MMX

Oh, 2010. This past year has been very good to me, if at times overwhelming. I'll do something rare now and lump myself and my evil conjoined erotica-writing twin Cara McKenna together for this post.

2010 was my first full year as a published full-time writer, and the first year I made any money at it.

I saw my very first published ebook story release in February, to be followed by six more, plus a paperback anthology. I finaled in the Golden Heart. I made seven sales this year, including my first two romance sales to Samhain and Harlequin Blaze, plus I sneaked in three more submissions that are currently on my various editors' desks. I worked with four different publishers and five different editors. I attended three writing conferences, recorded a podcast interview, took part in my first mass book signings, started a second website and this blog, shuffled my priorities as I took on a second genre and author identity, and magnificently rose to the challenge of further putting off the search for an agent. I made several respectable bloggers' best-of-2010 lists and suffered through a few lousy reviews, buoyed by a surfeit of positive ones. I joined Twitter and made a gazillion writing-trench comrades whom I can now never imagine living without.

In January I traveled to England and Scotland for the first time, to visit one of my best friends and also to meet some of my dad's long-lost kin in Yorkshire. I went to Florida for RWA National, New York City and Oregon to visit with my bonus family, Ohio and Minnesota to visit friends, and drove up to Maine several times to see my parents. I went fishing with my dad and caught nothing but weeds. I got my tarot cards read with my mom. They were right.

I fell back in love with running this year, joined the gym when the weather turned grim, watched many good and bad movies including thirty-four starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, read many books, listened to weeks of radio. Collectively I spent nearly two days with Dan Savage in my ears, and even more with The Archers. I saw several excellent exhibits at the Peabody Essex Museum, was treated to a live performance by Preacher Jack, and nearly witnessed the Celtics win it all. I got hooked on new and awful television shows, reclaimed my posture, began learning conversational Italian, and sniffled as some beloved pets met their makers (R.I.P. Moira, Captain, Guy Noir). I rode the ferry, the subway, the train. I received many duck-related articles and news clips from my vigilant antipodean pen pal. I whooped and wept as my friends changed jobs, went back to school, graduated, got engaged, got married, fell in love, fell out of love, got themselves lost, got themselves found.

I watched the herons and egrets arrive in the cove across the street, only to give way to the buffleheads and brants and eiders as the days grew shorter.

I got addicted to Machinarium then Angry Birds then Sudoku, traded early-mid-life-crises with my husband, popped bottles to mark our professional achievements and sniffled over our struggles, made plans to move then amended them. I diagnosed us each with many ailments, often incorrectly.

I ushered bags of tropical fish up and down the slippery back staircases of the New England Aquarium. I dyed my precocious silver roots no less that fifteen times and walked through yet another pair of Chuck Taylors. I acquired an iPad and we are as madly in love today as we were back in August.

I drove far more than I would have preferred, yet fell afoul of no tickets or dings or mishaps. I stripped wallpaper and painted our bathroom. I suffered through another Halloween season in Salem. I spent two separate evenings dressed as a flapper. I bought my first pair of high heels in a decade. I clapped for my NEC-RWA chaptermates and baked an awful lot. I learned to make chili and dinner rolls and perfected a few new mutations of my unbeatable chocolate chunk cookies. I did not burn the house down.

I wrote blurbs and bios and blog posts and tweets, and with shaking fingers composed e-mails to kind readers. I cried over rejections and frustrations and general confusion and hormonal crises. I saw many new birds in person for the first time, including upwards of forty quails. I hiked up mountains and peed in the woods and I went jogging in the territory of cougars and was not mauled. I went sailing as an active participant for the first time and now bear my scar proudly. I drank with friends. I shot skeet. I got laid. I bowled poorly. I got excited for Christmas shopping for the first time in a few years. Not all in one day, mind you.

I reflected on the past year and all I managed to do, despite the fact that I sometimes beat myself up because I feel I don't do enough. I made plans for the new year, with room for adjustments. I wrote this blog post, and I hit "publish".

Thrusty Thursday: Vincent Regan

Not only is this the final Thrusty Thursday of the year, it's also my 100th post! Oh deary me, however will I pick a worthy honoree?

It was easy, actually. I've had Vincent Regan in my back pocket [sadly not a euphemism] since I started this silly little blog, and now his time has come. As I've always said, 300 is the perfect heterosexual date movie, as it's got slaughter and violence for the bloodlusty males, and ripped, bruised-up fighter dudes for pervy girls like me… Hmmm, I suppose it's actually the perfect date movie for everyone, except perhaps a pair of lesbian pacifists.

Brutal period pieces seem to be Regan's niche, as in addition to 300, Troy and Clash of the Titans are among the Welsh actor's most noteworthy projects. His weary-ass eyes and excellent on-screen wailing are inexpressibly foxy, plus he's often got facial hair, which is a bonus in my book. But let's see about finding a good clip of the man in action for you poor souls who haven't seen 300 yet…

Well, it looks like embedding is disabled for most of the movie's clips on YouTube, so we'll just have to use an old-skool link to this handy compilation of all the Vincent Regan bits from 300! Well done to the industrious pervert who put that together for us all to enjoy. And to make up for a lack of handy clippage, here's another still photo, this one from Troy:

Mercy me! So under-bathed and overtired.

See you all in 2011 for another year of spirited Thursday Thrustin'!

A Year of Lents

When I was a kid, I was always secretly jealous of my Catholic friends who, in my mental wording, "got to do" Lent each spring. It seemed so romantic to me, this notion of doing without for a month. So noble and selfless. My consciousness of Lent started in the late eighties as well, which meant I was also being bombarded with media mentions of "dieting". How grown up the women on TV were, always suffering for their diets! Suffering and going without seemed so sophisticated. Clearly Catholicism is genetic, as I was raised agnostic yet inherited all the guilt and self-loathing enjoyed by my foremothers.

Already, I'm going off topic. The point is, I've decided to do an entire year of Lent-like experiments. Every month in 2011, I'm going to either go without a vice or luxury, or else commit to doing a certain positive thing each day. No moral I'm trying to prove, here—there's no point to this exercise aside from challenging myself and giving myself a healthy shove toward the edge of my comfort zone. I've come to realize in past few years just how adaptable humans are, and I want to explore that a bit more, and hopefully surprise myself with my own flexibility and will.

Here's the schedule for what I'm calling my Discipline Year (you may take that in either the punitive or reverent sense, as I expect it'll be both):

1 GYMUARY For January, each and every day I will go to the gym—a twelve-minute walk from my house. Probably not the best month to pick this one since the weather in New England can be Russian roulette, but I've been slacking badly the last few weeks, so the sooner the better. And don't worry, I won't go nuts. I'll switch between cardio and yoga and group classes and swimming so I don't injure myself.

2 FACE-OFF FEBRUARY In February, I will forgo wearing make-up the entire month. There is a reason, aside from consonance, that I picked this shortest month to not wear make-up. I like the stuff and I've been wearing it since I was about fourteen or fifteen. But I'd like to see just how differently I'll feel about myself if I go without it for a few weeks.

3 MEAGER MARCH No frivolous purchases for the month of March. That means clothes, silly stuff from CVS, coffees or drinks while I'm out and about, iTunes or book downloads…spending on necessities and groceries only. (Alcohol counts as a grocery item, however, as the hideousness that is temperance is coming later in the year.) I'm not too worried about this one.

4 NO #&$%@! APRIL For April, I'm putting the cabash on my potty-mouth, from "damn" and "hell" on up the line of profanity. This will go for out loud swearing as well as tweets and blog posts, though my characters are still allowed to cuss their everloving heads off in my manuscripts, as always. I honestly have no clue how hard this will be, and since my swearing is more habitual than willful, I will have to come up with a penance system for when I inevitably slip up…a dollar to charity or something like that.

5 MEAT-FREE MAY I'll be going vegetarian for the month of May. For now this means no meat, including poultry and seafood. I'm open to tossing eggs and dairy into the mix and upgrading to vegan… I'd miss having cream in my coffee each morning, but if I'm feeling brave at the end of April, I'll up the ante.

6 NO JAVA JUNE That's right, no coffee. I'm dreading this one. I'm allowing caffeine, but substituting rooibus and green tea and maté will not make my grief any more bearable. Coffee is as much a comforting ritual to me as it is a chemical fix.

7 JUJUBE-FREE JULY That is to say, no candy. No extraneous sugar. If a food such as wine or fruit contains natural sugar, that's fine, but no candy, sweet drinks, pastries, or packaged food with sugar as one of its top five listed ingredients.

8 UP AND AT 'EM AUGUST For August I will set my alarm and rise promptly at five a.m. each morning. Normally I get up around six thirty, but I want to see exactly what I might get accomplished in those bonus ninety minutes before the rest of the world wakes up and demands my attention. Perhaps it will just be a lot of yawning, but perhaps it will be an entire extra novella.

9 SWITCH OFF SEPTEMBER In September, I will go without TV. Considering I don't own one, this should be easy, right? Hell no. Thanks to Hulu and Instant Watcher, I've got a mean TV habit going on, and I'll need to figure out other ways to enjoy my lunch hour or unwind at five aside from tuning in to my beloved crappo reality shows. Movies will be acceptable.

10 OMMM-CTOBER For October, I will commit to practicing yoga either at home or in a class for at least forty-five minutes each day. It's something I used to do before writing became my sacred daily practice, and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with it.

11 NOVEMBOOZE That's right, no alcohol for the month of November. I'm dreading this almost as much as the coffee month. And I did pick a holiday month on purpose, just to make it tougher. If I wind up with a contract or a release date in November, I'll just have to get creative with my celebrating. Perhaps a cupcake or a new necklace in place of the usual champagne.

12 DONATE DECEMBER Each day in December I will go through my clothes and other possessions and pick one nice thing to add to a Salvation Army-type donation box. December's usually stressful, and this is an easy one for me. Getting rid of older stuff feels good, and it makes room for new and exciting things to come into one's life. Seems like a good choice for the end of the year and the holiday season.

So that's the deal! This blog will be like my 12-step meetings, so expect lots of whiny posts as I struggle through my various withdrawals and am tempted by seductive relapses. The first week of June should be especially entertaining as you watch me break up with my precious codependent lover, coffee. Oh how I will plead to get him back! And as early as next week you'll probably see posts about how very little I feel like sloshing through the icy slush to go to the gym. Stay tuned and watch me crumble. Or if you're similarly masochistic, join me for a month! If you do, let me know. I'd happily welcome any guest posters who wish to share their own self-denial experiments.

Best "New" Things This Year

Bear in mind I'm not always at the cutting edge of, well, most anything, so these are new-to-me favorites for the year, not necessarily actual new things. But anyhow, here's what topped my lists in 2010:

MOVIES District 13 (French, post-Apocalyptic-ish action, 2004), Cemetery Junction (drama, 2010), Ong-Bak (Thai, martial arts action, 2003), and Harlan County, USA (documentary, 1976).

MUSIC My boy Elvis Costello's new album, National Ransom (2010), various Lady Gaga singles, and a slew of outdated pop and hip-hop I won't embarrass myself by ennumerating.

BOOKS A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs (2008), The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (2010), 703 by Nancy Makin (2010), Attachment (2008) by Isabel Fonseca, anything by Kristan Higgins.

TV SHOWS Louis (comedy, 2010), An Idiot Abroad (reality / travel / comedy, 2010), various new-to-me seasons of Top Gear (reality, current incarnation 2002—present), seasons one through five of Say Yes to the Dress (reality, 2007–present). Oh and Hoarders, as always.

GAMES Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons (iPad, 2009, 2010), Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64 emulator, originally 1996), Machinarium (Mac, 2009), Boggle (iPad, 2010).

Sunday Puzzle

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means—time for me to rip off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday!

Mustachioed enigmatologist

extraordinaire, Will Shortz

If you're a newcomer, each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon via the WES website if you want a chance to play on the air).

Note: I never post the solutions on this blog…at least not before the submission deadline. I see lots of keyword traffic coming from people looking for the answers, which is at best impatient, and at worst, cheating. For shame.

Now without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

Name a famous American from the past who has seven letters in his or her last name. Take the last two letters, plus the first four letters, in that order, and you'll name that person's profession. Who is it?

Click here to see the original puzzle posting, check the answer to last week's challenge, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer.

Thrusty Thursday: Both the dudes from Fight Quest

Doug Anderson and Jimmy Smith

Those dudes being fighters Doug Anderson and Jimmy Smith. Discovery Channel already gave my back-up husband, Survivorman's
Les Stroud as well as Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe, and now this?! You shouldn't have!

I've mentioned Fight Quest before, I'm sure. I found this show last winter when researching a boxer character for my erotica alter ego, then revisited a few episodes this fall while deciding which martial art I wanted a current work-in-progress's romance hero to practice. It's an excellent show, which sadly only ran for one and a half seasons (2007–08). It's easy to imagine that a show about two American guys traveling around the world to try their hands at various martial arts disciplines would be chocked with swagger and ego, but Anderson and Smith are both exceedingly humble, curious, and respectful toward their foreign hosts and competitors. If you have a Netflix account and enjoy manful things like fighting, I can't recommend it enough. All thirteen episodes are on Instant Watcher—log in then click here.

Now, to the thrusting. You have a choice between the shorter 28-year-old New Jerseyite and former military bodyguard Doug Anderson, with his manfully beefy arms and chest tattoo and sideburns, or mixed martial artist Jimmy Smith, who's taller and 33 and from Los Angeles, boasting a foxy shaved head and unnecessarily impressive abdominal area. Both can kick your ass with their enviable Jiu Jitsu skillz.

But don't take my word for it. Check some footage and make your own decision.

Here's the first chunk of the boxing episode, taped in Mexico. It's long, but the short intro segment will give you a little taste for the show and its hosts.

Some days, I am that white duck.

I've been struggling lately. Not any grand struggle, or a sustained one that haunts me from moment to moment. My struggle seems to crop up sporadically like acne, and it's difficult to pin it to any one event or overarching fact of life. But it comes up again and again—I'm not good enough. I'm not cutting it as a homemaker, a sex partner, a financial contributor, a writer, a designer, a friend, a woman, a human.

At thirty-one, my baby-making machinery is humming insistently, but I can't help but think that if I routinely feel this overwhelmed, working full-time at a job I truly love and also playing the homemaker role, how on Earth can a child ever fit into this equation? If I already feel like I don't have enough energy to go around between my husband, work, friends, and day-to-day chores and errands, what could possibly be left after a day spent caring for a baby?

I suspect my genetically inherited Catholic guilt wants me to suffer. I should be thrilled—my husband is thus-far supportive of me writing full-time, despite the major income hit. I seem to be good at it, and I possess the discipline and drive. No longer commuting, I have the time to exercise and relax and read when the day's writing is done. If the house is clean, that is. On paper, I have it all. But I frequently find myself crushed by the pressure to revel in it. I feel crushed by frequent feelings of inadequacy, when I should be all set up to thrive. Water, sunlight, and nice, nutrient-rich dirt, and still some days I wither.

I take criticism of my housekeeping and other wifely tasks intensely personally, because if there's truth to them, it must mean I'm failing miserably. After all, I work from home. Surely I should be able to accomplish X, Y, and Z around the house. But X, Y, and Z take time, and that times takes away from the forty+ hours a week I feel obligated to spend on my writing and related tasks, and that makes me feel as though I'm falling short in that department. If I tackle all the chores and write five thousand brilliant words and make a delicious dinner, I'm pooped, and then I'm failing at the role of affectionate and charming partner. Seriously, how much worse could a child make this? How do my mother-author-partner Twitter friends do it all?

I want to say I'm not neurotic…perhaps those who know and love me will disagree. But I welcome germs with open nostrils. I don't care what the latest trends are and if I'm hitting the mark. I don't generally worry about what people think of me, unless they feel as if I've hurt them personally. I hope most of my acquaintances would say I'm easy-going. The struggles I'm feeling…they don't feel neurotic or frantic, generally speaking. They feel more like hopelessness. Not quite depression (I know what that feels like), just a sense that I'm failing when I'm not living up to my various daily roles.

When I feel like a worthy professional writer and a creative person, I feel like a lousy partner. When I feel like a stand-up housewife, I feel I'm neglecting my duties as an-author-who-treats-her-work-seriously. If I nail both of those, I probably neglected exercise or friendships or blogging or items on my miscellaneous to-do list as a consequence. As I write this, I feel I should be hemming my husband's pants as I promised. I need to eat dinner, but I need to blog. I need to be reading my friends' books, because they're kind and supportive enough to read mine. I need to find an agent. I need to cure whatever's making my toes all itchy and fat like sausages because I haven't been able to work out enough. I need to schedule this and that and return this e-mail and get groceries and learn to make homemade curry sauce because the store-bought jars are so pricey. And I need to relax, because not relaxing makes everything impossible.

But of course, I don't need to do any of these things…except perhaps the groceries, from time to time. My husband probably won't leave me if I don't hem his pants tonight or schedule this or that utility. My writing career will probably not flop if I take a weekday off to relax or tackle some other project. My friends will probably still like me even if I don't read their books the month—or year—they come out. This blog will not cease to exist if I fail to write twenty posts a month. I do, however, need to fix my itchy sausage-toe problem.

How do you do it, Claire Huxtable?

With pills? It's pills, right?

My husband brought home a book for me from his office, called Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, by Judith Warner. He knows I like nonfiction books about people struggling in our twisted modern society, books about how television is corroding our children's psyches or how our hypersexual media is warping our expectations about intimacy and self-worth. This book is wonderfully and personally written and it is both staggeringly depressing and heartening hopeful. It describes the plight of my generation and the one preceding it to a tee—women trying to cope with their God-given right—nay, obligation—to Have It All, post-feminism. Women striving to have it all but feeling utterly helpless and lost and inadequate and dissatisfied and exhausted.

Some days life, no matter how good it truly is, feels very difficult. And I don't feel as if I'm allowed to feel that way, given how much harder many, many people have it in the world and in this economy. In addition, I've semi-consciously designed my own life to be as simple as possible—don't acquire too many things, live in a condo that's a nice, modest size, only spend the energy cultivating friendships and acquaintances and family bonds that feel mutual and healthy, strive to do work that's challenging and creatively fulfilling… Generally keep things casual and manageable, so that when a child does enter the picture, they'll be part of a humble, adaptable, content family. And content is fine. Jubilant happiness is impossible to maintain for more than the odd fleeting moment, plus it's exhausting. Content is healthy. Content is doable.

Or it should be. So why do I feel so helpless some days, amid all the positivity and ease of my life?

I don't have an answer, and I'm sick of analyzing myself, trying to sleuth one out. I'm just pleased that today—or at least in this hour or minute or moment—I feel calm and content. Just this second, I feel like enough. If only it could last.