Word Wednesday - Cosmopolite

cosmopolite \koz-MOP-uh-lyt\, noun:
1. One who is at home in every place; a citizen of the world; a cosmopolitan person.
2. (Ecology) An organism found in most parts of the world.

I am probably the antithesis of a cosmopolite. I'm a homebody and that's where I love to be.
Don't get me wrong. I've been other places. I've lived in Switzerland and in England. I did my best to fit in, but I was not one of those people who can step off the plane and act like they've been there before.
Plus, I get terrible jet lag.
Not that I didn't embrace the culture I was living in. I did. I spoke French as much as possible when in Switzerland. I enjoyed British culture also and made some friends that I still send Christmas cards to 16 years later.
But alas, I'm a homebody. I'm glad I don't have a job that requires me to travel. I'd do it, but I'd always been thinking about when I'd get home.
Do you like to travel? Where have you been that neat?

Happy News Monday - Cup of Joe

The power in your morning coffee.
I'm new to the coffee generation. I didn't like coffee until I reached my 40's. Really. I drank maybe 9 cups total before that. Well, maybe a few more in college, but I didn't pull too many all-nighters.
I'm not too into the foofy coffee drinks. I like when I can make it myself. I put just an ounce or so of flavored in my decaf. Yep, decaf. Anyone who knows me would be scared if I drank a lot of caffeine. Think Energizer Bunny.
On speed.
I enjoy Dunkin' Donuts coffee the best, but I can't make that myself. My work cafeteria now has DD coffee so I get it cheaper with my employee discount. I might get a latte once in awhile.
So I'm glad to know it isn't all bad for you. Maybe what little caffeine I consume enhances my performance?
No ones complained about my job yet.
So what brand of coffee do you like best?

Hot Hunk Friday - Tim Daly

When I searched for Tim Daly, Google had no images of him. I would assume that means he guards his image carefully.

I remember Tim Daly from Wings. It was a cute show. It never jumped the shark.

Now he's on Private Practice a spin off of Grey's Anatomy. The show has more humor in it than it's parent show and not so much baggage as Dr. Gray has. I haven't seen too many episodes, but that's because I don't watch too much TV. Not a snob thing, but a busy thing.

I think he's been in a few Lifetime movies along the way.

He seems like an all around okay guy. Not a huge ego sort of person.

I hope I'm right.

My first Authorsday with Harry Ramble

Welcome Harry Ramble to my first Authorsday.Harry will be giving away a free book. All who comment are entered.

Hi, Chris! Thanks for shining your flattering blog spotlight on me.

I have to say to your readers, when I first saw who April Robins and RRW had matched me up with, I was pretty excited. I saw right away that Chris has a regularly appearing “Hot Hunk Friday” feature, and I thought, Hey, that’s a perfect fit! Just slap me in there! I lobbied persuasively for a HHF profile, but Chris has been forced to reject my request, based on the unfortunate fact that I am a) not a celebrity, and b) unattractive.

But, you know, I’m not picky. I would have happily settled for a prime placement in Chris’s “Word Wednesday” feature. Here, too, I was met with disappointment, as the word “ramble” has already been featured in the “Word Wednesday” entry for January 21, 2009.

And so, here we are, on Authorsday, with an interview instead. My novel is called Sex Offender Lives Here, and it’s available from Ebb Press. It’s a story of divorce, a particularly vicious child custody battle, and America’s obsession with sex crimes and predators. Or, as the media kit would have it, a “tale of love, loss, and terror in the house of mirrors that is our post-modern Information Age.” Those who wish to know more can visit me at harryramble.com.

Okay, Chris, fire away!

1. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Since the day I realized, at the age of 12, that I couldn’t hit a curve ball worth a damn. One day, you and all your little friends are having a grand old day on the diamond, dreaming of being Reggie Jackson. And then the next day one of your friends has a mustache, is a full foot taller than you, and has a 80-mile-an-hour breaking ball he didn’t have yesterday. And you? If you’re lucky, you realize you’re a writer.


2. What do you know now that you're published that you wish you knew when you started out?

I wish I had known that the publishing industry (think everything from Random House to Baker & Taylor to Barnes & Noble) would cease to exist in 2009. I could have saved myself about ten years of writing query letters. Not to mention all that money I spent on SASEs.

Oh, I know those companies will still “exist” at the end of this year. But the business function they’ve evolved to perform (the purchase of large quantities of wood pulp and ink, the printing and binding of sheets of paper, the truck transportation of pallets of bound volumes, the shelving of those volumes, the return and pulping of unsold inventory) no longer exists. Left to its own devices, the Kindle would have rolled up this entire world (with its massive overhead of pricey Manhattan office spaces, 7-figure advances to unpopular former US presidents, and lunch tabs at Le Bernardin) in two or three years. The recent appearance of iPhone reader apps, however, just shortened that grace period to zero.

In 2012, the biggest, most influential publishers in the world will be operations on the scale of two savvy recent college grads (one tech whiz, one marketing whiz), a pair of MacBook Air laptops, and a regular table at the back of a Panera Bread franchise.


3. What drew you to the subject of Sex Offender Lives Here?

The initial idea came from a news story I read a few years ago. A 20-year-old dishwasher from Canada used Maine’s official sex offender registry system to track down and kill convicted felons. He killed two people. One was a 57-year-old man who had been convicted of assaulting and raping a child younger than 14 years old. The second was a 24-year-old man who had been convicted, when he was 19, of having sex with his girlfriend who, at the time, had been two weeks short of her 16th birthday. Two very different people, obviously, but they were both sex offenders and they were both registered by name, address, and photo. The killer in this particular case was found in possession of the addresses of 32 more sex offenders.

The sex offender registry system, which now exists in all states, grew out of the entirely reasonable desire to protect children from sex criminals by notifying citizens when a convicted sex felon moves into their community. Of course, public knowledge is more public than ever in these days of Facebook, Google and 24-hour Twitter updates. So there’s definitely a potential for concerned citizens to take matters into their own hands. This is something that’s happening more and more frequently across the nation.

At the same time, there’s no consistent definition of what a sex offender is. Rapists, murderers, and predators certainly qualify. But what about the guy who has a fight with his girlfriend on a Friday night and is accused of pushing and shoving? What about a guy arrested for public urination? What about a person who’s computer is hacked by a virus and used by a third party as a transmitter of child pornography? What about—and this is the direction my own novel takes—a father who is accused of sexual crimes in the course of a very bitter child custody dispute?

Now I’m no expert. I’m just a novelist. But it doesn’t take an expert to recognize that there are inequities in the system and a tremendous potential for abuse. We have a very inflexible, one-size-fits-all system of monitoring and enforcement in place, and yet we don’t really have a coherent way of thinking about or talking about sex offenses.

Speaking just as a novelist, there’s a lot of dramatic potential there. The novel isn’t solely about these issues, of course. It’s also about a father’s responsibilities to his family, about what our obsessions reveal about us, about one very fallible man’s love for his son. But that’s where the story started.


4. What’s it like, marketing a book like Sex Offender Lives Here? Do you get odd reactions from people?

You’d be surprised at how many people respond by saying, “Really? Wow! That’s great! It’s not a memoir, is it?”

Actually, no, it’s not. It’s a novel. Once people grasp (with some relief) that the book is fiction, they often next assume that it’s a horror/thriller in the “serial killer” vein so popular in today’s fiction marketplace. In fact, Sex Offender Lives Here is a kind of “anti-serial-killer thriller.” It’s a story about real people and the very real consequences of choices made and influenced by love and fear and desire. There are no devils or saints in it, no soulless killing machines or brave heroes.

I should say that there is one very peripheral character in the novel, a stereotypical sex fiend who exists outside the narrative and is kind of influencing public opinion around some of the main characters. He is called the Balloon Man, and he functions as a kind of counterpoint to the very real people caught up in the clash of cultures delineated in the novel. And I can’t tell you how many people say to me, “Why don’t you write a book about that Balloon Man guy? Heck, I’d read that.” For some reason, a novel about sex offenders portrayed as real people is controversial, but a novel that exists as a means for readers to participate, vicariously, in a series of brutal killings, is considered mainstream. It just goes to show you what people are conditioned to expect from literature, I guess.

Marketing a book like Sex Offender Lives Here gives you opportunities to test easy assumptions. When laying out the Contact page on the website for the book, the web designer asked me, “How many people do you think will want to join the mailing list of an author they know only as the author of Sex Offender Lives Here? (A pretty good number, actually, although the increasing omnipresence of Facebook and MySpace is rendering 20th-century technologies like “mailing lists” obsolete.)

Other people wonder if I get hate mail from angry people. As it turns out, not much. I do get mail from people moved to share their own tales of travail as a consequence of their contact with the sex offender registry system. Some of these tales are pretty harrowing, and I never know quite what to say. I’m not a partisan when it comes to this issue. I tried to be as even-handed in the narrative as I could.


5. What’s the strangest thing you’ve had to do, as part of marketing Sex Offender Lives Here?

I had to paint hate grafitti on my own house. I hired a production team to create a “book trailer,” one of those little video shorts that everyone has for their books these days. And I just wasn’t happy with their first draft, which leaned very heavily on stock images of menacing guys peeking from the shadows, guys in handcuffs, that kind of thing. Just completely missing the sense of the book, which is, at its core, the story of a family under siege, a husband, wife, and child at the mercy of events that have spun out of their control.

So I said, look, I’ll provide the images, from photos I’ll create, and I’ll do my own voiceover, a kind of plea for understanding from father to son, that, together, will capture the spirit of the book. So that’s what I did. I mocked up protest signs, stuck them outside front doors, and photographed them. And I went to the local art store and bought myself some water-soluble paint in several colors.

On Halloween of last year, a bright and sunny morning, I went out and started painting messages of hate on my own house. I had never written a single word of grafitti in my life. Not even a picture on a school desk, that I can remember. I’ve included a couple of stills here, and you can view the trailer itself here, at MySpace: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=51238989.
It’s in some other places as well. Barnes & Noble has it up.

It’s an odd thing, expressing hatred and fear like that. Slashing your thoughts on a wall like that, in blood red and black. It would have been an interesting exercise to have tried before writing the book. I’m certainly glad that the paint proved to be as washable and removeable as advertised!


6. What was the best writing advice you received? Did you follow it? Conversely, what was the worst advice you’ve received?

To be honest, I don’t think any one person can tell any other person anything useful about writing a story. And I say that as someone who’s done the seminars, participated in writer’s circles, been fortunate enough to bounce my work off a successful author or two. I say that as someone who possesses an entirely useless degree in English Literature from Rutgers University. Sometimes, the less formal education you have, the better off you are. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner didn’t have a year of college between them; they didn’t attend a single “Writer’s Boot Camp.”

If you could sit down all day with Martin Amis and really pick his brain, he could tell you a heck of a lot about how to write a serviceable Martin Amis book. Likewise, Jane Smiley is the world’s foremost expert at writing Jane Smiley books. That’s the way it is. It’s not transferable. It’s unique to you.

You have to learn the language of your heart and devise a way to express it. And that way you come up with, of expressing yourself, will only work for you. All the rest of it, the “showing, not telling,” the grammar, you can learn in a week or so.

So I guess that’s the advice. Go out into a field somewhere and sit down. Listen to your heart. Write it down. Keeping writing it down until some of it is true.


7. What was the name of the first manuscript you ever completed? Did you try to get it published?

Did I try to get it published? Do people write stories that they don’t try to get published? Not me. I like to believe there’s a market out there for anything I write, as long as it’s as good as I can make it. Novels. Screenplays. Shopping lists. Directions for the babysitter. Everything’s got a potential destination.

My first novel was called Zoo Monday. It was an enormous thing, almost 200,000 words long, written in the present tense from the viewpoints of half a dozen major characters. It was about a teenager who achieves a kind of notoriety for a murder he didn’t commit. And a kind of nihilistic death cult that grows up around him.

I wrote it in the late 80s and started shopping it around a few years later. It was a different world, then. You could send out twenty queries to reputable agents and get four requests for more material. It never quite got over the hump, though.


8. What’s your next book about?

It’s called The End Is Near, and it’s a comedy about one man’s childhood trauma, midlife crisis, and his attempt at gaining revenge, twenty-some years after the fact, via murder/suicide. Okay, it’s a dark comedy. With witchcraft, a farcical hostage situation, a highly combustible romantic triangle, and angelic interventions. In the largest sense, I guess, it’s about how our cherished grievances and justifications don’t ever quite match up correctly with the realities of our lives. The book will be out later this year, again from Ebb Press.


9. Give us one fact about yourself that very few people know.

I had a high-profile slot in “Happy News Monday” totally locked up until the article on Hippo Sweat knocked me out of the top spot on Sunday night. Chris assured me that it was nothing personal. It was a business decision based on SEO and keyword search rates and advertising revenues. And it’s okay. I’m fine with that.

About Harry Ramble

A marketing professional and advertising writer for more than two decades, Harry Ramble has learned the value of never using two words where one will do. He is the author of "Sex Offender Lives Here," a tragicomic tale of divorce, child custody battles, and America's obsession with sex crimes and predators, now available from Ebb Press (EbbPress.com). Look for Harry's next novel, The End Is Near, a story of childhood trauma, derangement, vengeance, and angelic interventions, also from Ebb Press, in the autumn of 2009. Harry lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

Word Wednesday - Laudable

laudable \LAW-duh-bul\, adjective:
Worthy of praise; commendable.

Does everyone in life do something laudable?

It depends. I think our culture now rewards you for just trying. Kids get a trophy for just showing up. One of the reasons I love that my younger son is involved in 4-H is that he isn't praised just for showing up. There are requirements. You must do two community service projects each year. You must catalog how you take care of your animal. He has to make a presentation this week on a subject of his choice. He's learning something and that is laudable.

I think the way I've raised my kids is laudable, but time will tell.

I don't think everything deserves praise. I think some things deserve recognition. If you have a good idea you should get credit. If you idea cures cancer, then you should be praised.

Am I making sense? Do I think I've done anything else laudable?

Not really sure.

What about you? Have you done something laudable?

Happy News Monday - Hippo Sweat

Hippo Sweat may help sunscreens.

Anyone who's ever seen my in person knows how pale I am. My husband says I make the White House look tan. When I had my first son the nurse said he was the palest baby she'd ever seen. Then she met me and understood.

It's about time for me to purchase our sunscreen for the season. As I have two pale children I have to make sure they are covered. I will put it on the younger one before school since he still has recess.

We are that pale.

Can I tan? Yes, but I burn first then it tans. Is it worth it to me? Nope. I get some color from incidental sun exposure, but when I'm at the beach I'm usually under cover or in the water body surfing or boogie boarding.

So if there is an ingredient in hippo sweat that will lower my chances of sunburn and skin cancer, then that's happy news for me!

Hot Hunk Friday - Eddie Cibrian

Eddie Cibrian.

Eddie Cibrian is going to be on a Lifetime movie with Lee Ann Rimes. Northern Lights. I knew he looked familiar, but could not place him.

He played Justin's coach on Ugly Betty last season. Not an overall nice character. He was cheating on his wife with Justin's mom.

But oh does he look good with his shirt off.

He would be someone I'd stare at in a bar and would never walk up to.

He couldn't be more out of most women's leagues if he tried.

I didn't read the Nora Roberts book the movie is based on so I don't know if I would have chosen him. As authors, if we have our book put on the big or the small screen, I think we need to let go of things. Unless we get creative input it is going to be someone else's vision of the book.

But I'm sure readers have different visions of books than the writer intended.

I make a practice of not watching the movie of a book I liked. It ruins it for me.

Being a writer I have a very vivid imagination so I have a clear picture in my head of any book, not just my own.

So to see how someone else interpreted it is odd for me.

Do you watch movies of books you loved?

Word Wednesday - Fop

fop \FOP\, noun:
A man who is overly concerned with or vain about his dress and appearance; a dandy.

He's swaddled in a heavy black wool overcoat and his shoes are silver-buckled with cap toes, the black leather well taken care of. He's a bit of a lounge lizard, a hip-hop fop.-- Po Bronson, The Nudist on the Late Shift

I included the line for the book because it so amused me. A think of fop as an old word. It is from a Middle English word. You know Middle English. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Because I was in Honors English in high school we read them untranslated. In the original Middle English. I actually found it enjoyable. An adventure.
Yeah, I'm an English Nerd.
Anyway, fop is a word that would be used to describe many metrosexuals. I know a guy who always has every hair in place. He's a medic, but his uniform is impeccable. Not a wrinkle to be found. I once saw him with his shirt untucked. It was so odd to me.
I guess in some ways he'd be a fop.
I cannot see myself using this word as I don't write historicals.
Do you know any modern day fops?

Authorsday

I'm unveiling a new feature on my blog. Authorsday will be interviews and or guest blog by authors. My first one will be March 26. Stay tuned.

Happy News Monday - Beth Isreal

A hospital with heart.
I work for a hospital in my real life. That's why I first read this story. I work for hospital that's dong well. I work in the Emergency Medical S ervices department and, really, as long as people do stupid things, EMS will be a thriving department.
I read this story with great interest. It was really heartwarming to me. High tide raises all boats.
And that's what those employees understood. If they all took little cuts than those who can't afford to lose their job, will be okay. And so will the hospital.
It's nice to see.

Hot Hunk Friday - Ralph Macchio

Yes, Ralph Macchio.
I never though he was particularly attractive in The Karate Kid.
In fact I knew someone who saw him in dinner theatre and he left surrounded by body guards and wouldn't sign autographs. He was never THAT big.
But I watched him on Ugly Betty last night. Wow. It took me a few scenes to be sure it was him. He was actually handsome playing a councilman that the family was trying to fix up with Hilda.
It was the better of the story lines. The one with Matt's snotty mother not liking Betty was way too cliched.
So what child star do you think has grown up well?

Authorsday

New feature in several weeks on this blog. Authorsday. Every Thursday I'll have either an author interview or a blog post by a guest author.
Stay tuned.

Word Wednesday - nocuous

nocuous \NOK-yoo-uhs\, adjective:
very hurtful; noxious

I use the word innocuous so often and I never knew there was a word "nocuous." I think it's awkward to say. Innocuous rolls off the tongue.
I could make a list of nocuous things. Or what I consider nocuous.
Cell phone conversations in just about any store that is normally quiet.
A room full of sweaty 14 year old boys.
A baby's diaper long after you've potty-trained your kids.

Here are some innocuous things.
The barest hint of fragrance.
Aluminum siding.

Guess it's easier to think of negative things.
Can you add to my lists?

Happy News Monday - Vegetarianism

Austin Firefighter.
This former All-American swimmer is a vegetarian.
I don't think I could be a vegetarian unless I suddenly had to kill the animal myself.
But I have learned that by eating more vegetables I have more energy. That isn't what I crave when I'm hungriest, but I've had to overcome the mistaken idea that a salad won't fill me up. It will. Of course I can chose a pretty big salad, but it's like speed for me. I eat a veggies with a little protein and I'm good to go. For hours.
And this firefighter is out to prove that you could eat more veggies and feel good enough to compete.
So when your Mom told you to eat your vegetables. Maybe she was right.

Hot Hunk Friday - Michael Urie

I'm writing this as I watch the one show I love every week. Ugly Betty. It's quirky.

And Michael Urie is the quirkiest. He plays Marc St. James, assistant to Wilhemina Slater who is always trying to take over the magazine Mode. It's a fashion magazine and Betty Suarez is the anti-fashionista. (Like me.)

Marc is Willie's confidante, her second in command. And he's a bit nerdy which you all know I like.

Well back to the show!

An apology

My life is completely nuts at this point.
That's why my posting has been erratic.
I will try harder to post regularly and on time.
Thanks for your patience.
cmr

Happy News Monday - Heart Healthy Kitchen

Stocking a heart healthy kitchen may be easier than you think.
You probably think I'm just beating you over the head with this topic. It's my thing. I've been an American Heart Association CPR instructor for 15 years. I work in a hospital. It's my thing.
And I know two people only in their 50's who have had heart attacks in the last four months. One had a quintuple bypass.
It's my thing.
Prevention is the key. Yes, there are risk factors you cannot prevent. Heredity is a big one. But you can take statins to prevent cholesterol build up if that is the problem. It seems to be a win-win because of so few side effects.
There are risk factors you can prevent. Stop smoking. Lose weight. Exercise.
I know it isn't always easy. Nothing worth anything in life is.
But take that first step. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Park a little further from the store than you usually do.
You don't have to change your whole lifestyle overnight.
Not unless you have a heart attack.
But I want you to prevent that.
So what can you do this week? What can you do to reduce your risk of heart disease?