lying for a living

My previous post notes that my cat is thinking of killing me. Patti writes: “That’s because of the 3 hours you spent arranging its limbs to frame the ‘22′ so beautifully…. Is there an ‘after’ photo of you?”

No.

But there is this “ten days to delivery of the manuscript” photo.

Today is the first birthday of lying for a living. When I launched it last year, with a post about fact versus fiction, I had no idea what a pain in the ass, and how much fun, this whole blog thang would be. It’s a pain, because once you start blogging, you can’t stop. You become Indiana Jones running downhill ahead of that huge boulder - if you slow down, you get flattened. Your blog will die. And I couldn’t let that happen, because it’s such amazing fun. And that’s thanks to all of you.

If a blog works right, it isn’t an online journal, it’s a conversation. And the people who come here to talk are some of the most civilized, perceptive and hilarious folks around. Thanks for all your insights. And thanks for your support; it’s been great to get to know some of you on the blog, via email, and especially to get to meet some of you in person.

And thank you:

For reading my books.

For the Grammar Geeks Unit. For Semana Snarka, and for trying - heroically, demonically - to make me snark during Lent.

For the 243 verb names.

For the bestseller lists. You’re the ones who let me know I had an Amazon number one bestseller.

For the laughs, the photos, the links to snark-worthy articles, the discussions of evil garden gnomes, dueling hillbillies, and psycho astronauts; the comments in Middle English; and your attempts to uncover my true identity.

Don’t stop.

What search terms have brought people to this blog today?

• Jesse Blackburn
• se5x
• Obtain fake passport
• Husband forced into panty

I really, really wonder about my readers sometimes.

WordPress.com has recently changed its spam-control regime. On my end, this has meant that the number of junk comments I have to wade through has vastly decreased. However, I want to make sure that legitimate comments are not being snagged as spam and deleted before I even see them.

If any readers are submitting comments but finding that they don’t get posted on the blog, please email me. Meg @ meggardiner . com .

(You know I have to type my email address that way so as not to attract even more spam, right? )

I get feedback on my blog posts - in person, at home. Here, freely paraphrased, is last night’s conversation with my spouse about the socialist critic who said I had a weapons fetish.

Husband: You’re brave. You slapped down a reviewer. (I.e., What the hell were you thinking?)

Me: I slapped down a reviewer who thinks it’s Moscow 1917, and that paradise will come when the proletariat destroys the capitalist running dog Yankees. That’s not brave, it’s fun.

Husband: Okay. But you slapped down a British publication for dissing America.

Me: He dissed American women. I mentioned that it was a British publication so readers would understand that the writer wasn’t himself American.

Husband: All right. (I.e., Oh, so you do know that the British press has been overwhelmingly positive toward you. As have your British colleagues. And friends. And pets.)

Me: Besides, the guy stepped on my toes. Trashing US gun-nuts is my prerogative. Same with American celebrity wannabes. And hillbillies.

Husband: (Silence.)

Me: What?

Husband: (Glare that says, You Okies pick on hillbillies because there’s nobody else you can pick on.)

Me: (Dang, we do. It’s almost as if we exhibit the same sort of prejudices as that reviewer.) (Smile apologetically. Think happy thoughts about Appalachia. Don’t tell my husband his home state’s motto is “West Virginia is for Cousins.”)

Husband: And why did you talk about the weapons?

Me: What?

Husband: The weapons in the closet. The tongfas, the chucks, the staff. That kobudo cosh stick I got you for your keyring. (Look of incredulity.) Have you forgotten my samurai sword?

Me: Your karate equipment - I didn’t think about it. Oh, my God. I actually do have a collection of Japanese assassin’s gear.

And yeah, it is wicked.

(For the record, my husband worked hellaciously hard for his black belt, and the martial arts gear is solely for sports. Only the samurai sword has ever been used for self defense, and only by me. And when I finished chasing him out of the house, that squirrel knew who was boss. The sword is now safely stored in my mother’s attic, but if the raccoons attack, she knows what to do with it.)

And babe, tell me now if you’ve stashed away anything else I should know about. Such as a dueling banjo.

A thoughtful reader has asked whether it’s kosher for commenters to reply to each other’s remarks as well as to my posts. The answer is, absolutely.

As I explained to the reader, to my mind blogging is not a dissertation but a conversation. I love it when a post becomes the starting point of a discussion. So sit down, tune up, join in. Key of G. Count it off: one, two, three, four.

Talk back.

Before I sign off…in keeping with a couple of themes this blog talks about - writing and Armageddon - here are two articles that are probably amusing but today strike me as ludicrously funny. From The Onion:

Writer Too Much of a P**** to Kill off Characters

Report: Majority Of Americans Unprepared For Apocalypse

Asterisks added in the title above. Please check and tell me if I’ve miscounted.

I’m parking the bulldozer now.

I’ve pulled over to the side of the cyber-highway this weekend. From what I can make out on the bottle, the painkillers say do not operate heavy machinery. To play it safe, I’m assuming that heavy machinery includes wordpress.com. In other words: no blogging while medicated.

That may be why this post took seventeen minutes to compose.

Sorry for the sparse blogging. I’ve had a deadline and have been under the weather, but today I got both of those sorted out. In particular, the doctor told me I’ve felt miserable and off balance because I have an ear infection. Thank you! That’s why people think I’ve been ignoring them. My hearing’s out of whack.

And now everything begins to make sense. At a Hodder & Stoughton event, I was sure fellow author Jojo Moyes asked me how many books I’ve now published. But she got wide-eyed when I told her: five. She said, are you serious? Five? Yes. My God, five? Yes, I repeated, thinking - is it really that surprising? How about you? Three, she said, and showed me a photo of her beautiful children. D’oh.

And my agent, Jonathan Pegg, looked unhappy when I described how a newspaper article had poked fun at another of his authors, David Mitchell. He said, was the article taking the mick? Yes, I said, the piece needled all the nominees on the shortlist. He shook his head. Poking fun at the Costa Book Award… it really is a well regarded prize. No, no, I clarified - I was talking about the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. He looked much relieved. He also - I think - told me that high in the Himalayas he had played tennis with the royal family of Bhutan. Jonny, if I imagined that, don’t correct me. It sounded dashing.

That leads us to today, when I sat glazed and feverish on the sofa, reduced to flipping endlessly between satellite news channels. In a churlish voice I began complaining about the weathercasters. He hunches. Her suit’s too shiny. Christ, that pink tie! Dude, when you get out of bed, brush your damned hair. And you - yes, you, biting your lip - rain is not sexy, not ever. Get a grip! I flipped to a new channel. Why are there nothing but weird weatherpeople on the tube?

The family stared at me and said, because they’re reporting a tornado in London.

Toto, get me my antibiotics.

Via Clive Davis, a summary of a spat between certain journalists who think that the “populist warblings” of book bloggers and Amazon reviewers are debasing literary criticism, and other writers who celebrate the “power to the reader” trend. Novelist (and former press reviewer) Susan Hill falls into the people-power camp. For writing on her blog that she finds the traditional book pages of the national newspapers “mostly irrelevant”, she received a petulant email from a literary editor who swore never to review her books again.

This blog has been going for 100 days. Time for a retrospective.

What started as an amorphous plan to talk about my writing life has spun off in unexpected directions, with posts and comments on grammar, spam, writers’ nightmares, conspiracy theory, evil twins, the vicissitudes of fate, and how red-hot lust for the British Library can make you feel cheap. Plus impassioned thoughts on apocalyptic fiction, and even more impassioned thoughts on dealing death to grammar illiterates. (”Fiery” seems to be the top choice.)

Credit whim, serendipity, and lack of editorial oversight. But my own imagination has supplied only half the ideas here. What has made this so much fun is the contribution from commenters. You’re the ones who have helped create the Grammar Geeks Unit, and mooted plans for a rather festive invasion of Canada. (Perhaps in the Spam Mobile?) You’ve turned this from an online journal into a conversation. Thanks.

So stop toasting misplaced apostrophes and bring your flamethrowers over here. Marshmallows for everyone!

As for the poetic license I’ve taken with this post - yes, the blog’s actually been going for 109 days. Why do you think it’s called lying for a living?

I’ve just discovered that at least one legitimate comment on the post Road trip: OKC was automatically sent to Spam purgatory. I’ve set it free. It now roams the comment herd. Apologies to Susan, aka Tactical Commander GGU#1, for the inadvertent banishment. Especially as the comment discusses family reunions in the same paragraph as the phrases “lithe young poolboys” and “poodle groomers”.

I’m training this blog to behave, but if it learns as well as my Labrador (ed., make that “if I learn as well as my Labrador”), things will take a while. If anybody knows of other lost comments, please let me know. The conversation is half the fun of this thing, and I want everybody to take part.