Renegades by Sara Mason

Title: Renegades

Author Name: Sara Mason

Editing & Rewriting

S.A. Mason

After you’re done with your first draft, take some time to celebrate what a huge accomplishment that is! After you take some time off to be able to look at your manuscript with fresh eyes, it’s time to edit. 

This sums up my editing process:

After a few days or weeks off, I read through the entire manuscript without stopping to fix every typo. I look at the bigger things like pacing, scene order, and plot holes. Printing out a hard copy is helpful for this stage. I’ll flag pages with post-its as I go then I’ll go back to make changes. Once the larger issues are fixed, I go back and focus on the little things like typos, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

I like to read through the manuscript several times, focusing on different aspects each time. For example, I would first read through the draft focusing on dialogue. It’s important to make sure each of the characters has a distinct voice. If you remove the speech tags (he said, she asked, etc.), you should be able to still tell who is speaking. If the characters are all sounding the same, I would go back and edit. Next, I would focus on physical descriptions. And I would just keep going through the manuscript until I looked at everything.

For me, the most important part of this process—and the most annoying—is rewriting. If you’re anything like me, while writing the first draft, there were multiple scenes that you thought were absolute crap, but you kept pushing through and writing to keep the story and finish the draft. Those scenes are the ones that need rewriting. It’s a necessary evil, but it has to be done.

At this point, don’t worry about the manuscript being perfect. After you edit it, you should be sending it to beta readers and your editor, so there will still be time to make changes!

Author Bio:

Sara Atherton Mason was raised in Somerville, Massachusetts, with an amazing immediate and extended family. She attended Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, graduating with highest honors in Chemistry. She then graduated from the Florida State University College of Law with high honors. She lives in the Florida with her toy poodle, Melvin, and clerks for a United States District Court Judge. She enjoys coffee, wine, sports, and science fiction television shows. 

Author Links -

http://www.saraathertonmason.com/

http://www.saraathertonmason.com/blog.html

https://www.facebook.com/SaraAthertonMason

https://twitter.com/saramason1287

http://www.pinterest.com/saramason1287/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7370794.S_A_Mason

Book Genre: Science fiction

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: October 31, 2013

Buy Link(s):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GBN8ECG/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0QS7SHS9DVYTEJB1J36P&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/renegades-sara-mason/1117273819?ean=9781493620654

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/renegades-8

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/372915

Book Description:

Elora Pertin spent her life trying to please her father, an esteemed General for the Empire. 

When he convinced her to leave her quiet life as a scientist to advance a secret project for the Emperor, she had no idea what she was getting into. The seemingly innocent projects she engineered were actually being used to develop a genocidal weapon. After uncovering the Emperor’s plot, Elora had no choice but to act. 

Elora finds herself fighting for her life against the Empire she once served, abandoning everything with only a handful of friends and an unlikely ally—the Emperor’s deadliest assassin. Will he prove himself true as her protector, a loyal servant of the Empire, or a romantic distraction? With the law and assassins searching the star system for them, Elora and her team are determined to accomplish their mission . . . or die trying.

Excerpt One:

Back in her room, Elora tried to come up with another plan. If her father couldn’t—or wouldn’t—help, she had to find someone else. Just finishing and going home was not an option. She tried to focus on the weapon, but was preoccupied with thoughts of her father. What was he involved with? How could he involve her in the development of an illegal weapon? He had been her rock and best friend since her mom died when she was so young. If she couldn’t trust her dad, whom could she trust?

She had just closed her eyes to practice the meditative techniques she learned on Naruta when she was suddenly pulled out of bed to her feet. She felt the strong arms of a man on either side of her head. Instinctively, she tried to jerk his arms away because she was sure he was about to break her neck. Her head was pulled so far to one side she could feel the muscles in her neck tearing apart. Then he stopped.

Elora could barely see the mirror in her peripheral. The man’s black monochromatic attire made him hard to see in the dark room, but she could make him out against her body. He was tall with shaggy dark hair, slightly curly on the ends. He had a strong jaw, and as she moved up his face, she saw he was looking at her in the mirror. His eyes were dark—almost as black as his clothes. Just as suddenly as he pulled her out of bed, he released her.

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Book Review (Shared by BK Walker) The Three Sisters by Bryan Taylor (Book Tour & Giveaway)

 

Three Sisters

by Bryan Taylor

About The Author

  Bryan Taylor is a double PK, a preacher’s kid of a preacher’s kid. With that legacy he faced two destinies, being an unhappy triple PK (Jubilees 17:23, “He that is born unto the son of a preacher and himself preaches shall be miserable until his dying day and suffer eternal damnation.”), or being sacrilegious and happy. He decided to forsake the Southern Baptists for Catholicism, but when he applied to join a convent, he was rejected (sex discrimination!), so he decided to do the next best thing: write a novel about the three nuns he would most like to meet. Bryan Taylor was born in Louisiana, grew up in Michigan and Texas, went to school in Tennessee, South Carolina and California, taught in Switzerland for a year, and has traveled to 50 countries, more than any Pope except Saint John Paul II. He now lives in California, which is one of the few places with people crazier than him.

Author Links

Website: http://www.threesistersnovel.com/ Blog: http://www.threesistersnovel.com/blog/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BryanTaylorAuthor
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18246773-the-three-sisters
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/3sistersnovel/books/  

About The Book

Genre: Humor, Satire

Publisher: Dragon Tree Books

Release Date: July 23, 2013

Buy: Amazon

    Book Description:   Nuns just want to have fun! But when three former Catholic nuns, Coito Gott, Theodora Suoraand Regina Granthave too much fun and get in trouble with the law, they become nuns on the run. Driving back to Washington D.C. where they work at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts, the three sisters are arrested in Tennessee. After defeating the local deputy in strip poker, they escape from jail, and are pursued by the zealous Detective Schmuck Hole, who has personally offered a $10,000 reward for their capture on the 700 Club. Little do they know that when the three sisters visit the Washington Monument, their lives will change forever. Set in 1979, The Three Sisters is a sacrilegious satire that skewers not only organized religion, but the government, the media, intellectuals, corporate greed and every other part of the establishment. Maybe not the greatest story ever told, but possibly the funniest. “Blessed are they who read The Three Sisters, for they shall inherit eternal laughter.” — Matthew 5:66 “The most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of Hell.” — Billy Sunday “Les trois soeurs valent bien une messe.” – Henry IV “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi che leggete Le Tre Sorelle.” – Dante Alighieri Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that reading The Three Sisters may lead to Eternal Damnation.  Side effects may include a renewed sense of humor and a better sex life.

Book Review Shared by BK

I had no idea what to expect when I opened  this book, but Bryan Taylor has delivered a funny, laugh-out-loud read. Rebellion at its best! Coito isn’t one to conform to what is expected and really steps outside the box, being a leader and not a follower. That’s what I loved the most about her.

A Daddy’s girl she was, always looking for approval, to realizing that she was the one disappointed. When she decides to become a nun, she thought she could change the world. How they could take that seriously and let her become a nun,  well, let’s just say a girl that practiced her confessions and went to them sucking helium beforehand, they were silly for thinking she was true to that calling.

Plus, aren’t Nuns supposed to be virgins?

Taylor delivers a hilarious page turner with The Three Sisters. The only thing that I didn’t really like was it started out in one point of view and at times jumped to another. I think it would have been better told from only first person, Coito’s. There were also times the flow felt interrupted and I had to go back and re-read a few paragraphs. It does put you to mind of Sister Act, and will have you rolling on the floor even without Whoopi. If you’re looking for a change of pace from your everyday reads, then I highly suggest you get your hands on The Three Sisters! You’ll be glad you did!

Excerpts

The college I was at had a small Newman Club for committed collegiate Catholics, who still spent most of their youthful years behaving more like St. Augustine than Cardinal Newman. Some of my friends and I set up a Joyce Club as a refuge for lapsed Catholics, and during our years there, we successfully filched several members of the Newman Club and got them to join our own. Whenever this occurred, I could share the great joy the father in the Bible must have experienced when the Prodigal Son returned home, or the shepherd had found his lost sheep. Working with this close-knit group of friends and learning from each other made college worthwhile. Moreover, there were hundreds of naïve young freshmen each year ripe for corrupting whom I could gird up my loins for, exchange jelly for juice, and turn them into cynics with amazing ease.

Academic life also gave me the opportunity to express my artistic talents in ways that impressed my coterie of college friends. When it snowed, a not infrequent event in Chicago, we created chionic masterpieces that lasted until the sun melted them away. Some were conventional, like Marie Antoinette Gets the Guillotine, but when the college was too cheap to build new sidewalks for its students we put together a column of legless snowmen and snowwomen sitting on their carts and pushing themselves along with paper signs on them saying, “Chicago’s disabled demand new sidewalks!” Thus we married the avant-garde to social activism.

We would also create living art, recreating and transmogrifying great works of the past. The one that got me and my fellow artists into real trouble was when we recreated Da Vinci’s Last Supper with me in puris naturalibus as The Naked Maja recumbent upon the table in front of Christ and his disciples. If the college officials had complained about the anachronistic juxtaposition of Da Vinci’s Cenacle and Goya’s Ode to Pubic Hair as the Christ and his disciples argued over who was going to pay thirty pieces of silver for me, I would have understood their objections, but instead they complained about my full frontal nudity, even though I was as faithful to Goya’s original as I could be. Sure, Billy Sunday wouldn’t have liked it, but he had died decades before. We referred to our masterpieces as Mama Art, the indirect descendent of Dada Art.

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Three Sisters by Bryan Taylor

 

Three Sisters

by Bryan Taylor

About The Author

  Bryan Taylor is a double PK, a preacher’s kid of a preacher’s kid. With that legacy he faced two destinies, being an unhappy triple PK (Jubilees 17:23, “He that is born unto the son of a preacher and himself preaches shall be miserable until his dying day and suffer eternal damnation.”), or being sacrilegious and happy. He decided to forsake the Southern Baptists for Catholicism, but when he applied to join a convent, he was rejected (sex discrimination!), so he decided to do the next best thing: write a novel about the three nuns he would most like to meet. Bryan Taylor was born in Louisiana, grew up in Michigan and Texas, went to school in Tennessee, South Carolina and California, taught in Switzerland for a year, and has traveled to 50 countries, more than any Pope except Saint John Paul II. He now lives in California, which is one of the few places with people crazier than him.

Author Links

Website: http://www.threesistersnovel.com/ Blog: http://www.threesistersnovel.com/blog/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BryanTaylorAuthor
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18246773-the-three-sisters
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/3sistersnovel/books/  

The Three Sisters is a humorous, adult satire about three former nuns who just want to have fun, but when they get in trouble with the law, they become nuns on the run. The three nuns in the novel are Coito Gott, the rebel, Theodora Suora, the intellectual, and Regina Grant, who loves mirth, movies and music. For this guest blog, rather than providing advice for the millionth time on how to write and get published, I have asked one of them to talk about one of their favorite nuns of the past. Your turn, Regina.

Jean Donovan is a nun I admire. Since I was a nun down in Central America, I can understand the sacrifice that Jean Donovan made. Here is a woman who, if she had stayed in the United States, would have been incredibly successful. She earned an M.B.A. at Case Western Reserve University and got a job at the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson.

She could easily have been a supermom and been successful with both her career and family, but while she was helping the poor through the Cleveland Diocese Youth Ministry, she got the calling to join the Diocesan Mission Project in El Salvador. She got her training through the Maryknolls and went down to El Salvador in 1977, working as a lay missioner, and helping refugees from the Salvadoran Civil War.

She was a follower of Archbishop Oscar Romero and often heard him preach at the Catedral Metropolitana de El Salvador. Despite the fact that Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in March 1980, she persevered and stayed on, even as others left. Even the Peace Corps departed the country. Part of her told her to leave El Salvador for her own safety, but then she thought of the children, the poor, the refugees and put them first.

On December 2, 1980, she and Dorothy Kazel picked up two Maryknoll nuns who had flown in from Managua, Nicaragua. Five national guardsmen of the National Guard of El Salvador stopped them on a jungle road several hours later. The guardsmen beat them, raped them, and murdered them.

Their murders became international news, and their murders forced the U.S. Government to face up to their responsibilities in supporting the military regime that ruled Nicaragua. The murderous culture of the National Guard was laid bare. The perpetrators were eventually found and were imprisoned. Nothing like that had ever happened before in Nicaragua.

I’m sure Jean Donovan never wanted to die this way, who would? She was dedicated to her mission, despite the dangers, and ended up doing more for the people in El Salvador than she ever could have imagined. She followed her conscience, did what was right, and that is why I admire her.

About The Book

Genre: Humor, Satire

Publisher: Dragon Tree Books

Release Date: July 23, 2013

Buy: Amazon

    Book Description:   Nuns just want to have fun! But when three former Catholic nuns, Coito Gott, Theodora Suoraand Regina Granthave too much fun and get in trouble with the law, they become nuns on the run. Driving back to Washington D.C. where they work at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts, the three sisters are arrested in Tennessee. After defeating the local deputy in strip poker, they escape from jail, and are pursued by the zealous Detective Schmuck Hole, who has personally offered a $10,000 reward for their capture on the 700 Club. Little do they know that when the three sisters visit the Washington Monument, their lives will change forever. Set in 1979, The Three Sisters is a sacrilegious satire that skewers not only organized religion, but the government, the media, intellectuals, corporate greed and every other part of the establishment. Maybe not the greatest story ever told, but possibly the funniest. “Blessed are they who read The Three Sisters, for they shall inherit eternal laughter.” — Matthew 5:66 “The most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of Hell.” — Billy Sunday “Les trois soeurs valent bien une messe.” – Henry IV “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi che leggete Le Tre Sorelle.” – Dante Alighieri Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that reading The Three Sisters may lead to Eternal Damnation.  Side effects may include a renewed sense of humor and a better sex life.

Excerpts

The college I was at had a small Newman Club for committed collegiate Catholics, who still spent most of their youthful years behaving more like St. Augustine than Cardinal Newman. Some of my friends and I set up a Joyce Club as a refuge for lapsed Catholics, and during our years there, we successfully filched several members of the Newman Club and got them to join our own. Whenever this occurred, I could share the great joy the father in the Bible must have experienced when the Prodigal Son returned home, or the shepherd had found his lost sheep. Working with this close-knit group of friends and learning from each other made college worthwhile. Moreover, there were hundreds of naïve young freshmen each year ripe for corrupting whom I could gird up my loins for, exchange jelly for juice, and turn them into cynics with amazing ease.

Academic life also gave me the opportunity to express my artistic talents in ways that impressed my coterie of college friends. When it snowed, a not infrequent event in Chicago, we created chionic masterpieces that lasted until the sun melted them away. Some were conventional, like Marie Antoinette Gets the Guillotine, but when the college was too cheap to build new sidewalks for its students we put together a column of legless snowmen and snowwomen sitting on their carts and pushing themselves along with paper signs on them saying, “Chicago’s disabled demand new sidewalks!” Thus we married the avant-garde to social activism.

We would also create living art, recreating and transmogrifying great works of the past. The one that got me and my fellow artists into real trouble was when we recreated Da Vinci’s Last Supper with me in puris naturalibus as The Naked Maja recumbent upon the table in front of Christ and his disciples. If the college officials had complained about the anachronistic juxtaposition of Da Vinci’s Cenacle and Goya’s Ode to Pubic Hair as the Christ and his disciples argued over who was going to pay thirty pieces of silver for me, I would have understood their objections, but instead they complained about my full frontal nudity, even though I was as faithful to Goya’s original as I could be. Sure, Billy Sunday wouldn’t have liked it, but he had died decades before. We referred to our masterpieces as Mama Art, the indirect descendent of Dada Art.

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Laina Turner Mystery Tour

Laina Turner Mystery Tour

@lturnermolaski 

About The Author:

Who am I? It kind of depends on the day. I am a human compendium of unrelated things. I used to think I was just weird, had shiny ball syndrome and couldn’t focus, scattered, you name it. Then I decided it was OK to be all over the place as long as each avenue I wanted to explore had meaning and purpose or was fun. So I embrace the fact I am a college professor, a writer of fiction and non-fiction, promoter of other authors, human resource professional, business consultant, mom, and all around interesting person (according to my closest friends).

When I’m not working toward my goals I like, ok fine, LOVE wine, coffee, shopping, and books. I enjoy my kids, they are awesome. I hate the cold but yet live in the mid-west. Vegas is one of my favorite spots as I love to people watch and if I ever get married again it will definitely be in a drive through chapel by a fake Elvis.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

 Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Five Seas Ink
Release Date: November 23, 2011
Amazon

Book Description:

In this short story Presley goes home for Christmas expecting it to be a relaxing holiday until her old boyfriend, Brian, asks for her help finding out who has been stealing from him and it turns from theft to murder. Why would anyone want to kill Tommy and what was he hiding?

---

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Chrysalis by Michelle Cornwell-Jordan

About The Author

Michelle Cornwell-Jordan is a Young Adult/ New Adult author.

Her titles include a co-written work with Danny Jones called Reahket, her solo young adult novella series Night School Vampire Hunter Trilogy and a contribution to the HerStory Anthology released March 08^th2013(Pagans Writers Press)

She is also the producer/host of the online radio segment, IndieReview Behind the Scenes, where she and her co-host Jamie B Musings interview Indie authors and musicians.

Michelle has been married for seventeen years and has a fourteen-year-old daughter. A book lover, her favorite genre has always been paranormal adventures.

Find out more about her on her website http://michellecjordan.wix.com/author#!

Follow her on twitter at @mcjordan37 

CHRYSALIS

A World of Bid’A Ban Novel

YA Fantasy/Dystopian

Book One

By Michelle Cornwell-Jordan

3CM Media

Set to release

September 31st 2013

Add to Goodreads

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15705478-chrysalis

The cover was created by the amazing (Amy Rooney-CVWriterDesigns)

Website: http://www.courtneyvail.com/

Photography by the fantabulous (Tiffany McDonald- Anecdote Photography)

Website: http://www.anecdotephotography.com/home.html

Big Hug and Much Gratitude to the very awesome duo

Models

Jessica Becerra

Instagram: jessdolores

Twitter: @jess_dolores

And Javier Gonzalez

Face Book https://www.facebook.com/#!/javier.gonzalez.1804?fref=ts

Synopsis

After the war between Man and the Supernatural. The world settled back into a harmonious rhythm. Man and Preternatural existing side by side, building a society that was technologically advanced and beneficial to both kinds. Ruled by ThunderKins(Children of the Sun). But there was dissatisfaction in several of the Divisions one of Fire and the other Rain. (Fire) Division did not accept the rule of ThunderKin. The Thunderkin heir was targeted for destruction, believing this would cause the Thunderkin rule to be overthrown. So Chaos was birth and Chaos had a name….Ayda

Ayda Blackhawk was the beautiful, mysterious new girl at Eagle Ridge High School, in the Mountain Division of the New World, She was not there to make friends but to bring destruction. Her assignment? To kill the Thunderkin heir. But Ayda meets Adrian the ThunderKin leader, and through a twist of fate, the rules change which places Ayda, Adrian and their world at the cross roads to either destruction or redemption.

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Daemon Persuasion by S.K. Gregory

       

Author Bio

 

Samantha Gregory lives in Northern Ireland. She has been writing since she could hold a pen and loves the supernatural/horror genre. She works as a freelance journalist and enjoys reading and playing guitar.

   

Author Links

www.skgregory.com

http://daemon-persuasion.tumblr.com/

https://www.facebook.com/#!/daemonpersuasion

www.twitter.com/sam_skgregory

https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard 

 

About The Book

Book genre - Fantasy/horror.

Publisher - Mockingbird Lane Press, Maynard AR, USA.

Release Date - January 2013

Buy - Amazon | Barnes and Noble

Synopsis

When Mackenzie Murphy goes looking for her father she finds herself caught in the middle of a demon war between three rival families. Still trying to master her own demon abilities, who can she trust to help her? The mysterious Lucien? Or Taryn, the son of the enemy? With all three families hunting for a talisman that could shift the balance of power, Mackenzie must get to it first and finish what her father started, or die trying.

Excerpts

Mackenzie sat tapping her foot nervously, waiting for her mother to appear. She shifted in the hard plastic chair trying to get comfortable. She hated this place with the cold stares from the inmates and the prison guards watching her every move. Mostly, she hated the fact that her mother had to be here for the next twenty years.

Her mother had no memory of the night Ray died. She had been found lying by his body. He had been stabbed with a kitchen knife fourteen times.

Her lawyer had called it self-defense, the judge had called it murder one. All Mackenzie knew was that Ray had gotten exactly what he deserved and her mother was being punished for it.

Annie finally appeared, her face pale and drawn. Her blonde hair, so different from Mackenzie’s own dark curls, hung limp and unwashed. She moved like a woman twice her age. Shuffling towards the table, her eyes lit up when she saw Mackenzie.

“Baby, how are you?” she said, clutching her hand.

“I’m fine, are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“No, I have everything I need,” her mother, replied. She stared at Mackenzie, taking everything in.

“Mom, don’t do the staring thing.”

“You look great. How’s school?” she asked.

“School’s great,” Mackenzie replied. At least it was the last time she rode past it. She had tried the whole school thing for about half a semester but it hadn’t worked out. She just pretended she was still there to keep her mother happy.

“Do you have a boyfriend yet?”

“No. I’m concentrating on school.” It bothered her sometimes how easily she could lie and how convincing she could be. It was a useful skill at work but she hated lying to her mother.

“Good, that’s good,” Annie said, patting her hand.

“What’s that?” her mother asked, pulling back her sleeve to reveal a bad scrape.

“It’s nothing.” Mackenzie pulled her arm away.

“Did someone do that to you?”

“No, I had an accident. I came off my motorbike.”

“Motorbike? Your daddy used to ride a motorbike,” she said.

“He did?” Her mother never went into any detail about her father. He had left her before Mackenzie was born. When Mackenzie was younger, Annie would lament about their summer together but she never gave any useful information away. All she knew was that her father was called Sebastian King. She had done a few searches online for him but she couldn’t find any matches.

“Yes. I remember he was fixing it when we first met. It broke down outside the bakery, where I worked. He was so handsome.”

“Why did he leave you?” Mackenzie asked. In the past when she would ask questions, her mother would shut down and refuse to answer. Lately though she seemed to have trouble discerning fantasy from reality and she was talking more and more about him.

“He was in trouble. He was only in town to visit Mr. Black”

“Mr. Black?” she said, trying not to push.

“He owned a pawn store. He was only planning to stay for a couple of days but he was there for three months.” Her mother’s eyes clouded over as she was caught up in the memory.

That was more information than Mackenzie had ever heard. She wondered if this Mr. Black knew where her father was. She had often thought about him over the years, where he was now, whether he even knew about her. Her mom didn’t know she was pregnant until after he was gone.

“The bakery you worked in, was that in your home town?”

Her mother nodded, “Yeah, it’s this tiny little town. When I was younger all I wanted to do was come to LA and now not a day goes by that I don’t wish I was back in East Falls.”

East Falls. She finally had a name, somewhere to start.

“Maybe we can go back there when you get out,” Mackenzie said.

Her mother realized what she had said, “You wouldn’t want to go there honey. It is nothing like LA and I know you. You’re a city girl.”

“I wouldn’t mind roughing it for a few days,” she replied.

 “No, Mac. The past is the past. Leave it where it is.”

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