Odd Birds

Erm... and gratuitous butt shots...

So my friend… I’ll call her the ‘Other Tart’ made a list yesterday about ways a person might know she was a writer. It’s a very good, giggle-worthy list, and her readers added some great ones. Go look, if you don’t believe me (or even if you do).

It got me thinking (oh, no—not time to say ‘uh oh’, yet. It wasn’t a dangerous thought)… Thinking about the person who eaves drops not for gossip, but for character quirks, the person jotting notes on a napkin because that brain of hers never stops working, that person who can’t WAIT for everyone to just LEAVE already so she can be ALONE because then she can WRITE!

The person who dreams about writing a mystery about writers at a conference where people keep dropping off… (I love books about writers—I wonder if writers love them a lot more than other people)… I love TV shows about writers, too… Murder She Wrote was a favorite for years… Now it’s Castle (then again Nathan Fillion does NOT hurt that case, though I got to see a lot more of his butt on Firefly.)

Water Polo

I took my son to Water Polo last night—it is through the local Rec&Ed, not the US team, unfortunately, and is at the high school on the farthest side of town… Oh, I know, Ann Arbor isn’t so big, but it’s about a twenty minute drive, so to drop him off and go home, just to turn back around to pick him up would be silly… I stay.

There was a dad with a laptop… I suppose he might have been writing. There was a dad pacing, doing everything he could not to dive in there and correct the nice high school kid who is teaching these middle-schoolers. And there were moms… reading… all of them except the insane one with a pile of notes and papers she kept thumbing through… the one who made her list of suspects and made sure each one had a lie they would tell over the course of the book (thanks for that tip, Elizabeth!), and then wrote madly for an hour, and didn’t even NOTICE it was going over until a different mom said, ‘weren’t they supposed to end fifteen minutes ago?’

“Wha? Huh?”

[gratuitous EXTRA water polo player shot]

I’d been so thoroughly in my world that the lot of them had ceased to exist. Good thing nobody needed saving.

I’m not sure I used to be able to so completely lose myself when there was so much going on. I think this is a new skill… probably not one that’s going to be good for my social life.

Ah well. The first draft of the first cozy chapter is written (sticking to the chapter every 5 days plan, though I definitely need to do finish my Roanoke research to fill in some holes… and I keep thinking of things I forgot to include… should probably fill them in, then tighten, then decide what can be moved until later, as they will probably frown on a 30-page first chapters *cough* In other words, I will have my editing job cut out for me
… but the STORY is flowing… I suppose that is the important point.

Have any of you picked up and quirks or ticks since you committed to writing, or am I slowly going insane all by myself?

Nine Crisco Twisters

On the Ninth day of Christmas, her Tartness gave to us...

Nine Crisco Twisters

Eight Solstice Wishes

Seven Success Secrets...

Six Writing Tasks

Five Sii---illy Songs

Four Cross-Dressed

Three Christmas Lists

Two Tartlet Minis

And a Boy Toy on a Hay Bale

Nine Crisco Twisters? Are you serious?

Well... No and Yes...

Nine would be a lot of Crisco Twisters, if you want my honest opinion on the matter. Even on a good day I've probably only got a dozen friends willing to play... it IS messy (picture notwithstanding, we typically have not worn this many clothes, so typically there is also a shower involved, or a hot tub), after all, and twelve people easily fits on three boards—two if you're really GOOD friends.

And actually, I think we always used margarine, but that was more because Crisco seems to be something I only have on hand when I know I am going to be baking something that uses it... not that as an adult I use margarine... switched to butter years ago... and Crisco DOES spread on the board better... but I digress...


Nine Crisco Twisters? Are you serious?

Well Yes and No...Nine may be a lot of Crisco Twister games to have around, but it DOES seem like a reasonable goal for the number of nefarious use products one ought to have around at any given time... Some others on the list...

Hot wheels (frozen): These run ever so nicely over the hills and dales of your favorite playmate... though watch it if said playmate is hairy—chest hair in particular, is averse to those hot wheel wheels and tend to make those burly guys scream like girly men.

You should always have a set in your freezer...

Kiddy pool: Preferably with strong enough sides that it can contain pudding or jello for a nice wrestling match.

Knitted Hand cuffs: Though the fur variety hold better, and the plain old metal ones are good if you've got a mean streak... silk scarf will do in a pinch... still... just OWNING knitted hand cuffs shows a certain twist of mind that just SCREAMS tart...

Dress up clothes: Oh, I know.... you SAY they are for future Halloweens, but that eye patch is sexy on any given Thursday, if you ask me.

Whip: because how else are you going to make them dance like you like? I mean seriously?

Food stuffs, preferably creamy in texture: chocolate, whipped cream, pudding, honey, frosting... brightly colored is good... put it on as war paint before you begin...

Bouncy Ball: (the big exercise kind)--if you can't see the use of this, you're just not trying hard enough...


IMAGINATION. No limits my friends... not a one...


And before you tell me Santa is going to put me on the naughty list, here is my theory... you know how in the game of Hearts you try to AVOID taking hearts, but if you take ALL the hearts then you Shoot the Moon and win the hand? I figure Santa's naughty list works just about that way... if you are a little naughty, it counts against you, but if you are TOTALLY naughty, then in comes back around and you win and get to be considered nice again...

So this is just the Tart, Shootin' the Moon...

Bondage Cures Sensitivity!

Since Misattribution is my Super Power, I thought I’d relay my morning to you for your own enlightenment.

My Morning Bondage

“Open. Wider,” he says, not understanding that this is as wide as it gets

“Do you need some suction?” My eyes dart, the rest of me trapped, as I notice a woman I’ve never seen before has come in.

“Ow!” I protest.

“Are you sensitive?” (to me) “Hand my some topical.” (to her)

You see… I have some places my gums have receded a little, and the sensitive part of the tooth is showing. My dentist says they are inclined to cavities, which has been proven by one of the little suckers having one, but more important to me is this sensitivity to cold and pressure… The dentist said a couple bonds over the places would resolve the problem. So far, the bondage truly does seem to have helped my sensitivity, but I will have a better gage on the matter when I’m no longer numb from the violation.


Nudist Movement Spreads!

So after the dentist, I was walking to work (I do this every day—it’s about 2 ½ miles and I really enjoy it). I was walking up Liberty, one of Ann Arbor’s major cross streets, if you can call a single lane each direction major. As I approached campus, what do I see, but PANTS in a garbage can! Another person has lightened their clothing load and is running amok in Ann Arbor! I encourage all of you to do the same before it gets too cold!


No Dirty Laundry for me!

Since nudists don’t generate laundry, you all already know it all, but LEGACY has reached chapter 15. The writing is still pretty easy, but has slowed from the manic ‘must write’ compulsion… still ought to get out 3 or 4 chapters a week though, which means I should be able to hand Mari a draft when she visits in mid-October (hear that Mari? Digressionista or not, I expect you to hold me to that.)

Agent front still as fruitless, but still 8 out there… I am debating using one of the blogs that tear apart Queries… the problem with CONFLUENCE is it is a complicated tale, difficult to nail down in a perky 300 words, but I know it is necessary for the sale… I may retackle it though this weekend… I’m thinking I took the guy too seriously who said SHORT (the 3 sentence guy) and that I need more space and it won’t be held against me provided it is all necessary to get my point across…

I hope all of you have an excellent weekend!

Bad Boys in Women’s Clothing

PG-13 content warning. One of my Facebook friends, Carola Dunn, shared a link yesterday that caused me to giggle. http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20090812/NEWS/908120415/1001 This man was caught sneaking into a woman’s garage and stealing her panties out of her dryer (which apparently is hooked up in said garage), but he didn’t stop there. He removed all his OTHER clothing and put the panties ON before leaving. There are so many fetishes involved here I can’t even begin to count. First, he HAD to know she was at home—she was doing LAUNDRY! So there is the cross dressing thing, the getting naked thing, the impulsiveness of not being able to wait, and the risk of getting caught. Surely there are more, but it is just a truly bizarre crime (that happened in Oregon, no less). Now I had a friend who had her studio broken into when we were in our early 20s, and that guy got in her underwear drawer too, so I understand how disturbing this is for the victim… but I still can’t help but chuckle at the confluence of the cross-dressing and the Darwinian Award nature of this crime (Darwin Awards being those awarded to people who remove themselves from the gene pool through sheer stupidity). But it reminds me… Cross-dressed Death Eaters My infatuation of the idea of cross dressed Death Eaters was born when I first spotted the following song on a HPANA thread dedicated to Monty Python (my two favorite things in one place! *fangirlsqueal*): I'm a Death Eater, and I'm okay. I plot all night and I teach all day. He's a Death Eater, and he's okay. He plots all night and he teaches all day. I take house points. I yell at kids. I go to my dungeon. On Wednesdays I'm at Hogsmeade. Have butterbeer alone. For those of you not familiar with the original, here is Monty Python’s ‘I’m a Lumberjack” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg Now Dumbledore is obviously a guy who is naked under his robes… but Lucius Malfoy? No way! Corset, garter belt, fishnets… the man is all about the trimmings! (heck, he keeps albino peacocks in his garden!) I’m not sure why it makes me chuckle so much, but it does, and clearly I’m not alone, as my friend Stacy found the above avatar for me. Maybe it is just the juxtaposition of soft, pretty, sexy things with irredeemable villains that is so delicious. But what about Real Life? I confess that I lose some people here. I have friends who love the idea of cross-dressed death eaters who cannot abide by my insistence that men in touch with their feminine side are actually more appealing, so I should clarify. If anyone were allowed to wear pants at my house, it would probably be me—don’t get me wrong, I’m not masculine, and my husband isn’t feminine, but I’m the wage earner, and I drive our big decisions (buying a house, moving across the country). My husband has been largely an at home parent, and he is the only one competent to keep track of appointments, schedules, and where our children are. We have reversed roles. So maybe there is SOMETHING in me, a little more inclined to switch things up. But the reality of it is, I find men willing to gender bend a little, are generally more open minded and playful and THAT is the actual turn on of it—no rules, no hang ups. A performer like Steven Tyler is infinitely more sexy to me because he can put on a boa. That’s not to dis Chad Kroeger, because he is clearly the hottest person on the planet, but he balances his lack of feminine with an obviously dirty mind and that voice that sends shivers down my thighs.

Naked World Domination Tour

I’ve been leading a movement for a couple years now to get everybody to just lighten up and take their clothes off. It is about silliness and fun, but there is an underlying theory that it is hard for people to be mean to each other when everybody is naked. That’s what I want… a world of NICE people! Doesn’t that sound appealing?

Oh, don’t worry. It doesn’t mean people can’t be a little naughty too... A pudding fight, making those men held in the dungeon dance like I like, lots of innuendo and fun. My kind of world.

One of the components though, of this naked haven, is an unspoken anti-material vent. You see disrobing is symbolic of letting go of the stuff for the sake of stuff. Why worry about who has more toys (we should all be SHARING the toys, ne?)

Ironically though, in all my super-silliness with the somewhat serious underpinning, I’ve made a friend via Facebook, with another writer doing the social networking thing. She is part of a more serious movement with some of these same underlying goals… a world where people treat each other with respect and kindness… a world that puts humanity, spirituality, experiences, and relationships before STUFF.

She is older than me… an authentic hippy, rather than the variety that stems from going to college in Eugene, Oregon. And the ideas she presents will probably be completely foreign to the subset of you based in the Midwest (the hippies in Ann Arbor drive SUVs). But in summary, there is a movement to make the world better through our combined energies.

It is not inconsistent with ANY religion—can be thought of as prayer, or not, depending on your vent. In the sixties they called it the age of Aquarius, because planetarily, that is what is happening, but what it MEANS is ‘think good things’. Spend some time envisioning the world as it OUGHT to be. Meditate, pray, commune with nature… however it is you touch your spirituality. Think of a world of reduced greed, an earth recovering from how hard we’ve been on it, societies that put people first, especially the future people, for whom we are only the earth’s stewards.

I want to share Marian’s blogs with you, in case you want to read in far more detail than I could accurately give:

http://siderealview.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/the-spiritual-route-ey-used-to-call-it-the-road-less-travelled/
http://youngbloodblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/entering-the-infinity-gate/

So everybody… think happy things! That, and some naked happy dancing, and all will be okay!

Naked Thursday

Since I’m not allowed to start Naked Thursday in the Common room, I figured maybe I could try it here now and again. Since it’s my first Naked Thursday in the Confessory, I am just going to throw a little party for some of the people who have helped, encouraged and kept me going, writer-wise.

I have to start with my writer’s group—The Burrow ROCKS. I LOVE these people.



Here are 5 of us in Cardiff last August, I’m in the middle, but make no mistake, that is MY big brown beer at the front.



And the same batch at our B&B with our Hogwart’s scarves, knitted by Leanne because she ROCKS (the same Leanne of the buff puff quill that is doing my post polish sparkle on CONFLUENCE).

And to prove these are the funnest people in the whole world… (because funnest IS a word when we are involved)



Here we are set to go to our French Taunting.

This is only five (and I recognize in that last picture, to get five, you have to count like King Arthur) of the thirteen of us, but these fabulous people are the core that keeps me encouraged, has the guts to tell me when something doesn’t sparkle like it should, and have been editing and advising, each to her own strength as I make this journey.

So Ladies (er… and Jason).. THANK YOU!

And Joris—special thanks to you too for always being my graphical go-to guy, whether it is a book cover or Lucius in drag I am looking for.



I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank the FABULOUS people who have read and encouraged my fan fiction stuff (at HPANA: screen name Gnargles&Snorkaks). The format, posting, instant feedback, chatter—mostly about cross dressed death eaters, my naked world domination tour, and innuendo, led to confidence, belonging, and… obligation… I couldn’t stop what I’d started and thereby learned to finish… the last step in a first draft, and something I had never before accomplished.

And then I have a new couple batches to thank… my real life friends who have been so encouraging since I ‘came out’ as a writer, and the established writers who have been so helpful and encouraging as I transition from ‘pre-published’ *snort* to published.

Naughty and Nice

The classic tale is, of course, good versus evil, but the naughty versus nice debate is not nearly so flushed out. Contrary to the slander flying around about me being an evil twin, in the battle of good versus evil, I always fall solidly good (I heard that snort, I don‘t know who it was, but I heard it). I really don’t want anybody to be mean and if they are, I want them to pay. I am decidedly, instead, the naughty twin. But the whole debate sent me on a tangent… something required of my religion: Digressionism, so it’s good. I’ve read interviews from soap actors (I know, just another skeleton in my closet) and actors who play really rotten characters talk about a release. They are able to play out every horrible thing they’ve ever thought, so the demons no longer lurk at the edge of their home life. Peter Bergen (once the beloved Cliff on All My Children, since then, the ruthless Jack on the Young and the Restless) said his wife prefers him playing the bad guy because he’s so much nicer at home. What I’m wondering, and bringing up for discussion, is the question of whether the writer gets the same release, and are there parameters around which it works and doesn’t work? I’ve written some bad guys, I’ve even gotten in their heads, but inevitably I come to understand and sympathize and am so compelled to redeem them that it is almost beyond me to stop. In fact, the transition I usually make is that they come to understand they are not meant to be evil, just a little naughty. So the effect of writing a bad guy, for me, has been an expansion of empathy, I suppose, and an increased urge to be a little bit naughty. The empathy fits making me nicer, but not in the way I was thinking because it is so convoluted. Empathy for evil people doesn’t make one act more nicely, necessarily, except maybe in relation to those evil people. I want to know if anyone has succeeded in getting deeply in the head of someone BEYOND redemption, and if it has had a positive or negative effect on their personality. Does writing awful things act as catharsis and so bad behavior in real life goes down, or does it desensitize and permit a little of one’s evil self to reach the surface and grow?

Grail Shaped Beacon

The Holy Grail for anybody who has just finished her first ‘Ready-for-Mass-Consumption’ novel is publishing. Getting my book out there, my name out there, making a career of writing things more than 10% of the population can follow… a beautiful dream. And it will happen. But I am discovering, as with any intense pursuit, distractions. “It’s not the real grail?” I should probably explain that for a rather mellow personality, I can be quite obsessive. My first obsession in memory was cartwheels. I spent most of 1970 to 1984 upside down. In the interim there, a poor boy named Brian received daily letters from me when I was eleven as the penalty he earned for being nice to me while I was on vacation. More recently obsessions have been running, Harry Potter, and now writing. The writing is at least a practical obsession, as I hope someday it earns me a living. But if you saw the neglected piles in my bedroom and basement, you’d know it is no small thing to be obsessed. (Did you hear my husband just groan?) There is a price. The problem at hand however, is that I keep running across Grail Shaped Beacons… sweet, shining mirages promising to propel my writing out into the cosmos. My Facebook writer’s profile? As if I didn’t already spend enough time on Facebook! Now I am tracing the friend paths of people from the writing world to find other promising ‘friends’. Oi! Researching Agents (who has time? But it can’t be skipped!) And now… Blogs. The problem with the Blog, like the Microbrew thing in the 90s… is I really LIKE this one. It could suck me in far deeper than it is healthy to be. Writing a few paragraphs without having to obsess over whether they move the story forward. The main character is ME! There is a narcissism to it that is fabulously reinforcing. And I can justify it as necessary! But do I risk getting bogged down in this fun ‘tool’ and miss some of the other necessities and opportunities? I could be researching those agents right now! But might this silly exercise get me noticed? The trouble is, it’s hard to say. And because I know nobody with connections to get my novel read by a decision-making person in the business, I suppose I need to do all of it. Blogs, writing contests (which take away time from writing my next book, mind you). My feeble attempt at networking. Oh… and then there’s my day job. So what I want to know is, if this is only a grail shaped beacon, and not the real grail, where is Dingo to set things right, and where do we line up for our spankings?