Book Winners, Chicken Sweaters, and Karma

First, congratulations to Amy, Brittany, and Road Warrior Mama--you each won a signed copy of All the Lonely People! I've emailed Amy and Brittany directly, but Road Warrior Mama--I need you to comment or email me, because I don't have your contact information!

I used the Random Line Picker to select the winners, chosen from a pool of folks who "liked" my Facebook author page, emailed me between November 12 and December 1, or commented here on the blog by last Saturday.

If you didn't win, you still have more chances to win an autographed copy: the Goodreads giveaway starts next week (one copy up for grabs), and I'll be giving away additional copies via several fabulous bloggers in the weeks to come, so stay tuned!

Last week something very exciting happened. I hit my lowest Amazon ranking ever! Look: I cracked the top 300! The lowest I ever got with Driving Sideways was somewhere near 3,000, so this feels mighty fine; I didn't crack the top 100, but oooooh----so close I can taste it! (It tastes like strawberry jelly beans, by the way.) 

Look, ma! People like me! They really do!

But Jess, you may be saying, what does this mean?

Okay, so the basic goal with the ranking system is to get as close to #1 as you can (We're number 1! We're number 1!) But because of the very existence of people like James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, and E.L James, this is next to impossible for the average smart-ass writer like me. HOWEVER: sometimes life is kind, and ultra-awesome benefactors / fairy author godmothers take pity on you or actually like your book, and tell their fans (or even their editor) about you. Basically: Jen Lancaster and Karen McQuestion rock. Also, look here, on Emily Giffin's website! Recognize anyone on the list? *bats eyelashes*

(Filing all of this away under "definitely paying it forward" and "good karma," in case I'm ever famous...)

Thank you so much to everyone who bought a copy; I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you laugh at the chicken sweaters and rape pit.* If you'd like your e-copy signed, check out my page on Authorgraph; I'll write you a haiku!

The paperback is mere days away, and I'll update the minute it's available. (I have the cutest little hand-knit mittens to tuck in the copies going to book bloggers!!!)

*Aaaack! What!?!? Well, you'll just have to read the book to find out. ;)

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.

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!