​I adore Halloween. It started when I was a child. Playing dress-up, getting a bag filled with free candy and, a few days later, celebrating my birthday? What a wonderful time of year!
 
Now that I’m a bit older, I still play dress-up, but no one’s offering me free candy, anymore. On the positive side of the equation, I can buy my own candy. It’s not nearly as satisfying, but at least no one is sneaking those tiny boxes of raisins into my Halloween bag. On the negative side of the equation, I only eat sugar-free candy these days. It’s a whole thing. Let’s not get into it today.
 
I also love I Luv Halloween. Years ago, I found volume one at the local library. Written by Keith Giffen and illustrated by Benjamin Roman, it was published by TokyoPop. I picked it up because the artwork appealed to me. I had no idea who the target audience was supposed to be. Published in black and white, drawn in an adorable manga-esque style, its main characters were children who engaged in very unchildlike behavior. Publisher’s Weekly called it, “a black comedy that reads as if Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton had collaborated on a Halloween heist story.” They also wrote that it was “not for the easily offended.” If you somehow manage to find a copy and decide to read it, you have been warned.
 
Some of my favorite Halloween movies combine comedy and horror – more on that next week – so it turned out that I was the target audience. So was Glynn, which almost makes up for his sick enjoyment of Circus Peanuts. (Spangler Candy has been manufacturing Circus Peanuts for over 100 years. They’ve had more than a century to stop doing this. On the bags of their banana-flavored atrocities, the Spangler brain trust doesn’t brag about how good Circus Peanuts taste. They can’t, not while there’s truth in advertising laws still in effect. All the Spangler group can promise is that their bag of awfulness will be “Free of Major Allergens.” For some reason, they seem to think this ad line will compel the general population to stock up on the stuff. How is it, Spangler Candy, that you’re still in business?)
 
Back to I Luv Halloween, I enjoyed it enough to buy my own copy of the book. Soon afterwards, I noticed when the artist popped up on eBay, selling a page of his original artwork. Being always short of cash in those days, we bid what we could and won the prize! Weeks after we’d paid for the page, the artwork still hadn’t arrived.
 
When my package showed up, the artist included a note, apologizing for the delay. He also added another four pages of I Luv art to make up for his tardiness. It was like Halloween all over again. Free treats and I didn’t even have to dress up for it.

​Years later, with Halloween and Halloween on my mind, I asked Glynn if he still remembered I Luv Halloween. He told me he’d recently re-read it and remained a fan. With our anniversary coming up, we decided to find the artist and ask if he’d do a commission for us. We wanted the characters in his story to be trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.
 
If Finch, Devil Lad and the gang were in our area, we’d know better than to offer them handfuls of pennies, Choco-Willies, or apples with razors in them (as one kindly-looking character does in the story). When they knocked on our door, they’d get those little Snickers bars every time.
 
Benjamin Roman accepted our commission request. This time, the artwork arrived quickly. Glynn tells me, after I’d seen the drawing, I danced around the kitchen, saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
 
This is the polar opposite of how I’d react to a gift bag of Circus Peanuts.

Deciding that life is short and we still have too many stories to tell to not get on with it, we’ve rolled up our respective sleeves and gotten on with it. We’re happy to be writing fiction again, but that’s for another day. For today, let me share how I lose a little piece of my short life all too frequently.
 
I surf the internet. Social media, not so much, but YouTube, writing forums, news sites, they steal a bit of my life almost every day. I could get through the news sites quickly if they didn’t have such enticing headlines and subheadings:
 
You Might Be an Old Fart if You Still Do This We are sorry to tell you that these things were never cool.
Always Place a Crayon in Your Wallet When Traveling I was all set for my trip. That’s when my friend told me to place a crayon in my wallet when traveling.  
Man Denies Female Soldier Her Seat in the Plane Once she sat down, things got even worse.
 
Written in bold and in the same font as the real news headlines, these aren’t news items. They’re advertisements, with a tiny little note above the header to say so. The ads usually include an intriguing photograph that doesn’t explain the headline. For example, “Man Denies Female Soldier Her Seat in the Plane” shows airplane passengers looking over their shoulders at some potentially-alarming sight behind them. I don’t click on the ad, but… I’m… so… tempted.
 
I wish the real headlines were as tempting. El Salvador Mines First BTC (bitcoin) Using Volcano Energy is actually news, but it’s information I can live without. If I owned Bitcoin or had my own supervillain lair with volcano attached, I might feel differently. However, when I’m teased with something like The Oldest Living Star from Gilligan’s Island is 102 Years Old You’ll be amazed, I have to know more.
 
As a child, and a teenager, and an adult, I saw reruns of Gilligan’s Island. I can picture all of the actors in my mind. Which one of them is 102-years-old? I can, perhaps unfortunately, still sing the theme song: Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale/A tale of a fateful trip/That started from this tropic port/Aboard this tiny ship. If you’re old enough, some of you may know it, too. When we get together, we’ll sing it in unison.
 
I started researching the cast members, as listed in the theme song. With Gilligan: Bob Denver left us in 2005. The skipper, too: Alan Hale, Jr (Skipper) went before that, in 1990. The millionaire and his wife: Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III), gone in 1989 and Natalie Schafer (Lovey Howell), exited in 1991. The movie star: Tina Louise (Ginger Grant) is still here and is, research indicates, the same age as my mother-in-law. Ms. Louise doesn’t like her age to be shared, but she is much, much younger than 102. The Professor: Russell Johnson (Professor Roy Hinkley) passed in 2014. When I was entering my teens? I thought he was so hot. And Mary Ann: Dawn Wells left us last year. Covid.
 
Only Tina Louise is still standing, but she isn’t close to the century mark. So, who was the mysterious centenarian mentioned in the ad?
 
Nehemiah Persoff. An unusual name, but, from all accounts, a terrific actor. Click on the link and you’ll discover that he worked with Marlon Brando, Barbara Streisand, George Raft, was in dozens of movies, and collected residuals from a good number of television shows.
 
He was in a single episode of Gilligan’s Island, “The Little Dictator.” He played the title character. Sherwood Schwartz, the series creator, said it was his favorite episode from the show. So, is Mr. Persoff one of the stars of Gilligan’s Island?
 
As remarkable as his professional life has been, this claim feels a little squishy. I don’t think any of us would have agreed with it. The people creating ad-bait knew this. They’re experts in toying with us. But Mr. Persoff worked with some of the greatest talents of his generation. He had a small role in “The Wrong Man”, a break-out role in “Some Like It Hot.” So, why did the ad-meisters choose Gilligan’s Island as their hook?
 
More people watched Gilligan’s Island than The Wrong Man and Some Like It Hot combined.
 
The process of sorting this out, discovering what happened to the actors I used to enjoy, cost me two hours of my short life. Worse, I’d do it again.
 
Anything to avoid clicking on the ad.

​Ernest Hemingway – 500 words a day.
Graham Greene – 500 words a day.
J.R.R. Tolkien – 245 words a day.
Tom Wolfe – 135 words a day.
 
A professional writer can be identified by his or her ability to write every day. Or so I’ve been told.
 
Whether I’m feeling it or not, a much-published acquaintance told me years ago, I plant my butt in the chair and turn out words. Good sentences, bad sentences, entire pages that go nowhere – it doesn’t matter. I don’t finish for the day until I’ve done my 3,000 words.
 
I didn’t know if she was simply stating a fact, or bragging, or bragging while stating a fact. She shared that Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) famously wrote 3,000 words a day. As did Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason). She was following in their footsteps, although she didn’t create mysteries. She wrote Harlequin romances.
 
You know who wouldn’t have been impressed by my associate’s daily word count? Michael Crichton, the Jurassic Park author. He went into his office and didn’t turn out the lights until he’d done 10,000 words each day. That’s a head-swimming number. If he didn’t rewrite his manuscripts so often, he could have put out a novel almost weekly.
 
If I could put out a solid novel once every seven days, I’d work for seven days a year. Or, if a Barbie convention was coming up, maybe fourteen.
 
In our house, five hundred pretty decent words in a day is a solid effort. My partner and I have done a multiple of that on those days when the creativity is really cooking – or, once upon a time, when we were on deadline and running out of time – but there have also been days when we wrote diddly-squat. Hell, there were years when we wrote diddly-squat.
 
(Just so that you don’t leave this blog without learning something today, the phrase “diddly-squat” originated as “doodly-squat”, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Its origins date back to 1934, but nobody seems to know why it came into use. Over the years, doodly-squat got twisted into diddly-squat, both words meaning “almost nothing” or “the least bit of something.”)
 
Do you know how many words we added to our current project, the serial fiction story, in the last eight days? The least bit of something. Three hundred words. Not three hundred words per day. Three hundred words in total. We only made it that far because we were able to resolve how to start the billionaire’s portion of our serial fiction, the section that was stumping us last week. Using the billionaire’s assistant as his surrogate allowed us to tell the reader how flawless, brilliant, handsome, and wonderful the billionaire is without it sounding like the fellow is bragging about himself.
 
Rereading the words this morning, I realized our 300 words need a rewrite. (Michael Crichton could relate.) While the assistant does tell the world how flawless, brilliant, handsome and wonderful the billionaire is, as required, he also makes fun of his name. Gently hints that his employer’s a thief.
 
It’s almost like he detests him.
 
I find this a more interesting read, but it’s probably a bad approach if we want to sell some eBooks. You know who I should ask for help? Michelle Douglas. Her book, Cinderella and the Brooding Billionaire, comes out from Harlequin.com in October! I wouldn’t know this if I hadn’t decided to check if Harlequin was still in business. They are and, presumably, this is because they know what sells. Billionaire romances sell. Brooding billionaire romances sell very well.
 
I imagine the Harlequin group also knows what doesn’t sell. Going through their catalog, I see they aren’t offering any eBooks where the focus is on the billionaire’s indispensable assistant who rather dislikes his employer.
 
Food for thought.
 
I see this blog is about to pass 650 words, a solid daily effort, so it’s time for me to plant my butt and paint another gourd bird. I have twelve of them to complete before all is said and done. Have a lovely week and I’ll see you next Tuesday. 

​Instead of working on our latest serial fiction, I’ve been goofing off. My partner hasn’t felt like doing his end of the struggle, either. There’s something that’s just a little off about our current writing project. It’s not the storyline… except, now that I think about it, maybe it is the storyline. Bear with me, I want to see if I’m right.
 
At first, we were all gung-ho (but not about Gung Ho, the Michael Keaton movie, which really should have been better). For the first several chapters of the new manuscript, everything is told from the viewpoint of our heroine. Our heroine is young, smart, struggling to make ends meet, and reasonably freaked when she wakes up and discovers her brain inhabiting someone else’s body. A someone else who has stolen a very important McGuffin from a rich and powerful billionaire. While she struggles to come to terms with this, the billionaire’s thugs are pounding on her front door, demanding she give the McGuffin back.
 
Except that our heroine doesn’t know what the McGuffin is or where it’s hidden. She’s in a fix.
 
We felt this was a relatable story. I mean, who hasn’t had something similar happen, right? Going to bed as, say, Kristin Faraday, then waking up in Charlize Theron’s body and discovering that a sexy, handsome version of Bill Gates has sent his goons to strongarm you? If it hasn’t happened to you personally, it’s almost certainly happened to one of your friends or family members.
 
We pride ourselves in grounding our fiction in reality.
 
The writing went along very smoothly – serial fiction is all about the cliffhangers, and the cliffhangers were falling nicely – until the middle of last week. On Wednesday, it was Handsome Bill Gates turn to tell the story from his point of view. The reader would learn why the McGuffin mattered and, if it was handled correctly, the next few episodes would give the reader a reason to like Bill beyond his eleven-figure bank account. In theory.
 
So, why are we struggling to put words on paper? We know where the story is supposed to go. The problem is, as ridiculous as Kristin Faraday’s situation might be, we find the idea of a self-made, altruistic, physically perfect and totally gorgeous billionaire to be an even more fantastical conceit. For us, it’s easy to present the billionaire as a threatening presence. It’s going to be a battle to make him every woman’s dream lover. 
 
I suggested that we give up on Sexy Bill Gates and create someone more in keeping with what we read about the super-rich. Will readers stay with us if present the billionaire as a soft-bellied, balding, and cretinous villain? I’ve argued that anything’s possible, but my partner doesn’t believe that mean-spirited cretin romance is the Next Big Thing.
 
Unable to come to a consensus on where to go next, we each wandered off to do other things that weren’t writing fiction. I opened my paint set. When I’m at loose ends, I paint Arizona birds on small, egg-shaped gourds; oh, don’t shake your head at me, there are worse hobbies. Each painting fills a few hours over two or three days. Once the latest bird was done, I went online to pass some time. Somehow, I found Entertainment Weekly’s Which Superhero Character Are You? quiz.
 
I’ve provided a link to the quiz, but it’s a complete waste of time. If you insist on checking it out, you’ll notice that it’s Marvel-centric. The superhero character options appear pretty male-centric, too. There’s no Lady Luck, or Raven, or Jill Trent, Science Sleuth among the character options. But the “game” was right in front of me, it was free, and I was bored.
 
I was stumped by the very first question: My greatest asset is my…*
(A) Ambition
(B) Discipline
(C) Strength
(D) Loyalty
(E) Intelligence
 
There’s no (F) None of the above. A, B and E didn’t seem right, because I was sitting on my butt doing a superhero character quiz, instead of working on a billionaire romance that might make a few bucks. C is definitely not my reality and no one except an Akita should pick D as their answer. Finally, I went with “intelligence” because I was smart enough to know that they’d provided no appropriate answer for a slacker like me.
 
The second question is about favorite foods. Nothing on their list would have made my top twenty choices. I went with “pie”, because, really, what’s wrong with pie? The third question wanted to know how my friends would describe me. I called the Good Witch. Her answer – “A pain in the butt. I had to get out of the shower to answer your call” – is not on there. The fourth question, about favorite colors, included blue and green. My favorite color is turquoise. The fifth, and final question, asking about fitness routines? Oh, please. Crossfit? Karate? Boxing? So… yeah, no real thought went into Question #5. I stabbed blindly.
 
Having filled in largely incorrect answers for all of the questions, Entertainment Weekly then refused to provide the superhero character answer unless I gave them an email to spam me on a regular basis. If you ignore my warning and play the game, they will do this to you, too. (It makes me want to send their marketing department a quiz: Which Supervillain Character Are You?) I gave them my spam email site, the one I don’t check, to go forward.
 
Their answer? Iron Man. The handsome, well-muscled, arrogant yet altruistic billionaire that has, somehow, charmed millions of movie-goers. The perfect candidate for a billionaire romance.
 
I have no idea what the universe is trying to tell me. I should have spent my time, finishing my Arizona bluebird.
 
 

​I know this is getting posted a little early, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Tomorrow is such a busy day, I’m afraid I’ll forget to blog if I wait. Since I’ve promised to fill this weekly spot for at least a year, that is NOT allowed to happen.
 
I’m feeling grumpy about Amazon’s Vella serial fiction failure, so let’s talk about something else for today. Last Friday, as I settled onto the couch for the evening, I noticed that my life partner was reading a paperback book. An old paperback book, purporting to tell the story of Liz Crowley, a woman who sells her love. Although the woman on the cover was dressed fairly modestly, the cover copy promised that this book was, “A Night-By-Night Account of a Prostitute’s Life – By the Girl Who Lived It.”
 
I cleared my throat. My partner looked up.
 
“Good book?” I asked, which was a better opening than, hey, that looks sleazy.
 
“It’s all right,” he replied.
 
“Looks sleazy.” I had to go there. I was already tired of waiting.
 
“A study of human behavior,” he replied. He pointed to the upside-down triangle at the bottom of the woman’s photo. (By the way, Google tells me an upside-down triangle is called a nabla. This comes from the Greek word for a Phoenician harp. I do not anticipate ever using this knowledge again.) On the nabla, I read the words, Monarch Human Behavior Books.
 
Borrowing the book, I opened the cover. On the first page, I read: He grabbed me roughly. “You’re a no-good prostitute,” he snarled. “The lowest thing there is – a disgrace to the human race – not fit to breathe the same air with the rest of the world. Get your clothes off. Fast!”
 
The speaker wasn’t asking her to remove her clothing because it was on fire. He had an ulterior motive. The reader soon learns that speaker is a cop from the Vice Squad, taking advantage of his position.
 
I decided I was right the first time. I said, “Sleaze.”
 
“Classic erotica,” my partner advised me. “Published sixty-one years ago, when such things were usually suggestive, not overt. We’ve written hotter stuff.”
 
Flipping through the book, this turned out to be true. One sexual encounter was described as “…the world went around and around and exploded on top of us with one hell of a noise.” If this was hot stuff in 1960, be pleased you weren’t reading sleaze sixty-one years ago.
 
“This was one of Larry’s early novels,” my partner said. “I wanted to see how it read.”
 
When he said, “Larry”, I knew who he meant. Lawrence Block has made quite a name as an author. He’s seen his novels made into movies, he’s won just about every award a mystery writer can win, and his Matthew Scudder detective series was a big hit. Glynn enjoys Block’s “Burglar” books, so, when a new one hadn’t come out in a while, he wrote him to ask why. This was years ago, when people used to write letters. When Mr. Block replied, he signed his note as, “Larry.”
 
Since then, he’s been Larry in our house. Decades before he became a Big Deal, Larry wrote a series of spicy books under various pseudonyms. Books like I Sell Love. There were mouths to feed and bills to be paid. The books had titles like Born to Be Bad, Campus Tramp and A Strange Kind of Love. Not only is LB unembarrassed by his past, he has 25 “classic erotica” titles listed on his website for purchase. Good for him, I say.
 
I want to close by adding that, as a writer, Larry continues to impress. Last year, his dark and disturbing novel, Dead Girl Blues, came out, as did an anthology he edited, The Darkling Halls of Ivy. This year, he put out a new anthology (Collectibles, Glynn recommends it) and a memoir, A Writer Prepares.
 
The memoir was officially published in June, on the man’s 83rd birthday.
 
I feel like such a slacker.

​​Did you have a pleasant Labor Day?
 
In the United States, Labor Day is a federal holiday. This is the time when the people of the nation go online to see if they can get 30% off on that La-Z-Boy Recliner they’ve been desiring. (Is it awful that I didn’t know the proper spelling for those chairs? Until this morning, I thought people were buying Lazy Boy recliners. I was wrong. Apparently, the words “lazy” and “boy” are too generic to create a rock-solid trademark for La-Z-Boy, Inc, so they made up their own word.) The holiday is supposed to be the day when a grateful nation celebrates the contributions of its workers. That might have been what happened in the 19th century, but, these days, not so much. During the part of my lifetime that I remember, Labor Day has been when the country’s retailers make their workers put in overtime to ring up discounted merchandise.
 
Our Canadian friends celebrate Labor Day, too, but they spell the holiday as, “Labour Day.” Vowels are as plentiful as maple syrup in Canada, so they add a few extra to any word they can.
 
My Labor Day was largely uneventful, although I did receive one notable text. It was from a friend who has recently started writing, and she’d just received her first negative book review. She’s received some very nice reviews, but she never texts me about them. I suggested (a) she stop reading her reviews, since many writers only remember the bad ones; and (b) reassured her that even the most acclaimed writers will receive the occasional thumb in the eye.
 
I don’t think I helped. There are times when it’s better just to listen.
 
But (b) was absolutely true. Everyone with any kind of readership will get a bad review sooner or later. Today, I’m going to prove it. Knowing that people’s taste in books can be very different – it sounds crazy, but some people might not enjoy Agatha Christie’s Curtain, a story I love – I decided I should find a list of swell reads selected by someone other than myself. Not only swell reads, the BEST reads. In 2003, The Guardian (UK) offered their readership The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I decided that would do nicely.
 
I confess, I recognized a lot of the names on the list, but I haven’t read most of the books they selected. I’d like to have read several of them without actually having to spend the time to do so. (Ulysses by James Joyce? #45 on Guardian’s list. It’s supposed to be brilliant. Here’s one review: Worse book that I have read. It should not be considered a "classic".) Then I went onto Amazon to see if anyone said grumpy things about these other works of genius.
 
Horrible book it is beyond confusing. If you wish to be confused trying to keep up with a million characters the(n) be my guest (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL by James Ellroy. #95 on Guardian’s list.)
 
I sure hope the movie is better than this book. There is no "zero" star rating or I would have given it for this book. (TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY by John le Carré. #78 on Guardian’s list.)
 
It was a terrible book. The book is so unbelievable and weird. (NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell – Penguin Clothbound Classics. #59 on Guardian’s list.)
 
AHHHHHHHHHH, worst book i ever read! sorry Mark Twain but its really really bad! (ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain. #31 on Guardian’s list. Included here to tweak my writing partner, who adores the novel.)
 
This was literally the worst book I have EVER read. Well except 50 shades of Gray. (MOBY DICK: OR, THE WHITE WHALE by Herman Melville. #21 on Guardian’s list.)
 
Jumbled writing, many events were simply not plausible and downright depressing to the very end. I cannot count the number of times I simply wanted to scream at the protagonist. (FRANKENSTEIN – Reader’s Library Classics – by Mary Shelley. #10 on Guardian’s list.)
 
If you like road-trip stories, potty humor and the slapstick comedy of a bumbling protagonist, you may very well like this book. (DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes/Translated by Edith Grossman. #1 on Guardian’s list.)
 
These were all one-star reviews. Every book I checked had readers complaining about something or other. Every book. Do I feel these readers were wrong in their opinions? Hardly. They know what they like, and the various authors didn’t deliver an enjoyable experience for them. The readers shared their thoughts with the world. That’s fair.
 
One more, before I go:
 
Agatha Christie has written some stinkers, but really this is the worse. (CURTAIN by Agatha Christie. #1 on my Agatha Christie collection list.)
 
So, rest easy, L. You’re among some very good company.

There’s so much I don’t understand. The uncertainty principle. Why Japanese men find crooked teeth sexy. Avocados. But those are the things that confuse everyone. In today’s blog, I’d like to talk about things that are specifically confusing me today.
 
Let me start with some of my website visitors. Every week or so, one of my two websites will get a comment on it that lasts only as long as it takes me to read it. Deleted, it’s never seen again, so why are they bothering? The most recent bit of nonsense read: 오피 of (retracted) has just posted a comment on your blog post, What’s better than true love?: You completed several nice points there. I did a search on the issue and found the majority of persons will go along with your blog.
 
This isn’t a comment from someone who’d actually read that blog post. I didn’t make several nice points in that particular bit of silliness. With the help of Forbes magazine, I provided an estimate of Scrooge McDuck’s fortune. Then I told those who didn’t know that “billionaire romance” was a fiction category. It’s hard to imagine that the majority of people give a dry whistle about either of the points I’d made.
 
Clearly, this is some kind of spam move, but where’s the value in it for the spammer? Even if I’d left it in play, the true love blog is three months old. No one visits either of my websites to read old blogs and, if someone decided to do so, it’s unlikely they’d use more of their day to check the comments. 오피 and his ilk are wasting their time. Why do they do it?
 
     # # #
 
Being a curious sort, I looked up to see if “오피” meant anything when translated into English. To my surprise, I learned it means, “Opie.” Do spammers think of “Opie” as a warm and trusted name? Or did Opie become a hot, sexy name and I somehow missed the memo?
  
This is information I need to know before I write my next billionaire romance. Handsome billionaire Opie Cooter had it all. Everything except what he truly wanted. What he desired most in all the world was the love of a middle-aged gourd artist who was confused by avocados. Look, you write the romances that appeal to you, I'll do the ones I like.
  
      # # #
 
Something else I don’t understand today: Why are there five people on Facebook named, “Opie Opie”, and why is it that most of them have so many more Facebook friends than me?
 
     # # #
 
While I’m on the subject of Facebook, I received a FB message from an editor, someone I didn’t know. He offered me a small amount of money to ($150) for the rights to one of our novels. Not that he was targeting my work, in particular. I’ve heard from others that they received the same message from the same editor.
 
I understand why he made the offer. Once the contract is signed, he gets a lot of words for very little investment. What I don’t understand is why some writers are wondering if they should take him up on it. If the online chatter is correct, he’s buying all of your book’s rights for all time. Run!
 
     # # #
 
Because I fear getting vertigo, I avoid caffeine. I’d direct you to an earlier blog about this but, as I said, people don’t read the old blogs. Thanks to Kirkland Decaf in the big green can, I can start each day with two cups of warm joe and all is right in my world. When my coffee maker abruptly retired (no advance warning, no written notice, nothing), I went online to find a replacement.
 
I checked Amazon, wanting to see what people had to say about the machines they’d purchased. When looking at questions in regards to different models, these are some of the real answer that I found:
 
How well does this coffee maker work at high altitude (7000 ft)? Sorry, not been to that altitude with coffee maker, only skis. Hope its invigorating for you otherwise.
 
Does this strike you as some kind of weird brag? It did me.
 
Can you turn off the beep? All you need is a trusty soldering iron. I'm not concerned about voiding warranty because it is what it is.
 
When did “it is what it is” become an understandable reason for voiding a warranty? This is a thing I don’t think I want to understand.
 
Gentlemen – because I know it was two guys that wrote these answers, it had to be – why did you take the time to write these responses to curious buyers? Educate me, I need to know. Did you believe that your words would benefit ANYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD in regards to whether they should or shouldn’t buy that particular model of coffee maker?
 
Are the water tanks stainless steel or plastic? Heat set setting to keep coffee war!
 
Oh, dear heart, I… I… I give up. Is the last word of your response supposed to be, “warm”? Even if it is, what are you telling Amazon buyers about that coffee maker’s water tanks? It escapes me.
 
Although, I did have some fun with your answer. When Glynn called from the kitchen, asking how long to reheat the chicken marsala in the frig, I yelled back, “Heat set setting to keep coffee war!”
 
There was the loooongest period of silence before he spoke again. ​

​Another glorious morning, blue skies and scattered white clouds overhead, but I woke up irritated at comic book genius/creator/writer/artist Terry Moore. This is not Terry Moore, the actress, who is also extraordinary. Oscar-nominated, the actress Terry Moore is still working in films at the age of 92; how fantastic is that? She’s practicing lines from one of the three movies she has coming out this year and next, while I’m losing sleep over which new coffeepot to buy. I’m impressed.
 
So, let me do my regular Tuesday thing. I’ll talk a little bit about writing, then I’ll rant about something that’s irritated me, and then we’ll both go on our way. It’s a plan.
 
In writing, there are plotters and there are pantsers. There are all shades in-between, but let’s not blur the lines here. A plotter lays out the story he or she or they are going to write, and they follow their outline. Sometimes, co-writers don’t behave (I’m looking at you, Glynn) or characters evolve and adjustments have to be made, but the building blocks are in place. A plotter knows how the story starts, understands the major character arcs, and has decided how everything shakes out at the end. In this house, I do most of the plotting. If things don’t tie up neatly, I notice. One of us fixes it.
 
A pantser does things differently. They’ll have an idea (“Our heroine wakes up inhabiting somebody else’s body. How did she get there and what does she have to do to return to normal?”) before they sit down at the keyboard, hoping the ideas flow from there. The really good ones can keep all of the story details in their head and never miss a step. Without an outline in place, a sloppy pantser will leave dangling plot points. As a reader, grrrrr.
 
Which is why we’re using a little bit of plotting and pantsing with our newest serial fiction. We started with the “inhabiting somebody else’s body” idea, then I loosely plotted the first chapter. Glynn ran with it. The second chapter started off in a place I hadn’t expected, but I loosely plotted that. Glynn took it in strange directions. The third chapter started off in a place I hadn’t expected… you get the idea. Five chapters in, neither of us know where the story will end up. It’s kind of exciting, writing a story in this way but, to make certain that we cover all of our bases, we keep notes as to what’s happened as we go along. Since we both have the memories of a pair of addled gnats, it’s important that we maintain consistency as we go from chapter to chapter. Glynn knows how I feel about dangling plot points
 
Bringing me back to comic book guy, Terry Moore. He’s a pantser, if you ask me, and he’s the reason I woke up irritated this morning. Let me back up: Glynn is a big fan of Mr. Moore’s Strangers in Paradise comics and his Rachel Rising series. As you might think, there are a couple of Moore’s story collections in the house. Having finished all of my latest BL mangas (go ahead and judge me. The heart wants what it wants), I picked up a handy graphic novel to end my evening. It was Strangers in Paradise: Love Me Tender.
 
**Spoilers ahead. Not many, but some. Consider this fair warning.**
 
This was a new story arc, so I didn’t feel entirely lost. The artwork was lovely and the characterizations were strong. Within a few pages, I’d learned that Francine (the adorable, klutzy brunette) and Katchoo (the adorable, hot-headed blonde) are in financial straits. They’re going to lose the roof over their head if they don’t come up with some scratch. This happens, then that happens, and, through a series of comical events, Francine is unexpectedly chosen to be the face of a condom company. Within minutes, she finds herself on set and being filmed for a commercial. Hey, it’s comics. The director tells her the commercial will be seen by 250 million viewers “every day for weeks, months, years!”
 
Yes, it was silly, but it was meant to be silly. I enjoyed it. Then the storyline drifts off a little, no one really acknowledges Francine’s career change, and the TPB ends without telling the reader what happens next. Since Glynn knows some of the SiP history, I asked him if Condom Girl became famous.
 
“Nope. Moore never mentions Condom Girl again. Never mentions the commercial again.”
 
“Nothing? Nothing? Not even a word balloon to say that the company changed their mind?”
 
“Not even that.”
 
“What about the women’s’ financial issues? Do Francine and Katchoo end up on the streets?”
 
“Moore kinda gives up on that part of the story, too. Nobody talks about it, anymore.”
  
Hearing this pissed me off. I asked him, “And this doesn’t piss you off?”
 
“He did the same thing with Rachel Rising. Introduced a bunch of plot elements, then ignored them when he ran out of time or lost interest. That parts that he did complete, they’re really good. You have to give a little.”
 
Maybe Glynn does, but I don’t. Damn it, Terry Moore, I don’t care if you’re a pantser, I expect you to fix this. Even though you completed the series fourteen years ago, you need to give Condom Girl some resolution.
 
Once you do, let me know and I won’t curse your name every time Glynn picks up one of your books.

​On Sunday, I pulled into this desert rest stop. Although it was early in the morning, it was already too hot. Flies were everywhere. There were no seats on the toilets, and there was a warning against drinking the non-potable water. That’s where I realized I didn’t have a blog for today. Or a picture to accompany the unwritten blog.
 
So, I took a photo of an outbuilding directly behind the desert rest stop. I was hoping the picture would inspire me to write a blog about… I don’t know. Balancing above a toilet seat while swatting at flies? Then I returned home and both Glynn and I got some surprising news. I had something to write about, after all.
 
Let me start with the good news. Yesterday, Amazon Vella emailed me a message. Their note read, “We are excited to inform you that you earned a launch bonus for the month of July.”
 
I don’t know why they were excited about this news, but I loved the idea. Free money! I was also surprised to hear it. While The Awful, Terrible NO GOOD Mail-Order Bride exists, it has some followers, we’re not making significant bank with the story. Not that the Amazon bonus was all that much. It isn’t new car money. It’s new car mat money, but only if you drive a Hyundai. By the way, I drive a Hyundai. If I need a new car mat, I’m golden.
 
How much was it? For us, the payment turned out to be a multiple of what we’ve earned on Vella so far. Still, only a two-digit payment. Talking to other writers, I’ve learned that Amazon sent out a lot of these awards, but most writers received less than a hundred bucks. I’ve yet to meet anyone who received as much as two hundred dollars.
 
Amazon didn’t reward everyone in their Vella stable, though, and the justification for who gets what seems to be built upon fairy wings and unicorn kisses. (I don’t know what that means, either. Let’s go with it. My week has been exhausting, and I’m scraping this together from scratch.) Why did the Amazonians do it? I think it’s fiscal encouragement, a (sur)prize to keep dissatisfied Vella scribes from bolting for greener pastures. So far, the pasture is pretty brown. There are a lot of people who’ve made nothing so far. When one of my friends posted that she’d earned nine cents after the first month, another friend posted, Lucky. She wasn’t teasing.
 
The not terribly-bad, but bad surprise? Yesterday, also, my partner in crime, Glynn, discovered that the voicemail on his Google Fi phone wasn’t working. It hadn’t been working for weeks. When a family member texted, asking why he hadn’t responded to a voice message, he replied that he hadn’t received anything. He was right, but he was wrong. His phone had recorded the words, but hadn’t told shared them with him.
 
Doing his own investigation, Glynn discovered this isn’t a new problem for the Google folks. Online fixes didn’t do anything, and the steps the customer service reps offered didn’t take, either. Finally, Google Fi customer service had to resort to desperate measures to make voicemail work again; the phone had to be returned to its factory settings. This morning, the missed voicemails of the last few weeks flooded in. Glynn had seventy-six messages to go through, including a few from me. When I asked him if he hadn’t wondered why no one had left him a voicemail in many days, he told me, “I’d hoped people were ignoring me.”
 
I don’t know if that’s a typical response for all men or just my man. Either way, like I said, it’s been a tough week. I’m using our launch bonus money on a bottle of wine and a roll of cookie dough.
 
 

​​Oh, how I wish it looked that good.
 
On the day I went to get a passport photo, a last-minute pic, I stood in front of the photographer while a certain someone danced silently behind her, making faces like a clown. The woman took the shot, never questioning why I wanted a passport photo that made me appear like a constipated chipmunk with murder in my eyes. Once I saw the picture, I didn’t have time to do it over again. Somehow, the State Department approved the ghastly thing to the consternation of airport security personnel everywhere.
  
I've since learned that people are allowed to take their own passport photos. If I’d only known.
 
The image above is a self-portrait, of sorts. A few years back, Glynn and I thought it would be fun to host a Murder Mystery Dinner on Halloween. We’d been to exactly one Murder Mystery Dinner in our entire lives, and it was a miserable thing. By the time the culprit was revealed, I wanted to kill the dinner’s organizers. Bad food, bad dialogue, and so borrrrrrrrrrrrrring.  
 
We thought a good Murder Mystery Dinner would be wonderful experience. We were certain we could write a better one.
  
We were mistaken.
 
Glynn and I each tried writing a scenario on our own, then we tried it together, and the “together” version was better but, still, the flow wasn’t quite right. It felt a little wobbly. Maybe a little boring. Ignoring these warning signs, we forged ahead. We made character lists and backgrounds, created some simple costume pieces for our guests to wear, and we collected a number of props. One of our props was this painting of me with my tongue stuck out and my eyes appearing a little glassy. The self-portrait was to be revealed after the murder. It was either going to get a laugh while providing a clue to solving the mystery, or its appearance was just going to confuse everyone.
 
(The clue? The victim’s tongue tilts to the right. I knew you were wondering, I wanted to share.)
 
Reading our multipage Murder Mystery Dinner scenario, the Good Witch appeared lost by page three. I could see by the fear in her eyes that she was afraid I’d invite her to the dinner. When Glynn shared that he might not be able to make it, either – and it was to be held in our own home – we decided it might be best to bury the project. The manuscript still exists, buried in a foot locker among a half-dozen other dead writing projects, but neither of us is excited enough to revisit it.
 
It just struck me that the only thing that died after all of our work was the Murder Mystery Dinner.  
 
Once it was scrapped, I turned the prop over to my guy to cut up and dispose of the painting. I can be a touch precious about some of my artwork, but not with this sadness. This week, sorting through a line of paintings to (a) keep, (b) sell, or (c) introduce to a reciprocating saw, I discovered that my zombie twin had never gone to its grave. Because my goofy expression made Glynn laugh, my partner had kept it.
 
By the end of this week, this ridiculous combo of oil and board is going on a date with the carbide teeth of a saw even if I have to do the cutting myself.