Sweaters For Days And Moves Like Jagger

Reading For A Cure!

2012-01-26T06:29:00.001-08:00

Today, I'm blogging at Reading For A Cure. Please take a moment to go check it out, and consider signing up for the reading challenge!

I Eat My Own Kind...

2012-01-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

Wanna make some trout? I know you do. Here's my recipe for trout and roasted red skin potatoes.

You're gonna need:

For the trout

2 tout fillets

Dill weed (LOL)

Black pepper

Olive oil

Aluminum foil

A shallow baking dish.

Some pliers

For the potatoes

A bag of redskin potatoes

Olive oil

Rosemary

1 garlic clove

A bowl

A cookie sheet

Make the potatoes first. They take the longest. Set your oven to good ole 350. Then get out your cutting board and start cutting up your washed red potatoes. Leave the skin on, cut them into chunks. Not too small, but smaller than a quarter of the spud, you dig? I didn't have a ruler handy, but I figure they were probably 1" x 1" or so.

When they're all chunked up nicely (we used to say that particularly long, unbroken paragraphs were "chunking up the page" in my critique group), put them in your mixing bowl Pour on the olive oil. Don't go crazy here, you just want to be able to coat the potatoes you've got, not drown them. Mince up that garlic clove. Throw it in there, too. Sprinkle on the rosemary, fresh or from the cupboard, I don't care, both work. Toss it like a salad, then spread the taters out on your cookie sheet. Throw them in the oven. You're a superstar.

Take your trout fillets and lay them skin side down. Take your handy dandy pliers and run your finger down the fillet, feeling for pin bones. If you find one, grab that fucker with the pliers and pull it out. Do it like an eyebrow hair, pull in the direction of the growth. Try not to rip a bunch of fish off, too, you know. Save some for the oven.

After that part is done, get yourself a sheet of aluminum foil that is big enough for both fillets. Slap them on there and pour some olive oil on the fish, the foil, go crazy. Olive oil is good for you. Then season it with dill and pepper. Throw another piece of foil over the top and seal the edges together. Then put the packet in a shallow baking dish and put it in the oven.

The potatoes are done when you can stick a fork through them easily. The fish is done when when the flesh is flakey when you rake a fork over it. I don't use timers when I cook, but I'd estimate 20 minutes. Check on it at 15, though.

You can either take the skin off the fish before you serve it or just let the eater do that his or herself. I, personally, like to take the skin off at my plate, because it feels like a primal celebration of the kill.

Serve some other veggies with that, too. Broccoli is always good.

Down here, everything knits...

2012-01-16T09:38:00.001-08:00

My grandmother is a treasure trove of crafting resources. If you need a certain type of fabric, she has it. If you've always wanted to latch-hook a rug, she's got kits for that. She's spent a lot of time at auctions, bidding on crafting lots, so occasionally she ends up with stuff she doesn't need, like knitting stuff. She doesn't knit, so she passes these things along to me, because I am also crafty.

This is how I came into possession of the single most terrifying thing I've ever seen in my entire life. The February-March 1984 edition of Annie's Pattern Club. Behold:

It's nice to know that Pennywise has some hobbies to keep him busy. Seriously, the first time I looked at this cover, I didn't see the fucking clown. In fact, the second time I looked at this cover, I didn't see the fucking clown. Like clowns often do, he was lurking, waiting to unleash his horror when I least expected it. I picked this up, said, "Huh, that's kind of a cute afghan there I OH MY GOD NO."

You'll notice that the cover promises a needle craft "surprise". What is that surprise, you ask? Murder. The surprise is murder. By clown. Possibly with a knitting needle.

Sweet dreams.

This is what happens to me every night.

2011-12-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

Last night, I dreamt I was directing an episode of American Horror Story. I don't know how I got the job. I've never worked in film or television in my entire life. But there I was, trying to fake my way through directing an episode of a hugely popular tv show.

At this point, I should mention that in my dream, American Horror Story was more of a reality show, meaning it is filmed in that actual, haunted house, and all the characters, living and ghost, are real, not actors. So, there's an element of danger involved. The cast of characters from The Walking Dead are also involved, and the entire show is shot right on the very edge of the Israel-Palestine border, and we kept losing production assistants to border skirmishes. These skirmishes involved someone just stepping a foot over a big, black line painted on the ground, sitcom style, and the Israeli police would take them away for deportation back to America.

At one point, I realize I haven't been directing the actors at all. I've been setting up the scene and trying to get all the ghosts to cooperate, and I don't see anything wrong with the takes I'm rapidly putting away. In half a day we've filmed half the episode. And I know they're going to realize that I don't know what I'm doing. When Rick Grimes's crying is too "feminine", I tell my AD to make a note to dub it over in post. That sounds almost professional. I know what I'm doing!

I start talking to Jessica Lang, who is actually a crazy southern belle living in faded glory in the haunted house, and she's concerned that the cinematographer is filming things "too dark." I realize then that our cinematographer is the same guy who did The Godfather Part II. I realize we are fucked, no one will be able to see a damn thing on film. I go to talk to him, and am immediately attacked by the frankenbabycreature from American Horror Story.

There is no closure to this story.

At this Christmas season, a plea for sense and rationality to my fellow Christians...

2011-12-12T05:29:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again. The time of year when Facebook status updates turn from "Anyone want 2 naughty children?" and "My husband is my best friend. Repost if your husband is your best friend," to "Some dumb bitch at Target had the nerve to say Happy Holidays to me, like I'm a goddamned Satan worshipper or a Jew or something. HOW VERY DARE THEY! CHRIST IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON!" and other such very, very tolerant Christian nonsense.

I'm a Catholic. Yes, I realize this means that to about 95% of the other Christian religions, I'm a godless Mary worshipper and not a Christian, but believe me, there is a lot of Jesus happening in our branch of Catholicism. So let me just make this plea, on behalf of all sane and rational Christians in the word. GUYS STOP ACTING LIKE WE'RE PERSECUTED.

From the annual "Happy Holidays is taking the Christ out of Christmas" explosion to the recent "Good for Lowe's for pulling ads from that show that makes Muslims appear to be fellow humans" nonsense, I've just had it. At least twice a day I get emails or I see status updates on facebook that urge me to copy/paste if I'm not ashamed of Jesus. You know what? I'm not ashamed of Jesus. I'm just worried that someone might think I'm full on Shirley from Community.

I think my fellow Christians and I are missing a really big point. We don't need our government to celebrate our holidays. We don't need to see only Christian material on television. We need to do what Jesus wants us to do. We need to treat our fellow humans with respect. Early Christians, the ones who had to hide for fear of their lives, the ones who were killed for their beliefs, would want to fucking smack us for calling our offense at a cashier giving us vague holiday wishes "persecution". Stop attaching Jesus's name to things he couldn't care less about, like whether or not a muslim family has a reality show or a nativity is on a courthouse lawn.

Also, Jesus wants us to save Community. And he wants The Talking Heads to start making music again. JESUS WANTS IT, DAVID BYRNE. JESUS WANTS IT.

Check me out, I'm an internet superstar!

2011-12-07T07:02:00.001-08:00

I'm so excited and pleased to announce that I will be blogging every Wednesday over at threewickedwriters.blogspot.com. This is so exciting. I've always wanted to be a part of one of those group blogs, but never had the opportunity. It makes me feel like one of the cool kids.

In other news, I've been taking viewers on a guided tour of my Blood Ties series over on the youtube.

That's the first one. Visit my youtube channel (and subscribed!) to ride the rest of this train with flames on the side straight into Awesometown.

Half My Genes, 1000 Times Nicholas Sparks's Ego, The Mercenary Journalism Of W.R. Hearst

2011-11-30T15:33:00.000-08:00

Let me share with you my son's newspaper, The Neighborhood Tattler (he isn't above lifting inspiration from Diary of A Wimpy Kid, okay? Besides, plagiarism is en vogue right now):

My son is going to be nine in like, twenty-nine days. He likes to write comic books, which, as noted above, usually borrow a lot in style and concept from Diary of A Wimpy Kid and Calvin and Hobbs. He's just written his seventh comic book, and he needed an avenue in which to publicize it. On the first page, pictured above, the text reads:

Opening

The new Bedroom Inc. comix book out!

Yes the Auther of the Bedroom Inc. has made his 7th comix book and is coming to you'r home Dec. 1st (if coming). "I just want to say that it take's pride and work to make comix book's" See comix, A3

Okay. So my kid? Is awesome. Not only has he written seven comic books, he's also created his own publishing house, Bedroom Inc. It has a logo and everything. And his newspaper, that he created to publicize his comic book, has a comic section that begins on A3, and he knew that newspapers have an A3. That's amazing.

The comic, "Captan Underpant's and the atackk of the Evil mom from outer space," is again, flavored with just a dash of borrowed work. The Evil Mom looks a bit like me, yells a bit like me, and was, I am certain, an original creation and not based on anyone, living or dead. There is a page with news about cub scouts and another about the school principal. Then, buried on the very back page, is what appears to be a book section:

The Neighborhood Tattler Daily New's

Jeff Kinney's 6th book is out oh I wonder if the 7th book is RIPPED PAGE'S hm. Well that's the new's for today! Tommaror's diffrint.

I am impressed on so many levels here. Not only does he take great pains to point out that Jeff Kinney only has six books published, while on the front page he makes it clear that he has written and published seven (and let's be honest, self-publishing is a booming market right now), he also relegates the story about Kinney's book to the very last page of the newspaper and writes a pretty scathing review, even though I happen to know he enjoyed the book.

This is my son. This is why my son must be respected and feared. And this is why my son will one day have royalty checks bigger than Stephen Kings'.

JIMMY! STOP PRETENDING TO BE ME.

2011-11-20T17:00:00.001-08:00

Happy Heil-oween

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Very rarely do I share photos of my spawn on my blog. Not because I think someone might find them and kill them, but because I think some kiddie fiddling pervert out there might look at those pictures and masturbate to them. But I have to share the unintentional White Power odyssey of our Halloween.

When the kid were all costumed-up and ready to trick-or-treat, I implored my husband to take the children out to the front stoop and get a picture of them. I was imagining something like this:

See that? That is the classic Halloween photo. Joyless. Hands at their sides like they're in a police line up. The agony of being made to pose for a photo, while up and down the street children caper happily, collecting up all the treats. But not you, Chippy. You're going to stand on that stoop until we get a photo of you with your eyes open.

Confession time: this is from a second set of pictures. The first set...

This requires set up, in order to not look like a hate crime. If you are unfamiliar with Super Mario Bros. (or Aspergers, since that's a large component to blame for this), Mario is usually posed like so:

So, being an expert on all things Mario, and dedicated to realism in cosplay (see also: Aspergers), my son decided he should replicate this pose for the photos:

Perhaps if he'd not been standing so rigidly to attention... maybe, it's just the mustache. But it looked a lot less like this:

And a lot more like this:

Then, things got worse. You see, my daughter, who turns three today, is always looking to her older brother, perhaps misguidedly, to learn how to behave in crippling social situations, such as getting your photo taken.

So now, I have two children heil-ing on my front stoop, as my entire small town filters by, skipping our house, I might add, despite the fact that we were clearly giving out treats.

When my husband, my lazy, lazy, husband, thought, "Ah, fuck it," and brought them back inside, thank god I had the presence of mind to look at the pictures. There are eight of them. Eight photos in which, captured for posterity, my children are unintentionally giving a white power salute. Husband took the kids back outside and took pictures to my exact specifications: no hands in the air. No hands anywhere. Just keep your arms at your sides. Pretend you're being booked for embezzlement.

Hope you all had a safe, happy, Halloween, totally unmarred by any reminder of the existence of Adolf Hitler.

The Faunae of Great Britain

2011-10-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

If you follow me on YouTube (and if you'd like to, my YouTube username is JenniferArmintrout, so it's not terribly difficult to find me) you know that I often upload videos made with Xtranormal, an internet animation website. Today, I made an executive decision and switched up my style, so from here on out, my vids will look a little different. But the content, you'll find, is just as bizarre as ever:

I bet you're all like, "I didn't know this was a baking blog now."

2011-10-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't stopped writing in order to start a bakery in the hopes of attracting an adorable police officer who thinks I make great cakes and has an equally adorable accent.

Not yet, Officer O'Dowd. But someday.

But I am doing an awful lot of baking lately. After my therapist was like, "You need a hobby, yo," and I was like, "Writing is my hobby and until I reach my entirely unobtainable goal of being the best, richest, most sexy writer in the universe, I cannot slow down," and she was all, "Do you realize you have gum in your hair?" I decided that maybe she was right, a change is in order. So, I bake. All the time. Like crazy.

From L-R: Baking, crazy.

Today, to celebrate the fact that my latest release, BRIDE OF THE WOLF, hit ARe this morning and is already rocking a shiny silver bestseller badge, I decided I would treat my family, and you guys, to some crazy baking of my own design. So, I present unto you:

Jenny's Bestselling Pumpkin Apple Cuppycakes.

For the cuppycakes:

1 box Jiffy Apple Cinnamon muffin mix

1 egg

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp nutmeg

Preheat your oven to 400f, you sexy bastard.

In your fancy schmancy electric mixer (or a plain old bowl, if you have arms like Canseco), combine your mix, egg, and pumpkin until it's blended. Then throw in the other two ingredients. Blend the hell out of 'em.

Fill your prepared (read: greased like whore during fleet week) muffin cups half-way with batter. I suppose you could also use paper or silicone baking cups, but I like my prostitution analogy, and that makes it harder to work it in (that's what she said).

Bake those delicious sonsofbitches for about thirteen minutes, or until the tops start to brown a little.

For the cream cheese frosting:

16 oz. cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted. Sifted good.

In your magnificent mixer, cream the butter and cream cheese until blended. Add the vanilla and blend. Add the sugar a little bit at a time. I did it about 1/4 a cup at a time, so you don't end up with lumpy horror or a face full of white powder ala Lindsey Lohan. Once all the sugar is incorporated, crank that mixer up to 11 (any high speed will work, so long as it doesn't whip frosting around everywhere) and let it mix, scraping the sides, for about five minutes.

Slap that beautiful monstrosity into a piping bag and go to town on the cooled cuppycakes.

Et voila.

If you haven't checked out BRIDE OF THE WOLF yet, you can get it from ARe, and read it while enjoying your delicious autumn treat.

"I'm Waving At Fat!"

2011-10-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

As you might remember from my blog posts earlier this summer, I have taken up baking as a hobby. This might seem like the perfect activity for a severely overweight person– or not, now that I think about it– but in reality, this is less about "Ooh, cake!", because I don't really care for cake or actually, sweets in general, all that much. For me, it's about the challenge of making something and forcing other people to feign enjoyment of it, much like when my relatives read my writing.

Today, baking madness struck me, and I decided I would make some cupcakes. And while I was at it, I would make DOCTOR WHO cupcakes.

I sat and pondered my options. A giant, TARDIS shaped cake with carefully piped icing 'round all the windows? A wedding cake with all ten Doctors in "chibi" form, sculpted painstakingly from fondant?

No. Adipose. If cake makes you fat, and it most certainly seems to do that, shouldn't that fat just... walk away?

If you're unfamiliar with the Adipose, they're the friendly looking little critters up there. Or rather, their young are. See, in a Doctor Who episode titled "Partners in Crime", the Adipose babies, aliens from another world whose breeding planet has disappeared, hatch one by one from obese people who were taking a diet pill. Only, through a course of events that could only happen on Doctor Who, their breeding got sped up, converting all the obese person's body fat at once to these chubby little monsters. And their organs. And their bones.

At the end, of course, the Doctor saves everyone and the Adipose pick up their children, prompting Donna Noble to utter her most famous line:

Arguably the most adorable enemy the Doctor has ever faced, the Adipose babies lend themselves perfectly to the task of making cupcakes:

Perhaps fondant would have been a wiser choice, but who wants to eat a giant blob of fondant? Marzipan is way tastier, and the calories from them and the absolute PILE of homemade frosting on top means that I can make at least AT LEAST one more Adipose baby when Miss Foster bumps up the breeding program.

Assuming, of course, that we're in the alternate Donna Noble "There's something on your back" timeline.

I can think of worse ways to go.

If you're not into cupcakes, but you're more into free books, head on over to Bronwyn Green's Blog where she's giving away a copy of my latest release from Resplendence Publishing, BRIDE OF THE WOLF.

BRIDE OF THE WOLF Excerpt!

2011-10-04T05:36:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's the excerpt from BRIDE OF THE WOLF, which comes out tomorrow from Resplendence Publishing!

* * * * * * *

It took Aurelia only seconds to assess that there was something dangerous in the way Jeoffrey approached her. The set of his mouth as he smiled, perhaps, or the slow way he came forward. She stayed very still as he came close to the back of the cart, a hand reaching to the knife at his belt.

“They’ve gone deeper to look for game,” he said in a reassuring tone. His hand fell on her shoulder.

She jerked away. “Don’t.”

His expression darkened. “Don’t? You aren’t the lady of the castle yet, apple. And things work a little differently there, don’t they then?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Aurelia admitted, breathing deep. “But if he is a man, my husband would not like you putting your hands on his property.”

“Ah, but that’s the trick of it, isn’t it?” Jeoffrey seized her by her arms. “He isn’t a man, and neither am I.”

His eyes. Jeoffrey’s eyes flashed warning orange, and Aurelia shook her head, backing slowly away. Of course, she’d known what they were. Her father had spoken of the wolf-men with disgust, but grudging respect for their prowess in battle. Yet something of a blindness, unintentional, perhaps, had come over her when she’d contemplated this journey. While her denial had made her feel safe, she now realized the folly of it. She was alone, in the forest, with wolves.

Jeoffrey’s body, made heavier by the mail he wore, pinned her to the hard ground in half a heartbeat. She gasped for air, then gave up and clawed at him, not breathing but making a hoarse, gulping sound as she pushed and slapped to no avail. His knee pressed between her legs, pinning her skirt to the ground, and as she flailed, she heard the fabric tear. One of the woolen mitts she wore on her hands slipped free, and she sank her fingernails into the skin of his cheek, raking down as hard as she could.

With a roar of pain, he reared back, but only for a moment. As she tried to drag herself backward, he struck her across the face with one metal-plated gauntlet, and blood exploded from her lips, matching the three bright red stripes she’d left on his face. But a second was all she had needed to gain her breath, and with it, her voice. She screamed, shrill terror ringing off every tree in the forest.

The rest of the party returned within seconds, even Raf, crippled as he was. It was he who lifted Jeoffrey from her, flinging him with impossible strength into the side of the cart. The knight crumpled with a sigh of collapsing mail, blood spattered across his tabard.

“Get up!” Raf shouted, dragging her to her feet ungently, by one arm. Aurelia’s head reeled, and she struggled to understand this rough treatment. Did he not see her struggle? She thought to plead with him to see reason, that she had not betrayed his brother, her betrothed, but then she saw the reason for the urgency in his tone. On the far side of the narrow road, Margaret Lackey and Sir Clement stood, brandishing spear and sword, their eyes glowing orange.

“You would harm one of your sworn brothers to protect this mewling cat?” Margaret spat in the dirt. “Your father was right to set you aside. You’re nothing but a coward!”

“She belongs to my brother!” Raf pushed Aurelia farther behind him. “He has bested you both in combat time after time, and you’ve never earned the right to his property.”

“She isn’t a proper woman,” Clement explained patiently, as though Raf were a child to be soothed. “She is a lower being.”

“She belongs to my brother,” Raf repeated. “If either of you wish to challenge him for her, you may do so at the wedding feast. But I am charged with her safety.”

“We could challenge you in your brother’s stead,” Margaret threatened. Aurelia peered past Raf, then regretted it. The fierce woman wore a cruel grin. “Clement, Jeoffrey and I. We could easily cut you down, crippled pup, and all three of us share her.”

Clement growled.

Suddenly, the world was upside down, and moving fast. Hanging as limp as a sack over Raf’s shoulder, Aurelia watched as, in a flurry of movement almost too fast to see, Margaret Lackey and Sir Clement shed their clothing and crouched, lean and terrifying, their naked skin rippling in waves of black. Two huge wolves sprang at her, jaws snapping. Another breath and they would be upon her, and Sir Raf, one-legged, limping Sir Raf, could not protect her.

He jostled her on his shoulder, and wind whipped her face as a thick branch snapped backward, knocking back one of the wolves, Clement, if she’d kept things right when the world turned upside down. The wolf Margaret jumped, and Raf whirled, Aurelia flying up and colliding with his back as the wolf yelped. Then, pulling Aurelia over his shoulder to cradle against his broad chest, Sir Raf dropped to the ground and they were sliding, in a cloud of dust and dead leaves, down a steep slope, the end of which disappeared into nothing. Raf did nothing to slow their descent, but held her to his chest tighter with one arm as they flew over the brink. With an arm above his head, he caught a thin ledge of stone from the face of the cliff.

Aurelia did not wish to look down. Far below, the river roiled, white frothing against the dark depths.

“Hold on to me!” Raf shouted over the rushing of the river.

She flung her arms around his neck, even as she begged him not to do what she was certain would come. That they had outrun the wolves was unbelievable; that they could survive the tossing waters was too much to ask.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could not ignore the plummeting feeling. It seemed forever before they touched the water’s surface, and then, as the frigid depths enveloped them, not enough time at all. She tried to keep hold of Raf’s neck, then just his cloak, her fingers fumbling on the wet edges of the fur, but the water drove them apart, tore her away in a rapid current that she struggled to climb above. This river ran past her home as but a trickling stream that she had sailed wooden boats on as a child. Now, it offered her no friendly quarter, sweeping her down the banks, farther and farther away from where Raf surfaced, looking about frantically. She gasped for air before the currents pulled down again. Her last glimpse of the world above the water was of the huge, black wolf standing at the cliff’s edge.

When things don't go exactly according to plan...

2011-10-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

You may have heard me tell of a time, long, long ago, when The Turning was a book called Blood Ties, and was a paranormal romance that ended with Carrie and Nathan (paralyzed and in a wheelchair) driving off to Las Vegas to get married. The second book in the series was to be titled Penance, Ohio, and it would be about what happened when Max was accidentally trapped in a small Ohio town that was under a curse.

Yup. Without the careful edits of one Ms. Shannon Godwin, my original editor at Harlequin, I would have missed out on– and you would have missed out on– the entire Blood Ties series and American Vampire. I wouldn't have written about Bella, or Bill. Or Graf, for that matter.

The same weird turn of events happened when I beganwriting my latest book. This one really is meant to be a historical romance. But when I started it out, Aurelia was in a coach, on her way to meet her new husband Raf, a werewolf and lord of a castle full of his fellow werewolves. For days, I tried to write that book, and every word was a chore. Then, I realized what the problem was. Aurelia wasn't supposed to meet Raf at the castle and fall in love with him. She was supposed to have an adventure with him, and fall in love with him that way. And Raf wasn't the lord of the castle, he was a disinherited son of a lord. Oh, and he's only got one leg.

So, you see, then, how in the process of writing one book, you end up with a completely different one.

BRIDE OF THE WOLF comes out on Wednesday from Resplendence Publishing. It's a book I'm really proud of, and I can't wait to share it with all of you.

Commanded to marry the son of Lord Canis, a powerful ally of her father and King Edward, Aurelia knows she is about to venture into a den of wolves. For the men who live at Blackens Gate are no ordinary men, able to change at will into enormous, bloodthirsty beasts... and as a mere human, Aurelia is a reviled outsider.

When the wolves escorting his brother’s bride to Blackens Gate turn on her, Sir Raf Canis finds himself in the unlikely position of rescuer. After losing his leg– and his place in the pack– Raf refuses to bring himself further shame by failing to deliver the lovely Aureilia. But the innocent maiden proves to be a temptation even he cannot resist.

Within the dark, dangerous forest, a love begins that neither can deny. To protect Aurelia, Raf must betray everything he has come to believe about his life among wolves, and risk death to save the only woman ever to touch his wounded soul.

For a excerpt of this awesome, awesome book, check back here Tuesday. And on Wednesday, you'll get a chance to win a copy for your very own, from author Bronwyn Green, who is very gallantly hosting a giveaway!

What are you doing in October?

2011-09-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

So, I'm trying to get on here to update my blog with news about a kick-ass writing opportunity coming up, and I kept failing and failing and failing on the security question. And as I'm failing, over and over again, I'm like, "Wait a minute? Why is there so much security?" Then, I started feeling kind of paranoid. "Is it because I'm doing something wrong? Like, without realizing it, am I doing something naughty, trying to sneak into my own blog? Oh god, am I doing it on purpose to sabotage myself, and I'm so deeply in denial about it that I don't realize I'm doing it? WILL THE POLICE BE CALLED IF I FAIL IT ONE MORE TIME?"

I'd forgotten to put the .com on my email address.

I just wanted you to know what i had to go through to tell you about this absolutely amazing conference opportunity. It's call "I've Always Wanted To Write A Book!", a one-day conference in beautiful downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Here's what's going down: The Grand Rapids Region Writer's Group is a professional organization that I belong to. I'm actually an original member of the group, serving on the first board when it formed as an RWA chapter. Eventually, the group broke away and became a career support group. We have an incredibly high number of published members, including author Bronwyn Green and Sidney Ayers, both who will speak at the conference. One of our goals when we started was to have a conference that would help people who always wanted to write, but never really did for one reason or another.

That's what you'll get at "I've Always Wanted To Write A Book!" 2011. You'll attend panels and workshops on specific genres, time and stress management, and industry tips from published authors, editors, and agent Michelle Grajkowski from Three Seas literary agency, who will also be taking a limited number of pitches.

Oh, and Jacqueline Carey. Yeah, she'll be there, too. She's the KEYNOTE SPEAKER! The woman who created Terre 'd Ange and Phedre and Kushiel and if you have not read her books, I'm sorry, FANGURL TANGENT AHEAD: If you have not read her books and are not currently reading them or planning to, I do not know what you are doing with your life. They are amazing fantasy books and she'll be at this conference, sharing her expertise and experience with you.

And guys. Guys, not to brag, but I'm going to– I, Jennifer Armintrout am going to– give a workshop on how to act professional. You'll have to see it to believe it.

Please, if you are serious about writing and have the dough to spare, check the link out and come party with us. It's going to be so much fun. Registration is limited to 100 attendees, so it's going to be a very intimate, very informative experience. There's an optional friday night GRRWG wine mixer, with some very friendly local writers who are committed to helping other writers.

I really hope to see you there!

Where I was.

2011-09-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

On September 10th, I went to an evening class, Modern Culture and The Arts, at my college. I talked to some people in my class about how awesome the Harry Potter movie, coming out that next summer, looked from the pictures in Vanity Fair, and resolved to read the books- all three of them- before it came out. I went to a friend's house. We made out while watching Evil Dead 2. I got home at three in the morning on September 11, 2001, and all I could think was "Thank god I don't have class until noon tomorrow."

At the time, I lived in my grandparent's spare bedroom, and they were early risers despite being retired. I made a little note and taped it to my door before I went to sleep. "DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WAKE ME UP BEFORE 10 OR I WILL TURN INTO A PILLAR OF SALT." I knew they had to get up even earlier than usual, because they were going to drive to Indiana to visit relatives. But sure enough, my grandfather ignored the sign and called cheerfully up the stairs at 8:45 am (according to my alarm clock, that seemed to hate me), "Jenny, you want some pancakes?"

I yelled back, "No, I don't want any pancakes. I don't have to be to class until noon. I want to sleep in."

I pulled my blankets over my head and tried to will myself back to sleep, but less than five minutes later, I heard my grandfather's footsteps on the stairs again. "Jenny!"

"I told you I don't want any pancakes please let me sleep for the love of God!" I begged. They're used to my drama.

"Someone drove a plane into the World Trade Center!"

The first thing I thought was, "drove a plane? What an odd choice of words." The second thing I thought was, "I bet this is going to be weeks of congressional hearings about air traffic controller safety." I thought it would probably be something we'd cover in my American Government class.

There was no going back to sleep, so I got up. And this is the part I remember so vividly. I remember walking down the stairs, because that is the last thing I can remember before, as cliche as it is, everything changed. I went into the kitchen, where my grandmother was sitting at the table, watching on the little tv in there as the newscasters, and my grandparents and I, talked about what a horrible accident it was. And then we saw the second plane, and we tried to keep talking about it like an accident, like the people on television still were. But I think, at that time, we knew.

My grandparents called our relatives in Indiana and said they would be late, they were watching "what's happening in New York". We kept watching, and heard the report of the plane hitting the Pentagon. I started thinking of other buildings we would be hearing soon: the capitol, the Sears tower in Chicago, the New York Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty. It sounds silly now, knowing how things turned out, but at the time, it seemed like whatever was happening could wipe every city I could think of off the face of the Earth.

On the tv, a reporter stood in front of a fire truck, and behind him, fire fighters jogged together in a big group toward the towers. A few minutes later, the South tower appeared to partially collapse. Then, reports confirmed that it had completely collapsed. I looked at my grandfather and I said, "What happened to all those firemen?"

I watched tv all day that day, from the living room love seat where I would doze off, then wake up, the tv still on. My grandparents, devout Orthodox Christians, cancelled their trip and debated going to church. I don't remember if they went. I do know that in the evening, a neighbor came down and knocked on the door. He was inviting everyone in the neighborhood to come down to his lawn to pray together.

I didn't go pray. I stayed on the couch, watching television, for days. Thinking it was the end of the world. Wondering if we should start locking the doors at night, because the terrorists could come in and kill us in our sleep. The kind of thoughts a twenty-one year old shouldn't have, ones that are more suited for a four year old. I was reduced to a child by my anxiety.

I shook the news paralysis (eventually, I had to go to work). I never shook that fear. No, I'm not still afraid of terrorists coming into my house and killing me in my sleep, but, like many Americans, I don't feel safe anymore. Ten years later, I struggle to explain to my son that "terrorist" didn't used to be a word that got used every single day, and that things used to be different. I think of the fact that both of my children will never know what it was like to live in a time where it didn't seem like anything could touch us.

I don't engage in 9/11 conspiracy speculation, and I'm not interested in discussing how our foreign policy and lack of awareness about ourselves may have hurt us. I've never been interested, because none of it matters. It doesn't matter why, what matters is that it happened. And it is important, for people who witness the events, even just on television, to remember where they were and what they were doing. Not just on 9/11, but the day before. Everyone needs that snapshot of the last time things were okay, because ten years later, it's still hard to accept that it will never be that way again.

The Well of Inspiration

2011-08-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of negative press for the past, oh, thirty years or so, about how Michigan is a terrible place. The economy is bad. Everyone is on welfare. The winters are cold and the summers are humid. Too much crime and not enough jobs. Most of these things are true. Some of them are half true. But we also have something very special.

I came to this place last week, taken there by a friend who knew the way. I won't share the directions. There are people who know where to find it, and those people are just the right amount. Twice, I was blessed to enjoy this sacred space alone, and I would selfishly like the place to remain secluded for as long as possible. But if you are determined, you can find someone to drive you out there, on the dirt two-track with holes that will swallow your tires if you're unwary.

A part of the Pictured Rocks coast of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it is a mishmash of sandstone cliffs and enormous boulders. The very glaciers that carved the Rocks now slap at the soft cliff faces in the form of the Great Lake herself, a perpetually frigid, temperamental beast that swallows men whole, never to release them.

The underwater boulders sift the currents in invisible patterns. One diver reported being pinned between two of the behemoths, captive to the pull of the waters. But on our first visit, we found only the gentle motion of a lake rolling over in slumber.

In the sunlight, the lazy currents rolled like gold silk, up from the crystalline blue depths. They split apart into sun-kissed lace gliding into a peaceful lagoon, or lapped half-heartedly at the rough cliffs. Where we stood could not be called a proper beach; all sandstone, with slick black algae making footing beneath the water perilous, the only loose sand one could find was in a single pocket beneath the water's edge:

...and on drier ground, where it held onto love tokens from other realms of nature.

Caves shelter birds, bats, people, from the sun that can be unrelenting, but chose that day to be merciful. In a place like this, one feels a true sense of the interweaving of the elements. Earth, air, and water tugging and pulling with each other in a beautiful war, creating each other from their own destruction.

I'd like to tell you that the peace of this scene was repeated on the second day of our visit. There are no photographs of that day; rather than try in vain to capture the scene, the second day I became a part of it. Waves taller than our heads battered us again and again. Always respectful of the force and deadliness of the lake herself, we dared to venture out of our golden lagoon, to step off the the underwater cliff where hip deep water gave way to fathomless depths.

When she'd had enough of us, Superior drove us from her shores with warnings only a fool would fail to heed. We stumbled away, intoxicated by the furious, alien beauty of the place.

These photos are a pale imitation of the true beauty of the place. It almost makes my heart hurt to look at them, because I know I can't share exactly what I felt those two amazing days. With a last look back, I returned to the mortal world, to live to my greatest potential until the time I return.

An Open Letter To Bill Schuette, Michigan Attorney General

2011-08-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Warning: Hippie Political Raving Ahead

This is the text of a letter I sent to Bill Schuette's office today, Friday, August 26, 2011. For those outside the state of Michigan or in the state and not following the developments surrounding the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, Bill Schuette has made it his single-minded focus to undermine the will of the people of Michigan, who voted to legalize the medical use of marijuana in our state. Most recently, he declared the Michigan Court of Appeals decision to uphold the ruling in Michigan vs. McQueen, "a huge victory for public safety and Michigan communities struggling with an invasion of pot shops near their schools, homes and churches." The ruling means that medical dispensaries are made illegal, and patients would have to seek their medication from possibly illegal, dangerous sources.

Dear Mr. Schuette,
I just wanted to offer a hearty and sarcastic "job well done" on effectively obliterating legal marijuana dispensaries in Michigan. Now, instead of getting my medicine from a secure, licensed facility, I can go to a drug dealer! And it will be so awesome when he tries to "up sell" me on illegally begotten Oxy, Vicodin, and Adderall! These dealers sometimes carry guns or other weapons (for their own protection only, I'm sure). These are definitely the kind of people I want to be involved with.

This is your "great victory" Mr. Schuette. Sick people, who are looking into alternatives to dangerous, sometimes off-label or untested drugs, will be immersed in drug culture. True drug culture, with all the dangers inherent when dealing in the illegal drug trade. These are operations that are happening near our "schools, homes, and churches." Just because they don't have a storefront doesn't mean the streets are completely absent of drug crime. Instead of a clean, licensed, safe facility, you are asking patients to monetarily support the illegal drug trade in the event that they cannot receive medication from a licensed caregiver. You, by taking such a hard stance against dispensaries and patients, are supporting the illegal drug trade.

I assume that since you stand firmly against dispensaries, you won't be buying your prescription medications from licensed facilities, either. If you need any kind of drug, from aspirin to Prozac, you'll be going to your friendly neighborhood drug dealer to obtain it. It's only fair, after all. I hope that we can soon also celebrate the removal of Walgreens, Rite Aid, and any other dealer of medications that can be abused from our neighborhoods.

Thanks for keeping us "safe".

Jennifer Armintrout
Registered voter, proud Michigander

Jen at the Liberty Bell

2011-08-16T07:51:00.001-07:00

Does what it says on the tin.

The crack was already there when I got there. I don't know who did it, but it wasn't me.

Happy Birthday

2011-08-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Happy 69th Birthday to the best three-fingered guitar player ever. Gone too soon.

Doobie doobie dah!

2011-07-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post involving night cheese, one of my summer craft project is cross-stitching quotes from my favorite television show, Tina Fey's 30 Rock, which I will then attempt to hang about the house until my husband notices them and, wildly embarrassed that he married someone who clearly destined to die alone, her face eaten by the many, many housecats she would have amassed during her lonely middle years as an animal hoarding spinster, takes them down.

I've finished the second project, and I couldn't wait to show it to you. And by couldn't wait, I mean, "man, I better post this to the blog before I forget. Fuck the frame, I don't have an 8 x 10 frame just hanging around, and I know for damn sure and certain I'm going to forget to pick one up in town tomorrow. Fuck it, I'll just show it to them like this, all wrinkly and unmounted."

Hey, that's a funny joke. What do my cross-stitch and an ugly lady elephant have in common? THEY'RE BOTH WRINKLY AND UNMOUNTED.

I chose the wisdom of one Mr. Tracy Jordan, star of Who Dat Ninja? and Honky Grandma Be Trippin', Oscar winner for Hard To Watch, creator of the megahit pornographic videogame Goregasm: Legend of the Dongslayer:

This also gives you a heretofore unseen glimpse of my laptop keyboard, where I write all those amazing books y'all love so much.

Also, where I play Goregasm: Legend of The Dongslayer.

Or as I call it, World of Warcraft.

Blah I Vant To Suck Your Blaaaaaaad

2011-07-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

My latest Fiverr.com experiment does exactly what it says on the tin. The listing, from AngeltheArtist, can be found here: I will make you a finger face character with my fingers:

"Using my own fingers (girl hand) I will dress them or draw them to the character of your liking with a cute face. Like a guy from Paris, or a Vampire, or a cute couple etc. whatever you think of will work! Just tell me what you please, I will send you the picture digitally on fiver and were done! Great as a gift for a friend!

Clearly, I needed her to whip me up a vampire. This is what I asked for:

"let's go with a vampire. As goth and tortured and darkity dark as you're willing."

I mean, if we're going to go vampire, we need something dark and horrid and scary, the stuff that will make a lesser writer (like me) go on antidepressants, according to some. Cheap shot of the day! I win a billion dollars!

What AngeltheArtist sent to me did not disappoint. I present to you, finger vampires:

You can't get much darker than that. I particularly enjoy the x'ed out eyes. Classic.

What I don't understand is how one would go about creating this type of scene on one's fingers. At some point wouldn't you need both hands to apply the fake blood and bushy vampire eyebrows? I commend you, AngeltheArtist, for doing what I could not, at least, not without accidentally gluing my fingers together and then gluing my fingers to my foot and my foot to the floor.

Insert Top Gear Theme Here

2011-07-22T05:08:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned my love of ~~fantasizing about hot hate sex with Jeremy Clarkson~~ Top Gear before, I'm sure. In fact, if I'd never sat down and watched "that funny show with those guys who do things to cars" I would have never realized how awesome cars actually are. At first, cars were secondary to the antics of the hosts, but then as I continued watching, I developed a real enthusiasm for super cars. Because I always desperately love that which I cannot attain. I'm looking at you, James May.

Imagine my delight when I found GreenLambo, a seller on fiverr.com who, for five dollars, will write anything you want on a piece of paper, stick it somewhere on a green Lamborghini (to my untrained eye, it looks like one of the Gallardos), and send you a picture. Obviously, I needed to jump on this.

The only problem was, my plan for my fiverr.com adventure was to create disingenuous viral hype. How could I justify comparing myself to a lime green Lamborghini? While I'm awesome, I have to say, I've seen a Lamborghini in person before. It was in New York City. My husband, friend Jill and I were standing in front of the statue of Atlas outside of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (doobie doobie daaaah!) when I turned and saw an Astin Martin Vantage parked in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. As I raised my phone to snap a picture, a blinding white Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder wove through traffic that looked like it was standing still in comparison. The noise it made could only be described as the high, incessant whine of an electric guitar solo in an 80's hair band mixed with the growl of bedsprings as the lead singer of that band got down with his lady love in a frenzied, early-AIDS panic meshing of unprotected sex and the threat of death.

It was a transformative experience.

So, obviously, I couldn't say something in the picture like, "Jennifer Armintrout is cooler than this car." It wouldn't make sense. I mean, the experience I had seeing that car in action, just feet from me, was a religious vision. For a split second I actually had considered jumping into traffic, just for the story. "So you were in the hospital for how many weeks?" "It doesn't matter, it was worth it." I couldn't even say, "Jennifer Armintrout is exactly as awesome as this car," because if i had jumped into traffic and the wounds incurred were fatal, I would have whispered, "I... was... perfect!" like Natalie Portman at the end of Black Swan, that's how amazing this was. I can't live up to that. And I just couldn't stand to stain this guy's fine automobile with a lie.

So, this is what I came up with:

Worth it.

Let me explain to you about Fiverr.com

2011-07-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, while perusing Regretsy.com I learned about a website called fiverr.com, where people list stuff they will do for you if you pay them five dollars.

Not that stuff.

I immediately saw the potential for advertising in this venture. I can pay people to say I'm awesome? That's so much easier than doing it by myself! So, from now on, expect to see a lot more random instances of people saying I'm badass, but keep in mind, I paid them to do so.

Like this handsome young chap here, who I paid five dollars to write a song extolling my many favorable qualities:

Okay, so clearly, this is the best thing ever. My thanks to "Thallett" for doing such a bang up job. If you're feeling blue or totally rad, either way, send him some business. You'd be amazed at how much more awesome your life sounds when set to catchy pop. You can find him Here

Two blog posts in one day? This is MADNESS!

Naomi Clark is my new hero

2011-07-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter To Laurell K Hamilton

I agree with Ms. Clark. The tweet she references, in which Ms. Hamilton suggests that she welcomes the deep, gothic, darkity dark thoughts that she is plagued with and other people are just, I don't know, not artistic or gothic or deep or what the fuck ever enough to handle them, makes me sick and offended. I'm a writer. I have a mental illness. And I'm not going to go untreated so I can better pour my tortured soul into my stories about vampires and shifters poking each other.

There's another component to those words that suggest that if you're strong, if you're dedicated to your craft, you don't need help to overcome your mental illness. There is already enough stigma attached to mental illness. We don't need to be glorifying it as a gift from the Gods or something. What is this, ancient Rome? Okay, folks, Caesar had epilepsy, he wasn't "touched by Mars" and if he lived today, he would be on medication for it. (I realize that epilepsy isn't a mental illness, but I've been rewatching Rome lately and I can't get out of that mode right now, okay, Vorenus?)

If you're depressed, if you hear voices, if you live in constant fear and you know that it's irrational, please, I urge you, go get help. This isn't directed as Ms. Hamilton, but to anyone who might read this post and have these issues. Going untreated for a serious mental illness is not a badge of honor. It's not an artistic, deeply feeling thing to do. It's self-destructive and selfish, when it affects the people around you. I repeat: do not go untreated because some successful people feel that you can "create" better if you're struggling with these issues.

Please, do go read Naomi's letter, because she's much better at breaking through her rage and channeling it into constructive words, and she hardly uses fuck at all in there, which is why she's more professional than I am. You can read more reaction about this comment from a group known as the LKH_Lashout on LiveJournal: http://lkh-lashouts.livejournal.com/553179.html#cutid1 wherein people who live with mental illness react to those words and the hurt it caused them. It's not pretty.

These are probably the worst cupcakes in London.

2011-07-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

I let my two-year-old pick the next cupcake project from the book, and of course she had to pick one of the most complicated. So, here are the results:

First, I had to sculpt a realistic corpse finger from marzipan. The author of the book suggested ivory food coloring, but that looked a little too fresh, so I used a teensy bit of yellow and a teensy bit of brown. Then, using my own natural sculpting talents and a ton of willpower to not just start shoving marzipan into my mouth by the handful, I made those corpse fingers, damnit:

The nails got a brush with piping gel. As per the instructions, I set them aside in an airtight container while I whipped up a batch of chocolate cupcakes.

It took literally all my willpower not to leave this...

...on top of the trashcans at the funeral home down the street. But I managed.

After the cupcakes were cooled and vanilla frosted, it was time to make some marzipan pie lids. I finished construction while singing along to "The Worst Pies in London", "A Little Priest", "God That's Good" and "Joanna". The Patti LuPone/George Hearn version, of course. After a little experimentation with methods (though the book instructs you to put the entire thing together before decorating with luster dust, I found it was easier to brush them with gel food coloring for better contrast and then put the entire thing together) and thickness of marzipan, I they came out looking more or less all like this:

They were a hit with the kids, and bigger hit with me, since the kids didn't want to eat the marzipan fingers and gave them to me.

I am surprisingly enjoying the aesthetics of them sitting on my baking rack in little rows. It's like a bunch of cupcakes flipping me off every time I walk past.

"and every two years you take up knitting for... a week."

2011-07-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

In my fevered attempts to keep myself from working, but also to not bake super complicated and work intensive cupcakes every single day, I've also decided to treat my work addiction with cross-stitch.
Counted cross-stitch is probably one of the easiest hobbies on the planet, unless you're my friend Bronwyn Green and you spend ten years working on a Theresa Wentzler project until your husband tells you that you can't cross-stitch anymore because he can't take the stress. There is just something soothing about mindlessly counting and stitching, counting and stitching. Until, you know, you fuck it up and you have to take a bunch of stitches out.

Keeping that last part in mind, I present my very simple first project of this whole "not working" experience:

I plan to cross-stitch several pieces with my favorite 30 Rock quotes on them, and then hang them in my office because my husband expressly forbids me from putting them up anywhere in the house, stating that, "Your nerdness must be contained to your own space. Don't make your nerdness everyone else's problem."

Sage advice. I hung it above the doors in my office, so that the view from my desk is something like this:

I have a lot of admiration for Liz Lemon, the fictionalized version of Tina Fey on the show. Although I always think of my friend Jill as being more Lemon-esque (and she has the coloring and glasses), I notice similarities between Liz and I. We're both trying to "have it all" and are obsessive perfectionists.

Also, this.

Trading one addiction for another

2011-07-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

Recently, with the help of my community's department of mental health services, I was informed that I am addicted to work. Apparently, "workaholic" is an actual thing. Usually, I feel as though if I work twelve hours a day, it's not enough, and I don't have enough time to get anything done.

As a result, I am now taking my first hiatus from writing in six years. I needn't tell you, gentle reader, that it blows real hard. All I want to do is write. Great ideas just keep popping up. But I'm forcing myself to ignore that urge, and, like a smoker who chews gum to quit smoking or a heroin addict who smokes cigarettes to quit heroin, I've found a parallel addiction to rule my time.

Crafts.

The glorious anniversary of my birth is tomorrow, and as a present, my friend Cheryl Sterling over at Writers, Like Me gave me this:

This is A Zombie Ate My Cupcake, a book full of some of the strangest, most pointlessly complicated cupcakes you will ever see. And I have made it my personal mission this summer to make them. All of them.

I started out with Lily Vanilli's Rainbow Cupcakes. Now, I'll be honest. She has a recipe for the actual cake in there. But cake and I... we don't get along. I'm not good at making cakes without a mix, so I will confess, I used a mix. But I did make her frosting recipe (I am amazing at making frosting). The cupcakes turned out like this (pre-frosting):

Mine turned out quite short, because I am new to this whole cupcake thing and I didn't fill the cups enough. As it turns out, that was a point in my favor, because once I had made twelve little cupcakes, I had enough left to make my own version of a rainbow cake. I made a tie-dye cake:

This fulfilled my life-long need to eat something that looked like the pretend food they ate in Neverland in Hook.

Once I got the cakes frosted, I decided to take a look at the inside, to see how the rainbow effect worked out:

Aww and yeah. Look at all that rainbow-y goodness. These cupcakes are magical. I don't know what it is about eating something that looks like you're having a mild hallucination, but it tasted delicious. As per Ms. Vanili's forward, I used fair-trade ingredients whenever possible. Farm fresh eggs and hand churned, organic butter from the hippie farm. I think it made the cake taste more psychedelic, even if it came out of a boxed mix.

I'm letting my daughter pick out the next cupcake design to try, though I'm a bit nervous she's going to want to jump right into the ones with sculpted marzipan fingers.

Stay tuned for further projects. Besides the cupcakes, I've also got some other things up my sleeve, crafts wise, this summer.

Pirates aren't that bad, mkay?

2011-06-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

So, as royalty statements went out this quarter, the near-deafening cry that went up from ebook authors was, "STUPID PIRATES". This is pretty much to be expected. If I do a google search of my pen name, Abigail Barnette (Abigail's latest steampunk story, BOUND IN BRASS is now available at All Romance Ebooks), illegal download requests and sites pop up on the very first page. It's enough to make an author gnash her teeth and rend her garments. Unless we start to look at it another way.

This man is not the enemy. This man gets us drunk.

First of all, we need to stop looking at every download as a sale lost. There's an old saying, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" I've never really understood that saying, because it usually has to do with women giving up sex for free, and the whole milk metaphor seems to work better in conjunction with semen, but that's a blog post for another time. While one could apply this to e-piracy of our books by saying, "If they couldn't get the books for free, they would purchase them," I think the opposite is true. If ebook pirates couldn't get the books (milk) for free, they wouldn't buy them (the cow), anyway. Because clearly, if you're getting it for free, it's not something you'd be willing to spend money on. The opportunity is there for these people. They can easily go find our books on any of the fine retail websites that carry them. But they don't. Instead, they go on message boards and say, "Looking for a torrent, plz," and wait. They wait for it for free, when they could easily drop the measly three or so bucks to have it immediately. To me, that kind of proves that they don't want that book that bad. They want it, but obviously not enough to pay for it.

So, instead of going, "I saw that my book was illegally downloaded twelve times from this site, that means twelve sales I lost," maybe we should look at it like, "My book was downloaded twelve times. That means twelve more people read it than would have otherwise." Sure, this doesn't have the same monetary value to us as authors, but it does have some value.

I'll fess up to something here: I've been known to download episodes of popular cable television shows because I'm too poor and too cheap to pay for cable. It is what it is, okay? Occasionally, I'll tell one of my friends, "You have got to watch this show, it's totally awesome." But she won't illegally download anything. Not a song, not a book, not a tv show, not a set of photoshop brushes, nothing. She is the anti-pirate. I can respect that. So, when I tell her, "You really need to see this show," she waits for the dvd, and either rents it or buys it through perfectly legal means.

Let's extrapolate that out, to the world of books, specifically, romance books, where our reputations as authors are based largely on word-of-mouth sales. Let's pretend our pirate's name is... I don't know, Sheila. We'll call her Sheila. For whatever reason, be it our current economy or just plain being a miser, Sheila doesn't spend much money on books. If she wants a paperback, she gets it from her library, if she wants an ebook, she downloads it from a pirate site. So, let's say Sheila downloads... oh, I don't know, GIANT by Abigail Barnette, and she likes it so much that she tells her friend, we'll call this friend... Harriet, about how great GIANT is, what with the sweet romance and super hot love scenes and all. Harriet, being morally opposed to piracy, goes and buys GIANT from ARe. And while she's there, she picks up the first book in the series, GLASS SLIPPER.

Obviously, this isn't going to happen every single time, so let's talk about a different scenario. Let's say Sheila reads the book, then goes to a review site, like Amazon or GoodReads, and leaves a glowing review. And, since she's such a book nut, her reviews are being followed by, I don't know, fifteen people. That's fifteen people who have just been told that GIANT is an amazing book, and fifteen people more likely to check it out.

Not to mention the fact that just having your name come up with more search results on google is a good thing. If I run a search for either of the names I write under, the last thing I would want is to have six results lead back to me and the fact that I write, and the rest of them pointing to a real estate agent in Kentucky who has more internet gravitas than I do. I'm grateful to pirates for the fact that when I search Abigail Barnette, google no longer asks me, "Did you mean Abigail Breslin?" That shit is disheartening. So, even if you google your name and all that comes up is your site and a thousand piracy sites, at least it's saying, "Hey, this person is out there, and they write books, and they're not Abigail Breslin."

Now, please understand that I'm not trying defend theft. But I'm consistently surprised at how many authors publicly bitch about piracy, when readers are quick to point out how obnoxious they find it. When my latest Jennifer Armintrout release, AMERICAN VAMPIRE came out, I joked to a reader on twitter, "Thanks for buying it instead of pirating it." I meant it as a joke, because I really don't give a shit what other people do with their computers. But the reader was clearly taken aback, judging from her response. I've probably lost that reader over my stupid joke, and it's not like I have so many readers that I can afford to lose them.

Let's take that example and extrapolate it out again. Let's say I love an author. Love, love, love this author, so much so that I follow her on facebook or twitter or some other form of social media that I don't know about because my youth is over and I'm relegated to some hellish limbo wherein I'm no longer "young" but not yet "middle-aged". But when she's tweeting or facebooking or yonking or whatever people do these days, she's always on and on about pirates. Pirates this, pirates that. It seems like her disdain for pirates has consumed her, so much so that everyone is a suspect, including me. Also, it's clear from these tweets and yonks or honks or franks or whatever that she's not really interested in crafting stories for me to enjoy. That's secondary to the real reason she's writing, which is money. And if she's not getting enough to be appeased, I'm going to have to listen to her complain about it.

So, I implore you, authors of the world. Let's just shut up about the book piracy thing. Yes, it sucks. But we're not losing as much money as we assume we are. If they're pirating our books, they're not buying. That doesn't mean they'd have bought them in the first place. And having our work in front of more readers is a good thing. And while we're only in it for the money, we can't tell readers that. It would destroy the illusion that we're all artsy, creative types who live for our work.

WHICH WE TOTALLY DO.

Unexpected Benefits to New York Recognizing Gay Marriage

2011-06-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

Like many people across the nation today, I'm thrilled as can be that last night, New York became the sixth state in the nation to allow folk who are homosexual to get married. I mean, there is that horrible, cynical side of me that is irked that only six states have done this so far, that goes, "Oh gee, you're going to let them get married, just like real people? That's mighty big of you," but even I can set that crotchety old-manness aside to be genuinely grateful for the brotherhood of man today.

(That wasn't an intentional reference to How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Musical references just kind of come out of me. I'm like the Seth McFarlane of not doing anything of value. So basically just Seth McFarlane.)

So, this decision has gotten me thinking of the unexpected effects this is going to have on the economy in New York state. This is what I've come up with, so far:

There's a 50% increase in job openings for wedding planners.

I'm not great at math or statistics or presenting factual information in a helpful way, so I figure that about half the people in New York are gay, and half are straight. Let's say half of those gay people and half of those straight people are engaged. We're going to need someone to plan these weddings, and I bet wedding planners in Manhattan alone are already swamped. Plus, we have to factor in all those "sensitive" guys who told their long term girlfriends that they would get married "When love is equal" or some other political shit they were hiding behind because they're really afraid of commitment. I'm looking at you, Brad Pitt, even though you do not live in New York that I am aware of. So, now we've got gay engaged people and commitment-phobic engaged people looking to get married. We're gonna need some more wedding planners.

So many more opportunities for cake.

This one saddens me a little bit, because most of the people I know who are my friends and also gay aren't dating anyone. Also, we live in Michigan, a state that does not recognize gay marriage. So, while the thought of this makes me super happy, it's bittersweet. See, there are going to be more weddings, and therefore more cake. And I'm not going to get any of it. But still, if you live in New York state, there is a fair chance the number of weddings you're required to attend will go up. I know, I know, that's a total bummer and you don't even want to spend every weekend at Crate and Barrel trying to find the cheapest thing on somebody's registry before dashing to the church, but I assure you: there will be cake. So, don't think of this legislation as another way your friends can suck the money right out of your bank account in a socially acceptable manner. Think of it as an increase in cake.

Divorce lawyers, expect to buy a boat in eight years.

Everyone is super happy right now, and I don't want to cast a pall on that, but the fact is, in the United States, it's estimated that most divorces occur around the eight year mark. This is fantastic news for divorce lawyers in New York, who just had their client base expanded for them by the state legislature. Doubled, if you use my faulty math.

Expect at least three gay-wedding themed reality shows on basic cable.

You know it's coming. Turn on any basic cable channel, they probably have a show about weddings. Planning weddings, buying dresses, family drama, people can't get enough of that shit. Now just imagine "Say Yes To The Dress" but with two brides arguing over what they should be wearing. I think it's safe to say that those creative liberal television types in New York City are going into development meetings as we speak: "It's called My Big Fat Gay Wedding. Write that down."

Okay, so it's fun to joke. And maybe some of these predictions will actually come true. But the bottom line is, I'm so, so happy for all our brothers and sisters in New York state who happen to love someone of the same gender and who are now, far, far too late, being recognized as our fellow Americans.

Now other forty-four states? Get your asses in gear, and stop your fucking whinging.

God bless New York, and God Bless America.

Wherein I change the lines to Mean Girls to be about Billy Joel instead of Regina George

2011-06-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

How do I even begin to explain Billy Joel?

Billy Joel is flawless. He has two Fendi purses and a silver Lexus.

I hear his hair's insured for ten-thousand dollars.

I hear he does car commercials. In Japan.

His favorite movie is Varsity blues.

One time, he met John Stamos on a plane. And he told him he was pretty.

One time, he punched me in the face. It was awesome.

He always looks fierce. He always wins Spring Fling Queen.

No, I won't be posting about the Judy Mays controversy...

2011-04-28T06:50:00.001-07:00

I'm just too damned mad about the whole thing, and any post I write about it will just end up filled with curse words.

A little Xtranormal laugh for Monday morning...

2011-04-25T07:25:00.001-07:00

My friend Scott and I discuss the Ayn Rand dating site. I used the KALI MAAAAAA! guy from Indiana Jones to represent him, because that's how I roll.

We all remember that James Frey is an asshole, right?

2011-04-22T04:55:00.001-07:00

Apparently, James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, the "memoir" famous for being a steaming pile of bullshit, is going back on Oprah to promote his new book.

If I sound a little bristly, it's because I think this guy is a fucking scam artist. But I'm apparently in the minority. If you go to CNN's entertainment blog, The Marquee Blog, you'll find a story about Jame's Frey's return to the Oprah show and lots of comments from readers who feel that it was Oprah, and not James Frey, in the wrong during his first appearance on the show. I feel it is my job, nay, my divine duty, to call it like I sees it and tackle one of these comments, a statement that hits every single one of my "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!" buttons.

Jan writes: whether the book was completely true or not, it was a compelling read. very intense. and it told a good story and demonstrated a good lesson. i bought several of them for addicts and they truly appreciated the books even if they were not 100% true. i don't know about his new book but i always felt that oprah went overboard in taking him to task on her show the way she did. it was pretty tough to watch. he did what he did, with the help and advice of very knowledgeable people in the business. i think he was more of a dupe that she was

What this comment tells me, Jan, is that you don't give a shit about truth or integrity, just as long as you're entertained. It doesn't matter if the book was appreciated by people struggling with addiction. It was a lie. And it was no one's fault but his own.

This is a sentiment that got thrown around a lot when the controversy first hit the news. a call-in on Larry King's show, Oprah herself blamed his publisher for the book being, well, full of lies and half-truths, saying it was the publisher's job to verify the facts. Of course, she changed her tune later, but it apparently stuck in the minds of a lot of readers, like Jan there, who feel that Frey was simply the sweet, unwitting pawn of an evil publisher.

I've got some experience in the publishing industry. Not in memoirs, mind you, but I do have eight fiction novels in print and five novellas in e-book format, and I'm currently working as an editor for a publishing house that will go unnamed for professional reasons. Whenever I have signed a contract, there's been this little section in it that says something to the effect of, "this is all my work, and if I'm lying it's totally on me." I would bet that James Frey signed a contract with a similar clause in it, something like, "If I'm lying and exploiting dead people for my own gain, it's nobody's fault but my own." And when I'm editing a book, I don't feel like the onus is on me to make sure that every historical fact the author includes is accurate. I assume they know what they're talking about, and I don't get paid enough or have the time to research how people cleaned their teeth in Victorian Britain. If the facts turn out to be inaccurate and readers complain, they're holding the author responsible. Blaming the publisher for James Frey's lies is like a five-year-old blaming his mom for his lies. "Yes, I lied, but you listened to me lying. Really, you're the one at fault."

Let's go back to that that "exploiting dead people for my own gain" thing. James Frey writes in A Million Little Pieces about a tragic car accident that caused the death of his only friend in high school. Of course, this turned out to be all lies, except for the part about the car/train accident that actually happened, and the girl's surviving family objected strongly to her portrayal and the inclusion of her death in the book, saying that she and Frey didn't know each other, were not friends, and that Frey was not involved in the accident or the aftermath in any way.

Now let's hop back to the statement that a lot of readers make: "It doesn't matter if it was fake, it helped my friend/my husband/my dad/my whoever, because they're an addict."

Drug addiction is a difficult dragon to slay. I've had my own problems with addiction in the past. You know what would have definitely not helped me during those times? Finding out that the thing that had inspired me to seek recovery was actually a gigantic, steaming pile of horseshit and failure. But setting that aside, whenever anyone says that James Frey's lies are admissible because they "helped people," what they're saying is, "I don't care about the emotional pain and stress this douchebag money grabber caused this dead teenager's family. Yes, they're real people, who have a real vested interest in this farce, but I choose to ignore that in order to still feel good about this wannabe hardass who goes on national tv with his big, sad eyes and cries about how life was so hard being a white suburban teen in the midwest."

Leaving aside his lies, which included turning a five-hour stay in jail into the life of a hardened criminal (a word he capitalized throughout the book, to really drive home what a hard-ass he is), there's the fact that he's created a sweatshop for people who want to write but don't want to make a living from it. You can read about that here .

So what we have here is a guy who lies, won't admit he's lying in the face of overwhelming evidence, exploits dead teenagers and living writers, and there are still people out there defending this curly haired fuck?

What kind of a world do we live in, that this guy is able to continue making a living and go out in public without everyone throwing rotten garbage at him? Is he not the definition of a super villain? James Frey is like Lex Luthor with half the brain, and we're funding his career by buying his books? Fantastic, this is exactly the world I want to be living in. Fuck integrity and honesty, as long as we're entertained.

"Are you not entertained?"

And now people are wondering if Oprah will apologize for her behavior during his last appearance on her show. Why should she? She read this guy's book, she believed it and trusted that he was telling the truth. Of course she believed him, he ran all over hell and high-water, telling everyone who would listen that his book was 100% fact and he is now and forever shall be the hardest motherfucker with the biggest balls ever, an ex-con so tough he survived a root canal with no anesthesia at the hands of a Nazi dentist and also he's Superman and he kicked his addiction to every drug ever while simultaneously rescuing babies and kittens from a burning meth house, and then he drove a bulldozer into a police car and stood in the middle of the street with his arms wide open, receiving their hate like Ed Norton in American History X only not a white supremacist. Only after he was caught did he start to offer up excuses for his lies, like he was Obi-wan telling Luke that the entire "hit a police car and faced an eight year prison sentence for felony mayhem" thing he told him about was true "from a certain point of view."

Stop defending this asshole, everybody. Seriously. Stop defending him, stop proselytizing about the power of A Million Little Pieces to heal even the most hardened of drug users. Stop insisting that James Frey was the victim while he continues to victimize others. And stop demanding that Oprah apologize. The person who needs to apologize is James Frey, but that's too much to hope for, so long as we continually reward whoever steals the title of "Most Audacious Liar".

What it's like living in Michigan

2011-04-18T06:16:00.000-07:00

Today I was going to blog two new xtranormal videos of my husband and I having normal husband/wife conversation, just to prove that we're both probably mentally ill. However, when I went to bed yesterday, it looked like this outside:

And when I got up this morning, it looked like this:

So I felt this was something I couldn't let slip idly past without comment.

Here's my comment: "What the shit is this? Wasn't it 83 degrees last Sunday? And we complained that the house was too hot and we all slept nekkid on top of our covers because it was unbearably warm? And now there's snow on the ground and in the trees like a goddamned Christmas wonderland? What the balls?"

There are a lot of clever jokes about Michigan and what it's like to live here, but I think for the people who don't live in the midwestern United States, well, they can't possibly know that those jokes are basically all true. There was an email forward going around for a while called "You know you're a Michigander if..." and there was a part where it says, "If you've ever had sunburn and frostbite in the same week."

That's this week, folks. That's this week.

We have lost our damned minds.

2011-04-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard by now about the video burning up the internet of a six-year-old being patted down by a TSA officer. If you haven't, I'll provide the video here, so you can get an idea of what people are so furious about. I will warn you that it's disturbing; I was surprised at how uncomfortable I was when watching it.

Before I say what I want to say, I have to make it very clear that I do not blame the TSA agent in the video. She was doing her job, and she did it with respect for the parents and the child and made sure to reassure the girl. At no point does the girl appear distressed or uncomfortable, and I give credit to the agent doing the pat down. In fact, I give a lot of credit to TSA agents as a whole. I've only very rarely encountered a TSA agent who seemed gruff or unprofessional. When I flew out of Newark, NJ last September, the TSA agent who patiently went through my bag and explained to me what could and couldn't go through the checkpoint was very friendly and smiled the whole time, and never once tried to intimidate or threaten me.

But this is absurd. There is a widely quoted statement attributed to Benjamin Franklin that is often cited when speaking about the current state of airport security: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Apparently, there are people in my country who feel they are smarter than Benjamin Franklin and more important than the Constitution.

I'm a fan of the fourth amendment, which reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." When you read this, and you think about our current airport security policies, you have to kind of wonder at what point "wants to use an airplane to reach a destination" began to fall under "probable cause". This six-year-old, if we're to assume that TSA is not violating the Constitution of The United States, somehow gave the agents at the security checkpoint probable cause to assume that she had contraband of some kind hidden on her person.

At this point, I think it's fair to say that we as a people are not looking to TSA to stop drug runners and mules the way we expected airport security to do pre-9/11. We're looking to TSA to stop hijackings and bombings, and that does seem to be their sole focus. We're also expecting them to do this, and it is a rightful expectation, without profiling passengers. So, in keeping with their mission, this search of a six-year-old girl was completely reasonable. The question should not be "Why are we searching six-year-old girls," but "Why are we allowing these searches in the first place."

Many people will attest to the need for heightened security in airports based on the fact that 9/11 occurred at all. But 9/11 was an inevitability. The World Trade Center was a complex of seven buildings housing some of the most financially powerful companies in the United States, as well as offices that worked in close conjunction with the infrastructure of the United States. The towers themselves had been targeted for terrorist attack before, as had the other buildings the 9/11 terrorists had chosen for destruction in the attack. Airport security was not responsible for these attacks, nor could increased security in airports have stopped the events from occurring if the terrorists had chosen some other method of attack.

Somehow, though, we continue to see "averting another 9/11" as a perfectly logical reason to subject travelers to unlawful search in airports. "It hasn't happened again!" proponents of these measures will state with pride, which is absurd. If we were to base the fact that 9/11 hasn't happened again in the ten years since the attack and attribute this victory to our security measures, then our security measures lose purely on the basis that before 9/11, 9/11 hadn't happened at all. The first commercial flight in the United States flew in 1914, and 9/11 happened in 2001. That's a pretty impressive track record, in my opinion, for our old security measures. The problem with this method of accounting is that you can't prove a negative. We can't prove that our current measures have diverted terrorist plots.

At this point, someone reading might be saying, "Fine, Jen, if you don't like it, don't fly. There's no right to fly in this country!" Absolutely, there is no "right to fly". But pre-9/11, it was an accepted risk, albeit a very, very small one, that someone might hijack or blow up your plane. The scale of 9/11 seems to have thrown us all out of whack, to the point that we are willing to give up our freedom for safety. Not real safety, but the illusion of safety. The comfortable feeling when we get on that plane that no one will be planning to blow it up or drive it into a building, because there are security measures in place to prevent it. But no one on those planes that were destroyed in 9/11 thought, as they got on that plane, that someone would be killing them on that flight, because all the passengers had been through security. When the planes actually were hijacked, no one fought back, because there was a certain expectation of how hijackings are conducted. None of those passengers or pilots or security check point workers could predict the future, any more than TSA is able to predict the future now. It's not a fault on anyone's part, it's just how the world is.

So, if you don't like it, don't fly? How about we do this, instead: rather than subject everyone in the country to degrading public search without just cause, rather than ask passengers to show strangers images of their naked bodies, rather than have our children groped by strangers in public, rather than hand over our rights to our own bodies to our government, we accept that airline travel has inherent risk. We accept that our country has enemies, and that those enemies may attack us. We accept that for all the freedom we have, there comes a cost, and at times that cost is very, very high.

I'm not advocating a return to the days of getting on an airplane with a sword as carryon, which, no kidding at all, I did in 1996 on a flight from Malaga to New York. I'm advocating a return to our senses. Right now, we're trying to outthink the terrorists, to the point that our suspicion will begin to hamper us. "A guy put a bomb in his shoe! Check everybody's shoes!" only works until the terrorists know that we're checking shoes, and then they move on to the next plan, or the next venue. Terrorist plots that the United States have thwarted since 9/11 have been predominately focused on fuel lines and public utilities, not airlines. That's not to say, "They're done, let's completely drop our guard," but "Perhaps we need to shift our focus slightly." There has to be a happy medium on the spectrum that is, on the low end, "Get on a plane with a sword," and on the high end, "Stick our fingers in a six-year-old's underpants."

I love my country. I love being an American. But I also love sanity. "If you don't like it, don't fly," to me, smacks of misplaced faith that our government can protect us from every inevitability, and that is not what our government was intended to do. So, I say to to everyone with a "don't like it, don't fly," attitude, if you don't like the reality that air travel carries an incredibly slight risk, don't fly, and allow the rest of us to travel with our rights in tact. And as for protecting the people on the ground, let's all accept that as long as our country has enemies, we are all potential targets with, again, a very, very slight risk of our lives being ended by terrorism, just like every other citizen of every other country in the world.

Our founding fathers were very cognizant of the fact that should their revolution fail, they would be put to death for their cause. We owe it to them to preserve the ideals they stood for, even if it means feeling slightly less safe when seated across the aisle from an obviously deranged and death hungry kindergartener on an airplane.

Shower with The Allman Brothers

2011-03-31T15:02:00.000-07:00

Just a few moments ago– literally, moments– I was in the bathtub, listening to my Pandora Radio "Allman Brothers/Willie Nelson" combo station (if you really let that sink in, I won't have to explain that this is another "Jen gets high" stories") when "Jessica" by The Allman Brothers came on.

If you don't watch Top Gear, I have to tell you right now that this is going to be about %60 percent less funny. But anyway, the theme to Top Gear is "Jessica", or a synthed up version of it, anyway. Sitting in my tub, I started laughing. Then I noticed it was echoey, so I put on my best Jeremy Clarkson voice and said, "Tonight! Richard Hammond sucks his own cock! I get arrested soliciting a prostitute, and James dies in an autoerotic asphyxia accident!"

The fact that I laughed out loud, or "Loled" as they say in the parlance of our time, got me thinking. How often are my characters laughing per book. I know that if you opened Ashes To Ashes and threw a dart in it, you'd hit somebody crying. But I wonder how many times I just lazily throw that verb at the page because I needed to tag some dialogue to keep it from becoming a screenplay.

Moreover, what are other really repetitive things I write? I have writer friends who I can guarantee certain phrases will pop up in everything they write. I've read authors who repeat the exact same descriptions in every single book of their series. Everyone has their own voice, and sometimes that voice echoes itself.

Reader, what are some often repeated phrases of your favorite authors? Is there any particular phrase of mine that you've noticed, or that you wish I would stop using? Is there anything you find repeated over and over in your own writing?

Blast From My Past

2011-03-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

So, this afternoon, while I hid upstairs while my husband told the visiting Mormons that no, his wife wasn't at home (I have a weakness for the religious and I usually invite them in, which invites return visits. I've been in the process of becoming a Jehovah's Witness for the past three years and I don't even want to, this is the depths of my inability to say no to religious folk), I decided I would sit on the floor of my bedroom and go through my big ole' trunk of memories from my younger days.

Doesn't everybody have one of those?

I found some amusing pictures of my recently-deceased grandfather, a series of snapshots I took whenever I caught him sleeping on family vacation '97. I vaguely recall that it went from, a "Ha ha, I'm going to take a picture of grandpa sleeping!" joke to a full blown, "If I casually turn on golf and hide behind that chair, I can get him again!" sniper attack.

Also in the rubble of my high school days? A very sweet letter from my first boyfriend in which he apologized for not breaking up with me well, and expressing a hope that we could be friends. I feel real guilt over the fact that I don't think I ever saw him once after my last day of high school. Whoops. Hope he's still alive somewhere. Wonder what he thinks about the recent decline of funny on The Simpsons.

There were programs from shows I saw during high school, and shows I was in during high school. Tickets from Alanis Morrisette, Rusted Root, The Verve Pipe, The Cranberries, REM, Patti Smith, and Radiohead concerts. An 8mm video cassette that I would literally pay a hundred bucks to know what's on it. Horrid poetry about how no one would ever love me.

As I started to look over the dreams I'd had as a teenager, and thought about how different my life has turned out in comparison to what I'd thought I'd be doing now, I got a little sad. Maybe I knew more than I thought I did back then. Maybe my life might have turned out differently, and I could be sitting in an apartment overlooking central park, polishing my Tonys and chatting on the phone to my BFF Kristen Chenoweth.

And then I found two things that pretty much convinced me that, no, I am in the life I was destined to live, for better or worse. One was a folder full of Forever Knight fanfic zines. Another was a journal entry from my senior English class. The teacher used to write quotes on the board and make us journal about them. I found my entries, which, helpfully, don't have the quotes copied on to them.

September 25, 1997
When the aliens finally come and get me, I will be pretty cool about it. I'll let them do their little experiments on me and whatever, and then I would show them around Earth. I think I would take them bowling, cause that would really help them understand our culture, I think. I think I wouldn't let them see Independence Day, though, cause that might peach them off.
I have seen four UFOs in my life, but none of them have stopped to pick me up.
If I were going to have someone play me in a movie, it would be me, cause I act, or Alex Kingston from Moll Flanders, cause we have the same hair.

I would love to know what she had written on the board that day to encourage such an explosion of verbal diarrhea.

I would be even more interested to find out what she had written on September 29, 1997:

Okay, I think that the quote means that when you are a kid, you look at things a lot differently and you aren't always trying so hard to figure things out. When you're a kid and you are thinking about something, you find one answer that seems logical to you and you stick with it, but adults feel like they have to know everything, so they don't think as much, they try to have it all figured out. I think it all boils down to your imagination, and how much you use it.

Setting aside the fact that I have no idea what I was talking about, I think I was onto something there. When you're a child, a simple answer does satisfy you more than when you're an adult. But it's interesting to look at something like this and think, "What would I think of myself, if seventeen year old Jen could see who she will be at thirty?" I wonder if she had any idea how much she will have to use her imagination as an adult.

St. Patrick's Day =/= Ireland

2011-03-17T09:21:00.001-07:00

Every year at around this time... no, actually, specifically on this very day, I start to get into internet arguments with Irish people, that is, actual Irish people living in Ireland, about St. Patrick's day.

Their argument usually amounts to some variation on being offended that it's celebrated by drinking green beer (which they don't drink in Ireland), eating corned beef brisket (which they don't eat in Ireland), and talk of stereotypical leprechauns, shamrocks, drunks, etc.

To which I say: It's not really about you at all.

I guess to an outside observer, St. Patrick's day in America looks like yet another American tradition cobbled together from ideas stolen from other cultures. And in a way, it is. But if anyone truly thinks that St. Patrick's day in America has anything to do with present day Ireland, they don't know the whole story. In fact, it has very little to do with Ireland at all. American St. Patrick's day is a wholly American celebration.

Some of my ancestors, like the ancestors of many, many people in the United States, came here during the potato famine. Though my name, through marriages and happenstance, is the bastardized German "Armintrout", you'll find Loudens, Cahills, and Smiths in my family tree. In the Louden family, especially, they're proud to be the decendants of Irish immigrants, and most of us describe ourselves as Irish. But we're not so thoroughly American and thick as to assume that we can just stroll on into Ireland and claim we live there, nor do we feel kinship with the Ireland of today. The Ireland we celebrate on St. Patrick's day is an Ireland that no longer exists, that never existed in the first place. An Ireland born in our family histories, out of the stories (read: lies) our parents and grandparents tell us about a magical place where everything was super great and magical and full of wonder and pride, but our ancestors left because they just felt like it, okay? Stop asking so many questions and do not, under any circumstances, read any Frank McCourt books.

It's the same with most decendents of Irish immigrants. Say Sam McIrish immigrates to America in 1875. He marries a Polish girl, but he raises his children telling them constantly that they're Irish. He tells them stories of Ireland and how wonderful it was, but also stories about the terrible hardships he endured. Those children grow up rolling their eyes at the tales of how horrible life was for their father, because they're usually told in conjunction with phrases like, "You kids have it sooooo easy," and "When I was your age." So, when they have children of their own, they leave those bits out. They raise that third generation with tales of how great Ireland was, how proud they should be to be Irish (Okay, yes, and a little Polish or Italian or whatever got mixed in there, but that's not as important as IRISH). Somewhere along the line, it becomes vogue to eat corned beef brisket to celebrate ones' Irishness, though I'm pretty sure corned beef was invented by Jewish people. And out of all of this comes our weird, effed up traditions. The drinking probably arose because, well, let's face it, when you're a poor immigrant, you probably want to get good a tore up any opportunity you can get, just to escape the harsh realities of life.

So, if you're Irish, like, born in Ireland, and St. Patrick's day is super upsetting to you, please know that we don't really think you're all drunken red-headed short people jealously guarding your pots o' gold, saying things like "wee" and "blarney" all the time. Only the severely ignorant think that, and they probably think equally demeaning things about other countries as well. We're just over here, celebrating our ancestors the way we have for generations, regardless of whether or not the tradition makes sense. And it's not like you can get upset at that, Ireland. I mean, come on. Pot, kettle, you know?

And as for the saying, "Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's day," the truth is, nearly everyone in America probably does have some Irish heritage, whether they're aware of it or not. That's because Irish immigrants got over here and got their swerve on, big time. If you're an American with more than four generations in America behind you, chances are you got some Irish in there somewhere.

So, Americans, celebrate your awesome affinity for turning nearly any mundane weekday into an occassion for public intoxication and the wearing of dopey hats. Do it with pride and as much dignity as you can muster while vomiting up green beer and cabbage in the backseat of a cab. Because you're not celebrating Ireland or being Irish. You're celebrating being an Irish-American, because we're pretty much super awesome.

What Writers Instant Message About

2011-03-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

Fish Fear Fire

2011-03-07T06:06:00.001-08:00

The title of my entry today would make a seriously awesome band name. Just a heads up to whoever fills Phil Collins's spot in the music industry.

I have four fish. Three goldfish and one plecostamus. Every day, I like to spend some quality time with my fish, except the plecostamus because he looks like Cthulu's mom. But I like to spend quality time with my goldfish. A lot of people don't realize that goldfish have distinct personalities. You can even teach them to do tricks. I haven't, because I don't have that kind of time or desire to see a fish do a trick, but I do like to talk to them and basically tell them how awesome they are and sometimes stick my hand in with them so they can attack me.

Last night, I thought, "You know what would really blow a fish's mind? Fire." Think about it. There is no way they've ever seen fire. I thought they would be really impressed.

I grabbed my lighter and walked on my knees to get right up close to the tank without actually having to stand up because things like "standing" and "walking" are my least favorite activities. All three fish were lined up at the glass, their mouths– perpetually downturned and disapppointed-looking– going in such a way that if there had been a way to transmit the sound to me, I'm sure they were saying "Op. Op. Op." Which, as you know, is fish for "Yes! Jen's back! Jen is awesome!"

Then I flicked the lighter.

I think I could have sat down in front of that tank with a plate of fishsticks and a t-shirt that said "I love eating fish" and they would have reacted better. They scattered, looking at me with their wide, horrified eyes. They were afraid of the fire.

After a few minutes of chasing them around with it (which consists of just waving the lighter back and forth in front of the tank), I decided that was animal cruelty and went back to just chilling out and talking to them. But our relationship has changed. Before, they viewed me as a friendly being. Now, they know I command the elements. They're already pretty freaked out by the fact that I can catch them in a net. Fire is somehow a worse betrayal of the bond between us.

I guess I'm going to have to do something nice for my fish, like watch Blue Planet again. They seem to enjoy shows about coral reefs and such.

There was no real point to this post, I just wanted to share. For some reason, creatures who live entirely underwater are afraid of fire.

Hi, I'm USA Today Bestselling author Jennifer Armintrout, and I'm on "welfare".

2011-03-06T08:02:00.001-08:00

It started this morning with a facebook comment. Not on my own page, but on someone else's. And it was more than one comment. This person's diatribe read as follows:

look at china.... 1 child per family. they should do that same thing here. would help regulate the baby making machines on welfare and food stamps.who abuse the system.[...]that is why the first amendment is so wonderful brittany. People can have opinions that differ from others. I feel that any mother that has to get on WIC, state aided insurance for their children, or receive any help from the federal or sta...te level, cannot afford to take care of the children they already have. Which is where I differ from most peoples opinions. I know what its like to grow up poor, and going to bed hungry at night. i also know what its like to only be able to sit in front of a kerosene heater for heat, and only take cold running watered showers. Too often i see mothers driving better cars than i do, and are able to eat better than i do. The only point i am making is, if a person is adult enough to make such decisions as having children, make sure you can afford to take care of that child, without the aid of these programs. When our parents were our age and having children, they never lived with their parents, nor did they ever ask for help. At least mine never did.

Setting aside the fact that this person advocates population control, i.e., complete control over a woman's fertility whether she likes it or not... no, wait, let's not set that aside. They're talking about how great the first amendment is while arguing for the destruction of personal freedom? How do you even wrap your mind around that kind of logic?

No, wait, original point. I read this person's comments and they really hit home. Because I'm on government assistance.

When I started writing, my husband, son and I were hanging on by our fingernails. Because we couldn't afford daycare but fell above the acceptable assistance level, I stayed home with my infant son while my husband worked fifty hours a week to make ends meet. My first contract, for Blood Ties 1, 2, and 3, was a lot of money at the time. 18k for three books. I was super excited, because now I could afford Netflix. Let that sink in. I could finally afford a nine-dollar-per-month dvd rental service, and it was a big deal in our house. So, we weren't the poorest people in the world, but we definitely weren't middle class or anything. We were barely working class.

When it was time to negotiate the contact for my next book, I was super psyched. I had an agent, so I bet I would get, like, 20k for three books this time! After negotiations, I ended up with a $200,000 advance for four books. We lived of off that for four years. We bought a house. Not a big one, but still, we owned a house. We bought a car. We decided to have another kid. Royalties that came in were high. My husband quit the job he hated and went back to school. Everything was fine.

And then it wasn't. When things took a downward turn, I didn't immediately panic. "We can hold on until Joe finishes school and gets a job. We have savings. This will blow over." I waited for a year for things to just "blow over", and they didn't. Our savings dried up. I got a job at McDonald's. My husband quit college and went back to work at the same job, this time at half the pay. Our resources were tapped out. I had to apply for welfare.

I'm not proud to say that we've been on foodstamps and energy assistance for a year now. I'm not proud to say that because of my pride, I waited until we were destitute to take action and seek the help that my government offers. We lost that house, which was, incidentally, the house I lived in during my teen years and held a lot of memories. I'm not proud about any of this. But pride doesn't feed your kids or keep them warm, so I can't afford pride.

And yet, the attitude persists that people on welfare are there because they're bad people. I don't think it's morally repugnant to do what needs to be done to provide for your children. In fact, I think a bad person is one who will let their children go to bed hungry when other options are available, simply because they value their pride and appearance over the well-being of their kids. That facebook commenter reserves the right to her opinion, and I reserve the right to mine.

I don't think anyone actually sits down and says, "I'm going to have this baby that I can't afford because life is more fun when it's hard." I don't think anyone actually says that they're going to intentionally live off of public assistance, and if they do, it's not much of a life, so don't envy them. In order to recieve cash assistance in the state of Michigan, you have to look for a job for forty hours a week. That's forty hours a week of pounding the pavement, filling out applications. You also have to tell the places that you're applying that you're on cash assitances, so they can sign your form to prove that you've been out looking. That's right, you get to tell a stranger that you're on welfare, and open yourself up to the derision of people like our facebook friend up there. In public. In the end, you get something in the area of a hundred bucks a month for a family of four.

There's a story that I hear all the time, from literally everyone. A woman goes to the checkout at the grocery store. Usually, the woman in question is described as "black" in a whispered voice because apparently black people put hidden mics around the houses of white conservatives to catch them being racist or something. I don't know, I don't get the whispered "black" that almost always accompanies this story. But I digress. This woman goes up to the checkout with some kind of luxury item in plain view. Many times, it's a brand name purse or expensive-looking manicure. She heaps piles of exotic groceries onto the belt: t-bone steaks, lobster, organic produce. Somehow, she also gets alcohol and cigarettes in there, and she whips out her assistance card and waltzes out with those groceries, six screaming kids in tow. On rare occassions, she actually is overheard telling the cashier how great it is to keep having babies and getting free stuff, so she's never going to work. Almost always, the person telling the story was standing behind her in line, their meager peasant rations pitfully malingering at the feet of the welfare queen's bounty.

It's all bullshit. For one thing, this story is so widely repeated that it just can't be true. I'm not saying that you didn't see a woman with an expensive purse using a foodstamp card. In fact, I often carry my Coach purse, which I bought five years ago, because it is sturdy and if something happens to it, there's a lifetime guarantee on it. What I'm saying is, I was a cashier. My husband was a cashier for almost seven years. Neither of us has ever seen this woman who gleefully hands over her foodstamps and chats loudly about how great it is to commit welfare fraud.

I'm going to break this down for you. Let's pretend you really, truly did see this woman with her expensive clothes or nails using her foodstamp card. Perhaps she bought those clothes before she became poor. It's possible she has to dress a certain way for her job. And if she is buying steak or lobster, maybe it's her birthday. Or maybe she's cooking for her boss or parents or something and she doesn't want them to know how bad it's been.

No one is omniscient. None of us can know what every single person on welfare is thinking or feeling. But what it is about simply needing help, asking for it, and receiving it that makes so many people assume the worst about a person? Maybe instead of worrying about how many people are abusing the system, we could say, "Thank god that's there to help people in need." Maybe we could say, "Thank god I don't have to ask for that kind of help, only to be looked down upon."

I'm Jennifer Armintrout, USA Today Bestselling Author and public assistance recipient, and I am a good person. And so are a lot of people in the same boat with me.

A gross story in which you will learn too many details of my life.

2011-03-04T11:15:00.001-08:00

If you follow me on facebook, you’re probably already aware that I love the movie Machete. Until recently, I thought that the worst possible way to ever be woken up was what happens to Jessica Alba near the end of the movie. Machete pushes her off the bed, onto a floor that is immediately covered in broken glass, while gun fire explodes everywhere and the only thing she can find to arm herself against the invading bad guys is a decorative table-top obelisk.

This morning, I would have preferred that.

At 6am, forty-five minutes before the alarm was to go off, I was, as I am every night, locked in the grip of a stress dream in which people are yelling at me and all my teeth are falling out. Then, I smelled something. Let’s concentrate on this point, as it will become important later. In my sleep, while I was dreaming, I encountered a stench so powerful that my sense of smell overrode REM sleep, a state in which non-essential brainwave activity takes a holiday and your genitals get a work out (look it up).

So, while I’m deeply asleep, something stinks so much that it rouses me to wakefulness. In the split second between my brain waking up and my body hopping on board the function train, I thought, “Maybe it’s my breath,” and tried to nudge myself back into unconsciousness.

But it wasn’t my breath, gentle readers. No, sometime in the night, my dog Sampson, who prefers to sleep under my bed, even though he’s the tall kind of beagle and doesn’t fit very well under there, had gotten sick. Not vomit sick. The other kind.

The poop kind.

Now, I don’t often think about dog poop. But when I do, I prefer to avoid words like “spraying” and “slightly-chilled”. “Gelled” is pretty much off the list entirely. And yet, I faced all of these putrid adjectives and more when my husband barked, “Jen. Your dog shit all over. Get up.” Followed by my two-year-old’s cheerful, fully awake voice asking, “Is that poop?”

Yes. Yes it was poop. So much, so disgusting. I’d just woken up. My husband had plastic shopping bags, a roll of paper towels, a bottle of Woolite and a bottle of Febreeze. He dropped all of these things in a panic and left the room like it was on fire.

Since Dear Author already featured a post about how getting to know authors makes them impossible to separate from their works, and this post has already let you glimpse a part of my life that would have been better left buried, I will try to put this as delicately as possible. I sleep, how shall we say, without creating extra laundry. Since I’d sprung from sleep to shit-cleaning mode in a matter of seconds, I hadn’t really bothered to put anything more on. While I scrubbed at the floor, I realized that this particular moment in my life could be a scene in a John Waters movie. A naked fat woman on her hands and knees, scrubbing dog excrement off the rug.

Did I mention that literally every pair of headphones I own was at ground zero of this catastrophe? That all three pair lay, coiled like Medusa’s head, in a pile of brownish-yellow slime? Well, dear reader, they were. I had to carry them to the bathroom and painstakingly clean them all without submerging them. At one point, my husband, who will have nothing to do with feces but will clean up vomit, as per our wedding vows, came to the bathroom door, made a face and said, “Take a shower before you come back to bed.”

When all was clean, but still odorous, I had the magnificent idea to put the Febreeze to good use. I did so, and vigorously. I liberally spritzed about half the bottle, until the horrible stench was good and covered. Finally, I could sleep once more. Okay, for thirty minutes. But I would make the most of that thirty minutes. I climbed into bed, folded the covers into a protective mask over my nose, and settled in for a peaceful cat nap. Unfortunately, no where on the Febreeze bottle does it have some kind of warning or guide to tell you at what point adding more Febreeze to the equation becomes more harmful than the original smell you’re trying to cover up. My eyes burned. My throat closed. I had an asthma attack.

Stumbling downstairs in the dark, I located my inhaler and took mighty puffs. I noticed the pile of blankets at the bottom of the couch, warm, snuggly, clean blankets that had never been in the same room with explosive dog diarrhea. I wrapped myself in one, fell on the couch and closed my eyes.

Only to be prodded awake by my son, who asked for cereal. My husband gently explained that since the kids were up, we, too, were now up, and we might as well get the grocery shopping done.

That’s right. We capped off our banner morning by doing the one household chore I like significantly less than cleaning pet crap out of the carpet. Things just got better and better from there.

As I write this, it is 1:55 pm, and it feels like it should be 8pm (or, for those not in the United States, 20:00). I think my body has actually aged from the stress of this no good, very bad morning. I’m going to take a nap in my hopefully aired out room, but I’m not going to leave you with pointless bitching. I’m going to turn this story into a lesson.

Every time you meet an author, and you think to yourself, “My, what an impressive person. S/he holds entire worlds in her/his head. Through the power of her/his words alone, s/he can transport me to another realm, one which I was glad to escape to. How in awe I am of the human mind at this moment, and her/his mind, in particular,” remember this post. Remember that at sometime in their recent life, they may have awoken to a morning of such horrors. Remember that authors are people, and sometimes, they have to clean up dog shit.

What I thought happened when we were pulled over by the police...

2011-02-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

As some of you already know, I am a registered patient under Michigan's Medical Marijuana Act, owing to the fact that I have chronic pain caused by Fibromyalgia. I'm totally legit here, so I wasn't doing anything illegal. But on Saturday, I was well-medicated as Bronwyn Green, Jilly-O and I made our way to our friend Emily's baby shower.

Things started off well, though we were somewhat delayed leaving my house as I thought it was imperative that google for information on Bruce Willis's penis size. When the search turned up surprisingly little, we got in the car.

Now, since I live in a teensy rural town, and the shower was in another, slightly larger rural town and both were separated by a maze of country roads, Bronwyn needed my help to navigate. Which was why I got shotgun. In reality, they should have just thrown me in the backseat and let me sleep. But then we never would have had the experience we had.

Rather than tell you what actually happened, I'll just tell you what happened from my perspective.

One one of those little rural back roads, Bronwyn was going much faster than she should have been going. Like, fifteen or more miles over the speed limit. She was telling us a story about something that terror has now erased from my fractured short-term memory, when she suddenly said, "Aaaand I'm being pulled over. Okay."

My heart started to pound. Even though I was legally within my right to be, for all intents and purposes, stoned out of my gord, I looked at my red eyes in the visor mirror and knew I was going to jail. Legally, I'm allowed to carry up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana. I had none. But I was going to go to jail. This was happening.

"Jill, hand me my purse," Bronwyn said, reaching over the seat.
"No!" I exclaimed, gripping the door handle and bracing myself as if for impact. "If you do that, he'll think you're hiding weed or you have a gun! You don't want the police to think you have a gun! If I was the police, and I saw you reach back there, I would think you had a gun!"

I don't know why I always think that the cops are going to shoot me. I'm a thirty-something white female who doesn't have visible meth sores. The cops and me should be fine. But when I meet a cop, whether it's socially or I'm being pulled over, I always say, "I don't have a gun!" In the latter situation, that brutal honesty is always met with, "Step out of the car, ma'am."

"I don't want this to be one of those times when they tell you to get out of the car, Jen," Bronwyn warned me. "Just don't say anything."

The cop came to the window and asked the usual questions. Why were you speeding, where are you going in such a hurry, etc. To which Bronwyn actually said, "I'm trying to get to a baby shower." Then, the cop asked her, "Where is the baby shower." I desperately bit my tongue to keep from snapping, "Why, are you gonna crash it?" In my head, all I hear is a litany of I never should have taken shotgun. I should have let Jill sit up here. I have too much access to this police officer. Today is the day I go to jail.

"Where is it, Jen?" Bronwyn asks, actually prompting me to speak in the presence of the law man. I mumbled something like, "Across from Perrigo," and after the officer had taken her information and gone back to his car, I shrieked, "Why did you tell him about the baby shower? You never TELL THEM YOU WERE INTENTIONALLY SPEEDING!"

Bronwyn, being the driver of the car and the person who was actually in some danger of legal reprecussions, bemoaned her luck and expressed her anxiety over the situation, to which Jill asked, "What, have you got priors?"

I laughed with them, but inside I was certain I was going to go to jail. For those of you who have never experienced the joys of my admittedly questionable pharmeceutical past, let me explain what it is like to be as high as I was. The moment I speculated on the outcome of this traffic stop, in my mind it had already happened. Let me stress again that I was doing absolutely nothing illegal, a fact that my rational mind should have taken comfort in. My rational mind had checked out for the evening. I looked out the passenger window. Beside us, the Plainwell airfield lay peacefully blanketed in new fallen snow. Somehow, and I didn't know exactly how, that airfield was my salvation.

I was going to make a run for it.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and sprang from the car in one smooth motion, rolling down the embankment like a motherfucking secret agent. I sprinted to the six-foot tall chain link fence and I climbed over that, the shouts of the policeman echoing over the sounds of traffic. I thought about those cars passing, and the people inside, who would go home to tell their families the fantastic story of the hero vigilante who stood up for the rights of the common man. The tale of my capture (for I would almost certainly be caught, either on this fateful day or one in the future, because folk antiheroes walk a fine line between bravery and recklessness) would echo in the hearts of the just forever.

At this point, to my mind, I no longer looked like this:

But like this:

But then, as I ran with a cheetah's speed and a gazelle's grace across that open field, something happened. We were pulling away from the shoulder. I had never actually gotten out of the car. And Bronwyn didn't get a ticket (which is the true miracle of this story). I settled back into my seat, adrenaline releasing its hold on my clenched muscles. I related my tale of heroics to Bronwyn and Jill. "I was running," I told them, my gaze drifting over the passing (now at the correct speed) landscape. "I was just... running."

If you'd like to read what really happened when we were pulled over, visit Bronwyn's blog for the whole scoop.

Hey, do you know what tomorrow is?

2011-02-21T08:55:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow is the release date for AMERICAN VAMPIRE.

People are saying good stuff about this book. I wouldn't want you to miss out on it. So you should probably hop on over to Amazon and order it. Look, here is a link that I have generously provided.

So, yeah. You should probably buy this book and read it, and then tell other people to buy this book and read it. That's how I can afford to keep sporadically blogging. My writing career feeds my true passion, which is telling you stories about my dog and posting pictures of snails.

The Naked John Lithgow Early Warning System

2011-02-15T08:36:00.001-08:00

As many readers of my blog know, I dig older guys. I don't know why, but guys over fifty turn my crank in a big way. Guys over forty-five, let's say, because James May is only in his forties, and he's like, my number one dreamy older guy. But I digress.

I like a lot of older guys, but just being over the proverbial hill isn't the defining quality that makes me think, "Huh, I would like to get on that, albeit carefully, as he isn't as young as he used to be." One famous older man who I absolutely adore, but not in a "Yeah, I'd do him," kind of way is John Lithgow.

John Lithgow is awesome. He wrote a children's book about a squirrel, and it's so cool, you just have to read it for yourself. In fact, he's written a lot of really cool books for kids. He was also in the most freaking awesome show ever, 3rd Rock From The Sun. And he played a serial killer on Dexter. And that's where my story takes a horrible turn.

I started watching Dexter at the urging of two of my friends, Scott and Jill, and once I started, I was hooked. It's one of the best shows on television, as far as I'm concerned, but then again I don't really watch tv. Anyway, it's awesome, and I busted through three seasons in four days.

And then I got to season four. Let me set the scene. I'm watching Season four on my laptop. I'm working on three concurrent writing projects for Abigail right now, so I'm doing double duty, writing and watching Dexter. I look up, and there's man butt. Actually, not bad man butt. My interest is piqued.

And then I notice it's John Lithgow.

Now, I'm faced with a conundrum. John Lithgow has an awesome booty. How do I reconcile this knowledge with the kindly face of my favorite alien on 3rd Rock? How do I read Micawber to my children without thinking of what a nice butt the author has?

This is why there needs to be some kind of nudity early warning system. When I watched Boardwalk Empire, I was fully aware that yes, it's an HBO series, I was probably going to see Steve Buscemi nude. But there are some celebrities you just don't expect to see naked, especially in the four season of a show that has relatively little nudity.

Granted, it wasn't sexual nudity. But now I know he has a nice ass, I have to put John Lithgow on my "I'd hit that" list, which is already pretty long. Now, I'm going to have to reorder my list, figure out some kind of filing system, and it's going to fuck my whole day up.

My dog is the Forrest Gump of dogs, if Forrest Gump had been a little dumber.

2011-02-07T04:11:00.000-08:00

I have two dogs. Both of them have an internal monologue that can be summed up as "duuuuur," but one is definitely smarter than the other. The smarter dog, an English Springer Spaniel called Tucker, won't remember that he has a head and will often ram said head into stationary objects, then act surprised and affronted at the pain his lack of consideration has caused. However, he's intellectually leaps and bounds above our younger dog, Sampson, a Beagle mix.

Sampson is... special. His hobbies are licking fabric (anything from the pants you're wearing to the furniture to the dirty laundry) and being hopelessly in love with me. When I'm gone for "too long", a period of time determined not by any chronological common sense but measured by Sampson's desire to be near me and anxiety that I will never return, he eats my clothing or tissues I've blown my nose in or pens off my desk. When he's not busy worrying over whether I'll ever return, he's either sleeping on or near me, or just sitting at my feet and gazing up at me longingly. As you might guess, I don't generally get a lot of alone time. A real problem arises when Sampson is in a different room than I am, and notices it. And this is the topic of my story today.

Last night, I was in my office, like I usually am. My office is off the living room, and has large french doors with long windows in them. There's another door at the back of my office that leads to our back hall and connects to the kitchen and bathroom. For the purposes of this post, I've made a handy graphic outlining the floor plan of our ground floor:

As you can see, Sampson is in the living room, and I am in my office. Since the sound of the television in the living room is distracting to me, I had closed the french doors to my office. But my office, being the only room on the first floor that doesn't gravity feed to the upstairs, gets insanely hot if I don't leave the back door open. So, marked in red on the above graphic is the path Sampson would have to take to get into my office.

The first time this scenario took place, I gave Sampson some leeway. I'm sure it's a difficult concept for dogs: the thing you want is right there, and the most direct path is blocked. Trying to get beyond the initial dog-mind panic, "I want it! It's right there! Why can't I get it?" in order to overcome the obstacle takes time. For Tucker, it was simply a matter of looking through the french doors, seeing that the back door was open, and taking that path of red x's. For Sampson, it went somewhat differently.

At the time, my cousin D-Rock and I were sitting in my office. D-Rock said something to the effect of, "That dogs is so fucking stupid. He's never going to figure it out." I countered with, "No, he'll get it eventually. Probably take him a while, though." Sure enough, thirty minutes later, Sampson wandered away from the french doors and eventually made it through the back door. But D-Rock was unconvinced. "He probably just went into the kitchen and heard us talking from the hallway, and was like, 'Oh, what's this down here?' He didn't mean to actually get in this way."

I'm afraid she might be right, because last night, the same thing happened. So, there I was, sitting in my office, being generally awesome, and Sampson realizes that he's been separated from me. I'm pretty lazy, and once I get comfortable, that's it. I'm done. I'm not getting up for anything, unless the chair is on fire or something. I put up with Sampson's whining for a little bit, but eventually he decided to charge the glass. That was when something had to be done.

I tried to put my hand up to my mouth and whistle, directing the sound to the back door. Since dogs have such awesome hearing, I thought this would clue him in to the alternate route. No dice. I made direct eye contact and pointed at the open door. "See? Come in the back way!" I shouted through the glass. This just made Sampson more frantic. My son, thinking he could help the situation, went to the kitchen and called Sampson, then tried to direct him down the hall. Sampson just became confused and raced back to the living room, where he collided with the doors. My son decided to open the french doors and let him in.

Sampson was all settled in at my feet when my husband went to the kitchen to make dinner. The sound of food being exposed and touched and possibly dropped was too much for Sampson, who shot out the back door of my office, down the hall into the kitchen. But my husband shooed him out... into the dining room. Sampson wanted back in my office. So he ran to the french doors in the living room and we repeated the frantic whining. This time, though, my son wasn't there to let him in, and so he had to become more resourceful.

Sampson needed a plan. When my husband unhelpfully scolded him for trying to dig under the doors, Sampson revised his thinking somewhat. Hey, wasn't there a secondary way to access the office? Yes! It would be tricky, but he could manage it. He would get into my office and be with me and all would be well once more.

Unfortunately, his path to the office was not a straight one. First, he ran up the stairs. Then, he sniffed around the dining room. By the time he finally got into my office, I had gone through the french doors, into the living room, and closed them behind me. Our places were switched. And now, Sampson couldn't get out. Though he'd just entered the office through the back door, he could no longer remember its existence. Somehow, diabolical forces had trapped him in this hellish room, still separated from my by those infernal french doors.

Now, I'm not saying that dogs should be exactly as smart as humans. Dogs in general can only be "smart, for a dog". That doesn't make the dumb ones less worthy of love and good treatment. I'm just saying that if Sampson was a human, he would be your boss. And every night you'd go home and you'd wonder how he got to be your boss, when he's so stupid. And every night, when you left work, he would be wandering around the office, desperately trying to find his way out.

Teddy Roosevelt says to read American Vampire:

2011-02-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

Grief

2011-01-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

My grandfather is dying.

Not in the active, immediate way that signals that this is definitely, within days, hours, minutes, the end, but the slow way that involves Hospice and doctors giving statements in months rather than years. Because of this, I've been thinking about the nature of grief and loss, and I've come to a conclusion: I have no idea how to deal with this, and by "this" I mean this specific death, for this specific man.

To paint a clearer picture of what I mean, I have to paint a picture of my grandfather. My grandfather is the type of man who, when working at the paper mill that eventually gave him asbestosis, cancer, and COPD, would volunteer for shifts that left him on his feet for twenty-four hours. He's afraid of heights, but as a paramedic he climbed a utility pole to bring down a worker who'd had a heart attack while fixing the wires. He delivered two babies in the back of that ambulance, using softball metaphors to talk himself through it. He values hard work the way other people value money; if it could be translated into currency, he'd have a fortune in the bank.

He loves infants more than any man I've ever met. He personally carried each of his six children to the nursery after their births. When I was a colicky baby, up all night screaming, he walked circles around the dining room table, singing to me. My own father never stepped up to the challenge, so my grandfather let me be his seventh child. Now that I'm grown, he takes my son for rides through the back fields in a golf cart, looking for wild turkeys and deer and stopping to let him pick up feathers. He calls my daughter "Punkin" and says how much she looks like me.

My grandfather is a man who will admit to past failings of the most major kind, but who won't admit he's wrong when arguing over the little things. He's a man who isn't the best singer, but who sang the loudest, until cancer took his voice box. He gets cancer the way other people get the flu, and shakes it off just as quickly. When undergoing radiation treatment for prostate cancer in 2000, we joked about the super powers that would result, and had a huge laugh when his "super-strength" caused the rusted-out door-handle on his minivan to break free.

He has known poverty, and never throws anything away because of it. His garage is a horror show of too many tools, too many golf clubs, too much clutter, too many things that will be useful "someday". That garage was until recently, also home to the many stray cats he adopted. The first one to live there was thin-haired and scabby, missing an ear and in possession of a weeping, dead eye, but he would pick that cat up and let it tuck its head under his chin while he scratched it.

My grandfather is my super hero. Who else would roust a six-year-old with chicken pox from her bed and smuggle her under a blanket to watch a helicopter land in the B.P.O.H. parking lot? Who else would quit cigarettes cold turkey? He's always been as tough as the cowboys in the westerns he loves to watch, but he reads Women's World. He read my first book, but not my second because it was "too slow." But he cared enough to call me and tell me that a vampire movie on television had stolen my ideas. It was Interview with a Vampire, but hey, he cared.

He's usually honest, he has faith in God. He had a stroke that left him lying paralyzed on his lawn for hours, and the next day he showed up at my birthday dinner.

And now he's dying.

Grief is a funny thing. I can recognize all the stages as I go through them, but there's no road map to what I'll be feeling next, and the entire process will reset when the day I'm dreading actually comes. I'm not sure if I prefer this kind of grief or the kind that happens with a sudden phone call in the middle of dinner. Certainly it would be more easy to enter into deep denial and trick myself into surprise when it happens.

I don't know how to approach this kind of death. It's the elephant in the room. Do you mention it? Do you act like everything is normal? Do you let the person you love die without acknowledging the fact that when they go, a huge chunk of your life is going to break off, and you'll never be the same?

For all I can write about death, with the blood and gore and violence, sometimes it's a quiet, expected death that wreaks the most horror and loss.

Happy Birthday, Buffy Summers!

2011-01-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

As regular followers of my blog and Facebook have learned over the years, I'm a huge fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I can't truthfully say it's my favorite television show of all time, but it's quite high up on the list. Despite Buffy's creator, The-Ginger-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, doing his absolute best to destroy the mythos I and millions have come to love by making all sorts of wacky decisions for his own amusement (including delivering Buffy her very worst birthday ever with the issue of the comic that hit stands today), but when one overlooks the totally bizarre second life the series has in print (seriously, could have lived without Buffy/Angel sex that destroys mountains and winds up in space), it's still the same, lovable old Buffy.

Oh dear, I didn't mean old. I know how it felt to turn thirty, myself, and since today is Buffy's big 3-0, I thought a list of my top five Buffy must see episodes is the perfect gift.

"The Zeppo" Season 3
This episode is the top of the list because it's so damned weird. A huge plot is going on involving the end of the world and the opening of the Hellmouth, but instead of focusing on impending apocolypse, the viewer instead followes Xander Harris on a hellish journey of self-discovery that begins with a donut run and ends with zombies, a bomb threat at the school, and a werewolf attack. Oh, and somewhere along the way, he loses his virginity.
"Hush" Season 4
No list of favorite Buffy episodes would be complete without "Hush." A group of shit-your-pants-scary baddies known as The Gentlemen roll into town in search of seven hearts to fulfill their nightmarish quota. After stealing all the voices in Sunnydale (the human voice is the only thing that can defeat them), they go on a rampage, surgically excising the hearts from silently screaming Sunnydale residents. The sharp acting in this one is what makes it so enjoyable to watch, as the characters have literally no voices for most of the episode.
"Fool For Love" Season 5
The plot of this episode is simple: Buffy gets hurt on the job and, suddenly faced with her own mortality, goes to Spike to learn about the two slayers he killed. On the surface, the story is about Buffy desperately trying to glean any information about her predecessors and the mistakes they made that wound up getting them killed, but on a deeper level, it's all Spike's story. As the reasons behind his wannabe hard-ass attitude are revealed through flashbacks, he becomes a fully developed character for the first time, a desperately lonely man who has never fit in with anyone.
"Innocence" Season 2You know how for some people, their first time is amazing, and some people's first time is completely lame? Buffy loses her virginity and her boyfriend in the same night, when Angel loses his soul in a "moment of happiness". Over the course of the series, this somehow got reinterpreted as "had an orgasm." You say "soul-deep happiness," Joss says "orgasm." Whatever. After Buffy wakes up alone and spends the better part of a day tracking Angel down, he cruelly berates her for her inexperience and makes it clear that the night before meant nothing to him. Of course, Buffy doesn't realize yet that Angel is now evil, and she spends the rest of the episode coming to terms with the fact that the man she loved is now her enemy. This episode was so important to a certain highschool girl dealing with her first broken heart, she couldn't leave it off the list.
"The Body Season 5During season 5, while Buffy deals with Glory, a foe more powerful than any she's ever faced, her mother undergoes treatment for a brain tumor. Joyce is out of the woods and making a full recovery when Buffy, returning home from the previous episode's plot, finds her mother dead in the living room. It's a brutal hour of watching Buffy and the Scoobies come to terms with the fact that, for all Buffy's strength, there are forces beyond her control, and the evil of the supernatural world takes a backseat to the horror of everyday life. The episode's title is taken from the callous words of the 911 dispatcher, who tells Buffy not to move "the body". This is a theme throughout the episode, as Buffy shocks herself by referring to her mother as "the body" and Anya goes on a heart-wrenching tirade about death and what happens to "the body".

So, those are my five must-sees from the series. I love all the episodes, except for the one where Xander joins the swim team, but these are the standouts for storytelling and general awesomeness.

Happy birthday, Buffy! Who knew a slayer would exceed their expiration date.

The Greatest Comedy of Our Time: Black Swan

2011-01-07T07:42:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me just say that everything you have heard about Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is true, unless any of the things you have heard are said without irony. The truth is, Black Swan isn't a great movie, if taken as a 100% serious thriller. In fact, it's a down-right terrible movie. But I refuse to believe that such a celebrated director and top-notch cast worked on this film, delivering lines like, "Everything she does comes from some dark impulse within her," without having some kind of out-of-body experience where they're hovering over themselves, looking down as they realize that they're in a really, really shitty movie. Instead, I choose to believe that everyone involved in this movie, from the producer to the director to the actors and the craft services people, were in on the biggest movie-related prank of all time.
I'm not going to cut for spoilers, because you've probably heard all the details by now, spewed out by an ecstatic press that has embraced Black Swan as a tour-de-force. Yes, there is a big ole lesbian sex scene. Yes, Natalie Portman's toenail totally splits in a bloody mess. All the sex and blood surprises of Black Swan have already been spoiled. What you probably haven't heard are the subtle-as-a-sledge-hammer moments where Nina (Natalie Portman) is shown vomitting in a public toilet, only to return home to find that her mother (Barbara Hershey) has bought a huge pink cake to celebrate Nina's casting as the Swan Queen in a new production of Swan Lake. Or the many times that Nina looks at rival ballerina Lily (Mila Kunis) only to find that Lily's face has been replaced with her own.
But there was a particularly telling moment, the one in which I realized that no one involved with the production could have possibly been taking it seriously: Beth, a formerly celebrated ballerina played by Winona Ryder, looks at Nina and says, like some giant wink to the audience, "You stole my things?"
How could anyone, the casting director, the writer, the director, Winona fucking Ryder, assume that line would elicit anything other than laughter and disbelief from the audience. Which, by the way, was exactly what happened. A huge, unamimous "HA!" from everyone at our showing.
So, basically there are two ways of looking at this movie. As a prank, a group of very talented professionals seeking to make the absolute worst movie of our time and passing it off as brilliance. Or, as the absolute worst movie of our time.
The second scenario is one of optimism and joy for someone like me. If a movie as terrible as Black Swan can be lauded by critics of the highest caliber, then other creative storytelling types don't have to work as hard anymore. This includes me. As long as Black Swan exists and is praised, I don't have to worry about writing a story that makes sense. I don't have to sit up at night worrying about loose plot threads or whether or not my dialogue is realistic. Black Swan sets a new standard for excellence, and that standard is so low, it could win a limbo competition.
I'm not sure which I like better. But I'm absolutely gleeful about the badness that is Black Swan. It might be my new favorite movie.

Coping with withdrawals, or: I finished watching The Walking Dead, now how do I carry on with my life?

2010-12-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

For the past five or so weeks, I have received one question, over and over, from friends and family members, from facebook people I don't know, even from major media outlets:

"Are you watching The Walking Dead?"

Or, if you're my Grandma, "Are you watching that show on that channel that has people turning into some kind of creature? I think it's vampires? That doesn't look like anything I'd want to watch. They put the damndest things on tv these days, it's no wonder that kids are being violent."

Up until three days ago, I was wondering where all of this was coming from. At first I thought, "What the hell, guys? Do you even know me at all? I don't watch stuff like that. I watch Family Guy and reruns of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I like dumb, goofy stuff that is easy to understand while high. I don't watch "serious drama".

(Yes, that's kind of a lie, I have been watching and enjoying Boardwalk Empire this season, but my point stands)

I thought people were recommending The Walking Dead because I write about vampires and ghoulish stuff. Also, since 2006 I've been telling everyone that will listen about this awesome idea for a zombie book that no publisher wants to buy and that's too bad for them because it will go down in history as the best zombie book ever written. Everyone just wants funny zombie books, and this one is going to be scary beyond all belief, but maybe the tides are starting to turn, what with this new show and Romero getting back in the game. Did you guys know that Mister Rogers and George A. Romero were friends, and that Mister Rogers thought Night of The Living Dead was "a lot of fun"?

I got off track somewhere. Oh, The Walking Dead. Right. So, At first I was pretty sure that people were just assuming I would love The Walking Dead because I write gross-out stuff. The same way all my friends assumed I would like Firefly because I liked Buffy, and they were all wrong. I became resistant to the idea of watching it, just because people were hyping it up so much. I went to my friend Scott's house, and he convinced me to watch just the opening scene of the series (extremely graphic, so be warned):

Yes, that's the opening. There's no wading in to see how the water is. This is where you dive right into the show. I was intrigued. More so when Scott explained that the show is adapted from a comic. So, at least I knew it was written by someone passionate about telling a good story, because let's face it, comic writers are the best storytellers we have in our culture right now. I promptly went home and obtained episodes of the show through entirely legal means that do not in any way involve a word that rhymes with "warrant", and started watching. I thought, "I'll [totally not download] the whole series, in case it hooks me, and I'll give the pilot a chance." I watched all five episodes in one day, only to learn that the season finale would air the next day. Once I got the chance to watch the finale, I thought to myself, "Okay. Great. Now what?"

That's the state I have been operating in for the past twenty-four hours. "Okay. Great. Now what?" Because this was a pilot season, AMC only produced six episodes. They've already renewed the show for another season, but rumor has it that one won't release until Halloween of 2011. That's a long time for me. I need to know what happens next. It's bad enough that Harry Dresden left me hanging this year, I can't take another cliffhanger.

If you, like myself, are working through this strangely grief-like state, I recommend the following:

1. Stay calm and put a cold washcloth over your eyes.
2. Take up smoking. I don't care what. Cigarettes, grass, insulation. You gotta do something to take the edge off.
3. Write fan fiction, but only good stuff. I'm not kidding, I really don't need to stumble across any The Walking Dead MPREG or "Everyone is in high school and also Twilight is there".
4. Oh my god, what happened to Merle? They let the whole season finish and they never wrapped that up? I'm going to go shake and cry in a corner.
5. Shake and cry in a corner.
6. Panic. Just blindly panic.

I have no answers. We're all in this together, people who watched The Walking Dead. People who didn't watch it, I'm not going to tell you to watch it. Because then you'd be in this same predicament. What I'm going to suggest is that you wait. You wait until the new season starts. Then, you start watching season 1, one episode a week, until you are are always six weeks behind and your viewing pleasure can last longer, cutting your withdrawal time down by six weeks. You're welcome.

2010-12-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

Guest blogging today...

2010-12-07T07:45:00.001-08:00

Today, I'm guest blogging as Abigail Barnette over at Tina Donahue's blog! Visit to enter for a chance to win a copy of Glass Slipper by Abigail!

Joss, you chubby ginger fuck.

2010-12-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

I have cut Joss Whedon a lot of slack over the years. When he allowed the atrocity that was Buffy/Spike. When he couldn't stop whining about networks not giving him a chance while he had two successful cult franchises in his wake. When he mentioned Firefly's cancellation in every interview for two years. When I realized that no matter what show he wrote, he would always be leaving out non-white characters and making women into his ultimate strong-woman-helpless-emotionally jack off fantasy in which Eliza Dushku looks slightly shocked and saddened as she punches him in the throat while begging him for help in learning the ways of love.

Okay, that last one is admittedly me losing patience with him. But his latest transgression is far and away a hundred times worse than any dickbag move he's made so far. Buffy fans be warned, there will be comic spoilers from here out.

Joss Whedon killed Giles.

For reasons that I can only chalk up to just not giving a shit, in the January Buffy comic, Angel, who is evil again, kills Giles by breaking his neck. I remember something like that happening before. In season two. When killing a character actually meant something in the Buffy verse and before everyone expected Joyce to be back any minute.

Joss recycled Giles's girlfriend's death to kill Giles.

I can see what he was going for. For Giles to die by the hand of the vampire who killed the woman he loved, in the same manner as she died, years after reconciling with the man who killed her and coming to trust him enough to fight beside him, should have packed an emotional wallop. It would have been perfect, if he hadn't waited for the series to end before he did it. You can't do a "call-back" to an episode that aired over ten years ago and expect it to have the effect you intended. Instead, it looks like you've run out of ideas. And when that lack of creativity extends to a beloved character, fans are going to be pissed.

I know the Buffy comics are supposed to be canon, but as a fan, I cannot and will not accept any of the trainwreck that is the Buffy comics. No "Dawn loses her virginity and becomes a giant," no "Buffy is lesbian now because Joss can't function without the thought of girl parts touching and straight women who have bad enough luck with men will naturally become gay," no "Giles is dead, aren't I awesome at making you feeeeeel things?" The Buffy comics bear no resemblance at all to the show the I remember, and I can add that to my list of reasons why Joss Whedon is an overrated jackass.

I almost forgot!

2010-11-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

I did an interview at Dark Angel Fiction Writing. Go check it out!

It's Always A Beautiful Day In My Neighborhood, Fred

2010-11-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

Somehow, in the course of an argument over who is hotter, Amy Adams or Idina Menzel,

(It's Idina Menzel)

I somehow was reminded of how much I love Mister Rogers. Let me paint a picture of my childhood for you. I was raised by my loving family, most notably my maternal grandmother, who was my primary caregiver during my early childhood. My grandma Z is wonderful person, always ready to express love and able to talk to a child on their level. Especially about their fears.

Grandma Z used to do this thing that, in hindsight, is probably the reason for my enduring night terrors. She used to go in and take her bath at night, and every time she would yell, "Help, Jenny! Help!" I would come running and find the tub was empty of water, and my grandma was missing. "Grandma, where are you?" I would yell, and she would answer, from some far off place, "I went down the drain!" I would run over to the tub to peer down the drain (and now, since you've never seen what my grandparent's bathroom looked like in the 80's, you have no concept of how scary the tub was, but the walls were crumbling and the drain was all rusty and forbidding) and then, when I was frantically yelling, "Wait, I'll get help!" she would spring from her hiding spot and scare me.

I fell for it every time. Because I was four.

Anyway, one afternoon I was watching Mister Rogers on PBS. And he had this to share with me:

"See, Grandma!" I shouted triumphantly. "I can never go down the drain!" I can't remember what Grandma was doing at the time, but it was the kitchen. Actually, no, I do remember. She was making donuts for her dad for his birthday. And she said, "Mister Rogers is a liar." My aunt Mary, who was a teenager living at home at the time, said, "Mister Rogers is a pervert."

I didn't know what a pervert was, but I knew what a liar was. It meant I could still go down the drain.

Oddly enough, even though I had been assured that Mister Rogers had lied to me, I still loved him. And I still do. I learned about hanging chads from Mister Rogers:

I learned about being cool:

Most importantly, I learned about being kind. And for all my swearing and wishing that people would burn to death while exploding in the vacuum of space, I truly am a good person. Just the other day, when I was lamenting to my mother that my kids are missing out on Mister Rogers, she said, "I'm sure you could download it from the internet." And I said, "I couldn't do that. It would be stealing. Stealing from Mister Rogers. And he told me stealing was wrong."

Basically, the best piece of advice I can give anyone is, if you're in a situation where you don't know what to do, think, "What would Mister Rogers do?" and then do that. And remember that you can never go down the drain. No matter what my Grandma might tell you.

R.I.P. Sparky

2010-11-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

What the Fuck, RWA?

2010-10-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

See, I have a theme going. Dear Author pointed out today that RWA hasn't really done anything about sound rogering Dorchester has given some of its authors, but back when Harlequin was going to start up Harlequin Horizons, they called an emergency meeting and removed Harlequin from their list of approved publishers.

Okay, let's look at the facts here:

Harlequin Horizons

Harlequin announces that they are going to offer a self-publishing model.
Before the service can actually launch or generate any kind of revenue, RWA calls an emergency session and boots Harlequin.

Dorchester Publishing

Dorchester decides that for the next six months, all mass-market titles will be released digitally. Books scheduled for mass-market release will have their release dates moved to some nebulous time in the future, and they will be digital only. Authors who have taken out ads and otherwise spent money promoting their book are basically told to deal with it.
At this point, RWA has already smacked Dorchester's hand for not paying authors.
Dorchester reverts rights to work back to some authors, but continues selling (and making a profit on) those works that are no longer legally owned by them.
RWA still hasn't made a decision.

It boggles my mind that Harlequin got straight up spanked by RWA because they were going to do something that possibly would hurt authors. It was a big enough emergency that RWA national had to hold an emergency session to make a decision. But Dorchester is and has repeatedly harmed authors and it's no big deal?

Inconsistent leadership and spotty protection for authors is one of the reasons I no longer belong to RWA. Unfortunately, there really isn't an organization out there that compares with them in terms of helping someone become a writer. So, if you're considering joining RWA, I would say approach it the way a person who just wants a discount on makeup approaches starting a Mary Kay business: Get in, pay for what you need, get out.

WHAT THE FUCK GUYS

2010-10-27T04:41:00.000-07:00

I don't know why someone felt the need to post Maura Kelly's address in the comments to my last post, but KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF. Maura Kelly is an idiot, but at least she's not a fucking creepy stalker.

Maura Kelly, I Will Kick Your Boney Ass.

2010-10-26T10:01:00.001-07:00

Recently, the enormous pile of fail that is Marie Claire magazine ran an op-ed piece by one vapid freelancer who took the opportunity to spew, like so much monkey diarrhea spraying the walls of a zoo enclosure, helpful advice for fat people.

The article is, if you want to treat your eyeballs to a feast of idiocy and self-importance heretofore unimaginable by people with souls, Should Fatties Get A Room (Even On Tv)?.

Okay, let's just grapple with that title there. Should fatties get a room? No. No, if I have to watch people of culturally acceptable body sizes pawing over each other in the supermarket check out line because the very sight of broccoli sends their libidos into overdrive, then I am allowed to kiss my husband in public. See, it's the "(Even on TV)?" part that gets me. It's like she's saying, "Of course, we all know it's unacceptable for fat people to touch each other in public. What decent human would even question that. No, no, what we are discussing is the probability of fat sex assaulting you in your very living room!"

That is, in fact, what the article is about. Or supposed to be about:

The other day, my editor asked me, "Think people feel uncomfortable when they see overweight people making out on television?"

Her editor was talking about Mike and Molly a sitcom that has drawn criticism for it's portrayal of two overweight people in a relationship.

But because she can't get over her own hatred of fat people, she can't write an article about that. Instead, she needs to warn us all about the dangers of being fat:

Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country's obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it's at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity! Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

Now, let me address these comments one by one, because otherwise I'm going to just start screaming DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE and end by throwing my laptop on the floor and stomping it to dust with my rhino-like body weight.

First of all, you cannot say something like "And while I think our country's obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy," and then jump right to using fucking fashion models as an example of health. If you believe you can equate the fashion industry with healthy body image, you are high. You are high on all the drugs in the world.

Second, "No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy," is a statement that I'm sure you, as a physician, are completely qualified to make. What? You're a not a doctor? I'm sure I saw it in your byline... hang on...

Maura Kelly is a freelance writer who is working on a novel. She rides her vintage Raleigh as often as possible — usually wearing heels, and always wearing her helmet. (She will not be a fashion victim!) Follow her on Twitter.

Oh, that's right. YOU ARE NOT A DOCTOR. You have no idea how to evaluate the health of any individual, let alone many, many individuals throughout the world. Either you're too busy picking out which high heels to wear on your bike or you don't wear your helmet as often as you claim you do.

As for your claims that obesity is costing our country epic amounts of money in health care costs... where's your data? "And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer." That's a fine statement to make, but on October 18 of this year, USA Today reported that obesity is responsible for 17% of our national health care spending. Seventeen. Percent. The article states $168 billion. The American Cancer society cites cancer ("even cancer.") at costing $228 billion last year. So... I'm guess you're not a mathematician either, then, Ms. Kelly?

She goes on to say:

yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

You heard it, fat people of America. Maura Kelly and the editors of Marie Claire find it "aesthetically displeasing" to watch fat people do anything. I don't know, I can imagine quite an aesthetically pleasing scene, almost poetic, in fact, involving a person with rolls and rolls of fat bodily shaking a clueless and rude freelance writer right out of her heels and helmet. Seriously, what kind of a fucked up, completely backward human being do you have to be to look at an expression of love between two people and decide it that it's gross, simply because those people look different than you do? Pretty fucked up, I think. I'm just being brutally honest here.

Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk.

Actually, "size-ist jerk" isn't what I would call you at all. I would call you a vain, body-obsessed asshole who is far too invested in what other people do with their bodies. You didn't give me the wrong impression when you compared me walking across a room to a stumbling drunk or a heroin addict. You gave me a very clear picture of what a pathetic person you must truly be in real life, if your own fear of fatness manifests itself in actual discomfort from having to just see a fat person walk.

But ... I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It's something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.

Perhaps some of us have better things to do with our minds, Ms. Kelly, than obsessing over everything we put in our mouths, or what the overweight maintenence man at the gym is doing about his body. This might surprise you, because I'm sure you've never experienced this, but the second you stop worrying about what everyone else on the planet is weighing, you start to do other things, like think and enjoy your life.

(I'm happy to give you some nutrition and fitness suggestions if you need them — but long story short, eat more fresh and unprocessed foods, read labels and avoid foods with any kind of processed sweetener in them whether it's cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, increase the amount of fiber you're getting, get some kind of exercise for 30 minutes at least five times a week, and do everything you can to stand up more — even while using your computer — and walk more. I admit that there's plenty that makes slimming down tough, but YOU CAN DO IT! Trust me. It will take some time, but you'll also feel so good, physically and emotionally. A nutritionist or personal trainer will help — and if you can't afford one, visit your local YMCA for some advice.)

Thank you so much for you completely unsolicited weightloss advice! As you are probably aware, all obese people ever eat is processed American cheese by the fistful, and we only ever get off our fat asses to lumber about distressingly in front of non-size-ist non-jerks like yourself, because we get our rocks off disgusting you.

Maura Kelly, you should be ashamed. But you won't be. I'm sure you'll look at yourself in the mirror and pick over your every flaw, just like you picked over the flaws of so many anonymous fat people in your article. You'll surround yourself with beautiful people who are similarly repelled by the very existence of fat people like me, and you'll all live in fear until the very day you die that someday, you might wake up fat. It won't happen, but you'll always be afraid of it. So, I feel sorry for you. Because all the advice you "helpfully" try to dispense, all the times you go to the gym, all the times you you hang out with your "plump" friends to try and feel better about your own weight, that will never alleviate the hatred you have for your own body.

Don't pity me, I'll just keep on pitying you.

National Coming Out Day

2010-10-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I worked at Meijer, which is like Walmart but bigger and Michigan based. I worked on the "cheese wall" which meant I spent my entire shift putting cheese products up in the big refrigerated case near the grocery section.

One day, a guy from the grocery department approached me. We occasionally said hello to each other, but cheese mongering is a lonely road, so it's not like we were BFFs. He came up to me and said, "Hey. I have something I want to tell you. I'm gay."

We were in the middle of a huge Kraft sale, and I was really busy. So I said, "So?"

He explained to me then that I was the first person he had ever come out to. He wanted to practice before telling his parents that night. He was twenty-one years old. Imagine that for twenty-one years, you knew that there was something about you that people didn't like. And that in order to make everyone happy, you just had to deny that this part of you existed.

National Coming Out Day is a wonderful idea, but it's a sad one, as well. It's sad that every day isn't a good day to come out. It's sad that kids are still being mocked for their sexuality, resulting in the tragic consequences of the past weeks.

No kid should ever have to worry that their parents will stop loving them for being who they are. No one should ever be bullied into suicide over the way they were born or the way they weren't born, in the case of Transgendered individuals.

If you are a closeted gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queergendered individual reading this, I hope that one day the world changes enough that you don't have to hide anymore.

Happy Birthday, John

2010-10-08T10:03:00.001-07:00

Happy birthday, John Lennon. The world will love you forever.

True Tales of Horror: My Laundry Room

2010-09-30T08:30:00.001-07:00

Today, gentle readers, I am cleaning out my laundry room. I'm sure many of you are aware that writers are not renown for their housekeeping skills. You know that scene in that horrible Stepford Wives remake where they all go to Bette Midler's house and she's a writer and the entire place is like a trash heap? That's what my house is like. I know several authors will own up to that level of filth, as well. And if someone is a writer and their house is perfectly clean, they've either got outside help or a low word count. I'm sticking to that.

Anyway, my laundry room has gotten... out of hand. I'm going to show it to you now. I advise anyone with heart trouble or a nervous condition not look at the following picture:

Yup. That is what my laziness has wrought. A solid mass of dirty clothing at least two feet deep. I have to be straight up with you, there are clothes in there my kids have worn once and grown out of in the time since I last did a massive laundry room cleaning. It comes down the landry ~~shoot~~ chute (I are a writer) and straight into the pile, ne'er to be seen again.

So, today I'm sitting down here, perched atop the deep freezer, alternating between working on edits for Abigail's January book (IN THE BLOOD, Samhain publishing, January 2011) and feeding the machines their due. I've got appropriately morose music playing (Tori Amos's utterly depressing Boys for Pele) and a two litre of Diet Coke to see me through. I just have to be sure to appease the Old Gods of laundry, so as not to be consumed by the pile myself.

If I don't return, be sure to buy up all my backlist so that I look more successful than I actually was.

Everything I Think, In Chronological Order

2010-09-24T17:27:00.001-07:00

When I was in 8th grade, and later, when I was a sophomore in high school, I kept these journals. They were Mead brand, one-subject "neatbooks", the kind that didn't have any wire or anything, just perforated pages. I filled these with pointless, free-form thoughts for the entire school year. In hindsight, I wish I had done this every year of school.

The reason I'm remembering them now is that my son has started keeping a journal in a notebook. I dug through all my old crap and unearthed these relics of the past because I thought he might be interested in knowing what his mother was like in her childhood years.

He said, "Wow, those are really old," and went back to his own journal. Jerk.

Anyway, I thought, "Maybe people who read my blog would be interested." So, if you're not interested in meeting Jenny at thirteen and fifteen, then get interested, friend.

I named these veritable tomes "Everything I Think In Chronological Order," and "Everything I Think In Chronological Order II: Birth of An Alternateen". Really. That is what I called them.

Here's the May 21, 1996 entry from "Everything I Think In Chronological Order II":
I have to go see Margret today. (ed.-- Margret was my counselor. You'll see why I needed one as you keep reading) I'm stressed out. I hate how people always eat during class. It's like they think they are totally different and don't have to follow the rules. That makes me angry.
Niki Davenport moved to Grand Haven. She's going to be a paramedic.
I found this book, R.E.M. REMarks. It has cool pictures in it of Michael Stipe before he was in the band, like, when he was in high school. He was gorgeous. He still is cute, but he's old now.(ed.-- Michael Stipe was like, thirty-six at the time.) Oh well. You know, I have no idea how old Dave Matthews is.
There was a poster of a guy parachuting on the bulletin board by the office that said, "A mind is like a parachute; it works best when opened." And Jill took a big black magic marker and wrote, "Hopefully certain facist members of the administration will come to realize this," and drew an arrow and the next day they took it down and put up a "Happy Graduation" bulletin board.
I hunted all over hell and high water last night for the May 3 Entertainment Weekly because it has a thing about the new Dave Matthews album. I want that album. It's like, cool that he can dance around all crazy and play the guitar at the same time.
The beginning of this book is like, an REM concert journal. Thanks for reading through it. It's like, somedays I think, "Wait a minute, who's going to want to read what I wrote?" And I get very upset. But then I think, "Wait, lots of people are interested in what other people wrote."
One of these days I'm going to be saying something bad about Natalie Merchant, and she's going to be right behind me and I'll feel really stoopid [sic]. Wait, what if she reads this? What if Tori Amos reads this? I'M SORRY, TORI! I LOVE YOU! I WISH I HADN'T CALLED YOU A TALENTLESS SLUT!
Now that I prostrated myself at her feet, I feel better. Hey, maybe Michael Stipe will read this. Whoa, maybe Christian Slater will read this. Hey, Christian Slater, my number is [ommitted] Dial (616) first. Michael, Tori, Dave M. and Courtney (Love, not Cox) can all call me. Hell, if anyone wants to call me they can. I'm cool. Especially when I went through the ice. Bad joke.
REM rules. Maybe one day my kids will say, "Mom, REM is so old," and I will say, "Shut up, asswipes, REM rules."
Maybe when this gets published, I'll have them put in scratch n' sniff pages.
I'm in driver's training @ Sears. My teacher is such a nut.
Writing on your hands is cool. I like writing on my hands.
I'm directing a short film with the girl scouts from St. Monica's, and this little girl reminds me of Julia Ormond. She's from England and has long hair like Julia Ormond had in Legends of The Fall.
I have auditions for Lil' Abner tonight @ Comstock. I was in Kiss Me, Kate last year. It was cool. I really want to be in Lil' Abner. It would rock more than two thousand popscicles.
I wish the bell would ring.

The weird thing is, I don't remember actually wanting to be a writer, but it's clear from these journals that I planned on getting long, repetitious thoughts about REM published some day.

Stuck at the airport: the five stages of grief

2010-09-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

The unfortunate downside of being dyslexic is that I have a really hard time keeping things like dates and days in order. This lead to me being trapped at the Newark New Jersey airport for twenty-four hours this weekend.

Realizing that you are trapped in an airport comes in stages. After spending several good hours on the phone with Delta airlines customer "service", I finally gave up and headed the airport to try and speak with someone in person. The mistake I made was in assuming that airline ticket counter representatives ~~are human beings with souls~~ aren't constantly beset upon by weary, excuse laden travelers. And thus, our odyssey of grief begins...

Stage One: Denial Though my hotel had very graciously offered to let me stay in the room until 2pm and then hold my bags until late that night so that I could go into the city to do some sight-seeing or something, I was pretty sure that I didn't need to take them up on that offer. Because how hard could it possibly be to get standby on a last minute flight out of New Jersey?

Stage Two: Bargaining Okay, so it's pretty difficult to get a last minute flight out of New Jersey. But there has to be something that can be done. No, I don't have $287.00 for a new ticket. I'm sure we can work something out for a lesser price. Hey, I could push the drink cart!

Stage Three: Anger You know what? FUCK YOU, DELTA. If I get stabbed in my sleep, it's going to be all your fault.

Stage Four: Depression Actual transcript of conversation I had with my husband on payphone in concourse B: "I'm just so lonely and it's so nice to hear your voice. Stay on the phone with me until you go to work, okay? Promise?"

Stage Five: Acceptance I'm going to live at this airport forever. I will never go home. The airport is my home now. Let's make the best of it by building a tend with the ballgown from the masquerade party and barricade the door of the handicapped stall with luggage and a sweatshirt used as a rope so I don't get raped.

Now that I'm home, I'm actually afraid that I'm going to suddenly wake up and be back at the airport, like John Cusack in that movie where he's trapped in the haunted hotel room.

Another Open Letter...

2010-09-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I attended Jaquelyn Frank's Authors After Dark conference in Secaucus, NJ. Overall, it was an amazing, enjoyable weekend. There were plenty of good friends, some I had met before, some I met for the first time. There were readers and authors, both sides fangurling over each other, fun giveaways and free books. Tons of fun was had by all.

Keeping that in mind, what I'm about to say is not a reflection on the conference. It is a reflection on one particular individual, and it should in no way turn readers or authors off from attending the conference the future. It's fun, affordable, and everyone goes home happy.

Unless they spend the weekend having their body weight relentlessly mocked by someone who should fucking know better.

I'm a large woman. I make no apologies or excuses. If I wanted to be thinner, I could be. I could work out more, eat less, I'm large enough that surgery is an option. But I don't pursue any of those options, because I'm happy with my life. It never occurred to me that anyone would feel that they had the right to be unhappy with my size on my behalf.

This weekend, one particular individual, and author who I used to greatly admire and looked forward to spending time at the conference with, took it upon herself to make comments leveled specifically at me, to my face and in front of other attendees in an attempt to shame me about my size. Comments like, "There's nothing worse than a fat woman wearing flowers," in regards to my love of Hawaiian shirts. "Don't eat that, that's why you're fat," when I grabbed a snack (this in front of a horrified group of readers attending a party in the con suite). Other fat-hate comments about "feeling sorry" for large people who wear sweatpants in public, and "knowing what that's like," that assume all fat people secretly long to be thin and are miserable because they are not.

When the straw finally broke my big, fat back (the "that's why you're fat" comment), I started off feeling enraged. How dare someone police my body? How dare someone feel they had the right to pity me for the way I dress or what I eat or how much I weigh? I have given no one permission to pity me, because I don't pity myself. I like myself, at any size or shape, and I love my awesome, awesome life. I live for every moment, and I try to make sure that I feel everything in my life with enthusiasm for living. Okay, maybe not as enthusiastic when I'm stuck in a plane on a runway in Allentown, PA because God decided to smite New York with a crazy huge thunderstorm, but most of the time I really do love every second of my life. The thought of someone pitying me, making a judgment that because I'm fat I must also be unhappy with my lot, made me see absolute red.

Then, it made me even more mad to realize that if she'd said these same comments to someone who has a problem accepting their weight, they might have thought, "She's right." A friend who roomed with me said, "If she had said that to me, it would have destroyed me." I thought about how low my self-esteem was after I gave birth to my first child and gained the first seventy-five pounds of what would ultimately be an over one-hundred pound weight gain. If someone had said to me then, "This is why you're fat" or made a comment about feeling sorry for people like me, I would have been crushed. I struggled with binge eating back then, out of hatred for myself and my body. I crash dieted, desperately counted my "points" and kept a "thinspiration" journal of svelte bodies that I wanted so badly to have for my own. If I had met this author back then, when my career was first starting and I hated myself for getting fat, I would have given up. I would have given up writing, starved myself, missed out on friends and acquaintances that I met in this business who I hold very dear. A single snide comment about my weight, back then, would have literally ruined my life. Did she make a remark that hurt someone else that badly at this event?

But as I considered all this, I also realized that this woman was not making these comments to me. She used to fat, and makes no attempt to hide the fact that she has lost the weight. She shouldn't, either. She was unhappy with something in her life, so she changed it, at great personal sacrifice. She worked hard for a dream, and she deserves credit for that, just as anyone who is brave enough to make a huge sacrifice for what they want deserves recognition. But for some reason, it's not enough for her to have attained her goal. She needs to punish her old self for not living up to her new standards.

She wasn't talking to me. She was talking to herself before she lost the weight.

So, to this individual, who I hope reads this post, I say: Let go of the hatred you have for yourself. Who you are is not about what you used to weigh. The people in your life who loved you then and now will never stop loving you because of a number on the scale. Your readers, who devour your books, don't care what you look like. They love you and your stories because you have a gift that transcends physical standards of beauty.

I know, because I used to be one of those readers. I'm not anymore. I will probably never forgive you for the hateful way you treated me this weekend. I know I damned sure won't be reading your books in the future, because every time I pick one up I will be reminded that you don't feel I'm worthy to shake the ground with my lumbering steps. But I do truly want you to forgive yourself for being fat in the past. You were a lovely person then, inside and out. You've made the outside lovelier. Now work on fixing the ugliness you grew on the inside.

Wanna check out Ravenous for free?

2010-09-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

If you're looking to win a copy of Abigail Barnette's (yes, that is me) Ravenous, Bronwyn Green is giving away one free copy to a lucky commenter.

As for Abigail, her/myself? I spent last night in the ER with a crippling headache. Thankfully, they did not listen to my pleas to euthanize me. But I'm all better now, and both my (fully integrated) personalities are hard at work writing today!

Happy Labor Day. Enjoy The Fruits Of My Labor.

2010-09-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today, you can get an advanced sneak peek at my/Abigail's upcoming release, Ravenous, over at http://abbybarnette.blogspot.com, before it's released tomorrow!

The Internet Powers of Colin Firth

2010-09-02T08:53:00.001-07:00

Okay, either blogger has just added stats to the dashboard, or I've just never noticed them. I love attention, so I jumped at the chance to see how many people notice me. The results are... surprising.

First of all, I need to do some revamping of this blog. Put some pictures of my books on it and stuff. Because otherwise, people might think this blog is about Colin Firth. According to stats, until I wrote my rebuttal to Laurel K. Hamilton, my most viewed entry was one that I wrote about Colin Firth. More specifically, it was a post made up of lies about Mr. Firth.

Now, the simple fact of the matter is, while Colin Firth is a great actor and generally under-recognized for his contributions to film and indeed, even literature (because everyone knows by now that Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones books and columns is based entirely off of Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the flawless miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice), I don't really have much more I can say about the man. I'm not what you would call a huge fan. If he's in a movie I was otherwise uninterested in, I'm not likely to go see that movie based on his presence alone. In fact, when I hear the name "Firth", I don't even think about Colin.

I think about his brother, Jonathan.

In the 1990's, there was a television series called Covington Cross. You probably don't remember it, because it was only on for like, six episodes in the United States. Time and detective work uncovered the rest of the season for me, and I've enjoyed it for years, despite the fact that the series ended on something of a cliffhanger (Do Richard and Charlotte get married or something? What about Eleanor's new found love of all things feminine? Does John Mullens pursue Lady Elizabeth romantically? Because that was hinting at pretty hard in one of the last scenes). Imagine, if you will, the show Bonanza (Or, if you're familiar with it, The Big Valley), only in Robin Hood times. It was super awesome.

Jonathan Firth, Colin's younger brother, played Richard Grey, the middle son who was always struggling for his father's love and trying to make a name for himself despite being dealt the shitty medieval hand of being the second son and not the one who stands to inherit all the titles and land and stuff.

I have no idea what has happened to Jonathan Firth, because I'm bad at keeping up with actors that I like. All I care about is that I still have my copies of Covington Cross, and that the inclusion of the name Firth will bring me some kind of blog traffic.

A sensitive subject.

2010-09-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

I am aware that not everyone sees eye-to-eye with me on the subject of the war in Iraq, or our president. I try not to be too overtly political, but I'm an opinionated person and my family's motto is kind of like, "He who is loudest wins" but in Latin, probably.

However, I can't let the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom pass without comment. I never agreed with the war, and I supported the troops in that I didn't want them all blown to tiny pieces by roadside bombs. I have nothing but good feelings for the men and women in our Armed Forces. I have friends and family that are currently serving, some of whom served in Iraq. I have at least one family member set to go to Iraq, even though the war is officially over. I have no illusions that the true end of this conflict will come years from now. I mean, we still have soldiers at posts in South Korea, we're never truly "done" with the wars we're involved in.

Still, it's a relief to have one less war to worry about. Our country has been at war since both of my children were born. We'll probably still be involved with the war against terrorism when they go to college. But for today, this is all right. Not grab-a-nurse-and-kiss-her-in-Times-Square all right, but all right enough.

Blogging as Abigail today...

2010-08-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

Abigail has a bone to pick about fat women in the media. Since I just finished writing her November release, which features a big, beautiful heroine, I felt my rant was better suited for her blog.

Thinking about Cyrus...

2010-08-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

If I have learned one important lesson from this whole JLA vs. LKH blog dust up gossip fest (that still continues... Dear Author featured it in their link round up today), it's that people friggin love Cyrus.

I'm still not sure why.

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of "bad boys" that I love. I've even blogged about them before. But I don't really understand what's so appealing about Cyrus. Maybe because I've spent so much time writing him. And maybe because I had to call upon all my selfish, negative personality traits to cobble him together. Cyrus is the kind of person I would be if I had just a little bit less conscience. You know, minus the statutory rape and child murder.

But I must be crazy, because I miss the bastard. I would absolutely like to write him again. And from the messages I've gotten from some of you, I think you'd like me to write him again, as well. Unfortunately, I can't just write him, because he doesn't belong to me anymore, and the people he does belong to don't feel there would be a readership for him. So, I'm starting a grassroots thing right now.

If you love Cyrus, if you want to read about him again, leave a comment here to that effect. Have your friends who don't read my blog but like Cyrus come do it, as well. I want to see if I'm right, that there are people out there who would send my publisher some dollars for another few hundred pages of Cyrus.

I've already found out how powerful word of mouth can be when I open my mouth wide enough. Let's see if the same goes for Cyrus. Leave your comments. Honk if you love Cyrus. And if there are no honks, then I can put him to his final rest on my "to do" list.

Battle Royale: Armintrout vs. Twain

2010-08-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

I received a tip from an anonymous commenter that my Laurel K. Hamilton blog was burning up the intertubes over at an amazon.com forum, so I stopped in to check it out. Somewhere in the discussion, famous author feuds were mentioned. Including Mark Twain and James Fenimore Cooper. To which an astute commenter mentioned that I am, in fact, no Mark Twain.

You won't hear any argument here. Mark Twain is probably the greatest American author of all time (okay, third greatest, after Herman Melville and Nora Roberts). But I am pretty sure I can take Mark Twain in a fight. You know, if the alien race he returned to upon his "death" when he hitched a ride on Haley's Comet hasn't created some devastating combat technology or done away with violence all together. But let's see what happens if we put me up against Mark Twain in a Battle Royale.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with how these little throw-downs go on my blog, you can check out Jen vs. The Hoff and Daleks vs. The Borg. That should make the rules pretty clear.

Dust off your old timey mustache, Twain, it's show time.

Me vs. Mark Twain: The Battle For Endor

Name
Me: Jennifer Armintrout Difficult to pronounce and google.
Mark Twain: Mark Twain Pleasant, ethnically neutral, not at all scary and German.
Advantage: Twain
Body of work
Me: Four novels about vampires fucking, three faery books everyone hated.
Mark Twain: You have to use the scroll bar on his wikipedia bibliography.
Advantage: Twain
Racial slurs?
Me: No, those don't really go over well.
Mark Twain: His name was what Jim? Dude, not cool.
Advantage: Armintrout
Hair Height

Advantage: I got this, dude.
Presidential connections
Me: Had my Obama lawn sign stolen twice; hold out hope of one day boning President Clinton.
Mark Twain: William Howard Taft released a statement upon Twain's death.
Advantage: Twain

Okay, so I didn't beat him. But he is an alien, and I do have bigger hair. Only time will tell, friends. Only time will tell.

The Phone Book: A Tale of Terror

2010-08-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

I hate phone books. Once upon a time, they had a useful place in life. If you needed to know a phone number or look for a business, the phone book was your go-to guy. You probably had a few different phone books, all of varying usefulness. I lived out in the country, so we had our little local phone book that was about as thick as a people magazine, but if you wanted to go to a movie in town, you got out the Kalamazoo phone book, which was substantially larger.

Then, a strange thing happened. That thing was the internet. Now, if I want to go to the movies, I get on my computer and in less than a minute I can know what the times are at every movie theatre in Kalamazoo. But still, the phone books come.

I don't know when my friendship with and reliance upon the phone book soured. Probably when I realized I was getting four or five of them a year. And they were heavy. And also, I didn't use them.

At first, I diligently kept them. But I never used them, and more kept coming. And coming. And then, something strange happened.

When we moved into our new house, we got a phone book within days. It was hanging from our mailbox like a little "Welcome Home" present. So, I left it out there. "Maybe whoever left it will get the hint. They won't want to waste the phone book." It stayed out there, hanging from my mailbox like a rotting head on a pike during Tudor times. But instead of sending the message, "Please don't fuck the queen," it apparently sent the message, "Bring me more phone books." Because that's just what happened. In a few weeks, our rain-swollen phone book and dirty, torn bag had been replaced by a brand new phone book wrapped in shiny plastic. I still wouldn't allow it into the house. My neglect of the phone book and its subsequent replacement became a sick pattern. It was as though the phone book deliverer was saying, "Here, have a second and third and fourth chance to make things right."

One day, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Taking a sharpie marker, I sat in the driveway and wrote a perfectly lovely note on the plastic bag holding the phone book. Something like, "Thank you, but I don't use the phone book." There may or may not have been expletives in it. The next day, the phone book was gone. It seemed like my troubles were over.

A few days later, someone knocked on the door. I figured she was a Jehovah's Witness, because we have a lot of those who come around. But she didn't look like my normal crew of spiritual visitors. And she wasn't holding a bible. She was holding a phone book. With a smile that reminded me quite a bit of Tom Cruise pretending to be normal and friendly on a talk show, she thrust the phone book at me. "I noticed that yours was ruined by the rain."

"Are you the phone book person?" I asked, my hands behind my back. "I don't want any trouble. I just don't want a phone book."

She bent down and placed the phone book in the center of my welcome mat. "I'll just leave this here for you."

For the rest of the day, I avoided going outside. I was sure I would find phone books in my driveway, perhaps arranged in a circle around a honey dew melon with a knife sticking out of it with a little note that said "beware." A friend stopped by to visit. "Hey, this was on your step," he said, and for a minute I thought he might hold up a severed head. It was the phone book. Somehow, that was worse. I grabbed it out of his hand and threw it out the door.

Time has passed. My husband burns the phone books when they come. And they keep coming, like some zombie plague. My son started school, and he's made a lot of friends. Like the family up the road. Now that he's old enough to cross our little low-traffic street, I let him visit on his own. Yesterday he returned home with an orange plastic bag and handed it to me. "What's this?" I asked, reaching inside.

It was a phone book.

2010-08-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

"Oh no! Abuela es muerte! We need to go into the underworld to save her! Can you say Underworld? SAY UNDERWORLD!"

"Who do we ask for help when we don't know which way to go? The map! Say map! LOUDER!"

"When there's a place you gotta go, I'm the one you need to know, I'm the map. If there's a place you gotta get, I can get you there I bet, I'm the map! What's my name? Say it again!

Dora and Boots need to rescue Abuela from the underworld. She'll need to go across the river Styx..."

"...past Cerberus the three-headed guard dog..."

"...and into the mouth of Hades!"

"Tell Dora: Styx, Guard Dog, Mouth of Hades! Styx, Guard Dog, Mouth of Hades! Styx, Guard Dog, Mouth of Hades!"

"Come on, vamanos! Everybody let's go! Come on, let's get to it, I know that we can do it!"

"We need to pay the boatman to cross the river Styx. I think I have something in my backpack that will help. Can you say backpack? Say it LOUDER!"

"Backpack Backpack! Backpack Backpack! Yay! Dora needs something to pay the boatman, so she can cross the river Styx! Can you see something she can use to pay the boatman?"

"Yum yum yum yum yum! Delicioso!"

"We made it all the way to Hades! Now, we just have to lead Abuela out! You have to look straight ahead and not look back! Can you look straight ahead and not look back?"

"Oh no, it's that sneaky fox, Swiper! To keep Swiper from looking back and thus condemning Abuela to the City of the Damned for all eternity, say 'Swiper, no looking back!' Swiper, no looking back! Swiper, no looking back! Swiper no--"

"Awwww man!"

"Abuela, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

THE. END.

Barfing On My Keyboard

2010-08-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

I've written before about the tendency of authors to always "play nice" and never say anything negative about another author. Not one who is more famous than you, because you could hurt your career. Not one who is less famous than you, because you'll look threatened, and god knows no one wants to look threatened. And no one can say anything about someone who is just as well known as they are, because writers tend to be a self-conscious bunch and we always think everyone is doing ten times better than we are (although, in my case, that's pretty much true right now).

However, I think those rules are bullshit. If I didn't name names, what would be the point of calling another out on their jackassery?

So, once again, I'm calling out Laurell K. Hamilton.

You may be saying to yourself, "Jen, what are you doing? Why do you bother reading about her if she drives you so incredibly insane?" Well, I'll tell you: I don't know. Maybe it's masochism. Maybe it's schadenfreude. Maybe I'm just mean and bored. Actually, it's probably that last one. But when I see shit like her recent blogpost, "Bleeding On My Keyboard", which openly insults other writers in the genre, I can't be quiet. And I shouldn't be. If the person who considers herself the creator of the vampire novel can't say anything nice, well, neither can I, and I'm comfortable with that.

"Bleeding On My Keyboard" begins innocently enough with Laurell lamenting how difficult it's been for her to work on her latest manuscript. Fair enough, I've been there. I can get on board with feeling like your own writing is trying to straight up murder you. In fact, I would wager that pretty much every writer has felt that way now and again.

Laurell disagrees with me:
Some very successful writers don’t seem to feel that emotional connection to their work, or at least not to the degree I do. I used to envy them until I realized the price of that cool distance. They write like they feel with less depth, less of themselves on the page. It is a safer way to write, less frightening, less hurtful, less pain for the writer, but the writing shows that.

This is where it all starts to go a little wrong. As a writer, I resent the implication that unless "I’ve screamed at my computer, cursed other characters, fought and lost to them," I haven't managed to make a connection to my work. I love my job. I wouldn't love it if it constantly frightened and hurt me, and I don't think it needs to.

Laurell continues:
I can read most other writers and tell you within a few pages which of them “feels” strongly when they write and which do not. Now, some can fake it better than others, but in the end it is a fake. They don’t believe in their own work, their own world, their own characters. They know that the skin of let’s pretend is there, always, they never let themselves sink past a certain point, or perhaps their world, their muse, their imagination is more shallow than mine. Maybe there are no painful depths to explore and they just spend their careers wading through the shallows because no matter how wide the water looks, it’s just a wading pool with no unexpected holes to swallow the writer up, and drown them in the dark water of their own minds.

Now, wait just a fucking minute. First of all, "the skin of let's pretend" should be there. It has nothing to do with anyone being less tortured than her. It has nothing to do with the depths of anyone's imagination. It's always there because it's fiction. No matter how real the characters might be in her mind, they're always just pretend. It doesn't matter if she's the darkest, most tortured soul ever to write, if she's writing fiction, it is always pretend.

Which brings me to point #2. For an author who strenuously objects (or at least makes a big show of objecting) to being asked if aspects of her writing are influenced by her real life, it takes some major balls to assume that she can know anything about another author's life from "a few pages". How arrogant does someone have to be to claim that they can tell whether or not an author has "painful depths" from a few pages of fiction? It's insulting to authors who do have "painful depths" but keep them private or don't wish to express them in their work.

Laurell continues:
The way I write is not for everyone, God knows, but for me it’s the only way I know. It’s the way I’ve always written.

So, you heard it, kiddies. The way she writes is not for everyone, but if you don't write exactly the way she does, you're shallow and have no imagination

I, for one, am going to continue being shallow and without imagination. Not because of the dark holes that can swallow me up, but because I write fucking vampire books. They're supposed to be fun and entertaining and disposable. The day I forget that is the day I become an arrogant, insulting person who takes to their blog to lament the pain I feel from being the only author who really writes.

Snails Are Beautiful!

2010-08-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but today seems like it's gonna be a great day.

2010-07-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've narrowly escaped Lilith Fair. My baby is drinking a cup of coffee. My husband starts a new job. It feels like today is going to hold a lot of awesome stuff in it.

Ten Things...

2010-07-19T11:24:00.001-07:00

Bronwyn Green won a blogging award, and now we're all going to be punished. She got to pick some people who have to tell ten little-known things about themselves. I see this as a lot like being crowned Queen in Tudor England. You get the honor and stuff, and you get to pick some ladies-in-waiting and make them do some stuff, but it doesn't last forever. Look, I'm not saying that someone should cut off Bronwyn's head and put it on a pike or something, God forbid. I'm just saying that maybe she's going to be declared the blog award's sister and put away to molder in an estate somewhere. I'm just looking out for my friend. I want to make sure this blog award isn't going to kill off its other recipients and expect Bronwyn to care for its children, you know?

Wait, what was I supposed to be doing?

Oh right. Ten things that are not well-known about me. That's kind of hard, because I generally just vomit forth copious amounts of "about me" in my daily existence. Some of you readers out there might have copies of your books signed with, "I could really use a cupcake right now" or "I've never been to a P.F. Chang's." But I'm gonna give it a try. I'm gonna do eight because I'm bucking convention and I don't feel like that blog award should be able to just barge into my house and start bossing me around because I am an American.

~~ten~~eight things in no particular order of importance

If it would end up with me in some kind of group home, I would wear various period costumes as my regular clothing. Mostly Tudor, maybe some medieval or pre-revolutionary France thrown in to break it up. Regency just for cleaning the house. I've also considered the same scenario but with Disney costumes, and I would dearly love having Cinderella's peasant dress for cleaning days. I would probably be more into cleaning my house if I could pretend to have cartoon mice assisting me.
The first car I ever owned was a Ford Escort XL. It was red, with a green hood because a tree fell on it before it became "my" car. It had a stain in the backseat that we all called "The Mystery Stain" because no one could remember how it got there. My friends and I used to hang our bras on the antenna, and once my mother left to go pick up pizza in the car with all of our bras still attached.
When I was in middle school, I didn't like taking group showers after gym class, so one week out of every month I would claim to be on my period so that the gym teacher wouldn't make me showever. Things were going okay for a while, until I actually got my period for the first time during, you guessed it, gym class. I had to go to my teacher's aerobic's class for like a week as punishment for lying about my period.
I'm a full-time believer in reincarnation, and I've had several past-life regressions. I've almost always been a peasant who died horribly. I'm really hoping to avoid that in this life. However, I have a pretty good outlook on dying since I've come to the realization that it's not permanent.
When I was born, my mother was single and in college, so I was raised by my grandparents in their haunted house. Despite putting me to bed every night with stories about who died in the room I was sleeping in, my family can't understand what would drive me to write stories about vampires. Many family members have expressed a desire that I write historical romances or something "nice" for Steeple Hill.
Recently, I've discovered nail polish blogs. I'm addicted to pictures and descriptions of nail polish. I don't know why, but it relaxes me, and I'm a big fan of being relaxed. Because of my new obsession, I've gotten into the habit of painting my nails every day. Sometimes twice a day. And then I decided I didn't like them square anymore, so I filed them round, then I didn't like them as ovals so I filed them down to nubs to start over again.
I have a genetic disorder that makes me too bendy for my own good. To combat this, I lift weights, but I'm still a huge wimp who can barely lift a gallon of milk. I could probably crush a man to death with my thighs like that James Bond villain from the 90's, though. The opportunity hasn't really come up.
I have this delusional blind-spot in my reason wherein I think, "I can do that," to almost anything. This once extended to playing the piano. I was surrounded by a group of about thirty high schoolers, all looking at me expectantly, and I asked, "Okay, can someone show me which one of these thingies is C?" I saw thirty young faces fall, and one of them meekly asked, "You know how to play piano, right?" I shook my head, very confident still, at this point, and said, "No. But lots of people do it. It can't be hard." I was wrong. However, their musical was a success, so there wasn't any harm done. In fact, I think I taught them a lesson about courage or music or something.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Which is why it was all effed up and I had to go through it line by line fixing it.

Turning 30, the Yahoo! messenger epic. Also starring Bronwyn Green

2010-07-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

Me:
I just slept for 14 hours.
Am I dying?

Bronwyn:
Are you sick? Also, I'm jealous

Me:
I don't feel sick.
Maybe I'm getting sick.
WHICH IS BULLSHIT THE DAY BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY.
But if I'm not getting sick, WTF.
Is this what happens when you turn 30? You go into a coma?

Bronwyn:
Maybe your body recognized it was coming down with something and decided to sleep it off. [name omitted] does that all the time

Me:
That would be awesome, if somehow my body realized it should do something good for itself.
Most of the time, when I start to get sick, I also stop sleeping and being hungry.
Like my body is saying, "Bootstraps, young man!"
Why are you awake so early?

Bronwyn:
Editing.

Me:
Fuck that. Burn down your house, collect the insurance money, move to the bahamas, profit.

Bronwyn:
Oh, how I want to.

Me:
I think I'm having a mental break down.

Bronwyn:
Seriously?

Me:
No, not really.
I had a dream that I had to get my high school boyfriend to sign some paper having to do with my kids.

Bronwyn:
I'm sorry you're cranky. I'm feeling pretty bitchtastic myself.

Me:
Is this what it's going to be like every time I go into a new decade of age?
Like, "OMG IT IS MY LAST DAY IN MY _______IES! I MUST GO IMMEDIATELY INSANE."
I'm googling old classmates.
I have wasted the last ten years of my life.
This is it. It's a midlife crisis.

Bronwyn:
That's pretty much how it works. Just be prepared to rage insanely every ten years - sometimes it starts early and lasts longer.

Me:
Which means I'm only going to live to be sixty.
That is not good news, Bronwyn.
I am disappoint.
Deeply, deeply disappoint.

Bronwyn:
You did not waste your life - you made two amazing kids, you write books, you have fantastic friends - this is not a waste.

Me:
I had one, long dream during my fourteen hours of sleep. All of it came down to trying to clean things by setting them on fire or running from people younger than me who had guns.
This is not a good sign.

Bronwyn:
This is your paranoia and freakout about turning 30.

Me:
I'm actually surprised that it waited this long.
This whole week should have been like this, knowing me.
I'm going to go wake up Joe and share these thoughts with him.

Bronwyn:
I'm not sure if it'll make you feel any better, but I've kinda been waiting for this.

Me:
Oh, good. I'm glad someone was anticipating my mania.

LOOK AT THIS!

2010-07-13T07:28:00.001-07:00

See these little guys? I want one of them SO much. I guess they work off the light or something. But watch this video and just see if it doesn't relax the hell out of you.

Also, I put the following video in my favorites. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking. I do know I was probably "medicated" at the time:

Writing Analysis Thinger

2010-07-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This online thing said I write like James Joyce. So, you know, watch out for AMERICAN VAMPIRE by James Joyce, coming out March, 2011.

Uncharacteristic ruminating on fatness

2010-07-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Usually, I don't have a problem with my body. In fact, I like it. I have to, because I have no intention of changing it, other than punching a few holes here and there and inking up my skin. This weekend, however, I was confronted by something that threatened to destroy the self-confidence I take such pride in. This weekend, I found an old duffle bag full of clothes from my high school days.

As any of you who have met me in person know, I'm fat. Rubenesque, if you're into flowery language. I wasn't always fat. In high school, i was teensy. I never realized how teensy until I held up a t-shirt that would fit a four-year-old and realize it was a size 2 from GAP. Now, I have this policy in life. My policy is, "Do what feels good." Dieting doesn't feel good. No one can convince me that a Snickers don't taste as good as thin feels. Because I've been thin, and it didn't taste like Snickers. But in that moment, as I held up that tiny shirt, I thought, "My God. How did I get this fat? I need to go on a diet."

That feeling passed as soon as we started roasting marshmallows over the campfire. But I did take stock. How did I get to this weight?

I had two wonderful babies who are growing every day into wonderful kids and, eventually and against my wishes, into wonderful teenagers and then wonderful adults.
I have plenty of food to eat. Some people don't.
I have the genetic code of my family, the women of which tend to be on the heft side. Also, on the awesome side.
My husband doesn't care how much I weigh or what I look like, and I don't have to be afraid that he's going to leave me for a younger, thinner woman because I'm not physically perfect.
I express my love for my friends and family through food. And I love them a lot. My family and friends share this same ideal, and they also love me a lot.

So, in the end, I guess the leap from a size 2 to a size 20 wasn't a downward slide generously greased with ice cream cake and cheese fries. Every pound I've gained has been the result of love and good fortune. And I'm not about to wish that away.

Ooowowooowooowwwoooooo

2010-06-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Things I Have Learned Online

2010-06-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, according to the internet, there are thousands upon thousands of dollars to be made just sitting on my ass. Like, I know, internet. It's called "writing". However, that hasn't been paying the bills as well lately, what with being between contracts and all. I'm staring to feel the pinch. So, maybe my good friend the internet has a point.

The internet wouldn't lie to me, right?

I've decided to make it my personal project this summer to "make money online from your own home" by doing all the crazy things people do to make money. First of all, I've signed up with AdSense to put ads on my blog. I almost accidentally typed "ass" there. To put ass on my blog. Anyway, AdSense promises that the ass put on my blog will with unobtrusive, and won't do anything to my readers unless they click on them. After that, I'm not sure what happens, and I won't be able to find out because I've already had to sign a contract in blood stating that I will not, under any circumstances, click on those ads even if my house is on fire.

The other thing I'm going to do is write articles and make how-to videos for Associated Content. Of all the money-making schemes online, this one seems to be the most promising. Why? Because it only partly relies on me tricking people into clicking links, and the other part is something I do really good, writing. And talking on a video. Okay, so anyone who listened to my short-lived and ill-conceived podcast knows that I'm not very good at the talking part. But I'm good at spamming my twitter and social networking sites with content, so just, you know, gird your loins and such.

The most exciting and yet least likely to pay off avenue to monetary gain on the internet has to be the online survey phenomenon. I've already signed up with a (legitimate and free) survey site and have taken some surveys. I'll be honest, I made six dollars in an hour, which is less than minimum wage in my state. But I got to click things and it makes me feel important to know that someone, somewhere, might use my opinions on iced coffee to market something to my fellow consumers.

If I've missed any opportunities to waste my time trying to get free, easy money, let me know. I'm game for anything on this virtual road trip to unbelievable riches.

I'll provide you all with updates from my awesome internet money adventure. According to all the promises these sites make, I'll be updating you via wrist-watch computer from my private helicopter over my recently purchased island off the coast of Fiji. Wish me luck!

In Case You Missed It...

2010-06-09T06:50:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you did miss the fact that Lady Gaga has a new video, you don't spend enough time on the internet. But I'm here to recap it for you.

I'm not sure what commercial you'll guys get, but for me Vevo selected an add for Caress body wash that implied my salsa dancing might not be up to par because my skin isn't sexy enough. Then the video started.

First, we're treated to a shot of a hot guy in fishnet tights lazing in a chair while the words "Gaga" and "Klein" and "Alejandro" are displayed in bold text. I know who Gaga is and I know the song is "Alejandro" but I'm not sure what "Klein" means. Maybe she's going for a pseudo German vibe, because the next thing we see is a bunch of men in Nazi-esque uniforms sitting at tables. Sweet, maybe this is going to be a Cabaret themed video!

The song should be starting any minute now. I mean, the Nazi guys are shirtless and dancing now, so they're going to need music to groove to. This is where Gaga pops out and starts singing, right?

There's Gaga! Wearing steampunk goggles! Awesome! And there's... bloody meat full of glitter and pins. And, uh, a casket. Okay, let's go with this. There's a cheering crowd, too. From the uniforms and Gaga's bleached eyebrows I'm expecting them to start chanting "Peron! Peron!" but it doesn't materialize.

Instead, Gaga is now leading a funeral procession for that casket we just saw a minute ago. Oh, and she's the one carrying the glitter meat. Wait, I thought she was watching that from the window. I've officially lost the narrative thread of this video and the song hasn't even started yet. Is 10:00 am too early to have a drink?

At least I have incredibly phallic shirtless gun-holding puppet man to soothe me. Gaga usually has women or flamboyantly arrayed men in her videos. I'm not complaining about the buff underwear models in this one, Lord knows I am not. But it's two minutes into this video and the song hasn't even started yet.

At about 2:04, funeral ballerina Gaga starts talking in a really muddled accent that can only be described as "vaguely European". Something about being in love with Alejandro, but not being able to be with him. Then it cuts to a shot of incredibly phallic shirtless gun-holding puppet man. So, that must be Alejandro. At least, that's the perception I'm going to continue to watch under.

So, Madonna is sitting watching some shirtless guys-- oops, my bad, that's Gaga. The cruel laughter and throne of nightmares made me mix the two up. But this is definitely still Gaga. I can tell by the goggles. The Gagagles. The shirtless Nazi boys dance for Magana's pleasure, and then the camera cuts to what can only be described as the 32nd Annual Needlessly Buff Moe Howard Impersonators' Synchronized Dance Competition. This is possibly the most disturbing part of the video for me, and by that I mean their haircuts. The haircuts, dear God, the haircuts. All I can think of are the Three Stooges, but their bodies, and the dancing, and men touching and simulated sex with each other and--

GAH! Gaga is dressed as a nun, probably praying for my immortal soul because her stupid Nazi Moes gave me a girl boner. Look, lady, you can't just put shirtless guys grinding on each other in your video and not expect a straight woman to stay dry as the Sahara, okay? No matter how ridiculous their haircuts are.

Now, I'm not going to describe the next scene. Because I have a pen name that gets paid to write about that kind of stuff. But this is definitely starting to win the prize for Best Gaga Video Yet in my mind. After the porn, Gaga dances around in Sally Bowle's underthings with her Moe clones behind her. And then there's more simulated intercourse with men in high heels. Seriously, has she been reading my dream journal?

Okay, now I'm starting to understand the plot of this video. The white latex cape she's wearing shows that's clearly a Knight Templar, and these are the devoted pilgrims following her. Right? Is there some kind of story here? There's always a story, Gaga! Sometimes it's hard to figure out, but there's always a story. Just let me know what it is!

The next part is honestly my favorite part of the video. I know, I know, you thought it would be hard to top the sex dancing. It's actually pretty tame, with Gaga sporting a Carol Channing bowl cut and actually wearing pants while she dances by herself and with jackbooted thugs. But she's so sexy and awesome in this part, it makes me wish she'd thrown the creepy Catholicism and Facism references out and done the whole video like this little bit right here. But if she'd done that, the inevitable comparisons to Madonna wouldn't have been as forthcoming, so she fucks it up by putting on a machine gun bra and dancing.

At this point I have yet to compare her to Annie Lennox, which happens at least once per video. Gaga hasn't forgotten about my love of pointing out which artists have visibly influenced her. She slicks back her hair and puts on a leather jacket, sunglasses and panties and gets behind a microphone to sing to her distopic future Fascism world while having fond flashbacks to the simulated sex she just had in the middle of the video. And there's some rioting and group sex and I still don't know what's going on. At the truly horrifying conclusion, Gaga's face melts like a film negative.

I have no idea what I just watched, but I'm terrified and aroused.

Sexy Picture Post

2010-06-08T08:16:00.001-07:00

Ha, gotcha.

Working at the library today.

2010-06-01T05:16:00.000-07:00

My son's first grade teacher is awesome. There's no way of getting around it. She's totally focused on reading and writing, and runs her classroom like an all day writing workshop at RWA national. Today, to celebrate these dwindling days of this school year, I'm going to share the fruits of her labors through the prose created by my son:

Kiersten, by Christian Armintrout
copyright February 2010 ed. note: There is actually a copyright page.

Kiersten is my best friend in the world!
But one day Kiersten ran out of our fort so...
I went in.
I saw snowball, it was as heavy as a TREE!
So-- I rolled it out.
But another kid came in and he hit me!
When Kiersten wasn't around.
"Kiersten!"
Kiersten is a great friend.

Christmas Tree, by Christian Armintrout
copyright January 2010

I had to get the Christmas tree out of the closet, it was heavy.
Then, I had to get the ornament box out.
We has lots!
Next I had to take everything down the stairs.
Grandpa and Steve helped me build it.
After we put up the tree we decorated it with ornaments.
My favorite ornament is a robot. But it got broken.
My new favorite is a bear in a car and mom put it up high because it is delicate.

The Boy Who Used to Be Naughty II, by Christian Armintrout
Dedicated to Mom and Dad and Wednesday
copyright October 2009
ed. note: This is the sequel to The Boy Who Used to Be Naughty, which tells the story of the time Christian got into my office and broke a bunch of glass globes for fun.

Now I am 6 1/2
Sometimes mom still says, "GO to your room,"
When I do naught stuff.
The last naughty thing was giving money to AJ.
I should have given the money to the lunch lady.
I learned my lesson.
Well, I ran out of paper so thats... the end.

ed. note: This next one is my total favorite. It's the only fiction one he's written, and I think he shows a real knack for it.
Grandpa's Car is Cool!, by Christian Armintrout
copyright November 2009

Grandpa's car is cool!
It has a face on it. The eyes are headlights, the bumper is the mouth.
"Hooo," I said.
It transforms into a red and blue robot.
The tires are lazers. It uses sign language to talk.
It can also make a mean face. I copy it.
"That car is cool," I said.
He said, "Thanks!"
"Cool," I said it again.

Look, I know I'm his mom, but I don't think it would be bragging or premature to announce that he's going to be the next Faulkner.

Bronwyn Green's mutilation of romance authors continues unchecked.

2010-05-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Last night, I got a hole punched in me. It was done by Rudis at The Tattoo and Piercing Studio in Grand Rapids, MI. Yes, the name of the place really is, "The Tattoo and Piercing Studio". No frills, no jackassery. I like that.

Anyway, Bronwyn Green went with me to man the camera and fulfill her goal of getting as many authors mutilated as she possibly could in one month. That sentence isn't right, but I can't figure out how to fix it. Too bad I had to skip critique group this morning to stay home with a cranky toddler. Anyway, she already got to Mia Watts. How many more authors have to be pierced before her bloodthirsty vengeance is assuaged?

Digression aside, here is the video of the actual piercing being done. I cut out all the unwrapping of tools and marking of dots on my lip and discussion of how I'm going to get pink eye from taking my laptop into the bathroom with me. What you'll see is just the positioning of the tongs and the actual needle going through my face. There isn't any finished shot of it on the video, because the immediate swelling that seemed to concentrate on just one side of my lip made it appear as though the piercing was really, really off-centered. But here's a picture of what it looks like the morning after, still slightly swollen but no where near as crooked looking as a result:

The jewelry he used was actually longer that needed, to accomodate for swelling. As you can see, it looks a bit snug right now. Keep in mind, that picture is after the swelling went down.

On to the video. This is not for the faint of heart, kids. Bronwyn has an eye for the graphic, and her lens does not shy away from stuff that looks painful.

And is painful. Very, very painful. This hurt like crazy.

Everyone have a good holiday weekend. I'm gonna spend mine drinking beer through a straw.

Okay, the big announcement...

2010-05-26T08:35:00.001-07:00

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. Ahem.

This has to start with a little story.

Once upon a time, in my first critique group, the Friday Night Mudslingers, we had a saying. We were saying it all the time: "Jennifer Armintrout does not write romance." And it's true. The most common complaint I get from readers is, "I thought this was going to be a romance. They had it in the wrong section." I try to write romance, in fact I aspire to some day write category romances because I like them more than any other type of book. But when I try to write romance, I end up killing everybody. You can't have people skinned alive in a Harlequin Presents. I know. I looked it up.

Eventually, when I finally figured how to write a romance without murders in it, I was already locked into this Jennifer Armintrout gig. Now, Jennifer Armintrout couldn't write romance, even if she wanted to and had gotten good at it. People would not like that, and companies wouldn't pay for it.

So, I figured that if I can't write romances, I figure I'll leave that up to someone else. A someone else who happens to be me. Under the name Abigail Barnette, I will be writing ebooks, the first of which will be available from Samhain Publishing in September of this year. You'll be able to find more info about that at Abigail's site. I will still be writing as Jennifer Armintrout and being my normal self. As normal as I can be.

So, that's the big announcement.

There is a downside to everything...

2010-05-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

The thing I hate most about having a new computer, (which, as is implied by the phrase "new computer" be nothing but awesome) is forgetting that simple tasks you might once have done with a bit of shareware that you downloaded on your old machine is now impossible to accomplish because you do not have it anymore. In the worst case scenario, you have no way of getting that program again. In the best case scenario, who the hell am I kidding? I still have to download the same program, install it (on a Mac this is a hellish ordeal of clicking and dragging that is so simple as to be insulting, yet somehow not simple enough on a machine that practically runs itself for you) and try to get my bearings with whatever little changes the developers have made in the last three years since I bought a new computer.

There's no point or underlying meaning to take away from this post. I'm just mad that I have to wait for Gimp to download again.

Romance Novel Characters, Class of 2022.

2010-05-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

My son brought his yearbook home yesterday. I may or may not have blogged before about how ridiculous it seems to me that when my kid is in the nursing home, he'll be surrounded by Dakotas and Jaydens. And like, when I'm in the nursing home, I'll probably accuse some orderly named Montana of stealing my lipstick. But as I'm looking through these children's smiling faces and matching up the Souixzhans and the Hunters, I'm starting to think that elementary school yearbooks are underappreciated resources for romance writers. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Romance Novel Character Class of 2022:

If you are writing a contemporary romance about baseball players, might I suggest:
Brooklyn, Auston (not a typo)
Stryker, Gunner

If you're looking for a new twist on an old favorite, how about:
Mica, Abbygale,
Aryanna (I really hope the occurrence of "Aryan" in this one was unintentional)
Mariea, Mekenna, Kamrynn,
Kasssandra, Alexxis, Madylin,
Shayann, Jaiyde, Mersaydies,
Jazzmine, Karter, Madysen,
Elyzabeth, Kersten, Nickolice,
Alekzander,

If you've just created a series about an impossibly large family of brothers, each hotter than the last, you might try:
Colton, Tanner, Ashton,
Brentin,Trenton, Dalton,
Karter, Landon, Caeden

Writing a historical romance set in the old west?
Montana, Cheyenne,
Dakota (There are two Dakotas in one class),
Dawson, Holden, Ezrian,

Of course, paranormal, fantasy, and scifi authors need their names, too:
Azlan, Tayah, Terri'aun,
Ameia, Rylie, Genel,
Therin, Tylar, Takaycee,
SiSi, Zarek, Rainen,
Kitara, Tehya, Kiau,
Coyana, Keghan, Deikon
Kaidyn, Emale, Thor,
Taygon,

Velour historicals, I have not forgotten you:
Azaria, O'Shea (That's a first name, folks)
Alainna, Teaghan, Tristren,
Ciara, Bram, Justus,
Adrionna, Trystan, Katryna
Lilyana

I don't know why i didn't think of this before. I agonize over finding the right name, that hasn't been over-used (okay, so Dakota and Colton are way, way overused) and all I needed to do was pick up my kid's yearbook. Of course, in years past it wouldn't have worked. He went to a Catholic school, so all the girls were named Mary and the boys were all Joseph.

Wait, that's an option for character names. Saints! Why haven't we seen a handsome were-panther named Ethelbert yet?

New blog? Co-blog? Also blog? What do I call this?

2010-05-18T09:04:00.001-07:00

Because I like to keep my stuff all nice and separate, and I'm not good at being professional and serious over here, I've started another blog. I'm not abandoning this one, just making a new blog for a specific area of my life. Weed Mom is shaping up to be a very frank, personal discussion on the issues I'm facing in my journey with chronic pain and medical marijuana. I'll be blogging there about how it affects my family, my body, and my own personal taboos. I'll post news about Fibromyalgia and Michigan's medical marijuana program. Right now, I'm twenty days away from being a medical marijuana patient, but it's never too early to start blogging a truly bizarre experience.

If you are interested, there's the link up there. If you know someone who might be interested, send them the link. And if you're not interested, that's fine, but stay tuned here for an upcoming, awesome announcement.

Happy Tornado Day! Err... that doesn't sound right.

2010-05-13T08:17:00.001-07:00

Whether or not that's an appropriate greeting today, it is, in fact, Tornado Day. It's a well-known fact amongst my readers that I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during my Blood Ties days. It's less well-known that before that, Kalamazoo, Michigan was my neighborhood.

Richelle Mead is also a Kalamazoo native. So, if you want to write Urban Fantasy, being born in or near Kalamazoo is a good way to get a start, I guess.

Thirty years ago today (three-months before I was born, just throwing that out there), an F3 tornado ripped through downtown Kalamazoo. According to my favorite meteorologist, Mr. Bill Steffen (who is cool as hell), that means it was going between 158 and 206 m.p.h. Five people were killed by the high winds, falling trees, and the collapse of the rear wall of the Gilmore's department store.

Tornadoes happen all the time, so why is this one such a big deal to us? Well, for one, we have one, maybe two tornadoes a year. Two, you've all seen Twister, right? Tornadoes generally happen in rural areas. Well, here's a Google satellite image of Kalamazoo, including the "downtown" area that the Tornado of 1980 destroyed:

View Larger Map

Thirty years later, anyone old enough to remember the Tornado will eagerly share stories of it. People who were in Gilmore's when it collapsed. I heard a first-hand account from a woman I used to work with who ran across Bronson Park just before the Tornado plowed through it. In high school, my friends and I would go to Mount Home cemetery and drink in huge scar the Tornado left on the grounds.

The Kalamazoo Tornado is legend 'round these parts (hence the capitalization). You can still buy t-shirts proclaiming that you survived the tornado. There's a facebook group where people share their stories. Some buildings (like the part of my son's old school that you see destroyed in the following video) have plaques commemorating the fact they either were erected on the remains of a building destroyed by the Tornado, or that they didn't get destroyed.

So, check out the vid, which is truly, truly spooky.

And another first-hand account, with a slide show of the destruction, is here: http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/05/spectacular_may_13_1980_tornad.html.

That's all I got today folks. Enjoy your (hopefully) severe weather-free day.

My coworkers are lazy.

2010-05-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sharing office space with these two new guys. They're quiet, that's a plus, but they don't really do anything. They just stare at me, and occasionally they eat. They don't look very smart.

They look kind of like this:

Except there are two of them.

2010-05-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

So, where have I been? Not blogging, I can tell you that. Sometimes, I just run out of things to say. Or, I have things to say, but they make me too angry to form coherent sentences. That's a blog for later this week. Today, I'm going to tell the harrowing tale of the thing in my back.

I had a tumor. It started out as a little tumor. See, at first, I thought I had a dowager's hump or something. Then, my back started hurting. This was back in January or February. I remember it like it was yesterday, because my days are mostly all the same. I was sitting in my basement family room with my besty, Jill, and we were ignoring each other in favor of looking at imagechan our laptops. We paused occasionally to show each other something funny. Oh, and also, we were watching Dracula 2000 and talking about how Gerard Butler was hotter back when he was fat. Anyway, I was like, "My back hurts. Right in the humpal area."

I went to my doctor, and she poked it and measured it and said, "Huh. I don't know what that is, but I don't like it." Which is not the best thing to hear from your doctor. Then, she got me an appointment with a surgeon, and he poked my hump and measured it and said, "It's tumor. You want to take it off or leave it there?" Like that's a decision you're going to make. "You know, I have this searing back, neck and shoulder pain, but let's just see how this plays out." I don't think so, thanks a lot.

So, after my surgery was rescheduled once, I finally went in and had the tumor removed on April 28th. The whole experience was pretty cool. They gave me drugs that were way better than anything I can get off the street, and which caused me to try and pull out my IV and take my gown off until the anesthesiologist just went ahead and put me under, probably because I was an idiot and screaming, "I can't breathe!" as they held the oxygen mask over my face. When I woke up, there was no tumor. In fact, I'm willing to believe that there never was a tumor. I think it was Cthulhu.

Let's look at the facts, shall we? Cthulhu is that guy, right up there. Note the bulbous head and tentacle face. Now, I didn't take a picture of my tumor, owing to the fact that I was anesthetized when it was being removed, but my surgeon did use the word "tentacle" to describe it. There was a central mass and TENTACLES reaching toward my spine. Stubby tentacles, he said, but I'm pretty sure he was just trying to minimize the horror factor once I found out that The Deep Ones had taken over my body and were clearly trying to gain control of my central nervous system.

Now that my back is no longer R'lyeh West, I can concentrate on important matters. Like introducing you to an amazing new writer (who also happens to be me), talking about professionalism and mistakes new writers make, and venting my spleen about all manner of things that have been ticking me off lately.

Also, to keep me in good blogging form, if there is any subject you want me to address, let me know. I might blog about it. Or I'll tell you to get stuffed.

2010-02-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

At the core of things, it is grape soda that has returned me to blogging.
After a hellish January, I settled down to some light reading, a book that was recommended to me. I won't name the book or the author, because that's not how I roll. But I was shocked to find, after enjoying the book for almost three hundred pages, something so fundamentally "WTF?" that I had to stop reading: the hero, an African-American, casually got into his refrigerator and pulled out grape soda.

For those unfamiliar with grape soda as a stereotype, well... it's a stereotype. I have no idea how it came about, or why, but grape soda is up there next to chicken and watermelon on the "Stereotypes about African-American eating habits" list. So, last night, when the black love interest offers the white heroine a grape soda, I heard this in my head:

Not only was this offensive, but it got me thinking about how just plain offensive white authors can be when writing about non-white people in general. For instance, what is up with not mentioning the race of a character outright? Let's say I pick up a book and it says this:

"Lamont was tall, with dark hair and burnt-caramel skin. His full, sensuous lips were the kind women envied, and his gold eyes burned in their dark setting."

What that tells me is that the character is black. Right? I'm suppose to assume that, from his name, the description of his lips and the color of his eyes, that he's a black man. Well, why not just say this?:

"Lamont was tall and black, with the kind of full, sensuous lips that women envied. His gold eyes burned with intensity..." etc.

Why are white authors so afraid of mentioning anybody's race? Is it because white people pride themselves on being "color blind?" "Oh, I didn't describe Lamont as being African-American because I don't see color, and neither does my heroine." That's complete BS, and it's more offensive than pointing out someone's race. For one thing, it's dishonest. Let's say you're white and you're out shopping with your friends, one of them white with red hair and one of them black with black hair. You get separated from them, and you ask the really perky blond girl at the kiosk who wants to try and straighten your hair right there in the middle of the fucking mall for some reason NO I AM NOT INTERESTED AMBER, LEAVE ME ALONE FOR GOD'S SAKE if she's seen your friends. How do you describe to Amber, the inappropriately placed hair straightener, what your friends look like? The first thought that will come to mind is "A redhead and a black girl." You won't say the part about your second friend being black, though, because you've been taught that acknowledging race is rude.

Well, you know what? It's not, and exactly the opposite is. In fact, refusal to acknowledge the race of a person or a character is not just rude, it's flat out racist. What you are doing is making their race something to be ashamed of, something you don't talk about in polite company. Oh, sure, it fulfills the "I'm colorblind!" mentality that white people have pushed for years, but when a white person says, "I don't see color," what they are saying is, "I see everyone as a white person." Being "color blind" removes a part of the character's identity, and an important part. Unless you're writing your book set in a fantasy world or the far, far future in which racism has been completely eradicated, your character's experience of being African-American or Asian or Latino in the Western world is going to be a part of what forms their opinions and personality. And if you're not prepared to deal with that, and treat their race and experiences as valued differences instead of something to be ashamed of, maybe you shouldn't be writing non-white characters, white authors.

So, my fellow white authors, lets make a pact to stop doing the following:

Avoiding any explicit mention that the character is of a different race. It's perfectly fine for white people to notice that a Person of Color is, in fact, OF COLOR. We all do it. It's called having eyes.
Describing a character's non-white skin color in food terms as a substitute to naming their race. Stop it, please. No more caramel, no more dark chocolate, no more coffee-with-cream, no more. Please, God, no more. When you sit down to write a love scene between two white characters, do you describe your white hero's skin as "the color of golden vanilla ice cream"? No. You don't. Stop turning People of Color into your food fetish.
Relying on stereotypes to flesh out Characters of Color. Not every black woman has to be sassy. Not every Hispanic woman has to speak Spanish fluently, or come from a huge family.
Pretending that because we write Characters of Color, we are completely without prejudice. You still probably have some. I know I still do. Ignoring it won't make it go away. Confronting it does, and working to retrain ourselves from the things we learned from society and our families is a lifelong process. The second you start acting like you don't have a racist or prejudice bone in your body is the second you close yourself off from learning anything.

Back to the grape soda. I firmly believe that this author, who would not acknowledge the race of this black man by explicitly telling the audience that he is a PoC, was misguidedly using the grape soda as a clue to the audience as to the hero's race. I could even go so far as to say that she might have been warned away from mentioning his race outright by a well-meaning editor who didn't want to offend anybody, but who didn't see anything wrong with the grape soda reference, either through ignorance of the stereotype or the misguided assumption that since Dave Chapelle made jokes about it, it's fair game now. I don't know. But it really got me thinking about what I'm going to be more careful about in my writing in the future. I hope it makes some other authors think about it, too.

I'm still here. I'm just on medication that makes everything alllllllll riiiiiiiight.

2009-12-29T10:12:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays To You And Yours

2009-12-24T06:50:00.001-08:00