A Laxative Walks Into A Bar ...

Do not fire nail gun at people, pets or windows. Do not stick fingers in moving blade of finish mower. Do not get clothes caught in PTO drive of tractor. Do not drive tractor under low power lines with the bucket up. Unplug wood chipper before clearing jam. Do not handle chainsaw by its blade ... Back when I had the farm, I used to love collecting the craziest warning cartoons from the various pieces of equipment we amassed over the years, and speculate on the real-life situations that prompted them. 

(Which is an admittedly gruesome hobby, but, hey! We all get our jollies where we can find them.)

I've had fewer opportunities to amuse myself with large equipment in recent years--most of Arizona's and my yard equipment politely requests eye protection and caution when in use, and not much else. And, to be honest, he does most of the yard work anyway, while I keep the house more or less in order. (Not a particularly gender-neutral division of labor, granted, but it works for us. And, besides, I once read that couples in which the guy tends to do the traditionally male chores have more sex. Not sure if that's really a thing, but chicken, egg, who cares as long as you get scrambled on a regular basis?) 

The other day, though, I was putting away some stuff in the bathroom, and caught sight of the following on the box of an ear-wax-removing kit: Never use toothpicks or hairpins to remove wax from the ear canal. And I thought "Whaaa ...?"

You know how little snippets of favorite books get stuck in your brain? Well, one of mine is from one of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, in which Ford (I think?) discusses finding detailed instructions on the side of a box of toothpicks, and knowing that the human race was ultimately doomed, because any species that needs help picking stuff out of their teeth with a stick is really beyond help. 

So the discovery of this little earwax gem got me wondering what other silliness might exist in my bathroom cabinet. I did a little rummaging around, and found the following:

On a bottle of painkillers: Do not take this product if you have an allergy to it. An allergic reaction may follow. (Paging Captain Obvious.)

On my solid antiperspirant: Do not ingest. (Doc Jess pictures herself thinking, "Wow, it's really hot out today, I better eat a whole stick before my date." *Nibbles on a stick of Lady's Choice.*)

On a bottle of spray sunscreen, a tube of aloe-based sunburn creme and a box of the fizzy denture cleaner I use on my Invisaligns: Not for Internal Use. (Because, really, I worry about my sunburning my internal organs, and it'd be easy to confuse my denture cleaner with my Tums. Not.)

But my favorite comes from a bottle of laxative tablets: Store at 25C (77F). Excursions permitted between 15-30C (59-86F). I had never before considered taking laxatives out on an excursion. Where do you think they would like to go? The beach, perhaps, or out to a movie? The mind boggles.

Okay, so maybe I didn't find any laughably dire warnings on my hair drier (I think that particular label fell off, and I know enough not to dry my hair whilst showering) or my pillow (I long ago tore off the tag that said "Do not tear off", 'cause I'm a rebel like that). But it turns out there's more entertainment in the bathroom cabinet than I would've thought. And that was just one shelf! One of these days, I'll go through the rest and report back. In the meantime, I'm taking my laxatives to the zoo. 

Brain Bleach on Aisle Five, Please! (And a confetti cannon moment)

The other day, it went like this:

Arizona (perusing one of his online fishing forums): Do you know this guy? There's a joke I'm not getting. (shows me the following picture): 

Me: Hmm. I dunno. One of the dudes from Duck Dynasty, sans beard? (pauses) Or, ha ha, one of the guys from Deliverance, maybe? We could do a Google image search.

Arizona: You can do that?

(We all have our little skills. Mine is the ability to find most anything on Google within a relatively short period of time. I'm sure the average six-year-old could kick my ass, but as far as Arizona is concerned, I'm a black belt in Google-Fu.)

Me: Sure. You just do this ... and this ... and ... What do you know? It *is* one of the guys from Deliverance. Yikes. I saw the movie once, back in high school. Guess it left a mark.

And when I say 'in high school,' I mean it. History class, last period, junior or senior year. The prof sent around a permission slip, asking our parents to sign off on us seeing it, and opt-outs were sent off to study hall. Then, for three afternoons running, we watched Deliverance. And after that last chunk, we all walked out of the classroom, shaking our heads and muttering the late-80s version of WTF?

There wasn't any in-class discussion before or after, no sense of what we were supposed to take away. It wasn't the first movie we had seen in class, but the others had been war movies-- 1776, The Red Badge of Courage, The Great Escape ... They had at least related to what we were studying at the time. 

But Deliverance? What were we supposed to take from that? Be wary of banjos? (Prior to seeing the movie, I had a worn Earl Scruggs tape that I loved to death, rewinding the banjo duel over and over again. After the movie? Less so.) Don't go camping? Or, if you do go camping, watch out that your party doesn't undergo a breakdown of its mini-society? Don't wander off into the woods? Unclear. But whatever the message, something clearly stuck, because twenty-some years later, I had that search image stuck firmly in my head, and it brought with it a creeping sense of 'someone is watching you from the bushes.'

Yikes! Brain bleach on aisle five, please, because clearly that left more of a mark than I realized! So how about you? What movie left a horrifying-funny mental mark on you? Did Jaws forever ruin you for swimming off Cape Cod? Did It make you a coulrophobe (someone who's afraid of clowns)? Share, please, and make me feel better!

And, in the meantime, a confetti cannon! (Jess tries and fails to put an animated cartoon confetti cannon here. Please imagine one.)

Harvest at Mustang Ridge spent a chunk of last week in Amazon's top 10 for Western Romances, and cracked the top 100 for Hot New Releases in Contemporary Romance! Woo! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those of you who purchased Krista and Wyatt's story. And for those of you who are still on the fence, now is a great time to dip you boots into the world of Mustang Ridge! It even had a price drop today! (Okay, from $5.99 to $5.97, but still ... LOL.) 

Click on the book cover for the Amazon link, or click here for an excerpt :) And THANK YOU!

I Am Mean To Naked People (and a NEW BOOK!)

No, I’m not mean to my new book. I’m asking you to pretty please buy a copy of HARVEST AT MUSTANG RIDGE, which will be in stores (online and a few select physical locations) tomorrow!

Click here for an excerpt!! Click here for buy links!!! Click here to get Jess to stop abusing exclamation points!!!! (Just kidding. There’s no app for that.)

I am, however, mean to naked people, as it turns out.

Admittedly, Arizona and I don’t have the most highbrow of taste when it comes to TV viewing. (Or, really, much of anything, save for sports equipment and my Western boots.) So it isn’t unusual for the following conversation to take place:

Arizona (flipping channels): Is there a new Naked People on soon?

Me: Sunday night, I think.

Arizona: Cool. Maybe these two will do something more interesting than sit around and starve.

In this case, the naked people belong to the Discovery Channel show, Naked and Afraid, where two strangers, one man and one woman, are dropped somewhere isolated and environmentally hostile, with one piece of gear a piece (usually a machete and fire-starter, though the latter can vary if one of them—usually the guy—views him/herself as a magician when it comes to starting fire with a bow drill). Then they’re filmed for twenty-one days of survival, and an eventual trek out to an extraction point some distance away from their campsite.

Before and after the ordeal, they are rated based on their experience, abilities, and mental toughness. Otherwise known as “Have you ever made a fire?” “Can you find food?” and “Can you manage not to tap out or be a total douche (or bitch) to your partner for three weeks?” The latter seems to be the tipping point for most of them.

The show appeals to Arizona’s survivalist tendencies, though from his running commentary, I suspect he would be off making his own camp by day three if paired with most of the people on the show, male or female. Me? I watch the show strictly for his MST3000-like asides, which elevate things to a whole new level. I didn’t think I was much of a fan.

The other day, though, I was channel surfing and stumbled across something called Naked Dating. And I thought “Why not?” Here’s the setup: A naked guy gets set up with a naked girl on your typical TV-type date at some swanky beach resort, they like each other well enough, and express mutual affection. Then the naked guy gets set up with a hotter naked girl, while the naked girl gets set up with a less confident, less charming naked guy. When the four mingle, Naked Girl 1 gets the cold shoulder from Naked Guy 1, and angst ensues.

And guess what? Turns out I would much rather watch naked people get dropped on some mountain in Belize, where they freeze their butts off, get chewed on by a cloud of mosquitos! Because if I'm going to watch two people be naked and miserable, I'd way rather it be in a situation where some ingenuity and teamwork can get things done ;)

How about you? What’s your guilty viewing pleasure? Are you a fan of cheesy shark movies on SyFy? A closet watcher of Toddlers and Tiaras? Soaps? Judge Judy? ‘Fess up!

Photobombed: the Kristan Higgins edition

So there we were on the last night of the Romance Writers of America convention in San Antonio, in the late-night scrum that always gathers after the awards ceremony--me, Gail (a fabulous friend and soon-to-be-released Kensington author that you'll be hearing more about in a few months) and the amazingly talented Virginia Kantra ... three roommates who had spent the week navigating workshops, signings, meetings, and more restaurants than I want to admit to (my scale lies, I tell you, LIES!). 

It went like this:

Virginia: Let's get a roomie photo! Hey, you! Random stranger! Will you take our picture?

RS: Of course! Okay, scootch in there and say "sexy cowboys!"

Jess, Virginia and Gail: Sexy cowboys! 

RS: *snaps picture* *fiddles with phone* Okay, let me make sure it looks ... (burst out laughing)

Because here's what we got:

Yes, folks, that's a Frownyface Photobomb from uber bestselling (and totally amazing) author Kristan Higgins because we hadn't invited her to be in the picture (and, well, because she saw the opportunity and took it, and she's like that!).

So we tried again: 

Much better! 

Many, many thanks to those of you who stopped by to visit at the booksigning (and let me tag along on some touristy stuff!), and also to those of you who raised your hands last week to get advance copies of HARVEST AT MUSTANG RIDGE. I'm sending out another batch of books today, now that I'm back home. As for the rest of you, it's available for preorder now, and will be in stock next Tuesday!!

Goin' West and Book Giveaway!

Arizona: Morning, killer, what have you got on tap for today?

Me: Packing, sending out promo books, updating the website, and blogging about how I'm leaving for the RWA convention in San Antonio tomorrow. And how if folks are in the area, they should come see me in the Hs--for JESSE HAYWORTH--during the big literacy signing on Wednesday. It's gonna be the bomb.

Arizona: I thought you didn't like broadcasting when we travel? (Translation: Didn't we agree it's dumb to Facebook vacation stuff while the house is empty?)

Me: Not usually, but you'll be home, and I trust you and the cats to guard The Fortress against any and all marauders while I'm gone.

Arizona (squares shoulders): We're on it. Where's Lucy? We'll go walk the perimeter. Oh, and sweetie? Don't forget to go through your purse this time. 

Okay, so maybe I forgot the last time, and got my pocket knife--the one he gave me on our first date, no less--confiscated by the TSA, which made me very sad. And maybe this time there would be a couple of other goodies that wouldn't pass muster (Arizona worries about me). But, honest, I'm not going to forget this time!

(Adds 'disarm' to my to-do list. Just in case.)

So I'll unpack my knife and such, and I'll pack lots of random stuff I probably won't need and forget things like socks and a hairbrush, and then tomorrow morning I'll be winging off to San Antonio for six days of Romance Writer Immersion Therapy. I'm going to see the Alamo, Eat All The Foods, and reconnect with friends I only see at conventions, even though some of us don't live all that far away from each other. And I'll be signing at the huge (like 400 authors!) literacy signing:

At the "Readers for Life" Literacy Autographing, hundreds of romance authors meet with and sign books for fans, with the proceeds from book sales going to literacy organizations. Since 1990, RWA has raised more than $825,000 to fight illiteracy.

The 2014 "Readers for Life" Literacy Autographing will be on Wednesday, July 23, 2014 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter Hotel in the 3rd floor ballroom.

This year, proceeds from the Literacy Autographing will benefit ProLiteracy Worldwide, Literacy Texas, Restore Education, and Each One Teach One San Antonio.

It's open to the public, and I'll be there signing WINTER AT MUSTANG RIDGE, in the H aisle for JESSE HAYWORTH :)

If you're coming to the conference as an attendee, come see me a second time on Thursday from 3-4:30 at the NAL Spotlight author signing, where you can get a free copy of the new book, HARVEST AT MUSTANG RIDGE!

And speaking of free copies of HARVEST AT MUSTANG RIDGE, I'm mailing out gift packs (including signed books) today to the awesome readers who were gracious enough to post reviews of WINTER during the first couple of weeks it was out. In this day and age, online reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, etc. are critical for authors, as is positive word-of-mouth! 

So if anyone reading this would like to receive a free advance copy of HARVEST AT MUSTANG RIDGE in exchange for posting an honest review or two and mention the book on social media in the first couple of weeks it's out, I would be happy to send you a copy. Just email your snail mail address to drjsandersen AT yahoo.com (check the spelling, as it's a weird one--sorry about that), and I'll send them out as long as I have copies left!

Purple Prose and Way TMI

Last night, it went like this ...

Me (collapses back onto the couch after succumbing to the stomach thing I've been fighting): Ugh. I feel like death on a stick.

Arizona: Poor kid. (pauses, studying me) Death on a stick, huh? Is that like a corn dog?

(On the TV, a Chopped chef starts breaking down a skinned rabbit, talking about how he needs to add fat because it's such a lean meat. The dead rabbit looks like ... well, a dead rabbit. And brings back memories of walking past a certain ethnic butcher's place every day during grad school, and the funk of supposedly edible corpses hanging in the windows mid-August, buzzing with flies.)

Arizona (pondering now): Or are we talking more road kill here? Some sort of rodent maybe, cooked over a campfire? You know, take a stick, shove it up the critter's--

The TV chef (spills out a tub of pale, gelatinously fleshy blobs onto his cutting block): And now, for the sweetbreads! 

Me (claps hand over mouth, bolts for bathroom)

Arizona (voice floating after me): Sorry!

***

And, well, now it's 3 a.m., and I'm up blogging because I feel like death on a stick and have been praying to the porcelain god at regular intervals. Which got me thinking about purple prose and really terrible (or awesome, depending on your point of view) euphemisms. Like death on a stick. Praying to the porcelain god. The old technicolor yawn.

I won't share all of the searches I've run over the years, looking for colorful shorthand phrases for various body parts and bodily functions that will fit in this book or that (or at least provide me with a good giggle), but here are a few of my favorites. For man-parts: purple-helmeted soldier of love, joystick, 100% all-beef thermometer, bacon torpedo. For lady-parts: Bermuda triangle, love lips. For that time of the month (in itself, a euphemism): the fun bits are performing their monthly maintenance (thank you, Arizona!), shark week at cooch creek (one that I probably shouldn't find as funny as I do). For lovemaking: play the game of twenty toes, throw another log on the fire, bump uglies, visit the happy valley ...

Some days, I picture an NSA grunt pounding up an echoing corridor, bursting into her superior's office, and gasping, "I've got an IP address with combined searches for 'how to make a pipe bomb,' 'how to crash a small plane and walk away' and 'what's the largest magazine I can get for a Glock 9 mm?' What should I do?" Her superior just looks at the name, shakes her head, and says, "File it under 'writer, comma, romantic suspense."

(Mind you, I'm sure the grunt is a computer program these days, and the run up the echoing marble corridor is pure fantasy, but, hey. My mind likes scenes, not data streams.)

Anyway, I figure the euphemism searches are more or less safe from that sort of scrutiny ... but I sure do wind up with some weird ads in my sidebar. And if you want to share a euphemism, lay it on me! 

Sharks, snakes and spiders, OH MY!

At a fabulous friend's house this past weekend for a most yummy BBQ (I keep typo'ing that as BBW, which tells you how roly poly I'm feeling the day after--truly the sign of an excellent party), the conversation turned to the recent sightings of Great Whites in Long Island Sound. 

(This is particularly relevant to my beloved and me, as we fish out there in our kayaks and, upon catching a big striped bass or whatnot, will tether it behind the boat and tow it home for dinner. Needless to say, we keep a watchful eye and a sharp knife close at hand to cut the line should the need arise!)

The conversation went something like this:

FabFriend: I saw a picture of all these sharks in the water near some swimmers, maybe down in Florida? *shudders* No, thank you!

Me (because I'm evil and I know what makes her twitch): Okay, you've gotta do one or the other to save your life--Do you swim through those sharks or walk through a room full of snakes?

FF: I die. *holds out bowl* More salsa?

(In retrospect, I should've--hypothetically, of course--put one of her kids in the scene, as she's a real mama bear and would undoubtedly walk across those sharks' backs and use the snakes for jump ropes if her kiddos were involved.)  

If she had turned it back on me, I would've been okay, as I think snakes and sharks are both pretty cool, and love watching them in the wild. If she had asked about putting me in a glass box and filling it with spiders, however, it would've been Game Over! *shivers* *shudders* *does little squirmy I think there's something up my pant leg dance*

You know that meme with a picture of a burning house and the caption "There was a spider, but I think I got it"? Yeah, that's me. Or it would be, if I didn't have that pesky live-and-let-live gene going on. So more often it's that age-old battle cry of: "Honey? Could you come get the spider and take it outside?" (At six-four, Arizona can pluck the suckers off our ceilings flat-footed. And, of course, put bowls and groceries on the tippy top shelves, just so I have to climb up on the counters to get them down.)

The other day, I did the leap-EUUUWGH! thing upon discovering a Giant Wood Spider lurking beneath the solar collector for our motion-activated lights. Whereupon Arizona went into Crocodile Hunter mode and hunkered down to study Mr. Spider, and was all like, "Ohhh, look! Babies! There have to be thousands of them! Come see!"

(Okay, maybe it was Mrs. Spider.)

Me: No. Thank. You. (In retrospect, I should've said, "I die. More salsa?")

How about you ... would you swim through sharks, walk through snakes, or get packed in with spiders? Or, yanno, snag more salsa?