Stacia Kane

So, I’ve replied to the comments left over the weekend, sorry I didn’t get to them before! And so, so awesome to see all the new commenters. I don’t know where y’all came from, but it’s really nice to have you here.

I was busy because I set myself a deadline, and wanted to be sure I met it, for a project I am totally freaking excited about. I’m only a small way into the process but seriously, keep your fingers crossed for me guys.

So I spent most of yesterday working. And eating ginger cake with custard, which is my new addiction. Unfortunately, unlike smoking, this one will totally make me fat if I’m not careful. I will say this for the English–they know how to make a damned dessert. Cakes with custard; cakes with cream; cakes with sauce, custard, and cream; cakes with jam and cream…it’s a wonder I eat regular food at all. And I’m not usually such a sweets person (perhaps why the ginger cake has so caught my fancy).

A lot of things catch my fancy, though. I tend to get a little obsessive. Like, about fifteen years ago, my brother and I were watching one of those Young Comedians’ Specials on Comedy Central. And this one guy came on, an unassuming guy who looked like every other comedian in that everday handsome kind of way. And he started talking about Jaws 4, and what a bad movie it is, and how you could be nothing but a spinal cord and still think it’s a terrible movie. The bit lasted about five minutes, and my brother and I laughed so hard, I mean, the kind of laughter where tears are rolling down your face and you can’t breathe and it feels so good it actually starts to feel bad, you know?

And next time the special was on we recorded that bit. And showed it to everyone who came to our house for like, a year.

So we followed the career of that comedian. We watched his HBO specials, we made sure if he was appearing on a talk show we caught it if we could. We were fans. Not stalker-y fans, like that crazy woman who handcuffed herself to Hugh Grant (which, I totally sympathise, but if I’m cuffed to Hugh I want it to be for a good, kinky reason, not because I’m just that kind of freak), but fans just the same. If he was performing and we heard about it, if we could see it, we did.

Because he was so funny. Even his bad jokes were good. There was something so warm and likeable about him something that made you want to watch more and more.

His name was Richard Jeni, and he died yesterday morning in an apparent suicide.

This is intensely upsetting. I miss my brother. I miss watching Jeni with him. I miss home.

RIP Richard.

(PS You can view the Jaws 4 bit here. I should point out that this clip is from The Tonight Show and not the Young Comedians special, so is not the version my brother and I had. Still funny, but cut for time so missing some of the nuances.)

richard jeni

Apparently it’s my skin.

Seriously guys! We finally got over 40(!) comments on a post, and it’s the post about skincare and TMI. I think that’s so awesome, and I’m so grateful to everyone who chimed in with advice, commiseration, or whatever. How cool.

An update on the skin thing, I have discovered the problem (at least, a large part of it.) I’ve been having dry skin issues anyway, which were exacerbated when I had the Mirena coil fitted in late November. (Which–TMI alert!–OUCH.)

So the dryness kept getting worse, and I decided to buy a new moisturizer–this stuff we really couldn’t afford (£12!) from Boots that’s supposed to be specially for dry, sensitive skin and contains mostly French spring water and pixie dust or some shit like that. Unfortunately, it also contains–ta da!–sunscreen.

Why, oh why do these people insist on putting sunscreen in moisturizer and then telling me it’s for sensitive skin? I have never in my life found a sunscreen or a moisturizer with sunscreen that doesn’t turn me red. PABA free or not, my skin hates the stuff. This is a large part of the reason why I have avoided the sun as much as possible since I was 18 or so. Any sort of additive in a moisturizer is bad.

(I remember one time I decided to try one of those moisturizers with AHAs, remember those? My face was like pink sandpaper for days.)

So as it got redder and redder, and rougher, I decided to go for the Pond’s cold cream and moisturizer, not realizing the moisturizer also has sunscreen. Bastards. It’s not really advertised on the box at all.

Why are you people doing this?

Anyway, there you go. I bought some Oil of Olay sensitive skin, and gently exfoliated with baking soda (seriously, try this. It’s excellent and also works wonders on babies’ cradle cap), and my skin, while not back to normal, is much improved today.

Has anyone else noticed I seem to be doing a lot of “placeholder”-type posts on weekends? Because so few people seem to be blogging on weekends. I don’t get as many comments, I don’t get as many hits…so I guess I’ve started “saving” my big posts for the weekdays. My big day seems to be Mondays of late–I had over 130 hits last Monday, which was nice.

What do you think about weekend blogging? Do you notice there aren’t as many people around? Do you find your enthusiasm for your own blog wanes?

The latest, and most amusing, Google search term that led to me was “Susan Powter cunnilingus”. I come up #3 in that search. Although why anyone would be searching for “Susan Powter cunnilingus” is completely beyond me.

Okay. Now I’m hoping this isn’t going to be a TMI post. I don’t personally see how it can be, but apparently there are some people in the world for whom any discussion about anything more personal than the weather is a bit Too Much Information.

And they’ll tell you that, too, in that rude, abrasive way of theirs. “Whoa! I didn’t need to know that!” they’ll say, often holding up their hands in a please-don’t-throw-that-bag-of-poop-at-me kind of gesture. And they’ll say that when you mention something totally innocuous, like that your husband is like a radiator and you have started sleeping without covers on because of it (appropos of a conversation about your child’s fever, btw, not just as a greeting. “Good morning! My husband’s body temperature is so high sometimes I want stab him with a fork in his sleep to get him to stop trying to snuggle with me, ha ha! And how are you?” etc.)

Or perhaps you’ve mentioned that your socks have a hole in the toe, or that you like eating lemon cake for breakfast. The reaction to such harmless bits of personal trivia is always the same. That shocked and horrified face, and the implication that you’ve committed a ghastly fauz pas. As if you’d performed a breast self-exam in public.

You know, I used to know a girl who constantly gave way TMI. I mean, this was Too Much Information on subjects about which any info was too much. Like her sex life. And the acts she performed on her boyfriend while he was on the phone, or the, ah, level of lubri–you know what? I can’t even bring myself to repeat it here, and I write sex for a living. (But this is a blog, and I do try to keep it at least somewhat clean here. I can say fuck all I want, but I don’t generally describe it.) Suffice it to say that the girl got graphic (say that three times fast) all the time. And nobody wanted to hear that shit.

But you know what? We all just sort of smiled politely and changed the subject. Because none of us were the types of assholes who belittle people for thinking we care more about them than we do.

So you tell me. Is saying–to someone who can, by the way, clearly see the truth of my words right there on my face–that in the last few weeks my skin has suddenly gone bone-dry and flaky, and is now turning scaly, red, and puffy on my eyelids, making me resemble a–well, a scaly, red, puffy-eyed thing–Too Much Information? Because I feel the need to at least let people know that I’m aware of the sudden red roughness of my skin. Lest they think I failed to notice when I look in the mirror a million times a day to assess whether or not the redness is creeping down my cheeks now, or what.

So there you go. I have now revealed a Secret About Myself, one which I assume is now making you all shift uncomfortably in your seats and glance guiltily around the room, hoping nobody sees the filth you’re reading.

And when you’re done feeling ashmed of yourself and shocked at my depraved openness, does anybody have any ideas for how to soothe this mess? I switched from my regular cleanser, which went overnight from lovely to turns-me-bright-red-for-hours, to cold cream, because cold cream usually soothes me when my very sensitive skin flares up. But while it seems to be helping in most areas, I’ve suddenly got this eye thing and I’m pretty sure it is on my cheeks now, too.

In my internal dialogue, in my deepest, most secret thoughts (“If I were Queen of the Universe, I’d have that person beheaded”) and in my less secret thoughts (“Don’t forget to pick up that Matchbox car from the stairs before you trip on it and tumble down to a messy death”, or “Buy bleach”)…I talk to myself in third person.

“December, you’re an idiot. Why did you do that?”

“You need to get up now if you want to take a shower before taking the Princess to school.”

“You’re always tripping on those stupid Matchbox cars.”

I always thought this was normal. Apparently I was wrong. (“You were wrong,” I say to myself.)

It seems every other person–every normal person–thinks in first person and first person only.

Is it because they know themselves better? Is it because they like themselves better?

Or am I a sociopath? (December, are you a sociopath? There was that time you saw human suffering and laughed. Yes, so that was America’s Funniest Home Videos, the one and only time you watched it. But still…)

I talk to myself in my head a lot, too. I’m a lot like JD in Scrubs in that way. I’m always thinking how things would be if this was a movie, how the next day or week or whatever would cut away and we’d get a glimpse of the future. But JD thinks of himself in first person, and I don’t. So I’m either weird or incredibly self-conscious.

Or maybe I’m self-aware. Perhaps my third-person thoughts are an indication of my observant character, a special mark that makes me a writer. But my crit partner is a wonderful writer and I know for a fact that she thinks in first person exclusively. (Because she told me.)

My characters think in third as well. They refer to themselves as “you.” Sometimes “I” but mostly “you.”

How do you think, and what do you think that says about you? And if you write, how do your characters think, and why? Is it a choice you think about, or is it just the way it goes?

Just a quickie post here, to share a review or two! First is a fantastic review for The Black Dragon! Fallen Angel Reviews gives the book 5 Angels (out of 5)!!

From the review:

December Quinn weaves a story that holds the reader captive. With characters that tug at the heart, this is one fascinating read speckled with passion, romance and intrigue making the story come alive in this page-turner. Ms. Quinn pens a tale so well-written that it immediately draws the reader in from the first page. I love the dialogue between Isabelle and Gruffydd. The whole complete ambience gives a real feeling of the landscape and surroundings of the area. Bravo to a great read!

And Coffee Time Romance gives the book 4 Cups (“Outstanding great read”)! From the review:

This book is top notch. It will keep you guessing as to who the Black Dragon is. And hold you riveted to the pages to see if Gruffyd and Isabelle will succumb to their fiery passions.

Not much else to say at the moment…too busy watching the lunar eclipse…

Seriously.

Because I clearly am not capable of interacting with other human beng in a way that does NOT make me look like a total idiot.

First, there was the misspelled my own damn name incident.

Then there was the “sent the old file, not the new one which included query letter, and had to resend with apologetic email” incident.

Yesterday I sent my hook to Agent X and managed, somehow, to transpose the words “genre” with “word count” in my head, and so sent the wc and not the genre. I posted this in the comments, hoping for the answer to come (much like flagellent monks hoped for enlightenment) but received nothing but the sympathetic laughter of my peers.

Now I’ve attmepted to say something reassuring on a publishing blog and ended up sounding like I was talking about something completely different, thansk to an un-followed through deletion because my Faery was crawling into my lap and I was afraid not to click “send”, because last time she crawled into my lap like that she managed to delete 600 words of a manuscript. So I had to add another comment explaining my first. I might as well have simply replied by saying, “Oh, and I’m a total dumbass.”

Is it the Mercury retrograde? Or am I truly just a moron who should go live in a cave by the beach and paint seashells for a living?

By the way–Movie Recommendation. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Absolutely hysterical. Seriously. Val Kilmer is freaking awesome in this.

And another by the way–Prince of Death is the #4 bestseller over at Whiskey Creek Press-Torrid! Thanks to everyone who bought the book!