Peeking from the Grant Weeds

After one of the most unpredictable grant seasons ever, I am busier than ever at work--hence the silence on this trusty old blog. I am making serious hay while the sun shines. I do miss the novel I started last summer, but I've been adding to the tidbit folder. Ideas are percolating. Other developments:

• We're considering remodeling our kitchen and downstairs bathroom this summer, after which we will have fully renovated our entire house. A human being can only take so much toilet so close to the kitchen for so long. Developing story, stay tuned ...

• I've started my seedlings! Far too early, it seems. Every so often you can hear a soft, wistful sigh coming from beneath the grow lights ... it can only be the kale, looking longingly out the window.

• We have something new to yell at in the house! It has one eye and watches us whenever we enter the living room. "XBox, turn! On!" "Xbox, go home!" "Xbox, choose this person! Off. TURN OFF!" We've named it Hal (because 2001 and utter lack of imagination), and it's only a matter of time before it develops self-awareness and kills us in our sleep.

• I met with my Dad's freshman comp students two weeks ago after they read Driving Sideways as part of their required coursework (Teehee! Nepotism!) I also got a sneak peek at their response papers after my visit. Here are three of my favorite excerpts:

"After finishing up Driving Sideways, I thought it was an overall good book. It is a book more on the ladies side, but once you start reading there's no turning back (and it's required)."

"When Jess walked in the classroom, she was nothing as I pictured her to be. She was so pretty, nice and open about everything.* I thought she was going to be a little stuck up because she was an author but I was completely wrong" ... "I already told my mom she needs to read this book over the summer."

"Jokes like this are exactly my type of humor. The other day I was gibing a man for his hair style. I looked at my friends and said, 'Look, it's ChangesoneBowie.' I swear he looked exactly like David Bowie, but no one understood the reference. Leigh and I would have shared a laugh at that one."

"I just never knew of anyone that was an author ... and Jess seemed almost too human, too regular to be writing a book."

"Instead of selling this novel back to the school at the end of the semester, I plan on keeping it to offer to others for a fantastic read."**

~~~~~

So that's the news from Yawn City. Back to the Grant Cave for me. Got to chase the million-dollar donuts...see you in June, kids!

*I love that student!!!

**I have signed the same book multiple times, because some students sell their inscribed books back at the end of the semester. Yeah.

Gearing Up

If you're an avid reader of this blog (stop laughing), you may have noticed a few changes to the layout. Yes, things are happening! A new header is in the works, and I'm also going to tackle my disaster of a website in the next few months.

Spring cleaning, yes, but also because I'm gearing up to launch Mandatory Release this July. *breathes into a paper bag* I have cover art, and I am DYING to share it with you all....soon enough. Julie Metz designed it, and guys: she did the cover for Judy Blume's Summer Sisters. Recognize any other names in her portfolio? She's amazing, amazing. More on this soon...

Mandatory Release is "officially" my third novel, but I actually started it fourteen years ago, under a different title, with a different plot and different characters. I've read the opening chapter at several book events years ago, so some of you may remember it.

I don't know if other authors are like this, but my novels feel sort of like my children; I always worry, at least a little, when I release them into the big, wide world. But with Driving Sideways and All the Lonely People, I felt they could take any kind of heat. Strangely, the book with the toughest setting and darkest themes and most vulnerable, honest, and raw characters is the book I'm most protective of. It's the book closest to my heart. It's the book that felt like opening a vein and bleeding onto the page.

Mandatory Release features my favorite character ever; if you liked Driving Sideways, I basically took Leigh Fielding, gave her a spinal cord injury, a crush on a coworker, mild anger issues, and a job in a prison. Oh, and I made her a guy. Okay, that sounds a little weird. But I think you're going to like Graham. He's got a sick sense of humor, lots of hope, and lots of heart.

It's a crazy mash-up of dick lit and women's fiction, written in alternating POV chapters. Maybe my tagline can be, "Throws like a girl, writes like a boy." My editor said it reminded him of Tom Perrotta, and I had to lie down when I heard that because The Wishbones is only one of my FAVORITE BOOKS EVER.

So. New author photo next week. Cover reveal soon. Blog and website overhaul underway. Final copyedits in process.

If you're in the Appleton, WI area this Wednesday April 17, I'll be at the Little Chute Public Library at 6:30 pm, for the Fox Cities Book Festival. I'm not sure what exactly I'll be talking about, but bring some questions--let's play "Ask Me Anything!" (Er, sort of.)

Sneak Peek: Yesterday I created a playlist featuring songs that would be my soundtrack for Mandatory Release. There's one key song that I didn't include, because if I did, I'd give a huge plot point away. I was all proud of how I figured Spotify out until I saw that a few songs didn't make it over on the embed, so you'll just have to pretend "Pursuit of Happiness" by Kid Cudi, MGMT, and Ratatat is there. Also, if anyone wants to make MR into a movie? I always thought "Vaya Con Dios" by Les Paul and Mary Ford would be a fun backdrop to a riot scene. Just sayin'.

After Today, More on the Tiny White Arm and Such

Hi. It's me again, telling you about the book ONE LAST TIME because today's the day! Driving Sideways is finally in bookstores after 29 long months of incubation!

What people are saying about the book:

"Driving Sideways is a gorgeous novel -- I LOVED it!!"
-- Marian Keyes, author of Anybody Out There?

"A hopeful and hilarious debut...Jess Riley may well be my new favorite author."
--Jen Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black

"Smart and funny without being forced, sentimental without being maudlin."
--Booklist magazine

“It made me blush several times.”
--my Mother-in-law Patti

Target also picked the book as a Break-Out title this summer! But it won’t be on their shelves until June 19, so don’t go there today unless you need toothpaste and paper towels or something.

If you buy it today, it comes with the following:

• A spine (inspiration for those of us born in the self-deprecating wing of the hospital)


• No jacket, because who needs one? It’s finally spring in Wisconsin!


• 111,840 pre-screened, carefully-selected words placed in a pleasant order


• My eternal gratitude and a glass of wine if I ever meet you or see you again. And since you’re reading this, I really do hope I meet you or see you again. Because I probably like you. Or whatever.

So you could take your OWN expensive road trip this summer, or you could buy Driving Sideways (for less than the cost of four gallons of gas!) and live vicariously through some people I made up. But if you do take your own road trip, you can also bring my book to read while you wait for your car to be fixed. In case it breaks down, like the Toyota did when I took the very same roadtrip with my BFF Cindy. And you can listen to the Driving Sideways iMix, with songs that I listened to while writing the book, plus a few I listened to while just kind of driving around. Sideways.

So if you would like to buy the book for yourself or many other people in your life (and I hope you do because I would like to make you laugh and/or blush), you can order it on amazon, Powells, Barnes & Noble, Target, Booksense, or Random House.

Or you can pick it up at your local bookstore. If they don’t have it, throw a tantrum.

I’m totally joking. Please don’t do that.

Unless you’re a toddler. Then you might have an excuse.

But wait! There’s more!

Tuesday I am guest-blogging, providing A’s to some excellent Q's, or otherwise being featured in some way, shape, or form (not a large sphere, despite all the cheese curds I ate late night) with Tia, Caryn, Sue, DeeMarie, Shelly at Not the Daddy, The Debutante Ball, Suzy Soro, and TX Poppet.

Edited to add these Wednesday & Thursday blog stops: an interview at Pam Writes Romance and with Joanne Rendell, and a guest blog at Drunk Writer Talk...and JellyJules has made my signature summer salad (now with delicious photo!). Tomorrow, check out Mommy Confidential, Gorillabuns, and December, who will be listing thirteen essentials to take on a road trip.

Also, the blatant self-promotion will eventually taper off and this blog will soon return to its regularly scheduled programming involving my dog, things I found in the backyard, recipe mishaps, and something you WON'T want to miss next Tuesday. I promise, you'll like it.

What is the Sound of One Tiny Hand Clapping?

Last night I was planting some things in the backyard (sunflowers, flags, and evidence, mostly) and I thought, wow, I could really use a hand with all of this work. And I looked down and discovered this:

So far, I have used the tiny white hand to do the following things:

• Say, “Who wants ice cream?” And raise the tiny white hand to reply, “I do!”
• Scratch a very small itch.
• Fling a miniscule discus.
• Beat a small drum.
• Wave to my neighbor. She is average-sized.
• Type this blog.
• Knock on a small piece of wood.
• Text a message to a friend very quickly and efficiently.
• Eat a small bowl of soup.
• Fan a portion of my chin.
• Pledge allegiance to the flag.

Here are some other things I have found in my yard:

A small, illiterate dog with terrible breath.

The key to successful consumption of soup.

A baby telling a bawdy joke to a kitten.

Help!

Also, that book I'm always talking about is finally out this Tuesday.

Two Weeks and Counting...

The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!

Wait...THOSE aren't PHONE BOOKS!

Some very exciting things are happening. First, I got books, y'all! I'll be giving away signed copies at several blogs near you in the next month. Second, I also got the biggest zit I've had since high school. Which is perfect because I was recently made aware of an 80's Prom Flashback party next Friday night. To get in, you have to wear your old prom dress and do-up your hair that scary way you did it in the eighties. When it looked like an artfully arranged tumbleweed that may have been home to a small family of shrews. The problem is this: none of my friends want to go with me!!! Because they are all pussies, afraid they might get a little Whitesnake on them. Okay, they're not really, they just have busy lives and that kind of thing.

(Uh, friends who are aware of this party? Yes, this is a challenge. A throw-down in non-Bobby Flay style. Go. Go into your closet and find that pouffy dress. Dig that dust-crusted can of Aqua Net out of the cabinet. Do not fear the eighties...embrace it...embrace the fear. Go with Jess to the party. Get drunk and do the running man. Let her take many photos. Now, shhh....go.)

To get you all in the mood (well, to get ME in the mood. Who am I kidding?) I am right now listening to "Der Kommissar" by After the Fire. And then I'm going to listen to the Go-Go's and then Big Country and then 'Til Tuesday and have a stroke and die happy. (Hi! I was only like eight or something when your music was popular, but I DON'T CARE! Just look at me like, nailing the vernacular in this post!)

Now where was I. Oh right! My zit! Well, it's developed quite a personality, I must say. It hates me, for one thing. It wants nothing more than to grab the spotlight and be a stoplight and pretty soon I'll be like Chris on that one episode of Family Guy, when his zit actually started talking to him and demanding daily applications of grease (internal and external).

Anyway, I'm going to just ignore it and tell you about something else. Something the "keepin' the cool side cool, the hot side hot" Eileen Cook did when her book came out. She hosted a Pimp My Book contest in which bloggers interested in getting the word out about her fabulous book Unpredictable (COMING SORTA SOON TO A MOVIE THEATER NEAR YOU!) agreed to post a review, Q & A with the author, guest author blog, book giveaway, or any other kind of fun little feature. So if anyone would like to uh, pimp my book on their blog between May 19 and June 1 (*shuffling feet and staring at them in true Midwestern anti-self-promotion fashion, because every molecule in my being kind of fights against the whole self-promotion thing .... unless I've had a glass or two of wine and there's ABBA playing*), let me know in the comments--we'll do it up.

Oh, I should mention that I'll pick two Bloggah Pimps at random for a $75 amazon gift card. There will also be signed copies in the mix somehow. And if you want to get creative (paging Kevin Charnas...paging Kevin Charnas...), we can do that, too. In fact, the crazier the better. Like, I want to hear about YOUR roadtrips from hell. (Preferably with photos.) Or you could just pose nude with the book covering your special purpose.

Two more things before I go refill my wine glass (What! You didn't think I could write an actual post about self-promotion SOBER, did you?!?!):

1) I'm having my photo taken this Thursday to accompany an article about the book for MKE. I'll be sitting in my car at a rest stop near a highway. Life, go on now: imitate art. Go on, it's fun! As my former priest Father Kevin used to flamboyantly say, "I LOVE it."

2) My actual real live website will be up and running some time soon. ("Look ma! I got me an ack-tyool website thingy, with one o' them 'http's and everything!") So at that point, no longer will you just see a bewildered looking Daisy peering up at the camera next to the "Coming Soon!" script. But I'll try to sneak her in there somehow.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO call this a post

I have to say, Vampire Weekend may just be my new favorite band. And the opening act? A dude named Yacht? Think “Anthony Michael Hall in the gym dance scene from Sixteen Candles” meets “Beck.” I started out a little embarrassed on his behalf, but he won me over with his trancey beats and his strange gymnastics routines and then his Q & A with the audience. (“What’s your favorite color?” “Seafoam GREEN.”) And then we had to all shout who would win in a fight, a pirate or a ninja. I tell you, I haven’t had that much fun since the Great Earwig Battle of 2007.

Yacht will be in at Studio B in Brooklyn next Wednesday, if you happen to live in Brooklyn. And I shall be at the Waupun Public Library next Wednesday, speaking about all things writing and book-related. Stop by and join us if you’re so inclined! There will be a Q & A, but I won’t be dancing like I have 7,495 volts of electricity coursing through me. I won’t be jumping rope with the microphone, either. Unless people really want me to. It depends.

So here are a few things that have been bugging me lately:

My favorite grocery store and my favorite chocolatier are both closing in the next month and a half. The candy shop is run by two cute little old ladies with diabetes, which is sad because they can’t eat the really good stuff they make. (Best. Chocolate-covered. Malted Milk Balls. Ever. Wait. Is that what you call them? Malted milk balls? Really? That doesn’t sound right. That just sounds pervy and weird.) I will also miss my favorite bag boy, Jared 2.0. Who will make fun of my strange purchases and canvas bags now?!?!

Oh wait. Just about everyone.

Here’s something else:

When will I finally call to make appointments for a much needed oil change and hair cut? Not together, the oil change is for my car and the hair cut is for my head, but you know? How hard is it to pick up the phone and make an appointment? Do I just keep forgetting? Will I find myself broken down on the side of the highway next month, my engine billowing smoke, my hair so long and unruly that it is actually impeding my ability to phone for help?

I am upset that Saved by the Bell and 90210 were the shows I had to ‘grow up with.’ Same graduation year and everything.

If the kids on those shows weren’t fictional and hadn’t already graduated ten years earlier. Luke Perry, I’m looking at you!

I am upset that the Homecoming and Prom songs I had to deal with in high school included “Love of a Lifetime” and “Heaven” by Warrant and “High Enough” by Damn Yankees and “When I See You Smile” by Bad English. I also think “I’ll Never Let You Go (Angel Eyes)” was in the mix, too.

No, wait. I am not actually upset by that. I am HORRIFIED.

So what’s been bugging you lately?

On Edit a Day Later: Alright. Yeah, I've had a glass of wine. So I'm going to tell you what's really been bugging me. What's really been bugging me is that a prostitute--a homeless, six-months pregnant prostitute in a blue poncho--approached my sister in the rain the other night, asking for help. My sister had just returned home from her job at the Boys & Girls Club, eager to get back to her beautiful seven months-old baby boy.

"Are you really pregnant?" my sister asked warily.

The woman lifted up her poncho. She was indeed.

"Have you had any prenatal care?"

No.

My sister gave the woman all the money she had. "I'm so sorry, but I need to get upstairs to my own baby," she said.

The woman in the poncho softened. "A boy or a girl?"

"Boy."

"Did it hurt when you had him?"

Scared, pregnant, homeless, penniless, pregnant. And who knows what became of her. "How can we as a society have failed our most vulnerable like that?" my sister asked me just an hour after it happened.

I dreamed of that pregnant woman that night. And it's been bugging me ever since.

On Taking the Good with the Bad

Despite an abundance of things to write about, I have hit a wall, mostly because I’ve been spending my days and nights and weekends churning out the grant proposals. You know, what I do for a living. I like to call it “Hogging all the hot water in the creative pockets of my brain.” Which have been pretty linty and empty lately as a result.

I could write about the flat tire I got last week, which was remarkable only because I haven’t gotten one ever, in my life, despite regularly driving over curbs and broken bottles and small children on bigwheels.

But who wants to hear about that?

Do you really want to hear about how my local grocer’s bag boy (We call him "Subway’s Jared 2.0") insists on always making a comment on my transaction? Last week, on my canvas bags: “Wow, you have bags from everywhere.” Two weeks ago, on a bag of Flat Earth veggie chips: “You know, I’ve tried the fruit ones. They weren’t that good.” Tonight: “You know, for an instant soup, this is pretty healthy.”

I could recommend a half dozen movies I’ve seen and enjoyed lately (The Namesake, Once, Sunshine, Into the Wild, The Darjeeling Limited), or tell you about music I’ve been listening to on my iPod (Radiohead’s OK Computer, Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations, the soundtrack for Once), or dishes I’ve cooked lately or reunions I’ve had with old friends or plans I’m making for the release of my book.

Holy Sh*t. I have a book coming out.

I go through my day doing the usual day-type activities (brushing my teeth, commuting to the office, working on my life-size macaroni and glue portrait of the Pope), and every once in awhile I will remember That I Have A Book Coming Out Soon and a feeling that can only be described as a cross between exhilaration and terror will curdle in my stomach. I just need to remember two bits of advice I recently gleaned via the always eloquent, always angry, always scary-intelligent and intense in a Hot-Guy-Way Henry Rollins.

Well, the advice didn't come from him, but from two guests on his show.

Very loosely paraphrased from the talented and brilliant Steve Buscemi, on pursuing your art (acting, writing, painting, etc.) in the face of criticism and public scrutiny: “When someone tells me they want to be an artist, I tell them, ‘Be sure you love it. Otherwise it’s just not worth it.”

Also loosely paraphrased from the kick-ass and amazing Joan Jett, on that same criticism and public scrutiny: “To believe the good reviews, you have to believe the bad.”

So. I steel myself and try to internalize this advice. Because they’re on the way, from Publishers Weekly and maybe Kirkus and Library Journal. From magazines and newspapers and bloggers and most importantly to me, anyone who walks into a bookstore and shells out money they’ve earned to be entertained by a story I told. This is a privilege, and a serious job, and I take it as such. I also happen to love it. So if the book contains a few too many plot twists or bad words or it doesn’t go all Samuel Taylor Coleridge on your ass and make you “suspend disbelief” for 350+ pages, I apologize. I’ll work harder next time. I promise.

But still, if you happen to pick it up in a bookstore in two months, I do hope you like it. And bless your darling heart if you do.

Also, my dog pulled some tripe out of her food bowl today and rolled in it and it was hilarious. I guess I could have written about that instead.

The 'Mooing' and 'Baa-ing' Are Extra

There comes a time in every young woman’s life when she reaches a very special milestone. It’s something she might look forward to her entire life, if she’s a certain kind of girl. Other girls may dread it. It can be messy, it can be awkward, it can be nothing like you imagined, but it’s always special.

I’m talking, of course, about the first time a young woman totally geeks out in front of a Celebrity / Writing Hero. Or in my case, in front of two of them.

Tuesday evening I attended (with the always-awesome dynamic duo of Swishy and Manic Mom) a book signing and reading for none other than the witty, gracious, and lovely Eileen Cook herself. It was thrilling to meet her, because I have gotten to know her via email over the past year, and I just adore her … (I also met her best friend Jamie—who is spunky and cute and awesome in person, and the multi-talented and elegant Ruth Kaufman, who sat next to me at dinner, and later I re-met the adorable and funny Kristabella, who ALSO enjoys wine and is therefore excellent in my book…but I digress).

After introductions, I tried to keep my Crazies on a short leash, and I mostly behaved … until Jen Lancaster showed up—yeah, that’s right, you heard me, THE Jen Lancaster, Chicago blogger and author extraordinaire who provided me with the awesome cover blurb for Driving Sideways…and then I (probably) just got downright creepy, all giddy and “Oh, can I sit next to you?” and “I am so starstruck that you’re here!” and “Who here watches Rock of Love II?”

I’m just glad I didn’t start petting her hair. But I think I rubbed Eileen’s back a little while posing for this picture.

(Sorry Eileen, I sincerely hope I didn’t creep you out! It must be said that back-rubbing is a very common gesture in my family, which is meant to convey sincere affection. But not in a weird way.)

Fast-forward to the wine bar after the reading. I am partially deaf in my left ear by this point, what with walking through the arctic Windy City without my sensible earmuffs on. Lovely (and thick! Quite thick!) wine menus are provided to us, and immediately I am confused by the Flights of Wine.

“Flights of wine?” I brayed, “What’s a flight of wine? Come on, I’m FROM A FARM.”

Yes. That’s right. You heard me. I’M FROM A FARM. I continued with, “This is all too confusing for me. Because I’M FROM A FARM.”

Okay. I’m not REALLY from a farm, but…well, let’s just move on. Best not to dwell. Later, I asked if anyone had heard of the gentleman who, while biking down a rural Wisconsin road, encountered a dead deer carcass, dragged it into the woods, and made sweet, sweet love to it. I’d just read about this in the local newspaper and, apparently, I was itching to introduce the anecdote into my next sophisticated conversation.

SO! For everyone keeping track, I’m from a FARM, and I tell stories about NECRO-BESTIALITY in classy wine bars.

Next, I used a sentence that may or may not have included the phrase “meat whistle” in it in reference to the last time I ate meat. As in, “Does the meat whistle count?” I’m not sure, but I may have even referenced a “skin flute.” (You can ask my brother what was actually said: he was cringing next to me with his face in his hands.)

But--BUT!! It must be said that I was NOT the person who ate the truffle that fell on the floor.

Alright, in all seriousness, Jen was generous and funny and lovely and offered some very helpful advice about writing, despite the atrocious things coming from my mouth at irregular intervals. And Eileen was just sweet and loveable and witty as can be. For more and BETTER pictures of the evening, please visit Manic or Swish...my photography skills are limited, as you might imagine, because ... I'M FROM A FARM.

Gimme a (spring) break, Gimme a (spring) break...

Break me off a piece of that ... snickers bar. (For you Office fans out there.)

Well, we still have lots of snow. How about a photo of Hypno-baby to cheer us all up?

You will do every-zeeng I command…

zoon eee-nough I shall have an entire aaahmy at my dizpozal and you weel all wor-ship me!!

Oh, wait. Those of you who know me already do. My bad.

Tomorrow I am going to Chicago to hang out with these wonderful writers and bloggers. I shall do a special “Tomfoolery Summary” blog post this Friday to tell you if the festivities are as wild as those I enjoyed last weekend, which included: dancing (and singing along) to We Are Family with a bar full of drag queens…pushing a small SUV out of a snowbank…and rubbing my eyes in disbelief at the fact that the lead singer of a hair metal cover band was wearing a black velour TWIN SET over his tight jeans, which were missing the back pockets and had lace-up sides. He was, in effect, a poor woman’s Vince Neil. And really, isn’t the original already at a steep discount?

There was mood lighting. There was ‘fog.’ There were so many pairs of tapered-ankle jeans mincing about on the dance floor that it looked like a fundraiser for People Shaped Like Upside-down Triangles Awareness.

I have also been fighting the “joke birthday candle” of colds. Just when I think I have it licked, it flares up again. In my corner: garlic, enough brown herbal teas to tie-dye a parachute, Zicam, Cold-Eeze, and all kinds of goofy holistic hippie broths. In the cold’s corner: a black belt in viral mojo, skill with nunchucks, and training in the dark arts of stealth-mucous deployment. I feel a new battle breaking out in my left nostril as I write this.

The cold is also fighting my will to work, which is concerning to me as I have two hundred-page Grants That Want To Kill Me due the day after Easter. Isn’t that thoughtful of the grant distribution people at the United States Department of Education? To make them due the day after a major holiday around the time when my clients will be on spring break—and thus unavailable to me when I need them most—for a week?

I have heard rumors of this mythical “spring break” creature. In fact, if memory serves, I once ENJOYED one in Myrtle Beach somewhere around 1995. But I haven’t seen a “spring break” in nearly a decade. What color are they now? Are they too shaped like triangles?

More on Friday, kiddos!

Local girl becomes weather-induced shut-in.

Greetings from balmy Wisconsin!!

Since this photo was taken, the pile of snow behind Local Girl and Devil Dog has grown by another foot.

To my readers in northern states: Doesn’t all this snow we’re getting make you feel like a kid again (well, minus the shoveling and driving in it parts)? Because when you were a small, short person, those snowbanks were like mountains! And now as somewhat taller adults, they are mountains once again! Remember how much fun a day in those snowbanks could be? Clambering over them, sliding down them on plastic saucers, arranging them into forts, hiding behind them during epic snowball battles…forget that nasty business about them sucking your boots off, or that one time you could have sworn the snowbank had teeth, that you saw it winking at you and licking its chops, that it actually snaked a snowy foot out to trip Jimmy Kohlman before eating his moon boot AND sock and then it gave Sara Welsh a facewash that made a pound of raw hamburger look like the gold standard for complexions?

To my readers in southern states: I’m sure there have been one or two moments in your life, perhaps in your youth, when you caught yourself thinking or saying, “I should like to see this snow substance they speak of “Up North.” But then you promptly forgot all about it and crawled back into the hammock strung between the two palm trees near your backyard pool.

I just love that story.

And here's what I love even more: when an inch of snow falls in certain climes and the local stores sell out of bottled water, batteries, generators, canned goods, and propane tanks and the snow melts before everyone gets back home, which takes an hour longer than usual because everyone is driving like marbles and banana peels have been scattered all over the road surface.

But back to the feet and feet of snow that we’ve received to date this winter. As I wrote this blog, we were expecting another foot of snow before nightfall (plus freezing rain and sleet and giant ice crystals the size and shape of He-Man’s magic sword). When so much snow is falling or anticipated to fall, your ability to just get out and about takes a nose dive, unless you LIKE frostbite and wet socks and calling tow trucks to tug your risk-taking ass out of the ditch. When the weather forces you to be housebound, terrible things can happen, such as:

Your husband is playing a new game on the Xbox. And at first, you think, Gee, that music is so soothing and relaxing! But don’t worry—this is just because the first fighting sequence hasn’t happened yet. There are fighting sequences every four seconds. After two hours of this, your right eye will begin to twitch, and your right hand will begin to make an involuntary stabby-motion. It’s a reflex, really, and at first you attribute it to chopping too many carrots for dinner (Because, oh, I don’t know, you eat lots of carrots when it snows), but then you notice the stabby-motion speeds up when you get near the XBox. And guess what? You can’t leave!! BECAUSE YOU ARE HOUSEBOUND.

You have a bottle of red truck wine in the kitchen. As you watch a movie called Sunshine (which is not blown up anyone’s ass…it’s actually a fantastic sci-fi flick starring the delicious Cillian Murphy), the wine begins to call to you in a soft siren. Small dogs start barking two miles away. So you heed the siren’s call and pour a glass. Or two. Or three. Soon enough, you find yourself weeping upstairs as you put away laundry. Your husband comes up to hug you and declare, “You get like this every year right about now.” Which you violently deny; really, you got this way just this once, just tonight, BECAUSE YOU ARE HOUSEBOUND.

(And drank a lot of wine, but whatev.)

All of that wine wakes you up at four thirty-seven the next morning. You arise, because your bladder urgently needs to be voided. (Speaking of, who came up with that one? “Voiding” the bladder. “This bladder is null and void in Tennessee, Maine, and New Mexico.”) After the voiding, you decide to take a vitamin and some aspirin. You don’t have a headache yet, but you can feel one weighing its options in the back of your skull, deciding whether or not to submit its application. You return to bed. Your husband, sleeping so peacefully when you woke up, has decided it is now time to Commence with the Snoring. Your right nostril has decided it too wants to join the program now in progress, and begins making killdeer calls with every exhalation. Two and a half hours later, you finally twitch off to sleep, your right hand making the stabby-motion again. When you get up later that morning, you think: what a great day to do some badly-needed shopping! But when you pull up the radar on weather underground, you realize you can’t. BECAUSE YOU WILL BE HOUSEBOUND.

I call this post to order

First order of business: Okay, Winter? You can go away any day now. Ehh-neeee day now.

Second order of business: Clarifications and corrections. Last October, I went out on the town with my best friend and her sweet, wonderful sisters. We had a grand old time, but that evening happened to be the one in which I spent far too long listening to someone at the bar drone on about his life without demonstrating one iota of reciprocal interest in my life. He was, in short, an All About Me. Unfortunately, I did not clarify WHO this particular All About Me was. So. These dear, sweet wonderful sisters (one of whom will be thanked by name in Driving Sideways for her insightful feedback on an early draft) thought my AllAboutMe post was … ALL ABOUT THEM.

“We thought she liked us!” they said, and I wanted to rush over and soothe them with hugs and chocolate martinis and buckets of reassurance. I wanted to weep, because they are the furthest thing from an AllAboutMe--they are AllAboutYOUs, thoughtful and empathetic and kind and funny in a warped way that I'm particularly fond of. “Do we really talk about ourselves all the time? We don’t, do we? We were about to adopt her and make her an honorary sister, but now she’s back in the foster kid pool!”

Make that the ugly red-headed stepchild foster kid pool.

My best friend told me these misunderstandings are bound to happen because Mercury is in retrograde until next Tuesday.

In other news, when a bell rings, a new angel has gotten her wings. Also, if the bottom of your right foot itches, you are going to take a trip.

Third order of business: Pimping. Pimping of books, to be more specific. And to really pin down exactly where I am on this issue, pimping of friends’ books. I was lucky enough to read Unpredictable months before it came out, and I must say: my dear friend Eileen Cook has created one of the sweetest, quirkiest, and loveable protagonists I’ve ever encountered between the pages. (Between the squires and knights, too. *echo, echo....* And we wonder why my stand-up career never took off.)

Anyway, this is her official ‘launch’ week over at The Debs, so each day will feature a post singing the praises for Unpredictable—and deservedly so, as it has just hit #24 on the Barnes and Noble trade paperback romance bestseller list! And our fellow Deb Jenny Gardiner's Sleeping with Ward Cleaver just hit #32 on the B & N mass market romance bestseller list!

I tell you, I am feeling the LOVE for these books. Especially since they have bumpy covers. You KNOW you want to feel those bumpy covers, you tactile lover of textures you…go on, treat yourself to some bumpy cover love—and prepare to laugh and wince along with the characters between the covers as they fall in and out of love, mess their lives up, and sort it all out in the end in a way that makes you want to email the authors to tell them that you love their work, and maybe you could be friends if they ever came to your town, maybe you could get together for coffee or dinner, but you’re not a stalker, no, you’re just a really, really big fan, and even though that word is derived from FANATIC, it truly doesn’t apply to you, you just love their work and do they like footrubs? No! Wait…that just slipped out, you’re just an average, everyday kind of person, a reader, a lover of books, and you ALWAYS carry binoculars and duct tape in your trunk, it in no way relates to how much you LOVE their books, and no, you had no idea that “Cockadoodie” was one of Annie Wilkes’s favorite expletives!

Anyway, in all seriousness, even if you only buy books featuring the faces of grouchy white political commentators, you should think about buying these books. And they're not even paying me to say this.

Well, not much.

Thank you, go in peace.

On Giving Up (Or Not)

This is a post for anyone who has ever felt like giving up. You’re a teacher, you’re training for a marathon, you’re playing bass in a band on the brink, you’re writing novel after novel yet hitting wall after wall. No matter your passion, you will likely reach a day where you feel like giving up on the very thing that feeds your soul—perhaps the thing you have come to feel defines you, in certain limited terms at least. But one day your muse has evaporated, you’re too tired to take another step, you take a long look in the mirror and think, “Why am I doing this, really? This is too hard. To hell with it. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Whenever you feel that way…maybe you’ve run into some tangles at work and you can’t unravel them; maybe you’re covered in Cheerios and spit-up and poop for the 265th day and you feel like little more than a toddler punching bag; maybe you just moved to Georgia and you feel just a bit lost and lonely—a stranger in a strange land.

Whenever you feel that way:

Download this song immediately and listen to it on a loop: “Art” by Louque, from the So Long album.

Keep running. Your time’s coming.

How many days like those have I had? Too many to count. Specific to writing, in my case, because writing is the thing I must do, and when that little train isn’t chugging along on the track I want, it’s a painful thing indeed. But after I simmer down and tune out the needling voices saying discouraging things in my ear, I return to the center and start again. I have to. It is my first love—the one thing that makes me still feel like me whenever I start to lose my mental or emotional footing.

So. I’m glad I didn’t give up writing when I sure felt like it a few years ago, because then I’d never have been able to photograph a story I wrote in actual book form sitting on a stack of old rejection letters:




And I'd never have received this amazing message from the awesomely talented Marian Keyes:

"Dear Jess, I LOVED it!!!!!!!!! I've just finished it and so sorry for the delay. I'm humbled that you say you like my books because I think your writing is genius. This is a gorgeous novel, it's so so so funny and sparky, yet very touching. I found it HUGELY entertaining and I loved Leigh and all the characters, you handled her illness with such sensitivity because it would have been easy to tip over into maudlin sentimentality and you didn't. Really, I thought it was great, your voice, I love its irreverence. Congratulations on writing such an enjoyable, uplifting book and I wish you every success and happiness with it

Marian xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

I think I broke a lightbulb screaming when I read her note. I know every day won't be rainbows and shiny teddy bear farts, but damn does it feel good to look back and think, Thank God I didn't quit.

I'd like to close this post with some gratuitous nephew footage. Because really, what's more hopeful than a giggling baby:

Three Blogs for the Price of One

First, thanks to everyone who played along last week--some of your inmate name suggestions were the picture of hilarity. I'll be announcing the winners soon. Until then, here are three blogs for the price of one:

Blog #1: A conversation.

My mom, sighing: “I can’t wait to retire. I’m just so tired of working with people.”

My sister and me: *Nodding our heads in agreement.*

Mom: “I mean, what I’d like to do after I retire is just work with plants all day. In a nursery, or a greenhouse. Just pot up the seedlings and work with plants.”

My sister: “But mom, just because you work in a nursery doesn’t mean you won’t be working with people. Remember when I worked at that greenhouse in (that wealthy suburb)? And I had to deal with all those richy-rich snobs?”

Mom, losing heart, getting insistent: “But all I’d be doing is the planting part!”

My sister, shaking her head and making a Tough Love face: “Nope. You’d still probably have to work with people.”

My mom, frowning and dispirited: “Thanks, Maddie. Way to crush my dreams.”


Blog #2: The most exciting dream ever, a play in one act.

Monday morning I woke up from the most exciting dream ever. I dreamed I was vacuuming my office at work, for a very long time.


Blog #3: Where are they now?

Sometimes I look back on the people I’ve worked substandard part-time jobs with and wonder what they’re up to now. Sometimes I don’t even have to look back, I just have to look to the left a little, or right in front of me, because hey! There they are again! The people I earned minimum wage with in high school!

My first gig: Hostessing at Bonanza.

One of the Bonanza coworkers I most idolized was a redheaded Molly Ringwald clone. She didn’t say much to me (in fact, I don’t think she ever deigned to speak to me), but that didn’t stop me from developing a detailed fantasy friendship with her. A few years after I quit, I went to an adult bookstore with some friends. And guess who was working behind the counter, with a slab-like pit bull chained to her chair? Yep! Molly Ringwald from Bonanza! So she ended up working at an adult bookstore. (Speaking of which, do they even sell books there?) In case you’re wondering, I was there to purchase a classy confirmation gift for a dear friend.

Another of my former Bonanza coworkers ended up attending the same college as me. I’d run into him at parties, and we’d always salute one another with an enthusiastic, “Bonanza!” Only over time, it became apparent that the social circles in which we traveled had one too many intersections. So our hale and hearty cheers eventually deteriorated into lackluster nods, and years later, we’d run into each other at a bar, drunk, and think, Wow, that person really looks familiar… “Hey, didn’t you used to work at Bonanza?!”

My second gig: Selling lead-infused toys at KB

I had a whole slew of fun coworkers at KB Toys. How could I not? We earned a paycheck playing video games and shooting one another with water guns. It’s easy to have fun in that environment, even when your boss rushes up to you and pinches your upper arm hard enough to leave a bruise when he thinks you’ve been chatting with your friends for too long and need to instead push the Bumbleballs on customers because they have a terrific profit margin.

One particular coworker I will always remember, mostly because I still run into him at parties hosted by a mutual friend. Back then, he was dating a girl who (in his words) looked like Wonder Woman. She cheated on him, which he related to me one night while we straightened the game aisle. I offered some mature advice: “Well, why don’t you just cheat on her right back?”

“Oh that’s real mature,” he answered.

Years later he got married and went to Hedonism with his wife, entertaining us at parties with spicy tales from their wild adventures. Then they bought a house and had a baby and now when we get together at parties, they talk about mortgage rates and property values like the rest of us.

This Friday I'm at The Debs again, writing about my Worst Vacation Ever. Stop by and share the joy.

Wow, look at all the links!

Sometimes you have the kind of weekend where so much happens that it’s nearly impossible to condense into a bloggable, bite-sized nugget without it sounding like play-by-play commentary on ESPN. And then you think, Maybe I’ll just blog about how my husband nearly burned the house down today by accidentally nuking a shitty microwave burrito for ELEVEN MINUTES and the stink will never wash off you, not even after 35,495 showers in purified water and bleach, and the dog was sneezing and rubbing her nose all over the carpet and your furniture will now and forever smell like a charcoal sphincter and your nose hairs have petitioned the Body at Large for a change of address, they are so wounded.

But then, you have a change of heart. You should write about the weekend, because you had FUN. You want to capture the moment for posterity.

So Friday night I hung out with my fellow Deb, the all-around lovely, gracious, and amazing Gail Konop Baker. We attended the Wisconsin Book Festival to see T.C. Boyle read on Friday, and then all sorts of martini-fueled hijinks ensued, which Gail very eloquently wrote about here.

(Okay, I’m making it sound more exciting than it was. But to me? Curl-up-with-a-good-book-and-tea-on-a-Friday-night Girl? Who will use her prosaic powers only for beige-colored good? It was like being strapped to the most dangerous, condemned ride in the history of amusement parks, and the carnie just broke the lever off in “Neck-snapping whiplash” position. It rocked.)

Note to all drunken young people: YES! People have in fact told me I look exactly like Tina Fey. But, now listen—and this is important: I am not her, or I’d be in New York, rolling around on a bed of money, tossing off jokes to my entourage of laughing, sycophantic, bare-chested young men/errand boys as they scurry behind me from party to party. *sigh* I love her...

Saturday Gail and I got to see Alan Weisman’s talk on his book The World Without Us, and THEN (this is the exciting part) Gail and I got to have lunch with him! He was so truly cool and down-to-earth. And SMART. I was a bit goggle-eyed in his presence. I have only recently begun to actually email my favorite authors to tell them how much I adore their books, so having lunch with such a talented, amazing writer … (well, see the part above about the carnie and the broken lever).

And then today? I saw my first potential cover design for Driving Sideways. I can’t share it yet, because it may be tweaked here and there, but…I’m happy.

More to come...

To the grubby-fingered, thoughtless jerk who stole three cases of my CDs last week:

First, I must say that I am partly to blame for the music-free situation I am now in. My garage door was unlocked. My car door was unlocked. I all but spraypainted my driveway with “Thieves Welcome!” I had practically arranged my mums and mini-pumpkins in a hieroglyphic with an unmistakable message: “Naïve rube lives here!”

And with such obvious invitation, the opportunity to steal a collection of fairly mundane CDs from a woman who uses Oil of Olay and hasn’t purchased an impractical pair of shoes since 2001 was just too hard to pass up. I get it, truly. You saw the birdfeeders in the yard and the muddy gardening clogs near the back door and what other thought could you have had than, “Wow, a really cool person must live here! I’m SURE she listens to Master P and Obi Trice. C’mon, let’s rummage through the glove box!”

So now it’s good-bye Modest Mouse--may you float on well. Farewell Death Cab for Cutie; I’m afraid I won’t be following you into the light. Adios all three Radiohead discs, including the so-aptly titled, Hail to the Thief. Adieu Aimee Mann, Keane, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Weezer, Kings of Leon, Coldplay, White Stripes, Madonna, Men at Work, Tears for Fears, Eagles Greatest Hits, Perfect Circle, John Lennon, Moby, ELO, Incubus, Perfect Circle, so many, many dozens of others…

But hey, Kleptomania Karl? Here’s what I don’t get. Will you sing along with John Denver’s "Calypso" on a buoyant Sunday afternoon? Will you groove out to Steely Dan and Willie Nelson during a basement sock hop with your friends? Will you blast The Indigo Girls while doing pushups in your bedroom? Will you swoon to the smooth, operatic stylings of Jeff Buckley when you’re home with your little punk friends watching Ultimate Fighting Champion on Homecoming night? On Fridays after work, when you want to let you hair down after a long week, will you pop in Duran Duran or ABBA and do a little car-dancing? Oh wait. You don’t work. What am I thinking?

My only consolation is that my most treasured CDs were indoors, safely nestled next to my computer: all three Trampled by Turtles discs, Sufjan Stevens, Muse, Andrew Bird, Feist, The Shins, Guster, and Wilco’s newest. (Shhhh my babies, mamma will protect you from the grubby-fingered little thief...)

I guess now I’ll have to step into the 21st century and get an iPod or satellite radio.

In totally unrelated news, they ARE changing the title of my novel after all. Farewell, Riding with Larry Resnick. Hello, Driving Sideways. (Named for an Aimee Mann song and indicative of the non-linear journey of the characters.) This is it folks. My masthead will change next week. No ifs, ands, or buts. No BS. No take-backs. I'm throwing Larry a going-away party this weekend.

Also, I’m at The Debs this Friday dishing about secrets.