINISHED I!! And you won’t believe this: Friday I was 35 pages from the end and things were really heating up. I was bitin’ my fingernails and forgetting to breath. But I was scheduled to speak at a women’s retreat at a campground near Kansas City this weekend. I couldn’t wait until Sunday night to find out how things end! No way! I’ll take the book with me, I thought. If I have some free time, there’ll be a whole cabin of women there to hold my hand while I finish.

But no! This lovely group puts their speaker up in a PRIVATE cabin all by herself. There goes that, I thought. But the program wound down by 9:30 Friday night and the women gathered in groups with their own churches, so I was free until my sessions the following day. I went back to my cabin (which was LOVELY with a full, modern bath.) I kept glancing at my book, thought about the stories I’d heard of more rustic cabins in this campground, where a group of boys had actually seen a SNAKE crawl out of a hole in a mattress. I shrugged. “What’s a little spider?” So I sat up in bed with the covers pulled tightly around me and read to the very end!

I did it!! I’m so proud of myself! It was a GOOD book! I came to care for all the characters and loved the romantic thread. Okay...I left the bathroom light on all night, but I actually slept like a baby! Woke up feeling refreshed and ready for the day. Not a hint of a nightmare.

Um...until... just before leaving to come home from the retreat yesterday, I went back to my cabin to pack. I pulled back the covers to strip the sheets off my bed... and a creepy black spider scurried out from under the quilts!! I couldn’t even scream! I was laughing too hard. ; )You may have the chocolates delivered to (her address). Now why do I think I’M the BIG winner all the way around in this deal?!! : )

P.S. I hope this doesn’t disqualify me, but I did NOT read the blurb at the end of the book for Violet Dawn! I know your blurbs are TERRIFYING! ; }

Deb, president in good standing of the Big Honkin’ Chicken Club

Fortunately, Deb in all her chicken kindness said I’m off the hook for sending DeBrand chocolates, which would have cost me hundreds of dollars. For this I’m grateful. But she shall receive five pounds of some good stuff, nevertheless. She’s earned it.