Song Sung Blew

Housekeeping! First, congratulations to Dana Vittum on
winning a copy of December Gephart’s debut novel, Undercover Professor! I’ll be
hosting more authors in the weeks and months to come, with more chances
to win great books, so stay tuned, kemosabes!




Official Blog Post Starts … NOW!




J and I are big-time Song Quoters. We’ll be moseying around the
house, or chopping up a salad for dinner, and all of a sudden one of us will be
struck with the urge to sing a random song lyric that’s vaguely related to the
task at hand: “Put ‘em in your mouth and suck ‘em!” ... while unwrapping a Dove dark chocolate Promise, for example.




(Chef, from South Park, singing “Chocolate Salty Balls”)




Sometimes we make up our own songs. “Restin’ pants, restin’
pants, hot diggity dog, it’s restin’ pants!” A few nights ago we were marching
around the living room singing this together: “Let’s go read! Let’s go read!
Let’s go read!” Because one of our favorite pastimes lately is reading before
bed. Me, all smug on my side with my light, sleek little Kindle, and him on his
side, wrestling with a fifty-pound paperback that keeps falling on his face, in
the delicate lady reading glasses he bought at Fleet Farm.




Speaking of Fleet Farm, did you know that this is where
every AARP-eligible citizen in my city buys birdseed? We were there last
weekend and I lost track of how many natty-looking older gentlemen had only
this item in their cart. We bought a 25 pound bag of sunflower seeds as well,
because we like fitting in with the crowd. They don’t taste the greatest,
though.




There was also a run on mittens! There were seriously thirty
people crammed into a short aisle devoted to gloves and winter hats marked down
to 30% off. J looked at me at one point to dramatically sing a snatch of lyric
from the Michael McDonald song playing on the loudspeakers above.




Sidebar: please revoke my speaking and/or writing privileges
if I ever use the phrase “snatch of lyric” again.




Also, here’s a song: “I just finished my … novella!” (To the
tune of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You”) It’s a lot of firsts
for me: first novella, for one thing. What’s a novella, you ask? It’s basically
a “fun-size” novel. Perfect for a rainy afternoon or to pass the time while you
wait for the oil to be changed in the mini-van.




It’s also the first work of fiction I’ve set in my current
hometown (featuring lots of local landmarks), first story I’ve written entirely
in the third person POV / past tense, first sweet, quirky love story with no
heavy themes (“Hooray!” cheer all of you), AND the first to feature awesome
bonuses. What awesome bonuses, you may be asking? Well, you’ll just have to
wait and see! 




I’m hoping to release it on President’s Day, just so I can
type, “In honor of everyone’s favorite holiday, I give you …"  and then I
announce the title, which is still a secret because I’m not sure I want to keep
it.




Next week I’ll be featured on Chick Lit is Not Dead. I think I answered the wrong interview questions, but as the Cornelius Brothers once sang, "It's too late...to turn back now..."
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