Cupcakes Belong In The Bakery, Not The Power 5

So last weekend college football started, which made my life instantly pick up speed. My University of Tennessee Volunteers started off well, if a trifle erratically, with a 59-30 drubbing of Bowling Green State University. Don't be fooled, though--BGSU has a high octane offense with players that will be playing on Sundays in a year or two. They hung around for most of three quarters and a long weather delay, but when Butch Jones decided to put the game on lockdown, it was locked down. So the Vols got a win against a quality opponent, and a wake-up call on the defensive side of the ball before heading back to Knoxville for a huge home opener against Oklahoma. 

UT fans were lucky. We were treated to a real football game, instead of the dreary cupcake smashing that usually introduces us to a new season of the sport we love.  We also got to witness one of the most absolutely ridiculous moments in NCAA history.

Mike Minns...dude, you're my hero.

But I have bigger fish to fry, so get to the sideline and put your darn shoe back on. And take an acting class. No one believed that you were hurt.

No one.

Back on track--

Major FBS schools schedule absolutely outmatched squads to start their seasons off with a bang. Just a quick check of last week's scores will illustrate my point. Georgia Tech beat Alcorn State 69-6. Georgia stomped Louisiana-Monroe 51-14, while Ole Miss annihilated UT-Martin 76-3. None of the fans who went to or watched these games enjoyed the actual thrill that is a football game. And no, not even my Vols are blameless here, with the Mean Green of North Texas  or the Western Carolina Catamounts on the schedule.

And what in the name of bleeding hogs is a catamount anyway? If it's a big wild feline like a cougar, why not call themselves cougars instead? Catamount just doesn't sound intimidating at all. In fact, catamount makes me think catamite and that's just wrong on so many levels.

Sorry. Let me get back on track.

Big school fans got to tailgate, yell a lot, and witness the tiny FCS lambs getting led into the slaughter. Small school fans didn't even have the pre-game delusion that their teams could win. Beyond getting to see their team on television--and the athletic department cash in big checks as their payout for willingly jumping up on the altar of  "automatic wins" against schools with better athletes, coaches, facilities, alumni base, and everything else. 

So what do these cupcake matches do? Seriously--what good is there in having a Miami or an Oklahoma beat up on a school whose team is half their size? 

Proponents will tell you that it's great for the smaller schools. They get that big payout, for one thing. UT-Martin, for example, took home $1.2 million for their participation as the Rebels' crash test dummies. The players from those small schools get to be on TV, and if they make a great play--and survive it--their name might just pop up on ESPN. 

The bigger schools, on the other hand, get a W to kick off their season's record. They must really crave those W's; they're paying millions of dollars for each one. As each team is playing 8-9 conference games out of 12 games total on the season, that means they're forking out a minimum of $3 million bucks every year to smaller universities. 

Don't get me wrong. Not every FCS opponent is an automatic win. Remember this?

I still love that App State win over Michigan. Ranks as one of my top ten games of all time and one of only two that doesn't involve the Vols. What's the other? As if you have to ask--

A few big schools like Washington State found out this past weekend that it can happen to them as well.

But for the most part? Big time power 5 conference schools have no business scheduling a FCS opponent. The games aren't enjoyable, the risk is greater than any possible reward, and an automatic W doesn't really do the team any favors. They gain more positive benefit from scrimmaging against themselves--first string O against first string D and so forth. And let's not forget, a FCS school might not be able to beat their SEC or PAC 12 opponent, but they sure as heck can ruin their season regardless.

Injuries.

Injuries can happen anytime, anywhere. Regardless of who a team is playing, football is still a contact sport. Even when you're running up the score on an inferior opponent. Several FBS powerhouses lost key players to season or career-ending injuries while beating up a FCS school. Makes you wonder if the easy win was really worth it if you're, say, Pitt for example, whose running back James Conner ran for over 1700 yards last season. Against Youngstown State, Conner sustained a torn MCL and is going to lose the entire 2015 season.  In their win over Rhode Island, Syracuse lost their star quarterback Terrel Hunt for the season. But the scariest injury by far was to Clemson wide receiver Mike Williams.

Williams collided with the goalpost while scoring against I-AA foe Wofford and fractured his neck. Fortunately, he didn't sustain a spinal cord injury and should recover fully. But let's put this into perspective.  The touchdown that could easily  have ended Williams' career or life was part of a 49-10 victory over a Wofford team that has not defeated Clemson since 1933. Mike Williams was ranked as one of the nation's top ten receivers pre-season. And this injury happened early, in the first quarter, when Clemson's first string offense was stomping all over the Wofford defense.                                                
A defense Clemson's third string, walk-ons, and redshirted freshman could have defeated fairly handily.

Every time a guy straps on a helmet and goes out to play football, there's a risk. College players know the risks. They train extensively to build up muscle groups and prevent serious harm--which may have actually saved Williams from a worse fate last Saturday. But you have to ask yourself--what in the hell was he doing out there in the first place? Why did this guy and all the others who got injured last weekend lay it all on the line for a game that, in the end, matters absolutely nothing in the end? Is the win really THAT important?

Saturday during the pre-game shows, I expressed some of my opinions on this via Twitter, and a Missouri fan jumped all over me when I said that as a fan, I just do not enjoy watching any big school annihilate a smaller one. I don't care what anyone says, if your team is winning 76-3 there's really no urgent need to watch. He thought I was for thinking that cupcake games serve no purpose.  "Keep on pounding them! Pile up the points! The bigger the score the better the team!" And when I brought up injuries to star players as a reason for these kinds of games, he went off. Apparently he was tired of listening to people whine about losing starters to injury. Football isn't for the weak, it's a man's game etc etc etc.

Wonder if he feels a little differently now?

On Saturday, Mizzou lost both their starting center, Evan Boehm, and their starting running back, Russell Hansborough, to right ankle sprains playing against Southeastern Missouri in the Tigers' first offensive series. Both will be back this season, but not likely for a few weeks--and once those two players were injured Mizzou's offense struggled to move the ball on the ground--which led to quarterback Maty Mauk proving that the inconsistency he displayed last season is still a huge problem as the Tigers limped to an ugly 34-3 victory. Mizzou is just lucky that SEMO couldn't score against--

No. That's not right. There was no luck involved. Mizzou paid for a 1-0 start. They purchased that automatic win. Unfortunately, though, it cost more than however much money they shelled out to entice SEMO to take the L and go home richer. It cost them a couple of players too. If they're lucky, Boehm and Hansborough are back before Mizzou's SEC schedule kicks off with UK on September 26, then hits South Carolina, Florida, and Ole Miss--four games during which I can promise you that the starting center and star running back are absolutely essential for the Tigers to win.      

In the end, these power 5 schools and their athletic directors are going to have to ask themselves if the price they paid was too much for those guaranteed wins.

And hope that the price doesn't become much higher for some player, his family, and team. Mike Williams was lucky. He's a player on a football team with top notch training and facilities, and receives the kind of care that helps to protect him from devastating injury on the field. But someday, in a power five vs. I-AA game, a player without t hose advantages, a player from the smaller school, a player who's playing for love of the game and for getting an education as opposed to getting drafted into the NFL may not be as lucky as Mike Williams.

I can guarantee you that when that day comes--and it will--the price will be way too high.                                                  

Songs of the South 1--The '86 Sugar Vols and a Handshake That Wasn't

Few fans can attribute their love of a football team to a single moment. I can. 

Don't get me wrong--I grew up in a Tennesssee Volunteers family. My father, uncles, cousins, and grandfather all were Vols fans. When I was little, I learned to love the game of football. Being the only little girl in a room full of guys rooting for one team brought said little girl advantages--like staying up late so I could see the end of the game and lots of junk food. When I reached high school, of course, I had other priorities--school, books, and boys. But I always kept track of how UT was doing, and in the late 70s/early 80s things weren't exactly top of the line for the Vols. 

When I graduated high school and went to college, my interest in football began to shift. My freshman year, I started to follow the Vols more closely, heading to Knoxville several times for games. So when the 1985 Tennessee Volunteers were rewarded for their 8-1-2 record with an SEC championship and a trip to the Sugar Bowl against Miami, I was pretty excited. So I went to a fraternity's bowl party on campus, where I was pretty much the only girl who had any interest in the game at all. Most of the guys there were pals of mine, and they all thought I was the coolest girl on the planet because I not only understood the game, but knew the players' names and could spout off stats with the same ease that I could roll out answers in my political science classes or immediately find the right piece of evidence to refute my opposition's claims in a debate tournament. 

No one really gave UT much of a chance in that game. Everyone was pretty darn sure that Miami, under that ultra-arrogant Jimmy Johnson, was going to slaughter the Vols. There had been a lot of smack talking out of Florida in the few weeks before the game. Johnson, in fact, had made it pretty well known that he didn't consider the Vols a worthy opponent. Instead of talking about the bowl game his team was in, he spent his pressers talking about Penn State and the Orange bowl and how Miami had beaten Oklahoma and were obviously the best team in the nation. Unquestioningly number one. When Vinny Testaverde followed up with a warning that if UT tried to rely on the blitz they'd get burned, I'd thought that was a spectacularly stupid thing to say. UT had beat Auburn with Bo Jackson on the team. Obviously, we had a good defense. As a matter of fact, the 1985 season had been a spectacular year defensively. Our defense was nicknamed the "orange crush" and had held the last seven teams we'd played to a total of four touchdowns. Four. So after I'd read that comment by the Miami QB, I took a great deal of pleasure in telling all my football buddies that 'testaverde' meant 'green balls' in Latin--which is almost but not quite accurate. 

So there we were, preparing to watch UT's biggest bowl game in years. It being a frat house, the keg was already tapped, lots of bags of chips were being opened, girls were giggling and guys doing their pre-game 'remember this play' argument. The Sugar Bowl came up on the TV and we all cheered, because even from the Goodyear blimp it was obvious that UT had won the battle of the stadium at least. The cameras went to the center of the field for the coin toss, and our captains extended their hands for the pre-game shake. 

And the Miami captains ignored them. 

At first I couldn't believe it. They were refusing to shake hands? Seriously? At the biggest game of the year, in front of a national audience? They left our captains' hands hanging in mid-air, turned their backs, and walked away in a performance of such contempt and with such a complete lack of sportsmanship and respect that the entire frat house fell silent.  Our captains exchanged looks and turned for their own sideline. As they walked back to their team, one of the captains--I think it was Chris White--kind of squared his shoulders and stiffened his spine. Just that small change of posture was electrifying--and contagious. Because it was like a ripple on the sideline. The team stood straighter, their faces were grimmer, and their eyes were narrowed.

It electrified the frat party too. All of a sudden, the game wasn't just something fun to watch while you got drunk. Suddenly, it was an insult against all of us, against everybody in the entire state of Tennessee. Jimmy Johnson and his Hurricanes thought that the Vols were beneath them, not even worth the most rudimentary courtesy demanded by good sportsmanship. In that moment, our focus on the game shifted from anticipatory to hatred. Make no mistake about it, we were all invested in the Vols from that moment on. All the snide little comments by their coach and QB were forgotten in the absolute and unrelenting hatred we now felt for all the Hurricanes. 

And, of course, Miami took the opening kickoff and marched straight down the field to score a TD a few plays later. 

But then something miraculous happened. The Volunteers started to massacre the Hurricanes. The Orange Crush took control of the game, forcing Testaverde to gnaw on turf for the rest of the game. (Now his nose and chin were as green as his balls). Our offense started the run the ball down their throats. We sacked Testaverde seven times for a combined loss of 84 yards. Five of those sacks were in the third quarter alone, and three of those sacks resulted in fumbles that we recovered and turned into points. Add in an interception, and I'm sure Testaverde regretted his comment about how blitzing him would result in the Orange Crush getting burned.  The only thing that was getting burned at that point was his season stats. And even though Penn State did end up losing in the Orange Bowl, there was no chance of Miami ending up as the undisputed national champion. Not when they lost 35-7 to a Tennessee Volunteer team too unworthy to shake hands with their oh-so-elite team. 

It wasn't until football season cranked back up in the fall of 1986 that I realized my feeling for the UT Vols had changed. The "Sugar Vols" as we fondly call the 85-86 team had jarred me from my mild enjoyment of the game to a full-out passion, not only for the sport but for the Volunteers as well.  That moment with our three captains extending their hands and being ignored was seared into my memory. It lingers there still, as an insult that will never be forgotten and one that must be avenged, forever. I'm not sure any other team since has refused to shake hands before the game. I'm reasonably positive no other coach was as arrogant as that turnip-headed Jimmy Johnson in creating an environment where that kind of behavior would be considered acceptable. I did go to the UT-Miami game in Neyland two decades later, though, and watched Miami players practicing their chest bumps in the end zone instead of warming up. The next year was Kellen Winslow's idiotic comment about "We're soldiers"--so maybe there's just something about "the U" that bakes players' brains into some kind of vacuous arrogance. 

But one thing is certain. Since that night where my Volunteers taught Jimmy Johnson, Vinny Testaverde, and all the Miami Hurricanes a lesson on courtesy, sportsmanship, and the advantages of an 8 or 9 man rush against an overly cocky QB, they have been MY Volunteers, MY college team in all sports, MY lodestone exactly THIRTY seasons later, as I sit here impatiently waiting for the 2015-2016 season. Football is so different now, and yet that one thing remains, unchanging and unchangeable. I am a Tennessee Volunteer--a Vol for life, and the Sugar Vols of 1985-86 are the reason my feet were set upon that path.  

Celina's note: This is, I hope, the first story in a series of blog posts about college football and its fans, particularly from the SEC. I'm calling the series Songs of the South, and I'm  kind of fidgeting around with an idea beyond the blog involving these Songs. If you have a Song story you'd like to share, drop me a line at kaantira( at @)hotmail.com, and if your tale has the kind of story I'm looking for I may just add it to the Songbook. 

For more reading on the 1985-86 Sugar Vols and the Sugar Bowl, check these links out: 

http://www.allstatesugarbowl.org/site316.php

http://www.allstatesugarbowl.org/site106.php

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/sports/preps/story/2013/jul/26/whites-ut-career-has-sweet-end/114310/

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/02/sports/sugar-bowl-miami-surprised-by-tennessee-35-7.html

http://www.utsports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/120514aac.html

Seasonal Song of the South: SEC Football and its Fans

So, I've been thinking...

Whenever I started out with those four words in a business meeting, all the other directors and senior staff members would groan and try to hide. Hard to do that in an online meeting, though, so they always had to suffer through it. 

So, I've been thinking...about following up on the FAN vs FANATIC post of a few days ago. 

Growing up in the deep South as I did, the beginning of football season kicks off a string of highly looked-forward-to events that seem to escalate the rate of time. For me it goes like this*: 

Football season starts-UT's first game-Labor Day-UT-Oklahoma game-the Florida game-trip to Neyland Stadium to watch the UT-Arkansas game-leaves change colors-UT/GA game-my birthday-my granddaughter Rori's birthday-my husband's birthday-Alabama week-Halloween (UT/UK game in Lexington. May hit that too)-sweater weather-countdown to championship week-Christmas shopping-Thanksgiving-Army/Navy game-Vandy beatdown-SEC Championship-put up the tree-Christmas-New Year's-bowl game-NFL playoffs-championship game-NFL championship games-Super Bowl-Valentine's Day.

*some events are interchangeable depending on when games are scheduled. This represents my list for this year, 2015

Then you get a break until it's getting close to March Madness time. 

While that may sound kind of odd to some of my writer friends, or other folks who really don't like or care about NCAA football, to my friends down South--and especially the ones who, like me, really enjoy the Paul Finebaum Show and SEC football--it sounds perfectly normal. I think we all gauge our seasons that way. And while my Song of the South is hardcore University of Tennessee Orange and White (God's team--why, you ask? Because God loves to hear "Rocky Top"), there are equally fascinating and important stories from my friends who (wrongly) bleed crimson, yell "WAR DAMN EAGLE!!" or "WOO PIG SOOIE!"(misguided), or feel their team is disrespected by the rest of the SEC (looking at you Mizzou). 

So I've been thinking. The incredibly fascinating range of stories that make up this seasonal Song of the South would make for a fun series of blog posts. I've extended an invitation to my fellow Finebaum callers/Twitter moguls to tell me their stories about why they love their teams. What made them Vols For Life, or Bammers? What made them love LSU so much that they misspell 'go' by intentionally substituting "e-a-u-x" for the "o"? (Geaux Tigers! Cracks me up every time I see it)  For every true college football fan is that moment of origin, the split second that took them from fan to fanatic. Living in Ohio, I have learned that while Ohio State fans are equally loud and just as annoying and unrealistic as the worst fans of SEC teams, their loyalty to the Buckeyes seems to be genetically imprinted upon them in utero. For some reason, folks up here love their Buckeyes because they're supposed to. Back home, fans learn to love their team--sometimes outraging whole generations of their family if they learn to love the WRONG SEC team. For example--Alabama/Auburn fans. Two great schools, two storied football programs only 160 miles apart. It is not unheard of for a kid of Alabama parents to almost literally fall in love with Auburn--either as an act of teenage defiance or just because they watch the right game at the right time. Fistfights start at weddings if someone utters "Roll Tide" at the wrong moment. 

And don't get me started on trees. 

So I'm going to compile this Song of the South. After all I am a writer, and the only thing I love more than hearing a good story is the opportunity to tell one. And if nothing else, I'll get to hear all those great stories. 

What? Football season is only 14 days away! I have to do something to pass the time, and Rocky Top only has two verses.

And who can resist a team with an entrance like this?

Only fourteen more days until the Song of the South starts for my Volunteers.

Wish that I was on ole Rocky Top

Down in the Tennessee hills.

Ain't no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top

Ain't no telephone bills...

"Rocky Top":lyrics by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, 1967

first released by Osbourne Brothers, 1967

FANdom, FANaticism and Kiss My FANny

So today I got into a Twitter war. 

Yeah, I know. Big shocker. I usually try really really hard to avoid those, mostly because words are the primary tools of my trade. Getting into a squabble with a Twitter troll is really wrong of me. It's the equivalent of Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson squaring up in the ring with Pee Wee Herman--the audience knows Pee Wee is horrifically outmatched, but just cannot turn away from the carnage. 

Like taking an Uzi to a paintball game.

At any rate, what started the fight was an argument over what constitutes a fan. A guy who roots for Florida during football season and Duke during basketball season instigated the event, and even though I used small words and tried to type slowly he chose to ignore the point I was trying to make.

To me, there's a lot of difference between a FAN and a FANATIC, even though the first term evolved from the second. For example--

I am a University of Tennessee FAN. I have always been a UT FAN--one of my earliest memories is watching football with my dads and uncles and cousins during some holiday at my grandparents' house. I have only ever rooted for UT, no matter the sport. When I was a teenager, our football program was being rebuilt and our basketball team, frankly, sucked, but I only ever pulled for the Vols. In my adult life, I have never worn another school's colors. While I will watch and pull for a team in a non-UT game, I've never rooted against UT because I liked another team better during that sport's season. When Tennessee was abysmal, I never wavered. The first song I sang to my babies and my daughters' babies? Rocky Top. I have several orange and white cats. Their names? Tennessee, Volunteer, Rocky...and Caesar. (Always have to have one oddball.)Rocky has a little sister who's gray. Her name? Smoky. And even though orange is absolutely NOT my color, I have UT shirts, fleeces, jackets, sweats, scarves, hats, gloves, ball caps, purses, travel bag, billfolds (two of them, both with grass and hedge leaves from Neyland), big fleece blanket, ice cooler, pitcher and cups set,light switch plates, rear view mirror block T, seat covers, flag, and innumerable Smokey stuffed dogs in this house. My daughter's twins just turned one. Before they were born, my son-in-law and I made an agreement--he gets one twin for UK basketball stardom and I get the other for UT football. And to top it all off, every single flower in my flower beds and garden is ORANGE. Not pink, or white, or lavender, or red, or blue, or purple. ORANGE.

Suffice it to say I am a Vol for life. Why is that? Because I am a FAN of UT. Being a good FAN is a full time job during the fall and winter. Especially from November-January, when football and basketball are both going on along with other less-visible but equally important sports. And if we lived closer than eight hours away, I'd have season tickets for Neyland Stadium.

So here's my question that caused such a ruckus today on Twitter: is it possible for someone to be a FAN of one school for football and a totally different school for basketball?

Obviously, some have extenuating circumstances. For example, I didn't go to UT; I went to Austin Peay State University, which is the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts in the state of Tennessee. I had a full scholarship at APSU, and when I was competing (I was a state and regional champion in public speaking, and placed at nationals several years which is yet another reason I shouldn't get into twitter wars with the debatorially challenged), I wore the school colors. APSU is my alma mater. But I can count the number of athletic events I went to at Austin Peay on one hand, although even then I was making 3-4 trips to Neyland Stadium each fall. Even then I was a UT FAN.

Then there's the Manning family dilemma. Archie Manning, father of Peyton and Eli, was a beloved Ole Miss quarterback. When Peyton was QB for the Vols, Archie would show up for the games--but I don't EVER remember him donning orange and white. He was rooting for the Vols because his son played for them, but he was  ALWAYS an Ole Miss Rebel.

This guy on Twitter doesn't have those or ANY extenuating circumstances. He is a Florida FANATIC because they always won when he was a kid, and he is a Duke FANATIC because they always won. So now, Florida will always win football and Duke will always win basketball regardless of what the reality is for both teams. Where I come from, that's called BANDWAGON, and this guy is totally pulling that bandwagon along behind his tractor with a flat tire.

I love to talk sports with folks from every SEC school, sometimes getting really deep into the mechanics of the game. Why? Because I really love football and am a student of the game. And there are a lot of FANS out there who are the same way. But this guy has no interest in the actual game. All he wants to do is regurgitate whatever 'facts' he pulled up on Google and Wikipedia to 'prove' he's right. And if someone disagrees with him, he goes on an insult rampage.

For example--

Today, in his continuing fairy tale about his Gators, he pronounced as usual that Florida would go 9-3 for the season, win the SEC, and go to the playoffs. Since the Gators don't appear to have anyone on their offensive line who's played a snap of SEC football, haven't named a quarterback, haven't really got any receivers or powerful running back, and who lost many of their defensive starters to the NFL and most of their commits to Auburn when Will Muschamp was hired there--because of all that, anyone who understands football tells him he's crazy. He also said that Mark Richt was no good, despite UGA consistently winning 9-10 games every season for a decade, that Nick Saban is washed up, and that Arkansas's Brent Bielema is a trash coach who 'ain't never beat nobody'.

Triple negatives are very difficult to translate and diagram, by the way. *wince* You know,  since they're GODAWFUL choices and frighteningly ungrammatical. Makes my brain hurt just looking at it.

At any rate, this is how deluded this guy is. And when I countered with--you know, facts?--his response was and I quote:

           Douchebag bandwagon idiot: There aint* no prostitutes in Tenessee. U know why?  There all volunteers--ask Celina 

*all spelling errors left intact on purpose 

Um...do what?                        

This after he told me to 'learn sports babe'.

What. The. Hell.

You know what? In college sports especially, people LOVE their teams. They  are passionate about their schools. You don't wander around UT during February and find everyone is wearing a UK shirt. You don't go to Alabama and show up at Toomer's Corner to TP the trees after Auburn beats the Tide in the Iron Bowl. It's just not done. I have about as much interest in college gymnastics or golf as I do my next door neighbor's political views, but  I sure as hell celebrate when UT does well in ANY sport. And what about the two games Florida and Duke have played in the last couple of decades' worth of NCAA tournaments? Who did the bandwagon fan root for, since the series is even at 1-1? Florida beat Duke in 2000 and in 1994 Duke beat Florida.

At any rate, after the prostitute comment, I blocked him like I should have done in the first place and saw only one side of the evisceration he received from the state of Alabama.

In my previous post, I talked about finding character studies among the people that writers associate with online. But I totally overlooked the fact that there are a lot of idiots out there who, safe behind their anonymity, cruise the internet looking for someone to fight with. This guy is like that. He calls Finebaum every day, and every day it's the same old routine--"you're not right about my Gators, man; Mark Richt is trash, man; Tennessee ain't got no reason to be hyped, man, they ain't beat nobody in years; Nick Saban is washed up, man; Bielema is a trash coach, man, he ain't never done no good, man"--and when he asks Finebaum a question, he talks OVER Paul's answer just repeating the same old crap over and over. And over. Until finally,mercifully, Paul ends the call and his entire viewing audience turns the volume back up on the TV.

So here's the gig: you're a FAN when you truly love one school/team in all things. You're a FAN when you stick with your team and wear their colors both during good years and bad. You're a FAN when your devotion to your school/team is unvaried for years--decades.

You're a FANATIC when you are incapable of listening when reasonable people are discussing your team in an honest manner. You're a FANATIC when you lose your shit because someone criticizes your team. You're a FANATIC when your idea of 'winning' an argument is to talk loudly and nonstop. You're a FANATIC when, despite your team having NO offense and only one great player (Vernon Hargreaves is, without a doubt, an absolute BEAST of a defensive back--top two in the nation probably) and a coach in his first year of being a SEC head coach and a brutal SEC schedule (relieved by a plethora of cupcakes) you still announce on a daily basis that your team is going to win the whole conference.

The only thing this guy is a FAN of is himself.

Right before I blocked him, he was saying that the reason everyone hates him is because he called the Finebaum show last March and said the Duke would win the national championship instead of Kentucky. Since Duke won the NCAA on several of my ballots, I didn't have a problem with that. Instead, I told him the truth--the reason people hate you is because you're rude and you won't listen to reasonable people's differing points of view. And in response, he equated me to a hooker.

In the end, I guess, it can all be boiled down to a fairly simple premise. FAN is derived from FANATIC and shares a lot of the same qualities. There's no doubt that the infamous Bama tree-murderer Harvey Updike is a FAN of the Alabama Crimson Tide. But there's also no doubt that Harvey is a FANATIC, because only a FANATIC would have poisoned those big, beautiful trees at Toomer's Corner  in Auburn. The folks who were just a FAN would have had a few more beers and gone to bed ticked off, but would have awakened the next day thinking "Next year we'll stomp them." A FAN wouldn't have destroyed those lovely, ancient, tradition-rich oak trees just to piss Auburn fans off.

Does anyone else wonder what kind of thought processes must have gone on in that man's mind to kill those trees and then to call Paul Finebaum up two days later and brag about having poisoned the trees to a national Sirius radio audience? That thought process is the missing link between FAN and FANATIC. I wonder if he was able to recognize that while he was in jail.

Etymologically, FANATIC means insane person, from the Latin root fanaticus meaning mad, enthusiastic, furious--and specifically was meant to describe zealots from the church--temples, in Rome, specifically the followers of Bacchus whose religion was all about going crazy. FANATIC, therefore, is meant to be a negative term, whereas FAN is a positive one. Or, as Winston Churchill famously put it:

A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.

So yeah, that FANATIC can kiss my FANny. I am a FAN of Tennessee, and his Gators are going down this year.

The jerk.

                                                                                                        

Character Studies of Life Can Be Found Online

All of us have to deal with people who aren't quite...well...right in the way they deal with people. But social media makes that interpersonal issue much bigger than it used to be. For example, right now I have social relationships with hundreds of people that I have never met except online. You do too. But what do you really know about those people? Only what they have in their social media bios and what they tell you. 

As humans, we rely upon our ability to gauge another person's behavior by hearing to tone of their voice, judging their physical movements, the motion of their eyes, how they gesture, and the context in which they make comments. Online, we don't have that ability. Instead of varying areas of gray, we have either black (everything he says is a lie, or bullying, or bigoted) and white (I accept everything said to me at face value). There is no middle ground. And that, in turn, leads to extremes of human behavior online that are fascinating for a writer to observe. I mean think about it--would our society work if our day to day communication was conducted in the same way it is on the internet? 

How many times have you busted someone in a lie online? Or bullying? How about using a false account? According to Twitter, there are over 20 million of those. Think about yourself--would you interact with people face-to-face the same way you do through your keyboard? I wouldn't. I was brought up with the manners of the Deep South. It'd be real hard for me to look at an elder and say, "You, sir, are a misogynistic bigot playing the white male victim card because you are intimidated by women who are smarter than you which is pretty much the entire race of womankind, you moron."

Hard, yes. Impossible, no. I'd have to be REALLY mad though, and there are a couple of old coots online who would be able to spark that anger in me with two seconds and a gust of wind.

We live in an age where we type faster than we think. For a writer who can churn out 2000 words an hour at peak speeds, making an ass out of myself in 140 characters or less isn't even hard. 

But here's where it can get fun for a writer. Go through your Twitter feed on any given day. From data I can find, the average number of Twitter followers is 208. So take a look at those people. Check how they act online. Read their tweet wars. (No, we ALL have them. Don't lie.) What can you determine about people through their online personalities? 

Because most people project who they want you to THINK THEY ARE as a stronger, smarter, younger, better-looking version of WHO THEY REALLY ARE. 

Take a look at the folks you've caught in a lie. (We've all been caught and we've all done the catching) Ask yourself what that person's motivation was for lying in the first place. That can lead you down a strange path in and of itself, because for most folks, they're not lying to PEOPLE. They're lying to a computer, which dilutes the sense of responsibility a great deal. It's so easy to sit at your keyboard and type "29 year old redhead, green eyes, 5'10" 115 lbs" as compared to "69 year old, don't remember my original hair color so let's go with plaid, blue eyes, 5'8" 215 lbs". See? Lie without guilt. No one on the other side of that lie knows what you look like BEYOND WHAT YOU ALLOW THEM TO KNOW. So who does that lie hurt, right? 

Aside from yourself, of course. You know, when you get the tweet that tells you your online friend is in/near your hometown next week and would love to get together for lunch? 

You have two choices. Deflect, or confess. And since most people would rather die than look bad, most people would...?

Yep. Deflect. 

So when you're struggling to create a new character and make him/her credible, sometimes you don't have to go any further than your own Twitter feed. A little digging can give you new understanding of human behavior, and lead you to giving that new character depth. And it doesn't even  violate the "all characters are fictional" disclaimer at the front of every novel. Because when you get right down to it, the people we know online are ALL fictional characters to some degree or another.

But keep this in mind also. Twitter and Instagram and Facebook are filled with people who are so desperate for attention/affection/acceptance/romance/friends/justification/self-diagnoses/an audience that they are no longer real people. They're caricatures of reality, and even if you call them out you can't help them. They have no interest in doing anything other than what they are already doing, and they won't thank you for the friendly advice.

As I just learned again. Today.

See? Even an old dog like me can (re)learn new tricks. Find that balance between reality and farce, and make that social experiment work in your favor. 

Back Again, Back Again Lickety-Split (NOT)

So, I've been waiting for my laptop's return from warranty repair since June. 

That's never what a writer wants to say, especially if it's followed by  "I've lost all my work since March." 

Yep. Left to the vagaries of a frighteningly unresponsive repair department, I'm sure the hard drive that my husband the ex-hacker  network administrator couldn't extract files from is proving to be equally bullish with HP. So since I mailed my laptop off--in JUNE, let's not forget that--I've been getting my online addiction through my phone and my writing addiction--

Well, let's just say withdrawal is tough. 

Funny. Before my laptop blew up, I wasn't able to write a word. Having never been decimated by writer's block before, I must confess I am now a lot more empathetic towards writers who are suffering through weeks or months of blank pages. And now I can say been there, done that. Two months of longhand scribbling in your journals will do that to you. 

So finally, I got annoyed (as usual) and informed my husband that we were going to get a new computer. That was Saturday. Computer came today, and I rather quickly discovered that I am not smart enough to set the darn thing up.  After an hour or so of cussing (amplified because my phone decided to crap out at the same time), I gave up and waited until the husband got home. 

It took him thirty seconds. THIRTY FREAKING SECONDS. God, I hate that. I can work for hours on something electronic, bitching at him the whole while in text, and that man can walk in the door and just touch whatever I couldn't figure out and *poof!* Up it starts. Every. Single. Time. 

Except--

--for my cell. Ask yourself this random annoying technology trivia question: who is STUPID enough to make a cell phone that you cannot take the darn battery out of? 

Answer at the end of my post.

At any rate, after a long, frustrating journey, it's time to get back to some elf-killing, and with a full slate of potential topics on the docket it's looking to be a great fall.  First things first--daily writing blocks resume tomorrow, with my normal four hour AM session and at least one four hour PM session, with a break for the Paul Finebaum Show, of course. And yes, I have spent the last two purgatorial months building a brand new world--one I intend to inaugurate tomorrow morning. *evil grin* Trying to think of a name for the anti-hero main character. I'm leaning toward Godwin.

Maybe.

Then, naturally, college football is on the horizon. I've decided to actively blog football this year, mostly because that will dovetail with a couple of other professional irons I've got in the fire. Always have to be thinking ahead, you know. 

And I'll also be working to get all of my previous novels reissued and for sale again. 

What? A girl's got to eat. 

In the end, even though this computer needs a LOT of work to be up to the standards and speed of my dearly departed laptop, it allows me to do what I want to do. What I NEED to do. And that's to write, without worrying about spilling a drink on it or losing keys. I don't think I'll even hook this up to social media. The only online access I'll have on this is for research purposes. Everything else, I'll continue to do through the tablet and my phone. 

Until, at least, the laptop comes back. I might be 60 by then, but who knows? They might surprise me yet. 

Oh, and the answer to our random annoying technology trivia question? Samsung. That's right. Samsung. 

The Victory Isn't In The Song

Yes, I know. I haven't blogged in almost a month. My last post took a lot out of me. I try not to post about things quite that personally impactful--devastating, I should say. In fact, Sharon DeVita's death sucked me dry of words. All words. For a month, I have not written. I could not write.

Not.

One. 

Single. 

Word. 

I haven't even signed a check.

I think when writers get depressed, it's seriously feast or famine. Some writers pour everything into their work, and create these amazing magna opa that live for centuries. Others, like me, turn their faces to the wall and shut the laptops down. When I get into this state, it usually takes a fairly sizable breakdown to get me going again. Well, got that out of the way today, along with the early summer strep that always seems to find my house, and so here I am at four AM trying to figure out where my damn glasses are, where my last writing file went, and how to reignite my writer's mojo. 

Fortunately, I have a secret weapon.

Remember this? Spring, 2009? Britain's Got Talent?

Okay, let's be honest--and I certainly will be as well. When I first watched Susan Boyle walk out on stage, the cold-blooded professional actor side of me immediately began to tear her down before she even opened up her mouth. Yep. I catalogued her faults right down to her toes--frumpy, fussy, social misfit, bad hair, bad teeth, bad dress, stage fright, sensible shoes. I knew, because I used to thrive in the cutthroat world of auditioning, that this woman was about to emerge as one of the most spectacular failures in entertainment history. I knew that she could no more sing Les Mis than she could fly. I Dreamed a Dream is not an easy song. (Ask Anne Hathaway, whose own performance of the song was actually a brilliant way for an actress to reclaim the song from this particular video and association. Totally deserved the Oscar, in my opinion)And so, I settled back to watch Susan Boyle make an ass of herself. Ready to laugh. Just like that nasty-faced kid in the audience, I was waiting to...well...feel superior.

And then she opened her mouth. 

By the end of the first line, everyone watching (including me) didn't care that she was pudgy, or that she was forty-seven and never been kissed. By the end of the first verse, the audience was on its feet. By the end of the song, the most unlikely star imaginable had been born. 

By the end of the fourth time I'd watched it, in a row, all I could think of was "Thank God I wasn't that girl in that audience with the camera on my face before she sang." 

Now it's summer, 2015, and I'm the one who's in my forties, wearing sensible shoes, and confronting my dreams head on. Now I stand where she did six years ago. And in one of those authorial catharses that always end up on writers' blogs, I have to ask myself something vitally important. 

Am I willing, now, to stand up and chase my dreams? At my age? At my station in life? In sensible shoes? (I draw the line at frumpy or fussy, though. I have always been fashion forward. My shoes may be sensible, but they're hot.) 

Conventional wisdom dictates to our society that forty-seven-year old women don't go on a talent search and create superstardom for themselves. Only the twenty somethings can do that, or the fifteen-somethings if you're a home schooled old soul from a farm in NY. In writing, it's kind of the same thing. It' s hard to break in anymore without a real platform--a built-in audience/market for your work. The publishing world is so glutted by self-pubbed, indie pubbed, e-pubbed, and vanity pubbed books that even the traditionally pubbed books aren't exactly flying off the shelves--unless you're a Kardashian taking selfies of yourself. 

Amazing what can get people called "authors" these days. 

We all find ourselves in a moment where we're facing a mirror, trying to analyze ourselves and our chances. How many of us will take our courage and our dreams in hand and head to a nationally televised competition? How many of us are as out and out gutsy as Susan Boyle must have been? 

How many of us can supersede our own self-image, and dare to start over? 

Here's the most important thing, though, for all of us to take away from the Susan Boyle audition video. The salient moment happens at 4:48. Susan Boyle has finished singing, received her ovation, blown her kisses, and before the judges say a word, she turned and headed offstage. I wasn't as impressed by that then as I am now. She was there, ostensibly, to dream her own dream, right? To chase something no one had ever given her a chance to even try before. 

But she doesn't need validation from the cynics at the judges' table. She doesn't need those three yeses. Why? 

Because she'd gotten what she came for. Not the fame. Not the fortune. Not stardom or thirteen and a half million YouTube views. She came to sing. That's it. To prove that she could, to prove to no one but herself that her dreams were as important, as valid at 47 as they'd been at 27. I don't think Susan Boyle went to win Britain's Got Talent--as, in fact, she did not. Susan Boyle went to win Susan Boyle.

She went for no other reason than to prove that she could sing, and only to prove it to herself. So once she'd succeeded, once the audience had fallen in love with her and Simon Cowell had sighed like a fangirl, all she knew was that she'd done what she set out to do. She'd gotten what she wanted from herself, and no one else mattered.

God knows I wish I was more like that. 

As artists, we're always striving to please people-people we don't know. We have to entertain, to challenge, to tantalize, and do so in such a manner that makes total strangers want to know us or, in the case of writers, our worlds, our characters, our stories. As a result, we're so damn critical of what we do that we essentially handicap ourselves. I'm not talking about the large group of writers who are seeking a regular income, writing variants of trope stories or formulaic books designed to please readers who aren't looking for books that challenge them. I'm talking about the ones who have something different to say, who are trying new ideas and trying to create new audiences. I've been both, edited both, published both. I know, as most writers do not, how many authors cripple themselves with self-criticism and either kill off their books stillborn because they're not good enough ever, or that many just write re-visits of the same story with different character names/places/things but the same story elements because it worked and they don't want to mess up a winning formula. 

It's easy to sabotage yourself. What you have to learn, more than anything else, is how to pick yourself back up. How to force yourself to move forward, how to pack up and try something that terrifies you--not because you want to 'win' something, but because more than anything else you have to prove to yourself that you actually can do it. 

Let me put it to you this way. Susan Boyle's victory that day? It didn't happen on the stage. It happened that morning, when she woke up, put on her church dress, got on the bus and headed for the BGT audition taping. Nothing was guaranteed. Nothing was certain. Everything was terrifying. But she strapped on those sensible shoes, got in line, got her audition number, and managed to keep her courage up long enough to actually walk out on that stage. 

It wasn't the song that made her into a star. The victory isn't in the song. The victory was everything that led up to the first moment she felt the stage lights on her skin. The victory was before the song.

There's a lesson in that. For all of us. And then when you consider the actual words of the song, a little chill races down your spine.

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream, I dreamed 
      --(I Dreamed A Dream, Les Miserables-composer:Claude-Michel Schonberg, Libretto: Alain Boubil, English lyrics:Herbert Kretzmer)

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed. 

How very easy it is for any of us to allow that to happen. As I said. Chills, man. Honest to God chills. Think about it.

University of Tennessee's Deal With the Nike Devil

Don't get me wrong: I like Nike. Or I did. Used to wear their tennis shoes all the time before I outgrew sneakers and accepted high heels as status footwear for grown up girls. More Jimmy Choo than Just Do It these days.

But the Nike news coming out of Knoxville is disturbing, and is certainly drawing a lot of attention from University of Tennessee sports fans. It seems that UT is doing away with the Lady Vols designation for all its women's athletic teams EXCEPT for the basketball program. I've had issues with this since it was first announced, but the release of correspondence between UT and Nike have ratcheted my unease up to all-out anger.

Why? After all, you might ask (if you're not from Tennessee or a UT alumni) what's the big deal? The proposed branding change is to create "one Tennessee", with all the athletic teams (except women's basketball) moving to the power T/Volunteers logo.

Well, there are a couple of big deals, in my opinion.

First off, doesn't this proposal completely contradict itself? How is it "one Tennessee" if the women's basketball team continues to be called the Lady Vols? That makes it most definitely TWO Tennessee--the women's basketball team and everyone else. More like a "one Tennessee" with a "one Tennessee-A."

Maybe--MAYBE--if the basketball program was changing its branding along with the other women's sports, I might not be quite as piqued. That would most definitely fall into a "one Tennessee" branding, whereas the proposal most certainly does not.

Obviously, the groundwork for the national recognition and positive focus for the Lady Vols moniker was laid almost in its entirety by Pat Summitt and her basketball team. She literally built the program from the ground up over a span of four decades, and is easily the most revered and recognized coach anywhere in women's athletics--and is the winningest coach in all of basketball, men's and women's. No one can question or deny Coach Summitt's contribution to the Volunteer Nation and women's athletics as a whole, and her teams made the Lady Vols name feared and respected throughout the NCAA as a model athletic program.

But UT has NINE other women's sports teams: softball, volleyball, swimming, rowing, gymnastics, cross country, track & field, golf, and soccer. There's a Lady Vols Hall of Fame.  Lady Vols have 10 NCAA championships--8 in basketball, 2 in indoor track and field, and 1 in outdoor track and field. Lady Vols own SIXTY-EIGHT SEC championships. Half belong to the women's basketball team with 34. Volleyball has 9 titles, track and field 8, soccer 7, cross country 5, softball 3, and rowing 2.

How is it possible for all those other teams to have their logo, their brand, their NAME negated? Why would the university want to restrict the Lady Vols name to just basketball? It doesn't make sense. The Lady Vols name represents championship athletics, high academic standards, and great ambassadors for UT and Tennessee as a whole. Even the United States, as evidenced by the 30 gold medalists who wore the orange and white.

Secondly, when did UT give so much power into the hands of Nike? And why?

In documents recently released from UT regarding the rebranding and published by Deadspin, Nike had the following to say about the proposed change to the Lady Vols designation:

Because your brand has an emotional connection with your students, staff and alumni, it is critical to keep the development of the work confidential and on a need-to-know basis. 

Let's stop and think about that for a moment.

So secondly, where is the LOGIC in changing a brand that the students, staff, and alumni have an emotional connection with?

And what's the deal with the 'need to know basis'?  Last time I checked, the University of Tennessee is a state-funded university, responsible for and answering to the taxpayers of the state of Tennessee and the students, staff, and alumni. The administration is required to consider the opinions and preferences of those individuals, without question. Where does Nike get off telling a public institution to basically keep the brand change quiet so that people don't get riled up?

And where does the administration and athletic department of UT get off going along with such a blatant disregard of the wishes of its alumni, fans, and athletes?

Did Mike Hart stop to consider that the Lady Vols branding that is so easily recognizable because of the basketball program is a benefit to their other women's teams? That the Lady Vols across the chests of our softball team leads them into the super regionals this week automatically confers upon those players the same school pride and aura of invincibility it lent to our basketball team? That we, the fans of the University of Tennessee, cherish and are proud of the Lady Vols as a whole, no matter the sport?

Apparently not.

In the press release from UT announcing the change:

Following significant branding studies by both our University and the department of athletics as well as conversations with head coaches and student-athletes, we will implement the related changes that resulted from this collaboration on July 1, 2015," said Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Dave Hart.
The women's basketball program was excluded from this transition because of the accomplishments and legacy of the championship program built by Coach Pat Summitt and her former players. The Lady Volunteers nickname and brand is truly reflective of Coach Summitt and her legacy and will continue to be associated with the Tennessee women's basketball team.

Could that have been any more insulting to the softball team? The volleyball squad? All the amazing young women who have worn the Lady Vols name with pride over the course of the last four decades?

 Saturday morning, a group of Tennessee fans, alumni, and former athletes came together to protect the abolition of the Lady Vols name. The purpose of the meeting? To present 23,000 signatures on a petition to the University to keep the brand as it is. According to an article from the Examiner, no one from UT even had the courtesy to show up despite speakers like former Undersecretary of Defense Dr. Sharon Lord.

Lady Vols donor Sharon Lord, who secured the first funding for UT women's athletics back in the '70s, started off the meeting by calling an SOS. "(The University) is dismantling what was once the more revered and respected women's athletic program in our nation," she says.

The website devoted to saving the Lady Vols says this in their mission statement:

The ‘Lady Vols’ is the most successful brand in women’s collegiate athletics.   It’s a name associated with 11 national championships, over 50 SEC championships, and a multitude of Olympians.   It’s a name associated with iconic basketball coach, Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in NCAA history and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  It’s a name that Lady Vols in all sports are fiercely proud of and are now fighting to keep.

 Diana Moskovitz, in her expose' of the Nike-UT Lady Vols conspiracy for Deadspin, has made the correspondence between the two parties available for all to see--and download. After perusing through more spin and PR-speak than I care to remember, I came away with one strong opinion. Nike talks a lot about helping the University "manage" the "excitement" and the launch of their new brand. And yet, that new brand hasn't generated excitement. It's generated anger, frustration, and the growing sense that the administration and athletic department of the University of Tennessee really doesn't give a rat's ass what anyone aside from Nike really thinks.

Not the athletes. Not the alumni. Not the staff. Not the fans.

Not me, not you.

Just...Nike.

By the way, Ms. Moskovitz's breakdown of the other NCAA programs who've undergone brand redesign is not only hilarious, but sobering.

"The report also notes that Nike wanted to “avoid the mark being demonic in nature,” despite the team literally being named the Sun Devils."

Yeah. Sure wouldn't want the Sun Devils to seem demonic in nature. Who'd Nike pay gazillions of dollars to for coming up with that brain trust of a comment? They'll probably decide the that central color of the daisies on the hill isn't orange enough for UT too. Idiots.

But finally, what's most sobering about this entire mess is exactly how much money and power the athletic apparel companies really have when it comes to dictating the course of NCAA universities and their athletic programs. Who would have thought that a company based in Oregon (whose state university has arguably the most hideous uniforms in all of college sports) would have the ability to come to Knoxville, Tennessee and command what that state-funded public university would do regarding its image, its branding, its fans--and then ORDER them not to let the cat out of the bag because those selfsame fans have an emotional attachment to the original brand?

To be blunt, collegiate athletics and professional athletics really are all part of the same money-generating beast, except that in collegiate athletics the massive profits go straight into the ledgers of the universities and the apparel corporations--money taken from the effort and skills of young athletes and the pockets of fans without any consideration for what either of those parties really wants.

Let's cut this down to the core, UT. If the athletes, fans, and alumni have an emotional attachment to the Lady Vols, then you'd be stupid to ignore that visceral response and try to retrain them to forget that branding ever existed. That emotional attachment keeps donor dollars pouring into your accounts and fan/alumni butts in the seats of your various venues. And if any company, even Nike, tries to convince you otherwise, then you'd best be prepared to handle the backlash.

There won't be any backlash on July 1 when this change is going into effect. There will be rage. And you've earned the right to feel the heat of that anger. As former volleyball player and Lady Vols Hall of Fame inductee Laura Lauter Smith said this past weekend:

My four little girls, they want to be a Lady Vol just like Mama. And it's sad that they ask 'why is the Lady Vol logo going away, Mama?' And I don't have an answer for them.

Unfortunately, I do. It's called greed, and the University of Tennessee administration and athletic department have fallen wholeheartedly into its pursuit.

For shame.

But there are still options for Lady Vols fans to consider, as I learned today when I called to discuss this issue with Paul Finebaum on his SEC Network show. Finebaum, recently named one of the 25 most powerful people in sports media and one of the 20 most powerful people in college sports by two different media organizations had this to say in response to my question:

"...I've been following this from a distance I don't know the details about why this is
 going down the road it's going.like everyone, I like the Lady Vols brand.I thought it spoke about Pat and everything else at the school. I have friends who live there and they don't like it either. I wish I could help you more. Maybe next week when we're down in Destin we can visit with Dave Hart the athletic director and maybe even the President down there and get their views and see where it is."

Stay tuned. Paul Finebaum rarely misses an opportunity to ask the hard questions. If nothing else, it'll be interesting to listen to what he--and they--may have to say. In his dual role as UT alum and nationally broadcast sports commentator about the SEC, his voice may be harder for the UT administration to ignore.

Sharon De Vita: Love, Laughter, and her Legacy

A few days ago, the writing community and romance fans lost one of the true greats. Sharon De Vita passed away after a brief illness. Her loss cuts deeply, at least for me. And while writing a remembrance blog post isn't really my thing, I feel compelled to share with you my love and respect for Sharon and my absolute sorrow at her death.

I first met Sharon through Musa. We hadn't even opened our doors yet, and she submitted her novel The Estrogen Posse to me. My first thought was, "No way. Someone's playing a joke on me. There's no way that Sharon De Vita is submitting to us!" I mean, this was THE Sharon De Vita--NYT Bestselling author of over 30 books, winner of the RT Lifetime Achievement Award, beloved of Harlequin and Silhouette readers--why would this writer be sending ME her new novel?

But it wasn't a joke. Sharon, returning from a hiatus after the tragic death of her son, was taking her career down a new path. The Estrogen Posse was a departure from the light-hearted romances she was so well-known for. The manuscript clocked in at a hefty 150,000+ words, with elements of suspense and humor framing a recently divorced woman's quest for herself amidst murder, family turmoil, and a new romance. The first scene was a one-sided conversation between the protagonist, Ellie, and God.

And Ellie won the argument.

There was no way I was going to let that novel be published by anyone else. I'd made such a connection with the story--and its author--that I'd determined we would publish the book within the first hundred pages. We contracted the book within a few days. I edited the novel myself, and The Estrogen Posse was one of the three books we published on Musa's opening day. 

Can't think of another e-publisher who started off with such a writer/book combination, or one with a Janet Evanovich blurb on the cover. But what had started as a business relationship between Sharon and myself, morphed into an editor/author connection that was one of the most rewarding professional experiences I've ever had. By the time Musa opened for business, Sharon had become our one-woman encouragement team and biggest fan. She brought us other authors, who'd been screwed over by their traditional publishers releasing electronic versions of their books and paying them a few cents per sale. She bragged about our way of doing business, our transparency, and our support system.

Sharon was so important to us at Musa. Every time we saw her emails in our inboxes, we automatically felt good.  

What a rare gift that is! Think about it: online communication is somewhat sterile, especially in a business situation. Think of what kind of person you have to be to supersede that cold formality. Sharon was such a writer, such a wonderful person, that even in an email zipped out in two minutes flat she could evoke such warmth and sincerity and such caring that it could make four people she'd never met feel happy with just a few well-chosen words. That's why Sharon's books were so well-loved: she had such a gift with evocative language that her readers cared about her characters with the same kind of intensity that they cared about their best friends. The Kirkus reviewer for The Estrogen Posse saw the same thing: 

While working with these dark topics, the author skillfully weaves in a dose of levity without any heavy-handedness. As a result, readers jump between gasps of shock during the murder investigation and stints of uncontrolled laughter as Ellie’s ridiculous “posse” mobilizes into action. An emotional, fun-filled romp.

You see, Sharon cared about those characters and shared them with us in her books, just like she cared about us as individuals--and she shared those feelings so candidly and with such sincerity that it was impossible to doubt that she meant anything other than exactly what she said. Don't get me wrong: Sharon and I went toe-to-toe several times during the editing process. She could be just flat out ornery if she chose to. And then, once the  orneriness had passed, it was like the sun breaking through the clouds and banishing the storms from the horizon.

It's hard for me to accept that I'll never have that feeling again, that I'll never get another email or phone call from her to brighten a dark day, or that I'll never fall in love with another amazing story that came from her figurative pen. 

Sharon gave Musa another wonderful gift: her daughter, Jeanne, came to work with us at Musa and became such an integral part of the company that it was hard to imagine how we'd ever gotten along without her. Jeanne is another one like her mother--she has the same spunk, the same warmth, the same earnest interest in what's going on around her. When health issues started to come between Musa and me, Jeanne stepped in and I trusted her to do so. 

But now we find ourselves here, heartsick and sad, when the days have dimmed unaccountably and even the sounds of an Ohio spring seem to be muted. Our world of writers and readers has lost a beautiful person, one whose talent made so many people happy and whose personality and loving nature was evident in every message or interaction. But beyond that community of authors, Sharon's loss resonates on a deeper, more personal level. We have lost a member of our family, a selfless lodestone to set our course by. We have lost an advocate, who fought zealously for other writers throughout her career. We have lost an innovator, who was willing to take a chance and make the best of it. 

And I have lost a dear, dear friend. Sharon encouraged me as both an editor and a writer. She cared about what was happening in my life, and she made my life brighter once our paths intersected. Her passing was sudden and wholly unexpected, coming as it did without warning.

Sharon leaves behind her husband, Frank, her two daughters, Jeanne and Annie, and two lovely little granddaughters. She also leaves behind legions of devoted fans, bereft authors, and shattered friends. But Sharon has also left us her books--all those wonderful books, the stories that remain as her legacy--that will always remain, immortalized, like she is now. My grief is for my own sake, because I've lost someone important and dear to me, and for her family, whose pain is just so intense right now. And yet, this particular death has brought to mind something that Leonardo da Vinci once said: "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death."

Life well used. An apt turn of phrase, and one that so embodies Sharon De Vita and the legacy of love and laughter she has bequeathed to us all. Her life was well used.

God speed you, my friend. You will be--and already are--sorely, painfully, sorrowfully missed. 

(And when I get there, wherever there is, we'll continue that argument about commas that I will, as usual, win. Or perhaps I'll let you win it, and just rejoice in the moment that we'll share.)

It's Official! Asphodel Returns!

I've been toying with this decision for a while. 

When my partners and I founded Musa, my writing took a back seat. Hard to be a full time writer and a full time editor at the same time. But now that I'm done with the editorial side of the desk, writing is once again my full time gig. So even as I write my new novel, in the back of my mind the thought of Asphodel kept slapping me. 

After all, the series did quite well considering that it was released only as an ebook by a small publisher better known for erotica and romance. So why not give it another shot? 

And, of course, there were the OTHER books I'd written in the Asphodel world because the story just would NOT SHUT UP. In fact, I had a whole new series written after the original four books. Same characters, different story. So while I was debating the fate of Asphodel, that other bit of information was jabbing me in the skull. Repeatedly. So I had to factor that in as well. 

Did I want to go through all the effort of getting those additional books, at present unedited, ready for publication at a standard that I, personally, would require? 

Hell, yes I did. 

So, get ready! Asphodel returns with the re-issue of the four original titles in The Asphodel Cycle: The Reckoning of Asphodel, The Gift of Redemption, The Temptation of Asphodel, and The Apostle of Asphodel over the course of this summer, 2015. In the fall of 2015, the first book of the new series, The Asphodel Saga: Servant of Dis will be published. 

And that's all she wrote. 

For now.

Ignorance is Anything but Bliss

Maybe it's me. Maybe my tolerance level is just much lower than usual. Maybe I'm just encountering more...less than intellectually scintillating people than normal as of late. 

I don't think it's me. 

Hard as it may be to grasp, but I think ignorance is on the upswing, and I think that's showing up on every level from personal to professional to global. I'm not saying this because I think I'm some kind of Mensa-qualified intellectual giant. I'm basing this statement entirely on events--some that I have witnessed and some we all have. Today has just been a benchmark day and really drove the situation home for me. 

Let me give you some examples. 

I'm one of those people who can upon occasion type faster than I  think. Not a slow thinker, just a very fast typist. People like me, with the gift/curse of 100 wpm, are the most likely to get involved in online spats. Surprising, actually, how insulting 140 characters or less can be under the right set of fingertips. That particular skill also can make you into a polarizing person. But I'm a writer. I *know* better than to get into flame wars. But sometimes they're just unavoidable. For example, if you want to get me really pissed off, insult my kids. Some *original phrase deleted* older gentleman whose previous attempts at insulting me consisted of "DUMB WOMAN" (that's a quote) saw a picture of me and my youngest daughter and posted on Twitter *spelling uncorrected* "Is she your lesban lovr? thats sick". 

She was 16 in the photo. Did not go over well. Why would he say that, you ask? Well, because I am a woman who loves sports, can discuss football knowledgeably, and calls up the same talk show he does to make actual points. So I called him homophobic and HE blocked ME for it! Reminded me of the time when I called out a blatant racist online, and his response was "I'm not a racist. And you spelled biggot (sp) wrong. It has two g's, like N*****R."

*headdesk*

Yeah. Makes my head hurt still. Because I call the Paul Finebaum show, some butthead in Alabama throws out a homophobic slur at me--involving my own kid. 

Today I discovered that all Marines are trained killers. That's all. Just trained killers. Apparently, that is the only thing that defines the Marine Corps. Semper fi, indeed. And I am not capable of debating that because I am just a mother who never served (never mind the long military history of my family) and that I'm unintelligent because I write paranormal stuff (I don't write paranormal stuff) and weirdos like me probably think UFOs landed at Area 51. Always good to know. Did I mention that this particular *original phrase deleted* gentleman who made these statements self-identifies as a Marine?

Yeah. Take a couple of deep breaths. It might help. A Marine told me that all Marines are nothing but trained killers and that I, an American citizen, cannot refute that point because I am a mother and not a Marine. 

Nope. Breaths won't help. Shots might.

It's not just strangers online. A member of my husband's family told me once that the movie Gladiator was historically inaccurate. (Had to explain the concept of fiction to him) A neighbor whose tree fell on our house during a storm tried to claim that he shouldn't have to pay for damage or even remove the tree because it wasn't his fault our house was in the way and was, in fact, our fault because if we hadn't moved the car into the garage it would have broken the tree's fall and prevented the damage to the windows and doors on the front of the house. (Had to go through rudimentary gravity, wind velocity, and basic physics to him) And then there was the doctor who, before he ever examined me or looked at an x-ray of my injured spine, said, "Now if I had a magic pen that I could wave to make everything go away, things might be different. But you aren't hurt--you just want narcotics." even though in the x-ray I'd brought with me there was a blatantly obvious deformity (including a fracture) of my spine.

Don't get me wrong. We ALL say stupid stuff. I am guilty of the compound crime of hot temper/foot in mouth disease myself. And that typing faster than I think thing gets me into trouble if I hit send before I hit the brakes sometimes. Who hasn't sent something out into the world that they really wish wasn't lodged in the permanent memory card of the Internet?

Two word: sex tape. 

But outside of the microcosm of my little, unimportant world is the macrocosm of the world we share--and that's where ignorance snowballs into something ugly and dangerous. These petty examples of ignorance are symptoms, clues that lead us to the terrible realization that we're dealing with a national disease.

Right now in Baltimore, the National Guard has been mobilized to stop the ongoing and escalating violence--where ignorance, or maybe entitlement might be a better phrase--hones that ugly edge. For who in the world would think that protesting an obvious and tragic wrong justifies the type of behavior that's happening now? Do not mistake me here. I believe there is a viable and justifiable reason for communities in Baltimore to be outraged. But community outrage should never take the form or rampaging and random violence. Protest, yes. Loot the mall? Burn down businesses and homes? Torch cars? Get broadcast live nationally breaking into a liquor store and stealing the contents while claiming your actions are the responsibility of the authorities? Pretend that criminal behavior is a form of protest? Destroy the community you claim to be wanting to protect? 

What kind of protest involves stealing flat screen TVs and cell phones? Can you imagine what the great reformers of the American people would think of this? Can you imagine Martin Luther King, Jr. or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or David Thoreau's reactions to what is happening right now?

Tonight while Baltimore burns, the real outrage has to be that ignorance has eclipsed what should have happened today. Instead of using protest to initiate a real and necessary dialogue between the community and the authorities regarding the death of Freddie Gray, the relationship between the police and the citizens, and the alarming deterioration of race relations nationwide, the ignorance of people wholly uninvolved in the situation has led to a city overwhelmed by criminals and now about to be locked down by our own military. A tragedy has become a travesty, and the real issues are buried under a quagmire of horror. 

 The people who could affect any real, positive change in Baltimore are either holed up in their homes, or trying desperately to stop the rampage, like the courageous Nation of Islam folks who lined up and formed a non-violent human fence between rioters and police. Their voices will be drowned under the yells of the ignorant who are throwing bricks through windows or setting houses on fire, fueled no doubt by the booze they looted. 

And when, in future days, when the desperately needed dialogue begins, where will those rioters be? Not talking. Not trying to help. And for the most part, not being held responsible for their criminal behavior either. And they certainly will not be trying to find the right way to protest the tragedy that led to today's violence. 

My use of the word 'ignorance' was very deliberate. I realize that some might take that word the wrong way, particularly if they are determined to do so. Cultural ignorance has been claimed before. My French mother, whose Resistance-organizer father was shot dead in front of her as the Nazis fled from the Allied invasion, never forgave Germans--ANY German--for World War II. Any claim of 'but we didn't know' just enraged her. "How could you not know?" she sneered once at a dinner party, while all the rest of us squirmed. (Yes, I come by my temper naturally. I'm mild compared to her) "I was eight years old and living in France, and I knew that all you Nazis were burning Jews. You lived right there. You knew. You just didn't say it out loud. You didn't WANT to know." She was convinced that the German people were willfully and retroactively ignorant, and right or wrong nothing I or anyone else could say would change her mind. For a long time, I thought she was wrong. 

But lately I've started to wonder if such a thing as cultural ignorance was possible.  After Ferguson, I became convinced that it was not only possible, but epidemic. Just like a parent who turns away from their kid who pulls wings off birds and tortures dogs, we get shocked when our darling offspring turns into a serial killer. That's why on this spring day in Baltimore, I think we all see how dangerous ignorance can be if it goes on unchecked. 

The United States can no longer afford cultural, racial, or social ignorance. Ignorance is bankrupting us as a nation, as a people. Our country began with a dream of enlightenment, and sometimes, on days like today, it doesn't seem like we've met our promise. We, as individuals, have to accept our responsibility for contributing to a culture where the delusion is perpetuated that if we ignore a problem it'll somehow just go away. And just like we have to deal with the consequences if we hit send before we really think about what we're doing online, we are paying a heavy price now for all the looking the other way we did over the last few decades. 

If we had learned the lessons set by Watts or Kent State, we would not now be living through Ferguson and Baltimore. 

And we cannot address the ignorance of our society until we can acknowledge our own ignorance--and take personal responsibility for our actions that ensued. 

Bigot really only has one g. So does ignorance. Or ego. 

And guilt.

Spring Means...Kittens

Spring means different things to different people. For some people, it's about flowers and the days warming up. For others, it's baseball. In this house, it's football spring practice--and kittens. 

Yes, another spring, more kittens. Don't get me wrong--OUR cats are spayed \neutered. Well, except for Diablo, my polydactyl black cat. He's special. I rescued him three years ago as a wormy, flea-infested runt with six toes on each of his front paws. I will breed him at least a couple more times--polydactyl cats are lucky for us writers. So the spring influx of kittens isn't the result of negligence or lack of care in this house. No, We rescue abandoned litters and pregnant cats, and for the past couple of years people have been dumping their mistakes on our front porch. 

Last year, we had six momma cats and their litters left on our hands. This year, we had four momma cats. One was dead when I opened the box, curled around her litter of seven newborns like she'd tried to keep them warm to the very end. Two of those kittens died, but the other five I bottle fed and are now thriving. 

Usually, we've found homes for the kittens and kept the momma cats, getting them spayed and healthy. So we have lots of foster mommas for the abandoned litters, and that makes rescuing kittens a lot easier. All that being said, I have a hard time imagining that finding good homes will be easy this year. For one thing, we don't just 'give free to good home'. So many kittens end up as meals for snakes or bait in a dog fighting ring. We give these poor little things a lot of human interaction and care, and are emotionally invested in each baby we raise. So what we do is either charge $25 per kitten or defer that charge if we confirm that the new kitten's parents have made a vet appointment for their fuzzy baby. 

Funny how $25, which is substantially less than what we probably invest in each kitten, will deter animal cruelty. People who think nothing of spending hundreds of dollars on a reptile won't spend a dime on that snake's food. Last year some guy showed up in response to our 'free kittens' ad and wanted to take all of them. Since I know from a firsthand basis that no one wants an instant addition of 11 kittens to their home, I had no compunction in turning him away. 

How could anyone feed a snake a kitten? 

*shudders*

I have no idea, But they troll the want ads for those 'free to a good home' kittens.

So, we require people to prove they have a good home. That's all.  Personally, I think the only good snake is a pair of shoes. Maybe a purse or a belt. But not a final destination for a kitten I've nurtured from birth onward.

At any rate, this year I've decided to do things a little differently. For one thing, Shannon and I have been discussing building a catio for our feline family. We're already in the process of making a kitty wonderland in the basement, and a catio would benefit our geriatric cats in particular. We have six cats over the age of ten--Satan turned 15 last month--and those warm summer days would ease those old bones. Which, of course, means that we'll have to re-landscape out back to accommodate an access tunnel from the basement window, the deck, the pool, and my garden. Sounds like a lot of work. Good thing Shannon hates doing yard work or else this wouldn't be any fun at all. The first litter of kittens will be old enough to find forever homes in four weeks, so we'll need to knock that out fairly quickly. Fortunately, all those years of set building in theater will come in handy. I have an idea for a catio that can easily be expanded or moved but still provide security for the cats inside it. 

Even started a planter full of catnip they can roll around in. Maybe with a shrubbery--or two, to make a path (a path! a path!)--we can avoid the ignominy of a HERRING!

*The management would like to apologize for the Monty Python backslide. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post*

And I think this year, I'm going to create a website that will come up in internet searches for folks in the area looking for a kitten. I'll post pictures of the kittens and some character traits and as each kitten gets a new home, I'll take that picture down. 

One of these days, if we win the lottery, I'd love to buy a huge plot of land in the country and create a permanent no-kill shelter and adoption center. That would be a wonderful addition to one's life story. But until then, as long as irresponsible people get cats and don't give them veterinary care, or keep them from situation where kittens could be created, I have a feeling that those cretins will continue to dump their problems on my front porch. So every spring, most likely, we'll have kittens to hand rear. When you help a kitten into the world, when you clean it up and give it to its mother, when you bottle feed it when it's so tiny it can fit in the palm of your hand, you're creating a human bond with that little life. Hand-reared cats trust humans. They like to be held, to play, to cuddle. They are well-behaved and reciprocate the affection they are shown. Anyone who's been to our house knows that when the front door opens, the cats big and small all run to the door to greet whoever comes in. And these kittens will do the same, because all they've ever known is human kindness--despite the fact that they were abandoned by humans when the snow was deep and the temperature low. 

So in the Summers household, spring means...kittens. That's all for now--those litter boxes won't change themselves, and there's an itty bitty kitten looking up at me from the nest with her siblings to let me know that it's time for her bottle.