What an up-and-down month. In the midst of the bad, there is good, and the good is that this past week I signed a contract with indie publisher InkSpell to publish my debut young adult novel, The Obvious Game, in February 2013.

Which is in five months.

Indies! We move fast!

I'm actually thrilled about the pub date, even though it's coming up soon. February is Eating Disorders Awareness Month, and there have been so many people who have emailed me about themselves or their loved ones wanting to know what the hell is going on in that person's head and how to help and what to do if it's you, I decided to write a book about it. Only this one is more interesting than my story ... fiction means you can change the beginning, the middle and, best of all, the end.

Here's the beginning of my query:

"Your shirtis yellow."

"Your eyesare blue."

"You have tostop running away from your problems."

"You're tooskinny."

Fifteen-year-oldDiana Keller accidentally begins teaching The Obvious Game to new kid Jesse onhis sixteenth birthday. As she buries her shock about her mother's fresh cancerdiagnosis in cookbooks, peach schnapps and Buns of Steel workouts, Diana bothseduces athlete Jesse and shoves him away under the guise of her carefullyconstructed sentences. As their relationship deepens, Diana avoids Jesse's pastwith her own secrets -- which she'll protect at any cost. Will Diana andJesse's love survive his wrestling obsession and the Keller family's chaos, orwill all their important details stay buried beneath a game? Nothing is obviousin THE OBVIOUS GAME.

I'm building a pinboard for it on my Pinterest page. The Birthright of Parker Cleaves is the novel I'm working on next.

What will make or break The Obvious Game (and, not to overreact, but my chances for publishing Parker Cleaves and anything else) is the success of this novel. The deck is stacked in publishing, especially for unknown authors, so if you would be willing to talk about my book once it is available, I would be forever grateful. You don't even have to say nice things, seriously. You could even be all DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT SUCKY NEW NOVEL, THE OBVIOUS GAME?  And I would actually be fine with it, because then that person might be all WHAT ABOUT IT SUCKS? And next thing you know, you're discussing my book. So seriously, there should be no fear here. You could hate, hate, hate my novel and I will still like you as long as you don't beat me over the head with it.

Because I don't want to spam or turn my blog into a marketing showcase, I've created this handy Google form that will forever live in the My Books page of this website.  If you or anyone you know might be interested in talking about the novel, reviewing the novel, talking to teens about the novel, etc. etc., please pass along the link to this blog and ask the interested party to look at the form on the My Books page.

For those of you who know me in real life, have heard me speak at BlogHer or elsewhere over the past three years or have been hanging around here since 2009, you know this puppy is a long time coming.

So thank you in advance for reading me here at Surrender, Dorothy, and I hope you'll read and enjoy/discuss/talk about/pass along to a loved one The Obvious Game. I'll be mentioning what's up from time to time, but if you really want to be updated, please use the form above.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up.

DJ Nibbles celebrates The Obvious Game!

Two weeks ago, my husband told me he'd lost his job in a clean, P&L-based cut. And suddenly, that thing I feared ever since we got married and bought a house and birthed another mouth to feed happened, and I wasn't sure if we could live on my salary or not.

Whether or not we should be able to is beside the question. Of course we should be able to. But we weren't. My husband and I earn within a small range of each other's salaries, and we've always been a two-income family. We've both been laid off or about to be laid off three or four times each -- I've been in Internet publishing since 1999, and he's been in sales-related jobs since 2007 -- but only once before was it quite like this, and that was almost twelve years ago, before the little angel, before the mortgage, back when we were 27 and could just stop drinking beer for a week and everything would be fine.

There are other things I'm afraid of -- cancer, other terminal illness, the death of loved ones, finding a possum in my basement, the usual things -- but sudden, unexpected job loss without a back-up plan is something I've been afraid of since I was a little girl and my mom stayed home with us, so in my mind if my dad lost his job, we would immediately starve to death, like within days.

It's been two weeks, and surprisingly, we haven't starved. We haven't even been hungry. And though I have been through the usual gamut of emotions starting with shock and ripping through anger and fear, they didn't last long. I'm not sure why, actually. I cried last night for a completely unrelated reason, but that's the first time I've cried for more than about five seconds in the entire two weeks.

I have no doubt he'll have a new job that he likes eventually. He could probably have one right this minute if he were ready to go out of the frying pan and into the fire, but I've begged him not to do that, to be thoughtful in his journey. We're not spring chickens anymore, and I know as well as anyone that being unhappy with your work will rot your guts and raise your blood pressure. We're at that age where it would be good not to have work stress operate on your innards any more than it has to.

I don't know how long it will take, though. I'm staring at the tattoo on my arm of the word "now" and trying to mind it. It doesn't matter how long it takes, because I can't know, and I can't do anything about it, and right now, right this minute, I'm tapping this away on my laptop and listening to Drops of Jupiter and wondering when the leaves will drop. The grass that was so dormant it hurt your feet a month or so ago is lush again, the only evidence of the worst drought in years left in the dead patches scattered here and there, the lawn's scars from the summer of 2012.

When I was twenty-seven and this happened (again in a crazy P&L, lost-client situation), I was terrified and angry and took it all out on him. Even though it wasn't his fault, I thought he should've seen it coming, should've known, should've warned me so I could prepare myself. Then time passed, and the year 2000 happened, when I had three jobs, and then I heard a few jobs ago that I was going to get canned, and then I went somewhere else and lost projects and contracts and all manner of things until I guess I came to the place in which I currently reside: the place that knows there is no safety in the world of work, but there is usually a new gig around somewhere. There is no soft place, there are only places. Which sounds horrific but I find extremely comforting. Because if there are no soft places, then there are no hard places, either.

There are just places.

There. I just touched my "now" again, because in five minutes I might not feel so chill about our situation. I'm minute-to-minute with my anxiety disorder, but we don't have to be in a hard situation for that to happen. My anxiety disorder doesn't give one shit whether we just won the lottery or whether we just got sued for $100,000. It's all, HEY, YO, YOU AWAKE? LET'S FREAK OUT.

My thirty-eight-year-old self wants to grab my twenty-seven-year-old self and tell her what's the what: Two months from now, you and Beloved will get married. He'll have a new job within a week. He'll change careers twice again. He'll end up in the exact same place in eleven years. But you, my friend, will have lost or left SIX JOBS in eleven years. The bubble will burst. The economy will get shredded. You'll buy a house. You will love the house. You will invest money in the house. You will bring a baby home to the house. You will lose money when you sell the house. You will buy another house. Your cat will die. You will love the house. Your replacement cat will die. You will remodel the house, slowly, room by room. You will get yet another cat. You will teach yourself to garden. And then, when you're tempted to bemoan the fact that sometimes it feels like you're right back where you were in this minute, right now, twenty-seven-year-old self, you will realize that you and Beloved stuck through it together, every minute of it, and that's all that matters.

We're all the heroes in our own stories, and every story needs obstacles or they're fucking boring.

That's what I think in this bit of now.

So buck up, Rita.

My absolute hands-down, favorite thing about BlogHer conferences is the Voices of the Year ceremony. This year was amazing -- every single one of the presenters seemed to also be a theater person, because there wasn't a disappointing presentation in the mix. Not everyone who was honored got to present, however (including yours truly), so I was thrilled in the year someone liked one of my posts that the powers that be decided to partner with Open Road to present the entire kit and kaboodle as an ebook on Kindle and iTunes.

Who doesn't love a good blogger anthology? (cough)

So, anyway, the actual pub date is October 30, but if you're interested, you can preorder it now. Go crazy, Ma!

I need to overhaul this blog. It's grown so cluttered. Everyone tells me I should migrate off Typepad to something else, and I really like Squarespace, which I used to build The Writers Place's new website, but the thought of spending all that time recreating something (not to mention I have zero funds for such an endeavor) is completely too intimidating. So I'm going to be hacking away here a little bit to see if I can dust off the spiderwebs.

When I started blogging, I knew about Internet publishing from a words perspective, but nothing about the technical aspects. When I started working at BlogHer, I realized I needed to teach myself HTML. Then I started hacking all sorts of stuff on this blog in my sidebars to the point I'm not sure if any of the original code even exists anymore. It's the same approach I take with gardening: Stick some stuff in there and see if it grows into things it's not supposed to. If so, rip it out and start over.

Last weekend, I ripped out everything but two cherry tomato plants, because it's going to frost soon and I can't stand to wake up to the little frozen wilted bodies of flowers and vegetable plants. My vegetable plants die young and beautiful. 

So if there are any categories you wish were beefed up or navigation you wish existed, let me know in the comments. I'm going to be updating best of, but I don't know which posts to put there. Any suggestions are appreciated! Stay tuned.

I've got a bit of gallows humor when it comes to sudden and unexpected unemployment these days (my husband lost his job last week). I talked to Big Bird this morning to see how he was doing with Mitt Romney's threat to defund PBS, especially after he brought up Big Bird by name.

Me: How are you doing, buddy?

Big Bird: It's like it was personal! (sounds of sobbing, beak blowing and nest gnashing)

The Yellow One was too distraught to talk via phone, but he did email me this pictorial later this afternoon.

BIG BIRD'S

FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF

---

STAGE ONE: DENIAL AND ISOLATION

This can't happen! I've been to the White House! A REPUBLICAN WHITE HOUSE.

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

STAGE TWO: ANGER

But I was on the Walk of Fame, bitches!

By Benmckune at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

STAGE THREE: BARGAINING

I could totally make a fresh start in publishing. What a thriving industry!

Creative Commons License by Pop Culture Geek on Flickr

STAGE FOUR: DEPRESSION

Fuck. It just hasn't been the same since the late Seventies.

Creative Commons License by Evelyn Giggles on Flickr

STAGE FIVE: ACCEPTANCE

I'd better go vote for Barack Obama.

Creative Commons License from Poster Boy NYC on Flickr

Rock the vote, America.

---

Do you have insomnia? Does your kid? Check out my review of the NightWave Sleep Assistant on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

So the Arens family had some craptastic bad luck at the end of last week. And some really good luck at the beginning of this week, but the good luck isn't really good enough to offset the bad luck, it's just nice. And I don't really think it's time to talk about either one of these things that are all my mind can wrap itself around.

We could use prayers, mojo, fairy dust, vibes and whatever else you can throw at us right now.

A few years ago, I first remember hearing it: the use of "earnest" as an insult.

ear·nest

¹    [ur-nist] Show IPA adjective

1. serious in intention, purpose, or effort; sincerely zealous: an earnest worker.

2. showing depth and sincerity of feeling: earnest words; an earnest entreaty.

3. seriously important; demanding or receiving serious attention.

I remember feeling shocked, then flashing to embarrassed, because I am quite often seriously zealous.

Then the emotion turned to anger, and I didn't like that feeling, so I put the entire issue aside.

Today I read the word "earnest" in its usual context, but I immediately remembered the whole earnest-as-an-insult thing and decided to focus on why it made me so mad, because it was a sort of irrational mad. Perhaps even an earnest anger.

Upon further contemplation, I realized a similar word for me is "hysterical." Immediate, irrational anger. There is nothing inherently wrong with that word.

hys·ter·i·cal

[hi-ster-i-kuhl] Show IPA adjective

1. of, pertaining to, or characterized by hysteria.

2. uncontrollably emotional.

3. irrational from fear, emotion, or an emotional shock.

4. causing hysteria.

5. suffering from or subject to hysteria

Except that both of them have at times been applied as insults in order to belittle someone who may have a legitimate cause or gripe. These two adjectives both imply passion, emotion -- the exact opposite of apathy.

ap·a·thy

[ap-uh-thee] Show IPA noun, plural ap·a·thies.

1. absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.

2. lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.

I equate apathy with one of two things: teenagers or clinical depression.

When did it become cool for adults to pretend not to care about things that are totally worth caring about -- whether they are political causes or volunteering opportunities or their kids? When did it become awesome to publicly belittle someone who has put effort and enthusiasm into anything?

I'm losing my edge.

I like to poke fun as much as the next person, good natured fun. But somewhere along the line, I shed my desire to appear above the fray. I completely understand that I am not cooler than any other person on this planet, because I've given up on cool. Whether they annoy you or not, earnest people get things done. Hysterical people are often reacting to a very real injustice -- they are moved to get angry because someone's been mistreated and everyone's acting like it's no big thing.

Nobody would ever make art if they weren't earnest. It's too hard.

(definitions from Dictionary.com)

Wow, thank you to everyone for your helpful ideas about getting to sleep. Isn't it funny how something so basic should be so difficult for so many of us to attain?

Ironically, since I wrote this post, she has slept through the night, though she still wakes up really early, in my opinion, for how late she goes to sleep. My husband only sleeps about five hours a night, though, so it's possible her natural needs are lower than those of other kids.

We have a routine, though it's been  pushed back a lot these past few weeks as we try to suck the marrow out of summer/early fall while the weather is still good and the light is still here after dinner. Third grade strangely has produced less homework than second grade, though more reading. She gets home from school at 4:30 on the bus and either does her homework or entertains herself in some other manner until I finish work around 6. Then we make dinner. We've been eating outside as much as possible. The last few days she's wanted to play outside with neighborhood friends, climbing trees and swinging. I'm fairly sure climbing trees and swinging are part of what combats global warming, so of course I let her do those things whenever she wants.

I'm not sure if the physical activity has tired her out more or if she's just getting back into the rhythm of life again and thus sleeping better. After she comes in, we have dessert and talk a little, then she showers and then there's about a half-hour of stalling and procrastination, then she climbs in bed and a parent reads to or with her for a half-hour or 45 minutes, then we lie next to her while she falls asleep. When it's me, I count backwards in my head to keep MYSELF awake, because I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. She also has an air cleaner that makes noise, a lit fish tank with pleasant bubble sounds and a fish light that throws dappled blue light on the ceiling. The kid is practically living in a spa of sleep aids.

I got a sleep aid machine breathing monitor in the mail yesterday for review, but we haven't had a chance to test it out on getting her back to sleep yet. I'll let you know how that goes. It's a great concept. I used it for exactly three seconds last night because I require no help falling alseep.

We did have both the little angel and Ski Bear take an oath on Monday night that they solemnly swore to try to stay in bed and lie quietly instead of coming to get us for at least ten minutes to see if they could fall back asleep on their own. They held their right hands up and repeated after me. Ski Bear is known to break his oaths, but the little angel is usually pretty good.

So, thus far, during the work week she is sleeping okay.

And, since this post was sorta boring, here's a post about The Light Bulb Conundrum of the Easy Bake Oven that I wrote on BlogHer yesterday.

My daughter struggled with sleeping until she finally slept through the night for the first time at about four years old, shortly after we moved into Chateau Travolta. That whole period of zero-sleeping through the night is a giant haze and something I like to avoid thinking about, except to note she was cute and sweet even though she never slept.

Then she turned into this awesome sleeper who could sleep through military helicopters flying over the house and fireworks set off next door and kids opening up their muffler-less cars on our little residential street.

And it was good.

Then, this week: eight-year-old insomnia. WHAT?

Last night I went to bed too late, slept from midnight to three and woke to hear her crying. She explained what she was crying about (nothing big), then I crawled in bed with her, but she was Wide.Awake. Then Petunia wandered in and was all meowy-meowy, then the little angel was REALLY REALLY WIDE AWAKE, and then she tossed and turned until I said, "I'm going to check on you and go back to bed," which means, "I've had it, kid."

I went back to my bed and five minutes later, she was there, too. Then she did fall asleep and started shoving me farther and farther toward Beloved, who may have been suffering from allergies (I wear earplugs, and no, they don't work). Finally, my back felt like it was being stabbed from the bizarre position I was in, so I extricated myself vertically and went into HER bed, leaving her to stick her bony little knees into my husband's back instead. It was about six by then. I finally fell asleep in her bed, and she must've slept in my bed, though I doubt Beloved did.

This morning on the way to school (I had to drive her because I couldn't get my EYEBALLS TO OPEN in time to get everything going to catch the bus), I said, "So what was going on this morning?" And she was all "I don't know. I just couldn't sleep."

RECORD SCRATCH

This can't happen again.

So we talked about relaxing all the different muscle groups. And we talked about counting backwards from 100. And we talked about what works for me, focusing on relaxing the muscle between my ears. And we talked about deep breathing.

And she was all PSHAW.

The bad part is that she woke up at three on Saturday night and couldn't go back to sleep, too.

OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO?

Does anyone know how to cure insomnia in a kid?