Never Forget

Like many of you, I can recall where I was ten years ago this Sunday when America changed forever. I happened to be home from work due to illness that day--a pathetic bathrobe creature curled up on the couch beneath a blanket, a cup of hot tea in one hand and a box of tissues in the other.

Ten years ago I witnessed terror play out in real time on The Today Show, watched in stunned disbelief as a second plane plowed into the World Trade Center, stared in shocked horror as people jumped from the burning skyscrapers, wept alone as the two towers crumbled.

This somber anniversary we remember those who perished in the attacks of 9-11 and honor those selfless and brave public servants--the firefighters, police officers, rescue personnel, and civilians who risked their own lives to save the lives of innocent citizens and in service to a nation under attack.

What are your feelings on this, the ten-year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks? How do you plan to commemorate the day?

At the State Capitol here in Iowa, a small flag will be placed on the capitol grounds to represent each person who lost their life that day. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those innocent victims who mark this grim anniversary without their loved one and to the rescuers at Ground Zero who were forever changed by the events of September 11, 2001. While our nation continues to heal, I also pray we never permit ourselves to forget the horror of that sad, sad day.

~Kathy~

So I Married a Demon Slayer giveaway

Hey, guess what? So I Married a Demon Slayer has just been released. It's the story of the one half-succubus who got away after The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers. This story was such a kick to write, and I'm so glad it's finally out there.

It's also getting some awesome reviews, which is really fun. But for those of you who didn't get an early copy, I've got one right here in my hot little hands.

In fact, let me give away two books today - a signed copy of So I Married a Demon Slayer, along with a signed, first edition copy of The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers.

Just post and tell me why you would - or wouldn't - want to marry a demon slayer!

Welcome To My Office

By Robin "Red Hot" Kaye

I’ve spent a lot of time on my office. It’s perfect.


I have a TreadDesk—yes, you read it right, a real treadmill desk, the desktop is on hydraulic legs to adjust to walking height with a press of a button so I can write while walking 1.4 miles per hour whenever I get the urge, and an exercise ball to sit on when I don’t feel like walking.

I have inspiration in front of me—a life-size stand up of Mark Harmon as Leroy Jethro Gibbs from NCIS—my favorite show and one of Abby too because my kids gave them to me for my birthday.




I have bookshelves filled with hundreds of books on writing and three different yet beautiful dictionaries.


I have not one but two beloved Mac computers with two screens because one can never have a big enough desk top.

I have my Writer’s Clock which tells me what time it is—closing in on a deadline, unfortunately.



I even have a sound machine so I can hear applause and laughter whenever I need it.

I have my sidekicks, Raja, my three-legged Bengal cat, and Jasmine, my Pointer mix always there to talk to or give me love.



I’m a lucky author!

The only fly in the ointment is that my DH—dear husband or damn husband depending on my mood—has decided, since we share everything else, my office has magically turned into our office.

Every evening and weekend, he’s sitting directly in front of my desk and I can’t work. Now my DH is as close to perfect as anyone possessing a Y chromosome can be. He built me my office, my desktop, and even bought me a second monitor while he’s using one of those teeny tiny notebook computers on the desk in front of mine with a ten-inch screen. He does the cooking when I’m on deadline, all the laundry all the time, takes care of running the kids around, reads my contracts, and is the most supportive husband anyone can imagine. It’s really hard to complain—and yet somehow I find a way. It’s frustrating as hell because as perfect as he is, he’s still a man. So how does an anything-but-perfect wife, mother, and author tell her near-perfect husband to get the hell out of her office because he’s a walking, talking, breathing writer’s block?

She doesn’t.

She packs up her MacBook Air and goes to Starbucks. Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense. How can I write at Starbucks with a ton of people, screaming kids, beeping coffee timers, and insanely loud Frapuccino machines, and not be able to write with my husband typing quietly on his little notebook computer?

Practice.

For two years I home schooled my daughter (who used the same desk my husband does now) and drove her ninety miles each way to Carlisle, PA to attend the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and dance forty hours per week. I had no choice but to make the Carlisle Crossing Starbucks my office. It took me a few weeks, but I’d go to work, get my coffee, and write my books. I wrote four books while Twinkle Toes danced. Then she decided to move to Carlisle, live with a host family, and go to Carlisle middle and high school. I thought, yay! No more home schooling, no more driving three hours a day! I’ll get so much work done. I sat in my lovely office and I couldn’t write a damn thing. It took me about two months of twiddling my thumbs before I got any decent words written. But finally, after much practice and Twinkle Toes withdrawal, I was able to work. Things went swimmingly, I did run back and forth to Carlisle to see Twinkle Toes and my Starbucks family, but for the most part, I was happy working in my lovely office until you-know-who decided it was OURS!

Now I’m at the Mt. Airy Starbucks—if I squint my eyes, I imagine I’m in Carlisle so it’s not so different. I do miss my favorite baristas—Laura, Lauren, Jess, Gina, Ben, Trudi, Christine, Shannon, Steph, the Manager, Nikki, the District Manager but I’m making new friends at the Mt. Airy Starbucks, and I’ll be working there until I finish Call Me Wild.

Last night, the guys closed up shop, and I sat on the patio working away since it was nice out and still before DH’s bedtime. My barista buddy Edward dropped off a box of coffee to hold me over until my MacBook Air’s battery ran dry. I swear, if there were an outlet and a porta-potty, I’d have stayed all night!

I figure I’ll eventually get used to sharing an office with DH, but I don’t have the time to twiddle my thumbs right now. I have a book due in nine days. Yikes! If Starbucks was open twenty-four hours a day, I’d move in until I finished the book.

Am I Missing Something Important

I want to preface this post by saying I don't do politics. Essentially, I think all of them are liars and thieves out for their own pocket and so I don't bother with listening to the news or getting into political arguments. I have better things to do - like contemplating the dust in my navel.

So I have no idea whose bright idea this was, but the more I hear about the situation, the more I feel that I must have missed something important.

Why did we cancel the space program?

Was it simply money? Really? All the waste I see (and as an accountant, I can recognize waste for 1000 miles away) and yet we can't continue our space program? Why did we never study the moon in depth? Consider this, governments have paid archeologists to dig in the same sand boxes for hundreds of years, but yet, the moon - which has never been excavated - has now been abandoned? That simply does not compute.

Then let's consider that we put our rockets in museums but left American astronauts on the space station. This is NOT like your buddy leaving you at a party because he hooked up with a cute girl. They can't call a cab or walk if they get desperate. So now we have to depend on other countries - who we've always said was beneath us in technology - to get our men home. If I was those guys stranded, the world's biggest butt-whooping would be happening as soon as I set foot on American soil again.

So now, since we've decided it's not worth it, Sir Richard Branson has decided to develop his own space program. Heck, he probably has more money than the US so it doesn't surprise me. But what about when he is successful. Then builds condos up there. After all, no one owns the moon, right? So there's really nothing to stop him from making it the next capitalistic frontier. Who will look like the idiot then?

Anyway, the entire thing exhausts me. So why exactly did we cancel our space program? Can anyone give me the Cliff's Notes version?

And Happy Labor Day!

Deadly DeLeon

First Author Talk and Booksigning!

I'm on vacation in Hilton Head right now, enjoying some lovely beach weather (a nice change from the earthquake and hurricane I experienced last week).

My toddler seems to like the beach, too, although she's way too much of a diva to allow me to take her flip flops off. Little princess refuses to let the sand touch her precious toes. It's pretty hilarious.

Anyway, ever the multi-tasker, I decided to combine a little work with pleasure, and arranged to give a talk to teens at the Hilton Head Library last night.



I wasn't sure what to expect, since I've never done one of these things before. I've spoken to adults about copyright and trademark law on numerous occasions, but I've never done an author talk to teenagers. And with the aforementioned earthquake and hurricane last week, I didn't get a chance to publicize the talk as much as I would have liked, so I walked into the library last night fearing my audience would consist of my mom and grandma.

Fortunately there was a nice cozy crowd of teens from the Hilton Head Library Teen Board. This group meets monthly to organize book-related activities (they're in the middle of planning a murder mystery night for later this fall), so I knew I'd found the right audience.

The kids had tons of questions for me. Admittedly, most were not actually about the book itself, but more about being an author and what it takes to get a book published. We talked about teen fiction in general, high school English class assignments, publishing, and writing. Lots of fun!

Of course, my daughter was in the next room over, and we could hear her screaming "No! Mine!" every time the Blue's Clues DVD ended. (Apparently she didn't think her daddy was fast enough at putting in a new one.) But that just added to the ambience.

When I got back to the beach house last night, I discovered an invitation over email to a Teen Book Party at the Montgomery County Library (Maryland), so I look forward to doing more of these events!

Gotta Love The Internet

Yesterday Jezebel ran with a story about girl's t-shirt. Normally t-shirts aren't all that newsworthy, certainly not on a feminist leaning website like Jezebel.  But this t-shirt was speical. It was being sold by JC Penny for girls between the ages of 7 and 16. As you can see below the t-shirt reads: "I'm too pretty to do my homework so my brother has to do it for me."

I'm not going to go into all the problems with this message. If you can't see them for yourself I strongly suggest you get back in your time machine and head back home to 1952 where the world will make sense to you again.

No, this blog is about what happened next. See, I didn't find out about this from Jezebel directly. I found out about it through Twitter. It was the first post I read yesterday morning...actually several people I follow had Tweeted about it including Avon Books who Tweeted the link along with the note: "The #AvonEditor just screamed a little." Of course I retweeted the article and then I headed over to Facebook and posted about the t-shirt there (yes, it pissed me off THAT much).  Soon others had reposted the link to the article.

By the end of the afternoon JC Penny issued a statement saying that they were no longer going to sell the t-shirt and that they agreed it "dose not deliver an appropriate message."

Now if JC Penny really had a problem with the message they wouldn't have developed and sold the product to begin with. It's their private label after all and they certainly can't claim that it slide in under the radar; not when they had a whole webpage ad for the tee with the pithy little logline: "Who has time for homework when the new Justin Bieber album is out?"

No, what they had a problem with was the immense negative publicity that was being generated and it was being generated at the speed of light...or at least the speed of a high speed internet connection.

It reminded me of what the internet has done for us. Yes, it has made porn more accessible, it has sucked up our time, and it has made it WAY too easy for us to check up on our exes. But it has also made it incredibly easy for individuals, regardless of their income level or power status within the corporate or political world, to effect change at a rapid rate. This was all about a silly t-shirt, but if it wasn't for Twitter, Facebook and the each person's ability to comment on JC Penny's site, that t-shirt would still be being sold and a handful of girls would have gotten the message that being smart is for ugly people and our world would be just a little bit worse. That didn't happen because enough people cared enough to speak up quickly and thanks to technology JC Penny heard us and responded just as rapidly.

So yes, some bad stuff is generated through the internet but on a whole it really has helped to make our world a little prettier...and a lot smarter.

Kyra "Fashionista Fatale" Davis

He's Funnier Than Me...

Todd was Tom's Stand-in for Jack's Pinewood Derby When Tom Was In Iraq.

So, my pal, Todd Welvaert goes black powder shooting with my husband and kids. And this was his post on Facebook:

"Shot a .50 caliber black powder flintlock rifle for the first time. I would encourage anyone who is a fan of history to do this. Amazing, thanks Tom. It goes like this. Aim, pull the trigger and try not to scream like a girl when the flint drops into the powder tray and produces a mammoth fireball about 2 inches in front of your face. Count two, feel the rifle kick and (when the smoke clears) see you've missed your target by about 6 inches. Be stupid happy you hit anything at all. Think about what it must of have been like to face a British charge with this in your hands. Be amazed our founding fathers could hear anything over their huge, clanging brass balls."

He's funnier than me. He's also a better writer, but he won't finish his book. I've known Todd and his wife Lisa for 24 years now. He's known my husband since cub scouts.

Todd's the guy who took my author head shot and the guy I used for this squib, Chapter 13 of STAND BY YOUR HITMAN:

"If I ran for a position of leadership in this town, my platform would be, 'A howler monkey in every home,' because nothing says community like a whole mess of howler monkeys."

See, he's funnier than me. And I wish he'd finish his damned book. My husband has threatened to just show up at his house with duct tape and a shotgun, to drive him to some remote hotel and keep him locked up until he finished it.

Ever have a friend like this? Someone you know actually has a good book inside them, but refuses to finish it? It's a pain in the ass, because there are so many out there who will finish a book, who SHOULDN'T finish a book.

If you have any ideas on motivating this guy, let me know. You think my books are funny - this guy would blow your mind.

The Assassin