Scarlet Letters

Given the surprise I heard when I said the words "out of print" a couple of times at Dragoncon, it occurs to me I haven't been clear enough about what's going on with the books. Many of my titles have gone out of print or are going out of print this year. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's the nature of the industry. I consider myself damn fortunate that Setting Suns  is still in print and available nearly a decade after its release; that's like a century in book years. However, the Blackfire zombie series is out of print due to the demise of Sam's Dot Publishing. I still have a decent inventory of paperbacks, but when they're gone, they're gone. Does that mean the end of Major Sara Harvey and her bloodsoaked crew? Of course not; there's a final novel to write. I am in negotiations with interested parties, and when the Blackfire series has a new home, I will be happy to share the news. The Nocturnal Urges series also will be goi...

Probably when one is running as far behind as I am in preparing for an 11-day business trip, blogging is a dumb thing to do. But I never claimed to be smart. Remaining on the to-do list: • Pack Dragoncon suitcase • Pack respectable-journalist suitcase • Put checks in mail • One last load of laundry • Finish packing books and electronics • Do itinerary for Jimmy • Finish promotional flyer layout • Finish Kindle programming and send • Email publisher • Email Mom • Email Stephen • File time card • Find photo sites for post-DC shoot • Reserve hotel for Nashville • Tomorrow before leaving town: load car, pick up flyers, drop off Boy's prescription, drop Jimmy off at the college and return library book that will be screamingly late if I don't return it before I leave town. • While on the drive: Call the reception site to find out when we get access to the space, so I'll know what time my wedding will be, so I can order my wedding invitations, so they'll be ...

Yup, friends, it's that time again. Time for the ravening hordes to descend upon downtown Atlanta and hang out with 60,000 of your closest friends. As usual, I will not have my books available in the dealer's room unless a dealer with shelf space magically appears out of the genie bottle in the next week, so you'll have to catch up with me if you want my NEW NOVELLA. Or, y'know, any of my other stuff. Or a hug. Though it's going to be 91 degrees and there's a tropical storm bearing on us, so hugs might get sticky. Here is my Stalking Guide. I don't have an app code yet, because I'm old and dumb and haven't figured out how they work. But I am open to (most) suggestions, and looking forward to seeing my awesome folks in Atlanta! Yes, even YOU. FRIDAY • Reading -   4 p.m., Vinings in the Hyatt. What will I be reading? Whatever y'all want to hear, or the new novella or possibly interpretive dance. That last one is directly proportionate to th...

Jimmy and I had the pleasure of visiting Dad and Karen in their lovely new lake house this past weekend, and it was a pile of fun except for the part where Jimmy nearly drowned. Okay, that's overstating a bit. It was all fun. Including the part where Jimmy nearly drowned. Dad retired at the end of last semester, and he and my stepmom sold their house in Our Town and moved to the Lake of the Ozarks. (Karen's right behind him on the retirement train, but she's still working one day a week for now.) Now they live just far enough away that we can't harass them on a weekly basis, as was our wont, and probably half the reason they ran away as quickly as possible. Or it could be they wanted a beautiful house in a quiet forest, so they could go out on their boat anytime they wanted. Something like that. Here they are with their new boat, which needs a name, folks - help us out there? Early suggestions include Geronimo  or perhaps The SS Minnow.   Titanic was vetoed . ...

Boy has his learner's permit. Wasn't it just the other day he was seven years old and waiting in line to meet Mickey Mouse? I took him out for his inaugural drive yesterday, in the most remote parking lot I could find on the college campus. He practiced backing up, pulling into a parking space, and driving around in circles. At first we stuck to idling speed, so he could get a handle on the car before we started accelerating. You should know that our car is a Honda Fit. It's a teeny little hatchback with a snub nose, and I adore it. It's a Tardis: fold down the back seats and it's got huge cargo room, while still being a little teeny car. But it does have a lighter engine than, say, the Honda Accord; 130hp vs. 185, for example.  When I test-drove it, I cracked that it had two little hamsters in wheels for the engine. Whenever the car has to do something special, like go uphill with the entire Literary Underworld in the back, we encourage the hampsters to...

I want you to meet David Black. I met David when I hired him to be my son's tutor. Ian was struggling with middle school, ADHD and generally being a teenager. He was very good at being late to class, ignoring his homework and not paying attention; he was very bad at passing the seventh grade. His teachers were giving up on him. I didn't have the luxury of giving up on my son, and David was our lifeline. Hired with the generous help of my folks, David was more like Ian's warden than his tutor. Every day after school, he picked up my son and took him to the library. They studied American government and English and fractions every afternoon, with an extra dose of study skills and work ethic. David had just graduated from the university with his teaching degree, but it was the recession, and he hadn't snagged a full-time job. So Ian became his classroom. He had worked extensively with special-education kids as a student teacher and came with glowing recommendations th...

Or is that redundant? The pre-con trip to Wal-mart is always exhausting. Partially because I'm allergic to Wal-mart, but cannot avoid it completely. Partially because I'm constantly trying to find ways to feed us on the road without breaking the bank, which is not easy when all three of us are traveling. Jimmy and I can subsist on one meal and a few add-ons a day; Boy requires vast quantities of food. And we are stony broke this week. First, household goods. A bike lock, a new flashlight, toothpaste and deodorant. Boy was nonspecific as to his deodorant needs, and lately he's been using Old Spice, which smells just as awful as you remember. But of course, he was home alone and therefore blaring music throughout the house, so he did not respond to multiple (and increasingly capslocked) texts requesting clarification of his demands. As usual, I had texted my Menfolk for their last-minute additions. Oh, I could be the hard-ass and insist they only get what they physicall...

This weekend, two friends of mine will marry. Technically, they've been married for a while... as long as it was legally permissible for them to do so. But this will be their formal ceremony in accordance with their faith and surrounded by their friends and family. And that is important. As much as people have told us, "Just elope, it's not worth the drama," we believe that the most important part of getting married is the presence of family and friends to support us and share in our happiness. If Jimmy and I had all the money in the world, Christ Church Cathedral could not hold all the people we would want at our wedding. Joy multiplies when shared. So we were honored and delighted to be invited to Selina and Lynn's wedding this weekend. And it's absolutely breaking my heart that we can't be there. We hemmed and hawed all the way up to this week, but finances being what they are, we just couldn't do it. Someone needs to invent a teleporter right...

Ian and I marched from the kitchen into the bedroom, where Jimmy had just gotten off the phone. We stood in the doorway with twin expressions of dismay, arms crossed. JIMMY: What'd I do? ME: The chocolate fondue I made for the party. Dark, rich, delicious molten chocolate from scratch. JIMMY: Down the drain. ME/IAN: *SQUAWK* ME: Nooooooo! IAN: Chocolate! JIMMY: It had gotten all hard! ME: It's CHOCOLATE. You plug the pot back in and it melts again! JIMMY: Oh. ME: You killed the chocolate! IAN: He needs punishment. ME: He does. IAN: He's grounded! ME: Or something like that. You are a bad man! A bad, bad man! JIMMY: I am not! ME: From scratch. That was good chocolate. You know what that costs?  You owe me chocolate. JIMMY: I will buy you chocolate tomorrow when I get paid. ME: It's not the same. JIMMY: *tries to kiss me* ME: No! I do not kiss bad men. JIMMY: *kisses me* ME: Bad, bad man!

Jimmy walks into my office (isn't that usually how this happens?) ME: ... JIMMY: What. ME: Honey, what are you wearing? JIMMY: Around-the-house stuff. ME: *grins* JIMMY: What? ME: Black sneakers and white socks. Shiny red Santa shorts. And a KISS T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. JIMMY: It's around the house! ME: *hysterical giggles erupt* Oh baby, you're so sexy. I mean, I just want to rip your clothes off. No, I mean I really  want to rip your clothes off. JIMMY: It's my Redneck Ensemble. ME: It's laundry day.

Me: So that pork roast? I found out why it was cheap. Jimmy: All that fat? Me: It wasn't fat. It was skin. It still had the skin on. Jimmy: Did you take it off? Me: I couldn't get it off! I hacked and hacked at it, but it wouldn't come off. So I looked it up on the internet, and it said you can roast it with the skin on and it will actually add flavor. Then it'll just slip right off. Jimmy: Then we can roast it in the oven. Me: What? Jimmy: Roast the skin, and it'll turn into cracklings. Me: Cracklings? Jimmy: *pats my knee* It's okay, northern girl. Me: WHAT. Jimmy: Cracklings. Roasted pork skin. Me: You just bake pig skin and eat it? Jimmy: Mmmm. Me: I have a theory that weird southern cuisine goes back to the Civil War, when everyone was starving to death, so they ate whatever they could. Then it became a point of pride: "We ate shit and we liked it!"  Jimmy: *laughs* Me: It explains giblet gravy. Fried pork skin inde...

Boy's English class is reading Romeo and Juliet. They are watching scenes from the Zeffirelli movie, because the Luhrman has violence, sex, drugs and transvestism - you know, just like the play.  Seriously, I don't blame them for sticking with Zeffirelli; it's safer than risking the parental reaction to Luhrman. But it means the kids miss the glory of Harold Perrineau's Mercutio, which is simply the finest Shakespearean performance in film. Luhrman's work is hard to take; it's frenetic energy and wild choreography hit you between the eyes, and it's often too distracting. But if you can make it through the first twenty minutes, your mind acclimates to Luhrman Land and that's when amazing things happen. I always liked DiCaprio's Romeo - he didn't play a lovesick waif, but a street-tough young man with intelligence and common sense who is simply bowled over by love. Claire Danes is passable as Juliet, but the supporting cast really shines,...

Bottle of hard cider, check. Boy in bed, check. Earbuds playing slightly creepy classical music, check. Distracted by internet. So what else is new. I turn on Freedom for Mac and instruct it to shut off my internet for a while. Freedom reminds me that I'm still in my trial period for this program, which leads to twenty minutes of searching my receipts file because I'm quite sure I paid for it, quite sure indeed, and there's no receipt so maybe I'm just dumb. Fine, turn off my internet, Freedom. Then I go to find the cemetery story file. It's not there. Oh God. That was a good story I had started. It was 1200 words of writing, and that's not much if you're, say, Bryan Smith or Angelia Sparrow. For me these days, that's an afternoon miracle. So then I was searching every possible corner it could have been auto-saved, trying to remember how I titled the file since the story doesn't have a title yet, and desperately hoping that it wasn't ...

ME: Urrrrrrrgh. I'm awake. MUSE: No, you're not. ME: Am too. I'm sitting up in my bed, holding my iPad. MUSE: Better put it to use, then. ME: You. YOU. Where the royal fuck have you been? MUSE: Working on this. Here, have the entire plot and every word of that project. *waves* ME: Holy crap. I know what happens. I know how it ends. I even know how to get to how it ends. I have the whole damn thing in my head. Fucking finally. MUSE: Told you I was working. ME: You might've shown up a bit earlier. This thing was due months ago. MUSE: Fuck you. ME: Glad to see you still have the same agreeable nature. MUSE: You gonna write that down or what? ME: I don't think I can get it all in the iPad. I should go downstairs and find my laptop. MUSE: You're not gonna be able to do that. ME: Why not? MUSE: I told you. You're not actually awake. You're dreaming. ME: What? I'm dreaming? So what about the story? The words? All this in my head - MUSE: It...

BOY: Mom, can I have a cuppy cake? ME: Hmm. How many did you have this morning? BOY: Two. ME: That's a lot of cupcake.  BOY: Pleeeeease? ME: First explain why you're calling them cuppy cakes. BOY: I've always done that. ME: You have not. You started when you heard Jimmy do it. BOY: Pleeeeeeease. ME: Okay. BOY: *arrives* ME: I said ONE cupcake! BOY: This one is for my imaginary friend. ME: Oh really. Who's your imaginary friend? BOY: Bob. ME: That's the best you can do? BOY: Wilfred the Magic Dragon. What. ME: Better.

Fighting with people online is like sitting on the beach and trying to empty the ocean with a cup. You pour it out on the sand, and it flows right back in. Social networking is a constant love-hate with me. I love that I can stay in touch with my family and old friends who live [anywhere but here] on a daily basis, bringing us much closer together than we ever were as children or as young adults. I love that I can talk to my readers, have a convenient feed of interesting material from wildly diverse sources, and toss my own stuff out for those who might be interested. The Social Network is a fun place for diversion. And I'm much better than I used to be about getting into fights. In fact, I first wrote this a week ago, and then shelved it because it wasn't worth the inevitable nastiness. We all know it's pointless to sink into the drahmah. But it's a struggle for me, because the very nature of my profession is to dispel ignorance with facts. Not truth - truth is a m...

Today is my little sister's birthday. I don't care that she's turning thirty-six. (Ha ha, Mel, I ratted you out.) She's still my baby sister, and the biggest regret I have in life (alongside getting student loans) is that she and I have spent most of our adult lives living in different time zones. It sucks. I want to hang out with her and get manicures or girly shit like that. I want to have lunch with her, just for the hell of it, and talk about nonsense. I want to call her up at the end of a tough day and say, "First margarita's on me." Social networks help alleviate it a bit. Neither of us is one for long phone conversations; we talk by text and internet. There are a lot of reasons why this year's especially difficult. I don't intend to detail them right now. Suffice to say, it's a special year. And I want to be there. Since I can't, I'll settle for embarrassing her with photos from that long-ago day when my parents brought...

In case you haven’t read the disclaimer on my publisher’s website, Fated Bonds contains erotic scenes. If my book ever appeared on television, it would be on HBO.  Aside from the usual hero and heroine romance, there’s a secondary romance. It just happens to be between two males. Since I wrote the love scenes between Tala and Alexander explicitly, it was only fair to do the same for Kevin and Derrick. In both cases, the sex is a part of the character growth and an expression of their affection for the other person.  Some readers may think, “ick” at the idea of reading about two men, but the love of those two characters was no less “right” than the main characters. They deserved the same stage as the main characters. I’m well aware that there are people out there who disagree. They can read something else. Of course, there’re logistical differences to consider. In the rough draft, I basically took my best guess and then passed it to a fellow writer who could commen...

Scene: Impending meeting of the Eville Writers. SNARKY BARISTA: Oh, I didn't realize you guys were coming in today. ME: Oops. We moved the meeting by a week and I think we* forgot to tell you. SB: Any idea how many will be here? ME: As usual, I have no idea. Could four or forty. They never tell me. SB: *laughs* What can I get you? ME: Something caffeinated. SB: *laughs* That we've got. ME: Let's see... should I be good or bad... SB: Bad. Bad is always more fun. ME: Yes, but I don't think I've written nearly enough to deserve being bad. ** So I guess it's a large iced coffee, Splenda and skim. SB: *rings up* And you don't have a discount card, right? ME: Nope. SB: I didn't know if we'd broken you yet. Ten to forty percent off! ME: *grin* Not yet. I'll join when it's free. SB: *evil* You know, it would've been free by now. You're in here every couple of weeks... ME: Well, don't bring logic into it... SB: I'm j...

"It takes six months to get in shape and two weeks to get out of shape. Once you know this, you can stop being angry about everything else and just be angry about this." -- Rita Rudner, para. Oh diet app, bite me. Nice little pop-up telling me "you aren't eating enough calories!" Yes, I've noticed. I have done everything my doctors told me to do. I track everything I eat - even a bite of bagel at church. I stay under 1800 calories a day with a balance between protein, fat and carbohydrate. I work out several times a week, both cardio workouts and strength training in the weight room. I take my meds like I'm supposed to even when they make me sick. And since the docs switched me to the new med two months ago, I've gained 16 pounds. Yay? Wasn't that supposed to regulate my screwed-up endocrine system so it could operate like a normal human? Do normal humans work out, diet and gain weight? Diet app, you are my constant companion on this non...