Move Aside, McRib; Josh Berk is The Next Big Thing

In an effort to make this blog more highbrow, I’m going to start posting some deeply insightful, richly nuanced interviews with VIPs in publishing. But I don’t really know any, so I’ll start with fetal-stage VIPs. I mean members of the Tenners, a group of authors who will make their publishing débuts in 2010. They’re going to be huge a year from now, HUGE I tell you!

First up: Author Josh Berk (The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, Knopf, Jan 2010). Have you ever met someone who seems like a brother from another mother? Josh fits that role; we have the same infantile sense of humor, the same taste in books, and are both gifted Scrabble players. Well, gifted in that we both apply our infantile sense of humor to building Scrabble words. I’ve never met Josh in person before, but through the magic of Facebook, online Scrabble, and LiveJournal, I feel like I’ve known him for years. But hey, enough about me, this is supposed to be an interview, right?

By way of introduction, I’ll start with his deal announcement from Publishers Marketplace:

26 November, 2007 - Young Adult Children's librarian Josh Berk's debut, set in coal mining Pennsylvania and narrated with sardonic humor by a boy who is overweight, deaf, and mute during his first year in mainstream high school, when he begrudgingly solves a murder and uncovers a secret truth about his family history, to Cecile Goyette at Knopf, for six figures, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, by Ted Malawer at Firebrand Literary.

Let’s review some key words: Cecile Goyette, Knopf, six figures, pre-empt, two-book deal, Ted Malawer, Firebrand Literary—any writer would be thrilled to have just one of these attached to his name, and Josh has a string of seven. It’s a good thing he’s impossible to hate. (And believe me, I tried, mostly because as a result of being bublished by Knopf his book will probably have deckled edges and I have serious deckle envy.)

Before we get to my deeply insightful, richly nuanced questions, let me steal repurpose some Josh-generated content from the Tenner’s site just to set the scene:

Five things about Josh:
1. I have a quiet day job (librarian) and a loud hobby (punk rock).
2. Both of my parents are also librarians.
3. I have two dogs with a total of three eyes.
4. I have a degree in political science yet pretty much hate politics.
5. My son has the ridiculously literary name of Elliot Emerson Berk.

And now, on to the questions.

Please tell us about finding your agent.
In May of 2006 I saw a little announcement in a local arts magazine that a literary agent would be speaking at a writer's group near to where I live (Eastern PA). Since graduating from library school and falling in love with YA lit the previous May, I had been working on a YA manuscript of my own. I was just about ready to begin figuring out how to send it out into the world so I thought I'd attend this meeting even though the idea of talking to an agent was terrifying to me.

The agent turned out to be Nadia Cornier of Firebrand Literary. She gave a great talk and I approached her afterward despite feeling nervous that she would brush me off. Surely she gets accosted by a hundred hacks a day with a "manuscript in a drawer at home," right? Well, that is probably true, but she was very nice to me and said that Firebrand had a young agent looking for new clients. I took down this young agent's e-mail address and felt very proud of myself for having the guts to talk to an agent (even though Nadia is totally not-scary, it was very very very stressful for me).

At this same meeting, I met Cyn Balog, a YA author who was one of Nadia's clients. Cyn was also incredibly nice to me. When she found out that I wrote YA, she gave me her e-mail address and offered to stay in touch. I could not believe my luck! Here was a real agented writer being so kind to me!

I sent my manuscript to the agent at Firebrand who read it, but "passed on the project" (in other words "no thank you"). I was a little upset, but thrilled because she said that I showed some talent and offered to read future works. I also stayed in touch with Cyn and sent her some of my writing. (If I was smart, I would have asked for Cyn's critque *before* sending it to an agent, but I was very new to everything at that point.) Cyn also said that I showed some talent and offered ways to improve. Basically, at that point, I would say that my writing was "over-written." I wrote a lot of fancy metaphors, deep inner monologues, and unnecessarily complicated plot devices. Cyn advised that I keep it a little simpler and add more action and less "brain dumping" (when the narrator just "talks" to the reader without anything happening). She reminded me of the old adage "show don't tell" and I took it to heart.

When did you start the book that would end up as The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin?
I was thrilled that I had an agent offering to read my future works and beyond thrilled that someone like Cyn would take the time to help me improve. I took her advice seriously and around this time--the summer of 2006--started the manuscript that would become DARK DAYS. My wife was pregnant at the time so I felt motivation on top of inspiration!

It took me about a year to finish a draft of DARK DAYS that I felt good enough about to send back to that agent at Firebrand. When I did, I found that she no longer worked there. She no longer worked in publishing at all! (I tried not to take it personally.) I used Agentquery.com to find some other agents and started querying. I got some interest and also learned that there was another new agent at Firebrand. He turned out to be a perfect match for my sensibilities and skewed sense of humor. That was Ted Malawer. He read the manuscript and offered representation in June 2007. I happily accepted!

Ted worked with me over the next six months until he was confident enough in the manuscript to send it to editors. It grew and blossomed under his oversight into something far superior to the draft (I didn't know it was a draft at the time) that I sent him.

Tell us how your amazing deal happened.
Yes, I still can't believe that said string of words applies to me! Ted sent the manuscript around to editors at various publishing houses who he thought might be interested. I was amazed that there was quite a bit of interest. Several very impressive editors called me to talk about the manuscript. They were all interested! I was astounded!

Ted told me that when this happens, the manuscript goes to auction. Auctioneers make me laugh and I pictured Ted talking fast, wielding a gavel. (I have since learned that it doesn't actually go down that way - mostly phone calls and e-mails.) This was right before Thanksgiving. He told me just to relax and that the auction would happen after the holiday. And then he called me again and said Knopf made a pre-empt offer! There was some back and forth between Ted and their people and then Ted called me at work. He asked me if I was sitting down. I reminded him that I work at a library, and that he shouldn't say anything that would make me scream. He said "I can't promise that!" and told me the details of the deal. He advised that we take it and we did. On the way home from work I bought a huge bottle of champagne and had a very happy Thanksgiving!

You sold the book in November of 2007, your pub date is January 2010, can you tell us where in the process you are now?
After lots (and lots and lots) of revisions, the manuscript was approved by Knopf for publication just last month. It is currently with a copy-editor. It then comes back to me and my editor for final scrutiny and then goes into design. The process of layout and design will start then and before long it will resemble an actual book! My publication date is actually January 2010.

Can you share one piece of advice for writers?
FOUR PIECES OF ADVICE FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!
(1) Don't be afraid to talk to agents or editors or other authors! They are just people and (for the most part) aren't that scary. They want to find a book to buy/represent as much as you want to find someone to do that for you.

(2) Practice and patience! If someone told me back when I was writing that first novel, that it was just a "practice novel" and that it would never be published I would have probably given up. But I learned a lot on that first manuscript and it led the way to the next one, which led the way to publication! (With a lot more waiting along the way, so yes! More patience!)

(3) Take any writing gig you can get. I took lots of other small writing jobs while working on my novels. These were neither glamorous nor high-paying (local magazines, newspapers, etc.) but they were great practice. I learned how to tell a story, I learned how to work with editors, I learned how to meet deadlines, and I learned how to write on days even when I didn't feel like it.

(4) Read! It might not be impossible to write and sell a manuscript without reading what's out there in your field, but it's probably pretty close to it! I had a great YA class at Pitt, but anyone can walk into any public library and ask "What's hot in YA right now?" (or any other field) and begin their education for free!

* * *
Wow. GREAT interview, wasn't that? I think it's safe to say that Josh is a writer to watch. Josh is going to be a Big Deal. And if this interview alone didn't convey that, just look at his photo. I mean, clearly this is a man who is out standing in his field.

If you'd like to know more about Josh, here are some avenues, (all sanctioned by him, of course). To become Facebook friends click here (I recommend this highly). To see his Myspace page click here. Or to be, as he says, “updated about the book and the excitement that is my career” send an e-mail to joshberk (at) gmail.com. Prepared to be awed.

THANKS JOSH!

BONUS: Josh's cover is now done! The art was done by the fancy French artiste Philippe Petit-Roulet, bien-sur, who does a lot of covers for the New Yorker.

A Blanket Apology to 22% of Readers

Every couple of months I check the Google keyword search page to see how readers end up at my blog. Still a full 22% of people who end up here are sorely disappointed, having Googled some form of "camel toe pants" and/or "three-legged fetish". The camel toe thing makes sense because of this blog post, but the three-legged fetish search has me scratching my head; I didn’t even know this was a condition of interest, and I have never blogged about it. Apparently there's lots of interest, so if you want to increase your traffic, you might want to post a little three-legged story. Another surprise traffic driver? Barbie doll heads. More people than you'd think are interested in Barbie heads, especially in combination with some other choice words, which I won't mention here for fear of even more people looking for content of questionable taste. My writing is questionable enough—throw in distasteful content and suddenly I become far too much like Anne Coulter than I am comfortable with.

Some interesting entry paths to this blog in the past couple of months:

the man who ate his head
ablaze naked
cenote ik kil disease (having swum in Ik Kil Cenote, this worries me)
high school tight pants
can men go in the dressing rooms at victoria's secret (answer here)
latex ballgag (this comes up every time)
company bought blue sky wound vac
crying indian poster (a classic)
daryl hannah nude
quantum entanglement (sorry dude, wrong blog)
electric blanket bad dreams
i need a psychic (so do I)
fetish htv
really tight pant camel toe (I like the addition of "really" to this search)
fuzzy set theory tai chi symbol (hu?)
bird feaking (not a typo)
an escher moment
barbie head necklace (this I can explain)
neon green parachute pants (this too)
aquanet

I must be writing some high-brow stuff, no?

Dominance and Submission: A Cautionary Tale

This business of writing is a subjective one. It’s not like say, accounting, where there’s a right answer—writers have to rely on arbiters of taste, namely agents and editors, to tell us if we will be successful.

To illustrate how powerfully the pendulum can swing between loving a manuscript and loathing a manuscript, I’ll tell you a writer’s conference tale. Pull up a chair, won't you?

A few years ago our ambitious writer’s group decided to go to a conference together. We chose the Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference because it was close enough to drive to and Marcia’s friend had a cottage near the conference that she’d let us use. We polished our work, had business cards printed, and ordered authentic manuscript boxes off the internet. (They tell you never to bring your manuscript because no one wants to lug them back to New York, but we were certain that ours would be the exception. They weren’t.)

The great thing about the Whidbey Conference, other than that it’s on an exquisite little island in the San Juans that you must ferry to, is that you can sign up for as many agent/editor meetings as you are willing to pay for. Plus, the people you sign up with read ten pages of your work the night before so you actually have stuff to talk about. I signed up for four 15-minute agent sessions. At that point I was shopping two manuscripts, a collection of memoir stories and the manuscript that is now The Prophecy of Days: The Daykeeper’s Grimoire. The adult-genre agents I met with, Jandi Nelson and Esmond Harmsworth, were both charming and complimentary and I walked away with business cards and offers to submit from both of them. Then I had a meeting with Jodi Reamer, who was a relatively new agent actively looking for YA clients. She had thoroughly read and made notes on my ten pages, asked great questions, and told me to definitely submit when I was ready. Not long later she signed a new writer named Stephenie Meyer—maybe you’ve heard of her?—and became a capital-a Agent.

My last meeting was with he-who-shall-remain-unnamed because I fear his wrath. But I’ll tell you this: his name rhymes with the animal pictured above. The minute I sat down with him he looked annoyed. He told me he hadn’t read the ten pages so I’d just need to pitch him. Caught off-guard, my pitch was probably not as polished as it could have been, but I was not ready for the full tongue lashing that followed. He told me, among other choice things, that the plot was too ambitious and I’d never be able to pull it off, that girls aren’t interested in science, and that I should give it up and try something else entirely. Honestly, this went on for the full fifteen minutes; I’d try to explain it another way and he’d find another way to shoot it down. He was relentless and I know this shouldn’t matter but I WAS EVEN PREGNANT! Have you no heart? No mercy at all?

When my 15 minutes of brutality were over, I went directly to a bathroom stall and cried my eyes out. My writing group came to the rescue—pugnacious Marcia wanted to kick his a**; Zen Julie wanted me to forget it ever happened, to remember that he is working out his own issues and that it has nothing to do with me; and tender Erin just cried along with me.

The next day at the closing ceremony I won awards in two categories, Young Adult Short Story and Nonfiction Essay. I’d hoped Mr. Molerat would be in the audience to see that I wasn’t the loser he’d told me I was, but of course, he’d done his damage and then taken the red-eye home the night before.

So, the moral. Treat agent/editor responses to your work like horoscopes: only believe the good stuff. Rely on your critique partners to tell you the truth. And walk softly around any agent whose name rhymes with the photo above.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Today begins the Chinese year of 4706 - the Year of the Ox. Charge ahead! For a look at what's in store for you in this new lunar year, click here.

So I got some fun news to share today: I am now officially part of Authors Now, the largest collaboration of debut authors and illustrators for children’s/teen books. The Authors Now website is a great tool for librarians, educators, booksellers and parents who want to find out about forthcoming books, set up an author visit, or download supplemental resources such as teaching guides, quizzes, and other materials. It's a really great idea! In all honesty, it's only when I see my name on something like this that I really start to believe my book will actually be published.

Gung Hay Fat Choy everyone!

Open Letter to the Universe

Dear Universe,
This year I'd really like to go to the Maya ruins of Tikal, with a stopover on Roatan Island, Honduras to play with the dolphins. Please make it so. Gratefully yours, Christy

Where do you want to go?

Scanner Addict

Last night I came down with scanner fever. I found a cache of old photos and for six straight hours I scanned and tortured friends by posting on Facebook. I lost track of how many times I said to myself, “What was I thinking?” Some highlights:

1975 - “Who here needs my papers? Let's get this moving, people!” I'm all business when it comes to summer camp. Best. Day. Ever. You know, if I had to pick one photo taken over the last 42 years that most captures who I am, this would be it. Overly packed, overly eager, and capable of carrying all my own stuff.

1987 - We look like a low-rent St. Elmos Fire cast. Notice the trunk had been transformed into a bar. Also notice party pants of the guy standing far left. I went to this event with a beautiful Norwegian exchange student (he owned his own tux! So European). Not long after this he drove himself to Las Vegas in his Porsche and tried, unsuccessfully, to commit suicide. I hope it wasn't my shirt. He lived, thankfully, to see his mug on this cheesy photo.

1987 Keys to this look:
Lipstick - Estée Lauder All Day Cinema Pink
Eyeliner - Lancôme Electric Blue (application: sh*tload)
Hairspray - Sebastian Mega Hold in the the can the size of a baseball bat

October 1987 Dear Diary, Peggy and I went to the Cal-Oregon Game! Berkeley is sooo fun! And everyone here is, like, soooo smart! We both wore our shoulder pads under our t-shirts, natch, because it's, like, 1987. Pegs even busted out the pearls and I wore my big red Vuarnets! Go Ducks!

1990 - My 24th Birthday party thrown by Chris Ritter. Apparently my husband was there but I did not actually meet him for another year and half. He had no interest in me this night. Go figure.

Blond doesn't work on me but it didn't stop me from trying. BTW, I never took the tags off that dress and returned it the next day, reeking of Tequila. I know, I'm gonna burn in hell, blah, blah, blah...1991 - A very bad idea. Going from blond to auburn with a quick and unintended stop at Bozo Red first. I was on the Clairol hot line for like two hours that day. Thanks, Daves.

Working for the man at Microsoft. And by working I mean playing solitaire. This was before I learned about proper desk placement for optimum game playing. Ankle length stone-colored Gap jeans date this photo at 1992.

1993 Okay. Where do we start here? If you own this dress, please identify yourself. I'd like to kill you. I borrowed it from someone for the Microsoft Christmas party. It's a whole lot of look, no? I'm a dead-ringer for Bea Arthur on Golden Girls. Seriously, though, who loaned me this dress? Tonya?

Ah, I wish I could do this all day. There are so many other gems. But, alas, I have to go make my child a waffle. If you upload any of your own old pics, please let me know. I'd like to laugh at other people who put shoulder pads under their t-shirts.

Mémoire Lane

When we were juniors in high school, my best friend Julie and I went on a summer exchange program to Belgium and had so much fun that we vowed we would do it again our junior year of college. So we found a program that both of our universities fed in to et voilà, there we were in France.

The family I stayed with in Belgium was wealthy and cultured so I thought our family in France would be similar. I mean they were French for god’s sake, wasn’t being fabulous their birthright?

We waited patiently at the train station in Avignon, a gorgeous old walled city in the south of France, for our host family to arrive. Julie was secretly dreaming of the family’s vacation house by the sea and I was dreaming of becoming more beloved than the mother’s own daughter and inheriting an old chest of Hermes scarves.

After all the other host families had come and gone, whisking their students away with smiles and arms around the shoulders—some of the more nurturing mothers even bearing pastries for the weary travelers—the Toussaints drove up in a dusty green Citroen. Madame Toussaint was a short, stout woman in a brown housecoat, the kind of thing my Mom might dye her hair in at home. She got out of the car and I saw she wore matching brown house slippers. I knew right then there would be no weekend cottage in Cap d’Antibes or chest of vintage Hermes scarves to inherit.

Monsieur Toussaint, a balding man in his sixties, never got out of the car. He smoked like someone who had done manual labor all his life and had to train himself to puff without using his hands; the cigarette dangled from his lower lip held expertly with just the right amount of moisture. Neither spoke a lick of English, so I got to practice my French right away.

“Hello,” she said, more as a command than a greeting.
“Hello! So good to meet you! I’m Christy.”
“And I’m Julie.”
“Yes,” she replied, looking us up and down.
“I hope you didn’t have trouble finding the school.” I said, thinking that maybe they had gotten lost on the way.
“Puh,” she answered, which is French for “You’re an idiot.” Then she turned around and waddled to the car saying, “My hands hurt, let’s go.”

Monsieur Toussaint popped the trunk from the driver’s seat, which he never left, and we packed up and got in.

It became clear to us that these people were professional hosts, in it for the money and not for the love of young American etudiants, when Madame Toussaint laid down the rules of the house: we were allowed to have room and board Sunday evening at 5:00 p.m. through Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. From Friday morning to Sunday evening, we were expected to be somewhere else; traveling, sleeping on the train station floor, whatever. And we were only allowed two showers each per week, which she would keep track of in a little blue book.

Our room was small and spare—it held two twin beds with a tiny side table between them, an armoire, and a rickety desk. There was one little window with old green shutters on the outside of it. Their latches had long been broken so the spring wind that blew hard for weeks, which they affectionately called the Mistral and we called a pain in the ass, made the shutters pound on the window like angry Clydesdales. Terra cotta tile covered the floor and went halfway up the walls of the room, presumably so that Madame Toussaint could hose the place out after each round of exchange students.

Dinner was served early because the Toussaints were French game show freaks. Total addicts. The lineup started at 6:30 and went until 10:00. The first few nights we tried to do the family thing and sit with them for their nightly TV fix, but these shows were unbearable even to serious TV junkies like us. My TV bar was so low that I didn’t even think I had a bar until I watched these shows. The level of goof—and there really is no other word for it—that the French are capable of would even make Soupy Sales and Charles Nelson Riley writhe. If you were an alien and landed in France for a couple of hours of game shows, you would think it utterly absurd that this is a culture that prides itself on subtlety, refinement, and good taste.

The second week we set a precedent: We said our studies were getting rigorous and we would have to retire to our room after dinner to study thenceforth. This was the only time I saw Madame Toussaint smile. “Oui, oui, bien sur!” she said as she made little scooting gestures with her hands.

This made for long nights. Our homework was not at all overwhelming and we usually finished it during the breaks between classes, so we had five hours a night to kill without access to TV, radio, or English-language books. A typical night’s conversation might start with Julie grabbing our alarm clock.

“Guess what time it is?”
“Six twenty five.”
“Nope.”
“Six thirty two.”
“Nope.”
“Six twenty seven.”
“Nope.”
You get the picture.

We spent a lot of time working on the title to the book we were going to write about all of our riotous European adventures, which we figured we would start having once we nailed down a title. After whittling the list down, we were stuck between two: I envisioned the book as a Dorothy Parker-ish piece of work so I wanted a brusque, American title: Broads Abroad. Julie wanted more of an European feel so she stood firm on Deux Histoires de Voyage Pariel. She said non to mine, I said puh to hers. Had we agreed, we would surely have had a runaway best seller and I would probably be negotiating the movie rights with Mirimax at this very minute. But with the book on hold we relied heavily on sight gags; putting panty hose on our heads, gloves on our feet, pretending to brush our teeth in the bidet, pretending to wash our faces in the bidet, pretending to actually use the bidet—in fact, the bidet often served as the third comedienne. This wasn’t what we had hoped for.

One night after dinner Julie finally broke it to me that Madame Toussaint had taken her aside privately and asked her if I was a “special” student. I think she had used the French equivalent of “dim.” A few days earlier we'd had a field trip to the Vaucluse and I had excitedly retold the story of the mill on the river where they still made beautiful papers by hand. Apparently, nothing I said made sense, and she thought I was trying to tell her that they made paper using hands, like as an ingredient. I had also mentioned that we had stopped at an old cemetery on the way back and had taken some pictures of each other lying in a big sarcophagus. I guess she thought I exhumed a body or something to do this because she seemed outraged. I was not skilled enough to decipher her retorts so I just sort of smiled and complemented her pale, saltless soup. These two conversations led her to believe that I had been dropped on my head as a baby or something, so she had this talk with Julie, French conversationalist par excellence. Okay, I will admit my French was bad but is there no gap between speaking bad French and being mentally handicapped?

My confidence dropped even lower, and effectively made me a shut-in. Alors, there would be no nights at the local bar, sipping Pastis and smoking Gitanes as I had envisioned back in the states. No lazy morning café au lait and French crossword in the bistro. No foreign boyfriend coming to pick me up on his Vespa to go see a Jules et Jim revival.

Non, just more nights laying in bed, listening to the wind fight the shutters and trying to block out the whines of Madame Tousaint complaining constantly about her hands as she cleaned up after a meal of stewed horsemeat. She became more evil to me by the day but she made damn good peach jam, which, since she called me retarded, I had been eating with abandon and without regard for her dwindling supply.

ADDENDUM: I was looking for photos to scan for Facebook and came across this gem of Julie actually in her bed in our room in Avignon! Please, feast your eyes:

The Grass Really Is Greener Over There

Do you ever get the urge to escape? To just pick up and start somewhere fresh? Do you ever dream of being caught up in some Mob scheme just so you’ll get to go through the witness protection plan? Or is it just me?

Yesterday Katie posted a taunt on Plot This that had me looking at real estate in Oxford, Mississippi for nearly and hour. We could buy a mansion for what crappy houses cost out here, and I could run in to Morgan Freeman at lunch or play with my kids on Faulkner’s property. Then there’s San Luis Obispo. After Robin gleefully posted about three 80+ days in a row while I’m looking at bleak, bare trees I did some googling around those parts too. Can’t get a mansion or bump into John Grisham getting pump-cheese nachos at 7-11 like in Oxford (you just know he eats those), but the prices are on par with where I live, you get sun 12 out of 12 months, and I could finally grow a bougainvillea. Though first I'd have learn how to pronounce it. Plus you get to see Robin and Eve a lot, and that right there is worth at least a half bath if not a bonus room.

I always feel like this in January, and it only gets worse in February. Only at the beginning of March when the days get long and the plum blossoms burst and the hills are awash in purple star thistle, do I start to come around. Bear with me, folks, I'm weak from lack of Vitamin D.

What's Your Mayan Day Sign?

Ever wanted to know your Mayan birth date info? I finally found a site that has a great birth date converter and horoscope-like personality decoder in one easy interface. Go here, and once you've put your birth date in, click the “Personality” tab at the bottom to see a description of your kind.

The great thing about your Mayan birthday is that it comes around every 260 days (the Tzolkin is a cyclical calendar so it’s never on the same day each year). If you want to know when your next Mayan birthday will be, click on the Calendar tab at the bottom and keep scrolling through the months until you see the flame next to your sign. This site also provide you with your "Burner Days" so there will be four days with flames next to them Only the one with your number and sign in it is your actual birthday.

If you end up doing this, please let me know what Day Sign and Number you are. Anyone else an 8 Eb?

Behold - The Prophecy of Days Book Website!

So, my amazingly talented husband Scott put a Prophecy of Days website together for me over the weekend. I have obnoxiously high expectations and I am annoyingly particular (hear my beleaguered husband sigh?). Seriously, I would hate to me married to me. But the site he made far exceeded my expectations. Please have a look and let me know what you think! Mac users, does it work?

www.prophecyofdays.com

Thanks again to Scott! (By the way, he also built the super-cool christyraedeke.com site. Animated origami! Oh my! If my online persona looks good, it's only because of him.)

The Nosy Introvert

As I’ve mentioned before, there are many reasons to love Facebook if you are a nosy introvert. So much information, so little actual contact! My high school class of 1984 had barely any diversity of color but a lot of diversity of mind. Can you match recent Facebook status posts with the person’s job? One of the answers may scare you.

1. X is in bed reading the book "the age of innocence" while listening to "spa music" on Pandora.
2. X is sittin in a beanbag naked eating cheetos.
3. X is done saying some (possibly inappropriate) stuff on CNN... Hope everyone gets a kick out of his comments on Showbiz Tonight, the most provocative hour of TV!

A. Lawyer
B. Designer of high-end boob pasties
C. Commander of a Navy nuclear submarine

Blowout Birthday!

Last night we met my in-laws for dinner to celebrate Scott’s birthday. Hank, who is not a good restaurant child under the best of circumstances, had been up since five am and had just been ice skating for two hours, so he was absolutely vibrating with that 5-year-old-tired-but-wired energy. He managed to escape when adults were distracted by the arrival of some very good margaritas, and a righteous mother nearby enjoyed coming over to tell us that he had slipped out the door. I had to give him the “somebody could take you and you’d never see us again!” lecture, which reduced him to tears. One down.

Meanwhile, Juliet had quietly sucked down two huge Shirley Temples. As soon as the cold sugary liquid had completely filled her empty 8-year-old tummy, she turned white and announced that she was going to throw up. Scott’s mom, Janie, followed her into the bathroom. Fortunately no upchucking occurred, but even a walk out in the cool air didn’t make her feel better so she just sat silently with her chin quivering. Two down.

No one realized that “pizza” in a Mexican restaurant meant a tostada shell with beans and cheese on it, so when this arrived for Hank, Scott and I knew none of it would be eaten. Two kids meals sat untouched.

Realizing that the best way to salvage any enjoyment for Scott would be for me to whisk the kids home, I ate quickly, packed up the malcontents, and headed off, happy that we had arrived in separate cars so the three of them could at least finish their meals and their drinks in peace.

So, I pacified the children with a DVD of Ruff Ruffman, and was making pretty good time on I-5 by cruising in the fast lane to pass the ever-present line of semi trucks in the right. Then POW!

A blow-out. Three down.

I’m not exactly sure how I managed to get to the right side and pull off to the shoulder; I was too busy pretending to remain calm for the freaked-out kids. Scott came to the rescue, but it took about 15 minutes for him to get there, during which time our car was in a constant state of movement from the gusts of air of passing semi-trucks. The two tired and hungry kids sat in the back seat trying to concentrate on the DVD while teary eyed and whimpering.

Scott arrived, we changed the tire (and by we I mean he), and made it home safely. Oy. From now on I’ll have a bit more respect for the day that Mercury goes retrograde. No travel, no communication!

Happy Birthday, Scott. The rest of the year will be smooth sailing after last night!

Think Gitmo Is Harsh? Try Growing Up With My Sister

When we were children, my sister Cathy took her frustrations out on me. She was strong, I was weak. It was your basic Darwinian situation and we both understood that if push came to shove she would kick my a**. She was cunning and diabolical as well, and took great pleasure in both the planning and the execution of my a** kickings.

Cathy was an expert with a yo-yo and seemed always to have one twirling. It was a good indicator of mood: if she was Walking the Dog or Rocking the Baby I felt safe, if I heard the baleful snap! snap! of the yo-yo repeatedly hitting her hand, I knew to watch out for an out-of-control Around the World that would “accidentally” find the soft dip of my temple.

When I was about five, my front tooth became loose. I was lying on the top bunk, moving it around with my tongue, pushing it to the point of pain and then easing up. Cathy was below me on the bottom bunk throwing a tennis ball against the wall as hard as she could over and over again with her one good arm. The ball flew into my upper bunk and while retrieving it she noticed me moving my tooth.

“You won’t believe how much you can buy with front-tooth money,” she said nonchalantly, laying her traps.
“It’s not loose enough to come out today,” I replied.
“Sure it is. Just get a long piece of floss and tie one end around the tooth and the other end around the bedpost on the top bunk then jump off—it’ll be so quick you won’t even feel it.” She said this as dispassionately as someone explaining how to remove a wart with Compound W. Did I mention she was cunning?
“Really? Jump off the top bunk?” The act of jumping so far seemed more horrifying than the pulling of one’s own teeth, but Cathy jumped off most things just for the sake of jumping, which was why, at this particular moment, she had a cast running fingers to elbow.
“Sure, what’s the big deal?” she said casually as she rammed the hook of a wire hanger up the cast to scratch her wrist, “I do it all the time.”
There was a part of me that wanted to jump off things and ride horses bareback and hide out in tree forts well after dark. “Okay, but don’t rush me. I need to do it slow,” I said.
She shrugged, said, “I won’t even be in the room,” and wandered off, seemingly unconcerned with whether or not I’d do it. Did I mention diabolical?

Pulling out a few yards of floss, I tied one end around my tooth and the other end around the bedpost. After 15 minutes of psyching myself up, I mustered the courage to jump. I fell hard but the tooth was still intact; the floss was too long and never became taught enough to yank it out.

I stood there, still attached to the bedpost and relieved in some small way when Cathy burst into the room swinging her arm cast like a propeller. I turned to look just as she yelled, “HI-YAH” and karate chopped the floss with her swinging cast. My tooth went flying across the room and landed with a dainty “plink” in the heat vent. Surprised by the attack, my scream was delayed until the open socket started gushing blood.

This was not her first attempt at harm. There was also the time she nudged me out of a moving car on a mountain road.

We were in my parent’s old Corvair, before there was any sort of concern about child safety in cars. Though I was a toddler and my sister was a tot, on this particular Sunday drive up to the mountains, we were in no way strapped down. Cathy waited patiently until we had made it off paved streets and were on the rugged Bull Gap Road on the way up to the top of Mt. Ashland before pulling the trigger. Even at the tender age of four, her timing was impeccable—as we rounded an outside turn she reached across me, put her little fingers around the door handle and pulled. Like a cork out of champagne, I popped out the door, hit the dirt road, and rolled down a short bank.

To make herself feel better, my mother reminds me that it was fall and the ground was soft. Damages were minimal, though I am really bad at remembering phone numbers.

I still hate the sound of a yo-yo.

Is It So Wrong To Love You?

Everyone in my writing group knows I’m smell-obsessed. I probably have far too many scent references in my work and I’m always asking the others in the group things like, “But what did the locker room smell like when your main character walked in?”

In my work in progress, the aroma of a Sharpie pen figures prominently. I don’t mind the smell, but it’s not one of my favorites. I’m a big fan of scents that are either severely organic (the inside of a corn husk, good damp soil) or severely chemical (gas straight from the nozzle, WD-40).

What are your favorite smells? Will anyone admit to offbeat or politically incorrect scents? Allow me to start by publicly admitting that I love the smell of gun cleaner and wet cat fur.

Greatest Monday in the History of the World

I just found out that I am the recipient of the Edna L. Holmes Fellowship in Young Readers Literature, Oregon’s one and only literary fellowship awarded to a writer of young adult books! I have been applying for this fellowship for years. Unbelievable!

The best part? It’s for my work in progress, a manuscript called Jewel of the Valley that I had resolved to finish revising this month. Hopefully this will help it get sold. And the grant money is nice as well. Perhaps a little bauble to mark the event?

Thanks so much for indulging my brag session. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a document to open…that is if I can stop shaking from excitement!

A Generous Gift of Bugs

My friend Daves is one of those amazing gift givers. Over the years I’ve received some lovely things from him—a tiny Smythson of Bond Street leather travel folio, a Swedish amber ring, a plane ticket to Barcelona—but this year’s Christmas gift may be the most unusual: a Lucite bracelet with real beetles in it. It’s my favorite combination of gorgeous and bizarre, and I feel so… so fuerte when I wear it. I’ve always had a scarab fetish—oh yeah; add a carved turquoise scarab from Egypt to my list of great gifts from Daves—so it’s nice to have scarabish beetles circling my wrist when I write. Behold:

Daves is also Juliet’s Godfather, an excellent score for her. His first gift? A chic infant-sized red leather jacket. With this bond, I have secured her a lifetime of amazing gifts. This Christmas Daves gave her a stunning display of bugs, including a glorious giant scorpion. I suppose you’d have to know Juliet to understand how cool this is to her. Like the Lucite bracelet (and, in my opinion, all good things) it’s both gorgeous and bizarre.

Though seemingly lowly, Beetles are great animal totems. They represent metamorphosis, creation, resurrection, rebirth—perfect for starting a new year. Beetles bring new life and vitality and they can teach you how to pace yourself through the seasonal changes of the year. I sense my beetle bracelet will come in very handy in the depressing depths of February...

2009: Cringe-Worthy Already

When my book was acquired in August, Andrew Karre was the editor. The day he left for another publishing house, he delivered editorial notes on the manuscript and talked me through them on the phone. So I worked diligently on those edits/comments/suggestions and delivered them to my new editor, Brian Farrey, a few weeks later. And then I freaked out. This is like getting a Christmas list from one person and using it to choose a gift for another person. What if Brian’s sensibilities were totally different from Andrew’s? What if he didn’t get me at all? What if I had to rewrite the whole thing?

Last night I came home from a few technology-free days away to find Brian’s notes on the manuscript in my email. Reading an editor’s notes on your work is an exercise in cringing. Every time he called me out on something dumb or pointed out a shortcut I’d taken, I winced. The good news: I know how to fix all of the issues. The better news: Brian thinks the manuscript is clean enough to send to my agent so she can sell foreign rights. The bad news: I have a few days of cringing ahead of me as I scroll through the edits.

Happy New Year, everyone! May 2009 be full of love and free of cringe!

I seem to have veered off course...

The last few weeks I’ve been on the Tangent Express. I’m blogging about the weirdest things, which is making me sound, well, weird. Sure I’m odd, but I promise it’s not in a "she really shouldn't have children" kind of way.

So, this being the last day of the Gregorian year, I should probably get back on track. This is a blog about writing, and I’ve had some people ask me lately what my book is about, so maybe I should post a little something about it here. Hmm, but where to start? How do I summarize it without sounding…uh, weird? I’ll give it a go:

The Prophecy of Days
More than 2000 years ago, when Paris and London were nothing but shoddy villages, the Maya were building immense cities and practicing advanced math and astronomy. After their great culture was destroyed, one cryptic legacy was left: a set of 20 prophetic calendars. The most important of these, the “Long Count” calendar, ends mysteriously on Dec. 21, 2012. For thousands of years the surviving Maya have had their Daykeepers tracking the Long Count daily, all leading up to this end date. What is meant to happen between now and December 21, 2012? This is where The Prophecy of Days picks up.

The Prophecy of Days is the story of Caity Mac Fireland, a funny, tech-savvy girl from San Francisco whose parents drag her to an isle off the coast of Scotland to manage some family property. Caity finds that a Mayan relic is concealed there, intentionally left centuries ago by Mayan Daykeepers. After seeing Cortez land on their shores, burn their books, and destroy their culture, the Maya secreted this relic away in an attempt to keep their profound knowledge alive into the current era.

As she delves into this world of secret information, Caity is helped along by a visiting family friend and Feng Shui master, Uncle Li; the castle groundskeeper, Thomas; a Mayan elder named Bolon; and Mr. Papers, a pet monkey that communicates through origami. A handsome Scottish lad gets pulled into the intrigue, as do several other people with questionable motives and loyalties.

Caity must weave together a tapestry of information in order to make her radical discovery, a mystery protected by an elite coterie of power-brokers who influence world events and world economy. Caity’s twenty-first century mind is put to the test as she tries to uncover the answer to an ancient riddle while trying to outwit this powerful group that will stop at nothing to control the secret, and her.

Book one of a two-book series The Prophecy of Days is a story rooted in science, myth, and ancient knowledge.

The Man Who Ate Barbies

Eugene, Oregon is an interesting place. Home of Ken Kesey, the Merry Prankster himself, Eugene has long been Mecca for people with alternative ideas and hippie sensibilities. Many of the hippies who relocated there in the ’60s and ’70s are now homeless and live around the campus of the University of Oregon. When I was in school, the most famous homeless hippie of all was the Man Who Ate Barbie Doll Heads.

I first met Barbie Head Man at the Oregon Country Fair, a three-day barter, craft, and music event held just outside Eugene every summer. This is a place where time stands still; the people you see attending today look just like the people who attended 40 years ago when it began. Heavy on hair, light on deodorant. Acres of tie dye.

I hate dust. The Oregon Country Fair, with its 45,000 attendees traipsing through woods, involves a lot of dust. So when a group of women dressed as faeries tripped lightly by with spray bottles of water and asked if I wanted a spritz, I welcomed the gesture. What I didn’t know is that these faeries treated their water with tabs of acid, and that potent LSD can be absorbed through the skin. Needless to say, it was an interesting day. I experienced the best burrito of my life, appreciated jazz for the first and only time, and met the Barbie Head Man.

Barbie Man always wore a sarong and had a rope necklace on which he tied Barbie heads. This made a lot of sense to me that day at the Country Fair; I saw it as something akin to a candy necklace—when the mood strikes you just bite one off. Apparently, the mood struck often and he routinely had to go to the emergency room to have the heads removed as they could not make it past his stomach. His abdomen was fiercely distended that day at the fair. I think he'd been on a bender.

Barbie Doll Man was a gentle soul, a lunatic to be sure, but not one of those stark raving mad homeless guys who runs around swinging a waddy and yelling obscenities. When you gave him a buck every now and then you knew he was far more likely to spend it in the doll section of Goodwill than in the malt liquor section at 7-11.

My senior year, Barbie Doll Man was killed by a city bus. Legend had it that one of his prized Barbie heads rolled into the street and he couldn’t bear to watch her get squished so he ran out after her. I’m not sure exactly how it went down, but I knew the corner of 13th and Alder would never be the same again.

Thanks to writer Sarah Frances of Plot This, who recently posted an eerie set of photos of mangled Barbies she’d discovered around her yard, including the photo on this post. This exquisitely bizarre photo took me right back to Eugene, circa 1987. I suppose you could legitimately call it an acid flashback. Unintentionally imbibed, of course.

For an interesting ode to the Barbie Doll Man of Eugene, check out this short bit on the Future Tense Books website.

Confessions of a Psychic Junkie

True confessions: I’m a psychic junkie. I use psychics like other people use therapists. Seriously, why spend years yapping on about your issues when you can spend an hour with a clairvoyant who can tell you all you need to know? Most people—first and foremost my husband—find this strange, so I try to keep it on the down-low. But this time of year, as we rollover to a new digit on the calendar, I get the itch to make an appointment with a seer.

In my defense, I blame my parents. They started me early—my father booked appointments for each of us with a renowned local psychic when I was just 14. Not that my dad is some kind of hippie; at first glance you'd assume he was very conservative. He held a job with a large corporation and went to mass most Sundays, but he’s always had a healthy fascination with the dark side. He grew up going to Catholic school so naturally he was in to anything macabre. The shelves of his study were crammed with books on crime families, the supernatural and medical anomalies. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the subject of hermaphrodites came up at least once a week in our house. While other kids were reading their Golden Books, my sister and I were looking at grainy pictures of elephantiasis.

So the psychic thing was not such a stretch. In fact, it was probably inevitable.

We arrived at the psychic’s home, a normal-looking house in a newer subdivision, in our Oldsmobile sedan. Only when the door opened did things start to get weird. We were greeted by a man in a wheelchair who introduced himself as the psychic’s brother. He was ferrying three small white dogs with yellowed beards on his lap, and although he was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, he was also wearing rouge and a woman’s wig. This was not a long, luxurious Cher-style wig but rather a short, curly gray and white wig that a woman in her 80s might wear—what my grandmother would call a “wash and set.” At first, I thought the hair was his own until I caught a glimpse of the flesh-colored mesh cap that anchored the wig hair.

He welcomed us in and asked us to sit on the couch where we would wait for our individual appointments. The smell of dog pee permeated the house and I followed Mom’s cue of sitting while having the least amount of contact with the couch. I wondered if my parents were having second thoughts about toting their young daughters to a psychic who lived in such slipshod conditions and may or may not have some unseemly relationship with the rolling dog ferry who calls himself “the brother.”

As the youngest, I was allowed to go first. On my way in, Dad slipped me a dollar and instructed me to walk up to the ice cream shop when I was finished; they would all join me one by one. As I prepared to enter, I tried to recount all of the ice cream flavors I could remember so he could not read my mind and hear the voices in my head that said Run! The guy’s a fraud! A slob! Quite possibly a pervert!

I walked into his office and was greeted with the wet, toothless grin of an elderly man sitting behind a small white desk that was so short his belly could rest on the edge of it. He wore a tight plaid shirt, kind of cowboy style with pearl snaps and curly stitching on the pockets, and he twiddled his thumbs. I had never seen someone actually twiddle their thumbs before—I’d only seen it used as physical punctuation after a joke about being bored. His hands were large and rough so the twiddling made a sound like nylon-clad thighs rubbing together. I said hello while chanting Butter Pecan, Heavenly Hash, Strawberry Cheesecake over and over in my mind until he said, “Why did you stop playing the violin?”

His question stunned me. Two things ran through my head: Oh my God, he can read my mind, I had better not think bad thoughts, and Oh my God, he can read my mind, maybe now someone can understand me. All of a sudden the need to be understood, the yearning for someone to really know who I was eclipsed the fear of having someone read my mind. “Can’t you see how awful I was?" I responded.

I had played the violin for three years but my playing was remarkably unremarkable. I used my mother’s childhood violin so I thought my playing was extra important to her. One day I mustered up the courage to tell my parents that I was going to stop playing the violin and would be taking an extra science class instead of orchestra. They just shrugged and complemented me on my practicality. It became clear to me that my playing was as painful to my family as it was to me.

“Is it important that I play? Are messages coming from my music?” I asked, thinking that angels might be speaking through my strained rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, one of the few songs I could play by heart.

“No, I can see that wasn’t the creative outlet for you. But you must remember that what you produce is not as important as the creative effort behind it. Remember that. Now I see beautiful writing. Lots and lots of beautiful writing.”

This delighted me. My new passion in art class had been calligraphy, and I was prolific. Nearly every day I pumped out a new poster-sized calligraphic rendering of Pink Floyd’s lyrics and I was extremely proud of the gold-leafed illuminated letters I had done on Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven.

“Wow! Will I become a famous calligrapher?” I asked eagerly. He laughed so hard I was able to see that he did indeed have a few teeth back in the grotto of his mouth and he said no, that’s not really what I mean sweetheart, you’re quite a literal girl aren’t you?

With much lisping and smacking, he mumbled on for nearly an hour about my future, which was surprisingly uninteresting to me—at fourteen hearing about your future seems as irrelevant as listening to someone’s dream. I simply could not reconcile what he was saying with my own life. In fact, as soon as he told me I would not be a famous calligrapher he lost me.

Afterward, I met my sister and parents at the ice cream parlor and listened to them excitedly tell each other their predictions, which was even more boring than hearing my own. I was much more interested in the Rocky Road milkshake I was drinking than anyone’s future. So I tuned out and started to calligraphy the words to Comfortably Numb on my napkin, itching to get home to see if my dusty violin had a secret message for me.

Only later, after the dog hair had been long washed from my clothes and the stale smell of the house had faded from memory, I realized I was hooked. Still am. But let's keep it on the down-low, okay?

The Startstuff of Which We Are Made

We are wondrous beings in a wondrous world.

The Crying Indian

Between Facebook and YouTube it's like the '70s exploded in my head. I'm reconnecting with people I made sugar-cube igloos with in first grade and reliving the horrors of having a "Mrs. Beasley" in the house as a child. Watching the Chrissy and Velvet commercial, with it's poor-man's-Paul-Simon jingle, brought back painful memories of not being able to grow my hair long enough so I could sit on it.

But those are like aspirin compared to the heroin of all '70s commercials: The Crying Indian. I remember this commercial more clearly than any other minute of TV I’d watched as a child. Seeing it again some 30 years later made my brain feel like when you pull the coffee pot out too soon and the hot liquid starts pouring out onto the burner, sputtering and bubbling. It was as if long-severed neural pathways were reconnecting or something. If you are 38-44, watch with caution: Like a solar eclipse, this kind of powerful nostalgia can damage your retinas.


I think it’s so disturbing because I can clearly remember when it was okay to throw your garbage out your car window, or leave trash on a park bench, or drive with a can of Oly wedged between your legs (with all the drinking and driving that went on, you’d think cup holders would have been invented way earlier).

In sum: the ‘70s sucked on almost every level.

Post script: my husband just dug up a hilarious commercial about "Big Jim" and "Big Josh" that had to be made by out-of-work Tom of Finland designers.

Behold the Raedeke Rhythmic Automaton

In terms of technology, writing could be considered the original tech tool; writing was the first way to store information even after the author was long gone. Cool, right? Apparently not. This fact gets me no credibility here at the House o’ Robots.

There are a lot of robots around here but not one does anything useful; there’s no laundry robot, no window-washing robot, no cleaning the icky white bolt covers at the base of the toilet robot. Instead, we have the robot that walks like a spider and shoots things, the robot that does a creepy dance, and the robot with tank-like wheels and a wireless video cam that the kids drive into my office to spy on me. I could go on. And I’m not just saying that.

So the newest addition to our Robot family was quite a surprise - it actually does something sort of useful. Okay, maybe useful is a stretch, but at least it’s amusing. Behold the Raedeke Rhythmic Automaton. If this short video does not make you chuckle then check your wires because you, my friend, are a robot.

For details on the how and why, see the 8 Bit Ghost Blog. Nice work, Scott. Maybe the next one could make Almond Roca or something?

This Is Some Amazing Marble

I just read on Facebook that my friend Orla, who lives in Saudi Arabia, is going for a warm walk on the beach. Here we have several inches of snow, enough to bend the boughs of my hardy rosemary. It's days like this that I wish teleportation was a reality.

I do love how quiet the snow makes everything; it's like living in a recording studio where nothing bounces off the walls. Except the children, of course! Nothing gets kids excited like fresh snow.

Speaking of snow and riled up kids, does anyone else make snowcones with snow and maple syrup? It was something I did as a child but my husband thinks it's mildly insane.

If the Universe Had A Logo...

I'm editing a new book on Yin-Yang Theory from Dr. Shan-Tung Hsu of the Blue Mountain Feng Shui Institute, and I'm finding it incredibly interesting to dive deeper into this subject.

We see the tai chi symbol - the icon of yin and yang - everywhere now, but often the wrong image is used. Can you guess which of these is the correct expression of the tai chi?

My favorite marketing misuse was in an ad for Salem Menthol ciagrettes; the designer had used the most negative of all four of these (counterclockwise yin over yang), essentially equating cigarettes with death. Take a drag of that!

Juliet Rocks

After I put up a post on the Plague on the House of Ra(edeke), Juliet looked at me with her big blue eyes and said, “You always do funny stories of Hank but I only make it on your blog when I bring a plague home.”

Sadly, it’s true. I often mention my Hank, but rarely mention Juliet. I think it’s because Hank is a bit peculiar, a tad quirky, so it’s easy to talk about him without feeling like I’m bragging. Talking about Hank is the equivalent of being self-deprecating. But Juliet, the child who practically popped out of the womb speaking in full sentences and could build robots before many of her classmates could read, is extraordinary. It’s impossible to believe Scott and I grew her from scratch. So it’s difficult to say anything about her without feeling like one of those Moms who’s always dropping “gifted” within two words of her child’s name. (I hate the term “gifted” as applied to children; I find it pretentions and offensive. If one child is gifted it means another is without gifts and that’s just plain wrong.) See how hard this is for me? I can’t even stay on track here. It’s time for a Juliet post. A Juliet Rocks post.

Last night she had her first concert as part of the Mokumbe Marimba Club and it was amazing. The marimba is one of those instruments that sounds great even when played badly, but when played in concert with ten other marimbas—the massive bass tone and several tenor and soprano marimbas—it’s music that you feel it in every cell of your body. I was stunned to see her working the keys with her mallets, looking as though she’s played marimba all of her short life. It’s a beautiful thing to see children play music together (even if they were forced to wear “crazy hats” by her groovy marimba teacher, who can be seen in the left corner of the photo).

So now, in addition to being a super smarty pants with an amazing sense of humor, Juliet can add marimba tenor extraordinaire to her 8-year old resume! Great job, Juliet!

Get An Eyefull of Extreme Perigee!

Tonight would be a good time to sneak onto a golf course, curl up with some blankets and hot toddys and howl at the full moon! Today luna will be just 222,000 miles away, closer than it's been since 1993; we won’t see it this big again until 2016. Enjoy!

I'm getting Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from these Victoria's Secret holiday catalogs

As soon as I finished college, I moved to Seattle into an apartment with two other roommates and one permanent couch surfer. Job hunting was tough, so as an interim solution I took a job as a sales girl at Victoria’s Secret making a whopping $6.25 an hour. The only thing worse than working a crappy job while in college is getting out of college and realizing all you can get is another crappy job.

This was in the late ’80s, before Victoria’s Secret instituted the No Couples in the Dressing Room rule, so a typical day at work might begin with me hearing people getting it on in a dressing room. I always tried to escalate these situations to the manager, I mean doesn’t this seem like a management issue?

“Jenny, there are people doing it in dressing room three.”

“Did you tell them to get out?”

“Yeah, they got quiet and pretended to not be in there.”

“Here, take the master key and break it up.”

So off I’d go, with my degree in Journalism and the manager’s important-keys-on-a-wristband, to bust some girl in a teddy and her horndog boyfriend.

“I know you’re in there and I’m coming in if you don’t come out right now,” I’d yell through the door, trying not to sound too much like the wolf in The Three Little Pigs.

Almost always they were indignant, “Well if you’re going to get snippy I won’t buy this bustier.”

I wished they could see me roll my eyes.

After they would leave, I’d spray some Lilly of the Valley perfume (the only tolerable scent in the cloying VS collection) in the room and pick up the soiled garment with two hangers, chopstick style, to deposit it in the “NO SALE” box in the back room.

I’d wonder about my destiny—was I always just going to pick up after other people's deviant adventures? In college I supplemented my gin allowance by working in a tanning salon, which, in rainy Eugene, Oregon saw a lot of action. The job was brainless: all I had to do was schedule tanning sessions and disinfect the beds after every use. College boys are a randy bunch and apparently they cannot lie still in their underwear for 30 minutes without getting frisky with themselves. They were conscientious about cleaning the bottom of the bed but they never remembered the top of the clamshell that came down over them. So basically I had been in the soft-core sex industry for years.

I was working at Victoria’s Secret because I could not find a real job. After months of discouraging interviews with advertising agencies, I honestly considered moving up in the ranks of retail; I was a great sales girl and often won the monthly sales contests. Any meager bonus would have been appreciated, but they rewarded us with lingerie instead of cash—just what someone making minimum wage needs. So each morning I scrounged up bus fare from the bottom of my roommates’ closets in an eighty-dollar garter belt and real silk stockings.

My winning sales tactic was simple: target men and use guilt as a sales tool. I’d approach a short man looking at sleazy lingerie and say, “Hi there. Can I help you find anything?”

“Oh, hi, I’m looking for a present for my wife. It’s our anniversary. I really like this," he’d say, holding up a porno-style red and black lace teddy. "What do you think?”

“Well…if she were buying it to surprise you, this thong-back teddy would be perfect. But this is for her, right? The ultimate gift for any woman is the cashmere robe. I promise you she will never, ever forget this present.”

“A robe? Really? Doesn’t seem very... Uh, wouldn’t she want me to get her something sexy?”

“Ask any woman in here, this is the sexiest thing they could ever receive. Cashmere is the ultimate. Shall I gift wrap it for you?”

“I guess. Uh, okay. Sure.”

I would run off quickly to wrap it and ring it up because the kind of man who shops at Victoria’s Secret may shrivel inside when he finds out that cashmere robe costs $275, but he would never, ever say he couldn’t afford it.

After a long day of peddling lingerie, I’d ride the bus home to our bleak apartment that always smelled like curry and moldy carpet, eat a tortilla or mac and cheese or something equally cheap, and envy my roommates for their real-ish jobs.

I’d go to Lynne for solace and comfort. Lynne was a weekend guest who turned into a roommate; she slept on the couch and used the hall linen closet as her dresser. She was stunningly beautiful in a big-eyed-Teutonic-blond kind of way and was as vapid as you would expect for someone so pretty, but she had a heart of gold. Lynne went out partying nearly every night and would pass out on the couch in her dress, nylons, and pumps. Before she would black out she’d say profoundly nice things to me, which I shamelessly sought out before I tucked her into the couch.

“Goodnight Lynne, can I help you out of your hose and shoes? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your pajamas? Do you have pajamas?” I’d ask, fruitlessly before she’d nod off with her mouth wide open, her breath smelling of Mudlsides or B-52s or Pina Coladas.

Then I’d go back to my bare room with a red pen and the want ads and curl up on my futon in the expensive silk pajamas I’d won...

Books and More Books!

This season why not forgo the glass chess set for your phlegmatic, pipe-smoking uncle and return the super-fuzzy slipper socks you picked up for your impossible-to-buy-for mother in law and head to the bookstore?

God knows the Fed is not going to bail out the publishing industry, so there’s a movement afoot to save the world by buying books as gifts this holiday season. Editorial Ass has an incredibly useful post up today listing books for a number of different types of people you may have in your life. Check it out, there is something for everyone!

Mmmm, Sugar...

I'm not a big believer in extraterrestrial life, but the fact that glycolaldehyde, a key sugar molecule, was found in a hospitable place in the galaxy has me rethinking the Greys.

Glycolaldehyde helps to build RNA, which is basically the central molecule involved in the origin of life on Earth. It was discovered at the center of the galaxy awhile ago, but now they’ve also found it on the star-forming part of the galaxy where there are potentially habitable planets. Sweet food for thought, no?

Damn you, previous post!

Had I not just put up a post in which 14% of the words were "tight pants" and "camel toe" I'm sure this blog would have score at least College Level in the blog readability test.

Once again, thanks to AC, finder of all cool blog toys, for this link to the Blog Readability Test. Anyone out there got a Genius Level blog like Literary Agent Janet Reid? Tip: Scrub your blog of middle-schoolish phrases like "what happened to darryl hannah's face" before checking it or you'll be back with me in 6th grade making fake fingernails by pouring Elmers in that groove in the center of your ruler. (Yields ten 1.2" press-ons by lunchtime!)

Are We Our Keywords?

I wonder if there’s a way to psychologically profile someone by the keywords that drive people to their blogs? Just as The Web Bot Project is able to predict trends and provide useful day trading info, do the words that lead people to our site somehow form a picture of who we are?

For the love of god, I hope the answer is NO.

I just looked at the phrases people used to get to my site. Frightening. There’s a whole category that just includes the words “tight pants” from which a sub-category of “camel toe” quickly emerges.

Would the FBI be able to sketch a psychological profile of me based on the following keywords that led to my blog?

three-legged fetish
what happened to darryl hannah's face
ornamental hermits
wound vac
latex ballgag
worst photographer
c'est la vie c'est la guerre
catholic hermits
escher moment
feaking
1984 parachute pants
excessive vamping
generic alleve
aquanet
bat wings grafted onto mice
bottomless pool mexico
blog funeral dirge
funny physical cautions
nacked yungen
freaks of nature
worst essay in the world

Searches JUST about tight pants:
tight pants pain
high school tight pants
stalking secretary tight pants
tight work out pants camel toe
tight trousers and pants cause pain
tight ski pants camel toe
tight pants pain risk
tight pants camel toe

(Anyone else think I should alert the authorities in Joensuu, Finland, where the search “stalking secretary tight pants” originated?)

If we can take anything away from this it's that any post involving "tight pants" and/or "camel toe" is a traffic driver....

What Now, You Ask?

So the revised manuscript is off, I am left with no immediate deadline, and children are at school. These are my plans:

1) Get back in pajamas
2) Turn on electric blanket
3) Turn off phone
4) Position large cup of Starbucks on bedside table
5) Open up "Astrid" manuscript and read cover to cover
6) Generally wallow until 1:00 conference call about freelance project

Ah, looks like a good day stretching out before me. After working so intensely on P.o.D. for the last few months, I'm really excited to dig in to Astrid. I wrote this manuscript last year, channeling nervous energy while I was waiting for an offer on P.o.D. and I really, really like it. Agent Laura had some major issues but I think I know how to fix it now, having had some distance from it. It's always exciting to go back and read something for the first time after a long while away. In this case it's been six months since I've cracked the Astrid manuscript.

What's that? Oh, it's my electric blanket calling—gotta go!

DONE!!! For now...

After an arduous three days of non-stop writing, I just sent the revised manuscript off to my editor and agent. I feel both elated and terrified; happy it's off my plate for now but so afraid I missed the mark.

I honestly can't type another word, so adieu for now...