Merry Chick Lit

Here's the trouble with ta-tas...

Or, if you prefer, tits.

Boobies.

Knockers.

Hooters.

Breasts.

They’re functional, decorative, and like just about any other aspect of women’s bodies, most of us aren’t happy with the ones we’ve got.  They’re too small.  Or they’re too big.  They’re the wrong shape.  Or they were fine until they hit that unfortunate point in the gravity + age equation.  Whatever the aspect, we’ll find fault with ‘em.

Right up until we run into their universal flaw: their susceptibility to cancer.

My first experience with the death of a loved one came courtesy of breast cancer.  I had just turned twelve when I learned my Nana had been diagnosed with cancer and would be having a double mastectomy.  In other words, while I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my breasts, my Nana would be losing hers.

And while it was odd to see her without her breasts, she would ultimately lose far more.  After battling valiantly, my Nana lost her life.  She was only 60.

Today, there is good news about breast cancer.  Early diagnosis and more effective treatments are saving lives.  I have three friends who are currently celebrating more than a decade cancer-free, and others who have every reason to hope they will hit that milestone, too - and then keep going.

These improvements are the direct result of tireless fundraising, and every chance I have to help raise money to wipe out breast cancer, I am on it.  Which is why I was thrilled when I was asked to contribute a story to Merry Chick Lit - Celebrate the Season With Six Sassy Shorts.  This compilation features brand new holiday-themed short stories from a great group of chick lit authors:  Carolyn Ridder Aspenson, Sarah Hitchcock, Francine LaSala, Nikki Mahood, Holly Martin - and little ol’ me!  I am very happy to be in such talented company, and better still, ALL of the proceeds from sales of this Kindle exclusive e-book will go to New York- based breast cancer charity Rocking the Road for a Cure.

My Nana was everything a grandmother should be.  She hosted countless sleepovers where we’d snuggle in her bed and watch The Love Boat or the Miss America Pageant (both forbidden at home, and in hindsight, my parents may have been in the right on that one).  She’d tuck me in and send me off to sleep with “angel kisses” planted lightly all over my face - the absolute best way to drift into sweet dreams.  She’d let me have Cookie Crisp or Lucky Charms for breakfast, and she’d feed me Spagettios for lunch.  She felt a swim in the pool was an acceptable alternative to a bath.  She could stop me from behaving badly with a single glance, and she could relieve the greatest of hurts with a hug.

Whatever you call them, breasts are great.  Take care of ‘em.  Feel your boobies.  Get your annual mammogram.  Stick around long enough to spoil your great-grandchildren with sugary treats, questionable television, and angel kisses.

After her surgery, my Nana showed me her scars where her breasts had once been.  She told me they didn’t hurt.  But I’ll tell you this.

It hurt like hell to lose her.

{Click on the link here to read more about Merry Chick Lit.  The e-book is just $1.99, and all proceeds go to Rocking the Road for a Cure.}

Thin, Rich Bitches

Janet Eve Josselyn really likes school.  She graduated from Colby College, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Boston College Law School. She is an attorney and an architect - and also an author. Her novel Thin, Rich Bitches is accurately described as "an uproarious romp through the minefield of female one-upmanship."  In today's book blog post, she responds to the prompt I've been having fun posing to my writer friends: tell me about a book that had a significant impact on your life...  

The Verdict (1980) written by attorney and author Barry Reed (and made into a movie nominated for 5 Academy Awards, starring Paul Newman) was a novel about a down-on-his-luck trial attorney who takes on what appears to be a losing case against two prominent doctors whose negligence may or may not have caused a pregnant woman to go into a coma. 

At the time I read the book, I was practicing as an attorney in the city of Boston working with a large team of lawyers trying to recover the cost of every railroad tie ($700 each) on the Northeast Corridor from Boston to D.C. After the case dragged on for a couple of years in multi-district litigation, our client (the MBTA) entered into a settlement with the defendant and we all went out to dinner to celebrate. A month later, we were all laid off, as the partners in the firm were unable to secure enough new clients to keep us all on the payroll.

So I hunkered down in my Back Bay apartment and read a lot of legal mystery novels and novels about trial attorneys. Although I enjoyed them (as a distraction from the depressing task of job hunting), it occurred to me that I could write a legal mystery novel and so I labored at it for the next six months. Conflicts of Interest was the first novel I wrote and I was anxious to get some feedback on it. I called Barry Reed’s law office (also in Boston) and asked if I could speak with him. The answer was no. So I wrote to him and sent him the first 3 chapters of my novel, not knowing if he would ever read it or get back to me. A month or so later I received the three chapters back with a hand written note that simply said that, “It needs more sex.”

Say what? His acclaimed novel, The Verdict, had only a few sex scenes, and frankly, they were embarrassing lame ones that seemed inserted as afterthoughts, so I was confused. Nonetheless, I decided to put some sex scenes in anywhere I could. That’s when I realized that writing from a male point of view was a mistake for me. If my heterosexual main character who was a man was going to have sex with a woman, then I was going to have to write about what it was like to have sex with a woman which I had never done and didn’t want to do. Thank you, no. So I couldn’t do it and didn’t do it. The manuscript just took up space on my computer until the computer eventually died.

Soon after I finished the manuscript, however, I started working as an attorney for the City of Boston. Working in the public sector was the most interesting job I’ve ever had and between my new job and my new marriage, and a year later my new baby, I was too busy to do any writing.

Still, I always wanted to write another novel - but with a female protagonist. A couple of years later we moved out of the city so I had to give up my job with the City of Boston Law Department due to residency requirements. We moved to a suburb west of Boston where I found myself surrounded by moms who “used to have careers” but were now competing to be “the class mom” of their kid’s elementary school class (a high honor).

All of a sudden I had thrown myself out of the competitive, professional working world and into the competitive, stay-at-home mom world. But I realized that I wanted to write another novel and this time I was going to write about something I knew about from my own perspective. So I wrote Thin Rich Bitches, which I perhaps foolishly set in the town I actually still live in (Dover, MA). Well, that was brave of me, and for the most part, the book has been well received in my town - though not by all!

So I credit Barry Reed and his novel, The Verdict, with teaching me a valuable lesson about writing about what you know. Since that simple lesson encouraged me to write my only novel on Amazon, I would say that that book had a profound impact on me as a writer, albeit indirectly.

For more about Janet Eve Jocelyn and her work, link to and "like" her Facebook author page.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Book Blog is Back!

My loyal readers may recall I used to post twice weekly: my typical Girl on a Wire brain droppings on Tuesdays and a book review, author interview, or other literary-related bit on Thursdays.  Through the miracle of Google analytics, I learned that pretty much no one was reading my book blog posts.  So I gave myself permission to take the summer off.  I mean, if nobody's reading the posts anyway, why the heck not, right?  I did lots of reading, a little bit of writing, and rethought my approach to book blog.   

I am a natural storyteller.  I find the thread of narrative in just about everything in life.  And one of the beautiful things that's happened in my life thanks to social media is that I have been able to connect and share with other storytellers, including the authors of books I've really enjoyed.  So I'm bringing the book blog back with a twist - I'm inviting authors whose work I've enjoyed to share a story about the books that had a significant impact on their lives.  (I'll also post book blog on Sundays instead of Thursdays, because who the hell has time to read anything on a Thursday?)

Kicking things off today is Karen E. Martin, author of the hilarious, sexy novel Modogamous.

Here she is, in her own words:

A book that had a major impact on my life…wow, that’s a tough one. This is probably going to sound absolutely geeky, but the book that has probably had the most useful effect on my life is “What Color is Your Parachute?” and its companion workbook—both of which are still on my display bookshelf, a collection of fewer than 200 go-to titles that I keep on hand to loan out and for guests to browse.

So yeah. Why this book? Well, we didn’t have much in the way of career counseling at my high school, so when I got to college, I just picked a major that I thought I’d like—journalism. I ended up hating it. Sure, it was writing (which I love), but it grated on me to write about topics that I was assigned, rather than about what really interested me. I switched over to a double-major that I loved, English Literature and International Studies, hoping that with two such broad fields that I would eventually find some kind of employment that made sense and that I would enjoy.

That’s where WCIYP entered into the picture. Not only did it explain the world of work to me, but the workbook helped me pinpoint and prioritize both my skills and my true desires—not the things I thought I was supposed to want, but the things I actually wanted from life.

I discovered that the thing I most yearned for in my career (at that time) was not the job itself, but the setting:  I wanted to be overseas. I’m sure I knew that deep-down all along.  I’d spent a lifetime reading about other countries and daydreaming about joining the Peace Corps and jetting off to a little village in Africa somewhere, but seeing it on paper made me realize that I would never be happy unless I made it a reality. WCIYP forced me to take a cold, hard look at my dreams and decide whether I was going to commit to them (to hell with the naysayers!), or whether I was going to meekly give those dreams up and half-heartedly do what all the “normal people” were doing with their lives. The answer was right there on paper. In my own hand.

And I couldn’t turn my back on myself.

Luckily, following my gut on majors had been the right choice, as my college education was tailor-made for becoming an English teacher overseas. My first trip overseas was to study abroad in Bath, England, and eventually, I did go on to become that African Peace Corps volunteer, living in a tiny oasis town on the edge of the Sahara desert. That was just the beginning.

As my career continued to bloom, I found myself returning to WCIYP whenever I wasn’t sure what step to take next. I would rework the prioritizing charts, and often found that new interests and skills were now taking precedence in my life. The book always helped me to refocus and let go of old ideas, making way for growth and change—even giving me a needed boost of courage when I was ready to embark on a new path. In fact, I still return to the book every few years to reread notes from “the old Karen” to see whether I’m still the same person, and whether I need to make a few changes to my current world of work. WCIYP has seen me through a myriad of career changes: teacher, trainer, school director, desk editor at a publishing house, and now, as a freelance writer. And I still find it relevant and useful.

After more than 20 years of using the book, that’s probably about the highest praise I can give.

You can connect with Karen E. Martin via Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, or on her blog about writing, publishing, and literature.

Or just check out Modogamous - a funny, sexy read:

Kate Adams has a steady job, a home she loves in the big city, and good friends who always keep her laughing. Everything is going great—until the night she crosses the line with her best friend Mitch, and the boundaries between friendship and love begin to blur. Things get even more complicated when hunky JP enters the scene. Add to the mix a spunky little pug, and things start to get crazy!

Good Girls, Bad Girls, and the F-Word

If you’ve read my novel Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husband, you know that (1) there’s a fair amount of sex in it (it’s not for nothing that my mother refers to it as “Karen’s sex book”), and (2) the sidekick steals the show.  Tamara is the BFF we all want: fun, vivacious, loyal, nuttier than squirrel shit, and with a MOUTH.  She drops F-bombs like Margaret Cho on speed.

Tamara brings to mind one of my favorite freedoms:

Freedom of the sort of expression that would have earned you a bar of soap in the mouth as a kid.

Confession time: I love to say, “Fuck.”  I think, properly used, it’s one of the very best words in the English language.  And I use it - properly, of course - quite a bit.

To be clear, I’m not tossing the F-word around during work hours or in the presence of small children.  I don’t break it out at cocktail parties or Christmas dinner.  Everything has its place.  I get it.

I also get that I’m maybe not quite the sort of girl you’d expect to be so fond of the F-word.  Take a look at my promo pics.  I look like a Good Girl, don’t I?  

But here and now, I’d like to divest myself of the Good Girl label.  I’d like to do what my protagonist Eve does and ditch the Good Girl suit of armor - and all the heavy fucking baggage that comes with it.

I’d like you to do the same.

Because here’s the thing…

Being a Good Girl has no real value.  In fact, I think the label does a whole lot of harm.  Because if there are Good Girls, there are Bad Girls, too.  And heaven knows, we’ve got a whole slew of words for that kind of girl.

A couple of days ago I was reading a great article by Melissa Gira Grant entitled, There Is No Such Thing as a Slut.  “Sluts take up more space in our imagination than in anyone’s bed,” she writes.  More fully to the point, she illustrates the ways sluttiness is a myth - a “form of sexual privilege” - and perhaps worst of all, the way we women use the term/concept to leverage our power against one another, all the while foolishly undermining our own goals.

Someone like me, for example - white, middle class, able to determine on the basis of a lifetime of social schooling how to dress and when to bite one’s tongue - might come across as a Good Girl, while someone from a lower-class background or an unestablished ethnic minority might lack the social grooming to dress and speak so as to avoid unwanted labels.  Yet there may be absolutely no correlation between our public presentation and our sexual promiscuity.

In fact, statistics indicate otherwise.  Statistically, Good Girls know they can get away with more - and therefore, they do.

(I’ve got you all thinking naughty thoughts about me now, haven’t I?  Oh, go on…)

In the fictional world of my novel, Eve appears to be the Good Girl, while Tamara seems the foul-mouthed hussy.  But when one examines the situation more fully - (spoiler alert!) - Eve is out on the beach fucking a stranger while Tamara is home with her husband and kids - we get a better picture of how irrelevant labels truly are.

In my recent body-issues post, The Size of It, I suggested that we women could literally change the world for our daughters and granddaughters if we just were more careful about how we speak about our self-image.

I think the same is true here.    

My favorite blogs, books, films and Netflix fare celebrate and explore female experience with humor, an unflinching eye, and often a foul, foul tongue.  These writers and artists are not your stereotypical Good Girls.

They’re much better than that.  

That said, join me in bidding farewell to those polarizing, useless myths: the Slut and the Good Girl.  I’ll leave you with a few fun links from ladies who kick ass, talk and write sex, and yes, drop the occasional F-bomb.

I fucking love them.

Aussa Lorens redefines talking dirty in bed.

Shannon Bradley-Colleary talks about hot married sex (no, it’s not an oxymoron…or a misprint).

And Wanda Sykes’ Detachable Pussy routine remains my very favorite, funny-as-hell way to unload all that female baggage.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Fangirl

As I count down to BookBuzz 2014 in NYC later this month, I’m turning the book blog over to some other authors for guest posts.  Today it’s Glynis Astie, author of the fab debut chick lit novel French Twist and its sequel, French Toast.

Girl on a Wire peeps, meet Glynis…

I can barely contain my excitement about attending BookBuzz 2014 in New York City!  The opportunity to mix and mingle with a group of very talented authors and fabulous readers is such a treat.  Though I am certainly no stranger to being a fangirl when it comes to women’s fiction, the role of author is brand-spanking new to me.  I’ve been a published author for less than a year, and I feel I haven’t a clue what I’m doing yet.

I’ve been most fortunate to have met an incredible group of chick lit authors, and it all began just three short months ago with my first Twitter friend, Finding Lucas author Samantha Stroh Bailey.  When our conversation string started, I had no idea of the many ways she would change my life. 

Samantha offered a great deal of sage advice.  She invited me to join a chick lit Facebook group where I met a number of other welcoming authors.  I was pleasantly overwhelmed by the camaraderie of the group and by how quickly I was assimilated.  Navigating the role of new author is rather daunting, and knowing that you are not alone makes a world of difference.  When I find myself overwhelmed by the blank computer screen in front of me, by the ridiculously large number of marketing options available to me, or even by the breadth of social media, I have a support group to turn to.

Within my first month of hard-core social media participation, I had “cyber” met hundreds of authors, but I was always drawn back to my chick lit Facebook groups.  Every day I found myself fascinated by the community that they had formed and by the myriad things that I learned from them. I slowly found the courage to participate in the discussions and found my confidence growing by the day.

Just the other day, I had the pleasure of meeting THE Meredith Schorr!  I kept reminding myself to be cool as I chatted with the very talented author of Just Friends With Benefits,A State of Jane and Blogger Girl.  It may surprise you to hear this, but I can be a total dork.  If you don’t believe me, please feel free to read my books.  My heroine, Sydney Bennett, is most definitely my alter ego!

And the best part? Not only have I discovered an abundance of really talented chick lit and women’s fiction authors, but also I have made some good friends.  I feel both inspired and humbled by the fabulous books that these amazing women have written.  I may be an author now, but the fangirl in me is very much alive and well.

The arrival of BookBuzz 2014 means that I get to meet many of these outstanding authors in person!  Francine LaSala, Cat Lavoie, Lydia Laceby, oh my!  And I will FINALLY meet Samantha Stroh Bailey, the woman who started it all for this rather, um, eccentric author.

Are you jealous? No need to be! Simply visit this link, RSVP and prepare to have an awesome time!  Hope to see you there!

- Glynis Astie, author of the French Twist series

BookBuzz2014 takes place Thursday, May 29 at 7 p.m. at the Galway Pub  at 7 E 36th Street in NYC.  Come enjoy a FREE signature Pink Stiletto drink, great nibblies, and autographed novels at a great price - all while you mix and mingle with more than a dozen of the hottest names in women’s fiction.  RSVP to reserve your space - and we will see you there! 

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Redesigning Rose

About 1/18th of the way into Redesigning Rose, I realized it was probably the best direct competitor on the market for my own novel, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husband.  So, of course, I made it my goal to find all the ways it was inferior.

Unfortunately, author Lydia Laceby didn’t make that possible.

I loved this book.

Skilled writer that she is, Lydia proved that it is possible to take a familiar concept - lying husband, smart wife finding her inner strength - and tell a tale that is fresh, unique, and utterly enjoyable through and through.  Rose Parker discovers that her bank accounts are dwindling thanks to her husband’s fondness for the attention of professional dominatrixes, and from there, the lies he’s told to conceal his nocturnal activities unravel rapidly.  Happily, Rose has Becky, an acquaintance who rapidly becomes her BFF - as well as her mother and her gardening - to help her through this upending of her world.  And then (of course) there are the two hunky guys who enter the picture.  Yeah.  Cue the lip-licking.

To her credit, Lydia doesn’t use these hunky potential heroes to ease her heroine out of a very difficult situation.  They’re the icing, not the cake.  Rose remains determined to sort out her failed marriage and her new life on her own, something I (purveyor of stealth feminism, as I call it) absolutely love.  Rose accepts responsibility for her own flaws and failings, and she sets out to become a better person.  She allows her strife to deepen her relationships with those around her, perhaps most especially with her mother.  She is the kind of woman I would like to have as a friend.

I love that this is Lydia Laceby’s debut novel.  That she can work this magic in her first book leads me to believe she will do great things in her subsequent works.

Fans of chick lit, take note.  There is a new, delightful voice rising to the top of the genre.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Modogamous

Which single girl among us hasn't wanted to put dating in the doghouse?

Kate Adams is five years out of college and settling comfortably into her life.  She owns her own home, enjoys her work, and appreciates the tidy order of her world.  Then her best friend Evette needs a soft place to land while suffering a bitter divorce (her hubby has knocked up another woman; sort of a marital deal-breaker).  She moves into Kate's guest room and drama ensues.  Literally.  Deciding she's had enough of men, Evette decides being modogamous beats being monogamous - so she adopts a pug, names the little dog Drama, and announces that her primary relationship will be with him.  But Evette is still a grief-stricken mess, and while she steeps herself in pity and alcohol, Kate - never a fan of dogs to begin with - finds herself walking Drama in the early morning chill.

Her tidy life upended, Kate reveals herself to be just the kind of heroine I love.  She's flawed and funny, a smartass with a good heart.  She thinks she's an excellent karaoke singer (she's not).  In a moment of weakness, she falls into bed with longtime buddy and coworker Mitch, then agonizes because she's ruined their relationship.  And then there's hunky JP...

Or has she?  Author Karen E. Martin tells the story of the love triangle - or is it a quadrangle? - that follows with a keen sense of human nature and the sharpest, snarkiest sense of humor I've found in a novel in recent memory.  Her depiction of female friendship is real and entertaining, perhaps especially because she doesn't shy away from all those naughty things we ladies discuss.  To say that laugh out loud moments abound in this book is an understatement.  And happily, there's no shortage of steamy stuff, either.

Love doesn't always come in the neatly-wrapped packages we've requested.  Okay, actually, it almost never does.  Sometimes love is a pug named Drama (I doubt it's a spoiler to say Kate's view of that little guy softens), and sometimes…  Well, just read the book.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

{Karen E. Martin is a seasoned traveler, having served as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years in Morocco and having worked for the U.S. Department of State in Romania and Jordan, among other adventures.  Fittingly, her next work is the second in her "On the Road with Karen" series - a new travelogue, tentatively titled “A (St)roll Through South America” will follow her journey through Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina with her mother – in a wheelchair.}

Beyond Desperation

Forgive me if today’s book blog post seems a smidge familiar.  A while back, I hosted author Anthony Paull for a fun collaboration: a conversation between the unlikely heroines of each of our novels.  My post this Tuesday was about failure, perseverance, growth and humor in ‘real life,’ and that got me thinking about those qualities in fiction.  This, in turn, brought me back to Anthony Paull and his novel Desperation Lingers.  It is arguably the second-strangest book I have ever wholeheartedly loved (The Love Song of Monkey by Michael S.A. Graziano holds steady in first place).  In spite of its surreal qualities, I found it immensely relatable.  I never thought I’d consider a plunger a symbol of freedom and defiance, but sometimes you really do need to break out the ugly tools to separate the muck from the men.

So here’s my (five star) review of Desperation Lingers, the e-book version of which happens to be on sale at the moment for only 99 cents.  Or if you’re feeling like a big spender, you can splurge on one of those paper-and-ink thingys.  Those who are my kind of weird will find this to be a book worth reading more than once.

Enjoy!

Where to begin?

How to describe Desperation?

Anthony Paull has created characters and a story unlike anything I’ve read before - and that’s a good thing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a personal love affair with Miami that may have slightly predisposed me to enjoy this novel. I was born there and my frequent return visits feel like soul-deep homecomings. That Paull so perfectly captures the flavor and quirks of the city that is my “woman hood” made me smile

That said, this isn’t a story for everyone. But it should be. Desperation Lingersreads initially like a farce, with characters and events so absurd and larger-than-life, it’s a cross between Shakespeare and Tom Robbins, with maybe a dash of community theatre and a hint of Miami-fied BBC sitcom.

Got it?

The genius of Desperation lies not just in Paull’s outrageous characters, hilarious observations, and perfect turns of phrase, but in his ability to turn the world of this novel on end every time the reader thinks she’s got a grasp on things. To be frank, this is a book with an unlovable protagonist, and if not for the colorful world Desperation inhabits, I might not have cared enough to read past the first few chapters. Desperation is a brusque, physically-unappealing aging alcoholic whose level of self-absorption is impressive even by South Beach standards.

Except that she’s not.

In Paull’s skilled hands, this unlovable woman is transformed. I don’t want to say too much, because the ultimate beauty of this novel is the stunning twists and turns it takes - particularly in the rollicking final quarter - but I will say this: tough it out past those points where you want to throttle Desperation and you’ll be rewarded. She has good reason to be hard and staid, and she could easily have remained the caricature she seemed at the outset. In the end, though, her absurd qualities are her most endearing and enduring, and this larger-than-life tale shrinks beautifully until it is just about heart-sized.

If you believe people truly can change, or if you’ve ever felt disapproval from a Frieda Kahlo portrait and wished you could change, this book is for you.

If not, this book is also for you.

Grab a plunger and wave it proudly. Desperation Lingers is not what she seems.

And neither are you.

www.kcwilder50ways.com