The other night, Lady B. had the most terrible dream. Right in the middle of one of her glittering soirees, Boney set off a frightful EMP blast, shorting out all electronics… ANACHRONISM ALERT, ANACHRONISM ALERT… Sorry, scratch that.

She dreamed that right in the middle of one of her glorious soirees, a strange new strain of plague escaped aboard a rat from a Carpathian cemetary, swept across Europe in minutes, and before the footman had finished making the rounds with the tray of lobster patties, the Zombie Apocalpyse was upon us.

The Ballroom instantly went into lockdown, readers, guests, authoresses, parrots and toucans alike, arming themselves for the fray with fishforks, cheese knives, their beaks, or the jagged edges of broken champagne bottles.

As the moaning hordes approached from the terrace, (we think they may be the non-readers of the world, the TV-Only Folk) Lord B shook off his brandy stupor quickly enough to order the French doors locked and bolted. Gentlemen rushed to pull the shutters closed and nailed them in place.

Even Monty had suddenly sobered up, shrugging off his flirting, (Lady B suspected it was only a dream at that point). Our valiant young rakehell was ready to fight to defend the ladies, not that they necessarily needed defending.

Indeed, Sarah had already equipped herself with the fire poker, and Miranda now produced a small pistol from her reticule, coolly checking the chamber.

Lauren had learned a few good moves with which to trick the devious foe, thanks to her extensive research for her Pink Carnation books. And Sabrina (unafraid of the hot stuff!) grabbed a fully lighted candelabra to ward off the mindless zoms.

Tessa fortunately had her Rita award with her (because hey if you won one, wouldn’t you carry it with you everywhere too?). Turns out a Rita is of just the right heft and weight for clobbering zombies that get too close.

Katharine was barking orders nicely asking the maids to rush upstairs and make sure the bedchamber windows were secure. Kate Noble was wisely doing the same for the wine cellars. The Apocalypse might be upon us, but at least we were well stocked with an array of excellent vintages and more importantly had our friends with us.

I, meanwhile, had climbed up on the roof of Beaufetheringstone House to peer out over London and assess the situation, as I am wont to do. I rushed back down to report that White’s was overrun, Almack’s was a screeching slaughterhouse of undead debutantes and half-devoured dukes, and Parliament itself was under siege (at which news, a few guests had the dreadful manners to cheer, and Lady B duly harrumphed with disapproval in her sleep).

The zoms were hungry.

It was a horrible dream. Even for a supreme hostess like Lady B, the prospect of being locked up indefinitely with hundreds of her closest friends, waiting for flesh-eating zombies to storm the premises, was a test of even Her Ladyship’s love of pleasant company.

~ FORTUNATELY ~

Intense terror awoke Her Ladyship. She sat bolt upright in her duchess bed and, heart pounding, breathed a sigh of relief to find it was only a nightmare.

But then… came the gnawing recollection of something Gaelen had told her weeks ago. That 12/21/12 marked the End of the Mayan Calendar, and this date was now only NINE DAYS AWAY!!!

Which begs the question, Will This Wind…?

All right, so maybe 12/21 isn’t really going to be the End of the World. One could only hope–!

But it is an end for me, so it’s rather a sad announcement today. I’ve so enjoyed being a part of the Ballroom Blog for the past year and a half, but now that I’m writing in two genres, I realized I really must pare down my schedule a little. Buckle down on my work. I’ll still be around–underfoot!–and will remain a Ballroom Support Personnel, but I won’t be an official Ballroom author next year.

Since one of my first Ballroom Blog posts begam with Monty Python (Silly Walks) and An Ode to British Humour, it seems fitting to finish with them, too. Leave ‘em laughing, as they say. If you’re interested in being alerted when my next book comes out (August, 2013) please stop by my website and join my newsletter signup.

I want to thank Lady B. and Albert, Lord B. and Monty and his toucan, all of my fellow authoresses who have made participating in this blog such a joy, and many, many thanks to you wonderful readers who have come and befriended us here. I’ll miss you, but (in the immortal words of Puss in Boots/Shrek: “I must not cry!”) I will still be around to visit when I’m not writing, writing, writing. (If you want to get a hold of me, you can always email me thru my website or check my own blog there to see what I’m up to.)

Anyway, that’s the news. But enough of all this glum talk.

I had yet another reason for writing about the end of the world today. That’s because it’s a topic I ran into when I was writing my next book (the August 2013 release, My Notorious Gentleman, second to last Inferno Club book).

That book (Trevor’s story if you’re following the series) takes place in 1816, the Year Without A Summer. What happened is that a huge volcano called Tambora erupted in Indonesia and shot ash up 26 miles into the stratosphere, where it was high to get picked up by the trade winds and global wind currents. This eruption is estimated to have been the equivalent of 20 Hiroshima bombs!!! So the ash ended up blocking out the sun (partially) for the next year or so, as far away as Europe and even America.

Believe me, they thought it was going to be the end of the world then, too. Though the Industrial Revolution was underway, it was still an agrarian world, and this event killed crops across the planet–corn/oats being also the main fuel for their transportation, ie horses. They couldn’t feed their animals or themselves–just as 20 years of economy-killing wars were ending.

So, Lady B would not be such a stranger to dire times. It is nice to keep that in mind when the end of the world seems near. It helps keep it in perspective.

BTW my husband and co-writer of Middle Grade novels, Eric (the E. in E.G. Foley) teaches 7th-8th graders and he wants parents to know that the kids out there are scared about all this End of the World talk. So if you’ve got kids at home around that age where they don’t always tell you what they’re thinking, that’s what he’s hearing at school, so give ‘em a hug and let ‘em know the world’s not ending, if you haven’t already done so. But of course you probably already know that! Anyhoo…

My question for the day is, if the Mayans turned out to be right and the world WAS going to end 9 days from now, what would you do with your final days on earth? Hmm. I’ll have to ponder that myself, cuz I have no idea…!

 

Under gaelen