SUMMER RECAP with TOO MANY PICTURES!!!

Take Mia On A Vacation/Staycation WIN... Guess who’s sleeping in MIA’s GUEST R...

SUMMER RECAP with TOO MANY PICTURES!!!

Hi everybody. I haven’t written a blog post about what’s up for WAY TOO LONG. So, in the event you are interested, nosy, or even mildly curious, I’m going to fill you in.

KIDS. I need to repeat that. KIDS. KIDS. KIDS. KIDS.

I have been busy with my kids this summer.

My oldest spent much of the summer at a Georgetown University Spanish program in Ecuador.

I moved my second daughter home from her dormitory in Manhattan and will move her to SUNY Purchase where she will attend the Conservatory of Dance THIS WEEK!! (still busy) I also watched her dance in NYC, at Jacob’s Pillow and even got to see her teach a few classes.

Daughter number three was sweet, as always, helped me all summer by doing the grocery shopping and carting her brother around so I could edit books! Plus she took a PSAT course.

ANd child number four, my son, PLAYED TONS OF BASKETBALL- his single obsession!!

When I was not spending time with my children, I spent a bit of time with MR. MIA. Mainly, at CONCERTS!!

Zac Brown, and Phil Phillips, and James Taylor and more…

I managed to find more trouble in NYC. I went to my FIRST EVER writer’s conference called WRITERS DIGEST!!

I had a fancy hotel room all to myself.

What else kept me busy this summer? CHATTING WITH MY CLOSE FRIEND, MICHAEL BOWLER. He is an author of the highest caliber whose books kept me happily busy from January until June!!

Here I am with his newest release, There is No Fear!! (DO NOT MISS his CHILDREN of the KNIGHT SERIES)

I met my sister’s new puppy, Gent. He’s a Great Dane, and from what I hear he has doubled in size!

What did I leave out?? BOOKS. Yes, I left out all the work I am doing on BOOKS… BOOKS!!!!

***I finished editing Random Acts, which will be released in October. Wait till you guys see the cover!!!

***I submitted One Voice, the sequel to Us Three and it was accepted by Dreamspinner Press!! Woohoo!

***I finished writing His Way, a YA LGBT Christian Contemporary Fiction novel. And then I REWROTE IT!!!

Thanks to my AMAZING BETA READERS- KARI, KEVIN, STACIA, DALLAS, and CRYSTAL!! AND THE AWESOME MICHAEL BOWLER TOO!!

You guys ROCK!!

***I started something new…WANT A SAMPLE???

LOVE SPELL…. by ME Mia- STILL VERY ROUGH but you get the idea.

Chance’s note:

Before you start reading I’ll warn you that I think a lot. J

Some people may call the activity of my mind overthinking. Others would slap a bright yellow sticky label on my brain, the phrase “has a few screws loose” scribbled on it in bold print, and feel that they’ve very accurately pinned the tail on the donkey. I choose to look at the convoluted—in the best possible interpretation of the word, of course—manner in which I process thoughts as ingenious… not to mention original, inspired, and authentic. And truth be told, I have about fifteen more adjectives to describe the manner in which I think burning a hole in my back pocket, but I very occasionally subscribe to the concept “less is more”, and this is one of those rare occasions.

Well, sort of.

Consider yourself fairly warned. J

So here’s what happened:

Chapter One Shine On, Harvest Moon

Brazen.

It pops into my head as the word that would best describe me right about…yeah, well, right about now. I raise my chin just enough to stop stiff spikes of black hair from flopping forward onto my forehead. Can you blame me? Those things are damned sharp—best they stay upright on my head where they belong—and gravity can only do so much to that end.

Chance César is a brazen B.

I stare ‘em down, but only after I pop the collar of the blinding “Orange Crush” tuxedo I’m rockin’ and shrug my shoulders in a sort of what-the-fuck fashion. Rule of thumb—first things must always come first.

Pop, shrug, and only then is it appropriate to stare.

“Eat your heart out, Johnny Depp.” Based on the buzz of scandalized chatter blowing this way and that in the crisp evening breeze, I’m reasonably certain that nobody in the crowd has hear what I said. And although some of the girls in the crowd may do backflips over Johnny Depp, they don’t give a crap about Chance César, who bears a striking resemblance to the movie star in his younger days. (Think Edward Scissorhands.) Or about the fact that said teenage boy is gonna make Harvest Moon Festival history tonight.

Refusing to succumb to the impulse to duck my head, I take a single shaky step forward on the stage that’s been set up on the dusty ground beside the vast—by New England standards—cornfield. The stage doesn’t wobble, but my knees do. Okay, so I’m an honest diva and I tell it like it is. And I’m a freaking wreck—strictly on the inside, that is.

Now get this: instead of shrinking away to avoid all of the staring eyes, which I admit was my instinctual response, this B takes a deep breath, blows that puppy out in a single gush, and starts to strut.

Chance, you are by far the edgiest Miss Harvest Moon this ramshackle town has ever had the good fortune to gaze upon.

(I often bolster my confidence with positive self-talk.)

Using the feigned English accent that I’ve perfected, thanks to long hours of rather tedious practice in my bathroom, I speak my next thought aloud, as well. “I wish I’d put in a tad more practice walking in these bloody heels before going public in ‘em.” Despite one slight stumble—a close call to be sure—the clicking sound my pumps make is relatively crisp and confident. I saunter out onto the catwalk.

My mind again wanders.

Faking foreign accents is a hobby of mine. I can do French, German, Mexican, Russian, and plenty more, but I don’t do the Asian languages as it seems too close to ridicule. I’m going to continue speaking in Standard British, with the slightest hint of Cockney thrown in for charm, for the rest of the night. Like I always (well, once or maybe twice, at the most) say, it’s a free country and I’ll do what I want.

“Introducing this year’s lovely…or, um, handsome Miss…ter Harvest Moon… Let’s hear a loud round of applause for Chance César!” Mrs. Higgins always speaks with a soft Southern twang, although I’m pretty sure she’s lived her entire life right here in less-than-gentile, Fiske, New Hampshire. It seems I am not the only one with an affinity for a colorful accent.

The applause is—I’m gonna be honest again—disappointingly, but not surprisingly, scattered.

“Woo hoo!” A solitary hoot splits the night—it’s quite impossible to miss—and I recognize a certain shrill and nasal quality in the sound. Echoes of, “Buckaroo! Buckaroo! Where are you, Buckaroo?” ring in my head, and I know without a doubt that the hooter is my best (only) friend, Emily Benson. Her hooting for my benefit sounds a great deal like her calls for Buckaroo, the Benson family’s frequently wandering bulldog.

In any case, the single, supportive hoot is followed by mucho expected heckling.

“Chances are, Chance César is gonna moon the crowd!” That’s a girl’s voice, for sure.

“Come on, Miss Harvest Moon, flash your full moon!” A dude mocks me next. I’m proud to say that I’m an equal opportunity victim of harassment.

I don’t blink even once in the face of the jeering, seeing as this type of thing is par for the course in my life. I simply place one pointy-toed shoe in front of the other, my eyes focused on the mountain in the distance. I’m proud of the fact that, amidst the chaos, I remember to offer the crowd my best beauty queen wave.

“Aw, shit…we must be havin’ a lunar eclipse or somethin’.” It’s another youthful male voice, and a deep one, at that. “There ain’t no moon to be seen ‘round these parts!” The heckler is a guy I know too well from school, Edwin Darling, who I less than fondly (and very privately) refer to as “Ed the Appalling.” I watch as he glances up briefly at the full moon in the dark night sky, and shrugs.

The lunar eclipse one-liner is actually pretty funny—I toss out ten points for creativity to Edwin by allowing a small smile—but still I never remove my eyes from the single treeless spot on Mount Vernier.

That’s when the music starts. I’m glad for the distraction. Plus, it’s much easier to sashay to the sound of music than it is to wiggle my backside to the unpleasant clamor of heckling.

Shine On, Harvest Moon…the Liza Minnelli rendition. It’s the traditional tune for Miss Harvest Moon’s victorious stroll up and down the creaky runway.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that Liza Minnelli’s voice always brings out the dramatic streak in me?

So maybe it doesn’t take more than a nudge to get me going in a theatrical direction—but, hey, drama’s not a crime. Momentarily, I wonder if I should have worn my flapper get-up, but since it’s peach, not vivid orange, I allow the thought to fall away. And then there’s the whole “not a single soul—with the exceptions of my parents and Emily—has yet been privileged with the honor of viewing Chance César in full female garb” thing that held me back from wearing a dress tonight. To this point, wearing feminine clothing has been purely a private pleasure, and I’m not certain it’s a side of myself that I’ll ever go public with. But tonight is the Beans and Green Farm’s Annual Harvest Moon Festival. And for New Hampshire, this is a big event—the whole town shows up for shit like this.

I suppose that pumpkin orange attire is mandatory.

At the end of the catwalk, I indulge the audience by providing them with their deepest desire: I stand there, still as a statue—for maybe a full thirty seconds, give or take—so they can drink in the sight of me, spikey head to pointy toe. Because I know that whether they admire me for having the balls to strut around Fiske (towns don’t come much more conservative) wearing a snug orange tuxedo and four inch black pumps, which I will admit is a public first for me, or they wish the shining harvest moon would fall on my house and crush me while I sleep, what they all really want most is a good long moment to study me. When the spectators finally start to squirm, I know it’s time to once again get this show on the road. I pivot on my toes and walk briskly to where my boss, the owner of Beans and Greens Farm, stands holding my crown.

Mrs. Higgins is a rather tall glass of water, and she’s accustomed to crowning petite high school sophomore or junior girls, not nearly grown senior boys in four-inch heels. So I crouch politely beside her and she carefully nestles the glittering crystal-studded crown in my spiky mop of dark hair. She offers me barely half of a crooked smile, for which I give her credit. I, Mrs. Higgins’ very own “boy with the attitude on cash register three”, have broken about every rule Beans and Green has established for its hordes of high school summer workers, right down to “no jewelry at work.” But a couple of points go to the lady cuz she managed to force out a grimace that could have been mistaken for a smile…if your standards are low.

Besides, I’m not about to remove my nose ring. It in no way impedes my ability to count, ring up, and bag cucumbers.

The music stops as soon as I turn to face the crowd.

“You don’t happen to have any… very brief… words of wisdom for our audience, do you, Chance?” Mrs. Higgins asks me, speaking into an oversized microphone. And she’s wary. Like a rat in a corner.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” My clipped British accent momentarily stuns the woman, and I take that opportunity to snatch the microphone from her hand. Realizing that it is now in my possession, she shudders. “I just want to thank you all, my beloved coworkers at Beans and Greens Farm, for voting me in as this year’s Miss Harvest Moon.” I pretend to wipe tears from my eyes, sniff for some added effect, and, of course, I employ my most gracious, high-pitched tone of voice. “I am just so honored to represent you all here tonight.”

Sniff, sniff. Pouty lips follow right on the heels of the sniffling.

Mrs. Higgins makes a sudden grab for the microphone but I’m more agile than her; I only have to twist a tiny bit to block her move.

Then I lower my voice so it’s all man—minus the delightful British inflection—and I ask the crowd, “So you thought voting for me as Miss Harvest Moon, here, would humiliate me—dull my shine, or rain on my parade, perhaps?” I wag my well-manicured finger at the crowd. “Well, in your face, my sorry losers, cuz I’m here and I’m queer and I’m shining on—just like that big ol’ harvest moon!” Without hesitation, I lean down just enough to grab Mrs. Higgins around the waist, and then I lift her off her feet and swing that lady around—probably till she’s seeing stars.

I’d bet my fabulous ass that no other Miss Harvest Moon has ever given Mrs. Higgins a joyride like that!