Which cover do you like best?

If you haven't already seen my new blog address, head on over to JanetteRallison.com and tell me which cover you like best!

My Top Ten Tips for Writers

So I've got a new website that has my blog linked to it. Eventually I'll figure how to link this address to it too. Until then, please go go my new link at: JanetteRallison.com

And the winners are

Before I list those picked by Random.org, I wanted to let you know that I will be doing one of my massive, give away every book I’ve every written give-aways at the end of September (or beginning of October depending on how organized I am) as we count down to the Slayers: Friends and Traitors release.

Winners, send me your physical address (at jrallisonfans at yahoo.com) and which book you’d like. Your choices are: Slayers, Erasing Time; My Fair Godmother; My Double Life; How To Take the Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend; Life, Love and the Pursuit of Free Throws; or Fame, Glory, and Other Things On My To Do List.

All great books, by the way.

Jessie Clark, Alyssa, Rachel W, Kimberly K, Mattie, Cathy

Another book giveaway (What I did this summer)

While I was up in SLC vacationing this summer I stopped by Clark Planetarium and saw their new movie Dragons: Real Myths and Unreal Creatures. It’s an educational film, like all of the films at the planetarium, but the producer framed the information in a story to make it more interesting. (If you live in Utah, go see it!)

The premise  is that a teenage girl--who has always had nightmares about dragons to the point that it’s an obsession with her--goes to see a mysterious Dr. Alistair Conis about it. She hopes he can help her. They talk about the similarities found in dragon lore and wonder why so many different cultures all have dragon legends.

At one point in the movie, we even see an egg with an embryonic dragon inside which is reminiscent of the original Slayers cover.

In Slayers, Tori is a teenage girl who has always had nightmares about dragons to the point that it’s an obsession with her. She goes to Dragon Camp which is run by a mysterious Dr. Alistair Bartholomew. (Both of which, by the way, have unkempt gray hair.)  She hopes he can help her. They talk about the similarities found in dragon lore and wonder why so many different cultures all have dragon legends.

I figured the similarities the movie had to my book was either one of those wild coincidences or the writer, Marc  Fafard was a fan. I found him on facebook, wrote to him and told him that I enjoyed his movie and said that I had a series out with a similar premise. I offered him a signed copy.

So it turns out he’s a really nice guy. And the similarities were just one of those weird coincidences that sometimes happen in the business. (Great minds think alike, and all of that.) We may do some cross promotion in the future. Here's the trailer for the movie. Really, it could almost double as a book trailer for Slayers--and has way cooler graphics than any book trailer I'll ever be able to do. You can watch it here:

 In the spirit of cross promotion I'm giving away five copies of Slayers this week (If you already have Slayers, I'll substitute one of the titles that I currently have a lot of in my closet: Erasing Time; My Fair Godmother; How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend; My Double Life; Fame, Glory, and Other Things on My To Do List, or Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws)

I'll give one chance if you like the Dragons film facebook page, a chance if you follow Dragons on Twitter, a chance if you follow CJ Hill on Twitter, and a chance if you like CJ Hill's facebook fan page.  The links are bellow. Let me know what you've done in the comments section.  Good luck!

DragonsTheFilm on facebook

Dragons on twitter

CJ Hill fan page

CJ Hill twitter

Slayers: Friends and Traitors giveaway

My publisher is giving away 20 ARCs of Slayers: Friends and Traitors on Goodreads this week. Awesome, huh?  You can enter by following this link:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/60764-friends-and-traitors

Also, I wanted to let you know that in a few more days, I'll be running another book give-away myself, so check back on the blog around Friday.

Who is on the A-list this year

It’s that time of year (at least in Arizona) when kids go back to school and parents are inundated with school forms to fill out. I’ve lived in the same house in the same school district for fourteen years. I have five children, which means I’ve had to fill out roughly five billion forms. You would think the school would use a computer printout that I could just initial, but no. That would be modern. And convenient.

At least now my kids are old enough that I can make them fill out some of the forms. My teen daughter was filling out forms and asked me who to put on the list of approved people who could pick her up from the school.

“George Clooney,” I told her. “But only if he agrees to come in the house and talk to me when he’s dropping you off."

“I would go with George Clooney,” she said.

(By George, we would both get in a car with this man.)

In that spirit, I decided to do an entire blog on who is allowed to pick up my daughter from school.

On the allowed list:

Taylor Swift. She would probably give my daughter good dating advice. If you know a guy is trouble when he walks in, stay far away from him.

On the disallowed list:

All other rock stars. Most of them seem to have death wishes and want to party like it's the last night of their life. I don’t want them driving my daughter anywhere.

Allowed:

Princess Kate because we’d love to see the royal baby.

Not allowed:

Prince Harry. He says he’s going to teach his nephew how to have fun. Since Harry’s last batch of fun produced pictures of him wearing nothing but freckles, I certainly hope Will and Kate put the kibosh on that idea.

Allowed:

Luke Skywalker. I chose him because I can’t think of any other celebrities I would allow in a car with my daughter so I’m resorting to fictional characters. Plus Luke has the force, and that’s really cool.

Not allowed:

Any congressmen, ex-congressmen, mayors, or mayoral candidates. Especially Anthony Weiner. What is it with these people and why can’t they keep their pants on?

Anyway, that is my list of people who are allowed and not allowed to stroll into the school office and pick up my daughter. Feel free to print it out and send it to your school as well.

Happy forming!

Okay, I would allow Johnny Dep to pick my daughter up from school too, because he is still that cool despite the fact that I can't find anyone who actually liked the Lone Ranger.

(We forgive you, Johnny)

***Goodreads is giving away ten copies of Slayers with the new, cooler cover. You can enter here: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/60481-slayers***

Hang out with me, Aprilynne Pike, and Suzanne Young Monday

Yes that's right, AZ peeps. You have the chance to not only see me--and you never know what color my hair is going to be, so that's always exciting--but also local cool author Suzanne Young and NY Times Best seller Aprilynne Pike.

Aprilynne is launching her new novel Earthbound. Plus for all of you Slayer's buffs she has the same name as Tori's sister. (Coincidence or is Aprilynne harboring a family of superheroes?)  And for all of you Erasing Time buff's she's the astute author who blurbed the back cover. If you've ever had questions about what she meant when she said I deftly explore themes of loyalty, this is your chance to ask her about it.

I would love to see you there!

Here's more info:

7PM MONDAY, JULY 29
Changing Hands Bookstore
6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283


In Pike's Earthbound, Tavia Michaels is the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed her parents. When she sees strange visions, she discovers she's an Earthbound — someone with the ability to create matter out of nothing — and that she alone holds the key to stopping an evil society that manipulates global events for its own shadowy purposes.

In Young's The Program, teen suicide is a worldwide epidemic. The only known cure is "The Program," a treatment in which painful memories are erased, a fate worse than death to seventeen-year-old Sloane who knows that it will steal memories of her dead brother and boyfriend.

In Hill's Erasing Time, eighteen-year-old twins Taylor and Sheridan are pulled into the future and must find a way to stop the evil government from using the time machine again.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS APRILYNNE PIKE is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Wings series. She has been spinning stories since she was a child with a hyperactive imagination. When not writing, Aprilynne can usually be found out running; she also enjoys singing, acting, and (of course!) reading books about magic and kissing. Aprilynne lives in Arizona with her husband and four kids.

SUZANNE YOUNG currently lives in Tempe, Arizona, where she drafts novels on restaurant napkins while eating chimichangas. After earning her degree in creative writing, Suzanne spent several years teaching middle school language arts. She is also the author of A Need So Beautiful.

C.J. HILL is a pen name for Janette Rallison, who is best known for writing romantic comedies (Erasing Time is her nineteenth published book). She lives in Arizona with her five children, but is still in desert denial and hopes that one day her garden will grow silver bells and cockle shells or maybe just tomatoes.

I'm doing a book giveaway on my Janette Rallison blog

You can link to it here: http://janette-rallison.blogspot.com/

Every writer feels this way sometimes . . .

Kids and a restaurant, never a good combination

We don't go to sit down restaurants very often. Last week, I was reminded why.

We took our four at-home-kids and temp kid, French foreign exchange student, out to a restaurant called The Crazy Cow. I will have to do a blog sometime about bad restaurant names, and The Crazy Cow will definitely be on that list. When my husband suggested the place, I said, "Should we really eat somewhere that basically has mad cow disease in the title?"

The restaurant turned out to have great food, so you can't always judge a restaurant by it's name (just like that whole judging a book by it's cover thing).

The only table that was big enough for all of us was off in a dining room without other patrons. This turned out to be a good thing. After my kids ordered, they were immediately bored. Oldest son picked up a half and half creamer, ripped it open, downed it, then reached for another. I calmly explained that the condiments on the table weren't appetizers and told him to stop.

Eldest son then picked up another creamer and bet everyone at the table he could turn it into butter. I calmly explained that shaking only worked on cream, not creamer. No matter, he and youngest daughter both sat there shaking creamers.

Younger son got up from the table and went poking around the waitress station to see if they had any crackers there.

I told him that the waitress station wasn't a salad bar, and he couldn't go poking around random places for food. Then I  pointed out that there was a camera in the dining room which the waitresses probably used to check on the diners. (I really hope it wasn't recording video that will subsequently show up on some reality show about bad patrons,)

Younger son, unrepentant, told me that if the waitress was watching, maybe she would hurry with our food. He took three jam packets and a torn piece of straw wrapper and tried to simulate a shell game.

My husband moved the condiments away from the children.

Oldest son then squished his straw wrapper into a small ball, then added drops of water to it. The thing grew and slithered like a miniature trash snake, amusing the children so much that they all repeated this feat with their straw wrappers.

I threatened the children with scenarios that involved my husband and I moving to another table and pretending we didn't know them. Most of the children were thrilled with this idea until I clarified that they would be paying for their own meals.

My sons then used their silverware, the salt and pepper shakers, and one of the shaken-but-not-turned-to-butter creamers to form their own version of table hockey.

The French foreign exchange student is probably quite impressed with American families. We are awesome examples of good manners.

At that point I made a pact with my husband that for the rest of the children's lives, should we need to buy food from a restaurant, it will have to be a drive through.

And yes, we did leave a big tip.

The Enrique Awards--vote for the worst pickup lyrics

For some reason the wording in this blog is being very odd. (Mischa my smart friend says this is because I copied and pasted lyrics from different places.)

 

So to see the contenders go to: http://janette-rallison.blogspot.com/

But it would be a good keynote address

I'm giving two keynote addresses in upcoming writing conferences. The problem is, I keep thinking of the really motivational keynote address James Owen gave at the ANWA conference. I won't ever be able to give such a moving talk unless I get stranded in Ireland and/or get in a crippling car crash. I'm unwilling to do either of those things.  But this . . . this might work.

If you want to attend either of the writing conferences where I may or may not be telling James Owen's life story. They are: LDStormakers in Kansas, Sept 25th, and Western Legends Roundup in Kanab, UT, October 25-26 )

The Winner is Becky @BecksterMay

Actually, Random first picked my daughter--which goes to show you that Random.org has a sense of humor. I sent her the manuscript months ago and she still hasn't read it.

 So Becky, send me your address and I'll pop your ARC in the mail. You can reach me at jrallisonfans at yahoo dot com

Slayers: Friends and Traitors ARC giveaway

I just got an ARC for Slayers: Friends and Traitors. I am very excited about this fact, even if it does mean that I have to learn how to spell traitors. (I keep trying to spell it with an er instead of the or. What is up with that anyway? We've got dancer, fighter, officer, and three thousand other job descriptions that end in er, but traitor is spelled with an o. Whoever created English spelling should be smacked.)

Anyway, because I know so many of you are anxious to read the next Slayers installment, I'm doing a give-away.  I need to add a disclaimer though. An ARC (advance reading copy) isn't the finished book. It's made of the galleys which is the copy before the last changes. Usually there are a few mistakes and typos in the ARCs. In this ARC there are a lot. I have a character crimple to the ground. Instead of going somewhere, at one point someone is soing somewhere. And it looks like I pretty much sprinkled commas randomly through the manuscript. Stuff like that. So keep in mind that the final copy (knock on wood) will be much cleaner.

I'm doing things a bit different for this give-away. Usually I choose someone from the comments. I just started tweeting as CJ Hill though, and I need followers so my publisher doesn't think I'm friendless. So at the end of the week, I'm going to choose one of my CJ Hill followers and I'll send them the ARC.

To find me on twitter, look for authorCJHill

Good luck!

The graduation blues

It's my least favorite time of year. That time when  retailers feel the need to herald the end of another school year with Congratulations Graduates of 2013! plates, cups, napkins, and balloons.

I've been a parent for the last 25 years. I don't remember what life was like before toys, piles of laundry, and homework were spread out over my house. My children are the best and most important thing to me.  Next September my oldest son will leave home. In another year, my twins will graduate. The last thing I want is to be reminded of this fact every time I step into a store.

This is what stores think I see when I walk down the bakery aisle:

This is what I actually see when I walk down the bakery aisle:

A special thanks to my son for drawing this cake. (And that's another thing--who is going to help me with computer stuff when they go? I soo need some chocolate . . . and maybe a therapist.)

These work for writers too

I was up all night working on the prequel novella for Slayers. The good news is that when it comes out, it will be free! The bad news is that I already killed off Nathan, Dr. B's brother, in the first book of Slayers and sadly there was not a good way to bring him back from the dead. Dang it.

So, as I stopped making any cognizant sense somewhere around 4:00 am, I thought I would share a picture from my son's comic blog. You can see other things he's drawn at http://theodd1sout.tumblr.com/

I'll be posting a real blog after I sleep.

My Double Life ebook

Remember months ago when I said I would have the ebook for My Double Life up soon?

Soon is a relative term.

Anyway, here it is for 2.99 with the bonus scenes included:http://www.amazon.com/My-Double-Life-ebook/dp/B00CRW7VKG/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369119673&sr=1-2&keywords=my+double+life

I've been at the LDStorymaker's conference this week. It's always super fun because I get to see so many writing friends and because people at Storymaker's actually think I'm cool. (My children refuse to believe this fact, but it's true.)

Here I am with Angela Morrison and international bestseller, Anne Perry. She was the keynote. Pretty much everything she said sounded amazing because she can quote Shakespeare, Dante, and speaks with a British accent. Memorizing large passages of classic literature is probably beyond my abilities, but I may start working on a British accent.

Every year at Storymakers, the Whitney Awards are given out. This year I was presenting the romance award with Sarah Eden. We were supposed to come up with a cute way to introduce the contestants. The problem with that was that Sarah and I spent two days joking around about all the bad and completely inappropriate ways we could present the award, so what we really did was come up with our introduction while we were getting dressed for the event. I'll put it in a future blog: Ways to tell you might be addicted to romance novels.

Every year, the funnest part of the Whitneys, (at least for me) is the after dinner drowning-your-sorrow-in-cheesecake because you didn't win pictures that Julie Wright, James Dashner, and I started years ago.

I didn't even get nominated for a Whitney this year. (The one book I had out in 2012 was disqualified because it was a rewrite of an earlier book.) So I figured that made me a double loser and I was completely qualified to crash the loser photos this year.

Here I am with the lovely Julie Wright, Melanie Jacobson, and Krista Jensen.Julie does despondent so well.

And here's the bitter group photo with awesome writers: Kelly Oram,  Tanya Parker Mills, Julie Wright, Melanie Jacobson, Krista Jensen, Theresa Sneed, Gregg Luke, Marsha Ward, and Annette Lyon.

Every time I look at Gregg I laugh. He's got the concept down.

Even though I love the loser photos, it wasn't my favorite moment this year. Julie Donaldson won the romance category for her book Edenbrooke (and best novel by a new author), which was especially  neat for me because she was one of the ladies in a week-long class I taught at BYU a few years ago. When she accepted her award she thanked me. I seriously nearly cried. I was so touched. It was way better than winning a Whitney.

Researching the skydiving scene

I hate getting details wrong in my books. This may not be entirely apparent since I have more than once gotten details wrong in my books, but I really do a ton of research. 

In Slayers: Friends and Traitors (due out in October) I have characters jump out of a plane, and I decided it would be a good idea if I went skydiving so I could write a more authentic scene. I didn’t think it would be too frightening since a large amount of people skydive every year. I figured, hey, people pay a lot of money to skydive so it’s probably even fun.

That was my first stupid assumption. People are idiots and you should never do something just because a lot of people pay large amounts of money to do it. Case in point: golf.

So I booked an appointment, went to the airport, and signed the twelve page waiver that detailed all the hideous ways I might die.  This was my favorite part:

Basically it says I may be struck by passing aircraft, hit by vehicles on the ground, or may run into trees, buildings, or poisonous snakes.


I still wasn’t all that nervous because I knew I was going to be strapped to an experienced instructor. He was not likely to skimp on parachute inspection or whatever, because he didn’t want to die any more than I did.

Then I met my instructor. He was a twenty-three year old guy who I suspect had no sense of his own mortality. I became a little nervous.

He took me to a small plane that sounded like a lawn mower and seemed to be held together with duct tape, super glue, and erector set pieces. I was a little more nervous, but I was still okay because I figured the pilot had been flying the plane for quite some time so he had a lot of experience doing important things, like not dying. 

We took off, gained altitude, and putted around in the sky for several minutes. I was now more nervous and cursing myself for ever switching from writing romantic comedies to action novels. Really, when you come right down to it, it would be fine to write a book about boring people who never do anything dangerous.

And then the plane door opened.

At that point a spike of terror hit me. I realized that people are born with several strong survival instincts and one of them screams: DO NOT JUMP OUT OF A PLANE! IT WILL KILL YOU!

I said many things at that point, all of which my twenty-three year old instructor ignored as he dragged me out of the plane.

And then we were falling through the sky.

Falling at around 130 miles an hour was like standing in a wind tunnel. All I heard was the wind screaming by. I couldn’t even tell I was falling because nothing around me was moving. Then the parachute came out and I glided through the air at a gentle 15 miles an hour. It did feel like flying then and was really fun—especially when we did spins. Spins are the best.

I landed and felt great.

This would normally be the end of the blog except for one thing.  Later that day I got a call from the skydiving company telling me that their computer crashed. (I guess this is better than hear that their plane crashed.) They had unfortunately lost all the pictures of me but they would let me skydive again for free if I wanted to reschedule.

Well, at that point I was still thinking about how fun the last part of skydiving had been and not the terror of the ominous open-plane-door-moment, so I not only rescheduled, I decided to take my teenage son with me. (Yep, these are all pictures from the second jump.)

This dear readers just proves that there is no cure for stupidity. Because there is only one thing more terrifying than being in a plane when the door opens and you know you’re going to plunge out of it. And that is: being in a plane when the door opens and you know your child is going to plunge out of it.

I do not recommend this as an after school activity.

When I went out of the plane the second time, I wasn’t looking for sensory details to use in my novel. I was searching the horizon to make sure my son’s parachute had opened.

It had.

And when you all read the skydiving scene in Slayers: Friends and Traitors I hope you appreciate my diligent research.

The Cruising Life, part two

For those of you who have never been on a cruise, the experience is pretty much like being aboard a floating buffet. Seriously, the ship had 24 hour pizza and ice cream. Which means that at some point, you feel obligated to eat pizza at 2:00 in the morning. And at 2:00 in the afternoon.

One of the coolest sights we saw were dolphins that swam along side the ship. They were probably hoping for discarded fish sticks.

 For some reason that isn't clear to me, Carnival decorated their dining room so that it looked like Ursula from the Little Mermaid was attacking the ship. Nothing says, "Dig in and eat!" like big purple plastic tubes. And if that's not classy enough for you, they added orange spiderweb designs to the end of the tubes. Maybe if you're really drunk, this all makes sense.

 Here's a hugely gigantic Mexican flag that stands at one port.  If you ask me, it's too large. It almost seems like they're compensating for something else.

 The stewards always left little towel animals on our bed ever night.  Oh sure, they look cute and cuddly . . .

But while you sleep, it's a different story.

 There were all sorts of these signs on the ship. I'm assuming there were no words on them because the sign makers wanted to add to the general confusion the signs communicated. Here you can see two different signs, side by side. The first is clearly warning you that ninjas may drop from the ceiling and surround your family.

 The second is telling you to run like heck--which is the normal response if you are being attacked by ninjas.

And here you can see a cruise ship taking a wrong turn somewhere on the Mississippi River. By the way, it took us nine hours to get to the sea. This is probably why Huckleberry Fin was such a long book.

And lastly, here I am with a pirate. I think it is pretty clear--judging from the position of his gun--what happened to his leg. Which is why you should never drink and be a pirate at the same time.

Things you shouldn't put on brownies

I just got home from a cruise, which means I have a mountain of laundry, a thousand unanswered emails, and no one to shape my hand towels into cute little animal figures.

I had one of those Janette Rallison moments on my cruise. Although technically speaking, it wasn't my fault.

On the first day, the cruise held a welcome barbecue out by the pool. (Loud music, people chatting and laughing.) After I ate dinner, I went back for a brownie and noticed a tub of brown liquid by the brownie plate. Okay, in retrospect the tub of brown liquid was also by the ketchup and mustard, but I was only paying attention to the brownies at that point.

I put a brownie on my plate, pointed to the tub of brown liquid and asked Martino, the guy standing behind said objects, "Is that hot fudge?"

It was, after all, the logical conclusion. Brownies + hot fudge = joy.

Martino nodded and said, "Yes."

I didn't take into account that it was noisy outside and English probably wasn't Martino's first language. I happily ladled a spoonful of brown liquid onto my brownie.

Again in retrospect, Martino's startled expression probably should have tipped me off. But no, I walked back to my chair and took a big bite of my brownie. Which was completely covered in barbecue sauce. Then I spit the bite back onto my plate and did a really elegant gagging-wiping-my-tongue-off thing as I tried to get rid of the taste of barbecue and brownie.

So it turns out you can't mix chocolate with anything and make it taste better.

Martino walked by me a few minutes later, keeping an eye on me like I was clearly crazy.

It was a totally unfair reaction, since he was the one who told me it was hot fudge in the first place. I dub it a Martino moment.

More on the cruise life next blog.

As you may remember from your high school English class (you kept all of your notes on A Midsummer Night's Dream, didn’t you?) Shakespeare invented around 1700 words in his plays and poems.

Frankly, I think I should be allowed the same freedom, and I get all snitty when copyeditors point out details like “Apexed isn’t a verb.” (And right now Microsoft is insisting that 'snitty' isn’t a word either.)

Shakespeare never had to deal with such constraints.

Here are some words you probably didn't know he invented: eyeballs, puking, obscene, and skim milk.

Cool, huh?

Here are some words I wish he would have invented:

Another word for 'drop'. Oh sure, there’s plunge and plummet, but you can’t use them interchangeably. You can’t have a character plunge her car keys on the floor.  No one has ever said, “Hey, plummet the act. I know you’re lying.”  Nor has anyone’s mouth ever plunged open.

Another word for 'door.'  We use them all the time. Character’s are constantly coming in them, stalking out them, walking toward them, and slamming them.  It’s hard not to overuse the word. And don’t tell me I could use portal—no one actually thinks of a door as a portal unless they are in spaceship or a submarine.

And  Shakespeare should have invented multiple words for 'turn'. In your novel, things will turn colors, turn up, or turn from one thing into another. Your characters will take turns, make right turns, turn over, turn back, turn their attention to things, see how something turns out, and turn things down. They will also frequently turn to each other. You can replace a few of those turns with spin, but that only works if your characters are angry or ballerinas. If any word deserves a few synonyms, it’s turn.

On the other hand, there are also words I could happily axe from the English language to make my life easier.  Ask me how many times I mistyped the word rifle in Slayers: Friends and Traitors and spelled it riffle.  The problem is that riffle is a real word. Spell check doesn’t catch it.   It means: to form, flow over, or move in riffles.

How many times have we all written about our riffling habits?

Maybe someone should add a function to the computer so that anytime someone grabs a riffle, a little warning pops up that says, “You amuse our computer brain, silly mortal.  And by the way, you have lightening cuting through the sky while your character is waking to the car.

Then again, sometimes I could use a good lightening bolt.

 

Why I don't swear in my books

I don't swear in real life. Seriously.

Well, okay, there was this one time when my 18-month-old daughter was seriously hurt, and we had to take her to the ER and I was frantic. We had to get our oldest daughter from a party and figure out where to send her and her four year old brother (You don't want that many children in the ER). I was going to go to the ER and my husband was going to arrange for the other kids, and then we couldn't find the car keys, (Little children carry them off) and then one car's battery was dead. And right when we finally had overcome all of those things and were ready to go, my husband said, "Just a minute, I need to go to the bathroom first."

I snapped. For a reason that is still not clear to me, a string of swearwords issued forth from my mouth. I didn't even know they were there. They all just came out in between the words: "They have bathrooms at the ER!!! Now get in the car!!!"

Not too long ago I said something to my now teenage son about how I never swear, and he said, "You did once. You swore that time you went to the Emergency Room."

I was surprised he remembered that all these years later.

That's probably how swear words should be. If you use them, they're so rare people will remember them decades later.

I've heard people use the F-bomb so many times in a sentence, it was a noun, adjective, and verb. I always wonder what those people do when they're really mad. I mean, what is left to say? "I double-dog F-bomb you!" or "F-bomb times infinity!"

I've seen the same problem in books. If you have a character swear all the time, it loses potency, and at least to me, comes off crass.

My problem as an author is that I sometimes have characters who would swear in given situations. I still don't include swearwords. (I have used the word h word--don't want to write it here, lest my blog be blocked by some filters--but only to describe the actual place, which I don't consider swearing. Although some younger kids don't seem to realize this difference. I was a Sunday School teacher for 8-year-olds once and had to refer to it as that-place-the-devil-lives because otherwise they gasped every time I said the word. And yes, I did try to explain the difference between swearing and naming a location, but they never seemed to grasp this finer point.)

Anyway, I can't have my characters swear for one simple reason. At my house I long ago instituted the rule that anyone who swears will have to pay five dollars.

I have over a million books in print. I am not that wealthy. I will have to continue to be swear-free.

KABAM (Kingman Area Books Are Magic)

Hey assorted friends, fans, and potential stalkers,

I'm peeking out of a stack of revisions to go to Kingman this Saturday, April 6th, for the KABAM festival. I'm assuming from the title it will be like a comic book and we will all be saying, POP! WHAM! and KABAM! a lot.

Here's the pertinent info:

This year, the outdoor poetry slam will be held on the evening of April 5th and the outdoor festival will be all day on April 6th, 2013.

Throughout the week, schools and literacy groups host events to encourage an interest in reading. Events include author visits to local schools and an evening poetry slam. The festival concludes with an outdoor festival in Metcalfe Park in downtown Kingman.

KABAM celebrates our authors, readers, and local businesses by bringing our community together to celebrate the fun and adventure of reading. We hope to see you at KABAM this year!

KAPOW! I hope to see you all there!

Things in real life that I would never believe in fiction

As a fiction writer, I have to follow rules of believability. My plot and characters' motivations have to make sense. I can't yank the reader out of the story by making him stop, pause, and think, "That would never happen in real life."

The ironic thing about this rule is that generally it doesn't even matter if the thing in question does happen in real life. For example when I wrote Just One Wish, I originally had the cast of a TV show working over Thanksgiving weekend. I'd heard from my Hollywood sources that if a cast is behind schedule, they do indeed work over weekends and holidays. But my beta readers questioned the schedule so I had to change it.

As a writer, the whole truth is stranger than fiction principle can be baffling. People are continuously more stupid then I give them credit for.  Here are a few real life things that make no sense to me.

1) People who willingly go on national television to air their dirty laundry and share the most intimately painful details of their lives.

If I didn't know who my baby's father was, I certainly wouldn't want to advertise this fact. Ditto for my problems in bed, struggling marriage, or my children's behavior that is so unruly I need Super Nanny to expose their flaws and my pitifully inadequate parenting techniques.

How does a person show up for PTA meetings after going on one of these shows?

2) People who record themselves committing crimes and then post the videos on the internet.

On one hand, I've got to applaud these idiots for helping law enforcement to incarcerate them. Carry on, stupid criminal, carry on!

3) Whoever invented and first invested in bottled water.

I am old enough that I remember the time when you had to physically pour water into your own bottle if you wanted bottled water. Really, it's not all that hard. There is only one ingredient to this recipe. So when bottled water first hit the stores, I thought it would be a foolishly short lived idea. I mean, what was the original advertisement for this product? It's just like the stuff you can get from your sink, only more expensive! Who would pay for that? 

As it turns out, a lot of people. This is why I will never go into business for  myself. I apparently don't know a good product when I see one.  Although lately I have been toying with the idea of marketing bottled air. It would be a great way to recycle all those used water bottle containers.

4) People who break into cages so they can mingle with carnivorous animals.

If the thing is called a Killer Whale, it is probably a pretty good indication that you should not dive into the tank for a social visit. And despite the fact that baby polar bears look huggable, a two minute search on the internet will let you know that polar bears eat seals. You are about the same weight as a seal and apparently have a close enough resemblance to a gray mammal with flippers that the polar bear is not going to be all that picky about eating you.

And last but not least 5) Road construction projects that take four months. One of the roads near my home is the victim of such a construction project. It makes me wonder what the men in the orange vests are doing on the days they show up--panning for gold? Excavating lost cities?

Fictional characters would never get away with being so slow for no apparent reason--but alas, we live in real life.

The book festival update

Despite just experiencing a bumpy airplane ride, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I haven’t blogged this week because I’ve been busy with school visits, conferences and such. I know you’re all wondering how the Tucson Book Festival went. Remember how I told you that my typical audience for a book reading at the teen tent was an average of, oh, a couple wandering people who wanted to rest their feet for awhile?  Well, you will think I’m a liar when I show you the picture of the audience I had.

But before you think I’m that cool, I have to admit that most of the audience who came for my reading were there because they knew R.L. Stine was doing his reading after mine and they wanted to make sure they had a seat. Smart people. And a captive audience. So yeah, the reading went really well.

The panel with Bruce Coville and Jennifer Nielsen went great too—except for the Q&A session when my friend, Angela Fox insisted that Hotel California was the greatest song ever written. Pa-lease, Angela. No one has done the Harlem Shake to that song yet.

Mysweater makes me look really fat in this picture. It is a clear sign of how awesome I think Bruce and Jennifer are, that I'm posting it anyway.

After the festival I went to Utah for a week of school visits. Those are always fun because a good author visit makes you feel like a rock star. I am currently at Lady Gaga status. Although no, I will not be donning a bubble dress or raw meat any time soon.

Lastly, I presented at Teen Author Bootcamp. The kids there rocked!

Now I’m back home and I want to sleep for a really long time.

 

You know you want to come to Tucson--and a true story

I'll be there this Saturday, March 9, and would love to see you. Really. I'm not just saying that because I want something from you. I'm not like those other love-em-and-leave-em authors that have done you wrong so many times. No, I care.

Now don't you want to make the trip out Tucson to see me? Forget the fact that it might be lousy weather. A little rain never stood in the way of true devotion.

Too much?

I've been reading romances today, so it's hard to be objective.

Anyway, I'm in currently breezy Tucson for the book festival. Close to a jillion authors will descend on the U of A campus Saturday. It will be awesome and literary and totally worth driving all night to get here.

2:30 – 3:15 –Teen and Author Meeting Place South of the College of Education on the Main Mall.
I'll be doing an informal reading and Q&A. These are generally lonely and sparsely attended events where authors ponder their popularity and careers in general.

True story: The last time I was at the Tucson Book Festival doing a reading, I was pleasantly surprised that I actually had quite a few people in the audience. A group of women had come with their daughters. They were attentive and laughed in all the right places. They asked thoughtful questions. Then as I wrapped things up, I asked if anyone had any more questions.

"Yes," one of the mothers replied. "When does Louis Sachar get here?"

Turns out they had come to see him and had gotten the time wrong.

Yeah, so if you're anywhere in the area, please come by.

4:00 – 5:00 Panel Discussion in Room 353: Worlds of Fantasy: Dragons, Monsters and False Princes with Jennifer Nielsen, Bruce Coville, C.J. Hill AKA Janette Rallison

This will be well attended because it's bound to be really interesting. I will pretend the entire audience has come to see me.


5:00 – 5:30 Autographing right outside the south entrance of the COE and to the east.

This is when my illusions that the whole audience came to see me will be brutally shattered. Again, if you can come by, buy a book and have me sign it. It doesn't even necessarily have to by my book. I'll happily sign Bruce and Jennifer's books.

I have my moments . . .

I admit I don't read all of my Goodread reviews. For one thing, it would be hard to keep up with reviews on twenty books. And besides, there is the author curse to deal with. The curse is this: you can read thirty glowing reviews about your book--and feel so happy--until you get to that one bad review. I know that it's impossible to write a book that everyone on the face of the planet will enjoy. People have different tastes. For example, some people inexplicably like the song Hotel California.

If you aren't familiar with the song Hotel California consider yourself fortunate. It is a slow ballad about a hotel that traps people inside. There is stabbing going on. I remember hearing once that the song was inspired by the movie Psycho. When it comes on the radio, I literally leap over furniture so that I can turn the station two seconds faster.

Anyway, so authors expect bad reviews. I shrug off most, but every once in awhile there is one that bugs me because it gets the facts wrong and then the reviewer states that s/he didn't like the book because of those facts. I know authors who have gotten bad review for books they didn't write. I once got a bad review for a book that I hadn't finished writing yet. (Apparent the reviewer had psychic powers.)

Sometimes I read reviews though and I had to say that I loved this review of A Longtime (and at one point illegal) Crush. I won't quote the whole thing because that would look like shameless self-promotion. I will say that the reviewer is brilliant and astute and right about all the nice things she said about me.

You know how (Janette Rallison) seems to create the most awkward, embarrassing, yet down right hilarious teenage moments in all of her books? (If you don't, read some and you'll see.) Well my friends and I have what we like to call "Janette Rallison moments". It's where we have the most humiliating experiences that are mortifying at first, but then we have a giggle fest later on about it. Like the time when one of my friends got their braces stuck to her crushes shirt. Yeah. Definitely Janette Rallison moment.

I am ridiculously proud to have humiliating moments named in my honor. This is perhaps because I've had so many Janette Rallison moments myself. In fact, you could pretty much say my life has been one Janette Rallison moment after another.

The latest, completely true moment that happened to me:
Imagine you are at a place where you are surrounded by people who are all dressed up. You are dressed up too. It is close quarters. You reach into your purse to pull out something you need--something that everyone is expecting you to have. It is at this point you realize that the bad smell you've been getting whiffs of all evening originates from your purse. Apparently one of your evil cats has recently crawled into your purse and peed inside.

(Here I am with the likely suspects.)

There is not a gracious way to get out of this sort of situation. And unfortunately, randomly screaming in close quarters is still not socially acceptable. That Janette Rallison moment will probably find its way into a book someday.

Things I learned at conference

The reason I haven't updated this blog lately is not that I wanted to leave the Buy-my-new-romance-novella blog up forever. (Although you should in fact buy it because hey, it's only 99 cents. What can you find at the dollar store that's going to make you happier?)

 The ANWA conference was Thursday-Saturday and I was busy--literally--from the moment I woke up (way too early) to the moment I fell exhausted into bed (way too late). Still, it was an AWESOME conference. Here's some of the things I learned:

 1) Don't volunteer to introduce James Owen. Instead of reading his bio in the ANWA program, I went off the cuff and told people about him. I ended by saying, "And the best part about James is that even though he's a bestseller, he's still a wonderful guy!"

 Which had all sorts of connotations I didn't intend. (Apologies to my other friends who are bestsellers.) 

2) Don't volunteer to give James Owen the five-minute-til-class-is-over-sign. James has had an incredible life. He talks convincingly about the power of determination because he's overcome so much. I would like his achievements without all of that 'overcoming' he had to do beforehand. I was so engrossed during his class that I completely forgot to keep track of the time. When the people in the next room suddenly started clapping, I jumped several inches in my chair and hurriedly glanced at the clock on my laptop--which made James think the class was over. He wrapped up and still had five minutes left. It probably worked out for the best though, since so many people wanted to talk to him after class.

 3) I work with awesome ladies. A big conference doesn't happen without lots and lots of help. I was so impressed and grateful for everyone who selflessly helped.


Here we are at the protagonist ball.


 4)People who help out at conference win the Beginning of Book contests. The judging was completely blind/anonymous so there was no way anyone could have rigged the winners, but most of the people who won in the various categories of the BOB contest had also helped out at conference in some fashion. Are helpful people more talented? More dedicated to writing? Do you get extra creative blessings if you serve others? I have no idea, but I plan on using this phenomena to recruit helpers for next year's conference. (And Torsha Baker who was in charge of the AV at conference got an agent from the conference. Now don't you want to be on the conference committee?)

5) If I'm going to conduct any part of conference I need sleep beforehand. By the end of conference I was so sleep deprived I was beginning to sound and act like a drunk person. Seriously, when I introduced James for the keynote, I decided I'd better read his bio (see number 1) and I couldn't pronounce the word 'adaptation'. It took me three times to get it right. And did I mention that a film crew was there filming James's speech? I'm really hoping that none of my introduction is left in.

Here I am as Snow White who has wandered into the wrong film.

A Longtime Crush for Valentine's Day

Remember, like, three weeks ago when I said I would be putting up a couple of ebooks in a week? Well, that was proof that I'm overly optimistic about my to-do list. You would think that after living with myself for forty-some years I would know some basic facts:

1) No matter what my intentions at the store, I won't send in the rebate form.
2)  I also won't turn in my receipt to the Boy Scout adviser, Achievement Day adviser, conference committee, or any other place that I'm supposed to turn in a receipt so I can get reimbursed for whatever I just bought for said groups.
3) I won't have just one cookie. I will eat as many as it takes to make me wonder if there should be a reality show about people with no willpower.

And most importantly 4) Everything takes more time than I first thought it would. (This is also why I'm frequently late for things.)

Anyway, my romance novella, A Longtime (and at one point illegal) Crush is finally up at Amazon. (Techno-Bob put it up last night at midnight so it would be available for Valentine's Day, and he made some mistakes, such as putting the parenthesis in the wrong place and putting the author's note where the book description should be. I fixed those this morning, but it will take awhile for Amazon to update.)

You can buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Longtime-point-Illegal-Crush-ebook/dp/B00BFNYG1A/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1360867713&sr=8-5&keywords=a+longtime+crush

It's only 62 pages, but I must say they are good pages. In fact, I sort of have an author crush on Kye--which is entirely inappropriate since I'm about twenty years older than him.

Here's the real description:

From the day Elsie’s older brother brought his friend Kye McBride to their house, Elsie adored him.  When she was eight she secretly blew kisses to him. When she was twelve she sat on the stairs, unnoticed, and watched him escort another girl to prom. When she was a senior in high school, she walked into math class and found out he was her new math teacher.

With that much emotion fueling her, things were bound to go wrong. And they did. Elsie not only spent her last two weeks of school avoiding him, she turned avoiding-Kye-at-all-costs into her life-long philosophy.

Now three years have passed and Elsie has come home for her brother’s wedding.  She’s got to face Kye –hopefully without getting crushed again.