Jessica Scott's Blog, page 34

Last Thoughts on #Iamnotaslut

This week saw the backlash against Rush Limbaugh's hateful comments go into full swing and my tweets and blog post were part of that. I said my piece because the attacks on women's right to decide for themselves their medical health reached a point where I had to speak.

I did not expect this to have the impact that it did. Thank you for the huge outpouring of support and to those who were willing to engage in constructive dialogue. I am honored that my words touched so many people but this debate does not need me to continue.

I'm truly flattered by the media requests that have come in but I'm not discussing this further. While I am proud to have helped galvanized the debate, I'm not going to engage partisan politics. This is bigger than right or left. Thank you for asking me to come on your shows, but I've said my piece.

For the record, in my writing career and my professional life as a soldier, I have never been asked to say something I did not agree with, nor have I ever been silenced other than through my own conscience.

My words and opinions are my own and should not be misconstrued as DoD or Army positions. I am proud to wear the uniform. I am prouder still that I have the support and love of my family, as well as those with whom I serve: seniors, peers and subordinates.

When we only listen to those who espouse opinions we agree with, we are weakened as a people. With luck and perseverance, this movement will shift into productive discussion that serves to make our nation stronger.

Our national dialogue is too important to allow the politics of hate and name calling to weaken it further. What I am most proud of is that this debate proves that our nation is still in the hands of we the people.

DABWAHA: Now With Hamsters & Links

Folks, it's the first time I have a book eligible for the DABWAHA tournament and after last year's fun, bribery and shameless pandering by some of my favorite authors, I *really* want to enter the fray. While there is no actual bribery allowed this year, I'm sure the fun will be awesomesauce.

But there's nothing I can actually do to get into the voting pool so I'm shameless asking that if you read Because of You and liked it, please ask Sarah and Jane to enter it into the brackets.

For those of you not familiar with DABWAHA, it is the "brain child" of Sarah & Jane from Smartbitchestrashybooks.com and Dearauthor.com respectively. It's the March madness for romance and stands for "Dear Author Bitchery Writing Award for Hellagood Authors"

HOW TO VOTE:

Please fill out your brackets using this form and write in Because of You (ISBN: 978-0-345-53386-9) and get them submitted before tomorrow. If Shane & Jen are added, there will be more hamsters. And won't that be awesome?

Was that enough shameless pandering? How about a little hamster thrown into the mix?

DABWAHA Shameless Pandering

Folks, it's the first time I have a book eligible for the DABWAHA tournament and after last year's fun, bribery and shameless pandering by some of my favorite authors, I *really* want to enter the fray. While there is no actual bribery allowed this year, I'm sure the fun will be awesomesauce.

But there's nothing I can actually do to get into the voting pool so I'm shameless asking that if you read Because of You and liked it, please ask Sarah and Jane to enter it into the brackets.

For those of you not familiar with DABWAHA, it is the "brain child" of Sarah & Jane from Smartbitchestrashybooks.com and Dearauthor.com respectively. It's the March madness for romance and stands for "Dear Author Bitchery Writing Award for Hellagood Authors"

Please tell Sarah and Jane that Because of You should be in the brackets for DABWAHA before March 6.

Was that enough shameless pandering?

I Am Not A Slut

I took a brief hiatus from twitter/facebook over the last weekend because the rhetoric was getting my blood pressure up and well, to spare the people around me endless rants about the stupidity in our national dialogue, I had to turn it off.

The rhetoric has gotten out of control. The extreme rhetoric that says a woman should just put an aspirin between her knees to keep from getting pregnant, or that proposes a bill in the Senate allowing employers to decide not to cover medical issues they deem immoral or the fact that a group of middle aged men have returned to an era where they get to tell me what to do with my body: I'm a little pissed.

I am a 35 year old married mother of 2, an Army officer who has deployed and I use birth control to be a good soldier and a responsible parent.

I use birth control to stop having my period so that I can go to the field and not worry about it.

I use birth control while deployed with my husband to keep from getting pregnant and getting sent home and letting down all the men AND women on my team.

I use birth control to keep from having more children than we can afford.

I use birth control to enable me to be a good soldier and balance my career and my family.

I use birth control to control the relentless cramps I had as teenager that had me in so much pain I could not walk.

I use birth control to control when I have children so that I can be more than the sum of my uterus.

I use birth control provided by the government to allow me to be a good soldier and a responsible parent and a responsible citizen.

I use government provided birth control while deployed to Iraq because it was my turn to go.

Call me a slut because I was fortunate enough to be deployed with my husband and I spent the entire deployment terrified I would get pregnant and sent home.

By all means, call me a slut. Call me a whore who expects the government to pay for my birth control so that I can abdicate my responsibilities as a parent. Call me a feminazi for forsaking my duties as a mother and using birth control so that I did not get pregnant again and miss the deployment. Call me a slut for wanting something more for myself and my daughters than to be someone's breeder. By all means, call me a whore for wanting my daughters to be able to fulfill their potential by being able to decide when they want to start a family.

Calling me and every woman who chooses when to have children a slut will not change the fact that we are responsible citizens who opt to plan their families, who opt to take responsibility for their lives as women and members of our society. And yes, call me a whore because I still expect Tricare to cover my birth control and my pap smear and my government mandated annual std exam.

There are other things I would prefer to be called. You may call me many things but that does not negate the things I call myself.

You could call me a Mom, because I have two beautiful daughters who I want to grow up knowing their full potential is between their ears, not their legs. You could call me Soldier, because I love wearing my nation's uniform and it is an honor to serve. You could call me Author, because I managed to write a book that people read. You could call me a Wife, because I've been with the same man for fifteen years. You could call me a Friend because I'm there, for laughs or for tears. Any of those things define me so much better than the singular hatred of calling me a slut because I use birth control.

But go ahead. Call me a slut. It doesn't make me one.

Things I Want

As a newbie author, I've been watching the publishing industry for a while. I'm a fan of the publishing industry as I'm somewhat of a nerd and love love love books. They were my saving grace as an unhappy teenager and as an adult, they are the saving grace from keeping my ass from expanding to ginormous (I do most of my reading on my elliptical, ICYWW).

We've established that. I'm also a realist and recognize that publishing is going through some challenges in growing and facing the demands of an increasingly digital world. I'll be the first one to admit that I do the bulk of my reading on my ipad now, something I vehemently resisted for a while. But sadly, if I want to read, it's going to be on a device that I always have with me: my ipad or my phone.

That said, I still buy physical books for my keeper shelf. I like nothing more than flipping through a book for a particularly poignant scene or tagging a page for notes to come back to later.

So, in acknowledging that I want both physical books AND digital books, here's a few things I want to see.

I want an open source ebook reader app that will let me read from BN, Kindle or iBooks or PDF that will SYNC my books like the Kindle and Nook apps do. I like being able to go between my ipad and my phone to keep reading when I'm standing in line or otherwise find myself with a few minutes. I dislike being locked into a single ecosystem which all three of the major players in the ebook market do. Calibre is very close to having the ability to manage all of my ebooks. Give me the ability to sync it, either using iCloud or Google or something and I'll be a happy girl.

I want a Kids Tablet of some kind. The Nook Kids app is a great app. It's full color and it's BOOKS. Not games. Not read out loud movie versions. It's books. I want a Nook tablet for kids that is for books. I love my ipad for my kids but hell, it's a little expensive for them to be lugging around. I don't, however, want a toy like the kids tablets that were the big thing at Christmas last year. The games suck, the ability to transfer files to the damn things requires a PhD and we won't even start on the battery life issues. A ruggedized Nook for Kids or larger iPod, again ruggedized, would be great for getting the kids some portable books and learning apps that aren't over priced and dumbed down.

I want print on demand from the Big 6 publishers. I love love love that I'm published in a digital imprint and I'm also a realist in that it makes sense to publish digitally these days. The ability to sell through in print is challenging for solidly established authors, let alone an unknown debut like me. So no, I don't necessarily want my publisher or any publisher to stay locked into a publishing model that is going to keep losing money if the authors don't sell enough physical books. But I'm also aware that there is a digital divide and some people either cannot afford an ereader, don't have the internet connectivity in order to effectively use an ereader or simply won't use one. I don't know if that's 60 people or 600 people and I'm not asking any publisher to guess. But I would love, love, love to see a print on demand option that is seamless to the buyer which makes the book available in print.

I want bundling. I buy a lot of books that are both digital and print. Nonfiction gets bought in my house in hard cover and digital. Fiction on my keeper shelf gets bought digital and print (don't tell my spouse). I want bundling that saves a little bit of money. I'm not asking for buy one get one free. But a little off the top would be nice.

The last thing I want is probably something only I want but it's a big one for me because well, I'm anal that way. You know how you can take tabs and run them down the side of a book and label it? Yeah, I want a pdf reader that can do that. I want to be able to see my tabs on the side of the page on my ipad. Maybe it's my OCD but the app that lets me to that has an automatic client in moi.

So those are things I want. Greedy? Maybe. Self centered? Maybe a little of that, too. But these are things that I'd be willing to be other people want, too. And the company that delivers any of these fills a capability gap that is currently out there.

Let's see if anyone is listening.

Late Winners: Good Choice Valentine's Day Hop Winners

I am so so far behind it's not even funny. Because I completely failed at this, I'm going to pick 2 winners for the Good Choice Reading Valentine's Day Holiday Hop

Ashley A and Melissa P

Please email me at jessica AT jessicascott DOT net so I know where to send your digital copies of Because of You and Ride With Me!

American Dervish

Sometimes, a book touches you on a level that you didn't see coming. When I read the opening of American Dervish, it hit me at a fundamental place: a place of knowing I was not alone. When Hayat takes a bite of his hot dog and looks around, expecting the building to collapse or the earth to shake for his violation of faith… there were echoes of my own struggles with faith. The first time I did not go to mass. The first time I realized my parents faith did not define me: I remember waiting for the earth to shake.


As someone who has wrestled with her faith, who has vacillated between devout attendance at mass and damn near walking away from her childhood faith yet again, American Dervish touched me deeply. It's not an easy book to read unless you're like me and you really enjoy books that touch on the deeply fundamental questions in life.

I could at once relate to Hayat's mother, trying to raise her son as a man of faith while wrestling and sometimes even hating what that that faith had done to her best friend. I could relate deeply with Hayat's father, a man who looked at the people around him, a people who shared his faith and his heritage, with distain and anger and more than a little distrust. His rage at his son's devout displays was especially powerful but not because he feared what his son would become but because Hayat, in his religious zeal, hurt a dear friend. Naveed's anger over that was a greater betrayal than Hayat's religiosity and that, ultimately, is where I can relate most strongly with Naveed. The faith he grew up with has hurt someone he cared deeply about. It's a struggle I can honestly say I'm dealing with right now as the faith I am a part of is hurting people I care about.

But mostly, I could relate with Hayat. With being a young person, trying to make sense of the faith of our parents. Trying to be a good Muslim or in my case, Catholic, only to fall away as you learn a truth about the world: the faith of our parents is not going to hold up to our ideals as we grow up. Maybe it's the worlds way of shaping us into something new. Maybe it's our way of breaking away from the traditions that shaped us.


But taking Hayat's journey through faith and ultimately away from it, I could relate.

American Dervish is not only about being a Muslim in America. It's a journey about growing up. About taking the faith we had as a child and looking at it as an adult. Ayad Akhtar wrote an incredibly powerful book and I'm so so grateful I had the chance to read it. It's especially potent for me right now, as I continue to wrestle with the traditions I've been raised with and trying to find the right path to steer my daughters toward.

If you've ever wrestled with your faith, if you've ever looked at your parent's religion through eyes filled with disappointment, or, if you've never experienced either of these things, Ayad Akhtar's book American Dervish will take you on that journey.

I highly, highly recommend it.

Change of Command Pt Deux

So tomorrow the fun begins again. I start inventories for my 2nd command, a challenge I am really looking forward to. I'm taking charge of a Headquarters and Headquarters Company, which means: I'm in charge of the company that runs the staff.

I've done a lot of growing up in the year and half that has passed since I took the guidon the first time. I learned a lot, way more than I thought I'd ever learn. I guess I should stop being surprised by how much I learn and start looking at the lessons I think I'll learn vs the lessons I actually learned. The delta might be very interesting.

So as I move into my 2nd command what are some of the challenges I think I'll face? Command is a unique job that I don't believe has any comparison in any profession outside the military. I'm responsible for training, for readiness, for budgeting, the purchasing, for soldiers and their families. The gamut of things commanders are responsible for is legion and yet, it's the best job the Army has to offer.

It's not without it's headaches, certainly. There's the constant stress of making sure you accounted for all of your property. Of herding the cats that are the staff officers and senior NCOs who don't want to play Army any more. Of making sure that all the check the block training as well as all the really important training is completed. Of getting people to the range and actually qualified. That's the easy stuff.

More difficult is balancing the needs of the HHC (translate staff) with the needs of the other companies. I still maintain that staff exists to support the commanders, not the other way around. So now, I get the chance to see it from another perspective: my company *is* the staff. How will I balance that? This, I think will be my biggest challenge.


Lessons I learned in my last unit will definitely come into play here. The ability to build a consensus before you brief any plan in public is going to be key. I highly doubt my new battalion commander will have much patience with me if I get into a screaming match about CARC paint in the motorpool, so I'm going to have to really work on my temper. Also, I need to spend less time arguing with what I think is important and just doing what my boss thinks is important. They're the battalion commander for a reason and the world according to Jess, while a good world, is not the only world (that was sarcasm, ICYMI).

One thing I know is going to be a challenge is property. I spend the last two days working on a Bento database that will *hopefully* keep me organized. Anyone who wants to try the Bento database is welcome email me and I'll send it out. I've also shared it in the Bento Template Exchange under business category (Change of Command Inventory). It's an ugly first cut but it's a start for getting things organized.

The toughest thing for me is going to be slowing down and once more recognizing that I'm not the commander yet. I also don't have the same people I had before. My crew was amazing and while I won't have the same people, I hope I still end up with the same caliber of folks I had last time. I'm going to have to avoid comparing the two though, just like with your kids. No one wants to hear how they stack up to the last guy and I owe it to my new folks to not make that comparison.

So change of command inventories start tomorrow. I'll leave you with this one final image on company command. Enjoy.

A Soldier's Thoughts on Birth Control, Religion and Women in the Military

I've become somewhat of an accidental feminist lately. I've struggled mightily with my religion's stance on birth control and finally accepted that, well, I'm just a bad catholic. I always figure I'm about one step away from excommunication anyway, so there's that, too. I bit my tongue recently (mostly) when FoxNews featured that Lizz Trotta when she said that women in the military should expect to be raped because we're serving in close quarters with men. I fail to see how a reporter who has never served in the military (your little boondoggle to Vietnam doesn't count), how has no current experience with the military and oh by the way, a so called news network that is allegedly pro military, can put this information out there. We should expect to be raped? Why because my brothers in uniform are such Neanderthal cave men that they can't control themselves? Honey, we got over the women incite men to lust uncontrollably a long time ago. Fox News should be ashamed of themselves for slandering the men and women who wear the uniform they claim to support.

Hey, Fox News, you don't get to have it both ways: you can't say that women in the military are being raped too much (and is there ever really an appropriate amount of rape?) on the one hand and then complain when those same women who oh by the way volunteered to serve, want birth control so as not to be perceived as "getting pregnant to get out of war".

But folks, this entire debate about birth control and religion has gone too far when the members of the House refuse to allow women to testify at a hearing on the Affordable Care Act and mandatory coverage of birth control by employers. This is not about religious freedom, either because no one is forcing anyone to take anything. The Affordable Care Act ensures that women who are covered by insurance can get birth control covered.

I am so sorry if your religious beliefs state that I should be in the home barefoot and pregnant. I am so deeply sorry if your religious beliefs are so archaic as to not keep up with actual SCIENCE and provide ethical and rational discussion on being a responsible human being and oh by the way, have children that you can provide for, love and care for.

I'll even buy your argument that if you're a man, you shouldn't have to pay into a system that forces you to cover my birth control. Fine. Then you can pay into a system that covers thousands of births annually instead because oh by the way, you still have to participate in the whole making a baby thing. Having kids is expensive. I promise you, it is far cheaper to pay for a pack of little pills each month than to cover prenatal care, labor and delivery. That's for healthy babies. And don't get me started on denying emergency contraception to RAPE VICTIMS. Folks, I've got a little news for you: if someone reports to the emergency room and states they were raped, they probably were.

Oh and one more teeny little fact before you say that you shouldn't be forced to pay into a system that you believe is covering abortions: According to the IRS, an abortion is a legitimate medical expense. That's right, folks, your tax dollars are already subsidizing abortions whether you like it or not. So get over it.

Folks a basic tenant of equality in this country means that I can decide to get pregnant or not. That is my right as an equal citizen, just as any man. This is NOT about abortion. This is about preventing a pregnancy and being a responsible adult who is capable of more than the sum of her lady parts. If someone cannot afford birth control, how are they supposed to afford a child? Oh and let's not forget that birth control is also used to treat disorders like ovarian cysts so the so called morality argument is bogus.

For members of Congress to hold a hearing on birth control and religious freedom and to refuse to allow ANY WOMEN to participate, to have NO FEMALE RELIGIOUS LEADERS involved in the discussion, and to actually consider passing legislation that treats women as second class citizens because of the potential that they may give birth is an outrage. For a presidential debate to honest to God be running on issues about birth control when our economy is in the tank, our education system is failing, our infrastructure is crumbling and our entitlement programs are out of control is a shame and we the people should be embarrassed that this national discourse is being held in our name.

And let's not forget about a little war we're still running over in Afghanistan and the more than 13% of OIF & OEF Veterans that are out of work.

Folks, I am tired of seeing these so called religious freedom debates taking over our national politics. Freedom of religion means that you are free to practice your religion and to NOT impose it on me. The right to swing your fist ends with someone else's face.

The freedom to practice your religion ends when it infringes on my rights to be an equal and full citizen.

Romancing The Blog Valentine's Day Hop Winners

Sorry I was late in getting this posted. The winner of the Romancing the Blog Valentine's Day Hop is

Catherine C

Please email me at jessica AT jessicascott DOT net!