Scarlet Letters

Briefly: While I like the concept of Nanowrimo, I think we can all agree that November is a terrible month to write a novel. Thanksgiving, holiday shopping, family visits.. not to mention it's sweeps month on TV. Therefore I created Julnawrimo: Because There's Nothing Good on TV in July. The live-and-in-person kickoff is 6-10 p.m. July 1 at the Denny's in Glen Carbon, Ill. An online component is on its way for those who don't live in the St. Louis region. The full FAQ can be found on the LiveJournal community profile page, not to be confused with those guys at JulNOwrimo. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter . Join up! Don't worry about making your 1,666 words or whatever per day. Just see if you can make SOME words each day for the month. Every word you write is another word you wouldn't have if you didn't try.

I stuck my head in the room two of my nieces are sharing. ME: Good night. L: Good night, dork. A: *giggles* ME: Did you just call MOI a dork? L: Yup! ME: Did you just call the person who may or may not buy you ice cream tomorrow a dork? L: Touche! ME: Uh huh. I'm just saying. L: You're my favoritest aunt ever! ME: That's more like it. A: Are you my aunt? ME: Yes! Um, lemme think. *counts* Yes, I am. A: Cool! ME: Good night, awesome girls. And they are.

• Sara Harvey and I are rarely at the same conventions these days. Hypericon was the first one since THE COLD ONES came out. As you know, I named the kickass ex-Marine major in that book after her: Sara Harvey, zombie-hunter extraordinaire. Sara Harvey the author and Sara Harvey the character could not be more different. Author Sara is a generous, sweet, bohemian lady partial to soft flowing clothing of impeccable style, wide smiles and body glitter - often enough that my son dubbed her the Glitter Lady. Major Sara is hard edges all the way, unsmiling with short-cropped black hair, whose idea of fashion is a black tank top and camouflage pants. Author Sara has chopsticks and ribbons in her hair; Major Sara carries at least six guns and knives, and as hard as you try, you'll only find three of them. Author Sara writes beautiful, fascinating books of undefinable genre; Major Sara says "fuck" a lot. Enough for reviewers to mention it. As people bought copies of THE COLD ...

As Memorial Day rolled around, I had a problem. I'm captain of a Relay for Life team , raising money each year for the American Cancer Society. My friends know this is a very personal issue for me, as cancer seems to strike so often. I am lucky that it has not struck my immediate family. But just in this last year, I've seen several close friends undergo treatment for cancer. Just last week, a co-worker died of cancer, only five years older than I am. Our goal for the year was $3,000 - seemingly achievable, considering we raised a little over $2,700 last year. It seemed less achievable as about half my team dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. As May drew to a close, we had raised less than $1,000. This was a problem. Oh, I knew there would be some last-minute donations. Some people only donate at the very last minute. Some forget to send in checks. We sell glow necklaces and toys at the event; that usually brings in some cash. We had been in talks with Dairy Queen ...

This is what authors do when they're bored. Stephen Zimmer posted about a book signing, and someone replied that he wished he could raise the money for his own book signing. For the purposes of this post, you should know what Shane Moore looks like. SHANE MOORE: Why do you need money? They should pay to bring you in. ME: Ditto. Book signings are one of the very few author promotions that cost you nothing. STEPHEN ZIMMER: Elizabeth and Shane replied before I saw this, and both of them are correct. Author signings at book stores should never cost the author. ME: If there is some bookstore that's charging authors for signings, we should step on that FAST. Author smash. SHANE MOORE: You let me know. I am IN! Grrrr! STEPHEN ZIMMER: That makes three of us… a new Musketeers? ME: The first person to photoshop that gets a right cross. SHANE MOORE: *slowly pushes laptop behind chair* Who would do such a thing? ME: Shane, I trust you about as far as I can armwrestle you. SHAN...

Tuesday, June 15 is my team's RELAY FOR LIFE DAY at the Edwardsville Dairy Queen! The local DQ has kindly agreed to donate 20 percent of their receipts on Tuesday to my Relay for Life team, and I am so grateful for their support. The only catch is: you have to have a coupon for us to get credit for your order! Whether it's a Blizzard or a full-out meal, you have to give them the coupon in order for your donation to get to us. The coupon can be downloaded from YouSendIt here , or it is available as a free download on The Literary Underworld . If anyone knows of an easier way for people to be able to download this coupon, PLEASE let me know. I will happily email it to anyone. Please feel free to forward it on to friends, relatives and anyone else in the area who might be inclined toward supporting the American Cancer Society and/or likes ice cream. I'm figuring that's just about everyone! And, as always, you can donate to the Relay team or directly to me , if you a...

 Last week I sojourned to Nashville for a little reading, a little signing, a lot of selling and plenty of catching up with old friends. I love Nashville, even with half of it metaphorically still bailing out from the flood. Remember, that OTHER natural disaster that's been pretty much ignored by the rest of the country? THURSDAY We first spent a couple of days staying with Stephen, a friend of mine from the dim dark years of college. There is a certain comfort in a friend who has known you since both of you were teenagers, a shorthand that allows you to talk without barriers because you speak the same language, you come from the same place. Stephen exclaimed over how much the boy has grown; I teased him about the horrifying cleanliness of his house; all was as it should be. On our "be a tourist" day, we drove out to Cumberland Caverns. Usually we go to the Opryland Hotel , which is my favorite hotel in the wide world and I have never stayed there because I lack the...

 Warning: I wouldn't wait much longer to get THE COLD ONES if you haven't yet, folks. Good things are happening for my Things That Go Chomp in the Night. I read from it, of course, and as usual they voted to hear it from the beginning. I never get to read the aswang sequence, dangit. At this point I'm considering Garage-Banding a reading and putting it on my web site just so I can get to read that sequence. Anyway. Rough numbers coming in from this past weekend's exploits (con report pending) and strangely, I sold nearly twice as many copies as I did a few months ago in Memphis. This is weird, because Hypericon is a mini-convention in Nashville, where I've never lived, and has at the most 300 attendees. In Memphis, where I lived for three years in college, Midsouthcon generally attracts between 1,500 and 2,000 people. And MSC really is a writers' con; between the high number of authors and publishers it attracts, Dan and Jackie Gamber's writers' wo...

The story of my crazed consortium is today's guest blog on Apex.

Today a friend of mine got some bad news. She's been fighting her third bout with breast cancer for years now, and the latest scans came back not so good. It's on the bone again, and there's small growth in the existing tumors. It's back to radiation for her. She's just one of my friends battling cancer. You know who else? The kind and funny man who sings next to me in choir. Macie's partner, Gail. The taciturn alto in the next row. My stepfather. That's just this year. THIS YEAR. Know who else is fighting or has fought cancer? Kiddo's Sunday School teacher. The mother of Kiddo's friend. Kiddo's former babysitter. The wife of a dear friend. More friends than I can name. My stepmother. And we won't even talk about the fathers, sisters, mothers, cousins, grandparents, brothers, children, friends and others whom we've lost. Without even looking at my address book, I can name three people who've lost their fathers in the...

ME: Stupid characters! ISABEL: I really think that's the wrong attitude. If you say mean things about your characters on Twitter, they'll never do what you want them to do. ME: They won't do what I want them to do anyway. They don't talk to me. ISABEL: I'm doing the best I can. ME: It's not your fault. You just aren't a guns-and-smartass type. ISABEL: See, if you would just let those two fall in love... ME: No. ISABEL: Please? ME: No. ISABEL: *pouts* I never get to have fun anymore. ME: Neither do I. SUPERMOM: Would you stop glaring at me? ME: I am not glaring at you. I'm aware that it's May. SUPERMOM: May is my month. We have things to do. This is why we don't do conventions in May. ME: I'm aware. SUPERMOM: End of school. Planning summer break. Field Day. Spring cleaning. Orchestra concerts. Cub Scouts graduation. Ramp-up to Relay. LOIS: To say nothing of actual work. ME: Certainly saying nothing of it. LOIS: You're awa...

Utah strikes again . Some journalism seniors hid words for male and female genitalia in their final issue of the Daily Chronicle at the University of Utah. Now the university is threatening to withhold their diplomas. I'm torn. They finished their degree work, they earned their diplomas, they have a right to graduate and the university should not try to censor them. However, this is the sort of crap I'd expect of high schoolers, not college students about to graduate. Yes, we've all done the parody issue; I was even involved in one, peripherally. But that's what you do for your April 1 edition, and it should be labeled as such. Our story that aliens kidnapped the rodeo team was clearly satire. This was in a legitimate issue, and of utterly puerile "humor."  The Student Press Law Center is taking up their cause , along with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. And rightly so. Under no circumstances should these students be denied diplomas an...

Do not.

In the lovely month of May, a woman's fancy turns to thoughts of ravenous rotting reanimated corpses. What? It's really and truly Zombie Awareness Month, not something I just made up to amuse myself. This link is from last year, but the gray ribbon amuses me. Sponsored by the Zombie Research Society (slogan: What You Don't Know Can Eat You), they explain here. Celebrate by buying THE COLD ONES! Because you know the sequel is on its way... and I'm currently writing it. Which means I need victims. LOTS of victims. And your names are so nice and juicy... Happy Zombie Awareness Month!

Because we can . Thank you, First Amendment. Because GLBT doesn't just mean sex scenes; but the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters in genre fiction. Because the definition of pornography in Miller vs. California states that the work as a whole must be offensive under the community's standards AND of no redeeming cultural value, which has never fit anything we sell, so those that choose to redefine the word can categorically bite me. Because fiction with GLBT characters and fiction by GLBT authors deserves an equal place in the literary world. Please visit the site this week and check out our books. Some of them have GLBT characters; some are by GLBT authors; and some do, in fact, have same-gender sex scenes. Gasp! Enjoy, folks.

Or so Mother Bennett said when we were in the middle of that bishop thing. Associated Content ran a piece on Propay vs. the Literary Underworld, quoting my previous blog post extensively. Unfortunately I guess Propay didn't comment, and there's already trolls! Apparently I'm just "bitter" about "being declined" and must've been rejected by Paypal too. Hee. For the record, in case anyone cares: Propay made it very clear in all our communications that we were turned down because of our content, not because of anything having to do with our business structure or credit, and our site is protected by an SSL certificate. Now, whether Propay has the legal right to reject a customer based on legally-protected content under the First Amendment is for someone smarter than me to say - I'm betting probably they do. But being legal doesn't make it right. That's why I stated it publicly, so my fellow entrepreneurs can choose with whom they do bu...

I cannot recall a recent time when I have been so angry. As you probably know, I started doing the speculative-fiction convention circuit about six years ago, upon the sale of my first novel. After a few years, I saw how silly it was for each of the authors to get a separate table in the dealer's room just to hawk our own books. It was a waste of space in the convention hall, a waste of time and money for us - you have to sell a metric ton of books to be able to make your costs back when you're solo on a table, and there's no one to back you up when you need a break from shilling your wares. So I started sharing tables, first with a couple of my close friends who also were doing the circuit, and then bringing in other authors we met at conventions. Soon I began carrying their stock with me on tour, in the hopes that I could drum up a few extra sales for them at shows they couldn't attend. They were horror, science fiction, fantasy… and the occasional paranormal roma...

They say if you fold a thousand cranes, you can make a miracle happen. And we called her Miracle Girl. Jennie Sutton had cystic fibrosis. Her lungs destroyed themselves from the inside out, and by the time I met her and her mother, Selena Rochlis, she was already on the transplant list. The disease had robbed Jennie of an adult body, so petite and whisper-thin that at first I thought she was maybe 14 years old instead of a young woman in her 20s. Jennie and Selena came to St. Louis to wait for lungs, and after a long, hard wait, they were rewarded with that precious gift. Jennie's transplant went very well, and for a time, we got a glimpse of a Jennie without disease. She could walk without help, could go out without an oxygen tank. Friends took her to a little town along the Mississippi with famous levee-high pies, and Jennie relished the ability to walk about the town unaided, finally free. She was going back to college, she told me. Her dream was to work in early childhood...

You never realize the perfect times when they're happening. Only once in a while, you get a little glimpse, a hint that this is one for the memory banks. Kiddo's violin teacher canceled his lesson, which gave me time to run by the store on the way home. No big. The boy went gallivanting about the neighborhood for an hour with his friends, so they can talk about boogers and superheroes, I will never know. I dug weeds out of the garden and cursed the rocks and nasty clay soil that grows nothing but junk weeds despite my best efforts. Then the boy returned - precisely on time, because he loses bike privileges if he's late - and rode in circles around the parking lot while I finished weeding the flower bed. Then I enjoyed the last of the sunset, sitting in the Adirondack chair as he played soccer with the apartment building's wall. The music rose in the deepening twilight, and when he looked over at me as Nickelback came on, I raised my hands in the awesome salute and...

I spent this evening's writing time working on a critter attack on a diner. I needed expositional backstory on the two characters I'm introducing without having a visit from the Exposition Fairy - you know, the moment when the recruiting sergeant reads the soldier's personnel file to him so they can talk about shit both of them already know. Very exciting. But I'm also limited to my main character's POV. Outside of the interludes, I intend to stay in her head the whole book. So I put her in a surveillance van with her superior officer, and he'll ask her to tell him what she sees. Her observations will be mostly correct, because that's what she does, and we'll learn about these two through her eyes. Ain't I smart? Only it doesn't work out that way. Because it's an action scene, and Sara can kibitz all she likes but she's still stuck in the van. The van is never the place to be during an operation - ask any of a hundred flunkies, fr...