Showing posts with label cursed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cursed. Show all posts
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Giving Birth: Dreaming a Writer’s Journey
I don’t know about you, but when I am writing I seem to have dreams that directly relate to my work. But not in a way I would have expected. I would expect to dream about the content of my novels, but this is not how it works.
For example:
When I was writing about detectives in Wanted: The Roaming Mortician seems like my dreams would have taken on a judicial slant: mobsters and drag queens and morticians. But this did not happen.
When I wrote Operation Tub-butt, seems like my dreams would have been filled with revenge seeking middle-schoolers and cheerleaders. But this did not happen either.
When I wrote Cursed! My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg, seems like I'd be dreaming about zombies and curses and stump toed soothsayers and pickles. But no.
When I wrote about mud and guns and jeep chases and funerals in Rooted, seems like I would have dreamed about all of that. But no, again.
What I dream:
With the development of all my novels, I dream about babies: fresh in the womb, baking up good like a loaf of bread, and ultimately, their delivery.
When starting a new novel, I invariably dream that I have just learned I am with child. I’m not visibly pregnant, but a few weeks along.
As I progress through my rough draft, my pregnancy progresses as well in my dreams. After the initial pregnancy dream, there will be a dream where I’m five or six months pregnant, and then another dream of being full term. Finally, I deliver a healthy happy child. This occurs right after I finish my rough draft.
Only, with Rooted, I dreamed I delivered twins on a beach. Which obviously means the book is doubly good.
Lately, I’ve had a different set of dreams which relates directly to a side project I’ve started. I’m currently revising some old content I have lying about. Content which I feel may influence the literary world for generations to come. Not necessarily in a good way.
The dreams have to do with three novellas I am creating based on content which did not make it into my books. After starting these short projects, I have dreamed of returning to an old business I had and starting it over. But in my dream, my plan is to start the business on a smaller scale, with fewer clients to make it more manageable.
The next dream I had involved four or five small sailboats which were abandoned in a lake. The boats were upside down in the water. Once I righted the boats, I discovered they were in very good condition. In the dream I reclaimed these small boats.
These dreams center on reclaiming small things WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M DOING WITH THESE NOVELLAS.
Spooky, I know. But I’ve come to consider these dreams nice little perks of my writing process. I welcome these dream babies, partly for the encouragement they provide, but mostly because they don’t need diapers.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables?
If You Search For My Website With: “Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables”…
Apparently and unfortunately, you will get my website. But I do not understand how. Sure, I’m glad it gets you to my site, but really, how embarrassing to search for me with such an unflattering question.
First off, my character Slade is a washed up drugged out punk rocker, prone to violent outbursts and the most offensive behavior. But he certainly has not pooped on a glass table. I’m not ruling out other types of tables, rugs, socks or small furry animals. But I assure you, he’s not defiled a glass table. At least, not yet.
Secondly, if anyone were to associate the word “poop” which one of my characters at least get the character correct. When I think of my writing (which I assure you if of the highest caliber) and poop, I think of Chigger “FreckleFart” Larson who was caught praying on the pooper.
Quite scandalous, I know. In Chigg’s defense, the bathroom stall was the only place she could find for such a private moment. The praying, I mean.
As a writer, I’d like to think that readers could find my website by searching for any of the following:
• “Greatest writer on the face of the earth.”
• “Winner of every Nobel Prize for Literature for the next eighty years.”
• Or simply, “She who’s name cannot be spoken.”
As a realist, I’m pretty certain the last selection would not direct people to my website. But as my literary career progresses, I’m fairly confident readers will be able to find my site using the first two selections.
But until then, I guess just search for me with, “Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables”…
You’ll get me every time.
Apparently and unfortunately, you will get my website. But I do not understand how. Sure, I’m glad it gets you to my site, but really, how embarrassing to search for me with such an unflattering question.
First off, my character Slade is a washed up drugged out punk rocker, prone to violent outbursts and the most offensive behavior. But he certainly has not pooped on a glass table. I’m not ruling out other types of tables, rugs, socks or small furry animals. But I assure you, he’s not defiled a glass table. At least, not yet.
Secondly, if anyone were to associate the word “poop” which one of my characters at least get the character correct. When I think of my writing (which I assure you if of the highest caliber) and poop, I think of Chigger “FreckleFart” Larson who was caught praying on the pooper.
Quite scandalous, I know. In Chigg’s defense, the bathroom stall was the only place she could find for such a private moment. The praying, I mean.
As a writer, I’d like to think that readers could find my website by searching for any of the following:
• “Greatest writer on the face of the earth.”
• “Winner of every Nobel Prize for Literature for the next eighty years.”
• Or simply, “She who’s name cannot be spoken.”
As a realist, I’m pretty certain the last selection would not direct people to my website. But as my literary career progresses, I’m fairly confident readers will be able to find my site using the first two selections.
But until then, I guess just search for me with, “Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables”…
You’ll get me every time.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Help Wanted: Input On The Best Jacket Copy You've Never Read
Okay, you know the routine. I've revamped my jacket copy for my YA book. Please read and let me know how this could possibly get any better.
Jacket copy for Cursed! My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg
Eighth grade was to be the greatest year ever for Ginny Edgars, creative genius and future award winning zombie screenwriter. But after Ginny and her gang land in the principal’s office, AGAIN, her friends are forbidden to associate with her.
Friendless and left to her own devices by her career obsessed parents, Ginny determines to befriend Chigg Larson, the class freakazoid. But Chigg is too scared to have anything to do with Ginny or anyone else since her father’s death.
Everyone in Locust Fork believes Chigg is the bearer of a family curse and responsible for her father’s tragic death. Chigg kind of believes it, too. It’s the only way she can explain why her mother’s warm love has turned ice cold.
Desperate to regain her mother’s love, Chigg turns to Ginny to help her uncover the truth about the curse, her family and herself. With the help of an ancient soothsayer, the girls embark on a quest that leads them to the curse’s origin and to Della, Chigg’s great grandmother, rumored to have gone crazy after drowning her daughter.
The girls quickly learn nothing is as it seem. The discovery of Della’s diary convinces Chigg she bears the curse, sparking a devastating course of self-destruction that leaves Chigger fighting for her life.
Relying on her foxy cleverness and a few zombie combatant moves, Ginny risks everything to save her friend from Della’s fate, all while writing the greatest movie ever, Space Zombies in Love.
Please let me know if this works for a jacket copy. You attention is greatly appreciated.
If this tempting morsal of text has you dying for more... please click here to download the first three chapters of the book for free.
Jacket copy for Cursed! My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg
Eighth grade was to be the greatest year ever for Ginny Edgars, creative genius and future award winning zombie screenwriter. But after Ginny and her gang land in the principal’s office, AGAIN, her friends are forbidden to associate with her.
Friendless and left to her own devices by her career obsessed parents, Ginny determines to befriend Chigg Larson, the class freakazoid. But Chigg is too scared to have anything to do with Ginny or anyone else since her father’s death.
Everyone in Locust Fork believes Chigg is the bearer of a family curse and responsible for her father’s tragic death. Chigg kind of believes it, too. It’s the only way she can explain why her mother’s warm love has turned ice cold.
Desperate to regain her mother’s love, Chigg turns to Ginny to help her uncover the truth about the curse, her family and herself. With the help of an ancient soothsayer, the girls embark on a quest that leads them to the curse’s origin and to Della, Chigg’s great grandmother, rumored to have gone crazy after drowning her daughter.
The girls quickly learn nothing is as it seem. The discovery of Della’s diary convinces Chigg she bears the curse, sparking a devastating course of self-destruction that leaves Chigger fighting for her life.
Relying on her foxy cleverness and a few zombie combatant moves, Ginny risks everything to save her friend from Della’s fate, all while writing the greatest movie ever, Space Zombies in Love.
Please let me know if this works for a jacket copy. You attention is greatly appreciated.
If this tempting morsal of text has you dying for more... please click here to download the first three chapters of the book for free.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Behold, the Chigg: Praying on the Pooper
From my novel Cursed! My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg!
So after a triumphant raid on the boys’ bathroom to swipe all the toilet paper, we paraded into the girls bathroom, laughing and shouting, “Ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, ding dong the wicked witch is dead.”
Then Mindy, with her short, spiky blonde ponytail bobbing anxiously on her head, asked, “Have you ever in your life seen anything as funny as those funny little sinks in the boys’ bathroom?”
“Not I, Min-min,” replied Shannon gravely from behind her round owl glasses. “How do you think they wash their hands? Those sinks didn’t have any faucets.”
“Silly rabbit, those weren’t real sinks. They’re urinals,” I explained in my harsh, toneless Mrs. Jutney voice. “They don’t need sinks. It’s a scientifically proven fact that boys do not wash their hands.”
“That’s just gross!”
“It’s disgusting!”
“Why it’s downright revolting, if you ask me!”
Then mayhem ensued until I kicked open the first bathroom stall and declared, “I christen thee, La Toiletta, Queen of the Golden Waters.” The toilet was flushed and we erupted into riotous cheers.
I found this exercise very agreeable and moved on to the next stall. But when I kicked the door open, there sat Carrie Larson. But no one ever called her Carrie, just Frecklefart Fanny because of the big, red, splotchy freckles that covered her entire body.
But never, not once did I ever call her Frecklefart Fanny, or Frecklefart, or just Fart as others did. That’s just disrespectful and crude, two things I am most certainly not.
I only ever called her Chigger, or the Chigg, because every time I looked at her during the first two weeks of school she was furiously scratching chigger bites. Some people I could name said she had fleas, but I knew they were chiggers from experience.
Let’s just say, it is not a good idea to run through a field of waist-high stinkweed wearing only an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny Pocahontas bikini and red velvet cowboy boots in the dead of summer while pretending to be Miss America. Take it from me; such an exercise will only end in tragedy, tragedy in the form of the most obscenely thorough case of chigger infestation ever!
And did I itch like crazy?
You know I did.
Carrie sat there on the pot with that frizzy red hair puffed to extremes all over her head, her face covered in what could only be described as a bad case of being the Chigg. She wore a ridiculous blue and white ski jacket, as she had every day since school started the month before, even though it wouldn’t get cold in Alabama until December.
She had a book in her hand, one of those little green pocket bibles.
And there she was, not looking at us, frozen, quiet, small, waiting for us to go away. Waiting for us to run back to class and tell everyone that we caught her praying on the pooper. And maybe we would have. Only there was something about Carrie Larson that made me pause for once.
So instead of running to class with my big mouth yapping, which in retrospect is exactly what I should have done, I threw my arm grandly toward Carrie, did my award winning bugle salute sound effect, and announced, “Behold, the Chigg.”
And that was when everything started for me.
*****
Click to download free chapters.
Click for more Cursed! posts.
So after a triumphant raid on the boys’ bathroom to swipe all the toilet paper, we paraded into the girls bathroom, laughing and shouting, “Ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, ding dong the wicked witch is dead.”
Then Mindy, with her short, spiky blonde ponytail bobbing anxiously on her head, asked, “Have you ever in your life seen anything as funny as those funny little sinks in the boys’ bathroom?”
“Not I, Min-min,” replied Shannon gravely from behind her round owl glasses. “How do you think they wash their hands? Those sinks didn’t have any faucets.”
“Silly rabbit, those weren’t real sinks. They’re urinals,” I explained in my harsh, toneless Mrs. Jutney voice. “They don’t need sinks. It’s a scientifically proven fact that boys do not wash their hands.”
“That’s just gross!”
“It’s disgusting!”
“Why it’s downright revolting, if you ask me!”
Then mayhem ensued until I kicked open the first bathroom stall and declared, “I christen thee, La Toiletta, Queen of the Golden Waters.” The toilet was flushed and we erupted into riotous cheers.
I found this exercise very agreeable and moved on to the next stall. But when I kicked the door open, there sat Carrie Larson. But no one ever called her Carrie, just Frecklefart Fanny because of the big, red, splotchy freckles that covered her entire body.
But never, not once did I ever call her Frecklefart Fanny, or Frecklefart, or just Fart as others did. That’s just disrespectful and crude, two things I am most certainly not.
I only ever called her Chigger, or the Chigg, because every time I looked at her during the first two weeks of school she was furiously scratching chigger bites. Some people I could name said she had fleas, but I knew they were chiggers from experience.
Let’s just say, it is not a good idea to run through a field of waist-high stinkweed wearing only an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny Pocahontas bikini and red velvet cowboy boots in the dead of summer while pretending to be Miss America. Take it from me; such an exercise will only end in tragedy, tragedy in the form of the most obscenely thorough case of chigger infestation ever!
And did I itch like crazy?
You know I did.
Carrie sat there on the pot with that frizzy red hair puffed to extremes all over her head, her face covered in what could only be described as a bad case of being the Chigg. She wore a ridiculous blue and white ski jacket, as she had every day since school started the month before, even though it wouldn’t get cold in Alabama until December.
She had a book in her hand, one of those little green pocket bibles.
And there she was, not looking at us, frozen, quiet, small, waiting for us to go away. Waiting for us to run back to class and tell everyone that we caught her praying on the pooper. And maybe we would have. Only there was something about Carrie Larson that made me pause for once.
So instead of running to class with my big mouth yapping, which in retrospect is exactly what I should have done, I threw my arm grandly toward Carrie, did my award winning bugle salute sound effect, and announced, “Behold, the Chigg.”
And that was when everything started for me.
*****
Click to download free chapters.
Click for more Cursed! posts.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
For a Lady Godzilla, You Sure Got Mothra Manners.
From my novel Cursed! My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg!
“Hey, hey, Lady Godzilla, don’t burn me with your fire lizard breath.”
That’s Mr. Lan. He calls me Lady Godzilla because I am blessed with a statuesque physique, meaning I am tall and strong.
But lately I haven’t been feeling too tall, or too strong. In fact, I’ve been feeling like a pair of worn-out gym shoes stuck in sticky, grimy goo, the kind that oozes beneath theater seats. It’s like I’m stuck in a theater where the same horrific movie is replayed over and over. And that horrific movie is only my entire eighth-grade year.
“Mr Lan, if you’re waiting for me to call you a gnarled-up Cambodian pygmy, it’s not going to happen. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I’ve matured a lot since last summer, and I’m no longer interested in arguing with you,” I inform him quite politely. I add, “And since you insisted on taking over my room until the week before I start high school, I would really appreciate it if you would try to be a little more pleasant.”
“You mind go blank-blank, dumb-dumb?” he asks as if I hadn’t said a word. “Set table up for game. I not getting any younger, and you not getting any prettier.”
So much for being pleasant. He’s looking at me with sharp eyes, daring me to retaliate. “Hey, you listening?” Mr. Lan smacks the table with his palm. “Or you got worms in ear again?”
I bite my lip. A, they weren’t even real worms that time, just gummy worms. And B, they weren’t even gummy worms, they were gummy bears. I could tell him all this, but I keep my saintly mouth sealed as I open the box of dominoes. I refuse to let him antagonize me.
“What happened to that big mouth?” He looks at me suspiciously. “I gone one year and now you too big-shot Godzilla girl to talk to poor Mr. Lan.” Then he looks around the room. “How big shot mature Lady Godzilla like I take down these silly monster posters?” He stretches his hand to the Night of the Living Dead poster hanging above my bed. He knows full well it is my all-time favorite movie ever.
I say, “Geez, calm down, you old crank-case,” knowing it’s what he wants to hear, but my heart just isn’t in it. My heart is plumb worn out.
And even though I know I should keep my mouth shut and rise above his petty aggravation, I have to set the record straight. “First off, they are not silly monsters. If you knew anything about anything you’d know they are zombies. And it is a scientific fact that the walking dead may be real. If you want proof, just look in the mirror.”
I didn’t mean to add that last part, had sworn I wouldn’t stoop to Mr. Lan’s level, yet somehow he always brings out the worst in me.
“For a Lady Godzilla, you sure got Mothra manners. You be nice and I let you change my bedpan. How you like that?” he asks with his beady eyes shining meanly.
And even though I am now a mature young woman with a promising high school career before me, I play along despite the fact it’s the last thing I want to do.
“Bedpan? You don’t even have a bedpan. What you have is halitosis.” Halitosis is chronic bad breath, and if there’s one thing Mr. Lan has it’s chronic bad breath. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is toxic. Okay, toxic and noxious. Like having sewer vapors leak into the air each time his cranky old mouth creaks open.
“Bad breath is a sign of illness, Chicky. I’m very sick man,” he adds, pulling his red silk kimono closed at his neck. He says he is sick, but he is not. He just likes taking an afternoon siesta.
*****
Click to download free chapters.
Click for more Cursed! posts.
“Hey, hey, Lady Godzilla, don’t burn me with your fire lizard breath.”
That’s Mr. Lan. He calls me Lady Godzilla because I am blessed with a statuesque physique, meaning I am tall and strong.
But lately I haven’t been feeling too tall, or too strong. In fact, I’ve been feeling like a pair of worn-out gym shoes stuck in sticky, grimy goo, the kind that oozes beneath theater seats. It’s like I’m stuck in a theater where the same horrific movie is replayed over and over. And that horrific movie is only my entire eighth-grade year.
“Mr Lan, if you’re waiting for me to call you a gnarled-up Cambodian pygmy, it’s not going to happen. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I’ve matured a lot since last summer, and I’m no longer interested in arguing with you,” I inform him quite politely. I add, “And since you insisted on taking over my room until the week before I start high school, I would really appreciate it if you would try to be a little more pleasant.”
“You mind go blank-blank, dumb-dumb?” he asks as if I hadn’t said a word. “Set table up for game. I not getting any younger, and you not getting any prettier.”
So much for being pleasant. He’s looking at me with sharp eyes, daring me to retaliate. “Hey, you listening?” Mr. Lan smacks the table with his palm. “Or you got worms in ear again?”
I bite my lip. A, they weren’t even real worms that time, just gummy worms. And B, they weren’t even gummy worms, they were gummy bears. I could tell him all this, but I keep my saintly mouth sealed as I open the box of dominoes. I refuse to let him antagonize me.
“What happened to that big mouth?” He looks at me suspiciously. “I gone one year and now you too big-shot Godzilla girl to talk to poor Mr. Lan.” Then he looks around the room. “How big shot mature Lady Godzilla like I take down these silly monster posters?” He stretches his hand to the Night of the Living Dead poster hanging above my bed. He knows full well it is my all-time favorite movie ever.
I say, “Geez, calm down, you old crank-case,” knowing it’s what he wants to hear, but my heart just isn’t in it. My heart is plumb worn out.
And even though I know I should keep my mouth shut and rise above his petty aggravation, I have to set the record straight. “First off, they are not silly monsters. If you knew anything about anything you’d know they are zombies. And it is a scientific fact that the walking dead may be real. If you want proof, just look in the mirror.”
I didn’t mean to add that last part, had sworn I wouldn’t stoop to Mr. Lan’s level, yet somehow he always brings out the worst in me.
“For a Lady Godzilla, you sure got Mothra manners. You be nice and I let you change my bedpan. How you like that?” he asks with his beady eyes shining meanly.
And even though I am now a mature young woman with a promising high school career before me, I play along despite the fact it’s the last thing I want to do.
“Bedpan? You don’t even have a bedpan. What you have is halitosis.” Halitosis is chronic bad breath, and if there’s one thing Mr. Lan has it’s chronic bad breath. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is toxic. Okay, toxic and noxious. Like having sewer vapors leak into the air each time his cranky old mouth creaks open.
“Bad breath is a sign of illness, Chicky. I’m very sick man,” he adds, pulling his red silk kimono closed at his neck. He says he is sick, but he is not. He just likes taking an afternoon siesta.
*****
Click to download free chapters.
Click for more Cursed! posts.
Monday, January 17, 2011
A family curse, a stump-toed soothsayer, zombies, mortal enemies, bffs and so much more...
A summary of my novel: My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg
Eighth grade was to be the greatest year ever for Ginny Edgars, creative genius, food connoisseur and future award winning zombie screenwriter.
But after one too many adventures lands Ginny and her friends in the principles office, again, she is abandoned by her friends and left to her own devices by her career-obsessed parents.
Alone, and still grieving the death of her beloved Gramps, Ginny determines to befriend eighth grade freakazoid #1, Carrie 'Chigger' Larson.
Only Chigger, the biggest sourpuss in the entire world, resists Ginny's friendship every stinking step of the way until an ancient Indian soothsayer sends Chigger on a quest to learn the truth about the Larson Curse.
Chigger fears the family curse killed her father and caused her mother to stop loving her. Even though Ginny knows curses are a bunch of bulloney, she agrees to help Chigger put an end to the evil that has plagued the Larsons for generations.
But the discovery of an old family diary destroys the girls' friendship, and sets Chigger on a devastating course of self-destruction that leaves her fighting for her very life.
Relying on her foxy cleverness and a few zombie combatant moves, Ginny resolves to solve the mystery of the curse and save Chigger, all while writing the greatest zombie movie ever, Space Zombies in Love.
*****
Click here to access additional Cursed! posts.
Eighth grade was to be the greatest year ever for Ginny Edgars, creative genius, food connoisseur and future award winning zombie screenwriter.
But after one too many adventures lands Ginny and her friends in the principles office, again, she is abandoned by her friends and left to her own devices by her career-obsessed parents.
Alone, and still grieving the death of her beloved Gramps, Ginny determines to befriend eighth grade freakazoid #1, Carrie 'Chigger' Larson.
Only Chigger, the biggest sourpuss in the entire world, resists Ginny's friendship every stinking step of the way until an ancient Indian soothsayer sends Chigger on a quest to learn the truth about the Larson Curse.
Chigger fears the family curse killed her father and caused her mother to stop loving her. Even though Ginny knows curses are a bunch of bulloney, she agrees to help Chigger put an end to the evil that has plagued the Larsons for generations.
But the discovery of an old family diary destroys the girls' friendship, and sets Chigger on a devastating course of self-destruction that leaves her fighting for her very life.
Relying on her foxy cleverness and a few zombie combatant moves, Ginny resolves to solve the mystery of the curse and save Chigger, all while writing the greatest zombie movie ever, Space Zombies in Love.
*****
Click here to access additional Cursed! posts.
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