Better than Tryptophan

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, I say, “Oh, bite me.” Seas of troubles suck, and I’m not so much into the suffering of slings or arrows, either, but thankfully, I’ve had people better and smarter than me around whilst hurtling toward ills I know not of. For that, I am very, very thankful.

(Apologies to smart and literate people everywhere for the Shakespeare butchery. Please be nice, though, or I'll hafta take a run at that Potter kid next. And nobody wants that.)

As I come to the close of a tumultuous, confusing, exciting-as-all-get-out week, I’m particularly thankful because:

George once climbed out my basement window only to come right back in again through the front door. There is no better friend, not anywhere, ever. And she lets me call her George.

Kelley is responsible for the boxed wine, underwear blogging, and fire trucks of my life. She listens to my never ending bullshit and only calls me on it when necessary for my own good.

Liane’s unwavering belief in good things to come for everyone around her is so infectious I sometimes get tripped up and believe in it myself. She has no blog, though, so you’ll just have to follow that glow coming from the sky just above Seattle.

If you removed the things about Ben that totally rule, he’d actually be kind of a jerk. Except that he wouldn’t be that at all, so let’s move on.

Sophie wrote one bad-assed mother of a book, and then forgot to stop being sparkly and generous and fun as hell. Nobody remind her, okay?

This post is one great, big sin of omission, I know. I’ve been a sinner and an omitter before, though, and God knows, I’ll be one again. I’m thankful for so much and for so many. And you can bet your ass, I’m thankful for you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Note From the Management

Please be advised that all complaints about this blog, it's author, or her taste in avatar headwear should be directed to agent Josh Getzler at Russell and Volkening, Inc. from this moment forward.

I'm his problem now!

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, 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!