Sunday, January 31, 2010

February Coming Attractions!

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    by Caren Crane

    February 2, you won't want to miss the fun as Kate Carlisle launches Book Two of her fabulous Bibliophile Mysteries, If Books Could Kill. I can't wait to find out what's happening with Brooklyn and the mysterious Derek! It's going to be a wild time in the Lair, with prizes and cocktails and chocolate and cabana boys...and more. Don't miss the party and the prizes!




    February 3, Nancy Northcott hosts Edgar and Emmy Award winner and RITA nominee Hank Phillipi Ryan. Hank will give us the scoop on the ways her career as an investigative reporter influenced her creation of reporter heroine Charlotte McNally, who's juggling a demanding job, a new love, and a budding relationship with her lover's daughter--and risking her neck in the pursuit of truth and justice. Hank's latest Charlotte McNally novel is Drive Time. Can't wait to hear how Hank's experiences inform her writing of this great heroine!




    February 4, Donna MacMeans hosts Lisa Cooke, whose new humorous historical release A Midwife Crisis is set in the Appalachian Mountains of the 1890s. A captivating midwife discovers she’s engaged to three different men (thanks to her zany family) and falling in love with a fourth. Lisa will be talking about what we love and hate in heroes. I am a total sucker for zany families!





    February 5, Jeanne Adams interviews Brad Parks, whose gritty debut novel Faces Of the Gone follows reporter Carter Ross as he investigates four execution-style murders and finds a connection between the victims that puts him in the killer's sights. The man had a cover quote from my idol Harlan Coben on the cover of his debut. I can't wait to read the book and to know more about Brad!





    February 19, romance and urban fantasy author Seressia Glass joins Nancy to discuss Shadow Blade, the first book in the new Shadowchasers urban fantasy series. With an Egyptian dagger missing, a 4000-year-old Nubian warrior seeking it, and sinister forces turning Atlanta upside down to get to the dagger first, shadowchaser Kira Solomon has her hands full. Sounds like spine-tingling fun!





    February 21 Christie Kelley interviews Janet Mullany about her new Regency-set historical release, Improper Relations, featuring the impertinent Charlotte Hayden, whose cousin Ann's bad behavior may cost Charlotte the husband she is growing to love. Oh, my, falling in love with one's husband?! What is a Regency woman to do?






    Contests and Prizes and New Releases, Oh My!

    Anna Campbell recently received the gorgeous Australian edition of Captive Of Sin. It's a lovely trade paperback that isn’t available overseas so she thought she'd share the joy. TWO lucky people can choose which of Anna's four books they’d like to receive in the bigger version, so the prize is a signed copy of either Claiming the Courtesan, Untouched, Tempt the Devil or Captive Of Sin. All you have to do is email Anna on anna@annacampbell.info with the title of her June 2010 release. You might find the answer in the Latest News on her website. For more information, please visit Anna's Contest Page.


    Christie Kelley is running a contest on her website through February 28. Just stop by and tell her something scandalous that you've done in your life — she promises not to tell and claims it doesn't have to be scandalous, merely fun — and enter for a chance to win an autographed ARC of Something Scandalous.





    February may be the shortest month of the year but it will be jam-packed full of fun! It looks like the happenings in the Lair will be hot enough to keep all of us in the Northern Hemisphere warm. For those currently sweltering in the Southern Hemisphere, at least the party will distract you from the heat and humidity! I hope you will all make a point of popping in each day to see what's happening with all of the darrlin bands, Bandita Buddies, special guests and, of course, the Golden Rooster!

    So, Bandita Buddies, what are YOU looking forward to in February? Inquiring Bandita minds want to know!Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Book Booty!!!

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    We have a winner from Monday's open letter to Amy Adams! But first, I wanted to thank everyone for making it such a fun day in the Lair. Just so you know, I'm sitting by the phone, waiting for Amy's people to call. I've got a really good feeling it'll happen any time now. I'll keep you posted! ;-)

    Meanwhile, the winner of the ARC of IF BOOKS COULD KILL is . . .

    Elyssa Papa!!!

    Congratulations Elyssa, my darling! Write me at katecarlisle99@yahoo.com with your snail mail address and I'll send that ARC out to you, post haste!

    P.S. Hey everyone, don't miss my book launch party this Tuesday! Fun! Games! Prizes! Cocktails! Men in kilts??? Oh, yeah!! Woohoo!!Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Happy birthday, Lucy!

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

Secret Formula?

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    by Susan Sey

    I hit a writing milestone just before Christmas. I turned in Book 2 on my first contract. Now you'd think Book 1 would be the milestone, wouldn't you? The first one, the big kahuna. The one that merited The Call we writers love to talk about for years and years to come. But I'll tell you the truth--it's Book 2 that I'm really proud of.


    And why am I prouder of Book 2 than Book 1? Because I wrote Book 1 (Money, Honey, coming July 6 from Berkley Sensation--have I mentioned that?) under absolutely no pressure. Nobody cared if I wrote it, nobody cared if I finished it, nobody cared what I did between "once upon a time" and "happily ever after." It was my book, my baby, & somebody--goodness only knows why--liked it enough to buy it. That was lucky. Not that I'm knocking luck--I'm darn grateful for it--but with Book 1, I presented the publishing world with a done deal.

    Book 2, though? That's a different story. That one you write with somebody looking over your shoulder from start to finish. It's the one you have to outline before you write, & get the outline approved. Then you have to write something approximating the outline, and pray you've managed to turn the outline into a story that has even a little bit of the verve & charm that sold people on the first book.

    It wasn't easy, I'll tell you that much. I wrote Book 2 two separate times--not two drafts so much as in two completely separate books. I wrote it the first time in about eight months. I wrote it the second time in two months. I don't recall anything between Halloween & Christmas, I truly do not. But I finally got it right. I did the work & I'm proud of it.

    I thought I was in for a well-deserved vacation but my agent has recently informed me that we should now be thinking about what we want to propose to my editor for a follow up to Book 2 (now sitting on her desk awaiting jugment.) So for the past two weeks, I've been racking my addled brains for fresh story ideas. For some gorgeous, high-concept pitch that's going to convince the powers that be to take another flier on me in an economy that (to put it politely) blows.

    I'll tell you this--for all the flack romance gets for being formulaic, this was not as easy as it should have been. If there's a secret formula out there for writing a best-selling romance, will somebody please send it my way?

    In fact, hey, why don't you? If you had to write a recipe for your perfect romance novel, what would it look like? Do you like your heros dark & broody? Funny & smart? Dangerous & suave? What about your heroines? Shy & sheltered? Kick butt & unapologetic? When a dog takes center stage, do you cringe or melt? Give us the skinny! Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Double Bandit Booty-Jo Davis & VLT

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    posted by Suz
    Today, I hope to warm up your winter nights by giving away double the bandit booty by announcing winners from guest appearances by Jo Davis and Vicki Lewis Thompson!



    The winner of a signed copy of I SPY A WICKED SIN by Jo Davis is LAURIE! The same Laurie who won the Golden Rooster that day! Congratulations, Laurie!

    AND

    The winner of a signed copy of BLONDE WITH A WAND is MARNEE!! Congratulations Marnee!!

    Please send your snail mail address to swwelsh2001 AT yahoo DOT com(yes there are 2 W's in that addy.) And I will see that both Jo and Vicki get those prizes to you ASAP!Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Pause For The Cause

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    Today is the fifth anniversary of the greatest moviegoing experience of my life. I already waxed somewhat poetically on this film last month and so I'll spare you but....last Sunday I found myself flipping back and forth between the NFC Championship Game and a "60 Minutes" special on their legendary producer Don Hewitt and there was a quote of Hewitt's that struck me. He said:

    "I was never interested in stories about issues. I was interested in stories about people dealing with issues."

    I know it's five years on but those insufferable gasbags who slung mud at "Million Dollar Baby" and tried to claim it was a film about an "issue" should really pay attention to that quote of Hewitt's. (They won't. "Issue" people are completely incognizant of the fact a character in a movie might do something they themselves would not.) "Million Dollar Baby" was a story about people who, in the end, had to deal with a terrible issue. That was all. Man, I can't wait to watch it again.Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Friday, January 29, 2010

The Passing of Icons

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    by Jo Robertson


    My husband says everything comes in three’s. Three natural disasters in a row, three appliances breaking down within months of one another, three celebrity deaths.

    This week two very different but memorable writers passed away.

    According to reports, American crime writer Robert B. Parker died at the age of 77 at his desk, writing, of course -- the literary equivalent of a cowboy dying with his boots on. The incredibly prolific writer, noted especially for the Spenser (no first name) series (“s,” not “c,” like Edmund Spenser), also penned the Sunny Randall series, as well as my personal favorite, the Jesse Stone books. He also wrote numerous stand-alone books and westerns.

    When I heard the news of Parker's death, I felt like an old friend had died. He's one of the few writers I auto-buy in hardback and his Spenser books are a throw-back to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet.

    Then on Thursday reclusive J.D. Salinger, whose iconic work The Catcher in the Rye has been read by millions of teenagers (usually in their sophomore year in high school), died at the age of 91.

    The Catcher in the Rye is rich with teenage angst, rebellion, and alienation. I taught Catcher for many years and have had parents seek me out at Back to School Nights to say, “This was the defining book of my adolescence. Thank God, you’re teaching it.”
    Or, on a rare occasion, a parent might grumble something like, “That damned book ought to be banned.” Such controversy has surrounded the book since its publication in 1951.

    Risking the wrath of a conservative school board, I went all Holden Caulfield on the latter kinds of parents, showing a spark of courage in my career when answering, “I don’t believe in censorship of any kind.” Ouch, what a rebel.

    So now I hold my breath, not really superstitious, but uneasy, wondering silently what I’d do if one of my favorite writers no longer penned the stories I love. It’s unthinkable that I’d never read a new book by Stephen King or J.D. Robb, J.R. Ward or Kate Atkinson, Meg Gardiner or Anna Campell, Mary Balogh or Anne Perry, Robert Crais or Michael Connelly. And the list goes on . . .

    Salinger hadn’t published in forty-five years but by accounts there were piles and piles of notebooks at his home. He claimed he continued to write because he enjoyed it so much.

    Right now I’m reading Brimstone, one of Parker’s westerns. A new Jesse Stone book comes out next month. Was this the last book he wrote, I wonder?

    Now, your turn, readers. Which two authors would you mourn if they never wrote a new piece of writing? They don’t have to die! Just no more new stories. And yes, you must narrow it down to two and you must share why.
    Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Have a fabulous weekend!

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Cheap Timberwolves Clippers Tickets!

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Jason Aldean Odeum Colorado Tickets

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    Jason Aldean will be performing at The Odeum Colorado (formerly the Broomfield Event Center) in Broomfield, Colorado on Thursday, March 18th. Ticket King has a very nice selection of Jason Aldean tickets to the show starting at just $70 each for seats on the main floor! These great deals will NOT last long so grab them now while you still can! Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Tea submarine

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WWE US Bank Arena Tickets

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    Hey WWE fans!! Ticket King has great news for you! The superstars of WWE will be coming to US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturday, May 22nd at 7:30 pm. If you haven't had the chance to see these guys live in action, now is your chance to get GREAT seats at a very inexpensive price! Our WWE US Bank Arena tickets currently start at just $40 each for lower levels. You won't find deals this great anywhere else so grab them now!!Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Street Style Memory Game

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Thursday, January 28, 2010

Vicki Lewis Thompson Brings Some Magical Fun To The Lair!

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    interview with Suzanne

    I am both excited and pleased to have NYT bestselling author, Vicki Lewis Thompson in the Bandit Lair today! Welcome, Vicki, pull up a lounge chair and we'll have one of our cabana boys pour you a drink.

    Suz: When you spoke at DARA (Dallas Area Romance Authors) holiday meeting a few Decembers ago, you told the story of how exposure on National TV helped your career. Some of our readers may not have heard that story. Would you care to share it with them?

    Vicki: I’ll tell that story at the drop of a hat, LOL! But first, thanks for inviting me to the Bandit Lair! Cute cabana boys! Ahem. Back to the subject at hand -- Kelly Ripa used to have a book club on LIVE with Regis and Kelly. NERD IN SHINING ARMOR was my first single title, and the print run was very low. I was afraid it would sink like a stone, so I hired publicist Theresa Meyers to help me get on Reading with Ripa. With lots of lobbying and a dose of luck, we did it! I appeared on the show. The print run went from 20K to 350K and I landed on the NYT. What a rush!

    Suz: I love that story and it is so inspiring to know it can happen out of the blue to an author. How did it change your writing career?
    Vicki: It opened doors that would not have been open before. I’ve now worked with three mainstream publishers and have an agent who only takes on NYT authors. Most of all, though, it taught me that anything is possible. You just have to go for it. You may fall on your face, but you may shoot to the stars! I’m much more willing to take risks these days.

    Suz: Recently you’ve switched gears and gone paranormal with your HEX series. What made you choose witches over say, vampires or werewolves?

    Vicki: With all due respect to the vampire writers and readers out there, I’m squeamish about blood, so that lets out vampires. As for werewolves, funny you should ask! I’m working on a top-secret project right now for 2011, and it just might involve werewolves. But they’re not bloody. I’m not good with bloody. I write comedy.

    Suz: Ooo can't wait to hear about those werewolves! Please tell us about the HEX series.

    Vicki: The series came alive for me when I decided that instead of setting it in Sedona, Arizona, a hotbed of New Age thinking, I should set it in a conservative little town in Indiana, where NOBODY believes in witches, wizards, magic, or . . . heaven forbid . . . dragons! Big Knob, Indiana, is imaginary, but I’ve had readers ask if it’s based on a real town because they want to go there! So do I, but it doesn’t exist. I made it up totally. The series features a matchmaking witch and wizard who are sent there to rehabilitate the delinquent dragon living in the nearby woods. In between dragon-sitting, they do some matchmaking on the side, which is where the romance comes in.



    Suz: Is BLONDE WITH A WAND the first in a new series for you? Can you tell us a little bit about the series?

    Vicki: The Babes on Brooms series is – at present – two books long. If readers like it, maybe it’ll get longer! It’s a spin-off from the Hex series in that the matchmaking witch and wizard from that series make an appearance in both BLONDE WITH A WAND and CHICK WITH A CHARM. These two spin-off books are set in Chicago, which is less than a day’s drive from Big Knob, so it works out.

    Suz: In BLONDE WITH A WAND, the heroine, Anica Revere, breaks a major witch rule and is stripped of her powers. How does she adjust to that?

    Vicki: Not well! She’s always been the “good” sister and now she has to depend on Lily, who’s the rebel sister, to help her fix the magical mess she’s created.

    Suz: The hero of BLONDE WITH A WAND, Jasper Danes, is the victim of Anica’s mistake. Does he exact a little revenge or does he easily find himself under her spell?

    Vicki: I think it’s okay to reveal that Anica turned him into a cat, because that’s in the blurb. While revenge is definitely on his mind, he’s dependent on Anica and Lily to change him back into a man, so he has to be VERY careful not to tick them off.





    Suz:     Can you tell us a little about the next book in the series—CHICK WITH A CHARM?

    Vicki: I would love to! It’s Lily’s story, and she’s a little jealous of Anica’s love affair with Jasper. Lily’s a bartender who has a crush on a customer. Against Anica’s advice, she gives him a devotion potion in his cocktail and discovers that it doesn’t produce quite the results she’d hoped for.








    Suz: What else can our readers look forward to from you this year?

    Vicki: I hope you’re ready for this. I’ve been typing like crazy and I could sure use a massage from Sven if you’re willing to loan him out. I have *seven* releases this year. Besides BLONDE WITH A WAND in February, I’ll also have RACING HEARTS, a NASCAR anthology with Dorien Kelly and Nancy Warren. This June will kick off my “Sons of Chance” series with Harlequin Blaze. WANTED! comes out in June, AMBUSHED! in July, and CLAIMED! in August. They’re cowboy stories set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the series will continue with three more books in the summer of 2011 and three more in the summer of 2012. Also in July I’ll have CUPID CATS, an anthology with Katie MacAlister and Connie Brockway. The stories are linked by an animal shelter that specializes in magical cats who become matchmakers for those who adopt them.

    Suz: OMG...we'll have Sven work on those fingers ASAP!! You're going to be one busy lady this year!! Is there a question you’d like to ask our readers?

    Vicki: How about this? If you could wave a wand and turn someone (a person you know or a public figure) into an animal, who would it be and what animal would you choose?

    Suz: Thanks for being in the Lair with us Vicki. Vicki will be giving away a signed copy of Blonde With A Wand to one commenter today. And don't forget, you can order books by clicking on any covers.
    Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Emma miniseries

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My Great Movies: The Big Sleep

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    "It's a funny thing. You're trying to find out what your father hired me to find out and I'm trying to find out why you're trying to find out."
    "You could go on forever, couldn't you?"

    Has there ever been a film more confusing than Howard Hawks' 1946 noir "The Big Sleep"? It is so confusing that the story goes, as the esteemed Roger Ebert has noted, that the film's star, Humphrey Bogart, showed up on set one day and demanded Hawks to advise whether a particular character's death in the film was a murder or a suicide. Hawks didn't know. So he asked the author of the novel, Raymond Chandler, on which the movie was based. Chandler didn't know either. If an author can't follow his own plot, well, isn't that the definition of confusion?

    But the confusion is okay because even though "The Big Sleep" is a film oozing plot it is less about that plot than it is about its many characters talking about the plot. I mean, really, has there ever been a film where talking was more important than Howard Hawks' 1946 noir "The Big Sleep"? I thought about that fact after seeing Robert Downey Jr. not be allowed to talk as much as he should have been in "Sherlock Holmes".

    "The Big Sleep" is so stocked with exposition I am surprised screenwriting professors have not banished all copies of this script to some gigantic shredder kept on a secret backlot. This is a movie that tells us everything and refrains from showing just about anything. Thank frickin' God.

    Bogart is Phillip Marlowe, a hard boiled private eye who likes his brandy "in a glass" and smokes as if cigarettes are as bountiful as bullets in John Woo movies. At the film's start he is summoned to the home of wheelchair-bound General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). Ah, but before he can meet the old General he first encounters the youngest of his two daughters, Carmen (Martha Vickers), a most flirtacious young debutante who literally hurls herself into Marlowe's unsuspecting arms. "She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up." This meeting is key. Not simply because General Sternwood is being blackmailed on account of Carmen but because aside from Marlowe these two daughters are the most important characters in the story.

    Who's the other daughter, you ask? Why that would be the older, wiser, sultrier, craftier, classier, comelier, edgier, drier, sultrier (wait, did I already say that one?), flintier Vivian. Perhaps then it goes without saying she was played by one Lauren Bacall.

    To each and every one of us there are always various film collaborations of which we never tire, of which we ceaslessly wish there were more. Me? I'm a sucker for Quentin & Uma. And for Bogie & Bacall. There was never anyone else like them, there will never be anyone like them again and this movie, for all its murder & mayhem, is primarily about them.

    There is a scene when Vivian, who doubles as a high stakes gambler, is sitting at a craps table and Marlowe strides up beside her and the camera, which was in a wide shot showing everyone in the gaming hall all around them, pushes in, fast, on our heroic couple, nudging everyone else outta the frame, and showing us just how these two not only become the most important thing in any room but how nothing else in the world matters more to each of them.

    In real life Bogart had already fallen in love with Bacall prior to this movie but that love was clearly growing as the movie rolls past your eyes. In his review Ebert wondered if Bogart, at the time in the midst of a messy divorce with his then wife, saw her as his salvation? A real possibility, and it's why I like to pretend his constant references to her as "angel" were not in the script but Bogart's own invention. It's the (extremely) hopeless romantic in me. Sigh....

    Not that there isn't a fair amount of other sexual tension crackling throughout the picture. Every place in "The Big Sleep" that Marlowe ends up seems possessed with a steady vibe of, shall we say, rapaciousness. He enters a bookstore to wryly ascertain a few pieces of critical info and encounters Dorothy Malone (defintion: Scene Stealer) as the most classic archetype of 'em all - librarian with horn-rimmed glasses and hair pulled up who, upon horn-rimmed glasses being removed and hair being pulled down, transforms into a woman of such breathtaking elegance that when it begins to rain outside Marlowe has no choice but to tell her "I'd rather get wet in here." Wowzer!!! Sure, sure, it seems tame to a modern day audience but when considering the 1946 Production Code this sequence is the equivalent of Kate Winslet on top of the laundry machine in "Little Children". Consider also the young dame behind the counter at the diner who lights Marlowe's smoke and gets nothing more than a one world line. But, like I said, consider her, which is to say look at her. How did she end up working there? It's like if in a noir movie today Mila Kunis was hired to light someone's smoke and say one word.

    But wait! I forgot about the plot! What is it again? Oh yes....blackmail. General Sternwood is being blackmailed by a "book dealer" named Geiger over Carmen's apparent gambling debts. But wait! There's more! An ex-member of the IRA, one Sean Regan (mentioned dozens of times but never seen) whom Sternwood, unable to partake in the bottle, had hired Regan to do his drinking for him and with whom, in turn, he became good friends, has gone missing. Where to? And why? Marlowe is hired to find out.

    The scene ends and Marlowe thanks him for the drink. "I enjoyed it as much as you did," Sternwood replies, implying the old notion of living vicariously. And that is precisely what we are about to do for the next two hours - live vicariously through the shoes and smokes of Marlowe as he navigates his way through the whole noir catalogue: the district attorneys, the cars with accelerators tied down, sitting low in the dark in cars outside suspicious houses, and, of course, the obligatory, endless chain of names - Eddie Mars and Owen Taylor and Joe Brody. It's all enough to make you want a drink.

    Which is precisely what we see Bacall's Vivian pouring the first time we meet her which leads, of course, to her first line which speaks a great many volumes: "So you're a private detective. I didn't know they existed, except in books." Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the Marlowe of "The Big Sleep" embodies that idealistic notion of the old school gumshoe. He's cunning, of course, but he's also smooth and always in control. The only time you see him sweat is in the beginning when he's stuck with Sternwood in that humid greenhouse. At one point he finds himself in an elongated sequence in an apartment in which three different men at various intervals pull pistols on him but by the time it's all played out guess who's gained possession of all those guns? Marlowe, that's who.

    And when the inevitable arises and the case appears closed he has to go on, dig deeper, answer all the questions, even at grave risk of his own life. "Why did you have to go on?" "Too many people told me to stop." In theory that's why he goes on, anyway. But in reality he has to soldier on because it's the only way he can end up with Vivian in his arms. Oh, so a few people have to die for it to happen. Them's the breaks.

    So many films these days substitute superfluous substance - twists and reveals and unexplained character motivations and what have you - for any sense of style. "The Big Sleep" was smart enough to know that in spite of its labyrinthine plot its substance stems strictly from its style.Source URL: http://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/01/
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Elemental Twisted Words


    Bliss.

    What is it? What can it be? Where can it be found? I don't know. I don't know and I have no clue. I just wake up every day wondering why I'm alive. I wonder this because my dreams are so real, and so fulfilling, that I don't want to return to the real world. I really don't. When I open my eyes and see my room I'm immediately depressed. I am back in my life, which has no meaning, which has no rhyme. I don't know what to make of it. I'm just living it.

    It is this terribly lost feeling that I am trying to escape, to purge myself from. A feeling that I had when I was in the streets, living day to day out in the open, with everything you own on your back. It was a feeling that I had no soul, no life. I was empty and soulless. What the fuck is that about? I thought I passed this shit a long time ago. Like a bad taco from Taco Bell, that shit should pass through you and out the other end sooner or later. But there I am back with the same sickening meal, not freeing me of the stain of living this life.

    I am sobering up. Feeling better from my Saturday of drinking and carousing. What am I to do about that? What? Get a Subway Sandwich. That's my plan. I rise and take my meds down to the pharmacy, dropping them off, an then to Subway for a hero sandwich. I'm going to eat well tonight. I order a foot long. Wow. Can I eat all that shit?

    I head back to the SRO and right next to it is a liquor store. How fitting my life. How real it's tenebrous tendrils. Like a sleepwalker I stroll into the liquor store and buy a quart of Jack Daniels. What the fuck. I'll just keep it in the room. I don't have to drink it all, I just want it all. I just want it. Call me a fool, call me returning to the vomit, but I'm clear in what I want. Clear and dangerous.

    I walk into the building and Sugar Plum pops out of the office. She greets me. I hide the bag of hooch behind me. Roberto appears and asks me into the office. FUCK! He has to talk to me. We all go to the office, Sugar Plum too. I keep the bottle between me and her. Roberto has to have me sign a truckload of papers and he needs for me to get a new budget letter from social services. Great. I have to return to the Mines of Moria. Fuck me. Sugar Plum goes into the office and takes a seat, far from me. I don't sweat a bullet. My heart does not skip a beat. I need to know where to go get this budget letter. Probably back to the place in Queens now. That's great. I really need this shit.

    Roberto calls over Sugar Plum and Orlando and they surround me. How can I get my budget letter? Sugar Plum gives me instructions to come down and see Snow White in the morning and get my location from her. They don't notice my bottle of hooch. If they did, they would freak and either have me sent to rehab or pour it out. Neither is what I want since this shit is expensive. I still stand there, talking. The elevator comes and I back into it, still talking to them, the door closes. Shit. I made it. They didn't notice shit. I exhale deeply and go home. Back to my room, my abode.

    I hit that sandwich like a pornstar, and open that bottle of Jack Daniels like there was no tomorrow. I rip though the wrapping and pour myself a stiff drink. Then I go and get my fucking roscoe and light my brains a fire. All creature pleasures, feeding the darkness, shoveling coal into the abyss of depression. Feeding it like it was a creature inside of me. Whahooo!! I am feeling good feeding this thing. I feel like I'm Seymore in Little Shop of Horrors, feeding murder victims to his plant i the plant shop. I am feeling great. I can't explain it. It is another way of dealing with a situation. I think of WELLBUTRIN, which was supposed to fight depression. But no, it didn't. I just made depression. Deeper and darker, whereas, I have to admit, this alcohol is serving a purpose. I can't explain it. I can't.

    I'm feeling great in no time. My suicidal thoughts are long gone. There is a state of grace. Bliss. I am free. Suddenly all is free. I don't know what to make of this, so I no longer try to figure it out. I watch television. Stargate Atlantis. Pretty interesting. I find my moment of zen. I am suddenly happy to be me. Suddenly free to be me. I am in a state of bliss where my dream state is no longer more valuable than my living/sober state. I am supremely happy to be alive.

    I have to reschedule my psyche appoint- ment, or I can be risking my SRO. I have to make appoint- ments for treatments ...IF I CAN JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS ROOM!!! I have to see Snow White tomorrow. Crystal blue eyes, blonde, blonde hair, white, white skin, good looks. I shake my head. I have work to do tomorrow. I have to get that budget letter, that appointment, that life.

    I have much to do. I sit back. A glass of Jack Daniels in my hand. The world spirals away. I have much to do, but now I am glad. I am glad suddenly to be me. I am not sad for a change. My spirit leaves my body. It rises above it, taking a heavenly step up and away. There I am, sitting on my bed, watching my computer screen as a television show plays. The lights are off, the shadows crawl. There is loneliness in the room, darkness.

    There is Alone and Darkness.

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