Classic Overachiever: An interview with author Suzanne Young

I met Suzanne Young at the SCBWI Conference in LA and I swear to god I never saw her without a huge grin on her face. I don't think I could even picture her without a smile. But, now that I think of it, I’d smile all the time too if I were her.

Suzanne is a classic overachiever—you’ve got a book deal? She’s got a four-book deal. You’ve got a book coming out in 2010? She’s got two books coming out in 2010. This is not all luck; to have this kind of success you also have to also have her skills, which include the ability to write a draft of a book in a week—with two young kids, a husband, and a full-time job. [Insert silent scream here.] Suzanne is now writing full time and if you stop to do the math you realize this means it might only take her a day, instead of a week, to get a first draft out. Crazy!

Let's start with the deal report from Publisher’s Marketplace:

Suzanne Young's SMITTEN KITTENS, a new series about a group of girls who spy on cheating boyfriends, to Ben Schrank at Razorbill, by Melissa Sarver at the Elizabeth Kaplan Agency (World English). [Note: Working title Smitten Kittens is now officially changed to The Naughty List.]

Now, on to the questions.

Your how-I met-my-agent story is really interesting (and bumpy). Can you share it with the readers?
Well, when I first started writing, I had no idea what I was doing, (that hasn’t really changed) so I sent out these awful queries to agents and editors. Nada. I busted out a few more books, learned how to write a kickass query letter and started over. I got picked up about 7 months after I’d written my first book. Only… It didn’t work out. I wrote fast. Really fast. And unfortunately my break-neck speed and aversion to following rules got me in trouble. My agent dumped me and told me that maybe I should join a critique group. Ouch.

Two weeks later, I decided to never speak to another literary agent. I went directly to the editors. Luckily, this WONDERFUL editor over at Razorbill along with a couple other lovely editors decided to look at my book immediately. (Guess I didn’t need the group after all.) Just when the editors had decided to offer, an agent emailed me. Yes. EMAILED ME! She’d been reading my blog, but of course, I told her that I never wanted to speak to another literary agent. She was understanding, and then told me WHY I needed one. I put her through the ringer. (SORRY MELISSA!) And eventually, she won me over. I signed with Melissa Sarver at Elizabeth Kaplan Agency. Four weeks and three offers later, I had a two-book deal with Razorbill. How’s that for a reason to have a blog!?

So in 2008 you landed a two-book deal with Razorbill, and then last month you scored another two-book deal for a total of four books (!) all before the first one is even in print. Can you tell us how this went down?
I should probably know the answer to this, right? Luck? Good timing? Getting fired from my regular job? Actually, the last one is sort of true. Basically when I sold the first two books, I made sure the editors knew I had seven others. I’m not sure they believed me at first. So as I waited for my revision letter, I let them know again. And again. And for good measure, just one more time.

Then I lost my job. I emailed to ask if there was any freelance work available because… well, I had a lot of time to write! Turns out they had given SMITTEN KITTENS (Now Titled THE NAUGHTY LIST) another look and decided they loved it. They asked about my other books. I told them that I had an idea for a sequel. Then… it just sort of happened. THE NAUGHTY LIST became a series. And again, just to make sure they wouldn’t forget, I sent them a few more books. Have I mentioned how much I love Razorbill?

How did the story that became THE NAUGHTY LIST come to you?
Ninja Cheerleaders. Seriously, I had a vision of cheerleading ninjas and laughed myself silly. At the time, I was strictly into love stories. So I started writing about these cheerleaders and then decided, she needed a super hot boyfriend! Then the love story evolved in my head. The sweetness, the heartbreak, the hurkies. When the book was done, it had become something entirely different, but so much better than I could have ever imagined. A cheerleader that doesn’t swear? Get the eff out of here!

You are well-known for being able to crank out a first draft in a week. How long did THE NAUGHTY LIST take you to write?
The funny thing about this book… it was my hardest task. I fought against it. The idea and first chapter sat in my files for months. I had a good friend (Heather, I love you!) who kept telling me to work on it. So one day, I sat down and started to write it. It took about two weeks to write the first draft, which was about 29,000-words. Really just a glorified outline. I had tons of great friends who read it and after a month and four more passes through, I had the finished project that I sent to editors.

You sold the book in 2008 and your pub date is Summer 2010, where in the process are you now?
Well, my date just got moved up to Spring of 2010 for book 1 and summer for book 2. I’m about to work on the line edits of book 1, but even more interesting than that, I’m getting close to seeing my cover. Which I will love all over.

Where do you get your sweet and adorable disposition?
Why thank you for that question, Christy! It was so nice of you to say! I believe I get a lot of my personality from my grandmother, but she sadly passed away before my book sold. It will be dedicated to her, of course. She was my heart, my soul and my guide. And she was the funniest bitch you could have ever met! Thanks, Grammy!

Can you give aspiring writers some nuggets of advice?
I’m sorry if you’ve heard this before, but JUST WRITE. Don’t stop. When your book is on submission, keep writing. When you’re sick of it, keep writing. My first book didn’t sell. Neither did my second, third, fourth, fifth… get it? THE NAUGHTY LIST was the sixth book I wrote. So if I could tell you anything, it’s to have an arsenal! It makes for great agent stalking!

Suzanne has a fantastic blog that you should all check out. To get a taste of her writing style, read Going Green, the story she’s publishing serially (just like Dickens!) on her blog. The minute you start reading, you'll see the woman has a serious gift for dialog.

Congratulations on your great success, Suzanne! And thanks for the interview.

A new way to think about creativity...

No matter how you feel about Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, her speech "A new way to think about creativity" at the 2009 TED conference is really, really interesting. A worthwhile way to spend 19 minutes. (Thanks Katie!)

Lock me in the basement

Yesterday I brought dishonor to my family by admitting that I deny a certain elementary “fact” about math and then trying to find evidence from the IEEE to support my claim. You see I come from a family that includes more than one PhD in Applied Mathematics* and a past president of the National IEEE. So I am the shameful family secret, the offspring they’d like to hide in the basement with the canned peaches and Christmas ornaments. I really should just remove the post altogether, but the comments are just too good to lose to the ether.

So I will marinate in my shame a bit longer.

Though a dimwit, I did learn one thing: I shall never speak of mathematics again. Instead I shall speak of writing! Tonight is the weekly meeting of my critique group, the Lithia Writers Collective, and I have pledged to have the revision of my work in progress finished by tonight. This means about 3,000 new words and about 80 pages of line edits. I love a deadline. So off I go!

* These are their real dissertation topics: “A Comparative Analysis of Methods for Sampling Stationary Stochastic Processes” and “Seismic Velocity Estimation from Time Migration”

Quantum Weirdness

During breakfast this morning my daughter says, “Mom, do you know what two times zero is?”
“Two,” I answer quickly, busying myself with the coffee maker to keep from adding, “Duh.”
“No! It’s zero!” she shouts with glee, as she is a child who loves to see her mother get things wrong. (Rare treat.)

I give her a patronizing look and ask her what fool told her that. She answers, “My teacher.” Rolling my eyes, I get the calculator and punch in the equation. It comes up zero. I toss it aside, complaining that it is one of those fancy calculus calculators that doesn’t understand simple math, and we tromp into my office to use the calculator on the computer. The answer: still zero! More cackles from the third grader. Then the five-year-old brother starts in on the cackling, just for the fun of it. I shoo them from the office with a can of compressed-air keyboard cleaner so I can think this through.

Really, it’s wrong on so many levels. You just can’t make the two go away, I mean it’s right there before the multiplication symbol!

The phone rings. I see that it’s my friend Kim so I answer with, “I’m baffled!”
“Me too!” she shouts.
“I know, right? Like how can it be zero?” I ask, assuming she’s just had the same conversation over breakfast.
“What? No, I’m wondering why there are four inches of new snow and no delayed start for school.”
“Seriously, how can the two just go away? The two was there even before the zero!”

Kim tries to talk me down, explaining it just as my gloating eight-year-old had. But I have a minor character flaw in that I Can Never Be Wrong. I realize the only place I’m going to get any supporting evidence is the internet, so I Google the phrase “How can 2 x 0 = 0 ?” until I find something that makes me right. Behold:

Quantum Weirdness: Two Times Zero Doesn't Always Equal Zero
By Mark Anderson
In a surprising discovery released this week, physicists have announced that two times zero does not always equal zero. The new theoretical research examines transmissions of individual quantum states, blah blah blah...

So I immediately print this article (from an Aug 2008 issue of IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of “The world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology” no less) and am seconds away from cramming it in my daughter’s backpack to make her show her teacher when I hear the faint echo of the even fainter Voice of Reason somewhere deep in the warm folds of my neocortex. Do I really want the greatest third-grade teacher in the universe to feel sorry for my child for having an insane mother? Do I really want to be the topic of hilarious ridicule in the faculty lounge?

So I let it go. But on this, as with all things, I side with the quantum physicists.

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?