Evelyn Claire is softer and squishier than you or me.

But, don't squish her too much. You'll wanna. But don't.












Oh, and when you see her big sister Amelia, tell her I want to borrow those sequined slides she was rocking on Saturday. And seriously, please don't squish the baby.

Even though you totally want to.

Evelyn Claire McLeod. Born 12:26am, June 12, 2009 (26 minutes plus 1 second too late to share her auntie Mags' birthday. She'll have her own, thank you very much). Squishing rules are in place. Particularly for the uber squisher CLKG. You can't squish her 'till she's bigger.

But did'ja see the fingers? And she's very soft.

For Twizzle

*Vid swiped from Katie Kay's facebook page.

Who the f*%k is Avery?

And what the hell is he doing in my book? I don't know him. My characters don't know him. He could be an axe murderer for all we know, but he's taken up residence in the apartment across the hall from the Damsels regardless, watching the comings and goings like some super-opinionated Greek Chorus, except not like that at all, really. Like something else. Entirely.

And if he does turn out to be an axe murderer, it'll totally mess everything up. He's supposed to be a not-insane perspective in a sea of insane perspectives--providing breathable air to that which exists in a vacuum--and I consider axe murdering to be a not-so-not-insane perspective, myself.

So, I'm putting this out there now, so as to avoid confusion later, and my decision is final and firm. One axe murder (just one!), no matter how minor it may seem in context to the narrative, and the new guy gets it. Gone. Done. Finito. Seriously. I'm not fooling around on this one.

Oh, God. He could be a Republican. Mags is breathing into her paper bag. And blogging in the third person. Oh no! Mags is blogging in the third person!

She's writing. Or something. Nothing good can come of this.

God loves the enablers! (Oh, wait... maybe that's just me?)

My obsession with Kings of Leon is bordering on unhealthy these days. By "bordering" I mean "look behind you," but this is my blog, and frankly I'd prefer not to split hairs if it's all the same to you.

You're so cool.

I've come clean. I showed Jeff my iPod track marks, er, play counts and I've confessed to the file converter downloads that release the inner-geek-I-wish-I-had-hidden-inside-me-but-OH-GOD-my-inner-geek-always-hasta-revert-to-the-google-for-further-instruction, thereby allowing me to spend countless hours ungracefully tweaking downloaded audio files into new yummy-yummy bootlegs.

Jeff loves me so he's concerned, of course. Intervention was swift and it was extreme. We have now dropped more money than anyone would consider reasonable on fifth row center at the Agganis Arena next month.

Always. Marry. An. Enabler. It's awesome.

Here. Let them be your problem for a little while.



I'm gonna go make goggley-eyes at my husband for a spell as I wait for my .mpeg to .mov converter to finish downloading...

But a damn good day for me.

Sophie Littlefield is a writer. She's warm and generous, uber fun, and she makes everyone she comes into contact with feel like superstars-in-waiting (waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to what she knows). Plus, she's got that I'd-hate-her-if-I-didn't-adore-the-hell-outta-her gorgeous thing going on. See? Oh, and she's a writer.

(That part before the last part is a lie, for I am the lying type. I'd never hate Sophie. If I didn't adore the hell outta her I'd just prop her up outside notorious NY publishing watering holes and exploit her Sophiosity to lure in vulnerable publishing types, but I'd never (not ever) hate her, oh no. Sophie is the shit.)

If you don't believe me, just ask St. Martin's Minotaur. They're publishing her debut novel, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, in August 2009. Plus the book to be named later. Oh, and Delacorte thinks her brain is pretty too...

But MAGS! you cry. You're totally self-involved!

Hey! What? Quit that!

But I'm confused! How is this about YOU!?

Me? Oh, right! Me! Okay then. Sophie Littlefield has done something nice again, and she's done it near me. Bestowed upon her by a very smart person was the Sisterhood Award.

The Sisterhood Award is all about sisters, women, girls, girlz. It's about us. Women. Together. And Sophie gave it to some smart women plus me.

I win! And I win again, because I, too, know some smart women I will now pass it along to.

Twizzle. Linda. Underpants. (Get a blog, Frango and Ethel!) I pass this torch onto women of incredible intelligence and charisma.

Girls rule! Just sayin'...

Sophie Littlefield is a writer!

Bleak Geek

Bleak House Books is run by folks with really good stuff in their gourds. I'm a fan, and now they're giving away free (FREE!) books this holiday season. Almost all of them, actually- including the titles that garnered the small house three Edgar nominations this year.You hafta pay the shipping, but you can order as many as you like.

I'm not sure what the end date is on this. I first heard about it before Thanksgiving, but I've not been a good or helpful girl lately. I ordered up Nathan Singer's IN THE LIGHT OF YOU, but I did not think to share. That's not right. I really am very sorry.

Bleak House Books is the shit. Seriously, and in the good way. If you google them up, you'll be impressed. And a little beguiled.

They're nice as hell, too, but don't let that stop you. They publish really, really good books. Follow the links.

Books are good.

I can't believe someone other than me is trying to get me to talk about me, but OKAY!

It has been determined by the wicked and witty H.L. (Heather) Dyer that I have officially napped long enough, and thus, she has tagged me for some hijinx and tombloggery. One does not disobey the wicked or the witty when it pokes you with a stick if one is sincere about keeping her seat at the cool kids table. Seriously.

I will therefore now tell you these seven things about me:

4 goals I have in the next 5 years:

• Pop off a query to the agent most likely to adore badly behaved absurdity with a touch of WTF? to it. That may sound like a simple goal, but it’s a lot more difficult than it sounds. Really. It’s hard to tell those sorts of agents from the other, saner variety. It is. Really.
• Lie around on a chaise lounge while said not-sane agent sells DAMN IT, JANE DAMSEL to a similarly not-sane editor at an appropriately not-sane royalty paying publishing house. Complain a lot when the hubbalummer dumps my lounging ass off the chaise and tells me to get back to the day-job (and to stop counting my eighty-seven dollar advance that I’ve requested be paid to me in singles because it makes it look so much plumper).
• Train the cat to stop licking plastic, or to give up some small portion of the bed, or to at least learn how to keep his middle-of-the night energy bursts confined to Jeff’s side of the bed. Something. Less. Evil. Something.
• Write another book. And another. Preferably to be confiscated from me immediately thereafter by goal number one and goal number two. Oh, and to find the perfect bag.

4 places I will visit someday:

• New York. Preferably often.
• Kauai, then Maui.
• Tom Robbins’ house for brunch or something. I just found out he’s seventy-two. When the hell did that happen? Damn.
• My awesome niece-slash-goddaughter Amelia’s house (3,000 *sigh* miles from here). She’s two next week and newly conversational. She told me on the phone the other night that she wants Uncle Jeff and me to “come over.” Damn.

4 of my favorite foods:

• Falafel with cheese at the Malibu Mutt in the Malibu Colony in Malibu, CA. No, I don’t need to hear it from you that falafel doesn’t traditionally come with cheese any more than I need to hear it that that ain’t tahini, it’s some approximation of tzatziki sauce, kinda, they’ve got in there.It’s a rolled up log of delicious love.
• Mexican food. And sushi. And Thai.
• Belgian waffles and linguica at The Neighborhood Portuguese restaurant in Somerville, MA. The Borges family welcomes you. Seriously, they do.
• My guacamole. I’m lazy about all things food preparation so I almost never have it, but I make the best guacamole ever. It’s true.

4 jobs I’ve had:

• Hospital Administrator.
• Human Services worker/manager/crisis team responder.
• Record store clerk.
• The requisite assorted odd jobs.

2 places I’ve lived:

• Boston, MA.
• Portland, ME.

2 places I’d like to live:

• Kauai (in the Winter).
• Boston (in the not-Winter).

4 things I’d do with my spare time (if I had any):

• Write more.
• Read more.
• Watch Project Runway marathons.
• Buy more bags.

I now tag the ever snoozing Underpants (because I always tag the ever snoozing Underpants), MC Hammer, and This Guy. I don't know him, but his blog is called Down With Pants! There's just no turning away from that.

I was such a nice girl once. I still am, if you can get beyond the blood and murderous carnage...

RULE: You write a book, you go to Paraguay, Uraguay, any other -ugay, or Hawaii. Bora Bora, or any Tihitian local works as transfer credit. You do that. For at least two weeks. Three is preferable.

You do not send emails. You do not put "QUERY:" in the subject line. You do not hit send.

Why? Because sometimes you're asked by others to commit murder, and really, it's best to be fresh for committing murder. I think it's a rule or something. If not, it should be.

I thought I was back. I even relearned how to play Spider Solitaire and found a Cryptograms free game website (mmm... yummy words). No. I'm not back. I need to go on a crime spree now. I'm killing words.

They bleed more than I thought.

Yes, that is, in fact, as (no, MORE!) pretentious than it sounds.

I don't care. I'm tantruming. So there. I just called you sumthin' funny and perplexing, and you didn't even do nuthin'. I did it just 'cos you showed up.

Don't worry. I'm already sorry.

Stoopid writing.

ETA: Quote from the hubbalummer. "You've figured out what to write. Now, I have to figure out what stunt we pull to get your book on page one of YouTube."

Yes. He did. I married well. I'm still tantruming, but...

A Better Life.

I recently finished reading A Better Life, the debut novel by author Rebecca Burgess. The book takes an unflinching look at a family held together and torn apart by a patriarch driven to give his children everything he never had, even as he withholds from them the only thing they've ever really needed, a father.

Burgess has written a stunning novel, populated by characters who are impossible to turn away from, even as the frankness of the narration turns their pained existances very real for the reader. They are allowed redemption, but not without a price, and there is no pie in the sky. Through Burgess's deft deptiction, the small victories in A Better Life feel life changing, and the life changing events startling by a lack of sentimentality in the prose. A Better Life is, quite simply, a beautifully written book.

A Better Life can be found here. Am I shillin' for the author? You bet your ass I am. Rebecca Burgess can be found here. She's a friend of mine and I can't tell you how proud I am of her. It's a bit of a thing to read a friend's book, as I've just discovered for the first time. "The font is lovely and the spelling impeccable" just isn't the sort of compliment you want to give a writer. Fortunately for me (ah! you've wondered how long it would take me to bring this back to me--almost three paragraphs, that's not bad, really), Rebecca Burgess was kind enough to write a great book and write it beautifully.

The font is lovely, and I've found no spelling errors, but A Better Life is a much better book than that.

-Mags.

Can you see me now?

Okay, I think I've fixed my feeds. I've just set up my own feeds, so I can stalk you all again with gleeful abandon (I never got to it on the new laptop after the Dell's untimely passing, and I wasn't really allowed to play with you anyway. Sigh), and sure as shooting, I didn't exist for me either. There's a message in there somewhere, but I'm too post-Jane to sort through it.

Lord knows what I did. I'm sure I was tinkering with something, thinking I was all savvy like that. I am not, nor will I ever be, all savvy like that.

I can now see me again. I did have to delete myself from my Google Reader and re-subscribe to me. I was setting up my RSS links anew on this computer, so I don't know if that needs to be deleted and resubscribed to as well.

Yes, I know. I'm a lot of work. My apologies.

Jane...

Is with her betas now.

Mags...

Is about to slide off her chair and refuse to get up from the living room floor until the nice man brings the pizza.

I owe your blogs love and more. Love shall be delivered as soon as a neuron or two starts firing again.

Indeed.

How the hell am I supposed to sell agents on my fiction when truth goes off and does strange crap like this?

Have you sexually harassed someone today? No? Shame on you!

Why you be hatin' the babies?

In Russia, a 22-year-old woman filed suit against her male employer for sexual harassment after she was locked out of her office for refusing to give him a little something special. This is according to this piece in the Telegraph UK.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

Oh, er... Crap.

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

Yes, reasonable. Certainly. I mean... Well, I'm not sure what I mean, but I've suddenly got that "not so fresh" feeling.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Oh, no, he didn't!

Yes, yes he did, actually. She was attempting to become the third woman in Russia's history to win a sexual harassment action, but that was just silly of her. Girls are for baby making and pleasing their bosses' man parts.

It's true.

I don't know if Russian judges have gavels or not, but I hear a pounding in my head either way.

I take my instructions about as seriously as Jane does, apparently. How seriously is that? The answer is none. None more seriously.

I missed my self-imposed deadline. I'd like to blame the CATASTROPHIC ERROR! I HAVE SHUT DOWN YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM AND REPOSSESSED YOUR COROLLA! message my poor beleaguered Dell scribbled onto the suicide note it tacked to my screen, or the two day migraine New England apocalyptic weather patterns bestowed upon me this past weekend, but that would be disingenuous.

(Disingenuous, but slipped in none-the-less. I'll whore favor where I find it.)

It's Jane. She keeps telling me she's a prettier girl than what she sees reflected in my manuscript, and holy fuck almighty she's a bossy bitch. Frankly, I think she looks perfectly fine, but she's having none of it. Great. Now I write primadonnas. I have to compete for my attention with my own character?

God, it's so close. God, it's been so close for so long now.

Someone please make her stop!

Bob's Big Brother is my big brother too.

See the post below? The one about me? I care more about this than I do about that. Take a screenshot, friends! This won't happen often.

Have you met Bob's Big Brother? He's hot shit. If you've met him you already know this to be true. If you haven't, his mother blogs here. Go on, now. I guarantee you'll fall in love with Bob and with Bob's Big Brother within two-point-three posts or your money back.

The mother of Bob's Big Brother is how the world ends up so fortunate as to find itself in the presence of hot shit. The father of Bob's Big Brother lets people poke fun at him on-line and in person and still holds his wife's hand throughout an hour long book reading, but I suppose that's something else altogether. It seemed worth mentioning, though.

The mother of Bob's Big Brother and I bonded initially over our snotty attitudes and our irreverent senses of everything. We moved on to other things--friendship will do that to a couple of girls, no matter how entrenched they may be in frivolity and slushie machines--and at one point I mentioned the blinding headaches my husband gets, which are caused by lesions he has on his brain.

I remember the response I received from her very soon thereafter. "Does he have Cavernous Hemangiomas?" The words on the screen were breathless. The lack of anything but those words left me that way too. My husband's lesions are something other, but in those five words from his mother, Bob's Big Brother became my big brother too. I suspect that if you or someone in your life suffers daily from a thing or twelve, caused by another thing that can not be controlled, Bob's Big Brother just might become your big brother too.

There's a new cool in town, and I'd be forever grateful if my twelve readers (yes, I'm looking at you too, Googlebot) would click on just a few little links and find out whether you might not be closer to being the little brother or sister of Bob's Big Brother than you thought. House Representative Tom Udall of New Mexico has introduced Resolution 1193, which is expressing "the sense of the House of Representatives that there is a critical need to increase research, awareness, and education about cerebral cavernous malformations."

Yeah, dawg.

His mother can describe it far better than I. If you agree this issue needs more funding (1 out of 200 children are effected, angiomas are so often painful and cause myriad cognative, neurological, and behavioral problems, and yet so few of us have ever heard of them?), smart people have made it super easy for you to help. There's a letter template here. You can just fill in the blanks and send or fax it to your Representative. You can find out just who that is and how to contact him/her here (which is also fun information when you want to argue about transfats or leash laws or that thing you did when you... no, no, that's another blog... sorry, my bad). It'd also be awesome to contact members of the Subcommittee on Health, and hey! look! they're right here!

Or you could educate yourself about Cavernous Hemangioma if that's where you'd like to start. That ain't small. Knowledge is powerful, and you are the great and powerful Oz, as am I. Let's step out from behind the curtain and get this hot air balloon sailing. That's where the real shit happens.

Bob's Big Brother is just doing his thing. His mother is doing hers. Isn't that how the coolest people start their revolutions?

I've got my letter filled out and there isn't a single swear word in it. That's my revolution.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum; or the "S" key on my keyboard is sticking again.

I've given me a deadline.

By the end of this weekend coming, Damn It, Jane Damsel is to be on my desk and ready to start pulling her own weight for once. She's had it pretty cushy so far, if you ask me, so she can do her bit.

She is going to punish me for that one, but whatever. It ain't as though she's had an unimpeachable attitude thus far.

Whenever I get my primadonna working I generally ignore my own blog, but I've been ignoring your's lately as well. I apologize.

I'm very annoying when querying. I intend to annoy the hell out of you again very, very soon. I am apologizing to you now because I'll be far too self-absorbed and angsty to apologize later. Yes, I'll be more self-absorbed and angsty than I am now. I'll be insufferable and utterly around.

I said I was sorry.

You should blame Jane for all of that, but be nice if you can. It's her fault, it really is, but there are circumstances that can be applied to everything.

She's armed, and she doesn't like to be spoken down to. That's all I'm saying