Twitter: Welcome to my inner monologue.
I just saw lightning during a snowstorm. Cool.
— Rita Arens (@ritaarens) February 21, 2013
@lifewithroozle That would be an awesome dystopian YA book title.
— Rita Arens (@ritaarens) February 21, 2013
THUNDERSNOW. I can just see the trailer.
— Rita Arens (@ritaarens) February 21, 2013
Thanks to my friend Alice for hosting a giveaway of a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME on her blog, Finslippy. Alice's idea was to have people comment their most awkward teenage moment, from which she would then chose a winner. I highly approve of her selection:
When I was 14, I had the biggest crush on this football player (witha bowl haircut? what?). So of course, my idiot friends, Bowl Cut, and Ithought it'd be super cool to sneak little bottles of booze into thewoods outside of a big German fest and get drunk off of god awful cheapliquor. Freshmen are totally smart and consistently make good decisions.Cut to: Bowl Cut wants me to go on a a ride called The Breakdance. Youknow the one. You're in a pod that's spinning, on an arm that'sspinning, while the whole thing SPINS. As we're hurling through the airand the neon lights are wavering back and forth and whizzing up anddown, Bowl Cut turns to me and says, "I don't feel so good." Iconfidently responded, "Me neither, but there's no way I'm going to besick." Then, my mouth opened. A river of vomit projected out of my faceand hit every single other car on The Breakdance. The ride was spinningso violently that there was nothing anyone could do but hope their eyesand mouth were closed at the right time. And guess what? Bowl Cut didNOT want to be my boyfriend after that! I know... I was confused too.
Yay, Kate!
If you need a laugh on this Friday, go read the 52 awkward moments in the comments. Many, many are worthy.
If you need a reset to your day, take four minutes and watch this completely bizarre but somehow satisfying video.
My Recurring Dream from André Chocron // Frokost Film on Vimeo.
Today is THE OBVIOUS GAME's official pub date, which means mostly you can now buy it in ebook form. Cheaper! Faster! Or you can just try to win it.
If you do end up reading it, writerly karma comes your way when you write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I write them, too. One can never have too much good karma.
DJ Nibbles loves YA
Every weekday morning that I manage to make it through my email before noon, I do a thing on Twitter/Facebook that I call #morningstumble. Basically I go to StumbleUpon and hit the button until I find something that makes me smile or makes me think, then I share it with that hashtag. It's one way of ensuring I'm not talking about my damn self all the time.
However, it often exposes my dirty little secret: there are huge swaths of culture that in my thirty-eight years I have missed. This morning, I tweeted this picture with the caption "I have no idea what is going on here, but the cats look pissed."
I happened to be on a conference call with my co-workers when I tweeted it, and no sooner had my fingers left the keyboard (I am not kidding, it was that fast), Stacy said, "Oh, Rita, you're JOKING! Right? RIGHT? You know what that picture is that you just tweeted?"
(crickets)
I could hear the panic creeping into her voice, something akin to when one sees one's friend drop ice cubes into a wine glass in front of their connoisseur other friend.
At this point, I realized it was something important I should know but clearly did not, so I just sat there to make it all worse. Sometimes when you're busted, you just have to own it.
"RITA! YOU KNOW THAT'S A VERY FAMOUS SELF-PORTRAIT BY SALVADOR DALI!"
Nope! And I just proved it very publicly!
I think it worried her more than it did me, because I'm currently in grips of an ongoing anxiety attack about something else, which I'm sure will pass in a few weeks. The fact that all I saw when I looked at that picture were some wet fucking cats should probably be more horrifying than it is.
And I actually felt comforted by the fact that though Stacy was taken aback by my unwashedness, she loves me enough to click on my links. REFRAMING! Look at me go!
Well, virtually anyway.
Here's a cat video. Kizzy never gives up. Feel free to write your own dialogue.
I met Steph in preschool when we were three. That's 36 years of friendship, for those who are counting.
Now our daughters are friends. The little one is the same age almost as Steph and I were when we met.
Happy birthday, Steph! I love you.
But this is how Kizzy gets punched in the face.
The little black cat started using his front paw again after twenty-four hours of solitary confinement in a room with low spaces.
He shot out the door the minute I opened it yesterday and now spends his moments torpedoing around the house, insane. We discovered he may be even younger than we thought, according to his growth plates.
That explains a lot.
Last night while we drove home from gymnastics, the fog was werewolf thick, and I could barely make out the headlights coming toward me.
This morning we woke up to deceptively warm air that spoke more of March than of January.
So I opened the window for the little black cat, and I saw his whole world change in an instant. Face pressed to the screen, whiskers blowing a bit in the breeze.
He didn't move for ten minutes.
I think this means thank you.
Last night, I discovered THE OBVIOUS GAME is now on Amazon, though it isn't coming up normally in searches yet, which I hope is just because it's still in pre-order stage. This morning, Tracie Nall put up this guest post by me on the writing process, using Kindle for revision, StoryMill software and butts in chairs. Thank you, Tracie!
The little angel got a book over the holiday break on money management. I thought it was going to be a book about budgeting and saving and all that good eight-year-old stuff, but no, it was a book on MAKING money.
The little angel whipped up a business plan. She was going to sell something. She was talking margins. I remembered the failed craft sales she and the neighbor girl had on our neighborhood's garage sale weekend in the past. The times they tried to sell complete strangers used ribbon for $1. I told her if she was going to sell something, it had to be something GOOD. Something useful. Something one might want to own even if it were not made with her hands. She suggested piggy banks.
And so Hoggin Crafts was born. Here is her logo. She made it herself on the Mac, not that you could tell!
I did offer to be her silent partner. I fronted her seven piggy banks, which I bought at Hobby Lobby. She is customizing them. We were at the jewelry store where I bought my replacement wedding ring getting it ionized or whatever it is you do to make white gold match platinum again (and if you did not know you could do this, it totally rocks, and if you ever buy white gold you should get them to throw this service in every six months for free) and the jeweler started telling us about her 16-month-old granddaughter who was enamored with ... you guessed it! PIGGY BANKS. The little angel got her business card and started designing the custom piggy bank that afternoon. Here is the plan.
The pig saying "oink" is her trademark. It goes on the stoppers on the pigs' bellies. She's about 3/4 of the way done with the pig pictured above and has taken four more orders, all from extended family. I have no intention of starting an Etsy store, but if anyone wants a custom-designed pig, let me know. The 3-inch-ish size pigs are $8. I'm happy she's developing these entrepreneurial skills now, because by the time she goes to college, a gallon of gas will cost ten whiffle-wind credits, and that will be just chaos.
