The FA Cup draw for the 3rd round has just completed and United have been drawn at Home to Kettering Town or Leeds United, depending on the 2nd round outcome of their game.

Other significant draws

West Ham vs. Arsenal

Chelsea vs. Watford

Middlesbrough vs. Manchester City

Tottenham vs. Peterborough

Notts County vs. Forest Green Rovers

MK Dons vs. Burnley

Wigan Athletic vs. Hull City

Aston Villa v Blackburn Rovers

Everton vs. Carlisle Utd

(Tranmere or Aldershot) vs. Wolves

Reading vs. Liverpool

Fulham vs.  Swindon

3rd round ties to be played 2 and 3 January 2010.

I’ve put up the page for the book tour for Eva’s Last Dance today.  It seems horribly early, but from years gone by, I remember how December slides by in haze, January disappears down a rabbit hole, and February seems to be here before you get your bearings and settle into the new year properly.

So I’m putting the page up now.  Here’s a link to it, and it’s also listed in the page links in the sidebar.

And I’m finally getting the hint that excerpts are welcome and appreciated.

So here’s an excerpt.

_____________

Nearly 100 years after their last dance together, Eva’s long lost love, Edward makes contact again.  Eva—petite, blonde, blue-eyed, lonely and a vampire now—can’t resist falling into his arm and under his erotic spell.  She’ll do anything he asks of her now.

Until the spell is rudely interrupted by human demon hunter, Ryan Jefferson, who is on the trail of an incubus.  He sets out to seduce Eva properly in a searing night of dance and passion.

_____________________

Excerpt

Usual warning folks…This is not kiddie fare. Read at your own moral risk.

Chapter One

Eva brushed her gloved hand down the length of her gown nervously and stepped out onto the roof, her heart pounding. At the other end of the roof, he was standing there waiting for her and she thought she might die.

“Edward,” she whispered, coming to a halt.

“Yes, it’s me.” He came toward her, holding out a rose. “I know it’s a shock but I can explain all that.” He handed her the rose. “Just as I know you can explain how you came to be here. Now.” And he smiled, just like she remembered, his blue eyes dancing, his easy smile lighting up his face. His blond hair was slicked back as always and he wore a white suit, just as she remembered too.

“You don’t look any different,” she said and her voice was husky.

“Neither do you.” He picked up her hand and drew her toward the centre of the roof. “It’s not the Waldorf, but would you care to dance?”

“I haven’t danced since…since then.” She looked around at the paper lanterns he had strung. “What about music?”

He pulled a small remote control from his pocket and clicked it. “Modern living has some advantages,” he confessed and a Strauss waltz emerged from an MP3 player and speakers set up on a small table. Waltzes. She loved waltzes the best and he knew it. She melted into his arms and wished that she was able to cry, to give expression to the overwhelming joy of being nestled in Edward’s embrace once more. Soon she would have to find out how this miracle had happened. But not now. For now she would simply enjoy it.

And dance. It had been such a long time.

Once, long ago, she and Edward had danced every night, their bodies pressed against each other, their eyes locked, the knowledge of their future together written in each others’ gazes.

She turned her head now to look him in the eye. “Edward.”

He looked at her and she saw once again the gleam in his eyes. The dancing had often been their only way of expressing their physical needs for each other, that they would not be able to fulfill until their marriage. Now she saw and understood the lust in his eyes and welcomed it. There was no impediment and her heart raced. As their steps slowed to a gentle swaying, his big hand gathered up the skirt of her gown, lifting it and his mouth captured her lips.

She moaned as his tongue pushed into her mouth, rough and commanding. Fright tore through her. They would never have been this daring when they were first engaged. Their families would have been shocked and horrified at the public display. But the fright was edged with arousal that swiftly overcame the old barrier. She wanted more.

Edward bent her over his arm, his hand sliding under her gown, past her stocking tops, to the tops of her thighs. His hand was cool but nevertheless, she found his touch made her tremble with anticipation. This was Edward, the man she had loved and thought she had lost.

His lips trailed down her throat to kiss her breasts above the low décolletage of her gown and his hand pushed between her thighs. She was slick with moisture and bare of undergarments. She longed for him to thrust his hand—

“Hey, asshole!”

Edward turned his head around toward the access doorway, questing like a wolf surveys the landscape.

Eva tried to stand up, for there was a man on the roof a few paces from the door, wearing a three-quarter length coat against the April chill, his legs spread in an aggressive stance. Black hair that was supposed to be short but needed cutting and glinting blue in the soft lights. Dark eyes surveying them with a world-weary expression and a sharp jaw set at a sardonic angle. Worse, there was a double-barrel shotgun over one shoulder.

Edward made a sound that was inhuman. A banshee howl. And he dropped her. She fell flat on her ass as he turned and strode toward the stranger, careless of the gun he had over his shoulder.

The man flipped the gun over and fired one barrel and Eva screamed as Edward clutched at his stomach with a shocked expression.

“Surprise,” the stranger said. “Think I’d use normal pellets on an asshole like you? Salt bound with holy water, with my compliments.” He walked up to Edward, put a boot on his shoulder and shoved and Edward fell on his back.

“What are you doing?” Eva cried, scrambling over to them.

“Saving your ass, honey. Don’t get in the way.” The man reached under his coat and pulled out a black knife with a flat, wide blade. Edward lay clutching his stomach and gasping with inhuman, whimpering sounds and the man leaned toward him and thrust the knife into his heart.

Eva screamed. She leapt on his back, reaching for the knife, moving as fast as she could but before she could pluck it from Edward’s heart, he disappeared. She stared at the black, smoking outline where his body had been, disbelief crowding all thoughts from her head.

That was when the man flipped her onto her back on the roof and straddled her, his black eyes glinting dangerously. “You’re a fucking vampire!” he railed.

Ryan watched the delicate little blonde’s crystal blue eyes get very large. “How do you know that?” she whispered. “No humans—”

“I just off’d an incubus. You think I don’t know about vampires?” he railed. “Question is, what did the thing want with you? They go after humans. Not your kind.”

“You’re a hunter,” she said breathlessly, fear blooming in her eyes.

“Relax,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “I took vampires off my hit list five years ago. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“Edward…was an incubus?” she asked. She looked like she was about to burst into tears and Ryan put it together with an almost audible click. “Jesus Christ, they duped you, didn’t they? Who was Edward to you? An old boyfriend?” He got to his feet. Normally, he would have let her get up on her own but something about her dress—the olde worlde quaintness of it, the long gloves and the way her golden curls were piled on top of her head…or maybe it was just the way her big blue eyes were gazing at him with such desperate need for help and information—whatever, okay, all right, he was a weak-minded idiot—he picked her up around the waist and put her on her feet. And damn but his hands nearly met around her middle.

And just for a second he flashed on a mental image of gripping her waist as he pounded his cock into her petite little package, making her scream his name.

He stepped back, dropping his hands from her waist like she was a hot potato and picked up the shotgun and reloaded it, giving his suddenly shaking hands something to do.

“Edward…was my fiancé,” she said softly. “We were supposed to have married, May 1, 1912. I was to join him in New York and booked passage on the Titanic.” She looked up at Ryan with a small smile. “I was not one of the women who found an early seat on the lifeboats. But a man who found me as I was dying offered me an alternative and I took it. He made me into a vampire, which allowed me to survive the cold that night and pass as human until we arrived in New York on the Carpathia. I could not go to Edward after that. It was part of the price of becoming a vampire.”

Ryan expected her blue eyes to swim with tears, until he remembered that vampires could not cry. He cleared his own throat. “What happened to him?” he asked.

“He died in the great war,” she said softly. “A hero, they said.” She looked over at the still smoking outline of the incubus. “So when I got his note today, saying that he had returned and wanted to see me, I thought that perhaps he had found a way to live on, just as I had.”

Ryan recalled the image he’d seen as he’d first stepped onto the roof—the demon’s lips on her breasts, his hands between her thighs, the gown hiked up around her hips and realized that his cock was straining against his pants, beating a steady tattoo that echoed in his temples. He was lusting after a vampire. Shit. Who’d have thought?

He waved toward the blue satin dress she was wearing. It made her waist look tiny and her breasts look like they might spill out at any moment. The sleeves looked like they would fall from her arms if he gave them the slightest encouragement, further exposing her breasts. He already knew that beneath the long panels of the dress she wore delicate stockings that stopped just above her knees and nothing else.

“Is this what you used to wear, then?”

“Almost,” she said, with a small smile. “My momma would have spanked me for not wearing a corset, or…other items. But yes, this is what we wore then.” And she blushed.

Ryan knew he was lost then. The blush did it. That and the dress that covered up far more than women exposed these days, yet did more to say “fuck me” than most porn. He was gone. Hook, line and sinker. He wanted to wrap himself around her delicate beauty and at the same time pin her to the wall and fuck her until those blue eyes hazed over with sensual repletion.

“So the fucking bastard gives you one dance and you’re putty in his hands,” he ground out. “Didn’t you even stop to ask for his credentials?”

“It was Edward. Why would I ask? And he danced with me. We always danced. We…” Her blush deepened and she dropped her gaze. “We danced instead of…” Then she lifted her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “We danced instead of sex. It was the way of it in those days, Mr.…”

“Ryan,” he said stiffly, as ideas exploded in his mind. “Jesus Christ, you’re a virgin,” he said softly.

“I most certainly am not,” she said stiffly. “I’ve been a vampire for nearly a century, Mr. Ryan. I assure you, virginity is a technicality I left behind a long time ago.”

“Just Ryan.” He held up a hand, frowning. “Technically speaking, you might still be. These things count in the demon world, let me tell you. I’m not talking about toys, or other vampires, or the loss of a hymen, if that’s what you mean.”

Her chin remained up but her blush deepened and he knew he’d hit the mark. He put the shotgun down again, to make himself less threatening and dropped his hands to his sides. “Have you ever had sex with a human male?” he asked softly.

She took a breath. “No,” she admitted.

He nodded. “That’s what the incubus wanted—your virginity. They prey upon humans because they’re easy marks but finding virgins is becoming more and more difficult for them. But when they do, they get all the power that comes with that virgin’s blood. But a virgin vampire’s powers? Sex with you would give them power beyond belief. No wonder they went to such effort to fool you.”

She backed up and sat quickly in the fold up chair next to the table, like the strength had suddenly run out of her legs. “I had no idea,” she said.

“There’s a war on,” he said dryly. “Didn’t they warn you about this stuff?”

“I’ve never… I didn’t tell anyone,” she said.

Ryan knew he had to give her the rest of it. “They’re going to keep coming at you, you know.”

Her blue eyes looked up at him helplessly.

“They’re going to keep coming at you until you do something about it,” he finished harshly.

“What do I do?” she whispered.

His cock throbbed. “Have sex with a human,” he said. He fought for a casual, offhand tone. “I’m willing to help out, if you want.”

___________

So…has promised, do you think?

As my friend Bruno once said, the song “The Final Countdown” is now playing in your head too.

Yesterday, while many WebWorkerDaily readers were taking a well-deserved day off and chowing down on Thanksgiving turkey, the team at Mozilla was busy pushing out beta 4 of Firefox 3.6. This new update includes over 140 bug fixes, but perhaps most importantly (to me, at least) it fixes the problems that beta 3 had with Facebook chat. If your beta has not updated automatically, it’s definitely worth updating now via Help -> Check for Updates.

Are you running the beta of Firefox 3.6? Let us know what you think of it below.

I know I haven’t been blogging as much as I have in the past couple of weeks. It’s a combination of not having any inspiration and fatigue. I just didn’t really want to blog much about the Penang trip because of the lack of pictures – I’d bore everyone with the many paragraphs of nothing but words. As for the prom, there isn’t much to say about it besides posting all the pictures I have on my camera, which isn’t really my style because I don’t like posts that are just 50+ pictures and 2 lines of words.

I’ve neglected Literary Fetish too but I’ll promise there will be more updates on both LF and here.

On a side note, I’ve started my internship and although I joke that I’m the underpaid desk monkey, work is really fun! Sure there are times where I sit at my desk and just stare blankly at the stamps arranged in front of me but hey, I’ve just started, there isn’t much to do yet. I know there will be piles of work for me to do on Monday so I’ll be looking forward to that. I’ll definitely be looking foward to Monday because Ada will be dropping by in SG for her River Island interview and we’ve agreed to meet for lunch.

It doesn’t matter to me that I get paid a pretty standard (read:low) stipend but at least working gives me something to do from 0900 – 1830. Better be working my butt off in a stuffy office then wallowing in my own filth at home, watching random TV Shows online. I will NOT waste 6 months of my life.

Getting to work every morning is pretty interesting though. Mother drops me off at the MRT station and I trudge my way through rush hour to get to my office. During rush hour, you don’t stand still on the train because you’ve got amazing balance or you’re holding onto a pole, you’re standing still because the crowd pushes against you, holding you up. Reminds me of the very first time I put on my custom made shooting suit. It was so stiff (not broken in yet) that I could just relax and sort of lean against the suit and I’ll still be standing straight and steady.

Anyway I am now sitting at a webcafe in town, still patiently waiting for Michael to haul his ass out of school. This is the 2nd time I’ve waited hours for him. Even though it gets frustrating, a quick, simple dinner together and just spending some time with each other, more then make up for the hours I’ve spent roaming aimlessly. But he really really owes me one for today considering I’m not exactly feeling like my fantastic chirpy self and my feet hurt like all hell from running around in heels and Silvio torturing our poor souls on Wednesday  night. I know he did that because I was the only girl in class and even May wasn’t present to placate his sadistic nature.

I’m going to pile up missed calls and as many messages as I can on his phone now, just to annoy him and get him to hurry up and meet me already.

‘Va!

He stood still, the breeze gently brushing across his figure. Trapped within his own mind, escape was not possible. Staring at the ground beneath him, he could not break his gaze. He was unaware of the world in which he stood. The sights before him reached his thoughts, but went unnoticed. The world he saw was his own and only by his own actions had he arrived in such a place. A barrier of emotion kept him from truely opening his eyes to see what lay before him. Silently, a chill swept over him, and the back of his mind was quickly filled with terror. Something wasn’t right and it was causing the hairs on his arms stand on end. A strange whistling sound cut through the air, and within a fraction of an instant, unimaginable pain pounded within his chest. Staggering backwards, his eyes were blinking furiously as his dreams were shattered in front of them. The pain overwhelmed him. In a daze, he looked downward and slowly came to realize what had transpired. A cold, sleek, unforgiving arrow stuck out from his chest, aimed perfectly into his pierced heart. He quickly fell to his knees, coughing blood into his numb hands before him. Fading ever further, he fell to his side. Every heartbeat was a futile attempt at life, labored and uneasy, resounding like thunder through his entire body. His mind formed a final farewell, and he slipped into his dream world for the last time.

It’s been an exciting and interesting year to be a web worker. We’ve come to rely more on services like Twitter, there has been huge buzz about Google Wave (s goog), and there are certainly no shortages of new applications being released each and every day.

Around this time last year I wrote “5 Applications and Services For Which I Am Thankful,” which was a tribute to the cream of the crop that I had chosen as my daily go-to products. With another year gone, I thought it would be interesting to revisit that list of products (at the time, I picked Gmail, BatchBook, BlogDesk, Toodledo and Google Calendar) to see what may have changed.

Despite the number of products that I test and review, all providing limitless opportunity to switch things around, it seems that very little has changed in my day-to-day web app usage, at least in the key applications that drive my business. Today, all five of these apps would be still be high on my list. Each continues to fulfill a very specific need and despite the growing number of other choices in each category, I would still choose these today.

With that said, there is one notable omission from this list, a product that I’ve come to rely on tremendously over the last few months. I’ve written in detail about Springpad in the past and with each day it becomes an even more integral part of my routine.

The tools that we use to run our businesses and organize our lives are tremendously important, and play a key role in our success.

What apps and services are you thankful for?
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/ / CC BY 2.0

A new study suggests that almost half (45 percent) of the workers at small- and medium-sized businesses spend most (75 percent) of their time out of their offices. In fact, only 15 percent of the businesses surveyed reported that all of their employees work in a single location.

The survey indicates that these trends will continue. In 2010, nearly half of the businesses surveyed are planning to hire new employees who will work remotely at least part of the time.

The survey was conducted online by virtual phone service RingCentral (which we recently reviewed) among their customers, so it is probably not representative of all businesses. However, it is certainly indicative of a trend that should hardly come as a surprise to web workers.

How much time do you spend out of the office?

Image by sxc.hu user sykicktb

I have changed the look of the blog to accommodate some readers who felt the previous theme was too hard on the eyes. It has taken me a while I know but I have finally gotten around to it. The theme is Andreas04 by Andreas Viklund. I am still hosted at WordPress.com being too much of a cheapskate (not to mention too lazy) to look at self-hosting options.

I actually like this theme better or perhaps it’s just a case of a change is as good as a holiday. In any case I hope it’s easier to read though I don’t guarantee that it will help my posts make more sense.

Oh, and if this theme sucks then let me know, WordPress.com offers plenty to choose from.

Waterloo Bridge (dir. James Whale, 1931): A refreshingly different pre-code film from the afore-discussed Red-Headed Woman and Baby Face, this one sticks to your basic melodrama motifs, very D.W. Griffith style but minus the epic scope. WWI bombs dropping on London form the catalyst for the melodrama, ending up with feel reminiscent of A Farewell to Arms (which came a year later) and the like.

The Dangerous Thread of Things (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 2004): Typical but atypical Antonioni. Great to see some of those big shots of alienation and juxtaposition again, along with perfectly square and perfectly diagonal angles like only a Neorealist who loves Eisenstein can pull off. Dialogue is atrocious. This probably would have worked better not as a silent film, but without any talking. Hard to see what the big guy is getting at, but apparently he sees his “sickness of eros” as having some kind of hedonistic cure.

Broken Blossoms (dir. D.W. Griffith, 1919): A case study of any issue within a hundred miles of gender, this one is a tight, cohesive, and theoretically pornographic (in its etymological sense) excuse to watch a bunch of people die: the macho male “ideal,” the helpless damsel, and the aww-aren’t-you-sweet foreigner who attempts to rescue said damsel before coming to his own pathetic end. So much for proselytizing Buddhism and spreading world peace; the poor devil goes from missionary to creep, in the end making life even worse for poor Lucy and her pure-evil father/husband figure Battling Burroughs. We have Griffith to thank or to blame for so many of these now-common features of narrative cinema. Check it out here.

One advantage about having the last two books in a series being released only thirteen days apart, is that you can combine a lot of things together, including promotion efforts.

I’ve spent the last couple of days pulling together a book tour that is combining the two books, and now I have a tour that looks pretty respectable.  I’ve added the page to the sidebar, but here’s a hot link to jump to it.

All the tour dates will have a giveaway of some sort on offer, and I’ve found some really cool new blogs this time around, including The Geeky Bookworm, and a couple of others that I’m waiting on confirmation of dates for.

And I thought Beth’s Acceptance, with it’s thirteen day’s notice, was a heart attack on a stick.    I’m starting to learn that life in the cave isn’t the slow paced type of existence they tend to paint of typical publishing.

I’m glad I”m just geeky enough to keep up.