Happy Friday, Lurkdom! I hope you all have splendiferous plans for the weekend. I'm going to continue to work on my word count and ponder the writing life *. I've been thinking a lot about first drafts. For the last two years, my writing group has been critiquing Nemesis' sophomore effort--a novel of undetermined genre or target audience. This past Wednesday marked the review of his final chapters** for submission. There's not much nice to say about Nemesis' writing***. It's not stellar, it's not mechanically sound, and the plot is thinner than gruel. I spend a good chunk of my critting time yelling at the page (and not in a good way) and tweeting comments about what I'm reading. Wednesday wasn't any different. In fact, it was worse. As I read chapter 35A, I grew more and more enraged. Pages of pointless backstory. No action. No dialogue. More repetition than Groundhog Day. Nothing happened. I read ten pages of straight telling. I had enough. ...

In case you're not a book nerd, you might not know that it's Banned Books Week . I think it's important to recognize books that have been banned or challenged because they usually end up being some of the most influential books in terms of outlook or genre*. And without fail, they're challenged because they make you think, deal with magical-elements-which-means-they're-the-spawn-of-satan, or have gratuitous sex and drugs. Please. While we're at it, why don't we ban most of the shows on MTV, the CW, and FOX? Or is it perfectly acceptable for your 13 year old to watch Snooki be drunken mess and attempt to hook up with her housemates? Oh, is that hypocrisy on your face? It angers me. I think it's in within your right as a parent to decide what your child can or cannot read, but don't make that decision for my kid. (I'm look at you, Tara Wolstein**. Now that I've gotten off my soapbox, I present one of my favorite books that has been chal...

Yesterday Hubby and I went to King Richard's Faire with a few friends. KRF is the renaissance faire that happens every weekend in September and October in Massachusetts. There are only two reasons I go. Historically inaccurate costumes, and The big cat show (To be honest, if we didn't have half off tickets courtesy of Groupon, I probably wouldn't have gone. It's overpriced, cheesy, and you have to pay for tons of stuff once you get inside anyway.) That out of the way, I have something to say to those in the Lurkdom who go to Ren faires and decide to dress up: please dress per the time. In recent years, I've seen Sith lords, Obi Wan, and medieval vikings to name a few. People, it's a renaissance faire . That means if you decide to dress, you dress in things like this: Image taken from here . Well, maybe not that extreme, but definitely you don't get tarted up in barely there clothing or go as a modern day ninja. Commit yourself, people. Pleas...

While staying at the Real World Cottage, we had the redneck neighbors from hell. Their yard housed tetanus and their porch was loaded up with, erm, crap. They were loud. They climbed onto the roof of their cottage more than once - with one of those times in a gorilla suit. The grandmother was nice enough to let us search their yard for the badminton birdie, so I overlooked everything except the gorilla suit. (I tried to get a picture but couldn't.) Correction. I overlooked everything except the suit until I saw the 9 year old with a live crab. He stuck the crab on the side of the road and pelted it with pine cones trying to get it to move. He wanted to see it get run over by a car. The child ran off as a couple of walkers happened by. They wondered how the crab got this far from the beach. Hubby and I used this moment to rescue the crab. We stuck him in a bowl with water and brought him back to the shore where I'd like to think the gulls left it alone. If they didn't,...

First off, I've noticed I've gotten some new followers. Hi, welcome, and Happy Monday. A few months ago, Cathy in marketing showed me the most disturbing Etsy find ever. The release of Regretsy reminded me of it's existence. Yes, this is a unicorn. Yes, you can find it on Etsy . Yes, this bothers me. While taxidermy is useful from a scientific perspective, I wouldn't want to own any. If I really want to see some, all I need to do is go to the Harvard Museum of Natural History where they have a full display from fishes to cloven footed animals. Maybe I should write a letter. Dear Taxidermist, While I appreciate the work it took to make this unicorn and how in some sense of the word, it's art, I'm more than a little skeeved by the concept. I see you also have a traditional white unicorn, both from dead-from-natural-causes lambs. I think that may be what's bothering me. Kudos for working with what you got, but I don't need the guarantee ...

Dear Parent, We are currently planning an in-school field trip in our sixth grade science classes, and your child is invited to participate. Please read carefully the information about this field trip, below. If you would like your child to participate, please sign the Parent Permission Form (attached) and return it by the date indicated. Students who do not return a signed Permission Form by the deadline date will be denied participation in this trip. Again this year, all costs for field trips must be borne by the students participating. All payments for field trips must be in the form of checks made out to the middle school. Please be advised that the school will impose a $15 fee for any check that is returned, to cover our own bank charges. Please also be advised that if the Superintendent of Schools deems it necessary to cancel a field trip at the last moment due to unforeseen circumstances, a full or even partial refund may not be possible to be granted, and the school or dis...

Before my full-time temp job, I worked part-time at a local florist. I had gotten the job because I knew how to turn on a monitor. I started working shortly after my honeymoon and would still be there if it wasn't for our suck-ass economy. I learned enough in 18 months to become a junior designer - a feat that would be much more impressive if there were more than me, the owner, and her dog. The job was great. My days were short enough that I could get writing or laundry done in the morning without waking up too early. The dress code was casual - as long as it wasn't offensive, I could wear it. More than half of the year was spent in velour pants just because. My boss, even though a flake, was fun to work with. It sucked when it was the holiday season because the tempo of the store went into triple-manic mode. My boss didn't handle stress well and her brain would shut down. This mean miscommunication would hit hard; we would spend most of Christmas Eve and Valentin...

It's not, actually. But Laura over at Combreviations posted this yesterday and I have been reading it in horror since. My Life is Twilight is a fan generated site about, you guessed it - TWILIGHT and all things that fall under it's helm. Resplendent with typos, it's pretty easy to share with the world how your life doesn't exist without this world. Before you get all pissy at my hating on this site, I'd like to point out that I have no problem with fandom. Fandom is a right of passage as a teen and most of us carry it well into adulthood. I'm a fangirl of all things Dark Tower, for example. I was also a card carrying Aerosmith die hard until I tore up my contract . I know how it is to argue over the finer points of a good book and which character is the best. My friend Danielle and I have spent more than one all nighter arguing over The Vampire Chronicles. We've debated over whether or not Stephen King really needed to add that last bit in Dark Tower...