If You Don't Talk to Your Cat About Catnip, Who Will?

I'm debating whether to turn my mother into the cops. It seems she left a "stash" sitting on the kitchen counter, available and tempting to whatever innocent party might happen to walk (or crawl) by.

The stash in question is catnip and the being who crawled by it--and then turned and crawled back--is her new cat, Charmin. (Or Prince Charmin, as I like to refer to him). Being nocturnal creatures, cats get into the darnedest things. One morning she awoke to find an entire role of toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom shredded beyond recognition and one very satisfied cat sitting in the hall, licking his paws and looking pleased with himself.

But the other morning Mom awoke to find her normal docile cat replaced by the Tasmanian Devil of Warner Brothers Fame. She came downstairs and a whirlwind tornado spun itself at her feet, from the middle of which she heard panting and gasping. After the dust cleared, she realized it was Charmin--high out of his mind. Apparently kitty got bored, investigated the kitchen counter and hit paydirt.

Wheeeezzzz.....the tornado whirled away, chasing his tail and pouncing on dust particles.  Bailey, my mom's dog, came down to investigate. Charmin usually steers clear of Bailey but the little high-on-life kitty raced over to him, looked in his eyes and said, "Bring it." (Bailey wisely chose to hide under the bed.)

The effects soon wore off and Charmin collapsed, exhausted, like a 21-year old college student after a night of pub crawls. He had that slightly dazed, "What the hell just happened here?" look about him followed by the "I think I need to ralph" look.

Bad kitty? No. High kitty, but not bad kitty. And not bad Mommy either. Who knew Charmin had a drug habit? Maybe it's best not to call the cops after all...

A Writerly Afternoon

I spent  Sunday afternoon feeling very literary. A friend of mine who is the editor for a prominent online Science Fiction/Fantasy magazine invited 6 writer friends to join him for an afternoon of reading and evaluating short story submissions to the magazine. (He's new to the position and the magazine has a backlog of submissions--some writers have been waiting for over a year to hear a "yes" or "no" on whether their story has been accepted.) So he filled a room with pizza, beer, wine, lemonade, and dessert and we plopped ourselves around a table and read for 5 hours.

It was challenging as this was not slush-pile reading. (Slush pile reading is the first go through of the huge pile of collected manuscripts. It's called such because it's easy the first go around to eliminate a bunch of crap--or slush--found there based on little more than reading the first page, first paragraph, or for the really bad writers, the first sentence.) The stories we read yesterday had already made it through an assistant editor's hands so all of them had merit. The challenge was to separate the very good from just the good.

For the first hour or so the room was quite as we worked through the manuscripts, marking an "X" across ones we didn't feel measured up and assigning a value of 1-10 for the ones we thought should make it to the next round.  After a while though, patterns started to emerge, and we couldn't help but giggle.

"Oh my God, this is my third clone story," exclaimed one reader. "What's with all the clones?"

"This person just spent 3 paragraphs describing the color purple," said another. "Really, let it go and move on." 

More silence. Someone snickered and we all looked up. The reader looked at us. "This one is written from the point-of-view of an elephant," she said. We all agreed that should be an automatic go-through. (Kidding.)

Then there were the sentences we read aloud to amuse each other. A hazard of Sci-Fi or Fantasy writing is writers get carried away with unpronounceable character names and places. Inserting an apostrophe in place of vowels for a name is a favorite trick, such as "S'djme." As a writer in our group said, "They think anything with an apostrophe and a vaguly sounding Celtic name is going to get them thr0ugh." So there would be sentences that read, "S'djme rode the Vrturn, descendents of the noble Miturian Roskslors, toward Ti-quothis  clutching the Namr'iste Alqutian in his fist." Huh? 

My friend the editor grabbed a fresh story from the box, read a sentence and tossed it in the discard pile. "It was written in present tense," he explained and we all laughed.  

I had a hard time with it. Out of the 12 or so stories I read yesterday, there were maybe 3-4 that were a  clear "no" for me.  I liked all the others and had a difficult time choosing. It came down to who had the best package. One story I liked quite a lot had a weak opening and horrible ending--but the middle was quite intriguing so I considered saving it. But in the end it would take so much editing to get it to work it probably wasn't worth the time.  A lot of us felt like one woman in the group who placed a manuscript in the "no" box with a sigh and the comment, "I so wanted it to be good."

At the same time, out of all the stories I read, there was only 1 for me that stood out as an absolute, "YES! This one must go in!"

Even though there wasn't much talking during the day, it was fun to just be around writers and their energy for the afternoon. I need to do more of that. I've become a bit bored lately with writing and have been thinking I need to attend some conferences or workshops or just reinvolve myself with writers communities to stir up some energy.

Meanwhile, kudos to the writers who made it to the next round and for those who didn't, take heart. We still really liked your stories.

Florida Fan

Yesterday when I got home there was a voicemail on Spotlight Publishing from a woman in Florida, calling to see where she could buy a copy of Lessons In Stalking... Life with Cats.  As I dialed her number today, I was debating whether to use my name or make up a name or just not give a name and simply say I was calling with Spotlight Publishing.

The reason for the deceit is it doesn't look impressive to have the actual author of the book returning your call. The whole point in starting the company was to create the illusion that Spotlight is larger and grander than it really is. But this morning found me not really feeling the need to impress and I rationalized that the chances of her knowing my name as the author anyway were to slim to none, so when she answered the phone I said, "Hi, I'm Dena Harris calling with Spotlight Publishing. I'm returning your call about where you can locate the book Lessons In Stalking."

"Oh, great," she said and then were was a brief pause. "Wait--are you the author?"

"I am," I said.

"Oh my God, I love you!" she said. (This is a woman who knows how to start a conversation).

Turns out she is a huge cat lover who has 4 cats, feeds feral cats, and is also known among friends as the Crazy Cat Woman.  She found my web site and loved it. She's having a birthday next week and asked her mom to buy the book for her. I was so thrilled with how thrilled she was to be talking to me that I offered to make sure the book reached her by her birthday if her mom ordered online today.

Sometimes being an author turns into a grind of "Aargh--what else can I do to sell this stupid book?" And then there are days like today where I am reminded how very, very fun it is to have written a book that makes people laugh. And how glad I am I did it in the first place.

So today's shout out goes to all the freaky Florida cat lovers out there. I love you people.

"Niche Your Pitch"

I spoke last night at the Naja Greensboro chapter of the American Business Women Association. My topic was "Niche Your Pitch: How To Create Memorable Personal Commercials." I haven't spoken in a while and I forgot how much fun it is, especially with a group that's eager to participate.

I gave a quick background as to what comprises a personal commercial, went through a series of "Before" and "After" examples and then had the group brainstorm ideas for members on how to liven up their commercials.

There was a guest at the meeting who had completed her massage therapist training but now had to perform a certain number of practice hours on clients for free to receive her certification. She had just joined a networking group but felt--rightly--that just saying, "Hi, my name's Dee and I'm a massage therapist" wasn't gaining her any leads.

We came up with, "Hi, my name is Dee and I'm looking for people I can get my hands on," as an opener. She has the personality to deliver it and was thrilled.

A successful commercial is brief, unique, and memorable. One of the best commercials I've ever heard came from a member of my Wednesday morning leads group. Bill Simmons sells office furniture. Snore, right? But look at Bill's Commercial:

Hi, I'm Bill Simmons and I'm looking for dirt. If you pass a construction site, see dirt being moved, or even spot a bulldozer, call me. I sell office furniture and companies make decisions about furnishings while buildings are being built. Once a structure is up, it's too late. So remember, if you see dirt or a bulldozer, call me, Bill Simmons.

I love this because it's brief, unique (no one else in my group is asking me to look for dirt), and it has sticking power. Every time I see a bulldozer, I think of Bill and call him. It's a great example of giving people a memorable nugget of information and not overloading them with information they don't need.

I have the speaking bug, now. Might be time to put some energy toward landing more engagements. I'm speaking to a rotary club next month. Once you speak at one, it's easy to land invitations at others and that's a huge circuit. Something to think about.