This week my Word Slinger is Motor Doll Lori Bentley Law. Lori is a pretty fascinating chick whose alter ego might strongly resemble the character Benny from her novel Motor Dolls. She is an author, photojournalist, Vintage car enthusiast and I’m pretty sure that she just might be a vigilante who is righting the wrongs of the world, but if she were to confirm that she might have to convince us that it is all just good weather in Belize. It’s all thumbs up in my book!
When I was a little girl I would watch Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and I always wanted to be like those girls in the ponytails snapping their gum while they walked around all cool in their midcalf jeans and sleeveless button-up shirts trolling parking lots for the bad boys who rode motorcycles and drove fast cars and dished on babes. I wasn’t a Richie, Ralph or Potsie girl. I wasn’t really a Fonzie girl either, I thought he was a bit of a creeper. I liked the awful jerk guy that showed up with Pinky Tuscadero. (Looking back now… I clearly knew how to pick them even at a very young age) I do have a point to this trip down my TV memory lane and that is that Lori Bentley Law made me feel that same yearning to be the type of cool girl but only a better one, because the two characters in her book, Jeda and Benny were so effing AMAZEKITTENS!
This Tongue Wagger comes from this week’s Word Slinger, Simon Travers. I fear that my poetry critiquing may be fearfully lacking so I will stick solely to the content of Simon’s poetry collection. It’s been fifteen years since I took my poetry course at Penn State University. Mr. Perrone taught me a great deal about poetry as well as writing it– along with writing for business, creative, technical and journalism. He told me to remember a lot of things and the only points that stick out from the many courses I took with him are: how to write a business letter, that knowing Shakespeare might be the difference in getting a job and not getting one, the proper methods of critiquing beyond preference and that when interviewing anyone it is better for both parties if you talk about things that the interviewee feel invested in and that they love. All that other stuff… it went on mental dump. I do remember often wondering if he spent a lot of time in the morning getting his hair to look like it did each day too, but he didn’t teach me that. Sadly, for Simon… my memory of stylistics in poetry fails me. But I do know what I like.
Simon Traver’s is the Weekly Indie Word Slinger for the first week of February 2014. The author of Anatomy, a collection of poems and essays, published by Stackhouse Jones an independent publisher that Simon established himself. He’s a busy guy. Enough of me introducing him… I’ll let him tell you about himself.
As a little girl I never had any other dreams other than to one day be an author. Reading was something I began doing fairly young and I wrote little stories that popped up here and there in grade school. There was a small story about a duck that I my mom kept from a Spring Story Collection in third grade that might have been inspired but sadly lacked coherence. Let’s say I won’t be publishing it anywhere.
I came up with the Weekly Indie Word Slinger Project after doing a good deal of research for publishing my own novels. The amount of work involved sounded daunting, but when I looked at the forum discussions of people who had literary agents shopping the big six and those who were dealing with marketing people it left a terrible taste in my mouth. It didn’t sit well with me that someone could tell me to change my story to make it more palatable. It might make me sound narcissistic or inflexible but I write my stories the way I want them read. I don’t want someone telling me to change them to suit them. Not to mention that I don’t necessarily write with the intention to rake in the bottlecaps, I do it because I love it. I dream in full plots and I wake up writing down characters names and snippets of dialogue and settings. I feel passionate about it. It’s what I love. I don’t want someone telling me how they want me to write.
This rom-com novel is written by this Weekly Indie Word Slinger–CeCe Osgood. The Divorced Not Dead Workshop is a humorous and insightful look at the weary world of the divorced yet hopeful heart. Considering that 50% of marriages in America end in the marriage crapper this book is not only relevant but more than likely easily relatable for many. If only more of us were inspired by alcohol to have ideas for workshops to de-suckify men instead of keying their cars and slinging eggs at their houses. I guess this is what separate the women from the girls doing community service–of course I’ve never hid from an ex under a table at the market, Ms. Bing.
This week’s Word Slinger is CeCe Osgood, a woman who won herself a very special spot in my heart when she called me “MOE” in an email: Mighty Online Empress. Tell me that shouldn’t go to my head. She is the author of the insightfully comedic novel about the hated post stage of divorce–that state when all the other sex does is disappoint you, The Dead Not Divorced Workshop.
Sometimes you get a book or one is recommended to you and you read the synopsis and you cringe and you just don’t want to tell the person that–“No, this book just really is not for me. Thanks, anyway.” You probably feel guilty or pained because it means a lot to the person and it really would make them happy for you to show an interest in the thing that they enjoy, but try as you might, you just can’t imagine this book in your lifetime, or for that fact, the next one either. This book had no true blaring faults when I read the synopsis, but when I read it I worried I might be having that feeling because it would be a “boy-centric” Sci-fi. BUT I WAS WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! It was sort of “boy-centric”story but I totally got into this book and loved it hard.
Stan Morris is an Indie author of many books who has enjoyed dabbling in many writing genres. He has claimed to me to be a relic of a past age who is still trying to adapt to the customs of our techno tribe (he didn’t quite put it to me that way, but I know that is what he is saying=)) and I think he’s doing a bang-up job. I forgot to tell him the caveat to teaching him the comment portion of Google Docs was he has to teach me Time Travel. You never get anything for free these days, Stan!
Do you need a hug? Is your pint of B&J’s bringing you closer to rock bottom rather than giving you loving comfort? Don’t cry in your Chunky Monkey. This is the perfect book to chase the blues away. Grace Unexpected by Gale Martin might just be one of the most smart and funniest books I’ve read in sometime. It’s chock-a-block with lighthearted wit that warm the cockles of your heart and maybe even leave you tittering out loud and claiming early incontinence.