Why?

Pretty much, yes.

Yesterday, I published a very snarky review of The Wolf Gift.

The only writer that I will publicly “review” is Anne and that’s for one reason:  I expect nothing less than greatness from the woman who set me on my path and when she falls short of, or flat flops off of, that lofty perch I sat her upon for so many years, it pisses me off. Plain and simple.

I’ve had professional reviewers tell me that they would never, ever do what I did and post a bad review. They would gloss it over, or just not post one. Why the hell not? If you’re a pro, I’m looking to you for your honest, professional opinion and if I open a book based on your good review and I find crap, I’m gonna be pissed at you and never take your advice again. Are you trying to spare the author’s feelings by keeping quiet? They’re a writer, they should have skin as thick as an elephant or they need to quit, or just have an Internet meltdown and provide us weeks of entertainment. Either way, suck it up, buttercup, and don’t lie by omission. You are not doing your readers any favors. And, really, you’re not doing anything for the author, either.

Could you imagine if I posted that I loved that book and say… Nia… decided to read it based on my review? She’d freakin fly to Georgia and kick my ass. And she could, too.

Just for the record, I’ve made it a policy not to publicly review books by anyone I know, even if the book is the most fabulous thing I’ve ever read. If I post a great review of Dick’s book, but keep silent on Jane’s book, as per the above “pro” policy… don’t you think Jane is gonna catch on that I hated her book, simply because I posted nothing? How long do you think that friendship would last? Now you see my point. The friendship is worth more than a review. So, to be fair, I do not review anyone I know. Ever. Beta read for you, yes. Review on like Amazon or Goodreads? No.

So, no, I’m not going to apologize for reviewing Anne in a bad light yesterday, not in any way, shape or form. Why not? Because I’m brutal, I have no filter – none of which is a secret – and I would want someone to do me the same courtesy of telling me that something I’d written was not good.

If it’s shit, I wanna know.

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Mailed Feb 28th to “Zombie”

Hey, you! Cat!

You know, you’ve been outside living under my car for a very long time. I swear it’s been a year. One would think you would trust us enough by now to come a little closer than ten feet. Seriously, we’re not going to eat you. I don’t even much like Chinese. Honest.

You were so sick when I first saw you, which is why I call you Zombie, you see. You staggered, listed, tripped, flat fell over numerous times. So much for a cat’s grace, eh? Sometimes, you just sat in the middle of the yard with your head down, nose between your paws. I’ve seen that behavior in a cat before and the outcome wasn’t pretty.  The neighbors’s cats would mess with you and, much as I loved them, they got on my shit-list for that. But! We’ve fed you, we’ve kept you warm as best we could. And guess what? You got better. And you’re so pretty.

Kal is in the front yard, too, ya know. She’s a good kid. Oh, hell… fine. She’s a bitch, but I’m sure she’d like someone like you. Socks, the idiot cat in the house already? Don’t worry about him, he’s too stupid to breathe, sometimes.

Wish you’d come closer – I can’t even get you to hold still for a picture. Bobby says you can come inside if I can ever get you to come to me. I’m going to hold him to that.

Love,

Your Wanna-Be Mom

No, I did not mail this one. I left in on the Vette. If Zombie suddenly develops opposable thumbs and opens it, we’re all screwed.

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Mailed Feb 23rd to Nia

She got her package yesterday, but because I blew the day with the “Spooge” blog, here we go!

Nia, Gail… whatever the hell your name is today. It’s interchangeable. 

Hi!  

And yes, I did do that sideways smilie, there.  Why not? I’ve written that way to you since nineteen ninety-freaking FOUR! I’m not going to stop now just because you’re reading a piece of paper and not a damned screen. What? Are you special or some shit? 

You see what I mailed you? HORRIBLE artwork. You asked for it, just remember that. I don’t care that you have it, it gets the shit outta my house before anyone can see how bad I suck at oil pastels. 

The art sucks! The dreams behind it? Well, you get it. So…

XOX

~me

I was so pissed off when I messed up those lamps.

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The Steps… or “I Wanna Be Spooge”

Everyone knows by now – how could you not when I can’t shut up about it? – how much I love New Orleans. The letter I sent Leia mentioned steps just outside the range of view in the picture. Here’s the story.

The Society of St. Anne Walk. That’s the best, most brief, link I could find on the subject.

The Society takes the ashes of their members who have passed in the last year on one final walk through the city on Mardi Gras. Then they walk to the Moonwalk, where the picture was taken, down a large set of steps to the water’s edge and scatters their ashes into the Mississippi. If you watched Treme, this is what was done with Creighton’s ashes. I don’t know if she made the walk, but they did end up in the river.

I don’t want to just be walked through the Quarter, though. I want to go to Layfayette Cemetery, too. I want some ashes sprinkled there. I want to then be taken on a trolley ride back to the Quarter to meet the SSA and have ashes scattered just a little, here and there, along the whole walk. I want to salute Rex, and then I want to go to the river. Why scatter the ashes in all these different places? Because I wanna be SPOOGE.

Spooge is any viscous substance of unknown, and questionable, origin - gotta have the “questionable” part, or it ain’t spooge - mostly found along the streets of New Orleans. That’s the shit that falls on your head out of nowhere, the slimy stuff that gets on your feet and works it’s way into the inevitable blisters you get from walking the city so much and seems to never want to wash out of those blisters. That’s a “Nola tattoo”, right there, and they last for months.

I wanna be spooge.

Hush. You knew I was weird.

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Sleepy time…

… but I wanted to say thank you to two recent followers and share some blog love.

Running From Hell With El

I’mma squeeze her to death before it’s over with.

The Loneliness of the Stay-At-Home-Mother

While it may have been long ago, I remember what it was like to be a LSAM who loved to write.

And an unexpected, but nice, visitor.

The Monster in Your Closet

Author of The Monster’s Daughter

Now, go love on these people while I go to sleep.

XO

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Mailed Feb 24th to Rose

Hey, bitch! Yes, YOU! 

You need to get your ass back down here, pronto! You and Ronnie James, both! This is messed up shit, here!

Wendy’s lost her damned mind! I had to go bail her out of jail because she ran down Broad Street naked. NAKED!…. chasing Sharon with a bat! No, not a baseball bat, a *reet-reet* bat, ya know… with WINGS and FANGS. Exactly how the hell am I supposed to make them both behave by myself? Are you damned NUTS?

And Pamela? WOW! Johnny Depp’s single now and I keep trying to tell her that just because he is does not mean it’s her cue to take her happy, wrinkled, old ass across the pond after him. It’s yours.

You get back here. NOW.

Deepest regards,

THE BITCH PULLING HER HAIR OUT!

Sorry about not typing out the p.s. Writing it was hard enough.

Rose was my best friend since like… puberty. Throughout our teenage years, she would move away, move back, move away. *sigh* I got so sick of putting her on buses. Once, we talked my parents into letting her live with us, but then her mom called and she moved away again, only coming back to Augusta when we were in our early twenties.

While she was away, I used to write her letters like this. In fact, before this whole Month of Letters thing, she was the last person to whom I had actually written a letter. Ronnie James is Ronnie James Dio, Wendy is his wife. Sharon is Sharon Osbourne. Pamela is Pamela Des Barres. Letters like the one above were comic relief, something to say so we didn’t have to talk about how fucked up our families were for just a few minutes, and because I liked to make her laugh. She would never reply, she’d call me instead.

Life goes on, we grew up… I lost track of her for a while. Everyone has demons and Rose had many, some she just could not shake. Rose passed away one year ago today. February 24, 2011.

Ronnie James left us in 2010, less than a year before Rose. I didn’t miss it, not for  a second. The last thing I said to Rose, alone in ICU, when I knew for certain that she was never going to wake up again, was this:

“Tell Ronnie James I said hello. And tell him his wife is a craaaaazy bitch.”

Three days later, I danced with her brother at her funeral.

She would have LOVED it.

And, yes, I mailed the letter. Rose Marie Bragg, c/o Ronnie James Dio

… On Tour…

~

… your best friend always sticking up for you, even when I know you’re wrong!

~

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Mailed Feb 11th… whoops… 16th to Leia

Hi, Leia!!!

You might have figured I’d send you a picture. You post so many beautiful shots on Facebook that it was hard to resist. 

See, I have this nifty camera and really haven’t ever learned how to use it properly.  This picture is extra special because it seems I got something mostly right that night. You should see some of the shitty pictures I’ve taken at hockey games. Oy! Who’da thunk men could skate that fast? It all ends up a huge blur and just *BLAH*. 

But New Orleans? She doesn’t move; she holds still for me and poses so prettily. 

It’s my favorite out of every picture I’ve ever taken there. That view, that bridge… are so, so special to me. There’s a set of steps just on the other side of the grass that lead down to the water… sort of a strange story, but I’ll tell you on the blog if you want to know… and I’ll hope you still like the picture after I tell you. LOL! 

Ya know, I was thinking about when we “met” and I have a confession… I can’t remember anymore, for the life of me, what your nickname was on “That Board” with “That Guy”. 

Gods, I suck. I have a worse memory than a thousand year old vampire.

*HUGS*

~Astrea

And now we hear… The Rest of the Story!

I went to get that pic printed on Feb 8th, as evidenced here. I’m at the kiosk, pushing buttons. It prints my receipt. I scan it at the print station. Nothing happens. I wait. Nothing happens. Dude comes over and pushes a few buttons, overrides the machine and pushes print again. Nothing. Reboot the system. Twenty minutes later, the system is finally back up. Redo the print job. Nothing. By now I’ve been in this store about forty minutes. System is brrrrrrrrrroken and I have no picture, I’m leaving. I never make it back until the 16th.

Go back FINALLY and yay! the machine is fixed. I almost order myself a copy. Nah, change my mind. I didn’t know where I’d hang it, anyway. I order just the one. The store has that internet deal where you can order pics online and they print in the store, so when the dude goes to punch in my print job… he accidentally hits the print job for 194 pictures off the internet. He apologized, but are you shitting me? I end up standing there for about thirty minutes when dude suddenly double-takes at me.

“Did you try to print an 8×10 the other day and the machine broke down?” Yeppers, that would be me. He reaches under the counter and pulls out my 8×10 from the other day. “It took us three days to get a Kodak technician here, and when he got everything booted back up it printed this out. “

The print’s been kinda bent by the machine trying to eat it, but it’s not terrible. It printed a little odd, the raw camera file seems to show more – like the image is cropped. Still, I’m not sending a bent pic to Leia, so I frown and hand it back to him, saying it’s kinda bent and it’s a pressie, so I’ll wait on the new one. But it’s bugging me, because I see it over on the counter and that’s “mine”, ya know? That’s *my* bridge. I grow more pouty by the second.

A few minutes later he hands me an envelope and kinda hides his hand by his cheek and does this pointing down motion. Then he smiles and says, “Here’s an envelope for your picture when it’s done.” I take a discreet look inside the envelope and he’s slipped my extra, bent copy inside and stapled the bill for only one copy on the outside. My brand new print slips out of the printer about then, so I smile to him and I’m off.

So! Now we both have a copy. I don’t mind that mine is bent, not one little bit. That bridge, that view, that city, means so much to me… just things no one can  possibly imagine. It’s my wallpaper on every computer I own, and now it hangs on the wall in my office, reminding me that October will eventually be here and, if the stars align just right, I’ll be there, taking another picture…

ETA:  Re: Nia’s package

I also painted this pic. It’s not great, but it also didn’t get tossed out.

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Mailed: Feb 18th to Juliet

*facepalm* I forgot to take a picture of the whole “set”, so let me explain. I mailed Juliet a large envelope with two letters inside:
.

.

Letter#1

I’m sure you ‘get it’.

Wish it really worked that way, but honestly, I think you’ll be just fine without anyone giving you a ‘sock’.

When you get sad, or even a little down, wear the sock!

Love you,
~Astrea

Letter #2

You didn’t really think I’d only send you one sock, did you? You’d look kinda goofy wearing just one sock.

(I even bought myself a pair.)

~

~

~

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Happy Day/Sad Day

Happy

Sad

Where y’at?

Laissez les bon temps rouler…

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A Book in A Box

I pre-ordered a book from Amazon. It wasn’t supposed to get here until Valentine’s Day. It got here the day before.

I was expecting a hard back and yet the box is a little small. I’m frowny. Is it a novella? That will disappoint me, if so. Normally, I’m window watching like a maniac when I know a book is coming because I can’t wait to get the box open.  Well that happened, the psycho-window-watching, but this time I put the box down, unopened, right here.

Yeah, that’s the stupid farting cat who thinks he owns my reading chair.

The box stayed there until two days later when my husband moved it here, on top of the tv…

Every time I sit in my reading chair, across the room, the box is smirking at me.

**SMIRKING** 

Don’t tell me you don’t see that smirk.
*

It’s… The Wolf Gift.

*A MILLION… ok, so like *eleven*… GASPS RESONATE THROUGH THE INTERNET*

I know, right?

I was with Anne, all the way and gung-ho, until Memnoch The Doorstop. I bought The Vampire Armand, in spite of Memnoch, because how could a fan have NOT bought a book with ARMAND as the main?… and I wept. And not it a good way.

I’ve had that box for five days now and I’m too chicken-shit to open it for fear I’ll be disappointed. I want to like it, I really do, and I hope I do. But it’s going to stay right there for a while.

I think it knows this and that’s what the smirking’s all about.

*

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