Bloodroom Review

Horror writer Carl Alves gave my vampire novel a cool review, calling Bloodroom's characters"compelling" and saying it "presents some interesting elements in vampire lore." Thanks Carl! Check out the review and then explore Carl's books. I'm currently enjoying his novel Blood Street on audiobook.

Why Does the South Inspire Vampire Writers?

I'm at the World Horror Conference 2015. Tonight I was on a discussion panel, the topic Weird South: I Will Never Go Hungry Again: Why are So Many Contemporary Vampire Novels Set in the South?

Good Question!

My fellow panelists were:

• Charlaine Harris, a native Southerner and author of the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series on which the TV hit True Blood was based. Her latest novel is Dayshift, the second in her new Midnight Texas series.
• Dacre Stoker, co-author of Dracula, the Un-dead (a sequel to Dracula , written by his great-grand uncle, Bram Stoker) and co-author of an England/Romania travel guide. A Southerner by marriage, his wife is from Charleston, South Carolina.
• Carl Alves, author of Blood Street, a vampire mobster blood feud novel set in Philadelphia.
• Jess Peacock, author of Such a Dark Thing, a theology of the vampire narrative in popular culture.
• Andrew Greenberg, one of White Wolf's original game developers on Vampire: The Masquerade -- and a Southerner.
• And me! Author of Bloodroom and The Bad Death, vampire novels set in South Carolina -- and a damned yankee (a yankee who stayed, since I was 11 years old).

Ok, what is it about the South that inspires vampire writers? Charlaine Harris pointed out that the South is often economically depressed; really chronically depressed, and that people in peril develop rich, supernatural beliefs to explain the unpredictability of the human experience. (Charlaine doesn't really speak this way; this is me paraphrasing her. She's much more plain spoken, charming, and funny. When describing Southern traditions, such as "the nice lie", her turn of phrase made us and the audience laugh out loud.) Dacre Stoker compared Romania to the Southeast US, in that their cultures were infused and enriched by immigrants over the centuries -- Romania by Romans, Turks, Romany gypsies, and Europeans; and the South by Scots, Irish, Native Americans, Africans, French, and West Indians -- and suggested that the influx of so many different cultures brought a crazy quilt of legends. Andrew Greenberg stressed that the influx of cultures did not make the South a melting pot; rather these cultures, by not blending, created tension that results in legends built (as all good novels are) on conflict and tragedy (and sometimes, though rarely, triumph). Jess Peacock built on this idea, emphasizing the vampire as the Other; an invading entity that is foreign, mysterious, dangerous, and tempting; saying that Southerners' clannish nature identifies anyone whose great-grandparents weren't born in the South as a suspicious Other. (I can attest that this is true -- after living here for 25 years, they'd still say to me, "You're not from around here, are you?") Carl Alves suggested that the Southern personality itself -- reckless, passionate, and romantic -- embodies the traditional vampire mystique. He invited us to imagine Bram Stoker's Dracula coming of age and being turned into a vampire in urban London instead of isolated, exotic Romania (Transylvania). It would have been a completely different novel! I suggested that the vampire's obsession with his (or her) prey -- that hypnotic, relentless, possessive hunger -- mirrored the South's climate and nature, its vibe. There is something about the South that gets inside you, clings and holds you, just as the Kudzu vine grows until it completely covers the building in its clutches, pulling it to the ground in the span of a few years. I have found that the South, though maddening in many ways, has wound itself around my heart. I will probably never move away. Like a vampire, the South is beguiling, entrancing, and seductive. There are logical reasons to run from a vampire, but logic can't hold out against his allure.

Why do you think the South is so inspiring to vampire writers?

Bloodroom is now an Audiobook!

Who could resists those eyes! Wait'll you hear him speak! Yes, Julian Mouret now has a voice, courtesy of award-winning narrator, Paul Heitsch. Bloodroom is now a downloadable audiobook. You can listen to a sample at Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

For a synopsis and character bios, visit my website's Bloodroom page.

Audiobook reviewers, contact me at http://naimahaviland.com/ for your review copy.

 

Lighting Pallas: A Photoshop Trick

I recently altered some photos for a cast-of-characters animation on my site thebaddeath.com (the landing page for The Bad Death, the first in a historical trilogy and the second in the Bloodroom series of vampire novels). This blog post explains some tricks I used in Photoshop to make an image more atmospheric. First of all, meet Pallas, as pictured in the image I got from 123rf.com. Pallas is the best friend of the trilogy's heroine, Anika. Pallas is either a victim, a predator, or both. To know for sure, read The Bad Death  ;-)

Once in Adobe Photoshop, I used the Apply Image feature to replace the black backdrop to an image of an outdoor setting. To learn more about this step, read my post called A Photoshop Trick for Book Marketing. After Applying the image to Pallas, I decided to change the lighting on Pallas' image. You see the image above shows the woman in warm lighting. I wanted Pallas to look moonlit because in The Bad Death, Pallas is almost always sighted at night.

To cast a blueish moonlight glow over Pallas, I selected Image from Photoshop's top menu, scrolled the dropdown menu to select Adjust, then chose Variations at the bottom of Adjust's dropdown menu. The Variations pallet visually shows color adjustments. I chose "More Blue" and "More Cyan" to give Pallas a blue cast that would imply moonlight.

I wanted to make the moonlit sky more dramatic, so I copied the layer, cut out Pallas till I had only the sky on the copied layer, then used the blending feature of that layer to alter the sky. The blending feature causes the layer in question to react against the layer beneath it to produce a visual effect. If memory serves, I chose the Hard Light blending option. You can see in the third image how Pallas' background has more contrast between highlight and shadow, resulting from my choice of blending option.

So, there you have it, boys and girls!

The Bad Death on all eReaders

Previously an Amazon exclusive, The Bad Death is now also available at iTunes, Kobo, and Barnes&Noble.com. Captivating, sensuous, and terrifying, The Bad Death, at once a sequel and a prequel to Bloodroom, unfolds against a background of eighteenth century human bondage and southern gentility. Passion rules the heart but terror rules the night in this breathtaking tale of love, desire, betrayal, Gullah sorcery, and supernatural horror in the antebellum South. 
 

Bloodroom eBook 99 Cent Sale

You can have this sexy and dangerous bad boy for 0.99 cents Monday, November 25 through Saturday, November 30 in any digital format. Just visit Amazon or the online bookstore of your choice.

Online stores vary in the speed with which they adopt new prices. If you see Bloodroom still at its normal $2.99, buy straight from my distributor, Smashwords.

Bloodroom is the first book in the Bloodroom Series of modern and historical paranormal novels. The Bad Death is the second book in the series.

Thomas Jefferson, Single Parent

Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd President may have also been our nation's 1st hot dad (DILF?). When his young wife died; the grief-stricken man had infant Lucy, four-year old Polly, and 10-year old Patsy to raise. Due to a deathbed promise never to remarry, he remained a single parent. Lucy died in childhood. Jefferson, Polly, and Patsy clung tenaciously to each other and, though more often separated than not, remained in constant contact through letters. Jefferson set standards for his girls in education and deportment that were unusual for his day and appear impossible and unhealthy in ours. I give you a few parenting rules from Thomas Jefferson, with tongue in cheek:

No Casual Friday:  Jefferson instructed Patsy in one letter, "Be you from the moment you rise till you go to bed as cleanly and properly dressed as at the hours of dinner or tea. A lady who has been seen as a sloven or slut in the morning, will never efface that impression ..." Ouch!

Sources Cited Below Post

No Downtime:  Here's a typical study schedule:

• From 8. to 10 o'clock practice music.
• From 10. to 1 dance one day and draw another
• From 1. to 2. draw on the day you dance, and write a letter the next day.
• From 3. to 4. read French.
• From 4. to 5. exercise yourself in music.
• From 5. till bedtime read English, write & c. 

Of Course, I'll Always Love You, If ... Jefferson's instructions were at times given as a road map to his heart. In a letter to Patsy, he wrote, "I have placed my happiness on seeing you good and accomplished, and no distress which this world can now bring on me can equal that of your disappointing my hopes ...Keep my letters and read them at times that you may always have present in your mind those things which will endear you to me."

It Ain't Just a River in Egypt: What illegitimate children? What mistress? When Patsy and Polly lived at Monticello as young adults, it can't have gone unnoticed that his unmarried slave woman, Sally Hemings, only got pregnant when their father was home from Washington. The illicit relationship was never acknowledged. When it became a national scandal, the Queens of Denial visited Jefferson in Washington to provide a united family front.

As women, each developed her own way of resisting their father's demands. Patsy blamed kids and a troublesome husband for her lack of free time, and pointed to Lucy as being way more behind than she in keeping the pace. Polly seems to have adopted the slacker role to her advantage, basically throwing up her hands and saying, 'I know, I'm so lazy!' But there can be no doubt that the three of them were crazy about each other.


I thought it would be fun to create a similar relationship between The Bad Death's Julian Mouret and his much younger sister, Charlotte. She was three years old when their father died and left the fifteen year old Julian as man of the house (and therefore, its legal head). Raising a child to be the Ideal requires you to embody that Ideal, yourself. By the time we meet them in The Bad Death, Julian has achieved this. But what happens when the Ideal "parent" falls from grace? We'll see in the next novel, House of the Apparently Dead.

Sources: The Women Jefferson Loved by Virginia Scharff; The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson edited by Edwin Betts and James Bear, Jr.; Thomas Jefferson, An Intimate History by Fawn Brodie.

FREE Kindle download: The Bad Death

Monday through Friday, November 4-8, The Bad Death will be a FREE eBook on Amazon. You're welcome ;-)

A Reader's Review Blog Reviews The Bad Death

Tina Williams at A Reader's Review Blog called The Bad Death "A masterpiece of dark romance, horror, and suspense". Read Tina's review and enter to win The Bad Death and its prequel, Bloodroom, in the e-book format of your choice!

The book giveaway ends Friday, September 27 at midnight (British Summer Time, which equates to 6:00 PM in US Central Time). Check BST with your time zone here.

A Photoshop Trick for Book Marketing

I have cast-of-character strips on my book web pages, bloodroomthenovel.com and thebaddeath.com. They give potential readers a chance to read bios of major characters. Also, the individual images give me visual aids to use in marketing my books. For instance, I'll post an individual character on Instagram with a provocative tagline and the web addy. Adobe offers a monthly subscription for Photoshop for less than $20/month, but you could probably find a good price on eBay or somewhere if you want to own it outright.

At left, you'll see the image I purchased at istockphoto.com has a dark background. Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers used this graphic to produce the cover for The Bad Death. At the time, I didn't have a large file of Derek's work. I used a jpeg of the cover in progress, pictured right. To change the model's brown eyes to my heroine's gold, I used Photoshop's marquee tool to select the gold eyes from Derek's small file and copied them into my large file, resizing them to fit my stock image.

Then I had to give my Anika the background Derek had. I have a graphic design background, but this trick is easy if you know where Photoshop's interface keeps the right tools.

Since I also bought the blue watery background from istockphoto, I had that large Photoshop image to work with. I opened that image in Photoshop and copied it into my working file. Copying into my working file automatically put the background on its own layer. On Anika's layer, I used Photoshop's pen tool to draw a path around her. See that thin light outline? That's the path.

When you click on the arrow in the Paths palette, a dropdown menu gives you the option to "Make Selection" of the path.

With the path selected, I clicked on Image in Photoshop's top menu. From the Image dropdown menu, I chose "Apply Image". At that point a palette popped up allowing me to select the layer containing the background.

TaDOW!

Ballet, Then and Now

Ballet figures largely in my novels. Bloodroom, a twisted romance set in today's Charleston, stars a vampire named Julian who's obsessed with a ballerina. The Bad Death, a vampire novel set in 18th century South Carolina, stars a slave named Anika who's possessed by the spirit of a modern ballerina. In The Bad Death, Julian is nonplussed (to say the least) when his field hand starts dancing like a prima ballerina and displaying some diva 'tude. Taking a writerly grand jeté through time required a ballet history lesson.

Arabesques, Then and Now

Under possession by the modern ballerina's spirit, Anika's movements look exaggerated to Julian's 18th century eyes. Today's "flexerina" had more in common with that century's acrobatic grotteschi in the lower brow commedia dell'arte, as described in Jennifer Homans' comprehensive Apollo's Angels. Compare 18th century prima ballerina La Carmago's arabesque to the modern version, right.

Anika had to dance demi-pointe (on the balls of her feet) because in The Bad Death's setting of 1788, pointe shoes weren't invented yet. Ballerinas wouldn't dance en pointe until Marie Taglioni perfected the art of dancing on the metatarsals of her toes (like the "neck", not quite the tip, of the toe). She was aided by extra stitching that stiffened the forward soles of her tight, soft satin slippers. Compare the old style of slippers with today's pointe shoes, below.

Ballet Sippers, Then and Now

I borrowed the left-side image from a student's terrific wiki-history of Marie Taglioni's impact. And see a signed pair of Miss Taglioni's actual slippers in an image that I was too cheap to pay for here.

Ballet Evolved  is a wonderful series of ballet history lessons in dance, featuring ballerinas from London's Royal Opera House. In this one, Ballet Mistress Ursula Hargeli leads four ballerinas in demonstrating innovations in dance through the centuries. In Baroque costume, Ms. Hargeli demonstrates that era's style of plié, pirouette, and port de bras. It's amusing to see the ballerinas, each at the top of her game in modern ballet, attempt these deceptively simple steps from the distant past.

Frenemies in The Bad Death

Charlotte, Jane Eliza, Eugénie

Oh, the complicated nature of female friendships. One's a murderess. One's using black magic to get pregnant. One's the product of her big brother's OCD. They're besties as long as no one tries to best the others. Each has a unique relationship to Anika, the plat-eye slaying heroine of The Bad Death. Here's a short bio on each.

Charlotte Mouret - As close to perfect as Julian could make her, Charlotte was educated in a schedule that never left time for idle (or independent) thought and married off at seventeen to the family's financial manager. Though Julian assures her their field hand is an idiot savant, Charlotte suspects there's something unnatural in Anika's sudden talents.

Jane Eliza Farmington - Cherished daughter of a retired slaver. Society beauty. Poisoner. All magic that turns a profit is good magic, and Jane Eliza's murders are just business. As a witch doctor's delivery girl, Anika must avoid becoming a toy in Jane Eliza's deadly games.

Eugénie Mouret - Julian's sister-in-law knows full well the power of magic. She'll pay any price for the charms that guarantee a pregnancy. Anika promised her a son destined for power. But if the magic works, who -- or what -- will live in Eugénie's womb?

Readers Vote on Book Descriptions

Congratulations to Aubrey Laine, the winner of a $25 Amazon gift card. To enter the raffle, Aubrey and other readers commented on which of two book descriptions for The Bad Death they found most compelling. I thought it would be fun to compile their input and share.

You can read the descriptions on my last blog entry. Option A was written by a professional book blurb writer I contracted with through The Serious Reader. I wrote Option B. Results: Option A won by one vote. I was really surprised to see the description I wrote fare so well. Hey, I can write a novel. But ad copy throws me like a wild horse.

Readers commented that Option A was "sultry and scary" and "matter-of-fact ...let's the reader know what he/she is in for". Others commented that Option B gave more insight into what the story is about, "drew me in", and "I would pick up the book if I read something like that!" Opposing viewpoints reminded me that one person's trash is another's treasure. For instance, while Option B snared some commenters, another said it was "poorly written". On a related note, when I get too scared of bad novel reviews, I remind myself how long the spectrum of opinion is. My novel, Bloodroom, has gotten 2 star reviews, but it's also gotten 5 star reviews. We humans are a diverse bunch!

Which description will I use? Both! Not at the same time, of course. Successful self-published authors change descriptions on books from time to time to see how each affects sales. That's what I'll do.

Thanks, all who gave their opinions. It's been a great help!

Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card

I'm trying to decide which book description to use with my historical vampire novel, The Bad Death. Help me out. Vote by leaving a comment on this blog and note it on the Rafflecopter form below to be entered in a raffle to win a $25 Amazon gift card. You can cast more entries by tweeting or posting about the contest on Facebook. The contest is international and runs from Monday, July 29 12:01 AM to Monday, August 5 midnight EST.

The Bad Death is a violent adventure with a kick-ass heroine and a steamy romantic subplot. So, if you were browsing and you picked up a copy, which of these would prompt you to buy the book?

Option A:

Passion rules the heart and terror rules the night…

South Carolina, 1788. The beautiful black woman emerging from his family crypt is a stranger to Julian Mouret, the refined owner of Lion’s Court plantation. A dancer and a mystery, she spins a strange, dark, and impossible tale of peril and flight. Though he fears she must surely be mad, the handsome slave owner is soon himself a slave, lost to the seductions of this enchantress called Anika and determined to lead her North to safety.

But there can be no safe haven for Julian or the exquisite Gullah girl who has bewitched him, not while monsters roam the night. A series of horrifying mutilation murders screams of the presence of “plat-eyes”—shape-shifting blood-sucking supernatural creatures feeding at will on the plantation workers—and only Anika can end the rampage. But to face the vampire horde she will have to master the darkness within. And the price of victory in the battle ahead may well be the eternal soul of the man she is coming to love.

Option B:

Can she defeat supernatural horror in a world overrun by human evil?

It is 1788 in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Planters have fled the feverish climate, leaving vast estates in the care of Gullah slaves. Julian Mouret is the one planter who didn't leave, but how could he foresee the mortal consequence of a stranger’s embrace?

An African beauty emerges from the family crypt and shatters Julian’s isolation with a kiss. How she came to be in the crypt – and the unseen creatures that emerged with her – are mysteries that transcend time.

Anika has the strength and spirit to sustain her through a lifetime of slavery on Mouret plantations, but magic is about to overturn the laws of man and nature.

As a rising tide of brutal killings overwhelm the Lowcountry, Anika suspects shapeshifting creatures of legend known as plat-eyes. She, alone, holds the key to stopping their bloody rampage. But Julian Mouret, a man of science who scorns superstition, will block her at the risk of her life and his soul.

Which one?

Instructions to enter the raffle: First, leave a comment. Then, use the form to mark that you left a comment (this enters your name in the raffle). To increase your odds of winning, use the form to tweet and post about the raffle (you can even tweet and post each day to super-increase your chances of winning). The winner is chosen randomly by Rafflecopter. Thanks for playing!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Dressing Julian

Julian Mouret is a vampire in my contemporary novel, Bloodroom. My upcoming historical vampire novel, The Bad Death, also stars Julian Mouret. Today I took the stock image photo I bought for the cast-of-characters animation on bloodroomthenovel.com and "dressed" it in 18th century clothing for the cast-of-characters animation to be featured on thebaddeath.com. This wasn't quite as fun as dressing a good looking man for real, but it was still pretty fun.

The hottie in the tux is from http://www.istockphoto.com/. The young gent with the pistol is from 123rf.com. My challenge was to get Julian out of his tux and into the sharpshooter's old-timey clothes. I used my Photoshop 6.0.
.I can just hear the hoots of incredulity. Yes, I use 12 year old software! It has all the features I need for simple image manipulation. If you don't have Photoshop, Adobe now has an affordable monthly subscription service for its creative programs.

I'll assume you know very little as I explain what I did here. I copied the sharpshooter into the tuxedo photo, which put it on its own layer so I could manipulate it independently. Really, the dressing trick amounted to resizing sharpshooter's body to "fit" Julian's. I used the pen tool to create a path around the cravat so that I could cut and paste it into its own layer. I used the transform tool to resize the cravat and torso.

To fit the the cravat "around" Julian's chin, I used the lasso tool to free select portions I didn't need and also used the eraser tool. Julian looks awfully fierce about his new outfit. Could be that moody sky; it fortells of vampires on the horizon. I cut the sharpshooter out of the sky and dragged the halves of the sky together. Then I duplicated layers and played with the layers blending feature till I got this moody effect. The blending feature in the Layers palette makes the layer in question "react" to the layer beneath it for visual effect. I include a screenshot of my layers. You'll see the selected layer has blending set to "Soft Light". If you mess with enough layers' blending features they all sort of affect each other, which can make for interesting results.

Bloodroom Available for All e-Readers

Prima Ballerina Natalie Heyward never saw the man who attacked her and her partner with lightning speed and brutal force one moonless night. Physically unharmed but inwardly shattered, Natalie throws herself into Charleston Ballet's new performance, but the ballet's enigmatic benefactor, Julian Mouret, undermines her contrived defenses. Why does her attraction for this handsome stranger feel illicit? Something in him calls to her and she can't just pirouette away.

Will Bloodroom's damsel in distress live or die -- or both? Visit your favorite e-book retailer and find out. 

Sally Hemings and Interracial historical romance fiction

Sally Hemings was an enslaved woman believed to have been Thomas Jefferson's mistress and the mother of five children by him. It was a great scandal when Jefferson was President. For centuries, historians denied it, but rumors persisted. I heard recent DNA tests actually proved it. Historical observations of Sally Hemings suggest that she would have appealed to Jefferson for reasons beyond the physical. And there was much about Jefferson that would tempt a woman to see beyond the obvious injustice of his lifestyle. Two films bring their personalities to light and focus on their relationship. Both run on plot lines and dialogue that are mostly conjecture, as no documentation, such as personal letters, exist to prove the depth of their attachment. I'll give mini-reviews of each, briefly review two books, and then tell you the main reason why I'm on this kick.

Sally Hemings: an American Scandal shows how the relationship between Jefferson (Sam Neill) and Sally (Carmen Ejogo) developed and how it matured over decades. It's even romantic at  times. The film focused a lot on Sally, her extended family, and fellow slaves and the cruelty they faced from racists and legal racism. I like that this film portrays Sally as spunky and outspoken, yet also a tactical thinker. The screenplay made her a total person with difficult decisions to live with.

By contrast, Jefferson in Paris showed Sally Hemings as a cross between Prissy from Gone with the Wind and ...oh, I don't know ... Lolita, maybe. Nick Nolte plays Jefferson; Thandie Newton plays Sally. It's kind of creepy, actually. Watch it yourself and tell me what you think. It's a typical Merchant Ivory film -- a visual feast of period costumes, sets, and scenes that brought joy to my eyes. The film ends with the biggest decision of Sally Hemings' life.

That decision is the main reason I find Sally Hemings one of history's most poignant and compelling women. In her teens she literally held freedom in her hands and made the conscious decision to relinquish it. The Hemingses of Monticello: an American Family examines her decision, as well as the lives of her extraordinary family. This nonfiction account by Annette Gordon-Reed is a thorough and compassionate book.

The Slave Master's Son by Tiana Laveen is an interracial romance set against the backdrop of the Civil War. In my opinion, it needed an editor. I applaud the writer for taking on such a tricky topic, though. And the cover's dead sexy. The Slave Master's Son has many favorable reviews on Amazon, so don't let mine be the last word. Download the free sample and tell me what you think.

Which leads me to why I'm on this kick as I ready my novel for publication later this year. The Bad Death is an antebellum vampire-slayer novel. Its heroine, Anika, is a slave on a South Carolina rice plantation in the late 1700s. Her love interests are Marcus, the enigmatic slave driver (who is himself, a slave) and Julian, Anika's master. How not to fall flat on my face with an interracial, slave-era love triangle? It's important to get this right. I know I can't please everyone, but I want to know my subject and live inside my characters in order to tell their story in a way that does them justice and is respectful of the history underlying fiction and fantasy.

FREE Bloodroom Download

 Bloodroom will be a FREE download from Amazon.com Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28. So, for those of you with a Kindle or the Amazon Kindle app, have a great weekend and happy reading!

Interviewed on Cutis Anserina

Thanks, M.R. Gott, for interviewing me on your blog, Cutis Anserina, a place for hard-boiled macabre. In M.R's novel, Where the Dead Fear to Tread, a police officer and a serial killer search separately for a missing child while running a malevolent labyrinth populated by creatures they never knew existed.

I enjoy reading M.R's interviews with new names in the horror genre, so I was pleased and flattered when the opportunity came my way for an interview. M.R. asked where the inspiration for my novels and short stories come from, about my views on the horror genre, and about my future projects. http://wherethedeadfeartotread.blogspot.com/2012/04/mr-interviewsnaima-haviland.html

bloodroomthenovel.com

Bloodroom, my vampire novel of romantic suspense, has its own website: bloodroomthenovel.com. You can also access it on my website, naimahaviland.com. Learn more about Bloodroom's characters (the good, the bad, and the hot). Download the first four chapters, free. Naturally, you can buy the Kindle-exclusive e-book there, but come back soon for a chance to win an autographed copy of Bloodroom in paperback!

Bloodroomthenovel.com was designed by Clever Ogre, a Pensacola-based creativity shop with talent and style.