Libby Broadbent's Blog, page 9

Roadside assistance

“Maybe you’ll write about this in your next novel,” he said, his Scottish accent lilting like melted caramel across the stick shift between us. My weiner was on my lap. It took great fortitude on my part to refrain from making the offer … “would you like to stroke my weiner?”

I had only just met these foreigners, after all, and I am all about avoiding international incidents with people from ‘away’. Jeep looked at him with mournful eyes. If ever a weiner needed stroking, Jeepy is the one.

The Scot’s wife, Cath, sat in the back seat, oblivious to the effect of her husband’s accent, madly scratching at the five thousand bug bites on her arms, neck, face and hands.  Midges. I felt that weiner stroking paled in comparison to the scratching of her particular itch.

“In Nova Scotia, we call them mosquitoes, and they can pick up a small child and carry it away before you can say ‘tea and crumpets’.”

I’m great with foreigners. I’m a veritable font of wisdom. I wonder if she realizes that her husband’s accent is every Nova Scotia woman’s fantasy?

Today, I rescued two travellers on the side of the road. I was sweaty, they were bug-bitten, it was fate. They had come all the way from England to visit Canada and had just had the quintessential Nova Scotia experience of hitting a deer on the highway. I feel they should receive badges at the airport when they leave… a certificate, or diploma, or a stamp on their passport that reads:  “You have created road kill. You are an Honorary Canadian.”

These hapless travellers were givin’ ‘er down the 103 when Bambi leapt in front of them, dead-center of their rented Jeep Cherokee. Immediately after the carnage on the highway, they turned… guided no doubt, by fate… down the Port Medway Road, leaking coolant and other essential fluids for several miles before seizing up dramatically in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. (I also heroically refrained from describing our location as the Middle of Butt-Fuck, and should also receive a medal for my diplomacy. One sometimes forgets how crude one may seem when one is not often obligated to serve as an ambassador for one’s country. Kudos to me, for holding the crudity in check.)

I was biking. Like the wind. Which is how I bike.

I have been eating cream-cheese-and-sour-cream-everything all winter and my ass is threatening to declare itself as a new province, so I have been biking. Like the wind. I passed the hapless travellers on my way out, and, a good forty minutes later I began to pass them again, on my way home. On my first pass I thought nothing of it… lady on cell phone beside vehicle. I mean, sheesh, no one in NS talks on the cell phone while they are driving, so I simply applauded her caution and biked on. Like the wind. However, a forty-minute cell phone conversation on the side of the road in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere implies some sort of emergency.

I stopped. Which is really hard when you are biking like the wind. I was only gasping a little. And sweating. Like Argentina in the rainy season.

They hit a deer, their rented vehicle went tits up, the tow truck was coming… from Halifax! Good Lord, that’s like sending help from Mars! It would take hours! This poor cute little British woman was being devoured by midges. Her husband had a Scottish accent. What choice did I have? I had to rescue them!

“Hop on my bike, I will carry you to safety!”

Apparently that is not the British way, so I had to madly bike home alone and retrieve my car… and the weiner, obviously. No rescue operation is complete without the weens… and go back to pick them up.

I love doing good deeds. It’s the Nova Scotia way. I even jealously hoped no one else would try to save them whilst I was biking wildly home because they were my helpless wanderers, dammit. If I wasn’t gonna save them, ain’t nobody gonna save them!

(I think I may be a deeply flawed samaritan deep in my soul.)

I brought them to my house, I gave them tea, I tried very hard not to adopt a British accent which is what I automatically do when I am with British people. It’s in my genes. Great Aunt Tilly and teatime and egad and God Save the Queen and all that. Marmite. Yorkshire Puddings. Horlicks.

I showed them the seals in the river, who chose just that exact moment to cavort, as they are wont to do. (Dammit, I wrote that with a British accent!) We called the rental company, we sorted out the dilemma, we had the barest of minimal moments of “we have two kids, we’re here for two weeks”, and , “I have four kids, I’ve been marking English essays all day”, and then I drove them back to their ruined vehicle which the tow truck was hoisting, and I sent them on their way.

Before they left, however… and I was sad to see them go. I had visions of taking them shark fishing and feeding them fresh-dug clams and explaining the intricacies of South Shore geneaology… I gave them my book. I muttered something like “I write stuff, like this, I dunno, ya know? Maybe you’ll read it, whatever” because I’m shy and ridiculous when it comes to promoting my work. That’s my foray into the international market. Done.

I have now cornered the European market on self-published South Shore Nova Scotia fiction because I was able to make venison jokes with visitors from the Home Country.

“You know, it tastes delicious if you can scrape it off the bumper.”

I said that. To the nice British people.

“Maybe you’ll write about this in your next novel,” he said.

Maybe I will. I’m a total sucker for a Scottish accent.

Thanks for reading!  Check out my novels on amazon.com.

Available now on Amazon

Apoplectic ennuie

Have you ever made bread? It’s quite a lot of work. The mixing, the kneading, the rising, the hoping that the loaves will rise and be light and fluffy, tasting like summer. And in your culinary efforts, as you are taking the loaves out of the oven, the air redolent with the fruits of your labor… have you ever noticed the carefully measured salt still sitting on the counter?

The end of the school year is upon us, and once again I am torn between maniacal laughter because I will be sending the wee delinquents on their way, sadness that I won’t teach some of them ever again, and absolute bleak despair because I fear so many of my lessons have missed the mark. I’m sending my students out into the world without salt.

It is a time fraught with sentimental nostalgia for the potential of September, and concern for the reality of June. Did I teach them anything? Have I made any kind of impact on their lives? Did they hear me swearing at them under my breath?

I recently asked my grade eleven students to write to me, to let me know their thoughts on my lessons about apocalyptic literature. We have read Brave New World, and Oryx and Crake. I have ranted about Wall-E and Tom Cruise movies. I have talked about conspiracy theories, and the zombie apocalypse. I have waved my arms and stood on my head and begged them to respond, to argue with me, to disagree, to breathe…

“For the past few days my teacher… Broadbent… has been droning on about  world issues. The questions she has asked have floated over my head like hundreds  of buzzing mosquitoes…”

I suppose I should be thrilled with the use of metaphor, and the correct spelling of mosquitoes since one of my favorite quotes is from a student writing about camping: “It is just terrible to be ate alive by misquotes.” Yes. Yes it is. Being ate alive is terrible no matter how accurate the quoting.

“The things that we’ve been going over for the past few days make me feel like… blaaaahhgg.”

These kinds of responses are the carefully measured salt still sitting on the counter after the loaves are already in the oven, realizing too late that all my efforts are bland and tasteless. It looks like bread, but no one wants a slice.

This week I have had kids tell me I gave them too much work, too little feedback, too much writing, not enough writing, not enough choice, too many smiley faces on their work, too many expectations, too many questions, not enough time… my head, and my heart, are in a whirl. I spend hours… hours… trying to find things that will intrigue them. Video clips, articles, songs, images… I have integrated facebook, ipads, twitter, youtube and yes, even Duck Dynasty into my lessons but still they stare at me, complaining that they aren’t entertained, that none of it is relevant, that I am as inspiring as a droning cloud of mosquitoes.

Sometimes I simply don’t know what else to do. I have a curriculum, I have outcomes, I have students. And never the twain shall meet. I like to think I have a creative brain and a varied toolkit of strategies which I sometime deliver accompanied by singing, terrible foreign accents, illustrations and rap.  And yes, I’ve been criticized for the accents. Zumtimez zere is just no pleazink people!

I lost my mind one day because a kid yawned. Sitting in the front row, not five feet from me. Not a delicate, behind the palm kind of yawn. No. A full stretch, jaw-cracking, howling yawn right in the middle of my lesson. The lesson I had spent several hours concocting. With video and surround sound. (Ok, maybe it didn’t have surround sound, but it did when I roasted him for yawning all over my best intentions). I indicated to him… with the vein in my neck pulsing wildly… that he was rude.

“So, like… I’m not allowed to yawn? What? I’m bored.”

Over the last few days I have talked to a young lady who thought she might be pregnant, another one who couldn’t decide if she wanted to pierce her nipple or her lip, another one whose boyfriend is an asshole, and a young man who promised he would no longer sneak out the back door of my classroom during class. Instead, he snuck the projector remote with the laser pointer and tracked little red dots all over me while I was teaching and I didn’t catch on for a good five minutes. I have intervened with a student who was cutting, another who needed a job, another who needed a letter for his parole officer. I have spent hours and hours marking, and planning and worrying about my students. And so have all the other teachers in my school. All the boring teachers, because I’m not so vain as to think I’m the only one worthy of the title. Most Boring Teacher of the Year. It’s what we all strive for.

I love my job, I love these kids, I get so tired of the varied rants about teachers not caring, not working hard enough, not being there enough. Are these kids asking their moms if they should pierce the lip or the nipple? I hope so. And I hope we’re on the same page, the mom and me, with our answers, because judging by the tattoos I see marching up young ladies’ legs and the bolts of metal I see sticking out of their faces I have to wonder. But I’m just a teacher. And a boring one at that.

I begin to fear that I will never keep their attention for more than three minutes. Unless I text them my lessons. Shakespeare in less than 140 characters. Get it, characters? What? Sorry, lame twitter humor. No wonder you’re bored.

It isn’t all torture, though. We laugh a lot, my students and I, in between the bouts of apoplectic ennuie. They tell me funny stories, and we have rap battles that I usually win. (wink, wink) A couple of sweeties left a note on my desk which read: “You weren’t here LBro, so we left some madlove for you!” I taped it to my wall. It was covered with smiley faces and little hearts, and that is enough to make me show up again come Monday morning. There’s only a few weeks left ‘til summer vacation when I will spend many happy hours planning a plethora of boredoms with which to regale my new charges. In September I will once again give them too much work , and not enough, and too many questions, and not enough, and too many expectations, and not enough, and… thank god for smiley faces. 

Thanks for reading!  Check out my novels on amazon.com.

Available now on Amazon

Charlotte Lane: delicious!

I was going out to supper with my Ladies, and so I painted my toenails. This is a sure sign of summer. Some people look for sunburns, or black flies, or lawn mowing as signs that summer has fully arrived, but for me? Red toenails.

I do a very bad of painting them, because they are very far away from me and I am just not as bendy as I once was, so it’s  a splash-and-dab kind of process which leaves polish clumpily on my nails, my toes, my feet and often the floor. I paint my toenails outside, to avoid destruction of property.

Another summer ritual is the buying of beer, something I only do in months without R.  R-less months are beer months. Months with R? Wine. I’m a pretty basic creature after all. Easy to please, easy to entertain, easy to inebriate.

One of my favorite rites of summer is my bike. In preparation for the evening meal with my friends, I felt it vital to burn some calories, and so I went for my first big tour around noon when the temperature reached 31 degrees and the asphalt was melting under my tires.

I nearly died.

It required beer afterwards, to bring me back from the brink of dehydrated hallucinating, which probably explains why I don’t bike in any of the R-months. (R-months equal beer, remember?) I was biking feverishly in the sweltering heat with a cloud of bugs keeping time with me. They were actually circling my bike as I rocketed forward, looping around me like demented wolves attempting to hypnotize a buffalo. And when I say ‘rocketed’, I mean wobbled unsteadily up big hills fantasizing about the beer waiting in the fridge at home, whilst elderly octogenarians passed me with their walkers. The bugs relieved me of several chunks of flesh I really didn’t need. The reason I bike is because I really have too, too much flesh, so really, how can I complain about the bugs?

How do you lose weight in Nova Scotia? Stand in your backyard without moving for fifteen minutes at dusk.

I painted my toenails because my Ladies and I went out for supper. I have a group of lovely Ladies who I get together with every day at school to bemoan our fate as high school teachers, and who I get together with outside school to eat delicious treats and laugh like fools.

For this dining adventure, we went to Charlotte Lane, in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Here’s the map, and here’s the website.

This is an intimate, tiny little restaurant and gift shop where I strongly recommend you make reservations because it is Just That Good. The gift shop sells cutesy Nova Scotian bric-a-brac and beautiful jewellery, wind chimes made of forks, and these very cool sinuous wooden fish that you just have to pick up and play with. The journey to Decadent Dining Deliciousness starts by navigating a tiny hallway lined with wine… could there be anything better than an entire wall of wine? I think not… into a warm orangey room with flowers and art and fabric. There’s a patio out back, but since I had recently made a donation to the Bug Lords of NS, we decided to eat indoors. It was very hot in the little room, but who minds the heat when the aroma of garlic and butter and something-amazing-like-summer-itself is drifting lazily in from the kitchen?

We all had the Special of the Day… lobster and scallops with a dreamy-creamy-garlicy sauce that somehow had lavender in it. Yes. Lavender. Roasted potatoes and beautiful steamed vegetables which included… horrors… brussel sprouts.

Flashback: The year is 1975. Hallowe’en. I am nine. My Wicked Stepmother is cooking that horrible, horrible white fish in milk and nutmeg, which she will force me to eat or I won’t be allowed to go trick-or-treating. And what does she offer as a side? The Brussel Sprouts from Hell. Cooked to within a fraction of a second of total disintegration. The sponge used to wash Davey Jones’ Locker is not more sodden, more haggard, more vile than those wee sprouts, which are no longer sprouts but have morphed into a geriatric mimicry of cabbage. I would rather eat Davey’s sponge. My Hallowe’en is filled with terror.

“I painted my toenails for this.” I thought. Still dizzied by the delicious aromas, but now stymied by the gag-reflex from my past which made Brussel Sprouts my mortal enemies, I fought with my Inner Child to peel itself off the wall of my Brussel Bias and buck up. I was surrounded by friends, after all, and I’d had a gin and tonic, and the sprouts looked surprisingly firm and leafy. Leafy? Brussel Sprouts? I remember having to scrape them off my plate with a spoon.

Delicious. I mean, like, freakin’ yum-o-rama! The sprouts were really, really good, and Wicked Stepmother’s mocking, over-cooked shadow fled in shame. Oh, to eat a meal made by someone who knows how to cook Brussel Sprouts! I glanced at my toes, cheekily curled in culinary delight like wee cherries, and devoured my vegetables.

I was glad that I had gone on my bike tour earlier in the day, so I felt entitled to dessert… lemon cheesecake with rhubarb sauce. To die.

Coffee.

So full that moving became an epic accomplishment.

We had a wonderful meal. The wait staff were lovely and cheery, and even though it was a very hot day the small room quickly filled up with people who weren’t barbequeing on the first truly beautiful day of summer. You know the food is good when it gets winter-weary Bluenosers away from the barbeque on a sunny Saturday evening.

It wasn’t a cheap meal; my bill for entrée, cocktail, dessert and coffee rang in at almost $50, but it was absolutely delicious and well worth the price. I enthusiastically recommend Charlotte Lane as a dining experience which satisfies not only your appetite, but also your Inner Child. Did you hate seafood as a child? Go! Go now! Order the scallops!

I can’t eat that way every day, so I went to the grocery store this afternoon… and bought Brussel Sprouts.

Thanks for reading!  Check out my novels on amazon.com.

Available now on Amazon

Boom, boom, boom!

I’ve just discovered that my latest book is Boomer Lit. I think.

This is incredibly exciting for me, because I suddenly feel like I belong to a Really Cool Club. I’ve always wanted to belong to a Really Cool Club, ever since that time in high school when the cute guy who worked in the university kitchen with me asked if I wanted to go out back and smoke weed. I was sixteen. I said no, and immediately was uncool. My brain cells thanked me, but I have forever after been longing to belong.

Boomer, baby. Pick me!

I had no idea that Boomer Lit even existed. But seriously, think about it. Baby Boomers? How many of them are there? Tons. And now? Those little darlings are all grown up, and they know how to read which is a skill younger generations may be losing, but don’t get me going on the evils of texting or I may LMAO or ROFL and make no sense at all. Baby Boomers grew up reading BOOKS, and they are now embracing the digital age and READING in droves. You go, girl! Or man! All seventy million of you!

My most recent novel, “Indefinitely Idled”, is about a man approaching fifty who has lost his job of 23 years, his wife leaves him and he is faced with a life-altering event at an age when he was getting ready to think about retirement and seeing his kid through university. This booms of Boomerism! I didn’t really know where to market my book because it didn’t seem to fit easily into the genres I was familiar with. It’s not romance… the cover sports a hairy man in a flannel. My editor warned me away from the fur, saying “Lots of women don’t like them hairy” but I love my cover. I think it’s sexy and mature and intriguing. I would go so far as to say it BOOMS. And I love hairy men. One hairy man in particular. He’ll be fifty this year and is the sexiest man on the planet. (Don’t tell him I said that… he blushes easily!)

My novel isn’t Young Adult, although it has a teenager facing a crisis in her own life, but the story really belongs to her father, Hal, who is thrown into torments over her lip piercing and desire to change her name from Brandy to Randi. With an i.

It’s not Chick Lit, or LGBT, because even though there is a thirty-something lesbian facing the loss of a pivotal relationship in her life, it is more about her meeting up with Hal in the moment of his despair.

There’s also Mina, the old age pensioner with the dying cat who is forced, against her will, to care for everyone who stumbles into her path. So, there are two older main characters facing serious changes in their lives… I think my novel is Boomer, and I love that.

Boomer Lit is a growing genre that parallels YA Lit, in that it marks a turning point for the characters, but rather than a coming-of-age conflict, it is a “third-stage of life” issue.

“Just as YA lit focuses on the first transition to adulthood, Boomer Lit is about the  next big transition. Now that the youngest Boomer is 49 and the oldest is 67, they  once again want to read books that will show them how to address the “Third Act”  of their lives. And they want books featuring mature characters that reflect  themselves.”    –Claude Nougat, publishingperspectives.com

This is exactly what I have been writing about, without knowing there was a Cool Club to belong to. It’s like being country, when country wasn’t cool. (Ah, Barbra Mandrell, and George Jones… sing it baby!) It’s like never throwing out that old tube top, when tube tops suddenly come back in style.

Ok. So maybe tube tops never came back in style, and I should never, never wear a tube top in public, but being a Boomer Lit author is very cool all the same.

Realizing that I now belong to a Cool Club, and am therefore a recipient of all the Cool Perks of being in a Cool Club… the failing vision, the aching hips, the throbbing uterus and concern over my pension and my savings account for my retirement villa in Newfoundland… what? My furry love is a hunter. He lives to hunt moose in Newfoundland. If we can ever retire, it’ll be to a heavily forested northern clime with freakishly large mammals roaming the landscape. I can Boom anywhere, baby!

Anyway, the perks of being in the Boomer Lit group include a wonderful Goodreads community that you should check out if you too are Booming, and did I mention…. 70,000,000 members?

Biggest Cool Club I’ve ever been in.

Wanna check out some Boomer Lit, to see what I’m talking about? Here’s a brief  list:

The Hook in the Sky, by Claude Nougat

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson

And here are some good articles to check out as well:

On the Edge: Boomer Lit, by Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Are You Ready For Boomer Lit? by Laurie Boris

And a list:

Popular Boomer Lit, Goodreads

And… oh yeah… there’s my book: Indefinitely Idled.

Boom, boom, boom!

Available now on Amazon

Indefinitely Idled, launched!

It’s astonishing how a crowd can turn the most mundane of actions into something entirely other. You know those moments when you have a burp caught ever-so-slightly in your throat? If you’re just talking to one person, you can have yourself a discrete little belch, say excuse me, and carry on. But when you have that little burp in your throat, because you drank two glasses of wine before picking up a microphone and beginning to speak to a crowd of fifty people, it becomes a much bigger problem. Amplified, if you will.

Everything becomes amplified when you are presenting to a crowd. Your belly is suddenly three inches more woobly than it was when you decided, in the comfort of your own home, to wear the clingy dress that swooshed so nicely in front of your bedroom mirror. Swoosh at home, sausage skin in front of crowd. Your eyesight, which benefits greatly from reading glasses at home, suddenly seems to require the Hubble telescope to properly see the pages in front of you when you read to a crowd of fifty people. And the bad language written on those pages, which you rehearsed at home and barely batted an eye, suddenly becomes gratuitous pornographic smut when spoken in front of fifty people. Fifty people ranging in age from fourteen to eighty. Some of whom are your students at your place of employment.

Try saying “dildo” a couple of times, in front of a crowd. At home, dildo is a funny word. In front of a crowd it’s an open door beckoning people into the darkest recess of your brain where they sit down and get comfortable, waiting for you to say it again with bemused expressions on their faces.

At my book launch I read carefully chosen passages intended to draw the crowd into the lives of my characters, to inspire them to be curious enough to buy a book, to enjoy the evening enough to tell their friends. I read the word “dildo” twice and made oblique references to dildos at several other moments. I must have read “fuck” half a dozen times. I mentioned a woman’s areola, her “mossy fen”, and her “pudding breasts”. I read of a woman grabbing a man’s crotch. I read the word “hard-on”. I may have mentioned that one of the characters wanted to “get laid”, but by then I was so mortified by my own porno fecundity that I had stopped keeping track. I had noticed none of these words when I rehearsed at home. Put me in front of a crowd and I become a potty-mouth. (See excerpt below.)

It’s not that my novel is Fifty Shades of erotica. AT ALL. It is a very mellow, gentle, Boomer-Lit novel about a fifty year old man coping with the loss of his job and his marriage. It’s about a lesbian with a broken heart. It’s about bad weather and geriatric pets. So where do all the fucking dildos come from?

The Launch was great fun… despite the clingy dress and the awkward moment of hoping my students who were in the audience would have no idea what the “mossy fen” might be referring to. The highlight of the evening came when Dancing DonDon, an icon at Alley Nine, the bar where I hosted my Launch and the location of several scenes in the novel, leaped to his dancing feet after I read a section describing the karaoke scene at the bar, and proclaimed: “That is AMAZING! What an IMAGINATION! How did you ever describe that so well, when you only come here once a year?”  He then proceeded to dance wildly to the music provided by The Tangos, a talented group of young men who provided the musical entertainment for the evening.

And so my book, “Indefinitely Idled” is launched. I sold forty print copies the night of the Launch, and I was blessed with a responsive and forgiving crowd who all seemed to have a good time. I hope to do more readings throughout the summer in different venues across the province. I may adjust my choice of excerpts, though. Although I probably won’t even notice anything inappropriate until I’m actually reading it to the next crowd. Crowds do that to me.

 

Excerpt: Alice, the lesbian financial planner from Toronto, is mourning the loss of the love-of-her-life, Tia who has run off a with a woman from the shoe store:

It had been a month since Tia informed her she was moving in with some slut from the mall who apparently sold shoes and cheap sex, with jet black hair extensions and a pierced nipple. Why Tia had seen fit to divulge this much information still boggled Alice, but perhaps it was for the best.

Perhaps it would make the break up easier if Alice could fully visualize Tia playing with Slut-o-rama’s nipple ring. In new shoes. Hair extensions littering the bed.

Alice had loved it when they made love and Tia would track the map of her body, laughing at new place names they made up for each other’s hills and valleys. She wondered if the shoe slut even knew what a mossy fen was.

Doubtful.

It was in this new Post-Tia apocalypse that Alice found herself questioning her body, her face, her purpose in life.

Tia never had these problems. Beautiful, perfect Tia. Breasts like sunrise. Ass like a chocolate sundae.

Heart of dark, twitching, malevolent, pustulent maggots.

Tia liked to tell people she’d been named after the dark and creamy drink, Tia Maria. She would laugh and say “I go down smooth and creamy.”

Alice had once found that incredibly cool. Sexy Tia. It was a miracle they’d been together at all. Maybe she should console herself with the impossible luck that their union had lasted for eighteen glorious months.

They’d met at a party. They got drunk. They got naked. They moved in together.

It had been a romance movie, complete with Friday lunches on outdoor patios and Saturday mornings with Tia wrapped in a towel with wet hair shimmering down her back. Their friends were happy for them; Tia the scientist and Alice the math geek. It was perfect. They wrote poetry to each other with fridge magnets, silly combinations of equations and formulas that spelled ‘love’.

At least, Alice thought it did.

She hadn’t factored in Tia’s shoe fetish.

Maybe if she’d worn heels? To bed? She’d never understood how that served any purpose. Wouldn’t they rip the sheets? Her feet looked better in steel toes.

Maybe that’s what she should have done, been more butch. More dominant. Worn the pants. Maybe that’s what Tia had meant by ‘stalling out’. Someone had to drive the bus, and Alice had never stepped up to take the wheel.

She’d left her for a shoe salesman. Woman.

Whatever.

Was that like having sex with the milk man? Did they do it in the storeroom, boxes of TOMS toppling over their perfect, slippery bodies, Crocs bouncing off their glistening butts? Does she get a discount now? Free insoles? Toe massages at breakfast?

The thought of breakfast almost made her weep.

Breakfast, alone. Shower, alone. Morning newspaper crossword, alone.

Fuck.

“I’m naked and I have to be at work in fifteen minutes.” She sat up and spoke to the picture of Tia still sitting on the dresser. Tia smiling, radiant, unperturbed.

“I’m naked, and my breasts are pooling in my armpits.”

Tia smiling: perfection.

“I want so badly to hate you.”

Tia still smiled. Would always smile.

And wear nice shoes.

Alice groaned. She threw a pillow at the photograph and it spun onto the floor, landing face down. Cupping her pudding breasts in her hands, she shuffled into the bathroom, ignored the mirror and cried in the shower.

Alone.

“Like” my BOOK!

My book launch for “Indefinitely Idled” is this week and I am fretting. Ok, not just fretting… freaking! I have nothing to wear. I don’t know what part to read. There’s a very real chance that no one will show up. I should’ve bought a pair of spanx, to contain myself. I had a dream I did the launch… underwater, with drowning kittens floating by.  The band kept playing, I kept reading, the kittens kept drowning.

Freaking.

This is the plight of the self-published author. We fret. We freak. We fret because we are alone in the marketing of our books, and, like most authors, we are not extroverted people. The thought of facing a crowd of people wanting to talk to us is knee wobbling. The thought of doing it repeatedly in a variety of venues is overwhelming. Self-published writers, write. We don’t socialize. Who has the time? Who has anything to wear?

I have a theory, which is probably wrong, but I’m going with it. In all my research into marketing self-published books, everyone insists that you need facebook likes, twitter follows, blog follows, like, follow, mention, retweet… ok. I get that. I see the value in spreading the word, but I’m just not buyin’ it. I think it’s a ploy by the facebook/twitter/blog platforms to increase traffic to their social networking sites, rather than a viable and trustworthy way to build a fan base. I don’t buy books that way. I buy books based on reviews, the appeal of the cover, and the blurb.

And I buy a lot of books. But never because the author has a cool facebook page.

I’m terrible at writing blurbs, by the way. Terrible. “It’s a book. About some people. Some stuff happens. The end.” That could explain my agonizingly low sales numbers.

I have liked and tweeted and followed… and not bought books. I’m sorry, those of you I have followed and liked… I just don’t think this is the path to success. Maybe I have a very old-fashioned sense of value, and the ethics of endorsement. How can I “like” someone’s page if I haven’t read their books? How can anyone “like” my page, if they haven’t read mine? And I know my likers haven’t read my books, or my sales would be in the hundreds. (Yes. Sadly, I’ve barely made it past double digits.) I also haven’t read the books of all the indie published authors I have “liked”, because I am a persnickety reader. I believe I am not the only one. I’m sorry, but I will never, never, never buy an erotic paranormal romantic gothic vampire thriller. I won’t. I read Moby Dick when I was twelve. I’m sorry, but I’m a Moby Dick snob. I read “Twilight” under duress and barely survived without imploding. (Read my impressions of “Fifty Shades” here.)

A reader’s time is valuable. A reader is going to cut to the chase and buy a book that has some credibility, some ingrained interest that leaps out at them not because the author has three thousand facebook likes, but because the author has a dozen solid critical reviews that prove the writing is worth the reader’s time.

I have embarked upon a strange and random marketing scheme which sees me flitting throughout my small community in the wee hours of the morning, depositing free copies of my latest novel on doorsteps, businesses, flower gardens. I have a letter inside the cover that encourages the recipient of the free book to enjoy it, perhaps write a review on amazon, perhaps tweet, perhaps pass along to a friend. I have left a free copy on the stacks of a local book store, right beside the computer terminal open to a search of my name. It’s guerilla ninja undercover book marketing. I giggle a lot while I’m doing it.

Is this going to work for me? Probably not. I live in a small community, after all, and I can’t afford to give away all my books, but I hope that if even a fraction of the recipients make the effort to write a review for me, it might make it worthwhile. And it’s very fun. I know if I came across a brand new book sitting beside a clump of daffodils with a sign in purple marker saying “Free to a good home”, I would embrace that random gift of literature. Especially since the cover is so deliciously saucy!

I love writing my books. I love editing them. I love sharing them with my friends. And I would love people to buy them. But I think my marketing has to rely on the standard of my work, the willingness of my readers to be my voice in the form of reviews, and my efforts to continue improving my craft. I am not negating the value of twitter and facebook and all such social media tools. I just know that I didn’t find the books I have loved from those sources, and the random indie success stories, such as Hugh Howey and Darcie Chan, didn’t rely on likes and follows to reach their readers. The likes and follows came after.

I don’t have any answers, and I’m leaving my books in daffodil patches, so really? Should anyone listen to me? Probably not… but I hope someone reads me. I hope someone likes my book enough to mention to the amazon giant that they thought it was ok. Like my book, not my profile. That’s my motto. I will have three books out by September. Once I have three available, I feel I’ll have something to work with. Maybe then I’ll buy a Kirkus, or a banner on Goodreads,  but I can’t afford that stuff now, not while I’m merrily scattering free books to the four winds like an enormous Literary Easter Bunny.

So, I am fretting, because I’ve booked a band, and a bar, and I have a hundred print copies of “Indefinitely Idled” sitting in boxes in my kitchen, and I’m terrified that I’m going to actually have to talk to people who might want to buy a copy. Thank goodness my daughters will be there to support me. At my book launch for “That Thing That Happened” I forgot to get a cash box and float, my dress kept getting caught on my chair, and I read a piece that had several nasty swear words in it when there were children in the room. My daughters saved me. I sold 88 copies of “That Thing” at that launch, because I live in a community of wonderfully supportive people who like to be entertained by a night of music and reading, with the odd swear word thrown in for color. Hopefully the launch for “Indefinitely Idled” will be a success.

I’m worried about the dream with the drowning kittens, though.

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The Bicycle Thief

I did not know what “semifreddo” meant, although I actually blame that lapse on the two “Billionaires” I drank before we got to the dessert menu. It is a fairly simple word to deduce, after all. But Billionaires have bourbon in them. And pernod. And, when they’re served by a lovely young man with a waxed handlebar mustache, one must be forgiven for lapses in one’s semantology. I blame the mustache.

We arrived, my love and I, at The Bicycle Thief after eight o’clock on a Thursday night. This decision was based entirely on the recommendation of our cab driver who suggested we go, because “that’s where everyone goes”. Being very set upon the notion of being with the “in crowd”, we demurred to the advice of Mr. Cab Driver, who seemed to know what he was talking about.

My love and I went to the city. Halifax. Bright lights, big city. We booked a hotel. We bought new clothes. We went out for dinner. It is vital to note, before I continue, that my love is a connoisseur of all good things. Meat, wine, cheese, grilled vegetables. The man never eats at McDonalds. Never orders fries when salad is an option. Never goes to sleep without kissing me goodnight. The kind of man who knows what he likes, and likes what he knows. The kind of man who is hard to impress.

We were blown away by The Bicycle Thief.

First of all, it’s beautiful. From the flaming torches at the entry, to the funky bar with Mr. Handsome Handlebar Mustache… I was going to ask him if he would marry one of my daughters… to the plethora of black and white vintage photos of people who you can only imagine must be family members of The Bicycle Thief himself… the place is gorgeous. And busy!

We’re from the country. We have one traffic light in our wee town, and a traffic jam means it’s 7am and the Tim Horton’s drive-thru is backed up, so maybe we are easy to impress, but Lordy Lordy, there were beautiful people in that restaurant. Wall-to-wall beautiful people. Wearing beautiful clothes. At nine o’clock at night. In my world, I’m in bed at nine o’clock. And I am not beautiful. I love going to the city to look at all the incredible people who appear like magic after the sun goes down.

We hadn’t made reservations… um… reservations?… so we sat at the bar for about fifteen very entertaining minutes while our drinks were served and we watched the beautiful people ebb and flow. At one point I asked my love if we should leave. If perhaps we were out of our depth. I was wearing skinny jeans and a floofy scarf, and I am not a skinny girl, but we decided to stay because the drinks were so delicious and we were starving. Surely no one would notice us.

We were shown to our table by a beautiful waitress, who handed us enormous menus that we couldn’t read because we’d left our glasses in the hotel room. Try sitting across from your blind lover at a very tiny table when you both have to hold the menus an arm’s length to read them. This does not spell romance. The lovely waitress said “You forgot your glasses?” and promptly offered a basket full of spectacles to choose from. I was thrilled! Unbelievable!

“Are you $%&%#-ing kidding me?” I bellowed. “This place is %#@$#-ing awesome!”

Luckily, I only shared that sentiment with my love, sotto voce, because we were trying to blend in with the beautiful. The beautiful do not swear at the tops of their lungs when offered spectacles, no matter how exciting that offer may seem.

I chose a stunning pair of cats-eye glasses and proceeded to read the menu to my love, since he declined the offer of the specs. I think it was because I have a very sexy Italian accent when I read menus, and he didn’t want to steal my thunder by reading the menu himself. He’s good like that.

I read everything.

Ever delicious, succulent, verbocious word.

We settled on “Icelandic Scampi allaBusara, roasted with Cognac, garlic, fresh herbs, touch of tomato, atop soft Polenta” ($14) for an appetizer, because I rolled all of the r’s most appealingly. “allaBusarrrrrra”. My love’s right eyebrow twitched in anticipation. Having no idea what Polenta was, and expecting it to be a cheese, or a bread, or a small Mediterranean mammal, we were delighted with the softy creamy yummy cornbreadishness of it.

The scampi?

%$#@&-ing awesome.

My love is a hunter. Let me qualify that… my lover is the quintessential hunter. We eat deer, moose, goose, duck, pheasant, trout, striped bass, shark, bear… if it wanders this fair land of ours, there’s a good chance my love has killed it and served it to me with a smile and a glass of wine.

The one thing he hasn’t fed me? Rabbit. Insert “The Bicycle Thief” here.

“Local Rabbit braised long and slow with a great Valpolicella, fresh herbs, with seared Polenta” ($25.)

Seriously? Rabbit?

My love nearly flipped his toboggan.

So, obviously, we ordered Thumper, and:

“Veal Scaloppine Limone, fresh lemon, butter, White wine, topped with Crispy Potato nest.” ($27.)

Between the words “Valpolicella” and “Scaloppine” my love’s cheeks flushed an endearing shade of pink. His nostrils flared at “Limone”. The evening was going well.

I had another Billionaire. My love had a Mojito. The rabbit was divine. Rich sauce, fall-off-the-bone tender, perfect vegetables. The veal wasn’t as spectacular, perhaps a tad too dry, but the flavours were marvellous. Polenta is my new favorite side dish.

We watched the people, we pondered who they were and what they were doing, we decided to start a rabbit farm and raise our own Thumpers to tempt the palate.

And then came dessert.

This was when I read the dessert menu… with the accent… and I said “I have no idea what semifreddo means, but is sounds delicious.”

A very tall bald man, who had earlier cleared off our entrée dishes, popped his head around the corner and smiled “It means mostly frozen”. Then he disappeared. Our own personal translator. First the spectacles, then the menu interpreter. I couldn’t have been more impressed if a gondolier had offered to navigate our way home.

Then, the dessert menu.

I rolled every R. I stroked every S. I hummed every M. My love’s eyes bulged out and I’m pretty sure he drooled a little. I wanted to steal a menu to take home for later.

“Housemade Peanut Butter gelato Sundae, Hot fudge sauce, crumbled peanut brittle, fresh Whipped cream” ($10.)

Best. Thing. Ever.

To. Die. For.

We never order dessert when we go out, but everything that came before had been so delicious, so fun, so different and new that we had to increase our caloric consumption by exponential degrees. We were not disappointed.

I have never written a restaurant review before, because I have never gone to a restaurant that serves Rabbit. And reading glasses. And handlebar mustaches.

The Bicycle Thief.

If you’re in Halifax, if you are with a woman who can read a menu with an accent, if you are with a man with a big nose and a hairy chest, if you want to be treated to excellent service and wonderful food in an atmosphere of beauty and vigor and twinkling lights… The Bicycle Thief is the place to be. (Disclaimer: The big nose and hairy chest are not required for enjoyment of this excellent restaurant… I am just incredibly lucky!)

The Bicycle Thief. 1475 Lower Water Street, Halifax, NS  1-902-425-7993

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Give Blood!

I gave blood today.

I am extremely pleased that I was able to do this, because I’ve often been turned away from blood donor clinics… not because I had sex with someone who injected monkey bodily fluids after travelling to a plethora of foreign countries and whose mother had hepadermahydrophalicitis… no… just because my iron is usually too low. My best intentions have been thwarted many a time, and I have felt inadequate and forlorn because of low iron, but not today. Today I am a robust and metallic 131. Hear me roar!

I blame Mother Teresa for my anemic ways. You know, that chick who gives us periods.

One of my students, when asked if she knew who Mother Teresa was, answered: “Is that the chick who gives us our periods? No? Oh, right. That’s Mother Nature. Never mind.”

Fear not, gentle reader, the education system is a finely tuned machine and this teachable moment was not wasted. The entire class is now aware of Mother Teresa’s humanitarianism. And… some details about the menstrual cycle that I never really thought I would have to divulge as an English teacher.

I became an English teacher to avoid multiplying fractions…and to avoid talking about bodily functions with teenagers.  It’s not working.

My young friend Brandon gave blood too, for the first time, and although he hummed and hawed over the monkey fluids question, he valiantly made it through unscathed.  He’s a man after all, and unimpeded by feminine frailty.

Frailty, thy name is woman. Pshaw.

I’ve borne four children. Four children the size of serving platters. Four children with heads like honeydew melons. Four children that grabbed onto my uterus and sucked every cell of my life essence into their plump little bodies for nine arduous months until they clawed their way out of my frail form with steel-toed hiking boots on their pointy toes.

My ex-husband occasionally had a cold, or a hangover, or a sore back.

I pushed ewoks out my hoo hoo.

Don’t talk to me about frail.

Men can’t do this. And I don’t mean simply because they haven’t got the goods. Men can’t have a cold without falling to pieces.  I have a lovely friend who describes it as The ManCold. She defines several reasons why men should not request sympathy when they suffer from the terrible oppression of The ManCold:

1.They don’t menstruate every 28 days.

2. They never feel like laughing and crying at the same time for no reason at all.

3. They don’t organize the house, dinner, everyone in it, or even themselves.

4. They don’t grow babies inside them.

5. They don’t have to push a baby out of their vagina.

6. They don’t have to wear bras.

I would also add that they don’t have to do Jillian Michael’s workout videos because their bodies have been destroyed by the ravages of birthing four babies the size of Shetland ponies. Jillian Michaels is my nemesis. Her and Mother T. And stretch marks. And that woobly part of my belly that won’t go away. Nemesises. Nemesi?

My real grievance isn’t that men can be wimpy. My real grievance is that I still have to menstruate, even after the four spawn, each of whom were big enough to have their own moon. I’ve done my bit. I should be able to sit back and bask in the warm glow of iron-rich blood I can share with the world whenever Canadian Blood Services asks it of me. And today, I did. You should, too.

Perhaps this marks a turning point for me. Perhaps this is the dawning of a brave new era where my iron levels will be impressive, my anemic self will be banished, my frail past will be cast off in favor of a bright new womanly future… menopause!

Damn you, Mother Teresa!

 Click the image to see a video we made to promote blood donation through Canadian Blood Services. The song is by Serena Ryder, “What I Wouldn’t Do”.

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There ya go

My grade ten English class is killing me. Softly. With this song:

“This is YOU Ms. Broadbent. You gotta watch this video.”

“Is it rude?”

“No. Honest. It’s you.”

“Are you being mean to me? Is this going to make me cry?”

“Just watch it. I promise; it’s good.”

They don’t realize that they do, indeed, sometimes make me cry.

“You’ll love it, it’s YOU!”

This, from a darling fifteen year old at the end of an especially trying class where I was, apparently, freaking out about cell phones and technology. Again.

Freaking out, to these we prodigies, sounds something like this:

Me: Give me your cell phone.

That’s it.

Ok, maybe my eyes bug out a little. Maybe my voice gets a little shrill. Maybe I threaten to hurl the offending object against a wall and then take the shattered shards and scatter them throughout the seventh ring of hell.

Maybe that happens sometimes.

But I definitely do not freak out.

I can feel it coming, though.

There are thirty-two kids in my English 10 class, and they are adorable. They are eagerly awaiting the onset of fishing season. They are writing their beginner’s driving tests.  They are watching Harlem Shake videos on their phones.

They are not reading.

The Giver.

Yes, sadly, I chose to teach The Giver this semester, because I haven’t taught grade 10 English for several years, and The Giver is the tried and true grade 10 text for our area. Innocent little Jonas takes off his shirt so the old man can lay his hands on him to transmit the memories… gasp. Pedophile.

“Couldn’t he just text him the memories?”

I didn’t see this coming. Neither, I’m sure, did Lois Lowry. Cell phones didn’t exist when Lois wrote “The Giver”.

And no one gets the symbolism of the sled.

“Give me your cell phone.”

“Yeah. Just a minute.” Text, text, text.

“No, I mean right now. You are supposed to be discussing the symbolism of the sled with your group.”

“I didn’t read the part about the sled.”

“I know. That’s why the group discussion will help you. Give me your cell phone.”

“Just a minute.”

This is about the time that my eyes start to bug out. I am very attractive with buggy eyeballs, and I highly recommend it as a cheaper alternative to botox.  Teachers can’t afford botox. Which I probably need since my students apparently think I have some freakish kinship with a bearded and cranky elder from Tennessee.

Duck Dynasty guy. Oddly enough, Phil Robertson bears an eerie resemblance to the guy on the cover of The Giver. Symbolic? A metaphor for our times? What?

       

Disclaimer: I have no idea if this guy is from Tennessee or not. It’s a random choice, made by me, because my grade 10 English students have exhausted me and I no longer have the energy to check my references. Tennessee? Kentucky? Mill Village, Nova Scotia? Who cares? I’m ugly and old and can’t relate to their world, I think that’s the ultimate message here. I have facial hair? Is that what they’re trying to say? I get it. (Just googled… Louisiana. He’s from Louisiana. TGFG. Thank God for Google.)

Duck Dynasty is a fascinating story of a family rising from rags to riches by capitalizing on their passion, their skill, and the media.  My understanding of the Duck Dynasty phenomenon is thus…

Old guy makes ducks calls, hits rock bottom, family rallies and through the interventions of intelligence, Jesus, A&E, and a brilliant marketing team, they have managed to capture the imaginations of most of North America, including 2/3 of my English 10 classroom.

This is a lesson plan in the making. This makes sense to them.

The Giver? “Whaddafuck?”

Duck Commander? “Oh yeah, they’re awesome! You gotta watch this video, Ms B!”

Is there symbolism to the beards?

I’m sure there is.

Shut it down. Turn it off. Mmm Hmm. There ya go.

If only it was so easy.

Buy my book on amazon: That Thing That Happened, by Libby Broadbent

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Five stars please…or… four? Three? Please?

I have recently been reviewing works by self-published authors. I really enjoy doing this, because I am asking people to do it for me. It’s the whole “pay it forward” thing. We need reviews, we brave pioneers of the indie publishing world. The magical algorithm that is amazon requires that people read our shit, like our shit, and explain what it is about our shit that they like. With stars.

Five stars please. Or…ok… four. Three? Anything bigger than two. Seriously, who has ever accomplished anything with a two?

But, here’s what I’m noticing as I delve deep into Reviewer Brain (which is oddly similar to the high school English teacher brain I was born with); I am reading great stories, wonderful plot, and intriguing characters… but with poor grammar, or fucked up tenses, or weak word choice!

Where is my red pen?

Don’t get me wrong… I don’t pretend to be the Voice of Authority on how to write. Sweet Jesus, just read my own novel and you’ll say “WTF?” My first editor fired ME, for goodness sake!

“Get rid of everything funny,” she said.

“Um… everything?”

“Yes,” she insisted. “This is not a funny novel. I can’t work with you if you think this is funny.”

“But… if I get rid of the funny bits… there’s nothing left. Just a dead chick in the woods. Who wants to read about that?”

“You’re fired,” she said.

And that was the end of beautiful… strange… relationship. I ignored her, I forged ahead. In my novel, there’s a dead chick in the woods, but hopefully the reader laughs all the way to that foggy and sinister rendezvous. Hopefully.

So… what do I know? Bupkus. Look it up. Yiddish. I’m not Yiddish, so what do I know?

Here’s what I’m noticing, my brethren, which I think can be fixed, and which I hope…praise God, and Tim Horton’s, and Daylight Savings Time…I hope I am not guilty of in my own writing…

Number One: Tenses

I notice this a lot in the writing I collect from my teens in school and, distressingly, in the writing of adults that I am reading. Pick one tense and stay there. It is very distracting for the reader, and very noticeable if you merge past and present in the same sentence. As a reader, I wanted to get lost in the story, I want to live each moment, and if I felt like Captain Kirk and his teleporter have just arrived and thrust me from past to present and back again in the duration of one sentence, well… except for the excitement of being thrust upon by Captain Kirk… it is JARRING! Don’t do it! (Did you get that? That last passage sucked ass! Why? Tenses, baby. Tenses.)

Here is an another example:

The kids were all sitting around wondering who will say it first. “This blows,” Randy said. They all nodded. Everyone agrees that it couldn’t get much worse. 

This is a mess, people! We have were, will, nodded and agrees. Jesus twice on a piece of toast! It’s simple to fix. I think the problem comes when we write the same way we talk. The difference is that when we talk we can’t correct our mistakes, and rarely notice when we make them. But when we write? The words are there for all to see, and we have the opportunity… no, the obligation… to make them work right, every time, ever some good, you.

The kids were all sitting around wondering who would say it first. “This blows,” Randy said. They all nodded. Everyone agreed that it couldn’t get much worse.

  Number Two: Word Choice

Oh dear. This is so… so… soooo important! Again… grain of salt, gentle reader. In my novel due for publication in September 2013, I have a character named Murple. I kid you not. And in my novel due for publication in April 2013, I have a character say “dirty-dyin’ bald-face’ed fuck”. Not once, but twice. So… ya know… my Yiddish heritage and all…  I don’t know bupkus… BUT… if you write that he waved hello erratically; or she yelled athletically, or he looked at her with an excruciating smile…. I’m gonna stop reading, even for a milli-second, and say WTF?  I don’t want to say WTF? when I’m reading. I want to say WTF? when my child tells me she didn’t pay her speeding ticket and now she has to go to court and pay double. I want to say WTF? when a student tells me he didn’t do his homework because the assignment got lost in his guitar case on the back of his friend’s truck that got stuck in the pits and they totalled the axle trying to get it out. Those are acceptable WTF? moments. When I’m reading? No WTF?… please.

My new book, due out in April!

Number Three: Show me. Don’t Fuckin’ TELL me!

Ok. I know. We all know this, right? But do we really know? If you show me something, you are giving me, The Reader, the opportunity to use my brain, to make inferences, to figure it the fuck out. I love this shit. The best writing I have read grants the reader the beautific gift of honoring her intelligence, wit, experience and common sense by showing what is happening. The Reader makes the leap. The Reader figures it out. Thank God and Tim Horton’s and Daylight Saving Time for authors who credit The Reader with the ability to figure it the fuck out!

Example:

Randy waved with enthusiasm as his girlfriend walked toward him on her incredibly long legs that were clad in skin tight jeans. “You look hot,” he said with horniness in his voice as he looked at her. Randy felt he deserved to have such a good looking girlfriend and he took every opportunity to show her off as his possession.

In this passage, not only is Randy an asshole who you hope never dates your daughter, but it is also a pedantic play by play which leaves no room for the reader to enjoy the image. How about this instead:

Randy’s eyes traveled up the long inseam of his girlfriend’s jeans, stopping at his favorite intersection. Green light, baby. He loved watching her walk. He loved other people watching her walk too, right into his arms. “You look hot,” he said. “And so do I.”

Sorry. I’m really not good at that stuff. Every time I try to write sexy scenes I just start giggling. Anyway, point is, don’t tell me he’s a horn-dog. Show me. I will love you for it.

So… those are my three things for today. I hope that helps someone, anyone, out there who is struggling to achieve their dream of being an author. I firmly believe that the difference between a three star and a four star review often lies in the author’s inspired use of tenses, word choice and showing-not-telling. I say “inspired” because there are 3,000,000 books being published out there every year, bitches!

Do you wanna be a three? Or a four point five?

I know where I wanna be. As far away from Randy as possible.

I love you all, thanks for reading!

I apologize for the profanity. I’m highly excitable.

PS: I could be spewing total horseshit, because Fifty Shades of Grey chick made a fortune writing such drivel as (paraphrased): “I chewed my lip while he shoved silver balls up my hoo hoo and spanked me, but I couldn’t decide whether to sign his twisted and carnally exciting contract, or just enjoy his money and his jet and his fancy car and his just-fucked hair.” You should probably disregard any of my advice and simply add butt plugs and genital clamps to anything you’re writing, and you’ll do just fine!

Buy my book on amazon: That Thing That Happened, by Libby Broadbent

Available now on Amazon

Follow me on twitter:  @LibbyBroadbent

Like my facebook page: Libby Broadbent on facebook

Follow my blog:  www.libbybroadbent.com

Thanks!