“Well, that blows.”

Yes, friends, that’s what I said to the Tour Manager at the conclusion of last night’s season finale.

Ideas who was in that exploding black truck? I’d love to discuss it in the comments, so comment away and let’s speculate ourselves silly!

Thirteen Good Intentions Gone Bad What’s the saying? The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions? 1. The time the video director pitched an idea that had the ShapeShifter boys dancing. DANCING. 2. The time Kerri went to pick up a package at the post office, only to find it had come $3.50 postage due because it had been wrapped wrong and she only had $2 on her. She refused the package, which had been one of those nice gestures on the part of someone else — but not for $3.50. 3. The time the band found a key lime pie in their dressing room. It wasn’t on their contracted tour rider; the promoter had thought it was a nice touch and got whiny when the band asked him to remove it. It didn’t touch him nearly so nicely when Mitchell made him wear it. 4. The sound engineer in the recording studio who forgot to push PLAY. 5. From time to time, Kerri meets someone who expected Kerry Voss, male artist, and not Kerri Voss, female. 6. The time Eric was offered an endorsement deal for a new guitar — but only if he’d never play his current ones again. 7. The new employee of the record label who had heard that Mitchell would be mean to her, so instead of asking him for lyrics for the new disc’s booklet, she did her best to interpret what she heard. 8. The time Kerri was asked to create the art for an event whose cancellation no one told her about. 9. The time the band opened a box of new t-shirts, only to find that the silver ink was red, the shirt itself was orange, and the whole thing looked like bloody puke. 10. Let’s not forget the newspaper reporter who tried to write a flattering article but confused ShapeShifter with … well, they’re still trying to figure that one out. But according to this person, who may or may not have ever heard the band, ShapeShifter is Satanic. Glad someone forgot to inform the band of that… 11. A local crew member, coming up to Trevor from behind, thought he was a woman. In that person’s defense, his hair was waist-length at the time and, from the back, he could be confused with a woman hippie… who wears biker boots and a chain connecting the wallet in his back pocket to a belt loop. And… well, you get the idea. 12. Someone filling in for Mitchell’s tech once strung Mabel upside-down. It may have been a joke, but the joke was on him when Mitchell broke Mabel over the guy’s back. 13. Often, at a backstage appearance, a guy will pull a CD (in the old days, a cassette tape — remember those?) out of a pocket and ask Daniel to listen to his demo. Daniel’s always willing — but once, the guy had given him a ShapeShifter disc, and no contact information so Daniel could make the swap. Hey, groupies! Other than #2, which just happened to me in real life today, would you like to see any of these turned into outtakes? Given time and interest, I just might do it for you. ’cause I love you guys and all.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will try to link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Thirteen Things about the new blog

1. With Breeni, Cheesy, PussReboots, and Ann, I’ve launched a new blog. 2. It’s called Win a Book. 3. I think you can figure out its purpose. But if not, the idea is that we’ll collect news of book giveaways around the Net. You can come to us and we’ll tell you who’s being buzzed about. 4. The ultimate idea here is to help spread the word about debut and mid-list authors. 5. I have to confess that Julia‘s book reviews made me feel guilty and like I wasn’t doing enough to help out people I really care about. 6. You can visit the blog at Win a Book. 7. There’s also an e-mail set up so you can contact me with news of your contest. 8. A lot of contest sites out there won’t post your contest unless you submit in a particular format. We’re not like that. We’re easy. 9. I know some blog authors don’t want publicity for their contests, because of the people who only stop by for in the hopes of winning things. I don’t blame them. 10. On the flip side, I’ve stopped by a lot of blogs because of a contest and wound up adding them to my reader. So you never know. 11. Hopefully, this is only the tip of the iceberg in the things I’ll be doing in the future for my fellow writers. I’ll be doing more posts like this one. 12. If Trevor read, I’d let him write a post or two. But this is what happened the last time he read something. Scary. 13. Win a Book. Really. Let’s start here for the time being. Come join us.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will try to link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

This week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt was one of those where I was immediately jazzed and then just as quickly, confusion set in. The theme is family, and it’s one I play with quite a bit in my fiction.

The problem, as is becoming a bit too common, is that I’ve got a ton of outtakes and other material on the blog already about this theme.

There’s the Brotherly Love Thursday Thirteen I did back in July of 2007.

There’s all the sibling torment that Mitchell and Amy heap on each other. Like the scene when Mitchell is showing Amy his new house. The torture of being a teenager and having a brother… or sister. The time Trevor set Amy up to torture both her and Mitchell…

Really. Sonya Voss puts up with a lot of hijinks in her home. She’s a saint.

And that’s part of it, I think. I don’t come from a terrible family, not by a longshot. And yet I still wish my family was more like the Vosses, who opened their home and took Trevor into it when the alternative was to let the kid hang. These people are close, they have a warm relationship with each other, they like being around each other. And they have fun together.

Now, that’s Mitchell’s family, the one Trevor takes over. (And you groupies who know Trevor even a little bit understand that fully.)

But there is another kind of family in my fictional world, too. The band.

Think about it for a second or two. You have a group of people — in the case of ShapeShifter, we have four guys — who come together. They share creativity, they share hours of practice and if they’re lucky, they get crappy dressing rooms, an overstuffed car with a trailer on the back of it for all their gear, and adventures out the wazoo. I figure this can either tear a group apart, like it recently did to real-life group Divine Heresy, or it can bring them together.

I have a dark side. It’s the part of me that makes my musical tastes run toward metal. But I like to dwell in a happy world (probably because that dark side’s power scares me), and so when it comes to families, I create happy ones.

Well, sort of. Trevor’s not the only one with an unhappy family roaming around my head. But you’ll have to stay tuned to learn more about them. And, frankly, I need the time to develop them more fully for you.

More from me later…

Every now and then, Trevor and I play by the rules. This week’s Thursday Thirteen asked us to Choose a letter of the alphabet and write thirteen words that describe you that begin with that letter. Be creative and have fun! Trevor trembled at the thought.

T is for Trevor. Trevor Fucking Wolff, thankyouverymuch. T is for Holy Terror. T is for terrible. T is for Touring. T is for Tremendous. T is for tortured. T is for Ten inches. T is for trouble. T is for tenacious. T is for Tight. T is for tragic T is for Trail Blazer T is for Total Package. More Ts… teetotaller, terrible, terminal, thread, thirty, three, twenty-some, trusting, travel, thorn, trustworthy, thrash metal, thunder, thing, thundering, threesome, tired, tumultuous, thoughtful, trait, thoughtless, tasteless, timely, talkative, turtle, tundra, the, tissue, than, trouble, tithe, Thursday, thirteen, three, Tuesday, tape, why, the, fuck, are, you, still, reading, go, leave, a, comment, already!

This week’s Writer’s Island prompt was outrageous, which I thought a pretty good prompt for old Trevor.

Trevor’s not the most outrageous person you’ll ever meet. I’ll grant you that. Instead, Trevor’s Outrageousness comes in the form of a lack of caring and inhibition. In a sense, he’s my wild side, the part of me that longs to be let out. I’ve gotten better over the years since I created Trevor, but I’ve still got nothing on the master — probably because I care more than he does.

At the same time that I’ve been mulling over this prompt, Julia tagged me with the Seven Things Meme. She said it was for me or ShapeShifter to do. And so with no further ado…

How Trevor equals outrageous. In his own words and voice, so don’t yell at me.

1. Read this post. It’ll tell you a fucking lot.

2. I got conned by the groupies around this joint to write a poem. I think I said a lot of shit they were wishing they had the balls to say.

3. Is it really sick if I say that piercing Mitchell’s ear was one of the highlights of my life? It wouldn’t have been if he’d taken it like a man. Shit, one little hole, right? Count on the big idiot to fuck that one up. Royally.

4. I’ve conned Rusty into all sorts of great shit. Most of it hasn’t been on the blog ’cause it’s in the book. Which means you got yet another reason to wait for the book. Can’t wait? Want it sooner? Make a bigger noise about this here blog. Bring your friends over. Leave comments like mad. Things are looking good, so get off your asses and help make ’em look better.

5. Ever been shopping for your properly healthy, and probably perfectly organic, fruits and green shit and seen someone do this? It sucked that Rusty was so cool about it. I fucking love it when she turns as red as her fake hair color.

6. This is where I’m supposed to talk about me and Rusty, but forget it. Read the book. Go back up to #4 if you’re all frustrated there’s no book to read yet. Trevor Wolff doesn’t repeat himself. Ever.

7. Now, I don’t think any of this makes me outrageous. This is who I am, and fuck you if you don’t like it even though you know you do or you wouldn’t be hanging out here so fucking much. But I’ll tell you one thing that is outrageous. That’s that I’m this rock star and I don’t drink. Not such a long story why, but … you gotta wait for the book.

I know, I know. I suck. But trust Trevor; the book doesn’t. Go on back up to #4 and follow those instructions once more. If you’ve done it right, this’ll be the third time now and that means you’re good at it and you got it down.

What’s that? I can’t hear you. The buzz about this here blog’s not loud enough yet.

Go fix it, will ya?

According to the rules of the meme, I’m supposed to tag someone, but while you groupies are all awesome, I don’t know how you can follow Trevor with the proper amount of style. Thus, if you do it, please give me a link back! You know… it’ll help make that buzz a little bit louder.

Look! Winter did! So did Ann! And Bethanie! Go check out their own outrageous comments, why don’t you?

One of the things that is frequently talked about in the marketing of your book to publishers and agents is this idea of high concept. Problem is, no one really can define it.

Author Karin Gillespie gave a talk at the RT Convention about it. And suddenly, it all made sense.

One thing I’m always struggling with when it comes to Trevor and the band is the very fact that Trevor’s the bass player of ShapeShifter. How often did I say, “I write about rock bands and the people who orbit them” to the people I met? To agents, editors, readers, writers?

Yet I’m told time and again that books about rock stars don’t sell. And besides, Trevor’s Song isn’t about a rock star. It’s a book about a man with two large problems.

Enter Karin and her seminar. First off, let me tell you that Karin is the greatest. Simply put, she’s amazing. She could give JA Konrath a run for his money when it comes to marketing, and JA is the king. (Not to discount MJ Rose in all this, either.)

All this brings me to the inspiration that struck yesterday. Constructive comments are encouraged, but anything abusive or mean won’t be allowed through moderation.

Ready?

Trevor’s Song as high concept:

Trevor Wolff’s best friend has gone and done the unthinkable by committing an act of monogamy, and now Trevor himself learns he’s got an even bigger secret to conquer. Will this conspire to bring him down, or will everybody’s favorite bad boy Trevor Effing Wolff triumph yet again?

(Yes, the actual piece of paper I wrote this on spells out that bigger secret. I’m holding back on you guys!)

I’ll tell you, this is one wind of change I hadn’t seen on the horizon. As soon as I’m more caught up on my sleep, I’ll share more with you. (hint: get to know my sidebar real good!)

I ducked out of the Romantic Times Convention yesterday around 3 and got home a little bit before 4. Those of you who know me or who I freshly met (and I have seen many Google searches for West of Mars already. Whee!) know that I’m a local chick and by the time yesterday afternoon came, when I’d checked out of my hotel SUITE (remind me to tell that story), I was glad. I was itchy to get home.

Anyway, here are some more impressions and things I learned. I want to promise that there will be more of these in the days ahead, but there probably won’t be. The only thing I can promise is that there are yet more winds of change afoot…

1. I’m a proud Pittsburgher, but I was amazed and horrified at the condition of the Pittsburgh Hilton. Others can tell you more about it, but let’s just say that many, many of us were glad we’d been evicted and sent to the Omni William Penn, even if it was a bit of an inconvenience.

This was my third bad experience in a row at a Hilton hotel. I’m done with you, Hilton Hotels. My money now goes elsewhere, even if I wind up spending more. From what I’ve seen (including the promised refund that I’m still waiting on, two years later), the problems exist across the board.

I wonder what the Board of Health would say about the servers who stuck their bare thumbs in the pour spout of the water pitchers when they put them on our table.

Yes, friends, I’ve called the Board of Health for things like that before. Piss me off far enough and I’ll make a point of pushing back.

2. The Mystery Chix and a Rooster are amazing, amazing people. Don’t ask me which is my favorite; I can’t pick. Check out their websites. Tell them I sent you. Read their books. Rave about them with me.

I have lots of promo bookmarks and business cards from this gang. If you’d like some, drop me an e-mail and I’ll mail them out to you.

3. Many of the authors whose blogs appear in my Google Reader are way cool. Rachel Vincent. Shiloh Walker. Megan Hart. Lauren Dane. Anya Bast. Ann Aguirre. Aline de Chevigny. Jennifer Estep. None, however, made me squeal the way I did when Colleen Gleason and I ran into each other (inches from literally) and made the connection. That’s just to say how awesome Colleen is.

I loved how excited she got when I told her I’d seen Rises the Night for sale in my local GROCERY. Yes, folks, I found a copy there and had to show it to my family, all of whom gave me blank stares. Many of the surrounding shoppers were initially curious but my strange and sudden inability to form words upon discovery of the book might have prevented a few sales I otherwise should have pimped for my bud Colleen.

4. I met Judi Fennell in the shuttle back to the Omni and hooked her up with the woman running the SOS mixer/thingie. I hope she had a great time!

5. Of all these cool people, none were cooler than Ann. Let me tell you, I’d have been lost without Ann. She’s the ultimate fan girl, in the perfect sense, because she is a librarian who is also the library’s buyer. It was a LOT of fun to walk up to editors and hear her ask for their list so she can buy their books.

Even better was meeting her cast of characters, her friends. Particularly that moment during the Faery Ball when MaryJanice Davidson came and plunked down on the couch beside me. Why? ’cause she knew Ann, who was on my other side.

Best of all was at the Vampire Ball, when I pretty much dumped Ann in favor of a new bud (who also dumped a friend in order to bond with me). Ann understood, and then some. I still feel bad about it ’cause Ann’s too cool to do that to. But once the whole story behind that comes out, you’ll agree with Ann.

So to make up for it, I played Tour Manager for HER at the huge book signing. While I’m a bit too incapacitated to carry the LOAD of books she’d brought from home to be signed, I did carry her new purchases for her, help the authors spell her name right, and generally have fun.

No, I did NOT tell a single one of those authors to please spell her name S-U-S-A-N. But there were a few times there that I was tempted.

Be sure to become one of Ann’s fan girls. She deserves it.

Thirteen things from RT Actually, I’m at home now. Whew. Home. Some thoughts about the first day of the Romantic Times Convention: 1. I heard there are 999 people other than me in attendance. Last year, there were 650. 2. Lauren Dane Rocks. 3. Megan Hart Rocks. 4. Tilly Greene is awesome and I’d better get to hang with her more. 5. Ann rocks the hardest. We’ve been hanging together, although this being on the phone and within sight of each other needs to stop. 6. Good things come out of bad parking hassles. 7. Being able to say, “Yo, Dude, I’m from West of Mars” gets you brownie points with lots of people on staff at the Hilton. Only, substitute the real name of an area near where I live for West of Mars. 8. People look at you differently, almost dismissively, when your nametag says “Aspiring Author.” The Tour Manager is fixing the nametag problem. Others are at work on the aspiring problem. (Won’t you help with that?) 9. My feet hurt, and it’s only day one. 10. JR Ward is amazing in person. Vivacious, but cool. So alive. And no, I did NOT take nostril shots of her. Puh-leeze. 11. Kim Harrison looks like my vision of Rachel Morgan. She’s got quite an air to her — please don’t take that as a negative. She’s very nice and interesting. 12. Nancy Martin breezed through. 13. Oy. My feet. Needless to say, the conference runs until Sunday. I’ll return visits once my feet have recovered. I’m skipping the gym before heading back down tomorrow…

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will try to link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Yep, as I’ve said before, the winds, they are a-changin’ over here. Most are good, but a few sort of suck. Read on and you can decide which is which. Maybe you can help change those sucky ones.

1. I’ve up and joined Facebook. Come friend me and teach me more about the joint. Be sure to join the West of Mars Groupie group, too, and show the world how into the band you are. (Not me. Just the band.)

2. I came up with this fantastic idea for the ShapeShifter logo that I can put on t-shirts and stuff. Problem is, my cats draw better than I do and when I tried to get the image out of my brain and onto the paper… well, I’m ashamed of how it looked. Not merely embarrassed. Ashamed.

3. I found a cool (free) font for the band to use. Is a free font, no matter how cool, good enough for our band?

4. So I decided that I’ll give up to three t-shirts featuring this new logo to anyone who can pull it out of my brain and improve on it. One catch: You have to sign over the rights to me so I own it. But to make up for it, I promise to give you credit on the website and here on the blog.

5. I’m headed downtown for the big Romantic Times convention tomorrow. What’s a commercial, mainstream fiction writer like myself doing at a romance convention? Learning, I hope. And hanging with the cool people I’ve met here. Hopefully both.

I smell more breezes on the horizon… stay tuned…

Whoa. I knew it was around here, but I didn’t think I’d be so crass as to miss it.

But I did.

And you know what? The world didn’t end. My blog didn’t implode. My muse is busy trying to juggle the Sunday Scribblings prompt with the Writer’s Island prompt with my own vision and the next work-in-progress… Not a bad job for a muse, really.

Have you figured it out yet?

My blog turned two yesterday. That’s two years of Trevor, Mitchell, Eric, Daniel, Kerri, Val, and Pam. Two years of Chelle and Kermit Ladd. Roadie Poet, Walter, Deadly Metal Hatchet, and Springer.

And me. That’s the amazing part. That you guys continue to be interested in me even though I’m as boring as they come. I have cats. I ride my bike and go to the gym. I’m raising two kids and trying to appreciate the Tour Manager instead of kill him. And I create fiction, which I think is way more interesting than I am.

In two years, this joint has grown. Not as much as I want it to, but that’s coming. There’s change on the horizon, gang. The winds are picking up; can you feel them?

Stay tuned. I have it on the best authority that there’s good stuff about to happen in the third year of this Meet and Greet joint. You’ll be glad you got here so early, I promise. This is the time to suck your friends in ’cause once things get rolling, there may be no looking back.

There will be links back, of course. There’s too much good stuff, stuff I’m really freaking proud of, buried here on this blog. But there’s also stuff — like this post — that’ll be lost in the rush.

One thing that won’t be lost but also won’t be expressed nearly enough is my appreciation for you guys. Every time I check my stat counter and see more than two hits, I’m thankful. Every time you leave a comment, I’m thrilled — even on days like last Thursday, when it was all I could do to keep up with them.

It just gets better from here. Thanks for riding along so far — and I hope you’re here for the long haul.

Lots of you guys have been commenting on Trevor’s absence from my Thirteens of late. Clearly, my not-so-subtle attempt to get you to come around the rest of the week isn’t working (but have fun with these links!). So… with no further ado, here’s your boy, starring in:

Thirteen places Trevor’s been lately 1. Taking a smoke break. 2. Juggling girls. 3. Annoying Mitchell. 4. Practicing. Nominally. 5. Playing shows. 6. Touring. 7. Discovering that it’s cooler to hang in a jacuzzi than it is to hang by the side of the pool. 8. Trying to out Roadie Poet. 9. Stealing bacon and doughnuts and anything else swimming in grease from the crew catering area. 10. Sitting behind Daniel or Mitchell while they give interviews, making fun of them the whole time. 11. Running from Mitchell’s swinging fists. 12. Sucking up to the band’s wardrobe manager so she’ll do his laundry for him. 13. Dreaming of seeing my book about him on the shelves.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will try to link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

The outtake I posted yesterday is one of my all-time favorites. It’s a scene that pre-dates the blog. In many ways, it predates Trevor’s Song and my gazillion attempts at Trevor’s predecessor (which I still vow to get right!).

It’s one of the original scenes I’d envisioned with Mitchell and Kerri, back when I was constructing their relationship in my head. It could even date back to March of 2000, which is when Mitchell and Kerri first came to life. (Yes, you Trevor fans, they came first. Trevor would say I saved the perfection for later.)

My original idea with Mitchell and Kerri was to play with the idea of two people who happened to be each other’s muses. And then Trevor entered the picture, I couldn’t tell the Kerri-Mitchell story the right way, and … Trevor took over. For those of you who know him, you’re not surprised. For those of you who don’t, if you follow the link in his name, you’ll come to his bio page. At the bottom of the page (and for all my characters), you’ll see a list of blog posts featuring that character. Go have yourself some fun.

Back to the topic at hand: Kerri’s First Two Drawings. I swear, some of my favorite moments are these quiet ones. Visit Rain and Hands, Inspiration and, to a bit of a lesser degree, Hearts.

This one trumps them all. Maybe because I’ve imagined it so many times. Maybe because it fits my definition of romance and I’ve always wished for such yearning and tenderness in my own life. This isn’t to slight the Tour Manager in any way. This is to say that all those romantic movies I watched as a kid and the sappy songs I used to love? They did a number on my head. No wonder I’ve turned away from them so thoroughly. They set down a bar that simply can’t be attained in real life. So, I’ll let Mitchell and Kerri attain them in their fictional life, instead.

Part of me thinks that one of the reasons we writers write is to live out our fantasies. I have no desires to be a rock star or be married to one; Hell, when I almost made a career in the music business, it was with aims of working behind the scenes, for a record label.

But part of me knows that I write to create this sort of stuff in my life, and to share it with my readers. To give us all a few minutes in which we DO wish we were people like Mitchell and Kerri, or that we had a Trevor in our lives.

One final note before I’m done babbling: the end here isn’t perfect. The scene doesn’t end here; it ends with a torrid kiss and then Mitchell sweeping Kerri back to her futon for another round of hot sex. Maybe one day all you eroti–chicks will work some magic on me and I can write that sort of stuff without squirming and blushing. But for now… use your imagination.

And come on back for more.

Thirteen (?) Things that happen Every Spring 1. Trevor swaps his leather jacket for a leather vest over a denim jacket. 2. Trevor rediscovers the pack of cigarettes he left in the leather vest when he wore it last. 3. The cigarettes are now stale. He offers them to Mitchell. 4. The Deadly Metal Hatchet beheads daffodils. 5. Fozzy buys the longest shorts a guy can get away with, hoping to hide the scars on his leg. Then he makes his annual call to the plastic surgeon to see if anything can be done about them. 6. Big Buck’s wife Beverly fires up the mobile grills and begins to get ready for the summer barbecue cook-off season. 7. Walter gets ready for a new tour. 8. Eric throws Cadbury Crème eggs into the audience. 9. They’d rather have his guitar picks. 10. Chelle swaps her long-sleeved concert t-shirts for the short-sleeved concert t-shirts. 11. Pam’s classes fill up with women worried about bathing suit season. 12. Roadie Poet, Hambone, and More begin fielding offers of work on summer tours. 13. Lyric offers her yearly discount on her favorite stockings to anyone with a prom ticket. 14. Susan’s world continues to grow. And grow. And grow. Sort of like the dandelions in her front yard, only more entertaining.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will try to link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Remember at the end of January when I posted the Chicken Scratch outtake? When I posted it and read over it, I realized that it was… not up to my usual standards, even for an outtake, which I tend to think of as unpolished and rough anyway.

To me, this was rougher than usual.

But to a lot of you guys, it was great. A few of you commented that if I thought that was rough, you’d hate to see how things looked with some polish on them.

I decided to rise to that challenge. After all, I wasn’t happy with some things in the outtake. And who can resist a chance to show off a little bit?

If you go over to my website and scroll WAAAAAAAY down to the bottom of the home page, you’ll find a cleaned up Chicken Scratch outtake. It’s a .pdf and you can download it and read it. Come on back here to tell me what you think of it after its makeover; you can’t leave comments over there anymore, thanks to spammers.

If this is a big success with you guys and you tell your friends and spread the word, and lots of people stop by to check it out, there will be more of them to come. After all, I’ve got almost two years worth of outtakes on this here blog, and I’ve got a bunch more waiting to be shared with you.

But for now, let’s start with one.

Happy reading!

March is International Women’s History Month, or something like that. Since that dovetails nicely into the discussions around here over the past few weeks, I figured I’d invent thirteen women who will one day be discussed. By someone.

Some of these women you’ve met before. Others I created just this week. Let me know who you’d like to see more of and, just like the list of bands the other week, I shall do what I can to oblige.

Thirteen fictional women who changed the world 1. Zeynep Goldstein. This not-terribly-observant Muslim woman married a not-terribly-observant Jew and, without meaning to, found a way to begin to bridge the centuries-old hatred between the people of the two religions. (Although, as a Jew, I didn’t know of this hatred until about ten years ago, at most. Must be a hidden hatred, or am I that sheltered?) 2. Toni Lauren Smith — One of eight children, Toni and her husband Leon decided to seek fulfillment by not contributing to the world’s population problem. Instead, they work tirelessly to promote the conservation of the world’s green spaces and the flora, fauna, and wildlife that dwells within in. (If you think she wasn’t inspired by a certain blogger, you’re nuts.) 3. Maureen — Also known as More to Roadie Poet, she is helping (along with the real-life women out there) that women do belong in the often-sexist world of roadies. 4. Aliyah — Created last week, all I know about Aliyah so far is that she’s a chemist, doing research in a New York City lab into alternates for petroleum. Her partner is a big-shit record producer, also in New York. She keeps him grounded and proves, yet again, that it takes a good woman to make a man great. 5. Sara Deaver — a single mom who teaches her community and social circle how to live with grace under pressure. 6. Alina Kozlova — A historian by training, Alina brings history to life, with the help of a team of sociologists, pyschologists, and every other -ologist she deems necessary. First through articles in a national news weekly magazine and then through her own books and later podcasts, Alina makes history sexy — and reminds us of the relevance of the past in today’s world. 7. JC Montecino — The US Government’s top IRS fraud inspector. Despite long hours on the job, JC raises a family of seven children. With the help of her stay-at-home husband who somehow finds the time and energy to constantly be renovating at least one room of the four-bedroom house. 8. Pauline Smolinski — A Holocaust survivor, at 80 she begins a new career as a Food TV host. As a judge of Iron Chef America and all those food competitions where people create crazy things and win ten grand for it, she’s not afraid to show what’s what in terms of the importance of food and nourishment. 9. Beverly Buck — Big Buck’s wife. Those of you who hang around know that Big Buck’s Best Barbecue is one of those places in the fictional city of Riverview that no one can get enough of. Beverly is responsible for creating Bodacious Sauce. She’s also the one who takes the mobile barbecue on the road, proving that women can barbecue with the best out there. 10. Sassy Brody — A lawyer whose rising star has people hoping she’ll be named US Attorney General. 11. Ruby Red — fashion designer to the stars, she helps turn the musical culture into something other than sex and the ghetto. 12. Bunny Fitzgerald — At the tenderish age of 20, Bunny Fitzgerald took the skateboarding scene like a storm. The first female pro with a reputation as good as Tony Hawk’s, Bunny takes that board and flies with it. Rumor has it that Shaun White thinks she’s hot, but the idea of being Bunny White scares her sleepless. 13. Lyric Maker — You’ve met Lyric on these pages before. Stay tuned; there’s more of her to come. LOTS more.

Yep, I’ve gotten some of the big storm that’s pelting Cleveland and Buffalo and Carmi in Ontario. The best part is that I’ve got the house to myself for a bit over 24 hours; I’ve been soaking in the solitude — even if my plans to have dinner with a friend were nixed by slow road crews. Oh, well. It can’t all be perfect.

Two of my friends have releases this week!

Aline de Chevigny (Damn, that’s hard to spell!) released Toss of a Coin. The link will take you to her blog about it and you can follow those links to buy it. (Have I mentioned that being home alone has made me lazy?)

And my dear friend Joely Sue Burkhart has The Rose of Shanhasson about to explode onto the e-book market, too. Same thing with the links.

Check them out, pick them up. Wouldn’t it be cool if, five years from now (or less), they hit the best-seller list and you can say you read them when?

I’ve some new fiction for you tomorrow. Stay tuned.