Christie's Top Three Deep, Dark Secrets

WINNER!

Okay…I’m back in Houston. And I’d like to formally invite all of you to Faye Hughes’ wake. Her final resting place will be in my compost pile. Gotta love friends like that, don’t cha?

And the winner of the GOTCHA book is . . . vicariousrising. Please email me at christie(at) christie - craig.com.




Okay, first, pay no attention to what the “Posted By” thingy says this morning on the Killer Fiction blog. Christie didn’t write today’s entry. I did. (With “I” being Faye Hughes, Christie’s non-fiction writing partner.) Christie’s not here –she’s in Alabama visiting her daddy and will be flying back today. She hasn’t even read the blog entry and won’t see the comments until much later tonight.

Cue all the Evil music.

I mean, silly Christie. Giving me access to her blog and asking me to “write something funny” in her absence. Why, I told her when we were in Orlando for RT and she started pointing and laughing at me when I accidentally ripped a seam in my brand-new PJ bottoms (Hint: Items marked down for a quick sale may have been marked down for a reason) that she would be sorry one day.

And today is most definitely that day.

Christie Craig’s Top Three Deepest, and Darkest, Secrets:

1. Christie has an unnatural affection for her bra.

I’m not joking. The woman is practically obsessed with it. During the RWA national conference in Dallas a couple of years ago, the fire alarm went off and woke everyone on our floor. Teri Thackston, our other roommate, and I were getting dressed and grabbing our most important items. (For me, that was my phone; for Teri, it was her pearls.) I pulled on some pants, grabbed some shoes and was ready to go. Ditto Teri.

Not so for Christie.

She couldn’t find her bra.

What’s more, she wasn’t leaving the room without it.

I told her to forget it, to grab her purse and let’s go. She looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you crazy?” she said, just confirming that my interpretation of the look she’d given me was dead-on. “I’m not going anywhere without my bra!”

Now, tell the truth: Isn’t that kinda strange?

2. Christie has an unnatural affection for hats.

Okay, this one is even weirder than the bra. Everybody knows that Christie wears her hats when she is at a writers’ conference but did you know she wears them even when she’s not? Trips to the supermarket, lunch with friends and you’ll find Christie wearing one of her hats. Better than that, she even wore them when she was a kid. Don’t believe me, take a look at the evidence.

Psst . . . I’ve written her mom and asked for baby shots to see how long this hat obsession has been going on. I’ll keep you posted on what I discover.

3. Christie’s books are more fact than fiction—all of that whacky, over the top stuff she writes about actually happens to her.

Okay, I know she’s shared a lot of her funny experiences with you guys here at the blog, like the time she got felt up by the elephant at the zoo or the real reason the Craig household has hardwood floors. What you may not realize is that she wasn’t exaggerating any of it.

Take what happened the first time I roomed with her at a writing conference. We were in New York City and around 7:00 in the morning, there was this loud pounding on our door. I got up just as this man dressed in a black business suit inserted the master key card into our door and came inside. He saw me and said . . . and I’m not making this chit up . . . “Security, ma’am. This is your 7:00 am wakeup call.”

I kinda nodded – what the heck else could I do? I was in my PJs and half-asleep – and then he turned and left the room.

Christie jumps up and grabs her bra. “What just happened?”

“Beats me.”

“Did he come into the room?”

“Yep,” I said, still half-asleep. “But I don’t remember asking for a wakeup call.”

And we hadn’t. What’s more, the front desk said that “Security” never delivered personal wake-up calls.

Weird, huh? I guess there is a reason they call her Crime Scene Christie.

So, there you have it. Christie’s top three deepest and darkest secrets. Now, I probably will be taking a little vacation after today but in the time I have left, I’d love to hear from you guys. If you were told to evacuate your hotel room, would you grab your bra? What do you think the real reason Christie wears all those hats? Have you ever had “Security” give you a morning wake-up call? And best of all, do you think Christie is going to kill me for sharing her secrets?

Oh, and one final thing. Christie is giving away a copy of GOTCHA!, her new release from Dorchester this week. I was lucky enough to read GOTCHA! as she was writing it and it is my favorite book of hers - so far, anyway. (Just wait till DD&Deceived comes out this winter! Oh, man! What a hoot!!) Be sure you come back next week. Christie is giving away some goodies to celebrate the release of GOTCHA!, not only here but at a lot of blogs and places. She'll have links and info in next week's post.

Faye