aka Kel doesn’t have PMS. She just feels like bitching commiserating today

Stuff that irritates the ever lovin’ crap outta me, in random order.

1. The term “Cozy mystery.” I like a good mystery as much as the next person, and I know the ‘cozy’ is supposed to make me think of curling up with a nice book on a big, comfy chair, wrapped in a homemade fleece quilt, on a cold winter day, in front of a beautiful stone fireplace, with a mug of hot cocoa (floating with white, fluffy marshmallows) sitting in front of me on a battered-but-quaint coffee table. It doesn’t. It makes me think of a group of conniving marketing executives sitting in a large, cold office in the middle of NY frigging C, trying to figure out how to get the unwashed masses to want to buy a mystery book. Dudes, it’s a fucking mystery book! We’re gonna buy it!

2. “Acupuncture.” If you want to get me into an office and stick me with thousands of sharp, tiny pins, you really need to leave the word “puncture” out of the equation. Take a lesson from traditional medicine. My mother, for example, is called a Phlebotomist, not a Lady Who Sticks You With A Needle And Sucks Out Vials Worth Of Your Blood.

C. Designated hitter. In this case, it’s not the term I hate; it’s the thing. Attention American League: make your pitchers go up to bat, the way real men are supposed to.

4. Snarky news reporting. I recently read an article about a former college football player in West Virginia who’s settled down to raise a family instead of going onto sports greatness. Apparently, he’s put on a lot of weight in the past year or two. Those are facts. Speculating on how many donuts it took to pack on those pounds…not so much. I suppose y’all think it’s a way of keeping up with the times and appealing to younger readers. It isn’t. It makes you look like assholes. Stick to the facts. Leave the snark for the comments section.

5. Perez Hilton.

6. Broken coffee makers. Seriously, is it too much to ask a free, plastic, 2-cup Gevalia coffee maker to work for more than a year? I don’t care if I do have hard water that screws with your innards. I need some goddamn coffee!

Here’s a secret: I’ve been a little nervous about something for the past several months. Something that I never mentioned to anyone.

Late last fall, I submitted a letter to Front Street Reviews , asking if they would kindly review Waiting For Spring. A couple of days later, I received a reply in the affirmative from Ms. Barb Radmore, the editor of the website. I’ll admit that I let out a little “Squeeee!” as I read the words, “I’ll review this one myself instead of assigning it to one of my reviewers.” But once I’d mailed her the copy of the book, trepidation began to set in. Here’s why:

1. I really love Front Street Reviews. I mean, really and truly, beyond-just-a-crush, love the site. It’s why I’d waited so long to submit my book for review. A bad’un might’ve crushed my ego beyond repair *.

2. Ms. Radmore is from Maine, which is a HUGE deal for me. Ever since I typed out the first word of the book, nearly three years ago, I’ve felt a tremendous responsibility to do right by my fair state, and by its inhabitants. The real Maine ain’t always pretty, but I love it and her people.

3. I sent her the version I’d published through Lulu.com. That in itself isn’t a bad thing, but I’d done it before I knew much about formatting (that realization, courtesy of Zoe – thank you, Z! – occurred about three weeks after I’d sent Ms. Radmore the book) and, as a result, the formatting in the copy she received is damned sloppy.

Every day I would check the site. I was half-hoping I would never see the loverly cover of my book gracing the front page; that it had gotten lost in the mail and that Ms. Radmore had forgotten all about it. I was one-quarter expecting to see it there with a “good lord, this book sucks” caption.  But I was also holding onto the barest glimmer of hope that Ms. Radmore actually had gotten the thing, and that she’d liked it.

Tonight after I got home from work, I took a deep breath, scrolled through my bookmarks, and braved a peek. Lo and behold, there it was! My loverly cover gracing the front page of the site! With nary a ‘good lord, this sucks’ to be found.

That’s right. She liked it.

The plot may sound like it has been done before, many times, but R.J. Keller is able to bring a freshness that is both unexpected and welcomed. She is able to maintain the flow of the story, the ebb and tide of a life as it crests and falls. It is difficult to carry a book in the first person, using predominately conversation without it seeming ‘in your face’ or poor writing. But Keller is able to pull it off. […] She has the ability to create strong characters that draw the reader into their lives, to cringe, cry, yell, and occasionally celebrate, as they stumble through their time between the pages of this book.

Check out the review in its entirety here.

* Probably not possible. My ego is fairly gargantuan.

Just posted a new page for my Waiting For Spring book trailer.

Check ’em out. 🙂

I worked on this until 4am.

An actual recorded conversation between three midnight convenience store customers is animated for your…convenience.

aka: this entire blog post might be half-full of shit

I walked into work on Friday afternoon to a sight that (almost literally) took my breath away: The store was nearly out of Allen’s Coffee Brandy. The next delivery isn’t until Thursday.

Naturally, I asked my boss, “What the hell?” I mean, he couldn’t honestly expect me to work two busy weekend shifts without any Allen’s in the store. It’s like punching the clock at Burger King and being told by your manager that, unfortunately, your customers will have to do without their Whoppers. Or, to use a better analogy, it’s like being a nurse in the pysch ward and being told by the attending physician that, unfortunately, your patients will have to do without their meds. Until Thursday.

“It’s not my fault!” he said. Then he proceeded to tell me the following story, the facts of which I cannot confirm. I’m going to tell you his story anyway.

It seems the founder (or inventor, or something) of Allen’s Coffee Brandy died recently. He was pretty old, and his daughter had long since taken over the business, but she was understandably broken up about the passing of her father. To pay tribute to him, she commanded the troops to cease production of the Champagne of Maine until after his funeral. Since Mainers buy the crap by the bucketful every day, it didn’t take long for distributors to run low. And that means it didn’t take long for stores, including the one I work at, to run out.

I’ll admit it: the story sounded a little hinky to me. Like something a short-sighted distributor might tell the manager of a convenience store to excuse the lack of Allen’s Coffee Brandy in their recent liquor order. I did a google search when I got home from work on Friday night and found nothing remotely resembling the events described by my boss in the news. It still didn’t stop me from repeating it to irrate addicts – I mean customers – on Friday and Saturday night. I even managed a tear or two and a lilt in my voice at the retelling. It did nothing to tug at the hardened heartstrings of would-be Allen’s consumers, though. Never in all my years of working shitty customer service jobs have I been exposed to  the kind of verbal abuse I withstood this weekend. I even had to call the cops on one occasion.

Next time we run out of Allen’s, I want hazzard pay. Or a can of pepper spray.

2008 was a pretty rough year for Mainers in many ways. Being a rural, wintry state, we really felt the effects of the obscenely high gas and oil prices; we watched helplessly as more mills and other companies shut their doors, or otherwise cut back on their labor force; and – perhaps most unsettling of all – the number of domestic violence murders tripled in number from 2007. (SOURCE: Bangor Daily News.) In fact, “60% of the murders in Maine last year were a result of domestic violence – including five people charged with killing children.” (SOURCE: WCSH6.com) With the economy set to get even worse, and knowing that hard economic times usually means an increase in domestic abuse, I shudder to think about what those statistics will look like by the end of 2009. Consider this:

• Conservative estimates suggest that only about half of aggravated and simple assaults are ever reported.
• In Maine, the crime of Domestic Assault, as reported to police, occurs every 96 minutes. (Maine Department of Public Safety, Uniform Crime Report, 2005.)
• Every year over 7,000 Maine women are physically or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner and over half of them (57%) are injured as a result of the violence. (Maine Center for Disease Control, 2008 )
• One in 20 new mothers in Maine report experiencing abuse during pregnancy. 

(SOURCE: Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence.)

Those of you who’ve read Waiting For Spring know that it includes a subplot involving domestic violence. In fiction, I was able to see to it that the offender got justice. In real life, of course, I have no such power. I do have the power to help real life victims of domestic violence, though, if even in a small way.

In that spirit, I’m announcing that the proceeds from the sale of Waiting For Spring at Amazon.com (both the trade paperback version, as well as the Kindle version) will be donated to Spruce Run, a domestic abuse project that provides information and support to all people affected by domestic abuse. Any donations received for the downloaded version of the book on Smashwords will also be given to Spruce Run. In addition, the proceeds from any copies sold directly from my CreateSpace page will be donated. (Keep in mind that an author’s royalties end up being more than twice the amount on CreateSpace than on Amazon.com, because there’s no money going to Amazon…which means the amount donated to Spruce Run would be twice as much from any books sold from there.) This includes any copies of the book sold thus far on Amazon and any donations received from Smashwords. (This does not, I’m afraid, include any of the proceeds from the Lulu.com version, which is no longer available, because that money went towards getting the Amazon version published.)

For those of you who live in Maine, my next step is going to be getting the book into local bookstores. The proceeds from those sales will go to Spruce Run as well. I’ll keep you posted on those developments.

In the meantime, for those of you who have been contemplating buying a copy, keep the donation thing in mind. For those of you who have already read and/or bought it (or put a tip into the tip jar at Smashwords), consider telling a friend or two, or more, about it.

I know this post has a lotta links and statistics, and it’s pretty late at night as I’m writing this, so if you’re confused – or if you have any questions at all – feel free to shoot ’em into the comments section here in this post. Or, if you’d rather, my email address is rjkeller.wfs@gmail.com

As many of you may know, fellow writer Travis Erwin has suffered a devastating loss. Last weekend, his family’s house burned to the ground. Thankfully, he and his family all got out in time. But they lost everything they own.

A site has been set up to help them out as they start the difficult process of rebuilding. Please consider donating if you’re able to.

Habitat for Travis.

I’d also like to post this, from Travis’ own blog, for you to consider:

Lots of you have asked how you can help, so swallowing my pride I’m going to list the few things that come to mind concerning my boys.

Children’s books. My boys are 6 and 8 and they both love to read and I know at some point they are going to feel the loss of their books.

Hot wheel cars for my youngest. They sell for about a buck and I imagine they would cost only a bit more than that to mail. I know it would bring a smile to his face to find one in the mailbox.

Also if any of you live in the Orlando area or are visiting Disneyworld soon I’d love to replace t- shirts they boys picked out while we were there. My oldest is a size 10 or I think a child’s large and he had a shirt with Mickey Mouse’s body that said I’m the big cheese. His younger brother wears a 6 or a small and his ad a picture of Mickey and Goofy dressed as pirates along with a treasure map and it said How to Be a Pirate. It is very silly I know, but they spent a week agonizing over what shirt to pick and then they were gone before they ever got to wear them at home. I would gladly repay anyone who can find those shirts for them.

Also, according to Erica Orloff:

…his wife is emotionally suffering and is a scrapbooker who lost all her supplies, so perhaps you might have these things just gathering dust in your closet.

If you’re able to help out in that way, Travis’ address is posted on his blog.

On a very different note, I forgot to let y’all know that yesterday was my day for posting at Publishing Renaisance. Well, it was. Check it out here. Actually, you should check out all the posts over there while you’re at it.

I think the title of this blog post says it all, but I’ll repeat it anyway – complete with exclamation point – because I’m pretty excited:

Waiting For Spring is now available in trade paperback at Amazon.com!!! (I guess that’s three exclamation points.)

That means it’s eligible for the free, supersaver shipping thing on total purchases of $25 or more. CLICK HERE to check it out. The snazzy ‘search inside this book’ feature hasn’t been enabled yet (I’m still working on it), but you can search inside the book anyway by following this link.

Or, if you prefer, you can buy it directly from my CreateSpace page.

And, of course, it’s still available on Kindle and in various formats at Smashwords.

Today my kids’ Christmas vacation ended, which means that mine ended, too. Back to the ole homeschooling grind, which I normally enjoy. Today, though, both of my kids had algebraic related difficulties, which means that I had algebraic difficulties, too. We finally managed to get through it (although it was touch and go for awhile), but it left me asking the same question I asked when I was in school over 20 years ago:

Who the fuck ever uses algebra in their daily lives? Seriously.

I’m not talking about simple stuff like figuring out what “x” is in x – 73 = 569. I’m talking about seven mile long equations with parenthesis and even negative numbers. Other than algebra teachers and very specific brands of scientists, does anyone else ever need to go this mathematically in depth? I mean, we were dividing postive numbers by negative numbers today. In real life, is it even possible to divide a quantity by a negative number? If it is, I don’t wanna know about it.

My brain is officially oatmeal right now. Fortunately, I don’t have to do anything this afternoon and evening that requires brain power. I just have to go to work.

**************

Quick housekeeping note: I added a couple of new questions to the Waiting For Spring FAQ page. Don’t hesitate to email me with any questions or comments, or to plop ’em right into the FAQ comments section.