One of my friends at work subscribes to Snack Crate, which sends a monthly box of snacks from around the world. She hates licorice and I love it, so she handed me a bag of Djungelvral, from Sweden.

Here’s a reenactment of my thoughts during this traumatic event:

Don’t they look adorable? Aw, they’re little monkeys. Little licorice monkeys. Covered in some sort of…powder. Hmm. Let’s take a closer look.

 

Oh, yes, they are ADORABLE!

And I love licorice! And, hey, monkeys.

And I am very adventurous in my eating and I LOVE eating treats from other cultures!

Oh, wow, this is going to be awesome.

:Pops monkey in my mouth:

OMG FOISNK&4*#&GKJS:LHE*&^(*&G:LJSDF*&^(*^*&*&$&^%#$LJLHGL??!!!!!!!

Folks? I literally jumped in my seat and grimaced and did a mouth-centered double-take and head shake and shudder.

Apparently, the Swedes enjoy coating their licorice in ammonium chloride, which tastes kind of like and also totally unlike sodium chloride (the salt we are used to). The candy has this crazy ammonia/salt zap which makes your mouth react ALMOST as if you popped in a super sour Toxic Waste candy COMBINED with that choking/cloying/nostril-burning feeling you get when you’re swimming in the ocean and accidentally gulp down a ton of water. And it makes your eyes water.

The licorice inside all that Fresh Hell was kind of good, but it took my mouth like ten minutes to recover.

Tasting this candy and realizing that it is POPULAR in Sweden? Makes me wonder:

• Are the Swedes generally crazy?
• What other insane combinations of foods do they eat?
• Is it possible that Swedes HATE this stuff and pretend to like it and therefore export it with secret glee at the torment they impose on the rest of us?

Part of me wants to try another one, just to see if it is really as bad as it seemed the first time.

Part of me wants to hand one to an unsuspecting fellow licorice-lover just to watch them eat it.

Most of me wants to throw it all away.

But…if any of you are in Evansville and want to try one, let me know!

Have any of you actually tried Djungelvral and enjoyed it?

 

I’m intense. I hold strong opinions. I have a hard time “enjoying” media without critiquing the hell out of its problematic messages. I am amused by nothing that contains sexism/racism/classism/able-ism/homophobia/any-other-isms. I care about “too many” social issues (for other people’s comfort). I may even be “too much” for some people.

But I’m funny.

WANNA KNOW HOW I KNOW???!

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency just accepted a piece I wrote.

And if McSweeney’s isn’t funny, NOTHING is funny. Like. Because McSweeney’s IS funny, get it? Most of the pieces on McSweeney’s are absolutely hilarious and amusing and MY PIECE WILL LIVE WITH THEM.

I’m not claiming I’m up to par with “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers” or “FAQ: The ‘Snake Fight’ Portion of Your Thesis Defense” or “An Update on the Problem of Maria.” 

My piece might be the sad, neglected neighbor-child to those pieces. BUT WE WILL BE NEIGHBORS!

BECAUSE I’M FUNNY.

(And, yes, I will absolutely, definitely, without-a-doubt post the link here when it’s published, which should be in the next few weeks.)

Well, lookee here! I’ve written a novel! I have an entire draft. Now it’s time to share it with my beta readers and get some critique.

1. All right, this is awesome. I’m going to send this novel to a few people and I can’t wait to hear what they have to say. They’re going to love it as much as I do.
2. OMG. What have I done? What. Have. I. Done? This novel’s not ready to be read. Did I already send it? Can I retract it?  Should I tell them to delete it? What was I possibly thinking? Maybe I should change my email address. And unfriend the beta readers on all social media. And dodge them in real life. I never have to speak to them again.
3. Deep breaths. This will be okay. I do want their feedback. They’re going to have useful things to say. I need to calm down.
4. OMG. Why is it taking so long for them to give me their feedback? Have they started reading it yet? Don’t they know I AM WAITING? :refresh: :refresh: :refresh:
5. My first feedback! I can’t wait to read it.
6. What the fuck do they know? Fucking beta readers. Do they even know how to read? Are they too stupid to understand my novel? What gives them the right to criticize me? Jerks. I hate them. Fucking beta readers.
7. The beta readers are right. I’m hopeless. My writing is hopeless. Why did I think anyone would like this? There’s nothing worth saving. It’s all trash. This is the worst possible thing anyone could ever have written. I should delete it and never write again.
8. Deep breaths. Okay, wait. The betas said they liked some things. And, well, maybe they have a point about that thing. And this thing. And maybe that other thing could be improved. Maybe they had some valuable comments. Maybe this writing is worth saving. Huh. And maybe I can make it even better.
9. I did it! I’ve done revisions. I listened to other people’s comments and made changes without freaking out. This novel is stronger now than it was. I will send out the new version and see what the betas think.
10. OMG. What have I done? What. Have. I. Done? This novel’s not ready to be read. Did I already send it? Can I retract it? Should I tell them to delete it? What was I possibly thinking?

 

image: pain-in-rainbows.jpg    https://monochromejunkie.com/tag/collage/

My prompts for the second round of the Short Story Challenge were action/adventure, animal rights, and delivery driver.

My brain spun round and round through cosmetic and medical testing, carriage horses, owl cafes, and landed on dolphins. After researching quite a bit about Taiji cove, I wrote a pretty serious short story about three characters (Kiyomi, Naoki, and Tom) sneaking into the cove to cut nets and free a dolphin pod. The story illustrated the horror of the Taiji dolphin slaughters and captures. It’s a cause I care a lot about. It was a kind of intense little story.

Okay, I thought. This has some promise.

I sent it off to some folks for beta reading. They mostly liked it.

Until one of my beta readers–okay, it was Gary, my husband–said: “You haven’t made this story your own” and “I love when you take these prompts and find some completely crazy and unexpected direction for the story. Dolphins seem kind of…obvious. A bunch of people might write about dolphins.” [Disclaimer: he said none of this verbatim, but this is what I heard. Actually, when I was paraphrasing him before, I said that he said, “Everyone will write about dolphins and there’s nothing interesting or original here and this story sucks.” He claims he didn’t say that. I guess I believe him.]

I started thinking about what I do best, which is fantasy and science fiction. Action/adventure can be SFF…. Maybe I needed to shake things up a bit. Gary said, “You have time to write something new.”

Start from scratch? When I already wrote one story for a 72 hour challenge?

Right about then, my friend John (also a writer) left me a voicemail and said, “Write to your skill set. You can blend genres and make your story SFF if you’re not feeling what you already wrote.” [Again, that’s probably not exactly what he said. I could listen to the voicemail again and quote him, but I’m too lazy.] 

I moped around. I sulked. I sighed in frustration. I moped some more. I was really, really, really grumpy. I had like seven million ill-formed ideas and wrote some random sentences.

Then, I just started having fun. A story basically poured out of my brain onto the page and made me giggle quite a bit of the time. I wrote the whole thing in less than three hours.

It’s a ridiculously frothy, funny story that plays with action/adventure conventions in a SF setting. We’re talking high school ninja-girls and animals worn as jewelry and a high speed spaceship chase. Yes, it touches on animal rights, but with the lightest of light hands.

I’m submitting the second story. I have no idea how the judges will feel about such a zany, genre-blurring story.

But I can guarantee they won’t read another story like it. I probably won’t post the whole thing here, because it may have quasi-publishable legs, this wacky little story. I’m happy to share it with individuals, though. If you want to read it, just let me know! 🙂

It’ll be about five weeks before I hear if I make it to round three, so stay tuned.

Those of you who know me in person (or follow me on other social media) know that my husband Gary had a rather dreadful, freak accident this past summer. I didn’t want to write about it until the legal liability was all figured out.

I’m not going into the details, but Gary was sitting in a folding chair that suddenly collapsed, caught his finger, and sheared off his fingertip. Like. Cleanly sliced through his actual fingertip including bone, which then flew across the room. He had to have a “revision amputation” the next day, where they removed more tissue and bone in order to close the wound and allow it to heal. He lost almost all the distal metatarsal.

We both cope with things by drawing upon dark, dark humor. I immediately imagined a zombie fingertip scritch-scritch-hopping along on its nail. The zombie fingertip would commit crimes, leaving Gary’s fingerprint behind, so that everyone would think he was a master criminal! But it would really just be his zombie fingertip, framing him! But who would believe that? Because there’s no such thing as a zombie fingertip!

OR IS THERE?

Just two more things to say:

1) I am sure losing a fingertip in any way is a horrible experience. But if you’re using a chainsaw or log splitter or hedge trimmer or axe or giant knife, I do think–after you’ve gotten over the shock and the medical necessities–you might think, Well, that sucked, but I always knew sharp things can do that. But…losing a fingertip while SITTING IN THE CHAIR? It’s the kind of thing that causes you to have no faith in the logical nature of the universe. Or in the use of chairs.

2) If you’ve kind of blocked the word “amputation” from your mind and been thinking LA LA LA LA CUT OFF FINGERTIP LA LA LA, when the doctor comes in and starts talking about “revision amputation” this and “revision amputation” that, you kind of want to puke at first. I wanted to beg the doctor to start saying, “When I go in and clean that up.” Because the word amputation is just not a word you want to actually hear a doctor say.

 

 

Image: https://brainzzzorgtfo.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/zombie-fingers/

Chris Zombie King

My “Fifty Thousand Batmans” story got me through to round 2 of the NYC Short Story Challenge. Woot!

This round will bring a new prompt, to arrive Thursday, 3/29 at 11 pm CST. Genre, character, subject. Stories are due Sunday, 4/1 by 11 pm CST and can be no longer than 2000 words.

What genre will I get?

What crazy prompts will I write about?

Stay tuned to find out! 🙂 I’m pleased to continue with the contest and I hope my creative abilities don’t fail me now.

I should get the judges feedback on my round 1 story soon–I’d be happy to share those comments if any of you other writers-types would be interested?

1. Wow! I have a really great idea. This idea is fantastic. This is going to be amazing. How has no one written this novel before? It’s brilliant. This will be brilliant
2. I’m so impressed with myself. Look at all the words I’ve written! Words, words, and more words!
3. Um. I’m not sure what happens next and how my plot gets from point A to point B. I’m gonna figure it out, though.
4. Wow. The messy middle of this book is truly a messy middle. Um. This is a total mess. I’m not sure how I’m going to wrap it up. How can I possible get to the ending I need?
5. Oh! That’s how it can resolve! Huh, look at that! Wow, I have a draft. I have an entire draft of the novel. I am amazing. I am a writer.
6. Okay, time to edit. Oh. Oh, wow. Oh no. What the hell? This is complete and utter shit. This book sucks. It makes no sense. I can drive a truck through that plot hole. What is my character doing here? Why would she even do that? My prose is the most hackneyed of awful prose there ever was. Why did I write this? How could I write 70k of the most awful prose in the history of prose? I can’t fix this. I should delete it. No, I should print it out and burn it and bury the ashes. OMG. I cannot ever let anyone read this.
7. All right, let’s think. Surely there’s salvageable stuff here. Hmm. Crap. There’s not. It’s still shit.
8. Self, this is a first draft and not a final masterpiece. Give this a chance. Hmm. Haha, oh, look, that bit’s actually kind of funny. And, wow, did I write that? I love that paragraph. And look at that part–that doesn’t make sense, but what if I tweak it a little this way and I tweak that part a little the other way and I add this section here. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. This might work.
9. Okay, now I’ve reworked the whole thing. I can’t believe the editing and re-writing have taken three times as long as the actual drafting. Maybe I need just one or two more run-throughs, just in case.
10. You know what? This doesn’t suck. This actually turned out kind of almost pretty okay. I think I’m ready to get feedback from some other folks. I think they might even kind of like it. I kind of like it! I really think I do. You did a decent job on this, self.

 

Coming next: The Ten Stages of Getting Critique on Your Novel Draft