Birthday List and the 2014 Liz Challenge
It's that time of year again.
Time to take stock…
review one's successes and failures…
Talk about what worked and what didn't…
And try not to be bothered that the number 5 and 0 are hovering on the near horizon.
Yeah. It's another birthday. And if you know me (or like to think you do) you know I roll around in the birthday goodness for as much as I can. I like to think of it as BIRTHDAY WEEK really, full of celebrations, toasts, pats on the back and presents.
This year I am kinda, sorta subdued however. A lot has gone down this year including but not limited to the huge list of books I wrote and summarily got published with all the attendant work and eager, frustrating watching of sales numbers. My brewery added something to its mix I was not really sure we needed but so far, the sandwich menu is causing sales to go up (at least for the first week). It's been stressful and those things mentioned above were sort of the "easy things" at least on the face of it.
I've managed to piss off more people than I pleased it feels like or perhaps just because those people like to use the internets and whatnot to remind me how much I pissed them off.
On the other hand (and to repeat myself) I wrote, edited, cover art-approved, revised, re-edited, and released 6 books this year. Six. Seis. Sechs. I'm counting one that came out 12/31/12 so sue me.
Two of these "projects" were long-epic-opus-style novels, Mutual Release and Good Faith. One I write for "free" to "thank" my "fans" -- the Jack Gordon back story prequel House Rules.
I guess any type of success measured by how many people you angered for reasons beyond your comprehension could be called that: successful. I got to write and release 3 books about a fictional, Detroit-based soccer team. Man On, Red Card and Shut Out represent some of the more intense writing I've done, up until Good Faith, or course.
So for whatever reason--hormones most likely but that's always a handy excuse isn't ladies--the Birthday Week is something I have approached with about as much fear and loathing as Hunter S. Thompson mustered for most anything nice. I got told I'm "too negative" but you know what I am sort of a cynic at heart and when I tried to be 100% hearts, flowers, puppies and rainbows online it made me want to stab myself in the hand with a pencil. So I slowly eased back into my "real self" take me or leave me. I ended up with a tad more takers than leavers.
Let's talk Best Of's shall we:
Liz's Best of List for 2013, In No Particular Order of Importance or Relevance
BEST BOOK I READ: Hands down, THE HUSBAND'S SECRET by Lianne Moriarty. This book was recommended to me by me mum, who is my #1 book recommender. She handed me a lot of great ones this year. But this one? Damn. I loved it so much I didn't even have a second of that writerly "shit I wish I'd written it." Go get it and read it now.
2nd Place: THE DINNER, by Herman Koch. Dark, evil and twisted and wholly in the mind of a parent of a teenager who has done a Very Bad Thing. DAMN I do wish I'd written something like it!
3rd Place: THE ART OF HEARING HEARTBEATS by Jan-Phillip Sendker. Another mom-recommend and a beautiful one about the sort of "love" most romance writers wish they could convey.
I did enjoy the Book Everyone is Raving About (the one about teenagers with cancer by John Green) but I've been a John Green fan for a while now and this one felt like something pretty special but all of his books are to me. Hence the kudos, the movie and the whatnot.
BEST TV SHOWS I WATCHED:
SHAMELESS, the Americanized Version. No where is raw dysfunction better represented than at the house of the hapless Gallagher family. Frank is the drunk-ass Pater Familias to a crowd of kids with their own sets of weaknesses but whose mission is to hold the family together by hook, crook and sometimes murder. I don't think this version will have the sticking power the British version did (something like 13 years running) but we Americans have tiny attention spans and require "endings" so that we can move on to the Next Big Thing. In the meantime, check this one out. It's on premium cable, yes, but also available on NetFlix and all the usual tv watching websites.
MAD MEN, once again a highly stylized glimpse into office and family politics vis a vis Don Draper, the uber dysfunctional yet delusional Alpha Male of the pack.
MASTERS OF SEX--a fabulous cast (and one I wondered about given Michael Sheen's previous incarnations as Tony Blair and Brian Clough--i.e. he's so "British" as to be painfully so to my mind but which was punched up by adding my Hero Alison Janney as the cougar-ish wife of the gay man University Chancellor) that does an an excellent job of portraying "sex" EXACTLY like Americans see it: simultaneously erotic and embarrassing.
BEST MOVIES I SAW:
I am not a huge movie goer. It's horrifically expensive and sort of a chore to my mind since in my house we have TVs the size of the smaller "theaters" within the mega plexes (not my choice but I'm not the Audio/visual picker-outer at the Crowe abode).
I did finally see THE LIFE OF PI which will always and forever be one of my Top 10 Books Ever Written. It was well done, scary in the right places and very well acted. To my mind, about 80% of books "turned into movies" suck ass. This one did not.
I recently enjoyed CATCHING FIRE although I sure do wish the fact that people are starving to death more or less in the Districts (hence the name of The Games) would be a bit more obvious. I don't mean make Jennifer Lawrence scrawny. I'm not jumping on that band wagon thanks. She is awesome to my mind and when I grow up I want to be her and kiss Bradley Cooper in a movie or two. I just think the entire concept of "hunger" was lost from movie #1 and to my mind it was such an important theme in the books I found its lack jarring in the movies.
Speaking of books made into marginal movies, I was excited to see THE GREAT GATSBY turned into the sort of movie I believe F. Scott Fitzgerald would have envisioned had R&B music and technicolor over-the-top-party scenes been possible in his time. I love Leo DiCaprio and thought he was the perfect amount of eager and weak, just like Gatsby was meant to be seen.
I will also say that a movie I saw on DVD stuck with me: THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL was just beautiful. Go rent it. Now.
Honorable mentions: WARM BODIES (zombie teens with a twist), MONSTERS U (I'm a sucker for a great Pixar flic) and HEAT (Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy together made me pee my pants).
I plan to see GRAVITY and AMERICAN HUSTLE before the end of the year...
THE YEAR'S HIGH POINTS (in no order other than how they come to me):
1. Writing, finishing and releasing the final novel of a successful series (Good Faith) and having 90% of the people who've read it "get it" for what it is meant to be: a novel of fiction, NOT a tied-up-with-a-bow fantasy story. Click here to see the 37 5-star reviews after just a month.
2. Wenchling Numero Dos' high school graduation and party
3. The Louisville Cardinals winning the NCAA National Basketball Championship! Which was a totally weird moment since they played the Michigan Wolverines in the final game. My team won. A bunch of fans of losers paid me a ton of money for beer that night. Win. win.
4. Starting a totally new book project and working with an inspirational yet challenging mentor to whip it and my skills into shape. I plan to finish this one (thriller) and start another (mystery) and shop the hell out of them in hopes of snagging the attention of a Big Time Agent who can help me take the next big step in 2014.
5. Highlighting all 25k of the above mentioned first project and dumping them, then starting over more or less from scratch. (Oh wait, that's a "Low Point")
6. Wenchling Numero Uno making the Honor Roll at College.
7. Realizing that one of the Poodle Muses who was literally knocking at Death's Door this past summer was going to live.
8. Seeing one my brewery's beers (and my personal favorite) Gulo Gulo IPL make Draft Magazine twice---> ONCE being named as one their TOP 25 BEERS OF 2013.
9. Being invited by Barnes & Noble Ann Arbor to read and sign Good Faith in their store.
10. Reigniting my goal to NOT be a 50-year-old slouch who never exercises, drinks too much and makes nothing but excuses about all of the above. I've got my Bikram mojo back and feel great!
Low points? Well, there were a bunch. But you know, it wouldn't make me value the loyal fans I have if were not for all the ones who were definitely NOT, either, for whatever reasons they had.
SO, to celebrate the wild, crazy, over-the-top, gut wrenching, whiplash inducing, emotional roller coaster of a year that ends with a car trip to Orlando, a football bowl game and National Soccer League games I am giving out yet more great stuff for my fans.
If you leave me a comment in the next 2 weeks on this post you will be entered to win a signed copy of GOOD FAITH.
And additionally, I am issuing a challenge and reward. Let's get sales of Good Faith (which has rave reviews and it's own fun little hate group) up to 700 total units. WHEN that happens, I will release a super secret never-before-revealed Good Faith "extra scene." It will take the form of a short story, likely posted here, on the Brewing Passion blog. Help me push sales, you get what you've been asking for since November 15, 2013! The full story of "what happens next" will be told in HAT TRICK, the next Black Jack Gentlemen book which releases in April 2014. But this epilogue…well…let's just call it "Liz's Dream Alternate Ending" shall we?
Happy Birthday to me!
Liz
Time to take stock…
review one's successes and failures…
Talk about what worked and what didn't…
And try not to be bothered that the number 5 and 0 are hovering on the near horizon.
Yeah. It's another birthday. And if you know me (or like to think you do) you know I roll around in the birthday goodness for as much as I can. I like to think of it as BIRTHDAY WEEK really, full of celebrations, toasts, pats on the back and presents.
This year I am kinda, sorta subdued however. A lot has gone down this year including but not limited to the huge list of books I wrote and summarily got published with all the attendant work and eager, frustrating watching of sales numbers. My brewery added something to its mix I was not really sure we needed but so far, the sandwich menu is causing sales to go up (at least for the first week). It's been stressful and those things mentioned above were sort of the "easy things" at least on the face of it.
I've managed to piss off more people than I pleased it feels like or perhaps just because those people like to use the internets and whatnot to remind me how much I pissed them off.
On the other hand (and to repeat myself) I wrote, edited, cover art-approved, revised, re-edited, and released 6 books this year. Six. Seis. Sechs. I'm counting one that came out 12/31/12 so sue me.
Two of these "projects" were long-epic-opus-style novels, Mutual Release and Good Faith. One I write for "free" to "thank" my "fans" -- the Jack Gordon back story prequel House Rules.
I guess any type of success measured by how many people you angered for reasons beyond your comprehension could be called that: successful. I got to write and release 3 books about a fictional, Detroit-based soccer team. Man On, Red Card and Shut Out represent some of the more intense writing I've done, up until Good Faith, or course.
So for whatever reason--hormones most likely but that's always a handy excuse isn't ladies--the Birthday Week is something I have approached with about as much fear and loathing as Hunter S. Thompson mustered for most anything nice. I got told I'm "too negative" but you know what I am sort of a cynic at heart and when I tried to be 100% hearts, flowers, puppies and rainbows online it made me want to stab myself in the hand with a pencil. So I slowly eased back into my "real self" take me or leave me. I ended up with a tad more takers than leavers.Let's talk Best Of's shall we:
Liz's Best of List for 2013, In No Particular Order of Importance or Relevance
BEST BOOK I READ: Hands down, THE HUSBAND'S SECRET by Lianne Moriarty. This book was recommended to me by me mum, who is my #1 book recommender. She handed me a lot of great ones this year. But this one? Damn. I loved it so much I didn't even have a second of that writerly "shit I wish I'd written it." Go get it and read it now.
2nd Place: THE DINNER, by Herman Koch. Dark, evil and twisted and wholly in the mind of a parent of a teenager who has done a Very Bad Thing. DAMN I do wish I'd written something like it!
3rd Place: THE ART OF HEARING HEARTBEATS by Jan-Phillip Sendker. Another mom-recommend and a beautiful one about the sort of "love" most romance writers wish they could convey.
I did enjoy the Book Everyone is Raving About (the one about teenagers with cancer by John Green) but I've been a John Green fan for a while now and this one felt like something pretty special but all of his books are to me. Hence the kudos, the movie and the whatnot.
BEST TV SHOWS I WATCHED:
SHAMELESS, the Americanized Version. No where is raw dysfunction better represented than at the house of the hapless Gallagher family. Frank is the drunk-ass Pater Familias to a crowd of kids with their own sets of weaknesses but whose mission is to hold the family together by hook, crook and sometimes murder. I don't think this version will have the sticking power the British version did (something like 13 years running) but we Americans have tiny attention spans and require "endings" so that we can move on to the Next Big Thing. In the meantime, check this one out. It's on premium cable, yes, but also available on NetFlix and all the usual tv watching websites.
MAD MEN, once again a highly stylized glimpse into office and family politics vis a vis Don Draper, the uber dysfunctional yet delusional Alpha Male of the pack.
MASTERS OF SEX--a fabulous cast (and one I wondered about given Michael Sheen's previous incarnations as Tony Blair and Brian Clough--i.e. he's so "British" as to be painfully so to my mind but which was punched up by adding my Hero Alison Janney as the cougar-ish wife of the gay man University Chancellor) that does an an excellent job of portraying "sex" EXACTLY like Americans see it: simultaneously erotic and embarrassing.
BEST MOVIES I SAW:
I am not a huge movie goer. It's horrifically expensive and sort of a chore to my mind since in my house we have TVs the size of the smaller "theaters" within the mega plexes (not my choice but I'm not the Audio/visual picker-outer at the Crowe abode).
I did finally see THE LIFE OF PI which will always and forever be one of my Top 10 Books Ever Written. It was well done, scary in the right places and very well acted. To my mind, about 80% of books "turned into movies" suck ass. This one did not.
I recently enjoyed CATCHING FIRE although I sure do wish the fact that people are starving to death more or less in the Districts (hence the name of The Games) would be a bit more obvious. I don't mean make Jennifer Lawrence scrawny. I'm not jumping on that band wagon thanks. She is awesome to my mind and when I grow up I want to be her and kiss Bradley Cooper in a movie or two. I just think the entire concept of "hunger" was lost from movie #1 and to my mind it was such an important theme in the books I found its lack jarring in the movies.
Speaking of books made into marginal movies, I was excited to see THE GREAT GATSBY turned into the sort of movie I believe F. Scott Fitzgerald would have envisioned had R&B music and technicolor over-the-top-party scenes been possible in his time. I love Leo DiCaprio and thought he was the perfect amount of eager and weak, just like Gatsby was meant to be seen.
I will also say that a movie I saw on DVD stuck with me: THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL was just beautiful. Go rent it. Now.
Honorable mentions: WARM BODIES (zombie teens with a twist), MONSTERS U (I'm a sucker for a great Pixar flic) and HEAT (Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy together made me pee my pants).
I plan to see GRAVITY and AMERICAN HUSTLE before the end of the year...
THE YEAR'S HIGH POINTS (in no order other than how they come to me):
1. Writing, finishing and releasing the final novel of a successful series (Good Faith) and having 90% of the people who've read it "get it" for what it is meant to be: a novel of fiction, NOT a tied-up-with-a-bow fantasy story. Click here to see the 37 5-star reviews after just a month.
2. Wenchling Numero Dos' high school graduation and party
3. The Louisville Cardinals winning the NCAA National Basketball Championship! Which was a totally weird moment since they played the Michigan Wolverines in the final game. My team won. A bunch of fans of losers paid me a ton of money for beer that night. Win. win.
4. Starting a totally new book project and working with an inspirational yet challenging mentor to whip it and my skills into shape. I plan to finish this one (thriller) and start another (mystery) and shop the hell out of them in hopes of snagging the attention of a Big Time Agent who can help me take the next big step in 2014.
5. Highlighting all 25k of the above mentioned first project and dumping them, then starting over more or less from scratch. (Oh wait, that's a "Low Point")
6. Wenchling Numero Uno making the Honor Roll at College.
7. Realizing that one of the Poodle Muses who was literally knocking at Death's Door this past summer was going to live.
8. Seeing one my brewery's beers (and my personal favorite) Gulo Gulo IPL make Draft Magazine twice---> ONCE being named as one their TOP 25 BEERS OF 2013.
9. Being invited by Barnes & Noble Ann Arbor to read and sign Good Faith in their store.
10. Reigniting my goal to NOT be a 50-year-old slouch who never exercises, drinks too much and makes nothing but excuses about all of the above. I've got my Bikram mojo back and feel great!
Low points? Well, there were a bunch. But you know, it wouldn't make me value the loyal fans I have if were not for all the ones who were definitely NOT, either, for whatever reasons they had.
SO, to celebrate the wild, crazy, over-the-top, gut wrenching, whiplash inducing, emotional roller coaster of a year that ends with a car trip to Orlando, a football bowl game and National Soccer League games I am giving out yet more great stuff for my fans.
If you leave me a comment in the next 2 weeks on this post you will be entered to win a signed copy of GOOD FAITH.
And additionally, I am issuing a challenge and reward. Let's get sales of Good Faith (which has rave reviews and it's own fun little hate group) up to 700 total units. WHEN that happens, I will release a super secret never-before-revealed Good Faith "extra scene." It will take the form of a short story, likely posted here, on the Brewing Passion blog. Help me push sales, you get what you've been asking for since November 15, 2013! The full story of "what happens next" will be told in HAT TRICK, the next Black Jack Gentlemen book which releases in April 2014. But this epilogue…well…let's just call it "Liz's Dream Alternate Ending" shall we?
Happy Birthday to me!
Liz
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