Having long admired fellow mid-souther Shelli Johannes Welles’s blog, Market My Words, I am a bit agog to find myself on it.  (Well, I answered the interview questions; I can’t be that surprised.)  So if you still have a yen to hear my thoughts, you can head on over there to see what I said.   More importantly, though, you can read the other entries and pick up marketing tips! 

In other news, I went to The ALA C onference (American Library Association) this weekend in DC, and it was awesome!  I can’t wait to post pics and share tales.  Preview: teens weighing in about YALSA picks; book-cart drill team; Will Shortz.

I also look forward to telling you about how I’m seriously considering killing of one of my characters (meaning editing her out, not killing her in the book) and how great that will be if it’s the right choice.  But I must return to said manuscript and reread in its entirety today, so back to’it, missy!

I’ve noticed something recently.  Both of the last two weeks, I’ve absolutely gotten obsessed with a single song.  We’re talking humming the song obsessively to the dear wife.  We’re talking 19 on the playcount within a few days.  Last week’s was Ingrid Michaelson’s Everybody, and this week, it’s “Wagon Wheel,” by Bob Dylan and Old Crow Medicine Show.

Everybody, everybody wants to love…

So rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain:

The more interesting thing I noticed was that each seemed to be an absolute driving force in what my characters were going through in my draft of The Book of the Dead.  Ingrid Michaelson sings about how everybody, everybody wants to love, and everybody, everybody wants to be loved–and it’s so true. 

We’re not just motivated by the desire to be loved (the more obvious one); we also want something to love.  We want to find someone worthy of our love, so badly that we imbue them with all sorts of noble qualities, and it’s so painful when they let us down that we often turn a blind eye, or create absurd explanations.  Or we want to love an activity so much that when we can’t pursue it the way we want to, we’ll bend all sorts of dimensions, including common sense and kindness, to make it go the way we want. 

That was last week.  Last week, my characters were falling in love all over the place.  This week, things are going kind of sucky for them, and what do they want?  To be rocked.  Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain; rock me, mama, like a south-bound train.  Hey-ey, mama, rock me now.  The love is on a fast course to crashing, and they need a little comfort.

If all goes well with my writing next week, things will go even worse for the characters.  I can’t think what song will be adequate.  Something with lots of screaming.  Anybody know a song of loud, horrible, pained agony?  Something by Kurt Cobain, maybe, except not the Tori Amos cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”  That’s the song I’ll play as everybody surveys the wreckage. 

Do you have any songs you’ve listened to obsessively during any particular period, of creativity or just life?  (I vaguely remember KJL’s obsession with a certain song senior year of college, something with ‘ocean’ in the title or band name…Who am I thinking of?)

Research is not, as I said the other day, funny.  Research is dangerous.

First of all, I have this habit of putting food in my novels that is way too delicious.  In two separate stories–one, Nice and Mean; the other, one called Not That Girl that may someday be unleashed to the world–I prominently featured doughnuts.  Every time M and E would make up, or J, M, Z and B would gather at the shopping center, I would have to stand by and watch while they stuffed their mouths with chocolately, cakey goodness and try not to care that I didn’t–and shouldn’t–have any in my house.  It was particularly rough when M wiped the extra glaze off the wax paper and then ate it.  That’s what I would do!

Then there was–and is; in contrast to the doughnut scene, this part made it into Nice and Mean–the matter of ravioli.  There’s an important scene in which Marina and Sachi eat ravioli.  I love ravioli!  Marina accidentally pours too much parmesan onto hers (I seriously hope this does not count as a spoiler), but I would eat it like that anyway.  I think they’re eating peas at the same time…I love peas with my ravioli!  Every time I’d revise that scene, I’d be tempted with the prospect of a ravioli lunch, and let me tell you, there is a lot more fat in ravioli, even cheese ravioli, than you realize. 

But now I think I’ve taken the cake for myself–or even, ha ha, the Cakesters.  In my camping story, workingly titled The Book of the Dead, some genius sent my characters Oreo Cakesters.  It’s important how many come in a pack, so just now (before lunch, I might add), I went online to find out and ended up having to look at this website:

http://www.nabiscoworld.com/oreo/cakesters/

Why can’t they just have the info without pictures?  It’s so mean and tempting.  Now I want Cakesters, and I should not be having Cakesters!  (I don’t mean to make this blog another lament along the lines of Women and Food Denial, but I very much doubt that most peoples’ healthy eating plans include regular consumption of Cakesters, especially in the middle of the afternoon.) 

So I may be on the verge of deciding that I should forgo research–or at least, internet research on food.  I am just going to make up all my facts from now on.  Even if I need to learn how long it takes yeast for yeast to rise–too bad!  I don’t want to be tempted with images of fresh-baked bread.  They may be making their own veggie burgers from a mix, but I will just have to imagine the finished product, thank you very much (okay, maybe some people would balk at the idea of mix-made veggie burgers, but at this moment, when no peas or ravioli have crossed my path recently, I am finding it quite tempting.)  If my subconscious is going to keep throwing tempting items into my stories, the least I can do is resist further temptation.  And if I put errors in my story in the process, who cares?  Wouldn’t you rather have me wrong than expiring of a heart attack before completing this novel?  I would.  Thank you. 

ps I am sorry if I tempted you with the pretty pictures here.  I had to get them out of my system.  Of course, now they are in my system.  Hm. 

pps It has been pointed out to me that I have not really made good on my tagline.  Consider this a love song to cake…a song of the broken-hearted.

You’ve got to love when you do an image search to check your understanding of a Pulaski (everybody’s favorite tool–axe and pick in one) and you come upon this:

instead of this:

This is the second time I’ve had a laugh on behalf of Casimir Pulaski, a Polish hero of…something or other.  I’d tell you more about it, but you’d probably think it was silly and agree with me that you had to be there.

If you have any stories of resarch snafus, however, or, indeed, tales of Casimir Pulaski, feel free to share.