(My neighbor Jeff)

For the first time in years, my husband, two kids and I went east for Christmas.  We all stayed healthy (for once), and our flights were on time (despite warnings of snow delays).  Only one problem:  my nine-year-old son, Philip, who stubbornly clings to his belief in Santa Claus, insisted that the big guy should leave our gifts at our home in California, not at his grandparents’ house on Cape Cod.  To keep the magic alive, I asked my friend Tracey to stuff the our Christmas stockings while we were away. What I didn’t realize was that Philip had left a note:

Santa if you come

if I get coal tell why here please ->    if I don’t write (no coal) here ->

Put a gift I would like most on my bed     Or if I get coal no coal on bed please

Sign here please ____________________ PS big writing please

Quiz on back for you please do it       tern over

Is your sleigh tricked out? yes/no

Is there really a Rudolph?  yes/no

Do raindeer really pole your sleigh?  yes/no

How many Cristmases have you diliverd presants?   _____ wright number please

Mary Christmas Santa     writen by Philip

Fortunately, Tracey saw the note and left a typed response:

Dear Philip,

I just love getting letters from the good children!  In fact, I receive so many letters that I bring my laptop with me everywhere I go.  No coal for you this year.  I have just enough to go around for all the naughty little boys and girls.  Now, I will answer your quiz, but you must promise to be kind to your sister and behave for your parents this year.

1. My sleigh is not “tricked out.”  A few years ago, some of the elves tried to “trick my ride,” but we discovered that all the flashy stuff made it too heavy for the reindeer to pull.  I did put in a high end GPS last year for some of the more remote locations.

2. There really is a Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, but he isn’t on the payroll.  Donner leads most of my flights.  Sometimes Blitzen.

3. Yes, the reindeer really pull the sleigh.  They are quite strong and agile.

4. This year will be 2007

I missed the cookies and milk this year.  Could Cookie and Cecil* have eaten them?

Love, Santa

*my cats

Philip was thrilled to find the note, of course, but a little peeved that Santa had neglected to leave a present on his bed, as instructed.

Happy new year, everyone & best wishes for keeping the magic — any magic, no matter how farfetched — alive.

Stop:

 . . . calling me to ask me how your customer service was.  Your customer service was a whole lot better before you forced me to take off my headphones, pause my playlist, close my laptop and set my coffee down to pick up the phone and deal with your pathetic neediness.  Before you called me I didn’t really care about you or your company. Now I kind of hate you.  

. . . looking like a cop car but being a sheriff.  It’s not fair.  I see your light rack on top of your car and waste a good two minutes driving the speed limit before I realize you’re a sheriff and not highway patrol.  I resent obeying the law for the benefit of peace officers who don’t even issue traffic tickets.  

. . . telling me you’re doing anything for my protection or my convenience.  No.  You’re not.  You’re actively annoying me.  How is that for my convenience?  In fact, let’s be blunt here, shall we?  You and I are natural enemies.  First off, you’re a robot while I am arguably human.  You’re a soulless, brainless automaton programmed to serve the needs of your corporate masters.  While I am only two of those things.

. . . pretending one vodka is any better than the next.  Scotch, bourbon, even gin can be clearly differentiated but vodka is all the same.  It’s all about the bottle with you people.  (Side note:  Moscow Marriott, room service sends up $50 worth of beluga.  It’s a ball the size of my fist. (And I have a big fist.) (Which is a perentheses inside a parentheses.) The point being that I don’t even remember the vodka.  (Which is often the problem. (He says, parenthetically.))  What do you think, one more “close parentheses?”)

. . . Oh, and if you are a cop no fair driving anything other than a Crown Vic.  Am I supposed to memorize every car silhouette?  How am I going to know you’re clocking me if you’re in a Pontiac?  So uncool.  

. . . answering online questions with, “I don’t know.”  See, here’s the thing:  if a guy goes to some message board and asks, “Does anyone here know how I can get cheese out of my camcorder?” answering “I don’t know,” isn’t really moving the ball forward, now is it?  Doesn’t matter what the question is, if you post it online the first answer is always, “I don’t know, but . . .”  (And the second answer is a spam link.)  Look, people, I know you don’t know.  I was hoping that other guy did. 

. . . with the “awesome.”

. . . pretending you read books when what you really read was just the New York Times Book Review’s review of the book.  Be honest, like me, and admit you didn’t even read the review but did watch How I Met Your Mother because you wished you could be Barney.

. . . dissing suburbia.  You know why so many people live in the suburbs?  Because they can have a garage three times the size of a Manhattan apartment.  And they throw the garage in free if you buy the house.

. . . saying “no worries.”  Guess what:  plenty of worries.  You have no worries?  None?  Do you qualify as sentient?  Have you turned on your TV lately?  Has someone been rooting around in your cerebrum with a red hot knitting needle?  If not, if your brain is functioning, then I’m going to guess you have some worries.  And if you don’t then by God I’ll give you some, starting with the fact that your tip is still in my pocket.  Now do you have worries?  Great.  Then bring me that iced tea.  And a vodka.

Uno dos one two tres quatro.

Day man.  Ah ah ah.  Fighter of the night man.  Ah ah ah.  Champion of the sun.

Na na na na na na na, I want to start a fight.

I don’t go anywhere without my switchblade.

He’s a cat (meow) flushing a toilet.

I want to rock and roll all night.

You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone.

Matty told Hatty, about a thing she saw.

He’s a cat (meow) flushing a toilet.

And party every day.

I don’t go anywhere without my crew.

Let’s not be L 7, come and learn to dance.

She left me for Jesus, and that just ain’t fair.

And while I hope I’m not like them, I’m not so sure.

Woolly bully.

Said I can take you home, where we can be alone.

He’s a cat flushing a toilet.

I think my dad’s gone crazy.

So what, I’m still a rock star.

Book Series.  I love them and read them constantly. 

The characters.  They’re people that I like that I hope make it to a happy ending.

Book Series told through many different narrators.  Well… I still read them, but don’t enjoy them as much. 

Why?  From book one the story is told through a character that I grow to know and understand (well, it does if its a good book).  I read the whole book wondering what will happen to my narrator and hoping its a good ending.  Usually they grow to be my favorite character in the book.

And?  Imagine if the narrator isn’t your favorite character.  I’m trying to enjoy this interesting book, but the character is annoying and dulling my joy.

Your being picky.  When does that happen that you can’t just put the book down?  Imagine a series where the first book is told through a person that you come to admire and like, and all of the sudden the second book is told through a different person.  I can still enjoy it and come to like this new character, but when this new character is shallow, jerky, or unlikable that ruins the book.

I just don’t understand why a lot of series now in days has to be told through a different narrator for each book.  The book’s world is shown through a certain character that allows us to view it from their own perspective.  This character because a person and you want to keep reading to find out their fate about just as much as the person themselves.  Most series continue the characters story/life book by book.  But some series “wrap up” a characters problems and moves on to the next person.  I don’t believe there is anything wrong with that. I do still read and enjoy series like this (example, All About Us Novels, Miracle Girls series, etc.). 

What bugs me is when the first book likable narrator is kicked to the curb in the second book and is only allowed a couple lines of dialogue or placement in the rest of the series! 

Example: The Heir Trilogy by Cinda Williams Chima (I do recommend this trilogy, especially the second book, The Wizard Heir).  I enjoyed the first book and the main character.  But in the second book he was gone!  Only to be infrequently heard from towards the middle and end.  He was no longer my favorite character and he felt cut off.   I wasn’t able to understand his reasoning, thoughts, or actions when they were brought up.  And somehow that made me sad.

Series told through different narrators opens up so many different perspectives to enjoy and experience.  But though readers, like me, enjoy these new views, we don’t want to see our much loved characters from former books pushed out of the picture.

I had a lousy day.  The details are tiresome.  Suffice to say lots of interruptions, not enough work accomplished.  Plus there are people in the world who murder children.

That last part is a shadow over the day.  A stain that kind of sinks into your soul.  Adam Walsh.  Old story, old horror.  I don’t believe in souls, but this stuff hurts something and it isn’t my body or my brain so it must be something, and I don’t have another convenient name for whatever the hell it is that this offends so deeply that it warps the direction of my life, at least for a while.  Until I forget about it.

Except that like most parents I never entirely forget about it.  

There are lots of things kids don’t know about their parents but the craziest thing is the violence their parents hide inside nagging and fretting and disciplining.  Kids don’t have any idea that their parents would die for them.  And kill for them.  I don’t think kids look at their fat tired fathers and their dishwater mothers and understand that here is a person who would not only die, not only kill, but burn down the world for their them.  Crazy, isn’t it?  Disproportionate.  Irrational and probably immoral.  I don’t care.  

When one of us, one of us parent types, sees a story like this, we lose, at least for a time, any pretense of charity, forgiveness, religion, understanding.  Civilization is a pretty thin coat of paint when we see this kind of story.  Because we, the race of parents, want to kill people who do things like this.  We want to kill them.  With the law if that works, but with our own hands if necessary.  Nothing sadistic about it, it’s not really a question of vengeance, it’s just that people like this need to cease to exist.  They need to be erased. On this the race of parents is unanimous.  

Would I take a life to save my kids?  Yes.  Two lives?  Yes.  A hundred?  Ratchet the number up all you like, the answer will always be yes.  Until there’s no one left alive but my kids.  That’s the crazy that kids don’t see in their parents.  Probably a good thing.

John Walsh, Adam’s father, said today that it had been torture not knowing for sure who had murdered his six year-old son.  Reporters used the “closure” word.  John Walsh didn’t say this, but I will:  he’d spent 27 years looking for the monster, needing to kill the monster.  Now he can relax a little.  Turns out the monster died in 1996.

It’s hard sometimes not believing in hell.  Hell is most definitely an appropriate location for those who kill a child.  It’s good that the monster is dead.  But an eternity in hell would be even better.

1- The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) - Mel Tormé, Robert Wells

2- Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie

3- Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin

4- Winter Wonderland - Felix Bernard, Richard B. Smith

5- White Christmas - Irving Berlin

6- Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne

7- Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer - Johnny Marks

8- Jingle Bell Rock - Joseph Carleton Beal, James Ross Boothe

9- I’ll Be Home For Christmas - Walter Kent, Kim Gannon, Buck Ram

10- Little Drummer Boy - Katherine K. Davis, Henry V. Onorati, Harry Simeone

 

What’s that list?  The most popular Christmas carols, according to this site which is probably just making it up.  

I hate Christmas.  I don’t mean that I hate it in a cute Grinch-Scrooge-Christmas Special kind of way where I just need to learn the true meaning of Christmas.  I will not be redeemed at the end of this tale. I will not be reformed by spectral visitations.  There’s no reassuring moral at the end of this tale.  So if you’re looking forward to saying, “Awww. . .” you’re reading the wrong blog post.

Christmas is dominated by two very problematic characters: Baby Jesus and Santa Claus.  

The story of the baby Jesus, as most of you know, is essentially a tale of horror.  First, He’s chased around by a megalomaniac ruler who’s decided to kill Him.  Herod misses Jesus but manages to kill all the other baby boys in the vicinity, which casts something of a pall over the  Baby Jesus’ holiday season.  

Then the baby Jesus’ Christmas takes an even worse turn when the only gifts he gets are gold, frankinscense and myrrh.  The baby Jesus can’t play with myrrh.  He doesn’t even know what myrrh is.  Baby Jesus wanted a rattle and a teething ring, was that so much to ask for?  But no: it’s krugerrands and two different types of tree resin.

The Baby Jesus was like, “What, I wasn’t a good little boy?  You calling Me naughty?  You know who I am?  Do you not notice the way all My pronouns are capitalized?  Take your myrrh on out of here and bring Me one of those toy lawnmowers that goes pop! pop! pop! when I push it around the stable.”

And 33 years after that first disastrous Christmas, the Baby Jesus ends up having an even worse Easter.

(more…)

I’m not even kidding. And it’s not only my computer, but my dad’s and my sister’s two laptops as well.

Firstly, my computer likes to attract viruses. It’s had a few this year along, causing it to crash no less than several times. I don’t even know how my computer gets all these viruses anymore. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t entirely my fault. Now, my computer does this weird thing that, while I’m using it, it will spontaneously shut off. Sucks, right? Especially when I’m typing homework. Luckily, my comp has a pretty good recovery program, but still, not everything is saved. When my computer was cooperating one day, I ran several virus scans, which turned up nothing. My uncle, a computer expert, thinks there’s a virus or a corruption in the software. So, now he has it and is trying to fix it.

My dad’s computer is okay. It’s the newest one in the house. Only problem: its internet connection is SLOW. The sad thing is that it’s located like right next to the wireless box thingy (my pro technical term). My computer, which used to be separated from the wireless connection by an entire floor, never had this problem. As I type this, I am waiting for hotmail to load an email I want to read. Plus, my dad’s computer doesn’t have many of the great computer programs (aka iTunes, I can’t sync my iPod anymore!).

My sister’s older laptop doesn’t have Microsoft Office 07 (actually, none of the computers in my house except mine have it). So, when I tried to open a Word file on it, it came up with a bunch of symbols and gibberish. Fun fun. It made me angry.

The other laptop is pretty good. Except for the fact that when I was trying to make a DVD of my project for English, it messed it up. It made me so freakin frustrated, I was nearly in tears. I kid you not.

One day I will get a super computer that is immune to viruses and technical problems and my life will be complete. Heck yes.

I’m in New York, at the Hilton right near the HarperDome.  I flew in on Jet Blue, 5 1/2 hours from Long Beach airport, the only airport in the world that’s smaller than the planes.  Tomorrow I have an actual agenda. It has multiple parts.  Meeting, then meeting, then lunch, then meeting, then an introvert break during which I will chew over all the stupid things I said, then another meeting.  Then, hopefully, drinks with Stearns during which I will, as always, sound just a bit crazier than I really am.

Random hotel room thoughts, in no particular order, and bearing in mind that I’ve had a Knob Creek Manhattan, a Sam Adams, a room service Reuben sandwich and pineapple upside down cake with white chocolate mousse.

1) I love Jet Blue.

2) White chocolate?  No. Missing the whole point of chocolate.  It’s chocolate for people who don’t like chocolate. It’s the chocolate equivalent of near beer.  Dark chocolate is chocolate.  White chocolate is lard.

3) In the near future advertising will be participatory, peer-to-peer, not top down.  Here’s the evolution:  hard sell, soft sell, product placement, peer-to-peer then lifestyle placement.

4) See, white chocolate is one of those aged-out foodie fads. (It was the big thing what, 15 years ago?)   Foodies love anything that’s new.  They don’t always have much judgment, much taste, so they chase after whatever’s new equating “New” with “Good.”  This explains the great goat cheese obsession of a decade ago.  Goat cheese here, goat cheese there.  90% of it tasted like feet, but it was new on the scene, so suddenly you weren’t supposed to like Stilton or Camembert or Reblochon because we’d already done those while chevre was new and hard to pronounce.

5) I’m reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.  An example of why writers shouldn’t read books:  there’s always somebody better than you are.  And then you get bummed.

6) I forget what #6 was.

7) There’s never a magic bullet but people waste their lives looking for one.  Magic diet, magic therapy, magic plan for getting rich, magic revelation that will destroy Barack Obama.  People want to believe in magic.  Magic is for stories.  In real life you actually have to work at things, there’s no sudden cathartic moment that turns everything around on a dime.  Says the man who just succumbed to pineapple upside-down cake.

8- Yes, I’m aware that I hyphenated “upside-down” in one case and didn’t in the other.

9) My great fear in meetings is that I will not recognize someone I’ve met like six times.  It goes without saying that I won’t remember names.  If you have a two syllable name I’ve already forgotten the first syllable before you say the second.  I don’t think this makes me a jerk.  I think it’s just quirky.

10) In April I’m going on a book tour in England.  Take that, Meg Cabot, you and your big deal Asian book tour.  

11) It bothers me that I know I’m probably going to like living in SoCal.  There’s something wrong with people who actually like Southern California.

12) I thought of a scene that’s too gross to actually use in LIES.  Not just too gross for Scandinavians, too gross for Americans.  Sin City gross.  And it’s something I could only use in one of the GONE books.  Which means it will be lost forever.

13) When I told my wife about #12 she said, “Sometimes it bothers me that I’m married to you.”  Not the first time she’s said that.

14) I asked a guy who really knows whether it made any sense that My Space, Facebook and Twitter are worth billions of dollars.  He said, “Nope.”  I think he’s right.

15) Okay, my wife and kids just called and now I’m sleepy.

For the past year my wanderings on the web have mostly been spent on Amazon, BarnesandNoble, My library’s site, and Paperbackswap.

Paperbackswap is great.  I just received to books in the mail from them last week.  (Its a site where you swap books.  For every book you send of to a member (who requests the book) you earn a point.  One book=One point.  So then you can spend your point to get a book from another member.

I am currently using their recommendations feature and I love it!  Every time I log in, theres a scroller that briefly runs through the books available in genres that I have marked as favorites.  This feature is how I found the two books I received last week.

The one con: The Out-Of-Print Curse.  When I finally find a book that sounds AMAZING, they don’t have a copy available.  Okay, then.  Next step: Check my library.  Sadly, they clean their shelves of books that haven’t been checked out in months, the book isn’t there.  I’ll finally look it up on BarnesandNoble to consider buying it and… ITS OUT-OF-PRINT!!!

How frustrating!  All I want to do is read this amazing book from this great author, but I can’t even get a copy!

My last hope is Amazon to buy a used copy.  But I am just so darn picky that I’m scared to get a used book (on paperbackswap you can fill out a sheet with your preferences to book condition, so the sender has to have the book in near perfect condition before sending).

I noticed many places on the web and my library don’t hold on to their out-of-print copies.  Everyone is jumping for the books that come out the next month, but very few are looking for books that happen to be published in the early ’90s.  I have to admit that I love it when publishers reprint older editions with new covers (the ’80s didn’t do so well on book covers) and modernize them a bit.  They are currently doing this to the Sweet Valley High Series and Hardy Boys Series.  Why can’t they do that to all books and not just bestselling series?

The answer to this unfortunate curse: None so far besides the searching at garage sales, flea markets, other libraries in the same state, and the occasional buy off Amazon or Paperbackswap. 

Doesn’t it make sense to have a company, kind of like Barnes and Noble, that would just sell out-of-print books?

As my wife is Norwegian I am instantly qualified to socio-analyse the Norwegian people, particularly their inability to queue, and their national obsession with Grandiosa brand pizza.

I spend most of my time when I’m there moaning about such things, I’m telling you: the radio stations’ play-lists haven’t been updated for 20 years - seriously 20 years. It’s the same every time I go. I like Alphaville’s Forever Young as much as the next person, but it doesn’t belong on a modern radio station - Move on Norway!

In a recent advertising campaign offering Norwegians the chance to vote for a new kind of pizza (beef and onion or ham and pepper) more people voted for the eventual winner (beef and onion) than voted for the party that won the Norwegian national elections. Enough said.

However every time I go there I also have a look around the bookstores. The first thing you notice is that they don’t do offers in Norwegian bookstore’s. There’s no 3 for 2, there’s no discounting, no money off, no Buy One Get One Free or Half price.  Everything is full whack, asking price, RRP.

This leads you notice the second thing about Norwegian bookstores which is the price of the books. To pick an unrelated example at random I picked up Gone by Michael Grant in hardback.

Guess how much it was? Go on guess?

Nope.

Nope.

You are way off.

Gone was on sale for 339 Norwegian Kroner.

That’s £32!! or $48!!

£32!! or $48!!

It’s supposed to be a kids book! What kid can afford that on a weeks allowance?! Well - Norwegian kids apparently because there was only 1 left on the shelf.

So as a publisher I’m jealous of Norwegian bookstore’s enormously high profit margins, but not their attitude towards politics and pizzas.

Actually the biggest tragedy is that reading isn’t big in Norway, despite the fact that it’s dark and cold most of the time. They’d rather watch blu-ray DVDs on big screen TVs instead. Oh - and occasionally they go skiing.

I have been a “bookworm” for about the last two years. That means that I have been constantly seeking new, good books not just reading occasionaly. For the past 5 or so months I have been a “reviewer”. In these past few months I have noticed a change in my reading habits.

I can’t just read a book for PURE FUN. I’ll unintentionally begin evaluting a book. Every sentence of every page can’t just be enjoyed. It will digest and sit in my head all day and I’ll start noticing little blemishes or faults. The great amazing parts begin to numb a little with every crack in the books facade. Books that I absolutely loved and bought a few months ago, no longer seem completely over the top amazing. I begin to pick out little things (like dialogue clarification, plot speed, realistic/relatible characters, etc) that I never noticed before.

Is this a pro or con to book reviewing? I hope its a pro, but I have yet to make a final decision.

I intended GONE to be creepy.  I intend the same for the sequel, HUNGER.  And the sequel to that, LIES.  I sat down at my laptop thinking, “I’m going to give people the creeps.”  Why?  Well, that’s beside the point.  (Sociopathy, deep-seated personality problems, a refusal to consider therapy.)

Unsettling premise:  everyone over the age of 14 disappears.  Complication: some of those kids are mutating.  From there all I had to do was follow the premise forward to get to creepy.  

I didn’t want to do the whole, “Boo!” thing.  I wanted the creepy to be as real as I could make it within the context of fantasy.  Real but not.  Realistic within a story that’s completely unreal.  Following the premise forward I had no choice, really, but to write about kids at their best and at their worst.  Neither good nor evil could be banished, I wanted both.  Because that’s reality. 

In a world where every institution has disappeared, where every authority is suddenly gone and kids — kids without experience, without education, without much in the way of moral sense — are suddenly on their own and in some cases given great power, well, bad things are going to happen.  

So anyway, I follow the premise through. And I get feedback from kids that they like the book and find it nicely creepy. I promptly put up a banner that read “MIssion Accomplished” and then I landed a jet on an aircraft carrier.  (Oh, my God, that allusion is already old enough that lots of kids won’t get it.)  

But at the same time I started getting feedback from various adults, some of whome didn’t find GONE nicely creepy.  They found it really disturbing.  And some wondered what the hell is the matter with me.

(more…)

Hi all!  I’m TheBookworm of Au Courant and this will be my first post as a member of Stupid Blog Name!

This weekend my family and I celebrated an early Thanksgiving with relatives who live pretty far from us.  Family get-togethers can usually go one of two ways.  First, everyone could be having a lot of fun and nobody is crabby (this is the rarest).  And second,  everyone is in need of a nap and little arguments break out about who gets the last roll.

Thankfully, the get-together leaned more to the first possible outcome!

There was a little argument about who should get the last candy cane (It should be me!) but overall the night went well. We played a fun game of cards called Nuts (I scored 3rd place!). We watched a movie while I was beating my cousin at chess. The younger kids were running around and jumping on all the different tractors (I have to admit, I seated myself on a tractor or two also

But my favorite part of all was the food! You got your stuffing, your gravy, your mashed potatoes, ham, turkey, buns, and desserts. After my second plate I had to lossen my belt a bit, but a little tummy ache was worth it!

On the way home I was reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and I just couldn’t relate to Katniss, the main character. She was use to feeling hungry and had about starved to death a couple times in her earlier childhood. Here I am with my stomach practically bulging out of my jeans, and 16-year-old Katniss was completely excited over finding an edible plant.

Wow… I have never gone hungry before (well, maybe had lunch at 3:00PM instead of at noon, but still). I guess every Thanksgiving is a little blessing, no matter who you spend it with or the dinner’s atmosphere.

Oh, great.  Now my mouths watering, luckily I can smell dinner starting to cook!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone, no matter where you are!

To check out my The Hunger Games review, click here.

There are certain things that people, for whatever reason, want to know about authors.  Like:  How long does it take you to write a book?  Do you write longhand or on a computer?  Where do you get your ideas? (David Mamet offers the best response to that one: “I think of them.”) 

I understand the curiosity behind those questions.  Here’s what I don’t get:  “Do you write in Starbucks?”  It’s always Starbucks.  It’s never, “Do you write in The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf,” or, “Do you write in your favorite local café?”  (I actually took my laptop into a local café recently only to discover that they’d covered up all of their plugs – presumably to discourage loitering writer types.)  For me, one of the perks of being a writer is being able to stay home with my cats and my teapot and my hidden box of Cheez-Its.  Why would I want to leave?

But yesterday, I did it.  I wrote in Starbucks.  My house is being renovated, and there are workers everywhere, all the time, and I can’t concentrate.  (I can’t shower, either, but that’s another issue.)  So I said goodbye to my cats (who were hiding under the bed), packed up my laptop, and headed to my favorite Starbucks.  (Fun fact for anyone thinking of moving to Orange County:  According to their website, there are 20 Starbucks within five miles of my house!)

Here’s the thing I never noticed about Starbucks until I tried to work there:  It’s seriously loud.  There are those monster espresso machines going WHOOOSH, and ceramic dishes going CLINK-CLINK-CLINK, and barista girls in green Starbucks aprons saying stuff like, “Pineapples are way high in fiber,” keeping their vocal volume up to be heard over the machines.  Above it all there’s some Bob Dylan-ish music, clearly intended to make Starbucks seem, you know — coffeeshop-ish.  Like, maybe if you were just a little bit artier, you’d freakin’ appreciate it.

The customers at my local Starbucks don’t talk.  They’re almost all on laptops.  Which made me wonder: Are they writers, too?  Or are they just surfing the net?  Or are they reading their email or looking for jobs or …

Stop!  Concentrate! You’ve got to work on your book!

I’d just about managed to finish my tall cup of supposedly low acidic (but disappointingly bitter) coffee and focus my attention on my latest book when I heard the magic words across the room.  “Would you like a sample?”  A heavyset barista girl was delivering … something … to a guy with a shaved head and a middle-aged lady in a flowered shirt.  

Hey!  What about me?  Back here by the bathrooms!  I tried to catch the barista’s eye, but she just trotted back to her friends at the counter – there were more workers than customers – and they all made embarrassing food groans as they gorged on the pastry.  One of them said, “It’s so good.  It’s something I would buy on my day off.”  I smelled cinnamon.

Defeated, I re-read my last couple of paragraphs, only to have the sample-bearing barista, who was talking on her cell phone, finally spot me.  She pranced over with a nice little slice of something centered on a chunky white plate.  She paused in her phone conversation to smile and ask, “Blueberry oat bar?”

And I said, “Yes!  Yes!  Yes!”  Okay, actually I just nodded politely, took the plate from her, inhaled the warm, sweet aroma, and finally … I tasted it!

It was … okay.  You know:  one of those healthy-sounding goodies that’s supposed to make you feel all virtuous because you can actually see the oat flakes on top but that you can just tell is laden with fat.  Plus, it was so sweet it made my tongue sting.  In the end, I managed to finish the oat bar, push away the plate, and knock out a couple of pages on my manuscript, but it wasn’t easy. 

Today I got my hair cut, and the shampoo girl, Brittany, asked if I was writing any more books.  I’ve got one due in February, I told her, but the chaos of my house renovation has made it hard to concentrate.

“You can always go to Starbucks,” she said, adding wistfully,  “I always wished I had the kind of cool job where I could take my laptop there.”

“Starbucks,” I said.  “Good idea.”

I’ve been on holiday for the last week and then ill for almost another full week (isn’t that always the way it goes?)

On Tuesday evening last week, I went to the most fantastic US Election night party I could have hoped for in London. I went to a friend’s place and as soon as we walked through the doors I knew it was going to be a special event. They had pictures of all the US presidents in the hallway (including Martin Sheen, what number president was he again?). They had tapes of famous speaches playing in the bathrooms, they had cookies, they had popcorn - they even had some actual Americans there!

The front room was decked out in US flags and banners, we had the trusty old BBC on the television as well as a projector screen showing streaming images from CNN and NBC. We watched the states turn blue with growing wonder and when Ohio was called and when the electoral votes were counted we all went crazy!

People were screaming and shouting, tears were shed, we hugged, we toasted, we cheered. It was the best election night ever.

This wasn’t even our election night, it was yours. We care what you think. Thanks for voting!

PS. Sorry if this seems out of date now, I’ve just been really really ill (sniff.)

Yeah, I know I’m a little late here, seeing this prop already passed on November 4, but I still feel the need to express my outrage that such a thing could even become part of California’s state constitution.

For those of you who are non-Californians, Prop 8 goes as follows, short and (not so) sweet:

“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

It basically eliminates the right for homosexuals to get married.

This to me is just ridiculous for several reasons. I’m not sure what good could be accomplished by enacting this law. All it does is discriminate, and what does that show about the people of California? That we are homophobic and prejudiced against people outside the norm? I definitely would not like to be seen that way. Think about it: the United States used to have laws preventing interracial marriage, between whites and blacks, and between whites and Asians. Those laws were repealed because they aren’t constitutional. Those laws eliminated marriage rights; so does Prop 8. Why is it okay now to prevent certain people from getting married when you can’t do so to others?

I know some religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church I attend and especially the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), were in support of Prop 8. I believe they refer to the Bible to declare that homosexuality is a sin. Being a more scientific person, I believe that sexual orientation is something you’re born with as a result of chemicals in your brain. I didn’t know until a little while ago that some religious people view homosexuality as a choice. To me, that is just ridiculous. I mean, I did a quick search on Google and found loads of sites confirming my theory. I mean, I just don’t understand, if everyone is “created in God’s image,” then aren’t the gays also? But then again, religion and science don’t mix too well, do they?

I’ve also heard some people say, well, so what if the gays can’t marry? They can get a civil union. Unfortunately, they are not the same thing. If a couple is married, then they are married in every state and have the same rights as every married couple. If a couple is in a civil union, then their rights aren’t uniformly defined across the US. So if perhaps someone in a civil union had a health care plan that included his/her partner in one state, they might not get the same benefits in the next state.

Some people want to protect the “sanctity of marriage.” Well, I hate to let this come to light, but people can get married in Las Vegas one night and then divorced the next. If that doesn’t violate marriage’s sanctity, then I don’t know what does. Some people think marriage is solely defined as the “union between a man and a woman.” Well, words change over time, as do their definitions. People will change language as it suits them. Why doesn’t that seem to apply to the word “marriage?”

Also, don’t even get me started on the ridiculousness of some of the propaganda supporting Prop 8. I’ve seen so many commercials and so many signs that my eyes have nearly bled (seriously). One of my favorites goes as follows: a young girl (maybe in second grade?) comes home from school and tells her mom something along the lines of “Today I learned that princes can marry princes and that if I want to, I can marry a princess!” And then her mom looks all shocked and probably proceeds to instruct her daughter in the “correct way of marriage” or something like that. Seriously, that commercial is so wrong it’s funny. Firstly, public schools aren’t required to teach anything about marriage, which is why I highly doubt a second grader would ever come home from school to talk about “princes marrying princes.” Besides, if there was a school program about marriage, parents can request to have their child excused from it, and the schools are then required to follow this request. On top of that, if parents don’t like the way public schools are teaching their children, they always have the option to home school their child or put them in a private school. And I don’t want to hear anything about well, maybe they don’t have time to home school their kids or maybe they can’t afford private school. Well, if they cared enough, they would find a way to make it happen.

I’ve also seen some of the most ridiculous handmade signs in support of Prop 8. One of them, I believe, said something like “protect religious freedom.” Uh, hello?!? Americans already have religious freedom. However, what we do not have is a mixture of government and religion. I don’t think eliminating rights for homosexuals to get married has anything to do with religion. It has to do with discrimination.

Oh, and my oh my, should you have seen all the signs in support of Prop 8 around where I live (I live in a rather conservative part of SoCal). One time when I walked home from school, I counted at least twenty something “Yes on 8” signs. The day before the election, I saw one house with at least 10 signs. I’m pretty sure I saw a man who lived in that house jaywalk across the street to plant some “Yes on 8” signs on public property. I’m glad they were gone the next day.

This weekend, I turned on the news and saw that there were anti-Prop 8 protests occurring in LA and one other southern California locale I forget. There were a lot of people holding signs that said “H8” because, well, that’s what Prop 8 is. I really hope Prop 8 will be tried in court and found unconstitutional (against the United States’ Constitution, not the California constitution considering it is now a part of it) because I believe in tolerance for people who aren’t like me. I am an open-minded thinker, and I hate it when people tell me what to think. I especially hate it when people lie to me. And this is why I am so against Prop 8. It serves no purpose other than to eliminate rights and promote intolerance and discrimination.

Of course, this is not solely a Californian issue. It was put up to vote in several other states, I believe Arizona and Florida (I may not be right, and there may be others as well). I hope in those states, their new prevention of same-sex marriage will be overthrown.

Muses?  Um, I think they’re on aisle 13.

Non-writers like the word “inspiration.”  My guess is that most writers don’t so much.  I know I don’t.  ”What’s your inspiration?”  ”What inspired you?”  ”Ooooh, you live in Italy, that must really be great for inspiration.”

Well, actually Katherine (Applegate) and I are leaving Italy.  We are dragging the two kids, the two dogs and the cat away from stunningly beautiful Tuscany to stunningly dull Orange County, California.  Why?  Are we expecting to find a muse to inspire us in Southern California?  No.  (The last muse in Southern California was killed during the wildfire season of 1997.  Her siblings had died earlier from mudslides, smog and earthquakes.)  What we’re expecting to find is high-speed internet, book stores, an Apple store and a Target.  Each of those mundane things is more important to me as a writer than my lovely view out over the rolling vineyards.

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