Hearing Voices: When a Character Cracks Up

My first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise features a woman who, through a surgical error, is given unwanted breast implants. Before they can be removed, they start talking to her. One is an English bloke, Max, the other a black woman of a certain age, Louise. Both have very strong opinions on what Molly, the main character, should do to fix her life, which is stuck firmly in the past.

In other words, Molly is completely nuts. And she knows it. She's hearing voices. The completely

mental thing about it is that when she starts listening to them, they make sense. Both Max and Louise, although they clash wildly, want Molly to break out of her shell and take some risks in love and life.

When I was writing the book, people at cocktail parties or my daughter's soccer games either laughed uproariously or they took a step back with a confused look on their faces, asking "Seriously? A book with talking boobs?" And to be honest, readers either willingly suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy the story or they don't.

But the insanity of the idea is what made it interesting to me. Weighed down by years of guilt about an accident in which her mother died, Molly's breaking point is the surgery, which cracks her open, spilling out all the fear, loneliness and guilt that have shadowed her since the day of her of her mother's death. With the breaking point comes two voices that change her life forever.

If you ever read any books by neurologist Oliver Sacks, such as The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, featuring stories of patients with various mental disabilities, Molly's voices aren't that much of a stretch. But unlike many real and debilitating mental illnesses, this one goes away once the Molly has reached a crisis point and moved beyond.

Great fiction takes characters and tosses them into the sea of crisis, spitting them out changed, for better or worse. In every day life, when faced with the chaos that life throws our way, we all have various coping devices. Sometimes going a little bit crazy is one of them. In fiction, writers can take it further because unlike real life, no one is going to end up getting hurt.

And in my books, I can promise you a few laughs along the way.

A native of Seattle and graduate of Smith College, Ellyn financed her MFA at The American Film Institute by working as a cook on fishing boats in Alaska. After several years as a screenwriter, Ellyn came to her senses and returned to Seattle, where she wrote her first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise, which was pubished in 2012. Her second novel, Divine Moves, was published the following year. She's polishing her third novel, Fifty Acts of Kindness and outlining her first YA novel, Finding Nirvana.

When she can find the right mix of humor, depression and hysteria, she'll write about her years in Los Angeles.

She lives near Seattle with her family and a shelter dog.

For writing news, sneak peeks at new projects and her blog, visit www.EllynOaksmith.com

Fiction Comes Home to Roost: Making up with the Neighbors by Ellyn Oaksmith

Setting: my cul-de-sac

For me setting is the bird’s next outside my house. Inside the bird warms her eggs, waits to hatch a living thing and watches the world go by. What came first, the setting or the plot? 

Coming from a screenwriting background, plot is king. Screenwriters live and die by the 30 second pitch: “Snakes on a plane!” “Husband and wife assasins!” Laugh all you want but those screenwriters are working today.

My current title, Divine Moves takes place in my own neighborhood, something I've never done. The plot involves infidelity, drug use, snotty teens, a kid possibly setting something very expensive on fire (rhymes with Hercedes) and yes, a stripping grandmother who teaches a grandchild to pole dance. Luckily I have neighbors with a good sense of humor who enjoy my books. 

What I wanted to write was a compilation of every quirky suburban family drama that interested me. But I couldn’t see any other way than to stick it in my own cul-de-sac. In reality we are incredibly supportive, adore each others’ children and celebrate with wine at the drop of a hat. What I found interesting was to throw a grenade into my fictional world (inspired by reality in tone only) and see where the pieces fell.

Did it work? Most people, including my neighbors have found the book to be engaging because the characters felt real and their problems — the tension between public and private and how we deal with failure, is real. At the same time I worked very hard to keep it light. Laughter isn’t the best medicine, it is the only medicine.

And it’s the only way I know how to write.

Thanks for stopping by. This is my first post so I’d like to say thank you to my fellow writers for inviting me. I’m so excited to be part of The Girlfriends Book Club!

A native of Seattle and graduate of Smith College, Ellyn financed her MFA at The American Film Institute by working as a cook on fishing boats in Alaska. After several years as a screenwriter, Ellyn came to her senses and returned to Seattle, where she wrote her first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise, which was pubished in 2012. Her second novel, Divine Moves, was published the following year. She's polishing her third novel, Fifty Acts of Kindness and outlining her first YA novel, Finding Nirvana.

When she can find the right mix of humor, depression and hysteria, she'll write about her years in Los Angeles.

She lives near Seattle with her family and a shelter dog.

For writing news, sneak peeks at new projects and her blog, visit www.EllynOaksmith.com

I Swore I'd NEVER Write a Vampire Novel by Jenny Gardiner

Really, I did.

For years I would lament to my friends, family, agent, anyone who would listen to me about how annoyed I was with the vampire trend; like the subject matter of these novels, they simply would NOT die. Made me crazy that fabulous novels were being passed on by publishing houses while mountains of tripe were being published under the guise of a "literary" craze. Sure there were good vampire novels out there, but really? I'd bet the vast majority of them were mediocre drivel.

 So I was meeting with my agent at a conference, bemoaning the finicky state of publishing, and jokingly mentioned an idea I had for a vampire novel, one I'd never write, because it was a ludicrous idea, so I figured it would be the thing publishing houses would go for (as opposed to the books I wanted to pitch but weren't the ones pub houses were looking for).

"So you have this woman who is turned into a vampire by her cheating husband, who was turned into a vampire by someone he'd slept with," I say with a laugh. "She then spends the rest of eternity trying to exact revenge on him for his betrayal. And it'll be a funny book."

 I expected her to pat me on the knee and tell me to get back to writing a good book. But instead she said she liked the idea and thought it might have legs.

 A week or so later, she tells me she had lunch with an editor who loved it and wanted to see pages. Pages of a book. One I hadn't planned on and wasn't planning on writing. So I got to work cranking out this non-novel of mine; I hunkered down and wrote and wrote and wrote. Got about 80 pages into it and slapped together a synopsis and sent it off to my agent, assuming that would be the last I'd heard of it.

 Turns out the editor loved the partial I'd sent on, and she was taking it to ed board. Well, if you've been around the publishing business long enough you learn about ed board. It's the gathering of insiders in a publishing house who either green light or kill your dream. Long gone are the days in which ed boards embraced risky books, or different books or anything but for what seems like something penned by the reality TV celebrity du jour, who doesn't actually write the thing anyhow but goes on a huge national tour earning gobs of cash while flacking their lousy book that no one with a modicum of self respect ought to even purchase, let alone read. Okay, off my soap box.

Anyhow, after the economy tanked and the publishing industry lost its last ounce of true soul, it became damn near impossible to find consensus on a whole lot of books, particularly in women's fiction, which at the time was a hard sell on a good day anyhow. So when my book went to ed board with an editor who loved it and really pushed for it, I still figured it had a minimal chance of getting the thumbs up. And sure enough, apparently the editor in chief or the publisher or someone all-powerful in this ed board determined that humor in these kinds of books either works or it doesn't work and they weren't going to chance it. Thus driving a stake in the heart of my vampire-novel-that-wouldn't-be.

My agent shopped it around a little bit more, found another editor who apparently really liked it but then she quit the business a week later. By then the genre had finally, finally died. Just in time for me to try to break into it. (This tends to happen with me--give me a genre and I'll kill it in a day flat; certainly worked well with chick lit).

Since then, my novel has been collecting dust in the far corners of my computer. I've entertained the idea of finishing it and publishing it myself, but really have just been too busy with other things to get around to it. So I figured I'd throw this up as my trunk novel and get your read on what you think of it. Should I keep this vampire hermetically sealed with garlic cloves and silver stakes in my laptop dead file that should be re-named "The Graveyard"? Or should I resurrect this monster and give it a new life on your e-reader of choice? You decide...

 TIL DEATH US DON'T PART 

by Jenny Gardiner

It all started innocently enough. Well, as innocently as these things can start, anyhow. And perhaps I wasn't entirely guiltless, if only because I succumbed to that most human of conditions: lust.

Although it wasn't the lust that killed my marriage. That came later. The demise of our union came courtesy of my execrable, lamentable and most deplorable husband, who decided to spring upon me an unexpected midlife crisis, in which he was overtaken by the entirely selfish urge to sow some wild oats. Or barley. Or grass seed, for all I know. For that matter I didn't know much of anything. All I did know was that that fucker dumped me. High and dry. While I was doing a load of his whites.

"I'm not feeling fulfilled," he'd said to me that day as I sorted the more stained clothes from the hamper into a separate pile.

"Fulfilled?" I asked, not even looking up as I un-mated yet another pair of his soggy gym socks (why he re-rolled dirty socks was always a mystery to me). I thought he was talking about a dearth of intellectual stimulation in his life. "Take a class or something."

Jude toed the ground in front of him with his black-soled sensible accountant shoes, scuffing the freshly-polished hardwoods of my sparkling laundry room. I've always felt that a laundry room is a reflection of the rest of one's life and my laundry room floor was clean enough to lick. Not that my life was particularly lickable, but you know what I mean.

I leaned over with a spray bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap, always at the ready, and pumped two squirts at the offending marks, wiping them clean with a pair of his BVDs that were awaiting a bleaching.

"Are those my Calvin Kleins?" he asked, grabbing them from me, glaring at the brownish Murphy splotch right on the butt of the things. I suppose if that didn't come out in the wash it could cause some embarrassment. But then again who would see them but me, anyhow?

"No worries. They're going in the wash for a good soak, so I thought I'd just save myself having to clean a dirty rag."

I suppose it should have been a red flag that the underwear in question was of the designer variety, and that he even knew that they were. Until a few months ago I could buy Jude's tightie whities in bulk at Costco and he'd have only praised me for my thrift. But at age forty-five, his seeking out designer drawers should have been the first of my indicators that our relationship had gone awry.

"Look, Marina, I don’t appreciate you using my Calvin Kleins as a dishrag."

"In case you hadn't noticed, there are no dishes here. Besides, I didn't use your underwear for anything more than wiping up your scuff." I pointed to the ground for emphasis.

Jude put his hands in his pockets and looked toward the doorway, sighing, his shoulders actually slumping as if I'd tossed a hefty sack of potatoes over each one.

"I need some space. Some time away. I'm not happy."

I stopped in mid-sort and stared at him, trying to peer into what I then realized was quite a blank face, one masked with apathy. 

"Just because I used your tight whites to wipe up some dirt off the floor?"

"They're not tight whites. They're boxer-briefs."

Oh, my god. Boxer briefs. Twenty years of marriage, dissolved over a semantic disagreement about a pair of undies. I began to wring my hands, stammering to find the right words to come out. But what could I say? One minute I was just attending to my household obligations and the next I was being kicked to the curb.

"Look," he said, his usually pleasant face contorted in such a way that he appeared as if he was torn between trying to apologize for being a dick and thrilled that he'd finally come out and said it — his inner demons plying his visage like a glob of silly putty. "I'm sorry. I tried to fight it. Really I did. I just need to work some things out."

"Things? What sort of things?" I sobbed, spritzing some Windex on the surface of the washing machine to clean up the liquid Tide that had dribbled there. "Or is it some woman named 'Thing'?"

He shook his head back and forth. "No, there is no thing. Well, there are things. But no Thing. Does that make sense?"

"Of course it makes no sense. You're not making sense."

Jude buried his face in his hands. "It's bigger than me. You simply have to believe me when I say this. It's out of my hands."

With that, he turned and walked away, striding through the kitchen and out the garage door as if he was late for a doctor's appointment, with only these parting words, "I'll make sure you're taken care of, you know. I don't want you to think I'm a complete asshole."

As if.

 # 

 But it goes without saying that when you've been married for two decades and you have gratuitous sex on a somewhat regular basis for half your life and then wham!, you aren't having any at all, well you might just overlook your better judgment when that green-eyed horntoad comes hop-hop-hopping along. I hadn't gotten laid in several months; a girl can only take but so much deprivation.

So how was I to know it was going to be a huge mistake? And not just shit, I wish I'd bought those fabulous shoes on sale at Nordstrom's last week huge, but oh crap, it's the end of the world as I know it huge. As far as mistakes go, this was of the A-bomb variety.

Jude had come by to drop off a support check. It was the least he could do after everything. Bad enough he abandoned me and our lives, but to do so and leave me with no cash to pay the bills and the mortgage, well that would be entirely unseemly and Jude was nothing if not seemly when it came to finances. What more could you expect from a CPA?

I’d already poured myself a second glass of wine (having tossed one down my gullet in anticipation of his arrival) so I didn't exactly notice Jude's peculiarly cold stare and peaked countenance at first, the whites of his azure eyes a stippled with red. I thought maybe he was just tired, and I was plenty satisfied to see that his footloose lifestyle might not be agreeing with him so much. Hey, I know at this point in life carousing all night is not as easy as it once was.

I invited him to have a seat and I took my place to his right, expecting him to initiate conversation. I straightened a stack of magazines in front of me on the coffee table, then fanned them out, finally settling on a neat stack while awaiting a word from his pursed lips.

"What's the matter  — cat got your tongue?" I finally asked him after a few long minutes of awkward silence. I know it seems weird that I'd even let the man into my house, all things considered, but I am a firm believer in trying to remain on speaking terms with one's ex. Of course I never knew I'd have to practice what I preached in that regard, but now that I must is no time to drop one's standards.

I grabbed another Waterford goblet (the pattern we'd registered for together at Bloomingdales all those many years ago) from the china closet to pour Jude a glass. I couldn't have the man leaving me money without being somewhat polite toward him.

"Wine?" I asked.

His eyes lit up a little bit. "What do you have?"

"Red okay?"

He loosened his necktie, looking ravenous, as if he hadn't had anything to eat or drink in days and my offering was going to solve that problem pronto.

"I've been dying for something red," he said.

Of course I didn't even think twice about it. Sometimes I could kill for something red myself. We talked for a little bit about this and thats, nothing important. I asked if he was doing his laundry fine and he said he'd found a woman in his apartment building who had offered to do it for him. Figures. Wonder if she's staining his Calvin Kleins.

"What's she getting in return?" I asked as I squinted a bit, afraid I could guess at the answer. He merely raised his eyebrows, but I swear I saw a passing glimpse of pain alight on his face. But just as quickly it dissipated, and he leaned back against the sofa, stretching his arms across while crossing one leg over the other.

"You look good, Marina," he said, nodding up and down at me. I guess he liked my new red highlights.

I half-laughed a sort of sad, hollow laugh.

"No, seriously. Good enough to eat." He reached across and tucked a finger beneath the strap of my pink camisole Hello Kitty! pajama top. I guess I had been looking a little better lately; a marital break-up has a way of helping a girl slim down in no time.

"But not good enough to see you through your crisis of self I suppose," I said looking down at the ground. I couldn’t help but remain conflicted about the man. Part of me hated him down to his DNA and wanted to reach into his throat and extract his internal organs and splay them in front of his face, just to exact a bit of revenge. But the other part of me couldn't get over what we'd once had. Up until a month ago I had loved this man and no other. I'd trusted him.

"I told you, Marina, I'm just trying to get my head on straight," he said, running the fingers of his free hand through his wavy, black hair as if whatever was on his mind was paining him. Yet he continued to twirl the strap of my top.

We sipped some wine and talked about Bittsy, our black cat, a bit. So far Jude hadn’t made a play for custody of Bittsy, which was good. Because I'd no sooner give her up than I'd die for the man.

Jude wiped his lips after finishing off his glass of wine. I took a final sip of mine and a trickle of wine missed my mouth, trailing down my chin to my neck. Just as I was about to dab it away, Jude, always the chivalrous man, came to the rescue.

"Here, let me," he said, and I fully expected him to blot the drip with his thumb. Instead he leaned forward and dragged his tongue from the base of my neck to just beneath my chin, then licked his lips for emphasis. It sent chills up my spine. Unfortunately not bad chills, either.

There was something eerily sensual about Jude that night. Like how a male stripper can be both a turn on and a turn off at the same time. Fact is, I'd never done it with someone as seductive (or forbidden) as a male stripper before, and for some reason the notion of illicit sex (or at that point, any sex) sounded so appealing.

"What was that for?" I panted out the question as if I'd just sprinted the hundred-yard dash.

"You know you can be terribly irresistible, Marina."

Jude licked his lips again in an almost wolfish manner. Now, throughout the course of our marriage, the sex was fine, but it was never downright erotic. There was never once a moment when I felt the kind of thrill you might get, say, if you rob a bank. Not that that would thrill me, mind you. Yet here was my ex-husband, the ink barely dry on the divorce decree, heating up my libido with the mere trace of his tongue across lips?

I was trying to figure out what to say next when Jude took matters into his own hands. He grabbed the bottle of Merlot from the coffee table, and poured a splash down the center of my neck, into my cleavage. A small part of me was mentally shrieking "Why! I never!"  — what with the guaranteed wine stain on my pajama top (and don't even remind me of the one on my dupioni silk divan). But an ever bigger part of me was in hubba-hubba mode, because I hadn’t ever driven a man to do something like that.

Before I knew what was happening Jude was atop me, licking me like a starving schnauzer that's been given a bone coated in peanut butter. His hands were under my top before I could even protest (and at that point how could I?) and before I could do much more but surrender both of us were clawing at each other, hurling clothes as far away as the kitchen. I should've demanded a condom —what if he'd been sleeping with the laundry lady?— but foolishly discounted it (we'd given up worrying about pregnancy years ago, to my dismay).

"Marina, you make me do strange things," Jude said as he entered me with far more force than I ever recall, yet far more passion as well, grabbing, groping, pulling, and nipping as he was.

"If this is what you call strange then I'm all for making it more familiar," I said as I searched for his mouth, which seemed to be in a frenzy trying to stake his claim all over my body.

"Oh, my God," Jude groaned with one final thrust as his hungry mouth came down along the column of my neck.

"Oh, sweet Jesus," I screamed as I felt as if a staple gun had just punctured my throat. "What the fuck are you doing?"

For a moment all I could hear was panting, his and mine intermingled, but mine more with fear, his more with what seemed to be repletion. As Jude finally released his grip on my neck, I reached to feel what the branding iron pain was from, and my fingers came away smeared with blood.

I pushed Jude off of me and sat up, naked, trembling. "What the hell is wrong with you? You hurt me!"

"Oh, shit." He wiped away a trickle of blood from his lips then rolled off of me and groaned, first quietly, but then louder and louder until he was screaming. "Oh God! How could I have done that?"

"Done what?" He was really scaring me. First with that bite that came out of nowhere and then this, as if he'd unleashed the Hounds of Hell on me and now regretted it.

I looked closely at his face and saw that his pallor seemed to have perked up. He almost glowed with good health.

"Have you done something that will get you into trouble?" I ask, rubbing my neck, which hurt like a sonofabitch.

Jude stood up and began to pace, muttering inaudibles over and over again, dragging his fingers through his hair as if raking up a leaf-strewn yard.

"Marina, you'd better sit down."

Considering I already was sitting down  — stark naked, I might add — that was hardly sage advice. I had this feeling come over me, a really bad feeling. Like when my mother broke the news to me that my father was dying of cancer. Somehow I must have sensed that whatever Jude was about to say was going to throw my world into upheaval.

Jude was pacing like a convict awaiting the executioner, and deliberately not making eye contact with me. Naked pacing ought to be considered an obvious sign of trouble ahead.

"Now what I'm about to say you're not going to like," he started out. And by phrasing things that way he assured himself that I'd be unhappy with it. By then I'd grabbed a dishtowel to blot the blood from that bizarre little love bite of his. Whatever was up with that I figured I'd never know.

"You're giving me the creeps, Jude. Just get on with it."

Jude sat on the coffee table, facing me, then stood up again, pacing some more, his dangly bits flapping around like a semaphore warning.

"Christ, Jude, the floor's going to catch fire if you don't stop making so much friction on it. Okay, okay, I get the hint. You regret having slept with me. I can deal with it. To tell you the truth I only did it because I was horny anyhow—"

"You only slept with me because you were horny?"

I gave him a "no duh" look, rolling my eyes.

"But—" 
He began to knead his face with his hands. 


"When I said I had to leave you it wasn't because I didn't love you, Marina," he said. "It was because something happened. Something horrible happened." 


 I just stared at him, not sure whether I should call 9-1-1 or push him out the door.

"I met a woman. And I'll admit, she was beautiful. Blonde, stacked. She had an amazing ass."

"Cut to the chase. I don't need to hear about your infidelities at this point. We're divorced, now, in case you hadn't noticed."

Talk about tacky, fresh after hooking up with your ex, chatting about a booty call with another woman.

"No, but see, I didn't want to be unfaithful. Sure, I didn't mind looking at her. I mean she was a knockout. I'll admit she got my blood stirring. God, that wasn't well-phrased. Let's take that back. So maybe she inspired some thoughts in me. But I loved — love — you, Marina."

"Don't talk about love with me, Jude. I'm the one who loved you and look what you did to that."

"But that's what I'm getting at. I had to leave you. And it's because of this woman. I met her through work. She came in one day, without an appointment, said she wanted to meet with me. I told her to talk to DeeDee about setting up a time. She did, but in the meantime she followed me after work one day—she seemed so insistent about this. Claimed she needed an accountant for a business that had been in the family for many generations. Wanted to meet over drinks to discuss what she needed from me. I was going to tell her to just stick with her appointment but she begged me."

"Since when did you succumb to a woman begging you?" Jude was not your average bird dog when it came to women. I can't remember him even watching another gal in my presence.

He put his finger to his lips; I shut up and let him continue. "Finally I relented and told her we could meet for a drink. I met her at Q Bar, the one we went to for your birthday last year."

"You took her to my birthday bar?"

"I didn't take her — I was just meeting her there. I was a few minutes late and she was drumming her fingers on the bar, looking most impatient. Once we sat down to talk, I realized there was something about her, something eerily mesmerizing. I couldn't keep my eyes off her, like I had no control over myself. Sure I stared at her. Who can look at a Da Vinci without an appreciative eye?"

"Are you trying to piss me off?"

"I'm just saying. But I soon realized the more I tried to look away from her, the more she fixed her gaze on mine, pinning her focus on me so precisely it was like a laser beam being used to hone in on its target. I couldn't do a thing about it. Before I knew what was happening, we were in an alley behind Chili's and she had her hand on my—" 


"I told you I don't want to hear about your dalliances, Jude." 


"But it's relevant information," he said. "Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, she had her hand on my crotch and even though I knew in my heart it was wrong, I couldn't help myself, babe." 


"Don't babe me." 


"Honestly I couldn’t help it. And then I was pushing up her skirt and she was tugging down my pants and somehow deep down in my gut I felt certain I was going to be having the best sex of my life when she opened her mouth wide, wide like a snake about to eat something ten times its size, and then she clamped down on my neck and I felt this pain, like someone had—"

"Shot a staple gun in your neck," I said, my whole body beginning to tremble.

"I didn't know what had happened at first," Jude continued. "I looked over at this woman and she looked as if someone had just infused her with sunshine, she practically glowed all of a sudden. And then I—"

"Reached down and felt your neck—"

"And it was warm and wet—"

"And when you took your hand away—" 


 "There. Was—"

"Blood."

I was shaking, the sort of 7.0-on-the-Richter scale tremors that happen when you're coming out of anesthesia following surgery. I wanted a warm hospital blanket and a soothing nurse at that very moment to calm me, to tell me I was all right. For that matter I'd have been much happier to realize I'd emerged from mere surgery with a simple organ removed, rather than my entire future excised without having even signed a consent form.

"Before I could find anything more about this woman, she was gone. The only thing I had left with the slightest hint about her was a web address she'd given me:

  v_sanguine.net 

"I thought it was her business website, so I looked it up, but there was nothing there. Nothing. Then when I typed in the word sanguine, I hit the jackpot. Well, jackpot in a bad way. I realized then what had happened."

By that time I'd grabbed the wedding afghan that my Aunt Bertie had crocheted for me, her twelfth niece, and wrapped myself , mummy-like, with it. I didn't particularly like the thing, but always felt so badly that poor Aunt Bertie died a spinster and I knew someone had to appreciate her handiwork, even if it did catch fingers and toes if you tried to sleep with it. And was the color of — oh, God — dried blood. 


"I still hadn't fully embraced what had happened. I mean, yeah, I've watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But that was just television. I knew there was nothing like this in real life. Surely this was just some insane woman who had a really creepy fetish."


I was feeling especially lightheaded, the way you feel after you've given blood. Only no one was nearby to hand me a cookie and a glass of orange juice. Oh, wait, I had given blood. Only not of my own volition. I still hadn't the energy to say much of anything, so I sat back and listened, staring as if in a trance. 


"I knew I'd done everything wrong. Everything. I mean, I had sex with this stranger. Even though I was married to you. And that was bad enough. But then, but then…" he trailed off and just sort of stood there, still naked, his shrunken willy looking about as forlorn as I think he was. "After I came home, I tried to research more about this. But everything I read kept coming back to the same thing. And as the days progressed, I began to feel weaker, I knew what I needed, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I mean what was I going to do, go down to the local blood bank and ask to make a withdrawal?" 


At that my stomach began to lurch, like a very flat tire trying to progress down the road. Flop, flop, flop. I could feel the wine and the Moo Goo Gai Pan I'd eaten an hour earlier (along with about four Chips Ahoys and a box of Jujubes) all vying against one another to be the first back up the chute. 


I raced to the nearest receptacle, my kitchen recycling bin, and heaved repeatedly. For the record, the Jujubes won. 


I stood up, my ugly vermillion afghan draped across me like Dracula's cape — oh, God, no — and stared at my husband. My ex-husband.

"You mean to tell me you've fucking turned me into a vampire?" For a whisper of a moment, the amount of time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings, I stood frozen in place. But then I surged forward, pounding my fists against Jude in rapid-fire motion, as fast as Phil Collins with a set of drumsticks.

"YOU FUCKING TURNED ME INTO A VAMPIRE??? You bastard!" I screamed, pounding with what felt like a bizarrely superhuman strength, as if I'd suddenly been imbued with invincibility, but realizing that it wasn't even eliciting a flinch from the man. Beast. Whatever he was. Or I now am. "Everything!," I shrieked. "Everything! I had everything ahead of me!" 


 Well, maybe not everything, but I could have if I'd have wanted it. 


"And now, just-just-just look at me—" I pointed at my chest. "Look at these!" My droopy middle-aged breasts were slumped across my torso like a broken spirit. 


"I kept meaning to make an appointment with a plastic surgeon to discuss fixing these puppies! Couldn't you have at least waited till I'd gotten around to doing that? Now I'm stuck with sagging tits for all of eternity?" 


"I'm sorry, Marina, I tried to resist," he said, letting out a sigh that seemed to reached to the bottom of the earth. "But when I saw you looking all sexy like that, what could I do? You know that all men think with their dicks. Why would I be an exception? Besides, I love your breasts just the way they are." He reached over in an attempt to tweak one but I swatted him away immediately. 


"Sexy like what? I was sitting here minding my own business in my Hello Kitty! pajamas! You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do." 


Jude grabbed a throw pillow and plunked down on my burgundy leather Queen Anne (which would surely stick to his sweaty flesh. Unless vampire flesh has a Teflon quality to it I don't know about). He at least had the decency to cover himself up with the pillow. 


"So the more I read about my dilemma—" 


"Dilemma? Are you mad? Dilemma is trying to figure out how you're going to get to work on time when you're stuck in rush hour traffic—" 


"Okay, fine, the more I read about my predicament, the more I realized it came with all sorts of, well, let's say contraindications to our staying together." 


"Contraindications? Now we're cribbing from the pharmacy warning labels?" 


"Would you let me continue? This is hard enough, in case you hadn't noticed." 


"You just sucked blood from my neck, Jude. Like some greedy two hundred pound mosquito. You've apparently just made me immortal, for fuck's sake — nothing I ever wanted, by the way. So don't look for much sympathy from this corner of the peanut gallery." 


He gave a subtle nod in my direction, meager acknowledgment for his transgressions if you ask me. "Anyhow. The longer I went without sustenance, the more I craved it. At first I was able to stave off the yearnings. I was eating steaks — rare — every day at lunch. But I soon discovered that steak alone wasn't going to do the job. I had to go on the prowl." 


"The prowl? Like some middle-aged Mr. Goodbar?" 


Jude rolled his eyes at me. "I was trying to protect you, Marina." 


"Clearly that worked." I glared at him. "So this is when the fancy underpants came into play?"

"They're not underpants."

"Whatever. So this is when you started dressing to, what, kill?"

Jude flinched at that. "I wasn't trying to kill anyone. But I didn't know what to do. And really, I didn't exactly kill them. I just changed their natural state."

"I'll say. Like going from a state of ecstasy to the state penitentiary. Only this prison's for all eternity." Was it for eternity? I was trying to probe the recesses of my memory for some notion about vampire lore. I dressed as Dracula for Halloween once or twice, but I didn't bone up on Drac's habits for the occasion.

"So did you have extended hook-ups with women? Or did you just nab 'em in the elevator and give 'em the old one-two?" I made a hook and an uppercut with my arms, then looked over and saw the truth carved like wrinkles into his face. "You slept with them and you killed them?"

"I couldn't help it, Marina," he said. "And I didn't kill them. I just—" 

"I know what you just—" 


"I was trying to preserve us. Honestly, I did this for you."


"For me!!!" For about one more millisecond I was rendered speechless but then the tidal wave of fury beckons forth from my mouth -— that very mouth that is now going to have to find a taste for blood. With me, a vegetarian. Jesus. I've always been pretty good at math, but this sort of calculation doesn't add up no matter how many ways I try to work the equation. 


"First you have sex with a strange, beautiful woman in a dark alley. Then you start cruising for new meat like some sort of, of, of cannibal, doing god knows what to get your fix, and now you've destroyed me, destroyed my life." I pace the room back and forth like some nervous father-to-be awaiting a cigar and an It's a Boy! declaration. "Jesus! My mother warned me about men! But did I listen? No. I told her you weren't like other men. But she told me one day I'd know better. This is one time I wish my mother wasn't right. 


"It's all making sense now," I said, trying to feign calm while teetering on the edge of manic rage, a veritable cattle stampede of anger. "First the damned underwear. Then the steaks! You gave up red meat for me years ago. But then you started sneaking behind my back eating steak again. I thought I smelled blood in your sweat at the gym, dammit. Steaks. Now my life is going to be about steaks and stakes. Jesus, fuck. And you knew about my blood aversion. It's why I didn't go to med school. I can barely attend the annual Red Cross gala. And I practically faint at the sight of blood! Goddammit Jude, how could you? You know I'm not a night owl! And now I have to avoid daylight?? How the hell am I going to get a suntan? You tell me that. Christ, I should've known ex-sex would lead to no good. This is bad. On a bad scale with zero being a paper cut and a hundred being my dog got hit by a train, this is a bazillion on that bad scale. A bazillion, Jude, do you hear me? You've just sentenced me to an even worse fate than you because a) you betrayed your wife when you fucked some strange woman behind the Chili's — and god, we don't even eat at Chilis! — so you deserve this, and b) this is going to really put a kink in my life. How the hell do you expect a vegetarian hemophobe to survive as a vampire? You tell me that? Am I supposed to mug a blood courier? Cause I'll never do what you just did to get by." 


Jude grabbed another nearby blanket and wrapped it around his waist. "First off, I don't know where you get the idea that somehow you'll be afraid of gay people—" 


I poked him in his forehead with my forefinger, wishing I had the power to make an actual indentation, a keepsake for him to remember what an ass he is. "I said hemophobe, not homophobe." 

"It was a joke, Marina. Remember, we always love to joke together?"

"Joke’s on you, too, cause this is no laughing matter. Why'd you go and kill me, Jude? Did you hate me that much?"

"I didn't kill you — I made you immortal!" 


"Whoo-hoo! I get to be immortal. With these!" I screamed, pointing again at my ta-ta's. 


"But don’t you get it? It's not about that stuff. It's bigger than all of that. It's about Us, with a big U. Us reuniting. Back together again. Maybe on some subconscious level I did this on purpose, because I wanted — I needed — to share my forever with you. Just think, now we can be together for all eternity." 


"Me? Together with you?" I shrieked yet again. It seems that shrieking might well be a hallmark of vampirism. "For all eternity? Are you out of your fucking mind? You just killed me, and now you want me to be yours? Put it in a goddamned valentine." 


I got up, supercharged with my newfound and roiling anger heaving like a stomach with a bad case of food poisoning. I stormed across the living room and kitchen, collecting bits of my ex-husband's clothing, confetti that started out celebratory but now only served as a stale reminder of what wasn't. I opened the fireplace screen, pulled the flue handle down, and piled his pants, shirt and shoes atop the andirons. I pulled the matchbox off the mantle, upon which was the last remaining picture of me and Jude together, which I grabbed and threw in with the rest, and lit the pile on fire. Jude came rushing over. 


"Marina! You can't do that!" 


"Oh I think you broke the bank on can't do that’s. I most certainly can, and watch me." I blocked his body as I let the conflagration erupt, the soles of his shoes smoldering longer than the flash-fire cotton of his shirt. 


"My clothes. I need my clothes—" 

"My life. I needed my life, and you snatched that right out from under me."

"Honey, why don't you just sleep on this, maybe you'll see things clearer in the morning."

"This isn't like breaking up with my first boyfriend. Nothing will become clear in this picture. Now. GET OUT." I wiped my hands against each other, as if erasing him from my existence. I grabbed a fireplace poker and skewered him in the butt, pushing him toward the front door.

"But Marina, honey, I love you."

"Out!" I began hitting him, hoping he'd finally take the hint. As we made it to the doorway, enacting the very reverse of that newlywed tradition of the groom carrying the bride across the threshold, a flash of white caught my eye, and I reached down to spear what I saw.

"Don't forget these," I said, passing Jude his beloved Calvin Kleins on the spear tip of my fireplace poker. "I think you're gonna need them."



Please check out my books that have been published!

  Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Anywhere But Here

Where the Heart Is

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)

And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F's Rhymes with Duck

find me on Facebook: fan page
 find me on twitter here
 find me on my website

Dipping My Toes into the Steamy Waters of Romance by Jenny Gardiner

Our very own girlfriend, the lovely Maggie Marr, invited me to help launch the release of her fabulous novel Can’t Buy Me Love recently by celebrating romance on her blog. I had to laugh when Maggie asked me to be featured as part of her “Spring Into Romance” theme, because I’ve found myself as a novelist to be at times adrift somewhere in that multiple-personality world that straddles commercial women’s fiction, chick lit and romance. Often times women's fiction doesn't fit in a particular category, which makes it harder to find a home for the book. And while my novels sometimes have been slotted as romance, I don’t regard myself as a romance writer in the same way that someone who writes category romances, for instance, does, perhaps because I don’t exactly write uber super steamy romance scenes (I’m too much of a weenie, because I think my teen kids would about kill me if I did). My nomadic genre-straddling was a problem for me when I published books with New York publishing houses-- I think the conundrum of where to shelve my books in a bookstore occasionally confounded the powers that be.

Over the past two years I’ve been able to enjoy a career as an indie author, publishing my work digitally direct to Kindle, Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore, Smashwords, and such, and have grown to love the freedom this provides me. For instance, there was a time when you really had to focus on one specific genre to “brand” yourself, which makes sense on many levels--find readers who like you as an author of historical romances, for instance, and they’ll follow you far and wide and buy/read all of your historical romances. But I tended to be all over the map, with non-fiction memoir, creative non-fiction, women’s fiction, chick lit, I even pitched a self-help book which I was told I could only sell to a New York house if I had a profile on a national level as an expert in that field. Natch. Oh well. And yeah, lurking in my laptop were a couple of straight-out romances as well, books I figured at some point I’d publish but only once I’d gotten my brand established enough to be able to veer away from it and not leave the “professionals” in New York to wonder what to do with my books.



But with indie publishing, I’ve been able to publish my novels and get them to readers. With the beauty of digital, I can categorize them to reach various audiences, and leave it up to the reader to decide if they like this book enough, maybe they’d like to try another of my novels as well. So that meant I was able to dust off those lurking romances and bring them out into the light of day (and, um, er, yeah, my kids might not be too thrilled, but more on that in a minute). And the thing about my romances is they’re a little too edgy usually to fit in the normal confines of “romance”, so all the better that I can publish them myself and let my audience figure it out! The first romance I published, ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE, is a lighthearted story of a woman tired of waiting for Mr. Right to come along. She wants kids, so she takes matters into her own hands (turkey baster, anyone?!). Unbeknownst to her, she’s then hired to be the photographer for her “donor’s” high society wedding. Mayhem ensues, etc.



My next romance, COMPROMISING POSITIONS, could almost be accused of being romantic suspense, but not really. It’s about a woman determined to get hired for a public relations job on Capitol Hill despite rampant sexism working against her. When she lands her dream job against her boss, the press secretary’s, wishes, it’s only because her other boss, a Viagra-sated Senator, wants to add her as another notch on his bed board. Sparks fly as my heroine falls fast for her press secretary (yeah, he falls for her as well) while having to dodge the aggressive moves of the horny Senator. Embezzlement, corruption and yet more mayhem ensue ;-). Oh, and those steamy sex scenes? Yep, I sucked it up and tried my hand at it (I’d originally written this book to enter into a contest sponsored by a New York Times bestselling author in which hot sex scenes were a must). I just decided to not tell my kids it’s out there. Oh, and I published these two novels under the pseudonym Erin Delany. Well, sort of. Jenny Gardiner writing as Erin Delany is more like it. Everyone asks me why I did it this way and I figured it made sense. Readers of women’s fiction are not always interested in migrating to romance, so I didn’t want to confuse those readers into thinking these were straight-out women’s fiction, but romance readers are often happy to straddle those lines, so I wanted them to be able to find my other books if they enjoyed these two romances. Make sense?

Anyhow, so I guess I am a romance writer. Well, sort of, at least sometimes. I like to say I'm a varied author. Whatever it is, I am definitely still a crazy mixed-up kid in publishing. But the great thing nowadays is that this confusion can work in my favor, rather than being a detriment. I hope you’ll go check out these books, as well as my others: #1 Kindle Bestseller SLIM TO NONE, American Title III winner SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER, WHERE THE HEART IS, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, WINGING IT: A MEMOIR OF CARING FOR A VENGEFUL PARROT WHO’S DETERMINED TO KILL ME, and I’M NOT THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THIS RELATIONSHIP (a humorous anthology of dog stories in which I’m a contributor).

Oh, and to show you how I love to jump all over the place, writing-wise, I'll be publishing a collection of humorous essays in the next week or so. Here's a preview of the cover:

So You Say You Want to Publish Your Own Book… by Jenny Gardiner

It's been nearing two years now since I decided to self-publish a novel. Back then it was in the early days of indie publishing, and I made the decision based on instinct, purely because I'd gotten a Kindle for my birthday that previous December and was so hooked on the convenience of it, the ability to acquire new books within a minute's time, the elimination of tons and tons of paper waste that was endemic with the publishing industry, etc. I just knew if I loved this cool, new (and then overpriced) gadget, then others would too. And I knew once the price came down on it lots of people would be on board. I'd decided the time was upon us when I heard that Apple would be launching this new product called an iPad soon. That was the magic bullet to bring the price down on e-readers so that people would buy them.

It was slow-going in the early days. That first year I hardly sold any books. Hardly anyone owned e-readers. Plus it was hard to determine the proper pricing--it made sense for an e-book to be cheaper than a book that is printed, but how much cheaper? Hard to know. And it seemed that those who owned Kindles were looking for free content. Maybe to save money after shelling out $350 for a Kindle? hehehe

Have I learned a lot in the past two years? Oh, if only you knew…

There was a time when I wanted to stay parked firmly in the camp of publishing with New York houses. That's the way it was supposed to be. But something happened along the way: times changed. New York houses changed (well, actually more like they failed to adapt, which led to their becoming much more irrelevant). It went from a reasonable proposition to an unrealistic one. More and more houses were putting all the demands on authors with little-to-no risk on their part. If a book didn't sell gangbusters, it was automatically because the author somehow failed. Which we all knew was baloney. But it was easiest to blame the most vulnerable in the trail: the writers. Advances became so small as to be almost insulting: once upon a time an advance would enable an author to write from book to book without quite starving to death. But advances were becoming so small that it was the equivalent of working a minimum wage job for about a week: clearly not enough to sustain someone. Authors were busily working their tails off, building a healthy mountain of debt and not ever seeing much money for their efforts (while readers falsely believed writers were living it up like the Kardashians!).

But then Amazon decided to offer authors what no one else had truly done: respect. In the form of a legitimate level of royalty payment. Enough to help pay for groceries! Imagine! Granted, it was part of their multi-pronged attack against the industry-slash-attempt-to-curry-favor-with-a-susceptible-population. But hey, I admit, I was completely vulnerable! Throw the possibility of actual wage-earning my way and I'll foam at the mouth! I have no pride!

But what I hadn't expected that I love about publishing myself is that I have control over my career again. No longer am I at the mercy of vagaries over which I have no control. No editors who leave in the middle of a book, leaving you essentially unrepresented for your book's publication and floundering in no-man's land. No houses who lose interest in the novel and neglect to promote it. No IOUs on royalties stuck in this mysterious accounting category known as "reserves", which means you'll never see a penny of it. Basically no one to blame but me if it doesn't do well. But now I have an artist's palette of options to try to fix that if it doesn't sell: change the cover. Change the descriptive jacket copy. Try various promotions both within Amazon and without. If the book doesn't sell, it's not dead in the water as it once was with a New York house. It just calls for some refining. Tweaking. This was a new concept: rather than sit passively by while my home was engulfed in weeds, with indie publishing I was able to take proactive measures to spruce up the curb appeal and ensure that people were interested. This is a great gift that Amazon has given authors. And one that benefits readers. For far too long authors were shut down with terrific books simply because they didn't fit within the narrowly prescripted terms of their genres and those of bricks-and-mortar stores: i.e. if it couldn't be easily categorized on a shelf, it wasn't going to find a home. But now if you write a book that transcends genre descriptions, one that might be part suspense, part women's fiction, and part sports narrative, well guess what? Somewhere on Amazon, you'll find your readership. Chick lit, once considered the graveyard for all eternity for writers, has returned with indie publishing: we knew the readers existed. It's just that publishing houses refused to take a chance to publish that type of novel after they'd killed the genre. It's a whole new world in publishing, and I'm so happy to be in the frontier of it, taking charge, owning my career again.

Over the past two years I've become a scholar of sorts, learning the ins and outs of independent publishing, trying to discern what works and what doesn't. There's a lot of trial and error, and there isn't always a simple answer. Plus it's true, rather than devote all of my time to writing, I'm having to divide it in order to focus also on trying to succeed in this New Publishing World Order. But hell, even if publishing through "legacy" New York publishers I was spending much of my time with marketing and publicity, sucking away time I'd otherwise spent creating worlds as a writer. At least now I'm doing it while earning an actual living, which is a good thing, if nothing else because it enables me to continue to be a writer. And that's a good thing.

So if you're interested in checking out my indie-published books, here they are!













and others I have with other publishing houses:





and coming very soon:




and please come visit me on twitter and Facebook here and here

Let's go for a Sleigh Ride!

by Malena Lott

I'll confess: I'm a holiday junkie. I love so many things about October through January 2nd that I couldn't even list them all here, but what they have in common is tradition and that magical romantic quality about the season as a whole. It gets cold. We get closer. Don't we call more, hug more, make more of an effort to connect? The world doesn't slow down, but it does feel more in focus.

Sleigh Ride: A Winter Anthology is definitely my homage to the season and how something as simple as a sleigh ride can have such meaning in our lives. I invited fellow Girlfriend Authors Maggie Marr, Maria Geraci and Samantha Wilde to be a part of it and they graciously accepted. You'll also be introduced to debut authors Dani Stone, Jenny Peterson and Megan Barlog, who are great writers you're going to be seeing a lot more from.

To celebrate our launch, we're doing several great contests including the 7 Sleighs/7 Days of Giveaways contest (now on day 4) as well as the Big Stuffed Sleigh Contest that ends Nov. 30th ($150 value.)

The book is available in trade paperback and ebook. For a chance to win a print galley of Sleigh Ride, leave a comment on WHO YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE A SLEIGH RIDE WITH IF YOU COULD INVITE ANYONE IN THE WORLD. What would you talk about? Or would you not be talking? :) Thanks for reading, and happy holidays! 

In order of appearance:

In Samantha Wilde's "Monks and Musicians," a family sleigh ride turns a mother's life upside down, leaving her to decide the fate of her future and family.

In the romantic comedy "Noche Beuna," Maria Geraci shares what happens when a woman breaks tradition and takes the holidays into her own hands.

Jenny Peterson explores the powerful bond of sisters with a painful past in "Fairy Lights."

A phone call out of the blue from the former great love of her life causes a pharmacist to question her past and whether or not a second chance is worth the risk in Dani Stone's humorous, "No Place Like Home."

In Megan Barlog's story, "The Escape," a stable owner with a hover sleigh is drawn to a troubled young woman who needs his help to avoid the bleak future planned out for her.

When her dog jumps out of the car in a snowstorm in Vermont, the California girl has the wildest night of her life on her journey to find her dog and heal her heart in Maggie Marr's, "Dashing Through the Snow."

A grieving mother returns home at the holidays to face the family she walked away from after tragedy in Malena Lott's, "Snowflakes and Stones." 

Called "beautiful" and "touching," this collection is a Good Read/Good Deed project with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the domestic violence prevention cause through the Alpha Chi Omega foundation.  

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