Children's Book Relief

If you're like me, you have a whole bookcase full of books you've read and will probably never read again.  Maybe you cull them every once in awhile, sending them to live at your local library, or donating them to your nearest thrift store, or just leaving them on buses and on benches like a friend of mine does. Maybe all you really need is a good reason for cleaning off those shelves.
Now you have one.
Urban Librarians Unite is hosting a fund drive to benefit children affected by Hurricane Sandy. They're looking for donations of used and new children's books and new activity books and coloring books (with crayons) for children.

Europe's Top Cop is ... a woman!

Mirielle Balestrazzi

It's been a good week for women here in the U.S. and now comes the news that Interpol has elected its first female president, Mirielle Balestrazzi. According to news reports, she's been a police commissioner in France since 1975 (when she would have been 31) and she's been the particular bane of organized crime in Bordeaux and Corsica.
I love that the number of "first" females is rapidly dwindling and believe that soon the whole notion of some jobs being beyond the reach of women will seem as quaint and old fashioned as sarsaparilla.

What's the story here?

Photo by Patrizio Martorana

Our brains are wired to make sense of the events we observe. When it cannot put together the puzzle pieces from our observations, our brains will simply fill in the blanks. That's the point behind those tests of how well we can read sentences that are missing vowels or have such a hard time spotting extra letters. Based on previous experience, our brain sees what it wants to see.
I think another way we're all wired is that we all share a need to turn our experiences into a narrative. If you've ever heard the phrase, "It is what it is" and disagreed, I think you're tapping into this impulse, or this imperative, or whatever it is that provides the perspective and the point of view to turn situations into story.
"Bad life, good anecdote," Carrie Fisher used to say, and I embraced that phrase as my mantra.
But it's not just writers who do this.
When I worked for Los Angeles Magazine, I car-pooled with two women who could not have been more different from each other and from me. One was an elegant ex-model whose husband was a handsome, successful executive. The other was a careworn mom whose life had been full of sorrows--an ex-husband who supported the family (or not) as a gambler, a first-born child who died from a reaction to the polio vaccine.
We were locked together in a small space for at least 90 minutes a day and sometimes longer and as women do when they're together, we talked.
Often the talk was trivial--about work, about movies, about people we knew. Sometimes the conversation was heavier, about an abortion one had had, about seemingly insurmountable in-law problems that were wreaking havoc in a marriage, about hopes and dreams and aspirations.
And one day we saw the piles of rubber bands at an intersection.
M saw them first and remarked upon them and J and I looked and thought, Huh. That's odd.
And that would probably have been it except that not long after, we saw another pile of the rubber bands--the skinny little ones--at another intersection.
Before long, we were seeing the piles of rubber bands all over the place, as if droppings from some big rubber dog that would pass by unnoticed, leaving its scat behind.
It almost drove us crazy trying to figure out the significance of those piles of little rubber bands.
and then one morning we came in to work very early, for reasons that escape me, and the mystery of the rubber bands was solved when we saw a paperboy on a corner putting them around his newspapers before loading up his bike.
The best advice my father ever gave me was, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."
We were disappointed when we found out what was really going on.
Because we wanted there to be a "story" there.

Recipe for a fall afternoon--Pizza

Photo by Szazlajos

It is actually cool here in the Southland, which is kind of a relief. I like summer as much as the next person but when it gets to be the middle of November, I'm ready to put away my shorts.

Since it's cool, it's time for pizza and I am not talking about ordering up from Shakey's. I'm talking about making it yourself. It takes a little longer but trust me on this--it's worth it. When I make this for parties people follow me into the kitchen to get fresh pieces before they exit. 

Once you eat this pizza, you will never, ever be able to go back to store-bought pizza, which is why I post the recipe every year.  I got the recipe from my mother, who got it from her friend Eleanor Trigg (along with an odd lemon/currant dessert recipe that I don't remember her ever making and which has sat unloved in the back of my recipe notebook since I inherited it in 1986).

Eleanor Trigg’s Pizza as interpreted by Mickey Tomlinson as handed down to me…

2 pkgs of bulk pork sausage  (I use Jimmy Dean’s hot.  You can also use turkey sausage)

1 yellow onion, diced

½ cup (or more) dried Parmesan cheese (in the green canister, not fresh)

Garlic powder to taste (you won't need as much if you use "hot" sausage

Italian seasoning to taste

2 large cans tomato paste

Lick of olive oil

Story for a Wednesday: The Temperature at which Love Freezes

Here in Los Angeles we're experiencing our sixth month of summer, but I remember winter... Here's a new story for a chilly day. Because somewhere it's chilly.

The Temperature at Which Love Freezes

By Katherine Tomlinson

Credit: Websurfer6

The front door shut with a soft but emphatic click as Jonathan slipped out of the house. Even though he knew Kaye wouldn’t have heard it—she slept like a hibernating bear—he still found himself looking over his shoulder to make sure she hadn’t wakened, that she wasn’t following him with her furious eyes.

But Kaye had merely grunted and turned over, burrowing deeper into the 600-thread count sheets and goose-down comforter.

There was only one person who would send Jonathan a text in the middle of the night; only one person whose text he’d read in the middle of the night.

Jonathan had grabbed the phone, fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table and read the message without turning on the light.

Come outside. I have a surprise for you. <3 span="span">

She’d attached his favorite picture of her, the one he’d taken after surprising her in the shower.

With barely a glance at his sleeping wife, Jonathan had slid out from beneath the covers, squeezed his bare feet into the fleece-lined slippers Kaye had ordered online without checking his size, and padded silently across the carpeted floor. 

He’d tied his plaid bath robe tightly before venturing out into the cold, well aware that all he had on underneath the flannel was a pair of thin cotton boxer shorts.

Outside, Jonathan breathed deeply. Purged of the vague day-time petroleum scent that always lingered in the wake of rush-hour commuters using his street as a short-cut to the freeway, the night smelled like pine needles

It's Here!

It's been a long strange trip to this Election Day.
It's all over but the voting.
I think we all deserve a breather. 
I found this joke on Man Walks Into a Joke, which bills itself as the "ultimate joke collection."

A man goes up to a politician at a party and says, "I’ve heard a lot about you.'' The politician replies, "But you can’t prove any of it."

Where do you get your ideas? The Noir Version

I am often asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" In some cases, that's code for, "Why don't you ever write "nice" stories?" (Those people should know by now that I don't do "nice" and they should  be glad. Writing dark fiction allows me to channel all the anger I feel toward stupid and cruel people and prevents me from being arrested for homicide, justifiable as it may be.) But I digress.
Like everyone else, I get the usual spam--for Canadian pharmacies, for penis extensions, for questionable legal transactions in Nigeria. These email missives go straight into my junk folder and are deleted en masse every morning.
But today I got an email that tickled that little spot on the back of my neck that tingles when the universe hands me an idea that might be a story if it percolates long enough.
It was from Marriedbutlonely.
Eeeeuuuuw.
The ads are aimed at guys, and promise that the women on offer are all "neglected housewives" looking for nothing more than a little fun.
Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?
There's a story here.
It's an old story for sure, but now with a technological twist.