Mindi Scott's Blog, page 4
January 24, 2012
Blog: My search continues for an 80s song about testicles!
There was this song I used to hear as a kid. A song that my older cousins would play on cassette tape in the mid-80s. A song that might or might not have been called . . . "My Nuts."
It was rap? I think. Here's my best recollection of the lyrics:
My nuts man, what do ya think?
My nuts!
[instrumental?] (doo-doo-doo-doo)
Me and my nuts are two best friends
He don't do nothing else by hang with me
Whenever I'm in trouble, man, you know, he just hangs there!
My nuts, man, what do ya think?
My nuts!
[instrumental?](doo-doo-doo-doo)
[Female voice or a male voice speaking in falsetto]: Anybody want some cheeeeeeeese baaaalls?
Obviously, there was more to it. Well, I think there was. Anyway, it wasn't a very classy song or a very good song. But I think about it sometimes. I've talked to my husband about it and he's sure that I made the whole thing up. Did I?
Edit: I didn't make it up! Well, not all of it. @SarahSMoon gave me the answer. The song is "My Nutz" by Fat Boys. It's both so much better and so much worse than I remembered it.
January 21, 2012
Blog: GCC presents Lucienne Diver!
Hey! I'm posting from Hawaii, where there doesn't happen to be eight inches of snow. Hooray! (*ducks*) I'm also on a borrowed laptop with resort wireless internet. I can't seem to fix the font issues below and the more I try, the more (and louder) I cuss. So forgive me!
Lucienne Diver answered a few questions for me about herself and her lastest novel, Fangtastic! This series has received some wonderful praise, including this from Kirkus Reviews:
“As ever, Gina's feisty, funny narration carries the day. Gina never fails to please, as she strides down the runway of afterlife with just the right mix of humor, make-up advice, youthful lust that never crosses the line and a kung-fu style all her own. This one doesn’t miss a beat.” —Kirkus Reviews
And now for the interview!
1. At age eight, what did you want to be when you grew up? And at age eighteen? And while you’re at it, what about at age twenty-eight?
I’m not sure what I wanted to be at eight. Did I still want to be a cryptozoologist? Yeah, I think I did. I wanted to discover some truth behind the Loch Ness Monster, chupacabra, big foot and all those legends. I wanted them to be real, for the world to be bigger than it seemed so that there were still secrets to be revealed. I don’t think that’s changed. At eighteen, I couldn’t quite believe in Nessie any more. I wanted to be an anthropologist, learning about ancient cultures, because piecing things together through artifacts and linguistics is like gathering clues to a mystery, like solving for secrets. I also wanted to be a writer, which is why my college degree shows double majors. And twenty-eight…you mean at my (*cough*) current age? Now I write books with elements of all of the above…magic and mystery, secrets and solutions. I describe my Vamped series as Legally Blond meets Buffy. You’ve got a snarky, fanged, fashion-conscious protagonist against sometimes pretty dark things that she’s got to get to the bottom of. I love the juxtaposition of light and dark.
2. Which Breakfast-Club-style label would have best fit your teenage self?
If you could mesh brain and drama geek together, that would be me in a nutshell. Something like a Gleek, only different.
3. Without giving away too much from your newest book, which character or scene from it are you the most pleased to have created, and why?
I think some of my favorite parts are my heroine’s snarks about Selene, who’s one of the powerful vampires behind the club where the lifestylers hang out in Fangtastic:
Behind me came a sound, like another panel sliding aside. I couldn’t help but swing around toward it, even though I didn’t really want to turn my back on Very Scary. A woman and two men stood in the doorway created, but my eyes were on her and her golf-pencil skirt. Ever seen a golf pencil? One-third the regular size, good for scoring. The woman exuded a sense of power the two with her lacked. Her hair was a wavy, glossy black, her skin like faded mahogany. Her nose was pierced with a very impressive diamond stud, and her eyes were ice-cold and dark as obsidian.
“Selene, would you please secure our guest?” Very Scary asked. “I need to confer with the council.”
4. Which are your favorite movies to watch again and again?
I’m lucky if I find time to watch films once, let alone over and over, but I adore Alfred Hitchcock, so just about anything he’s directed that doesn’t star Tippy Hedren I’m on board for. I’m also a huge fan of serio-comic films like Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, As Good as it Gets, Big Fish, Johnny Dangerously, Clueless, Legally Blond, Miss Congeniality…. Then again, I love musicals like Mamma Mia and Chicago. I own every season of Buffy.
5. And, now, the most important question of all: Beatles or Elvis? Please support your answer. ;-)
The Beatles. There’s no contest. With the exception of “In the Ghetto,” which makes me cry every time I hear it, I have to admit that I’ve never had much use for the King…except when he appears as Bubba in Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books. But the Beatles…I love them. How can I not love the group that gave us “Paperback Writer”?
Author bio:
Lucienne Diver is the author of the popular Vamped series of young adult novels (think Clueless meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer). School Library Journal calls the first book, “a lighthearted, action-packed, vampire romance story following in the vein of Julie Kenner’s “Good Ghouls” (Berkley), Marlene Perez’s “Dead” (Harcourt), and Rachel Caine’s “The Morganville Vampires” (Signet) series.” VOYA has suggested that the books “will attract even reluctant readers.”
Her short stories have been included in the Strip-Mauled and Fangs for the Mammaries anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen Books), and one of her essays appears in the anthology Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperTeen).
January 7, 2012
Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit : UNRAVELING ISOBEL by Eileen Cook
I have a particular fondness for Simon Pulse. It is the imprint that published my first novel and will also publish my second. It is also an imprint that does some of my very favorite YA novels that I've read in recent years.I haven't had the chance to read Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook yet, but I did read an excerpt of the first chapter and I'm officially hooked!
You can check out the first chapter at the author's website. But first, here's a little bit about the book:
Isobel’s life is falling apart. Her mom just married some guy she met on the internet only three months before, and is moving them to his sprawling, gothic mansion off the coast of nowhere. Goodbye, best friend. Goodbye, social life. Hello, icky new stepfather, crunchy granola town, and unbelievably good-looking, officially off-limits stepbrother.
But on her first night in her new home, Isobel starts to fear that it isn’t only her life that’s unraveling—her sanity might be giving way too. Because either Isobel is losing her mind, just like her artist father did before her, or she’s seeing ghosts. Either way, Isobel’s fast on her way to being the talk of the town for all the wrong reasons.
About the Author:
Eileen Cook is a multi-published author with her novels appearing in six different languages. She spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer.
You can read more about Eileen, her books, and the things that strike her as funny at www.eileencook.com. Eileen lives in Vancouver with her husband and two dogs and no longer wishes to be anyone or anywhere else.
Blog: Happy New Year (yes, I'm late . . . always late!) and a Live Through This update:
In case you don't know, I spent January 2 through November 18, 2011 working like crazy on this book. I first started it in January of 2010 and worked on it some throughout that year, but the debut of Freefall that autumn was a huge distraction. My progress was much slower than I (or anyone) would have preferred.
My agent officially sold LTT in February 2011, and I then worked on writing and revising it almost every day after that. My editor's turn-around on my drafts was so fast each time that I literally had only about three weeks when I was truly on a break from it in almost eleven months. I have a feeling that when I look back on 2011, it will be even more of a blur than 2010 was!
Live Through This is slated for release October 2, 2012. The day before my birthday! It's going to be a simultaneous hard cover and paperback release, which is very, very exciting. I've now seen the cover (and I adore it!) and I've read the summary that my editor put together. I'm assuming that I'll be able to share those in the next month or two since ARCs should be out around then.
Another thing I'm excited about for 2012 is the new book I'm working with my friend, Michelle! We're having a great time putting our ideas together. Obviously, it's too soon to talk about it at all, but we've both been using lots of exclamation points while chatting about it!
And one more thing: I was invited to join the Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit. What this means is that I'll have another opportunity to get to know and network with some fabulous YA authors. I'll be highlighting some of their books on my blog periodically with feature posts and/or interviews. I can hardly wait!
Happy New Year, everyone!
November 20, 2011
Blog: Processing death. Or perhaps, still not processing it quite yet.
I got off the phone feeling concerned, but hopeful. I figured I'd head down to visit her at the hospital early in the week. I hoped that the test results would be helpful and that whatever was wrong with her would turn out to be manageable.
But by Sunday night, her condition had worsened considerably. Her organs were shutting down and she was put in a medically-induced coma.
On Monday morning, I left work two hours into my shift and drove down to the hospital where I waited in the room with other family members until the end.
I was there when they unhooked the machines that were keeping her (technically) alive. I was there when the numbers on the monitors dropped down to zero. I was there when she was pronounced dead. I was there, crying with and hugging everyone until we could all collect ourselves and leave.
I got a one-week extension on my deadline with Simon & Schuster, worked Tuesday through Thursday at the office, and then spent Thursday through Saturday with my family. I did small things to help them prepare for the memorial. I attended said memorial and the reception afterward. I drove home, slept, and got up Sunday morning to get back to work on finishing my book.
There is no way that I can question whether my aunt is truly gone because I was there when it happened. For some reason, though, my mind keeps reverting back to five Saturdays ago: I'll head down and visit her at the hospital early in the week. I'll wait for the test results that will be ready on Wednesday.
October 10, 2011
Blog: Thoughts on not really being a geek.
The results? None of the above.
(FYI: Today, I took that same quiz and was told that I am now "A Modern, Cool Nerd.")
This is of particular interest to me today because I went to GeekGirlCon yesterday. I went there feeling that I'm not particularly geeky and came out of it feeling . . . mostly the same way. I think.
Being a geek seems to be, by broad definition, about being passionate about something. Whether it's comics, sports, Joss Whedon, films, Bible verses, etc., a person can geek out about anything, even if it isn't something that's traditionally considered of geeky interest.
There are so few things that I'm passionate enough about to be a geek over. The closest I ever came was during the years when I was totally into Buffy. I watched every episode repeatedly, knew all the episode titles, joined a Buffy forum. It was hard for people to have a conversation with me without me quoting the show or saying things like, "That reminds me of that one time when Spike/Xander/Willow/Buffy . . . "
I didn't take it any further, though. I've never been to Comic-Con to meet the actors. I've never dressed up as any of the characters. It's been at least a year since I've watched an episode. I don't think I'll ever NOT consider myself a fan, but it seems unlikely that I'll ever regain the passion that I once had.
Since then, I've gotten into new things, but it's usually been fleeting passions or moderate interests. I've read all the Harry Potter and The Hunger Games books. Sure, I like 'em, and I can probably debate about them, but I don't usually bother. I love The Clone Wars cartoon, and I actually can recognize some of the planets by sight now, but I don't know most of the minor character's names, or even many of the major ones. I'm not even a true Tetris geek because I cannot for the life of me get a T-spin to work!
Here's further evidence of my non-geekiness:
I played Magic the Gathering a few times in college, and thought it was very fun to create my own deck (which I still have), but after maybe a dozen games I was totally over it.I attempted a role-playing game that same year, but the boys got annoyed and didn't want to play with me anymore because when we "went to the fair," I wanted to ride the ferris wheel. Which, apparently, didn't exist in this particular world where I was a twelve-foot cyclops.I loathe Lord of the Rings. Utterly and completely.At GeekGirlCon, I was very interested to hear people talking about finding/embracing their geekiness (including Jane Espenson - OMG!), but I didn't particularly relate to it. It's true that I felt alienated growing up, but it wasn't because of my interests and it didn't draw me toward any particular interests. (Maybe reading?Nerdy!!!!)
And now that I've gotten this far into typing this, I seem to remember that I've blogged about passion several times in the past, and about the fact that I don't seem to have much of it. And that's the conclusion that I'm coming to once again.
Maybe I'm just too lazy to be geek?
September 12, 2011
Blog: What will my third book be about?
I turned in the latest draft of LIVE THROUGH THIS (aka Book 2) to my editor last night. This means I get a short break to get caught up on life before I have to dive back into the draft. During the thirteen or so hours away from it, I've watched 9/11 stuff on TV, slept, read 9/11 articles, returned emails, played Tetris Battle, and considered what my next book should be about.
In pondering the last of those, I realized something: When I started focusing on writing back in 2004, I had a very short list of things that I would NEVER write.
1. A male narrator
2. A story about sexual abuse
As it turns out, my first published book has the former. My second will have the latter.
I think I need to make a new list of things I will NEVER write, and then I should have an easy time getting started on book 3, yeah? ;-)
July 12, 2011
Blog: Displays of Affection
Please visit the Contemps site to read it. And, if you'd like, leave me a comment there sharing what the rules were like at your high school. Pretty please? :-)
June 28, 2011
Blog: The U2 Concert.
So, Lenny Kravitz opened the show. He is a very nice-looking man, from what I could see on the screen. :-)
I'm only a casual Lenny Kravitz fan, so I wasn't sure if I'd know many of his songs. As it turns out, during his hour, he played seven songs total (I think!) and I knew all but two.
U2 played for over two hours. (I think! And this is why I should have done this post three weeks ago.) It was my third time seeing U2 because it was the third time Matt bought me a ticket! I think U2 concerts are very feel-good events, so it was a pleasant evening.
Here's a really bad picture of the stage while U2 plays as well as the backlights of many, many phones. You'll have to take my word for it that that's what you're seeing:
And finally, here's a picture that U2 took of Matt and me and some other people!
It kind of freaks me out that there exists pictures online of everyone who was in the stadium that night, but whatevs. Oh, and if you're wondering what I'm laughing about, I think this shot was taken after I'd turned toward Matt just in time to get an ASS TO THE FACE from the dude behind me. I said, "Did that really just happen?"
Matt sat, "He practically sat on your head."
I had the giggles for at least an hour afterward.
June 22, 2011
Blog: Realistic YA Revolution!
In addtion, Tara is hosting a giveaway of over one dozen books! Check it out here. The drawings will take place on June 30th, so get on over there with your recommendations!
