Nicole Peeler belly dances, listens to baaad music, and still teaches at a prestigious university

So one day Rachael and Sophie and I were talking about great bloggers and --swear to God-- we all stopped, gaped at each other, and said, why hasn't Nicole Peeler blogged for the Pens? WTF? Do you think she could take time out of her busy schedule of belly dancing and molding young minds and writing smut to be our guest on Pensfatales?

Nicole said yes, of course, because she is all kinds of awesome and her superhero quality is to be funny and creative and genius on demand.

Check out her Jane True series of Urban Fantasy novels -- you'll thank me. Really. Nicole is h-o-t hot, and so are her books.

Nicole:

Well hello there, Pen Fatales and Readers! I am stupidly excited to be here. I haven’t had the chance to meet all of the Pens, yet, but if I were to begin waxing poetic about Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Rachael Herron, I would have to write an EPIC. An epic, people. Because that’s how much I adore them.

So when Juliet asked me to guest blog here, I was super excited. I also knew I had to really dig deep, and really share. Nothing else would do for the Pens but brutal honesty. And so that’s what I did.

I like a lot of music. In fact, I would say that, for the most part, I’m pretty hip, pretty happening, pretty “in the now” when it comes to music. Except for one secret I keep buried . . . a secret so dark, so painful, I keep it hidden for fear of reprisal.

I freaking love Roxette.

I love them. I’m sorry. I know that’s like claiming allegiance to Twinkies, or to Hanson, but it’s true. I love the saccharine gooey sweetness that is Roxette. And here’s what I love about them:

• I love that I can take a power stance, and sing along with their songs in a REALLY dramatic way. The way I might, in other scenarios, herald the impending apocalypse, or sing of my lover having fallen on the battlefield, or announce that Sarah Palin has become our President.

• I love that the lyrics often mean absolutely nothing when you actually think about them. Roxette presents us with a philosophical conundrum akin to Schrödinger’s cat: If a song is sung about nothing, but with tremendous passion, does that song actually come to mean something?

• I love all of that spikey, spikey hair.

If you’re still not convinced, try it out. First, take a power stance--legs apart, arms akimbo, and head back so you’re READY TO WAIL. Now play this song and sing along as loudly as you can:

Enjoy the drama and the meaningless, all while imagining your own hair in all its potentially spikey glory. It’s infectious! Granted, it’s infectious in the same way that sexually transmitted diseases are infectious (caught doing things we know we shouldn’t be doing, with people we certainly shouldn’t be doing them with) and yet it’s SO MUCH FUN.

At least it is to me.

Stop judging, meanies.

Cuz I bet y’all have your own secret sin music! But who is brave enough to share?


Bio: Nicole Peeler writes the Jane True series of Urban Fantasy for Orbit Books. She’s also an assistant professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Seton Hill University, where she mentors up and coming writers in SHU’s MFA in popular fiction. In her spare time, she travels compulsively and belly dances badly, but with great enthusiasm. You can find out more about Nicole and her books at http://nicolepeeler.com.

So I Married A Musician

--Adrienne Miller

I don't have great deal of musical talent. And that's probably being generous. I can't say that I don't have any. About a year ago I discovered that I have a knack for the harmonica and there are a couple of lullabies that, if I sing them really softly, my kids will settle down. So, hey, that's something. But other than that, I've got nothing.

I can't sing. I can't keep a beat going on my own for more than thirty seconds. I tried to play the clarinet when I was in sixth grade and was politely asked at semester's end by the music teacher to find another elective. (Which reminds me, I should totally do a post some time about all the things I've tried and been asked to never do again. The list is surprisingly long. When I fail, I do it spectacularly.)

But I love music. It's my go-to inspiration, my muse. Drop me in the middle of nowhere and as long as I have my ipod, I'm good. Some people need silence to create, but not me. Just about everything in my life plays to a soundtrack. Stories, car trips, even laundry day, they all have their own playlist. 

So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I married a musician, and a really good one to boot. Tom is the opposite of me in so many ways. He's a self taught musician who can play just about anything with strings-guitar, bass, piano, ukulele. Oh, and drums too. He writes music. He improvises. He has a freakin' degree in jazz theory. I didn't even know there was a theory behind jazz, let alone a degree you could earn in it.

It became apparent pretty early in our relationship though that we did not hear or experience music the same way. I listen to a song the same way I look at a painting like Van Gough's Starlight Over The Rhone. I see it as one thing. I feel frenzy in it, the crazy. I'm moved by the visceral reaction I have to it.

Tom, on the other hand, sees each individual stroke, each little brush of paint. There is no totality. It's not a painting, it's a thousand touches of paint. He might see them as cleverly applied, but they don't fill him with abstract inspiration. 

This has led to a couple of polite disagreements about music in our household. We each have the bands and playlists that can only be turned on when the other one is out. There was the time I told him we had to leave a Dream Theater concert at intermission if there was going to be any hope of saving our marriage, or the time that I drank my way through a night at a combo jazz club just to keep my sanity. 

It goes both ways, of course. There are bands of mine he outright hates - Foo Fighters,  Kate Bush, Counting Crows - all for things he sees as 'musical sins'. And here you didn't even know there was divine morality in notes, did you? He teases me mercilessly about my love for Damien Rice. After seeing on iTunes that a song of his was twenty-one minutes long, he commented, "What is it, five minutes of singing and another sixteen of him quietly weeping in the corner?"

Will we last? Probably. But where some people advise that separate bathrooms or bank accounts make for a happy marriage, I advocate for separate playlists.

Cheer Up Sleepy Jean: The Deep Philosophyical Underpinnings of the Monkees

by Juliet

I know what you’re thinking. This blog post should have been in the religion section.

No? All right, maybe you're thinking that Juliet is FAR too young to have listened to The Monkees as a child. And you're right, of course -- they were before my time.

But I’ve always been out of step. When my older sisters went on to listen to Abba and the Bee Gees and the Eagles and Journey on the stereo, I inherited the Close-n-Play record player along with their discarded albums -- the Monkees among them.

(I still insist I am a better person for having skipped right over some of the hits of the late 70s. If I never have to hear Hotel California EVER again in my life I'll die happy.)

But The Monkees...these guys were a revelation. The spoke about Real Issues, like suburban angst. I give you Exhibit One: Pleasant Valley Sunday. Just listen to those lyrics for a moment. Rows of houses that are all the same, and no one seems to care.

This was heavy stuff for someone who happened to live in such a house.

Later one of my sisters, in a fit of pique and older-sibling piousness, pointed out that The Monkees were a soulless group put together by corporate forces to make money. It didn’t matter.

I closed and played the Close-n-Play and listened, glassy-eyed and mouth agog, to Zor and Zam. Remember that one? There are these two kings, see, the King of Zor and the King of Zam, and they called for a war...But nobody came.

I’ll give you a moment to really think that one through. What if everyone saw through all the war stuff and just didn't go? My best friend Diane and I pondered this for days. We couldn't believe no one had thought of it before. We could have saved the country from the debacle of Viet Nam, if only we'd been older and had our Monkees albums tucked under our arms.

Of course the Partridge family had David Cassidy, and he was cute, so I watched the show without fail. But their music somehow lacked the…gravitas of The Monkees. (Recently I was told the Mondrian-inspired Partridge family bus was bought by porn producers. Can't wait to see what they do with it.)

The Beatles were classic, of course, but even my sheltered twelve-year-old mind could tell they were often referencing drugs and/or sex, which made me uneasy. The Monkees kept it in the comfort zone. They spoke about middle class ennui and the stultifying air of the suburbs. They spoke about how we should all have fun and be nice to each other. They spoke to my soul.

Years later I confided the secret Monkees fetish to my then-husband, and he decided this accounted for my absolute lack of sense when it came to anything political. I insisted people should grow up and be polite to each other, and then at least we'd have something to build on. He pointed out that the world was motivated by money, pure and simple. The marriage didn't last all that long.

Ah well. Guess I'm just a Daydream Believer.

HIJACKED!

Since it's still my day to post, I'm hijacking this post from myself (see below) to announce

AFTERTIME is out today!

By our own Sophie Littlefield, I have this to say: I loved this book. The writing is gorgeous, the language spare and precise and moving.

And it's the scariest thing I've ever read. Seriously. Sure, you think zombies and you think (or maybe it's just me): cheesy. It's gonna be high-pitched-scream in-the-theatre scary.

But no. Sophie's gift is making it real. As if it's something that could happen (AND IT COULD) in the near future, given chemical warfare and political upheaval. It got to the point where I couldn't read it at night, because the nightmares I was having were so awful. Sophie's writing is affecting. It's unavoidable. It's look-at-this-NOW writing, and I loved every scary minute of it, and the main character Cass broke and rebroke my heart, over and over again.

Go do yourself a favor give it a read. Congrats, Sophie! We're so proud of you.

Rachael Serenades You

I'm from a musical family. My mother played the piano beautifully, and my dad plays anything stringed you set in front of him. When I was little, he'd tuck us up in bed with a song of our request -- I usually chose The Peanut Butter Tree (which was a Dad original).

We grew up singing together and not finding it weird. We three girls, when we sing at karaoke or Christmas caroling, usually shock the hell out of people -- our voices work together like one, and we LURVE some tight harmony. We keep saying we'll form a band, but out of all of us, only Christy knows how to actually play anything (the bass, guitar, and drums). I can play chords on the guitar, badly, and can play piano a little, but nothing to write home about. I didn't play anything when the family sang together, out camping at bluegrass festivals, and I kept my hands busy with knitting while everyone else jammed.

So a while back, I tried picking up the ukulele. Four strings! How hard could it be? (Hint: Not hard.) I bought a crappy one, loved it, and then sold some yarn to the knitters to fund a new, nice uke. I posted this video the night I got my new one, so I wasn't good at playing it (or changing chords) yet, but I think it shows how I love it.




Certainly won't win any awards -- except for the FUN award, perhaps, which is a really important one. I love my uke. (There's another little song here, with friends, and a primer to starting to play the uke yourself!)

How I Foisted Music On The Kids

by Sophie

MUSIC

I'm a silence person. I don't like a lot of sensory stimuli, including jarring imagery or sound or texture. With the exception of first drafts and driving solo, both of which I find best accompanied by loud music, I am content to rattle around with only my thoughts taking up aural bandwidth, if such a thing is even possible. (Do you "hear" your thoughts? I think I do.)

It wasn't always that way. Between the ages of 8 and 18, I played the cello - rather seriously, as a matter of fact. (I know that some people don't know what a cello is so here's a picture of Yo Yo with his.)

Then I quit cold turkey and I doubt I could play any more, though I'm tempted to try and probably will when things settle down around here.

Here's a picture of me with my string quartet and our advisor when I was my daughter's age, going-on-sixteen. I'm the one on the left. (Those of you who remember Gunne Sax dresses will notice two nice examples on Jenny Shallenberger - 3rd from left - and the other girl, whose name I've entirely forgotten. Of course, I made my own dress.) The older gent was our advisor, Mr. Spotts. Isn't that a marvelous name?


And here's a picture of Junior last summer at music camp - drumsticks are a little easier to haul around than a cello:


I include these pictures because I've been thinking of the role music plays in my kids' lives. Right or wrong, I decided early on that music ought to be part of the curriculum and since it was given cursory attention at best by the education people in our state, I made it a rule at home that the kids had to give it the same attention they gave any other subject - and that meant half an hour's practice 3 or 4 times a week. I told the kids that when they reached high school they could choose whether or not to continue, but for five years they had no choice other than which instrument to play.

They complained bitterly. I didn't care. I'm hardly a tiger mom but on this subject (and that of TV, which I regulated with such a complex set of rules that the result was that we hardly ever watched it unless it was something I wanted to see, a hypocrisy I sort of regret) I was resolute. And sure enough, when the time finally came for them to quit, neither wanted to. They played on, and my son will join an orchestra when he goes off to college next year.

There's all these studies - if you're a parent, you've heard 'em - that show that music helps kids with everything from math to languages. Arguably, the study of music gives you a bit of snob cred, though I imagine my whole family is weary of me going "I played that" whenever a classical music piece is co-opted for a television ad.

That wasn't why I made my kids play, though. I'm not sure I can put my finger on the reason. Nostalgia, certainly, and a vague feeling that there should be some depth to the experience of music as funneled through pop culture. But I've loved hearing them practice, even back in the terrible early days of cacophony and missed notes.

Bethany's Buddy

Religion was always on the milder side in my waspy family. We did Sunday service, provided it was followed by donuts on the beach. We worshipped in a non-descript wood-paneled room. We were quiet about our religion.

Naturally, like my holy roller sister, I grew attracted to the exact opposite. Loud, glaring religion. The multi-hued glass windows, jewels, and gory reliquaries of Catholicism. Dancing nekkid, widdershins, during the full moon, as I read from my Llewellyn Wicca Handbook. Making a metanoia and lighting candles in front of golden icons in the Greek Orthodox cathedral. Ooo, and stigmata! Stigmata was the very pinnacle of ostentatious cool.

As I aged, I developed my own personal religion, flamboyant but lighthearted. I studied religious history, and decided which bits of the bible made beautiful, wonderful sense, and which bits were essentially political propaganda centuries out of date. Love is love, whether you’re gay, straight, asexual, or poly, and I dismissed any words to the contrary as necessary growing pains for an ambitious religion - the best missionaries are 12 little versions of yourself, right? I felt guilty about my presumptuous take-it-or-leave-it attitude, but I couldn’t help think that my Buddy Christ™ roadside shrines were my own modern way of proselytizing. And a much healthier way, at that.

It got a bit harder to laugh about my faith when Mom got sick. Mom was the one that took me for doughnuts after Sunday service. Mom insisted on the advent candles on the dinner table. Mom sat with me in Maundy Thursday services, where we shared muffled, inappropriate snickers when the pastor would awkwardly duck behind the teeny lectern, his skirt-clad rear sticking out, so that no one would see him whacking a saw to mimic the sound of the nails being driven into Christ’s feet.

I tried to blame it on oxygen saturation and medication side-effects, but near the end, when she couldn’t communicate anymore, religion sure didn’t seem to be a comfort to Mom. She was scared, and confused, and visits from the pastor or reading aloud from the bible only made her more so.

I can’t express what a hit that was. Mom was the model for all of my religious beliefs. If in the end it meant nothing to her, what on earth was I doing with my life and soul?

It wasn’t until recently that I realized it wasn’t her religion that was challenged in that moment, it was my own. Her responses were difficult to interpret, at best. It was all about the meaning I laid on them.

I can’t know for certain what she felt when she died. I can only believe that her faith was with her, and that my fuzzy, loving, it’s-all-sweetness-and-cherries God was with her. And I do believe.

Buddy Christ™ is back on my dashboard now, by the way, and we’re spreading the good news in a Ford Van, reaching out to my quivering brethren. But it took a while to find my way back.



Bethany Herron is an urban fantasy writer, freight-train conductor, and RWA Board Member living in the Bay Area. She has the blessed fortune to be connected to the Pens by blood, and blogs at http://jujuwiz.wordpress.com.

I'm Loving Angels Instead

by Gigi

I love hanging out in cemeteries.

No, I was never a Goth kid. But I've always felt a profound sense of beauty and peace in cemeteries.

One of the first plots that ever came to me was a ghost story about two teenagers who are drawn to an angel statue above a grave in a cemetery from California's Gold Rush days.

I'd still like to do something with that story someday, but I learned that writing YA is different than mystery, so I've got a lot more work to do before I can finish it. But you know what? I loved writing that story, regardless of what comes of it.

Based on that attitude, it was suggested by one of the Pens that I'm the most likely among us to become a Bodhisattva. I'm good at the Buddhist practice of calmly accepting the things around me. I accept that the cup is already broken; the things around me will all break at some point, but I'm not going to spend my life worrying.

Even when things go "wrong," it's all part of life. I've screwed up at a lot of things in my life -- being turned down for fellowships after college (which led to me taking off for London instead), getting myself on the wrong life path that I didn't quit until age 25 (which led to me meeting the love of my life a month later), not getting right that ghost story I love (which perhaps I'll find my way back to when I'm ready). By accepting these failures for what they were -- broken cups, not a broken life -- I was able to let them go and move on.

I think I'm good at that practice because most of the time I succeed in living in the moment, appreciating the people and experiences around me, instead of being focused on striving for some future payoff.

It's especially easy to appreciate the moment in beautiful spiritual places like cemeteries. You can feel the universe there. How can you worry about the petty problems in your life when surrounded by such serenity?

I've tried to capture the ethereal nature of cemetery angels through the lens of a camera. Below are a few of my photographs that show how I've experienced these peaceful places.

p.s. If anyone missed the reference in the title of this post, you're missing out on the highly entertaining Robbie Williams.

Addendum: Not five minutes after I wrote the original draft of this post, I was putting dishes away and broke one of my favorite martini glasses. Now that's a good lesson for practicing what I preach ;)

Martha Gets Religious (about writing)

Nothing brings out unsolicited advice like the declaration: "I'm working on a novel."

"What about?" strangers/friends/family ask.

It doesn't matter what you say, they will offer friendly advice. You could literally quote Genesis, and you'd get the response, "Wouldn't it be cool if you make the universe is three days instead? Three days seems more urgent."

Pile that advice on top of whatever you get from your critique group, writing friends, writing forums, seminars, and Oprah.

That's a lot of advice. The only way to anchor yourself in your story is to keep a central tenant of writing commandments. Things you know in your heart to be true about the world, about writing, and about yourself. Things you will not compromise on even as your story grows and changes under the care of others. Things that keep your story yours.

Martha's 10 Writing Commandments To Herself. Not To You.

1. Thou shalt have a female main character point of view. No offense to guys. But there's enough from your point of view in this world.

2. Thou shalt try thy bestest not to let any characters bite their lips. At least not until thou makest a friend who actually does bite her lip. Because really, thou doesn't knowest anyone who does this in real life.

3. Thou shalt not have two women fighting over a joint male romantic-interest. If the two woman shall fight, it shalt be over something substantial. And interesting. Not a dude.

4. Thy characters shall not have pets, unless they intend to eat said pet, or do something grotesquely interesting to said pet, because otherwise all they will do is feed and pet said pet, and what do you really have to say that is interesting about pet ownership? Nothing.

5. Thou shalt not write a character having a dream. Thou knowest that listening to someone's dreams is hella annoying, even when they are thine own. So why make someone pay to read them? (I should note - I have written characters waking up from nightmares but not in the process of having them. It's a thin line, but they're my commandments, so I'm cool with it.)

6. Thou shall write characters of ethnic diversity but not dwell on said ethnic diversity creating a "we are all the same at heart" message because thou knowest, as someone of diversity, that thou feels this message is total sentimental crap undervaluing the very point of diversity in that difference is beautiful and not something to be feared. Besides, when was the last time thou wantest to be the same as anyone? Never.

7. Thou shall keep thy word count under 60,000. Nothing thou hasest to say is interesting enough to hit 100,000 words. Ever.

8. Thou shall make thy books as awesome as possible. Thou knowest thy is asking for Publishers to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in personnel, materials and overhead to produce said work so make thou shit worth hundreds of thousand of dollars.

9. Thou shalt write whatever the hellest thy wants. Else, what's the point?

10. Thou shall make holy any day thy wantest to rest. Because again. See above.

The Secret of Everything

L.G.C. Smith

So. Religion. In 500 words or fewer. Really? I can’t do it.

Instead, I’m resorting to one of my stories. I’m old enough to repeat myself if I feel like it, so here goes.

In my first year of grad school at Cal, I arrived late to campus one spring morning after a gutting fight with my husband. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was the kind of fight that made me wonder what the hell I had been thinking to marry this person, and what ever possessed me to think I had the slightest inkling of who he was inside because clearly, I didn’t, and my judgment was so wildly off the mark as to call into question everything I ever thought I knew about anything.

I know what was wrong now. He had bipolar disorder. At the time, however, as I parked in the Northside lot and scuttled down to the corner of Euclid and Hearst to cross onto campus, I despaired. Something was wrong, very, very wrong, and no amount of therapy or constructive action on my part seemed to make any difference.

As I reached the crosswalk, the light turned red, and I was stuck in front of a bakery with a homeless guy with a big beard and a little collection box for the Berkeley Free Clinic. My guard down, I made eye contact.

He smiled. He didn’t ask for my spare change. “What’s your favorite shape?”

Well, that was a different approach. “A triangle,” I said.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

He pointed to the sky behind the redwoods to the west of the North Gate. “Look up.”

I did.

He traced a triangle with one finger against the clear blue sky. “There’s a blue triangle for you. Love and fear. That’s all there is. You decide.”

The light turned green and I went to my class, and on with my imperfect marriage and my own deep flaws and foibles. Those words have never left me.

Three short sentences spoken in a profane and painful moment, with the humble gift of an imagined blue triangle sketched in the air bore a lesson as resonant as the teachings of the world’s greatest religions.