Faster Than Kudzu

Half a List and a Pretty Fat

1) I like lists. They unstick me. I was talking with my friend Lydia yesterday on the phone about this book, bouncing ideas off her, riffing, you know? And I said, “I BET ROSE LIKES TO MAKE LISTS!” And we both started laughing as we realized…

a) I have never actually given my main character in any book a list making fetish. BUT!
b) But I have ALSO never written a novel without suggesting to Lydia, at some point, that main character has a list making fetish. And. Of course:
c) I HAVE A LIST MAKING FETISH. And so it makes sense that
d) This blog entry is already a list inside a list. SEE?

2) I am abandoning the list. NOW.

I HAVE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU! I am IN the latest Jen Lancaster book! She wrote Bitter is the New Black and she is wicked wicked wicked funny, and I mean the wicked in a lot of different ways, all good. I first heard about her books from the Birmingham media rep, Mary Noble, when I was on tour. Mary Noble grabbed me by the ears and told me I HAD to read this woman’s books, “SHE IS LIKE US,” Mary Noble said. “SHE COULD BE IN THIS CAR WITH US, AND WE WOULD BE JUST AS HAPPY AS WE ARE RIGHT NOW.”

Which was pretty happy. I <3 Mary Noble, who has a cosmic understanding of how a grilled cheese sandwich SHOULD be made (On white bread. With butter. And American cheese.) Mary Noble was the rep with me when I was accused of wanting to bake dogs in pies and eat them while cackling in absolute pleasure, which, I will admit, when it comes to my own specific favorite dog, Bagel, and his propensity to eat MY OWN SPECIFIC FAVORITE SHOES and treat the cat box like a salad bar and his recent decision that SIT is a word that means he has the OPTION to touch his butt to the floor IF I am holding a pork chop…well. We have our dark moments, Bagel and I. But I have, in my defense, never YET shot him or even killed him gently. POINTS, ME!

ANYWAY, in Jen Lancaster’s NEW book, she mentions that she is listening to BETWEEN, GEORGIA on audio while at the gym and then she cries while doing curls. Cries in a good way. I think. I HOPE. Anyway. I think it’s weird that I was reading her book and in it there is a scene where she was reading my book. It’s very …picture of a kid on a cereal box holding a cereal box with a picture of a kid holding a cereal box on THAT cereal box, and so on, until the atom splits and infinity is reached or blows up or whatever happens.

The book is Such a Pretty Fat and it was particularly engaging to me as I am currently at WAR with my own butt about what size it is going to be (It was one size before tour, and now it has become a DIFFERENT size, and I* want the old size but my butt likes the new one. And my butt has chocolate and butter and cookies and pasta and CHEETOS fighting on its side,whiel all I have is the elliptical and grim determination. Small wonder my butt is WINNING.) Anyway, point is, if you want to laugh until your brains come out your nose, go get this book.

Holidaisy

Holidaisy

Scott and I were hanging out with some folks (including my friend Leffy) the other night, and they asked me what I got for Mother’s Day.

Me: Welp, Sam made me a decorative keychain with these little shells that jangle—mother of pearl, but he handpainted them. SO PRETTY! And Maisy decorated a vase and filled it with paper flowers. The flowers were made out of CUT OUTS of her WEE TEENY handprint.

Leffy: AW. What did Scott get you?

Scott: I got her a picture of some flowers.

Leffy: No, SERIOUSLY.

Me: He is telling the truth. He gave me a picture of Tulips.

Leffy: Scott! You are FIRED!

Me: Of course the picture was displayed on my brand new 22 inch flat screen monitor…

Leffy: REHIRED!!!!

Hee. Geek love is the best kind of love, because it often comes with new electronic equipments.

I hope alla ya’ll other mothers got handmade delightful things from your babies! And I hope you do not have to fire your husbands. Anyone get a vacuum cleaner? Our vacuum cleaner blew up 6 days before Mother’s Day, and I was in TERROR that I would be mom-gifted with a new one. After 15 or 16 years – I lose track –he knows me so much better than that. BUT! In case he’d had a brain fart and accidentally given me the vacuum, I had a line alllll ready for him: “Oh. Thanks. I just wish you had gotten me something you had actually SEEN ME USE before.” *grin*

A monitor is a pretty high end Momday prez, BUT it was a combo---for Mother’s day AND to celebrate our upcoming 15th or 16th anniversary, slated to take place later this month. I forget what exact day, but it IS in May. HEH. I used to know these things, because the day and year were engraved on my wedding band.

But he gave me a GORGEOUS antique eternity band on our tenth anniversary, and I promptly LOST the old ring. (Yes. I know. That seems BAD. But in my defense, it was very ugly. VERY VERY VERY UGLY. Sentimental much? Why, no, thank you.) and the new one is an eternity ring so it CANNOT be engraved so therefore I think I am absolved from ever knowing what day I was marrie,d much less how many YEARS ago that was. It’s not like HE would know the exact date and year if HE didn’t have his original band with the date in it RIGHT ON HIS FINGER like a round, gold, marital CHEAT SHEET.

Also HE cannot be blamed for the ugly original band. It was the cheapest ring in thew store. I think it was like, 10 carat gold embellished with Reynolds wrap and 3 sub-atomic specs of diamond dust they got by windexing the surfaces where actual stones were cut. It was very FLAT looking and…well…ugly, but I picked it out because I was spending so much time at the barn riding at that time, and I wanted a ring that wouldn’t CATCH on stuff and IRRITATE ME when I was mucking about with ponies. So we went to a ring store and we picked his band and then I picked this SCRUTIATING ugly cheapo flat thing and we left them there to be engraved.

A week or so later, he went back to the store to get our bands, and I saw they had accidentally swapped it for this GORGEOUS flowery ring that cost about nine times as much. I looked at it and said, “HONEY! LOOK! THOSE MORONS GOT ME THE WRONG RING!” and marched it back and exchanged for the ugly one, and of course within three years I virulently hated my ring.

It took me another TWO YEARS after I started hating that ring---so a total of FIVE --- before it occurred to me that they had not made a mistake.

Me: Hey Scott, remember when the ring store gave me the wrong wedding band, and it was that flower one and not this ugly cheap one?

Him: *suddenly very busy and not looking at me* Oh. Er…Yes?

Me: Did they REALLY? Or did you just not want me to have such a butt ugly wedding ring.

Him: LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY!

Me: OOOH! WHERE????!??! Wait --- Seriously!

I finally did get him to confess. He had done it on PURPOSE and picked out a ring he thought LOOKED like me, and it was lovely and flowery and expensive and then when I started hating the ugly one I picked he got me this antique eternity ring that I ADORE and NOW I got a monitor and I EMPHATICALLY DID NOT get a vacuum. I tell you what, one of the NICEST parts about my particular bout of motherhood is that this guy is their dad, and I see all the best bits of him in our kids.

Happy Anniversary, baby. Today and whatever day our anniversary actually is.

The To Didn’t List (part whatever part we are on, and also the end)

Remember the To Didn’t list? It got interrupted by little deers and spiritual cleansing, but it was basically a massive effort to clean up my EMAIL FILES, including all the self mailed ones that said ZOMGAH! BLOG ABOUT THIS!!!

And now? I need that TEENY little lady from Poltergeist to come in here…remember her?

Except instead of HOUSE, she would say IN-BOX.

SO here is the last of it, including others that came in while I was shoveling through:

1) Iron Man is supersonic popcorn fun, Robert Downey Jr. is AWESOME, and there is something to be said for casting actors who are capable of Shakespeare in Love and Chaplan in a big boom-filled summer flick, and the something that can be said is this: It makes the movies that are OBLIGATORY VIEWING for the parents of 11 year old boys a pleasure instead of a duty.

(Do you HEAR me POKEMON franchise, you damp floppy animated MISERY? Get ROBERT DOWNEY JUNIOR TO PLAY PIKACHU and MAYBE I will forgive you the 90 minutes of my life I WILL NEVER GET BACK after I sit through you. PS. If you DO snag RD Jr, I think Pikachu should be shirtless. A lot.)

2) SHOULD I HAVE AN FAQ PAGE? Does anyone ever READ FAQ pages? As it stands, I have slowly built up a sizeable file called “ANSWERS TO FAQS.” But put them on a page? Yes? No? FAQ pages always feel distancing and impersonal to me, but are they actually LESS impersonal than having a file with the answers in my MS word and cutting and pasting answers via email? I feel WEIRD and rude doing that, but at the same time, I can’t type out the same answer anew each time someone asks a question I am often asked…

PRO: If I did have an FAQ page, we could do a contest where you send in SUGGESTIONS for questions that should be ON the FAQ, and sending one would put your name in a drawing or something? What do you think?

3) Huzzah! It is more blathering and COMPLETELY unsolicited advice for writers! YOU’RE WELCOME!

On one of my favorite lists, a writer was trying to market her book to small Christian publishers and having little success because of the material---a little dark. At the same time, she has gotten rejections from agents and editors that say things like, “"Though your piece is certainly compelling and worthy of good home, I do not have a place for it at this time...I hope I rue the day I didn't offer you a contract"

I don’t think she realizes how ENCOURAGING that is! I think part of the problem is that she is deciding ahead of time where her book would fit in the industry, but she doesn’t know the industry. Neither do I, quite frankly, and you probably do not either, Oh Faceless Writer Reading This On The Internets, which is why The Lord in his infinite wisdom made agents.

I thought gods in Alabama was Christian fiction. Hee. Yes. Really. That is where I saw myself selling it…Oops, except it also had graphic sex, graphic violence, and a narrator who used the F word in it about umpty hundred times. SO. No Christian press would touch it. With a 20 foot pole. Not even if the pole had a dead possum on the end of it.

They MIGHT have been willing to touch it with a FIFTY foot pole, provided if the pole had had a stick of Zest Soap on the end, and assuming they could use the pole to stuff the WHOLE bar right into my protagonist's POTTILICIOUS MOUTH. I felt then -- I still feel -- that while the F words were plentiful, not a single one was gratuitous. (DIGRESSION BACK TO THING 2 ---A question that would absolutely have to be on the FAQ would be “Did you HAVE to use the F word so bountifully in gods in Alabama? My EYES are Bleeding! Was it REALLY necessary?” Answer: Yes.) I wasn't willing to let Arlene eat the soap and say things NICERLY.

SO--- YOU may think your book is a romance, but actually it s a thriller. Or vice versa. We are not the most objective viewers of our own work. A good agent knows what presses are looking for which sorts of objects, and as writers, we shouldn't have to worry our pretty head about such things. LA LA LA! That's not our job. I wish our job was "eating petit fours and shopping for VERY expensive shoes, " but alas, that ain't it either. If we move to New York and start networking and meeting every editor in town and researching pub lists for five years, who is going to write the next book? That's what we do. We write the next book.

If you are getting the sorts of rejections from agents that say the writing is good, that means you are getting PAST the query stage and having your MS or a partial of your MS read, and then getting GOOD PERSONAL rejections on top of that. That is a message from above! And the message is, "QUERY MORE AGENTS."

Here endeth the in-box To Didn’ts, and they are all TO ALREADY HAVE BEEN DIDS now. I feel we deserve a cookie.

Treat Fell Out. Who was Left? (Hint: Not Pink Socks)

Treat Fell Out. Who was Left? (Hint: Not Pink Socks) is actually Part 2 of yesterday’s entry, titled, “Treat and Retreat (were sitting in a boat?)”
But it is not here. Hee.

Late last night I suddenly REALIZED it was my day to blog at A Good Blog is Hard to Find so you can find the WHOLE entry, both parts molded together into a single story over THERE.

If you missed yesterday’s entry, just hit the link above for the whole thing, OR, if you were here yesterday, go there and just scroll about halfway down to pick up where I left off. It’s awkward, I AM sorry, but some folks who regularly read THAT blog have not have been here FIRST to read the beginning.

Treat and Retreat (were sitting in a boat?)

I forgot to tell you I was going on retreat! I left on Friday…I was feeling all spiritually clogged and barn sour and hatefully weepy and SO SO SO SORRY FOR MYSELF and I think it was sticking out EVERYWHERE. My best friend is being eaten by her children’s SPRING activity flood (as am I, best beloveds, as are all parents) and so we hadn’t talked in a couple of weeks. She called me and said , “WOW I CAN TELL FROM THE WORDS AROUND THE EDGES OF YOUR BLOG THAT YOU ARE ONE RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC AFTERNOON AWAY FROM HEADING UP TO THE TOP OF A WATER TOWER WITH AN OUZI! WHAT GIVES?”

And I was all, “OH! ‘Scuse me! Is my mental illness showing? Here, let me just tug my skirt down…” And so I tried, but I fast realized I didn’t have NEAR enough cloth. I would have needed a hoop skirt to rival Scarlet O’Hara’s at the BBQ to hide all of the FROTHY layers of lacey mental illness I’d wrapped around myself. “WAHHHHH I am a big fat hateful selfish cannibalistic failure with BAD HAIR WAHHHHH! Who is a sad! Sad! Panda? WHO? MEMEMEMMEME.” Like that.

So I headed off to a TV and traffic free woodland spot with a labyrinth and hiking trails down by the Chattahoochee River, and spent three days pretty much alternately marching around in the weeds and praying, and now I feel----retreated. Which is to say “significantly less crazy, with a firmer grasp on my actual priorities.”

The day before I left I thought, “I will go on retreat in the spirit of BABY BIRD! I will hunker down in a nest and scream and peep with an ENORMOUS OPEN BEAK and be stuffed with the worms of calmness and the worms of happiness and I will be given all good worms! ALL GOOD WORMS FOR ME!”

SO I went, and that first day, I was very weepy and stompy, and I missed my beautiful Television, and I missed my patient and beautiful husband, and I thought to myself, THIS IS USELESS! Where are my good worms??? I AM HOOTING AND PEEPING! I DEMAND THE GOOD WORMS! I came out here to the wilderness to find a TABLE in it. A BANQUET of sanity and grace spread just for me, and instead I found a table spread with ACTUAL WORMS, and NOT the kind that secretly mean peace, the damp squirmy kind…and here, you see, my baby bird and table in the wilderness metaphors met up and began breeding indiscriminately and had to be abandoned.

So Saturday morning I got up at 6 and put on my tennis shoes and went stomping down the trails with a map, like a moron. Because when it comes to choosing the correct fork while out hiking, a map is USELESS to me. I do not SPEAK map. I might as well take a bag of chicken bones and rattle them together and toss them to the earth and then see how they mystically fall to decide directions. Chicken bones, a map, magic 8 ball… same, same, all same.

But I took a map, and I headed into the woods.

Now you know I am not a beauty of the earth person. I know some people look at a sunset or a mountain or some flowers or whatever and they go OH! THE BEAUTY OF THE ERF! OHOHOH! And their eyes get misty and the wander off refreshed or whatever. Me? I say, “Dude. It’s a tree with some blooms on it, and come fall someone is going to have to RAKE that up when the tree poops it all off. Can we go watch TV now?”

But I AM an endorphin person. Hard physical work clears my head and makes me cheerful. SO! Armed with my map and a near psychotic level of optimism regarding my ability to use said map, I marked out a three mile course for myself. Then I put my head down and put my back into it. I am sure there were lots of lovely whatnots along the way, but I was looking at dirt and my feet so I could get a lot of speed without getting a lot of “falling onto my face and breaking it.” The trails were hilly and rooty – very satisfying, and soon I was tearing along them like a little steam engine, puff!puff!puff! very earnest.

A MIRACLE began to happen. Every time I STOPPED and checked the map, I was WHERE THE MAP SAID I SHOULD BE. It was BIZARRE! When the map said I would come to the river, I would come to the river. When the map said I would see the fork leading to the tent campgrounds, LO! There was a fork that led to the tent campgrounds. When the map said the labyrinth would be coming up on my left, THERE IT WAS! MAGICALLY ON THE LEFT! As if the WHOLE Labyrinth had grown centipede feet and creeped from where it USUALLY sat to wherever I was inevitably lost and plopped down just as I came around the corner as a gift to me.

THE GOOD WORMS! THE GOOD WORMS ON MY TABLE IN THE WILDERNESS! I crowed to myself, going even FASTER, and taking up my mis-mated metaphors again in the fervent heat of my delight.

And the whole thing was so VERY miraculous that I assumed it was Good Worms, and trusated it and put my head down, and stomped on trusting it, so that when I got to my last HALF mile, I came BACK to the same little rotty-looking plank bridge over a creek THREE times before I realized I was absolutely and hopelessly and finally rightly and justifiably Lost. As usual.

EEP – Must run! LATE. More tomorrow.

The To Didn’t List, part 3

My friend Carmen had the Best Vacation Idea Ever--- remember when Karen and I went to a lit con and on the way we passed the CRIME AND PUNISHMENT museum and we wanted to stop and sit in Old Sparky and learn about guillotines? Except that as usual we mucked it up?

That Blog Entry gave Carmen and her best friend Stephanie the idea to go on a roadtrip wonderland of BIZARRO SOUTHERN TINY TOURIST ATTRACTIONS called Carmanie's 1st Annual Dark'N'Twisty DirtyBackRoadtrip Cruisapalooza. They will be going to off OFF beat and sometimes profoundly disturbing places – the reallife versions of Bernese Frett’s TRULY creepy museum in Between, Georgia

They are having T Shirts made.
They are making COMP TAPES.
They are SERIOUS.

They are even going to Southern Forest World in Waycross Georgia, home of "Stuckie the Petrified Dog!!" This is literally a dead dog who somehow died while “stuck” IN A TREE, and he now is very petrified and very famous. In Waycross. When he was discovered they plexi-glassed him INSIDE the tree and built a whole touristy thing around HIM. Yes, they did. THEY REALLY DID. Of COURSE they did. OH, How I love Georgia!

Here are a few more of their ODD STOPS!

International Towing And Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum <---true! exists! INTERNATIONAL!

-Road Kill Cafe' (White, GA)

-Oakland Cemetery/ and Six Feet Under Restaurant

-Antique Funeral Museum/Margaret Mitchell Playhouse (How can a FUNERAL be antique?)

-Abandoned Insane Asylums at Central State Hospital and the Flannery O'Connor gravesite & memorial in Milledgeville

Winecoff Hotel (the "Titanic" of hotels)

-Warthen (oldest jail in GA - Aaron Burr was imprisoned there)

-Woolfolk Murders Site & Rose Hill Cemetery (Macon)

Corpsewood Manor (Trion, GA)

Bloodstained Crypt of Little Nina Craigmiles

Bud Jones Taxidermy Museum in Tallapoosa (THEY! HAVE! A! WHOLE! ENTIRE! RHINO! Makes that raccoon look like amateur hour…)

Smithsonian Institute Tick Museum in Statesboro (VIVA LA TICKS!)

I wish I was going! SEND PICTURES!!!!

They have a quite a few more stops. But they missed one – Hey CARMANIE – if you guys head into ALABAMA, you should go see the HELL BILLBOARD AND WATERWHEEL that lies midway between Birmingham and Montgomery---it’s been there as long as I can remember, and I feel it is only a hat vendor and cotton candy stand away from being a legit tourist destination...