Jess Riley's Blog, page 3

Now Presenting: Amy Sue Nathan!

Today on the blog I'm so thrilled to be hosting Amy Sue Nathan, debut author of a fabulous new novel, The Glass Wives (St. Martin's). Amy started the popular Women's Fiction Writers blog two years ago, and it's a wonderful place to find interviews with some of the best voices in the genre today. Amy is a kind, generous, and talented person, and she's giving away a signed copy of The Glass Wives to one lucky reader--just leave a comment below to enter! 



Synopsis for The Glass Wives:




Evie and Nicole Glass share a last name. They also shared a husband. When
a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends
the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost
between the widow and the ex. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in all
this heartache—the chance to rid herself of Nicole once and for all. But
Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby
half-brother, and she wasn’t counting on Nicole’s desperate need to hang
on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash,
Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses—and her home—with Nicole
and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to
rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust.
More than that, she must ask: what makes a family?


 ~~~~~~

1) What inspired you to write  The Glass Wives ?

My life! In the novel, the main character is a divorced mom whose
ex-husband dies leaving her with two kids and a mortgage and a big mess.
That happened to me in 2004. But, I turned the truth inside out and
upside down to write fiction because I wouldn't write about my real life
kids or our real hardships. It was fun to write with "what if" in
mind. 




2) Who are some of your author idols?
Judy
Blume, Margaret Atwood, Alice Hoffman. But really my idols are the
authors around me who are talented and generous who I'm proud to call my
friends. 




3) What teenage memory makes you cringe?
I
wore a lot of blue and pink eye shadow. I had very long nails and very
tight jeans. Oh c'mon. It was the early 80s and it was awesome. 




4) What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Don't
give up. You can't have a book published if you don't write it, rewrite
it, rewrite it again, polish it, and put it out there for others to
critique. 




5) You’ve been asked to bring a dish to a summer potluck. What’s your Go-To Recipe?


Now
that's when I cringe! The best thing anyone ever brought to one of my
backyard barbecues was a bag of ice cream novelties for dessert. I
thought it was so clever! And it was so much fun to just pass around the
bag and let everyone pick their own treat.  If I had to cook and it was
summer, I like feta, watermelon, and mint (or basil) on skewers.

~~~~~~

Thanks, Amy! (I too LOVE Judy Blume, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Hoffman...) Don't forget to leave a comment that includes your email address* below to win a SIGNED COPY!!! Tell us YOUR Go-To summer potluck recipe. You have until midnight EST, Friday June 7 to enter.



*Don't worry, I won't spam you, but I do need to get a hold of you if you win!
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It Came from 1991

A lot of truly angsty things have been happening here lately, most of which I'm loathe to blog about (there's enough depressing stuff on the news)...but I WILL be posting at the Girlfriends Book Club on Thursday about "Writing through Trauma," so head over there for a bit of TMI and such.



In the meantime, I've got new author photos (whee!) and behind-the-scenes activity underway before the launch of Mandatory Release. Two fabulous author blurbs are in, and I can't wait to share more on all of this. In the meantime, if you add it to your Goodreads queue, I'd be ever so grateful! (Just click on the cover to the right.)



But you know what's REALLY been on my mind lately? All of the horrible movies I dragged my long-suffering high school boyfriend to. (Can I end with a preposition there? Ah, who cares.) How many seventeen-year-old guys do you know who would have patiently sat through:



1) Hook.

2) Dying Young.

3) Sleeping with the Enemy.

4) My Girl.

5) The People Under the Stairs.

6) Regarding Henry.

7) A Few Good Men.

8) Wayne's World.

9) Candyman.

10) The Last of the Mohicans.

11) A League of their Own.

12) Patriot Games.

13) Single White Female.





Do you notice a trend there? Right. With some exceptions, they are all movies that post-menopausal women and men with Low T might enjoy.



(A bright note among the garbage was Silence of the Lambs, but we saw that in the theater on EASTER SUNDAY, so I still had to make it all weird.)



And then there were the movies I picked when we rented a flick: The Fisher King. Dead Again. Fried Green Tomatoes. Driving Miss Daisy. King Ralph. The Prince of Tides. Thelma and Louise. Rush. L.A. Story. Far and Away. The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Malcolm X. Of Mice and Men. A River Runs Through It. Shining Through. Unlawful Entry.



Seriously. Why not just spin the wheel and skip over the interesting years, landing right on "cholesterol medication, reading glasses, receding gums, and you may want to reconsider attending that comedy show because you now have a shady, unreliable sphincter." We were sixteen and nearly eighteen!!! Practicing to be sixty and eighty!!!



I don't know why all of this came to mind earlier this week. Maybe I'm getting contemplative as I get older. Maybe I caught the beginning of Sleeping with the Enemy on OWN and it triggered something in me other than a) gratitude that I hadn't married an abusive yuppie; and b) amazement at how young Julia Roberts looked in that film. Regardless, that boyfriend of two and a half years was exceedingly patient, and it still blows my mind how easygoing he was when it came to Things I Wanted to Do, including break up the week I got to college because like 95% of my girlfriends at the time, I wouldn't be ready to love a truly nice guy until I grew up a bit first. Subscribe with Feedburner

Now Presenting: Leslie Lehr

I'm so happy to have the luminous, TALENTED Leslie Lehr on the blog today to celebrate the release of her latest novel, What a Mother Knows: an
unsettling, emotional and suspenseful novel of the unshakable bonds of
motherhood, in which Michelle Mason not only loses her memory after a deadly
car crash, but can't find her 16-year-old daughter, the one person who may know
what happened that day. But the deeper Michelle digs, the more she questions
the innocence of everyone, even herself. A dramatic portrayal of the fragile
skin of memory, What a Mother Knows is about finding the truth that can set
love free.


NYT Bestselling author Caroline Leavitt called it an "achingly moving suspense drama. Dark and unsettling, but with a ray of hope like a splash of light, and a knockout ending you won't see coming."



Leslie has stated that it will be a few years before her next novel is available, so savor this one--I know I plan to!




1) What inspired you to write What a Mother Knows?



When
my daughter was in middle school, she started crying at night, every night -
and I felt so helpless. I imagined the worst. I wrote an essay called
“Parenting Paranoia” that Arianna Huffington excerpted in her book, On Becoming Fearless. But I was still
afraid.



Then I had jury duty
on a manslaughter case in which two women were suing the driver of a car that
crashed into a sports bar and killed their sons. We had to decide on the value
of their loss. And so, in the worst of what-ifs, I started worrying about what
my daughter’s value was to me, who I was without her…and how far would I go to
protect her.



2) Who are some of your author idols? 



Different novelists
inspire me for different reasons. Starting out, I idolized Carolyn See,
Margaret Atwood. and Isabelle Allende. I love current authors who combine beautiful
language with solid storytelling, like Leslie Schwartz and Carolyn Leavitt. I
love Jane Porter for writing as if she’s my best friend telling me a story. I
like Heather Gudenkauf and Jillian Medoff for sucking me into their worlds and
making me race to the end. I love Megan Abbot for being so snarky and Megan
Crane and Emily Griffin for making me smile. 
And I’m loving all the authors in the Girlfriends Group Book Club – so
much diversity and talent like you, Jess, in this one group, it’s hard name
everyone! I do favor women authors, not just because I can relate, but also
because I do think it’s harder to carve out writing time, let alone a career.



3) What teenage memory makes you cringe?



Tumbling down the
stairs in front of my first date and his hunky big brother, who was driving us
to the Eighth Grade Dance. My girlfriend sewed a new dress for me  - a short flowered number – and I had a new
pair of platform shoes that I forgot to buckle. I’d been crushing on this boy
for months and was so excited that he asked me instead of a girl with bigger
boobs. I thought I’d make a grand entrance when he arrived, and did I ever. He
ended up being my boyfriend all through high school, but I could never look his
big brother in the eye.
 

4) Are you a cat or dog person?




Both. I adopted a cat
and named him Puppy when I started out on my own, because my apartment didn’t
take dogs. My younger daughter had several kittens - Buttercup, then Cupcake -
a friend asked of number three would be named Cup ‘O Soup. But they died
tragically, so my older daughter adopted a black lab and named her Scout after
the girl in To Kill a Mockingbird.
When she left for college, I was traveling a lot, so we gave her to a family
with another dog to play with. (We see happy pics of her on Fb all the time.) Both
of my girls made up for it by adopting dogs as soon as they moved out after
high school. It drives me crazy, but they love those dogs, so what can I do?
 

5) What advice do you have for aspiring authors?




1.
Read!
2.
Love the process, that’s all you have control of.

3.
Lock your refrigerator.

4.
Write something good enough to make your family proud, but don’t let the
thought of your family stop you from writing something good.

 


6) If you could have any super power, what would it be?



I would like to zap
my kids from afar to be happy and safe all the time.
~~~~

Isn't she lovely? Leslie is a prize-winning novelist, screenwriter, and essayist; What a Mother Knows is her third novel. She's also incognito as "Chemo Chick" in Karen Rinehart’s breast cancer blog, Sick of Pink.  Book clubs, Leslie would LOVE to Skype with you after you read What a Mother Knows! (Which you're going to do, right???) She's got a beautiful website ( www.leslielehr.com ); you can also find her on Facebook (www.facebook.com/authorleslielehr) and Twitter (@leslielehr1).


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Gearing Up

If you're an avid reader of this blog (stop laughing), you may have noticed a few changes to the layout. Yes, things are happening! A new header is in the works, and I'm also going to tackle my disaster of a website in the next few months.



Spring cleaning, yes, but also because I'm gearing up to launch Mandatory Release this July. *breathes into a paper bag* I have cover art, and I am DYING to share it with you all....soon enough. Julie Metz designed it, and guys: she did the cover for Judy Blume's Summer Sisters . Recognize any other names in her portfolio? She's amazing, amazing. More on this soon...



Mandatory Release is "officially" my third novel, but I actually started it fourteen years ago, under a different title, with a different plot and different characters. I've read the opening chapter at several book events years ago, so some of you may remember it.



I don't know if other authors are like this, but my novels feel sort of like my children; I always worry, at least a little, when I release them into the big, wide world. But with Driving Sideways and All the Lonely People, I felt they could take any kind of heat. Strangely, the book with the toughest setting and darkest themes and most vulnerable, honest, and raw characters is the book I'm most protective of. It's the book closest to my heart. It's the book that felt like opening a vein and bleeding onto the page.



Mandatory Release features my favorite character ever; if you liked Driving Sideways , I basically took Leigh Fielding, gave her a spinal cord injury, a crush on a coworker, mild anger issues, and a job in a prison. Oh, and I made her a guy. Okay, that sounds a little weird. But I think you're going to like Graham. He's got a sick sense of humor, lots of hope, and lots of heart.



It's a crazy mash-up of dick lit and women's fiction, written in alternating POV chapters. Maybe my tagline can be, "Throws like a girl, writes like a boy." My editor said it reminded him of Tom Perrotta, and I had to lie down when I heard that because The Wishbones is only one of my FAVORITE BOOKS EVER.



So. New author photo next week. Cover reveal soon. Blog and website overhaul underway. Final copyedits in process.



If you're in the Appleton, WI area this Wednesday April 17, I'll be at the Little Chute Public Library at 6:30 pm, for the Fox Cities Book Festival. I'm not sure what exactly I'll be talking about, but bring some questions--let's play "Ask Me Anything!" (Er, sort of.)



Sneak Peek: Yesterday I created a playlist featuring songs that would be my soundtrack for Mandatory Release . There's one key song that I didn't include, because if I did, I'd give a huge plot point away. I was all proud of how I figured Spotify out until I saw that a few songs didn't make it over on the embed, so you'll just have to pretend "Pursuit of Happiness" by Kid Cudi, MGMT, and Ratatat is there. Also, if anyone wants to make MR into a movie? I always thought "Vaya Con Dios" by Les Paul and Mary Ford would be a fun backdrop to a riot scene. Just sayin'.




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Bad School Musical

Spring is in the air, and for me that means Grant Crunch
Season: late nights, poor personal hygiene, sleepless nights, and the attention
span of a cricket born in a fuel refinery.






When I was a kid, I liked spring a lot more. Except for our
spring concerts. Every year, my entire elementary school put on an all-school
musical in the gymnasium. The themes changed annually. When I was in second
grade, we sang “Up, Up, and Away” and “The Trolley Song” for a
transportation-themed musical, because there’s probably nothing more exciting
for young girls than singing about cars, planes, trains, trucks, boats, and
motorcycles. The next year my class dressed up like ragamuffin orphans to
sing “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” for the school’s version of Annie. We did The Sound of
Music in fourth grade, Peter Pan
in fifth grade.
It was during that performance that the second-ugliest
picture of me ever was taken.  Look at
this!








 

Music Teacher: “Hey kid, you have a nice, fat head and look like
a prepubescent boy. Want to be Captain Hook?”
Me: “Sure! I’ve always wanted to wave around a plastic hook
hand while singing an off-key solo before a hot, crowded gymnasium full of parents
forced to sit on hard, metal folding chairs. I'm going to look so awesome in that hat!”





The next year could have been somewhat redeeming. Our sixth
grade class (the far-flung Eden Elementary contingent) would meet all the other
sixth grade classes from Campbellsport at the annual 6th Grade Spring Camp experience--sort
of a “meet & greet” before they threw us together in the junior high
blender the next school year.






And we were sure to make a great first impression with our
medley of Beach Boy tunes.
We earnestly practiced for weeks. Everyone had a part to
play. Me? I pretended to ride in a car, bopping my head and doing some kind of
hand motions to “California Girls” with three other kids from my class. We
sounded awesome. We were so psyched. The day of the camp performance arrived,
and we donned our surfer shorts, pastel tops, Swatch watches, leis, and dorky smiles.
Each song had a carefully choreographed dance routine, accompanied by piano.  Jazz hands may have been involved.






The other sixth grade classes? Lip-synched to Bon Jovi in acid-washed
jean jackets and sunglasses. They were accompanied by a boom box and somehow, a
kick-ass laser show.  No one was told to
smile. No one flashed jazz hands, but there may have been some rudimentary
break-dancing.
Afterwards, we felt as if a trick had been played. At least
I did. I’d spent years lip-synching into the mirror in my bedroom, only to
never have the opportunity to publicly display my talents. Lip-synching was actually an option? As was
maintaining some sort of cool factor in the critical weeks before the first day
of seventh grade?






Also, it’s a miracle none of us were beaten.
Fast-forward two years to the eighth grade spring chorus concert.
I vaguely recall singing a bunch of shitty rock songs (“R.O.C.K. in the USA” comes
to mind), and the show was to close with a stirring rendition of White Lion’s “When
the Children Cry.” All of us were supposed to sit on the edge of the stage, our
legs dangling into the void before the front row—to make it more profound or
intimate, maybe, or so the audience would have more difficulty seeing us…it’s
hard to say. Our chorus teacher revealed the true extent of some childhood head
injury when he said to us, “Everyone! Idea! Find a small child to bring with you for
our final performance. The kids are going to sit on your laps while you sing ‘When
the Children Cry.’”






Luckily, I had a three-year-old sister, so I was set. Others
begged to borrow children from babysitting clients. Some classmates simply couldn't find a kid to sit on their lap for the song and were summarily banished to the edges of the line-up, which made the rest of us hugely jealous and resentful. I can tell
you laps were urinated on, and children actually did cry. Beyond that, I've suppressed most of the memory.
Behind the Music: every kid in that class (one of two required electives--it was that or band) had to select and sing a SOLO in front of THE WHOLE 8th GRADE CHORUS CLASS that semester. And when I say "every kid," I mean every kid: the jocks, the nerds, the farm boys, the cheerleaders, the burnouts, the shy bookworms, ALL of us in our awkward, tuneless, voice-cracking, middle school glory. By the time we'd selected our Top 40 sheet music, practiced at the piano with Mr. Krumbein, and actually sung the fucker into a microphone before nearly fifty of our peers, a kid peeing on your lap during a White Lion song sounded great by comparison.



In case you were wondering, I picked "Heaven" by Bryan Adams. I made my friend Pam sing "The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics, and I still can't believe what an evil bastard I was back then.Subscribe with Feedburner

More Home Reno, Before and After

Last year was a big year for remodeling at our house. In the winter of 2011-12, we gutted our second floor and rebuilt it from the studs up, moving walls and creating a bathroom that didn't make guests recoil in horror.



Then, because we hadn't yet had enough, we took on two more projects last summer. I haven't posted the Before and After photos yet (something about a book release and five grants due in a few weeks or whatever), but I'm finally getting around to it.



As some of you know, our house was built in 1885, long before things like electrical and plumbing codes or symmetry and safety existed. Our primary entrance does not lead you to a foyer, because that would make too much sense. Instead, you open the front door and land right in the kitchen. Which has FIVE doors: to the back hall, upstairs, downstairs bathroom, the porch, and the living room. When we finally tackle our kitchen remodel, this will actually make our job easier, because there's only so much room to put new cabinets when you have five freaking doors and two windows in a small room shaped like a box.



But back to my story. So you arrive at my house. The first thing I used to say when I took your coat was, "Welcome to the hovel!" The second thing I still say is, "She only pees when she's really excited. Sorry about that."



When you turn to your right, you enter the living room, which until last summer looked like this (minus the furniture):





Teeny-tiny. And don't you just love the blue carpet? It was probably installed in the early seventies--a used remnant from some shagadelic van. When it got really humid and hot in summers, it would smell like moldy, rotting death.





This used to be my office. Without the desk, you can get more of a feel for the delightful, stained orange carpet, which was a nice contrast to the blue in the adjacent living room.  I don't know what that big black blob in the upper left-hand corner of the photo is--it's either my thumb, or the ceiling finally caving in. Last winter I was showing some friends a funny video on the computer in that room--the video of the mullet guy playing "Careless Whisper" on sax? Anyway, at one point one of them looked up and asked me, "Uh, is this safe?" I honestly had no answer to that. We're all lucky to be alive.



In May, the contractor who'd worked on our second story emailed again, offering a deal if we had a project for him. Did we ever! Let's start by tearing up the carpet (put your gas masks on) and blasting the wall out between the living room and office. Don't forget to fix the ceiling! We took everything down to the studs again--all new plaster. So purty.





Did I mention we don't have a basement, so our furnace was in a little closet in the old office? Oh well, no basement means no flooding! And no place for J to arrange his ugly beer can collection!





Things are progressing. Look, new window trim, paint on the walls, and a fun light fixture! Also, holy damn am I sick of painting!





At the same time, we hired a crew to dig up our backyard and install a patio. There's pretty much no lawn to mow now.





 I read Gone Girl in the chair in the upper right-hand corner.





 And here's the living room After. No more blue or orange carpeting!





 This couch is the best ever. J's already making impressive progress on his Indent.





 My old Hope Chest, which my Dad used to call my "Hopeless Chest." My Godfather made it for me out of pews from the church in which I was baptized. (Sidebar: Isn't "pew" a funny word?)





Still trying to figure out what to hang over the TV. Daisy is barking at her Nemesis in this shot.



Maybe next year we'll tackle our kitchen and downstairs bathroom--the only two rooms in the house that have yet to be touched. And boy howdy do they need help! The floor beneath the toilet is squishy, and it's so close to the oven you can watch garlic bread brown under the broiler if you pee with the door open. *Pukes*  Also, the linoleum has more peaks and valleys than Appalachia. Also, Daisy used to snack on it as a puppy. So stay tuned. This house, like life, is always a work in progress.Subscribe with Feedburner

I Shouldn't Have Had That V8

Was what I was thinking last night while I tossed and turned and watched the clock tick into the wee hours of the morning.



Well, the spicy V8 and all those pickles. I could feel all the sodium chugging through my veins, raising my blood pressure, desiccating my cells and turning my tongue into a dehydrated apple slice.



I guess I'm getting to that age, where sodium intake is a concern. *sigh*



Anyway, there are three things rattling around my head today:



(1) I met with several fantastic book clubs in the last few weeks and had so much fun. Two of them included members who were friends/acquaintances with two of my HUGE author crushes, Lauren Fox and Shannon Olson. Lauren will actually be attending the May meeting of one of the clubs, and I immediately started thinking of ways to pressure them to invite me as well, if only so I could sit behind Lauren and pet her hair. (Just kidding, Lauren! Maybe.)



It's like when you're in a decent-ish local band, shooting the shit with some fans, and one of them casually mentions that their next-door neighbor is Adele (or Geddy Lee from Rush, depending on your musical inclinations).



(2) Still in the major weeds at work. I have four Federal grant proposals due by mid-April, plus one outlier for a client in West Virginia (mountain mama, take me home....). It's the time of year I pay the piper for my summer off--but every year, I feel like I get through our crazy time by the skin of my teeth. These grants HAVE to be submitted, or I don't have a job. So you just pray there are no family emergencies, or funerals, or trips to the Emergency Room. (See you in May, loved ones!)







(3) I like to totally stress myself out, so I am also doing some behind-the-scenes work on Mandatory Release and prepping for three speaking gigs in the next two months. I'll be getting a new author photo soon, so I should probably stop eating all this salt or I'll look like Juanita the Ice Maiden. Subscribe with Feedburner

Presenting Sam Wilde: I'll Take What She Has

I'm so excited to have Samantha Wilde on the blog today to discuss her new novel, I'll Take What She Has. Sam is such a sweetheart, and isn't that the most adorable baby on the cover?? I'd buy it based on the cover alone (but the story inside is wonderful, too!)





Tell us about your new novel. What inspired you to
write it? 




Here’s a brief synopsis: Best friends since
kindergarten, Nora, a reserved English teacher, and Annie, an out-spoken
stay-at-home mother, wrestle with the green-eyed monster when the new history
department hire at the suburban Boston prep school where they teacher, Cynthia
Cypress, arrives on campus. A missing grandmother, a depressed sex therapist,
and a financial crisis add to the comedy in a novel about imperfect
friendships, mixed up families, the messiness of motherhood, and the quest for
the greenest grass.




My running joke about this book is that I wrote a
novel about envy and had to do extensive research! I really didn’t need to look
much farther than my own grassy yard to come up with the felt experience of the
novel. I started with three women, Annie, Nora and Cynthia. The novel, which
underwent years of extensive revisions under three separate editors, has
morphed almost completely since I first plotted the story. The heart of it, the
meat of it, concerns friendship and motherhood and how envy changes both of
these things—and changes the women, too. The book explores the idea that envy can eventually change someone into
something better.




Book readings, signings, and events: tell us one
wonderful memory and one awkward one.




When my first novel, This Little Mommy Stayed
Home, released, I had a book launch at the amazing independent store, Odyssey
Books. Because I’ve lived in this area for so long and have taught yoga to so
many people, serving as a minister to others, a large crowd gathered. At the end
of the night, the owner had to turn a friend away without a book. She had sold
out all the copies of my novel and told me that in all her years that had never
happened before! (I didn’t sell out, by the way, for my book launch of I’ll
Take What She Has on Wednesday night and I tried not to be disappointed!)




Around the same time, I went with my mother,
novelist Nancy Thayer, to do a book
signing in Connecticut. When we arrived, the most amazing, enormous arrangement
of flowers greeted us. My wonderful Aunt had sent them and they were clearly
meant for two important, famous, awesome novelists. Then, we had about three
people attend the talk! It was a beautiful, sunny July day after three weeks of
rain…still, it can be hard. We had a lovely time with our three audience
members and our flowers. I wanted to have an event equal to the flowers. Only
in hindsight could I see what really mattered: spending that time with my
mother.









How do you unwind after a horribly stressful day?




A good book. A good book can fix everything. I
find reading so relaxing and healing and restorative. On a really bad day,
after the children go to sleep, I might put on my pajamas early and dive into
my bed. I really love my bed. My husband makes fun of me, but I get a lot of
pleasure from hanging out in bed (reading, people, that’s all I meant!).
Talking to friends also, the kind of long, meandering conversations I can’t
have when children are awake. I often end my day on my bedroom floor with some
gentle yoga poses, sometimes listening to an uplifting podcast.  Also: curling up beside my husband, knowing I
have chocolate in my cupboards, watching my children sleep.




What advice do you have for your fifteen-year-old
self?




I love that question. I’ve been thinking about it
lately because a friend who started babysitting for us at twelve has just
turned eighteen! I thought about what I would like to tell her if I could speak
candidly. I would say the same to her as to my younger self: You are precious. You may not feel it, but
you are. Live with a sense of your own value. Know, regardless of how others
may treat you, that you are deeply loved. At fifteen, I struggled so much
with wanting beauty and thin thighs and the adoration of boys. I wish I could
pull that girl into my arms and give her a piece of the satisfaction I have
now—much of which came through motherhood—from simply being myself.




What’s next from you?




The laundry. Then sweeping up underneath the kitchen
table. I have to unpack the duffle bag from our trip last week and try to
locate the playroom floor underneath the toys. But that’s probably not what you
had in mind! Right now, I’ve got my whole focus on getting I’ll Take What She
Has into the world. I call it the “little book that could” because of all the
editorial changes it survived. I’ve put my third novel on the back burner; it’s
there though, patiently waiting. I have two memoir books I’d love to finish. I
wouldn’t mind another child either…. Probably what I should do is finish my cup
of tea, floss my teeth, and go to sleep. Sometimes, what’s next is so ordinary! 




 ~~~

Thanks, Sam! For more on Sam and her books, visit her Facebook page, her website, and check out the terrific book trailer for I'll Take What She Has . 



























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Housekeeping

I'm blogging at the Girlfriends Book Club tomorrow at noon EST on how to decide whether going indie is right for you. You could also go rogue or go crazy. Whatever flips your skirt.



I hate to turn stupid comment verification back on, but I've been getting bombarded with spam comments lately, so bear with me. I know most of you aren't robots or slaves in a third world country, but you know how it is.



AND, posting may be light these days, because I'll be drowning in a pit of grants until late April ... but if anything amusing happens, you'll be among the first to hear it.



In the meantime, think spring! Daylight Saving Time is almost here, and the car in my clock will be only 32 minutes slower again!Subscribe with Feedburner

Shiny Happy People Everywhere....

February is always such a dreary month; but in just over thirty days, the first day of spring arrives. Despite the sagging, crusty piles of snow on every curb, the days are getting longer. You KNOW it won't be long before you can open your windows to air the place out. Dandelion fluff on the breeze and the first bike ride of the season aren't far behind.



There are lots of hopeful, optimistic things happening this month:





One of my dearest single friends goes on a date with "her dream guy" this Wednesday night. They have one of my favorite meet-cute stories ever: she volunteered to give a presentation to his 8th grade social studies class (and she claims she was all nervous and sweaty, which I don't believe for a second)...great conversation ensues...nervous follow-up phone call from him: "Thanks for coming to talk to my students; um, you forgot all the Jolly Ranchers you brought." Which is basically the same as saying, "I enjoyed meeting you and hope to hear from you again." Don't you think??? Two more emails are exchanged, and time is spent deciphering meaning. Fast-forward to Friday night, and a friend and I are practically shouting at her: "CALL HIM BACK AND ASK HIM OUT!!!!!!" So she did, and they have a date! It's like a real-life romantic comedy. She totally deserves a happily-ever-after, and I am dying to hear how the date goes.



Another friend, one of my best college pals, brings home her new adopted daughter this Friday. I am incredibly thrilled for her and her family, and can't wait to meet the little peanut.



J found out his job will NOT be outsourced, and he will actually be given a slight promotion.  I think you could hear my sigh of relief in Algeria.



I have five big grants due in mid-April; while they'll keep me crazy-busy, I enjoy working with these clients and I'm incredibly grateful for the work. (Given the dysfunction in D.C., I wasn't sure the Department of Education would have ANY money with which to award grants this season...)



One of my close friends undergoes drastic surgery this week, but I am so hopeful that this will put her on a solid road to recovery, and that she'll be feeling strong and ass-kicking again soon. (N? I have a feeling there will be kale casseroles and obnoxious humor in your future. You have been warned.)



I got to spend yesterday with the cutest kids in the world. We went out for frozen yogurt, and my five-year-old nephew informed me that "You should be grateful for the ice cream, because of where it comes from." (My sister: "Where does it come from, honey?") Nephew: mimes the milking of udders with his hands, plus the sound he imagines they'd make: "Psst--psst---psst---psst!"



Finally? I'm placing my order for new plants and seeds and rejoining our CSA today, and I meet with five fantastic book clubs later this month.



(I'll stop now before I break out into an Elton John song....)Subscribe with Feedburner