BOOK LAUNCH TWILIGHT ZONE

It’s launch week and that means that I have been thrown into the TWILIGHT ZONE!!  Not kidding about this one folks.  My life has turned a shade of weird that is stranger than fiction.

I mean, who knew that life could get this psychotic in a few super short days?  I suppose this is God’s way of keeping the creative spigot wide open for me so that I have no shortage of life experiences to write from.

Sunday was deemed unholy from the moment I woke.  Despite the spiritual feeding of gospel and God, I was working on a classic toothache with a tooth that has already been root canaled, gutted and crowned my most hated tooth in my friggin mouth.  I made the snap decision to live by the bottle.  The Advil bottle.  By day’s end, I knew I had to call the dentist.  I turn into that monster everyone wishes they could suffocate with a pillow in its sleep with that call.  I HATE going to the dentist.  But I knew I had to go.  I hiked up my big girl shorts and got on with it.

Monday is the day designated by the devil to torture human kind as hell on earth.  I felt like my face was going to flipping fall off and I was sporting a unsightly swelling.  I got a morning appointment with the dentist.  I had just enough time to drop the kids of at school, yoga, and shower.  I left my breath at full strength morning funk, because I just love my dentist that much.  I went into the garage, turned the key in the ignition and….nothing.  As in deader than a flipping doornail.

You know how you get those super friendly neighbors who swear they’re ALWAYS home should you just need anything, they’ll be there?  Mine were missing.  No worries.  I am married to the most-prepared-for-disasters man on the planet.  I hooked up the emergency battery and waited a half hour to get enough juice in my jeep to start it.  There was no way I was going to make it to the dentist and had to reschedule.  Regardless, I chucked on a new shirt because I’d soiled the one previous and got on with life (NOT EVEN GLANCING AT WHAT I’D PUT ON).  The shirt was clean, therefore it was wearable, and went into town to AutoZone where they were going to save my mechanically stupid butt.

On the way down, because my car battery was dying a horrible death, everything on the dashboard was on the fritz.  The engine light flashed on along with the skid control, tire pressure sensor, the gas light and a few other assorted blinky things I have no clue what they’re for.  I figured, I just needed to get to AutoZone in one piece and all would be well once again.  Things really got interesting as the wipers became possessed and switched on unexpectedly and then broke.  This was nothing to the fact that my car DIED twenty feet from the AutoZone parking lot.

I mentioned that the gas tank light was on, right?  Well, it was the only blinking thing that got it right.  I was totally and completely out of gas.  I got out and proceeded to push my jeep into AutoZone.  Every flipping car zoomed by like it was a totally normal Monday thing for a five-foot-nothing, one-hundred-twenty-something pound woman to push her four-door Jeep Rubicon down the road by her friggin self.  Go feminism for the win.  I will punch the next woman to say they don’t need help from a man. 

Sweating profusely and not caring what the hell state my clothes and hair were in, I burst in and pretty much demanded that the guy eating his doughnutty breakfast behind the counter sell me a car battery.  He complied a little too willingly.  In fact, he blushed, had me hold his tools, and got me up into the engine with him as he explained the intricacies that are car batteries.  It was awfully nice since I’d just spent the first five minutes of our encounter ordering him around.  In fact, he was more than attentive. 

In a moment of silence where the extraction of the battery took his two hands and two eyeballs, I happened to look down at myself.

The shirt I had put on was brand new.  I’d not worn it yet and was unaware exactly HOW LOW the neckline was.  Add the exertion of car pushing and my haste in dressing and my very attentive car savior was getting quite the show.  I do believe that “wardrobe malfunction” is the politically correct terminology as my girls were mostly exposed and gave my helper full view of everything from my collarbone to my belly button every time I bent over to hand him his tools.

He gave me twenty bucks off the battery and wipers and a free gallon of gas.

The Dentist came next.  Because, really, a bad day is not truly bad unless it can possibly get worse.  I have an abscess on the root canaled tooth and antibiotics as well as a future second root canal are in my near future.  I found myself swearing a lot.  I’m sure the full reason why he didn’t shake my hand was directly proportional to the fire coming out of my eyes.

But it does not end.  My week is NOT over. And what has started as a horrible Monday was just the beginning of my psychotic Tuesday.

Tuesday is the new Monday.  Tuesday is Monday’s evil twin sister, the snarky other half and the dregs at the bottom of the sledge pond.  Tuesday was the launch of my book into the readers world.  It was also the beginning of my blog tour.

Cue creepy music.

Tuesday dawns with an abscess still raging and I need good news, folks.  I pop onto my e-mail and I get my first blog review.  As I read it, my jaw went from mildly unhinged to dropped on the floor.  The reviewer could not finish the book.  The experiences she had at dead center of my YA Science fiction/Fantasy was so horrific that not only could she not continue reading, my word smithing had made her physically ill.  She was so traumatized that she indignantly proclaimed that I had scarred her and how DARE I write in such a way.  She could not believe that she trusted me so much and she just knew that I would write exactly what she felt I should.  How DARE I MISPLACE THAT TRUST!!!

Whaaaaat????

Not all books are for every reader, but there is such a thing as narrative flow.  Bad things happen to characters.  It’s what makes an interesting book.  If she was looking for fluff, well, she got the wrong author.  I do not write fluff.  EVER.

Okay, so…that was fun.  I cried for about an hour and then got over it.  Even the strongest and leathery author has to admit that there are a few critics that get under their skin.  We get over it. I went to bed thinking that Wednesday was going to be a snap after Monday and Tuesday.

MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Yeah….no.

Around 2am a massive thunderstorm rolls in and pretty much shakes the entire family out of bed.  My kids are up, the dog is freaking out and sleep is impossible.  There was a blinding flash of light and a crack so loud it shook the bed…or maybe that was just the hubs jerking awake.  Either way, after hail and a spectacular lighting show, we woke up to a hole melted in the street in front of our house.  The lightning blew out our garage door opener, the front porch light and light switch and internet modem.  As in fried.

That all made doing author business via crackly phone and spotty smart phone internet a total friggin joy all day.

It is now day’s end.  It’s only Wednesday, but I fear for my life come the ending of this week.  Should I die in some unexplainable way, my weapons collection is willed to my sons, my library goes to Ami and Kevin and all my artwork pawned off to whoever wants it.  Please burry me with my 1800’s edition of Les Miserables and set of Mark Twain novels. 

The universe has got my number.