The Girl is a terrible teenager.

The Girl is a terrible teenager. “Why?” you ask? Well, let me tell you a story about a brand new sophomore in a brand new high school (just built new not just new to her).

Things never go smoothly the first week of school anyway, even if the school isn’t new. Not completely. And no one really expects it to. At least not anyone with kids. So when we got a call the second day of school informing us our nearly perfect daughter (true, it’s sickening) missed first period, it was a surprise. 

She denied it.

We told her to go to the teacher the next time she had his class (every other day) and straighten it out. The next day, we got a call saying she again missed first period. Surprised? Yes, but also mildly suspicious. Not of The Girl; as I said, she’s nearly perfect. The school was more likely to be the culprit.

Again she denied skipping first period. Again we told her to go to the teacher and straighten it out.

Third day of school, guess what? You got it, another call. The teachers both claim they marked her as there. Okay, so the school computer has a bug and everyone’s being marked absent? No. The parents of teens who do miss are not getting calls but, for reasons they can’t pinpoint, a bunch of others are getting the calls on their behalf. They’re sorry and have no idea when it will be fixed.

Hubby has the number memorized and sighs when his phone rings now at right about dinner time. So . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . and he’s carrying his phone waiting for it to ring – oh, there it goes.

So, why does this make my nearly perfect daughter a terrible teenager? Because she just realized she could have been skipping first period every day for the past four days, knowing full well that WE WOULD NOT BE TOLD.

I pointed out the school would still have the correct information.

Never reason with a teenager, okay? Not even nearly perfect ones. You can’t win. Reason exists as an abstract concept to them.

The Girl’s answer was it’s okay if her teachers and the school knew if she was skipping a class, as long as Hubby and I didn’t. What? Then she balled up her tiny fists (she’s petite), declared herself to be the worst teenager ever, flung her thick, waist-length waves that I would kill for over her shoulder, and stalked out of the room.

Well, she got that last part just about perfect.

Welcome to Hell, I mean High School

My oldest is in tenth grade. Where I grew up, ninth graders were shoved in with the rest of high school, but not here. Here they’re with seventh and eighth graders, which means they start high school before they’re in high school. The powers that be are rethinking that. It’s a new idea here and slow to catch on. I think the resistance is from overprotective parents not wanting to really admit a fourteen-year-old is a teenager and send them off with all the ‘big kids.’ I have a thirteen year old too. He’s a big kid, dump him in the deep end.

It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my baby girl (AKA "The Girl" to all of you) is genuinely in high school now by anyone’s definition. She’s not impressed. Although I am hearing a different sort of rant from her nowadays.

First there’s the "don't they know to walk on the right?" Actually, her school is brand new, just rebuilt so it can hold the new ninth graders. So . . . no. Almost a third of the kids there don’t know to walk on the right because they don’t drive. But wait, they grew up in – well the majority of the world that drives on the right, so shouldn’t they have clued in to walk on the right by now? No. Apparently not, we'll leave it at that.

Second, remember I went off a while ago about teenage boys being allergic to soap? It’s not limited to thirteen-year-olds, unfortunately. Enough said. 

Third, she’s not impressed with others of her own gender either. I tuned out as she went on (and on and on) questioning why a girl who wants to play violin would get her nails done and have them so long she can’t actually play. Or why another would take swimming but not realize she might need a swimsuit she can actually swim in without the top coming off. Personally I’m amazed they’re allowing two-piece suits in a co-ed swim class, but hey, what do I know?

Also, she doesn't understand how anyone can find Latin hard. Plus now she can take Honors and AP classes and, again, she’s flummoxed why kids are whining about it being difficult or time consuming.

And she was asked out in her first week of school. By text message. I’m not kidding. Her immediate response was to text back and ask if he really just asked her out via text, then to ask if he breaks up via Facebook. He didn’t get it. Bit of a mixed bag on that one. She’s flattered, yet annoyed. And in giggles because Hubby is having a meltdown.

The Girl’s fifteen, we’re not letting her date yet. In truth, she can handle group dates now, she’s mature enough. Boys her age aren’t though and we need to protect them from her snarky attitude and her father’s growing reach-for-a-rifle paranoia. He needs another year to psych himself up for this. Hubby’s just not ready.

Social Media and the Teenage Horde

A friend of mine updated her MySpace page and sent me an invite to check it out. (Yes, MySpace is still around.) While I was looking it over, The Girl was looking over my shoulder and asked “What’s that?”

Are you kidding me? How can someone not know about MySpace? I was so stunned, I can’t remember if I even answered her. I became lost in misty memories.

I fled MySpace years ago because it was being overrun with teenagers. Like many, I found Facebook and sighed in relief to be able to be social with adults I didn’t know. You all know how that turned out. Yeah. My teenagers live on Facebook too. So once again I migrated to Google+ to seek adult interaction. (Crossing my fingers and looking over my shoulder for teenagers.)

In actuality, The Boy has found Google+, he’s just not interested. He’s thirteen and not enough of his peers are there (yet). It’ll happen. Teenagers are like some sort of plague and there’s just no way to contain them in the eWorld. They’re better at it than we are. We’re the generation that thought Tron was neat for crying out loud! My kids got bored, said “That’s ridiculous, it doesn’t work like that,” and wandered off, just as it was getting good. Now The Boy is eyeing The Matrix and Caprica and I swear he’s wondering if he could make that tech work.

I look at him sometimes and see The Terminator and Battlestar Galactica in our future. Did I mention The Boy wants to work for Microsoft and The Girl wants to work for Google? Hollywood may be prophetic and is certainly giving them ideas, but we have social media to blame for addicting them to the cyberworld. Thanks, MySpace.

Book Backlash and Celebration

AKA Lexi Frost – backlash and celebration (Free Book Promo 8/17-19)

Remember the trouble I had getting a simple book published? It wasn’t over when Amazon apparently published it. I say ‘apparently’ because it was only partially there.

AKA Lexi Frost was on Amazon – sort of. If you looked by title, it was there. If you looked up my name, you’d find two books. Otherwise, you couldn’t find it. You could sift through hundreds of new releases, thousands of romance novels, millions of eBooks, and never see it. You could do keyword searches: nada.

I didn’t know this at first. (I don’t have time to go page by page through hundreds of new releases or thousands of romances novels. Hundreds of thousands.) Then someone on a writing group I’m part of mentioned Amazon has an ‘Adult’ filter and they don't even tell the author when they filter a book from public view. There is a way, from another site some authors use to track Amazon sales, to tell if your book has been flagged. I was. On Amazon’s part, it’s part of the review process, and there isn’t any criteria anyone can point me to as to exactly why some books are flagged and others aren’t.

It isn’t content. That much I’m sure of because I did a general, sift-through-pages search for a certain series that includes near-bestiality, orgies, and sex acts that would make Lexi run naked down through Trafalgar Square to avoid, and they’re available to the general populace. So my suspicion that my cover has a naked woman on it was why my review process was so long initially (even though she’s facing away and barely showing a dime slot), may be on the money. There are still some colorful covers out there, there aren't as many as there were a couple months ago, it depends on the reviewer.

I also noticed a distinct lack of content warnings on books I knew had sex scenes. I used to see warnings all the time, sometimes even using ‘erotic romance’ as part of the title. Either these are now filtered, or authors – not self published either, I was looking at mainstream publishers – are taking them out to avoid the filter. This is very scary, but another time.

So I did a quick redesign of the cover, changed some keywords, and reloaded it to see what would happen.

AKA Lexi Frost is visible. Although it’s no longer a new release. And since it’s been out (officially) now for a couple of weeks, if you want to find it in contemporary romance, you have to sift through hundreds of thousands of books. So essentially anyone looking for it is still going to find it by typing the title in directly or by search for my name, meaning I haven’t changed anything.

To celebrate, I’m having a free weekend for AKA Lexi Frost Saturday, August 17 – Monday, August 19. It goes midnight to midnight (Pacific time) approximately, Amazon doesn’t guarantee anything.

So download it. Tell your friends, have them download it. And I wouldn’t mind reviews. Good ones preferably. The sequel should be out soon. No cover issues, I’m learning.

The Girl, the cat, and the shower

The Girl likes to take baths and showers in my bathroom because I have a big glass shower and a garden tub. Oddly, Cat likes to join me, or anyone else, for baths because she likes to play with water – to a point.

Filling the tub, Cat will sit patiently by the swan-neck tap and bat at the water as it cascades into the tub. Very nice. Then she circles the tub, and the occupant, like a small black shark, throughout the bath and watches you.

Cat loves bubble baths. Really loves them. For her, it is kitty heaven to play peek-a-boo with my toes under the bubbles. She hasn’t gone so far as to jump in after them yet, although she does occasionally slip. If Hubby is in the bathroom she risks having ‘help’ getting into the tub. (The problem is what she really needs is help getting out of the tub.)

Lately, The Girl has decided to ‘help’ Cat overcome her mild hydrophobia. This morning, The Girl woke sore from yesterday’s hike with friends. Hubby suggested a soak in my tub. She chose a long shower. (Why she couldn't use her own bathroom is beyond me.) 

Grabbing her own scuba gear for the venture, she dropped Cat’s collar on my bed and I noticed her disappearing into my bathroom with two black pointy ears and pair of wide yellow eyes peering at me over her shoulder. Oh, dear.

The water runs. Cat’s mournful meow wafts through the door followed closely by, “You’ll be all right, the water’s not hot.”

“A word of warning to the girl with the upset cat in my bathroom,” I called through the door.

“Yes?”

“She has claws.”

Pause. “Okay.”

Not to say Cat didn’t get - moist. The Girl did take her in the shower with her instead of letting her just watch from outside like I usually do. (She likes to chase bubbles streaming down the inside of the glass. Fun!) But Cat was permitted to sit in the corner and only receive the occasional misting from ricochets. Apparently she can jump quite high when she gets cornered in the shower. 

Cat got snuggled in a warm towel afterward. The Girl wasn’t fatally wounded.

Video Game Detox (Pending)

The Boy is thirteen and just starting eighth grade. He’s pretty typical for a teenage boy, more’s the pity. His life’s all about video games and putting off his few chores until ‘later.’ It’s a vague time reference that never seems to arrive unless his video games are threatened.

Now that school is on the horizon, I’m starting to wake him a bit earlier each morning because I’m sadistic. I mean because I’m a caring mother who doesn’t want him to fall asleep in class the way he falls asleep at the kitchen table at breakfast. Then lies down and falls asleep on the way up the stairs afterward. And in the bathroom.

  

So I’m reading parenting teenage boys books. It’s a big to hit my self-esteem. Pass the rum-filled chocolates, please. 

Occasionally something just jumps out at me. In Everything Bad Is Good For You, by Steven Johnson, the author references research done on the brains of young video gamers when he suggests the games stimulate a particular part of the brain in much the same way that crack cocaine affects the same area.

  

Hmm. Then I look at my thirteen-year-old happily driving off an overpass in Grand Theft Auto. Why he wants to drive off an overpass over and over again in different cars to see how each lands is beyond me. I think it serves to prove I’m not a thirteen-year-old boy.

So playing video games stimulates a child’s brain like drugs. It explains The Boy’s behavior. He loves his Methcraft.  I mean Minecrack. I mean Minecraft. I guess that means I need to detox him. This is not going to be pleasant.

  

Actually I think I’ll take a page from The Boy’s pagebook and finish my current reading list first. Maybe they have tips. Besides, I’ll need more rum-filled chocolates. Depending on what it says, and The Boy’s reaction, I might need to upgrade to rum-filled Coke.

AKA Lexi Frost

AKA Lexi Frost

Lexi Frost is a successful photographer in a specialty niche: tasteful nudes. All she wants is continuing success and to keep her private life private. She didn't want to attract the attention of millionaire Paul Lovett. And she really didn't need rock star Flynn Peterson to fall for her during a photo-shoot either. Both are persistent but Lexi isn't interested, in part because she isn't Lexi Frost.

Teri Giles has a successful career, two teenagers, and their four friends. Okay, maybe having six teenagers in the house isn’t ideal. And her son’s basement band makes her buy aspirin in economy-size bottles, but she makes it work. Trying to hide an alternate identity and career from a house full of teens is a little chancy, so Teri was ready to scream before attracting unwanted attention.

Then her worst fear is realized: her cover is blown. In a split-second decision, she takes a chance on one of her suitors after swearing she wouldn’t love again. But Teri isn’t the only one who’s been keeping secrets . . .

Okay, so there’s my second book. Although it was written a good year before my first one. No one said this writing and publishing thing had to be linear, right? Good. As long as we got that straight.

As you can probably tell from the cover, this one has sex. I’ve been writing since 2008, and my first two books had a couple things in common: vampires and extraordinary length. This has neither. This was the book that broke that mold. Instead it has teenagers driving adults nuts and sex scenes. Life imitates art?

Erotic romance is kind of a good market to be in right now, in theory. You couldn’t tell by my attempts to get this book out there though. My editor was a hoot when I first tried to give this to her (keep in mind I also write paranormal with only implied sex). I said ‘contemporary erotic romance’ and her mind went to 50 Shades of Grey. Her stance was hell no! I assured her I didn’t write BDSM, it’s all normal vanilla sex. (I crossed my fingers because I imply . . . never mind. You’ll find out.) She caved, edited it, and didn’t complain.

Note: seeing red all over a manuscript returned from an editor is bad enough. Seeing red marks encroach into a sex scene is just wrong on a whole other level.

Fine, editor: check. Cover: no. Sigh. Cover artists have boundaries, and the one I had for the first book didn’t do erotic romance. She gave me some other names, so I had to shop around again. Okay. Cover: check. Amazon: uh, well . . .

We all know there’s contemporary erotic romance on Amazon. There’s erotica on Amazon (erotica = sex but no love story). I went to upload this puppy, it took the book and went into review like normal. Review is supposed to be about twelve hours.

Twenty-four hours later, I’m looking through the forums wondering why my book is still in review. I haven’t received an email, there isn’t any notice to say Amazon’s having problems, nothing. It took nearly thirty-six hours to get this darling online. But it’s there now. That’s all that matters. (I suspect it’s the cover.)