MaryJanice Davidson's Blog, page 13

I Get New Covers and Less Fan Mail From Small Children

Berkley, my publisher for the UNDEAD series, is re-releasing the first two Betsy books (UNDEAD AND UNWED; UNDEAD AND UNEMPLOYED) with new covers. This has created some controversy, and thank goodness, because my only plans for today were lying around finishing DIVORCED BEHEADED AND SURVIVED and drinking Shirley Temples. (We're out of milk, so I'm sitting around all day with chocolate syrup but no milk. Oh, the humanity. And no, I did not get my ass out of the house and buy milk. Don't judge me.)
As I've mentioned before in FB posts, blogs, books, interviews, etc., the Betsy covers were changed for several reasons. One, when UNDEAD AND UNWED came out, it was the only game in town. To be blunt, I invented (accidentally, I promise) paranormal chick lit. So when the first UNDEADS came out with their cute cartooney covers and zany Betsy antics, great. (Seriously! Great! I basically looked around the bookstore, then went home and wrote what I couldn't find. That'd be Betsy. Since then, I've been able to jettison SDJs and have Ramen noodles less than three times a week. Yay, zany Betsy antics!)
Except now, fast-forward 9 books (and those are only the Betsy books, it doesn't include DERIKS' BANE and DEAD OVER HEELS and such) and seven years, there are a zillion of cute paranormal romance novels with cute cartooney covers and fun trendy hip heroines dealing with various paranormal difficulties and day-to-day problems. Then the Twilight books came out...need I say more? Paranormal, paranormal everywhere. Go check the romance end-cap of any bookstore if you don't believe me. I remember staring at one of them a couple of years ago, and thinking, jeez, *I* can't pick my book out of the crowd, how's a new reader s'posed to?
Two, the series was moving in a slightly edgier direction. (Don't get all shrill. I've been warning you for years. Check your author's pages. "But I don't read author's pages; they're just a way for the author to yak about herself for another five pages." "So? Read 'em.") The books are always going to be funny, it's just I ran out of shoe sales to write about. So there are new problems for Betsy & the gang to fight (not least of which, not dying...and/or not living forever). So there was that to factor in.
Three, the fan mail. Oh my God, the fan mail. From children. Little kids! Hey, I like to make a buck as much as the next whore, but not off the dreams of small children. The cartoon covers were captivating the kiddies...and fooling their parents. (Note: in general, I love fan mail. Keep 'em coming. Also, fan mail from 9 year-olds who are reading JENNIFER SCALES, great! Keep 'em coming.)
Now, right around this time the Berkley marketing department said heads up, we're changing the covers. So instead of my first response ("But I love those covers!") I thought of the tiny, tiny children and (a rare and wonderful thing) kept my mouth shut. Also, contractually, it was their call anyway; they told me as a courtesy, and that's absolutely fine...I do not have a marketing degree. I did not go to college at all. I love to write. I love to nurture my agoraphobia. I do not like making marketing decisions.
But ever since then, reader reaction has been mixed. Some people love the new covers, some hate them. New readers don't care; some old readers feel screwed. I'm happy for the ones who are happy, I feel bad for the ones who feel bad, but as for my own feelings: I remain indifferent: I have zero control over the covers, but plenty over what's between them. So I focus on what I can control.
Tracy, my assistant, is one of the biggest fans of the edgier covers, and I don't blame her. She's my front line for reader mail, and I still remember the first time she read a fan letter from a 9 year-old girl: "Me and my BFF like totally love Betsy and she is like the coolest grrrlll evah! and also we don't get the weird icky stuff she did in the swimming pool with Sinclair. but my BFF's big brother sez he'll tell us all about it!! and okay so it's like the coolest book and she is the coolest and we can't wait to save up our baby-sitting money for like the next one y r awesome!!!!!!!"
Tracy, a decent human being with children of her own, was frozen before her screen: "What do I do?" she asked, panicked. "What do I do?"
"Ask for her Mommy's cell phone number," I suggested. "That's a conversation I'd like to have."
Is this my fault, my worry, or my responsibility? Technically, no. Should I push for whatever covers I like and too bad about random FBI checks regarding corrupting the morals of minors? I s'pose. Still...it bugged me. And with each new exuberant letter carefully typed or hand-written by an enthusiastic child who hadn't been on the planet even ten years, who was younger than Tivo!, I felt worse.
So...parental responsibility? It's definitely not mine. My fifteen year old isn't allowed to read my books, never mind random elementary school kids. (Also: "Gross, Mom. I don't want to read any sex scenes you write. Just...gross." "But when you're older, I'm just saying..." "Just...don't. Please. Mom. Stop it now. Never. Never, okay? I WILL NEVER READ THEM.") And yeah, if your elementary school kid is buying romance novels in the ROMANCE NOVEL SECTION and you're not checking them out, that's not on me. But jeez, I'm not made of stone, people! I'M THE ONE GETTING THESE FRIGGIN' LETTERS!
"Hey, me and my BFF just figured out what Betsy and Sinclair did in the pool and now we're like the most popular girls in like fifth grade, like!!!!!!!"
Oh my God, just give me a Go-Cup full of vodka and a 9 mm so I can end it all. After taking a few parents with me. Oh, and by the way, parents buying romance novels for their little girls without checking content first? When I'm sitting in moral judgement on you, me with my indifferent parenting, inconsistent yet arbitrary rules, and frequent E.R. trips for stitches (not always stitches for me), it's time to re-examine your life.
So! The new covers are here to stay. That, I can live with. If you can't, go check the bookstore. There are still plenty of quirky romance novels with cartoon covers to choose from. Knock yourselves out, bay-bees.
No minor moral-corruptin' today,MJ

I Use A Terrible Word To Describe My Publisher

Brava, the publisher who prints my Alaskan series (parallel universe where the U.S. never bought Alaska and it became their own country with their own royal family), is re-releasing the books: The Royal Treatment, The Royal Mess, and The Royal Pain. And I have to explain how I feel about that with...a word I hate using.
Bittersweet. That's the word. Yuck. It's one of those words that always sound over-used the first time I hear it. Bittersweet: something sad and nice at the same time. But for whatever reason we don't say "it's sad and nice at the same time that Brava is re-releasing my Royals series", we say it's "bittersweet". Which is like saying something is "hotcold" or "angrythrilled" or "hornyfrigid" or "alivedead". At worst it sounds made up, and at best it sounds overdone.
The reason I'm stuck using a word I hate is because writing for Brava was all good at one time, and switching to another publisher was all good, and my books being available even after I wasn't writing for them was also all good, them being re-released yet again is all good. And one of the mongo-gigantic (see? now I'm making up words that sound overused right away) reasons these things are all good is because of the late, great Kate Duffy.
Kate was my editor at Brava and man oh man, did she spoil me. She thought everything I wrote and said was hilarious (who wouldn't love that?). When I turned in a manuscript, she dropped everything and read it the very same day, then called with 24 hours of finishing to tell me how much she loved it (who wouldn't love that?). Her ideas for covers were brilliant; her ideas for marketing were clever, and her editorial suggestions were inspired (she was the one who thought up naked Hide and Seek, to use just one example, and who wouldn't love that?). In 12 books over 5 years, she only once ever denied me. Only once did I hear the word No, about anything.
In the first draft of THE ROYAL TREATMMENT, two of the characters plan a honeymoon to the United States (they aren't American citizens). And the first place they were going to visit was Ground Zero in New York City. Not to gawk and point and wonder, but to pay their respects.
"No," Kate said, "they don't." Startled (was that a NO? oh no!), I asked her to elaborate. So she did: "They don't go see Ground Zero out of respect. They don't go for any reason. They can't. Because in that world, nothing completely fucking awful like 9/11 ever happened. In your Alaska, the towers are still standing. That world is SAFE."
I wanted to ask who she'd lost on 9/11. I didn't dare. And the thing about Kate was, she didn't ask. She didn't deprecate, she didn't explain. She just laid it out: you MUST delete that paragraph, end of discussion. And I was so startled she'd drawn a line in the sand that I nearly fell over myself agreeing to do it. (Frankly, my editors almost never draw lines like that so the mere fact that she did would have made me agree even if I didn't agree, if that makes sense).
Fast forward a few years, and Kate is now dead. She kicked cancer's ass for a while, showed it who was boss, and then got tired. Her death was as much sorrow as shock.
Now here come the Alaska books. New printing, new covers, new look. But no Kate. Almsot every day I'm getting bunches of cover flats or seeing release dates or fielding questions about Brava's other releases and none of it leads back to Kate and all of it leads back to Kate. Sure, I wrote the books. But as any author will tell you, that's just a part of the whole thing (and a lot of people don't think it's an especially big part, but there you go). And to be honest, they weren't books. I didn't (and don't) write books, I pull words together to make a pile of words. My books were hundreds of pages of a Word document, and Kate Duffy got them from my head to my computer to her office to her staff to book store shelves. They were only "my" books when she was finished doing her work.
I'm happy Brava is re-releasing the Royals. But I'm also sad because the re-release makes me think about Kate every day. My feelings are bittersweet. I miss her and there aren't two words smooshed together to describe that, there's just one: sad. Or sadsad, I guess, if we stick with the bittersweet formula.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that writers write (sure, duh, no brainer, right?) but what we don't do is morph our words into something a reader can pluck off the shelf at Barnes & Noble. For that, we need someone like Kate Duffy or Cindy Hwang or Monique Patterson. For that, we have to risk the bitter to enjoy the sweet. And I think that's okay; more, I think it's fair. I think sweet is sweeter if you know about the other side of the coin. Kate showed me the other side of the coin; I'm grateful to her for the bitter. And I thank her for the sweet.

I Show Yours, Mine, and Ours

Below is the first chapter from my FBI-agent-with-multiple-personality-disorder trilogy, YOURS, MINE AND OURS. It's the sequel to ENEMY MINE, which came out last September. As usual, my heroine, Cadence Jones, has "come to" in a strange place with strangers shouting at her. Happy New Year, and enjoy!
* * *

"—doing in here?"

I blinked at the woman across from me. She was not pleased, not even a teeny tiny bit. Her hair, which was once probably a lovely brunette pageboy, now looked as though the woman had been combing it with a wire whisk. Her face was red and shiny. Her clothes were a mess—a run in her pantyhose, her blouse un-tucked, one shoe missing—and she was standing ankle-deep in a drift of snow. Her brown eyes were really, really starey.

"I didn't miss Christmas, right?" I asked. This wasn't an idle question. The last thing I remembered was December, but hardly any snow—it had been a weirdly green winter.

"Didn't you hear me?" the woman croaked. Her voice was hoarse, either because she was ill or she'd been screaming. Probably at me, poor thing. "The cops are on the way! This is...it's...it's destruction of property!"

Well, that certainly sounded bad. I nodded encouragement ("yes, my, sounds terrible") but it didn't calm her down, not even a little.

I tried to figure out where I was. There were no newspapers around, so I had no idea what city I was in or what the date was. No TVs running with a CNN stream. Windows, sure, but too high for me to see billboards or the Golden Arches or any sort of landmark. (Mmmmm. Arches! Suddenly I wanted a Filet O' Fish, or five.) Nothing indicating the name of the building the poor thing and I were in. Just barking.

Lots of barking from, I would deduce (being a trained investigator for the FBI, I could do that; I could deduce all over the place) lots of dogs.

Dogs.

Ah.

I looked down and observed that the "snow" I was standing in was actually mounds and mounds of poodle fur.

"Uh-oh."

"That's it? That's all you have to say for yourself?"

"Um...oh, crumbs?" (Profanity was for the unimaginative.) "And...I'm sorry?" An apology seemed like the right move. When I woke up in a strange place with enraged strangers who were wearing only one shoe while standing in poodle fluff, it was almost always the right move.

"And there they are!" she shrilled, pointing with a flourish at the approach of two police officers. "You boys! You come over here and...and get her."

"Get me?" I asked, appalled. "But you don't even know me."

"Don't say that like we haven't spent ten horrible minutes together."

Well. We hadn't. She and I, is what I meant. She had spent time with my body, but not with me. Don't worry: it's not as depraved as it sounds.

"She committed felony assault on all my show poodles!"

Scratch that. It was at least as depraved as it sounds.

"Ohhhhh, that sounds bad," I said as the officers hurried up. They were St. Paul police, I noted as I nodded politely and tried to look the opposite of dangerous. Both cops were big and blonde and puffy, one with blue eyes and one with brown.

"You called in the assault, ma'am?" Blue Eyes asked.

"I think, yes, officers," I said, well into helpful mode.

"You shut up! I did," she agreed, blowing a hank of hair off her forehead with a gusty, egg-scented puff. "She committed assault all over everything and I'll lose now and months—months! Down the drain! We've been working toward this dog show for months!"

"You should probably arrest me," I agreed. I went to set down my milkshake, then realized my hands were empty. No wonder I was thirsty. "I'll come along quietly."

And I did.

Ho-Ho-Ho, Yo!

Wow, Xmas is gone again. It never fails to amaze, like no matter how much sugar I dump into the pitcher, it's never enough. (It's a miracle! Or the opposite.) But now it's time to plan for New Year's Eve. And like all things freakish about me, I'm really looking forward to NY's Eve. Just like I prefer Black Friday (the day after T'giving) and Christmas Eve Eve (I'm not gonna try to explain that one again), I really love the week between Christmas and New Year's. Why? The madness is over, and a holiday completely about getting shitfaced is mere days away.
Oh, and there's the whole looking forward to a new year, and promising to atone for all previous screw-ups...that's cool, too. For my part, in terms of things I shouldn't have done, or would do over:
I changed the tone of the UNDEAD series a bit, promising it would stay funny (and end funny), but that some bad things would happen, but I did it without warning anyone years in advance.
Then I left a cliff-hanger at the end of the newest book, but didn't warn anyone months in advance.
Then I ended the UNDEAD series once and for all. And when I did, I certainly didn't leave any sort of hint about the series in, say, the title. In large shiny letters.
Oh, WAIT. I didn't do ANY of those things. But a bunch of you sure acted like I did! Wow, that was exciting! So, am I sorry? I'm...not sure. As above, I didn't actually do those things. Have I learned my lesson? Oh, sure. Never again will I end a series without...wait, I'm forgetting again. I didn't do that.
Okay, but for sure, you can count on...well. All the things I've already told you you can count on. Snarky vampires. Heavily medicated civil servants. Snide blogs. And a truly bitchy writer, who loves her job and, by association, thinks you guys are pretty swell, too.
Hugs and jugs (of booze, you pervs) and peace most of all,warmest regards,MJ

The Most Funderful Time of the Year

I was raised like a hyena by King Al and his consort, who broke the world record for silhouette shooting when I was six. (An impressionable six, because I clearly remember two older gentlemen walking past my mom and muttering loud-on-purpose, "Goddamned women should stay in the kitchen where they belong." Best. Memory. EVER. Jam it high and wide, old guys. I'm saying it, because my mother never would. She has class. Unlike you two classes assholes. How about THAT?)
Now where...right, raised by a hyena and a sharpshooter. We didn't have much money when I was little, but there were always gifts under the tree. Christmas was always wonderful, and occasionally weird. And my folks liked to mix it up a little, too. (Weird, huh? Because we were so normal in every other way. Hee!)
One year we were all given the same amount of money to spend...on ourselves. We shopped and bought our own gifts, and wrapped them, and couldn't tell anybody what we'd bought ourselves. Then on Christmas Day, we opened our gifts and showed the others what we'd gotten...ourselves! It was the opposite of Christmas...it was Bizarro Christmas! And super cool, besides.
This year, in a futile attempt to teach our children the value of a dollar, and to count their blessings, and to not be dead inside, we put a price limit on gifts. A hundred bucks. They took it pretty well: "Wow. Okay, Mom, if that's the rule. So no single gift can cost more than a hundred dollars. It'll be tough...but we'll deal." (That's when it occurred to me that we might be a few years late on that whole "value of a dollar" thing.)
"No," I explained, "we're not spending more than a hundred bucks PER. As in, the total amount I will spend on your unworthy butts will be a hundred bucks. Which, by the way, when I was your age? Was a FORTUNE. For a lot of people it still is. So you should strike every item on your list that costs more than a hundred bucks. And maybe ask for...I dunno...pencils? Maybe a book on crosswords. We could get you a LOT of crossword puzzle books for a hundred bucks."
My kids exchanged bemused (or was it dismayed?) glances. "That goes for you and Dad, too?"
"Yup."
"How about a hundred spatulas?"
"You can never have too many spatulas," I agreed.
So Saturday should be interesting. Which is the whole point, really. (Yes! The point of Christmas isn't charity, forgiveness, generosity, or spirituality. It's to be interesting. Hallelujah!)
But for me, incorporating these truths is mostly a re-run. I had a pretty good idea of the value of a dollar when I was helping put food on my family's table at age 12 (ammunition is suprisingly cheap!). And this year I had three books out: UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED, ME MSYELF AND WHY, and RISE OF THE POISON MOON. So I spent much of the year doing PR: radio interviews, TV interviews, book tours for both hardcovers, newspapers, attending conferences, giving speeches, talking to magazine editors...all sorts of people all over the country wanted to talk to me about my books. And some of them even wanted to read them!
Value of a buck? Check. Not taking enormous good fortune for granted? You bet. My assistant, Tracy, and my sister, Yvonne, have both promised to stick a gun in my ear if I ever take contracts, sales, or royalties for granted.
So while my kids might have their doubts about weirdly arbitrary gift limits, and my parents will solemnly promise to stick to said limits and then cheerfully overspend (I'll grant you, ignoring parental guidelines are a grandparent's perogative), and I'll wonder how many spatulas my kids can jam into my stocking, the message behind the message remains the same: Christmas is wonderful, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with whatever's under the tree.
Not that I'd insist on returning, say, something from Jo Malone. But it could be a can of OFF, and I'd still count my blessings.
My hope for all of you: to be with the ones you love, as long as you can, this holiday season.

My Car Tries To Knock Me Unconscious

I'm clumsy, right? Very tall and very clumsy and (as I was reminded at Pearle Vision) very nearsighted. And, like many people who overcome crippling deformities and a suspiciously low I.Q., I've come to terms with my defects. Or I ignore them. I do one of those things, for sure.
So I wasn't surprised when my car assaulted my tender head; clearly my Ford knew either a) it could make my concussion look like an accident or, better, pilot error or b) if not, it knew no jury in the world would convict it. I'm, um, a careless maintainer of my car. Also of my dogs, plants, workload, garage, leftovers, and children.
It was time to pick up my kids, so naturally I was at the bakery. First, if you pick children up when they are expecting a ride because of an impending blizzard, they'll come to expect that treatment all the time. Not on MY watch, kiddos. Second, I'd skipped lunch. So naturally I decided to pick up sugar cookies, rosettes, and Russian Tea Cakes (ummmm! they taste like cookie dough dredged in powdered sugar and then dredged through more cookie dough).
As I strode (staggered? I had many small boxes) to my wow-this-needs-an-oil-change car, I pulled open the door and prepared to lean in to shove all my small cookie boxes (and the wild plum jam I'd also picked up, because a day without some sort of fruit topping is a day without sunshine) across the seat. Before I could do that, I sneezed. Hard. Really really hard.
You know how sneezes are involuntary, you can't predict them and can't keep your eyes open during them and they tend to sort of take over your entire body for a second? (Unless that's all just me.) Well, these things happened and thus I could not stop my head from slamming down...right on the point of the open car door.
In the half second it took me to figure out what had happened, I honestly thought my brain had exploded (all over my Russian Tea Cakes! noooooo! I can work without my brain, but not without sugar). I just couldn't come up with any other explanation for sudden searing pain in the middle of my forehead.
Luckily, my soccer mom bangs need a trim, so I was able to expertly camoflague the damage. I knew no one would ever suspect my Ford was holding a grudge (how long is it going to sulk because I insist on feeding it regular unleaded instead of that premium junk?). When my daughter greeted me with, "Can I drive?" I knew my camoflague had worked. "Thanks," she replied when I got out of the driver's side, followed by "Holy...! What happened to your head?"
Dammit! What I assumed was camoflague was the normal self-absorption of a teenager. And I should know...I'm well aware of where she got it from. "My car tried to," I began, but she cut in. "Can we go to DQ?"
Which made me smile for the first time since my car cold-cocked me. "No need," I said, showing her several bags. "I went to the bakery."
"The bakery! Oh, Mother," she said in that exact tone teenagers have the patent on. "Is that why I was standing out in the freezing--oooh, rosettes!"
"Also sugar cookies and plum jam. Don't touch the Russian Tea Cakes. I bled for those things, almost."
Oh, and my Ford? Right now it's sitting in the driveway, thinking about what it did. If it behaves tomorrow, I might splurge and buy new wiper blades. But maybe I won't. It all depends on whether or not I have to go back to the bakery.

I Post Myself

In celebration of finishing UNDEAD AND UNDERMINED last week, I thought I'd post another random chapter. Very minor spoilers, but as background, Betsy and the gang are living in a timeline that has already been tampered with. Some changes are interesting and cool. Other changes are horrifying. Either way: good fun!

"Okay, come on. I gotta hit the closet." I slowed my usual galloping pace while Jessica gasped and labored up the stairs. Being pregnant in a mansion this size must be a bitch. All our staircases looked like something out of Gone with the Wind. "My clothes closet, not the water closet, which I have clarified because in this timeline you've become obsessed with going to the bathroom."

"Shut. The hell. Up," she gasped.

"Hey, I can do a Rhett. Thinking about these stairs reminded me. I can scoop you up and sweep you up the stairs, except without a romantic lesbian vibe."

"Eat shit. And. Die."

"It'll be quicker. Probably. Even with my superior vampire strength, I'm not sure I could heft your bulk up these stairs."

"Touch me. And. Die."

Finally, she made it, and I followed her down the hall to my room. "At least we've gotten that out of the way."

"What out of the way?"

"You having the nerve to fall in love and get pregnant in an alternate timeline. I'm glad I've forgiven you; now I can concentrate on saving the world and, also, Marc."

"Oh, for the love...!" I gently shoved her into a sitting position on my bed and darted into my closet. I couldn't save the future and also Marc and maybe beat up the Anti-Christ unless I had the right footgear. Sure, it sounded lame, but if I felt sexy and confident I could get more done. And these shoes made me feel sexy and confident. They were my version of an 80s power tie, except not stupid. Case closed.

Except.

Um.

Sexy...and...confident...except...what?

"Wh—where...?"

Jessica had rolled off my bed, stretched up on her toes, and peeked over my shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"There's...there are shoes that should be in here that are not in here. And there are shoes in here that should not should not should not should not be in here!" I actually had to fight down the urge to throw up in my mouth.

There were over a dozen shoes missing, and my closet was a third full with...ugh...I could hardly...it was impossible and yet the grisly evidence was all over my closet. "What are all these velvet clogs doing in there?"

"Well. They're...you know." Jessica looked puzzled and alarmed. She covered her belly with both hands this time. Again, I was certain she had no knowledge of it. "They've been in for the last year. You—the you who was here a couple of days ago—you had just bought that navy blue pair, over there."

"But—" In this timeline I kept my good taste up my ass? Both Antonias were still dead but I now collected clogs? "But I hate clogs!"

"Since when?"

"Since always! And where are all the Christian Louboutins? I need my honeymoon Louboutins, my red Pavleta flats, I need them, where are they, I need them!"

"Your what?" Jessica, who had never feared me, ever, was backed all the way into the far corner of my walk-in closet.

"Pavletas, my Pavleta Louboutins, the Christian Louboutins, there should be twelve pairs of Goddamned Christian Louboutins in here and they're gone and I really need the ones I got on my honeymoon, where are my Christian Louboutins!"

"Who," Jessica asked, frowning so hard her forehead laddered into dark wrinkles, "is Christian Louboutin?"

My screams brought Marc and Sinclair on the run.

I Have Enough of (being) Undermined

I avoided my laptop most of today, behavior I don't normally exhibit unless I'm sleep-deprived or really, really drunk. (I'm always afraid I'll spill my Kahlua and cream on it.) I usually take a day off after finishing a book and, yup, yesterday I finished UNDEAD AND UNDERMINED. Which is why I'm treating myself to laptop avoidance today. Tomorrow I'll be back at it...there's a scene from YOURS, MINE AND OURS, the 2nd book in my FBI agent with MPD trilogy, that I'm dying to get out of my brain and into my laptop. Then my laptop can worry about it.
It's funny...if I'm hip-deep in a book I'm annoyed at my laptop. If I've finished a book and treat myself to a day off, it feels really, really weird not to be writing. Although I deeply pity Stephen King and Nora Roberts (they've both told reporters that they MUST write every single day, weekends, holidays, birthdays, every day, must...by the way, that's not talent, it's obsession), I can understand a little bit what it must be like to be compelled to write day after day after day. Today I was only compelled to wash Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls down with glass after glass of milk. And, you know, be a loving wife and mother and all that.
I'm sure Stephen and Nora will take my comments pretty hard. They're probably both crying into bags of money right now. Sorry, guys, but I called it the way I saw it.
All this to say UNDERMINED is finished and in my editor's hands. Will you guys like it? Will you hate it? Will you threaten extortion? Will you completely ignore the title and then ask questions which can be answsered by reading the title? Will you have any idea what I'm talking about? I guess we'll wait for July, and find out.

San Diego Rocks Despite The Worst Weather Ever

Okay, my visit to San Diego was like writing an Undead book...too much fun. The city was beautiful (the airport *bathrooms* were beautiful...with seashells!) and the RWA chapter couldn't have been more welcoming (I'm not speaking to RWA National, which they might even notice one day, but I have no problem with the chapters, which I tend to find supercool). The stores hosting my book signings were warmly professional and, even better, had tons of my own stock for me to sign, and the readers were (this is not actually confined to San Diego) enthusiastic and keen to tell me how terrific my books were.
The only weird thing was the weather. Not the actual San Diego weather...San Diego's reaction to the weather. "I am SO SORRY," many, many of them earnestly told me. "This weather is so horrible! I, and all my fellow citizens here in normally sunny and warm San Diego, am mortified and cannot apologize enough about the awful and disgusting and horrible weather we are currently having, which is just gross." They were talking about the fact that it was overcast and a mere sixty degrees (in mid-November). "Thank you so much for being here! I can't believe you were able to safely leave your hotel room. Anything could have happened to you. It's so dangerous out there. Look at those clouds!"
They got really upset for me when it started to rain. "We might have to shut down early," many of them told me anxiously, watching it pour. "This is going to...traffic will be...I am SO SORRY. Disgusting!" "Look at that RAIN!" "Wow, that is just really...rainy." "Thank you so much for venturing from your hotel to this hotel. We're so embarassed." They were hypnotized by the sight of water falling from the sky. They'd be talking with me and then their gaze would helplessly go to the windows...and stay. "I can't believe it's so...rainy. We can't thank you enough for leaving the state of Minnesota and coming here to San Diego when the weather is so weird and dangerous." "That's all right," I told them. I am generous and brave.
Despite the dreadful disgusting weather I loved my visit. The only way it could have been improved would be if my kids had been able to join me. Even as I type that, I'm aware it might not be true. The Barnes and Noble, and Mysterious Galaxy, were terrific stores...great staff, great prep, great supply of many of my books, great snacks.
When I left San Diego, it was cloudy and mid-fifties. Minnesota welcomed me with freezing rain, a temp in the low twenties, and car and door windows that were frozen shut. Also the knowledge that I had stupidly not bought an ice scraper for my car (they always vanish over the summer). Luckily, my hotel room key card worked all right in a pinch. At least it wasn't cloudy or, worse, raining.

Off to San Diego, Pray For Them

It finally snowed in MN (we've had the weirdest fall EVER), so I'm looking forward to going to San Diego this week more than I normally would be. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to help with the whole "Yay, Literacy!" thing the RWA's got going, but also, I like the idea of fleeing snow for a couple of days. Also: literacy is good.
Friday, I'll be doing a book signing at the Mira Mesa MarketCenter Barnes and Noble, which sounds cool and San Diego-ish. 10775 Westview Parkway, San Diego, 858-684-3166, at 6:00 p.m. Feel free to pester the store for more details.
Saturday, assuming I haven't been escorted from the state, I'll be at the San Diego RWA Literacy Event at the Best Western Seven Seas at 411 Hotel Circle South, in (you guessed right!) San Diego. More info can be found here:http://rwasd.com/chapterMeetings.html
Sunday (again, assuming...you get the jist) I'll be doing a book signing for Mysterious Galaxy Books...details to be found elsewhere on this blog, and also on my FB page.
Any questions? Don't bug me.
Hope to see all kinds of you there! (All kinds of you? What does that even mean?)