Triggers

I have the flu. My head is an explosion of light, strange noises and ponies. I have no idea how the ponies wormed their way in there but they won't leave.

Thus, when I needed to leave the cocoon for an urgent errand involving lunch money and a daughter who blows all remaining cash the day before on banana nut muffins (yes, I'm looking at you, R), I was able to experience a few tweaks from my addled brain. I smelled the New York City subway. In my car.

When I was eighteen, I showed an amazing amount of gumption and blatant stupidity by quitting a very nice college in the Midwest and moving to NYC to find my fortune. I had no plan aside from showing up in January with a suitcase and the address of my pregnant sister in Brooklyn. With me so far? I'm a genius.

I won't go into the gory details, let's just say my time there was a mixture of The Nanny Diaries and Serpico, but riding the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn every weekend stamped an indelible memory of the subway: urine, sweat and heat. Not all of it was crazytown down there; I heard some excellent musicians, met artists and poets and was offered an orange by a friendly crackhead (I passed). After getting this trigger of subway scent today (still no idea how), I felt the urge to write about my favorite city.

NYC was the hometown of my zombie, Anna, in EYE OF THE BEHOLDER and I hope to visit it once again in an upcoming zombie anthology submission (hmmmm, zombie nannies?). You can take the girl out of the subway -- but you can't take the subway out of the girl. Wait. Wha?

What are your triggers? Are you inspired by scent? Sight? Crackheads?


Image credit: blogs.villagevoice.com

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: DREADFULLY EVER AFTER - Review and giveaway

Ahhh, the good old days. When men were men and women stayed at home and did needlepoint.

Er. No. Not in this story they don't.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: DREADFULLY EVER AFTER picks up the story four years after Elizabeth marries her beloved Darcy, settling down to life at Pemberley. Her warrior skills becoming rusty due to the constraints of being a married woman, the melancholy that threatens to consume her dulls her reflexes and she watches in shock as a mere Undead child fells Darcy. Asking for help from the interminable Lady Catherine de Bourgh exposes Elizabeth to drama, intrigue and... dare I say it... the adventure she'd been secretly hoping for. Joined by her father and sisters Kitty and Mary in London on a quest for a cure orchestrated by Lady Catherine the Great, the Bennets enter a city befouled by Dreadfuls, royalty, and the odd rabbit.

Hockensmith did a fantastic job wrapping up the series. The pace was quick, characters were mostly full-bodied and I enjoyed the developing story lines of Anne, Kitty and Mary. Anne de Bourgh had a touch of Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca) going on as she tries to lure Darcy to the dark side during his isolation at Rosings -- nice touch!

I give PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: DREADFULLY EVER AFTER five out of five heads for being a great weekend read, I hope you enjoy it too.


::GIVEAWAY::

The lovely people at Quirk Books are as excited as I am to give away a copy of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: DREADFULLY EVER AFTER to a Betwixt & Between reader! I like to keep things simple so tell me in the comments below what's your best zombie dating tip. For an extra point, what's your favorite Jane Austen novel? Winner will be chosen March 28, 2011. Please leave a contact email in the comments.

Note: Eligible only in USA & Canada

Quirk is also giving away eight vials of "antidote" to lucky fans at their PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: DREADFULLY EVER AFTER facebook page, enter there to win!

Sweet, sweet publication: The Girls' Ghost Hunting Guide with Sourcebooks!

Boy, do I love the quiet ones.

While trotting out The Zombie Dating Guide, I've been working on other projects in the back room for the past few months. No less dear to my heart, they're the ones that were so awesome that I was confident they would find homes with editors who would love them as much as I do quickly (and they did).

Today, I'm thrilled to announce that THE GIRLS' GHOST HUNTING GUIDE (ages 10-14) will be published by Sourcebooks-Jabberwocky, to be released Spring 2012. GGHG will be a go-to journal for girls to experience ghost hunting (with adult supervision), while learning about the unseen world around them. Interviews with ghost hunters, psychic mediums and real questions from girls around the world will round out the book that is focused on exploration, safety and fun. Please look for the website and forums to come soon.

Project number two will be announced soon!

An enormous thank you to my lovely agent, Dawn Frederick! We make a great team! :high five:



The zombies? Oh them. I have plans for my pretties, oh yes, big plans...

Death-defying organizational feats of motherhood (and writing)

While working for a national non-profit organization and managing 500 (mostly) women, I quickly learned to get my to-do list whittled down to something manageable else I’d get overwhelmed and hide behind the copy machine.

My trick was simple: pick the one most death-defying feat of the day and crank it out without succumbing to the lure of email, chatting with my cube neighbor, or that blinking voicemail light of doom. This was far before the Cone of Silence headphones so it wasn’t easy in a busy office but knocking off the big thing for the day helped me shake my bad thang at the rest of the list.

Now that I’m writing full-time, the list is back in play but in a new format: Google calendar. I have five color-coded calendars stacked on top of each other in the browser plus a task manager in the sidebar to keep me on track. Family, scouts, summer camp director, writing deadlines and the editing schedule for An Army of Ermas all cheerfully litter my screen. It’s a rainbow of OCD. I also have a pink board with upcoming project deadlines and I think that’s a petrified cookie propped up on my printer. Please, god, don’t tell me I put that cookie there as an incentive. I’m doomed.

I’ll gloss over the huge family calendar plastered over the kitchen table for five kids to add their activities to (copied then to my Google calendar) and my iPhone calendar that freaks out and beeps if it thinks I’ve missed something at 4am, waking the dogs and making my husband believe it’s time to get up and make me coffee (win!).

Right now I’m plotting a short story on a yellow legal pad though it will soon move to FreeMind (mind mapping software) once I get the rough ideas down. If it’s too big, that idea will move to the 8ft blackboard so I can better organize the flow. Yes, I know it’s only 5000 words. Can you imagine me as a novelist?

So what are your organizational tips, Cha-Cha?