BTLN Chapter Four (Patreon)

Today you get a chapter AND a video...and I admit the video is a bit of a spoiler. Though this video was taken in Honey Island Swamp, it's not far from where this story is set. (And it's the tour Sam alludes to. I took many, many people on this swamp tour when I lived in New Orleans and we always saw new animals.) This is a good example of the hog Sam runs into. They're big and they're fast. (We sometimes saw them running along the highway down there.) I'm not sure you get a good gauge on the size in this video, but I've been around large pigs and hogs (I used to work in a vet clinic in my late teens/early twenties) and I can tell you right now that you don't want to cross them. The guide in this video is throwing marshmallows to get the hogs attention. They do this with gators, too--also hot dogs. If you turn the volume up, you can hear Smalls yelling for a marshmallow, which we wouldn't give him, because he was little and he couldn't throw far enough.

Thanks for being patient for this chapter. The wreck of our van threw quite a wrench into our schedules and I've been overloaded picking up the slack, arguing with the insurance company, figuring out transportation (we still only have one car and the kids are in sports and my husband has physical therapy in downtown Seattle three days a week right now), and I've basically been exhausted. But we're back on track now!

I'm trying to use NaNoWrimo to finish out my other YA novel in progress, code named Frontier as well. I will get ALL THE WORDS this month. If you're a writer and doing Nano, you're welcome to friend me!

-Lish