iPod Shame

To say I am not a morning person is like saying Simon Cowell is just moody. If it were up to me nothing would begin before 10 a.m., certainly nothing so mundane as a job. Alas, the rest of the world does not share my owlish ways and I am forced from bed each morning at 6:00 6:10 6:20 6:30 (the snooze button is the devil). At the butt-crack of dawn there are only two things that get me going: a shower and music. These days the water must be warm, but not hot—it’s already too hot here—and the music must be fast and loud. I dock my iPod onto the speakers in the bathroom, hit shuffle, and get in the shower. Sometimes I’m awake enough to pay attention to the actual songs, sometimes it’s all I can do to keep upright and not drown. (P.S. If this ever happens, my love, please, please put some clothes on me before the paramedics arrive. Thx.) Anyway, today it was the latter, but apparently my guy was paying attention because he burst into the bathroom, laughing his head off.

“This is on your iPod?”

“Uuuhhhh—yeah, I don’t know how this got on there, must have been on some old CD I had. I’d forgotten all about it.”

Lie. Straight up. I love this song. But, alone, in the car with the windows up, where no one can hear me sing it at the top of my lungs. This, my friends, is iPod shame: those little gems in our music list that we would deny to the death we love, while secretly putting them on replay for hours. Cheesy, overly sentimental, ballads and rock anthems alike. We know they suck, but something about them—the beat, a lyric, the memory invoked of that guy with the supersexy shoulder tattoo that summer after senior year—won’t let us send them to music purgatory where they belong. Whatever the reason, we all have them.

In no particular order—because they pretty much suck equally—these are my three (that I will admit to on a public forum anyway):

Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins-- This song is an over-the-top 80’s cheesefest, but when Phil croons the lines “when I’m in your arms, nothing seems to matter, my whole world could shatter, I don’t care” I swear my heart squeezes.

Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett—Need I say more? But it reminds me of hot summers with friends by the pool.

Straight Tequila Night by John Anderson—For this one, I have almost no excuse, other than I was young, this is Texas, and I loved to two-step. Ugh, seeing the video only makes me cringe more:

Tell me, what’s in your iPod Hall of Shame?

Shut your pie hole

Last week I drove past a pie place with a big sign out front that read "Fill Your Pie Hole!"

Now, I know it's a completely innocent phrase (though it's always sounded vaguely dirty.) But it got my attention and stuck in my brain and now I'm hungry for pie. Or maybe it's just that it's the end of summer, which seems like such a pie time of year.

People don't make pies very often anymore. I miss pie.

My grandmother's generation made a lot of pies. And, man, that woman could bake. (She's still alive. Just doesn't bake anymore.) She probably ate desert every day of her life and in the time I knew her, she was never overweight. She just moved that much and ate enough good stuff to balance it out. Oh, and she never drank sodas. When we would visit, she'd send grandpa down to the basement to bring up a couple of bottles of "pop." They kept some generic brand of 7 up for when we were there, but they never drank it.

But back to the pie ....

She made amazing cherry pies and rhubarb crunchs. My other grandmother made fantastic lemon pies, that were so tart, you almost couldn't eat them without the meringue. To this day my dad won't eat anyone else's lemon meringue pie.

Baking a desert every other day is something that seems to have gotten lost between my grandmother's generation and my own, not just in my family, but all over. My mother always had gallons of ice cream in the house and store bought cookies. Now I have pints of Ben and Jerry's and Ghirardelli chocolate carmel squares. But not fresh pie.

Despite my craving for pie, I probably won't make one. We all try to eat healthier now. But I wonder sometimes if Cherry Garcia is any healthier than cherry pie. It probably isn't. It just stores better in the freezer.

So what's your favorite kind of pie?n

So So Sorry! Winner of Last Contest Wednesday!

Thank God for Shellee for continuing to blog as I am in a Tempest Unleashed panic!!!!!!!!!! So sorry I didn't post last week's winner... and it is Holly!  So drop me a line at tracydeebs@gmail.com with your snail mail and sometime soon I'll get the book in the mail (as soon as I finish Tempest Unleashed, lol).

Thanks,
Tracy

Awkward Epi 6 Recap

Stepping in for our regularly scheduled Contest Wednesday (to return next week, pinky swear!). Plus, I need an outlet for my new TV obsession. And, if you're still not watching, why not??

Okay, here goes...

Episode 6: Queen Bee-atches-- Summary and Review in 500 620 words or less

The least you need to know: Jake (Matty’s best friend and cheerleader Lissa’s boyfriend) kissed Jenna!?! It was awkward…

The Set-up: In fair Palo Verdes, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge (okay, just since the beginning of school, but in teen years that’s ancient) break to new mutiny when Jenna’s mom forces her to “rush” the KnickKnackers—a junior league type mother-daughter charity org wherein, as Jenna so eloquently puts it, “mean girls don’t grow up, they just get older.” Of course, the event is at sadist Sadie’s (And wow, I just made the connection when I wrote that—wonder if that’s deliberate, because awesome. Character naming kudos, Lauren Iungerich!) house and her mom is the lead older mean girl who ultimately decides if Jenna’s mom makes the club’s cut. Ooooh, conflict.

The Sagging Middle: Not to fear, Matty is also present and accounted for, bartending. There’s a sweet moment when he tells Jenna she looks nice, but it’s all too soon kiboshed by Sadie and he never gets a chance to answer Jenna’s request to hang out. Jenna is concerned that Jake squealed to Matty about their kiss, but Tamara (Jenna’s BFF #2) assures her guys don’t talk. Except, dundundun, Jake is also working the party, and after seeing Jenna and Lissa at the same time, becomes a nervous wreck, blurting out his lip-lock indiscretion to an unsuspecting, and now charmingly flustered, Matty. Let the cock-blocking begin—on the dl, of course.

Meanwhile, Jenna and Tamara, convinced that Sadie is the author of the infamous “care-frontation” letter, snoop in her room and abscond with what they think is her diary, but turns out it’s even more personal: Sadie’s food journal complete with caloric intake, missteps and, more importantly, weight, recorded daily. Jenna’s dilemma: return it or take revenge on her nemesis, tit-for-tat styles.

Not surprisingly, her neurotic school counselor, Valerie, is no help, since Jenna is squeamish about blackmail, and prescribes a cat fight as the best solution, though off school grounds, of course. In the hallway, Matty is feeling out Jake for details on the kiss, but in a totally I’m-not-interested-only-trying-to-help-my-best-bro-out kind of way and convinces Jake to let sleeping dogs lie (lay? GrammarGirl, help me!) with Jenna. I love jealous Matty--though, this kind of serves him right.

Back at the ranch, Jenna and her mom have made it to the next rung of the KnickKnacker gauntlet. Then, in a rare moment of serious after-school-special drama, we see Sadie in a emotional confession to her non-sympathetic mom on the trials she suffers with her battle of the bulge. It’s actually quite a heartbreaking and revealing moment, but in the end she still deals with her pain by inflicting it on others. So after deliberately sabotaging Jenna’s mom, Sadie rightly deserves Jenna’s blackmail: KnickKnakerdom for her mom or the journal goes viral. (Also, Ashley Rickards pitch perfect imitation of “You’re Welcome” is amazing!)

Final Act: Sadie obliges and Jenna returns the journal determined to wield the power of kindness, instead of cruelty. Also, Sadie didn’t write the letter. Jake decides he might be into Jenna after all and a mad, undercover texting race ensues between him and Matty for a 1x1 request with her. Unfortunately for Matty, Jake’s the only one who gets a text back. Uh, oh. Powershift in the relationship. Dundundun.

Best Teen Speak: “Mo to the Fo”

Best Jenna/Matty moment: Although Jenna isn't in the scene, when Matty tries to convince Jake (but really himself) that the kiss with Jenna meant nothing and she probably isn't thinking about it or Jake at all. Right?

The Boys of Summer

Over the course of the years I have become an author’s worst nightmare: the fickle reader. Between the magic-behind-the-curtain that daily life requires and my own writing, I have so much less time than I’d like to devote to reading. So, like a kindergartener with ADHD, there’s a very limited window of opportunity for a book to grab my attention and keep it. And because I’m a writer, it’s even tougher for an author to make me forget the mechanics of storytelling, to stop my inner editor from mentally rewriting sentences and picking apart plot holes.

A lot of writing books exhort the importance of the first five pages (there’s even a book called The First Five Pages devoted to it) because that’s about how long a writer has to hook a fickle reader like me. In May, I’d picked up a copy of The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han based on a blog recommendation (and because it sounded like a memoir about my fifteenth summer). The first few pages started out well enough, a breezy read, with a hint that some of my favorite elements (i.e. romantic yearning, an ordinary girl, lost soul hero) were involved, but nothing that was going to keep me turning pages till 4 AM. Until I got to, sure enough, the very last paragraph of page 5 and Ms. Han hit me with this:

Conrad was the older one, by a year and a half. He was dark, dark, dark. Completely unattainable, unavailable. He had a smirky kind of mouth, and I always found myself staring at it. Smirky mouths make you want to kiss them, to smooth them out and kiss the smirkiness away. Or maybe not away…but you want to control it somehow. Make it yours. It was exactly what I wanted to do with Conrad. Make him mine.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

People, I stayed up till 4 AM, hiding under the covers with my book light, until I’d finished. Got up, drove straight to my local bookstore on the way to work, bought the sequel, It’s Not Summer Without You, and stayed up again until the wee hours. Then lathered, rinsed, repeated the next day with the final, just-released conclusion, We’ll Always Have Summer.

This is what a great storyteller does: poses a worrisome question--will the ordinary girl make the lost soul hero, Conrad, hers?—and then dares you to put down the book until you know the answer. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read the series, but suffice it to say, this question worried me enough that I got only twelve hours sleep over three days. So worth it.

This series is superb. One of the best—and tensest—love triangles I’ve ever read. Seriously. I usually pick my horse right out of the gate in a love triangle, but this one had me rethinking my choice until about mid-way through the final book. So much so that when I had about thirty pages left till the end, I became so nervous and excited to know how it would turn out, I couldn’t take the anxiety and had to walk around the block before finishing it. I’m not kidding.

If you haven’t read the series, I dare you to pick them up and see if you can make it without skipping ahead to the end to know.

What was the last book you read that gave you goosebumps you loved it so much and stayed up all night to finish?

Contest Wednesday: End of Summer

In honor of it being the last week of summer vacation here in Austin, I am giving away a signed copy of Tera Lyn Child's first mermaid book, Forgive my Fins.  The second book, Fins are Forever, is in stores right now.  All you have to do to be entered to win is answer this question: What was the best part of your summer?  For me, it was my trip to NYC-- so much fun!

Tempest Tuesday: There's a New Guy in Town

Hi everyone :)  I'm putting the finishing touches on Tempest Unleashed and thought I'd throw another excerpt up for you-- one with a brand new guy (who really sets Kona's teeth on edge ;)  Let me know wht you think of Sabyn ...

After knocking on her door, I waited patiently to be admitted by one of her servants.  But when it finally swung open, the merman standing there was definitely not like any servant I had ever seen.

            Dark and gorgeous and charismatic, with piercing blue eyes that looked right through me, he exuded power from every pore.  He was as tall as Kona—which meant he was huge, as my boyfriend was close to six and a half feet tall in his human form—and heavily muscled.  More than that, though, nearly every inch of skin between his neck and his waist was covered with dark blue tattoos. And not the kind you got in a tattoo parlor.

            No, I thought as I pressed closer to him without conscious thought.  These tattoos, with their slight phosphorescent glow, were like mine.  Like Kona’s.  Like Hailani’s and my mother’s.  They were gifts from the sea, markings of true Mer power. 

I couldn’t help staring in astonishment.  Not because he was the first merman I’d ever seen with such marks—he wasn’t, of course.  But never before had I seen so many on one person.  Not even my mother or Hailani, or even Kona’s incredibly powerful father, had close to this number

Who was he, I wondered, as I shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny.  And why was he looking at me like I was a present he couldn’t wait to open?

“Come in, Tempest.”  Hailani’s voice echoed from within the chamber.  Tearing my eyes from her mystery guest was more difficult than it should have been, but I managed it as I started to step into the large, opulent room that served as Hailani’s meeting room while she was below the surface.

I expected the merman to move aside as I entered, but he didn’t.  Instead, he stood right in the middle of the doorway so that I was forced to brush against him as I passed.  Jolts of electricity shot through me, sizzled along my nerve endings, and if we hadn’t been underwater I would have sworn that I’d been burned.  A quick, startled look at him confirmed that he had experienced the same thing.  Only he didn’t look at all surprised.

Who was he? I wondered again.  He didn’t look much older than I was, but I’d learned that, down here, looks could be deceiving.  After all, Kona—despite just having reached the end of selkies’ teenage years—was actually several hundreds of years old.

 

Even more important than who the guy was, however, was the question of how Hailani was planning to use him against me.  Kona would think it was crazy of me to be so suspicious, but I’d been around the merQueen long enough now to know that she never did anything without a purpose.  And that purpose was always self-serving.

 Come over here, Hailani told me impatiently.  I don’t have all day, especially considering I’ve wasted most of the morning waiting around for you to wake up.

I’m sorry.  My experiences yesterday left me quite... drained.

She studied me through narrowed eyes, meticulous in her search for a weakness.  She found it in my almost completely healed tail.  Did one of Tiamat’s soldiers do that to you? she asked.

Yes. I straightened my shoulders, tried to look as healthy as possible.  If she sensed I still wasn’t one hundred percent, she’d poke at me until I was too weak to continue.  But it’s fine now.

Well, I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?

Shit.  I obviously hadn’t done as good a job of faking it as I thought I had.  What do you want, Hailani?

Queen Hailani or Your Majesty! she snapped back at me.

I stared back at her with a look that was deliberately insolent.  Of course.  Your Majesty.

She looked ready to take offense at my provocation, which was juvenile I know but so satisfying, when the merman cleared his throat.

Hailani looked at him and some of the fire died out of her eyes.  Tempest, I called you here to introduce you to my grand-nephew, Sabyn.  Sabyn, this is Cecily’s daughter, Tempest.

Nice to meet you, Cecily.  He stuck his hand out to shake mine, a friendly look on his face that did nothing to put me at ease.  I’d learned from bitter experience that Hailani’s smile was sweetest right before she stabbed someone in the back.

Even worse, the second our hands touched, electricity once again rocketed through me. 

Sorry, he told me, so softly that I knew he didn’t want his aunt to hear.

No problem, I answered, though half my body ached from our contact.

Sabyn is going to take over your training, the queen told me.