Team Unpubbed

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a blog tour filled with romance and teen angst! And you will LOVE every second!

2012-02-13T08:26:00.000-05:00

I'm blog touring! If you'd like to follow along, the schedule is below! (It's super fun...you know you want to join the fun!)

Double Clutch by Liz Reinhardt
February 13 – March 2
Coordinated by: Kari

Monday, February 13: Kristen T at Seeing Night Reviews (Character Interview: Jake)
Wednesday, February 15: Basma at In Between the Lines (Author This or That)
Thursday, February 16: Jen D at What's on the Bookshelf (Review)
Friday, February 17: Vickie at Me, My Shelf and I (Author Interview)

Monday, February 20: Damaris at Good Choice Reading (Character Interview: Brenna)
Tuesday, February 21: Crystal at My Reading Room (Book Picks)
Wednesday, February 22: Kristen T at Seeing Night Reviews(Review)
Thursday, February 23: Heidi at The Readiacs (Music Post)
Friday, February 24: Jen D at What's on the Bookshelf (Author Interview)

Monday, February 27: Divya at Bookish Delights (Character Interview: Saxon)
Tuesday, February 28: Vickie at Me, My Shelf and I (Review)
Wednesday, February 29: Ashley S at Ashley Suzanne (When I’m Not Writing)
Thursday, March 1: Heidi at The Readiacs (Review)
Friday, March 2: Kari at A Good Addiction (Author Interview)

A Giveaway, A Sweet Story, Hot Abs, A Valentine Deal...All The Good Stuff!

2012-02-07T15:27:00.001-05:00

Why We All Love Abs And It's All Okay!

So, I lured you here to drool over some delicious abs with me! And to let you know why my guys have such bodily gorgeousness. AND to let you know that I'm giving away two paper copies of Double Clutch in a Goodreads giveaway contest that ends this Friday, February 10. AND to announce that I'm going to run a .99 Valentine's Day sale on the e-version of Double Clutch this weekend (2/11 & 2/12) because I want EVERYONE to have a chance to be with Jake and Saxon this Valentine's Day! So there are all my announcements, and I'm providing a link to the contest, and then back to the abs, natch!

To enter to win a paper copy of Double Clutch, click here and throw your name in the hat!!

I recently wrote a YA contemporary romance called Double Clutch, and one of the highlights of writing it was creating these two amazing, gorgeous, brilliant guys. Do they have flaws? Oh, don't even get me started! But there is one thing I just couldn't budge on, and it's something that comes up a lot in complaints about heroes and romance and YA in general...my guys have abs.

Yep! Jake and Saxon both have them. Washboard abs that ripple when they take their shirts off. They have abs, and I'm not going to apologize or make excuses or giggle (okay, maybe I'll giggle a little tiny bit). But I will explain why it's perfectly okay for guys to have abs in fiction and for all of us to swoon.

Those are lovely abs, good sir.

In order to tell this story, I need to go back into my dating life. I like guys. I started liking guys back when I was a wee girl, and once I had my first kiss at summer camp, I was a goner. There are a few things that really make my heart thump. First of all, I love a good laugh. I love a guy who can laugh at anything and everything with me. I love nice hands. Big, calloused, rugged-nailed hands that have clearly been building something or making something really appeal to me. I also love shoulders. A nice, wide pair of shoulders can make me feel a little faint.

So, every guy I liked must have had a great sense of humor, nice hands, and huge, muscled shoulders, right?

Um, not so much.

The first boy I kissed was thin and gangly. He did have great hands, but his laugh was really soft and quiet.

My first real boyfriend was embarrassed by how stubby his fingers were. He didn't like his teeth, so he always laughed with his mouth closed, and it was a muffled kind of laugh. And his posture wasn't great, so his shoulders always looked a little stooped.

I dated one guy who had a big, jolly laugh, fine hands, and a definite six pack. We had absolutely nothing in common and wound up breaking up without a second glance back because we bored each other to tears.

Not that you're officially Mr. Wrong for every girl, fella! You're just Mr. Wrong for me. You'll find the girl for whom you will be Mr. Right. I promise!

So how are those three things my things? Why did I go to all that trouble to describe them in so much detail? Well, they're the three things I love most about the guy I finally fell head-over-heels in love with. And they might sound slightly shallow, but represent what he means to me as a person.

My husband, Frank, has a laugh that is so loud and funny, it makes other people laugh. He laughs hard. He laughs from his gut, and he often can't stop. Like he's doubled over, crying from laughter. I'm seriously laughing just thinking about his laugh. Some people have said it sounds like a donkey that's scared for its life. He's been teased for it. People turn around in the movie theater and stare in shock when he laughs. And I LOVE IT!

When we first dated, I told a joke. It was probably fairly funny. I manage to be funny sometimes. Frank laughed so hard and loud, I was afraid he'd drive off of the road. I had a few boyfriends before Frank who just didn't appreciate my sense of humor, so his laughter made me feel great. And it was contagious. We spent so much time on every date laughing like hyenas about nothing and everything. We still crack each other up. I think it's why I still have a major crush on him, even after years of being married.

This is pretty much how we spent the majority of our dating time...it's still like that, only now we have a daughter who joins in and laughs like crazy with us!

And his hands? I'm a tall girl, and my hands are big, but when he holds my hand I feel kind of petite. I love having that sensation sometimes. And he does work with his hands. He works on engines, tiles my countertop, makes wooden toys for our daughter, landscapes, draws...his hands are dirty, calloused, and so capable. I love holding hands with him, because they just feel like Frank. They feel strong and safe and warm.

And the shoulders. Sigh. Frank has these big, broad shoulders. He has a tattoo on one that I love. He looks amazing in a suit. When he hugs me, his shoulders are so wide, I feel like I can just get lost in his embrace. It's amazing.

Okay, now I've described my husband to you, and I bet he sounds amazing. And, I have to admit, he is. But if you saw him in real life, would you go gaga? You might! Haha! He is pretty cute! But I have plenty of girlfriends who told me I could do better when we were dating. He had plenty of girls turn him down or dump him before he met me. There are things about his appearance and the way he is that some girls wouldn't be able to stand. And, sadly, he doesn't have a six pack!

Do I ever check out other guys? Do I drool over Ryan Gosling? Um, I am alive!

Ryan, you can talk to me about fonts all day long!

And I know he thinks other girls are pretty. That's okay. I know that for him, just like for me, there's a particular combination of qualities that just clicks on a higher attraction level...and that click happens when he's with me and I'm with him. It's very cool!

So about abs? Well, there is a different combo for every lady out there. We all know that. When I write these guys, I want you to know for a fact that they are hot, hard-working, sexy guys. And how do I tell you that in shorthand, even if I don't know your particular hot-button combo? Well, take a lookie, ladies! (You're welcome!)

This is internationally understood as HOT!!

Forgiving Trinity and Rough Sales Numbers!

2011-12-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

I'm very happy to let everyone know that Forgiving Trinity debuted! I'm especially happy about this one, because it all started one gray November on Blogger...

I don't want to be one of those parents who's always talking about her own kid and bragging about how many dance recitals and bassoon solos and French tests said kid aced, but c'mon, look at that little beauty! That's gorgeous, right? Props to my guy, Steve Peterson! I found him on elance...if you need a cover guy, I cannot recommend him highly enough. His rates are amazing, his work ethic is intense, and, well, just look at the magic he works!

What happened, that long ago November, is that I had finished Double Clutch (and Junk Miles and Slow Twitch...) and sent out a bunch of letters to agents, and was primed to be instantly on my way to a major publication deal!

Oh.

Except I got a lot of really sweet 'no thank yous.' And I was starting to get bummed. But, more importantly, I was losing hours, days, weeks, pressing my email's 'refresh' button over and over again, on the off chance that in the three minutes it took me to get up, to pee, and come back to my laptop, some important agent had emailed me!

Then I read about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I was also, simultaneously, trying to build a platform, so I was floundering on Blogger. I decided to combine my desire to start a blog with my desire to participate in NaNoWriMo, thus resulting in my blogel/blovel Forgiving Trinity.

I wrote a chapter a day. I badgered a few friends into reading the chapter and voting on what would happen the next day. I was psyched by the legions of fans who began demanding I write more (or the four friends and awesome blog lovers who put up with my obsession). Every single day I had people who loved books and words writing to tell me what they liked and didn't, what they wanted to see more of and what they thought dragged on. It was an incredible writing experience.

By the end of the month, I had a book. Done.

Well, not done. I had to edit it. Get it critiqued. Comb through suggestions. Make changes. Take things out. Add things in.

And I loved it! I really, really loved it. And when I had tweaked it and done all I could to make it perfect, I got an amazing cover, and put it out there! So, if you have an ereader, it's available on Amazon and B&N. And if you love paper, I promise that will be coming out soon! (I promise.)

Oh! And I'm SUPER behind in sales figures, but I'd like to let you know how I made out the last few months!

October - I sold about 58 copies of Double Clutch. Woot!!

November - I released Junk Miles just before Thanksgiving. I sold a combined total of 381 copies! That made me especially giddy, because it was exactly 300 more than I sold in September! (Though, of course, I had one more book out this month!)

Currently, I'm on the cusp of 400, with the three books out. So that's very, very cool for me and makes me extremely excited and happy!

I really wanted to break it all down more specifically, and I will. But I can tell you that the bulk of my sales come from Amazon Kindle US purchases, and that there has been an almost neck and neck tie between Double Clutch and Junk Miles, so releasing a second book definitely helped sales in a huge way.

And thank you. I love being part of the blog community. I love having people to share this exciting stuff with. I love that I can share a book that literally took root right on this blog. Amazing!

Guest Post: High School Dances With YA Urban Fantasy Writer, Jo Ramsey!

2011-12-07T22:27:00.001-05:00

The very cool, talented author Jo Ramsey agreed to be on my insane blog! I'm so happy to have her here and encourage you all to check out her website: www.joramsey.com. This woman is amazing!

Hey everyone! I'm just off my blog tour, and I'm very lucky to have the lovely Jo Ramsey gracing my blog with a story that my YA-loving soul absolutely loves. Remember prom? Was yours magic? Did you go? Did you dance? Ditch? Celebrate another way? Jo is sharing her story here, and I'd love to ask you guys to share your favorite prom memories in the comments. Also make sure you check the links to Jo's awesome book, From the Ashes, which is book 5 in her fabulous Reality Shifts Series, and the cover of her upcoming short story The Harvest Dance (where we get to see Shanna enjoy her school's version of Homecoming)!

High School Dances

If you’ve attended school, chances are you’ve been to a school dance. Andif you’ve attended a school dance, chances are that at least once, you ended upupset or embarrassed.

Dances can be fun. My sixteen-year-old daughter went to a semi-formaldance at her school last year. Her unofficial date was her best friend, who’smale and who wasn’t interested in actually having a date to the dance. Theywent together because it was that kind of dance. Both of them said they had agreat time, and my usually shy daughter told me she danced with people shedidn’t know.

On the other hand, dances, especially semi-formal or formal ones, can bepretty stressful. I remember agonizing over what I was going to wear to mysenior prom. My mother ended up finding her old prom dress and having it remadefor me. The problem was, I didn’t have a date. The guy I wanted to go with wastwo grades behind me, even though he was only a couple months younger, so Iwasn’t sure I could ask him. Or who would have to pay for everything if I didask him. I ended up not asking.

The night of the dance, I got all dressed up, planning to drive myself tothe dance and go alone. Then my mother announced that she was driving mebecause she didn’t trust me to drive her car in high heels. (Huh?) She drove meto the place where the dance was being held, and I saw all the couples walkingin and froze. It was bad enough that my mother was my freaking chauffeur, butEVERYONE ELSE had dates and I didn’t. I ended up having an anxiety attack andnot being able to go in.

I’ve always kind of wished I had gone alone. The next school day, a fewpeople asked me why I hadn’t, and said they would have danced with me and thatthey had admired me for saying I would go alone. I’ve also kind of wished I hadasked the boy I wanted to go with. But you know what they say about wishes…

I did go to some dances in high school, but most of them weren’t verymuch fun for me. I was almost never asked to dance, and to this day I cringewhen I hear “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” because that was the mostcommonly-played slow song at the dances I went to. (Though Glee did a prettygood version of that song.) I kept going to dances because I kept hoping that“this” would be the time it would be different. It never was, but I kept tryinganyway.

If you like YA urban fantasy, this series is a MUST read!

In book five of my YA urban fantasy series Reality Shift, From the Ashes, Shanna Bailey agonizesover being asked to her school’s “Harvest Dance” (their version of Homecoming)by her former next-door neighbor Ken, who seems a lot more interested in Shannathan he used to. I didn’t manage to write about the dance in the book, sincesomehow it seemed more important to have Shanna and Jonah preventing theUniverse from being vaporized, so I wrote a separate short story about thedance, which will be available this month. Shanna has plenty of reasons to beafraid of going to the dance, and of going on a date, but she pushes throughand does it anyway.

I am extremely glad that Shanna gets up the courage to go...I LOVE to relive the fun of high school dances through characters who get to enjoy all the fun I was too busy being nervous about!

You can find out more about Jo and her books on her website, http://www.joramsey.com. The Reality Shiftseries so far is available from Jupiter Gardens Press, http://www.jupitergardens.com.

A Giveaway, A Sweet Story, Hot Abs, Great Book Deals...All The Good Things

2011-11-22T08:40:00.001-05:00

Why We All Love Abs And It's All Okay!

So, I lured you here to drool over some delicious abs with me! And to let you know why my guys have such bodily gorgeousness. AND to let you know that I'm giving away two paper copies of Double Clutch in a Goodreads giveaway contest that ends this Friday, February 10. AND to announce that I'm going to run a Valentine's Day sale on the e-version of Double Clutch this weekend (2/11 & 2/12) because I want EVERYONE to have a chance to be with Jake and Saxon this Valentine's Day! So there are all my announcements, and I'm providing a link to the contest, and then back to the abs, natch!

To enter to win a paper copy of Double Clutch, click here and throw your name in the hat!!

I recently wrote a YA contemporary romance called Double Clutch, and one of the highlights of writing it was creating these two amazing, gorgeous, brilliant guys. Do they have flaws? Oh, don't even get me started! But there is one thing I just couldn't budge on, and it's something that comes up a lot in complaints about heroes and romance and YA in general...my guys have abs.

Yep! Jake and Saxon both have them. Washboard abs that ripple when they take their shirts off. They have abs, and I'm not going to apologize or make excuses or giggle (okay, maybe I'll giggle a little tiny bit). But I will explain why it's perfectly okay for guys to have abs in fiction and for all of us to swoon.

Those are lovely abs, good sir.

Not that you're officially Mr. Wrong for every girl, fella! You're just Mr. Wrong for me. You'll find the girl for whom you will be Mr. Right. I promise!

So how are those three things my things? Why did I go to all that trouble to describe them in so much detail? Well, they're the three things I love most about the guy I finally fell head over heels in love with. And they might sound slightly shallow, but represent what he means to me as a person.

My husband, Frank, has a laugh that is so loud and funny, it makes other people laugh. He laughs hard. He laughs from his gut, and he often can't stop. Like he's doubled over, crying from laughter. I'm seriously laughing just thinking about his laugh. Some people have said it sounds like a donkey that's scared for it's life. He's been teased for it. People turn around in the movie theater and stare in shock when he laughs. And I LOVE IT!

When we first dated, I told a joke. It was probably fairly funny. I manage to be funny sometimes. Frank laughed so hard and loud, I was afraid he'd drive off of the road. I had a few boyfriends before Frank who just didn't appreciate my sense of humor, so his laughter made me feel great. And it was contagious. We spent so much time on every date laughing like hyenas about nothing and everything. We still crack each other up. I think it's why I still have a major crush on him, even after years of being married.

This is pretty much how we spent the majority of our dating time...it's still like that, only now we have a daughter who joins in and laughs like crazy with us!

Ryan, you can talk to me about fonts all day long!

This is internationally understood as HOT!!

2011-11-14T09:48:00.001-05:00

(Update: Junk Miles is out and ebook available! If you have already read Double Clutch and would like to enter to win Junk Miles in any of the blog tour drawings, just let the blog host/me know!)

Hey Everyone! So, between editing Junk Miles and trying not burn dinner every single night, I'm on a blog tour!! The fabulous Missy (http://missyreadsreviews.blogspot.com/) set it up, and it's been a blast so far! If you follow my guest posts, they will tell the story of my slightly weird 'firsts' (in honor of the first love in Double Clutch!). So we kick off with first brush with romance and go all the way to first true love! Sigh! But it's not all corny. I promise there are some laughs in there! So please follow if you'd like and enjoy all the madness!

Double Clutch Tour Stops
November 13 - December 4

Sunday, November 13: Interview @http://roroisreading.blogspot.com

Monday, November 14: Guest Post @ http://turnersantics.blogspot.com/Turner's Antics

Tuesday, November 15: Interview @ A Diary of a Book Addict
Wednesday, November 16: Guest Post @ Dreams Galore
Thursday, November 17: Review @ I Heart Books
Friday, November 18: Guest Post @ A Word's Worth
Saturday, November 19: Review @ Much Loved Books
Sunday, November 20: Interview @ Arianne Cruz
Monday, November 21: Review @ The Confessions of a Book Nerd
Tuesday, November 22: Guest Post @ Alchemy of Scrawl
Wednesday, November 23: Interview @ O'Boyled Books
Thursday, November 24: Guest Post @ Books, Biscuits & Tea
Friday, November 25: Interview @ All Things Books
Saturday, November 26: Review @ KC's Paranormal Books
Sunday, November 27: Interview @ Words on the Shelf
Monday, November 28: Guest Post @ Missy's Reads & Reviews
Tuesday, November 29: Interview @ Musings of a Bookworm
Wednesday, November 30: Review @ Purple Jelly Bean Chair Reviews
Thursday, December 01: Interview @ The Book Barbies
Friday, December 02: Review @ Dee's World
Saturday, December 03: Interview @ Book Labyrinth
Sunday, December 04: Review @ The Ballad of a Subcultural Mother

Deep, Dark Broadway Secrets Are Revealed!

2011-11-05T09:31:00.001-04:00

Hey Friends!

I owe you all a numbers update...but, to tide you over while I diligently edit the followup to Double Clutch, I have another sappy story about love and Frank and weirdness at lovely Amanda's (of Letters Inside Out) blog.

Just to whet your appetite, let me give you a scenario. There are two young people madly in love. One works on cars, loves hard complaint rock and horror movies, particularly spoof horror and zombie, and spends hours browsing auto parts stores. The other is a studious art history major who delves into a BBC miniseries weekend with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and no logical way out except the one that's as long as it is delicious.

Here's a lovely picture showing the two young lovers' worlds colliding in mannered blood-lust!

One of the two has a birthday. One of the two buys a set of tickets for Broadway. One of the two is extremely excited. One is not so excited, but willing to fall on the sword for love. Both wind up happy and smooching (belated spoiler alert). Are you dying to know which is which?!

Okay, maybe not just like that, but it would be cool, right?!

And I have copious notes from my gleeful grammar ninja friends outlining every single minute mistake in my latest book. So, I'm off to roll up my sleeves and dig in! But numbers are coming soon! I swear! And in the meantime, please enjoy...

http://www.lettersinsideout.net/posts/guest-post-liz-reinhardt/

Why 'Hamburger Medium Well!' Makes My Heart Thud and My Palms Sweat

2011-10-22T10:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.medeiasharif.com/2011/10/guest-post-double-clutch-author-liz.html

The awesome Medeia Sharif allowed me to descend on her usually sane blog with a certain tale of romance...

Blogger friends, you know I have bored you all to tears with stories of how my husband and I still manage to make each other craz(ily in love) after 11 long, arduous years together. But where did it all start, you might ask. What was the exact moment our eyes met?

Was it when he rode to my rescue when I ran with wild abandon down a treacherous English hillside and twisted my ankle?

Swoon!!

Um, no, that was Sense and Sensibility.

Was it through a fishtank at a fancy masquerade ball?

It all started out with such beautiful potential...sigh!

Um, no, that was Romeo and Juliet.

Did I run into him at a quaint Parisian train station while he was mysteriously sweeping under a photo machine?

Why is she running away from him? How does she make the clunkiest shoes look so adorable? The mysteries of love!

Um, no, that was Amelie.

Let me give you a hint:

Romantic, no?

C'mon! Aren't you dying to read it now??

http://www.medeiasharif.com/2011/10/guest-post-double-clutch-author-liz.html

Come on over and find out!

Sixteen Candles and the Top 5 Songs That Got Me Through Double Clutch

2011-10-14T09:10:00.000-04:00

My awesomely cool blogger buddy, Rockee, interviewed me and reminded me that my MC Brenna's b-day was October 11! How'd I miss my girl's b-day?!

I wish Brenna and the 16-year-old in every one of us a happy, happy birthday...and the hottest guy ever and a big cake ablaze with candles and the ability to rock a disaster of a bridesmaid dress because you are Molly Awesome Ringwald (and, yes, that IS her middle name) (as far as I'm concerned, anyway)!

Rockee's interview is amazing, by the way...this girl needs to go into journalism! She actually made me tell her which guy Brenna would let slip into the icy ocean, Titanic style! Hahaha! Please go check it out and read Rockee's reviews. Not only does she have awesome taste in books, she also makes amazing playlists to go with them!

In honor of Rockee's awesome interview and my procrastination, I'm going to list the top five songs that got me through Double Clutch for your (hopeful) enjoyment!

# 1 "Laundry Room" The Avett Brothers

Why? It's about a couple sneaking into the laundry room to make out like crazy, but quietly, so the girl's parents don't catch them. If you don't fall in love with this song, your heart may be a seething lump of black coal. I'm not judging you, I'm just saying.

Lyrical magic: "Last night I dreamt the whole night long. I woke with a head full of songs. I spent the whole day, I wrote them down, but it's a shame. Tonight I'll burn the lyrics, 'cause every chorus was your name.

# 2 "I Will Possess Your Heart" by Death Cab for Cutie

Why? I like the imperative tone in the title (and lyrics) and the easy-going/stalkerish quality of the song. Personally, I think that's what DCFC does best! It's a song about a guy who's really, really in love, and he knows exactly why, and he's willing to sing it to her like it is. I like that.

Lyrical Genius: "How I wish you could see the potential, the potential of you and me. It's like a book, elegantly bound, but in a language you can't read (just yet)."

How do they manage to mix creepy and elegant so perfectly?

# 3 "Bad Kids" by Black Lips

The song pretty much sums up Brenna's glimpse of the other side through Jake and Saxon. She's a sheltered kid, and they both do wild, stupid things (or did wild, stupid things). But there's something intriguing about them because of the bad. Sigh. The allure of the bad boy. (And, no, nothing they did was 'riot-gear' bad. This video is actually pretty serious and upsetting. But also true.)

Lyrical genius: "Smoke cigs (in the bathroom stall), spray paint (penis on the wall)." Is it crazy that both those things make me cringe?! So bad! But I love the ruthless nonchalance Black Lips use when singing about it!

# 4 "Everybody Got Their Something" by Nikka Costa

Why? This is the song that I wish was blaring out of my gnarly 6-disc CD player back when I was 16. You cannot listen to this song without a) dancing around the room, b) realizing you do 'got your something,' and c) picking up just a teeny bit of Ms. Costa's sexy swagger. Love this song!

Lyrical genius: "Taking off my glasses, sun pokes through my lashes, and, somehow, I know there's a time for every star to shine." Okay, what makes these lyrics SO incredible is how Nikka manages to stomp all potential cheesiness out and just make this a killer song.

# 5 "We Are Going to Be Friends" The White Stripes

Why? This song goes through my head every September (or August in south Georgia, since that's when school starts here), and I love the way it can make you feel nostalgia and anticipation. That's a weird mix to get just right. This song was on repeat when I wrote about Brenna's first day of school (her double first day of school!).

Lyrical genius: "And we don't notice any time pass. And we don't notice anything. We sit side by side in every class. Teacher thinks that I sound funny, but she likes it when you sing." How freaking perfect is that? How amazingly simple, but observant, and funny without trying. Perfect.

So, what's on your top five book list? Oh, and seriously, see who Brenna kills off at Rockee's blog!

http://rockeemusikreads.blogspot.com/2011/10/double-clutch-interview-with-liz.html#more

Frugality Is So Lame! Or: What Will YOU Buy When You Find Your Pot'o'Gold?!

2011-10-06T12:35:00.001-04:00

***If, after reading this, you feel the need to know MORE about me (like why I needed to smear my nose with Vaseline when I was 17), you can hop over to the very cool Jo Ramsey's blog and read a very weird interview! http://www.joramsey.com/?p=917 ***

My husband and I have always been pretty frugal. Not by choice. Frugal is just a sophisticated synonym for poor, which is what we really are, but happily poor and kind of by choice, so no whining! We make ends meet on a fairly tight budget, and that means we sometimes eat a lot of Raman, I keep bottles of hotel shampoo for toiletry emergencies, and we have a lot of date nights that involve doing what we were always dying to do as teenagers...lie in bed together with no curfew and no one invading our privacy.

Yeah, we play a lot of Scrabble, too. Because it's cheap fun. But we don't spell things like 'frugal.' We like to spell naughty things that make us giggle. Frugal and immature!

(Well, except our five year old, but she's exactly what two crazy kids wind up with when they get to lie in bed together with no curfew and on one invading their privacy. And we love her tickle fests and the great herd of stuffed unicorns that invades our bed with her on date night.)

You know unicorns are bad ass!

The other night we were discussing our fabulous September sales and imagining, with shiny, love-filled eyes, all the goodies that we would buy once we're rich, rich, rich!

Okay, I'm going to tell a heart-warming story about being happy with the little things and all that. But first, let's all admit that the only thing we've ever really wanted to do with any potential fortune is trade it in for gold coins, fill a vault to the brim and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck! Ducktales played a huge part in my understanding of finance as a child. I assumed all bank vaults looked like this ^.

"What would be the first thing you'd buy?" Frank asks, snuggling me closer than normal now that I may hold the key to all of his future monetary happiness.

"I would buy..." So many delicious, wonderful, lovely items danced in my head, I could hardly decide. "I would buy new throw pillows for the couch! And they wouldn't smell like dog. And I'd buy them all at once, so they actually matched, and we'd be able to afford more than two at time!" I sighed. Affording more than two $25 throw pillows? We'd practically be ready for our first MTV Cribs appearance.

"Ooh. Could we get that green color like that girl who we wanted to win did on that design show marathon we watched last Friday?" He half sat up, his eyes gleaming, and I considered how several consecutive hours of nonstop HGTV could turn even the most apathetic man into a home design connoisseur.

"That was a good date night," I reminisced. "Definitely green throw pillows. What would you want?"

Throw pillow minimalism? Or the inability to purchase more than one outrageously priced throw pillow at a time?

Frank tilted his head thoughtfully. "Those pans that go under the heat coils on the stovetop."

Since I don't often venture near the stove, it took me a minute to conjure an image of them in my mind. "Oh. Why?"

"You know how the house always smells like it's burning down when we turn on the stove?"

"Isn't that because I'm cooking, hence the house actually is in danger of burning down?" I point out.

"That, too. But it's also because of all the meals you've already attempted to cook that bubbled over the pan or spilled under the coils. And now they're all carbon based, and they smolder whenever the stove gets hot." He gave me a scientific frown. I ignored him.

Upon googling "crusty burner pans," I came across this amazing site that said how to do a little ammonia based science experiment and get them amazingly clean! So we may ix-nay the entire 'buy new' plan and go the dangerous home science route! Wish me luck! (I got a D in high school chem...)

"I would totally get a new pair of corduroys." My trusty green pair had two butt-area holes that were beginning to show an alarming amount of faded cotton underwear, all of the belt loops were hanging off, and the pocket area was, inexplicably, two shades darker than the rest of the material.

"I thought you liked your old ones. I thought you were excited because they were the ones you had in high school and they still fit." Frank could not grasp the idea of desiring a new pair of pants when a disgustingly old pair were still held together at the very weak seams.

"Um, it's cool they still fit," I said with a blush. Okay, this is just a tiny baby lie. They do still fit. Because corduroy is lovely and stretches and they're low cut, so any extra belly bulge just kind of hangs out above the 'waist.' "But I think a new pair would be awesome."

Almost exactly what mine look like! And considering how unflattering they are on this very lovely, toned model body, maybe I should consider squeezing into another pair? This picture is from a site that offers an explanation about how to make your corduroy pants into a nice skirt. But that doesn't sound nearly as fun as ammonia bombing my burner pans. Plus, the only thing that would make these pants MORE unflattering would be turning them into a homemade skirt.

"Oh!" Frank bolted up, inspired. "I know!"

"What?" Throw pillows, stove pan thingies, new corduroys...what else on earth could two sane people want?

"Bikes!"

"Like motorcycles?" I imagined a gleaming new Harley.

"Uh, no. I don't want you to die. Bikes, like that you pedal." He grinned.

"Why bikes?" I asked.

"Haven't you wanted one?" he asked. I nodded. Because, seriously, who doesn't want a bike? "And I bet you would look so funny riding a bike."

Then he got out of bed and pretended to be me riding a bike. Which looked suspiciously like a pantomime of a blind monkey riding a unicycle, but wound up making me laugh because, in his cruel attempt to mock me, he stubbed his big fat toe. Hard.

This is NOT what I look like when I ride a bike. I look like one of those awesome French girls who ride those cute bikes and their hair blows in exactly the right direction and their skirts don't reveal their old, cotton underwear for the world to see, and they carry a baguette and bottle of wine in their basket and look sexy. Very sexy. If you disagree, may God smite your toe. Hard.

I put my arms around him while he whined about his toe. "That's God punishing you for making fun of me. And, you know, I'm the one who will make all the dough. Shouldn't you be sucking up?"

"I'm here to keep you down to earth."

So we spent the rest of our date-night lying in bed imagining other riches...a nose hair trimmer (for him, not me, I swear!), those energy saver lightbulbs that are really expensive but very eco-responsible and help pay down your bills, dining room chairs that don't feel like they were designed by medieval torturers, maybe a tent.

"The things we want are pretty lame," Frank finally admitted.

"They're not lame!" I said, and mentally replayed our list. "Okay, yeah, they're lame. So what would be cooler?"

"I don't know. A new car. A Challenger. Orange."

"Seriously? An orange car?" His eyes looked so sweet and pleady, I shrugged. "Alright. Done."

Okay, okay, it is pretty sexy! But, seriously, I never would have pegged my husband as an orange car kinda guy!

"And the house. Paid off."

"How is that less lame?" I asked. "It's still, basically a houseware. Just, you know, the biggest one."

"Cause we could spend the money from the mortgage on other stuff!"

"Like?"

"We could go out west. See the redwoods."

I had this image of Frank, Amelia, and I in a redwood forest and almost passed out from excitement.

Just me and my fam...and maybe Darby O'Gill and some little people and a few Ewoks. You were thinking it, too, weren't you?

"Oooh. We could go to Italy and see the Sistene Chapel." I fanned myself.

"I could go to one of those glass blowing camps."

"You want to do glass blowing?" I asked, but his shiny eyes spoke for him. Done! "We could get the baby horse riding lessons."

"You could go to yoga like in a lame class with other lame people who like yoga," he suggested helpfully.

"Those classes aren't lame!" I imagined contorting on a mat in front of a whole group of other contorting people. Are those classes lame?

Yes, I realize they are kind of lame. Like most of the things on this list. But, like the other list items, they're also all doable/obtainable (okay, not necessarily the house and the car...but they're long-term-goal doable), and I really like finite, doable goals. I like having concrete things to work for that are total happiness bringers! And I think the reason so many of our to-do list items had to do with our house and family has to do with how much we like hanging out together. Which is another thing to be happy about.

So I've shared my family list of totally bizarre stuff we would buy if money came pouring (or at least flowing at something more than a soggy trickle) in. What would be on your list??

I Love the 80s!: Or September Book Stats REVEALED!

2011-10-01T12:29:00.000-04:00

In the name of helping each other out and general nosiness, a lot of indie authors post their first month numbers and stats. I know there are other people out there wondering what self-publishing looks like, mathematically and all that, so I thought I'd join the club and write in with my stats for September!

I think I picked September because I didn't get to go back to school shopping this year, and there was a hole in my heart from it, and, to ease the pain, I plugged that hole up by putting a book out there. And the book starts in September!

I put my book up on September 6, 2011.

This came up when I googled 'six' (yes, I am aware I am groping at straws here in the picture department!). They are six gnarly hats that boost your brain power, metaphorically. The upper right corner is, alas, not an invisible hat. It's just white and doesn't show up. I've linked to this fascinating page and will now put on my red hat (feelings and emotions) to better manage my giddiness over this post!

I will tell you every snore-inducing thing I did to promote and the numbers, because I was obsessed with knowing before I published, and others out there might have a similar compulsion for checking random stats!

I promoted it on my personal Facebook page to guilt all friends/family/frenemies into buying my book. My method is what I like to call 'cyber bludgeoning' or 'the posts don't stop until you buy.' And, though this is a YA geared at older teens, I was delighted when my former pastor and great-aunt bought copies! Read it, read it!

Who are these peeps? I don't know! But I'm off to friend them, so I can later guilt them into buying my book!

I started an author page under Liz Reinhardt. It has 84 fans. (Again, most corralled from my personal page and badgered into becoming my 'fan.' Hahaha!)

I am naught but a floppy eared dog, and my fans are the wind beneath my ears!

I have this lovely, lovely blog! There are now 64 lovely, amazing followers reading my posts and leaving awesome comments (the blog is the most fun of my public arenas, natch!).

Pretty much what I look like while blogging.

I am on Twitter as @lizreinhardt. I have 27 followers and am an official Twitter moron.

This would NOT be me, because my phone is one of those super old 80s phones that has its own carrying case and a big antenna. But someday I'll have a cool new phone that I can not understand Twitter on!

I am on Goodreads. I have 28 friends and 16 fans. Um, most of my fans are also friends! I like Goodreads as much as I like blogging. Oh, and Double Clutch has a 4.24 in the star category with 18 ratings and 9 reviews. 55 people have 'added' it.

Maybe it's Double Clutch? Who knows?!

I asked several bloggers for help getting the word out there, and boy did they help!!

I wasn't in THAT much trouble...but almost! And here they were, valiant, lovely, sweet rescuers!

8 blogs reviewed my books:
http://stillseekingallies.blogspot.com/
http://readingeatinganddreaming.blogspot.com/
http://missyreadsreviews.blogspot.com/
http://www.totalbookaholic.com/
http://www.fuzzycoffeebooks.com/
http://sizzlingreads.blogspot.com/
http://obsessionwithbooks.blogspot.com/
http://sarahcatchingbooks.blogspot.com/

I had 4 guest posts:
http://sarahcatchingbooks.blogspot.com/
http://www.totalbookaholic.com/
http://cristinadossantos.blogspot.com/
http://caryncaldwell.com/

I did 1 interview:
http://obsessionwithbooks.blogspot.com/

I have more blog reviews/guest posts/ blog tours lined up and keep asking. By the way, the reason I linked them all is not to shamelessly self-promote, but because, if you're thinking of self-publishing, these are amazing people who are open to indie reads, are honest, and adore books. What could be better?!

Okay, numbers time!

Kindle:
US - 50
UK - 1
(I did 'sell' more, but they were gifted to reviewers, and so I pulled them off of the official count.)

Nook:
21

Smashwords:
3

Createspace:
5

Could there BE a more awesome first month number? No, I don't think so either!

That makes EXACTLY 80 books! Woohoo! I told myself I'd be happy if I sold 50 the first month. I've also read that September isn't a huge month for esales because people are done vacationing and loading their Kindles/Nooks/ereaders with awesome summer reads. The reason I chose to put Double Clutch out in September is because I'd like my next book to be out and talked about in November and have both ready for the holiday season, which I hear is a hot sale time. We'll see if my theory holds out.

If anyone out there has any advice or anything I missed, please let me know! And thank you all for being rad and commenting and following this weird blog! I really do appreciate it!

(And if October is even worse than September sales-wise, I'll hang my head and cry a little, but I promise I'll over-share, as I always do! I genuinely hope this post wasn't a bore fest, and you have any suggestions or questions, throw them out there. Not that I know what I'm doing, but I'm always happy to share/over-share. You know how I roll!)

Why Polyester Golf Pants Don't Really Flatter Anyone and Won't Make Your Crush Love You

2011-09-29T11:04:00.001-04:00

I had this big, fat crush way back when I was in high school. He was kind of punk-rock, kind of artsy, quiet, tall...and I was at that point where I was sure if I could just get him to look my way, he'd realize how much I liked him and like me right back!

But it didn't happen that way.

If you'd like to read about fashion disasters from the 90s and how NOT to get your crush to love the way your butt looks in those pants, please hop over to Sarah's blog and check out my guest post! Also, you could win an ecopy of Double Clutch!

(And if you're thinking about buying a copy and just can't make up your mind, you might be swayed by Missy at http://missyreadsreviews.blogspot.com/ , Courtney at http://www.fuzzycoffeebooks.com/, or Shana at http://sizzlingreads.blogspot.com/. They wrote some nice stuff, but I swear, I didn't know what they would say until the blogs popped up this morning! They're brutally honest, and I chewed my fingernails waiting for their reviews to come in!)

Now for some awful fashion....

http://sarahcatchingbooks.blogspot.com/

Um, I was smart in high school, I swear I was! So why did I think these were so hot?

Senior Year: I Borrowed A French Horn; I Wanted A Blog

2011-09-27T16:04:00.001-04:00

I remember being a senior in high school. I had so many interests! I had so many ideas! And there wasn't much of an outlet for them. Everyone I wanted to contact was so far away, like two day snail-mail and wait for a response far away. Everything I liked felt like something I had to wait for unless my parents were willing to help me get where I needed to go (and they were kinda like, 'Get on your bike, kid! We're not cabbies!'). The issue? No internet. No way to contact anyone outside my tiny circle of known people. No Google. No Facebook. No Skype. NO BLOGGER!

This is me as a high school senior...a French horn was about all I had as far as technology went. What I wouldn't have done for an iPod...or a blog...or whatever I knew would have to replace the suckiness that was dial-up. Alas, none of these marvels had yet been invented! (Photo credit: Tamar Goetke)

I've had a few reviews come out for Double Clutch and they've been AMAZING! I've loved every nice thing every cool person took time out of their monstrously crazy days to say.

But having a teen rate my book?

Finding a teen who runs a full blown blog review site?

Emailing back and forth with a teen who is passionate about books and sure about her own mind and incredibly smart and sassy?

I guess I feel like I channeled Brenna and had her read the book I wrote about her.

So please meet Sarah, senior, teenager, blog reviewer extraordinaire, who gave Double Clutch a heart-stoppingly wonderful review! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! And please check out her site and read her reviews and be amazed by all of her spunk and smarts and passion. I sure am! Colossal love to Sarah!!

http://sarahcatchingbooks.blogspot.com/

Yeah, I know. Adorable much?! And tech-savy, smart, fun, with her own blog...she has more than a borrowed French horn to help her cope with her need to be heard.

Commas SAVE LIVES! (And Make Your Party Waaay Cooler!)

2011-09-26T07:58:00.000-04:00

If you know me at all, you know I LOVE punctuation! And grammar! And nerdiness! If you share these loves (c'mon, admit it, you know you do!), please visit my guest post at Once Upon A Time, where the lovely Cristina allowed me to spread my comma insanity all over her page! And leave a comment, even if you are one of those maniacs who doesn't love and worship the Oxford comma...though if you are insane like that take a look at the picture below and try to argue against it. I rest my case!

How can you argue logic like this?

http://cristinadossantos.blogspot.com/2011/09/lizs-road-to-publication-through-comma.html

Love Triangles, How Twilight WILL Make Your House a Sticky Mess, and An E-Book Giveaway!

2011-09-24T11:42:00.001-04:00

Last week my awesome friend Caryn let me crash her site and guest post, and I was so glad, because she's very talented and cool and sane, and, well, she knows how I am! But everyone was so nice and comment-y, that I decided I'd ask a total stranger if I could guest post...and she said YES! Please stop by and check out my post on Jessica's blog Confessions of a Bookaholic. I'll be talking about how I let my house fall to pieces while I devoured Twilight and give my top love-triangle reading suggestions! And if you have an ereader, there's a giveaway! (She's also got awesome reviews and up-coming sneak peeks for all things YA...you'll love her site!)

Here's the link!

http://www.totalbookaholic.com/2011/09/guest-post-giveaway-double-clutch-by.html

If You Bash Sonny's Drive In, I Will Deck You, Jane Austen Fight Club Style

2011-09-23T10:16:00.000-04:00

I have officially sold 50 books through Kindle and Nook! (Not counting the 5 books I bought from Kindle and gifted to interested reviewers.)

As my dad would say, "You made enough to buy us all pizza out!"

My dad has a big thing for pizza. And he admires success. My dad actually has a pretty cool story. Wanna hear?

I honestly wish we could all sit down and have a slice together! Maybe one day I will be able to host a huge blog follower pizza party. That's a lot of books, but I'm hopeful!

My dad was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. When he was a kid, World War II hit (yeah, he's an old guy!), and Nazis occupied his country, which really pissed the Danes off. They hated that Hitler admired their Nordic heritage, being that he was such an insane, psychopathic asshole. They hated that their country's Jewish population was segregated because Danes are pretty nationalistic people, and they like to all celebrate being Danes. King Christian X, the monarch at the time, rode his horse through the streets of Copenhagen every day with a star of David on his coat to show his solidarity with his persecuted citizens. He shook my dad's hand once.

Doesn't he just look like The Man?! I have a history crush on KCX!

When World War II was over, my dad's family made good on a long-term plan to move to America. They were serious about being American, traded their Danish citizenship for American citizenship, and made this country their permanent, much loved home.

The weird thing is, my dad is more American than most Americans I know, despite being born and raised in Denmark. He's a go-getter, a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of guy who dreams big and works his ass off. My dad just celebrated his 75th birthday, and we had to beg him to quit one of his two jobs. Crazy!

Not my dad and his parents! Based on headgear, I'd say they are Eastern Europeans...but the tone is what I'm going for. Holla America!

One of the coolest and most horrendous things my dad ever did was build this restaurant back when I was in high school.

My dad had put in 35 years at NBC as a light, camera, sound, and edits guy. He worked on SNL for years and rubbed shoulders with all the comedic greats. When he retired he wanted to slow down a little from those 70 or 80 hour work weeks that put braces on my teeth and sent me to Danish camp in Minnesota in the summer. So he decided to open a little place.

A hot dog cart, he said.

Tiny, he promised.

One man operation, he vowed.

Only it went a little out of control. It kept getting bigger and bigger until it became this:

It was once called Sonny's Drive In (my dad's name is Sonny). Even though it has a shiny new owner, there's still a feeling of dread when I see this place...like I have this horrible feeling that I'm on for back to back double shifts all weekend. Excuse me while I go throw up in an attempt to expel the memory.

I know, I know, it looks cool! It does. And it was. Kind of.

Unless you were one of his children. Because then this nifty 50's drive-in burger joint became your own personal, never-ceasing hell. HELL!!

Owning a restaurant takes a certain savvy, a certain balance. My dad is not good at balance. He would have been an awesome meet and greet guy. You know, that schmoozy manager type who comes up just when you have a gigantic bite of steak in your mouth and pats you on the back until you think you might choke and has a big, booming, bellowing laugh. The guy who makes every customer feel happy and showered with attention. The kind of guy who has no idea how to drop a basket of fries, organize a wait station chart, or run a credit card machine.

Um, also, there was a uniform. Yeah, it was a poodle skirt for inside waitresses, which I was. So imagine this cool lady, but smear some hot dog all the way sauce down her skirt and dip her snazzy scarf in chocolate malteds and make her at the prime of her teenage life and extremely pissed to have to waste it in her parents' restaurant night after long, grueling night and you have me as a waitress there!

We wound up living there. We wound up hating it from the depths of our souls. Many, many people in our little community had a lot to say about what a failure my dad was.

What a chump he was for opening such an enormous place.

What an idiot he was for not being able to get the food out on time.

What a jerk he was for building the entrance on the wrong side/ not hiring good enough wait staff/ having gross fries/ charging too much/ being generally incompetent.

I'm not saying there weren't kernels of truth in the whispers. I'm saying that he's my dad, and if you want to tell me about what a loser he is, get ready for me to rip you a new one.

Go ahead, say something smart about my Dad and his crappy restaurant endeavors and I promise I will clock you upside the head, Jane Austen Fight Club style.

Because whether or not that restaurant was successful in traditional terms, my dad survived the Nazi occupation and a trip across the Atlantic, learned English, got a job at 13, put himself through school, got hired at one of the most prestigious television companies in America, worked his ass off for 35 years, retired with more invested money than most Americans will ever see, and followed a dream he always had.

Maybe he followed it to the point of insanity, but what had these critics done?

Most of the time it was nothing. Most of the time the jerks pointing at my dad and laughing hadn't, in their entire adult lives, acted with the integrity and courage my dad had as a child crossing the ocean to make a new life in a new country. They hadn't clawed and climbed like he did. They didn't know rejection and disappointment the way he did.

In the end, the restaurant stayed profitable (barely) for five years. We toughed out 9/11 and the economic downturn, endless road construction right in front of us, and community negativity that seemed to delight in any failure we weathered. My parents sold the restaurant and our house, pocketed a sizable lump and retired. (Well, kind of. Mom went back to school and Dad is still working like a maniac.)

Here he is on his 75th b-day (I know, seriously, he is like a human fountain of youth) with my girl. On top of being an awesome go-getter, he's also an amazing grandpa!

Reviews have been coming in for my book, and they've been mostly amazing, but some have been a little harsh. I have a genuine appreciation for the reviewers' honesty. But I also have an appreciation for what I did. Not everyone is going to love Double Clutch, and that's okay. I put my book out there and knew it would get judged, and knew some of the judgment wouldn't be easy to take.

But I have a long history of watching people claw and climb to get what they want, and the journey isn't always an easy one. So I'm ready, equipped with the entrepreneurial spirit my parents raised me with and ready to take whatever knocks come my way. And no matter how bad it gets, not matter what negative things might eventually come up, at least I don't depend on roller skating sixteen-year-olds to sell my books. That, my friends, is something to be happy about!

I know it looks fun...don't be tricked. It's awful, hellish, terrible work. Really! It is!

Okay, I have to gush and share two awesome reviews that came in for Double Clutch. I am so flattered by the reviews, because these two are amazing, spot on, awesome reviewers, and I'm not just saying that because they liked my book. If you just published YA and want a great review, check them out!

Fred at Still Seeking Allies... has a gorgeous, hilarious way with words that you will fall in love with (and please consider following his blog so you can read more of his reviews; they are WONDERFUL!!). Also, check out Reading, Eating, and Dreaming I was Blair Waldorf. She is DEAD ON in her reviews, and her best of lists are MUST READS!!

Book Gangs: They ARE Cool!! I Don't Know Why They SOUND Dorky!

2011-09-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

I taught English for a few years that were, I will admit, sometimes heart-stoppingly horrifying. I wish I had been good enough at math to teach it! But I still don't really know what the Pythagorean Theorem is all about, and that's after, like, five consecutive years of Algebra I. Which you have to take over and over again if you keep failing it. But I feel like I can understand why math frustrates and confuses students. If I could have learned it well enough to teach it, we could have all bonded over the great, scary mystery of letters and numbers dancing around with addition and multiplication signs.

Has it been geometry all along? Because these are triangles!

But teaching people who didn't love English just confused me. I think I may have been so unhappy teaching English because I was so jazzed to be an English student and so in love with the books and sentence diagrams and vocabulary lists that I was at a total and complete loss when I was faced with people who had no interest in reading. And I know there's this theory that you should teach what you're passionate about, but I had a rift in my abilities because I get an uncomfortable acid reflux feeling burning low in my throat when I try to imagine not wanting to read.

Is there anything more soul-crushing than the thought of a world without books?! AAAHHHH!!!!

I'm a reading nerd, loud and proud. When I opened my Kindle on Christmas, I had a Christmas Story moment. There was no more beautiful gift under any tree anywhere in the whole world than that slim little slate grey piece of electronic heaven.

I know how you feel, buddy. I really, really do.

"Do you like it?" my husband asked, pride at finding the perfect gift radiating out of every one of his pores.

"Oh, Frank!" I gushed and clutched the reader to my chest ecstatically, my eyes bright with something manic. That immediately made him second guess his gift-giving idea.

"Be careful," he warned nervously. "You can instantly download any book you want directly through your Amazon account. You'll probably empty the bank account out."

Proud as he still was, there was an edge of real alarm when he imagined our dollars floating away, into this harmless looking little device full of words. And that alarm wasn't entirely unjustified.

You'll shoot your eye out kid! But it's worth it, isn't it Ralphie? It's worth the pain of eating Ramen three nights a week because you read Simone Elkeles's new book a tad faster than you thought and Stephanie Perkins' book had been calling to you, but you sped through that too, and there were so many others, so many pretty, lovely others that you, maybe, possibly, shot through the grocery money? C'mon, Ramen is tasty any (or every) night of the week! Right?!

Because my love affair only intensified, and soon I was reading twice as much as I had before. Every book in the world was at my fingertips and I could read as much as I wanted whenever I wanted!

I thought back to my students, the ones who had groaned every time a written word met their protesting eyes and forced itself to be read. They whined through contemporaries, classics, poems, short stories, biographies, and government test excerpts! They didn't whine too much when I read aloud in front of the classroom, but that was mostly because they were texting under their desks or snoring a little.

Not all of them. But the vast majority.

And maybe mostly the classes the greenest teacher (um, me) got stuck with.

And I just never got them. They could read. They could pick up the book and read the words, but it didn't click for them. Why?! WHY??!! What better incentive is there to read than a good book? How can you make someone love something that they should just love because it's amazing and wonderful?

It was the most brutal conundrum.

I survived because there were a few who shyly sought me out to ask what books to take from the library or what else a certain author we read together had written or if I wanted to see the new book they had gotten. Angels! Cherubs! Little maniacs who drooled over books and spoke my language, because it's coded! When you have the same background of books, you have peeps. A gang. A book gang.

This guy isn't in my immediate gang, but I'd definitely let him join. You know, if he wanted. And if 'book gang' doesn't mean something other than what I think it means...could it mean anything else? I guess I really don't know much about gangs! Even book gangs.

My husband is thirty miles away, at work, right now, but I can mentally see him stop what he's doing and laugh, long and hard, apparently for no reason at all. But it's really because, somewhere deep inside, he knows what I'm writing, and he thinks it's hilarious.

Shut up, Frank! Books are cool! You're just jealous!

He would have been my worst student. A smart kid who just looks at books and says, "Nah."

I can even get behind a book burner or a book protester...at least they care in a deranged way about books! But just a 'nah'? Just an, 'I don't really like to read. I never get interested in books'?

WHAT?!?!?!?!

Seriously, does this need a caption? It's the saddest quote in the world.

There's this whole life of delicious stories that you miss out on! There's a whole language you can't speak! How can you be okay with that?!

When I wrote my books, my protagonists were never in Chemistry class. Why? Because I got a D in chem (sorry, Mr. Davidowski...I know you were all about the Bunsen burners and ions and charges, but I just couldn't grasp it. Ohmygod, maybe you have a blog right now lamenting the lack of chemistry love in the world! I'm such a hypocrite!!), and could never put in any useful details that would make any sense. But there's always an English class. Because I speak Books and sometimes my characters do too!

In Double Clutch there's this whole Lord of the Flies parallel at one point, where my main girl, Brenna, and her outcast English partner try to figure out who different groups and people in school would be if they had to be a character on the island. One of Brenna's love interests is a clear contender for Jack, and it's painful for her to realize that it makes sense!

Cretin English boys plane-wreck on an island and go nuts! Do I even have to sell this book?! Doesn't it sell itself?!

At one point one of the guys makes an Odysseus crack (that's right...we get all kinds of Greek!), and Brenna practically swoons. Natch. Who wouldn't swoon over Odysseus?

You can pull your bow back for me anytime, baby! Woowoo! (Okay, I also realize that Orlando played Paris in Troy, but there aren't as many sexy pics of Odysseus with his bow as you would hope!)

There's also this musing bit at the end where Sense and Sensibility shows up and presents the age old question; is it better to marry responsibly or let love lead the way? Despite the dashing romance of being rescued in a rainstorm and reading sonnets together and giving away a lock of hair to your beloved, did Willoughby and Marianne ever have a real chance? Brenna has to hash that thought out even as her heart is being torn by her real life Willoughby! (Though her alternative is quite a bit more delectable than poor, earnest Colonel Brandon.)

Oh, Marianne! My heart bleeds for you! I know your pain!! (Well, in a strictly fictional sense. But it feels like I know your pain intimately!)

If you are insane enough to continue to follow Brenna's story in Junk Miles, there is reference to Wharton's Ethan Frome, Grimms' fairytales, Huxley's Brave New World, and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. If you've read those titles, you have a feel for the tone they set and suggest (yep, angst, fear, depression, oppression...all the good stuff!!), because you speak Book. The old, noble language.

Say you wrote a book. What other book would be hidden in there? What would you have to share with your readers, even in code? I remember reading an Eloisa James romance where they colored their butter using strained carrots. I wrote her an email right away, demanding to know if she used Ma Ingall's recipe from the Little House books, and she had. James is so in my book gang. Who would be in yours?

How Dr. Frankenstein Inspired Two Totally Hot YA Heroes: Caryn Caldwell Asked Me to Guest Blog! Wheeee!

2011-09-13T16:54:00.000-04:00

Usually a post takes a ton of time and effort and energy and attempts at making my present sad, sorry life appear humorous and not too weird. But TODAY I spent the day at the beach while my amazing friend and awesome writer offered up her blog digs for me! She even edited and formatted and worked like the scarily capable, organized, driven woman she is! Please check out my guest post at her lovely blog...it contains my husband's tempter tantrum over Double Clutch and a secret kiss I'll never tell (or maybe I do tell)! Plus, if you know me in real life, you might find that I scalped details from your life for my fiction. But I'll never actually admit it...still it would be fun to look, right? So click below to link on over there!

How Dr. Frankenstein Inspired Two Totally Hot YA Heroes

You're going to love it...or else I may have to fictionalize you in an extremely unflattering light! Just kidding. Maybe.

I SELF PUBLISHED!! And You Can Peek At the Neurosis That Was My First Day!!

2011-09-09T11:51:00.000-04:00

I published.

I published!

I PUBLISHED!

I know, I just showed you this the other day, but isn't it dreamy?! Don't you want to take it to see 500 Days of Summer or to an Avett Brothers' concert or for ice-cream and waffles?! Or is it just me?

Okay, it's not that huge a deal. Technically speaking, I uploaded a document and jpeg into Kindle and Nook's pre-formatted thingy, entered some basic info, and, voila!, I became a published author!

I just didn't want you guys to imagine that I actually did my own publishing and feel bad for me. I get little shivers when I think about doing physical labor!

Amazon warned me that it would take 24 hours before the book became available for sale, but I had a feeling they might make a special exception for me! So I prepared to refresh my computer a jagillion times until something came up. I actually only had to hit refresh eight times (every three seconds), because what Amazon must have meant was that it would take 24 seconds.

Double Clutch was online! To buy! Anyone could buy it!

I called my sister, who screamed and bought it! I then ordered her to flip through it (which she really, really didn't want to do because she JUST finished her final beta read, like, a week ago), and she told me that the surprise extra chapter from the next book, Junk Miles wasn't there.

"What?" I shrieked. "What do you mean? Are you sure? Did you go through to the very end? I see it on my word document!"

"Oh never mind," she said breezily. "I was looking at the version you sent me when I was reading it for all your mistakes. But there's something funky in your author bio."

The color drained from my face and I felt woozy. "What?"

It wasn't this bad! (But, of course, much worse than the fact that there is a glaring typo is the fact that the message was written by jackwagons. I am not, I hope, a jackwagon, even if I do occasionally have a typo show up!)

"It's like something got typed twice in a row."

I gripped a chair for support and whipped through my Word document. Katie was RIGHT! There was a glitch in my AUTHOR BIO! And everyone would see that I was clearly an IDIOT who couldn't even proof a one paragraph AUTHOR BIO!

"Don't worry, Liz," she soothed. "No one ever reads those anyway."

"I DO!" I wailed.

"Well, yeah, but you're a nerd."

"My friends are nerds, too!"I moaned.

"Then they'll have a big nerd parties and send you emails where they all tell you that you messed up." I think Katie was still attempting to be comforting. Or torturing. That line gets crossed fairly frequently with me and my sister.

"My friends aren't mean nerds." Even as I say this, I'm logging on Amazon's site in a desperate attempt to fix this, only to find that, though my book is out for the WORLD (ie my sister and me) to see, the editing processor is in Limbo, and I CAN'T MAKE EDITS.

If I was woozy before, now I'm just a lump of boneless, self-pitying jelly on the floor.

Terror really doesn't have a shape! But it has a consistency. It's gooey.

"So are you going to be, like all weird about this?" Katie asks. I can hear her dainty fingers clicking on the computer keys in the background.

"Why?" I gasp out. Barely. I have a TYPO in my AUTHOR BIO? ONE PARAGRAPH?

"Because I kinda announced it on Facebook when you told me it was available to buy."

Maybe I threw up, but I don't really know, since my body was just a gelatinous pile of goo and that would have all mixed in. Gross,yes, but that is what the devastation of typos does to an irrational human with a love of grammar and it's immutable LAWS. Laws I had carelessly broken and tossed into the world.

If you don't respect grammar, your grandfather gets devoured!

"ItsokayKatie," I wheezed, tears and snot mixing with my lifeless life goo.

"Don't worry. I'm sure there are lots of other things wrong with it," she comforted. "Ohmygod! Did you see Jem's* post about Rio*? They are so much drama! Why do they put their dirty laundry up for everyone to read?"

"I guess because we all read it." I force myself out of a goo state and into a semi-solid, which is really all the life force you need to be on Facebook. And I take a tiny comfort in the fact that there are lots of typos. All over.

Typos I really don't notice most of the time, because these are friends (or people I spy on under the guise of friendship) and it's the content that matters. Plus that, I can barely add a long row of numbers without taking my socks off (thank God I moved to the subtropics where my toes are always hanging out!), so I don't have any sort of sick compulsion to point my long, beady finger at other perfectly nice peoples' grammar and syntax if I happen to notice it.

"Ooh." Katie snapped me out of my philosophical musings. "People are liking my status!"

And people did like hers, and mine, because I couldn't have my book announced by my sister and not me! And then my awesome friends started, and I hacked into my brother's and mother's account to post the happiness I'm sure they were feeling, but didn't think to share with the whole Facebook world!

And people started to BUY MY BOOK!

"Frank!" I cried "FOUR PEOPLE BOUGHT MY BOOK!"

Frank peered at the computer screen, awed. "Who are they?" he asked in a hushed whisper.

"Um, one is Katie. One is Britt. One is Tames." (They all announced that they bought my book. On Facebook. To lure other potential buyers. And I love them for it.) "But I don't know who the fourth is."

We stared at the screen. Who could it be? Who could that fourth person BE?

Okay, maybe not these guys because they're actually a group of neuroscience researchers who came up when I googled "people," and I bet they're busy reading things to further science and save lives. Or maybe they love YA contemporary romance! I don't like stereotyping.

By the end of the day, I had sold 15 books!

I called Frank at work. "Guess how many books I sold?" I demanded over the roar of the train that went by his place of work at least eleven million times a day.

"How many?" he asked, and it sounded like a thousand crates of screaming cymbal-clapping monkeys crashed around him.

"Fifteen!" I yelled.

"What? Sixteen?" he screamed into the phone.

My lips trembled. "No! Fifteen!" I bellowed.

"Oh, fifteen! That's good too! Look, babe, I have a situation here!"

It sounded like the cymbal-clapping monkeys were at war with some kind of ear-piercing toddler toys on top of the train, so I let Frank go and marveled at the idea that FIFTEEN gorgeous, smart, amazing, wonderful people bought my book.

Better than 15 pies!! 15 PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT MY BOOK! (But pies are also lovely and delicious!)

Some revealed themselves. My beloved high school English teacher (who also caught, among other things, a 'then' where it should have been 'than'...oh, it made my author bio typo feel like a paper-cut compared to this skewer impaling my grammar guts! The shame!!), friends from high school, friends of friends from high school, and people who I only knew through at least three degrees of separation. My head felt light, like it was stuffed with cotton candy or cream puff shells or those weird ice cream dots that they sell in vending machines.

My mom wanted to know who the three reviewers on Amazon were. She was disappointed when I actually knew all three.

"When will some real people review it?" she griped.

"Ma, they are real. I just know them," I explained.

"You know what I mean."

"Maybe we just need to give it more than a day. People who downloaded it might not have read it." Or liked it, I mentally added, but didn't dare utter that in front of my mother, who considers any ambivalence towards me or my work fairly on par with out-and-out hatred.

My mother harrumphed. Lovingly.

So I'm jittery. People are buying it and (hopefully) reading it and might (very hopefully) review it! It's out there. People are clicking their tongues, disagreeing with things I chose to do or ways I chose to say things, picking up on typos here and there, asking me about price and paper format (which is coming soon!).

But they're also cheering me on, spreading the word, saying very nice things that may not even have anything to do with the fact that they personally love me.

Okay, maybe not quite this good, but pretty damn close! There's a lot of love out there.

Final verdict? It's scary. It's so scary to send your baby out there for all the world to see and judge.

But it's what has to be done!

It reminds me of this part in High Fidelity (the movie, not the book, although, yes, I did read the book, I promise!) where Laura tells Rob that he's finally making something (his record label, the one he signs those crazy, talented, shop-lifting punks to) after a whole life of being a professional critic. Not that I was very critical, or ever as unhappy as Rob...who I kind of hate, and Laura could do SO MUCH BETTER, right? But the point is really her wisdom.

I know, he's adorable, but you're SO MUCH MORE adorable, and he's draining and takes way too much work and doesn't appreciate you! And you're so supportive, Laura! Find someone new!

Because it's scary to put yourself out there and let it all come in and hit you upside the head. But it's also delicious and wonderful and happy. I'm very happy! So read Double Clutch because you like me or I've made you laugh or you want a good, angsty teen romance...and do whatever it is you want to do, because as scary as it may seem, I promise you the world is more beautifully receptive than you're anticipating. And I'll love you. And will absolutely buy your book. And write a review. Cause that's how I roll.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the innocent Facebook oversharers...who obviously don't care who sees every little piece of their personal business on the open internet.

I Force My Sister Katie to Interview Me and You Get a Sneak Peek of Double Clutch's Rad Cover!

2011-09-07T16:13:00.000-04:00

So I've been driving my little sister nuts talking about the boring ins and outs of self-publishing and crying about how no one will ever bother to interview a self-pubbed writer because who really cares if someone says she's hot stuff just because she says so? And she felt bad for me, so she offered to interview me. You know, if I helped with some of the more boring questions. And wrote it all out. And gave her a foot massage. And pedicure. But I love her, and am perfectly happy to abuse our sister-guilt for my benefit! So here it is...and now I have to go put bonbons in her mouth and pour her a fresh glass of wine. Thanks, Katie!

This is my totally adorable sister, who was not entirely delighted to do an interview, but since she loves me, she soldiered through! And is exacting her leverage, probably as you read. Even if you're reading fifty years after this posting.

So, when did you decide writing was your thing?

It all started with Twilight...

Seriously? I love Twilight!

I know, because we both have awesome taste in books. And, yes, that started my real writing, as in the writing that led to the creation of an entire book I really liked. As opposed to my fake writing, which was either assigned or for someone else or crap, and that really started in 7th grade in Mrs. Schroth's class or in junior year of high school for Liz Coopersmith or in senior year of college when I was having a nervous breakdown and my boyfriend (now husband) had to work and couldn't spend the entire day letting me cry on his shoulder.

So as far as real writing goes, it was all about you getting hot from Jacob Black? By the way, I still can't believe you're not Team Emmett!

Emmet's yours, and I know I'd totally lose him if I tried to fight you, and I don't want my eyes scratched out, because you're scary. Oh, and now you got me thinking. In 7th grade, I wrote this story. Actually, Shakespeare wrote this play, Romeo and Juliet, and we had the choice to act out a scene or rewrite the ending.

Please tell me you opted to act out the scene?

No! Why? Lame! I rewrote the ending.

Seriously? Wouldn't it have been easier to act it out? You were such a nerd.

No, you're a nerd, because who wants to act out Shakespeare in front of the whole class? I mean, I guess it would be easier. But not more fun, because I couldn't have killed everyone.

Don't they all die in Shakespeare's ending anyway?

Well, Romeo, Juliet and Tybalt do. And Mercutio. But in my ending they ALL die. First they all live happily, because all wrongs get nicely righted and everyone's happy and in love. Then there's a toast, and someone poisoned it on accident, like before he realized love would conquer all, and they all drink and they ALL DIE! My teacher loved it.

You are a horrible person. So that was why you wanted to write YA romance?

No! That was junior year. My friend, Liz Coopersmith, loved the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. And I guess there was this line in the series where they were all older and cool and they did a big mystery smorgasbord. But it always ended at kissing. That's it. And Liz was unsatisfied, so I wrote a steamy Drew/Hardy love scene and gave it to her, and it was pretty touching.

She didn't feel like you ruined Nancy Drew?

How could finally getting it on with one of the Hardy Boys (I don't remember which one) be a bad thing? Anyway, my love-writing took a hiatus until senior year of college, when I was spazzing out and asking myself what life meant and if I wanted to join the Peace Corps or move to China to teach English, and that's when I wrote this long, crazy historical Western romance while I should have been studying biology.

Wait, I don't remember a weird western romance. Wasn't your first book a YA?

No. And I never made you read that one. You're welcome, it was awful. It wasn't YA because I wanted to publish through Harlequin and they did adult, so I pretended to know what two logical adults would do in a relationship instead of just channeling my inner 16-year-old. And Harlequin looked at a lot of them, but kept passing. And I got all sad, and then I read Twilight. It inspired me to write a book about teenagers, but this was still before Double Clutch.

Please don't tell me you wrote a vampire novel.

Um, yeah, two actually. I didn't make you read those either! You're welcome on that, again. If you were an aspiring YA author who read Twilight and didn't try to write a vampire novel, you obviously had no soul! So I wrote two awful books, and made poor Lex (my best friend) edit them and it was awful of me. I apologize. But I realized that I hated vampires (at least the boring-ass ones I wrote), and loved teenagers (fictional teenagers I created). But I didn't really love those vampire-teenagers, the ones I made. Or I loved pieces of them. So I decided to write what I knew, but cooler.

Sorry for Lex. But better her than me! And that was Double Clutch?

Yes! Which started when I was staring dreamily at Frank, probably while he was stuffing his face full of Doritos and watching Overhaulin', and I wondered, "What would it be like if he and I dated in high school?" And it was actually a fairly lame fantasy, because we were both kind of boring. But we had potential to be cooler! So I kind of Bryan Adamsed my teenage years, and looked back at them and reinvented them, and the book just poured out.

Haha! So it was Frank who made it all happen? Too funny! Was it different to write than your adult romances?

Definitely. I stayed up late, typing way into the night, and Frank kept begging me to stop because you know how he always whines that I have 'hammer fingers' when I'm excited about what I'm writing? So I would sneak out into the living room and type all night and go through the days like a zombie. And I forced Frank to listen to the whole thing, which he hated.

How could Frank hate Double Clutch? Or does he just hate YA books?

He's not a big reader at all. Like, I think he's read five books in his entire life. But it wasn't that; he really thinks he's Jake Kelly, and it pissed him off when Brenna didn't totally devote herself to Jake.

But didn't you say he is kind of Jake Kelly? Um, which is kind of gross because I have a serious crush on Jake, and now I know he's my brother-in-law.

Sorry! But don't think of Jake as Frank, because Jake is just that awesome, sweet guy you always hoped would pop up and sweep you off your feet in high school! And Frank hates when I tell him this, but he's also kind of Saxon Maclean. Or at least he was. He's a lot tamer now than when he was a teenager. And, of course, as much as some of it is based on true life, lots of it is just made up. Like completely made up.

Ugh! He's Saxon too? You're ruining my book crushes! Okay, I'll just forget your answer to that question so I can still consider Frank my perfectly nice brother-in-law and lust after Jake and Saxon, thanks. Did you use your friends and enemies in the book? Anyone going to sue you?

Hahaha! I hope not! I did use names and kind of mixed people together to get details down, but no one character is any one person. Although, you helped a ton with that. Like when you would stop reading it and call me and say, "You know you used so-and-so's name here. Did you know that?" And I was like, "Wait, is that someone real?" Thank God you were so popular in high school, because you always let me know when I accidentally plug a real name in.

This reminds me that you actually get the real credit for my writing career, you know.

Because I was willing to talk non-stop about Twilight with you?

No! Haha! I had to force you to read it, remember? And then we mostly just talked about how hot Edward and Jacob were. No, when we were in high school, you tore this page out of the back of an Avon romance that said something like, Have you always dreamed of being a writer? Avon is looking to sign the next big author! Which is really odd, because now things are so strict at publishing houses and they never, ever want people just randomly sending them manuscripts. They want it to come through an agent!

But you pulled it out and were like, "This book kind of sucked. You could totally write a better book than this." And you're never really full of shit. If you don't like something, you're a straight shooter. So it was touching that you believed in me like that.

Aw, I actually remember that! Well, I hope you get famous and make a lot of money and share it with me. By the way, am I the inspiration for Brenna in Double Clutch?

Um, you should totally see a ton of yourself in it. I mean, she's pretty much us. We're both pretty mean to boys and have no issue blowing them off. But there is another character written just for you; she's bad ass and gorgeous, and she comes in in the third Brenna Blixen novel.

Ohmygod, I can't wait! How many Brenna Blixen novels do you think you'll write?

I loved Meg McCafferty's Jessica Darling books, and I felt this huge connection to Jessica because they followed her from sophomore year, out of college, and into the workforce. I felt like I grew up with her, and I'd love to do that for Brenna.

Is there anything you're really proud of with this book? Anything that you think makes it stand out?

I don't want to get on a soapbox or anything here, but I think the whole concept of teen sexuality is really prudish in America. Like, we have these very suggestive images and videos and songs, but when a writer writes a scene with emotion and details and it's true to life, everyone gets very shocked and upset. The truth is, I hope kids are having safe, loving experiences, and I don't think blacklisting examples of that in contemporary books makes any sense.

Also, I love family. I mean, I love my family, and I hate that in many YA books the parents are dead or gone or absent across the board and the teens just run wild. I mean, that's kind of a fun concept, but it's not reality. Brenna's mom is very involved and so is her step-dad. One of the problems with Jake and Saxon is the lack of parental involvement they've both dealt with, for different reasons.

Any advice to other would-be writers or writers who want to self-publish?

The internet is a miracle for us. Hire a good editor. If I can plug mine here, Alexa Offenhauer of Loose Leaf Editing did amazing things with Double Clutch. And I'm not just talking commas and spelling. She looked for continuity. She checked facts about when things were said and if that made sense. She warned me that, though they were the coolest type of pant going in 1995, cargo pants are no longer the style du jour of the modern young man. She questioned my mention of MySpace as the main online social forum. The book wouldn't have been nearly as awesome without her.

And my cover designer, Steven Peterson has been amazing! Not only does he have a ton of experience, he's enthusiastic and he really listens. When he sent me the first designs for the cover of Double Clutch, I was literally jumping around the room, screaming because it was just beyond my expectations. Self-publishing is a little nerve-wracking, but he made me confident that people were going to be drawn to my novel. And then, hopefully, once the cover made them bite, they'd fall in love with the characters.

Any last thoughts?

Just that I'm so happy to have this opportunity to self-publish. If I wrote Double Clutch ten years ago, it would have sat in the bottom of some drawer. Today I have the opportunity to get it out to so many people.

Who, hopefully, will love it as much as I do.

Oh, and if you ever want to write me, you can go send me an email at lizreinhardtwrites@gmail.com or like me on Facebook at Liz Reinhardt's Page.

And thanks for interviewing me, Katie!

You're welcome. Um, and I'm dead serious about the brownie mix in your cabinet. You should make some. Like now. For me.

Sisters, sisters! There were never such devoted sisters!

And, now here is the cover, compliments of the very talented Steven Peterson!!

My mom said the boys looked like punks! And my grandma said Jake (left) needed some tattoos on his arms...which wouldn't fit the story (since Jake doesn't have any ink). But I love it!
And soon you can love it, too. By downloading it to your Kindle/iPad/Nook etc!

YA Author Angie Stanton Talks Self-Publishing, Her Hatred of English Class, and The Scariness of Being a Cheerleading Flyer!

2011-09-06T07:27:00.000-04:00

My good friend and amazing self-published YA writer, Angie Stanton was cool enough to stop by and talk to us about the ins and outs of self-publishing, the new book she has in the works, and her favorite YAs by other authors! Here's a brief description of her newly published book, Rock and a Hard Place.

One day while watching the Interstate exit for her dad’s long awaited return, Libby’s life is rocked when Peter Jamieson steps off his tour bus and into her life. After a couple chance meetings with Peter, Libby breaks away from her perfect behavior and her life changes course.

Peter longs for normalcy away from the screaming fans who know nothing about the real him. He is amazed to discover Libby has never heard of him or his band. Soon their friendship turns to love. While Peter battles his family's growing interference so he can spend time with Libby, she struggles with her eccentric aunt who turns more bizarre each day.

Their lives are torn apart when Peter's family intrudes and Libby disappears. Peter’s desperate search for her comes up empty. Can they find their way back to each other while the world plots against them?

Here's Angie! Isn't she adorable?! And a fab writer! Some girls have all the luck!

What got you started writing? Has it been a life-long thing, or was it something you fell into as an adult?

I never wanted to be a writer. I struggled through English class and hated writing in college. Ironically my degree is from the School of Journalism, but in advertising, not writing! The thing that got me started was an idea in my head that wouldn't go away. I'm a day dreamer and was always building stories in my mind since I was a kid. For my first book, Love 'em or Leave 'em, I realized my story was so complete, I should try to write it down.

Ashley Reynolds, who hates even having her picture taken, lands herself smack in the middle of a reality television dating show. She finds herself surrounded by glamour girls and pageant queens all vying for a date with the smokin hot bachelor. Ashley's plan, to fly under the radar and get sent home early, falters when she soon discovers a knack for drawing unwanted attention her way. Bad boy quarterback Luke Townsend thought choosing between 25 stunning women would be a dream come true. How wrong he was! Luke's patience is tried by the wiles of the charmers and the persistence of the camera crews. It doesn't take long for him to realize, however, that the one girl trying the hardest to get off the show is the one who most intrigues him.

Okay, that totally surprises me, because writing seems so natural for you when I read your books! I love the premise for your first book, Love 'em or Leave 'em. How did you get your idea for Rock and a Hard Place?

My daughter went to high school with a really nice kid from Colorado. His mother died when he was fourteen and he was shipped to Wisconsin to live with his father, who was abusive and apparently didn't want him. This kid, through no fault of his own, had to survive a hellish life. This boy's story got me to thinking of all the kids who get a raw deal in life. Nice kids who just want to grow up happy are put in horrible situations. That's where the idea of Libby came from.

That is amazing! I had no idea that it was based on a real life situation, but that makes so much sense when you consider how emotional the story is. How long did it take you to write it? Edit it?

That's a good question. I'm not exactly sure. I think about two years total, however, I write off and on, taking long breaks when I get distracted or busy. The editing probably took a year. I work with great critique partners, but they help me as a favor, so it takes a long time to work through all the chapters.

Your first book was adult contemporary romance. How was writing Rock and a Hard Place different?

Trying to write with the fresh mind of a teenager and keep my own older vocabulary and emotions out of it. Teens today are very smart, so I didn't want to dumb anything down. That would be an insult to young readers.

I completely agree! Sometimes people who don't read YA don't get how sophisticated it really has to be. You put your first book out there by going through the publisher without an agent. What did you want for Rock and a Hard Place? Were you looking to take the same route or did you want to try to get an agent? What was that journey like?

My goal was to get an agent and find a publisher who loved the story as much as I do. However, no agents would even look at it. Everyone said it wasn't what they were looking for at the time. They all wanted paranormal. So after a year, the self publishing market had really taken off. I realized no one was going to represent my book, so I decided to try self publishing. My expectations were low, so the success of Rock and a Hard Place has been a wonderful surprise.

I'm not surprised at all! Your story is amazing, and I think readers can really connect with Libby's situation. Your cover is fabulous! Who did it and how did that become the cover?

Isn't it gorgeous? Even better is the awesome story inside...

A good friend of mine, who is a professional graphic artist, does my covers. She knew I wanted something contemporary, young and fresh. I love what she did with it.

Rock and a Hard Place has done really well, and already has glowing five-star reviews. What do you think sets it apart from other YA books out there? What are you proudest of?

I believe that readers connect with the plight of Libby and are rooting for her from the start. The book also has so many twists and turns of the unexpected, that it keeps readers constantly surprised. I hate reading books that I can easily predict.

Agreed! And, without ruining anything, I have to say Libby's decisions in the end were very believable, and, at the same time, very brave and surprising. Have you given any thought to continuing this as a series? There are two other very interesting Jamieson brothers!

Definitely. The younger brother Adam has such a goofy personality, that I'd like to see him have his own story. I've been mulling that around in my head for quite some time.

Oooh!! Can't wait!! I love asking YA authors this question; what are your top three favorite YA books?

There are so many and I won't name the obvious that everyone already knows about. Here are some of my current favorites.

Life as We Knew It - by Susan Beth Pfeffer - I love natural disaster movies and this book is about that from a teenage girl's point of view. Loved it, however after reading all three books in the series back to back, I was a little depressed. So space them out.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Audrey Wait! - by Robin Benway - This about a girl whose ex-boyfriend writes a song about their break up and becomes famous. She has to deal with the aftermath of the paparazzi. It's a fun light read.

Audrey Wait! by Robin Benway

The DUFF - by Kody Keplinger - I never expected to like this book, but loved it. The premise is that every group of friends has one fat or ugly friend, the Duff, so it will build up the confidence of the others. Its a great read with tons of relatable emotions. Also has lots of sex in it.

The DUFF by Kody Keplinger

I am adding these to my Kindle list right now! They sound fantastic! I hear you have another book in the works...can we get a sneak preview of what it's about and when it will be available to buy?

My next book is Dream Chaser. It's about Willow, the flyer on her high school cheerleading squad. She takes a nasty fall and quits because she's afraid to get hurt again. To avoid cheerleading, she returns to her first love, dance, and a new show, but is faced with obstacles and a cast of kids who don't want her there, including her former best friend, Eli, who is her romantic lead.

One of my favorite scenes is when the director tells Willow and Eli to go parking to figure out how to do their stage kiss. They do go parking and it's a riot. Dream Chaser will be available November 2011.

In case you are cheerleading-term impaired like I am, the flyer is the person on the top of a stunt who gets lifted or thrown. Um, this looks super scary, and makes me understand why Willow would be so shaky after a fall!

Dream Chaser sounds fantastic, and I can't wait until November! What has been the hardest part of self-publishing?

Technology. Preparing the book for publication is a labyrinth of challenges. I am technology challenged.

I hear you there. And today there are so many different blogs, pages, sites, feeds...it's hard to keep track of it all! What has been the best thing about self-publishing?

Validation. So many people have bought the book and reviewed it across the boards. The fact that this story effected them so strongly warms me to the core. It's great to know that all my hard work is being enjoyed by the masses.

I'm ecstatic to see other people falling in love with Peter and Libby the way I got to when you first sent the book to me! Thank you so much for interviewing here, and, people, if you want a good book, pick up Rock and a Hard Place, and be on the look out for Dream Chaser on Kindle this November!

Thank you again, Angie!!

Reviews: Why 5 Stars and Possible Hobbling Both Give Me Hope

2011-09-05T09:15:00.000-04:00

My friend and fantastic YA author, Angie Stanton, recently released a self-published book called Rock and a Hard Place.

Isn't it gorgeous?! Trust me, you'll love it! Go, ahead, click the pretty picture and buy this book!

I had the pleasure of being part of her critique team, and I love this book. It revolves around a young woman, Libby, who loses her mother and sister in a car accident, her grief-stricken father abandons her to a less-than-savory aunt, and she feels the emotional toll of her lost life in every bleak second that ticks by. But then she has a chance meeting at a magically gorgeous natural spot with a very cute guy named Peter. They connect, the chemistry is instant, and it feels perfect! One teeny problem. He's part of a mega-band, worshiped by screaming girls across the globe, and his world's and Libby's are about as far apart as two young lives could be. I don't want to give too much more away, but this was an excellent love story and a story about finding yourself, learning to stand on your own two feet, and figuring out what's important in life.

And I will spoil the end a tiny bit by telling you that Libby's actions and decisions made me so damn proud, I was nodding along like a crazy woman and whispering girl-power words of encouragement to her through my Kindle.

Long and short, pick this book up, because you'll love it, and Angie is a fantastic writer! And the reviews agree with that sentiment! When you put the title of her book in on Amazon, you see a solid five stars out of 24 reviews. When you click on the reviews, you notice that there are actually 21 five-star reviews, 1 four-star, and 2 three-star reviews. Huzzah!!

That's what we like to see! Woot five stars!

Or not totally 'huzzah!'. Angie (who is an incredibly sane and lovely woman who knows that her ratings are fantastic and admits it) confessed that the three star reviews hurt. Especially one that seemed to take a stab at Angie's work because it wasn't priced the way the reviewer felt a self-pubbed book should be priced. After a few paragraphs generally praising the book, the reviewer ended with this paragraph:

Is there a reason this story is $2.99 instead of the usual .99 cents for an author's first kindle book? I was expecting more. Normally I spend $2.99 for a sequel, but based on the reviews, I thought this story would be like "Where She Went" by Gayle Forman Where She Went, and it so wasn't. I would recommendMeant to Be ((The Saving Angels book 1)) and The Wrong Path as comparable novels, but at only .99 cents.

It's kind of a weird sentiment, which I pointed out to the reviewer (as a concerned party who will be self-publishing soon). A reviewer should give any book any number of stars he/she deems appropriate for the book, but the idea of making a monetary comparison between books based on content value seems strange. Though the review title should have been a clue. It was something like "Good Book....If You're 15!".

Um, Angie is a YA novelist. 15 is actually the target age.

The reviewer went on to apologize for hurt feelings and eventually got defensive that no one found her largely subjective and inconsistent review helpful.

C'mon serial reviewer, don't cry! Not everyone is going to like your reviews and it hurts, but no worries. You can write incoherent, silly reviews of other peoples' books anytime! Chin up.

But it got me thinking about ratings in general, because, especially for a self-published author who doesn't have a PR campaign to get the word out there, ratings can make a book title pop up more often and lure readers who might be on the fence.

I read quite a bit, but rarely leave a review, unless it's a book that becomes a life game-changer, like a little tome on cage-fighting and matching tattoos that shook my world. You know, for example.

If I adore something, I usually tell all my nerd peeps on Facebook. If something is blah, I bitch to Frank until his eyes silently beg me to stop, and I remind him how I listened to a thirty minute explanation about the process of refitting the truck's headers on our trip to the junkyard. I also sometime send an email to my friends or critique partners and get their reactions. A lot of the time, we may fall very hard for the same things and hate others with similar disdain, but often the middling stuff if really different. And we respect the distinct ripples of difference that flow through our book-love pool.

For those of you who don't live with a motorhead, these are headers. I know, aren't you feeling sleepy just looking at them? I know way more about these than I ever wanted to. Frank would like you to know, "They're called headers because they're tubular." This is the nonsense I have to put up with every single day. Good thing I find him delectable covered with a light sheen of grease.

In the end, taste is so personal. A banana and mayo sandwich sounds just one step away from chocolate dipped bugs to me (meaning I will probably eat one at some point, but the thought of that day makes my stomach clench with queasy anticipation and horror), but there was a lovely, funny lady I recently met who talked about those sandwiches with a passionate gleam in her eyes and made me promise, nay vow, that I would ignore my natural gag reflex and eat one. Because, she was sure, I would LOVE it. And hunt her down to shower her with thanks.

That kind of passionate enthusiasm is definitely a nudge for me. And, considering my crappy food shopping decisions, there isn't a doubt in my mind that one day in the near future a banana, some bread, and my trusty jar of mayonnaise will be three of only half a dozen edible substances in my house. I may become a convert by force.

Elvis ate them, but with peanut butter AND mayonnaise, and he was a rock god. Who also died on a toilet. Still...

What scares me is that, because I don't review often, I'm nervous about who does. Do you? Do you leave comments, good and bad because you are the Ralph Nader of books and don't want to see anyone else crash and burn into the next cliched, easily remedied tortured romance (and you always wear black socks)? Do you love to share your opinion because you would have been an Alpha if you lived in Aldous Huxley's crazy world and need to tell all of us Beta/Gamma/Epsilons how things are done? Tell me!! TELL ME!!

Because if you read this blog, you might review my book. Maybe. And I'm scared of you.

Is is just me, or are internet commentors kind of freakishly disturbing? I think I may have posted a wee article on how sucked into OMGYahoo! I am (WAS! I swear, 'was'!), and the comments were just such disgusting examples of grammar and syntax, plus they were soul-suckingly mean. Like unfunnily, unsnarkily mean-spirited. And I love a good ribbing as much as the next guy, but pure meanness for meanness's sake makes my throat close up, and reinforces the reality that a zombie apocalypse is imminent, because any group of living creatures that mean deserves to feast on one another's brains.

It's not a huge leap. Commenting uncharitably about Beyonce's pregnancy in an open online forum >>>> Zombie Apocalypse.

But this is fear talking! (I know, all the bananas and mayonnaise and zombies can get anyone's adrenaline pumping.) The reality is most reviews are super cool, super nice even, because people want to talk about what they like. Mostly. Unless your book honestly sucks according to a wide band of general reviewers. Some fall into the category of Angie's strange review, where the reviewer probably had okay intentions, but had a specific interpretation of the rating system that might not fit the overall idea. And, of the low ones, some might be plain mean, and some might be helpful.

Some of the longest sighs and biggest eye-rolls of disappointment from my friends/critiquers led to the best revisions of my book. Anyway, real life aside, I believe in good book magic, and think Double Clutch might stir some up!

Oh, and I already wrote some of my own bad reviews, privately. You know, kind of like a sick exercise in taking the sting out of what might get said (and I can do it with proper punctuation too!).

So I sat down and swallowed hard and wondered what might sting like a thousand acid-dipped arrows puncturing my writer's soul.

You know what's worse than a dozen arrows piercing your skin? When you shoot them at yourself! Can anyone say deranged masochist?! (i.e. writer...)

So I dug deep and imagined what other people might say if they hated my book. And I came up with three likely hate-based scenarios, which I then wrote fake reviews based on. Just to get me ready. You know, like when athletes train by...working out...okay, I know nothing about athletes! I did it solely so I can get my crying done with now! And giggle a little at myself...here they are for your enjoyment!

Fake Review # 1: The Action Lover and General Eye Roller

Brenna Blixen, the main protagonist in the novel Double Clutch, does little other than kiss boys, obsess about kissing boys, and hope to kiss boys more in the future. There's a lot of detail about her house, her room, her mom, her breakfast, and I'd prefer more action. I'd also prefer if every hot guy didn't fall instantly and completely in love with her. Who does she think she is? Bella Swan? PS I wish the author had done more research on running and Motocross and less on making out and beyond.

Fake Review # 2: The Offended Mom Who Never Read the Book Description
(And Worships Footloose)

I am extremely offended! This book contains smoking, drug references, teen sexuality, swearing, sneaking around, unsafe driving, a lack of respect for the movie Footloose, fist fights, lying, and truancy and flagrant absenteeism! I will NEVER allow my teen to read this book and be corrupted by it! I hope Ms. Liz Reinhardt learns that no one is interested in her filthy novels!

Fake Review # 3: Rabid Fan Who Might Trap Me in a Misery-type Situation
(PS I'd be so honored to be the recipient of any such book-based rage!
Just, um, please no hobbling, thank you!)

Make up your mind, Brenna! Two hot guys love you and you're all, 'Which one is my soul mate?' Duh! It's so obvious, and if you can't figure it out, you don't deserve him! You are a whiny little priss who doesn't know a good thing when he's taking you out and calling you all the time and being so sweet...UGH! Fine, if you don't want him, I'll date him! He can do so much better than you anyway, and I know how to treat a good man! Your next book better have Brenna picking the right guy...or else!!

Annie Wilkes, I admire your devotion to the books, but, speaking as an author...OUCH!!

So there you have it! This is the way I entertain myself late into the night when my stomach is in knots, and I'm positive people will throw up on my book (which would be SUCH a bad idea, since most sales would be ebook sales, and vomit and electronics are not traditionally considered complimentary substances).

In the end, I know that if my book is good, I will have mostly good reviews (just like Angie). And if it sucks, I can always close down all online interaction and shuffle to my room, lonely and sad, unable to face the world.

On the bright side, if no one likes my book enough to become deranged about it, I probably won't face hobbling! There's a sledgehammer's worth of relief in that!

My Decision to Self Publish Was Spurred by Cage Fighting, Shakira, and My Mother's Bullying

2011-09-02T09:15:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I bought a book on Kindle because it had an intriguing cover, was the right price, and over 150 people had given it a five star review on Amazon. Not that 150 positive ratings always means you've struck gold, but when that many people beg you to buy a book and proclaim its awesomeness, it's always worth a look.

The cover is kind of Bosch-esque, right? Maybe it was the art history major in me that was pulled in.

So, without giving too much away plotwise, let me provide you with some keywords to help establish a feel for this book's content; cage fights, underage drinking, risky motorcycle riding, threesome, poker tournaments, gangsters, co-dependence. Yep. Now imagine the heightened melodrama. Imagine the shenanigans.

Now that you've had a second to let those terms sink in, I want to say that I fell for the book pretty hard. I want to also say that I love Twilight, had a temporary obsession with Degrassi after I was out of high school, and when Katy Perry sings "Firework," I get a little shiver of happiness because I feel like she's singing directly to me. I also watched the documentary, Helvetica, with intense adoration, worship Joanna Newsom and her crazy harp, and am still swooning over a decade after reading Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. I would call my tastes eclectic.

C'mon...tell me you didn't go gaga when you heard there was a two hour documentary about fonts!

With this particular book, I was sucked in from the word 'cage fight' and I couldn't rip myself away. Halfway through I took a break, my eyes half-glazed, and turned to my husband. "Google the name Jamie McGuire right now, please."

Frank loves a good Google mission like nobody's business, and he got right down to it.

"What are you looking for specifically?" he asked.

"Her agent."

"You want to query her agent? Is her book like yours?"

Hmm. Yes and no.

"I want to query her agent, because I can't believe she got away with all this." I held my Kindle up and shook it with amazement.

Frank looked at my Kindle with reverent suspicion and a dollop of frustration. Kindle makes every book look like every other book, so there was no way at all for him to tell from cover clues what I was reading (not that this cover would have actually helped, since its Bosch-like tendencies are a a tad more symbolic than informational).

"What did she get away with?" Frank asked as he scrolled through search channels looking to glean any and all info on Ms. McGuire.

"Everything!" I struggled to explain what this book was doing to someone who didn't read publishing industry blogs for kicks. "First of all, everyone is in college."

Frank drew his eyebrows together. "There aren't books about people in college? Aren't all you writers kind of big college nerds?"

"Well, there's no market for college," I explained.

"Oh. Like no one wants to read about college?" Frank looked even more confused. "But you loved college. Wouldn't you like to read a book about college?"

"I know it seems weird, but publishers think no one will buy books about college. I guess I'd actually love it if there were more books about college. But there's nowhere to shelve those books. Like there's no shelves for them in the store." Frank gave me his carpenter's look of disdain, which clearly communicated his thoughts: Why don't they just build 'college books' book shelves?

"But I didn't think your book was about collge. I thought they were in high school," Frank said.

"You're right, they are. But that's not really it. She does other things. Like there's cage fighting!" Frank nods and the examples pour out. "There's sex! There's underage drinking! There's co-dependent romance!"

"Do your books have any of that?" he asked, obviously trying to remember if I'd written a soft-core version of Fight Club that I never told him about.

"No! And that's not the point! The point is, this book breaks every rule about what's allowed in books, and it's good, and I want to know who her agent is so I can break some rules, too!"

Doesn't it give you chills! That's Queen Elizabeth! Who did those Sex Pistol punks think they were? What did they think they were doing? And why am I so interested in dipping my toe in the ocean of their rebellion? Aren't I the same girl who immersed herself in a documentary about fonts?

Frank passed me the laptop. "I can't find anything about an agent."

The book was almost mistake free and commercial-writing smooth, so I never questioned that it was traditional house published. I searched her website and it was clear why Ms. McGuire's book shocked me with its radical craziness; no agent told her she couldn't put any of it in. No publisher or editor did either. Jamie McGuire's book was self published.

Self published?

Self published.

Self published!!!

If you aren't an aspiring writer, the phrase 'self published' may seem like a fairly innocuous one. But if you are an aspiring writer, those little words can run chills up and down your spine. Forget punks, forget playing the din of your obnoxious music at ear-splitting levels while you decoupage images of the queen of England with your nihilistic word rants. Self publishing is walking the tightrope with no net, sticking your head in a lion's mouth, jumping off of something high very quickly with little padding or protection because it's "fun."

What the hell is this person doing?! And should I do it too?!

It's beyond punk...it's an extreme sport. And it's scary! Agents, editors, publishers are safety nuts. They know how this whole, big, scary world or publishing works and they know which risks to take.

Sometimes.

Because Jamie McGuire's book is doing well. Really well. She's selling in the top couple hundred of all Kindle books. All of 'em; fiction, YA, romance, mystery, nonfiction. She's selling better than many carefully crafted, edited, promoted, and presented traditionally represented books. I understand that she has no paper sales, that she may not be able to field prospective foreign, television, or movie rights, that she doesn't have help to set up websites, go on book tours, or take part in forums. Many review sites won't touch her book because she's self-published.

It's not that agents, publishers, and editors don't have a place in publishing. They do! But for an author with a book that, for whatever reason, doesn't appeal to the agents, editors, and publishers, there's absolutely nothing to lose by putting a book out there, and there might be, possibly, a lot to gain.

Jamie McGuire wrote exactly what she wanted to write. She didn't worry about trends or offending a board of editors or keeping to industry-stated standards about what will and will not sell. And when no one in publishing showed interest, she put it out for the only people who really matter anyway; readers.

While publishing professionals chase after the next hot trend or attempt to replicate the success of the last incredibly popular bestseller, they sometimes miss the point; that a good story with strong bones is going to surpass a trend every time. And while a publishing executive has to tread cautiously and consider every word and story line, a reader is only focused on the joy of the story. And there's a refreshing freedom in that!

Mmmmm. You know when a book makes you feel like that? Is there a better feeling in this world? No, no there isn't.

So say you are a writer and you wrote a book that you love.
Say you let people you adore and respect, but who would also tell you if your book might just be a gently steaming turd, read this book.
And you accepted that you were co-dependent on the passive voice and activated it.
And you stopped tagging every single line of dialogue because you learned to trust that your readers could follow a basic conversation.
And you burned the midnight oil and beyond working on it until your husband begged you for a single night's peace without your "hammer fingers" drumming on the keyboard for hours on end.

This book might as well have a placenta because you've carried it, labored to deliver it, and are so damn proud you want to show it to everyone.
And you try to!
Say you send out a very good amount of nicely written, passionate, professional queries (say around 100; yep, somewhere around 100 pleas to love your baby). And people complimented your baby's funny details and modern tone, but they didn't fall in love.

Okay, actually, no agent was remotely mean about my book. Actually, they all had very positive, constructive things to say. But the real burn was the intangible 'I just didn't connect.' In book terms, that means, 'She's just not that into you.' So my book and I went out and got many pedicures and drank way too many martinis and danced to "All By Myself."

No one fell in love. But I was in love. So I had to give the book to the only people who would read it; my mean sister, my sweet sister-in-law, my loving best friend, my heartless but wonderful college roommate, my newly agented, brilliant critique partner.

It went through the whole spectrum.

My sister loved it.

My sister-in-law squealed over it and brought it to school to read, where, she claims, other students tried all day to rip it away from her and get their read on (and I twisted my hands a few months later when my sis-in-law worried a little over whether or not she'd met her graduation qualifications and wondered if it was because she was reading my tawdry novels rather than learning algebra and chemistry...she did graduate. Phew).

My best friend gushed over it, then rolled up her sleeves and got right to editing, and we spent many long emails dissecting what worked and what didn't.

My evil but lovely roommate cyber rolled her eyes, told me I should write about something other than melodramatic teen romance, and I did what I always do...I blithely and lovingly ignored her. Because she read all 90,000 words in ONE night when she had a toddler and a newborn baby squalling in her ears and demanding her love and attention. What better recommendation is there than that?

My friend and critique partner gave it a good, thorough ripping with fresh eyes that helped me tighten and polish until it shone like a slightly quirky,sometimes meandering gem.

Though the book evolved as far as my writing went, at its core it was the same basic book, and, despite another solid round of queries, there was nothing but crickets.

I'm done waiting in silence! I'll eat your crickets! Well, maybe not. I mean, it's a symbolic threat. But they are covered in chocolate, so we're back to maybe yes. And I ate the last Milano yesterday, so it's a probably yes, actually.

It was my mother who finally bullied me into facing why I hadn't self published.

"Does it cost anything?" she demanded.

"Not for epublishing. They get a percentage of anything you sell, and if you don't sell anything, they just get nothing."

"So what's the problem?"

"I want an agent."

"Why?"

"I want someone to help me. I want someone to validate that my work is good and help me sell it."

She tsked. "Seriously? Look, I love you, but you've never ever done anything the easy way. Remember when you got a degree in women's studies when I told you to get a teaching degree? And then it took you two more years to get certified to teach? Never the easy way."

"Yes, Ma." I sighed.

"You know, those agents, they're just other girls who got degrees from other colleges. A lot of them are probably your age. A lot of them probably don't read as much as you do or have an English teaching background. And you're the writer. You are. Is your book good?"

"Yes."

"And you've tried to get an agent for how long?"

"Two years."

She tsked again. "Well I know you'd be successful, but if you don't think so, stop complaining. You have other options."

And it made me think of this interview Shakira did. She said that she's very involved in every step of the process as far as music and touring goes; she does her own hair, makeup, and costume designs. She works on her own choreography and song lineup. She even writes her own songs, in English, despite becoming bilingual fairly late in life (and her Spanish-speaking fans swear her Spanish-language lyrics are much more nuanced). She said that, the way she sees it, doing everything is freeing. If she fails, she has only herself to blame. And if she doesn't, she can wallow happily in her own confident success. And, you know, be the fourth richest woman in music and lead the revolution to educate Columbia's poorest children.

You may think she's a 4'11" hippy blonde with a voice reminiscent of a goat's bleating. But she could eat all of us alive and her hair would still look fantastic.

So, after much consideration (and editing; and editing again) I decided that I will self-publish. My first YA contemporary romance, Double Clutch will go online as an ebook very soon, with paper options close behind. To say it's been exciting would be a massive understatement. To say it's been scary would be a more colossally massive understatement. Does this mean I don't want an agent? No way! Agents have knowledge about contracts, rights, promotion, and networking that I don't. They are invaluable. Maybe I'll sell well and one will offer. Maybe I won't sell well, and I can keep querying the way I did before.

What I am looking forward to is reader reaction. And what I'm praying for on my knees is that readers love my little YA angsty-love fest with the same fierce intensity that I do.

But just because I don't have an agent doesn't mean I'm doing this alone. My fantastic best friend and editor, Alexa Offenhauer of Loose Leaf Editing has combed through the book until the grammar is tamed and crisp and the mid-90s teen references have been smoothed out and updated.

My book designer, Steven Peterson, is making magic out of the book cover, and I hope I can share the images with you soon and I also hope that they make you weep with gorgeous-teen-love-brilliance the way they make me.

My lovely critique friend (and recently agented!!) author, Caryn Caldwell clued me in on NJ-isms that may not resonate for the non Garden Staters and helped me see my particular style quirks with new eyes.

My mean sister, who gets a crick in her neck and a bout of agita whenever a typo floats in front of her eyes, is doing a final run through.

In this age of connectedness, even a self-pubbed author gets to have a fantastic team. So, I will be bringing you some tidbits about this book and the cover and the process as honestly as I can, and am open to any questions. But now you know what spurred me. Shakira and a book about cage fighting. And my mother being mean.

The story of my life!

Mike Ness is a punk I can get behind; guyliner, angsty, love-lorn lyrics, underdog roots with a cult following....I feel you, Mike.

What Cher Horowitz and Maya Angelou Taught Me About My Love For Twilight

2011-08-02T11:43:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite ex-students, one who is sassy, adorable, focused, a little sarcastic and a ton of fun, one who I steal band suggestions from and whose pop-culture infused Facebook status updates make me chuckle, really, really, really hates Twilight. She hates it for all the right reasons and some of the wrong ones, but her hatred of the book creates a well of self-conscious in me because I remember being the young-adult who very, very carefully chose what to like and not like, and those choices had surprisingly little to do with what I actually did and did not like. If Stephanie Meyer's slightly suffocating, circuitously written tale of the ultimate obsessive December-May romance came out when I was a teen, I know I would have scorned it on premise. I would have forced myself to hate it, even if I loved it, in secret.

Every breath she takes, every move she makes, he'll be watching her!

Why? I know there is the term "book snobbery" that makes the rounds, but what I was experiencing was "book buffoonery."

The famous romance author and Shakespearean scholar Eloisa James tells a story about how she would hide the romance novels she adored reading in a backpack and once spilled them all out in the library at Oxford or Princeton or some other hoity toity school, and she picked them all up, red-faced and shamed that her classmates had seen what she was reading.

One of my ex-boyfriends collected comic books, not based on which ones he loved, but based on which ones would impress other people with their obscurity and snarky and purposeful anti-appeal. If there was a comic that "everyone" was reading, like Spiderman, he would deny himself the opportunity to read it, even if he was dying to know about Peter Parker's clone Ben Reilly and weigh in on whether or not Ben counted as a contender for the spidey suit, since he was only a clone, even if he did have rad superpowers. Much cooler to read Captain Koala,even if you hate it with your entire soul, because how else will you pretend you're better than all of your less open-minded, more sheep-like peers?

You can only like this ironically. The problem is, liking anything ironically is the opposite of fun. And 'liking' and 'fun' should go together, right? Right?

And the problem isn't the crappy stuff I was into (or pseudo-into or fakely-into) because, really, carrying around a copy of The Communist Manifesto or Ibsen's Plays isn't going to do you any harm. The problem was the hyper-attention I gave to why I liked or didn't like anything/everything and the way it closed me off to openly liking what I really liked.

Case in point; the movie Clueless came out during my teen years. Alicia Silverstone's Cher cracked me up; I had a crush on Paul Rudd; her father was an adorably lovable tyrant. This was pre-Austen for me, so I had no idea that Clueless was actually based on Emma. I also didn't have a firm grasp on who Amy Heckerling was or why her direction and screen-writing is pure magic liberally speckled with smart pop-culture references and literary gems. Knowing those things would have made it acceptable for me to like the movie back then, but that's beside the point. I should have liked the movie because I should have just trusted my own taste buds, so to speak.

Heather: It's just like Hamlet said, "To thine own self be true."
Cher: Hamlet didn't say that.
Heather: I think I remember Hamlet accurately. Cher: Well, I remember Mel Gibson accurately, and he didn't say that. That Polonius guy did.

"This is ridiculous," hissed my best friend at the time. "I hate Valley Girls and all this materialistic bullshit! Why is it all about how they dress and how rich they are? This is worse than Beverly Hills 90201." She sneered at the screen.

"I know," I whispered back. "But we paid for the movie and all, so we better just sit through it. Plus that, we shouldn't really complain about something we didn't watch all the way through. No one will take our opinions seriously if we haven't even watched the movie." I offered her my popcorn and Reeses Pieces, and she nodded in agreement. My heart swelled. I would never have told her, but I wanted to see the end of that movie with my entire soul.

And I secretly watched every episode of Beverly Hills 90210; I was trying hard to be an intellectual and maybe a Communist and perhaps even a future ex-pat living a life of lofty socialism in Norway, but who could resist swooning over Luke Perry? Who?!

I dare you to not fall in lust. I. Dare. You.

There's a part in the movie where Cher analyzes her feelings for Josh (while admiring various items of clothing in various storefronts) and she realizes she loves him. Fountains backlit with colored lights flow and my heart soared, but my friend snorted with disgust, and I managed a half-faced scowl. We were so caught up in how we thought we were supposed to react, we didn't even know how to react anymore. We lost our guts. And mine stayed lost for a long time.

"What do you want to watch?" my ex-boyfriend asked with lazily solicitous eyes.

That may sound like a question to you, maybe even a direct, easy-to-answer question, but in my neck of the woods during my teenage days, it was much more than a question. It was a test. A coolness test. And the winner would probably wind up just as miserable as the loser.

"I want to watch..." I scanned his shelf a little nervously (yes, even his own collection of movies held booby-traps and possible misunderstood 'likes'; for example he owned the laser disc version of Song of the South (unedited Japanese import only, of course), not because he loved Disney and wanted a rare movie from them, but because he hated Disney and buying it spit in the face of all they tried to hide about their ulterior racist motives). "Good Will Hunting," I said with a roll of my eyes and a one-shouldered shrug. "I like that Damon and Affleck tricked the Academy with their humble, working guy story. I mean, an Oscar? It's like the ultimate joke."

Um. Yeah. I wanted to watch Good Will Hunting because Minnie Driver is so tall and gorgeous and funny and I love, love, love Matt Damon's arrogant character and how he changes in the end, even if it is cliche. And who doesn't laugh hysterically at Ben Affleck's interview socks?

C'mon! Those socks alone carry the movie! How can you not laugh explosively?!

He tossed it back on the shelf. "Nah. I'm in the mood for hardcore DeNiro. You never really got to soak in Taxi Driver did you?"

Jodie Foster is delightful. This just wasn't what I had in mind when I thought about a 'romance.'

Why didn't I just tell him? Why not just say, "Look, jerk, I like what I like! I'm not going to apologize or rationalize, okay? So turn on You've Got Goddamn Mail because I like it, okay? I like it a lot and I want to watch it, no ironic reasons. And go pop me some damn popcorn!"?

When we broke up, I swore I'd surround myself with people who liked what I liked. But it wasn't that easy. I remember vividly watching two of my college roommates arguing over Nickleback.

"Nickleback rocks and you're an idiot if you don't think so," said Jen, pointing out the merits of blue-collar, plain-speech lyrics and straight forward guitar rifts that got stuck in your head in a good way.

"Nickleback sucks, and you're an idiot if you like them," argued Lex, citing the lead singer's clingy/scratchy voice, the uninspired, cliched lyrics, the earwig nature of the song that seemed to be on constant replay.

I was slightly dismayed, because here were two people I loved and respected with two different opinions and they would now lose all respect for one another over a Canadian rock band.

But what happened next surprised me. "This is how you remind me of what I really am..." Jen sang menacingly.

Lex rolled her eyes and muttered some of the words under her breath defeatedly, I joined tonelessly and we made brownies and watched The Real World. And loved each other. Even if we didn't agree on Canadian pop/rock, we all loved our Brownies, loved our MTV addiction, but most of all, we loved each other.

And that's when it dawned on me that when you love someone, you love that they don't need to double check every like and dislike with you and shouldn't, anyway. Because you need to have people in your life who enjoy Broadway shows, watermelon, Hardy Boys novels, baseball, tropical islands and horror movies even if they don't rock your world. It makes you more tolerant. It makes you less snarky. It gives you permission to be true to thine ownself.

Which is why, nearly thirty with a degree in women's studies and a background teaching English literature and language, I did this when my sister and I went to opening night of New Moon:

Loud and proud, friends! Loud and proud!

And yes, that ex made fun of me on Facebook. And a crowd of ravenous friends and family virtually tore him a new one, which caused him to delete our virtual friendship. Which was sweet of them, but totally unnecessary. My squealy fan-girl admiration for a book/movie featuring co-dependent vampire/human love/obsession needs no validation! I like what I like, I like you to like what you like, and if anyone has anything to say about it, I would go to the undeniably cool Maya Angelou:

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."

Look at her! She has it figured out, natch. And I can totally see the two of us cracking up to Clueless and snacking on popcorn. Can't you?

Am I A Phony or A Sexy Clone or A Worker Clone? Things My Students Have Made Me Ponder!

2011-07-28T10:14:00.006-04:00

The first day I taught high school to seniors, I was determined to go beyond teaching...I was going to inspire! I was going to force them to love Beowulf and perhaps use kennings in their everyday vernacular (because, honestly, what 17-year-old doesn't want to say "sea-road" instead of "ocean" and "battle-sweat" instead of "blood"?)! We would debate the terms of good and evil in Macbeth and worship, stunned, at the alter of Huxley's Brave New World. It would be like reliving my own glory days as a heart-thumpingly excited teenager, tromping through the halls of my high school, novel clutched to my chest, gritting my teeth through Algebra and biology to get to English, damn it, English!

I'm loving the love in this picture, but I wish the book's arms were slightly more muscular. I prefer when my books work out. Just saying.

The reality was a tad more depressing. It's not that my students didn't love the books I handed them with reverence; it's that they didn't even read the books. Apparently a lot of people don't read! At all! And it had been going on for awhile. I think this may have been apparent to me in high school when I tore my eyes off of Song of Solomon for long enough to listen to the motley crew that made up my phys ed field hockey team bitch about English class.

A gum-snapping girl with daggers in her eyes and a field hockey stick clutched in her fist headed a discussion that seemed to have every intention of turning into an impromptu book burning.

"Whatever! Who needs this shit? Who even reads about Arthur anymore, and the movie isn't even that good. I watched the whole thing and it was weird and I failed the stupid quiz anyway!"

The same girl then screamed at me when I missed a field hockey pass, because, apparently smacking a little white pool ball around in the grass at eight in the morning with no audience is more important than studying one of the greatest stories ever written?

I told her this in a flourish of triumph, and she hip-checked me in what, I'm sure, was a gross disregard for proper field hockey rules and general sportsmanship. As usual, the teacher was off complimenting students who were similarly passionate about the game instead of defending those getting physically assaulted on the outer reaches of the field.

Curious if I was missing something, I brought the whole conundrum up to my classmate, who seemed far more in-sync with the field hockey bullies than I was, but still had the good sense to love Song of Solomon and even managed to hack through George Elliot's Middlemarch.

"Are we in the minority?" I asked, puzzled.

"There are only eight of us in honors English," she pointed out with raised eyebrows. "Out of a class of three hundred. Where do you think all the other kids in our grade go for English?"

Hmm. Of course it had occurred to me, on some level, that some people may not have a natural prowess in English. I was a junior still wrestling with the elementary rules of Algebra when most of my friends were doing Trig, after all. But the low-level Algebra class was still all just boring, ridiculous math problems. Even the lowest English classes still read books. They even mostly read good books.

I explained this. My friend sighed.

"You're missing the point."

"What point?!" I exclaimed. "Who can read The Good Earth and not weep when O-lan's earrings are stolen? Who? Tell me! You'd have to be a heartless, soulless brute!"

She glanced at the field-hockey-ball-shaped bruise purpling my leg. "Maybe whoever pummeled you with gym equipment to try to make you shut up about the merits of Guinevere's role in Le Morte d'Arthur?"

"But I make a good point, don't I? I mean, you can almost define yourself as a woman depending on if you villify or worship Guinevere. I'm right and you know it. They know it!"

She rolled her eyes. "Yep. You really told them." She flicked my bruise for emphasis.

Field hockey: the most savage game ever played.

My students were unable to whack me with sporting equipment, but I firmly believe that was from lack of opportunity rather than lack of desire. They did lift the veil and showed me exactly what went on in those rooms populated by the 292-odd students who didn't jump on the chance to pursue honors English.

My biggest and most persistent obstacle was that they didn't read. I taught academic track and modified track students. Contemporary and classic novels. Poems. Short stories. Essays. If I assigned one chapter, one act, one page, one paragraph, one haiku, they didn't read. In the beginning, I snarled and growled if I saw Cliff's Notes...a few weeks later, I was thankful for anyone bothering to read them.

For my younger students, we could get away with lots of group reading and reading out loud. The novels were much shorter and easier to digest. But that didn't work with the seniors. There really is no way to read aloud Mary Shelley's Frankenstein unless you have a solid block of three days locked in a Gothic house with a raging storm disabling your internet access and rendering your phones obsolete.

I went through stages of mourning and general unhappiness. I told myself the next novel would change their worlds, their lives, make them readers! I chose novels that rocked me to the core, changed my world view, made me salivate for more.

But instead of me making the students enlightened readers, they made me a deranged monster who contemplated just showing the movie. Or handing out Cliff's Notes.

As book after book was napped on, opened with a groan, or just generally hated, my own reserve of steely determination rusted away. By the time midterms were over and we were into Huxley's Brave New World, I was buckled under with a defeat I never imagined I could feel.

It was even worse than waitressing...and if you ever waitressed, you know that particular pain stabs like hot pokers to the soul.

We laboriously moved our desks squeak by squeak into a giant circle, making ready to talk about a book that almost no one had read, which I knew because of the sheer amount of failed chapter check-in quizzes (and, no, the big F's that made my eyes shimmer with tears back during my school days did not for one second alter the course of non-reading my hardcore students pursued with dogged determination...not even when I switched from PC green pens to evil, old-school red!).

"What is the point Huxley is trying to make about our roles in society?" I asked as pleasantly as I could fake. "Are we all mindlessly pre-programmed clones? Are most of us just taking in whatever gets handed to us and spitting it back out without thinking?"

Forty bleary eyeballs stared at me without thinking.

"Are you talking about, like, cloning?" asked Matt, a grizzly of a kid with a charming smile and a very firm grasp on run-on sentence fragments.

"We could talk about cloning. It's going on right now. There's a lot of debate about it. What do you guys feel about the power to make life in a lab? Is it a powerful tool of science? Something we shouldn't play with? Something in between? Could it become the nightmare of Huxley's world?"

After a full two minutes of silence, a girl trying to hide a large Dunkaccino in her backpack said, "I think clones are, like, gross."

"Good start, Jen. Why are they gross?" I prayed there would be a kernel of...

"Cause, like, they could do it all wrong and make it, like, headless. Or a freaky thing."

Not quite what I prayed for, but, "Good! And what is the problem with creating a headless thing?"

"Um, would you have to bury it? Or, like, should you use it for parts or whatever?"

"Wait, is it alive with no head?" asked a boy in the back who had the startled look of someone waking up from a very confusing dream.

"Yeah, would you have to murder it first?" pondered another lad, making stabbing motions at the imaginary headless cloned monstrosity on his desk. "But is that, like, even murder? Or is it just, you know, humane, like doctor assisted suicide?"

"It's alive if it has a heart! And murder is murder, even if the headless freak would have wanted to die anyway!" cried a girl from the back of the room.

"But if it has no brain, who cares?" muttered the lone voice of reason, slumped in her seat.

"I care! All life is important!" The girl in the back countered.

"Even zombie life? So, if there were zombies, you would, like, want to make laws to protect them?" the lad still pantomiming monster murders asked.

"Ew, no, but this thing has, like, no head, so it has no mouth, so it's not a zombie because it won't like eat anything!" the girl reasoned. Sort of.

"And no other zombie would want it because it has no brains," mused another boy.

This got them all thinking.

"So what Huxley's saying is..." The dreamy-eyed boy in the back was putting his thoughts together, gathering it all up and leading to a final climactic opinion on good old Aldous's brave new horror! "What he's saying is, like, if you're going to clone, you know, test it out first? Maybe? I mean, you might get a few headless ones, but fix whatever makes them headless. You'll get better, the scientists will work it all out. And then you'll have like, cooler clones, like, they'll be hot like what's-her-name in the book who's always sleeping around, and the ones who aren't hot, they'll be happy to work. Cause you need worker clones and hot clones. Even bees and ants know that."

The class nodded in eager agreement.

Dolly, I don't know very much about sheep. Are you one of the sexy sheep clones, or are we using you for brute labor?

For a minute, there was a deep, welling horror in my soul. My hands shook a little. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. I pushed out of my brain all the amazing class discussions and long, soulful debates my own high school class once had about human rights, individuality, government control, ignorance as bliss, the pain and beauty of art. I pushed it all away and let this new zombie/clone reality soak in.

And I was okay!

Zombies and clones were metaphors. Complicated metaphors, really! When my students talked about them, they were absolutely speaking metaphorically, and I would be foolish to have interpreted it any other way. A less eager, loving, open-minded teacher may have thought they were shallow, under-read, over-electronified pseudo idiots, but I knew this wasn't true.

"Thank you, guys." I smiled. They smiled. "That was a really good dis...discussion," I choked out. "I love how you all put such thought into this book. I want you all to take out your novel log right now. Please scratch off Catcher in the Rye for the next unit and put it at the end of your list. Instead, we'll be looking at, um..." I did a quick scan of the works we can choose from and found the one I was hoping for. " 'A Rose for Emily'!"

The students shrugged and made the revisions, and I gnawed on my lip and hoped for forgiveness from the long-term sub coming in to cover my maternity leave.

No one, I repeat, no one can out-crazy Faulkner, so I decided I had the strength to tackle that one. But Cather in the Rye happened to be one of those life-changing books for me, and I just couldn't let it be zombified; the sub would have to take it.

Although Holden as a sexy brain-eating clone?

I'd never thought of it before, but students can really open your mind to new things!

All the sexiest clones are wearing them!

Further Perils of Marrying a Writer: Ponyboy Curtis and Mary Lennox DO Make Romantic Sense! As Do Magneto and Professor X...

2011-06-09T11:14:00.005-04:00

I've been a lover of romance since I was way too young to really get it. My mom left Jean M. Auel's Valley of the Horses out and about when I was twelve. I was nerdily excited to tackle a book the size of a cinderblock with typeset so tiny you needed magnifying glasses to read it!

But I quickly realized that Valley of the Horses was going to do far more than move my Book It Word Balloon around the halls of Frankford Twp School four times and earn me more free personal pan pizzas than I could consume in a month of cheese and oil feasting.

Valley of the Horses unleashed my young romantic soul. Oh Ayla! Oh Jondalar! The things you taught me in the blushing Eden of prehistoria!

Oh Ayla! How I envied life in your valley!

My young eyes were opened to this incredible world of romance. I was about to cannonball into the pool of luuurrrve and I was ready, so ready! It wasn't just books...the movies that had once made me wriggle uncomfortably and sigh with boredom were suddenly incredibly interesting reflections of my own insatiable romantic interest. Songs on the radio that I had hummed along to without any particular attention now spoke to my soul! Love was everywhere!

Since that tender age, I've seen myself and my love interest du jour in a thousand different fictional incarnations. My first kissing buddy/passionate penpal, Aaron (the sweet boy from Tennessee I met at camp and fell head over heels in love with in middle school), will be forever linked in my mind with Baz Luhrman's exceptional ugly-duckling ballroom dancing extravaganza Strictly Ballroom.

Scott and Fran, you made me want to ballroom dance my heart out! Love to you!

It's worth noting that the story of a homely girl who challenges the smooth-operator bad boy of Australian ballroom dance and finds her own beauty and talent through unconventional dance moves had next to nothing to do with the actuality of my young romance, which focused more on seven page love letters and illicit 2-hour phone calls to Tennessee.

But I watched that movie with new eyes. I could feel the love, finally! I could understand why the paso doble needed to be danced from the heart, not through the feet (in theory, anyway)!

And when Aaron elected to not return for a second year at camp and I had to actually row canoes and attempt to learn Danish instead of kissing him like crazy in the woods, I knew heartbreak. Alas, my wanton need for actual kisses overcame the satisfaction of the x's at the bottom of our epic letters, and I dumped Aaron by sending his agonizingly earnest plea for my eternal devotion back to him with a note that said, "I just can't!"

Sophomore year of high school, Baz Luhrman popped back up, this time with Romeo + Juliet. I sat with my friend Kim in Newton Theater and felt my heart flip around in my chest when Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes eyed each other through the fish tank while Des'ree sang Kissing You. I wanted that! I barely knew what that could be, but I wanted it!

What girl who was a teenager in the mid 90's didn't dream of meeting her Romeo through the glass of a wildly lavish aquarium that separated the men's and women's bathrooms in a palatial mansion?

When I met my serious high school boyfriend, Tommy, that was on fire in my young limbs, and every single romance I saw was our movie. Those were showy art-house years in my life, and Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66, the saga of a guy (Gallo) who kidnaps a girl (a very curvaceous Christina Ricci) and forces her to pretend to be his wife all while dealing with his own obnoxiously adorable emotional problems and sprinkled with cookies, Rosanna Arquette, photo booths, tap dancing, bowling, and the embarrassment of a man who cannot drive stick became our officially selected film.

I should have seen the arrogantly scrawled graffiti writing on the barely crumbling wall in the pretentiously falling-down-but-not-too-dangerous neighborhood.

That relationship was as much work as sitting through Buffalo 66 while keeping an ironically raised eyebrow and slightly amused smug grin wound up being. The fire that burned so brightly and allowed me to cry unashamedly through two movie theater viewings of Titanic, had cooled to a miserably guarded existential farce. We parted ways with relief, bubbling animosity and a wild run towards whatever the next step might be.

Yup. Her face says it all. Love can wear you the hell out!

I didn't have the starry eyed passion of my Strictly Ballroom days, but I wanted to run far, far away from the calculated nonchalance of Buffalo 66.

That's when I met Frank. And fell in love in a whole new way. And wanted a defining movie.

But there really wasn't one.

There were movies we both loved that were romantic. Like Garden State. Or Clueless. Or Sixteen Candles.

But nothing fit.

Maybe if Ponyboy Curtis grew up to be a really well-adjusted, happy guy and Cathy Carlson wasn't a total wet blanket and they got married and no one died in a fire, The Outsiders/That Was Then, This Is Now could be our defining cultural movie/book.

Or if ornery, heart-of-gold Mary Lennox grew up and married sweet natured, romantic Dickon, The Secret Garden might work.

It would be awesome if Ponyboy and Mary Lennox could meet up in some twisted new story. They're a match made in heaven, as far as I'm concerned.

Then we went to see the recently released X Men: First Class. There is a whole barrage of fangeek nerdiness and socio-political controversy around this movie, but I want to focus on the romance. Or bromance. Because, with a giant container of popcorn in my lap and a box of Junior Mints in my hand, I came to a startling realization.

I am Professor X and Frank is Magneto.

Here we are as Legos!

I shared my revelation with Frank on the drive home from the theater.

"I think that movie defines us," I announced.

"Yeah, it was pretty good," Frank said with endearing innocence. "Thanks for going to see it. I know it was technically your pick this week, but you said that reading the book first always ruins movies for you, right? So Water for Elephants would probably have sucked for you anyway."

"No, Frank, listen. I think I'm Professor X and you're Magneto."

I could see his entire body sigh as he prepared to go to 'analyzing-a-perfectly-good-movie-until-it-became-a-crazy-symbol-for-life' town.

"You're a bald telepathic mutant in a wheel chair and I'm a deranged Holocaust survivor who can bend metal with my mind?"

"NO! You're missing the point!"

"That is the point, hon. It's a movie about mutants."

"No it isn't." I forge on even though Frank's eyes are filling with tears as he silently begs for mercy. Can't I just watch an action movie in peace? Why is my wife a lunatic? I can feel the vibes of tortured resignation humming off of him. "Professor X sees the good in people. He's perpetually happy, always trying to make things better, always trying to get regular humans and mutants to tolerate each other."

"Probably pretty easy when you don't have to watch your family get killed," Frank grumbles.

"See! You're so gloomy! Like Magneto! That's why we're so good for each other."

"Um Elizabeth?"

"Mmm?"

"You've seen the rest of the movies with me. You know that Magneto and Professor X are enemies, right? They fight each other all the time? They never agree?"

"Well, that's just because Magneto needs to listen to Professor X. But Professor X is good at ignoring him when he doesn't, so it's all good."

"Except when Magneto's totally right. I mean, missiles are flying at Professor X's head from human warships, but he still wants to sing Kumbaya?! Professor X needs to stop being such a know-it-all and listen to Magneto, who clearly knows better than to get himself killed!"

"Geez, calm down, Magneto! It all worked out!"

"Except that you got a bullet in your spine because of me!"

"Chill. I forgive you."

Frank shakes his head.

"What?" I ask.

"We will totally go see a romantic period piece movie together if you will stop ruining the X Men for me, Professor."

So maybe we still need to do some searching for our perfect fictional romantic counterpart.

Or maybe good relationships have a ton in common with dozens of movies and books and songs, and, then again, aren't exactly like any of them.

Or maybe I can write a screenplay using Mary Lennox and Ponyboy, but making them wormhole-travelling mutants! And when the rights for a movie get picked up, Frank and I can hold hands and sigh while we watch our fictionalized symbolic love play out.

A girl can dream.

The Mystery of the Poorly Executed Sketch and Why Writers Shouldn't Facebook Stalk

2011-05-24T09:52:00.001-04:00

I became friends on Facebook with a person from my husband's past. This is a person Frank would blithely live his entire life without ever contacting again, not from malice, but because he just doesn't have a body filled with inquisitive bones the way I do, and he abides by that snore-worthy maxim, "Leave well enough alone." I asked said person to be my FB friend because I was curious to see pictures and figured no harm could come of it. My husband rolled his eyes.

I can't help myself! I must look!

My request was accepted and friendship has been exactly what the vast majority of FB friendships are; periodic covert stalking and minimal communication. Frank is fairly immune to the excitement of peeking into a long lost's life, and doesn't get the same thrill from seeing children/significant others/homes/vacations of people from his history that I do.

Maybe it's because I'm a writer? Maybe I love the possible story? The inherent character clues that show up based on clothing, stance, subject, focus, caption in a posted photo? Or maybe I'm just a tad obsessive and nosy?

All was going swimmingly in the cool world of minimally invested cyber acquaintancehood. The particular person was even so good as to begin a fairly steady stream of photo updates. Huzzah! Nothing gives an inexplicably pleasant high like looking through the private photos of someone you're semi-interested in from a distance.

Sadly it's never anything this hysterically amazing, but I never give up hope!

It was late at night, my stomach was aching in an attempt to digest too much Pizza Hut from an ill-advised gorge, and I flipped through the photos. Most were half-blurry, strangely captioned minor jewels, but one struck me. It was a sketch of this long-lost friend of Frank's, done with low to moderate artistic accuracy.

That in and of itself isn't particularly strange. People sketch all the time. Sketches get posted. Postings get looked at. What was strange was that Frank had gone through a graphic design program as a teenager, and most of his portfolio wound up with this person from his past and, we were sure, eventually found its way to a trash bin. This person hadn't had contact with Frank in over a decade.

But the sketch was reminiscent of Frank's untrained early work! Could this be a part of the missing portfolio?

This is not the actual sketch! This is just an example of the kind of anatomically wonky, serious subject matter type sketches that Frank was fond of in his teenage years. No comment on the present!

Frank doesn't have many things from his earlier years, because his family wasn't big on saving things. But now that we have a kid, he realizes the value of passing this stuff on. Especially when his air-brushed painting of Simba became her 'favorite thing in the whole world' and is routinely pointed out to guests visiting our home and adored by our girl.

So on a higher moral level, it was exciting to think about getting this sketch and other possible sketches back. But there was also a shallower, not so happy level to all of it. Somewhere deep down, I was a smidge sad that this former friend had been the subject of a sketch when I had never, ever in the ten years we've been hanging around together, been. Possibly, maybe, I was a little unreasonably jealous.

I glanced over at Frank, who slept like a blissful angel. He would be really mad if I woke him up at 2:30 AM to ask about this sketch on Facebook. I would not wake him.

But if he happened to wake up on his own, I could casually bring the question up.

I sighed. Loudly.

I squirmed. And took the covers off of him when I did.

Just when I was running out of 'not seemingly intentional ways to wake my husband', Pizza Hut decided to wreak further intestinal havoc, and I had to make a mad dash. When I crept out of the bathroom, Frank sat up on one elbow.

"Hey, you feeling okay?" he asked blearily.

"Sooo much better now," I assured him. I climbed into bed and rubbed his head. He snuggled down, attempting to go back to sleep. "Um, Frank?"

"Mmmppphhh?"

"So remember that friend I added on Facebook? And how there were some new pictures? And you didn't want to look? Well, I looked and there was this sketch and it totally looked like you could have done it, do you want to see?"

There was nothing for a few minutes, and I assumed Frank had fallen back to sleep. Then I heard the long, labored sigh of a man who loves to leave well enough alone. "Honey? Could we just look at this in the morning? Please?"

The four hours until morning might as well have been four centuries. The mystery was killing me slowly (now that the Pizza Hut had been vanquished). Did this unrelated, uncared for person possess such intimate objects from Frank's earlier life? If I had objects like that from someone who I once cared for, would I keep them or give them back? What made one person think claim could be laid to another person's art and talent so callously? A minor headache formed. I sighed and tossed and turned without intending to wake Frank, and this time, he woke up twice to beg me to just go to sleep!

I'm usually an awesome sleeper...but this riddle was keeping me scarily awake!

Morning dawned and I popped up like a daisy. Frank looked much, much less enthused. I opened the laptop and loaded the pictures. Frank looked over my shoulder and laughed.

"No way. Not mine. I bet you it's Holigee Bamboligee's*, actually."

I was dumbstruck. Of course a tiny part of me thought that sketch might not be Frank's. But I hadn't expected the entire narrative I had painfully concocted in the middle of my long sleepless night to end with such intense anti-climax.

"Really? Can't you look again? Closer."

He leaned in, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and shook his head. When he came back from rinsing he looked down his nose and Explained Something to me. "Elizabeth, my sketches are like fingerprints, okay? Every artist's are. So, I can tell my own, no problem."

"That analogy makes no sense," I countered. "I mean, say we both put our finger prints on pieces of paper and mixed them up. You're honestly telling me you'd know which ones were yours?"

"Yeah. My fingers are bigger."

"That defeats the point!"

"The point is that I know my own sketch, and that's not it!"

"So you didn't sketch someone else?"

"Ah-ha! I knew it! What did I tell you about leaving well enough alone? What did I tell you? You were up all night over that?" He sat next to me and laughed while I scowled. "Look, I never even sketched people, okay? It was graphic design. I did like promotional posters and cartoon stuff. Okay?"

"Fine. But if you had sketched people, you promise you would have also sketched me at some point?"

Frank offered up some kind of silent prayer. "You drive me insane. Yes. I would have sketched you for hours a day."

"Ugh, that sounds kind of awful." I stretched and got out of bed. "Well, I'm glad we solved that."

"It's a huge relief," Frank deadpanned, kissed me, then ran out the door and escaped to work as fast as he could.

The next day, his old friend posted a few more pictures. I clicked right by. I checked on my Scrabble games, perused my cousin's graduation pictures, and commented on some posts.

Yeah, but this is Facebook world, so that took about five seconds.

So I clicked and looked, and there is nothing else to the story. I promise! Nothing else. Except one of the pictures had this really cryptic comment from someone I think Frank used to know. Maybe I should leave well enough alone...or maybe we can solve another mystery together!

He calls it torture, but I think it's more like ScoobyDoo-esque bonding!

Only the crew needs to be around a laptop. I'm Velma. Frank is probably Scooby. Or Velma's long-suffering, off-screen love interest.

*Some names have been altered to protect the privacy of those who may not want to be snared in this web of insanity.

How Mr. Flynn's Dad Made Me Feel Good About My Stolen Wallet

2011-05-02T10:35:00.003-04:00

I like to think I'm a fairly optimistic person. But maybe I'm just insane.

Why aren't you happy?! Be happy!! I'm happy!! You're going to like me and be happy with me!!

When we went on a trip to north Georgia for a writer's conference and I couldn't find my wallet after a pit-stop at a Cracker Barrel for the most delicious apple pancakes except for my great-grandma's, I figured I left it at the hotel. When they called to tell me it wasn't there, I figured someone would find it and good Samaritan it back to me. When my missing bank card and maxed out credit cards showed multiple attempts to charge gas at stations around the Cracker Barrel we had visited, I accepted the fact that someone stole my wallet.

How could something as good as hot pancakes attract someone as bad as a wallet thief?

Who steals a wallet and goes on a gas binge? I would hope that if I ever became a petty thief, I'd be a tad more creative.

This would be my completely dorky splurge! You know, if I was a wallet thief.

But I digress. It took a long time to sort out the missing wallet debacle. I had to call all the relevant card companies and get safety blocks put on my credit. I had to file a complaint with the police so my bank would back the (laughably small) amount of money that had been stolen from my account. I had to go to the bank and get a new ATM card, set up new account passwords and numbers and codes that I blithely forgot the moment I left the bank.

So how did I feel about this entire escapade?

Pretty cheerful!

Am I a psycho?

I guess I should explain why I had such happiness after my specific wallet theft. I had this fantastic teacher in grammar school named Mr. Flynn. He was this quiet, monotone man who made us memorize and recite our prepositions in two minutes or less, whipped us through old-school sentence diagramming that took up the entire chalkboard, and made us complete compositions on yellow paper that we neatly copied to white paper and read in front of the class in a process certain to cramp hands and produce cornea-dislodging amounts of eye-rolling. I didn't appreciate his genius in seventh and eighth grade, and even thought he was boring and antiquated.

Do kids even do this anymore? Or is it a lost art, the last vestiges of which are hidden in our 8th grade comp notebooks?

But he had a secret side passion; Mr. Flynn was a writer! And he told a damn good story!

I bought his book (Maggie's Heart) and kind of fell in love with Mr. Flynn. He had stories about his wife (Mrs. Flynn was our awesomely nice sometimes substitute at Frankford School) and his Valentine time duel to win her love, how he taught his kid the power of being sweet to librarians and got him a job at the library with a tie and a bunch of wildflowers, and how he had to win Mrs. Flynn back into the garden and away from I Love Lucy reruns with some roses and a plan.

Dear Mr. Flynn, I totally underestimated you and your interesting, amazing life. Don't worry. I got my comeuppance when I taught middle school language arts many years after I had been your student. You are a saint. And a damn good writer!

But the story that spoke to the perpetual optimist whistling on my shoulder was one about his dad. Mr. Flynn's dad was a smooth operator. In one story, he goes into a diner and sits down to grab a bite at a particular pretty waitress's station. He asks her if she'd like to see a picture of his wife, and she says she would. And this Casanova whips out a picture of her that he'd taken earlier that week.

Which could have gone badly for him, but he was a sweetie, so she agreed on a date, then marriage, and then they had Mr. Flynn. Mr. Flynn's dad was so oogly in love, he showed this picture to every deli counter worker, grocery clerk, bank teller and window washer in town. He kept the picture in his wallet all the time.

Even after his wife died.

One day he got mugged, the wallet got stolen, and Mr. Flynn's dad was going nuts, not because of the money, but because of that incredible picture! That first picture of his wife that he used as his sweetie pie pickup play was gone for good!

Except his years of gaga picture showing paid off. Someone found his wallet with no information in it. It was entirely empty...except for this picture of a cutie girl waitressing.

One of those random washing machine repair men or taxi drivers (I think it was actually a florist) who had smiled and nodded while Mr. Flynn's dad showed this picture of his wife had found the wallet and picture and remembered, and since Mr. Flynn's dad had been pretty stalwart in his campaign to share the story of his love and enough people had heard it, someone knew someone who knew someone who got the picture back to him!

Amazing, right?!

Amazing! Sometimes life really IS butterflies and kisses!

So that's the story I run through my head when I'm bummed and feel like no good will come from this life and most people are bile spewing leeches (I know, those metaphors are both gross and grossly mixed). And that's why I didn't care about my wallet!

I know pictures are digital now and all that, but I did have my wedding earrings in there. I had packed them in my wallet because I love them and didn't want to lose them. But the night before we left the hotel (and stopped to chow down on apple pancakes), I had three requests from agents for books. It was a banner night, and Frank and Amelia were desperate to get me some Thai food to celebrate.

Since we were all having so much fun and dressing so nice, I took the earrings out of my wallet so I could pretty myself up and celebrate my good luck! And I took my license so I could have some cold Thai beer, on the off chance I actually got carded.

Thank you delicious food and beer for tempting me to wear my earrings!

It might be coincidence, but I like to think I took the earrings out because there's good energy in the world. Even though something monetarily important was about to get snagged, my sentimentally valuable stuff was swinging safely in my ears.

That thought kept me pretty jolly through all the phone calls and faxes, and even through the rejections the three agents ultimately sent for my books. And that dopey happiness still oozes out of my life in sickeningly sweet examples.

Like my broken dorkstick. I could be sad that it cost over $200 to get the files back and that the man who I called when I needed to check on its progress chuckled and said, "Reinhardt? Woo! Oh yeah, I remember this one! It's gonna take a little longer than we originally thought!"

But I'm not. Because just before I broke the dorkstick, I was feeling the bile leeches closing in. But I fought them back, entered a contest I was sure I wouldn't win, and didn't, but did get attention from agents who are now taking a look at the book with interest. Having the manuscript back so I could send it in one polished piece was worth way more than $200!

And if a random lost picture of a pretty waitress can make it back into the hands of the guy who loved her so much he sang their story from the rooftops, I'm positive there's enough good mojo out there for all of us.

How Love (Of Grammar) Conquers All: Even Celebrity Marriage Slide-Show Specials

2011-04-26T14:50:00.001-04:00

When I'm not slaving over the keyboard for hours at a time spilling thousands of brilliant words, I like to take a little omg!yahoo break.

If you're not in the know, omg!yahoo is a celeb website where you can find out up-to-the-minute details about LiLo's jail time and her pissed-offedness about it, or spy a pic of Kate Hudson's preggo belly or look at a picture slide show of heinous celeb outfit atrocities online, for free, anytime!

How could I resist clicking? And why is this so interesting? How should I know? I'm not an anthropologist...I just like preggo bellies!

Before I discovered omg!yahoo, I used to stand in the grocery line and flip through the celeb magazines that go for around $5 each. I am too cheap to splurge on a magazine I can read cover to cover in one bathroom session, especially when $5 is almost an entire novel, price-wise.

But when I see the glossy, airbrushed covers, I get immediately sucked in. When a magazine asks me, "Do you want to know the secret to these happy Hollywood marriages?", the answer is always a resounding "YES!".

My shame about reading those magazines used to exist only through my husband's irritated chiding. When we were young and childless, he smiled indulgently while I flipped through the pages and squealed over Oscar dress spreads and They're Just Like Us! (only very, very rich and egotistical!) pictures. But once our daughter joined the picture, he frowned on my indulgence.

I don't begrudge him his frowns.

"Um, Elizabeth? The baby just put seven packs of Mentos on the belt. Can you grab them before...never mind, they're already rung up. Nice."

I looked up from two pages of 'secret inside information' about Beyonce's possible pregnancy that somehow managed to say absolutely nothing for 2,000 words.

"What did you say?" I blinked dreamily like someone waking from a sweet, indulgent dream where an anonymous insider provides extremely vague details about the potential pregnancy of a star I will never, ever meet. I suddenly see the enormous pile of mint candies, packaged in a bag all its own. "Oh! Are you making some kind of weird mint dessert? What's with all the Mentos?"

"Just buy the magazine and help me bag the groceries," Frank said through gritted teeth. "Just buy it!"

"What? No! What a waste of money!" I throw the $5 magazine back on the rack and cheerfully move the $10 bag packed with Mentos to the cart, ready to head home.

Alas, there was no delicious minty dessert. I just had Mentos pouring out of my purses, pockets, and bags for weeks.

Back in those days, I worked full time outside of my home, so a few minutes of diving into the pseudo-reality of the stars was like smoking a cigarette, drinking a Starbucks or getting my nails done; total relaxing pleasure. And since I don't smoke, drink coffee or have the ability to keep polish on my nails without unsightly chips, the occasional magazine flip seemed innocent enough.

Then I switched to working at home. I care for children, and it's a weird paradox; I have all the time in the world, and none at all. The kids play/sleep/eat in peaceful spurts that might range from a few minutes to a solid hour or two. But it's never certain just how long the reprieve will last, and the pain of emptying yet another potty has to be offset by something nice. During those flashes of down-time, I like to lay low to discourage the immediate bout of tattle-taling that oozes forth when the little buggers make eye contact. But filling those little spaces of time productively isn't easy.

If I try to read a chapter in a book, I get interrupted to wipe a bum or break up an argument or redistribute a stolen snack and my pace flies out the window. If I play a little online Scrabble, I invariably press the big green arrow before I've totally committed to the 6-point word I've half-heartedly created so I can stop someone from climbing the fence and breaking his/her leg, thus missing out on the suddenly clear spot where my 'Q' could have earned me a cool 78 points.

Damn my desire to utilize the 'Q', the 'B', two triple letter spaces and the double word score...it's just awful, embarrassing greed!

Omg!yahoo beckons me with lightening fast articles and prickles of instant gratification. At first it was all fun and no harm.

The only problem is that it starts to feel uncannily like eating a bag of Funyuns for lunch. You just keep pressing the fake onion crunch into your mouth, and before you know it, your stomach is gurgling, your breath smells like something between a corpse and a skunk in heat, and sweat runs down your face in greasy, onion tainted droplets.

So delicious, but so very, very evil.

Frank checked the computer history to see where that exciting article on lugnuts he'd Googled the night before could have gotten to. His jaw dropped.

"OMG!" he cried.

I looked up, startled. Frank isn't really big on text-slang. I was shocked he even knew the term 'omg.'

"What's wrong?" I asked, scooting over to check the screen.

"OMG!" he repeated.

"You said that. Are you watching that claymation zombie egg-timer video I sent to your email? Crazy, right!"

But Frank wasn't looking at the grotesque blood-and-guts decadence of the undead done totally in clay. He was looking at the history page on the computer, where omg!yahoo appeared with startling frequency.

"Wow. This site, omg!yahoo. You go on this site a lot. A lot." He ran his eyes down the page and I felt a hot wave of indignation wash over me.

"For your information, I flip through super fast! Like, really fast! Sometimes I don't even stay for longer than one second, okay? That is seriously misleading." I crossed my arms over my chest and pursed my lips.

"It's okay." He smiled wide. "Just, you keep telling me how you need more time to write..."

"Oh, and I'm supposed to spit out my magnum opus in the ten seconds between taking a splinter out of someone's butt-cheek and blowing more boogers out of someone's nose! When I type like that it makes no sense! I have to go back and edit the whole damn thing!"

"Alright, alright," he grinned. "But did you learn something from this scathing article on Kim Kardashian's workout secrets? Because as far as I knew, you don't like the Kardashians, working out or keeping secrets. Am I wrong?"

I pouted on my side of the bed, and threw little barbs his way about watching Grownups at work on lunch and filling the Netflix queue with mindless anime...who was he to judge me?

Really, Frank? You're going to make fun of the things I like?

And in the end it wasn't Frank who convinced me to stall my addiction. It wasn't even a commitment to better work ethic or a decision to stop and smell the actual, real-life roses. What gave me the resolve to stay away was the nasty, hateful comment section on omg!yahoo.

And the even-more-deplorable grammar.

And the fear that it might be catchy.

It's hard to explain without going into the depths of the omg!yahoo annals and pulling out some gems.

Here's an example of a defense of Paris Hilton:

ya all JEALOUS of Paris. if god give me a 'wanna b who' wish b4 i dye. I wanna b 'Paris' the girl has MONEY n POWER what else would anyone ask 4??????????

This one laments the lack of enticement the show Glee offers. I lament the substitution of actual punctuation with the word 'period.'

i just cant get into this show, its a freakin musical .....btw leah michelle is very annoying period

And in response to the question of whether or not AnnaLynn McCord and Kellan Lutz are back together:

Who @#$% cared!!!! S.T.D's

Why? Why do you hate apostrophes so much, you refuse to learn how to use them properly? Why use the past tense? Why so many exclamation points at the end of a question and no punctuation at the end of a fragment?

I just can't be part of this hateful, grammatically careless community! I cannot.

So I have returned my attention to online Scrabble, and walk the perimeter of my yard like a crazed warden with my Kindle in one hand, the other ready to wipe a nose or catch a ball before it sails over the fence.

No matter how tempting it is to go back to those articles and read all those terrifying comments, I won't intermingle with disrespectful English-haters. I sometimes wonder that I already did unintentional damage to my brain and vocabulary. What if it's degenerative? What if I start mis-punctuating or forget there's a shift key?

If reading great works makes you smarter, does reading atrocious crap make your brain cells melt?

Methinks it may!

The next time Frank and I shop, he sighs as I grab a magazine and flip through with ravenous interest. I keep Amelia trapped in the cart, plying her with Mentos that I dig from the bowels of my purse and pick the lint off of.

"Still not helping," Frank snarls as the bagger puts the bananas on top of the bread and the magnetic strip on his card refuses to read after the ninth swipe.

I put the magazine down and help him, but in my head, I'm all:

What a Fu- OOOL!!! I'M NOT A LOOSER! We are SICK SICK SICK TO HEAR ABOUT THE KARDASHIAN *

* Yes, these are actual comments from omg!yahoo, and you should be warned that just reading them might be detrimental to your health.

I Broke My Dork-stick

2011-04-20T09:05:00.001-04:00

Disclaimer: If, after reading this story, any one of you comments with a "You should have backed your files up!" I will never, ever love you again. Ever.

On Friday life was beyond under control. The sun was shining, Frank and I were going on a date that night and had sociable plans for Saturday. I had a nice book review that I planned to write and blog. And I took a cursory look at some pictures of me and my siblings at my brother's wedding and decided that it looked like I ate all the pies. And who better to whip a pie lover into shape than Jillian Michaels?

She scares the pie right out of me!

I put her workout DVD in the DVD player, and it took me through the first round of stretches then stopped mid-jumping jack. My momentum was broken, I was left panting like a fool, looking for another way to complete this workout so I could look like I only ate most of the pies instead of all of them. Stuffing back the little voice in my head that told me to think long and hard before doing what I did next, I inserted the DVD into my laptop, balanced it precariously on the coffee table, and commenced sweaty jumping/stretching/sit-upping. (Is this starting to sound like the part in a horror movie where the girl decides to check out the noise she heard in the basement by herself in the dark? Cue knife-wielding maniac!)

That's coming up!

I finished the 25 minutes of excruciating pain, cursing Jillian and her peppy assistants the entire time, and NOTHING BAD HAPPENED!

Just as I was smugly congratulating myself on a job well done and considering eating a piece of pie to make up for all the calories I burned, I got up and tripped on the laptop cord.

The laptop reeled off of the table, inches from sure doom, but I caught it! Like a coordinated pro-ball player, I caught it before it shattered on the floor! And I was so happy and relieved, I planned on eating two pieces of pie!

Then I realized I broke my dork-stick. Most of you probably know this device as a 'jump-drive' or 'flash-drive', but dork-stick is Frank's term for the place that stores all of my dork files. All of them. Every one. Every single one. And sometimes I back it up. The last time I did that was probably December. But I meant to do it again soon!

The little quarter inch of metal covered in red rubber was jammed in the USB port and bent into an 'L' shape, twisted and mangled like a corpse with a broken neck.

This is not my actual dork-stick or hand or laptop. This is another silly girl working off some pie with a DVD in her laptop and her own dork-stick hanging precariously out the side!

Several completed novels, works in progress, and edited versions of novels were saved there and there alone. Hundreds of thousands of words are on that stick and nowhere else.

NOWHERE ELSE.

You might ask, "Liz, why didn't you just save your Word files on the laptop? Don't you know Word files hardly take up any memory? Why didn't you do this?"

Well.

Frank and I are fairly laid-back people. He hates when I put my feet on the dashboard of his truck. I wish he'd quit using way more than a quarter-sized dollop of my good conditioner. But other than little squabbles, we share, we love each other, what's his is mine and vice versa.

Except for laptops.

Once I had one and he didn't. I'm embarrassed to admit how many arguments that caused. So I bought him his own and peace reigned! For two months, until my clumsiness led to me breaking my laptop and we were back to square one. Only this was Frank's laptop. With his dorky truck screen saver. And his little quirks that I felt obligated to pay attention to.

Like his insistence that memory was being used up way too fast and was clogging up the works. He complained so much, I took my own moronic stance. I refused to save on the computer, and only saved on the dork-stick.

Which led to a secondary fight; I liked to leave the dork-stick in and save at random intervals. This was also my way of showing that I could do more work at any moment, and I got a kick out of the fact that it made his eyebrow twitch with irritation. He told me a million times to take it out and warned that someday something bad would happen!

I held the little wreck of my dork stick in my hand and did the only reasonable thing I could think to do; I attempted to jam it back into the port.

No luck.

I Googled my problem and found that I am not alone. Many, many people break their dork sticks in an astoundingly similar fashion every day! There are whole companies whose only purpose in life is fixing these mangled file holders for the idiots who never bothered to back up!

And it only costs about $200!

I picked up my cell with shaky hands and dialed Frank's number. "If you say 'I told you so' I'll beat the crap out of you!" I bellowed defensively the second he answered.

There was silence on the line.

"Um, did I tell you so about something?" he asked cautiously.

"The dork-stick!" I wailed.

"Did it get stuck in the USB port?" he asked.

"No! Well, kind of! Oh, shit! Is the port broken too?!"

"Too?" Frank's voice was angelically calm.

"Frank, I broke my dork-stick," I confessed.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Did you try to stick it back in the port and open it?"

"I tried! It's dead! All that work is gone!" I moaned, holding the little twisted piece of metal in my hand and giving it forlorn looks.

"Don't panic yet," he said in this calm, reasonable voice that he only busts out when I'm in full panic. Usually he's the panic-er, but when I get crazy, it unleashes this amazing calm in him. "I bet we can fix it."

"There is this site that says they can," I tell him. "For some money."

"How much is it?"

"Like two hundred dollars. Sometimes! It could be less! If the files are small. And they're really small, because they're just word documents!"

"So we'll send it."

"That's a lot of money for us."

"That's a lot of work for you. Isn't all that work worth two hundred dollars to you?"

And I thought about all the hours I snuck way after Frank fell asleep or before my sister knocked on the door to drop my nephew off; the minutes when the kids were all miraculously playing/sleeping/watching a movie/not causing one another bodily harm, and I could get lost in what I was writing. The rewrites, the drafts, the touch-ups, all done a snippet at a time.

"It is. It really is." I felt a huge weight lift off of my shoulders. "You're a pretty cool husband."

"I could use a back-rub," he fished.

"Done. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

An angel. A total angel.

Hahaha! This is what comes up if you Google "sexy angel man." Frank looks nothing like this, but now that I've seen this picture, I'm afraid it might be my go-to image when he does something nice. Why do I torture myself with Google?

That night my dork-stick was sweetly bandaged up and in a bubble-wrapped envelope and my husband was lying belly-down on the bed, ready for a back rub.

"That was cool of you, Frank. I was freaking out today, and I know we don't have all this extra money to throw around..."

"Yeah, about that. I, uh, remember those truck doors that we really, really needed because the doors on my truck right now are rusting and that's not safe?"

"Not safe how? There's hardly any rust! It's not like bald tires or bad brakes, right?"

"So, anyway, I found them both for $200 and they'd usually be more like $800. $800 if you're lucky! Really, probably more like $1000, so this was a really, really good deal."

Slow, deep breath. "So you were nice about my $200 screw-up because you're trying to butter me up so I'll let you spend $200 on doors we don't need?"

"But it's not like they would be there forever. And I just got all that overtime in my last check. I figured I better get them right away when I saw them at that low a price..." Frank shifted uncomfortably on the bed.

"YOU ALREADY BOUGHT THEM?!"

He looked over his shoulder, his face all innocence. "But I saved us something like $800! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

I marched into the bathroom, found the bottle of blue cooling gel that I use when I get a bad sunburn, uncapped it, straddled Frank, held it shoulder high, and squeezed a huge puddle onto his back, pushing all of my weight onto him while he squirmed and screamed.

"AHHH! IT'S FREEZING! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!"

Because sometimes love is a cold, cold thing.

I put my hands in the icy muck and rubbed it in while he wept. "Because you wanted a back-rub. Here it is."

After a minute, the gel stopped giving him frostbite and he relaxed. "Sorry. I was going to tell you about the doors on the way home."

"It's okay," I sighed. "I would have been cool with it. You shouldn't have bought them without telling me."

"You're right. Though I did save us almost..."

"Frank, I'm not an idiot. Stop telling me that."

"Alright. I'm glad we can probably save your books."

"Me too," I said, softening a little again.

"But, Elizabeth?"

"Yeah?"

"I did tell you not to leave your dork-stick plugged in."

This is what happens to angelic husbands who utter "I told you so."

What's In A Name? That Which We Call A Sixth-Grader By Any Other Name Would Be As Obnoxious

2011-04-14T09:07:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I daydream about what it would be like to be writer famous.

Writer famous is the absolute best kind of famous you can be. If you are a writer, no one in actual media gives a real crap about you, even if you did write a book about two daddy penguins raising a baby. They might care about the content of your book (which is awesome!!), but they often only know your name, and unless you're uber-famous, they usually can't even attach a picture to it.

I went to a big, fancy writers' conference last July and I met one of my idols, Jayne Ann Krentz (also Amanda Quick, also Jayne Castle). The funny thing is I didn't realize I met her until she got up and started telling hilarious, blunt, informative stories about writing and referenced her awesome, crazy career, and I realized that she was the woman on the back of all those witty, sharp romances I'd read...just the head-shot on the books was a decade old, posed and kinda glam. Not that the woman in the flesh wasn't a crazy bombshell; she was just a real person, not a glossy photo on the back of a glossy book jacket.

I like her red leather, I like her saucy arm-cross, and I like her willingness to curse and swagger at the biggest gathering of romance writers in the nation! Go Jayne Ann Krentz/Jayne Castle/Amanda Quick!

Okay, this is Jayne Ann Krentz as a real person in the present; still awesome, still sassy and wonderful, but without the red leather and the devil-may-care crossed arms, I didn't put two and two together. (By the way, I also suck at math.)

My point is, here I am, a fan of Ms. Krentz-Castle-Quick, looking right at her at a conference where she is supposed to be, and she has bright red hair and I've seen her face a thousand times, but I don't see her! That is the beauty of being a writer; you can have some selective celebrity. You're a goddess at a writers' conference, but you can still run out for bagels in your sweats and no one is plastering your image all over the land!

This feels like a cheap shot, but Brittney really is a mess in sweats...or in sequins or in cowgirl boots.

But I don't have to wait to be a big name writer to have my rabid fans not really recognize me because my bio pic is the very most flattering picture of me ever taken! I have a form of celebrity all my own based on my former civilian job, and, let me tell you, on an average day in my little corner of the world, I feel a lot more like Brittney than Jayne.

And by that, I mean I feel like a poorly dressed space cadet with no ability to move in peace without seeing my "fans."

I taught for two years, and was directly responsible for something like one hundred twenty students. There were many more students who knew my face or whose friends/siblings/family had me, so that number multiplies exponentially, especially when you factor in parent/teacher conferences, school dances, sporting events or school website photos.

The point is, there are many people for whom I was once a dreaded figure of authority, people who probably saw me with copious amounts of chalk on my butt, slaved through the present perfect tense with me and had their lives ruined when I sent home detention slips or failure notices.

I was also someone who introduced new poetry and literature, enjoyed movie days with the occasional class popcorn surprise, and gave hugs when needed. But the angels who might remember these events during my tenure never seem to show up at the supermarket checkout or when I'm having my husband check the waistband of my underwear in the Walmart lady's apparel section so I don't buy a size that's way too baggy again. It's always the little trolls with camera phones and a bone to pick.

I swear, this was only occasionally how I looked! Most of the time I was crying. Or closing my eyes and willing myself anywhere (anywhere!) except for the classroom.

I see kids everywhere, and since I taught eighth grade a few years back, the former pre-teens are full fledged demi-adults now. They serve me Happy Meals and five dollar foot longs, heckle me to buy pecans at local fairs and hostess me to the table right next to the speakers on karaoke night at the only steakhouse in town. The last example smacks of meanness, but sitting right next to the speakers means something very different to a couple who just wanted some steak on a Friday night when their kid was being spoiled by Grammy and a small-town teen whose Friday night excitement is the boom of karaoke speakers. I scowled at her then, but I think she meant it to be a kind gesture.

The scariest thing of all is when a child comes up to me and demands I address him/her by name. Because I cannot. Can. Not. I never remember. I just don't.

And, oh, I've had kids come up to me and demand I remember their names! One freckled girl with long hair and big eyes jumped me in the shoe department at Macy's. I hadn't had my Orange Julius yet, absolutely nothing cute came in an 11, and anything that had some potential as a 5 became a grotesque mutation of a shoe by the time it swelled to my size. My kid was knocking beaded sandals off of their pedestals quicker than I could scoop them up, and handing me six-inch red lizard skin stilettos with zippers and screaming, "This would look great on your feet, Ma! Put it on!"

Most things look scarier in an 11, but this particular shoe was more menacing in its dwarf state.

I was suddenly goosed in the ribs, and before I could flail at my attacker, I realized that I quasi-knew this small person.

It had been two years since I taught her. She had grown from eleven to thirteen; a kid to a young adult. Since I didn't grow up in this area, the only way I would know a kid that age is if I taught her, and I felt a squeeze of dread low in my gut.

"Hey sweetie!" I said and patted her arm awkwardly. "How have you been?"

"Really super great, Mrs. Reinhardt. Do you remember Alison Blalison?* We were, like, not even really that close in sixth grade, but now we're like together all the time and I spend pretty much every weekend at her house and she's, like, really super nice even though she comes across as pretty mean when you first know her. Do you remember how everyone thought she was, like, a little super mean?" Before I can recall any particular super meanness, Freckles's phone plays part of a loud, most likely inappropriate song and she giggles and squeals. "Ohmygod! Alison! Guess who I'm standing with? No, guess! No! No, silly! Haha! No!"

As Alison Blalison and Freckles guess, I pry a stiletto out of my child's insistent hand and try to sneak away.

"Mrs. Reinhardt!" Freckles snaps. "You have to say hi to Alison Blalison!"

I reluctantly take a small, pink, shiny, jewel-encrusted phone out of Freckles's hand and hold it to my ear. Alison Blalison punctures my eardrums with her squeal then raves about how totally fun my class was and how cool it was that no one, like, ever did any work and just passed notes and talked all the time and it was, like, so much fun!

Just when I'm positive I'm going to hurl right on the gladiator sandal display, my kid mercifully upsets a huge stack of boxes and I'm able to throw the phone back to Freckles and escape. Almost.

"Hey Mrs. R, we should totally be Facebook friends! I'll friend you! Oh, wait, I don't know your first name." Her little face squishes with worry, and I'm about to tell her that it's okay, I never go on Facebook (which is a bald, bald lie), when she brightens and says, "You can look me up! Just friend request me!"

I swear I held my face in a perfect mask of calm assurance, my best 'I'm-not-losing-control' teacher face. But Freckles's eyes widened.

"You do remember my name, Mrs. R.? Right?"

Cue the symphony of tiny violins, legions of puppies with big, sad eyes, Cindy Lou Who watching the Grinch steal her Christmas tree.

Why? Why Mrs. R? Why don't you remember my name, Mrs. R? Why?

"Mrs. R?"

"I, umm, I..."

"You don't remember my name!" Freckles plants her fists on her hips and glares. "You really don't remember do you?"

Many of you might, right now, be thinking that I should have taken the situation firmly in hand, told Freckles that I was busy shopping and it was lovely seeing her, grabbed those scary red lizard-skin stilettos with the zippers and my kid, and marched out of there five inches taller. But the reason why I couldn't do that is also the reason why her name was impossible to recall; pre-teens are my Kryptonite, and my brain effectively melts around them.

This might also be the reason why teaching middle school made me cry. Everyday.

Freckles stared at me with disappointment radiating out of every pore of her being.

All I could think of was this time, seven years before when a kind-faced, portly gentleman approached me at Home Depot and tapped my shoulder.

"Sara?" he asked.

I smiled over my shoulder as I hacked at blinds. "Oh, you need Sara in kitchen design? It's one aisle over."

He squinted at me, then shook a finger. "Elizabeth! Of course!"

I searched his face. Did I know this man? How? Why? Embarrassment crashed over me. Memory, work! Work! I pleaded. But my weak, stupid brain gave me nothing.

"I'm Mr. Post! I was your..."

"Third grade reading teacher," I filled in. My third freaking grade reading teacher! This man saw me for forty minutes a day for one year two decades ago and he remembered my name!

I taught Freckles for ninety minutes a day for one year and it had been two short years since I'd last seen her, but I had no clue. No clue.

Freckles finally shook her head and set her mouth in a tiny, bitter hyphen. "My name is Guantanamera**, Mrs. R. Do you remember now?" She shook her shiny hair and texted something with ferocious speed. Probably to Alison Blalison. Probably about how uncool Mrs. R was.

I said a weak goodbye and she marched away, snubbed, angry, hostile even.

And I thought about being writer famous. The kids whose eyes would light up at the memory of having me as their teacher. Maybe they'd buy my books. Maybe they'd come to my signings, their little eager faces somehow familiar, but distorted by a few years and the pressure of a signing and the demand to remember, on the spot, so I can personalize the book they just bought to show how much they love and remember me.

The dread is so great that it makes the potential for unpublished anonymity feel safe and comforting again. I'll never have to awkwardly try to guess a name again! I'll never have to flounder in the face of someone I should know, but don't! I can wear sweatpants everywhere...or just in my house, because if I never leave my house I won't see any of them! Ever!

Except there was that time that one stopped by and tried to sell me lawncare services.

What was his name?

*Names have been changed to protect identities. Really. It's not because I don't remember their sweet little names. This is me being responsible.
**Okay, Freckles's real name is actually seared in my memory forevermore. I'll never forget. Of course, I blew my big chance, so the fact that it's ironclad makes no difference now. But I can't reveal it anyway, because she really was angry, and on the off-chance that she reads blogs, I really don't want her to hunt me down.

Our Big Fat Georgia Wedding

2011-04-12T07:56:00.000-04:00

Sometimes no writing happens at all, which is fine because I have legit business going on.

Like I have to squeeze into an electric blue strapless tube dress with pockets so I can be the bridesmaid for my newly minted 19-year-old Southern belle sister-in-law. Which sounds way more painful than it actually was for a few key reasons:

I don't look too bad in electric blue, and it allowed me rock my inner Debbie Harry.
I ordered my dress a size too big, remembering that I always bone up for St. Patrick's day by switching from red wine to a full bodied lager and then give up Caring About Calories in Baked Goods for Lent. But apparently those dreams I had about dancercizing to "Heart of Glass" weren't just dreams, and the dress was mercifully comfortable for a scary skin-tight bridesmaid's dress!
I've always secretly loved dressing like a twin with my little sister. So what if she's a size 00 and I'm lurking anywhere from an 8 - 14 depending on whether said clothing buttons or has elastic? Ever since Mom did our hair in matching side French braids and slapped us in identical tie-dye leggings (with stirrups!) matching outfits always make me giggle. It's a deep dark secret that I'll now share on this blog for the world to see!

Hi! I like to dancercize to "One Way or Another", be ironic about Lent and try to convince my sister we should both side French braid our hair for Twin Day, also known as Our Brother's Wedding!

Also, my SIL is actually a really sweet person who puts up with our constant heckling about her funny accent, love of frog legs and insistence on tubing in a river that has live alligators in it. And no, we do not believe your inane propaganda that they won't bother you if you don't bother them! Alligators are human-eating machines! And you are insane if you swim with them!

Or, you are my sister-in-law.

The wedding weather was mercilessly hot, and felt hotter because most of us were in polyester or heavy blends, but everyone looked good and the service was blissfully short and sweet! My SIL looked gorgeous, my little bro was dapper and it was all magic and romance. The food at the reception was delicious and, although there was no imbibing since our new little sis is way underage, there was lots of dancing, which is the next best sin after drunkedness! Especially if you manage to throw some electric blue tube dress lewdness in!

And I got to rekindle a little romance with my own former groom/current husband by jumping into the often treacherous waters of reminiscing-at-a-romantic-event!

While busting a move on the dance floor, I called to Frank, who sat nearby trying to coax our nephew away from the irresistible peacock table decorations that were just begging for a set of chubby hands to grab at them.

"This is fun!" I shook my butt in his general direction and he smiled his appreciation. "Remember when we got married? We're so old now!"

"Yeah. How long have we been married? It feels like seventy years," Frank said as he stopped an errant child from blowing out every candle flickering romantically at the head table.

"Really? It feels more like a hundred seventy to me!" I called back, bobbing uncertainly to the "Electric Slide." "Does this song make you feel like you're at a middle school dance?"

"I don't think I went to any." He draped a napkin over Amelia's hand a minute before she wiped chocolate cake frosting down her flower-girl dress. "And if I did, I wouldn't have danced."

"What about to 'Cotton Eye Joe'? Isn't that, like, your anthem?" I asked and spun two little girls until they wobbled away dizzily.

"Isn't the 'The Chicken Dance' your anthem?" He caught a plate that slid off the table before it shattered.

"No! 'I'm Too Sexy' is my anthem!" I shimmied and bumped butts with Amelia.

"Can't be, it's already mine. I copyrighted it!" Our nephew took Frank's hat off of his head and ran away with it before Frank could grab it back.

"How can you afford it, since you already spent all your extra money on the copyright to 'The Hustle' and 'Ice, Ice Baby'?" I crowed and threw some dice at my sis-in-law while she sprinklered back at me.

"Um, except you're the lyrical poet!" He opened a party favor shaped like a little wedding dress and ate all the lime green M&Ms.

"Well you slice like a ninja!" I almost tripped as three sugar zombies crawled between my legs.

He's killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom! No, he really is.

Frank untangled two kids whose dance was verging on a fistfight and was about to retort when Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" came on and the DJ called us on the floor for a family dance.

We met on the parquet floor, stood in front of each other, and I put my arms around my husband and leaned on his chest. "I love this song," I sighed.

"Remember when we watched 50 First Dates?" he asked and squeezed my butt.

"From Blockbuster in Newton! Remember video stores?" I looked deeply into his blue eyes.

"Remember our crappy little apartment in Branchville?" He kissed my nose.

"Remember how you could sit on the toilet and put your feet in the tub and wash your hands all at the same time in that bathroom?" We were grinning like fools, remembering our youth, when our future crashed the party.

"I want to dance with you!" Amelia demanded.

We held out our hands, warm parental love spilling towards our daughter.

She shook her head. "Uh-uh. I want you to hold me." Frank reached down to grab her. "Like a baby," she specified. "Both of you. And sing to me."

So we cradled our fifty pound, five-year-old baby between us with shaking arms and crooned Iz's crazy version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" without screwing up too many lyrics.

"How long is this freaking song?" Frank gasped, moving his arms so Amelia's heft transferred almost completely to me.

"Like five minutes," I wheezed. Amelia glared and ordered us to keep singing before she closed her eyes and pretended to snore.

"It feels like five years," Frank moaned.

"Like five hundred years," I cried.

I smiled at him. He raised his eyebrows at me.

Giving in to a fleeting surge of romance, we leaned forward and barely managed a dry, raspy, desperate peck on the lips before our backs were too strained and we had to give full attention to keeping our child from crashing to the ground. At that moment, Amelia stopped pretend-snoring, swung both her arms around our necks and made us endure a super-long family kiss.

So there I was dancing to a totally rad song, my kid and husband in my arms, my sister and I rocking identical (except for size) electric blue dresses, surrounded by cake and family and kisses and dancing. It was this awesomely fun night that made me nostalgic for the past, excited about the future and passionately enamored with my immediate present.

And to top it all off, Frank rapped along to "Ice Ice Baby" while I dancercized by his side. Or maybe that was a dream? When reality is so dreamy, how could I possibly tell which is which?

Thanks for the love, Iz!