Looking for something funny to read?

I read Ray Rhamey's new story, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, and it provided me with some much needed humor from the chaos that accompany the holidays.

For those not familiar with Ray ... He's a multi-talented editor who critiques the first 16 lines of author-submitted first chapters to his blog, Flogging the Quill. He allows his blog visitors to comment and participate in the critique as well. It is one of those sites that I visit for mini-lessons on writing craft. Enlightening and intimidating at the same time. He's also an author, having written Flogging the Quill and now a new story, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles.

Inspired by L. Viehl, Ray asked his blog visitors to participate in his experiment to get the word out about his new story. Given what I get out of his blog, I figured the least I could do was read his story and give a shout out. So, with an eARC of his story on my reading devices (Kindle and iPhone), I delved into this story.

Told from Patch's perspective, the story starts with the incident that changes him from a normal kitty-cat to vampire kitty-cat. From there we see his narrow escape from being sunburned to death, his torment of a vampire dog that is afraid of cats and his unintentional place in the political spotlight. As I read Patch's story I laughed out loud many times and stopped to read some of the cat's witty opinions to my husband, like 

• his opinion on canines, the vampire looking teeth: "...why aren't they called "felines" -- our carnivore teeth are much better developed than what dogs have ..." 
• his opinion on dogs: "Dogs are such losers."
• opinions about humans: "It's a common mistake for humans to think they can own a cat." and "Now there was where cats took exception to human customs. If we don't like somebody, we do our best to make them go away. The way we see it, only fool suffer fools ..."
  

I enjoyed Ray's characterization of Patch - an independent cat that calls 'em like he sees 'em. Some of the human vampires were annoying, but I suppose they would be to a cat. This is not a nail-bitter of a story, but truly entertaining and fun to read, even with blood thirst and mob scenes. You don't have to be a cat-lover or dog-hater to appreciate this story.

When the book comes out, I'm contemplating letting my son, an avid reader, have a gander and see what he thinks. I can already hear him laughing.

So if you are looking for something quick and funny to read, check it out. For more information click http://www.vampirekittycat.com/.