It's tome to not be nice

In the movie Road House, the late Patrick Swayze plays legendary bouncer Dalton and in one of the movie's best moments, he tells some wannabe bouncers the way it's going to be. "Be nice," he says. "Until it's time not to be nice any more."

I think about that sometimes when I hear people offering up lame arguments for something, like abolishing school lunches because it affront's a kid's "dignity" to be offered food when he's hungry. (That, to me, is Paul Ryan's lowest moment and it had to beat out stiff competition for the honor.)

So, when I saw this meme about gun conrol, all I could think of was, "Yes."

Americans for Responsible Solutions
Everytown for Gun Safety
Newtown Action Alliance

Derek Murphy Knows Things

Derek Murphy is a book designer with a PhD in literature. I ran across this excellent blogpost he did (* Cover Design Secrets publishers use to manipulate readers into buying their books) If you're an indie author who creates your own covers, or someone who buys a lot of premades, like I do, the article is definitely worth the read.

In one instance, he points out that an author's name looks a little "crowded" on the cover. That's a problem I run into when I use my real name. On premade covers, designers often use the placeholder text: Book Title and Author Name. As it happens, "Author Name" has the same number of letters as my pseudonym, "Kat Parrish," so I usually have a pretty good idea of how it's going to look on the cover. "Katherine Tomlinson," though, is a long name, taking up 19 spaces with the space between my first and last names. It's annoying to fall in love with a design and know that your name is just not going to look good all spelled out.

The Midnight Queen is (Almost) Here

The Midnight Queen, the conclusion of the three-partstory cycle that began with Bride of the Midnight King, is in final edits. I wrote much of it while sitting by the bedside of my hospitalized best friend, who was mercifully asleep most of the time. (He's fine now.)

 The setting helped put me in the mood to write about witch kings and dark omens. (Hospitals at night are creepy places. There's a reason why Lars von Trier's The Kingdom was so eerily effective. If you've never seen it, check out the trailer here.)

I love my characters in this series and am sorry to leave them behind, but it's time. The book will be out later this month. The cover is by the wonderful people at Indie Author Services.

A book to boost your faith in humanity

I've known people who chose to die by their own hands, including one who jumped off a bridge to end his life. I found this book by accident while I was checking on titles for a client. It's about a man named Kevin Briggs who is known for talking suicides out of jumping off the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. There's a video about him on YouTube, or you can get the book here.

I write urban fantasy, and in my fiction there are "protector" characers who have a calling to help humanity. It's not often you ruin into one of these people in real life. 

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

I am a huge fan of Ryan Gattis' multi-POV novel All Involved, which revolves around the L.A. riots that ensued when an all white jury acquitted four white cops for the horrific beating of Rodney King. When this book popped up on a friend's list of the books she'd read last year, I was intrigued enough by the title, to find out more. Set in 1999 during the Seattle protests over the World Trade Organization meeting being held there, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist was Sunil Yapa's debut novel. Here's the NPR review of it. Like All Involved, the story is told by multiple characters, including a kid who's in the streets, not to protest but to sell marijuana to the activists. The NPR reviewer found Yapa's work full of compassion but decided, ultimately, that his execution was a little amateurish.On Amazon, the book has 92 reviews and comes in with a solid 4-star ranking. The top review is headlined, "Edgy, Dystopian, Melodramatic Lyricism." I'm willing to forgive a lot if a book gives me passion and lyricism. This may be my first book purchase of 2017. I'll get it here.

The Three Best Books about Work I've Read

Studs Terkel's oral histories are treasure troves. (The zombie novel, World War Z is actually an homage to Turkel's WWII history, The Good War.) His book Working (which was made into a musical), is a tapestry woven from many voices--celebrating the working woman and man in all their diversity. There is pride in work here--from the construction worker who likes looking at a skyline and seeing what he has helped build--but there is also despair and anger. But most of all there is a sense that work gives meaning to a life. The book was published in 1974 and in the 40-some years since, some of the jobs chronicled have ceased to exist. Writers, especially, should dip into this book--the characters are real, and fascinating, and original.

Barbara Ehrenreich is a writer with a feminist slant who has written on subjects as diverse as God and sex workers. When she set out to investigate the idea that a job--any job--could be the key to a better life, she went undercover to see just how that might work. The answer was--not very well. Her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, is an eye-opener that anyone who has voted against a minimum wage needs to read. Ehrenreich's prose is graceful, and the book never descends into ranting, though there is passion here. She had an idea that all was not as rosy as it appeared on the surface, but some of what she found (particularly insie a "cleaning service job") shocked her. It will shock the reader too.

The latest book I'm recommending is Diane Mulcahy's The Gig Economy, which has a totally different focus. Yes, it talks about how work has transformed from a linear career to a series of "gigs" strung together by workers, but Mulcahy's focus is on how making this new reality work for a worker.  It's not just fast food workers and Uber drivers, she points out. As an adjunct professor, she's also part of the gig economy, moving from position to position in what one reviewer called, "an empowering search for freedom." As someone who has been a full-time freelancer for more than 20 years, and someone who has had to
hustle for gigs on Craigslist at times, I can vouch for the freedom, but also for the uncertainty. Mulcahy's book has some great strategies and tips for finding more and better work and also some pep alks about defining and refining goals. Well worth the read.

Words to Live By

I am increasingly troubled by conspicuous consumption on any level. I'll see an ad for "affordable shoes" and think, "they're cute" and discover they're $138. Here on Planet Reality, we don't buy $100 shoes. Maybe if I worked in an office and I had to keep up appearances...
When I worked for Los Angeles Magazine, which was owned by ABC at the time, I wore corporate attire, and that meant Anne Klein heels and little designer suits. But these days, it just kind of makes me sick that people buy $85 lipsticks and don't really think about it. Maybe if it was the only lippie they were going to buy for the season...
I think about Gilded Age excesses. I think about all the money I've wasted over the years myself, buying tons and tons of frivolous stuff.I live a simpler life now. I am learning the difference between "want" and "need." But it's harder than I would have thought.