MaryJanice Davidson's Blog, page 3

Duluth Invites Me For Authors' Day And The Iron Range Will Never Be The Same

I'll be in Duluth this weekend signing and selling books at the Duluth Public Library on Saturday, May 17, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Between the gorgeous library and the 2200 square foot used bookstore not far from there, I plan to return to St. Paul Sunday afternoon pretty much staggering under a load of books to add to the load of books which is beside the load of books that makes up my TBR list. Which should sound exhausting but only makes me want the time to fly. Is it Saturday yet?

Hope to see some of you there; as always I'm happy to sign books brought from home. More information can be found here.

I Post the First Part of Eric Northman's Story in: DEAD BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

So there I was, enjoying a breakfast of Grape Nuts and Half n' Half followed by a V-8 chaser, when Charlaine Harris (she of The Southern Vampire Mysteries series, which led to the True Blood shenanigans) asked if I'd like to contribute a story to her upcoming anthology, Dead But Not Forgotten. Naturally I took this for a cruel trick question and said terrible things to her, and about her, but then her editor convinced me that a) it was a genuine offer and b) Charlaine had not, in fact, lost a bet. 

The rules were simple:  the main character of the story could be anyone in The Southern Vampire Mysteries series except Sookie, we had to play nicely within the rules of the SoVa space-time continuum (e.g. a story could be set while Sookie's grandma was alive, but you couldn't write a story where she interacts with a character introduced after she died), and we had to promise not to harm any animals while writing our stories. But I am an arteest and they can't control me, so I told them that third rule was totally out of line. I had no intention of harming an animal, but now that I was told I couldn't, I really really wanted to. God, that clause alone took forever to work out. (In the end, I ignored an animal, so their feelings were hurt but they weren't physically harmed. Arteest!) It was like when I found out I was pregnant and the doc explained I couldn't smoke or drink. Suddenly all I wanted to do was eat a pack of Marlboros. But I digress.

I'm not alone in having a sizeable ladycrush on Eric Northman, but for those of you who haven't read any of the SoVa books, he's a hunky vampire over a thousand years old with the build of an Olympic swimmer and the stamina of a sex addict mainlining Viagra. Formerly a Viking, currently a badass, he's arrogant in all the best ways, and always owns his shit. He was my first and last choice. Except for Pam. Okay, and maybe Sophie-Ann. Or Bubba. It doesn't matter, I didn't have to choose; Eric was available (oooh, best phrase ever) and he was all mine (second-best phrase ever). 

I set Widower's Walk two hundred and one years after the events of the final novel in the SoVa series, Dead Ever After and, in addition to writing a story from a man's POV (rare for me; I tend to stick with the ladies, or they stick with me) I wrote it in the present tense (even more rare…but fun!). I also got to do some research on Louisiana, one of the few states I haven't had a chance to visit. No idea what the readers will think, but I sure had a good time with him. The story! I meant the story. I definitely wasn't thinking about Eric's, um, longship. At all. Not even once. 

(I am a liar.)

(A liar who now wants to visit Louisiana!)

Anyway, here are the first couple of pages from Widower's Walk. Enjoy! And stop thinking about his longship, pervs.


* * *


When is a betrayal not a betrayal?When it’s not a betrayal.
He’s been here before, except he hasn’t.  Two hundred and one years ago, Louisiana was a different place, which stands to follow as it was also a different time.  The bar was here, but now it’s called Were About.  There are still waitresses here, but instead of leaving tips on tables customers use the datpads to send credits wherever the waitress (petcash, savings, WorldTax, 401K, direct-to-IRS) wants them.  There are blonde waitresses here with big eyes and sweet smiles, but they aren’t Sookie.  There are bad people here.  Of course.Eric Northman waits for a waitress (not for the first time), and ponders the nature of change.  It would be difficult not to, since everywhere he looks he is reminded.  Whoever wrote the more things change the more they stay the same, he thinks, had a brain tumor.  Because the more things change, the more things change.  Even the youngsters can see it. Louisiana, as a starting point.  Because first it was known for its mound complexes and status as a de rigueur Native American paradise and then it was known for the bow-and-arrow welcome hostile tribes gave the Spanish (perhaps they saw their future once Europeans hit the shore?), and then the French got their claws in and hung on until it became Slavery Central and then England spanked the French and took some of Louisiana as a penalty/prize and Spain snatched the rest which only increased the slave population (Louisiana by now being, essentially, the Walmart of slavery) and then Napoleon more or less declared, “You know what France would like back?  Louisiana.  Cough it up, bitches,” but then changed his mind and sold it to the United States, which knew the deal of the century when they got it and never once had buyer’s remorse.And then things settled down but not really and Louisiana was known for exporting sugar and cotton and a bunch of rich guys decided to secede (“Um, if there’s no slavery, who’s gonna build levees?  Besides us?  Which, obviously, is not acceptable.  Who’s ready to throw a secession soiree?”) which did not work out at all, and then the whole Reconstruction thing happened and the slaves were free and the supplanted planters took it pretty well (except for the KKK, the White League, and, um, the Colfax Massacre), okay, pretty well might be an exaggeration, and then the state was known for the rabid discouragement of African Americans registering to vote and then it was known for a sizable section of the population moving to California and then it was known for Civil Rights and then it was known for the Hurricane Katrina clusterfuck and then it was known for its seafood export (until they lost New Orleans to the hurricane that made Katrina look like a spring breeze) and then it was known for its petrochemical industries and now it isn’t.  Now Louisiana is primarily known for 1) tech, and 2) paranormal inhabitants.  And Eric isn’t there for an computer upgrade.Shaking his head he thinks, I have been spending too much time in the Wikipedia archives. He considers the cars and trucks in the parking lot, and the fact that at least four-fifths of them are solar-powered or electric.  It’s still legal to own and operate gasoline fueled engines, but only for so many hours a week, only for specific jobs (e.g. farm equipment), and it’s generally understood that even those will be phased out within twenty years.  Which is fine with him.  He knew electric cars would kill petrol-fueled anything back in 1995, for God’s sake, and planned (and invested) accordingly.  It was all well and good to be proved right, and it was even better to get rich doing so.  Besides, it’s much easier to make mischief when you have the checkbook (not that anyone used those anymore) to back it up.“Hi, welcome to Were About.”“How too cute,” he replies, almost-but-not-quite bored.  She’s cute, too.  Blonde, but then, he has a thing for them.  “TrueBlood, please, straight.”  No ice, God forbid, no cinnamon sprinkle, no salted rim.  After fixing the ozone dilemma and developing the prostate cancer vaccine, as far as Eric was concerned the greatest accomplishment over the past few centuries has been engineering TrueBlood as a palatable drink.  The downside to that?  People who weren’t vampires now drank it, which caused all sorts of trouble.  “Passing” was becoming a problem.  Not since the dark days of the Twilight franchise had it been so trendy to be dead.

* * *

Dead But Not Forgotten is available on audio here May 13 and Kindle and hardcover November 25, 2014; you can pre-order now. Longship sold separately. 

I Post Chapter One of UNDEAD AND UNWARY Whether Readers Want Me To Or Not

Just finished the copyedits for UNDEAD AND UNWARY, hitting stores this October. (There's still time to get your affairs in order and leave the country.) Thought you might like a look at Chapter One (spoilers for the end of UNDEAD AND UNSURE). Also: I'm too lazy to write something new this week while at the same time I'm goofing around with my blog format.

* * *


You know how you see someone you love stuck with a job they don’t know how to do? Or maybe they do know how, but they don’t like it, maybe even hate it? And you watch them struggle with a kind of dread because you know if they can’t pull it together you’ll end up offering to help them, even if the job’s over your head? Even if you know you’ll probably suck at it but you can’t just leave your loved one stuck with something awful? Even though you’re pretty sure it might devour your lives?
Yeah, that’s how I ended up working at Walmart the summer my friend Jess and I were eighteen, which was just so stupid. Among other things, neither of us needed the money, and also, Walmart is evil. I knew that long before I became a creature of the darkness. But that’s a whole other story and we come off pretty drunk in it.
Also, it’s why I’m cobitch in charge of Hell. I’m just too nice, dammit. It’s one of my biggest character flaws.
Fortunately I’ve been able to avoid my cobitch responsibilities for a couple of months now, and I had my brother/son, the vampire king’s new churchgoing activities (he’s on the Historical Preservation Committee and running the cookie exchange, which—I can’t even), my dead dad, the never-ending quest to housebreak Fur and Burr, and the entire household being a slave to Thing One and Thing Two to thank for it. (Off topic, lately I’ve realized we are dangerously close to being outnumbered by babies. Which just . . . yikes.)
All this to say it’s pretty chaotic around here. Our normal is other people’s chaos. Actually, it’s other people’s fever dreams. I was legitimately busy. Which I told myself as often as I could. It’s not like I just lolled around the mansion, talking my sexy husband into role-playing Scarlett and Rhett having passionate, pre-rape foreplay on our sweeping huge staircase. I loved scooping him into my arms and darting up those stairs only to ravish him in our bedroom and talk about how, frankly, my Sinclair, I don’t give a damn.
Lots to do, no time to hang around Hell. Except Hell had shown up in the form of my sister, Laura. Half sister, technically; we had the same dad, but Laura’s mom was Satan, making my little sister the Antichrist. Or the Anti-Antichrist, I guess, since she used to rebel against the devil by being good. Because how else would you do it? How can you outdevil the devil? It’d be like trying to outvapid any one of the Kardashians: no matter how determined and driven you are, no matter how much time you devote to what you suspect is the impossible, it cannot be done.
And I had to give my little sis props: Laura never once tried outdeviling the devil. Instead, she was (and is) a fixture at various local soup kitchens, food banks, church banquets, shelters, and the occasional Democratic fund-raiser. Plus, there was no need for passive-aggressive maternal rebellion anymore, because I killed Satan (crazy week—don’t get me started). If nothing else, there was no point in rebelling against the devil when you were the devil.
Anyhoo, Laura was here, she wasn't queer, and I'd better get used to it. Or however that was supposed to go.
“Share,” she said again, tapping her Payless-shod foot on the faded peach-colored carpet. Black flat, rounded toe, made of some horrific plastic/pleather hybrid; I reminded myself that it wasn’t nice to tackle the Antichrist for the purpose of confiscating her shoes and then blowing them up.
Mind you, this was a woman who could literally travel through space and time using only the force of her will, a woman who, it was foretold, would take over the world, and she can’t bring herself to wear footgear that isn’t wretched. Also, round-toed shoes have creeped me out ever since I read Roald Dahl’s book The Witches. The way Mr. Dahl tells it, witches have to wear round-toed shoes because . . . they have no toes! Their feet just stop at the end of the . . . whatever the bones are just before the toe bones start, that’s where their feet stop. They just stop! Even thinking about it summons my vomit reflex. 
“We agreed, Betsy. Sharing, remember?”
Eh? Oh, right. I shook off my case of the creeps and tried to focus. Running Hell. Sharing running Hell. Which was an unfortunate word choice, since I had been an only child for most of my life (my half sister/work buddy/occasional nemesis didn’t pop up on my radar until I hit thirty—an age I’ll be for centuries, so it’s a good thing I never got that tattoo), so “sharing” wasn’t something I’d had much practice with.
“We agreed,” she continued, being as dogged as I was when I tried to talk her into some decent shoes, “we’d run Hell together.”

Agreed? Run it together? Hmm. Didn’t sound like me. I tended to avoid work, not blithely agree to it. Unless I was trying to get back on someone’s good side. Which, given that I’d killed my sister’s mom, was something I would have had to do. Dammit. I probably did agree to share. The things we do in moments of weakness: recycling in a desperate attempt to save the earth, obsessively updating Amazon wish lists, agreeing to run Hell with the Antichrist.
“We agreed”—ah, cripes, she was still going on about this—“it was the least you could do after murdering my mother.”
That irked me, but not for the reason you’d think, which is why many people are (rightly) convinced I’m a bad person. “First off, the least I could do is nothing.” Huge pet peeve of mine, along with people using amongst and towards and synergy, and people mailing Christmas letters instead of cards. And I’m saying that as someone who used to do the letter thing; I actually thought people were genuinely interested in the promotions I didn’t get, the shoes I did, the guys I didn’t marry, the babies I didn’t have. But even my puffy vanity couldn’t keep convincing me people wanted an envelope full of Who Cares, I’ve Got My Own Problems for Christmas, so now I don’t send anything.
Ironic, because I actually have cool (cool = weird/terrifying) stuff to write about now. Well, we picked out our tree—had to go at night, obviously, and then helped ourselves to half a pint of B neg from a would-be Christmas tree thief. BabyJon is learning to walk, his parents are still dead, and I killed the devil. Happy holidays from all of us at Vamp Central! In lieu of gifts, donate blood. Because the Red Cross shouldn’t be able to hog it all, dammit.
“Okay?” I needled. “‘The least I can do,’ by definition, is nothing. Ergo the word least. Ergo the word ergo.”
“Which you’ve been doing! All across the board, nothing but nothing.”
“All right, fair point. It’s just I hate when people say ‘the least I could do’ without acknowledging—”
“Stop talking. Right now.”
“—that the least I could do isnothing.”
“It was really naïve of me to hope you’d stay on track for this.”
“You bet it was. Also, if the shoe fits.”
“That makes no sense.”
“And while we’re on the subject of shoes—”
“We aren’t!”
“—those things on your feet could make it through a nuclear winter, which, believe it or not, is not a selling point. That plastic/pleather doesn’t look like it would ever break down. Cockroaches and those shoes, that’s all that would remain on the poor scorched earth.” The thought was so sad, I had to shake my head. “Also, killing someone in self-defense isn’t murder. Right, Dickie-Bird?” It was handy to have a cop in residence, and this wasn’t the first time I’d had that thought. “Not murder?”
“Justified homicide, yes, it is. Yes, it is.” Detective Nicholas Berry, one of my several thousand roommates, was perched on the peach-colored love seat as he cradled Thing One and cooed to him. We were surrounded by peach, which is why our nickname for the peach-colored parlor was Peach Parlor.
(Sometimes we had no imagination. Of any kind. Peach Parlor, my God.)
It was at the front of the mansion, just off the entryway, and we usually used it to entertain welcome guests and occasionally corner uninvited guests. But Dick and his full-time sweetie, Jessica, had taken into their heads that the color peach soothed their weird babies, and if it was true, those babies were probably going to be the most relaxed and laid-back on the planet because everything . . . couch, wallpaper, love seat, overstuffed chairs . . . peach. One hundred percent peach. All peach, all the time. We’re having a special in the Peach Parlor, and the special is peach.
Meanwhile, the Thing That Sired Lovers of Peach was still cooing at his baby. “Not a jury in the world, no, there isn’t, not a jury in the world and oooh! Look, she’s yawning. Come see, you guys.”

Damn . . . that was Thing Two, then. Dick had knocked up my bestie (which Jessica loves to pronounce “beastie” and which, since she is as sleep deprived as a POW, I let slide) with twins and even though they were fraternal, they looked identical to me. Except for the boy having a penis and the girl not, I mean. They were pale, like Not-Nick, with Jessica’s not-pale features. Same dark eyes (their besotted parents claimed the babies had big pretty eyes but whenever I looked, said eyes were squinched up in a yawn or a yowl or in sleep . . . they could be cross-eyed for all I’d been able to see), same teeny nose, same pointy chin, same weirdly gangly limbs. Yes, I will be the one to make that particular announcement: Thing One and Thing Two were pretty hideous.

“Guys? C’mere, loooook!”
Laura, still standing in her patented “arms akimbo in judgment” pose in the parlor doorway, didn’t move. I didn’t, either. “I’m not crossing the room to watch your kid do something she does at least five dozen times a day.” Yeah, Not-Nick and Jessica were doing that annoying thing parents did, to wit: come see my ordinary kid do ordinary stuff that we totally think is the opposite of ordinary and we’re sure you’ll agree, rinse, repeat. Repeat × 1,000.Pass.
“You know how I know I need to get more sleep?” he asked and, since I was pretty sure it was rhetorical, I didn’t reply. Which worked out fine, because after a pause he kept going. “I couldn’t find the babies last night. Jess was asleep, and the babies were asleep, and you guys were out hunting, and I went to look in on them and for a few seconds . . .” The exhausted, slightly dazed smile fell off his face and I saw with a start that he was afraid. Not “what if they don’t get into a good college?” afraid but “I didn’t know what to do and was scared” afraid. “I couldn’t find them. I knew they were in the room—where else would they have been?—but they weren’t there. At least, it seemed like they weren’t. Gave me a hell of a start.”
“You’re right,” I decided. “You need more sleep. Your lazy babies are hogging it all.”
“I don’t think sleep works like that,” he said through a yawn.
Laura was now gazing thoughtfully down at father and daughter. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this in front of the baby.”
“Trust me, the baby doesn’t give a shit.” I chortled. “Except, of course—”
“Don’t.”
“—when she shits! Heh.”
“Scatological humor,” Laura commented, unimpressed. “A mark of true class.”
“I’m full of surprises.” Scatological. Probably something to do with poop, right? Scat = poop, taught to me many years ago by my mom (she hunts; geese, deer, ducks, and wild turkeys are not safe from her). Which wasn’t even true, since I don’t even like poop humor and if I ever did, Family Guy would have killed that part of me long before now. If there had been no Family Guy, South Park would have taken care of the job. But there’s no level I won’t sink to in order to get the Antichrist off her “you promised, and also it’s ‘bring your sister to work’ century” thing. If that meant poop references, I was fully prepared to make them. It was, after cornering my husband and banging him senseless, my number two priority. Ha! Number two. Get it? (It’s possible I need professional help.)
I’d been lucky so far, and I knew it. This place, our St. Paul mansion (dubbed Vamp Central about a day after we moved in), was a madhouse even on good days. Normally I disparaged that. Normally I bitched about it like I was getting paid. I never wanted the queen-of-the-vampires gig, but was slooowly becoming used to it. (Used to it = dead inside.) Or resigned, I guess—that’s probably a better word. And I sure never wanted to live with assorted vampires, werewolves, and babies, but again: resigned. Didn’t want to be married to a vampire, didn’t want to go time traveling. Didn’t want to be haunted, literally haunted, by several ghosts (spirits? shades? life forces? pulse challenged?), including that of my loathed stepmother. Didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.
And now, when it was too late to fix it and too early to properly mourn my pulse-accompanied lifestyle, I missed the normality of everyday life. Predeath my biggest problems had been not strangling my boss, saving my hard-earned pennies for the new Louboutins, avoiding my stepmother while trying to get my father to pay attention to me (yes, pathetic, and yes, thar be daddy issues ahoy), watching Jessica go through more boyfriends than a cat through cat litter, and trying to vote Republican without feeling like a traitor to every female ever conceived. All those things were a huge pain in my ass back in the day (back in the day = about three years ago), but now that I had to worry about death threats, death attempts, navigating a timeline I screwed, kind-of-sort-of raising my half brother/son, accepting that my mother is (groan, shudder) dating and (argh!) possibly having sex, and now cohosting Hell with my half sister, it seemed like my old life was laughably carefree.
It wasn’t, of course, but that’s how we are about older, smaller problems when faced with newer, awfuler ones: ah, the good old days! Which weren’t so great, and certainly not all the time, but I’m going to pretend they were perfect.
“But that’s enough murder talk around my baby,” Not-Nick continued, reminding me that I was in the middle of a conversation, kind of. “Not a sentence I thought I’d be saying ever,” he added cheerfully. “I was pretty convinced I’d die alone.”“That’s the spirit, Dick-Not-Nick." Aword about Nicholas Berry and his annoying name. In the old timeline, we’d known him as Nick. Which made sense, since it was shorter and more efficient and short for Nicholas, his actual name. For some unexplained, illogical, silly-ass reason, when I returned to the changed timeline, he informed me no one ever called him Nick, no one ever called him by his full first name, and furthermore, his nickname was and always had been Dick so I’d better get with the program, and also, we’re out of milk so the next time I’m out and about could I please bring home a gallon of skim?
Outrageous! First of all, skim? That’s white water. That’s all skim milk is: they take out all the wonderful stuff that makes milk taste like milk and replace it with white water and people actually drink that shit. Second, Dick? How? How did his family get Dick from Nicholas? It makes no sense. And nothing against the Dicks and Richards of the world, but I always disliked that one. Call me immature if you like—I’ve earned it many times over—but come on: The word. Is slang. For penis. If he was a woman named Virginia, would he insist we refer to him as Vag? I think not! (God, I hope not.)
Old habits were hard to break, and I had enough trouble remembering people’s actual names, never mind their nicknames both pre- and post-timeline-fuckery. Trouble was, for some silly reason Nick disliked being called Nick and called me on it. A lot. (My vamp queen title never seems to impress or intimidate the people I want it to impress or intimidate.) Which was his prerogative, but I dunno. Seems like his time could be spent on pretty much anything else.
“Sure, she doesn’t understand now,” the Roommate Formerly Known as Nick was saying, “but it’s never too early to get into the habit of watching absolutely everything we say all the time around the babies constantly.”
Oh, goody. “Yeah? Well, let me give you a tip, No-Longer-Nick—”
“God, will you stop with that?” Exhausted, but not too exhausted to glare and correct me. I had to admire that. “You know what year all your favorite shoes came out but can’t remember which four-letter word I prefer being called?”
“—it’s kind of hard to accept your authority on anything when you’re dressed like . . . um . . .”
DadDick was dressed in a stunning ensemble of gray sweatpants (which I suspected had been black about a decade earlier), vomit-stained T-shirt (I assumed it wasn’t his vomit, but here at Casa de los Weirdos you could never be sure), and bare feet. And God, did his toenails need trimming, and don’t get me started on how much his heels were crying out for a pumice stone. The bags under his eyes told the world that he hadn’t slept in a thousand days. The smell coming off him told the world that he hadn’t showered in a thousand days. I didn’t know how it was even possible, but he was barely even cute anymore. The babies had sucked all the cuteness out of him.
“Are you honestly telling me you’ve got no need in your life for an internal censor of any kind?” he argued, pretty coherently for a zombie. (Not a real zombie, of course. That was Marc, one of my other several thousand roommates.) “Think of watching what you say around the babies as excellent practice for future vampire queenery.”
“Making the horror that is now my life complete,” I finished.
DadDick rolled his bloodshot eyes. “Don’t talk to me about horror. You got more sleep in one night than I’ve had in a week. Do not talk to me about horror.”
“Fair point,” I conceded. It was. Jessica had told me it wasn’t that the babies didn’t sleep for long; they’d known that was coming. It wasn’t the three a.m. feedings or the multiple daylight naps or the midnight diaper change. It was never knowing, when she or DadDick did get a chance to lie down, if they would get a twenty-minute nap or six blissful uninterrupted hours or something in between. It’s the not knowing that exhausts you, she’d told me. I had listened in horrified fascination; all she needed was a flashlight to shine in her face as she finished her story with, “And the call was coming from inside the crib!”
“Look, we don’t have to talk about this now,” I conceded while trying to make it look like I wasn’t conceding a damned thing. “Let’s wait until the babies are out of earshot.” And maybe puberty. How long could I stretch this out?
Unfortunately, the Antichrist was not only too nice (when she wasn’t killing serial killers, proving an overreaction is not always a bad thing even as she terrified me) but she saw through me too well. Which wasn’t that impressive; it’s not like I was some inexplicable force whose every thought was cloaked in mystery. Laura found me as mysterious as a dartboard.
She pointedly shifted her gaze from the baby and speared me with her blue-eyed gaze. “Do you know how many people die every day?”
“I know it’s more than twenty.”
“About one hundred fifty thousand.”
“At once?” I asked, appalled.
“It works out to about six thousand people an hour.”
“That,” I said, “is a lot. Let me guess where this is going . . .”
“Yes, please. It would be so great if you knew where this was going.”
“. . . at least some of those dead people end up in Hell?”
“At least,” she replied dryly. “The backlog since you murdered my mother—”
“Justified homicide!” I yelped and pointed to DadDick, who was nodding and droopy eyed. I thought it was cool how the sleepier he got the tighter his grip on the baby, like even his subconscious was devoted to its safety. He could be snoring and still have her cradled safely in his arms. I couldn’t multitask for shit, so I found that impressive. “He said!”
“—has been immense. Black Plague immense.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Immense means gigantic and—”
“Jeez, I’m not that dim.” Polite silence was my response. I decided DadDick’s was because he was dozing and Laura’s was because she could be an immense bitch. Don’t tell me about pots and kettles; I know all about pots and kettles. “I’m not,” I finished, trying hard not to whine.
“Then you get it. How this is an immense problem. And you understand that regardless of whatever nonsense is going on around here, it likely doesn’t trump sorting six thousand souls an hour.”
“I don’t think you can generalize that,” I argued. “What if there was a nuclear bomb in the basement that only I could defuse? That’d be more important. That’d be loads more important.”
Laura closed her eyes and kept them closed. Counting to ten, maybe, or reminding herself that killing her sister/colleague would be bad for workplace morale. Or maybe thinking about investing in a pair of shoes that weren’t horrible; I dunno. I was a vampire, not a telepath. “Is there. A nuclear bomb. In the basement?”
“Not that I know of,” I admitted, “but obviously I need to make checking it a priority.” And anything else I could think of. “Safety first! That’s our new motto.” Which, come to think of it, we should have implemented the minute I woke up on the slab in pageant makeup and horrible shoes. “In fact, you—huh.”
“What.”
Yikes, the flat “what.” No upward inflection; it’s not so much a query for more information as a statement of being pushed too far. Kevin Spacey set the precedent in L.A. Confidential, the best movie ever based on the worst book ever. And now the Antichrist was picking up the “what” torch; I never should have made her watch it. Though her crush on Exley was super cute (I was a fan of Bud White, because a man who would kick the shit out of a wife beater hits my “isn’t that romantic?” button every time). Also, is it me or does the older Guy Pearce get, the more simian he gets? Watch L.A. Confidential and then watch Iron Man 3. Heartthrob to monkey. Weirdweirdweird.
“Nothing, it’s just . . . I think Jessica’s back.” I’d been able to hear the car pulling into the driveway, of course, but the slow, plodding footsteps didn’t sound at all like Jess’s usual springy stride. Sleep deprivation could be an explanation, but I didn’t think . . .
The front door creeeaked open. We should offer to rent out that sound for Halloween.
. . . that explained . . .
Jessica wandered in, not bothering to close the door.
. . . everything.
“Uh. Jess?”
No answer.
DadDick stirred on the couch, instinctively tightening his grip on Thing One (or Two . . . the whole problemwas that I couldn’t keep them straight), which caused her to let out a small squeak. He absentmindedly soothed her as he rose to his feet. “Hey, babe. You okay?”
“Hmm?”
“Where’d you go?” I asked, curious. She was acting like she was in a trance or had been mojo’d by a vamp. I knew it wasn’t the latter because it was daylight hours and also, no vampire would fucking dare because I would kill them so much. And who’d want to put her in a trance if it wasn’t vamp related? “Jess? Where were you?”
“Oh, I took the babies to see your mom.” Jessica had a peculiar expression on her face, a combo of impatience and worry and fatigue. Like, I didn’t think I’d have to talk about this, you poor thing, and stop bugging me and boy am I tired. “That’s what it was. Where I was. Yeah.”
“The babies are here,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “Remember? Marc’s watching Other Baby in the kitchen while he . . .” Dissects things, but that was no way to end a sentence around Jess. The world’s biggest hypochondriac isn’t as paranoid about germs as a new mother. “. . . does stuff.” Also, DadDick was holding one of her babies. Five feet from where she was standing. Standing without the babies.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You—you do?”
“So we didn’t stay long, obviously.”
“You and the babies you didn’t actually bring,” I couldn’t help adding because weirdweirdweird.
“Right!” she finished with a touch of her prebaby snapitude. Then she turned around and walked out. But it wasn’t Jessica’s brisk got-to-get-going-quick pace that she used everywhere. She just sort of . . . wandered off.
Laura shook her head, a resigned expression on her face. “I don’t know what that is, but it’ll be more than enough to keep you occupied for a few days.”
“You think?” I managed to keep the hope out of my tone.
“My point! Whatever it is—she’s on drugs, she’s exhausted, she’s been mojo’d by a nasty vamp, she found out she’s being audited—you’ll seize on it as an excuse to avoid your responsibilities from Hell.” She smiled a little, and who could blame her? Responsibilities from Hell, heh. Maybe the “I’ve got the [fill in the blank] from Hell!” thing will make a comeback now. “All right, yes, I hear it, but it’s true, and you’re slacking.”
“Look, obviously something’s going on,” I began.
Laura’s beautiful face (the Antichrist has never had a pimple) remained unmoved. “Something always, always is.”
“Someone could have attacked her!” Argh, dial back the excitement, Betsy.
“In broad daylight? Without leaving a mark on her?”
“Okay, someone might be . . .” I cast about for what “someone” might do. “They could be blackmailing her!”
“Who would?” Laura asked, displaying a shocking display of callousness when everyone in the house knew being a callous asshat was my job. Nagging and now poaching on my territory! My torments were endless. “She’s a billionaire who lives with murderously protective vampires.”
“She is not!” I snapped back. “The economy has sucked so hard and so long, she’s only a millionaire now.” The vampire thing was harder to argue.
“Like I said. It doesn’t matter what this is. You’ve got your excuse du jour to avoid keeping your word.”
“Boy, you just don’t care about anything but yourself, do you, Laura? I’m sorry to say it, but it’s shocking to see.”

The Antichrist, usually pale as milk, started to blush. It only made her more dazzling, which was just annoying. Tall, slim, with blue eyes and long blond hair (until she lost her temper, then it went red and her eyes poison green), looking better in faded jeans and a Livestrong T-shirt (“Just because Mr. Armstrong cheated doesn’t mean the charity isn’t a worthwhile endeavor,” she  maintains.) than I did in my wedding dress . . . I didn’t like being the ugly sister and the mean one.
So I kept up with the nagging, because artless beauty must be punished. “It’s just me-me-me with you these days. Meanwhile my best friend might have gone insane, or she’s being blackmailed or hypnotized or audited, or some awful combination, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Because that’s what a good friend does: she pushes her troubles—nay, her responsibilities!—aside and helps. No matter what the cost.” I swept toward the door and pointed toward the foyer. “Good day, madam!”
“Oh, Jesus jumped-up Christ on a crutch,” she muttered, which, for her, was about the most shocking epithet ever uttered. This was a woman who considered shoot and dang over the line, swearwise. “Fine. Let the record show I tried.” She followed my pointy finger and exited with a huff and a glare. I vowed to make it up to her. Just as soon as I broke my other vow and figured out what was wrong with Jessica.
“Okay, great!” I practically cheered. “Let’s get to the bottom of this! Hoo—”
“Don’t cheer; you can be really obnoxious in victory,” DadDick warned.
“I was going to say ‘whoever did this to her will be sorry,’” I managed with hardly any dignity. I managed to keep myself from jumping up and down in sheer glee. Something was wrong with my best friend and she obviously needed my help! Thank God something was wrong with my best friend and she obviously needed my help!
Like I said: bad person. That’s me all over.

My Book Review Turns Into A Love Letter But I Regret Nothing, Dr. Helen Castor

I just finished SHE-WOLVES: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. It was outstanding, gripping, and educational, so I sat down to dash off a quick note to the author. And then this happened.

* * *


Dear Dr. Castor,
I just finished your wonderful book, SHE-WOLVES: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, and had to write you to rave. Also, I'm pretty annoyed at you because my book bill is about to go sky-high(er) and frankly, you might want to think about starting fundraisers for your readers, because I doubt I'm the only one with this problem.
I've been into the Tudors for years, especially Henry VIII and his wives, long before Showtime cast a slender brunette of medium height to play Henry. I read everything about them I could find and eventually started to get Tudor-ed out (there were only so many takes on Ann Boleyn's fall, and Henry's growing sociopathy and waistline, before I needed a break). So I started reading about the gang who came before (Henry VI, Edward  IV, Richard III) and the Wars of the Roses, which is how I discovered Margaret of Anjou. In a word: whoa! (It's wrong that I want to see her and Elizabeth I in a cage match, right?) I couldn't believe the woman's courage, audacity, determination, and focus. So I started reading books about the Wars specifically to find out more about Margaret, though I also loved reading about Warwick losing his *hit when King Edward had the audacity to a) choose his own queen and b) be king. Which is how I ended up with SHE-WOLVES.
I'm embarrassed to say it sat in my TBR pile for a year. It wasn't entirely my fault--my eldest started college which I dealt with by re-reading all her favorite YA novels ("Remember reading the last Harry Potter book?" "I remember you wouldn't let me near it until you finished it, Mom, you harpy." "Oh the memories!"), and I got hooked on WORKAHOLICS, which is a terrible American comedy that is my walk of shame. Then I went through a graphic novel phase. (All right: another graphic novel phase. I go through about four a year. Don't judge me.) Then Philippa Gregory's THE WHITE QUEEN hit TV and reminded me how much I loved learning about the House of York, whose tenacity and courage was only exceeded by their inability to not devour each other.
Once the TV show had run its course, I remembered there was another kind of TV: books! And there was SHE-WOLVES, where it had held pride of place on my bookshelf for a year, nestled snugly beside Stephen King's DR. SLEEP and back issues of Fine Cooking magazine (I highly recommend the grilling issue!). When I picked up SHE-WOLVES, I was tempted to start at the end:  with Margaret's story, since she was the reason I bought the book in the first place. Then I thought, well, Dr. Castor is probably going somewhere with Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella of France. (I'm embarrassed to admit I only knew of Eleanor from being played by Glenn Close in a remake, and the only royal Isabella I knew of was Catherine of Aragon's mother, and the only famous Matilda I knew of was from Roald Dahl's book. I've got to stop telling you things I'm embarrassed about. I need to keep my humiliation to myself.) Their stories, I figured, might be relevant to Margaret's, or why else would you include them? On the other hand, why would you do any of the things you do? I don't know you. You could be an enigma. Or a Tory. (They still have those in England, right?) So maybe you had a plan when you included queens who weren't Margaret. Or maybe you didn't. I had nothing to go on, and in the end, I figured if their stories didn't grab me I'd just skip to Margaret.
Which brings me to my increasing book budget, since of course you made Matilda and Eleanor and Isabella pretty much leap off the page (a good trick in those medieval gowns). By the time you got to the White Ship disaster I was hooked--and that was only page 26! Of all the dumb ways for Henry I to lose his heir! The guy conquered Normandy but lost his son when a bunch of drunks tried to steer a ship through a rock, which was probably the twelfth century equivalent of losing your kid to a party bus crash. All that before we even got to Matilda, who proved that her father didn't just pass the badass gene to his son.  And then Eleanor of Aquitaine!  History should just rename her Eleanor, Never To Be Messed With, and get it over with. She makes pretty much everyone who wasn't queen of at least two countries look like a slack-ass. Queen of France? Sure, but not enough of a challenge. Also, the king of France was great if you like amiable eunuchs, which she didn't, so buh-bye, King Louis. Queen of England? Sure, why not, she got all her queen practice out of the way in France. Oh, the king of England would like his line to continue? Sure, Eleanor says, here are five sons and three daughters. Go nuts. Eleanor was on board with pretty much everything King Henry II needed done, as long as she didn't have to choose between her sons and her husband. Oh. Whoops. Well, at least she didn't have to pay the price by being imprisoned for over a…oh. Whoops.  But then! Henry, known throughout history as King Grouchypants, was kind enough to die of a fever, leaving his son Richard in charge. King Richard made Son Of The Century by basically saying, "Mom, I gotta go force my religion on people I've never met who've never done me any harm, so: heeeeere's England! Have fun running the place." The Crusade thing was annoying, but as a mom, I appreciated his "no, really, my mom can have whatever she wants, including England, so stop bugging me because I have to go repress another culture" attitude. Eleanor did more in her last decade than I've done in three, which I should resent, but mostly I just admire. Then:  Isabella, married to a paranoid crybaby who held grudges like dragons store treasure, a guy who had no interest in letting his wife into his man cave (figuratively as well as literally). Nightmare. Isabella of France should be studied and admired solely for not strangling Edward II before their first anniversary. I know the movie BRAVEHEART is riddled with inaccuracy, but whenever I picture Edward II, I picture the weasel-face actor who played him, and I just want to punch things. Things like his face. Also, Isabella of France should be renamed Isabella of Awesome. So:  Isabella of Awesome got to watch her husband/king do the medieval equivalent of passing notes in class to a guy he had a crush on, except instead of passing notes he was passing tons of land and money and titles. But at least Piers Gaveston, King Weasel-Face's man-crush, was mature and dignified and didn't use his influence to…yeah, I can't finish that sentence without giggling. But then Piers bit the big one, courtesy of the medieval equivalent of high school teachers cracking down on kids passing notes: they ran him through and cut off his head. That would teach King Edward II to pass notes! Except it didn't.  Queen Isabella decided deja vu all over again wasn't acceptable, so she put on the medieval equivalent of big girl panties and deposed King Weasel-Face and arranged a nasty death for Hugh Despenser (or as I call him, Piers Gaveston 2.0), and if she'd stopped there it would have been terrific but if she'd stopped there, she wouldn't be Isabella, Stomper of Weasel-Face. She went too far and had her ass handed to her (politely), but lived to tell the tale. The worst thing I can say about her is that she shouldn't have been surprised to find Edward III was his mother's son.  Finally, the reason I bought your book, Margaret of Anjou. By then, my Amazon wish list had increased by 12 books (damn you, Dr. Castor!) and I hadn't even finished SHE-WOLVES. And yep, by then I'd realized you had a plan when you told Matilda, Eleanor, and Isabella's stories first, because even I, with my American high school education, lack of college, and gross amount of TV watching (Do they have Game of Thrones in England? It's terrific.), could see the parallels in their lives. As a fan of watching medieval royal houses pretty much eat each other, I loved Margaret's story. As a mom, I ached for her when the one time she let her son leave her side and fight, he died. In battle, fighting for his father's crown, if that comforted her. It wouldn't have comforted me, but I wouldn't have lasted a week in any of their courts. There's a reason there isn't a book called SHE-BITCH: Why MaryJanice Davidson Should Never Have Been Allowed To Write. Which brings me to…well, me. I'm fortunate enough to be published; most of my books are romantic comedy and paranormal chick-lit, and I threw some YA books in there, too, for the heck of it. When I'm on deadline I like to read the opposite of what I'm writing. So I'd ask myself, what is the literary opposite of a fluffy romantic comedy where everything works out perfectly for the feisty heroine…medieval English history! Emphasis on queens in a primitive patriarchy where you could get put to death for picking your nose in church! Where often nothing worked out and if you got a splinter it sometimes killed you! Perfect. Which is how I started with the Tudors and, a decade later, found SHE-WOLVES.  All that to say your book was wonderful and I'm assuming you are, too. I've got BLOOD AND ROSES on the way via Amazon, and I have my fingers crossed you're taking a break from writing another wonderful book to read this. Scratch that: I hope you're taking a break from finishing another wonderful book. Like, reading the galleys finished. It's about to be published finished. Because I'm hooked, and I've got to have more. You showed me an entire area of history I'd willfully ignored for years; I'm kind of hoping you'll be able to teach me trigonometry next. Many, many, many thanks. Warmest regards, MaryJanice Davidsonwww.maryjanicedavidson.netUNDEAD AND UNWARY, October 2014

My Son Is Growing Up And I'm Never Leaving The Bathroom

Because I have a wonderful job, we have a cabin within the mysterious dark woods of that savagely beautiful land, Wisconsin. And because Wisconsin, like Minnesota, lost a bet with God just before winter started, we couldn't wait to get up there for spring break. Ah, calendar spring: the lying whore of all calendar seasons. Because "spring" brought snow showers, freezing winds, and more road kill than usual, probably because the deer had a meeting and said, "Oh, the hell with this. Let's just end it, I dunno about you guys, I'm not interested in freezing to death. Just pick an SUV or a truck, or a car with a Massachusetts license plate. It'll be over quick."

All that to say I was looking forward to a bit of spring hibernation in between bouts of cooking (all comfort food, natch: pork roasts and baked potatoes and broiled salmon and garlic bread and brownies and warm white chocolate pudding and in between meals piping hot tea and hot chocolate with whipped cream and it's so weird how I always gain weight in winter, must be a metabolism thing totally beyond my control).

I failed to take my disobedient son's flagrantly disrespectful actions into account. There I was, trying to have a nice "spring" vacation with my family, and there he was, growing up. Little jerk (who now comes up to my shoulder). After his sister had the gall to turn eighteen and go to college, I'd made it clear I wouldn't accept his willful growing any longer. Anyway, I'd decided to run to the store for milk and jerky and Havarti cheese with dill (my daughter's Kyrptonite), and had no idea what I was setting into motion with my casual, "You guys need anything from the store?"

"Yeah," my husband said without looking up. "Could you pick up a razor and a small can of shaving cream for Liam?"

?????  

(If I'd been a software system I'd be all DOES NOT COMPUTE followed by the blue screen of death. I would stump even the lackwits of the Apple Genius bar. They'd never be able to restore me! I'd have to be scrapped for parts!)

"For…a play?"  I know, duh, right? But honestly, it was the first thing I thought of. He's always asking for weird things for plays and other annoying school activities (see previous blogs and FB updates about his desire for a Johnny Cash hat and gourmet peanut butter and notarized marching band forms and do not getting me started on the marching band thing again). "Is he teaching someone how to shave for a play?"

"No," was the careful reply, the way you talk to someone who's inherently unstable but who brings you sandwiches and tea:  dangerous, but usually to be placated. 

"Oh. Okay. Sure. No problem. I'll just go out and get that. Those things he asked for. That you asked for on his behalf. Which is totally fine and not threatening to me at all because my kids growing up doesn't mean I'm headed for crone-ville. I'm going to the store, do you need anything? I've said all these things out loud, haven't I?" Fortunately my family is well used to my psychoses and wasn't at all rattled. I was rattled enough for all of us. 

Never have I taken more time to get to the last item on my list. I was looking at vegetables I wouldn't feed a dog, pretending to consider buying them and feeding them to our dogs (you know who you are, celery, you fibrous demon-spawn). I pondered birdseed even though there was literally five feet of snow between the closest bird feeder and my rattled ass. I gave serious thought to stocking up on liverwurst, the single most vile wurst in the history of wurst. 

But I couldn't cower in the wurst aisle forever, and not just because the stock boy was rattled by the way I kept muttering, "I can't even bring myself to touch you, wurst, you filthy wurst! How can I think about buying wurst when I can't touch wurst? Damn you, wurst, you and your wurst ways make me physically sick."

I left the aisle before the stock boy could hit 9 and 1 and then clutch his phone as he waited for me to go supernova so he could hit the last 1, and was soon staring at the small selection of razors. It was only fitting that the first I noticed was Mach III, spawn of a hundred stupid commercials. Why would any man want to put a small rocket, complete with flammable rocket fuel, on his face? Mach III, what the hell drives your marketing team? I have so many questions for you. Anyway, no Mach III. Gillette? The Best A Man Can Get? No, I need the Best (or at least Not The Worst) a teenage boy can get. Daisy? No, that wasn't just potentially emasculating (although to give my son credit, he gives not a shit for colors as gender definers), I often went out of my way to avoid buying anything pastel pink. 

So the generic Family Home Razors it was. Now for the shaving cream…oh, the hell with it, Family Home Shaving Cream, too.

So I bought them, but I was furtive so the clerk wouldn't catch on to the fact that I was aging BEFORE HIS VERY EYES as evidenced by my treacherous son. I buried the shaving stuff among condoms and whole milk and lube and spray cheese and fireworks and horse porn and Ritz crackers so he wouldn't think I was weird. And then I drove home, thinking it was really good I hadn't run into any Cumberland library staff. They had invited me to give a talk at the library that summer, an invitation that would instantly be rescinded if they got a good look at my whole milk and horse porn. 

But all my fretting seemed to be for nothing. I wordlessly set down the Family Home Shaving Cream and Family Home Razors beside my son, who was so busy chewing strawberry Hi-Chews (long story, but my kids love exotic candy from foreign lands) he could only grunt. I speak fluent teenager, though, and knew "Uggnn nnnfff" meant "That is simply marvelous, Mother, and I thank you also for going to the trouble."

And that was it! The Family Home Shaving Stuff disappeared (along with the Ritz and the spray cheese) and apparently we were doing a "let us never speak of this again" thing. Yay! Usually we only did that when I bought cookie dough that was not only devoured within hours, but never got anywhere near an oven. We're all into it. We're all ashamed. We all decided to never speak of it again.

Except later that night, I couldn't find my husband and son, but I could hear them. Not words, but the timbre of their voices and that was another thing I'd had to get used to. My son's voice was changing, rapidly downward. He often practiced speeches or runs through dialogue in his room, which is next to ours, and though I can't make out the words I can hear the rumble of his voice. I won't lie; I found this startling at first, and may have…

"I don't know who the HELL you ARE but I am about to yank your spinal cord out your ASS and STRANGLE YOU WITH IT! Get away from my--"

"Mom."

"--precious wittle baby boy whose innocent wittle--oh.  Sorry."

"Third time this week, Mom. Get a grip."

…overreacted. Which is something I never, ever do normally, so that should tell you the level of my startlement. 

I followed the rumbling downstairs to the kids' bathroom and there was my husband going over Shaving 101 with my precious wittle baby boy. I was there for the tail end of it…

"And once you get the bleeding stopped, and change your shirt again, you're ready to go out."

…and it was just as well. If I'd been there for much more, I'd have made a real fool of myself, what with all the comments along the lines of "my baby is becoming a man!" and protracted sobbing and taking away the spray cheese. Also, if anyone needs me, I'll be curled in a fetal position in the bathtub, which I may or may not fill with spray cheese. Wake me when it's Christmas.

My Son Is Growing Up And I'm Never Laving The Bathroom

Because I have a wonderful job, we have a cabin within the mysterious dark woods of that savagely beautiful land, Wisconsin. And because Wisconsin, like Minnesota, lost a bet with God just before winter started, we couldn't wait to get up there for spring break. Ah, calendar spring: the lying whore of all calendar seasons. Because "spring" brought snow showers, freezing winds, and more road kill than usual, probably because the deer had a meeting and said, "Oh, the hell with this. Let's just end it, I dunno about you guys, I'm not interested in freezing to death. Just pick an SUV or a truck, or a car with a Massachusetts license plate. It'll be over quick."

All that to say I was looking forward to a bit of spring hibernation in between bouts of cooking (all comfort food, natch: pork roasts and baked potatoes and broiled salmon and garlic bread and brownies and warm white chocolate pudding and in between meals piping hot tea and hot chocolate with whipped cream and it's so weird how I always gain weight in winter, must be a metabolism thing totally beyond my control).

I failed to take my disobedient son's flagrantly disrespectful actions into account. There I was, trying to have a nice "spring" vacation with my family, and there he was, growing up. Little jerk (who now comes up to my shoulder). After his sister had the gall to turn eighteen and go to college, I'd made it clear I wouldn't accept his willful growing any longer. Anyway, I'd decided to run to the store for milk and jerky and Havarti cheese with dill (my daughter's Kyrptonite), and had no idea what I was setting into motion with my casual, "You guys need anything from the store?"

"Yeah," my husband said without looking up. "Could you pick up a razor and a small can of shaving cream for Liam?"

?????  

(If I'd been a software system I'd be all DOES NOT COMPUTE followed by the blue screen of death. I would stump even the lackwits of the Apple Genius bar. They'd never be able to restore me! I'd have to be scrapped for parts!)

"For…a play?"  I know, duh, right? But honestly, it was the first thing I thought of. He's always asking for weird things for plays and other annoying school activities (see previous blogs and FB updates about his desire for a Johnny Cash hat and gourmet peanut butter and notarized marching band forms and do not getting me started on the marching band thing again). "Is he teaching someone how to shave for a play?"

"No," was the careful reply, the way you talk to someone who's inherently unstable but who brings you sandwiches and tea:  dangerous, but usually to be placated. 

"Oh. Okay. Sure. No problem. I'll just go out and get that. Those things he asked for. That you asked for on his behalf. Which is totally fine and not threatening to me at all because my kids growing up doesn't mean I'm headed for crone-ville. I'm going to the store, do you need anything? I've said all these things out loud, haven't I?" Fortunately my family is well used to my psychoses and wasn't at all rattled. I was rattled enough for all of us. 

Never have I taken more time to get to the last item on my list. I was looking at vegetables I wouldn't feed a dog, pretending to consider buying them and feeding them to our dogs (you know who you are, celery, you fibrous demon-spawn). I pondered birdseed even though there was literally five feet of snow between the closest bird feeder and my rattled ass. I gave serious thought to stocking up on liverwurst, the single most vile wurst in the history of wurst. 

But I couldn't cower in the wurst aisle forever, and not just because the stock boy was rattled by the way I kept muttering, "I can't even bring myself to touch you, wurst, you filthy wurst! How can I think about buying wurst when I can't touch wurst? Damn you, wurst, you and your wurst ways make me physically sick."

I left the aisle before the stock boy could hit 9 and 1 and then clutch his phone as he waited for me to go supernova so he could hit the last 1, and was soon staring at the small selection of razors. It was only fitting that the first I noticed was Mach III, spawn of a hundred stupid commercials. Why would any man want to put a small rocket, complete with flammable rocket fuel, on his face? Mach III, what the hell drives your marketing team? I have so many questions for you. Anyway, no Mach III. Gillette? The Best A Man Can Get? No, I need the Best (or at least Not The Worst) a teenage boy can get. Daisy? No, that wasn't just potentially emasculating (although to give my son credit, he gives not a shit for colors as gender definers), I often went out of my way to avoid buying anything pastel pink. 

So the generic Family Home Razors it was. Now for the shaving cream…oh, the hell with it, Family Home Shaving Cream, too.

So I bought them, but I was furtive so the clerk wouldn't catch on to the fact that I was aging BEFORE HIS VERY EYES as evidenced by my treacherous son. I buried the shaving stuff among condoms and whole milk and lube and spray cheese and fireworks and horse porn and Ritz crackers so he wouldn't think I was weird. And then I drove home, thinking it was really good I hadn't run into any Cumberland library staff. They had invited me to give a talk at the library that summer, an invitation that would instantly be rescinded if they got a good look at my whole milk and horse porn. 

But all my fretting seemed to be for nothing. I wordlessly set down the Family Home Shaving Cream and Family Home Razors beside my son, who was so busy chewing strawberry Hi-Chews (long story, but my kids love exotic candy from foreign lands) he could only grunt. I speak fluent teenager, though, and knew "Uggnn nnnfff" meant "That is simply marvelous, Mother, and I thank you also for going to the trouble."

And that was it! The Family Home Shaving Stuff disappeared (along with the Ritz and the spray cheese) and apparently we were doing a "let us never speak of this again" thing. Yay! Usually we only did that when I bought cookie dough that was not only devoured within hours, but never got anywhere near an oven. We're all into it. We're all ashamed. We all decided to never speak of it again.

Except later that night, I couldn't find my husband and son, but I could hear them. Not words, but the timbre of their voices and that was another thing I'd had to get used to. My son's voice was changing, rapidly downward. He often practiced speeches or runs through dialogue in his room, which is next to ours, and though I can't make out the words I can hear the rumble of his voice. I won't lie; I found this startling at first, and may have…

"I don't know who the HELL you ARE but I am about to yank your spinal cord out your ASS and STRANGLE YOU WITH IT! Get away from my--"

"Mom."

"--precious wittle baby boy whose innocent wittle--oh.  Sorry."

"Third time this week, Mom. Get a grip."

…overreacted. Which is something I never, ever do normally, so that should tell you the level of my startlement. 

I followed the rumbling downstairs to the kids' bathroom and there was my husband going over Shaving 101 with my precious wittle baby boy. I was there for the tail end of it…

"And once you get the bleeding stopped, and change your shirt again, you're ready to go out."

…and it was just as well. If I'd been there for much more, I'd have made a real fool of myself, what with all the comments along the lines of "my baby is becoming a man!" and protracted sobbing and taking away the spray cheese. Also, if anyone needs me, I'll be curled in a fetal position in the bathtub, which I may or may not fill with spray cheese. Wake me when it's Christmas.

I Endure So Much Weird In Tucson, Which Is Awesome, And So Is Isaac Marion

I've whined before about the ungodly amount of snow Minnesota has been enduring and other places, too, but I don't live in other places, I live in Minnesota, so that's what I'm bitching about. What I'm not bitching about is the Tucson Festival of Books, which would have been terrific even if it hadn't taken place in a beautiful desert locale. Also, I'm as pale as a trout's belly and normally find deserts horrifying, except this winter. Because, as above: ungodly amount of snow.

I was in it to win it the second the plane touched down, like people who spend thousands on a cruise but aren't sure they should have, so they are determined to have fun NO MATTER WHAT. Which is fine, and good for them, but they can be shrill. OH MY GOD, UNLIMITED SODA! WE CAN EAT ALL WE WANT SO I DON'T EVEN CARE ABOUT THE HUGE LINE OR THE EARLY MORNING WAKE-UP CALL ON THE LAST DAY! Yep, okay, settle down, glad you're having fun but that was right in my ear. Again. 

All that to say I was determined to have fun, so as I stepped outside I started basking in the lovely warm weather, seventy five degrees of awesome soaking into my creaky frozen bones. "Sorry about this," a native said, vaguely gesturing to the…weather, I guess? The sky? Their soul? My soul? "Cloudy and raining on your first day here, not much fun."

Ha! Idiot. (Well-meaning idiot, so I didn't say that out loud and also, not a good idea to insult your driver when you're in a strange place.) First, it was barely raining, it was closer to a lazy sprinkling. A lackluster sprinkling, like the weather could scarcely be bothered to rain. Second, the sun was behind the clouds, so I didn't care about the cloud-curtain, because I knew the sun would return. Proof the sun was alive, it's aliiiiiive was enough for me. Third, seventy five degrees of awesome soaking into my creaky frozen bones. I'm afraid I giggled all during the ride to my hotel. And not cute giggling, like a college cheerleader discovering she likes cake-flavored vodka. Scary giggling, like a forty-something writer discovering she won't have to look at snow for 72 hours, celebrating by guzzling cake-flavored vodka.

Also, Tucson has hidden its garbage, which is astonishing and cool. Honest to god, I didn't see a single piece of litter anywhere the entire weekend. Minnesota's pretty good with that stuff, but Tucson could give us a run for our money. 

So between the weather and the lack of garbage, and the plethora of frosting-flavored vodka, I was having a fine time long before I set loafer-clad foot on the lovely and litter-free University of Arizona campus. Sun shining, not a cloud in the sky, booth after booth of books, publishers, historians, more books, and gelato on a stick. Yes. GELATO ON A STICK. I…was going to live there. Forever.

All my panels/workshops were stuffed with readers, which is always good fun, and I signed lots of books and hit my Pull Goal about half an hour into my first event. The Pull Goal started when I'd accidentally hook someone who had never heard of my books. Usually the Pull is a reader's spouse dragged to one of my signings; sometimes it's a fan of someone else on the panel…basically, when I get the floor I spend sixty minutes over-sharing ("And we never saw Grandpa again, but at least we were able to bury his feet.") and suck in at least one unsuspecting reader ("I had no idea who you are, but you're funny, and possibly crazy, so what would be a good book of yours to start with?"). It started happening frequently enough that I made it a conference goal: meet as many readers as I can, pull one unsuspecting bystander into my 60+ book back list, figure out where all the bathrooms are. In fact, everything was perfect until I ended up sharing a panel with the man who destroyed my dreams of (zombie) love. His name is Isaac Marion, and he stomped all over my (zombie love) heart.

I'll back up a couple of years, when I was pitching new book ideas to my editor. I love writing the UNDEAD books, but I like to have other projects in the hopper, too, and I love pitching. And I had the idea (before zombies became the new vampire) that zombies could be the new vampire. So I pitched a book idea: zombies in lurrrrv. Think of the travails! Think of the comedy! Think of the sex scenes! Oooh, I couldn't wait. I spent days polishing the proposal, re-reading the thing until I could see it every time I passed out. I mean, closed my eyes. 

She turned it down. I took it like an adult ("Waaaaah! You're mean!") and set about coming up with another idea, which she did like, so yay! Writing is sales (it's not sexy, but it's true: if you're a writer, you're in sales), and even best-selling writers (moi) don't get every single idea picked up (moi). She was a pro through and through, explaining why she felt she had to pass (among other things, she was confident I'd have no trouble making it funny, but she doubted I could make zombies knocking boots romantic and sexy). I shrugged and thanked her for her feedback and got on with moi life.

Well, no.  I waited a few months, re-wrote the thing, and sent it to her again. Surely by now, I reasoned as I chortled, she has seen her folly! Or is exhausted by the idea of dealing with my whining and begging twice in six months. Or has terrible short-term memory and doesn't remember turning down this pitch.

Nope. She passed again, again like a pro, again outlining her reasons why. So I let it go ("Waaaaah! You're super duper mean!") and reminded myself that even moi can't sell every single pitch, and I put it all behind moi. I also stopped referring to myself as moi.

Then Isaac Marion, crusher of all my dreams, wrote a wonderful YA novel called WARM BODIES. It was about, yep, you guessed it, zombies in lurrrrv. Romeo and Juliet, with zombies. He wrote a funny, lovely, romantic book. About zombies in lurrrvvv. And it was such a delightful book they turned it into a movie about zombies in lurrrrv.

Bastard.

And here he was, sharing a panel with me! Oooh, vengeance would be sweet! Sure, he had no idea who the hell I was, and in fact hadn't wronged me at all, ever, and I was about to be both unprofessional and shrill, but none of that mattered beside the cold indisputable fact that he wrote a terrific book and must be punished!

So I turned to him, ignoring the 150 or so people in the audience who probably wanted to talk about books or something, and greeted him with, "I've got a bone to pick with you, pal." (In our family, that translates to, "You'd better cover your eyes and your groin, pal, because you're about to be stabbed in one or the other.") "You kind of ruined my life and also one of my dreams."

Isaac, who is not only talented but sane and cordial, expressed surprise. 

"That's right!" I continued, like he'd protested or argued. "I pitched my zombies in lurrrv story and got it turned down twice, and then much later you went ahead and wrote your book about zombies in lurrrv and it was so good Lion's Gate made a movie of it and the movie was so good I couldn't even hate-watch it! Yeah, that's right, Isaac Marion, you jerk! My teenage daughter and a bunch of my friends and I paid good money to hate-watch it and we ended up being charmed!" God, that Isaac Marion, what a bastard!

All right, our dealings might have been slightly more cordial. And he might have politely pointed out that my real beef was with my editor, not him ("Yeah, well, she's not here, Isaac! IS SHE? Huh? No! It's just you and me! And the other writers on this panel! And the 150 spectators who probably want to talk about books or something! They can have you when I'm finished!"). And I might have sincerely congratulated him on his well-earned success. But that's not nearly as much fun to tell.

Once I had that dangerous confrontation out of the way, I consoled myself with the greatest invention in the history of human events, gelato on a stick and also a pulled pork sandwich. "You guys want to see something funny?" I asked, sitting down among a bunch of tan people. "You want to watch a Minnesotan eat BBQ? First, I'll need about a thousand more napkins and a Hazmat suit." 

Meanwhile, my tech was acting up. All of my tech. Before I left for Arizona I dropped my phone. This is something my husband never does, so he literally couldn't understand when I said the thing was acting up "after I dropped it". It took hours of hand gestures and diagrams before he was able to comprehend my problem ("But if it's giving you trouble, why even drop it in the first place?" "Shut up shut up shut up."). Anyway, it wouldn't shut off. It worked perfectly, it just would not shut off. So whenever it wasn't charging, it was running down the battery. Thus, the first thing I'd have to do every night after returning to my hotel was plug it into my laptop. No big deal. I thrive in adversity and also, I was still high from shrieking at Isaac Marion. (Again, the guy couldn't have been more of a pro, or nicer. He really does deserve all the success that should have been mine.)

Then I noticed my laptop wasn't charging. Unfortunately, I'd run the battery down to about 12% before realizing (shut up shut up shut up). So pretty soon I wouldn't be able to charge my laptop and, thus, my cell phone. Okay, that's trickier. That could be a problem for me. Well, at least my Kindle is…OH COME ON! Basically, I endured a Perfect Storm of tech failure.

By Sunday everything was close to deader than shit. My last text was to my husband briefly explaining the situation as I watched my laptop charge count down from five minutes like in ALIENS ("You have five...minutes...to reach minimum...safe...distance…"). In the morning my cell had a bare trickle of a charge and (I'm aware of the illogic of this) I was annoyed to see my husband hadn't replied to my text warning him I had no computer/phone/Kindle charge and not to bother texting me and I'd see him that night. (When I confronted him upon my return, his obviously made-up response was, "You told me not to text you back since you wouldn't get my text." Our marriage is built on lies.)

So I packed up all my stone dead gear and made ready to return to the snowy steppes, but not before I made it clear to anyone I could grab ("Sorry! I got BBQ all over your shirt. It hardly shows against all the white. Um, will you invite me back next year?") that I would love to return. And then it was off to the airport, where the last of the wonderful weirdness happened.  

I try to keep to Louis CK's philosophy in mind when it comes to flying:  "Flying is the worst because people come back from flights and they tell you their story and it's like a horror story. They act like their flight was like a cattle car in the 40's in Germany…'It was the worst day of my life. First of all, we didn't board for twenty minutes, and then we get on the plane and they made us sit there. We had to sit there!'

"Oh, really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero? Wow, you're flying, it's amazing! Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going oh my God! Wow!"

Louis makes excellent points, so I try to keep a positive attitude. Sometimes it's tricky, though. Airlines never used to automatically charge for all checked luggage, and now they do. Then airline personnel are astonished when everyone wants to lug their stuff onto the plane. "For some reason since we implemented the charging scheme, I mean policy, we have limited space for luggage on the plane so if you haven't checked it already, you should definitely check it since there's no room for some reason! Weird, right?" 

But that's not as aggravating as those who switch seats with impunity. As I boarded (clutching my carry on which I refused to check because KNOCK IT OFF, AIRLINES) I could see there was already someone sitting in my seat. I hate when that happens, mostly because I always feel like the person who beat me to my assigned seats has squatter's rights. But I trudged ahead and told the elderly gentleman to get his narrow butt off my seat and to take his vomit bag with him. Except what came out was, "Um, I think you're, um, in my seat? Maybe?"

"Oh, yeah, probably," was the cheerful and unrepentant reply. Which is not how I thought the conversation would go. Usually they make a big show of checking their ticket against mine and seem very perplexed about the whole thing, like it's totally normal to get 8A mixed up with 29C, as opposed to what they were really up to: jumping the gun because they want a separate seat for the suitcase they didn't want to check, or their infant, or whatever. 

"Um," was my fast-thinking reply. "Yeah. So. You're in my seat. And, um, maybe should move? Or something?"

"I've got 9B," said the elderly women in row 8. Wait, so she wasn't in her assigned seat, either?

"No, I've got 9B," another senior citizen corrected. (Which sounded like "what a dumbass to not know the seat you haven't bothered to claim, dumbass!") "You've got 8B."

"That's mine!" another woman said (hint: she didn't say it from 8B). By now I'm staring around in total conclusion. For whatever reason this pack of retirees went rogue all over coach and I would be forced to pay the price in blood, or aggravation.  

"Okay, so…wait. Am I the only one out of the eight of us who actually paid attention to their seat assignment and, weirder, wanted to sit in the seat assigned to me?" Rhetorical, by the way. Of course I was. And I had eight butts in wrong seats to prove it.

So I hail the flight attendant over by frantically flapping my boarding pass at her and pretending not to be terrified. "There's a mix-up," I told her, which was the truth. "We'd like help straightening it out." Which was a lie, since only one of us wanted help with that.

"Wrong seats?" she replied cheerfully, coming down the aisle and looking at my boarding pass, then at the guy sitting in my spot. "Yes, sir, may I see you--thank you. Ah. Sir, you need to be across the aisle. And--"

"I'm in the wrong spot, too," 9B pointed out (which sounded like "Why is he getting all the attention? I'm an entitled jerk, too!").

"Yes, I see…" She was suddenly faced with a blizzard of boarding passes. "Ah. All of you. Okay, well, who was the--"

"He did it!" 9B shrilled, pointing an accusing finger at the squatter in my spot. "It was his idea to switch!" Ever see a sweet-looking little old lady turn informant? It's not pretty. You could almost hear the unspoken, "Take the children, but spare my life!" I've never seen anyone roll on an accomplice so quickly. It made me dizzy.

What followed was a gabble:  "--sit by the window--" "--told you you'd get us in trouble--" ''--but what difference does it make where we sit if everyone--" "--you arrogant ass, you've killed us all--", etc., etc. Since there were extra spots, and since I didn't care where I sat as long as I could ride the plane to Minneapolis, I offered to sit…I dunno, somewhere, some seat the senior flybunnies had eschewed. Which is how I ended up in 22A. I'm not at all sure how that happened, but okay.

Again, not complaining. It was the final interesting, odd touch on what had been a wonderful weekend in Tucson. Plus I had something to blog about if Isaac Marion slapped a restraining order on me. Win/win!

Tucson Soundly Punished By My Presence

I'm off to the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend, Friday through Sunday. I love cons and conferences and festivals at any time, but especially when Minnesota has clearly lost a bet with God and is being punished worse than usual with metric tons of snow.  When they invited me late last year I barely let them get the invitation out before screaming, "Yes, God yes, oh please please...I just need to be warm again! Er, when is this again? Tomorrow? Say it's tomorrow. IT'S SO COLD SAY IT'S TOMORROW I CAN'T FEEL MY FACE. Oh. March. Whatever."

But now it's March! And it's far too late for them to take it back. Also, nothing short of a SWAT team will keep me away from the desert right now. The high in St. Paul today is supposed to be 25F/-3.8C. Sure, I hate to leave during a heat wave, but my word is my bond and also: ARIZONA. 

One of the conference coordinators, a ridiculously overworked woman named Patricia Knoll, actually cautioned me to bring sunscreen. 
"Yes," I agreed tearfully, "oh yes, yes I will." 
"I'm not kidding." 
I tried to tell her I was taking her seriously, but was crying too hard to articulate. Also, tears of joy clog my sinuses just as effectively as tears of rage.

I'm on some great panels over the weekend, too:

How Do You Do It? Writing Fast and Writing Well
Saturday, March 15, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Koffler Room 216

A Knight, A Zombie, And A Klingon Walk Into A Bar: Writing Genre Comedy
Saturday, March 15, 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm
Integrated Learning Center Room 150

Workshop: World Building
Sunday, March 16, 10:00 am to 11:00 am
Integrated Learning Center Room 119

More details on the festival can be found here: http://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org.

I'm hoping to meet lots of readers!  And never forget, Arizona: you have no one to blame but yourself.

I Get To Play In Charlaine Harris' Sandbox: DEAD BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

It's likely half the planet knows that Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series inspired HBO's True Blood, and the last book in the series, Dead Ever After, came out last spring. What half the planet might not know is that Charlaine put together a 15-story anthology set in the Stackhouse universe and invited several notable and skilled authors to participate. Oh, and me! She invited me, too! (My working theory to explain my involvement is that she lost a bet.)

Now that press releases are flying all over the place, I get to talk about it and man, sooooo excited.  I've only written novellas and single title books for the last decade; I've forgotten what fun writing a short story can be, and how different from my norm.  It's a sprint, not a marathon, and you've got to get moving in a hurry.  My story, Widower's Walk, takes place 201 years after the events in Dead Ever After, showing readers what Eric Northman has been up to, his thoughts on the past, and his plans for the future. 

The anthology will be released in several formats (audio, e-book, hardcover), with the audio book released by Audible, Inc. on May 13; it's available for pre-order at www.audible.com/DBNF. I'll be sure to post other release dates as I get them. 

Below is a teaser, and the cover. Mild spoilers for Sookie's choices at the end of Dead Ever After. 




Eric Northman thinks that everyone got what they wished for, with all that entailed.  Sookie wanted sunbathing and babies and Merlotte, probably in that order, so his darling had chosen to live in a swamp and have puppies with a sentient Labradoodle, or whatever the hell Sam Merlotte decided to be that month.  Gone now, of course, like(his no not his never his not for a long long time)Sookie, she to the heaven she so unwaveringly knew awaited her and Sam to wherever the souls of Labradoodles go.  Eric is sure Sookie mourned, but Merlotte’s children remained, and his grand-children, etc., etc., ad nauseum, and that would have been enough for her, she would have died happy knowing her line would go on and on. Like Eric goes on and on and will after true death.  Merlotte is not the only sire to ensure his line continues.  He has Pam and he has Karin, and through them many others, and soon he will have a nation.It had been his maker’s will that Eric and Freyda marry to consolidate power and eventually take the United States.  (Well.  The first part was all Appius, to be sure.  Eric might have tacked on the second as an addendum.)  And he had been fine with that plan, once he tweaked it, because—oh, yes, there’s always something—he had always known he wouldn’t need Freyda to take the States.  He only needed the more powerful supes to be looking the other way when he made his move, which worked out nicely, but only for him.  The Stackhouse-Merlottes can have their swamp, and welcome to it.  He’ll take more.  He always takes more.            He wonders when his plan-within-a-plan finally became clear to Sookie.  If she kept up with the news, she would have realized in less than a decade that things had never been so cut and dried as they’d appeared.  He wonders if she regrets giving him up—or letting him be handed over.  I won’t ever settle for settling.  He is always amused by those who insist that having a good choice and a bad choice means having no choices.  In the end, it is a choice, everything is, good and bad, and crying otherwise is for children.  He is many things, but he has not been a child since William of Normandy walked the earth.

I Have A Weirder Than Usual Weird Conversation With My Weird Son

So there I was, scooping peanut butter in a frosting bag so I could use said bag to squirt peanut butter into a Kong for our dogs to play with so they'll leave me alone for five minutes. (I'm never as altruistic as people assume. There's always a motive behind my niceness.) I knew the momentary peace was doomed to be shattered, but I couldn't have predicted how.

In comes a child of my loins, The Boy.  "Mom, could I get a black top hat?"

"A black top hat?" I'm squirting peanut butter into the Kong, which looks like a red rubber hollow snow man. Mmm...a peanut butter stuffed snow man? Insanity. Chocolate-stuffed, though. That one I would consider.

"Yes, please."

"For school?"  Squirt.

"Yes."

"For the play?" Squirt.

"No."


After a pause, I resumed squirting and asked, "Are you gonna elaborate on that or were you just expecting a check?"

"For Snow Week. We can dress up like anyone we want and I have those really nice black clothes."  It's true, he does. Had to buy him dress pants and shirt for Jazz Band ("They won't let you perform in shorts and a t-shirt? Snobs."), and when they all troop onstage it looks very impressive. It doesn't hurt that he's tall, slender, and pale...like a little BBC Sherlock!

"And...?" Squirt.

"And if I wear black pants and a black shirt and black shoes, and a black top hat, I'll be head to toe in black."

"AND...?"

"Johnny Cash, Mom!" This in a tone of 'gawd, get with the program already, stupid woman'. "He's also known as the Man in Black. Oh." Now he looks sympathetic. "Did you not know that?"

"Of course I knew that," I snapped, refilling the frosting bag with more butter of the peanut. "I'm pretty sure I'm the one who told YOU that. I'm not buying you a black top hat that you'll wear at school for one day and never again. How about a black baseball cap?"

My suggestion was met with an eye roll. "No, Mom. Johnny Cash was classy. A baseball cap?" Disgusted snort. "I've never seen a picture of him in a baseball cap."

"I'm pretty sure you've never seen a picture of him in a top hat, either!"

"Yeah, but it's still classy," he persisted, unaware of how close he was to getting a frosting bag bulging with peanut butter rammed down his throat. 

"I'M NOT BUYING YOU A TOP HAT SO HOW ABOUT THAT?" Then: "Aagghh!" I'd unthinkingly clenched my fist. Peanut butter everywhere. "Dammit!"

"Mom." He eyed my fist, now dripping peanut butter. "You don't even like peanut butter."

"It's not for me, you---never mind. No. No to the top hat. No to peanut butter. No to rubber snow men stuffed with chocolate. No to everything."

"But not the top hat, right?"

"Get. Out."

Haven't seen him since. I guess those usually dormant survival skills finally kicked in. Now I just need to figure out how to get peanut butter out of my watch wristband.