The Bonnie Raitt Day

There I was. Innocently looking at puppy rescue vids on YouTube. Sad puppy covered in fleas rescued from abandoned house, starving puppy rescued from garbage bag thrown on side of busy highway, sad puppies found in field during rain storm. The usual heart-tugging footage of abused puppies saved and adopted out to nice homes. Okay.

What do I see but Bonnie Raitt will be in Boise on August 14. Get your tickets now!

It’s May. I dither for a day or so, check the prices, which are jaw-droppingly expensive. I have not attended a concert since…um…Aerosmith? In Boise? Years and years ago? Yes, that’s the case here. I finally take the plunge, get my ticket at the cheapest price I can find. Wahooo! Going to Bonnie Raitt at the Boise Botanical Gardens.

Birthday present to myself.

Time marches on. It’s August all of a sudden. I’ve been job-hunting, sobbing over my lack of abilities to land a job and then, get a job. At a hotel. I am slated to start trainings the day after the concert. I figure that will be fine, it’s only four hours, whatever.

No no no. As Ugh, the post before this says, I started training the Thursday before the concert. I had to nix Sunday as it cut into my going to the concert time.

Did I mention where the concert is actually taking place? An open field. Bring your own chair. A list of instructions a mile long, plus hey, don’t try and park near the event. Take the shuttle! It’s here, on this vague map! Outlaw Field, to be exact, beneath the big hill with the cross on it. I spend two fucking days looking for a chair. I have to buy a chair. Or stand there for two hours. I also get myself a water bottle. Where I work is right by the local Wal-Mart.

I get this email from the event center on Friday. The concert is Sunday.

By Saturday, the night before my birthday present– I’m a tired, used up tube of nothing. Front desk is exhausting, confusing, bewildering.

I wake up Sunday exhausted and spent. Don’t wanna go nowhere! Have actual thoughts of just staying home. But no, I have a small royalty check that needs to be deposited. I found and bought a chair! Twenty bucks, little director’s chair, it’s perfect. Comfy and low. I can get in and out of it without embarrassing myself. So instead of loading up my route on my phone at home, where I have the internet, I, sigh…yeah. I attempt this in the next town over and guess who didn’t think about how phones and connections works because she’s tired and stressed as hell over new job?

But! Intrepid me also typed out directions for the parking garage in downtown Boise and where the shuttle is and how to get out of downtown Boise and back to the freeway!! Thank goodness.

Boise, by the way, is a confusing mass of one-way streets downtown. It’s just a giant rat’s maze. I, however, know that W. Front Street becomes the freeway. If you can find that one way, you can get back to I-84, which can take you back toward Ontario or forward toward Mountain Home. There’s also lots of construction going on. Which can reroute you and…I didn’t hit any of that.

I manage to find N. 8th Street. No parking garage. I park on the street, after asking at the little gas station on the corner of 8th and W. Fort. Very nice guy helped me. He didn’t have to. I do mean nice, genuinely nice. I have to circle about, and nearly get lost trying to get back on 8th. No parking garage, so I just park on the street, being careful about no parking zones, or meters. I leave my GMC there, locked up, get my chair and backpack with my bottle of frozen water– so I’d have ice water at the concert. I know the shuttle stop is, allegedly about a ten minute walk away, by the Wells Fargo bank.

Fuck me running, can I find this place? No. I go up and down the streets it’s supposed to be one or near. Nada. Nothin’. An hour of this. It’s six. The concert starts at seven. I’m a sweaty, dripping mess.

I get back to the gas station. I have to beg the attendant for help as I have no internet connection on my phone. Can’t find a wifi that’s free in the area to use. It’s Sunday eve. Uber? Taxi? Taxi, it is.

I get one to show up. At six thirty. I breathe a bit easier, the place isn’t that far off if he quoted me a reasonable price like that. Twenty five bucks, plus taxes, etc. Sure. I just want to get there, I have cash. I’ve spent nearly the cost of the tickets on taxis, chairs, gas– because I forgot to fill up at home on the farm gas tank–and so forth.

Taxi shows up. He’s also very nice, a hustler but I don’t care at this point. I would have handed him my torn off arm if he could get me anywhere near where I was supposed to be. We hit concert traffic and it’s a crawl. It’s L.A. traffic time. And the minutes are ticking. I help the driver take down an address as he blanked on how to spell ‘highway’. He’s got an accent I can’t place, but it sounds Eastern European. He has to send a driver to Lowman, Idaho, about two hours away from Boise, to pick up a guy for the airport. Three hundred plus dollars. The airport is his bread and butter.

Finally, close to seven, I get let out near the Boise Botanical Garden. 40 bucks. I’m fine with this. He was great, got me there, got me as close as he could, hustled me a bit, sure.

I see hordes of other people, with chairs. I follow them, get in line, wait another half an hour, with the opening act, Mavis Staples, already slinging the blues into the evening air. She sounds fantastic.

Did I mention the strap on my little backpack keeps breaking? I finally hook it to the plastic thing that allows you to adjust the strap…if the strap wasn’t broken, frayed and bad.

I’d drained the melted water in my water bottle so I’m very thirsty. But read, in that email, that there’s a water station to refill bottles. M’kay.

It’s probably a hundred or more, btw.

I wait in line. I get my backpack and chair inspected; I pass. I get waved with the wand for security. I get my ticket scanned. I’m in!

It’s a giant field. There’s a banner that announces it’s Outlaw Field. Mavis is still performing. I see some space at the very edge of the grass and decide to just plop it there. Done. Get my chair unfolded, I sit and slump, almost shaking with how much I’ve done to get here.

Mavis finishes. Bonnie Raitt will be on stage in probably half an hour.

I try to get some water, as my ice isn’t melting very fast. It’s ten bucks for two tokens or something. I ask where the water station is. It’s across the entire field, next to the stage. I walk over that way, find it, fill my bottle up twice. I drink down the first one, refill. I feel a lot better and less shaky.

Did I mention the two cuties who sat next to me? These two cute friends [or girlfriends], with tons of food and just happy to be there smiles. Very friendly sorts.

Bonnie takes the stage at last. She’s in a bright turquoise top and her red hair can be seen from space. Nobody is supposed to take pictures or record anything. But. All around me are people doing just that on their phones. I, too, snap a few pics but the security taps me and tells me to stop. Nobody else around me taking pictures got talked to but I did. Sigh.

She sounds wonderful. Relaxed, at ease, a total pro. She sings Angel From Montgomery. I’m just so happy! She does some new stuff, some old stuff. There’s plenty of blues slide guitar. She says nice things about Boise and how beautiful it is there. The night starts to fall and I’m glad I went.

Okay. So I leave when everyone else starts to leave. I’m mad determined to find this shuttle and see where I went so wrong.

Find the shuttle!! I’m asking everyone like a dork where it is and the guy directing traffic points behind me with the look of ‘right there, idiot’ on his sweaty face. Did I mention it’s a superhot day?

I clamber aboard, with my chair. I stand in the very back, as it’s already full. A guy gives me his seat, I take it. We’re off into traffic! It’s wall to wall cars leaving the place, of course but eventually, the bus gets us back to the Wells Fargo stop. My jaw drops. I’ve been here before. Ugh!

I calculate that I am parked directly down from the bus stop.

I walk and walk and walk, in the dark, carrying my chair and my about to fall apart backpack. Yes, that building looks familiar. I remember that church.

The numbers are going up as I trudge down N. 8th Street. Is that my GMC??

It is! I made it back to my car!

Getting back to the freeway. Of course I go the wrong way on 9th street but I do a u-turn and find W. Front Street, and the freeway and home. I left at three or so and got back at midnight.

Will I ever attend a concert there again? Probably not. But now I know where everything is and how to get there and back again. Experience added into my brain cabinets. I got a souvenir hat.

The end.

Things I’ve Noticed

The Gilded Age, HBO. Bertha and George, Carrie Coons and Morgan Spector.

March. Warming up. Raised bed for squash almost done. Cat doing great. Now that you’re all caught up–

I happened upon Minx, over on HBO.

It’s about a fictional women’s soft porn mag started in the 70’s by a radical feminist and a hardcore porn mag producer. Whacky hijinks ensue! Yep, it goes about how you think it does.

Penises everywhere. Shrill, naive, unpleasant female lead named, seriously, this is her name– Joyce Prigger. I do mean unbearable. Holy shit. Fun, easy-going male lead, named Doug Renatti, who sees ‘something’ in the Matriarchy Rising mag layout of Our Heroine. She pitches her over the top feminist scream to several mag producers in SoCal at this fair. She of course gets nowhere because no one will give her a chance! She’s an editor shopping around her liberated woman ideals and no one will throw her wads of cash and accolades, wah.

I lost any and all sympathy for her about five minutes in. I’ve seen this shit so many times. The unpleasant, uptight female lead, the lead male totally likable and smart, the rest of the cast pretty adorable, sweet, intelligent at times and…ugh. Okay. It’s rom-com time. At least, that’s the take I take away here.

Our Heroine is fresh outta Vassar, working on selling subscriptions for other magazines and generally so stupid about how the world works it’s goddamn painful to watch. She doesn’t know how that to get financed, you have to get big donors with money? She went to fucking Vassar. She didn’t rub up against the children of politicians and even presidents? For fuckety fuck’s sake.

She can’t sit through picking a male model for their debut issue without losing her shit. Joyce is embarrassed and squrimy, tee hee. The college girl hasn’t seen many dicks! Tee hee. She’s not only a shrieking harpy, she’s a prude! Oh goody!

It’s not funny or charming or astonishing. It’s just dumb. She’s a dumb character, a stereotype, a Men’s Rights example of what they think a feminist is. There is no nuance to her. At least not in the episode and a half I made it through before switching over to Youtube animal rescue videos to clear my head of the ‘Why the fuck are they still writing this type of female character? And during the so-called women’s liberation height??? Fuck fuck fuck fuck!’

And then, yeah, I rewrote this series in my head. Because, writer.

What if.

What if Our heroine, renamed Linda Lewis, or some other normal name that doesn’t hint a thing, was cool. I mean, with it, on top of her life, ambitious, calculating, willing to take chances. And a force of nature or someone you’d want to hang out with, hear their views. She’s got a sense of humor! She wants to change the world and she’s not asking for permission to do it. Linda can be unsure of herself at times but mostly, she works out what needs to be worked out. She approaches the pornmag producer guy, pitches him her magazine idea and he suggests the nude male centerfold every month. As Linda is mostly okay with her sexuality, she agrees to this, but says she wants to be in charge of the whole enchilada, even the tasteful nudie stuff. They begin a tentative partnership and learn a lot along the way.

I’m so tired of the naive, awful female lead and the cool, with it male lead that makes the female lead look both childish and boringly stupid. See the Ugly Truth, with Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigel. The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock– which, despite her charm and Ryan Reynold’s scowling with his usual charm throughout it–presented a horrible female boss stereotype straight from a Hallmark Christmas collection of Bad Lady Bosses that just need a Good Man to Show Them Some Good Lovin’. Sweet Home Alabama, where Reese Witherspoon went home to shit all over her home town and her parents, yet wound up with her ex-hubbie after…ugh.

So yeah, done with Minx. Boring and irritating, not my cup of anything.

I’m also struggling with Our Flag Means Death. I want to like it more. I just fail at that. I do like Blackbeard. It helps that he’s played by Taika Waititi. I wish this series had centered more around Blackbeard facing the end of his time as the most bad-ass pirate ever. The Stede Bonnet character just repels me so utterly. A guy with a lot of money getting to do whatever he wants. Where in American politics and private blah dee blah have we ever, ever seen this crud?

I need a third to end this TV review rant.

Gilded Age! Now, it’s trashy, but it’s fun, gorgeous trash. I get tired of Marian, the female blond lead who’s so bland she blends into the scenery no matter what she’s wearing. Please, Jesus– let her be ravished by a pack of rabid sailors after that bland and boring lawyer guy sells her to a brothel after her aunt refuses to accept him into High Society. Wheeee!!!!!

And then she’s seen no more when she leaves with the sailors as their new captain. Work it out, writers!

As that would leave far more screen time to the Russels. Not the kids, yuck. Ick. Boring!

No no, Bertha and George Russel are fabulous, arrogant monsters you just love to love. She’s a social-climbing soft-voiced goddess and he’s a fiery, black-bearded robber baron you hope never escapes to run amuck in these here present times. Together they plan to dominate Old Money Manhattan and make it beg for mercy it ever slighted them in the least. Bwhahahahahaha! Yes, please!!

I also love the Peggy Scott character. Upper class black woman, with ambitions to be a writer. Her mom is played by Audra McDonald, of Broadway. The Broadway Audra! If you can’t tell, I love Audra McDonald. But, the show explores the middle class and even upper class POC post-Civil War strata that developed and lead to such things as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I also find it annoying and eye-rolling when the blond Marian doesn’t seem to notice all the rampant racism all around her. Okay, sure. Ahem. But. We do get a scene with her bringing second-hand shoes to gift Peggy with during an unannounced visit to Peggy’s parent’s home. Dorothy Scott, Peggy’s mom, rightfully embarrasses Marian with how Marian expected the Scott family to be near destitute and grateful for a white lady savior. Ouch.

It’s not Downton Abbey. It’s a colorful, somewhat empty, imitation but it’s enjoyable. Watching the New Money sorts clash with the Old Money sorts, great fun. Watching the Russels plow ahead like a team of shiny Clydesdales, also great fun. The two aunts of Marian, played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon, make up for a lot. They remind me of L.M. Montgomery characters, for some reason. I half expected Anne Shirley to pop in for a cup of tea and a saucer of neighborhood gossip.

And there’s servants but nothing so far that grabs the attention or begs for more air time. There’s no Thomas, for instance, slinking about, causing trouble while managing to remain a near tragic figure we have to love. But, maybe in later seasons, the servants will be fleshed out, given actual characters, become part of the stories around them, rather than just set decorations whenever Mrs. Russel stalks by in a red silk dress.

Thomas from Downtown Abbey. Sorry if I lost some of you there.

I wanted to do a fluffy blog post, what with all the horrors here in America and over there in Ukraine. And other places, and other places after that. Oh dear.

Right next door, Ammon Bundy is staging a protest over the state of Idaho stepping in to remove a baby that was being horrifically neglected, as in that baby could have died if something had not been done. This extremist, who’s running for govvie of the state, claims it’s a medical kidnapping and has called for protests and even possible violence if the child isn’t returned to the parents who were abusing it. As these parents seem to be related to Bundy’s campaign manager…it’s a frigging mess in Idaho, in other words, right now.

This bunch of political theatre stunt-makers even shut down a major hospital there in Boise for a bit. The present lieutenant govvie, Janice McGeachin or something like that, attended a white pride rally in the most open and defiant of ways. She’s an elected official. She also wants to be govvie. And she’s batshit insane and a religious nutball. Wheee!! I’m two hours from all this and it sucks. It sucks!

So yeah, I’m watching trashy historical dramas and submitting my writing now and then to the here and there. Spring is around the corner. 2022 already seems a bust. 2023, baby, you gotta give us all some hope, m’kay? Great!

Meridian, Nampa and Boise are close together.

Update– Just saw, in the Idaho Statesman, where the child in question was returned to the parents, more than likely because of Bundy’s threats and bullying. It really can be an awful world at times. I doubt those parents have seen the light. And terrorism wins in Idaho.

Aftermath: Boise, Idaho

My third book, AFTERMATH: BOISE, IDAHO, is now available as an e-book, with the paperback due in a bit. Enjoy!

Dead Battery and Zombies

So yes, yours truly slumped off to work, only to find I LEFT THE KEY ON in the car and…dead battery, anyone. Anyone?

Have to wait a bit to get a jump. Thoroughly bummed about what a dumbass I can be and…didn’t I promise the next post about be about my third book?

I sure did!

AFTERMATH: BOISE, IDAHO

What is it about? About novel length. I’ll show myself out. Thank you, thank you, try the chicken! Tip your waiters.

Ahem.

Here we go—

Aftermath: Boise, Idaho.

Native Idahoan Hannah Gray kills herself, as the zombies scratch at the door of the apartment she’s holed up in. However, she wakes up in an office, in Boise, Idaho. Hannah has no idea what she’s doing here or what she’s supposed to be doing in this workplace full of women doing busy work. To her horror and confusion, the boss seems to be an actual zombie or, in this new reality, called a Fecto. To her further disgust, the Hannah who belongs in this world seems to be having an affair with one of the other Fecto bosses, who goes by the name Harrison Squack. The other Hannah was apparently a double agent in this bizarre new world. A strange society where zombies are in charge of everything versus the humans who have to just grin and bear it. Or else these naughty humans get sent to Salt Lake City for ‘retraining’, wink wink. Or just disappear or get featured on the news as suicides or as going against the nice Fectos who just want a better society for all. There’s, naturally, a rebellion afoot! The local Fectos seem all over that! Hannah plays it cool as possible but she soon sets off a chain of events that leads to some wacky, wild and, ultimately, tragic events.

Doesn’t that sound like something you’d like to read?

Yes! Yes, it does.

When is it available? FuckifIknow.

Soon? It will be soon. It’s in final editing.

Have a better Sunday than me, my fellow babies. Wear your masks!

Rebirth Rebirth!

 

A still from the Red Turtle. The Red Turtle will not be mentioned once in the following blog. 

Instead of Rejoice Rejoice…

The [new] computer is now working. One of those refurbished deals. Man alive, it’s FAST. Whizz! Whoom! Oh hey I can play Candy Crush now. My priorities are catawampus a wee small bit. 

Lesson for writers: Send out lots of submissions. Instead of, like, three. Yep. Glad I could help! Volume. Volume is the key here. That way when you get rejected, it won’t seem so thousand percent everyone hates your work. Volume will spread that out a bit. That’s the theory, anyway. Wink!

ABPIP– always be positive in public

Notre Dam has burned. Something ancient, something grandly lovely, something fragile, has been destroyed. For now. It was being renovated. So perhaps something sparked. As it can do. Whomp whoosh, medieval wood ceiling might as well be made of gasoline cans. I did hear great efforts managed to save some of it. And I am glad of that. 

People claim terrorists did it. Like Glenn ‘Puppy Eater’ Beck.  Or that God is sending a message. [Most of the crazier religious sorts on Twitter.] With various interpretations as to what that message is. Others make jokes or shrug. I guess the football team can still play…seems to be some people’s confused take on the fire there in Paris. [As Notre Dame is a school and…yeah.] 

So am figuring out things and stuff on the new computer. It does read my thumb drive/s. That’s excellent well. Very leery of this newish machine. I trusted the old one, after all. Which was also refurbished. And worked for ten years. If not longer. 

Oh! Game of Thrones was on all week on free HBO. Which is good. As it was the week my elderly other machine decided to beep forlornly at me to bury it in the computer graveyard known as ‘stored in the closet somewhere’. Yes, I did see the new ep and I am literally a quivering, miserable happy mass of cells. Will Jon accept his birthright? Will Dani find out she’s likely preggers with her nephew’s kid? Will the Night King discover that Cersei is far far far colder than he is? Will Sansa and Tyrion get together for real?? [Heard people contemplating that one…] Arya and the Hound, a new buddies cop spinoff? Brienne and the big red-headed guy? Romance or…? [my absolute fave want them together couple ever on GOT. I am not alone in this one.] So, one zombie dragon took down the Wall? 

I was also watching Return of the King, as I had to find a new app to play DVD’s and the like so…and it was right there. Shh. Now. Where were the elves at? Mirkwood and Loth-whatever? [Did they all go get on the ships? All of them?] I mean, that group of elves showed up for the Battle of Helm’s Deep. The elves couldn’t send twenty or so to fight in the big ass giant battle in ROTK?? What about the dwarves? Gimli cannot be the only dwarf left and he was a fearsome, awesome fighter. So? Was there some plague that killed off the dwarves or they were busy or…did I miss that in the umpteen times I watched the LOTR movies? 

So!! I have two books for sale. House on Clark Boulevard and Oregon Gothic. They’re GREAT! I also have Aftermath now in editing. It’s about Boise and…ZOMBIES. But aware zombies that run the world. Yeah, now you’re hooked! You’ve always wanted to know about Boise! Ha ha ha! 

 

It’s June already??

Just having some fun. It’s June now!

I should probably start off June with something about writing projects. The committee of puppets in my head nod and agree, yes, I should do just that.

Ah so, gentle readers and assorted indifferent passerbys– I wrote this short novella on zombies…Stop right there.

I fleshed it out, ha ha. It’s now novel-length. It deals more with menstruation than zombies. Just kidding, of course. I’m not that far gone into Womanlandia. Menstruation, eh, gross. We’ve come such a long way, right??

Where was I?

I call it, for now, Aftermath.

I know. Generic as all get out. But it works. I will probably keep that title. A good title is ninety percent of the battle or something. I learned that in grad school! Go Running Rebels! [Google is your friend if you don’t know what school that is.]

I found a scrap of paper with– woman wakes up after killing herself during a zombie apocalypse.

That was it. That ‘sparked’ something. I started writing. As one does.

That actual first draft was shit. Just crap on toast. I cringed reading it over. Cringed! I started over. Better, not great, but better.

I got to where Our Heroine Hannah faces a giant crater in a road. With some ideas of she should be taken to the camps of the resisters or be taken to the military base to be dealt with or…yeah.

I grew all wishy-washy and unsure. And put the project away.

So. Time passes. I delve back into Aftermath.

Ideas flow like cheap supermarket markdown boxed wine into a Styrofoam cup. 

So, I write the ending…which just ‘works’ for me. I have to now write the penultimate part before that ending.

Four or five options present themselves here. I write them out, I discard them, go back to them, ponder over them, call myself a cunt a lot, and then happen on a sort of happy-ish pre-conclusion that rings a bit more true than the others.

Wait, what’s the plot, you might even be asking yourself at this point, if you’ve bothered to read this far. Here we go!

Hannah kills herself rather than be eaten by the zombies who’ve cornered her in the very ruined wreck of Boise, Idaho. The world has been overrun and destroyed, she’s had enough of trying to survive. However, instead of going off to hell or heaven or just dying, Hannah wakes up in an office. Run by zombies. She is a fish out of water here, trying to navigate her new existence among people who seem to know her. She finds herself at the center of plots and counter-plots, caught in some office three-way with her zombie boss and some guy named Kevin, who is one of the leaders of the resistance against the zombie overlords. Zombies, by the way, run everything. The word zombie has been outlawed, and any fighting back against the absolute zombie control gets dealt with quickly. The zombies control the banks, the police force, government, everything. Hannah, thrown into this, muddles through as best she can and ends up making a series of decisions that lead her into the Idaho mountains, in pretty much the same world she found herself before she cut her wrists.

 
Now, that sounds grim, but it’s not. I found myself laughing at pragmatic, practical Hannah quite a bit. I enjoyed making up slang that might get used for those in charge who smelled like three day old fish left out on a hot summer day. I enjoyed writing this! I used bad words and am probably an indecent blah blah blah.

Let June ring her bells and let me get Aftermath polished up enough so that if it comes out to the public, I won’t have to pretend that some other Ann Wuehler wrote that. Or that I was doing lots of crack. Or Ambien. Ha ha. Had to. 

Oh, on a last note. My poor cucumber plant! It became dotted with tiny black bugs that laid tiny white eggs. I looked up how to ‘naturally’ take care of that problem. As I didn’t want to spend bucks on some chemical composition or powdery devil powder. Maybe I had something in the fridge or the cupboards that would make those damnable little bugs march off for greener pastures. Get it? Greener pastures?

Yeah. Beer, salt, flour.

Now, I did pour beer on the poor thing. I should have waited several days and been patient. I applied some salt. Again. I should have waited to see if the beer would work. It’s…on life support at this point. I’ll pinch off the bad leaves and let it recover if it wishes. I just went out to check on it and the yard bunnies fled in all directions.

It’s chilly this morn, but that baking dry heat will arrive and the dust will coat everything and we’ll watch the skies for any sign of rain, dreading the lightning that will ignite wildfires…but that’s a week or so away.

Maybe we’ll get lots of rain all summer! If you live around farmers for any amount of time, by the way, you’ll find eighty percent of your thoughts center on what the weather is doing at any given moment and the other twenty percent centered on writing zombie novels.

Aftermath slithered from brain to page fairly easily. It poured like cheap ketchup onto scrambled eggs. Not that I even like ketchup. I’m trying to describe how readily this tale leaped from brain to my typing fingers.

Is that good or bad? Should writing on a project involve long periods of agony and doubt and dark reflections on the nature of life itself?? Or just be a fun romp used to remain almost totally isolated from humanity?

I hope that poor cuke plant recovers. I hope the weather warms up a bit but doesn’t go into those damn Mojave level temps. I hope June turns out to be not my usual June, where I…nope. Just write, honey. Just write!

Thunderstorm about to hit.  Wheat field. Appropriate scenery for a zombie tale, tee hee. 

Boise

Oh, hi. I just wrote a mostly focused blog post on musicals. I should go rest on my laurels until well after Hellmas is over and done with for another hell-stained year.

I have to drive to Boise today for X. I will not bore you with this one. But a trip, nonetheless I shall be making. Over several rivers and through no woods I go. The Malheur, the Snake, the Boise, in case someone at home is about to write me a long comment about how there are no rivers in Eastern Oregon/Western Idaho and how dare I say otherwise. I imagine imaginary commenters. Because no one comments here, I have to make up scenarios in my head where people comment and get bothered enough to fling some words in my general direction. 

I am not bitter. 

Yes. Yes, I am.

Now. Boise. It’s a maze of one-way streets downtown. It’s not as bad as, say, Portland or Eugene for trying to get from point A to point 7, but it’s close. It’s getting there! The city of Boise is trying to beautify, rebuild and otherwise make it look pretty so people will go there and buy stuff and enjoy organic greens, at the cozy, spendy eateries, greens that are grown in Boise neighborhood gardens. Or something like that. Make Idaho Great Again. MIGA! 

I’d like to stay home and write. Or play Candy Crush, which after YEARS of not letting me advance, has suddenly let me advance to new levels again. I know! Candy Crush, you moan to yourself. Oh Annie! No, resist! Don’t call me Annie. Don’t. 

I should be submitting to contests, festivals and literary journals. Polishing my words into brilliant diamonds of truth and beauty! And then sending them off with all the other brilliant diamonds! All those other brilliant diamonds of others that get sent in, so that we all sit there in a shiny to-read pile! Wheeeee!

The Last Jedi is also in my seen-that list. I saw it. I wuvved it! What’s with the grumbling?? Is it all the actual women in leadership roles? Stuff doesn’t blow up enough? I bet it’s that stuff doesn’t explode enough, right? And how cute were those bird things? Cute! I now want one. Marketing works! [Porgs. Those bird things are called porgs. Now. Where can I get one?] 

Boise, that’s where this ode to vagueness began and where it shall end! Boise, city of trees. Tree City! I shall come back from my X mission and drink some tequila. I have a feeling…no, mustn’t jinx it. The gods laugh. Jinxed already, hon! Tee heee hee, goes Odin as Jesus slips a whoopee cushion under Allah’s saddle. And then everyone laughs at the long farting noise. What did you think would happen?

PS– as this pertains to the Last Jedi and my Boise trip…

There I sat, with my cup of spendy joe and my trashy fluff-bit of a novel, when I overheard the whine of an insectile voice. It rose and fell on the horrors of the Last Jedi and that this insect-voiced male would not ever!! consider it part of the real Star Wars oeuvre. I shifted about, mostly because the chair I sat in proved not that welcoming and due, also, to my almost-need to go argue merits of that film with the whine-voiced sort. I did not wish to cause a fistfight, not so close to Christmas!

There was a diss about how Luke had been ruined and some smack talk about Rey. The running time got compared to Blade Runner. The new one, the old one? Oh the questions that festered in my listening heart! Whatever else got spewed out I’ve chosen to block out, obviously.

And then…ah, eeeh, this loud and belligerent wasp– I did not actually do a casual looksee about the coffee shop/cafeteria to get a gander at this noble and loud being–went onward to extol the virtues of the Transformers movies. Not all of them were worthy of his seldom-given praise, but still, he was quite effulgent and moist-voiced on that first Transformers movie. I snickered at the hubris of others and returned to the adventures of a very privileged gal having mild adventures in Manhattan. I also patted myself on the back for minding my own beeswax and liking coffee. Well done, you, I told myself. Well done!

 

 

The House on Clark Boulevard!!

 

THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD IS FULL OF LADYBUGS.

That is a line from my latest stab at the third book of my ‘trilogy’. Saint Lysette and Bloody Alice. The second is done– Alice in Oregonlandia.

I’ve started that third book over X amount of times [at least four] and have stumbled upon…well, will do a whole blog post on that. I am determined that September will be ABOUT WRITING AND WHAT I’M WRITING OR ELSE I’LL EAT MY OWN HAT. I have two hats. One is from Thailand. I won’t eat that one. Because I got it in Thailand and I need to remember I was once a brave little world traveling cookie.

American politics, at the moment, make me want to write snarky comments under news stories and start my own religion so I can get a megachurch, too. The Church of Annabella. I’ll preach on America First, everyone else can just suck it and why guns are holy and in the Bible. 

Hence, the focusing on the gentle art of writing and the gentler art of promotion of said writings. Yippee skip, my cowpokes and cowladies. Mostly because anything I write that way– [I edited out a mini-rant on AmeriJesus running over SJW’s in a chariot. Uh huh.]– makes me a bit, well, unfocused and scattershot. So!! Let’s get promotin’!! Isn’t this fun?

The first leg comes out in September. The House on Clark Boulevard.

Ghosts. Holiday meals. Human sacrifice. Will Nancy ever get those Christmas cards written? How can a housewife get a kid potty-trained if she’s fighting the forces of darkness? Who is Mr. Peepers and just why does Mr. Blue do what he do? Who will get up to let Fred in? It’s certainly not Art! Will that turkey ever cook?? Is Calgon far more magical  than that company let on? Find out these questions and more!!

The House on Clark Boulevard.

The street is real, by the way. That house, which is one of the characters in this book,  was one of my childhood homes. I was just a little older than Alice Stockhorst when I lived in the actual house on Clark Boul-de-bard. That’s how I said it, because I was, like, four or five.

We were living in Washington State by the time I hit first grade…Paterson Elementary, where you could spend your whole recess watching barges go up and down the mighty Columbia if you so wished. We took field trips to McNary Dam [giant man-eating catfish!] and to Tri-Cities [Pasco, Kenniwick and Richland] to see the ballet. Memory, it cleans up those images you wish to be sparkly and nice, doesn’t it. Oh yes.

Oh, I made my grandmother–the real Grandma Joan in my about to hit the market book, whose middle name was Joan– drive us past the dead bull when I lived in that house. A dead bull they had not yet taken away. Yes, one of the truly darker parts of that happy fantasy friendly barn yard picture some of you hold dear in your heads. What happens to large dead animals? When they get all ripe and stinky and very very very dead? La la la!

It fascinated me, that gas-bloated dead behemoth, and she indulged my morbid tastes, like any good granny does. Kids, they love death and gooshy stuff. That shiny, balloon-looking carcass we had to visit as long as it remained a fixture of the landscape. Back then the roads had not yet been paved and the ruts shook her little car.

A Lynx. Or maybe that car came later, maybe she had another car before that, there’s so few left to ask. And I find I’d rather romanticize than ferret out the boring make and model of whatever car she ACTUALLY had at that period of time. I remember her silver Lynx, a Ford. I remember the bull and my grandmother driving us by it so I could get a good look. That much is true. That much will go in the documentary called What Ann Wrote. It will be produced two hundred years from now when people ‘discover’ my writing and there’s fan clubs and…

Oh look, there’s me not being a total unicorn-happy butterfly of positivity!

Sorry.

Back to this book about to TAKE THE WORLD BY STORM. Yay!!!!

A friend of mine has helped me set up readings. In Ontario, Oregon. At the local library and possibly, at this little wine place that features ‘local talent’. Second and Wine is the name in case you’re ever in Ontario, Oregon. Chefs, authors, foot models, who knows. I don’t get out and about, I am not in the loop, even the tiny Eastern Oregon/Western Idaho loop. I’m nearly a total recluse at this point in time.

So, the reading/s.

There might even be a Boise, Idaho one. Big city, bright lights, fellow babies. I know, Boise is relatively ‘small’ when compared to, say, Los Angeles or Hong Kong, but I am not getting on a bunch of planes to go to Hong Kong. That takes more than the seven dollars I have in my purse at the moment. Just saying. There might be ‘some places’ in north Boise– which is apparently the arty end?

If you know Boise at all, that’s mildly funny. If you have no idea what a Boise is or have never heard of the state of Idaho, well. Maybe that’s God’s will working wonders in your life, who can say at this point in the narrative. I’m being totally, like, sarcastic, so let’s return to our regular blog post road, shall we?

Being a grad school grad, I’ve had public readings of my stuff.

Oh yes. I’ve seen my work done on stage, either really well or so badly I actually died a little. I’ve had to sit and take criticisms that were more about tearing me apart than addressing my work. I’ve gotten great stuff from actual enemies who hated my guts. I’ve gotten many a neutral ‘good job’ from actual friends who perhaps didn’t wish to hurt my feelings.

So I’m not shaking over reading a few pages for the public’s amusement/boredom. I probably will be a lot more nervous once actual dates and times are nailed to that cross of public speaking, oh yes. But it will be more about– what do I wear, my hair should be murdered with a nuke, should I just shave my head or what and what did I do with my beige iridescent lipstick? [A shout out to the real Dirty Dancing]

Oh hey, I have a new book coming out!! You can buy Oregon Gothic!! I also write plays, so produce them!! I’m fabulous!!