Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

From Mercedes Benz via Mollie.

So here’s the story so far.

I was going home to my brother’s house for the parents-niece-and-nephew-brother-and-sister deal. Lani’s kids were having turkey with their dad so they were going to have pizza here. And previous to that, I had brought home the ingredients for about four Thanksgiving dinners because Scylla is cooking in You Again and people get shirty if I don’t have the recipes later. I put the turkey in the sink to thaw (this was a week ago), took some anti-sinus meds, fell asleep, and left the turkey out for over twelve hours. This will kill people so I had to throw it out and buy another turkey two days ago, which I left in the fridge to thaw. Got all that? read more >>

It appears I have bacterial sinusitis. Bleah. However, I’ve been bitching about this enough, so time for some Happy Thoughts. Here are some thing I’m liking lately:

• Lee from Dancing Crow, who posted this in the comments:

“Jim Henson was said to have three general responses when a Muppet sketch got stuck: eat it, blow it up, or throw penguins at it.”

From now on, I’m using that when I get stuck in a book. Expect penguins. read more >>

I’m working on the book. I’m cleaning house. I’m getting Christmas presents together. None of this makes for interesting blog posts. One thing: my microwave immolated itself. I put in a potato, hit the “Potato” button, go downstairs while it cooks and then several minutes later hear the smoke alarm go off. Run upstairs, kitchen filled with smoke, try to get the vent fan to work; Lani runs in yelling, “What? What?”; I open the door to see potato now a hollow charcoal shell, air makes charcoal burst into flame; Lani yells, “ALASTAIR!! FIRE!!;” I throw a cup of water on it saying, “I don’t think this counts as a fire,” Lani opens the window by the stove; I throw another cup of water on the flames; Lani says, “Go downstairs, this smoke is bad for your asthma;” I say, “No, I”m fine, no wheezing;” Alastair comes in; I say, “Really, no big deal” and throw another cup of water on the flames, extinguishing them; Alastair takes charcoal and plastic out of oven and discards them; I try to get the microwave to work and then go downstairs to check the circuit breaker but no dice; Alastair goes back upstairs to Sweetness who is having an asthma attack from the smoke; I tell Lani, “I don’t mind getting a new microwave but this sucker is also the stove vent so it’s going to take some installation;” Lani says, “I can do that, I’ve done it before;” I say, “With a vent?”; she says, “Sure;” I say, “And you yelled for your husband for a few flames in a microwave?” and it all goes downhill from there. My position on this is that I put the potato in and pushed “Potato” which should have resulted in a baked potato, so the fact that the microwave kept on going and immolated itself is not my fault. But I don’t see how I can get a blog post out of that. And there’s nothing else new. You’ll just have to talk amongst yourselves until something happens here or I have a New Thought. Don’t hold your breath.

ETA: Lucy/Lani’s account of the experience is here. She’s much more thoughtful about it, which figures because she’s much more thoughtful.

As we’re gearing up to start the PopD Mystery series (and we’re all sick right now, so take “gearing up” with a grain of salt), it’s a good time to talk about what we’re going to do and invite comments and suggestions, starting with our definition of “mystery.”

For the purposes of PopD, a mystery is a story where the goal of the protagonist is to solve a crime, preferably murder. The protagonist thereby becomes the detective even if he or she is not a private eye or on the police force. If it detects and solves crime, it’s a detective. This usually means that the antagonist is the criminal which makes plot analysis so much easier than in a rom com. It also makes sense because mysteries are plot-centric while romcoms are character-centric. So for once the good-guy/bad-guy description of protagonist/antagonist is going to work. Three cheers for a just society. read more >>