Winner of copy of Winging It is:

Winner of a copy of Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me is...drum roll please!! GMR--please contact me at jenny at jennygardiner dot net with your mailing address and I'll get that out to you!

Winner of Carolyn Jewel's Book Giveaway

Through the magic of Random.org Julie! (julieguan) I've emailed you, but you may need to check your spam. Or just send me your mailing address!

Thanks everyone for dropping by!

ALL IN A DAYS WORK

THIS IS NOT ME, ALTHOUGH THE VODKA-WHILE-CLEANING IS NOT SUCH A BAD IDEA...

Cliché or not, I want to talk about resolutions for just a minute. And not because I ever bother with any; I don't. But because I know that there is at least one person around my house who wouldn’t mind if I resolved to try to clean my house occasionally this year.

The thing is, I don’t not clean my house. I just rarely undertake the rigorous all-day effort required to have the whole place clean all at once. Maybe it’s because it only builds up smoldering resentment in me when everyone then comes home and ravages our home in a matter of minutes; or perhaps my psyche can take it better one meager clean-then-trashed room at a time. Or I OCD clean, which takes ten times as long (no hired housecleaner will devote hours to baseboard cleaning, and if I do that, by the time I work my way up days will have passed!).

We do sometimes have folks come to clean, when things get desperate. I’d love to have a regular housecleaner, but I think I might be too populist to have someone doing my dirty work for me all the time, like I feel as if I need to pitch in. I'd be fixing meals for the maid, donning my own pair of rubber gloves when done with that to help scrub things.

THIS POOR MAID NEEDS A MAKEOVER


Don’t get me wrong, I adore having a sparkling home, but it’s a moot point, as it’s not in the budget for the next, oh, say, rest of my life, anyhow. So I’ve resigned myself to picking up the broom, and yes, even the toilet brush, all in the interest of avoiding COPD or whatever other breathing disorders my family might succumb to if I don’t clean the place.

In honor of my birthday a few days before Christmas, we had cleaners come in. More because we had 18 people coming for Christmas Eve dinner and there was no way I’d have time to cook and clean for that lot. In truth it wasn’t for my birthday, but ended up being an unexpected bonus. See, I cleverly tried to get them to come clean on my birthday as a self-gift, but they refused, saying they were too busy. I had to settle instead for two days earlier (meaning I'd have to re-clean again before company came, because my family would have dismantled the cleanliness by then). But then they forgot to come on their appointed day. Which is problematic, when you spend hours preparing for the cleaners.

OKAY, THIS IS NOT ME DOING THE LAUNDRY, EITHER

See, preparing for the cleaners is almost as hard as cleaning the place yourself. You have to pick up a houseful of stray mess, discard the piles of trash the kids have left lying around, clean up the clumps of dog hair in the corners (too embarrassing for them to witness), wash every dish, put away any hint of your slovenly self. For me, that takes about, oh, ten hours (I’ve been known to dump the motherload of extraneous mess into laundry baskets and hidden it in the garage; out of sight, out of mind).

So to my chagrin, the cleaners forgot me (which isn’t as bad as the time a surgeon forgot to release me and left me stranded in the recovery unit till he was tracked down by a nurse while mingling at a cocktail party that evening). But the upside was I got them as a booby prize for my birthday! Hurray! Which meant a completely clean home, which was indeed a lovely birthday gift.

NOW, IF I LOOKED THIS GOOD CLEANING, MAYBE I'D DO IT MORE OFTEN (or at least do it in sexy lingerie that I wouldn't mind bleach splattering)
Occasionally I’ve hired cleaners expecting to smell the heartwarming aroma of the freshly-cleaned, only to be accosted by the most offensive odors imaginable. Once, it was the unsavory fragrance of cat excrement permeating my entire home. The cleaner vacuumed our unfinished basement, the one piled high with boxes and only occupied by the cats, and sucked up the kitty goodies our antique feline failed to leave in the nearby litter box. This in turn clogged my new vacuum cleaner, and for some odd reason they continued to sweep the entire house despite the ghastly smell. Thank goodness I didn’t have to clean the house, because I then had to spend about four hours trying to de-cat poo the vacuum. It was not a pretty sight. Or scent, for that matter.

IF ONLY WE HAD THIS LITTER BOX, MY VACUUM WOULD'VE REMAINED INTACT

I blame powerful cleaning agents for them not smelling the stench. See, another time we went out of budget for a cleaners treat. These occasions usually occur before unexpected houseguests, so that we can delude these friends that we are not slobs. I left the cleaners to do their thing, then returned home to the noxious scent of a cheap hooker. One in dire need of an olfactory system transplant. Seems the cleaner had used a product called Fabuloso, something that is apparently very popular amongst Latinas who clean, but the aroma of which had me running for the gas masks, if only I’d stockpiled them post-911 and the anthrax-in-your-mailbox-scare. This confirmed my suspicions that cleaning a lot of houses with powerful toxins has rendered the noses of many cleaners basically dead zones. Because the smell of Fabuloso is so not fabuloso; rather it is so vile, toxic and lung-searing, that I had to fumigate my house when they left, re-cleaning with something more mainstream.

MY NOSE BURNS JUST LOOKING AT THIS BOTTLE

Back in the 80’s, when a flood of Salvadoran refugees fled to America, many of these immigrant women became housecleaners. We occasionally hired a cleaning company managed by a country gal from West Virginia who was under the impression that if you added enough vowels, very loudly, her Spanish-speaking Salvadoran workers would understand her implicitly. Her commands of “Moppo el flooro” usually fell on uncomprehending ears. And their use of a Chlorox-infused cleaner on my teak dining room table cemented the notion that I should’ve just done it myself.

THIS IS NOT ME CLEANING, THANK GOODNESS!
I suppose I could turn this clean-house resolution on its head by suggesting the one around here most desirous of the spic and span mode perhaps pony up as well. After all, we need a lot of painting on our aging house, and I’m way too short to reach all those high places. Plus, last time we had housepainters, you should’ve seen what those folks destroyed. It’s either that, or fire the maid, and I’m pretty sure I can’t fire myself.

NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE ME, HAPPILY POLISHING THE GOOD CHINA AFTER SPENDING HOURS FIXING A HEARTY MEAL...


be sure to stop by and visit my website (where I desperately need to do some housecleaning), blog (ditto), or over on Twitter and Facebook (here and here) where I try to stay on top of things in a more timely manner...

Oh, and I think we're still doing giveaways, right? I've got a copy of WINGING IT: A MEMOIR OF CARING FOR A VENGEFUL PARROT WHO'S DETERMINED TO KILL ME for someone leaving a comment today!

Howling at The Moon

by Judy Merrill Larsen



I have a dog who howls at sirens. It's very sweet and hearkens from somewhere long ago in his ancestry. I asked the vet about it; I was worried it meant the noise hurt his ears, and while we live in Mayberry, our house is on one of the main streets and we have our share of fire trucks roaring past. Our vet assured me it wasn't caused by pain, but rather, when Ernie (our dog) hears sirens, he thinks it's another dog somewhere looking for his pack. So Ernie howls to try to call him home. It's fun to watch. He'll usually be sprawled on his back in a deep sleep (I mean, he spends at least 20 hours a day snoozing) but when a siren sounds, he jumps up. (We joke that he resembles George Bush at a press conference at that moment of startling.) And then, it's as if he goes into a trance of sorts--he tips his head up (to open his throat, I guess) and howls. It's mournful, it's eerie, it's a sound that comes from his toes and from thousands of years ago. And then, he looks around as if to see if we noticed. And I wonder if he ever feels sad that the dog he was calling home never arrives. But he'll do it again, every time. He can't help it.

Sometimes, I feel like Ernie, howling away, wondering if anyone hears. As a writer, much of what I do is very solitary. I write, never sure anyone else will ever read my words, much less come home to them. I send blog posts out into the ether and am more tickled than I probably should be when someone leaves a comment. It means we've connected in some way. But, like my dog and his howling, writing is in my blood, in my bones. I don't have a choice to not write, to not howl out and hope I'm heard. In reading a variety of blogs, I don't think I'm alone in this wondering. Books are released to much fanfare (or not). We earn out our advances (or not). We garner scads of reviews (or not). But what it's really about, at least for me, is to wake up and check my e-mail, like I did this morning, and open a letter from a reader who just finished my book. And who said it made her love reading again. And in tears, I write her back. I howled, she heard me. As writers, that's a power we all have. Sometimes I think that's all we can do. Let out a howl. See who answers.

On the way to becoming a writer...

I live just steps away from Washington, D.C. – a city where people are as likely to ask, “What do you do?” as they are to say, “What’s your name?”

So … what do I do? It took me a while to figure that one out.

Eleven years ago, when my first son was born, I left my job as a features writer for the Baltimore Sun. As a reporter, I covered all sorts of compelling stories, from the accidental death of one police officer at the hands of a fellow officer to a glorious, sun-soaked Opening Day at the new Camden Yards baseball stadium. I spent a night at a haunted house – it was built on top of a graveyard, just like in the “Poltergeist” movie – and wrote the story of an aimless teenager who turned into a hero during the Columbine school shootings.

I adored my job, but my traffic-clogged daily commute to Baltimore, combined with the frequent travel required, made my decision to stay home an easy one – well, at least on the easier spectrum of the wrenching choice so many women face when they weigh how to best balance work and family. I kept reminding myself I was lucky to have a choice as I free-lanced a bit here and there, and then, less than two years later, had another gorgeous baby boy.

Life, as it tends to do, got more complicated. Our family moved to a new house (actually, a very old, fixer-upper of a house) and we began to renovate the kitchen, meaning we had no water on the main level for weeks – so every night, I scrubbed bottles in our bathtub and tried to dream up dinners I could cook in a microwave. Then my husband exhibited some serious multi-taking by catching pneumonia and simultaneously starting a new job, requiring him to work longer hours. The cherry on top? Our brand-new refrigerator exploded one night when we were all (oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou) out of the house. We arrived home just in time to summon the fire department to save the house – but our home was, once again, a fixer-upper. The new carpet, the new paint, the new counters… all destroyed. Oh, and so was our computer – and with it the first hundred pages of the novel I was trying to write late at night while the kids slept.

We moved to a hotel for a few months and the two babies and I slept on the fold-out couch so my husband, who’d cracked a rib from all his coughing, could sleep in the lone bed and try to recover. And it isn’t too much of an exaggeration to say that around that time, I quietly lost my mind. Well, as much as any Mom can lose her mind while she’s trying to hold the family together.  I didn’t have time for a breakdown. I didn’t even have time to blow-dry my hair. Which was probably no great loss, since I rarely had time to wash it, either.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have time to write.

Being a stay-at-home Mom was wonderful – and alternately exhausting, frustrating, funny and joyful. But I ached for writing. I missed it like you’d miss a beloved best friend you’d lost. Then one September, my youngest son began school. And I began to type.  I could’ve gone to the gym and tried to lose those last few pounds of baby weight (fine, ten!) or gone grocery shopping alone for the first time in years, but my keyboard was calling me. I was scared at first. Would I be rusty? Did I know what I was doing? And was I crazy to even try? Because I hadn’t written fiction since elementary school. I wasn’t sure I could put together an entire novel.

But fiction was what worked within the new parameters of my life. I couldn’t fly around the country chasing stories anymore, but I could dream them up. So the pages piled up, slowly and steadily. In the mornings I was a writer again, and in the afternoons, I was wiping noses and cutting the crusts off sandwiches. I’d finally found a balance.

Now I have another baby boy to snuggle – my third! – and every day, thanks to a wonderful babysitter and a nearby Grandma, I have a few free hours to write. The two best jobs I’ve ever had – writing and motherhood – are finally in sync. This is what I do. And I feel so very, very grateful.

The Debut of Chapter Two and 364 Other Pages PS: Don't miss the giveaway!

By Laura Spinella

Well, here we are, BEAUTIFUL DISASTER’S debut. Six weeks to write the rough draft, six years to this moment. I have the champagne; who brought the glasses? You’re right—straight from the bottle it is. During the last half-dozen years many things have changed. Two daughters graduated from high school, one ending up on the campus of the book’s setting, Athens, Georgia. I so did not see that coming. Kahlua, the golden retriever who listened dutifully to a jagged first draft is gone. Never replaced, but the void has been filled by a cockapoo and a miniature golden doodle. Excellent listeners, zero shedding… marginal critiques. And BEAUTIFUL DISASTER, what changed there? Oh, that’s right. This is a blog, not a book. In deference to the celebration, let’s make this quick and go with what didn’t change: Chapter Two.

When the finished copies arrived, it occurred to me that Chapter Two was nearly identical to the one I wrote manically on a rainy Saturday six Aprils ago. Soaked to the bone, my muse decided to come inside that day, tracking mud through the living room and an idea across my brain. Positive that my first Chapter Two and the polished print version couldn’t be the same, I scavenged basement boxes in search of an original copy. (Um, everybody has a stash of those, right?) Last week, inside a musty closet, with the world surrounded by Christmas, I sat with Easter decorations at my feet, leaning against a Hefty bag of clothes bound for Good Will. There, I compared a brave but pitiable draft to the glossy covered finished product. Pitiable with the exception of Chapter Two. I was right—if Kahlua were here, she’d back me up. The narrative and dialogue from Chapter Two read almost verbatim to the ’05 version. Clearly, from the timeline, the majority of the book took work, and lots of it. But I also recall writing that chapter, the telltale pulse that dictated the rest of the story. Today, I see the synchronicity of something I thoroughly doubted, while simultaneously understanding that it was meant to be. At the end of this blog I’ll share a snippet of Chapter Two. It’s a piece of BEAUTIFUL DISASTER that played a large role in keeping me on the path to here.



Showing off a finished copy to Auggie.



In the meantime, since this is debut day and I’m the novice, I’d like to know how you spent (or will spend) yours. Honestly, I don’t have much planned. It’s a Tuesday, which means the people I hang with are in mid-week mode, consumed by making it to Wednesday. Many friends are too many miles away to do more than offer a giant shout out via Facebook. My husband is decidedly, unavoidably, out of the country. Feel free to interpret that any way you’d like. And since Boston and balmy have nothing in common, particularly in January, any ideas about a Main Street parade are out. I’m okay with the quiet. The moment may have arrived, but I suspect this thing will continue to move at marathon pace. Still, I’d love to hear about your debut day. Did your phone ring endlessly? Did your best friend throw you a launch party? Or maybe your publisher—or maybe that only happens in the movies. Perhaps you did your first book signing that very day. Tell me about it. If you’re that all important reader, not a writer, I hope you find the muse inspired excerpt intriguing; I think it’s the bridge between there and here. A signed copy of BEAUTIFUL DISASTER will go randomly to one commenter. We’ll blindfold the cockapoo and let her pick. Don’t forget to leave your contact info so she can look you up. Thanks for reading, and thank you for sharing in BEAUTIFUL DISASTER’S debut.

                                                    Athens, Georgia, thirteen years ago

The bike rumbled up to the curb in downtown Athens, announcing his arrival like a lion advancing on new territory. Goddamn, but it was hot. He was used to hot places. Not that he had ever learned to like them. Rural Indiana, where he grew up; Parris Island; the bottom of hell—he always ended up in places where sweat was part of the dress code. The sidewalk was thick with college kids; they kept the place going, from what he had heard. College towns were a handy place to hang for a while. Nobody asked too many questions. If anything, people encouraged a come-as-you-are attitude. The casualness appealed to him. Conforming would never work out—ask any Marine.



Athens, Georgia



An eternity on the bike coupled by hours in a traffic jam had left his longs legs cramped and a little wobbly. Food would be good idea. He tugged at the sweaty jeans that were seared to his skin and pulled a red bandana from his pocket, blotting his grimy brow. Stepping to the curb, he attempted to blend in with the crowds of backpacks and portable CD players. He felt staring eyes as he moved among them. Girls mostly. Girls always looked at him. He wasn’t the typical fare, with hair as long as theirs and the scruffy beard. On most days it led to the Jesus remark before lunch. He didn’t care, but sometimes he wanted to lean into their probing, dewy eyes and whisper, “Yeah, just think what your old man would do if you brought me home.” He liked college towns, but he wasn’t interested in college girls. Despite their glances, they weren’t really looking for a guy like him either.

Laura blogs at www.lauraspinella.net, catch her signing dates on the events page, join BEAUTIFUL DISASTER’S Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Beautiful-Disaster-A-Novel/161793947170701 

Just Say Yes--and Happy New Year

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Christmas.

Not exactly—funny. But certainly unusual, unpredicted and, in my experience so far, unprecedented.



I got really, really sick. It’s all fine now, so you can read the rest without worrying one bit.

But it started with kind of a weirdly-bad headache. Should I take Advil, I thought? But it didn’t seem like that would help. So I decided to ignore it. My fingers felt tingly, but I decided that was my beginning arthritis, sigh, and ignored it. I was so tired! But that’s a constant sate of being, so I , um, ignored it.

Now you have to know that my schedule—and this is the point--like yours, is pret-ty crazy. I love my life, and I’m grateful every day. I have a dear husband. I have a wonderful full-time job as a TV reporter, which is basically 24-7. I’m working on my fifth mystery-suspense novel, and am now on page 267. (Some days, I’m thrilled about it, some days, it stinks. But that’s another blog.) I’m scheduled for speeches, seminars, conventions, appearances, signings, blurbings, contest-judgings, MWA board activities, and if I keep on with this list, it’ll just take up too much room. But imagine red-eye flights, early morning speeches, late night writing.

All of your lives are like this, right? In whatever configuration of responsibilities, activities, events, and work-related and personal-related and fun-related and book-related stuff we’re all juggling at every moment.

The arrival of the holidays ramped it up to even more crazy…I was getting ready to send holiday cards, getting ready to do my holiday shopping, had parties to go to, places to go, people to see, stuff to do. Pages to write every day. Three articles due. Blogs to keep up. New Years plans.

And then, Tuesday night before the week before Christmas, I got really sick. So sick I had to go to the doctor, who sent me to get IV fluids for six hours. I couldn’t lift my head. I had to sleep.

“Can you sit up and tell me about it?” the doctor asked.

“I’d prefer not to,” I remember saying. “I need to stay lying down.”

They asked me all kinds of questions, and almost decided I had noro-virus, a pretty awful thing that’s like what all those people get on cruise ships that keeps you in the bathroom for a week. But I didn’t have those symptoms, so they were baffled.

And then the doctor finally said: you don’t have a rash, do you?

And I said, well, not really..but I have three weird little dots on my lower back.

Her eyes widened. “Are you under a lot of stress? Have you been working really hard?”

If I hadn’t felt so awful, it would have been funny.

I had shingles. And it was horrible.

I slugged down medicine, lived on nothing but ginger ale for about a week. Had a horrible headache. Slept, slept, slept, slept, slept. Finally, finally, my brain stared working again, and now, about two and a half weeks later, I’m, knock on wood fine.

But here’s the point. Nothing got done. NOTHING. Nothing I had planned to do, nothing I had told myself was absolutely necessary to do, none of it got done.

“Sick,” I’d email, trying to type while lying down. “More later.”

No one got Christmas cards, emails didn’t get answered for a week, Christmas presents were last-minute gift cards.

And no one cared. It was ALL FINE.

Yes, I made my article deadlines, made them fine, instead of worrying about them for two weeks and then writing them, I just wrote them. Luckly, by some amazing luck, I had no appearances scheduled so I didn't have to cancel and ruin anyone else's plans. . 

Being so sick took away my choices. And when I was lucky enough to reenter the world, it was all fine.

So now I’m thinking—hmmm. What if I spend too much time trying to be perfect? Trying to do everything?


And what if, suddenly, the universe sent me a message saying: “Guess what, girl. You’re done for a while.”

The incredible Wally Lamb once told me he keeps an index card by his telephone. On the index card, he’s printed one word. NO. He’s the most charming, most generous, most giving, most loving—but even he, sometimes, has to remember to protect himself.

So here we all are, girlfriends. Celebrating our lives and loves and successes and challenges and facing a new year. I’m not saying “just say no.” I’m saying—just say yes. Say yes to a little peace, and a little time for yourself, a little less total-perfection-at-all-times, and a little more smelling the roses. Counting blessings that we’re healthy.

Happy New Year. It’ll all be fine.

(And just for fun--Three copies of DRIVE TIME are up for grapbs! I'll choose winners from the comments...and Happy New Year!)