BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

So… A week or so back I posted a quick blog entitled Q&A: In That Order, or something of that sort… Who knows for sure. I don’t even pay attention to me anymore.

At any rate, I said I would answer questions in a blog entry for the 15th, so here it is. I also said I’d wait until the 12th for all the questions. Then I realized I was leaving town at Oh-Dark-Thirty on the 12th and wouldn’t have a chance to see those questions. Well, doesn’t seem like I had to worry. As I said, I don’t pay attention to me anymore, and it seems not many folks out in the blog-o-sphere do either. What I mean is, I got a few questions right off the bat, and only a couple of those were actually serious. But, after that, not so many views of the post. That seems to be the case across the board.

I guess that means folks are becoming bored across the board. With me at least.

Again, who knows…

Anywho, as promised, here are the questions and answers. If you have more, feel free to leave them, and maybe I will answer. Or, maybe I’ll ignore them.

Again, who knows…

• kat says:

  May 30, 2011 at 7:33 pm

  i have been curious for awhile. i am a fan of long hair, my spouse has long hair my stepson and myself also. so…did you set a milestone for yourself? when you cut your hair i mean! ty if you answer!

Heya, Kat… There wasn’t an actual milestone. I’ve had, or did have, long hair since high school. I had some short periods in there, but for twenty-odd years my hair was long, and for most of that, long enough that it was in a fairly substantial ponytail. Then, one day after being “off the road” for a couple of months I had to pack my suitcase so that I could hop onto a big, winged rocket-propelled cattle car, and head off to a foreign land (read: not home) to do a gig. As I stood there looking at all of the stuff I was cramming into my suitcase it dawned on me that I was packing around an awful lot of “hair product,” so to speak. Too much.

Basically it came down to the fact that hair care was taking over my suitcase. I decided it would be way easier to manage, and to pack for, if I had shorter hair. So, I did the only thing I could do. I asked The Redhead. Why? Because I once shaved off my beard without her permission and I still have scars from that incident.

Anywho, Her Supreme Evilness said, “Yeah. I think you are due for a change.”

I said, “My fans will probably be upset.”

To which she replied, “Who do you live with, your fans or ME.”

And so, I got a haircut. Just as an aside, the 16 or so inches of hair went to Locks of Love…

• Gina says:

  May 30, 2011 at 7:38 pm

  So if the book you just finished writing is “In the Bleak Midwinter,” featuring Constance Mandalay…. whatcha got cooking that is due in December? Thrilled we’re gonna get two M.R. Sellars books in such a short period of time!

Writing for a smaller press has advantages and disadvantages. Mostly advantages, but among the disadvantages is that my deadlines are tighter since they move through the editorial process quicker. What that means is that instead of turning in a manuscript and seeing it on the shelves 8-12 months later, it is usually more like 3-6. Sometimes faster if I’ve had to ask for an extension on my deadline.

So… With ITBM in the can, what is next on my plate is finishing up #11 in the RGI series, which I had already been writing when I took the break to do ITBM. Once I finish that, I will be hopping on board the Constance train again, as the publisher has already asked for two more in the Constance Mandalay series.

• Tasialue says:

  May 30, 2011 at 7:38 pm

  So, was Uncle Fred secretly working FOR the government, field testing plague serums on unsuspecting homeless folks? ‘Cause I think he was…

For those who may have never attended my “Magickal Ethics” workshop, “Uncle Fred” plays a big role in a “Kobyashi Maru” no-win scenario I present to the class. The point behind the scenario is not to see if you can pull a Kirk and cheat your way out of it. The point is to present you with a situation that makes you think. The idea being that if you leave the workshop looking for aspirin, then I have done my job to make you think about ethics and how they apply to our everyday lives. Note I said, “make YOU think.” I’ve already done plenty of that on the subject, hence the workshop. The idea is for YOU to have the headache, not ME. However, as you can see, Ms. Tasialue didn’t get a headache. She is just being a headache.

That said… No. He wasn’t. It’s all just a Fig Newton of your imagination.

• Schueyman says:

  May 31, 2011 at 10:17 pm

  What do you call that place on the inside of your arm where your elbow bends? And what about the corresponding area behind your knee?

Antecubital fossa and popliteal fossa, respectively. Neither of these are any relation to Dian Fossa or Bob Fossa. Nor are they related to Dian Fossey or Bob Fossey, just so we’re clear.

(Thanks to my friend Doctor Gina Witt for the anatomical info…)

• Schueyman says:

  May 31, 2011 at 10:18 pm

  Why is there air?

Per Doc Witt – So you won’t collapse due to not having something expanding your skin.

However, as I’ve known you, Mister Schueyman, for thirty-odd years, I highly suspect the answer you are looking for is:

“To blow up volleyballs. Any PhysEd major knows that…”

• dee says:June 1, 2011 at 10:49 pmWhat, is your name?
  What, is your quest?
  What, is the average airspeed of a cocoanut-laden swallow?

Lord Stainless Steel Thundermonkey.

To do everything in my power to please The Evil Redhead.

African or European?

There you go…

More to come…

Murv

There are certain things, that when said aloud, will bring most any conversation to a screeching halt. You know the things I mean. Stuff such as, “Whoops, my hair is on fire…” or “Whoa! Is that Dana Delany over there?”

Personally, I have an intense fondness for the Dana Delany comment, but then we already knew that, right? Well, if you didn’t, you do now… Oops… Guess that was sorta awkward, eh?

The thing is, there are several such phrases that can bring a conversation to a sudden halt. Case in point…

I was prattling on endlessly with my PA the other day. As it happens, the o-spring is out of school for the summer, so she was sitting there fiddling about with her Nook or some such since it is loaded up with a ton of summer reading for her. Since she’s all kinds of brilliant and has a high school level command of the English language, I often forget that she’s still just a tween, so my filters aren’t always in place. In this instance, they weren’t, and I was talking to my PA about Merrie Axemas, and In The Bleak Midwinter, giving him a synopsis of the stories, how they related, differed, and other such nonsense.

Well… Anyone who has read Merrie Axemas knows that there is a dismemberment involved. Merrie. Axe. Mas… You get the idea. So moving right along, as we are talking the o-spring pipes up and says:

“Did you know that when your head is chopped off you still live for eleven more seconds?”

This really shouldn’t – and didn’t – surprise me. After all, she’s my kid… But that’s not the thing that stopped the conversation. I mean, think about it. I research all manner of nastiness for my thriller novels… After all, I write about serial and/or spree killers for the most part. That’s why I’m a member of the HWA, and not the “Grandma’s Cozy Knitting Happily Ever After Ending Whodunit Club”…

But on with the story… you see, since both my PA and I know my kid, we just continued the convo, involving her at this point. Mainly discussing the fact that 11 seconds might be a bit of a stretch, but that there was some evidence to indicate that the brain continued to function very briefly following decapitation.

This then turned to different ways of dying, and before I knew it my PA and my daughter were into a discussion of which way to go would be the least traumatic. They got onto beheading, suffocation, drowning, etc, and I added my two cents, that being the fact that I was under the impression that suffocation wasn’t a particularly pleasant way to go, no matter HOW the suffocation happened. That’s when my PA regaled us with a tale of how he had almost drowned – or come somewhat close – when he was a child, and how it had gone from a fearful struggle to a simple calm… Well, obviously he didn’t drown, or he wouldn’t have been there having weird death conversations with my tween daughter.

But this was when the conversation stopper came.

Darling daughter pipes up, “Yeah, I almost drowned a few years ago.”

You could hear a pin drop. I stared at her. She stared at me. My PA stared at her. She stared at him. We all stared at each other.

Finally I broke down and said, “When was this?”

“A few years ago at blankity-blank pool,” she replied.

“How?”

She shrugged. “It was before I knew how to swim and my friend took me to the deep end and left me there because she didn’t know that I couldn’t swim.”

I stared some more. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”

“I dunno.”

“So, did the lifeguard jump in and save you or something? I mean, it seems to me they would have told us about it when we picked you up from summer day camp.”

“No,” she said. “My friend just took me back to the shallow end.”

“Well, did you start sinking or what? How did you almost drown?”

She thought about it a second and then said, “Well… I might’ve kinda exaggerated…”

Guess I can’t complain. She’s my kid. She got it honest…

More to come…

Murv