That's What She Said :: Darynda Jones Book Signing

Posted by Rhianna
Howdy, folks! I have come back with a blast and a new name: That's What She Said (which is, arguably, one of the best comebacks/lines ever). I have moved my book reviews over the The Geektastics, which goes live January 1st. I hope you will check it out as my section will cover parenting, books, geeky things, disney things, and crafting. So, what does that mean for Thats What She Said? It means TWSS will focus on whatever I am feeling or thinking in the moment; stream of consciousness over set writing with a specific goal or topic box. So, I'm going to give it a try and get started and see where this leads me :) ----- Last week was very exciting for me - I got to meet a favorte author of mine in person for dinner and then a public book signing. It was amazing! Cait and I had dinner with Darynda on Sunday night and were so caught up in talking that we didn't leave until 10:30pm (which is crazy late for me). The book singing was a lot of fun too, it was neat to hear an excerpt from her latest book be read by a fan, get my books signed, and hang out with other fans. Overall, a lot of fun.
Oh, and guess what! We found out that Colorado has an annual fan-centered romance novel convention in June! RomCon! Cait and I are thinking of going. Are any of you out there interested in meeting up while we are there? And/or any suggestions on what you want us, specificly, to focus on and write about? Until next time; Rhianna!
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Location: Aurora, CO 80015, USA

Special Guest Post from Nathan Carson

Posted by Read Drink and Be Bloggy







     I'd like to introduce Nathan Carson! Over the past few months I've gotten to know him... well very little actually, aside from what I’ve read from him, but his candor about his struggles with Crones Disease and his amazing artwork caught my eye. I’m easily friendly with people so I like to consider him a friend. He has written about his experiences and put them on his webpage to share with the world as somewhat of a book. There’s several ways to experience DearPoery.com I chose to listen to it so that I can multitask, it’s a necessity of being a mother, it’s impossible to do just one thing at one time. Anyway! With out gilding the lily any further… Nathan Carson! (Oh! I've also included a few of my favorite pieces of artwork of Nathans, for your viewing pleasure.)




It was Saturday around 10:30 and I was trying to write a blog for someone else’s site. The previous day had been my birthday and I didn’t do shit. I was a loser in a new town and I had no friends. Actually, most of that wasn’t true. I was living with one of my pals, but he had a new girlfriend and couldn’t hang out, and the town wasn’t new, I’d graduated from its shitty college four years prior, then moved away. Now I was back, ostensibly to help take care of my grandpa after my grandma died, but that wasn’t going so well. When I got to town I’d found I wasn’t needed. My uncle and aunt had already moved in, they were taking care of the day to day and disapproved of the swear words I’d been writing and posting on the Internet. They didn’t want me hanging around my pops, soiling him with all that humanity. Suddenly I found myself in a new old town with a handful of friends and nothing to do on my birthday. It wasn’t so bad. As long as I had a keyboard I was happy. See, that summer I’d found my purpose.

 

My whole life I’d tried to be a writer and failed miserably. I’d written the beginnings of 3 sci-fi novels. They were mediocre at best. I was a 32-year-old man-boy washed up loser of a joke. Then I started throwing up blood.

 

The doctors would later tell me I had Chron’s and prescribe a steroid regimen. The pills were well intentioned but they drove me insane. In the midst of hallucinations, sleep deprivation and physical agony I began to write. It started out as a Facebook post letting my boss know why I’d been no-call no-showing to work, but it quickly become something more. The mental and physical agony had unlocked something fierce, and he wasn’t going away. That was good. I kind of liked the guy.

 

That summer I finished my first book. It wasn’t science fiction, I had not created a new world; the book was about me. It was as true as I could make it. Ten years prior I’d been enrolled at a college in a stinky cow town in northern Colorado. That was not an exaggeration, the place smelled exactly like burning cow blood, probably on account of the cow blood burning factory in town. It turned out, cow blood was exquisitely toxic and you couldn’t just send it off to the dump, you had to burn it. Greeley, Colorado was one of the few places in America where this sort of thing was done and every Tuesday and Thursday they fired up the kiln and got down to it. My friends and I called Greeley Stank Town and with good reason. I’d moved there because, at the time, there was a thriving music scene. Somehow I ended up attending the local college. My English professor was a giant of a man with a full head of graying hair and an old school ethic. He was imposing. He was astute. I wanted badly to impress him.

 

The class was English 110 and our one assignment was to write a 10 page research paper. My topic was anti-trust. Microsoft had recently come under allegations of monopolistic practices from their rival, Sun Micro Systems. It was a fascinating case. A week after we turned in our first draft, the intimidating professor called me into his office. I sat down amongst his tall stacks of Thick Books and waited for him to begin. We sat there for what felt like hours, just looking at each other. I was too afraid to speak. Finally, he broached the topic.

 

“I’m going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer. If you lie to me, I’ll find out. You will be expelled from this college and I’ll make sure you’re never admitted into another institution of higher learning.”

 

In retrospect I realized he was bluffing. The man was an English professor at a third rate community college in some back woods cow town, but I was 19 and his threat terrified me. “Have I made my self understood?” He asked.

 

I tired to say, “Yes,” but the word got stuck in my throat. What was he talking about? I nodded my head and tried to keep my legs from trembling.

 

The giant of a man reached into a stack of papers and pulled out my first draft, the one about the Microsoft anti trust suit. I looked at my little document and wondered where this was going. The professor placed his large finger tips lightly on the cover page and stared at me, searching my soul for hints of deceit. “Did you write this?”

 

I looked at the paper with his mighty hand spread neatly across it. Had I? I couldn’t remember. Nothing existed outside the office with its terrible professor god. I looked at the man, so handsome and strong. I was pretty sure I’d written it, but the question was so absurd I began to second guess myself. Imagine if someone asked you whether the sun had risen yesterday, the implication was that it had not.

 

“Yes?” I answered, uncertain if it was true.

 

“All of it?”  He wasn’t buying it. How could you prove that you had written a paper? How could you prove anything at all? I nodded my head. He was going to kick me out of college and make sure I never got into another and there was nothing I could do about it. Sorry mom, your son was a failure.

 

“Every word?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He wasn’t convinced, “I’ll need to see your sources. Bring them to me next class period with the pages you cited book marked. If I find even a hint of plagiarism you will be expelled.”

 

I got up and left, my limbs heavy and wooden. Every ounce of adrenaline had fired and was leaving my system in jittery shakes. I could barely walk. I’d written that paper, hadn’t I? I could have sworn I did. I didn’t have anything to be afraid of, right?

 

I rode my bike home and carefully bookmarked the pertinent sections. In truth I’d read each of the books all the way through. One of them had been written by the illustrious team of Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand. They were both pretty smart. I liked what they had to say. Two days later I came to class with the books and handed them to the professor, then sat through his lecture with my stomach in knots. He made me wait a full week before passing judgement. Each day I’d attend classes and wonder if it was all in vain. Should I just goof off and get on with my life? I was pretty sure I’d written that paper, but one could never be sure.

 

A week later the enormous professor once again told me to follow him into his office. I sat in the same chair, surrounded by the same books. He stared through me with the same steady gaze. “You need to be more careful how you cite your sources.”

 

Shit. He was going to kick me out. I was a 19-year-old failure. Would the school refund my money?

 

Then he smiled, “But with that said, your paper is the best that has come across my desk in the 26 years I’ve been teaching.” That ass hole, why’d he have to lead with that ‘cite your sources’ crap? Did he want me to shit myself? “I can’t even show it to the rest of the class,” he continued, “they wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

 

My heart exploded. I’d gone from abject terror to everlasting pride in the space of a single sentence. His acclaim was relative. I was attending a terrible community college in a cow town the size of a postage stamp. The competition wasn’t exactly fierce, but a compliment was a compliment and 14 years later I was still talking about. He asked me if I’d written anything else. At the time I was halfway through my first terrible sci-fi novel. I’d been writing a page a day for 70 days in hopes of becoming the next Heinlein. Proudly I brought the tormentor-turned-mentor my manuscript. A week later he told me it was sub-par, that I was more of a non-fiction guy. He introduced me to his published,  non-fiction friends and tried to convince me to take freelance jobs with magazines, but I wasn’t interested. I wanted to be a world builder like my hero, Tolkien.

 

Then I decided to move to L.A. and pursue a career as a rock star. That big old professor begged me to stay, to finish my degree and be a musician in my spare time. I told him ‘no’ and rode off into the sunset. I never saw him again. 14 years later I couldn’t even remember his name.

 

Then I got sick. Really sick. So sick the doctors put me on a steroid treatment that drove me insane. I began running around Denver half naked and drooling; I hallucinated a dead rat where my penis used to be; I thought I was incarnating on earth as God; I began to write it all down. Something opened up inside of me. I had found my voice.

 

That professor had been right. I wasn’t a world builder, I was an historian, a boring old scribe. It took me 14 years to figure that out. For 14 years I fought my calling. I had a plan and it was going to be great. People would marvel at my creativity and shower me with acclaim. It didn’t work out so well.

 

The problem with playing against type was that you never got anywhere. I tried, for more than a decade to write the Next Big Thing, but it wasn’t meant to be. In 14 years I didn’t finish a single book. Then fate or god or circumstance forced my hand and in the space of a single summer I wrote a 90,000 word masterpiece. Masterpieces were relative. I wasn’t the next Salinger or Vonnegut, but for the first time in my life I had done Something Worth Doing. It was so satisfying.

 

Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to follow your heart.

 

You, no doubt, are like I used to be. You have an idea of who you want to be, but you’re not there yet. Your reasons are varied. Some of you are scared of failure, others success. Some are embarrassed by the simplicity of their dreams, others unsure of where to start. A few of you know what to do, but are ignoring it. I’m here to tell you that you can’t fight against your nature. You are a machine, adrift in the swirling chaos of life, and like all machines you were created for a purpose. God might be alive or dead or never have existed in the first place, but that doesn’t change the fact that you, dear reader, have a purpose. It sings to you. Every day you ignore it, but it won’t go away. It might be something bizzare, like recreating movie scenes in colored sugar or something important like volunteering at a homeless shelter, but there is a mountain inside of you and it must be climbed.

 

For 14 years I ignored my mountain. I knew it was there, but I wanted to climb other peaks. You know what your mountain is, just as well as I did. People have told you about it, professors have begged you not to leave, but you did any way. Fortunately mountains are tough creatures, they don’t go away.

 

Have you always wanted to travel? Do you like baking brownies or raking fall leaves? Then travel, bake, rake and live. Take with you no expectations. So often our dreams become clouded with misplaced ideas of success. The purpose of your purpose is not to make you rich or famous; the purpose of your purpose is to complete you, to join you to the universal song with its glorious symphony building ever on towards an unknown and unknowable destiny. You exist. What a wonderful thing! You stand on the shoulders of giants — men and women who lived and died while playing their part in the ever-expanding chain of desire and fulfillment that culminated in this very moment. What will you do with their beautiful gift? Will you squander it with dull routine, doing What You’re Supposed To rather than What You Want? No! You’re better than that. Carpe the mother fucking diem! Not because I told you to, but because you recognize your place in the song. Humanity needs you. I have no idea why, but we are moving towards something great. Slowly, to be sure, but everyone will play their part, whether they want to or not. You might as well enjoy the ride.

 

I’m a loser sitting at a computer in a town somewhere in Colorado. It’s Saturday night and I didn’t even do anything for my birthday. Despite all that I have never been more fulfilled, happy or certain that I am exactly where I need to be. That’s the thing about reveling in your purpose, the world can go to shit around you and you’ll still be happy; confident in the certainty that who you are is exactly where you need to be. Don’t stop, hesitate or surrender. Start today, you’ll be glad you did.

Nathan is a guy who wrote the blog you just read. For more of his obscene ramblings visit www.dearpoetry.com
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