Unhinged...Seriously

Where I've been

2011-10-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

So we bought a house. It isn't our first house, but for all practical purposes it might as well be. We have been in "temporary" houses for all our married life. The first house we bought was teeny but adorable and we therefore crammed way too much stuff into it. When we moved, we were smart enough to rent until we sold the first house. By the time the first house sold, we realized we were going to move again.

The upshot? For almost 11 years, anywhere from a third to half of our worldly goods have been in boxes, attics, and storage units. That is a LOT of crap to weed through. Add in outgrown baby clothes and paraphernalia, and I decided to have a yard sale before we moved. Observe:

Baby clothes. Way too many baby clothes. Sorted by size.

Many dead animals on the walls

I am not a yard sale person. I am never doing that again. Ever. But it did pay for about half of the painting we did in the new house. Because the new house featured a great deal of brown. In many different shades. Also, dead animal decorating. Aside from leather and a cowhide rug, I am not a fan of dead animal decorating. I don't want anything with eyeballs hanging on my walls. But this is what the den looked like before the previous owner moved:

Seriously, y'all. A bear, four deer- or maybe three deer and an elk, a couple of birds, and I think there was a fish in there somewhere. It was a bloodbath. Or, if one is being generous, vaguely medieval. And very, very brown. It's still brown because we haven't gotten around to painting it yet.

So. First we painted the dining room, foyer, living room, one bedroom, and the master bedroom. They were all brown:

Brown living room...3 shades of brown!

Other side...still brown! With many tchotchkes!

Brown Master Bedroom

Then came the boxes. This is a sample assortment of the boxes in question. Note the formerly brown walls are now green in the dining room that is currently a staging area for unsorted boxes, which almost certainly contain books:

Never ending pile of boxes. And there are more!

For those of you who are already organized, that might not look so bad. For the organizationally challenged or people married to my husband, this represents a nightmare. When I pack a box, it is filled with like items that should be unpacked in the same place. When he packs a box, it is "Holy crap! I bet I can beat the world record for cramming stuff into a box the fastest!" The items in said box could include shampoo, a lamp, three coffee mugs, a sort of melted candle, a few coloring books from 1970, and some back issues of Rolling Stone. Every box represents an adventure or a nightmare, depending on how you look at it. Or how tired you are of figuring out where to put stuff. Or whether or not said husband is at home and might catch you throwing out his first Playboy.

The "sorting of the box content" unfolded into projects like this:

Yay! Orderly crayons!

Culling the broken stubs from the crayons.

And this:

9 boxes of ribbon leftover from gift shop...now happily residing in master closet!

As a side note, I am thrilled with the ribbon rack. It hurts my heart to give someone and ugly present, especially when I knew that somewhere in all those boxes I had this abundance of ribbon and wrapping paper. I even found my special super-sharp ribbon scissors! And about five rolls of the invisible variety of scotch tape!

At any rate, every box represented at least an hour of sorting, donating, and throwing away stuff. And I still have more boxes! But the living room now looks like this (work in progress, but it's taking shape):

Built in shelves with our books! And our stuff! And a near naked Pirate!

I have a World History shelf, a yearbooks shelf, a Southern Authors shelf, an "I was an English major and here is the proof" shelf, and my favorite, a Dungeons and Dragons Shelf! The organic chemistry, physics, and medical tomes are in the cabinets. And it smells like a library. *happy*

The Dungeons and Dragons Shelf

I was an English major shelf

Also, I absolutely see the point that frequent movers have about the benefits of eBooks. But with eBooks, you can't put your friend's books on the shelves in the living room!

Friend's book! THE TAVERNIER STONES

THE MAN IN THE CINDER CLOUDS

In fact, I am so enamored of having friend's books on the shelves that I am considering dedicating a shelf to just that. Of course, that means that I will have to purchase dead tree versions of many things I own in digital format, but oh, well.

The best part of the new house, though. Ah. It is marvelous. And it isn't even in the house:

The back yard! From only half way back!

Here it is as viewed from the house:

Daddy playing ball with the kidlets.

The move continues. I still have to paint things. We have furniture projects to complete. But it's slowing down around here and hopefully the dust will settle into a nice, ordered living space. The closets are done (why, yes, I did divide the kid's closets into "school uniforms" and "other" sections), the kitchen is put together, the sheets are resting comfortably in assorted bins labeled "king, master BR", "queen, guest BR", and "Full, Pirate BR" or "Full, Princess BR." At long last I have the square footage and closet space to unleash my OCD.

When I get everything all pretty I'll post some more pics.

The Truth About Kids

2011-08-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my thoughts on family have been deemed blogworthy by a couple of people. Keep in mind that this was never intended as a blog post. It was a frank response to a dear, dear friend on the question of whether or not she should engage in the trial of procreation. She asked my opinion because, and I quote, "You are not one of those 'you have to have babies to be a whole person' freaks."

(And make no mistake about it. I am NOT. Every person's journey is different. Children don't complete you. Neither does marriage. IMO, you should be complete before you engage in either of those things, albeit with room for growth.)

Here are my thoughts, with names eliminated to protect the innocent:

Holy crap, Dear Friend. I can give you an opinion on procreation but the only person qualified to know if you should have kids or not is YOU. After you have one. Because the thing is, you might be one of those people who falls head over heels in love with the little peanut when it gets here.

I can tell you in all honesty I would have been fine without them. I luuuuuurve mine and I don't regret having them or anything like that, but the day in/day out quality of my life definitely turned south. Things I hate:

Having to plan ahead for a week to go out to dinner instead of deciding at 6 pm that I don't feel like cooking.
Having to bring my A game for every Halloween, birthday, Christmas, whatever.
"running to the store to pick up milk" requires that I dress myself and TWO OTHER PEOPLE (term used loosely), one of whom still requires help with the seat belt, herd them through the door while they jockey for position to be the one who gets to open the door and then they race to the car to see who can be first and THEN they start yelling at each other and don't stop until we get back home.
Carseats.
Feeling guilty every time I turn on the TV so I can get something done.
I never go to the bathroom by myself. Ever. And Princess likes to hand me toilet paper.

LOVE:

When one of them says I'm the best mom ever. Boy, have I got them snowed.
Being able to tell them things like, "No, Mama didn't toot. This is a magical couch and it toots by itself," and watch them try to figure out if that could possibly be true.
When That Boy I Married gets home from work and they both drop whatever they're doing and yell, "DADDY! DADDY'S HOME! DADDY! DADDY!"
When they sleep.
When Pirate comes to find me and says, "Mama? I just wanted to give you a hug and a kiss."

The other thing to consider, and it's an icky thing, is how you feel about a child with special needs. We wouldn't have been thrilled to find out one of ours would be Down's, for example, but we knew that we would still raise it. And there are other things that are subtler, like a gifted child, that still require more parental involvement than your average bear. You can't ditch a gifted kid with a nanny. They totally know what you're up to and they will figure out how to force you to pay attention to them.

I know that there are moms out there who really love doing the school christmas parties, taking kids to the park, setting up trips to museums and aquariums and hikes and scouts and all that crap. I am not one of them. I only do that stuff because I have to and even then, I don't do it much. I feel guilty all the time because MY kids are totally getting shortchanged.

And the fear is awful. I have these panic attacks about stuff I have zero control over, like what if one of them has Alport's- my weird kidney thing? What if one of them does something insanely normal, like drive drunk when they're a teenager, and they get hurt or killed? Or worse, hurt or kill somebody else? What if one of them has an addiction? Addiction fear affects EVERY SINGLE DECISION I make. My kids don't get benadryl. I won't even consider ADD meds despite the three teachers and two pediatricians who thought Pirate needed them. (Screw them. I know what he needs and he's doing great without the meds. And two years in a row he smoked every kid in his class on standardized testing.) What if Pirate's girlfriend is 17 when he's 18 and her daddy finds out what they're up to and Pirate ends up on the sex offender registry for statutory rape? OMIGOSH! Is that a tick bite? What if one of them gets Lyme disease?

Your lifestyle will be less appealing than it is now. Being closer to your family when you have kids is a huge luxury because the only people you will trust to love them the way you do is a grandparent, aunt, or uncle. Bangkok, any of the -stan countries, Africa, all those places will become bigger and scarier. Yes, we all know bad things can happen anywhere but living in a third world country where you are a political target is going to suck.

And if you think you have a hard time keeping up with your car keys now, honey, let me tell you. Getting kids in and out of cars without slamming little fingers or letting one of them strangle the other or letting the dog out while you're coming in and HOLY SHIT you have to pee because you couldn't go to a public restroom with a 7 year old boy but you couldn't leave him alone outside while you went... I defy anyone to remember where they left their keys under those circumstances.

On the other hand, Princess is hugging my neck right now, while I type.

Here's the thing. For somebody like me, quality of life goes down. There is no spontaneous any more. That Boy I Married and I did not spend a night alone with each other, without a child, for a year and a half after Pirate was born. (He slept in his room, we weren't the nutjobs who kept the baby in our bed, but you sleep with one eye open all the time while visions of SIDS dance behind your eyelids.)

The payoff takes a while to kick in. Pirate was one before I began to enjoy him. And the payoff is so...metaphysical. I can't tell you one thing I'd like to do with my day that is centered around my kids yet everything I do with my day is centered around my kids. But I'm glad they're here.

My house is trashed, I don't remember the last time I put on make-up, I'm suffering PTSD from the noise fatigue of three kids last night at dinner time (ours plus a neighbor), and summer vacation is killing me.

But still, I had the second one on purpose. I can't tell you why, so I made the slideshow.

Another slideshow design by Smilebox

Can't Stand It, Part II

2011-07-31T20:34:00.000-07:00

If you've read the blog for a while, you might have seen this one. The blog about the fabulous Carolyn and how she is the person I want to be like. At the time, she was merely sick. But her son Frank, my first "date" for a school dance, had just been killed.

Well, it's not quite a year later and Carolyn is dying. Probably soon. Like tonight, tomorrow, sometime in the next day or so soon. If not, then in a few weeks. She knows it. She told my mama, who was there to take her blood pressure and make the call that she needed to be admitted, that "I think this is going to be the thing that gets me." Whatever the "this" was. Side effect from chemo, cancer, whatever.

And here is the part that breaks my heart. Carolyn isn't scared to die. She isn't even scared of Hell, if that's where she's going. She is afraid that she won't see Frank.

She is so convinced of her child's salvation and so unconvinced of her own that she is afraid she won't get to see him again. You know, if there is an afterlife. Maybe death is just the ending of us. And she won't see Frank then, either.

I know with every fiber of my soul that if there is something more for us than this plane, Carolyn will ascend to it. Everyone who knows her feels the same way. Her own doubt (and I know this, because we discussed it explicitly years ago) stems from the combination of intellect and Southern Baptist-itis.

Intellect forces questions. If you are smart and have any imagination whatsoever, it must cross your mind that religion is merely a construct to protect us from our own fear that we begin and end with our time here on Earth. It provides us with the comforting notion that ultimately, injustice will be balanced with judgment. It serves the spiritual need for fairness. Lives filled with suffering are still worth living for there must surely lie a reward at the end of a life lived by a loving, honorable spirit.

But maybe there isn't and it is only our own egomania that tells us that we are more than the sack of flesh that holds our thoughts and demonstrates our will.

Here's the thing, though. If you're Southern Baptist (or Catholic, or Muslim, or Sikh, or Reformed Jew or whatever the heck you are) there is a belief tenet you can't quite let go of. The common thread is that religion, or more accurately, FAITH, holds you to a higher standard than you will ever achieve.

I don't think that is a bad thing. A stretch goal makes you strive for more than you are. Even if we're all misguided nutjobs (except the atheists), if our faith provokes better behavior than our nature, that is not a bad thing. *

I just wonder if we aren't all right, those of us who believe in something more, in our belief. Where we might be wrong is in its application to our own selves. In my own life, I know so many people that I believe are in Heaven or destined to be there someday but I can't see how I will ever make the cut. I actually believe. I believe in the Bible, Jesus, sin, and judgment. I think the 10 commandments are not a bad roadmap for a life, even if nobody is ever going to make it all the way through without trouncing a couple of them. My belief does not exclude people of other faiths, other denominations, or even other interpretations of the good old Bible, but that is an entirely different discussion.

The point is, in my experience, the people who seek the hardest seem to be the most unconvinced that they are worth the grace of whatever higher power might be running the show. The sins we see in ourselves are mere foibles, human weakness and infinitely forgivable, in others.

If I believe that God loves US, all of us, why is it so hard to see how He could possibly love me? I hope that Carolyn has the peace of knowing a benevolent creator, one who sees foibles instead of sins, before she sees Frank again.

* Please note that in my unqualified opinion, Faith, in its truest expression, in any form, should raise humanity in general and the people that you know specifically. If an expression of faith causes pain or hardship to another, then it isn't divine in nature or spirit. It is an abuse of doctrine.

30 Days of Creativity™

2011-06-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

30 Days of Creativity™ is a registered trademark of The Rejectionist Services, Intl.®, the same people who have been eschewing the lowest common denominator and dropping Mordor on your party since 2009. TRS is currently offering a Strong Language Advisory for their clients.

I did not think I would participate in this intriguing event, as it is now summer vacation for the Pirate and the Princess. Summer Vacation, the annual spiritual trial is also known as the Season of Ashes and Sackcloth, is marked by sunscreen textured fingerprints, a redneck above ground inflatable swimming pool, and inappropriate language in front of minors as I scrape fingerpaint handprints off the walls.

Plus, I'm wrestling a manuscript and closing in on victory.

But I thought about it and realized that every day around here offers some example of creativity. Maybe not the sort that The Rejectionist® had in mind, but definitely creative. Here is how we are observing 30 Days of Creativity™:

Princess realized her kitty had a Velveteen Rabbit complex:

One day, I will be a REAL KITTY!

Pirate was in charge of the end of the year Teacher Gift. (I was room mom. What can I say, I lost a bet.) The kids all painted tee-shirts (Guess which square is the Pirate's!) and we took them to a quilter who made this:

Best Teacher Gift Ever

We rescued a batch of peaches from their sad state of decline on our kitchen counter and made peach ice cream. OH! And we painted the aforementioned redneck above ground inflatable swimming pool. Along with ourselves. The artistic stylings in crayola washable paint did not survive for long, but we did employ the pool in a creative fashion to create our own redneck spa:

Escaping household temp of 85℉ due to @##!^% landlord's unwillingness to fix.

But Tuesday saw the pinnacle of our efforts in 30 Days of Creativity™. Daddy scared Pirate after bedtime on Monday night. He hid in the hallway and pounced from the dark, yelling loud and scary noises. Pirate jumped out of his skin and vowed revenge. Revenge took this form:

Snakes in the toilet!

So, yeah, I guess I'm throwing my hat in the ring for 30 Days of Creativity™, after all. Just don't expect a tapestry, a mural, or a hand knit toilet cozy. Around here we decorate our toilets with snakes.

Things that are not normal but happen with frequency in Georgia

2011-06-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

Rejectionist got me thinking with her post on things that are not actually normal but actually seem normal after 2.89 years in New York City. We all have a bit of the exotic in our own back yard. My own version, which provides an interesting compare and contrast:

A car horn that toots "Dixie", just like the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard.
Your neighbor drops by, without calling first, just to chat. And then she just wants to chat. She isn't there to complain about your yardwork, after all. Bizarre, that.
You won't see Bjork at an art happening, but you might see Charlie Daniels at the state fair.
Not one really amazing Mexican restaurant in a town with a Mexican restaurant on every corner.
Army guys patrolling the downtown streets on the weekend. To keep the Army guys in line.
The AC repair guy looks you straight in the eye and says, "Well, in this heat, 85℉ is about the coolest you can 'spect to get your house, even runnin' the unit all day." And he looks at you like you're crazier than a three-headed cat when you ask him how Target manages to keep it to 72℉ with a lot more square footage. Because girls aren't supposed to think of things like that.
It really is cheaper for the boy to take the car in for repair than the girl. Plus, they don't try to sell him a new air filter every time.
People think it's weird or very ballsy to go to the grocery store without makeup or fixing your hair.
People who won't buy their own liquor because they are afraid they might run into somebody from church at the liquor store.
Jehovah's witnesses at the door and Watchtower tracts in the mailbox. With regularity.
Answering the door nude when the Jehovah's witnesses come. They don't come back after that. They still leave the Watchtower tracts in the mailbox, though.
Air shows are a major social event.
Strip club next to the farmer's market, which is next to a tattoo parlor. And another one of each the next block down. Dancers and artists must require a lot of produce.
The nicest thing someone says to you all day is, "We'll be praying for you, bless your heart."
The meanest thing someone says to you all day is, "We'll be praying for you, bless your heart." Usually after they see the empty wine bottles in your recycle bin.

Lit Fic vs. Everybody Else

2011-04-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

There have been skirmishes. Time lauds Franzen and does not deign to mention better selling genre authors, for example. The last bastion of all things intellectual, the BBC, does this. But the icing on the cake comes when another shot is fired across the bow by the newly minted Pulitzer winner, a woman. Yay! A chick wins! But then she slams on chick lit in general. What? It's like the girl in the office who makes fun of all the other girls and a couple of the guys for, you know, acting like a bunch of girls. Like she thinks it's her secret handshake for admittance into the boy's club.

Bad news, honey. At the end of the day, you're still a GURL. WO-MAN. One of WOMYN. Whatever. What you've accomplished is becoming the poster child/excuse for the Pulitzer committee to say, "We absolutely recognize women! See?" It does not bolster the validity of your accomplishment to disparage other successful female writers. It doesn't prove that they didn't give you that prize because you're a woman and there was some heat to throw us girls a treat. It doesn't prove that they did it because you write LITERATURE, not CHICK LIT.

Pulitzer's a big deal, dude, and mad props. You don't pull down prizes like that if you write crap. But that doesn't mean that people who will never be considered for prizes like that are writing crap.

We can talk circles until we are blue in the face about MEN vs. WOMEN in the literary community. But there are two things to consider:

ONE: There are more women writers and readers than men. That means, by default, that more commercial fiction is being written and consumed by women. A LOT more. It also means the the competition for these publication slots is wicked fierce.
TWO: Are the things women want to write and read unpalatable to Literature, with a capital L? And if women's interests are unpalatable to Literature, is it because men still decide what is Literature?

I can't speak to point one. I don't have the pedigree for it. I don't know why this is, if it should be, or if it speaks to some impending literary doom. But as for point two, I have a big, fat, WHAT?

Struggling to find your role in family and society, a life partner, children and jobs- do you want one or the other or both or neither...these things are not worthy of the "literary" title? They are ages old! Fairy tales often have widows or maidens seeking to make their way in a man's world with the deck stacked against them. Chaucer addresses such things. Jane Austen only qualifies as literary because she's been dead for, like, a gazillion years. Because let's face it, if she was writing today, the NYT would not review or recognize her silly tales of women who face societal challenges when finding their one true love.

As to fantasy, or even speculative fiction if you get down to it, there exists a rich history that includes the works of The Pearl Poet, Spencer, Mary Shelley, and the fantastical tale of Beowulf long before it could boast the likes of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis.

What really flies all over me is when people purporting to encourage reading send the subtle (or sometimes not) signal that it only counts if you're reading certain books. Here's the deal, plain and simple:

Good writing is good writing. It is NOT "pretty good for that genre." Or "a fairly talented writer wasting her ability." The talent of the writer is not devalued by the type of story he or she tells, the setting of the tale, or, heaven forbid, that there are women falling in love or having babies (or NOT!) within the story arc.

Stories that explore LBGTQ issues, racial politics, mental illness, and poverty are important but stories that that speak to women's issues are derivative tripe? Deciding to have children or not, if you can afford them, if you can make your marriage work or if you should cut bait, miscarriages and infertility, if you regret the abortion you had when you were nineteen now that you are thirty-six and can't get pregnant...these are the real life every day dramas that many of us are living. Please don't tell us that we're being hysterical or melodramatic or that our stories aren't worth telling.

How is it not misogynistic to only hail the fiction of women like Virginia Woolf (love her!) and Sylvia Plath (not so much)? Women only have depth if they are suicidal? Or, like Jane Smiley, tell tales of domestic abuse and rape survivorship? How is that not misogyny?

How is it not misogyny to say that the only works by women that merit critical acclaim are the ones that portray women as victims or read like a man wrote them?

Get over yourselves, lit snobs. When the years pass, the stories that still stand are the most universal, the ones that find a truth in the characters that predates our birth and will exist years after we are gone. These truths apply to women and men, people of color and mighty whitey, and people who love those of their same sex, both sexes, the opposite sex, or haven't figured it out yet. Our weaknesses and strengths pass down through generations and are recognizable in deep space, eighteenth century France, imaginary planets, and the 2011 version of New York City. Our stories are HUMAN.

Oh, and one more thing. The stories that survive to be greats? They have identifiable plot threads. Just food for thought.

Are you a misanthrope? Or just a snob?

2011-04-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

Beware the self-identified misanthrope. If you are uncertain how to spot these people, here is a field guide:

Musical tastes: I loved their first album. Then they sold out.
Movie tastes: They don't make anything good. Unless it has subtitles. Except for Lord of the Rings. But I fell in love with Tolkein when I was 3 and first read The Hobbit.
Art tastes: Representational art with identifiable objects is for the uninitiated and Monet is for Hallmark cards.
Literary tastes: Why do you suppose only the college presses are printing anything worth reading? Nobody else puts out poetry any more.

Point of information: A misanthrope is someone who despises people. Someone who thinks they are better than everyone else is just a snob.

Listening Skills

2011-03-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you don't hear well and your six year old is talking through multiple gaps left by dearly departed baby teeth:

"Mama, can we have pizza for dinner?"

"What baby? You want to please have a winner? A winner for what?"

"PIZZA, Mama. Pizza for dinner."

"Oh, sure, I guess the winner can have pizza. What contest? Is this for school? If it's a spelling bee you'll have to study, you know."

"No, Mama. DINNER. SUPPER."

"Listen here, little man, we do not call people suckers. It's not a nice word, for one thing, and if you are talking about the winner it makes you sound like a sore loser."

"Excuse me, but I didn't say that. I was talking about dinner."

"Escuchame? Are y'all doing Spanish in school? Good job with the accent, but don't talk to me like that. It's disrespectful to tell a grown up they have to listen to you, even if you say it in Spanish."

Mama rinses the last dish and turns off the water. If the Pirate wants to practice Spanish, she can't hear him well with the background noise.

"Okay, buddy, you go grab the Spanish flashcards. All that talk about pizza sounds good. What do you think about ordering one tonight? "

"Pizza, yay!"

"Just okay? I thought you loved pizza! Don't worry, I'll order the dipping sauce you like for the crust. Just a minute, though. I'm going to do it online. They always mumble over the phone."

Fury of the Phoenix Giveaway

2011-02-01T06:17:00.000-08:00

The delightful Ellen Oh (publishing the first of the Dragon King Chronicles next year) is hosting a Fury of the Phoenix giveaway in honor of the equally delightful Cindy Pon's upcoming release. You enter with a Haiku! How fun is that? First prize is an ARC of Fury. And a $50 gift certificate! Second prize gets a paperback of Silver Phoenix and $25. Not too shabby :)

If you remember, Silver Phoenix released last year and was universally loved by everyone who read it. The original cover looks like this:

Since the book was phenomenal and seems to be gaining momentum, assumptions were made that the "Asian" needed to be toned down to reach more readers. Ellen offers perspective and class sharing her thoughts on the change over at her blog. All I can say is DAMN! How lucky is Cindy to have two such gorgeous covers for one book? And she's generous, too. You can get the first 70 pages of Silver Phoenix at her site for Silver Phoenix.

Check out the contest rules and what Ellen has to say about the significance of the cover change here. And brush up your haiku! Great prizes!

Lava Cake: For my Tweeps

2011-01-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

Recipe for Lava Cake, those half baked mini-chocolate cakes with the gooey middle, for my Tweeps who tweeted about it all day yesterday and left me craving them.

1 stick butter
8 ozs. bitter or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
4 large eggs plus 1 yolk, room temp
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsps all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 400. Grease eight 6 oz ramekins well. Melt chocolate and butter in the microwave at 50% power, checking and stirring until fully melted.

Beat eggs, yolk, vanilla, salt, and sugar about five minutes until volume triples and mixture is thick and smooth. Spoon over melted chocolate and butter, sprinkle with flour, and gently fold the mixture until blended.

Pour into ramekins and bake 12-13 minutes until set but still jiggly. Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge.

nom nom nom

The Sevenfold Spell: Guest Review

2011-01-17T08:34:00.000-08:00

Hey!

I posted a guest review of The Sevenfold Spell by Tia Nevitt over at Jennifer Estep's blog. Check it out!

Sevenfold Spell

Also, if you haven't read Jennifer's Elemental Assassins series and have the remotest interest in Urban Fantasy, you need to rectify that RIGHT NOW.

Elemental Assassin Series

Happy Reading!

Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey: A Review. Also, A Metaphor.

2011-01-16T18:02:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen the circus since you were a kid, you need to go. I took the Pirate today and could not believe how full throttle awesome it was. I think the Cirque du Soleil people have raised the bar for everybody. The circus lends itself to real life comparisons in many ways. Observations:

Kids are more excited about it than grown-ups. The "I have a driver's license" set didn't get into the whole thing until the action started. The kids were wound like Slinkys about two coils too tight just in the line for tickets.

Pacing is key. No matter how cool something is, it gets old fast. You gotta move on to the next act.

A little mystery goes a long way. I've seen the schtick a gazillion times. I still can't figure out how the magician pokes swords through the box containing the lovely assistant and doesn't skewer said assistant in the process. Therefore, it hasn't gotten old.

You need some humor to break the tension. Between the motorcycle-on-a-high-wire act and the guy-in-a-cage-with-six-lions act, they had clowns doing funny stuff. Not the old school Pennywise kind of clowns. Cool ones with saxophones and trumpets. A nice combo of street theater and performance art. But whatever it was, it let you unclench from the "death-defying" tension of whatever came right before.

Accidents happen, so expect the best and plan for the worst. Yep. Even at the circus. During the motorcycles-in-the-spherical-cage-ball portion, they had three motorcycles scoffing at gravity while circling the cage. The damsel suspended from the wire extended her legs in an athletic mid-air chinese split and clipped one of the cyclists. He crashed in a man/motorcycle heap at the bottom of the cage. Everyone cued in immediately. The remaining cyclists came to careful halts, spotters swarmed the cage, and everyone emerged unharmed. But damn if they didn't all know what to do the second something went off script.

The show must go on. After the motorcycle crash, the performers took their bows and the next act started. No malingering on the mishap.

Everything is better with glitter. Everything is better with glitter.

My only other observation is that there is no excuse for a $10 bag of cotton candy. Ever.

I Won a Contest!

2011-01-11T23:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, the prize was a $25 gift certificate and a copy of this:

Snooki's Book

So I wouldn't consider it a big resume boost. But still, I won! Sarah over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books did a live blog reading of Snooki's book, A Shore Thing, last week. Cover to cover. I was glued to my computer for the duration. Absolutely the most fun I've had in a year or better. The book packed a lot of humor, all the more for being frequently unintentional, but the Bitchery outdid themselves with the commentary. If you have a few minutes scan through the blog. You won't be disappointed. My review:

I laughed. I cried. Usually concurrently. This book is to great literature what Showgirls is to great cinema.

(In all fairness I believe they did what they set out to do. It is a fast beach read sort of book and absolutely fits with the image I have from watching two minutes of Jersey Shore. There is no pretense of contention for a Pulitzer or Oprah's book club. If you think you might like it, you probably will. If you think you won't like it, you might be surprised at how much you will laugh.)

Those of us participating waited with bated breath for the scenes of teh sexxxy goodness that must surely lie within. From chapter one the MCs, Gia (Snooki in disguise) and her cousin Bella are ready to find some hot gorillas and GO! (Really. They say that. Gorillas.) I found myself particularly captivated by Bella's love interest, Tony "Trouble" Tortino (or something similarly Italian). Tony is grade A prime Guido gorilla material (again, not my words). But I found him ambiguous. He owns a gym, lives with his grandmother, fastidiously irons everything, including his sweats, obsesses on fabric softener, and wears eyeliner. (FOR REAL!)

That is gonna be some more sexxy, right? The McLovin scene? NO! Total fade to black and check back in when the characters are picking their clothes up off the floor. I cannot tell you what a disappointment this was. The descriptions in other parts of the novel were so unique, so memorable, that we were on the edge of our seats trying to figure out what metaphors would be used for coitus. I offer these examples of the pop-off-the-page writing, the kind that really brings the scene alive:

Snappy dialogue: "I'm not a whore. I'm a slut. There's a difference."
Description: "A circle of hippies on the beach were huddled together like a family of Ellis Island immigrants just off the Mayflower. "
Mood setting: "Up close he smelled grungy yet fresh, like a parking lot after a rain storm."

You can imagine the disappointment (and yes, perhaps a soupcon of relief) that there is NO ACTUAL SEX in this book. So Sarah hosted a contest. Write the missing sex scene. It was a perfect opportunity for me to explore the characters of Bella and Tony, delve into their motivations, really study them. I embraced it fully and took the plunge. Here is my best effort, in 200 words or less, at capturing the unforgettable voice and characters of Snooki's work:

**********************************************************************************

“This is my room, baby,” Tony said proudly as he held the door for her. He was super classy. “Like it?”

Wow. Gia would shit herself. Animal print everywhere. The crochet bedspread had a leopard print pattern. And it didn’t even smell like Axe in here. More like…Drakkar Noir.

“It musta taken your grandmother forever to make that bedspread.”

Tony closed the door.

“Nah. I did it. I used finger weight yarn, merino/silk blend, and designed the pattern myself. If feels so good on your skin. Go on. Try it.”

She’d promised herself a hookup and dammit, it was time to follow through.

“Okay.” Bella stripped and moved to the bed. It wasn’t scratchy or anything.

“I love how your boobs stay just right even lying down.” Tony took off his shirt. His eight pack reminded her of the underside of a lobster. She wondered if it would be good covered in melted butter. He unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them off, revealing a gorgeous package stretching his shiny black banana hammock. When that came off, he was totally bald.

“I want you to suck my bald eagle, baby. Then we’ll get the wax and I’ll do yours."

**********************************************************************************

My mom would be so proud. If she knew I had a blog. Still, I don't think I'll mention it just yet.

Breaking The Silence

2011-01-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Six people are dead. A little girl born on THE September 11 is one of them. A woman is fighting for her life and facing recovery from a horrific brain injury.

"It's Sarah Palin's fault!" screams the left.

"The shooter was a Marxist!" screams the right.

The shooter is a disturbed, most likely schizophrenic man. He is clearly sick. What happened in Arizona is not the fault of Sarah Palin or Karl Marx. The toxic rhetoric in this country may have focused this man's disorder on politics, but it could have been anything. It could have been a church, the Safeway grocery chain, an army base, anything that captured his diseased imagination. If we're going to focus on hate speech as the sole cause of this tragedy, then let's be honest. We are all guilty. We don't get to define hate speech as only what the other side spews.

Much has been made of the Sarah Palin hit map but no one has mentioned the Democrat Leadership Committee's 2004 election map. Which is which?

Is it hate speech to hang Sarah Palin in effigy? Or does that get a pass because Palin is odious? How about punishing your enemies at the voting booth? Or bringing your gun to the knife fight? Or blowing up Rush Limbaugh's brain?

My friend Pete pointed out that the media coined the term "battleground states." Politics is war. Not just here, but everywhere. In the US we are lucky to have a reasonable expectation that when we engage in the business of politics we will not be killed for it. We take this for granted and speak in hyperbole with the understanding that people know we don't intend physical harm to George W. Bush when we put his visage in the center of our dartboard. I don't think this guy actually believed that someone would really assassinate our president based on his work.

Hate speech is not the sole vehicle of the right. Both sides engage in violent imagery. Both sides make inappropriate jokes about assassinations and putting the enemy in the crosshairs.

But while we engage in this national debate about who talks the ugliest and how this might have affected a mentally ill young man, six people are dead. A little girl born on THE September 11 is one of them. A woman is fighting for her life and facing recovery from a horrific brain injury.

Stop it. Stop pointing fingers and yelling at each other. Stop looking for problems and start looking for solutions.

Closet Super Mom

2011-01-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure, but I think I might qualify as a super-mom. Once in a while. I mean, I didn't have either one of my kids in "reading for babies" or "baby gym" programs, or anything, but every now and then I find a boon of bonding time in the strangest places.

In the large stack of evidence against my being a super-mom, I live for bedtime. The kid's bedtime. About 3 pm I start counting the minutes. Unplanned deviations from the expectation that bedtime is 8 pm and I will then be "off duty" do not play well in my reality. But if somebody wakes up from a nightmare, or with a nosebleed, or just because, I do alright.

Today the Princess went down for a "nap" at 4:30. She went down HARD. Full nasal whistling, cover tossing, sleep-through-an-earthquake hard. She showed all signs of sleeping straight through 'til morning. I was optimistic enough that I did not wake her for dinner. But the little tyke woke up about 9 pm asking for cartoons and curious about the odd sound outside the house (freezing rain hitting the windows).

She "helped" me fold two loads of laundry, cheerfully helped me put them away, ate a PB&J, and then we went to her room. Just me and her, Brother was asleep in his room, Daddy in ours. Me and the Princess read some books, listened to Beethoven's 9th, and snuggled with two dogs and a cat. We had a good time. Much to my surprise.

Maybe I have a latent mom superpower I didn't know about. Maybe I really am "Supermom." My kids seem to think so. At any rate, the Princess is back to somnolent nasal whistling after feeling really special for a couple of hours. Not a bad return on my investment. My kids might need therapy, but I hope to give their therapist cause to tell them they didn't really have it all that bad.

Personal Grooming: A Dangerous Trend

2010-12-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, children of the eighties. You will recognize the slippery slope we've been descending since our youth. Back in the day personal hygiene responsibilities were basic. Shower daily, shave your face or legs and pits depending on gender. At the time I thought that was pretty unfair since I am borderline furry and have to shave every day, twice if I want to show some leg without a five o'clock shadow.

Summer upped the ante for us gals. The bathing suits had gone decidedly northwards and the expectation was that no hair show beneath the line of the suit. (Thanks, Sports Illustrated.)

Note the severe vertical line of the bikini bottom.

Whatever happened after you crossed that line was your own affair. Since razor burn on the upper/inner thigh is nearly as unsightly as awkwardly escaping hairs of the extremely intimate variety, alternative, permanent methods of hair removal gained popularity. Electrolysis. Absolutely medieval, people. I know. I tried it and wasn't man enough to handle it.

This trend toward beautiful, hairless skin caused no end of consternation but in the grand scheme of things, we didn't know how good we had it. Those damn Playboy girls took it to the next level. I turned around twice and gals were opting for anything from the landing strip to bald as a cue ball. (That was where I drew the line. No lasers, no electrical shocks, and no razors. Dudes, some things are sacred.)

This hairless pussy is clearly unhappy.

Starlets, showing off their well coiffed hoo-hahs, all went commando in their mini whatevers. All of a sudden, the collective acceptance of which goodies you show and which ones you cover up changed. It went from a sedate amount of cleavage to a free-for-all, including hints of butt crack in $5000 Golden Globes gowns.

Celebrity flaunting bald vajajay

And now it is time to draw the line. All these bald or thinly fuzzed peep-show personal areas have engendered a strange new notion. You should care what your va-jay-yah looks like. To the point that they now have jewelry and plastic surgery for it.

Bedazzled vajayjay

No. Just. NO.

Not reconstructive, like post delivery repair work. The pretty-it-up kind. If you have a few thousand dollars to spend on personal improvement, body repair, whatever you want to call it then why, for the love of all that is holy, would you spend it on a place that presumably only your MD will be looking at very closely? Even your partner should be, erm, focused on other things. Like what you're doing with it. Or what they're doing with it. It's not exactly celebrated for its innate beauty, like, say, a nice rack. A pretty waist. The small of the back.

And seriously. Hef's sac must look like two old socks with golf balls in the bottom by now. Think he's going under the knife? Or even cares?

Sock stuffed with ball. Observe the unaesthetic nature of said article.

I'm going with the old-fashioned way to achieve desirability, myself. Keep it exclusive and voila! It's a hot commodity. When the fellas start going in for ball lifts, maybe I'll give it some more thought.

Nope, not even then.

Christmas is like Florescent Lighting, OR, How the Holidays Reveal Every Flaw

2010-12-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

Every one tells you how the magic of Christmas is once again revealed when you have kids. This is BS. For a few reasons. Allow me to elaborate.

Reason #1: My husband. He's nosy as hell about where the money goes even though I am not a woman who spends money with abandon. It's annoying when he wants to know "What is this $1.76 at Circle K?" but I make allowances since we have caught fraudulent charges this way.

HOWEVER. I am now a "stay-at-home-mom." This was a joint decision, made in the best interest of the family as a whole. As in, not necessarily what is best for MOM, but what our kids needed and, well, since we decided to procreate and all, time to suck it up and commit. This ended the era where Mom (previously known as Laurel) earned an actual paycheck. Joint checking gained an entirely new significance. Gone are the days when Laurel could purchase a nice-ish gift for that boy she married and have any reasonable expectation of surprising him. This is how she was reduced to asking her dad to pay for this year's gift with the promise of paying him back as soon as the gift was opened. A bit humiliating, truth be told. Dad was a really good sport about it, though.

Reason #2: My mother. I've discovered that my mom has a bitch streak as wide as an oxcart. This should not surprise, really, since my sister and I both sport healthy bitch streaks. But Mom? Honestly, you would think we were Jewish or Catholic based on the reverence we (and everyone else) share for my mom.

Mom is over the holidays. Fair enough, as she has spent every single Thanksgiving and Christmas in the kitchen for the past forty years. BUT. She has two able-bodied adult daughters and one son-in-law who are all bang-up cooks. And a nephew who is a professional chef. As in, New York and Chicago's coolest restaurants sous chef. We volunteer year-in, year-out to bring/cook anything and everything. My dad even offered to have the holidays catered this year. Mom has refused each and every overture to take some of the holiday burden from her tired shoulders. And then she gets pissed because she is doing all the work. The pathology surrounding the laundry room is perhaps even worse.

Reason # 3: My dad. Holy hell. He lives in a bubble. The only reality for him is the one he is in that very instant. I'll be juggling dirty dishes, whatever casserole my mother has granted me permission to be in charge of, and a six-year-old and three-year-old who are wild as bats because SANTA IS COMING TONIGHT!! and from the computer room I hear, "Laurel?"

"Yes, Dad?"

"Can you help me with this for a minute?"

Inevitably, the "this" is related to email. I have never been able to explain to him how Microsoft Outlook is a program. On your hard drive. It downloads email from "out there" and puts in on your computer "right here". If you do not use or link it with an online server, then the email gets pulled from the mysterious internet and only exists on the computer you downloaded it to. I've tried analogies, like how voice mail from BellSouth is different than an answering machine. No love. This has been going on for years.

I swear he's a smart man. He just gets wrapped around the axle on something and you can't dislodge him. He always comes back with: "But I have Outlook on the computer in the office. Why don't these messages show up there?" Nothing I say will penetrate the frustrated conviction that because both computers have Outlook they should exhibit the same information.

Reason # 4: People who should be here and aren't PLUS people who shouldn't be here and are. My grandfather was a Christmas staple. The holiday didn't start until he and his wife arrived. Seriously. It just wasn't Christmas until Pappy pulled up in his big gray sedan and wheeled their suitcases into the guestroom. He died almost three years ago and things haven't been right since. I mean, less right than they were for the previous three years when his wife had Alzheimer's and was so fragile in any space outside her own home.

Then there are the widows and orphans. I am SO GLAD that we are this sort of family, but it does make me, erm, bitter when I'm ready for all the extra people to go on home. Someone doesn't have family for the holiday? Can't afford to travel? Recent loss in their family? They'll be at our house. I really, really love this about my family but I'd like a year where we can wander around with no make-up and pajamas all day.

We talk about inventing a holiday for this express purpose. We won't tell anyone else when/what it is. It will be our family holiday. But I'll be damned if my mom does the cooking or my dad brings his computer.

Mixing Genres

2010-12-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

NOT FOR THE KIDS. OR PEOPLE WITH CLASS. STRICTLY FOR ADULT PURPOSES. SEE YOUR DOCTOR IF YOU EXPERIENCE PROLONGED SYMPTOMS.

Okay, disclaimer over. For the twisted sense of humor set:

Mixing genres allows the creative juices to really flow. Observe what happens when this clever Australian quartet combines a Wiggles-type ditty with adult themes:

Genius, I tell you. Genius. Way better than Jane Austen zombies.

I am not a baker.

2010-12-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

I like savory things. Savoury, truth be told, since I think the extra vowel in the British spelling is sort of like an onomatopoeia for the palate. More layers to the word, more layers to the flavor. Even subtle layers, like an extra vowel you might not hear but somehow sense is present.

Lobster enchiladas? No problem.
Rack of lamb with rosemary and red wine reduction sauce? I could do it in my sleep.

Sugar cookies? Epic fail.

We produced the ugliest sugar cookies EVER today. They were tasty, mind you, but could my 6 and 3 year old cut them into anything resembling holiday shapes? That would be a resounding NO. We had to settle for green and red sugar sprinkled blobs.

My poor kids. They may never overcome the tragedy of their childhood.

I think I'll stick with coffee creme brulee. It's the only dessert I can produce with the desired result.

Resolved: Something Seasonal Will Get Done Up in Here

2010-12-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

The Rejectionist! Uncontest! Here are my resolutions:

1. I resolve to actually put something on the tree. Lights AND ornaments. It's up in the living room and mocking me in its naked state. The kids have concluded that the boxes of ornaments are actually kitty toys since they have been on the floor for two days and still show no inclination of migrating toward the tree.

2. I resolve to take the tree down before ~~New Year's~~ Valentine's Day.

3. I resolve to complete the annual family slide show that we watch on Christmas Eve. Oh, and the slide shows that I didn't get done last year or the year before.

4. I resolve to get my poor little boy scout's badges attached to his uniform. Since I have had both for three months.

5. I resolve to apply the super ideas to improve my MS to my MS.

And in the actual self-improvement instead of get caught up category:

6. I resolve to do one randomly nice thing each day. Take someone else's grocery cart back to the store, pay for the next person's coffee, something. Smiling at someone who is rude to me totally counts.

24, Family Style

2010-11-27T22:05:00.000-08:00

24 hours in the car. That's just getting there and getting back. I am not Michelle Duggar. I don't travel with a list of fun songs we can sing or prepared to quiz my kids on the histories of the states we traverse. Mostly, I huddle against the front heated seat, thank Heaven for the invention of DVD players, and cling to the hope that one of those all-too-brief respites of quiet will erupt in the back seat.

Coloring books get us through the first hour. Then Mama and Daddy cave and put in a movie. Three hours in, things have gone pretty well. (Mama's not looking for liquor stores just off the interstate. Yet.) We watch How to Train Your Dragon, a universal favorite.

HtTYD finishes and we have not quite enough time for another flick plus the kids need to start winding down since we are spending the night in a hotel. You know, exotic and exciting for the six and under set who have not yet developed volume control for the larynx and cause disturbances for other guests.

So the Pirate invents a travel game.

"Mama, I have a dragon in my head. Know what he looks like?"

The swollen, rusty remnants of the blue harvest moon wink at me from just over the Blue Ridge mountains. Time was the moon and I would flirt with each other in quiet until it grew too silver and important to talk to the likes of me. No such luck tonight.

"No, sweetie. I have no idea. Tell me about the dragon." Pleasepleaseplease don't let this be one of those topics he gets looped on.

"His tail is two miles long and his fangs are one mile long. The moon looks kind of like his eye."

Ha! The moon has often been my dragon's eye. A sleepy dragon, waking just enough to open one eye and look me over. It's kind of a cool moment of connection.

"Do you have a dragon in your mind, Mama?"

"Yes."

"What does he look like?"

"SHE is sometimes glittery black, but sometimes she is copper, like a new penny. Her eyes look like the moon, too. Her wings are like bat wings but very beautiful."

"Daddy? Do you have a dragon?"

"Yep. He has a fluffy blue tail, he is blue and white, and he has a blue button nose."

Pirate giggles. Then he asks the Princess what her dragon looks like.

"Pank." (Really, I swear we say "pink" despite any and all claims of redneck heritage but Princess persists in "pank.") "Wif pank polka dots and pank wings."

"My dragon is born in a thundercloud and that's where he lives. Where does your dragon live, Mama?"

Mama's dragon lives in a volcano. Daddy's lives in the dryer lint. Princess' lives in a pink castle.

"My dragon's weakness is rain. He doesn't like it." An unfortunate circumstance for a dragon who resides in thunderclouds, but there you have it. "Does your dragon have a weakness, Mama?"

"Ice. That's why she lives in a volcano."

"What about yours, Daddy?"

"Dryer sheets."

Pirate asks Princess what her dragon's weakness is. I wait with bated breath, wondering what could possibly threaten such a terrifying amalgamation of Pepto-Bismol colored horror.

"Two seven eight," Princess replies, deadly serious.

Fifteen minutes of that road trip were high quality family fun. I even felt like a pretty good mom. And despite meeting Grandpa and "Auntsy" (the three year old contraction of "Aunt Nancy"), pony rides, and a house full of cats and musical instruments, Pirate's favorite part was the road trip. Because we were all in the car together.

It melted my grinchy heart. Or maybe that was just the seat heater.

Animal Dialogue

2010-11-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

TBIM is out of town. He usually lets the dogs out last thing at night and they get a "cookie" when they come back in. He trained them or they trained him. You be the judge.

Stage: Dark. Quiet. Kids in slumber, house at peace. Quiet rumblings of dryer and sussurations of dishwasher.

Mama: Okay! Everybody out. Get busy!

Dogs exit stage.

Dogs re-enter.

Lulu: Snuffle, whuff, snort, happy dance. (Dog-ese for "I love you! Love, love, love you! Love ya, mean it! Good stuff comin'?"

George: Elegant, dignified wave of gorgeous plumage he calls a tail. ("Yes, milady, favor us with a courtesy.")

Mama (oblivious): Good dogs! Good job!

Lulu: BIG happy dance!

George: Happy shuffle.

Mama moves to stage right, the living room. Mama reclines. Dogs follow in disbelief.

***

Scene: Mama at ease on sofa. George resigned on floor. Lulu darting back and forth to the door in the universal code for gottago gottago GOTTA GO!

Mama: You just went out! You can't be serious. No. Uh-unh. No way.

Lulu: Squirmy wriggles.

George: Sad gaze of the betrayed.

Lulu: More squirmy wriggles. ("No, srsly, I mean it!")

Mama: Fine. But take care of business this time.

All: Hustle to the back door. Dogs exit.

George and Lu: Promptly return to door.

Mama: OOooh! I coulda had a V-8! Cookies!

Crunchings and munchings for George and Lu, tranquility at last for Mama.

The End.

OH! Except for the cat, who tried to follow my roastbeef sandwich INTO MY MOUTH. Saucy little minx.

Grounds for Divorce

2010-10-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

That Boy I Married took the princess shopping yesterday while the Pirate and I spookified the yard for Halloween.

They returned with a pinky-purpley-sparkly make-up kit. With NAIL POLISH.

I've endured four applications of saccharine flavored lip gloss already this morning. I am assured that I look very beautiful. Nails have been painted to glittery perfection. The campaign to paint again is now officially launched.

Oh, Lordy! She's eyeballing the dogs with a bottle of nail polish clutched in her manicured fist. Signing off now.

Pray for us.

Banned Book Review: Speak

2010-10-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

A day late and a dollar short, but The Rejectionist's call for banned book reviews has been heeded!

I read Speak last week just because it was banned. I didn't think I would like it because everywhere I looked this book was described as the story of a girl who was raped and kept silent. In this regard, proponents of Speak are making the same mistake that nay-saying book banners are.

It is not about rape. It is not about a rape victim who chooses to remain silent.

IT IS NOT ABOUT RAPE.

Melinda, the main character, is raped. She does not choose to remain silent, she simply can't speak. Her trauma has left her so isolated and depressed that she can't bring herself to speak of it, or much of anything else. The inciting incident could have been any trauma, the point is that this girl withdraws so abruptly and so far that no one can figure her out and furthermore, no one tries to. She has no support. She is representative of so many marginalized kids that she is practically a poster child for why the high school years are NOT the best of your life.

It is about a girl who is drowning while no one notices.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, on to the review-y portion of the show.

First: This book is side-splittingly funny. I'm like most of the unwashed genre-reading masses. I'm unlikely to read a book because it tackles a tough issue but I will devour a book that keeps me turning the pages. Every synopsis, every reference to Speak makes it sound downright bleak but Anderson does a masterful job infusing Melinda's voice with an authentic, sometimes acerbic commentary on high school life.

On the first page Melinda applies her full concentration to where she will sit on the bus. Again in the cafeteria. Her friends have judged her a narc and abandoned her and the only person who will sit with her on purpose is a transfer student with no friends. Really takes you back, doesn't it? Who doesn't remember the crushing importance of where you sit and WHOM you sit with?

Heather-the-transfer-from-Ohio is now Melinda's only companion. Heather is quite the joiner, looking for any entre onto the high school social ladder. Drama club, the Marthas (a clique of seasonal sweater wearing, crafty, teacher supportive types), pep rallies, all of these represent inclusion to Heather. Melinda gets swept along for the ride because she lacks the energy to object. She harbors no hope or ambition of being included.

Meanwhile, Melinda's ex-best friend Rachel is carving out a new identity for herself:

Rachel is with me in the bathroom. Edit that. Rachelle is with me in the bathroom. She has changed her name. Rachelle is reclaiming her European heritage by hanging out with the foreign-exchange students...She can swear in French. She wears black stockings with runs and doesn't shave under her arms.

And later:

She puts a candy cigarette between her lips. Rachelle wants desperately to smoke, but she has asthma, She has started a new Thing, unheard of for a ninth-grader. Candy cigarettes...Next thing you know, she'll be drinking black coffee and reading books without pictures.

Melinda's observations on her teachers are equally funny and insightful. Over the course of the year we see her first impressions of her art teacher flesh out, but he is the only teacher who makes an effort to reach her. He is also the one who comes closest to getting her to talk. She has stretched enough in his class to create a truly disturbing sculpture of a mute Barbie trapped inside a literal skeleton- the remains of the turkey her parents failed to render edible for Thanksgiving.

Her art teacher and relationship with art evolve in a fascinating way. She struggles with expression. Her teacher recognizes this and encourages her to keep trying, to find what works. He gives her a book of Picasso sketches. The disconnect from reality in Cubism speaks strongly to her own view of herself and her reality. Melinda's struggle with expressing herself through art proves her need to communicate even though conversation is beyond her grasp. It's delicate and subtle, but this detail underscores the idea that Melinda did not choose silence. She needs to be heard and lacks the tools to make it happen.

The remainder of Melinda's teachers seem uninterested in her frequent class-skipping, satisfied with the stolen hall passes she provides. Her grades are terrible, a huge departure from the previous year, and as a result her parents decide to tighten up on discipline. Heather eventually abandons her because she is such a downer. Not once has anyone asked her what is wrong or if they can help. When she tries to tell anyone anything more than "yes" or "no", her throat closes up to the point that she cannot talk. Her parents schedule a conference with the principal:

We have a meeting with Principal Principal. Someone has noticed that I've been absent. And that I don't talk.

They want me to speak.

"Why won't you say anything?" For the love of God, open your mouth!" "This is childish, Melinda." "Say something." "You are only hurting yourself by refusing to cooperate." "I don't know why she's doing this to us."

Melinda observes the conference, removed and imagining the entire thing as a scene in a musical. Her mother is concerned that the principal will think there are marital problems. The father threatens to call the school board. The guidance counselor institutes a carrot-and-stick plan whereby negative behavior has "consequences" and positive is rewarded.

At the end of the conference Melinda muses:
"Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. I wonder how long it takes to ride a bus to Arizona."

By the end of the school year, Melinda's need to speak is so urgent that in one or two passages I felt my own throat tighten, trying to push the words out for her. She also has meaningful conversation with two people, both of whom show an interest in her. Her classmate David reaches out to her with a note first, supportive of her, indicating that her parents should have taken action against the teacher who forced her to do a report in front of the class. He follows up with conversation at her locker. It is the first meaningful dialogue she has outside of her head and occurs in the last quarter of the school year (and the book).

It stood out for two reasons. First, it was the first time I realized how little dialogue there had been. That's damn hard to pull off and keep a reader interested. Second, all it took to get her to speak more than one word at a time was a kind gesture and indication of true interest. It cracked her armor and the next person who speaks to her instead of at her is Ivy, another former friend. They talk in the bathroom and Ivy gets her to open up just enough to engage in bathroom graffiti against her attacker.

So little was required to free her enough to speak at all but she has passed through almost the whole school year with no one noticing or caring enough to reach out.

Suffice it to say, the ball is rolling and Melinda is finding her way back to the world by the end of the book. It's a great ending, redemptive, realistic, and hopeful.

But this book is not the story of a rape. It is the story of an epic fail on the part of a community to recognize Melinda's crisis and try to understand instead of force her to conform.

I will absolutely recommend this book. I will recommend it because it is a great read, compelling and funny. I will admire it for being important in spite of those things. And I will tell anyone who thinks it should be banned that I think that is a great idea. That way, more people will read it.

Adventures of a Part-Time-Never-Was-Beauty-Queen

2010-09-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

In honor of the spirit of The Rejectionist's public humiliation post, I offer the following. All my spiral bound, purple inked attempts at fiction met their demise during a year of exceptionally fierce spring cleaning on the part of my mother. Apparently, she assumed that if I had not even lived there for ten years that meant that not every single item, decayed corsage, and hello kitty note was essential to the fiber of my being.

In the darker times of a slower place, back in the day, there once was an awkward girl who did something drastic. She tried her hand at living up to social expectations.

Girls who wanted to do a team sport tried out for cheerleading. This girl- the awkward one, or Miss A for short- was not cheerleading material. Not even a little bit. It's good to know your limits.

For the smart but cool anyway crowd, there was Leader's club. Miss A had the GPA but lacked whatever other elusive quality got you selected for Leader's club. She was aware enough to know that it wasn't the sort of thing you could lobby for. Very mysterious, the Leader's club. Thus far in her high school career, Miss A's club exploits were based solely on grades. Math honor society, Spanish honor society, stuff like that.

But Senior Year there was one thing, one major thing, that was judged by people that did not already know everyone at Jefferson Davis High School, where Miss A took the most AP classes in school history but did not attend many dances. It was a big deal coming-of-age ritual for twelfth grade young ladies in the cosmopolitan hub of culture known as Montgomery, Alabama. So big that even the girls from Luverne, which was practically Crenshaw County, turned out for it. Everyone started from the same place. Your GPA, talent, and interview counted just as much as anybody else's. No extra points for cheerleaders or Homecoming Queens. That's right. The ultimate level playing field. A truly egalitarian selection process. The Montgomery County Junior Miss Pageant.

Miss A examined the Herculean task of entering the pageant. She knew she wouldn't win, but placing in something might look good on college applications. Just like the Junior Miss people, the college people liked applicants who were "well rounded."

She took stock of the judging categories and how she might fare in each:

Academic: One area with no cause for concern
Appearance: Acceptable
Interview: Who doesn't like to talk? And how different can it be from college entrance interviews?
Talent: Hmm. Problematic. Don't sing. Don't dance. Refuse to do a Gone With The Wind monologue. I never should have quit trumpet. What to do, what to do?

All she could do reliably was perform well on standardized tests, which did not translate on stage unless people enjoyed watching someone completely fill circles with a number 2 pencil for 90 seconds. Well, she could also draw. But that wasn't much better than filling in circles for entertaining an audience.

Miss A's speech and drama teacher came up with a genius solution for the talent problem. She suggested drawing to music. In time to the music, an image from the song. So that's what Miss A did. She rocked her way through a giant cartoon frog, timing the strokes to "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog."

It wasn't great, but it sure beat the girl who played the piano in a hot dog costume, finishing with a flourished version of the "Oscar Meyer Weiner" song. Another girl walked on her hands, for Heaven's sake. In a clown costume. Really? Drawing to music…not as good as the girls who could sing but in the grand scheme of things it was not cause for massive embarrassment. And Miss A's primary goal, first and foremost, crucial to her estimation of a successful experience in this brave new world of "normal girl life," was to not humiliate herself.

During pageant prep she faced two major hurdles. One she was used to. One of the coaches plain old did not like her. She couldn't put her finger on it but she suspected he felt that she lowered the standard median of candidates for Montgomery County Junior Miss. He liked the girls who were the local rock stars of their high school lives. This was annoying but how seriously should you take a middle aged MAN who devoted three months of every year to coaching teenaged beauty queen wannabees? The other hurdle, though. Well, the other proved her downfall.

Miss A knew the second she laid eyes on the Poise and Appearance outfit that she wanted no part of that particular portion of the program. It was a hyper-feminine monstrosity of soft white chiffon with sleeves so puffy that they might have rendered the wearer airborne if she flapped her arms fast enough. And it had tiny sparkles on it. Anne Robertson, a much more traditional participant for Junior Miss, had been hand selected by the coaches as the outfit model. Anne couldn't even make it look reasonable and she was a good six inches shorter than Miss A, who was guaranteed to look ridiculous in it. Outside of a four year old on Easter Sunday- a four year old with indulgent parents who let her pick her own dress- nobody could have pulled it off.

Miss A groaned, sucked it up, and resolved to do her best anyway. Her mother bought the material, found a seamstress, and had the dress made. At least it zipped up the side. The zipper went from hip to bust, leaving the dress accessibly wide open until every frill and ruffle was ready to hug the appropriate virginal curve. That disallowed unfair advantage to cheerleaders, who were by their very nature limber and better equipped to handle quick costume changes with zippers in the back.

She learned the stupid Poise and Appearance dance. This was not a bad attitude on her part. It was stupid. Everybody knew it. The song was Michael Jackson's I Just Can't Stop Loving You reformatted to elevator music and the choreography matched. Not even the Miss Congeniality types could find anything good to say so they were the only ones who did not say anything, having been raised better than everybody else. Miss A secretly bet they prayed about it, though.

She practiced enough to be reasonably certain that she would not flub it, confusing or possibly knocking down anyone unfortunate enough to dance near her on stage.

The night of judging rolled around. In the Montgomery County Pageant, Judging takes place the day prior to the public at large show. The audience is the judging panel only, not even family. This stroke of genius on the part of the pageant organizers creates a dress rehearsal that matters and eliminates crowd induced stage fright on the part of any particularly fluttery participant. Pageant people might have lousy taste in clothes and music, but they're good at event coordination.

Miss A did not suffer debilitating stage fright but she did get a little nervous. The Poise and Appearance routine went smoothly, though, with no forgotten steps or unfortunate episodes. Everyone finished in triumphant relief and flowed offstage like so much sparkly ice cream melting under the stage lights.

"What were the judges laughing at?" Ann Summerville asked as soon as they entered the stage wing. She was a veritable sprite, so tiny she looked like she might live in a mushroom. The dress almost worked on her.

"I didn't notice they were laughing," Miss A said. She had been concentrating too hard on NO MISTAKES.

"I don't know. Did somebody mess up?" Hot Dog girl asked.

"Are you kidding? They were laughing at the dresses," Shelley Garrison said. Shelley had an awesome talent. She did a dance routine to the theme from "Mission: Impossible" in a nude colored leotard that somehow looked more cute than sexy and therefore slipped through the approval process. She would make the top 10, for sure. Plus, Shelley was always nice to Miss A. Even though she had been a cheerleader in 10th grade AND was in the Leader's club. "Uh, Laurel? Please tell me you just now unzipped your dress."

Miss A glanced down to her left side, which was completely exposed to the world. Well, damn. No wonder she didn't get too hot on stage. Too bad they didn't award points for matching your underwear to your bra. Because make no mistake about it, everybody would have seen both.

"Whoops," she said. The stunned silence and sympathetic pats assured her she had officially knocked herself out of the running for anything. There are places where showing your goodies on stage is rewarded, but the Montgomery County Junior Miss Pageant is not one of them.

Sure enough, show night they announced the top 10. Miss A was not among them. Shelley wasn't either, surprisingly. Anne Robertson made it. And Crissy, the girl who walked on her hands for her talent. In fact, Crissy went on to win the whole thing, including a $500 scholarship to one of the local colleges. They had a few more consolation scholarships to hand out after the illustrious Junior Miss was crowned but the girls were all tired, a few of them weepy, and pretty much over it. Everybody but Crissy, anyway.

And for the next five minutes, Miss A did not get a chance to sit down. One college offered her a full tuition scholarship. Another stepped up with room, board, AND tuition. A third sweetened the deal with an additional $500 a semester stipend on top of the free ride.

Her suspicion that pageants might be a socially acceptable form of displaying goods for consumption was confirmed. She was the object of an outright bidding war. Being objectified was rather appealing after the previous day's fiasco.

Miss A became a lifetime supporter of pageantry that night even as she vowed never to do it again. She had learned a very valuable lesson:

If you flash the judges at the Junior Miss pageant, you probably won't win. But you get to go to college for free and that is even better.

Banned Book Week!

2010-09-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

Yay for banned books! Banned book lists are the best place to find good stuff to read. If it weren't for the nutjobs out there trying to make sure we didn't get to read anything, you know, fun- or even worse, challenging- I would never have read Harry Potter. So cheers, guys! Thank you for highlighting the greatest books out there. Saves me lots of time.

I'm going with Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. It is way off the beaten path for me since I avoid books with major downer topics like the plague. Sorry, lovers of issue and important books, but I get plenty of drama in my real life. I want my book life to be a predominately happy place. Hence, YA Fantasy.

I'm making an exception for a couple of reasons. After the internet kerfuffle over the Op-Ed piece by the idiot in Missouri I grew curious. Looked up the book, read the excerpt. I feel for this girl. I was this girl but with a different issue. I remember being the one in the cafeteria that everyone assumed must be contagious if pariah was a communicable disease.

I'm also reeeeaaal tired of blame the victim/cover it up. A rape survivor is entitled to do whatever she (or he) needs to in order to cope. Even if that is keeping it private. We shouldn't force or shame people into telling their stories. But we sure as hell shouldn't shame them into keeping quiet, either. For the quiet victims out there, the ones who are too scared or too private to talk to an IRL human about their experience, there has got to be a venue. A place. Nothing is safer than a book. It won't tell anyone your secrets even though it pours its own out. Books like this one are a lifeline.

People like the man who believes recounting an attack is equivalent to soft porn are a perfect example of why we need books like this. Can you imagine being the daughter of someone who thinks like this? You would be terrified of telling your family what happened to you. Speaking of it makes you dirty (dirtier?). You can't tell the truth because then everyone will know you are damaged. Your stock will go down. Who will want to marry you?

Where would you turn for understanding? Solace? Recovery?

So I'm going to read this book. I imagine my kids will, too, eventually. I'm good with that. I'd like them to be sympathetic, have some way to understand or relate to anyone they meet who may have experienced this. And God forbid they have personal experience with it, but if they do, I want them to feel not so isolated. I want them to know their parents don't think they are dirty or at fault. I want them to trust that I won't see them as less than they are because someone else did something very wrong.

We can't ban rape victims. Banning their stories, their truth, doesn't make the criminal part of this saga not happen. It returns the power to the aggressor again and again. Enduring a rape does not make you dirty. It makes you a survivor. Telling the truth does not make you pornographic. It makes you brave.

***UPDATE***

Since posting I done hauled myself to the libary and read this book. Holy crap. Phenomenal. It is hugely funny despite the immense weight of the issues Melinda is dealing with and a very redemptive ending. It is also artistically damn near perfect. So, so, so glad this book got some book banner's dander up enough to catch my attention. I tore through it.

Save the Cat!

2010-09-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

Blog buddy Lydia Sharp highly recommends
Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder as an instructional resource for all sorts of nifty writing tools like tag lines and pacing. The title is explained in a character development section. You have an unapproachable, bitter, or otherwise unlikeable character who is actually a good guy. The first inkling of inner goodness comes in the save the cat moment, when this character runs into the burning building to rescue the cat from certain incendiary death. Through one act of kindness, this person is now redeemable in the context of the story.

Well, cats and kittens, I have my very own real life Save the Cat story! For realz!

An acquaintance/BFF/relative (anonymous person) I know has been dating a guy who insists on acting like a teenaged asshat a lot of the time. To the point that people who know better (me and all her other friends) are killing the sacred cow and advising her to be rid of him.

So she got engaged. C'est la vie, right?

A week ago she received a phone call from someone claiming to represent an attorney seeking to claim an outstanding debt. Should she ignore/refuse said debt, she faces jail time. BUT. Lucky her. They would settle for a bank draft...immediately...and consider the matter clear.

Our heroine did not just fall off the turnip truck. She knows something is fishy but is concerned about identity theft. So she wastes a goodly portion of the workday contacting her bank, credit card companies, and credit agencies to get to the bottom of the matter. Turns out the whole thing is a scam designed to intimidate people into getting robbed.

Since she has a phone number for this "attorney", she traces the number to California. Eureka, California. She alerts the appropriate authorities in Eureka and the Great State of California but is none too optimistic that anything will happen to shut this shady operation down.

So. The formerly mentioned asshat calls the number. He somehow hacks into their voicemail system. He changes the outgoing message to say:

"If you received a call from this number it is a scam. Do NOT send them money. Do NOT give them any information about your bank or your router numbers. You do not owe these people money. They are THIEVES."

And then, for good measure, he changes the password so they can't get back in to their own voicemail. It has now been their outgoing message for several days. Boo-YAH!

He is getting phone calls from many a grateful soul who were terrified they faced some prolonged legal battle or emptying their liquid assets in an effort to avoid jail. He is now promoted from asshat to asshelmet.

To the Dogs

2010-09-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

In honor of Chris Eldin's triumphant return to blogworld with
Alpha Bitch Whisperer and per her request, here are photos of our own canine companions. Many, many photos. We're a little funny about our dogs.

This is George. He is a golden/chow mix. Here is Lulu:

Here are some more of Lulu when she was a young whippersnapper. She is a purebred German Wirehaired Pointer, bred for show from field trial champions. The white spot on her body is a major flaw for show. Since I have never shown a dog in my life and have no plans to start, I don't mind it. In fact, I think it is sort of adorable.

The next photos are of the best dog who ever graced God's green Earth. Her name was Mazie and she was my first German Wirehair. When I had my shop in Atlanta, she came to work with me every day. She stayed perfectly still, not moving unless someone came up to her or spoke to her. Then her stump of a tail would wag so hard it shook her whole backside. She wouldn't let anyone in the stockroom unless they were with me but somehow knew the front of the shop was public. She died right before the pirate turned one and we got Lulu three weeks later. I love Lu and George, but Mazie was special. I'd have given her a kidney if she needed it. I miss that damn dog.

And these are just the general chaos that rules our house. If you don't know them, it's hard to keep Mazie and Lu straight so don't bother trying. The yellow lab who shows up in some of the photos is a rescue I foisted on my mom and dad. Her name is Peaches and she is pretty awesome. She reminds me of Mazie with her smarts and stubborn. I found her in the street the same week we got Lu. I thought that boy I married would have an apoplexy when I brought another puppy into the house but the story ended up with a very happy ending. Peaches is the highlight of my parent's life and since Dad has a farm- complete with a pond- she landed in it pretty good.

Can't Stand It

2010-09-02T05:36:00.000-07:00

I know who I want to be when I grow up. I've known for a while. She's one of my mom's best friends and her name is Carolyn.

We've been trying to put together a trip to Charleston, SC for a couple of years- me, my mom, and Carolyn. Never seems to work out. This year turned out to be a bust because Carolyn got diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She's tough, though, dealing with chemo the same way she deals with everything. Practical humor and keeping her cards close to the vest except for a very select group of supportive friends that she knows are as tough as she is and won't get sucked down in her drama. Today is her last day of chemo. We've all been holding our breath and praying a lot.

Carolyn has an important job. She's the secret keeper. You can tell her the dirtiest, darkest, career ruiningest, marriage wreckingest secret you know. Ten years later, even if all parties are deceased and no harm can be done, Carolyn still won't have told a soul.

Carolyn's kids are my age-ish. Her oldest son, Frank, was my first homecoming date. He was taller than me so he qualified. Prior to the eighth grade homecoming dance, most of our interaction involved the annual innertube down the river trip and occasional visits to their farm where Frank and his younger brother Avery threw dried out cow pies at me and my sister. They weren't being tacky, they just thought it was fun. Susan is the youngest of the clan and wisely avoided her brothers. She hovered on the edge of the action and enjoyed the respite of having a different set of targets in the vicinity. Susan grew up to be the only one that a yankee wouldn't immediately assume was a redneck.

It's been years since I've seen any of the kids. I keep up with them through Carolyn. I know how many children they have but not their names, what stresses they have in the marriages, their strengths and shortcomings. Carolyn has a special way of talking about even her near and dear that doesn't sugarcoat anything but doesn't paint them in a bad light. She sees the truth of things and works with that.

Frank died last night.

Avery was in the car in front of him. He saw Frank lose control of the vehicle on a bridge and get ejected from the car. In classic Frank form, he never wore a seatbelt.

The only thing I can think to hope for today is that Carolyn is insulated by shock. For the first time, I hope that chemo knocks her on her ass so she can sleep through the next week. Her friends and family can set out the casseroles, answer the phone, haul her bleary, drugged self to the funeral, and cry for her while she's sleeping. Avery and Susan can entertain Frank's four kids. I don't know who will run the Greyhound bus business. It was a family business and Frank was the current patriarch in charge. Avery never wanted it.

I can't stand it. Today is going to be one of those "I wish I were anywhere but here, in any moment but this" days.

(Insert Disenfranchised Minority here) Best Friend

2010-08-31T08:18:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to get a grip on this trope for a while. Most of my WIPs do not have the semi-required gay or black best friend and I feel like I am shirking some societal responsibility. I can't do a legit MC from either perspective because honestly, I'm not that good. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it takes a better writer. I'm whitebread through and through. I still like Third Eye Blind. There is no hope for me.

Still, I do have friends who are not white. Or straight. I like them. I respect them. So why don't these folks pop up in my MSs?

I had an epiphany yesterday. I saw an article on the internet about the "Black Best Friend." She is everywhere and always portrayed favorably. Her qualifications are: sassy, grounded, cooler than her white Main Character counterpart. She offers the words of wisdom that Ms. Whitey must embrace to achieve her goal of career and relationship fulfillment. The Gay Best Friend does the same thing but with more swishing and better fashion advise. Occasionally the best friend is Latina, but she is interchangeable with Black Best Friend. Earth Mother hip types who enjoy the spiritual gift of perceptive insight into humanity.

I think it's degrading. It is a shortcut purely for the development of the white character. The reader/audience knows that our hero is a good, non-prejudiced person because of the props in place, in this case a minority best friend. It's also code for the writers/producers to pat themselves on the back and say to the world: "I'm not a racist homophobe! I like you people!" I haven't thrown any of my real life non-white/alternative buddies into stories because I do not want to reduce them to props.

Now that I've put my finger on the source of my reticence, I feel better able to tackle it. For a while I thought I just disliked the cliche of it all but I have other cliches that crop up here and there, so that really wasn't it. When I look around at my own circle of friends I notice two things: each one is an individual, not a representative of a group. And I have more than one friend whose first language is not English, who not too long ago would have been denied membership to the Country Club based on race or religion, or whose marriage is not legally recognized by my state.

The trick to populating fiction with characters instead of cardboard cutouts of acceptable minority roles is to make the MC's circle of friends match reality. If her best friend is black it seems unlikely that this person would be her only black friend. People don't take applications for friends, assigning one slot to each minority and filling the rest of the positions with faces that look just like theirs. Ensemble casts in books and movies do. There is a reason they call it the "token" whatever friend.

Why can't our forward-thinking, enlightened MCs have a more checkered clique of homeys? In reality, people tend to be either very segregated or very desegregated. It's either all white folks at your dinner party or about half of them aren't. I'd like to see this revolutionary concept incorporated more widely. Maybe even an MC who is the token straight, white kid surrounded by "other" people good enough to overlook it and judge the individual by her merit. That I could pull off...I've been that guy. I'm bored and annoyed with the MC who is a kind enough person to look past differences and have A friend from another background. It's just a reinvention of the benevolent white protector who always gets to be the hero.

Auld Lang Sign

2010-07-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

Jason Evans' Clarity of Night contest is now ON! The first five entries are up. The contest has gotten so big that this time around his scoring system for the Forties Club is being applied to the posts. The best possible score is 45 and entries that score 40 or higher get posted. You have all week to enter if you like. 250 words or less, inspired by the photo ""Uncovered." This summer's theme is in honor of The Tavernier Stones by Stephen Parrish- great read if you've not already gotten your hands on it.

Sadly, this seems to be the first time I've not made the Forties Club but I'm posting my entry here:

Auld Lang Sign

"Tell her I love her, Frank. Happy New Year."

John studied his dead wife's brother. Thirteen years since they lost her. Twelve since John married Susan, hoping to give two little girls a stand-in for their mother. Six since Susan sealed his fate with another daughter.

John turned from the casket to see Susan tap her watch. He shuffled to the second pew, the nearly family section.

"We need to get going. The party starts in two hours and I've got to make the cheese tray."
Susan slithered out of the pew before John could sit. She slowed her exodus only to eye the tired satin and greenery on the sanctuary door. It wilted like last night’s cocktail dress on a hungover celebrant.

“When I came along we had Christmas down by New Year’s Eve.”

Like most of her commentary, it required no response from John.

***

John surveyed the hall closet.

“Why do you keep all those coats? You only ever wear the one.”

Any space that was his pissed her off. John retaliated with an ancient coat from the back. He jammed fists into pockets while Susan stalked down the hall.

Frayed card stock nestled against his hand.

12/31/73, Louisville to Boston. The boarding pass he unearthed was from his real wife’s first cancer surgery.

John marveled at the faded treasure her hands once held, turning it over. Quenching sweet pain bloomed fresh at the sight of her loopy handwriting on the back.

It said, “I love you, too.”

Upon Why You Should Have Beta Readers Who Are Not Writers

2010-06-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: I am not published. I have worked in publishing, but on the textbook end and in sales. The closest I came to any sort of editing was working with acquisitions. So, I don't really know any secret insider information.

But I have a theory about beta readers.

Should your betas be writers? Uh, yeah. Writers are more plugged in to trends in the industry, what's getting picked up right now and what's getting passed over. They are more likely than your sister's best friend from college to catch hackneyed phrases, mistakes, repeats in your MS, etc. They also have an ability to zero in on what isn't working and why.

But in all the time we spend learning about what agents and editors are looking for we get caught up in minutae. We put so much blood, sweat, and tears into trying not to be just another vampire book or cozy mystery or whatever that it screams at us when we see it in an MS. Basically, we fall into the trap of writing for agents.

It makes sense, since most of us won't get published until after we cross that first hurdle. But agents are not your actual market. People who will buy your book for any other reason than they know you, like you, or feel sorry for you want to read a good story. If you are a genre writer, you'd best know what expectations those people have. Odds are good that they do not look for massive doses of originality. Sci Fi readers who like space stories want some cool gadgets. Romance readers want an HEA. (Heck, some of them want as many HEAs set in nineteenth century France as they can get their hands on.) YA readers want to know who to cheer for. Mystery readers want to know who pulled the trigger.

So your authorial beta readers, who are looking for fresh, cool ideas and solid writing, sometimes pay more attention to those things than the story. They get so turned off by something that seems like a cliche that it might kill the whole MS for them. Readers, plain old garden variety, don't care so much. Otherwise, how do you explain John Grisham?

If all your writer friends think you are amazing but nobody normal gets carried away with your MS, then you have an elite but unprofitable target market. Get a couple of people who don't know anything about anything to read your MS and tell you if they like it or hate it. You might have to fish for info, ask specific questions about things you aren't sure work, but their opinion should count because at the end of the day, those are the people who will pay real money for your book.

My personal theory is start with a couple of non-writers you trust to be honest. If they like the story, get some writer betas to help you sand down the rough edges and make it pretty. Then run it by another non-writer (or even one who's already seen it) and see how it plays. That way, you get input on craft and the impact of the story.

In Which the Importance of Gal's Father is Explored

2010-06-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

A grown woman finds herself in the surprising position of being the mother of two young children. By its very nature this circumstance provides explosive episodes of self-realization, sometimes multiples in one day.

The youngest, not yet three, yells at the top of her lungs: "Don't talk to me like that!"

Huh. Little whippersnapper's pretty sassy. And with a strong sense of what's acceptable. Perhaps misplaced, given her tender years and status on the totem pole, but hey, it's nice to note the healthy expectations of how she should be spoken to.

And thus, the self-realization takes on its inevitable layers and the thickness of generations.

How do my kids know how they should be spoken to? Treated? Regarded? How do I know how to teach them?

I remember.

I remember learning to put a worm on a hook and being told, gently, that yes, my father feels a little sorry for the worm, too. But worms don't have the same kind of nervous system we do and while the worm surely isn't happy about his/her predicament, it isn't the same as what I might feel under the circumstances. I was tender-hearted, not a fishing failure.

I remember being taught chess and nascent algebra during the summer break after third grade. In the middle of the night. It was a magical moment where all the world hid in sleep but us, just me and my dad. I was important.

I remember being told after my one and only straight A report card fell to all A's and one B that it isn't really the best thing in the world to be a bookworm. That was second grade and my B was in handwriting. It was the first time I heard the expression "bookworm" and my dad had to explain it to me. Unlike a classic bookworm, I was well-rounded.

I remember doing jigsaw puzzles and playing games of Old Maid around the game table. I was fun to spend time with.

I remember a counselor during a trying period in my college years observing that the reason I had not dated much in high school was that my father had set the standard very, very high. I was shocked. I didn't enjoy a robust dating life in high school, but until that moment I hadn't given much thought to how many boys I turned down or discouraged. Even in that insecure time I was not willing to settle. I wasn't a dateless wonder, I was discriminating.

I struggle with the standard. I've done things in my life I didn't think I could do because I didn't want to not meet the measure of the man that raised me. I was glad I did them. I've things yet to do, some that seem near impossible, but I remember the confidence of the man I think the most of and it becomes sacrilegious not to try. I think of his older children, not blessed with the same mother as I, so damaged and still shaped by the standard. They know the benchmark and rebel because they haven't met it, whatever it is.

If I had to define the mysterious standard, this would be my best effort:

Professional: Whatever you choose to do, be good at it. Use your intellect. If you are a server, shoot for head waiter. If you work in Corporate America, shoot for the highest position that will make you happy. If that is CEO, you can be that. If you don't want to engage in office politics and general B.S., dominate the division where you enjoy working. But paramount is that your professional success should not be dishonorable or predatory. It should be a manifestation of your God given ability and hard work.

Personal: Don't let people take advantage of you. Expect what you deserve. If you don't get what you deserve, cut bait- whether it's business or personal or a blend of the two. Be compassionate. You will know other people who do not have the resources you do. When you find them, help them in a way that protects their dignity.

Family: The greatest charge you are given as a human is responsibility to your family. Honor it. The faith you give to your family honors the people who raised you and teaches the children you are raising.

As fathers go, one could do worse than a father who teaches these things. But one could not do much better.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

People Who Are NOT Cool

2010-06-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

I love blogworld. I've met some of the most fascinating people and been privileged with exposure to much better writers. But there are always those people. The ones who point out your typos in the comment thread. COME ON. That is so...so...seventh grade. It reeks of "I'm smarter than you are and I just wanted to make sure everybody knows it." It's like online heckling.

Unsolicited critique in a public forum is even worse. Somebody posts a poem or flash fiction and does not finish with a request for your thoughts? Don't put your negative thoughts in the comment thread. If they want a beta reader they will let you know. A contest setting or a submission for critique is totally different. Then you can let it rip.

Every blog I follow has an email address linked to it. Use it. Most people are open to improvement and appreciate a chance to fix a mistake they didn't catch but it's nice to have a chance to do it on the down low.

This situation came up on a friend's blog last week. It was low profile, everyone was cool about it, but I felt my latent defensive streak flex. If I knew where to find the commenter, I'd fill her Splenda packets with salt.

Anyway, in a private conversation with the lucky person who gracefully accepted the public illumination of each possible flaw in her research I came up with the following:

I wouldn't use a microphone to tell you that there is toilet paper on your shoe.

People Who Are Cool

2010-06-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Elton John played Rush Limbaugh's wedding.

He was totally cool about it, too. I love this attitude from him. While Mr. Limbaugh has never come out anti-gay, as in gay people should not exist or be free to be gay, he is anti-gay marriage. Elton John is most definitely pro gay marriage and for obvious reasons affected by the issue.

I know he got paid to perform but he could have booked another gig.

To play music at someone's wedding when that someone doesn't think you have the right to a legal marriage is extremely generous.

*I got to stand next to Elton John at the bar of a restaurant in Atlanta once. I was too chicken to say anything so I just pretended I didn't notice him. Standing one foot away. I'm such a dork.

** This post is an observation on one person's character, not a launchpad for political discussion on this issue. Whatever you think, half the country is firmly in the trenches with you. Half the country is adamantly opposed to you. Nobody's making a move to change anyone else's mind. Except maybe Sir Elton and he did it with a soft blow. SOOOoooo, if this triggers a need for venting personal feelings of the "gay marriage attacks the institution of marriage" variety send me an email personally or find a politics blog to yell on. If you post it here, I'll delete it in the interest of keeping things relatively warm and fuzzy. Same applies if you want to bash on Mr. Limbaugh.

Speed

2010-05-29T08:38:00.001-07:00

The pirate is a problem child. Ask anyone. Ask his teacher, ask his parents, ask the kids in his class.

Just don't ask the pirate. He'll tell you he's smart, he likes art, and his mom is really proud of him. He doesn't see himself as a problem child.

The way I see it, I need to keep his self-image where it is and get the rest of him to match it. Progress to this end is notable.

He's learned through a combination of conditioning and experience that he gets away with more when he smiles and regularly employs phrases like "please, thank you, and ma'am." Manipulative, but hey, it works.

As far as his "problem" goes, let me describe:

My five year old boy can't sit still.
He likes to wiggle.
Sometimes he talks without permission.
He doesn't always wait for the teacher to call on him before he blurts out an answer.
If he's bored, he's inclined to play cave by crawling under the table at school.
He's impulsive and acts without thinking.
In art, he likes to paint on things besides the paper.

Clearly, he needs medication. Again, ask anyone. Ask his teachers. Ask his classmates. Ask the school administrator. They told him so. (Well, some of the kids did. The administator asked him if he was taking his medicine. The teacher considered meeting with a social worker on his behalf. The pre-K 4 teacher wanted him tested for every acronym she could think of.)

On the behavioral bell curve, there is no doubt he is not on the bell. I know this. He's further from the bell than he would have been twenty-five years ago because all the kids like him are on meds. Except the ones with parents like his. Two parent households, higher education, enough income that one parent can devote a lot of time to handling problems. Parents with the education and confidence to tell a school system and a pediatrician, "We appreciate your involvement and support. We're not going to go that route. Let us know in what other ways we can help you get him to where he needs to be."

I go to the school on a regular basis so the teacher doesn't have to spend all her time on my child. Because I can. I don't have a 9-5 job that I will lose over this. I'm not backed into a corner or in a position to be intimidated.

Twenty years ago, rich kids were on medication. Ten years ago, all of them were. Must have been a golden age for early education. Now, poor kids are way more likely to be on medication than their luckier counterparts. This is crap.

We are about to see a generation come along where creativity and independence are fostered in the privileged and medicated out of the kids who have no advocate. Their mothers love them just as much but they are more easily influenced by an M.D. and a Masters in Education. Those people most know what's good for our kids, right?

Juvenile brains are developing. Learning pathways are being established at a phenomenal rate. Those pathways laid down under the influence of a scheduled, mind-altering drug are permanently designed to require that drug to function at optimal levels. I'm not raising my kid on speed. (Yes, it's speed. Adderall's primary active ingredient is amphetamine.) Not only am I worried about his brain but his physiology. I can't imagine a growing body subjected to a 60 year old diet pill for ten years is not going to be at risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes as an adult.

But what about other people's kids? It's gotten to the point that they damn near need a semester of pharmacology as a requirement for an education degree. I don't propose that there is NEVER a reason to use medication and I'm certainly not okay with telling parents they shouldn't any more than I'm okay with people telling me I should. But there is gross abuse here and as always seems to be the case, the people least able to fight back are the most likely to be victims.

The only thing I can do is be vocal. I explain our decision to the pirate's teacher. I provide documentation. I let her know that I appreciate how much easier he would be on a prescription but the long term risk is too great. And I pray that the love of children that led her to be an educator in the first place will give her the patience to deal with kids like mine and advise another mother, a single mom who's struggling, that medication is faster and easier but not necessarily better.

The guy in this video makes my point better than I can. It's about twenty minutes, but if you're pressed for time start it at 15:41. Watch the whole thing when you have time. He's very funny and really makes you think.

The Love Triangle

2010-05-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

Good Lord. It's everywhere. If it isn't the MC it's a subplot. I hate them. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em.

I'm trying to figure out what is appealing about the love triangle. Obviously, many women/romance readers dig it. Two strong heroes fall all over themselves risking life and limb to protect/save/rescue the foolishly spunky gal who's up against more than she bargained for. Is it incredibly romantic to have a heroine with two wonderful specimens of masculinity pining over her while she wrings her dainty hands in indecision? She knows she's hurting them both but she simply can't choose because...why, again? Oh, yeah. She can't bear to hurt one of them. What?

Let's flip it. Two lovely ladies hotly pursue a male protag who loves them both. They compete for his affection. In the spirit of the trope, let's go with the most adorably feminine counterpart to fisticuffs and rescue of the heroine. One bakes him her state fair winning coconut chiffon cake. The other joins the DAR to buddy up to his mother. The first one strikes back by learning how to hunt. (She is just adorable hoisting that rifle up like she might really shoot something. Aw.) The other takes up fly fishing and learns to create her own lures. Would ya look at that? She's so good at it she starts her own online business selling lures.

So does this make the hero a tragic figure torn between two soul mates? No. It makes him an asshat who's stringing along two women at once. And the women both deserve him because they are idiots.

Maybe that's why the love triangle annoys me. It's vaguely misogynistic somehow, like women are too flaky to make a decision and go with it but we expect men to know their own minds and hearts. On the other hand, Hamlet couldn't make a decision and I didn't like him either. Guess I just don't go for wishy-washy.

Junior High Talent Show

2010-05-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

Do you remember what it was like when you were twelve or thirteen and you had to sit through the talent show? Subtropical waves of heat shimmy through the gym because if it's winter the heat is on and it only runs full blast. If it's late enough in the spring, the air conditioning can't cool it off fast enough. The tennis shoe/vinyl/aerosol deodorant/popcorn smells mix together in toxic fumes that guarantee at least one nervous performer will get sick.

A skinny, scruffy air guitar band leaps about and only gets away with applause because it consists of the coolest guys on the varsity whatever team. Several wobbly monologues delivered in tinny, squeaky sincerity are punctuated by awkwardly spaced dramatic gestures. A piano solo or two trips along the keyboard. But once or twice- in the era, not every year- somebody special takes the stage.

They look like everyone else if not marginally worse. The audience squirms in uncomfortable anticipation of whatever's coming. We've been programmed to keep expectations low. As in, please don't let this one suck because I can't feel sorry for one more person tonight.

Then this happens:

I think that must be what it's like for agents reading queries. You straighten up a bit. This one might not be so bad. In another sentence or two, you start to get excited. You get to the sample pages and read with a mix of elation and sheer gratitude that this person did not make you pity them, wonder what they were thinking or how their mother created such a delusional fantasy world for them. In the mix of the good, the mediocre, and the absolutely dreadful it must be an amazing eureka moment to find one that is fan-damn-tastic.

A Hat Tip and a Heads Up

2010-05-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Stephen Parrish is an author I stumbled across in blogland last year. I know from his blog that he is a fantastic writer and a lot of people already know about him, but just in case you forgot or it slipped by you, his novel, The Tavernier Stones, just published this week. It looks like it is going to be rock solid. (Pun intended. It's about a gemologist. And a treasure hunt.)

He also has absolutely the coolest promotion going for his book. It is also a treasure hunt and the prize is a one carat diamond. Seriously. Get your copy and get cracking.

So hats off to Stephen and heads up to all of you!

Below is the book blurb from his website:

When the well-preserved body of 17th century mapmaker Johannes Cellarius floats to the surface of a bog in northern Germany, and a 57 carat ruby rolls out of his fist, treasure hunters from around the globe race to find the Lost Tavernier Stones of popular European folklore.

According to legend, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was robbed of a priceless hoard while returning from his final voyage to the Orient in 1689. The hoard reputedly includes some of the world's most notorious missing jewels. Among them the 280 carat Great Mogul Diamond and the 242 carat Great Table Diamond, the largest diamonds ever unearthed whose whereabouts are unknown.

John Graf is an Amish-born cartographer who has never ventured out of Pennsylvania, let alone embarked on an international treasure hunt. David Freeman is a gemologist who has done his share of prospecting, but little of it within the boundaries of the law. Between them they have all the expertise necessary to solve the mystery. They also have enough differences to derail even the best of partnerships. And ahead are more obstacles: fortune seekers equally qualified and every bit as determined.

The race spans two continents. The finish line is in Idar-Oberstein, the gemstone capital of Germany. There, in chambers beneath an old church, where unspeakable events took place in centuries past, winners and losers alike find answers to age-old questions about the Lost Tavernier Stones.

ICK. Or: What is hot and what is NOT?

2010-05-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of books with a romance thread. Action with a romance woven in, UF with a romance woven in, mystery with a romance woven in...you see the pattern.

Some (read:most) is formulaic. Once in a while something is fresh. Writers are always looking for the angle to bring a new twist to the ancient story of boy meets girl. Like a sonnet, a few rules must be observed or your story/subplot does not qualify as a romance.

The protag must be single at the beginning of the story. Possible variances include attached in the context of a bad/abusive/dying relationship.
The couple must be together by the end of the story. Or, in a series, there must be clear intent to move in this general direction.
During the course of the story, there must be tension. If our hero and heroine are the destined to be together/soul mates/love at first sight variety, the tension will be external, like a mutual enemy. Dean Koontz does this to great effect. The other end of the spectrum is the classic love/hate tension. They drive each other batty but have an undeniable chemistry and a moment of vulnerability somewhere during the story where they gain a better understanding of each other. Think Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. I'm a sucker for this trope. And the du jour of pop fiction is the "I'm a human and my lover is not" variety. This one is usually resolved by "upgrading" the human in some way.

The beginning and end are pretty easy to master. They start off apart and end up together. The tricky part is how they get there, the journey and the tension. And this is where the shark jumping takes place.

Please. If you are writing a book with romantic elements, for the love of all that is holy, respect the limits of the ICK FACTOR. For the most part, the couple should not be so May/December that the reader is prompted to speculate about basic biological limitations like ED and reduced post-menopausal sex drive, for example. If you go there, you better be good. Harold and Maude? Soul mates, hilarious, and a great soundtrack worked to downplay the ick factor of a barely grown young man falling madly in love with an eighty year old free spirit. The Mary Russell books by Laurie King have a fifty something Sherlock Holmes fall for a twenty year old difficult genius. The age disparity is dwarfed by the complete lack of anyone else in the world who might be a suitable companion for either character.

Occasionally somebody pulls off a Thornbirds. I suspect this does not have the shock value it used to, though, so not many people go for the man-of-the-cloth trick to heighten tension.

But I read one over the weekend that is irredeemable. Absolutely not. NO WAY. Let me set the stage: YA UF. Usual cast of characters. Decent world building. Snappy dialogue. Love triangle (which is not my cuppa but I make allowances since it clearly makes millions swoon). So we have some nice little sparks flying in the middle of a generational conspiracy for genocide. Sweet little kiss scene followed up by the fellow being a complete jerk but we know he's not such a bad guy, simply conflicted. We're doing well on the tension front. But since the author has designs on a series (there are published sequels) there must be the Big. Bad. We can never be together. So what's it gonna be? Guilt? Angst? Misunderstanding of I Love Lucy proportions? No such luck.

INCEST. Incest, people. As in, the two people you are pulling for find out at the end that they are brother and sister. And yes, being a savvy reader I totally get that this will most likely be resolved in some convoluted plot twist involving a baby switch or something but the damage is done. These two people think they are siblings so there is no potential for anything but ICK. ICK. and more ICK every time they gaze longingly at one another, innocently brush hands reaching for the same death dealing supercharged silver tipped ninja star, whatever. It's not just no spark. It's anti-spark.

Greek mythology in UF? Totally acceptable. Greek tragedy? Not so much.

Creativity and Making Mistakes

2010-04-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

Most of the creative people I know have one big quality in common. Mistakes don't scare them. They don't really care if they get something wrong. What they do care about is getting better.

Many of my creative type friends are perfectionists, too, but that seems totally different from fear of failure in the souls of these intrepid groundbreakers. They won't suffer imperfection in their own work. But they acknowledge the mistakes, the flaws, and sand them out. Striving for perfection requires mistakes. I don't know how they always knew this but I had to learn it. I'm lucky I've always gravitated toward people who are lots cooler than I am.

These people who are so much cooler than me did things I would never have had the balls to try. One got an MFA. She is now a sculptor. A couple majored in glass blowing. I thought they were nuts, but really cool. Wished them luck with that. They now have their own studio where they do custom work, their own stuff, and give lessons.

A friend from high school wanted to act. Even at seventeen I knew that was pie-in-the-sky but I certainly hoped it would work out for her. Maybe she could teach drama and speech when she grew out of it. But guess what? Her acting credits now include Spider-Man (yes, THE Spider-man, not the cartoon), Beauty Shop, Never Been Kissed, and a buttload of other stuff. She narrated the audio book for The Help.

Another friend from high school read cheesy romance novels all the time. I knew they were cheesy because they had people kissing on the covers but I didn't judge because all my books had dragons or unicorns on the covers. She also wrote cheesy romance in her spiral bound notebook. I figured it was as good a hobby as any. I didn't have time for hobbies because I was too busy taking all the A.P. classes my high school offered. Her third book just published in April.

I have a double major in Biology and English. English because I just liked it and Biology because I knew I would never use the English part of my degree in anything that would pay the bills. I now find the science portion of my educational background to be extremely useful in Trivial Pursuit and making an educated guess as to whether my children's runny noses are due to allergies, bacterial infection, or virus.

I sure wish sometimes that I had grown a pair a little younger. I always liked writing. It just seemed so stupid to think I could do anything with it. I finally got over being too chicken to try it and even if I never get it right it is the most fun thing I have ever done. Even the mistakes.

So cheers to all of you who had the courage to do what you loved even though it really was pretty dumb. I always knew you could do it!

Showing vs. Telling

2010-04-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

Huh. The more I pay attention, the more the superiority of showing something vs. telling it seems to crop up. This article on revamping your resume underscores ten overused cliches on resumes and offers examples of how to show a potential employer that you have the skills they are seeking rather than just telling them. Some examples:

Kill this: Results-oriented professional. Replace with your own version: I love to solve thorny supply-chain problems
Kill this: Strong work ethic
Replace with your own version: I taught myself HTML over a weekend in order to grab a marketing opportunity
Kill this: Meets or exceeds expectations
Replace with your own version of this: Invited to join our executive staff at a strategy summit during my first year at the company

Of course, in the article it doesn't mention showing and telling. But they definitely advocate showing and the examples cited demonstrate why it is so much more effective.

Cliffhangers

2010-04-13T01:04:00.001-07:00

I recently read a much anticipated sequel to a book I adored. I waited. I counted the days and hours. I checked my Kindle every hour after midnight on the release date until the book finally showed up at three AM.

I was ultimately disappointed in a big way. So disappointed I was kind of mad about it. It's been a week and I'm still a bit put out. I trolled reviews on Amazon to see what this author's other minions had to say and about half of them agreed with me.

So what was the letdown? Sophomore slump? Overhype? There did seem to be a bit of the "second book syndrome." First books go through years of loving care and pruning, critiqued by friends, romans, and creative writing groups who lend us their eyes, but the second published book goes through a much smaller albeit more elite funnel. On the whole, though, the wit and voice I loved so much in the first book was still there. It should have gone down on my list as "pretty darn good but the first one was better. Still can't wait for the next."

Instead, I've been fighting the urge to post a "WHY did you do this to us/What were you thinking?" message on an author blog. Damn if she didn't throw in a big, fat, old fashioned, soap opera style FRIGGIN' CLIFFHANGER.

I get that not everyone breaks out into hives over cliffhangers. I do. BUT. They are kind of like politics. Whether you are for or against, half the room is going to disagree with you. Safer to stay away from it altogether as far as I'm concerned.

As a reader I feel cheated if the story doesn't feel resolved, or at the very least paused. Cliffhangers just feel...truncated. Like you ran out of paper before you got through. There are two possible reasons to employ such an ending. One, the story you have to tell is longer than the book you have been contracted to write. If this is the case then suck it up and figure out how to make your story tighter. Two, it's a cheap trick to manipulate me into buying your next book.

I was going to buy it anyway. So was everybody else. I'm still going to buy it, but now I feel a little bitter about it. I'm also advising anyone who hasn't read books one and two to wait until the third publishes.

Blog Interview

2010-04-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Here is my blog interview over at Heather's Edited Within An Inch of My Life. Hop on over and check it out.

Cheers!

Random Acts of Kindness

2010-03-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

I've decided those birkenstock-wearing, patchouli smelling folk who really are kind to animal, vegetable, and mineral alike might be on to something with the "Practice random acts of kindness" bumper stickers.

Driving down one of Florida's many, many, many expensive toll roads this weekend I took a whim to pay the toll of persons behind me. Doubled my fare for the trip, but honestly, it was the MOST fun. Lest you think I qualify as beneficent, let me clarify.

When you pay the toll for the person behind you, it is highly unlikely they can ever pay you back. Or even say thank you. There is a possibility you will drag race to the next toll booth and if they beat you they then return the favor. BUT. Since you come out of the tollbooth bottleneck a half mile or so ahead of them, this scenario is unlikely. If they want to say thank you the best opportunity they have is a hand wave at your exit, when you slow down.

This confuses people.

Seriously? Why did the person in that car do that? Do they think they know me? Are they supposed to be in a car caravan where the person behind them had no cash? Why would they DO that?

I drove along and laughed and laughed. More entertainment from a one dollar bill than you can get anywhere north of Tijuana.

Random acts of kindness. You really do get more than you give.

And maybe there was a tiny case of the warm fuzzies when a car would pass me and wave at the person who did something nice for them for no real reason.

Negative Criticism in The Public Arena

2010-03-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

If your published or public work gets reamed by someone else, congratulations! First, you're published. Second, enough people know about you to assume opinion about your work might interest other people. That's kind of huge, if you think about it. Something you created is well known enough that people who make their living writing about stuff other people wrote picked on your book as a title whose name recognition they could skate on.

And finally, if you must respond, take a page from Sandra Bullock. She didn't post a drunken diatribe on a webpage, she took the heat, and she defended her work without telling anybody they were wrong or too stupid to "get" her.

In Which the Unfortunate State of My Face is Explained

2010-03-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

We dance in our kitchen while supper cooks. The five year old pirate, the two year old princess, and Mama rock out to everything from The Beastie Boys to Tchaikovsky. "Dancing" generally starts by miming what we hear in the music. 1812 Overture, for example, has several martial interludes that are just perfect for prancing like horses.

Inevitably the free form interpretive dance devolves into mere spinning and giggling.

On Sunday, Mama spun herself so dizzy that it was all she could do to release the boy before he joined her in what may have been the most spectacular faceplant in the history of mankind. The floor, armed with a thin woolen area rug, leapt up and slugged Mama in the face while the pirate looked on in horror. Said area rug offered no buffer from the hardness of the floor but did contribute a lovely, oozy rug burn to the insulted area of her face. It's crusted over nicely. Mama is a special kind of pretty this week.

It hurt. A lot. I may have been mildly concussed as I had a couple of episodes of retching after this impressive display of grace and dexterity.

I invited my Facebook friends to please help me come up with a better story. Among the more inspired suggestions were:

I sustained the injury in an altercation with the Canadians during one of the hockey games at the Olympics. (I like this one. I could work "puck" in there and we all know what rhymes with "puck." I'm a sucker for word play.)
Several references to domestic violence. "I'm not a good listener" and "Supper was late." No, neither I nor any of my friends think actual domestic violence is funny. The notion that that boy I married might perpetrate it, however, is so out there as to be Monty Python hilarious. As is the notion that I wouldn't kick his skinny white a@@ if he ever did such to me.
And my personal favorite: I took an elbow from a stripper who was jealous that I had more bills in my t-back than she did.

My cheekbone still looks like the stunt double for the Pilsbury Dough Boy but the glorious technicolor has faded. I just hope the kids are not forever terrified of dancing now. They already have to overcome being Baptist. Adding risk to life and limb as well as the immortal soul can't help my case.

Writer's Groups and Accountability: Have We Taken Things Too Far?

2010-03-01T08:06:00.001-08:00

So my blogging buddy McKoala set up an accountability system for her writerly community. I did not actually think she would really send a killer koala all the way from Australia to rough me up if I didn't come up to snuff.

Apparently, she meant business. Writers, beware. It's a dangerous business.

MCs and relatability

2010-02-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

Conventional wisdom holds that a main character must be, to a certain extent, mainstream. We equate mainstream with relatable. This seems to run a spectrum, though, and follows age lines.

In very young children's lit the MC is often superlative in many ways. In fairy tales, he or she is wittier, braver, or luckier than most. In addition to their amazing talents and gifts, they usually have bigger than average problems of the wicked witch variety. Transition to middle grade and the same holds. I love Artemis Fowl. But he is absolutely not normal. He is extremely wealthy, extremely smart, and only gradually (over the course of several books) does he seem to be plagued by anything remotely resembling a normal kid's problem. Even when the MC starts off "normal", ie: nothing special at school, problems at home, whatever, in middle grade the superlative rule still applies. Harry Potter is socially normal, struggles with regular adolescent woes, but he's a hell of a wizard and very brave. Percy Jackson? Turns out he is a demi-god of the highest order. Gregor the Overlander discovers he is a berserker who might have shamed the Visigoths with his battlelust.

By the time we transition to Lit Fic or Women's Lit the MC must be extremely normal with an exceptional problem or story. They need a job or spouse that does not fulfill all their greatest hopes and aspirations but a hurdle that will allow them to overcome this mundane drudgery.

Somewhere in the middle is YA. Right now, the trend is toward very "I could be that guy" MCs, which makes them very relatable. Their problems, even with the current crop of supernatural twists, revolve around uncertainty about the MC's convictions and place in the world.

The tension arises from normal people in exceptional circumstances or exceptional people in normal circumstances. If you have an exceptional MC in an exceptional circumstance, the only other avenue for tension is that the MC does not realize he or she is exceptional. Like Sookie Stackhouse: a waitress who considers her ability to read minds to be a disability because it inhibits her ability to have a normal relationship with a peer.

Somewhere in the equation, though, exceptional always crops up. How do you make the MC relatable and exceptional at the same time? Give them a blue collar job? Average looks or intelligence? Unhappy with their weight? Whatever it is, my favorite books have it. I'm not a huge consumer of chick lit but Jennifer Weiner is amazing at the normal people/exceptional circumstance combo. So is Mary Kay Andrews. Successful mystery and thriller authors also seem to have the secret handshake into this club.

How do they do it?

Clarity of Night Silhouette Entry

2010-01-11T18:13:00.000-08:00

Clarity of Night Flash Fiction Contest is underway right now. The photo, titled "Silhouette", is the prompt for your 250 words or less. The entries are fantastic. Mine is below.

Raptors 1, Hoyt 0

Boyd’s fingers looked positively cyanotic. His sigh rose silver and disappeared against the sheet metal sky. Deer hunting sucked. Nothing to do but sit in the cold and wait.

“Want a pull? Warm you up,” Hoyt said. Beefy fingers held out the pretentious sterling flask.

“No, thanks. Might have to pee.”

“Smart, kid. Don’t worry about scaring the deer off, though. I got a jug up in here.”

Boyd eyed the old milk jug. No way he was sticking his pecker in that thing. Hell, there was no way he was whipping it out. Instant dicksickle.

“’s light out. I reckon we give it another twenty minutes. Maggie’ll be disappointed.”

Maggie hates venison.

“Yeah. Maybe next time.” Boyd kept his own counsel with his future father-in-law.

“Hot damn!”

Hell. “Where?”

“Up there! I got the mate a couple weeks ago. Damn sumbitches got all my call birds before quail season even started.”

“I think there’s a pretty big fine for shooting raptors.”

Thunder shook the blind and the hawk sheered left. Hoyt couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn that drunk and hawks are a hell of a lot smaller than deer.

“I’m too old and too rich to let some tree huggin’ fed tell me how to manage my own damn land.”

The hawk circled back while Hoyt reloaded. The hawk shot first.

“What the hell?” Hoyt’s hand smeared the gooey brown mess from his pate into the fringe hair tufted over his ear.

“Least bird shit’s warm.”

ROLL TIDE!

2010-01-07T21:06:00.000-08:00

Order has been restored to the universe.

Alabama 37 Texas 21.

Very best wishes to Colt McCoy for a speedy recovery. He is a fantastic, classy athlete who did not deserve to go out on an injury at the beginning of the championship game.

That is all.

Sober New Year's Eve

2010-01-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

I rang in 2010 with Krystal burgers (that's White Castle for you damn yankees). Not a drop of anything stronger than coca-cola. An unfortunate circumstance which I had vowed never to repeat after having my tubes tied.

I watched my mother-in-law breathe. She has apnea so the breathing-while-sleeping thing is alarming under good circumstances but after the open heart surgery the day before and all the subsequent respiratory depressing painkillers it really freaked me out. But she's doing great and should be out of the hospital tomorrow.

I can't help but feel we dodged multiple bullets here at the end of 2009. The mother-in-law had planned to take our five year old to the beach (where she lives) for New Year's. The two year old princess was slated to go to the other grandparents. That boy I married and I were going to meet friends at their north Georgia mountain cabin.

We've been worried about the mother-in-law's cardio health for a while. She neglected to tell us how bad her symptoms were but the day after Christmas she just could not catch her breath after climbing the stairs. It felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest, she said. But it was nothing to worry about because she "feels like that all the time." My mom took her pulse, could not even find a radial and the carotid was weak and erratic. Mom told her she needed an EKG immediately. She still insisted she was fine. My mom is a nurse with a very strong cardiac background.

My sister duplicated this assessment procedure. My sister told her she needed an EKG immediately. She still insisted she was fine. My sister is a nurse with a very strong cardiac background.

My husband told her she needed an EKG immediately. Repeat refrain. He is a P.A.

My dad told her she needed an EKG immediately. He is an M.D. See the pattern developing here?

I'm not anything but a girl who has absorbed crazy quantities of medical knowledge through exposure, jobs, and patient status. (Patient as in I am one, not I possess it.) But I told her she was crazier than a three headed cat if she thought she was driving across the state of Georgia with my son in her car and then spending a week alone with him as long as she had symptoms like that. She agreed to get an EKG.

The EKG got her sent to the ER. The ER admitted her into the cardiac unit. The cardiac cath demonstrated critical aortic valve stenosis (for the uninitiated that is the valve that separates the heart from the aorta, which is the vessel that feeds the entire circulatory system). She was in heart failure and her heart is enlarged because it's been working so friggin hard to push blood through an opening that was one-sixth the size it should have been. Without a valve replacement, she would have died this year.

So I'm glad she's alive, glad the crisis happened in my hometown where we know who's good with hearts, glad my family is knowledgeable enough to recognize the warning signs, and glad that we are all savvy enough to go to bat for a family member who got admitted on a holiday weekend. (She spent the night in the hospital and still had not been assigned a cardiologist by noon the next day. Unacceptable. UNACCEPTABLE. About an hour and a half after I confirmed that no one had been assigned to her the best damn cardio in the city was in her room. And yes, I was a little bit bitchy. Not to the cardiologist...he was really nice. To the nurse who lied to me and said yes when I asked if a cardiologist had been assigned and then pretended like she misplaced the information when I asked her who it was. Once a physician is assigned to a patient's case their name appears on the spine and cover of the chart.)

I am also angry. I'm angry at my mother-in-law for not taking this seriously. My children adore her. Their lives are richer for her presence.

My husband would be devastated to lose his mother. He's a medical type fellow and still had a tough time being around her post-op because she is his mother. So I did it, since I love her, too, and I'm way more confrontational than that boy I married and just knowledgeable enough to be a decent patient advocate.

But I'm really angry at me. I let her brush off our questions about her health. I let her. In private I have been telling my husband for TWO YEARS that I thought she might be in early heart failure but I let her say the cough was allergies, the huffing and puffing was extra weight, the edema was just too much salt the day before, and her internist wasn't worried. (Side note: If you are concerned, do NOT take the GP, FP, or Internist's word for it. Get a second opinion. Ask questions. Be the squeaky wheel, people.)

I would have let her take my child this week if my mom hadn't caught this. He knows about 911 but I'm not sure if he would think of it if his Gaga collapsed. And I shudder to think about a major event happening at 70 mph.

So. In 2010, my one and only resolution (since I typically eschew them altogether) is to be as aggressive with my loved ones before they need medical intervention as I am with the medical professionals afterwards. Watch out for your family. If you're worried about someone, don't tolerate the blow-off. Call B.S. If the doctor says they are fine and you don't believe it, check with another doctor. Because lots of doctors suck. I can say that since I'm related to four or five just in my generation of the paternal branch of my family. Add in the nurses and we could staff a hospital. The point is, we know better and this still reached crisis stage.

So pay attention. Make a resolution to ring in next year with the same family roster as this year if you have anything to say about it.

Return on the Investment of Not Being a (total) Jerk

2009-12-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

The SEC Championship. Alabama vs. Florida. Glory, drama, tradition. A football gal's dream.

We have two young 'uns, a leftover gift certificate to Outback Steakhouse, and no desire to fix dinner during the game. I'll just go to Outback at halftime and presto! problem solved.

I arrive shortly into halftime, in my houndstooth check coat and crimson scarf, and there is no one at the take-out stand. Except an older couple studying the menu with an intensity that startles and alarms the gal behind them, who is determined to place her order and depart before the start of the third quarter.

Years and years ago, I waited tables at Outback. I know this couple. She is overweight and her ballet slipper style gold sequin shoes show stress at the seams. He is dressed in a fastidious but not expensive fashion. If they were seated in my section I would groan inwardly while fixing a bright smile on my face to greet them. It's not really their fault they don't know how to tip and it's not my prerogative to give them less than my best because of my prejudicial assessment of the likelihood that I'm about to get stiffed.

Safely behind them and invisible while they peruse the menu, I silently tap a foot and fix my best annoyed customer expression on my face. Not because I'm hoping they will notice- I'd feel pretty bad if they did- but because I'm hoping someone who works there might and please come tend the take-out stand. Let's speed this up, people.

Unfortunate shoe matron turns to see me behind her, smiles broadly, and says, "Mumble,mumble, mumble, good, mumble,mumble, reasonmumble?"

I don't hear well so I know some of my trouble is attributable to this undignified condition but I do hear well enough to know that something is off with her speech. She is foreign or has had a stroke. I've never had a stroke, but I've been foreign and that is challenging enough.

"Sorry?" I ask, with what I hope is an encouraging smile.

She communicates that she would like to know what articles on the menu are agreeable and affordable. They have a $25 gift certificate and do not want to exceed that amount.

"It's been a while since I've eaten here but everything is pretty good. I have a $50 gift certificate, though, and I don't think I'll spend more than $35, so if you go a little over I'll pick up the difference." I tell her. I've been there, looking through the window at goodies I can't quite afford. It sucks.

She is delighted and bends over the menu again. He opts for a chicken and ribs combo I've had and I assure him it is good, she chooses a chicken sandwich item I've never tried. The attendant finally manifests, looking harried, and takes their order. They come in just under the $25 limit.

I'm a bit disappointed but I think it's sweet they didn't try to take advantage.

The neatly dressed gentleman focuses attention on the television at the bar while I place my order. I don't need the menu since I checked it online and had already made my selection.

"I've got a connection to Alabama," he says. Cool. They're Alabama fans. "My brother-in-law and both my nephews played there."

I cease the recitation of my order, much to the server's confusion and ill-concealed irritation, and ask, "Who's your brother-in-law?"

"Did you ever hear of Jeremiah Castille?"

I proceed to mild hysteria and a borderline apoplectic seizure. Holy hell. Jeremiah Castille and his sons, Tim and Simeon, are Alabama legend. Jeremiah was the MVP during the Bear's last game in 1982. He went pro with Tampa Bay, I think.

After stuttering praise for the man's august relations and watching his proud grin grow wider and wider, I offer to buy them dessert. The wife is tickled pink. She orders cheesecake.

Damn if I didn't get home to find the people at Outback put Jeremiah Castille's brother-in-law's cheesecake in with my order instead of his. I hope something good happens to them sometime soon. They were nice folks, and exceedingly generous in their pride for the achievements of their family.

Gender Identity vs. Overt Misogyny

2009-12-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post something funny but alas, alack, I lack the anecdote. Perhaps tonight's holiday office party will provide fodder for the next post. So instead, here's what's on my mind:

Is it misogynistic to have a male character who is bigger/better/faster/stronger than the female protagonist?

I keep reading book reviews by people I deem superior to me in literary taste, social consciousness, and basic coolness. They don't like the pop culture books that I enjoy and the reason that crops up with the most frequency is that the book is antifeminist in some way. And no, I am not talking about Twilight, although its popularity demonstrates a personal conviction of mine.

Evolution trumps social consciousness.

We are all descended from hunter-gatherer societies with division of labor based on biological necessities. Women bear children. Human children require a lot of time and attention, with one of the longest and most intensive juvenile periods in the animal kingdom. It might be possible, or even advisable, to be a single mother these days but for most of human history it would have been a very difficult prospect. I propose, therefore, that most women exhibit a genetic preference for a male who can provide and protect. This gives offspring the greatest chance at viability. It is a documented reproduction strategy called "sexual selection by female choice" and is most notable among species with concealed ovulation, or a fertile time that is not advertised to the male of the race.

Whether or not a gal wants children odds are good she will find her sex drive still dovetails with those traits her progenitors required.

Men who want the choicest females look for one who is likely to produce healthy offspring. i.e.: They like their ladies hot. While facial features and coloring vary by race, some indicators of "health," like figure, are nearly universal. An "ideal" female body shape, for example, demonstrates proportions that cross culture and race. The preferred ratio of a model's bust, hip, and thighs are the same on every continent. Except maybe Antarctica but there is no population to speak of there.

Then begins the demonstration of masculine desirability. This can be physical superiority but because we are social creatures other forms of power, such as wealth, can compensate. Hence, the "howcome men can get older and still be sexy" lament. Older men have amassed more wealth as a general rule. Nobody thinks the salt and pepper silver fox with food stamps is a catch. If he's driving a Mercedes, however, swoon.

I'm not saying this is universal or that we can't get off the reservation, just that it is already hardwired in a spectrum pattern with extremes at both ends. But it would go a long way towards explaining why we return, generation after generation, to stereotypes that most of us agree are outdated.

So, is it actually misogynistic to recognize these distinctions and stereotypes in our writing? I think no. Unoriginal, but not misogynistic. It crosses the line into anti-feminist when the characters are punished in some way for breaking out of traditional roles and I don't see that much in current fiction. Writing within a traditional role isn't the same thing as rejecting a non-traditional or even counter-culture one.

The biggest complaint about YA books is that most often the male character is the vampire, werewolf, supernatural whatever and the hapless damsel is either at his mercy or under his protection. In reality, the "supernatural" is just a crutch for "supermasculine." Most of the traits that come with the title are exaggerations of physical qualities we consider male: speed, strength, and sometimes aggression.

The uber masculine hero and the heroine who values strength and loyalty in her man are not going away because they lie at the center of the spectrum and appeal to the greatest number. Or lowest common denominator, if you want to look at it that way. As a value judgement, it seems harsh to hold it against society in general that we tend to look for our ideal mate in a romantic figure. We can stretch things a good bit- look at how many more of our heroines get to do a lot of thinking and even some saving (yay!) and how many emo vampires (boo!) are out there- but trying to reverse the role altogether and still produce a commodity that resonates is tricky business. No matter how much I tell myself I should, I really don't want to read the love story between the 98 pound weakling and She-Ra.

This is what the romance industry has known for years. It's also why they are growing while almost everyone else is not. The rare books that appeal to the mainstream without alienating the academics blend the lines but they don't completely erase them.

Observations from Salt Lake City

2009-11-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

Two thirds of the tightest high school trio ever united over the weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah. My friend Jen and I haven't seen each other since my wedding nine years ago and I have never met her children so we had some catching up to do. During my visit I got to:

See Salt Lake City, which I've never done. It's gorgeous.

Shock a table full of Mormons by ordering (and consuming) two large carafes of hot sake. Fortunately, Mormons are more polite than teetotaling Baptists and refrained from praying for me on the spot.

Watch Alabama beat LSU.

Read a great book (Soulless by Gail Carriger. Go get it. Right now. I paid for my copy, FTC.).

Make chicken and dumplings at high altitude. It actually does make a difference. Who knew?

Observe the largest selection of licorice I have ever encountered. Apparently, licorice is big with the Mormons. Of equal interest to me was that the licorice was all manufactured by the Amish.

Count bicycles. There are lots.

Hang out with Jen, one of the coolest people on the planet, and remind her that her soon to be ex made a classic mistake. He married a chick way cooler than he is.

Regretably, I did NOT get to do thing I wanted to do most. Make the ex's ears bleed. Jen prudently neglected to tell me when he stopped by the house to pick up the kids. My only other opportunity would have been when he dropped them off. Of course I wouldn't have reamed him in front of his kids but I could have cornered him at the curb while they were safely in the house.

**The series of events that promted my visit is catalogued here.

Observations on the Cheestastic Eighties vs. The Modern Era

2009-11-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

SyFy is running the 80's version of V since the updated one is coming to network television very soon. I loved the mini-series, but hey, I was in eighth grade and lacked sophistication. Catching it on the flip side of 2009 is just as good but for entirely different reasons. Reasons I'm certain do not represent the intentions of the original screenwriters. I find that upon reflection, V captured many wonderful eighties trends that were notable in other works.

198?: Women were equal to men. The gender neutral uniforms that fit the women much more snugly than their male counterparts demonstrate this fact.

2009: Women wear chick clothes because they want to look hot and that is just fine.

198?: No child was ever born whose parents understood him. Ever. In the eighties, parents sprung fully formed, with no childhood memories to lend empathy to their childrearing skills. The Breakfast Club said it best: "When you grow up, your heart dies." Even adult children bear the scars of the tumultuous parental/progeny relationship. They seek blue collar jobs that satisfy the soul rather than embrace the corporate ladder that consumes their materialistic progenitors.

2009: In YA fiction and entertainment, parents are well meaning but absent and bumbling. The modern teen may discuss his or her sex life with the extremely tolerant parent but probably prefers not to because of the ick factor. Youth today indulgently care for their parents who are hopeless outside the workplace. This is convenient when a girl with a policeman father has her boyfriend spend the night EVERY NIGHT.

198?: A midget who frolics each time a plane lands on the island is the height of tolerance and understanding. Good white people adopt black kids despite social pressure because, darn it, it's just the right thing to do. White people like "Benson" and "The Jeffersons" so race relations are good. Geeks haven't really entered the scene, just nerds. They are smart computer whiz kids with misunderstood poetic souls. Aside from the news and the AIDs crisis, homosexuality does not exist except as a cruel high school slur. ("I thought only pansies wore neckties." Anyone remember that gem?)

2009: Everybody has a gay best friend. The gay person is important and cooler than everyone else but not the lead. ( Will and Grace exception duly noted.) Lesbians are always bisexual and hot. Black people are also cooler than everyone else, sometimes the lead, but never the geek. Geeks can be cool but they must be quirky, caucasian, and routinely err in their fashion choices.

198?: Kids from the 'hood have good hearts and no opportunities until someone more privileged gives them a chance. Most people stereotype them and treat them badly.

2009: Erm, well, this one hasn't changed much.

198?: The villian is very attractive and beyond redemption unless they are a small town sherrif and then they are fat. They like to use phrases like "insipid fool" unless they are a small town sherrif and then they call everyone "boy."

2009: It isn't really fair to label someone. People have conflicts. Picking sides is arbitrary and judgmental. If the character is a demon, vampire, or werewolf, they are definitely not the bad guy.

Favorite stereotypes? Thoughts?

Caramel Sauce and Babies

2009-10-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

He smells like caramel.

I let them have caramel sauce with sliced apples for dessert. She got it in her hair and it clung through bath time. She smelled delicious and had the most adorable, sticky curls for bedtime. I'll deal with it tomorrow.

He looks like an angel when he sleeps. He's beautiful, the visage pregnant mothers the world over dream of while they wait. Hell on wheels awake, but so perfect now when the world is still and dark and he has finally given up the day. The only beauty he lacks in sleep is cornflower blue eyes that reveal every plot and mischief that crosses that hyperkinetic brain.

I wonder if angels really smell like caramel. If they don't, they should.

Midlife crisis

2009-10-09T16:54:00.001-07:00

Somthing's different. She isn't sure what it is, exactly, but equilibrium is gone. They've worked together for so long, toward the same objective. Things should be good. He's gotten what he wanted. Maybe it's her turn to work on herself.

It's a little scary that they cashed in their entire retirement for him to open his own law firm, but it's a calculated risk. They are near forty. If they wait any longer it will be too late.

Maybe they got married too young. So many of their friends at BYU got married at the same age, though, and they seem fine. Maybe she's just hit her midlife crisis. Suck it up, Jen. Deal with it. You've got three great kids and a husband who works hard.

Her therapist helps her reach the understanding that she is not the only one. Many women do not feel completely fulfilled as homemakers and caregivers. She's always been a runner, she keeps in shape and runs marathons with friends, but her brain is hungry. She would have gone to med school if she were younger, if there weren't three kids. When there was still time for that she was putting him through law school in New York. Then they moved to Boulder for his great job. He worked such long hours. If she were a med student or a resident neither of them would have had the time for their marriage, their growing family. She reads a lot.

I loved Boulder. I wish we'd never left.

But the siren call of Salt Lake City, a community of people who believe as they do, another great job, it was important to him. Their daughter is fourteen now. She'll be dating soon.

Salt Lake City is kind of fun. She remembers being in school. She wants that feeling again. Learning new things and building knowledge specific to a purpose.

"What do you need a job for? You have a great house and three kids, Jen. You have a responsibility to your family. You have plenty of outside interests. You do stuff with your friends, you take running trips and go to concerts. I make enough money that you don't need to work."

He doesn't understand it but he knows her mind is set. She always had an independent streak. It's largely the reason they've been in marriage counseling. Whatever. It's her midlife crisis. She starts nursing school.

Nursing school is a rush. School has changed so much! Everything is on computer now. Assignments get turned in online. There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with running. She misses running with D and her husband.

D and Brad keep running. They decide a vacation would be fun. The families can go together. Their six year old boys are best friends. The brief trip is a bright spot, a communion of families and a respite from study. Rejuvenating.

Back at home, though, things still aren't right. Equilibrium is gone. Is it really about nursing school? The kids are happy, supper gets cooked.

The August cell phone bill looks funny. There are hundreds of text messages to just one number. It's D's number.

Brad admits to "inappropriate involvement with D." Translated from lawyer to English it sounds like an affair but he swears it's not been physical. Like that makes it better. He agrees that the right thing to do is cut off contact. They take a trip, just the two of them. She's working hard to address his complaints, to use what she's learned in marriage counseling to fill whatever need he has. New York was fun, but in Paris she knows he's not really there.

They come home and she knows he's texting D. She confronts him. He nearly convinces her she is crazy. After all, she was the one with depression issues, right? In the end, though, he comes clean.

"I love her. I'm not giving her up. I'm leaving."

So he does. She puts his clothes out the back door for him to pick up in the morning and deadbolts the door. He's gone.

It's his midlife crisis. A sports car or hair plugs would have been cheaper. Whatever. She is done.

D is still living with her husband and two kids. Brad is living in his new house around the block.

Jen, well Jen is finally living.

Felicitous vs. Cantankerous

2009-09-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

Please excuse me just this once while I B.R.A.G. on my kids. We play lots of music, greatly varied, at home and both kids enjoy. We dance and shriek like banshees for about 30 minutes of each day. The two year old has gotten to what I like to call the "stoner" level of music appreciation:

"Like song, Mama!"

or

"Pretty!"

Now. The five year old. Oh, the five year old. The bane and joy of my existence, he is. Tonight, we started with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 Chorale (Ode to Joy). His response to the music?

"This is felicitous!"

After switching to Bach we spent a few minutes of picking out instruments on Brandenburg Concertos ("That's a flute! I hear violins!"). Then Toccata and Fugue ensues with its solemn organ tones.

"Mama, this one is cantankerous."

Can't spell 'em yet but he can sure use 'em in a sentence.

Thank you for your indulgence. I will try to return to more scholarly or adult themed (as in, if I'd never had kids I'd still care) topics later this week.

If I won the lottery

2009-09-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

The coolest thing about writers has got to be the "What would you do if you won the lottery?" response.

Everybody else, in ascending value judgement order:

1. "I'd quit my job tomorrow."
2. "I'd quit my job tomorrow and volunteer somewhere."
3. "I'd definitely keep my job." (But you totally know they wouldn't.)

But nobody ever says, "I'd get to work earlier and stay later since I would have the freedom to do so."

Writers, published, unpublished, more money than God, impoverished, brilliant, or kind of sucky:

"I'd write more."

Jacob have I loved...

2009-09-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

For most of my life I have related to Esau. Beloved by my parents, the firstborn, but all the blessings seemed heaped on my younger sibling. It was the trickiest part of Sunday School for me. I always felt bad for the wrong guy. Jacob was the hero of that story but I never got over thinking that Esau got gypped. I still think it is horribly unfair that Pharoah's heart was hardened instead of allowing him to relent and grant the Jews their freedom. He lost his son to the Angel of Death in the next plague of Egypt. Why? Another topic, another day.

Most of our youthful acquaintance will tell you that I'm the smart one but my sister is more fun, and prettier. And so funny! Strangely enough, no one seemed to realize that we were both insulted by the observation that things worked out so equitably what with me being gifted with intellect and my sister with beauty. And just for the record, she's every bit as smart as me, however smart that might be.

We share many of the same gifts and weaknesses. We're both stubborn to the point of self-harm. We both have a sense of compassion that is great enough to cause us considerable discomfort. We feel sorry for convicted criminals who totally had it coming. Neither one of us would change the outcome but we do feel bad for the jerk who swindled all those people or fled the scene instead of calling an ambulance. We would both hock an organ or a car title to pay for a dog who needed surgery. Maybe not even our own dog.

These days, my sister is going through a rough patch. Long story short, she is reaping consequences far, far beyond what she has ever sown. She does not deserve the $#i% that is raining down on her right now. But she is not taking it lying down, curling up and quitting, giving up. She is tough as nails.

In our casual acquaintance, she probably still seems like Jacob. In her world, she probably feels like Esau. But here's the cool thing about Esau. Jacob and their mother conspired against him to steal his birthright. His mother and his twin. But Esau had the strength and confidence to greet his brother with delight after all the years and all that had passed between them because they were still brothers, first and foremost.

The things I have that my sister wants, I share with her. The things that she has that I want, she shares with me. It is likely that neither one of us will ever have what the other does, but it doesn't matter so much. Because if one of us has it, we both do.

I'm proud of her. I'm proud to share the same blood with someone as amazing as she is. I'm proud when other people admire her and I can say, "That's my sister."

Some days, both of us are Esau. But I think really both of us are Jacob. We both inherited the strength of our forefathers and one sister a piece. We are blessed.

Anniversary: High Points of a Marriage

2009-09-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

Be wary. This will be long since said marriage has many high points.

9 years ago today the flower girl rolled backwards down the stairs while my beloved and I exchanged our wedding vows.

Anniversary 1: We celebrated in our Lilliputian Atlanta shoebox of an apartment. He fixed filet with cognac and mustard sauce and we ate year old, thawed wedding cake that was surprisingly delicious. My sister called us from Alabama in tears because her dog had suffered a critical spinal injury that ended up putting her in debt for quite some time. That boy I married was not one bit perturbed at having his delicious and romantic dinner interrupted by the crisis since he gets that our dogs enjoy a status damn near our actual genetic progeny, at least in my family.

After Year One I don't remember any specific anniversary, just that we always say "Happy Anniversary" to each other. I can't tell you how grateful I am for this. Neither one of us feels the pressure to make EVERY ONE just as special as our wedding day. We aren't always observant of birthdays or Mother's or Father's Day, either. I had the good fortune (or wisdom) to marry a man who thinks like I do. It's the sentiment and the occasional big gesture that count. You can't pull off the big gestures with regularity. But there have been a couple of knockouts during our relationship and the momentum wave carries you a long way.

First Christmas (dating, not married): Now Dear Hubby wrangled a series of three hardbacks by a man named Ferrol Sams (Run With the Horsemen, The Whisper of the River, and When All the World Was Young) for me. Autographed to me, complete with references to each book in the autograph, by the author. It were truly a fortuitous series of events that led to this coups but Damn! It was perfect. The books are universally loved by my family and left my sister's much wealthier lawyer boyfriend baffled at how nobody, including my sister, was impressed with his gift to her of half carat diamond earrings. That was the year she came up with the following axiom:

"You can spend a lot of money on a gift or a lot of thought. If you don't spend a lot of thought, you'd better spend a lot of money."

Eventually, she fired the lawyer boyfriend with lots of money and I married the student boyfriend without any. She was on to something with that observation.

After we'd been married a couple of years, That Boy and I took an amazing trip to Chicago for me to run the marathon there. Great food. One of the best trips I have ever taken. My mom went with us and since everybody loves my mom, including That Boy, it didn't cramp our style at all. In fact, it was even more fun.

He bought tickets to the Alabama vs. Tennessee game for my birthday that same year. Home game for my cherished Crimson Tide. The outcome was mixed. It was two weeks after the trip to Chicago and you know what they say about distance running and fertility. Well, I took a chance that weekend. The football game had four overtimes with the forces of evil finally taking the edge to give Tennessee the win.

Shortly after that trip, I fixed rack of lamb and bought a weensy bottle of champagne for us to tell him we were expecting for the first time. He was thrilled, I was terrified.

One two year old boy and some crazy medical complications later, I miscarried twins. We were disappointed but okay.

A couple of months later I bought a nice Pinot and fixed rack of lamb again, but I had to kick his mother out of the house after dinner to achieve the same state of expectancy the second time. That one stuck.

Shortly after the night I had to kick my mother-in-law out, my now husband turned 40. He celebrated his birthday surrounded by friends and family at the most ridiculously deluxe lakehouse to grace the southeastern US. It had an elevator. In addition to the heated pool (late November birthday), hot tub, fire pit, full size keg refrigerator, pool table, pinball machine, piano, and two kitchens, everyone had their own bathroom. A couple of people bought plane tickets to attend.

Each guest received their own copy of the cookbook to which they had all contributed recipes, stories, and photos. (My husband is a bang-up cook.) There were commemorative cooking aprons, as well. The keg refrigerator housed an actual keg and many, including the birthday boy, awoke on Saturday with substantial hangovers from any of a number of liquors including single malt scotch that populated the full bar. We had Italian one night and friggin' awesome barbeque the next, although I was too nauseated to enjoy either since I was pregnant with baby number two at the time. It was a surprise party and that boy I married had no idea until I got him there on Friday night under false pretense. The entire shindig represented a nearly a year of planning and the ultimate pinnacle of my creative forces.

Tonight we had dinner with our five year old boy and two year old little girl who both agree their dad is the fun one. Mom is kind of scary. We had chicken and dumplings. True to form, the Princess wore more than she ate. But That Boy I Married picked up a bottle of champagne on the way home so the chicken and dumplings seemed a little less Middle America boring than usual. And he also stopped at Target and bought me the softest blanket ever. EVER. I'm always cold.

I'm a lucky, lucky woman.

Insomnia

2009-09-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

I've concluded that staying up all night long (literally...not sleeping at all before the first restless wails of a child herald daybreak and hungry children) to write is VASTLY preferable to staying up all night long with restless, undirected energy that is borne of dissatisfaction with the pace of my book but no clear direction how to fix it. It's fixable. I know it is. I just can't back away from it enough to see the solution.

I'm closing in. Little insights strike while I'm driving, in the shower, vacuuming, whatever. Some of them break my heart because they involve taking a hatchet to a chapter I just loved when I wrote it and still love to read. But in the big picture, it has to go. If 3000 words can be pared down to 300, then it was too many damn words.

But hey, I'll always have my hard drive, right? Me and my many-worded lovers can meet for private trysts anytime. If I'm ever famous, I'll have a ton of bonus material to post on the website. Boo-yah!

Moved...and starting Kindergarten

2009-09-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Mama Bear reared her ugly, roaring head today.

Hatchling #1 started Kindergarten yesterday in our fair new city. School started here back in August...way back, like the beginning...so he is breaking in to an already established playground hierarchy.

Background info:

Said progeny is descended from bellicose vikings on my side and germans on his father's-pretty much the same thing. He is very tall. Being a tall five year old, he is also skinny, though not painfully so. His birthday is late June so he barely qualifies for the age cutoff for kindergarten, making him one of the youngest in his class, but he's already reading so it seemed counterproductive to hold him back a year for age equality.

He's a little athlete with a well-developed sense of justice. He's also the youngest member of the youngest class on the school playground.

He came home today with a vicious scratch on the back of one hand. Turns out, a bigger kid grabbed him and was holding his hands (a smaller scratch bedecorates the other) and Bambino wasn't having it so he pulled his hands back to himself. Good for him. He did EXACTLY the right thing. He stood up for himself without hitting back or being a weinie tattletale.

We had a little chat about bullies. You don't have to put up with anyone putting their hands on you if you don't want them to. If they do, you tell them forcefully to stop. You have permission to defend yourself. If you need help, get a teacher but try to resolve it yourself first.

Little man tells me these kids are bigger and step on the littler ones. On their heads, arms, whatever they can stomp. My guy feels guilty for not interfering when they pick on someone else. Wow. I remember that feeling. What a conundrum as a mother. So that boy I married and I had a talk about how to handle this. We concluded the following, in descending level of importance:

1. Our child's physical safety is priority number one.
2. We want to instill (or reinforce, in his case) his right to stick up for himself.
3. We also want him to speak up for others if the situation warrants.

Now. How do we reconcile 2&3 with 1? That boy I married wants me to talk with Little Man's teacher. I don't want to be that mom...not yet. I don't want to mark my child as the kid with the overprotective mother, especially if he can fight his own battles or learn to. He obviously has some sense of self preservation or he would have intervened when others got picked on. I need to help him find the line that when crossed means he needs to go for help.

For tonight, I told him he did the right thing. I told him that when someone else gets picked on he should stand up for them if he thinks he can. And I told him that when I was little, and his dad, too, sometimes we didn't say anything either. Because we had the sense to be scared.

I hope that as he gets older he will find the strength to help someone weaker and the creativity to do it even if he feels outmanned. I did, somehow. I was the bully target for over three long, miserable years and I still never suffered the torture of someone weaker than me. It is a violation, an abomination. I'd rather be hated than live with knowing I should have spoken up, even when I was twelve.

In the meantime I hope my child's mother will refrain from the instinct to find the little $#8#s who are doing this and tell them in hushed tones, below the hearing of rational adults, that they might be bigger than my kid but I am bigger than them. Their mamas might not care if they act this way but I do. I can find them. I can make them sorry if they don't stop.

Did you take your medication?

2009-09-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

Be forewarned. This post is destined to trend whiny.

We just moved to a new city. Or rather we are approaching the end of a move to a new city. I loved where we lived before but am delighted to live less than twenty minutes from a grocery store and in a city large enough to boast actual bookstores. (Well, our last little burg did have one bookstore. Sonshine. Inspirational reading. I never went since I own a Bible already and prefer to go straight to the source if I am seeking spiritual guidance. Self-help in any form, even non-religious but especially theologically based, is an anathema. Don't argue with me about this...you have no chance of changing my mind.)

Moving is hard work. I've done it plenty of times before and you would absolutely not believe the sheer quanitity of crap I can lift, carry, and haul. If I were a superhero my identity would be Antgirl: the woman who can carry up to 100 times her own body weight if it means one less trip from the car!

This time is different. I can't lift as much. And I punk out half-way through to my goal for the day. I just have to stop and lay down for a while. My legs swell up and the skin feels like sausage casings until I raise my feet long enough to let the swelling go down. I used to get more done than anybody but my mother and this time around I feel like everyone else is carrying my weight. That boy I married has done his share and about 75% of mine. I harbor the secret fear that he is looking at me askance because he thinks I've grown lazy. But then he asks:

"Have you found a nephrologist here yet? Are you taking your medication?"

If you have ever had a chronic medical condition or taken long term meds then you will understand there is no phrase more annoying than "are you taking your medication?" It is rife with implied criticism. The possible interpretations are limitless:

You aren't taking proper care of yourself.(Admittedly, I can do better in this arena.)

If you were taking better care of yourself you would be as good as everybody else.

And my personal favorite: You just aren't what you used to be. And the difference is notable.

I am not on the verge of kidney failure. I am nowhere near as sick as life insurance companies think I am. Or as I will likely be at some point in the future. My blood pressure and lipid panels are good but my body can't seem to keep enough iron to carry sufficient oxygen for my robust energy requirements. I lose enough protein through my kidneys that I could eat steak every day and still not break even.

It drives me NUTS. Right now. Not even thinking about what this means for my future. I hate the feeling that my body needs me to put some chemical into it to slow down the ambiguous progression of a ridiculously obscure illness that has no cure and that one of my children may have inherited. Oh, and did I mention that it also causes deafness? Seems convenient, if constant chatter frays your nerves. The noise, however, is not yet diminished. I just don't understand what you're saying half the time. If there is background noise and I can't see your lips moving as a crutch then odds are good I am getting a garbled version of whatever you're asking me.

Don't even think about talking to me if you are standing with your back to me or walking in front of me. I speak English, Spanish, and Redneck fluently and can't understand any of them reliably if you don't speak directly to me under ideal conditions. In bad conditions you sound just like Charlie Brown's teacher. Delightful.

Ah. My cankles have reduced in diameter to discernible ankles again. Time to get back to work.

In Defense of Literary Stepchildren

2009-08-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

OR: Why does everybody hate adverbs and passive voice so damn much?

These are two hard and fast rules in "good writing." Adverbs and passive voice are lazy, sloppy, unprofessional, and will ruin your work even though they are grammatically correct.

Okay, who came up with this arbitrary prejudice? I can guess where the antagonism towards adverbs started and it probably is rooted in lazy writing. Observe:

"I want you now, my darling," Fabio whispered breathlessly.
"We can't! O my lover, the evil Stephan will kill you," Victoria murmured fearfully.
"I will defend you. You are mine," he said fiercely.
"Oh, yes. I am yours, lover. Take me now!" she said recklessly.

Many dialogue tags and adverbs to describe the dialogue. BORING. And trite. They should be saying and doing things that cue the reader into the mood. But really, there are only eight parts of speech. Do we have to engage in the wholesale slaughter of one of them just because lazy writers use it as a crutch? That's bad writing. It shouldn't be contending for publication anyway. Meanwhile, a decent story with better writing is getting axed by an agent or editor whose anti-adverb policy is Pavlovian. Once you've trained your eye to look for them they are all that you see.

To adverb or not to adverb? It's basically (uh-oh! adverb!)Faulkner vs. Hemingway. And dammit, I like Faulkner better. But clearly (oops...another adverb!) there is a place for both.

Then there are passive voice and being verbs. Essentially, the subject of the sentence is acted upon or just IS something instead of performing an action. Most of the time a sentence can be restructured to better effect by eliminating passive voice. I get that. For example:

I was hit in the skull with the baseball.
The baseball careened into my skull with bone-crushing force.

OR:

The house was delapidated, with paint peeling like willow bark and a porch that sagged with years and the burdens of the family within.

Paint peeled like willow bark from the delapidated structure and the front porch, exhausted with age, sagged in its center.

But why can't it be okay to just state a condition every now and then? Like:

I was defeated.

It's short, sweet, and to the point. If you want more oomph, sub "beaten like a red-headed stepchild" or whatever. Sprinkle in an adverb like "utterly" as long as you're breaking all the rules. But if the narrator got theyself beat, a brilliant descriptive sentence that pops off the page doesn't feel the mood.

I'm paying a lot of attention to passive voice these days and some of my favorite books use a lot of it. I suspect this is because the authors are storytellers more than writers and spend less time worrying about passive voice than communicating the mood or state of the character. At any rate, the reading public is quite forgiving of passive voice regardless of what professionals think of it. It certainly appears with much more frequency in the classics. Probably because they were written before t.v. and movies and ADD convinced us all that everything has to be action or we will be bored by it.

Since I am not famous nor do I think I am the next Faulkner, I continue to scour my work with an eye toward eliminating adverbs and passive voice. I gotta tell you, though, sometimes it doesn't make any difference to the story. I wonder if the pendulum will ever swing back the other way? I miss adverbs. Passive voice doesn't bug me. And don't even get me started on the death of the backstory.

Why Is Church Funny?

2009-07-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to church with my mom to hear Don Piper speak. He is the fellow who wrote "90 Minutes in Heaven." The short version of his story: killed when an 18 wheeler hit him head on in excess of 60 mph. Declared dead by four different sets of EMTs. Dead. Definitely dead. 90 minutes and lots of prayer later, he was singing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and somebody was telling the police officer, "Hey, the dead guy in the red car is singing."

I'm not going to weigh in on the tale or the religious implications. I haven't reviewed x-rays or medical charts or verified eye witness accounts and don't feel particularly driven to do any of these things. Draw your own conclusions. Aside from the amazing personal account I left church with one other burning question.

Why is church funny?

Am I just by nature sacreligious? I don't think God is funny, although I'm pretty sure He has a sense of humor. But honestly, I cannot get through an entire church service of any type without stifling laughter at the most inappropriate times. Yesterday, for example, I almost lost it when the internalized narrator noted in a dry voice that the soloist bore a disconcerting resemblance to BTK. Perverse, I know.

If you could get inside my head at a funeral you might be diagnosed with grief induced hysteria. My own wedding witnessed shudders of silent laughter that began with me and spread to include my sister and the very dignified, dedicated pastor performing the ceremony. (The flower girl rolled backwards down the stairs with a series of thuds that sounded for all the world like a bowling ball. In my defense it was pretty funny.)

I think it is all the dignity at church that makes me laugh. People are just not dignified. I sit there in the pew and contemplate the nature of God, the failings of humanity, the remarkable notion of redemption, and wonder how many other people there are hungover or thinking about lunch. Stomachs growl, the guy next to me in the pew has killer garlic breath and sings with too much gusto, kids who are too old for the children's service squirm, we all sweat or shiver because one octogenarian power-hungry harpy of a church secretary controls the thermostat. No single place in the world brings to focus the foibles of humanity like church.

I have many friends who no longer attend church (or synagogue or whatever). They cite a host of reasons for their lapse but chief among them is that church is full of hypocrites. Naturally church is full of hypocrites. How can you have hypocrisy without standards that you value and fail? It's really the whole point of church, if you think about it. A place for all us hypocrites to get together and try (or pretend) to be better than we are.

It's the dichotomy, I suppose. The incongruous juxtaposition of the beauty of spirit and selflessness with the inescapable reality of corporeal form. That being said I really should go to church more. If nothing else, it's good for a laugh. And if the sermon takes too long I usually leave with a really good idea for a book.

Yesterday's service taught me one very important thing about myself. I do NOT want to get run over by an 18 wheeler in order to achieve publishing success. God does speak to us, even if we laugh too much during service.

A Day Off

2009-07-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a public service message. To be more accurate, a good old fashioned grumble session.

There is a large disparity between my husband's definition of "a day off" and mine. Before I continue, let it be known that in reality I have no cause for complaint. None. I married a wonderful man who is a great dad. He works hard, comes home and plays with the kids, does more laundry than I do, mows the lawn, takes out the garbage, and very seldom leaves the toilet seat in the upright position. He's a jewel.

That being said, I need a day off. A weekend would be better. For every gift giving occasion over the last two years this question has been posited:

"What would you like for your birthday/anniversary/Mother's Day/whatever?"

The answer has been the same each and every time.

"I would like for you to take the kids and go away."

I'm such a romantic. But seriously, I would like a whole weekend to not hear a whine, wipe up juice, change a diaper, or blow bubbles in the front yard. And read and write with NO GUILT.

The thing is, that boy I married often takes one or the other of los bambinos somewhere for an extended period of time on Saturday afternoons which cuts my responsibility load considerably. Occasionally, however, I am promised a day off. Last weekend he made noises about actually taking the kids to see his mother this weekend. I had palpitations.

Somehow or another, that plan faded or fizzled or maybe he was just speculating out loud. I'm not really sure. It was quite a tease, though. Then he floated the idea that maybe he would take the older (my trouble maker) with him on Friday night and Saturday to do some work on the house we are selling. That one never came to fruition either. Today he generously (and bravely) started out with a plan to manage the kids all day and let me put my feet up.

I know that in theory it's the thought that counts. I do. And he was thinking of me. BUT. If everyone is here, it's not a day off. I can hear them when they have tantrums. I feel guilty that I'm not pitching in. (Not quite guilty enough to ascend from our cavelike basement.) And when things get really hairy I have to pitch in because frankly the kids are a little more scared of me. So. In the interest of well meaning spouses everywhere who promise their significant other the day off I am posting the conditions that must be met in order for it to qualify:

1. You must actually go away.

2. If you say you will go away by 9 am, you must comply. No claims of a 9 am departure and then dilly-dallying around until 1. At that point it's naptime for at least one of the bambinos who must then stay home and that is NOT a day off. Every second that dear hubby and kids are still around is on MY time. I get edgier than a two dollar hooker looking for a crack fix while I watch the clock and wonder when everybody is really going to clear out and the house will be quiet.

3. Do not come home early unless it is a bona fide emergency. In our case, a complete melt down of the five year old qualifies. I might want a day off but I can be reasonable and handling him in a public setting when he is in full frontal disintegration mode is just too much to ask. Just please call and let me know as soon as you do that you'll be home early. Otherwise, if I think I have until 6 pm to play with my belly button I really need until 6 pm. If I don't get it I feel ripped off. Shortchanged. Hostile.

4. It is better if the day off is not a surprise. Half the fun of the elusive day off is knowing it's coming and looking forward to it. It's better than jewelry and highly likely to gain you favors of a carnal nature.

That's it. Pretty simple, really. If I ever get a real day off I will let you know. But I won't blog about what I did that day because I guarantee you that to anyone besides me it will be dreadfully, blissfully boring.

ONE LAST DRINK: Clarity of Night Flash Fiction Entry

2009-07-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

ONE LAST DRINK

I greatly desired the man’s death, even imagined it; he could not be suffered to live. You, who so well know me, know it was not covetousness, as my wife ventured to suggest- that she should utter such against her own husband! Her slander against me proved the poison in the man’s deranged poem that haunted and taunted, incessant, unceasing.

I had his acquaintance years prior but dreamed not of meeting again. Such simplicity, such justice in the path set before me as my eyes knew him in the street. He wore the greyness that came on him in his younger days, marking the madness consuming his soul. Madness he inflicted upon us all with his writings. Nevermore. You must understand my course predetermined. What just man, sane man, could deny it? Not you, certainly.

He had a weakness, this supposed genius of our age.

"Mr. Poe! Mr. Poe! How luckily met!" He could not guess my revulsion at touching the vessel of such insanity as dwelt within him.

"Reynolds?"

"The very same! Join me. You must not walk alone on Election Day in Baltimore. Here we are at Gunner’s Hall. Come, have a drink. I’ll see you safely home."

"I should not. I am-I should not."

"You cannot deny me the pleasure of raising a glass together in celebration of your accomplishments. It is many years passed. Come, one drink."

"Ahh. One last drink." So you see, it truly was he, not I, that chose his manner of death.

Writing

2009-07-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

I want something new to write. It's more fun than editing. Vastly. I still love the book...adore it, want to make out with it and have its baby, but I miss seeing a whole scene of something new in my head and being completely checked out of reality until I can write it down.

Surfing blogs of writerly and industry types I have become a huge Chirs Eldin fan. Those of you who are just supportive friends of mine might not have heard of her but I think you will. I swear she's channeling for Judy Blume. Think "Superfudge" for the 21st Century. Anyway, she plugged a writing contest on ANOTHER blog, Clarity of Night, that I'm all geeked up about. Cliff notes version of the rules follow:

1. Write no more than 250 words
2. Inspired by posted photo.

The photo (Seriously, go look it up if you want to see it but I am too lazy to post here) is a glass of something that looks like claret and a hint of smoke wafting around the base.

I wasn't going to enter but I got struck by lightening (figuratively of course) over the weekend with a really cool concept and decided to flesh it out. It turned out pretty well and holy crap, it was so fun! And completely different in voice and concept from what I've been writing. The entries in previous contests have been crazy good so I am not holding my breath to place against that kind of competition but I don't think that next year I'll look back on my entry and cringe. I'll post here tomorrow after I submit it.

I have another fun little germ of an idea rolling around waiting to ripen, as well. I'd better edit faster before it takes on corporeal form and dominates my life to the exclusion of all else...

I hope writing continues to be this fun after I start sending queries.

Different, Like the Rest of Us

2009-07-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm "different." The phrase "You are NOT right!" has been directed at me with remarkable frequency. It's a little strange, really, since on the surface I look like a stereotype. Thirtysomething, married, one boy, one girl, two dogs. We worry about money, elections, where our kids will go to school, our parents getting older. We're just like everybody else. And when people tell me "You're not right" it's usually because I have elucidated a universal truth that no one else wants to 'fess up. My biggest dirty little secret? Every single day I count the minutes until the kids' bedtime so I am done being a mom that day. Except it isn't really a secret since I'll tell anyone. Even a social worker.

The thing is the stuff I will admit to is usually stuff everybody else feels, at least some of the time. You know how I know this? Bestsellers. Chick lit is rife with stereotypes like me. The moms are overwhelmed, trying to balance work and kids, sometimes disappointed with where they are as opposed to where they thought they would be at their current age. If nobody else felt this way no one would buy these books. The characters would be impossible to relate to. In real life I am surrounded by the grown up version of Pollyanna. Everyone I know talks about how they are so grateful for their wonderful kids and they say prayers of gratitude all day every day for their perfect, blessed life.

I don't believe them. I KNOW that they all get tired of wiping peanut butter off the TV and crayola off the walls. I KNOW that when no one is looking sometimes they yell at their kids. For no good reason other than that they are tired and the kids are being kids. I KNOW they sometimes let the kids watch too many cartoons just so they can get something done. Or maybe just so they can take a nap. Sometimes, after I admit these things to a shocked group of classroom mothers, a few of them admit it too.

I don't typically gravitate to chick lit because I like my characters to be more exceptional than I am. Better. More. Maybe they overcome bigger problems than I face (or ever hope to) or have some incredible talent that I wish I had. But it's nice to know they pee in the shower despite their amazing, superhuman gifts. Still, part of escaping my life involves reading about things I don't get to actually do.

Gritty realism is not my forte as a person-who-writes-things-but-does-not-refer-to-herself-as-a-writer. My life is full of it. I can't go three days running from bad guys in the woods and still be interested in making out with my boyfriend because frankly, I would stink. A lot. In a book the delightful man who captures the heroine's heart would be entranced by her musky scent. Since I deal with BO and dandruff all the time anyway I don't really want to write about it. Or read about it.

So what it boils down to is I like to read and write things that would never happen to me. Or anyone else. But I still want to know that the character is scared of something, proud of herself, or embarrassed sometimes. Different, but the same as the rest of us.

(Just for the record, though, I really am different. I'm downright odd. It's okay...I'm good with it.)

**Addendum:

How's this for gritty realism? Within 30 minutes of posting the five year old stops up a toilet, overflows it, and steps into the playroom announcing he did wash his hands with soap AND wiped his heinie. (In five-year-old vernacular this is code for he did neither of these things.) While he is squirming back into his underwear I notice a poop stain on the carpet. A full seven or eight feet from the bathroom. It is the only one and defies explanation. No poop on hands or feet (that I can see) and no other stain indicating a trail of any kind. Dogs are outside. No idea how mystery stain manifested. Five year old to the bathtub and out comes the carpet cleaner and scrubber. You can't tell me all those other moms would be singing psalms and hymns of grateful praise right now.

What I've learned (not) on the Internet

2009-06-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Summer vacation proceeds with crushing, time sucking, intellect devouring inexorability. My progeny demand childhood memories worthy of, well, childhood. Spending all my time writing and surfing blogs about writing seems to fall short of my own fond memories of summer so I did the responsible, motherly thing and took them to Gaga's house for a week at the beach and to Grandmore's house for another two weeks full of day camp, slip-and-slide, ice cream, and swimming lessons. It's killing me. I'm pretty sure it's killing the grandmothers, too. But the kids are having a good time and bear mosquito bites, bruises, and skinned knees to prove it.

My forced adventures in maternal obligation have left me bereft of internet connection and time to use it even if I had reliable access. I've been scanning blogs and catching as catch can on agent postings. In the two week sabbatical I'm shocked to discover that nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed in the world of publishing. Nathan Bransford was sick for about a week but he's feeling better and remains his kindhearted, good-natured self. Janet Reid continues to make me laugh out loud with acerbic observations about people who just don't know any better and perhaps don't actually know anything. Editorrents explores the change in mood by using the phrase "was gone" in lieu of "wasn't there." Writers who comment continue to lament the state of publishing today and the absurdity of trying to pick only books that will sell. All fun to read and prone to induce occasional moments of trepidation when I ask myself if I would ever do something so idiotic as whatever is the most recent transgression trend of newbie queriers the world over but nothing really new. And truth be told, I emphatically would not do any of the things these kind hearted educators of unpublished writers warn against. My biggest stumbling block remains producing a book (and query) good enough to capture an agent's interest.

What have I been doing with this unexpected windfall of free time? (Free time being defined as the hours between 9:00 PM and 8:00 AM when the fruit of my loins can reliably be expected to sleep.) I've engaged in an outright orgy of reading and writing. I haven't had this much fun since I decided THE BOOK was finished enough to start researching how to get it published. I think I might ride this restricted internet trend a little while longer...

Why Do I Want to Publish This Book?

2009-06-04T06:21:00.000-07:00

Over and over I read cautionary tales posted by authors and agents about how long it takes to get published. The fifth book seems to be the magic formula for a lot of authors...that's the one they finally had success with because they kept writing and kept learning and finally got good enough to write something publishable. They look back on their earlier efforts with indulgent affection but they know that the agents who rejected them were right to do so.

Here's my problem. I love this book. I didn't include any overt references but it was inspired by some closely held personal beliefs that are dear to me. I truly don't believe I'll write a story I like better than the one I'm working on now. That doesn't mean I'm a one trick pony (maybe I am) but I've already written another book that was fun to write and I might go back to later but it really isn't as good or compelling as this book. The story is there, the characters are well developed, the length is right, and the writing is coming up to snuff with polishing. I want to get my baby prettied up enough that other people can love it, too.

It has not been my life long dream to be a professional writer and I can honestly say that this did not start out as a quest for publication. It was just a story that captured my imagination and turned out well enough for ambition to bite me. It's a good story. I'm terrified that since this story is the one that popped fully formed into my head like Aphrodite springing from the foam of the sea that I lack the technical skill to give it the chance it deserves.

I don't want to just get a book published. I want to get THIS book published.

Fan Fiction and Other Things...

2009-06-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

So now that I'm cyberstalking agents trying to figure out whom to query and how to tailor their letters I frequently stumble across frightening, distressing blogs and stories on the internet. A couple of my pie in the sky choices have agented some high profile authors and books (hey, shoot for the moon, right?) and are obviously being stalked by lots of other wannabes.

Like me, many of them blog.

I have an unofficial personal blog policy of not naming names. It could be distressing if the named ever read it and besides, once it's out there I can't take it back. So without naming names I feel free to say that there is some really bad stuff out there. And it's getting sent to agents I want to query. I know, objectively, (people who know me will tell you I'm pretty good at being objective, even if it means taking criticism) that what I write is better than much of what I'm reading. Not just grammatically. I found one today that actually posted fan fiction on characters I'd read. It was painful. Trite, cliched, and clearly intended to mimic the voice of the author but without success. I cringed, literally cringed, while reading it. The poster was obviously proud of the effort and has written a book they want to submit to my dream agent. Said dream agent must get a ton of really bad submissions.

This should be a comfort. But it is not. I'm doing the same thing a gazillion other wannabes are doing and we're flooding the market. If I were an agent trying to slog through fifty queries in between doing work for actual clients my eyes would bleed. How does it not all run together? What on earth could I put in my query letter to let them know that I am not one of those people? The answer: absolutely nothing. All I can do is make it clean, to the point, and not gushy. And hope something about my query attracts the reader's attention enough to prompt further investigation.

There is some really good stuff out there, too, don't get me wrong. It's just demoralizing to share ambition with people who obviously think their work is just as good as anybody's when it definitely isn't. The implication is obvious. What if, in truth, I AM one of those people? And if I'm not how will an agent ever know?

Too bad they don't grade on a curve.

What People Will Say on the Internet

2009-05-28T20:39:00.000-07:00

Trolling blogs in the last few weeks I have been shocked by some of the posts.

Most of the blogs I follow these days are agent/editor blogs run by people in the industry of publishing. I'm interested in how the business works and whatever free insight I might gain from these folks who spend part of their business day sharing information with people who know little to nothing.

I'm not so very naive as to think there's nothing in it for them. Every aspiring author with any initiative is likely to stumble onto an agent blog that offers advice on how, when, and whom to query. And guess who they'll query first? The people they feel they have some connection with through a blog. Good agent bloggers are likely to get first shot at new, fresh authors just coming up. A blessing and a curse, I'm sure.

Nonetheless, other agents who DON'T blog are likely reading these posts as well. And editors and publishers. A few people post anonymously but many use something resembling a real name. The ones using their real names are most likely doing so in the hope that their name will be recognized when they send queries. The things they post, however, are equally memorable. If I were an agent I would remember particularly vitriolic observations about how agents, publishers, and the entire industry in general are abusing writers in every way and publish nothing but tripe designed to sell to the lowest common denominator. I might even remember the name of the poster if it were frequent or harsh enough.

At any rate, the authors of these blogs don't get paid any extra for their time, insight, or the questions they answer. And some of the questions seem way out of line. For example, if an agent offers free advice on how to evaluate a new agent and whether or not to consider signing with them, it seems over the top to ask the blogging agent for a list of new agents who might be good. You are essentially asking them to send you to their direct competition. I've been in sales for a long time. I never minded questions about my competitors and always did my best to answer honestly but it flew all over me if a customer asked me to recommend one. I would always direct them to the internet. I never felt obligated to make it easier for them to take their business elsewhere.

Some of the comments are just plain mean. They attack others who post on the blog with aspersions on their intellect, understanding of the industry, intentions, and personal preferences. I don't like mean people. They make me mad. And then there are the ones who get upset over things like a daily blog posting late. Seriously? Someone who is doing something not in their job description that makes my effort to learn about the industry easier posts their daily blog an hour or so later than usual and they get complaints? Because it's inconvenient to the work schedule of a blog follower?

Mostly these people are friendly, curious, and willing to learn or share what they know. But a few of them are way more unhinged than I am. I can't imagine they are serious about getting published. But if they are, karma is a bitch. And the internet is forever...

Traps

2009-05-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

There seem to be lots of traps out there for aspiring authors. I'm falling into them with alarming frequency. I will enumerate them to the best of my ability here.

Trap #1: Researching the publishing industry turns into a monster time suck because of all the great blogs. These are writers, agents, and publishers. They are literary. They can turn a phrase pretty damn well. And they're often funny, which is like catnip for me.

Trap #2: Reading all these blogs with advice for aspiring authors makes the whole thing seem hopeless. Lists of reasons queries get rejected, manuscripts get rejected, common mistakes new authors make, how important it is to polish your MS but DON'T LOSE YOUR VOICE! So it has to be highly standardized so it won't stand out but it had better stand out. This sends me combing through the MS in a panic looking for all the things they say you can't do if you want to get published. I would rather go through sorority rush at Ole Miss with a great big zit and fake leather shoes than query.

"Do I have too many dialogue tags?" she said, worry clouding her expression.

Trap #3: I've read published books that sell well that I don't think are as good as my book.

Of course I have. I made up my book. I got to put in all the stuff I like and leave out the stuff I hate. If I can't develop my own fantasy world to my liking then I have a real problem. It's like having imaginary friends who won't play with you.

Trap #4: All the people that post on blogs sound really serious about what they're writing. Maybe they are way better than me. But the really serious ones hate the books that sell well. (Except Stephen King. He seems to be the only best seller who is sacred to aspiring authors. They will eviscerate anyone else. I hope people one day hate me as much as they hate Stephenie Meyer. If people hate me that much then I can buy an island or something.)

Trap #5: I might as well give up now because I live smack in the middle of nowhere and have two small kids. Writer's conferences are not an option. I don't have a website for my book (and won't in the near future), have no idea how to go about creating a book trailer (I know. A trailer for a book. Who knew?), I'm not a viral internet marketing buzz genius, and I have no desire to Tweet. I'll never make it.

Trap #6: Walk around in circles worrying about Traps 1-5 while I should be editing my manuscript.

I guess the thing that has me the most freaked out is the element of luck in the industry. I am the unluckiest person you will ever meet. I don't gamble because I know with absolute certainty that I just gave the dealer five dollars. I won't win it back. I am Murphy's Law incarnate. It seems so futile to send out queries when I know that luck plays a part.

On the other hand, maybe I'm way overdue for some good luck.

Editing

2009-05-22T02:50:00.000-07:00

Another aspiring author who's doing what I'm doing...blogging his "newbie" experience, just wrote a post about editing and how much he hates it. I was very relieved to find this is not unique to me. Two words:

It sucks.

But why? For me, it's a couple of reasons. I made a couple of major no-no mistakes in my original draft. A lot of my book takes place in my main character's head so there were large chunks of story exposition with no action or dialogue. I'm fine with that as a reader but agents hate it. Because editors hate it. Since it's their job to know what readers like I'm guessing other readers hate it. So there were sections of my book I really liked that had to be complete do-overs. There's also the tricky "If it doesn't forward the plot, cut it" rule. That one is tough because sometimes there is a detail or conversation that develops a character or relationship with no direct bearing on the plot. Judgment call. The other thing I realized about my style is that I have an obsession with semi-colons and extraneous modifiers. I spent one very boring day using the search function of my word processing program. Once I removed the words "actually" and "a little" (I allowed two instances each to stay but everything else had to go) the manuscript was TWO PAGES shorter. Two single space pages. Two whole pages of useless words. The semi-colons had to be found the old-fashioned way. I re-read the whole thing, breaking almost every sentence with a semi-colon into two shorter sentences.

Editing takes a lot longer than writing and it isn't especially creative. The part about writing the book was fun. (I'm fighting the urge to insert a semi-colon here.) The story was burning me up and I couldn't wait to get the next part down. I couldn't write it as fast as it was coming into my head. And the coolest thing was that sometimes the characters wouldn't do or say the things I thought they would. They really were getting their own personalities. It's like having your very own socially acceptable multiple personality disorder. Once the story was down, though, I was ready to see what they would do next. As in next book. They were still talking in my head all the time and doing their own things. But book one isn't ready for prime time yet so editing must happen despite the yen to get back to the fun part. I've indulged in about 150 pages of fun part while I was supposed to be editing...I can't help it. Plus another almost whole book completely unconnected with the first one. That book was fun but total crap. I'll keep it for me but otherwise it will never see the light of day.

So now I'm panicking about getting book one cleaned up enough for its virgin voyage into queryland. I need about a week locked in the basement to devote solely to editing and a magic pill to instill discipline. Since I won't get a week in the basement I'll just have to work on the discipline thing. Damn.

Jealous

2009-05-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is universal among artists but jealousy among writers seems rampant. And it does seem worse than in other industries.

Aspiring authors rip commercially successful books at every opportunity. These books can't all suck that much. If you see a bestselling title mentioned on an agent blog, however, there will be a frenzy of messages attacking the book for everything from originality to writing style. The only thing I can think of is that unpublished authors assume that discrediting "great" books will make their book seem more appealing. "If a book like that can get published and sell then can you imagine what a really GOOD book, like the one I wrote, could do?"

I'm not a singer or a composer or a painter but I don't get the sense that artists in those fields are so vicious. Musicians routinely recognize others with skill, even the ability to just write a really good pop song. I don't hear painters or sculptors (and I have friends in both areas) slamming others in their field who manage to eke out a living as a successful artist. I guess in that community it would sound something like this: "Oh, yeah. She's alright. She sells a bunch of stuff to hotels. You know, nothing challenging."

So what is it about writing? Just in my own little bitty anecdotal evidence of an experience the "pickiest" feedback comes from people who write. Not so much stuff I can use, like is the pace okay? Is there enough tension? Too much of this, not enough of that? What phrases do I repeat too much? If you bought this book would you be sorry you spent the money? Would you buy the sequel? Most of the suggestions would change my book to more closely match what that writer would have written if it were their book. And no, I'm not talking about any of you.

On one agent blog he posted an "Agent For A Day" contest where anyone who wanted to participate evaluated 50 query letters and selected the five they would pick to represent. Three were query letters that went on to be published, including one NY Times bestselling title. None of those three made it into the top tier of queries the writers participating would have selected. Hmmm. Maybe writers aren't really the best qualified to evaluate what readers would buy. At least not unpublished writers ;)

At any rate, I published a review on Amazon for the first time ever this weekend. I liked the book but I had a couple of minor quibbles and thought on the whole it might have been better. A sequel is coming out next year and I speculated in my review that the sequel would be better, since the one I read was the first in a series and by the end of the book it was starting to rock. Setting up a story big enough to take up several books is pretty hard to do and that's what this felt like, mostly setup. Anyway, the author's husband read my review and responded. He was really cool about it although I got the impression he was disappointed that I didn't have better things to say. So of course then I felt bad and offered to pull the review (which was overall positive). He said no, it was totally fair and not to worry about it. Since the book is selling like hotcakes I'm pretty sure they don't really care what I think.

The only two negative reviews, though, read like they had been written by embittered authors. One accused the writer of plagairism and the other didn't even review the book, just said that the author was only published because of who she knows. That DID bother her husband. As well as the fact that people they considered friends a few weeks ago are not friendly to them anymore. Other authors she's been friends with for years. How sad.

Why do we support each other until one of us gets what we all want? It's crazy. There isn't a limit on success. If you succeed that doesn't mean I will fail. And if I do, it doesn't mean it's because you were successful first. Sure, I might be a little jealous. But that doesn't make me not want you to get what you want. I just wish I had it, too.

Vacillating

2009-05-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I wrote a book. I won't tell most of the people I know about it because, well, they might think that I think that makes me a writer. (Spoken in mysterious tone that self-identified writers use with pride and everyone else with skeptical humor.) My mom doesn't know. She might want to read it.

The trouble is, I like the book I wrote. I like it a lot. I don't think it's great literature or anything, but if someone else wrote it and I read it I would buy another one about the same characters or by the same author. I've passed various transmogrifications of it to enough people that the feedback makes me think I am not actually crazy. Other people might like it, too. In fact, other people do like it, and not just my best friend or my husband. Plus, they all think it would appeal to the same kind of reader I think would like it. They tell me this without me asking them, "Do you think Twilight readers would like this book? Despite the fact that there is not one damn vampire in it? Or werewolf, or any other creature of classic horror lore?" So far, my instincts aren't too far out in left field.

So what do I do next? The feedback I've gotten tells me that that the story needs fleshing out in one area in particular. Everyone has said basic versions of the same thing on what they like and what they want more of. So I added more of the "I'd like to see more of this..." and people like it better. Moving in the right direction.

This was the most fun thing I have ever done in my life. I have been the happiest, the most fulfilled, writing this book and starting the next one. Do I really want to wreck it by opening myself up to the brutal rejection of trying to get published? Everyone who writes a book thinks their book is good and other people would want to read it. We can't all be right. We can't all be writers.

I decided I would just putz around online and see what's involved. Crikey. A month later I found myself so paralyzed with fear I was ready to trash the entire harebrained scheme. I am definitely not a writer. Who knew that if you "tell me, don't show me" in the story that agents and editors will summarily reject you? Everything has to be somehow worked into action or dialogue? Seriously? But as I started thinking about it I found that maybe that would work. Chapter One is now on its fifth version. Oddly enough, it is way better than the first version. They might be on to something with that "show me, don't tell me" business.

Query letters. Oh. My. Gosh. I have to get someone to foam at the mouth over a debut novel by an unknown in 350 words or less. They won't care that I lived in Argentina since my story is set in South Carolina. Or that I had research experience funded by the National Science Foundation when I was just in college since the book has nothing to do with science. Or that I ran my own business for five years since the main character is in high school. All things that have fit neatly and impressively in cover letters for other jobs I applied for. I am completely unimpressive. My only option is to communicate the hook and "tone" of my book in one to two paragraphs. I was not a marketing major. This is not my forte.

It's much easier to read agent blogs and scheme than take action. Maybe I'll just do that for a while. It's more fun than editing, at any rate. The more I read the blogs the more I see just how ridiculous it is to think I might be one of the select few to get lifted from the slums into the elysian fields of published. Or even just agented. But I notice a trend among the blog followers. Most of them are unpublished, too. And a lot are kind of whiny about it. The prevailing theory common to unpublished authors is that agents suck and don't want anything that's new, untested, or challenging. They want cookie cutter books that will sell well to the unwashed masses. I conclude two things from this. One, people would rather blame someone else and then spend all their time yelling at the object of their frustration instead of getting better. (Reading and posting on blogs takes up an awful lot of time. If we were all offline and working on our books our lot might improve.) The other is that if they think so little of the reading public, people who actually spend money and buy books, they probably aren't writing books that the reading public wants to read. So maybe the agents are right. Maybe their books aren't really all that sellable. Maybe mine is. It might not be smarter than theirs, or as challenging, or high art, but at the end of the day I bet people might buy it. Maybe I will submit to a few agents. What's the worst that could happen?