One of the joys in my sad, pathetic housewife life is embarrassing my children. I do it as regularly and publicly as I can. (Just yesterday, I sang and danced Lady Gaga’s song Telephone (while on Grandma’s boat on Lake Austin – sound travels better over water) to my two boys and their 10 year-old cousin Josh. They all hid under beach towels, but that did not deter me. No! I made it all the way through to the Beyonce part of the video. Now that’s dedication.) I was deemed the most embarrassing mom in the  universe. Score!

I also do embarrassing things at home, too. And you know what? The boys don’t mind that so much, as long as no one else can hear me. Like, for two or three months last year, as soon as the kids arrived home from school, I got out my guitar and played a made-up song about farting called Bust a Grumpy while the boys danced on the bed.* The refrain was plebeian but, Oh, the verses! Full of all sorts of details describing flatulence. (I am, you know, a published poet. You got mad word skillz, ya use ‘em. LOL)

I digress.Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Willing to embarass yourself… and those you love. As a writer, you gotta do it. Come on, it takes a pretty thick ego to call yourself a writer, and a thicker one to write a novel that you send out into the cold, hard world. It’s even harder to do something novel with your novel, or whatever you’re writing. To take a risk, to do something not quite like what everyone else is doing? Terrifying. Potentially excruciatingly embarrassing. Build up that ego; you’re going to need it.

There are going to be plenty of people who will tell you that your novel in verse/picture book in emails/YA paranormal romance about sentient cheeses is the worst idea they’ve ever heard. (Hopefully not your beta readers.) But write it anyway. Will it get published? Probably not. Most things don’t. But will you experience an almost transcendent joy in the creation of that thing that your uncool heart/imagination/Dork-Muse called forth into being? Yes, you will. And that’s the real payoff.

When I daydream, I hear children laughing. Sometimes it’s my real kids laughing about the bedtime story I made up for them that night. (Talk about payoff. All my bedtime stories hit the bestseller lists.

Someday I hope it will be the children reading my work. It could be that they’ll laugh at me, instead of with me. So what? I stopped trying to be cool long ago, and I never was very good at it anyway. What I want to be good at is telling my stories in a new way. Even if that means making myself look like an idiot. Even if it means mortifying all those associated with me.

It probably will. Hey, I have a whole lot of kids, family members, and beta reader friends to embarrass. I am so blessed.

Do you ever find yourself worried about what others will think of your work? Do you ever censor yourself to avoid embarrassment… or even hide your manuscripts in a drawer/your light under a bushel to avoid being laughed at/rejected? Don’t we all know writers who do that? Let’s not be that kind of writer, Friends.

Write well, and bravely. Have fun with your work!

News: An editor of a literary journal nominated a short story of mine for an award/competition thingy. I’ll give more details later, if anything comes of it. For now, I’m just feeling all warm and fuzzy knowing he thought my little story was good enough to be sent on!

* They made me swear never to tell anyone about this. What can I say? I’m a fiction writer. I lie all the time.

It’s cold in Texas today and getting colder — beginning to feel (at last) a bit like Christmas. I got a stocking stuffer this week already — an essay of mine will appear in The Ultimate Christian Living anthology, out next March. Yay! (Of course, Santa may have to work a little harder next year — what I asked for was a book deal)

To all my friends, family, and cyber-stalkers: I hope you all get the gifts you asked for. Here’s a little something to read while you’re wrapped in your blanket/Snuggie/arms of a loved one. Grab some hot cocoa, and have fun reading Nikki’s Christmas Letter (as usual, written by Dave. Thanks, Dave!).

Stay warm, sing carols, and hug everyone you can. Tonight’s Little Baby Jesus Night — it doesn’t get any better than this.

The Velveteen Rabbit has long been known as the go-to book for sick, evil kids who want to watch their parents cry. (You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen their eyes when you get to those last chapters. They’re watching you try to hold it together, not paying a bit of attention to the story. Little sadists.) Anyway, last night I read the last seven chapters of Kate DiCamillo’s book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (the rabbit in question), to my kids. We’ve been reading a couple of chapters a night, a very Norman Rockwell-ish thing to do, if I say so myself. It was all going very well until the formerly beloved authoress, Ms. DiCamillo, who gave us that lovely little mouse Despereaux, and her new, gloriously magical The Magician’s Elephant — Winn Dixie for crying out loud! — turned on us… and killed off a precious little four-year old character, a wonderful, flaxen-haired girl (there’s illustrations, yanno) who loved the rabbit, and her brother, and Jesus, and apple pie, and ponies (you get the picture) so much. The little girl we all fell in love with, just a little. Until she died. Gone. Kaput. Dead as a wedge. Buried. Worm food.

The tears started then. I kept reading, thinking surely this must have a happier ending. Surely, Kate wouldn’t do this to us! My children kept sobbing, my six-year old asking “Why, Mommy” Why did she die? Can’t she come back alive?” — and I never wanted more than to race down to my computer and revise a book — and I kept reading to find the happy ending, realizing as the pages left to read grew fewer and fewer, down to three, two, one… that it was not coming.

And then — no I’m not going to tell you what happened — a small, joyful burst of “happy tears”at the end, but too little. Too late.

An hour and a half of crying, four lullabies, and a couple of stiff drinks later, we were all able to move past it. (Um, don’t worry, The drinks were for the grown-ups.)

Do I recommend this one? Sure. If you want to weep yourself senseless. Just don’t make it your bedtime read-aloud. The writing was, as usual, glorious, so beautiful that at times I wanted to re-read it just to hear the words again. (Sound of Nikki tamping down jealousy here.)

So, Kate is a master at her craft, but she’s really, really mean, too.

I hope someday I can be just as mean. Now, it’s back to my own manuscript,where no one dies (well, not yet), and my MC has just performed inadvertent CPR on a dying man who was choking on a fishing lure.

(What movie, you ask? Um, that would have been New Moon. I have two words for you people: Team Jacob. I have never felt more like a nasty old cougar in my life, and I don’t care. Middle-aged women gasped out loud in the theatre when he took his shirt off the first time, and giggled every time after that. Really, a pretty horribly acted movie, if you were thinking about the acting. Which I wasn’t. I was thinking about the abdominals. Yummy.)

When I was a little girl, my parents tried just about every punishment in the world (because I was a very naughty little girl, of course), but their fallback was grounding me from books. You see, I didn’t really care all that much about losing TV or telephone. Oh yeah, and this was way before computers, because I’m dinosaur-old. I always swore I would never ground my kids from books, because I think it’s inherently evil, and far too effective. I have a kid who has a bit of a reading problem, too, so I know how tempting it can be.

But I may have to ground MYSELF from books this week. I have so many good books… and the one I need to concentrate on is the one that’s half-delivered, its head on my computer screen, the rest of its little self still lodged in my mind.

Ah, birth analogies. Did I ever tell you about my 23 hours of back labor? Hey, where are you going?

Okay, I’ll stop. I have one piece of very good news today, though, so hang around until you read this: I sold three short stories to a new enterprise. Remember those books your aunts and uncles gave you at Christmastime that had your name typed in them as one of the characters? I had Snow White, the Seven Dwarves, and Nikki Loftin. It was totally one of my favorites ever, and my kids still think it’s awesome. Well, a new business called storysomething is going to do this online — with personalized books you can download to your phone or computer. I can’t wait. But I’ll have to; they’re still in Beta testing.

Still, very cool. Of course, I used my own kid’s name in the drafts I sent them!

Now, I’m off to sign that work-for-hire contract… and then to finish giving birth to another snarky, very naughty MC. If I can stay away from my TBR pile…

On Wednesday night, we had drinks, conversation, and amazing steaks at Angelo and Maxie’s with Anuj Singh, a friend from high school. (Thanks, Anuj!) Then Dave disappeared for two days to take pictures of NYC (got the ticker-tape parade for the Yankees World Series win!) while I went to the Backspace Ball. (Um, did I mention I booked the family vacation to Walt Disney World today? I’ll stop with the Cinderella references now. I’m more an Ariel or Mulan type, anyway.)

So… I got to wear my name tag that said Scholarship Winner, and feel all special and fancy and feted (not fetid), and hang out with the fun and funny Lori Walker and Lisa Iriarte (who got more fun/relaxed after she was asked to sign by Colleen Lindsay of Fineprint — yay, Lisa!). We read our queries on Thursday morning, whereupon I learned that one simply does not choose a title for one’s middle-grade humorous novel that evokes the Holocaust for the reader… yeah, I’m changing the title. LOL

I read a different query in the afternoon, for a WIP I had set down for a while, and got a huge response (The Holy Toast, for those of you playing at home). Makes me want to finish it! One novel at a time, grasshopper…. Most of the other MG queries were for MG fantasies, which did not make me want to run home and dust off that finished draft of Perfect Mischief (Boy/Fairy Story) and show it to anyone. The field is just TOO thick for my taste. I’ll wait a while.

The “pages day” was super fun. I LOVE hearing authors read their own work, and I had the  chance to hear a dozen or so take their (nervous, trembling) turns in front of four agents. My heart got big and proud of all of them for having so much courage! Yay Writers! You are brave, and strong, and worthy! Long Live Writers! Now let’s get something to drink!

Of course, I missed a couple of hours of the conference having lunch with Suzie at a great Thai restaurant – YUM! — and checking out the Fineprint offices. You know that scene in Willy Wonka where the contest winners go into the factory? The office is like that, but with books. Suzie smuggled me out two for the airplane ride home that I have (of course) finished — and they are fabulous! If you like Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, or anything Katie MacAlister writes, RUN to a bookstore to check out Molly Harper’s new “Nice Girls” series. Seriously, Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs had me laughing so hard on the plane, I woke up the guy in front of me at least twice.

There’s so much more to tell, but this post is getting long. I’ll try to post some pics tomorrow, if Dave doesn’t beat me to it.

Thanks to all who made Cinderella’s Ball possible: Dad, Katherine, Mom and John (The Babysitters Back Home). You rock!

On top of the painkillers, Grandma has senile dementia/Alzheimer’s, so most of the day was spent in a very short conversational loop. But I had the chance to read my October essays to her — making your Grandma giggle is like making a baby laugh, pure joy — and watch TV with her between catnaps. You’ve never watched the cooking channel until you’ve watched it with Grandma; she kept muttering “I wish she would wash those vegetables she’s using,” and “She’s not going to rinse that fish?”  and “You’d think a professional would know to tie that long hair back.” (You might want to think about that, Sandra Dee. The health department will ding you for the hair.) Lunch was my homemade cajun ham and bean soup, fresh cornbread, and my dark chocolate walnut cookies. I’m pretty sure it tasted better than whatever that Barefoot Contessa was making. At least Grandma said so.

When she napped, I read the perfect book for a day with Grandma — A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck. I laughed, I cried. His Grandma was wonderful and terrible, mischievous, loyal, cussedly mean, and determined to make things right.  It made me wonder how many authors out there are writing picture books and novels about their dear, obstinate, peculiar Grandmas. I know I can’t seem to stop writing about mine.

Well, I mean, of course I make it up. But what I’ve been noticing more and more is the things I write that are at least semi-autobiographical (ie: the characters in them are recognizably me/my family/friends/pets) are the only ones that get published/win prizes. So, sure, I’ve written some cute little stories about bears sailing boats in a regatta, which were unbearably bad, and a few other similar things that will stay moored to my hard drive forever.

Bringing a writer into the world? That’s a fear parents don’t have, but they should. That their children will someday grow up to be writers who love their parents so much they want to immortalize them forever in print (yeah, that’s the angle!), or love writing and being published so much they don’t really care how Mom or Dad feel about it (um, that’s probably closer to the truth).

On that note, here’s this week’s publications: Check out Skirt! magazine, the new essays section. Mine is called Coming Out of the Craft Closet. Also, The Hole Story is out in this month’s issue of Texas Co-op Power, just open the .pdf file to page 25.

Who knew my life was this interesting? Now off to do laundry. (Okay, I’m probably just going to read the Al Capone Does My Shirts book, but it’s laundry-related, right?)

But I had two pieces of good news today! First, I sold another puppet play to another anthology, this time to a holiday-themed book. It will be out in early 2010. Great, right? But then….

I had a short story accepted by Boy’s Life magazine! This is a 1,000-word story called Facing The Panthers, about a fifth-grade soccer team learning to deal with their fear (abject terror, more like!) of the most notorious team in their League. My favorite part? The riff on the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune.

My brother Ryan is going to love this one. We memorized that Litany as teens, and used to recite it to each other at appropriate moments. I think the last time was when I called him over to my house (in my single days) to help boil my dishes clean. Ah, good times.

That was when my life as a mother began.. and my dreams of writing were in large part deferred. My kids were never the kind to sleep quietly while I wrote. They mostly screamed, and made enormous, staining messes, and when they got old enough fought with each other. I call this part of my life The Decade of Maternal Bitterness.

But this morning, as I shipped Son Number One and his little brother off on the bus to school (yes, he wanted to ride the bus on his birthday — he got a new DS -i he wants to show off) I realized I owed the entire past year of writing success to him. Not only have I written and published multiple essays about the “joys” of parenting, almost every character that pops into my head for my middle-grade books is based very closely on him. If you’ve read my work, you know this means I have a child similar to Raymond Mahaney running around loose in my house. Pity me.

My mom used to say, “Someday you’ll look back on this and laugh.” It’s true. Writing about Raymond/Cameron, I do laugh, a lot. Now.

But ten years ago, if you said that to me, I would have smacked you with a dirty diaper. Gotta love perspective.

Happy Birthday, Cameron! And thanks for giving me enough material to make a career.