Chicks-n-Scratching

Archive for the ‘humor’ Category

My romantic comedy JINXED has 13 chapters. This is the only story I have written that asked for more than just chapter numbers. It wanted ‘quote’ headers that capsulized the mood of each chapter. In a way, it tells the story’s progression, gives insights as to what is happening in the story arc.

I share them with you.

Chapter One
“…direct from out of the wasteland! He’s bad, he’s beautiful, he’s crazy!
It’s… It’s the man with no name!”
—Dr. Dealgood in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Chapter Two
“Suddenly he stops. He looks up. For, lo, there she stands. The girl of his dreams. Who she is or whence she came, he knows not, nor does he care for his heart tells him that here, here is the maid predestined to be his bride.”
—Grand Duke in Cinderella

Chapter Three
“You don’t love a woman because she is beautiful,
she is beautiful because you love her.”
—Anonymous

Chapter Four
“He’s strong, he’s kind. He’s always there for you, and he’s handsome to boot.
He’s perfect. Perfect. Perfectly infuriating! He makes me crazy.”
—Hades in Kingdom Hearts

Chapter Five
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chapter Six
“Unless it’s mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it’s a waste of your time.
There are too many mediocre things in life; love shouldn’t be one of them.”
—Frankie in Dream for an Insomniac

Chapter Seven
“It’s a secret wanting. Like a song I can’t stop humming.
Or loving someone you can never have.”
—Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Chapter Eight
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
—Robin Williams

Chapter Nine
“Love is passion. Obsession. Someone you can’t live without.
Someone you fall head over heels for.
Find someone you can love like crazy, and will love you the same way back.
Listen to your heart. No sense in life without this.”
—William Parrish in Meet Joe Black

Chapter Ten
“I used to believe in forever, but forever is too good to be true.”
—A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh,

Chapter Eleven
“I was born when she kissed me.
I died when she left me.
I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
—Dixon Steele in In A Lonely Place

Chapter Twelve
“Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life,
Love gives us a fairy tale.”
—Anonymous

Chapter Thirteen
“How shall I do to love? Believe.
How shall I do to believe? Love.”
—Archbishop Robert Leighton
BONUS!!

Epilogue
“But in spite their differences, they had one important thing in common.
They were crazy about each other.”
—Duke in The Notebook

*sigh*

I do love a happy ending. JINXED is available now in ebook and will be available April 1, 2010 in print.

When opposites attract, they are screwed three ways from Sunday.

Frannie learned the hard way that a McHottie doesn’t always equal marriage material. Besides, she’s happy with her vanilla life. She has friends, a career and a double-D-powered vibrator. Then Fate shoves her, literally, into Prince Charming’s lap. His declaration of love at first sight is cute—and spikes her bullcrap meter into the red zone.

She’s more than willing to give in with her body. But she’s barricaded her heart behind castle walls—and permanently welded the gates shut.

Tragedy taught Jinx that time is too precious to waste, so when a series of uncanny coincidences thrusts Frannie into his life, he holds on tight. He knows she thinks he’s several fries short of a Happy Meal, but he’s determined to breach the fortress around her heart and give her a Happily Ever After.

Even if he has to carry her fanny-first into his kingdom.

WARNING: Includes jelly shoes, a narcoleptic cat, and meatloaf. The steamy sex scenes may lead to fogged windows and wet panties, so proceed at your own risk. Do not attempt to read without the following items: tissues, napkins for spewed beverages, and a booty call on speed dial.

I have a mess and a half to clean up today. Majorly.

Backstory. I knew my children had a two hour delay due to weather that threatened to turn into a cancellation. The threat was a good one, I figured they would be home since our school system freaks over a chilly fart in the wind. So they had spent a long time building this elaborate play area where pirate ships attacked a Lego village and set fire to things. The fire department would then have to work at rescuing everyone. (One kid is into pirates, the other firefighters, can you tell?)

Rather than dismantle it, I left it alone assuming they would get up and resume playing. With me so far? Yeah? Good.

I have been battling this insomnia thing that is frankly kicking my ass. I took a little something to help me sleep and went to bed at the ungodly early hour of 11PM. Lights out, that’s all she wrote. zzzzzzzz

*CRASH!*

I heard it but through my drugged fog, didn’t care. I figured if it was something dangerous, the smoke alarm would go off. Back to dream land I go.

This morning I wake to discover a fucking bomb went off in my kitchen.(Explanation, my kitchen dining room were open/attached but I converted the dining portion to an office area.)

This is the story relayed to me by my husband who was sleeping on the couch for other marital reasons…

In the wee hours, our Christmas gift kitten, named FELON, is an instigator to trouble. He pounced on the older cat who acted as if he were mortally wounded and went streaking into the kitchen. Hubby followed half asleep to investigate. He tripped over a pirate ship, fell into a ladder truck and against my 7 foot fully stocked bookshelf.

Now, I had a lot more than books on that shelf. I had a few hundred books but also a couple baskets of junk, a nice display of my collectible tins, etc. Said bookshelf teetered and tottered before falling, taking with it everything in its path, namely the Lego village, a second matching 7 foot book shelf and the lamp. Shit flew everywhere, hitting my desk, pushing a bunch of stuff to the ground, littering the floor, breaking glass, etc. My CD collection skated across the floor like drunks on ice, my printer is in two pieces and my computer went for a trip form the middle of the desk to the left.

Hubby picked up the aforementioned FELON, threw cat in the kids’ room and shut the door and went back to sleep. I awoke to writer/mother Armageddon in my office area.

I am not a happy author. Nor mother. Nor cat owner. Nor wife for that matter. I have spent two hours already cleaning up broken stuff and gathering little dangerous things like push pins and thumbtacks and what was a beautiful candy jar. Paper clips and pens and all sorts of desk paraphernalia. All mixed in with pirates, firefighters, legos and matchbox cars.

Luckily, my computer only slid and suffered no damage or I could have ended up in jail for feline/hubby murder.

So no writing today, I am restocking the shelves and rearranging furniture to avoid anything like this in the future.With the entire family under foot. Joy.

Here are some of my favorite quotes by her.

1- “I was going to have inner peace if I had to break a few heads to do it.”

2- It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

3- “It is fast approaching the point where I don’t want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.”

4- There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

5- When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me”.

6- “There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.” Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they’re still there.”

7- “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.”

8- Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

9- I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair.

10- Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna.

11- Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.

12- “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.”

13- “I’ve decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.”

I need an assistant. I can’t, of course, affor to pay one. So I need either a Minion or an Intern.

1. Kid. I haz one. The Minion could help organize events to entertain her. Away from the house.

2. Laundry. Do you have any idea how much laundry I do? I figure if I didn’t do laundry, that probably equates to an entire book over the course of a year.

3. Office supplies. How am I supposed to keep track of that stuff? I need reinforcements (the little circular page kind, not the military kind). I thought I had some, but I can’t find them. A Minion would have them ready for me.

4. Correspondence, including but not limited to bills. Minions are supposed to take care of piddly and annoying details, right? Just think of the bump to my mental health if I had a Minion to do my bill paying for me.

5. PHONE. Heavens to Mergatroid. How many times have I sat down to write only to have the phone ring? Approximately a gajillion. And, yes, it could be important, so I answer it. And get dragged into a 45 minute political conversation with my dad, or a 30 minute gab-fest with the BFF. I love you people, but I need to work. Darn it.  Minion, please.

6. Cleaning. A clean home/work space is so much more conducive to productivity than a messy one. And I don’t have time to clean if I’m going to… well… be productive. So I need a Minion to do that for me. Did I mention I HATE cleaning?

7. Proof reading. Not so much content as just boneheaded mistakes. Typos and formatting. Things that anyone should be able to catch but take time that I don’t want to spend doing it. Definitely a Minion task.

8. Vetting new music. This is particularly problematic when GN sends me new stuff. His taste is questionable. He likes bagpipes, for pity’s sake. No, I mean he LIKES them. As in will deliberately listen to them and they aren’t playing “Amazing Grace.” In any case, that means about half the stuff from him is distracting at best. And bagpipes at worst. A minion could check it for me first to make sure it isn’t bagpipes!

9. And links. I get links all the time from lots of people. A minion could organize them and collect them so that when I have time, I could go visit the links and enjoy the (mostly humorous) entertainment provided by friends and family who send the links. I like links. Not when I’m working. Need the Minion for that.

10. Seeking out new recruits for my plan of world domination. Okay, not really, but it sounds good. And I’d definitely need Minions for that.

11. Organizing my library so I can stinking find things. My library used to be organized. By genre by author. No longer – now its a huge mess of stacks all over the house. Now I must hunt for Kill and Tell (which is missing!) and The Political Economy of Terrorism (by Enders and Sandler – good book). A Minion could keep it organized for me. Handy.

12. Keeping me hydrated. That’s part of a Minion’s job, right? Keeping me supplied with my beverage of choice, whether it be water, root beer, or adult beverages. Right?

13. Because it would be rockin’ awesome cool. Seriously. How awesome would it be? “Hi, this is my Minion, Babette. No, you can’t have her. Get your own Minion.”

Well, she doesn’t have to be named Babette. Nor does the Minion have to be female. Interested in the job (keeping in mind it is unpaid, but does come with a room in my house – though you have to share the bathroom with my Munchkin)? Excellent. Apply in comments.

So. Do you think the plot bunnies have radar? Or some kind of super-stealth surveillance network? Because I do. They always know when I have the least time and energy to deal with them. Those sneaky plot bunnies are stalking me, waiting to pounce when I am most vulnerable: swamped with other projects, snowed under with real life concerns, stuck in an endless morass of dreary prose.

And then they pounce.

Now, mind you, my plot bunnies are not the nice, fluffy bunnies of petting zoos and Cadbury commercials. No. My plot bunnies bear a strong resemblence to a certain rodent in a certain Monty Python movie. Yes, it’s true. My plot bunnies have a mean streak a mile wide.

Let me set it up for you: I have a cold. A really nasty cold. And a deadline on the dissertation. A really close deadline. And edits for an upcoming Freya’s Bower release. And finish work on a submission. And Munchkin is through with camps, so she is home. Which means I have to watch her. Plus, I had to buy school supplies today.  And I have approximately 20 other WIPs lined up in the queue.

Naturally, the plot bunnies, sensing weakness, attacked.

Darned rodents.

I am stealing this from another board I love, a non-writing, non-book board. It is a board of women who think.

My friend Beth wrote:
I’m beginning to understand the stigma of romance novels/novelists. It’s akin to sex toy parties, erotica, male/female dynamics, admitting that women need men, etc.

There’s a blushing frailty associated with romance novels, sweeping vistas and grand gestures and traditional strength. When I first started reading these, I thought, well, I was an English major who did her Honors Thesis on Milton’s Paradise Lost, I’ve earned the right to read whatever I want. And I found myself wanting to justify it. And then I began to hate that feeling and thought, I like strong men and hot sex. Why should I be ashamed to admit that.

So, whatcha readin? Vampire Sex. Lots of hot, hot Vampire sex.

While obviously unrealistic in their entirety, I think these books can help a woman understand what she likes, wants in her relationships, sex-life, friendships. I’m amazed at the things I’ve learned about myself and how responsive Mr. B has been to those requests/changes.

I’m a romance convert, and I’ll soon be publishing my thesis on romance novels and the women’s movement. ROFL

I replied:

Seriously, smart women read romance. Smart women write romance.

I hear a few major schools of badmouthing romance.

First IT IS FORMULAIC. Girl meets boy, boy and girl get nekkid, boy and girl fight, Happily every after(HEA). *substitute boy meets boy or girl meets girl for growing gay/lesbian romance*

Well duh.

That is kinda life people. How many people get married every year or fall in love? Yeah, love, that emotion that has fueled life since, oh, time began! And I reeeeeeeally want a copy of that formula that people assume is so easy. As for the HEA, does the police drama not have the bad guy getting caught? Sometimes there is a wedding, sometimes it is a ‘We are good for now’. depends on the author and the subgenre but there will always be some closure.

Take Gone with the Wind. Did Rhett leave Scarlet? Sure as hell did, left her sitting in a pile of skirt and tears. She survived. The romance was part of her journey not the crux of the tale. The tale was how Scarlet changed and her manipulations. It is NOT a romance. It is women’s fiction with romantic overtones.

SECOND COMMON BADMOUTH “It is all sex”.

And this is a problem… why?

No, it isn’t. The growing trend for the past decade or more is less and less closed bedroom doors and there are more positions beside vanilla missionary BUT there are some fantastic books with NO SEX in them. Yeah. Shocking.

There is no doubt erotica and romantica (phrase coined by Ellora’s Cave ePublishing) have skyrocketed. You can now buy ‘dirty’ books on line without going to a seedy store and getting condescending looks from a prim bookseller. You can read about anal, BDSM and menages. You do not need to practice these acts to read about them and enjoy it no more than you need to commit or solve a murder to enjoy a Grishom novel.

Major publishing houses are still somewhat publishing shy on gay romance so epublishing found a niche that exploded. Who knew that straight women would enjoy reading about gay men or group sex or whatever? What they enjoy is a good story. Period. And not all GAY stories feature open door sex.

There is sex in Stephen King, the Bible and a slew of other “non romance” genres. maybe not as much or as detailed, but there. Sex is normal. Deal with it.

THIRD COMPLAINT: The men are too perfect and it degrades women.

And Playboy and Penthouse are what, biographies?

Seriously, all books are fantasies in that they strive to take you out of your life and let you live someone else’s journey. Dickens did it. King does it. Picoult does it. So the men are hot. Big Deal. I want a few hours where I can fantasize- Sports Illustrated Swimsuit for women.
Couched in pretty words and stories, today’s romance often gives women –and girls– examples of healthy relationships, gives insights to what they as individuals might not be able to voice in their own minds. It isn’t rocket science. It is knowing it is okay to say ‘Touch me like this’ or ‘I would like to try that’ or even ‘I don’t want this’ and know that there are other women asserting themselves. You don’t have to be butch to say I want more oral but sometimes it is easier to say ‘honey, read this passage then come upstairs’.

FOURTH COMPLAINT: It is not real literature.

So?

Commercial fiction: Divine Secrets of the YA-YA Sisterhood, Water for Elephants, the Notebook, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Davinci Code, The Stephanie Plum Series, etc.

Literary fiction and commercial fiction have different goals from the outset, from the application. It doesn’t benefit anyone to mock the other. There are some damn fine stories in both and some gouge my eyes out with an ice pick in both.

Okay, I have a challenge for you if you have made it through all that drivel on a soap box.

There is one book that springs to mind right now that combines everything I have said above.

~It is commercial fiction but has literary undertones.
~It is a romance but not a traditionally-perceived boy/girl/happy kitty story.
~It is heterosexual(M/F) but explores attitudes and perceptions of homosexuality without actions from the main characters.
~There is loving sex but not melt your panties heat.
~The storyline is universal but something most people will never experience.
~Despite the author being a known talent and major ties with NY Publishing, no house would take a chance on it.
~It topped the lists this summer as being the best Beach Read as an epublication, surpassing huge numbers of print books.
~Reviews have been outstanding.
~It is a fine example of intelligent and emotional storytelling.

Interested? Curious?

BUTTERFLY TATTOO

It ain’t your mama’s romance.

There is Crap out there and pleasebabyjesus don’t let me be writing that.

There is Crack out there and I hope I am writing Coke but I will take Crack.

Crap is the stuff where there are land-mine size plot hole, flimsy character development, flat dialogue and generally the most blah thing besides chewing cotton balls. It often times has shoddy editing, dismal sentence structure and an over worked main story that reads like a Brady Bunch script. You know what is coming. The devices and things that occur are so ridiculous it is unbelievable. Many many times,they are an insult to the common salt shaker’s intelligence.  Crap makes you snarl and curl your lip and go flip the TV on after you stare at the page in absolute horror thinking “I spent money on this shit when I could have gone to Starbucks?”

CRAP is deceptive, make no mistake. They often have lovely covers and even come from  decent writers or well known publishers. Crap oozes though and it slips in unnoticed. An example of CRAP HERE

Crack, now crack is a different duck altogether. Crack is… not high brow cocaine. But it still takes you on that high, that jittery adrenalin ride that, while you are there, is like WHOA, LOOK, DUDE, PINK HORNETS SCREWING IN A VW BUG, COOL!! You like it. It is interesting and engaging and you want more!! And then you finish the story and get this creepy crawling feeling on your skin. Man, how could have enjoyed that?

It’s like sex with the class bozo. You didn’t think about anything while you were having that FIFTH screaming orgasm (Yes, 5th as in OMG he did it right and over and over and over). It was good.You already want to do it(Him) again. You check your calendar when the next installment comes out.

It is only afterward that you feel ashamed (the class clown, the one who wore the buttafuckwho? Teeshirt). You don’t talk about your dirty little guilty pleasure. We understand. We all have those vices, those dark urges we indulge in secret. Here’s mine.

Then we have the cream of the crop…Cocaine. Now not everyone graduates to coke, either in usage or writing. Cocaine is the story that all others are measured against. There are many many examples in the classics: Pride and Prejudice, Last of the Mohicans, Woodwiss’ Flame and the Flower and anything by Loretta Chase.

Where do you get cocaine today? Carrie Lofty is one coke pusher, Lisa Kelypas another, Kathleen O’Reilly another. You want a few fresh names you may not have heard of?

*Looks around secretively then whispers ‘Come here’ while opening her trenchcoat*.

Check out these. Sweet rush followed by heaven. But be careful, you’ll get hooked. Any of these ladies, Kate Pearce, Stephanie Draven and hopefully, one day, ME. I am an aspiring coke dealer. I want to join those ranks. Let me find an open street corner and I am so there.

I am lazy today.  Actually, not so much lazy as brain-fried, wrung out and generally worthless. It doesn’t help it is raining and I have three kids underfoot. My family has some upcoming medical thing we are all bracing for, there are two weddings and a retirement party.  This month.

So without further whining. Here is my blog selectin for Wednesday June 17th. Hump day.

Things that make me feel better!

These things make me feel better.

Alcohol. Hemingway the great(drunk), so to speak. Many writers do have alcohol dependency issues, I am sure. Pain makes for a wonderful story and it is my favorite actually. THere is nothing so compelling as a person stripped bare and showing the world the scars. To do that, many writers dig into their own soul, bare their personal low points and do it with such vivid honesty that it takes your breath away. It is exhausting and leaves one…vulnerable. The whole game of write like mad, breathe your story and then WAITWAITWAITWAIT forever and a day to hear from editors, agents, the publisher, etc. can be grueling.

I don’t drink.  Oh, I HAVE and I am sure there are more than a few embarrassing photos floating around out there to prove that. There may be a story or two of the 5-point seatbelt that would not let go of me or the huge-ass doberman who charged me one New Year’s Eve and made me pee my pantyhose when a voice from the darkness yelled SATAN, STOP!! (try that while drunk, it will scare the piss out of ANYONE!!)

But I don’t drink NOW! ALthough I am not opposed to the occassional beverage, I have not had one in… You know, I was going to say 6 years. And two months ago, that would have been correct. But last month, Big G and I went to a fabulous dinner and I had a Whiskey Sour. I thoroughly enjoyed it. One. A month ago.

CHOCOLATE. Smooth, rich, decadent, sinful and produces chemicals in the brain similar to falling in love. What better crutch could a romance writer turn to?

I like it. Don’t LOVE it. Like it. I prefer caramel.

Sex. I write smut book, right? My bedroom must be a huge place of silks and sexual freedoms. maybe a chest full of toys, a swing, certainly the heady scent of passionate coupling lingers in the air, permanently baked into the drywall.

Poor Big G is laughing his ass off right now. I have three kids.I have deadlines. He leaves for work at 4AM.  Yeah, I had a sex life. It is kinda like that alcohol bit above. I like sex, am quite good at it according to my husband but yeah, three kids, deadlines and that pile of laundry I have been doing battle with for a month all seem to take precedence at times.

Food. Writers live wild exotic celebrity lives where we wine and dine with stars.

Excuse me, it is time to start the chicken in the crockpot. BRB.

Now where was I? Oh yes, food. Uhm, I love to cook. I like good food. I hate clean up and really, I have been cooking 2-3 meals daily for so long, take out pizza works for me right now.

THE COMPUTER. Okay, you got me. I am here far too much. I live on the computer. I twitter, blog, research, write, socialize, chitchat, play games, etc. I am my computer. if my house caught fire, I would throw my kids out enroute to running for my hard drive and flashdrives. Screw the pictures and wedding dress. This little box comes with me or you will pry the melted, scorched heap from my dry, charred bones.

So maybe I am not stereotypical in your view but there it is. Me. And I am still a writer. So, do YOU fit any of the writer stereotypes?

Yup, That is me. I had my first release yesterday(sqeee)and I have been making blog rounds, promo’ing, chatting and generally showing off and saying LOOK AT ME, BUY THIS!!

By the way… GO BUY JINXED!!

Back on track here…

Through the miracle of modern technology, I’ve received some emails, twitter tweets, Yahoo IMs, blog comments, etc from some who did buy JINXED and actually read it already.

~One woman told me she was going to reread it today because she was sure she missed something because she was laughing too hard.

~I got one tweet that just said “DOG TURD TURBAN!! OMG ROFLMAO!!” (you have to read the book to get it)

~One emailer told me she had some bladder issues while reading. Mmmmmmmkay…er…sorry??

~One woman thanked me for making her cry and laugh, said she needed it. My pleasure.

~I got a tweet telling me the sex was hot! (cool)

~I have had a few comments on how bubbly and funny I must be in real life. People, I am boring!  I am! Like dead starfish on a hot boardwalk for three days boring.

~Apparently some of my free reads were also read (Yay!) and a person asked me why the comedy is toning down in them. Am I funnied-out?

No.

But as in life, relationships are not all laughs. Yes, you have to laugh through your tears but tears do come eventually. The laughter returns, always in my work, but no one wants to overdose on comedy. You need to balance the funny with the real, too. In Beauty and the Badge (freebie read series), Jace is not the comedic point pf view, Dayna is. So Dayna is where you will get your comedy.

JINXED has this also. As many laughs that are in it, and I do hope you laugh, there is a real story there, one that I hope touches your heart. Jinx and Frannie have real issues- Issues you can’t just slap a clown nose on and forget about. Comedy is one aspect of that story, a big one but the bones of the tale are those of human frailty and trust, something I hope everyone can identify with.

So day two of published author status and all is good. I am going to go check out the Naughty Girls Next Door. I guest blogged there way early this mrning. I hope I made sense. Stop by and leave me a comment there for a chance to win a free copy of JINXED!