Book Tour 2009!

So recently I did my first-ever book tour for my freshly published novel, "The Giving Season" (available now at Amazon and Pearlsong Press, btw).

Yep. Three libraries in three days. I felt like a rock star.

I'm joking, of course. I was lucky enough to be asked to participate in a traveling "local author" book fair by Michael "Put my books between King and Koontz!" Knost (just kidding, Mike), who is the editor of the Legends of the Mountain State books and the Probably-Going-to-be-Nominated-for-a-Stoker-Award Writers Workshop of Horror. We went to the three libraries in my county (including the one at which I work) and did a few Q&A sessions with students and the public. I sold a few copies of my books. Gave a few autographs (and felt like a total douche--after all...who am I?)

It was fun to go to the libraries and talk about writing. I realized that I don't get to talk about it nearly as much as I'd like. Could it be that I've actually found something that I'm...wait for it...passionate about? Wow...and here I've been thinking I was pretty much numb.

The experience made me wonder how many well-known writers take that sort of thing for granted. "Oh, ho-hum...yet another book signing. How many hundreds of copies will I have to sign today?" Or how many writers take it for granted that people want to actually hear their opinions on their writing (or anything, for that matter). I'm so used to people tuning out me and my crazy talk that it astounds me to think that anyone would actually be interested in listening to me speak.

I joked around and said that I felt like a "real" writer with a "real" book...but to be honest, I wasn't really joking. For years and years and years and years (and a few more years) I wrote in total solitude. No one (but an unlucky few) read my stories. No one cared. I was in a vacuum. To suddenly be in an environment where people not only asked me questions about my writing but BOUGHT MY BOOKS felt like culture shock.

Even more so when I did a phone interview with Peggy Elam, my publisher at Pearlsong Press. I'm totally not used to talking about my writing (yet somehow I managed to blab for a whole hour) so it was brain-busting for me to be asked questions about it. I don't know if anyone has actually tuned into the podcast (it's here, by the way) but my mind is still blown.

Maybe I need to get out more.

A few words about Twilight

I'll come right out and admit it.

I like the Twilight books.

Go ahead and crucify me if you will. I've never been much for snottiness when it comes to books, and I'm seeing it in great big spades when it comes to Stephenie Meyer's writing. And it's pissing me off, to be quite honest about it.

Why? Because people are more than happy to criticize the books without taking the time to read them. Yeah, I know that's a groundbreaking concept: read the book first. I was like that at one time. I heard "glittery vampire" and tuned out. Vampires don't glitter. And who wants to read a vampire book written by someone who went to a Mormon college? I don't usually equate Mormons with great horror fiction. Yuck. Go peddle your teen romance elsewhere, lady.

I hate to admit that I was such a dick about it.

I watched the movie first ("Twilight") and was shocked that it was actually interesting. Maybe I was--gasp!--wrong. So I picked up the first novel in the series. And I liked it.

Me, the die-hard zombie/vampire/gorehound fan. I liked it.

I started noting all the criticism at about that time. Meyer wasn't a great writer. She didn't deserve all that success. People hated her and all she stood for. They'd hold book burnings of all the Twilight novels if they could get away with it. Even Stephen King said that Meyer "couldn't write worth a damn."

Wow. Talk about polarizing your audience.

My personal opinion about all the Meyer hate? Jealousy. Pure D jealousy. Yeah, that even goes for Stephen King.

Look at the facts: Twilight was Meyer's first novel. Her first shot out of the gate. And it got huge fast. She didn't toil in the salt mines of writing short stories for $.01 a word for years. She didn't "pay her dues" of writing novel after novel with no attention. You know...like the rest of us poor writing slobs.

She got lucky. Extraordinarily, terrifically, disgustingly lucky.

She had the right story at the right time, and found the right audience with the right characters. She was able to reach teenage girls (and a lot of grown women) with her romantic elements, as wild as they are. She. Got. Lucky.

That's not to take away from the work she's put into the books. Writing is difficult, and even if you have no respect for the writer herself, at least respect the work that goes into it. The Stephen King comments pissed me off, because he's been nailed hundreds of time by critics for the very thing he's accusing Meyer of: not being a good writer. And I like Stephen King, don't get me wrong. He's just not the greatest writer of all time. Neither is Meyer. And here's the secret: no one is.

Writing is a subjective thing. There are some wildly successful horror writers out there that I just absolutely can't stand. Does that mean they can't write? No. It just means I don't care for their stuff. Which is why it's wrong for anyone--especially fellow writers--to dismiss Stephenie Meyer so cavalierly. You know how hard it is to write and to try to get published, after all.

Will I catch hell for this? Probably not, because no one reads this blog and--even more than that--no one gives a particular damn about my opinion. But I'm coming out of the Twilight closet. I enjoy the books. I think Meyers has done a pretty good job with them. I congratulate her on her success.

And if you don't like it, then...well, bite me.

Yay! "Best of All Flesh" is a go!!

I'm really thrilled to announce that my story, "Night Shift," is going to be included in the upcoming zombie anthology, "The Best of All Flesh." It was originally published in "The Book of More Flesh," the second book in the trilogy (of sorts) based on the "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" RPG. I'm honestly surprised that it made the cut, because there were a ton of great writers and super stories in the three anthologies. No false modesty here...I'm really stunned.

It's available for pre-order at Amazon (just click on the cover over there on the right and you'll zip right to it) and should be out in December 2009.

Hopefully, my romance novel, "The Giving Season" will be out around that time too. Yes. Romance novels and zombie stories. I am a very complicated woman.

What the hell's so "wise" about 'em?

It's been a while since I've posted (for all NONE of you who read this blog), but I have a very good excuse: for the last month or so, I've been in massive, bone-pulsing, throbbing pain from my two lower wisdom teeth. Oh, it's been fun.

Back in May, I woke up one night to a eye-watering pain in the left side of my mouth. I'd been having some problems, but I thought it was my sinuses, since the pain/pressure went into my ear and throat. But that pain was nothing compared to what woke me up that night. To illustrate how much it hurt: I called around for a dentist the next morning. Yep...the pain was bad enough to drive me to a dentist. That's pretty bad.

And you know what's really fun? Trying to find a dentist who'll take an emergency. Every single ding-damn one I called was booked solid. By the time I finally found one who'd see me, I was ready to take a hammer to my jaw and take care of business myself.

But I did find one, and as soon as I sat in the chair (this is, by the way, after he made a few "WTF" comments about my weight--I mean really...WTF?) and opened my mouth, he took one look and said, "Nope, I can't help you. You're going to have to go to an oral surgeon."

*sputter* Excuse me, but wha? An oral surgeon? I just want the teeth pulled out. Do whatever you have to do, just GET THEM OUT OF ME!

X-rays are taken. Apparently my wisdom teeth are overachievers and are coming in under a "bony prominence" or some such thing. Basically, they're going to have to be cut out of my jaw. Great. $185 bucks later--and with NO PAIN MEDICINE--I walk out of the dentist's office and go home to make an appointment. This is, keep in mind, in late May.

So guess when my appointment's scheduled? July 1. So I got to have a good solid month of throbbing, aching, maddening, unending pain in my mouth. And lucky me, the pain hops sides from time to time, so both wisdom teeth get a good go at me. I've probably ruined my liver with ibuprofen and Tylenol, but damn...how could anyone be expected to have even a halfway normal life with that much pain? June was just a blur to me.

By the time I had my surgery, the pain had gotten to the point where it felt like a dull nail pressing slowly...oh, so slowly...into the raw nerves of my lower jaw. I had been nervous about the IV sedation I would be having for the surgery--I've never had any kind of operation before--but by July 1, I was ready to do whatever I had to do to make the pain go away. Christ, it was bad.

Cut to me waking up after the surgery. My mouth is packed with gauze. I can't feel anything below my nose--and oh, what blessed relief THAT was!--and I have a prescription for 20 tablets of Lortab to get me through the after-surgery pain. I'm warned about dry-socket, and after I pay my $600 bill (thank God for credit cards), I go home to recuperate. All's well that ends well, I think.

Until the numbness wears away. And then oh, my God...both sides are throbbing and aching and pulsing with agony and I'm bleeding so much I'm sick to my stomach from swallowing blood and my stitches feel like they're coming loose too soon and I can't eat anything and it's bad, so very bad, almost as bad as when the damn teeth were in my skull. I can't open my mouth very wide because it feels like I'm going to crack my jaw. This goes on for days and days. The Lortab does exactly shit for the pain, so I have to combine it with mega-doses of ibuprofen (sorry liver) and all I want to do is sleep until I don't feel anything because the pain is just so nagging, so nonstop, so constant that it feels like it's driving me insane.

More days pass. The pain becomes more manageable, but it's still hiding in the shadows, ready to spring at me whenever I eat something or tense my jaw (as I apparently tend to do when I sleep). Eating becomes a whole new fun thing, because removing the wisdom teeth has created handy dandy pockets to catch all kinds of food particles, which then irritate the living hell out of me until I'm able to rinse my mouth out. The taste of blood still lingers in my mouth, although by now I think it's just my imagination. I hope.

As I write this, it's been a little over two weeks since the surgery, and I'm still aching--although it's nothing like before. The pain now feels like it's deep in my jawbone, a dull pulse that has just sort of settled in for the duration. It's better than it was, but good Lord...it's still driving me nuts.

I found the cartoon (from www.peter-hodges.com) while doing a Google search and it pretty much sums up my experience. I'm just glad it's behind me now...because good grief, I don't think I could do it again. The blood...so much blood...

Dept. of Execrable Movies: Raimi Edition (SPOILERS)

Okay, I must have sat through another version of this movie, because it sure wasn't the one that everybody seems to be raving over. It wasn't scary. It wasn't particularly original (a gypsy puts a curse on somebody who pisses them off...hmm, sounds a lot like "Thinner," methinks). And if this is supposed to be Sam Raimi's grand return to the horror genre, then he can stay the hell out, as far as I'm concerned.

I. Hated. This. Movie.

And when I say "hate," I mean hate with the fire of a thousand suns. Yeah, I'm surprised too. I figured I'd at least like it. It's Sam Raimi! "The Evil Dead" is one of my favorite movies of all time. How could it not be good?

Well, let me count the ways...

First of all, there's the problem of the main character--you know, the pretty blonde who denies an ugly old woman an extension on her bank loan and done gets herself all cursified. One of the most important rules of scriptwriting is HAVE A SYMPATHETIC MAIN CHARACTER. That way the audience actually gives a shit if she lives or dies or gets herself dragged to hell.

In this movie...not so much. Her boss leaves the choice up to her, and she chooses to kick the old woman out of her house so she'll seem all badass and tough and will get promoted. It's not like her hands are tied and she's really sorry, but she has no choice...blah blah blah. She wants the promotion, so she kicks out the old woman. Cut and dried.

There's a really great book on scriptwriting called "Save the Cat" (the irony in this will be apparent in a moment) that urges scriptwriters to insert one small scene in their script that will align the audience's sympathy with the main character. Maybe they save the cat from a tree. Maybe they do something nice for an old person. Whatever. It's a moment where they are funny or sweet or caring, and it's guaranteed to put the audience squarely on the character's side for the rest of the movie.

There's one moment in this piece of cinematic crap that totally destroyed any small shred of sympathy I had for the main character. It involved a teeny kitten, a big knife, and a cut to the outside of the house with an off-screen cat's screech. Why...WHY??? Why do you have your main character kill a kitten--even if she's trying to save her soul--midway through the movie? It was almost played for laughs (disturbing enough) but it was just unnecessary. After that scene, they couldn't drag that bitch's ass to hell fast enough.

And then there's Raimi's insistance on using his lameass slapstick. I like the Three Stooges too, but that kind of stuff has no place in a horror movie, even if you are attempting to add humor. It totally pulled me out of the movie and made me wonder who in the hell green-lit the script. I mean, it LITERALLY drops an anvil on a character's head. I kept waiting for somebody to do the Curley shuffle.

And let's not even mention the moment when a goat talks. Yes. Talks. A goat. By that point, I was doing the Sideshow Bob shudder.

Stephen King once wrote that when he couldn't go for the scare, he'd go for the gross-out. Okay. Fair enough. I've done it in my own writing more than once. Raimi, unfortunately, took those words to heart. There was more spit/worms/maggots/blood/formaldehyde/unknowable bodily fluids going into the main character's mouth than necessary for the plot. It was like Raimi decided that his audience was going to be made up of teenage boys who'd think it was super cool to watch a pretty girl get choked on thick goo while a toothless old woman gummed her open mouth. I've got nothing against disgusting stuff in movies, but come on...there's a limit.

Honestly, I cannot understand why this movie is getting so many good reviews. It's like Raimi's diehard fans are just happy enough to see his name on the screen, to hell with whatever follows it. One review called it a perfect summer horror flick. No. It's not. It's a horror movie for people who don't know what horror movies should (or could) be.

If Raimi had played it straight, if he'd cut out the dumbass slapstick and made the script a little more palatable, this might have been a good movie. As it is, he uses all his old "Evil Dead" tricks--shaky cam, zooms, quick pans to shock the audience, "possessed" objects, etc. and so on. It's all gimmicks, no substance.

The movie could have been good. If he'd made the main character sympathetic, the gypsy woman totally unlikable (instead of pathetic), and made good on the promise of showing the Lamia demon (instead of shadow silhouettes and quick glimpses), then maybe...maybe...it would have been scary. If it had really been, as the trailer says, about the fact that even a good person could be condemned to hell, then that would have been something for the audience to think about.

Drag the bitch to hell, see if I care. And take this damned movie with you.

I FINALLY figured out...

...what Kate Gosselin's hair reminds me
of...

The indomitable Lola "I want to bear your children!" Heatherton (Catherine O'Hara) from SCTV!

Once seen, it can't be unseen.

Like the mountains are safe...