Layce Gardner's Blog, page 5

Everything Old Is New Again

Saxon and I went vinyl record shopping yesterday. (I think the last time I bought a vinyl record was 1989!) I had bought Saxon a record player a couple of weeks ago as an early birthday present so we’re getting into vinyl again. It also plays CDs and cassettes. Real cassettes! Remember those? Remember how you had to rewind them with a pencil?

It made me realize how much technology I’ve lived through. For a long time, I thought technology could never get more advanced than the long cord on yo...

Do These Bike Shorts Make My Butt Look Big?

I have a love/hate relationship with my bike shorts. I hate that they’re so tight. I really hate that the padding in the crotch area make me feel like I’m wearing one of those old-fashioned sanitary napkins from the 1950s. I do, however, love that the padding protects my precious parts from the bike seat.

This morning Saxon and I were going bike riding so I had to suck it up and wiggle into my tight bike shorts. I had them about halfway on when something went dreadfully wrong. I pulled the fr...

Click the Pause Button

Back when I first started writing for a living, I was a binge writer. I would settle down at my desk and not come up for air for three days or more. Then came the inevitable crash.

Once I began working for hire in Hollywood, I found out real quick that this method didn’t work. Producers paid you big bucks to deliver quickly and on time. Writing for Hollywood was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It gave me discipline and persistence. And, above all, it taught me the value of m...

Sweet Sixteen Candles

My daughter, Emma turned sweet sixteen yesterday. To commemorate that monumental event I thought I would take look back through the years:

When Emma was three, she thought the cat’s litter box was called a glitter box. I never corrected her because it was just too precious. (I also used ‘the glitter box’ as the name of the strip club in my book, Tats. Thanks, Em!)

When she was 11, Saxon and I took her to the Dallas book club with us. She wrote her name on Sandy Thornton’s sign-in sheet. In th...

THE BIG TRIP, Part Two

Last week Saxon wrote The Big Trip, Part One and had planned on writing Part Two, but I talked her into letting me write it. I was afraid she would gloss over certain parts and neglect to inform you of her participation in the ugly truth of it all.

Let’s backtrack a little and start right before the trip itself. You see, Saxon typically packs two weeks prior to the trip. I pack moments before the trip. The good thing about the way I pack is that there’s no time to change your mind or re-pack....

Homophobia Is Alive and Well

A lot of you readers know me as a lesbian fiction novelist. I am that, but I am also much more. I am a daughter, a wife, and a mother. I am also a lesbian. I have faced some discrimination in my life. Not as much as most LGBT people, mainly because I surround myself with enlightened people. It hurts when I am discriminated against for being a lesbian. But you know what hurts worse? When somebody discriminates against my child. Or any child. But that’s exactly what happened last week.

My daugh...

Sneak Peek -Till Beth Do Us Part

Here’s a sneak peek of our book Till Beth Do Us Part. It will be released June 1st. Enjoy!

Synopsis

Jamie Bravo is new to the Private Detective business. Armed with ten thousand business cards, a fedora and trenchcoat, the world’s ugliest dog, a parrot who sings show tunes, and a Gay roommate, Jamie is ready for anything. What she doesn’t count on is getting a call in the middle of the night from her ex-girlfriend, Veronica, announcing that she woke up to a dead body in her bed.

Now Jamie is...

Let’s Get Physical

Yesterday I found a ten dollar bill in a jacket pocket. For a moment, I looked at the rectangular piece of green paper and thought, “What is this?” That’s when I realized that I rarely use real, physical money anymore. I use a debit card or a credit card for most purchases.

And that got me to thinking. . .

Most of my life revolves around the virtual, not the physical.

I am a novelist (along with my co-author and wife, Saxon Bennett.) I write on my computer three to four hours every morning. I...

After Death

I love the mother/daughter conversations Emma and I have as I drive her to school. I cherish these conversations because she’s almost 16, and soon enough, she’ll be driving herself, and this moment will be gone forever. Sometimes though, the conversations take a wrong turn. Like today’s. It went something like this:

Emma: When I die I don’t want to be buried underground.

Me: Really? Where do you want to be buried?

Emma: That’s not what I meant. I want to be cremated.

Me: Me, too. Remember tha...

The Welcome Basket

Fifteen years ago when I first moved to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, a friend of mine’s mother said, “You should go down to the Chamber of Commerce and get your welcome basket.”

“Welcome basket?”

She nodded. “Of course. People who move here are given a nice welcome basket. It has soaps and coupons and maps and lots of goodies. It’ll tell you everything you need to know about town.”

“Okay, I’ll do that,” I said.

Two days later I marched down to the Chamber of Commerce, went inside, walked up to a wom...