Kyra's Web Log

Why Amazon is Wrong About Sales Taxes

2011-07-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

If you're an Amazon Associate you get a very small stipend whenever a visiter to your site clicks on a link you provide to merchandise on Amazon's site and makes a purchase. If you are a California resident you are not an Amazon Associate, at least you haven't been since Wednesday when Amazon severed ties with all of it's California based associates. The email that they sent out announcing this irritated me to no end. However the source of my irritation has little to do with income. Yes, I'll will be losing a little, but certainly nothing that will make a difference in my standard of living and this frees me up link to other sites I support.

What irritates me is the self-righteous tone of the email. This idea that Gov. Jerry Brown and California State legislators are passing a new Big-Box-Store-championed tax law specifically because they "...seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors," isn't just misleading, it's a false statement.

Obviously what California is seeking is a way out of a huge fiscal hole that we've dug ourselves into. But the only one who wants Amazon to pull the rug out from under Californian Amazon affiliates is Amazon. I do understand Amazon's need to utilize competitive pricing. Their ability to underprice everyone is the single most important aspect of their business strategy. But California legislators (as flawed as they are) are not imposing a new tax on anyone.

See, the law, as it is now, is that only businesses who have a physical presence in California have to charge California sales tax (7.5%). If an online business doesn't have a physical presence in CA Californian buyers are required to declare any item we've purchased online without sales tax. That way we can pay the sales tax we didn't pay at point of purchase when we pay our other quarterly or yearly taxes (no one does this). Now California has decided that Amazon affiliates based in California represent a physical presence and therefore Amazon must tack on the CA sales tax for any Californians who purchase something through their site. The question of whether or not an affiliate represents a physical presence for an online retailer is debatable but this isn't a question of whether or not Californians should pay tax on items bought online. The question is if the collection of those existing taxes should be made possible. If Amazon is the one to collect the tax upfront it's collectable, if it's up to individual citizens to keep track of every online purchase and pay one big lump sum of sales tax at the end of the year it's not.

Furthermore, Amazon could collect the sales tax on California purchases (as the majority of their online counterparts do) and still have more competitive prices than anyone else. Last week, On Killer Fiction I blogged about several beauty products I purchased, many of which I bought through Amazon. The eye cream I got, Neocutis Lumiere, normally sells for $95. But it is shipped and sold through Amazon for $51.22. If they added 7.5% sales tax to that price it would bring it up to $55.07. That's still a significantly lower price than any other online or brick and mortar retailer is offering. Another example: My books are generally sold for $13.95. Amazon sells them for $11.16. If they charged CA sales tax they'd have to add 84 cents onto that price. Granted it would take away some of their price advantage on the Barnes & Noble (and B&N always charges sales tax) but the pre-tax price of my books on B&N was already $11.18 so Amazon never had a significant price advantage there to begin with. And if someone were to buy three of my books on Amazon they'd get free shipping. B&N will give you free shipping too but only if you pay them a yearly membership fee. So boom, there's your price advantage, Amazon.

In other words, charging sales tax may level the playing field slightly more than it currently is but the playing field still won't even be close to being level. As always, it will be at a very steep tilt with the advantage going to Amazon.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Amazon basher. Independent bookstores and publishers have been hating on Amazon for years. But while Amazon may have contributed to the decline in the physical presence of independent bookstores (and to be fair most of the blame for that goes to B&N and Borders) the independents that did survive are better due to the competition. I know a lot of people will take issue with that but I don't think that Indie Bound (the excellent website that allows you to order books online from independent book sellers) or independent book-seller-extrodinaire Powell's would have such strong online presences if they didn't know they were up against Amazon. I don't think reader reviews would be posted on booksellers' websites if Amazon hadn't started that trend. And I don't think so many successful published authors would be self-publishing through Amazon if the publishing industry had a better business model. So as a whole I applaud Amazon for pushing book buying and online retailing into the 21st century. I have bought many items from them in the past and I have no doubt that I'll be buy many more from them in the future.

But when it comes to charging sales tax? I'm sorry but their arguments just aren't as compelling as they seem to think they are.

Kyra Davis
Author of
The Sophie Katz Series
And
So Much For My Happy Ending

Not Missing The Baby Days

2011-06-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

When my son was a baby people would come up to me in stores or in restaurants, bend down to look into my son's seemingly innocent blue eyes, gaze at his big blonde curls and say, "Oh, I miss this stage!" And I would smile sweetly and think to myself, "They must not remember what it's really like."

I like babies but I'm not a "baby person." I also learned during the mom's group that I attended during his infancy that, compared to his peers, mine was not an "easy baby."

"He's spirited!" The maternity nurse said as my son screamed like a banshee in her arms. "He's out spoken!" His daycare provider explained. My all time favorite quote was from one of his preschool teachers who told me, "He lacks a certain subtly of emotion." And yet he really was cute, and very smart and, when he wasn't screaming like a banshee, very charming which made me wonder, would I too miss this stage when he outgrew it?

My son just turned 12 on Tuesday and I think I have my answer: No.

For one thing he's still cute smart and charming but the screaming-like-a-banshee-thing didn't stand the test of time. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't have fond memories and those baby/toddler years provided me with tons of wonderful stories but still, I don't miss those years. The fact is I really, really like who he is now. Yes, I know he's an adolescent and that this can also be a challenging stage. He reenforces that point whenever I try to take him clothes shopping (for those of you who have younger boys, be forewarned; once your child hits the double digits he will no longer indulge you while you window shop at the mall).

But although he certainly has moments of "hating me" so far those moments don't last any longer than they did when he was younger and they haven't increased in frequency. He shows no sign of being embarrassed by me at all. If anything he seems rather proud to call me mom. As for being less affectionate...well this morning he came into my room to give me a hug because he thought a hug would be a good way for me to start my day so that's a bridge I don't have to cross yet.

And is (and continues to develop into) a really cool individual. So many of his observations about society and our world are not only spot on but are incredibly insightful.

And he hasn't lost his sense of wonder at all despite the fact that he once worried that he would.

See, shortly after his fourth birthday I took him to a Natural History museum (one of his favorite things to do). He had a great time but once we left he got very quiet, then teary. Finally he told me what had him upset. "What if, when I get older, I forget how wonderful dinosaurs are. What if I just don't feel it anymore?"

It was such an odd and moving question (coming from a four year old) that it actually took me aback. "That might not happen," I said. "Maybe you'll always love dinosaurs. Who knows? Maybe you'll become a paleontologist."

And I'll never forget the little smile that took form on his lips as he considered this. For about six years he insisted that yes, he would be a paleontologist. Now he's not so sure but he is still impressed with dinosaurs. He still finds new new scientific studies, paleontological and archeological finds awe inspiring. He is interested and...and awake enough to understand how fascinating our world is. The fact that he's been able to maintain that while maturing and becoming more independent...well it just thrills me.

So as much as I loved who he was I don't pine for those years. I'm too excited about the now and next. What career will he choose? What college will he want to go to? How will he handle himself in high school? Will he still want to be part of his school's DC trip next year?

Will he give me a hug tomorrow morning?

So many possibilities...

-Kyra Davis

Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Mystery Series
, and
So Much For My Happy Ending
order the latest release, Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress today!

Are We Empowered By Other's Narcissism?

2011-05-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

About a month ago NPR reported on a study which proved that the lyrics in popular music has become increasingly narcissistic over the last 25 years. In 1985 the #1 song was We Are The World. Now it seems like at least half the songs that are playing on the radio include lyrics that let us all know how fabulous the musical artists who are performing them are. It's easy to spot the trend, from Timberlake who claims to be Bringing Sexy Back to Taio Cruz and Ludacris who are going to Break Your Heart...but that's apparently forgivable because Ludacris doesn't "think there's anybody as bomb" as he is so we need to feel blessed that he's giving us any attention at all.

I asked my Facebook and Twitter followers what they thought about the issue and I got a lot of responses, many of which blamed the rise of narcissism in our pop-culture on the self-aggrandising nature of social media. Others pointed out that narcissism is the foundation of most reality TV.

All that's true but I think the most interesting thing about this pop-culture phenomenon is not that it's on the rise, it's that the public seems to crave it. When I was a teen MTV's The Real World was the big reality show. It topped out at 5.5 million viewers. The Real World San Francisco featured a man named Padro, who was gay and living with AIDS. He became a cultural icon and when he died the President actually issued a statement mourning our nation's loss and thanking him for helping to raise AIDS awareness.

Now MTV's big reality show is Jersey Shore which averages 8.9 million viewers. That's particularly impressive when you consider that The Real World had much less competition than Jersey Shore has (back in the Real World days of my youth most of us didn't have 500 channels and 2 television sets). And who are the Jersey Shore break-out stars? They're the most narcissistic of the bunch. Snooki and The Situation. And yes, we say it's because we like to laugh at them, and some of us do. But the we-just-watch-for-kicks-and-giggles argument sort of went out the window when Rutgers University paid her a $32,000 appearance fee to do a Q and A with their students. And then there are the Real Housewives. The more selfish their behavior the more likely they are to make it on the cover of US Weekly and that's not because US Weekly loves the Real Housewives, it's because they know that enough of us love them to justify plastering their picture on a cover. Many point out that viewers like to look down their noses at reality show stars and that doing so makes them feel like their own lives are more together than they once thought. I can't entirely disagree with that but I think there's more to it.

As for the music, well I'll be the first to admit that I love a lot of those narcissistic songs. When you dance, sing or simply blast them from your car stereo they no longer belong to the musical artists who created them, they belong to you. And therefore those narcissistic lyrics feel personally empowering. And although I'm not a Jersey Shore or Real Housewives fan maybe those who are are driven by similar motivations. After all most of us wouldn't run around acting like a drunk diva (à la Snooki) or as selfishly as one of those bleach blonde Orange County housewives. But maybe part of us wishes we could every once in a while. Maybe we wish we could have a taste of that level of confidence and entitlement. Maybe that's always been the appeal of rock-n-roll. Yes, it's true that Mick Jagger has never gotten on the stage, grabbed the mic and screamed, "There's nobody as bomb as me."

But he sure as hell implied it. And his badass energy continues to infect those of us who tune into it.

And we loove him for it.

Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Mystery Series
and So Much For My Happy Ending
Check out Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress in stores now!

Today There's A Little Less Evil In The World, So Yes, You CAN Celebrate.

2011-05-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

When I first heard that Osama Bin Laden had been killed three thoughts rushed through my mind. They were as follows (and in the following order):

1) Wow! We actually got him!

2)...but Judaism tells me I can't celebrate an enemy's death

3) What exactly does this change in the grand scheme of things? Not a lot.

The second thought is absolutely true. It's why, on Passover, we have to take a drop of wine out of our cups for every plague we list off during the seder. It doesn't matter if only our suppressors were stricken down, our cups cannot be completely full while anyone is being killed. So as evil as Osama Bin Laden was I was wary of celebrating the victory. As you can see from the Huffington Post, I'm not the only one who felt this way.

And then I made the mistake of talking to my mother about all this over the phone within earshot of my son who was excitedly drawing a picture of the American Flag. He heard me speculate on how this would not in any way shape or form end terrorism or shorten the wars we're involved in and all the rest of it and he immediately started tearing up. "I was so excited," he said, his voice shaking. "I thought this meant something."

And that's when I realized that I was looking at this thing the wrong way.

As I sat him down an analogy popped into my head. "If someone kills your family," I said, "and the killer is caught ten years later and given the death penalty it doesn't bring back your family. It doesn't stop other murderers from killing people. But what it does is restore our faith in justice. It assures us that the rewards of evil are fleeting and the consequences severe and irreversible. That means a lot. Today there is a little less evil in the world and today marks a huge victory for Justice."

That is most definitely something worthy of true celebration.

As for the whole thing about celebrating the death of an enemy....

Well in the words of Mark Twain, "I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

Pretty much sums up what I'm feeling right now.

Author of

The Sophie Katz Mystery Series

And

So Much For My Happy Ending

Sophie est en France!

2011-04-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, when Sophie takes her annual trip to France. This is her 5th trip and every time she goes I love France a little more. Why? Because I love the way the French love my Sophie. The French translations of my books now sell almost as many copies as the Sophie books that are published in the states in the English language they were originally written in.

Think about that for a moment. There are over 307 million people in the US and there are only a little over 62 million people in France. So percentage wise, the support Sophie receives from French readers is almost 6 times as strong as the support Sophie receives from her American readers.

The question of course is why. One reason may simply be that the French have fewer options. That's not to say there aren't as many wonderful books written in French as there are written in English. However the French have yet to fully embrace ebooks and there are no French audiobook versions of Sophie. In the states I am constantly competing with myself. My book sales will drop but my ebook sales and audio-book sales will rise and it is always a battle to get publishers to look at the whole picture. In France the picture is much narrower and precise. No equations are necessary in order to figure out if Sophie is maintaining and even building her popularity.

Then there's the French (or to be accurate, the French Canadian) art department. In America Sexe, Mensonges Et Petite Robe Noire is Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress and as you can see, it's an entirely different cover...and it's boring. The little black dress on the bottom is absolutely dowdy (I pushed for a sexier version of that dress but every time they fiddle with it the results were worse). There's nothing dowdy about the French cover. It's girly but the sheer stockings dangling from the drawer, the necklace hanging out of the jewelry box and the bra hanging from the dress keep it from being too neat (and therefore making it more Sophie). It's hard to see from this picture, but in her bag Sophie has a fold up map of San Francisco and a little sleuth-like magnifying glass. It's adorable, flirty, chick-lity fun. The American art department wanted to switch up the cover to make it look less chick-litish but the French aren't afraid of chick-lit and the art department figured that there's no need to pretend the book is more subdued than it is.

But perhaps the most surprising part of Sophie's success is that it goes against common wisdom (or at least common wisdom in the US). There's a sense that the French don't want to read about "ethnic" characters or see them in their movies. People will often point to Will Smith's box office struggles in Europe as proof of this. Hollywood's so paranoid about the supposed phenomenon that when Couples Retreat was released in Europe the studio's art department initially removed the black actors from the movie poster.

Sophie's both black and Jewish. Now if you look at the most recent French cover, Sophie doesn't look very black. However, if you compare Sophie's skin tone on that cover to her skin tone on the cover of the US version of Obsession, Deceit and Really Dark Chocolate you can see that she's been tanning. Furthermore, if you compare Obsession, Deceit And Really Dark Chocolate to its French translation you can see that Sophie is always darker when she gets to France (maybe she's hanging out on the Riviera). Of the seven main recurring characters in the Sophie novels, three are black and four are Jewish.

And the French continue to embrace the books. I'm not suggesting that there isn't racism or anti-Semitism in France anymore than I'm suggesting that those things don't exist in America. But I do think that the American perception of French prejudice might not be as accurate as we thought it was. My sense is that the prejudice that exists in France and Europe as a whole, may be based more on cultural differences than actual skin-color. I'm not an expert on this subject, I'm just throwing this out there. But at the very least we should be asking ourselves why Sophie was able to buck a perceived trend.

Because the jury is out in regards to how the French feel about Sophie. They love her.

And my French readers should know, she loves them right back.

American Humane Association

Our Girl Sophie Has A Lot Going On Right Now

2011-04-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

A lot of you have been asking me when the next Sophie book will be coming out. I know I have been vague to say the least, never committing to anything beyond, "I'm working on it."

And I am working on it but I have to put it aside for a few weeks so I can give my focus to writing, polishing and perfecting a pilot for an original TV series that is in development with Lifetime. At the moment it looks like the show will simply be called "Sophie Katz." Or maybe just, "Sophie." Rod Lurie, creator and producer of Commander In Chief has signed on to executive produce should the series be picked up. Rod is also known for his movies The Contender (starring Gary Olson and Joan Allen), Nothing But the Truth (starring Matt Dillon) and The Last Castle (starring Robert Redford) and many others. Oh and he WILL be known for his upcoming movie, Straw Dogs, starring the love of my life, Alexander Skarsgard. It was through Rod that I actually got to meet Skarsgard which was kinda cool (understatement).

The Sophie series will feature all the characters my readers have come to love but it will have very different storylines than the ones you've already read. And yes, of course Anatoly will be a major part of each and every story.

It's all incredibly exciting however we still have a long way to go before Sophie has the opportunity to stroll into America's living rooms. For one thing, Lifetime has to actually LIKE my pilot enough to film it. Then they have to like what they've filmed enough to pick it up. Then the ratings have to be strong enough to keep it on the air. Lots and lots of variables. But it's a promising beginning.

Even if the show doesn't get picked up I must say that I'm enjoying the process of creating it a lot.

As for the book...the release date is somewhat contingent on how this whole thing plays out. I've been advised that I should coordinate the release with certain bench marks in the show's development and, if I'm extremely lucky, its premiere. That doesn't necessarily mean I'd wait for the premier of the series to release the book but I might wait until Lifetime launches their publicity campaign. Keep in mind, this isn't a Lifetime movie or a mini-series but a regular ol' ongoing series. Currently Lifetime's only two original series on air are Army Wives and Drop Dead Diva.

But that's going to change.

I'm also not 100% convinced that self-publishing isn't the way to go for me. I've had six books published through traditional channels and I do have a following, many of whom read ebooks. So then the question is, do I really need a publisher? New York Times bestselling author, Barry Eisler certainly doesn't think he needs one. He just turned down a $500,000 advance so he could self-publish through ebooks. So as you can see, I have a lot to think about. I can promise you that the 6th Sophie book really and truly is in the works and regardless of whether or not things work out with the television show, I will be releasing it for public consumption in the not too distant future.

For now, everybody keep your fingers crossed for me and, if you haven't already done it, sign your name on the petition to make a Sophie Katz TV series. Can't hurt to let TPTB know that there's a demand for our girl ;-)

And no, this isn't an April Fools Joke :-P

--Kyra "Fashionista Fatale" Davis

Big Love Finale--Eh.

2011-03-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read the Big Love Finale, STOP READING NOW! Major spoiler alert!!!!

I can't begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to the Big Love finale. As the last season progressed I began to suspect that wives, Margie and Barbara, were about to leave the polygamist marriage. How would Barbara reconcile the fact that she and her husband had grown in different directions and now were attached to different values. Obviously Barbara and Bill still loved each other but their marriage was no longer a good fit for either of them. I knew that it would take an enormous amount of personal strength and emotional turmoil to face the music and do what was right for both of them. As for Margie, well she clearly got married for the wrong reasons. She spent much of the last two seasons talking about how she got married to get out of her current living situation with her mother. She wanted to be "saved." And she was but she married too young and now she was finally beginning to understand that she needed to step away from the restrictions of this particular group in order to define herself based on her own passions and personality rather than Bill's. Ironically, Nikki, the only one of the three women who grew up with the assumption that she would be in a plural marriage, would end up being a marriage built for two and in some ways that would be perfect because despite all her craziness she seemed to have more respect for Bill's ideas about religion, relationships and marriage than any of the rest of them. Again, the decision to leave wouldn't be, couldn't be black and white. It would be complicated with lots of pluses and minuses, excitement and heartbreak. And I figured that was perfect. Perfect that we would have such an emotionally complex and layered finale to what has been an emotionally complex and layered show.

Or what if Bill actually got twenty years in jail? Would the women continue to allow him to set the rules from jail and if not how would they be able to sooth their conscience knowing that the man they'd abandoned or demoralized went to jail because of a marriage that they all were a part of? That would have been a fascinating issue to explore during the finale (they might have been forced to make the finale 2 hours long but I doubt fans would have complained).

It honestly didn't occur to me that they'd take the easy way out. Clearly if Bill died then Barbara would no longer have to worry about reconciling her new ideals and values with the conflicting ideals of her marriage. Bill could give her his approval without ever having to live with the consequences. Margie wouldn't have to worry about deciding between a path that works for her and her loyalty and love for the husband she once needed. If Bill dies everybody can say they stuck by their man until death and deferred to his authority until he was no longer available to offer it. Yes, it was a twist to have Bill die at the hands of such an unlikely enemy but the while the actions and motivations of the murderer were surprising the results of that action were mundane.

I may be the only one who feels this way. I've read other reviews of the finale and they're all pretty positive, applauding the way it all wrapped up perfectly. In fact you could say they're applauding the perfection that I found so grating.

But that's finales for you. They are rarely as satisfying as you'd like them to be and very rarely live up to the overall show the viewers had grown to love. With the Lost season finale there were those who loved, loved, loved it and others who hated, hated, hated it. In this case I may be the lone dissenter in which case they did a bang up job in pleasing the vast majority of their audience. I'll try not to complain...too much.

--Kyra Davis

Japan Needs Us.

2011-03-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

When the news of the Japanese earthquake was broadcasted across the stratosphere, one number kept banging around in my mind, 8.9.

I was near the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake of 89'. It was a 6.9 earthquake, the largest the continental United States had seen in over fifty years. It destroyed the downtown area my hometown of Santa Cruz. That's not hyperbole. There is not a single building along the main strip of Downtown Santa Cruz today that was there before 89'. All those pre-89 buildings just collapsed. People died. The merchants were literally operating out of tents for years. But of course what I remember most is that moment when a typical California earthquake become more serious. A friend of mine had come over to my family's home after school. My mom was busy with something in the kitchen, my stepfather was up in Oakland with a friend for the third game in the world series and my older brother was ignoring all of us as he watched TV.

And then things started to move.

Downtown Santa Cruz after 89' quake

My friend rolled her eyes and muttered, "I hate these things," as my mom ushered us under the doorframe. My brother was a little slower to comply and then...everything just changed. The house was shaking too much and it immediately became clear that this wasn't a "typical" anything. Finally grasping the danger, my brother grabbed the dog and held him still. My mother gasped and yelled, "Oh my God, this is the big one!" And as we all watched the ceiling, waiting for the chimney to come crashing through, I wondered, "The big one? What does that really mean? Are we all going to die? Will it be painful? Will California go into the ocean just like in the movies?" I didn't get it. Not just because I was a kid but because it was impossible to "get."

That was 6.9. This is 8.9. That is beyond my comprehension. At least one of their aftershocks was bigger than anything California has experienced in three hundred years. And while we ALL are praying and hoping for the Japanese people I think it's fair to say that everyone in California is taking a moment to ask themselves, are we prepared? And being prepared is so much more than storing extra water, a flashlight and a first aid kit. Even before 89' my mother had drilled it into my head that nothing heavy or breakable should ever be hung over the bed, not even a framed picture and ideally your bed shouldn't be near a window. Food is hard to get after a disaster so, in addition to water, I always keep a Costco box of protein bars on hand. And then there's the issue of gas. After the 89' quake we all learned the dangers of allowing your tank to get too low. If you need to go on a search for your loved ones or, God forbid, evacuate an area quickly, you don't want to run out of gas because the gas stations might not be open for days.

But then again, a lot of this stuff won't make a difference if the building your in collapses. I dearly hope that if I have to live through a quake bigger than the Loma Prieta quake I will conduct myself with the dignity, courage and calm that the Japanese people are exhibiting now. Their strength is awe inspiring. And I think it's worth noting that while we've heard of food shortages and the like we have not heard a single report of looting or price gouging. In the last decade or so lots of disasters that have occurred in third world countries have been reported by the media but to see one of the wealthiest nations in the world suffer this, a country that boasts the world's third largest economy...well it's much easier for us to make comparisons between how things are being handled there and how they would be handled here. One thing is clear, regardless of how wealthy your country or state is, when you suffer a disaster of this proportion you need the compassion and assistance of the international community. I honestly believe that when the time comes (and we all know it's coming) Japan will be there for us. Now we need to be there for them.

Here are links to organizations that can facilitate your support:

AmeriCares

Doctors Without Borders

International Medical Corp

Save The Children

Shelterbox

World Vision

--Kyra Davis

I'll Support Him In Whatever He Does...But Does It Have To Be That?

2011-03-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

The other day I went snooping through my son's Google account (this should be a requirement for ALL parents of adolescents). And I did find something shocking. Stories that he's been writing. Lots, and lots, and lots of stories. A few of them were clearly meant to be the beginning of a book.

Throughout my son's 11 years of life I have tried to facilitate his interests. When he was two he became interested in Ancient Egypt and so we went to the library and found countless books on the subject. By three and a half I was reading him Egyptian mythology as bedtime stories. I took him to see artifacts and taught him how to spell his name in hieroglyphics. But it was also around the height of his fascination with Egypt that he expanded his interests to include dinosaurs and paleontology. So again, we got books, we went to museums, we collected fossils, we even checked out fossil replicas from the Los Angeles Natural History Museum's educational department so we could study them in our home for a week. And when he told me he wanted to be a paleontologist I thought of the tedious work of cleaning fossils with a toothbrush, the grueling hours of digging in the hot sun and the mediocre to low pay and I said, "If that's what you want to do, I'll support you all the way."

After all, it's his choice, his life. I'm not going to judge or tell him what his priorities should be. I continued to support him when he updated his goal from paleontologist to paleo-geneticist. I'm not even sure there IS such a thing as a paleo-geneticist but if he wants to pioneer a new field, more power to him.

But a writer? That one's a little harder for me to get behind. In the last eight years I've written and published 6 books, a short story and a few articles and essays. The ups and downs of this profession are intense. The rejection gut wrenching. The wins fleeting. It's a hard life. I've chosen it for myself and while I don't regret it I do occasionally wonder what it must be like for those who have a passion for other things like, oh, I don't know, accounting. If there's a kid out there who is lying in bed, dreaming of becoming a CPA, well I think that's a kid who's going to be okay. His path has been tried, tested and is ready to go. And until the government comes up with a tax structure that is easier to understand (yeah, right) there will always be a demand for those who have a love of adding, subtracting and turning family vacations into deductible expenses.

And yet my whole philosophy as a parent is to support my son in any and all educational extracurricular endeavors he chooses to pursue. I'm not the Tiger mom. I'm not going to force my kid to play the piano if he hates the piano and I'm not going to force him to practice tennis for four hours a day thereby turning something that was once enjoyable into a chore. But I will help him to understand that pursuing his passions, be they in science, history or some kind of creative expression, can be an exciting and invigorating thing to do and more than worthy of his focus and dedication. So who am I to advise him against harboring dreams of becoming a writer if that's what he wants? Who cares if it's a tough profession? It's not like there's a huge job market for paleo-genetists either.

Of course the difference is that I have no idea what it's like to try to break into and sustain yourself within the field of paleo-anything. I DO know what it's like to be a professional writer. I have the burden of too much information.

So I asked him. In the most neutral voice I could conjure up, I asked if he was interested in becoming a professional writer. He paused, thought about it, and then said, "I think it's better as a hobby." I suppressed a squeal of joy and settled for a nonchalant nod of agreement.

And yet when he created a storyboard to help him put together a play and recruited another friend to write the score, I began to wonder if "hobby" had been a euphemism for "serious career possibility." Ah well. I'm getting my seatbelt on and my pom-poms out. This could be a bumpy ride and I intend to suck it up and cheer him on all the way.

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How I Got Into Writing--The Untold Part Of The Story

2011-02-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

When I was a little kid I saw a movie about a football star who was struggling to deal with life after his retirement. I couldn't tell you the name of the movie or even who was in it but I do remember one scene where the football player tells his wife that he hates talking about the glory days of his career because every time he tells those stories they feel less and less real and more and more like fantasies. I was probably around 7 when I saw the film but even then that scene hit a chord. It dawned on me that if you retold a memory enough times it stopped being a memory and became a story, a story that has little to do with the emotions you felt at the time it occurred. It turns into a sound bite or a fairytale, but it stops being truly real.

That's sort of how I feel about the story of how I got into writing. Those of you who have read/seen/heard any interview I've ever done (in publications, radio shows and regional television stations all over the US and Italy) know that I started writing during my divorce. You know that I hadn't been pursuing writing as a career before that. You know that writing Sex, Murder And A Double Latte (my first novel) gave me direction and strength during a time when my life was in shambles. I've retold that piece of my history so many times it doesn't feel real anymore. The swirl of intense emotions that existed for me at that time no longer exist in that story. Just like when you hear a song on the radio that excites you initially but begins to bore you once every radio station starts playing it twenty or more times a day.

All this has gotten me thinking, is there more to the story? Something that I haven't really talked about or explored? Something that will keep me from getting bored by my own author-orgin story? Of course the answer to that is yes. Because although I've told countless people that I hadn't considered a career as a writer before my divorce that's not 100% true. I hadn't considered a career as a novelist. But I had considered (and then forcibly pushed aside) the idea of pursing a career as a writer.

The truth is that I have always loved writing. As a kid I won prizes on the few occasions when my school would have short-story contests. In middle school I told my mother I was going to be a playwright. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon and Shakespeare were my heroes. I've read Satre's No Exit, Wilder's Our Town and Sterner's Other People's Money more times than I can count. In high school I even wrote and performed a short skit for a charity event/competition benefiting women's shelters and was honored beyond words when I took first prize in my category. And yet by the time I received that honor I had already given up my playwriting ambitions, not because I didn't have a passion for writing but because I was rebellious.

According to my grandmother, writing was something all the women in our family were supposed to do. My mother had disappointed my grandmother by not pursuing a career as a writer and now the burden was on me. My grandmother helped raise me and I loved her and my grandfather they way other children love their father. To this day the memory of my grandparents continues to inspire me.

And yet I'd be lying if I were to say that I wasn't a little resentful of her "plan," for me. According to her, women in our family needed to begin piano and ballet lessons at 5. I did but refused to practice the piano and quickly traded in ballet for more modern forms of dance (never really heard the end of that). When I turned 12 my grandmother bought me private singing lessons as a "birthday gift." Singing lessons were nowhere to be found on my wish list but I understood that, like the ballet lessons, this was something I was supposed to do. I also understood that my voice was fine but not as good as my mother's voice and there was a level of competition involved in all this as far as my grandmother was concerned. The only reason I wasn't pushed to draw more was because I so clearly sucked at it. But writing? That was something I had a talent for. My mother and grandmother had a talent for it too. "I can't decide who's the better writer," my grandmother would muse, "your mother, you or me."

But I didn't want to compete with members of my own family and I was not going to pursue a dream that someone else had handed to me. Instead I threw myself into acting. Acting was the one art form that no one felt I needed to do. No one ever said, "You must audition for this play." No one in my family had ever seriously pursued acting endeavors which meant that the medium was mine. I never would have written a skit for someone else to perform at that charity benefit. But as long as I was the one performing it I could easily say the whole project had been about my acting and not my writing at all. And I did love acting. Performing the work of my favorite writers on stage made me absolutely giddy. But I refused to go back to my 6th grade ideas of actually making a living as a writer. At least not until my divorce...which just happened to coincided with my grandmother's passing.

Now, whenever I run into someone who knew my grandmother I'm reminded of how happy she would have been to have seen someone in the family get published and I kick myself for being too bullheaded to make that happen during her lifetime. Naming my main character (Sophie) after her hardly seems sufficient. And yet a little part of me knows that pursuing the dream of writing would have been a hundred times more intimidating if she had been around while I was doing it.

The bitter truth is that while she helped cultivate my dream of being a writer, I didn't have the confidence or even the generosity to sow those particular seeds during her lifetime.

As it is I have to settle for honoring her memory by continuing to cultivate the dream that I had previously forced into dormancy and hope that somehow she knows what I'm doing.

So that's the other part of the story of "how I got into writing." It's a little too complicated to talk about in interviews. I can't fit it into a logline and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. This is a part of my history that will remain real for me.

Kyra Davis

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A NEW TWIST TO THE EBOOK

2011-02-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time on this blog talking about ebooks and what affect they have and will have on the publishing industry. But I haven't spent a lot of time talking about what it will mean for the books themselves. In general people take it for granted that an ebook is just like a regular book without the paper. But that's not always the case. As technological advances continue to be made in ereaders, ebooks are increasingly being sold with "extras." Hyperlinks to the music a character is listening to, videos of author interviews and whatnot. The only problem with this idea is that clicking on a hyperlink in the middle of a paragraph to listen to a song takes you out of the story, if only for a moment. But still, it's an important moment. When you're lost in the world some author has created for you an awkwardly placed link can mess with that experience.

My friend and a New York Times bestselling author, Alina Adams may have found a way around this. For the last several years she's been writing the Figure Skating Mysteries. But now she's trying something new with them. She's released a multimedia edition of her novel, Skate Crime. In it she's embedded videos from the Ice Theater in New York but instead of taking you out of the story she's made them an intrinsic part of the story. In a way the videos are like visual paragraphs. So it's like a book-movie, or a movie-book or maybe we should just call it a mook. Whatever it is, it's definitely interesting and in this genre it really works.

I have no doubt that some readers will cluck their tongues and say that while absorbed in a book they want all the pictures to be confined within their own heads. I can already hear the disdainful voices condemning this as a horrible bastardization of real literature.

But you know what? Those aren't the readers who would be picking up a Figure Skating mystery anyway. And let's face it, there isn't anything more visual than figure skating so why not use that to an advantage? This isn't a replacement for books (there will always be some books that I'll want to read in paper form). This is just another form of entertainment for those looking for something new, creative and innovative. Oh and the book is priced at $0.99. I'm a big fan of creative innovation that you can buy for the price of a Kit Kat.

Anyway, it's a project that I'm going to be watching carefully. The ebook revolution isn't just changing the way we shop for and buy books. In some cases it will give authors new and different ways to express their vision. I can't see how that's a bad thing.

Kyra Davis

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Unisex Bathrooms: A Stinky LA Trend.

2011-01-27T12:36:00.000-08:00

What do Firefly, Eleven Nightclub and Boulevard3 all have in common? If you said they're all LA hotspots you'd be correct. They're restaurants, clubs and lounges respectively. But that's not the similarity that I was thinking of. What really links these places is their unisex bathrooms. It seems that in LA there is nothing more chic than men and women washing their hands together after emerging from their side-by-side stalls.

Granted the stalls in these bathrooms are similar to walk-in-closets in that the door to them are floor-to-ceiling, they're roomy and, for the most part, no noise or smell can easily emit from them...until you open the door. But the fact is the men and women are still in the same line together, they vie for the same mirror space and sometimes they have to share the same very long sink with a faucet that looks more like a waterfall than anything else. It's sort of hard to wash your hands well in these waterfalls but it does look cool and apparently that's what's important.

The weirdest part is that in the many LA establishments that have embraced this new trend the bathroom has actually become a hotter pick-up spot than the bar. Bathrooms are very intimate places and when you're standing in line inside their ecru walls waiting to do your business the guy behind you is more likely to start a conversation with you than he would if you were standing next to him ordering a cosmo. While at a bar they can easily hide behind a cocktail or limit their conversations to only include the friends they came with. But men don't go to the bathroom in pairs the way women occasionally do and since a unisex bathroom means that guys actually have to wait in line to pee (not an experience they're used to) they frequently choose to pass the time by talking to a stranger. The stranger has to be a woman because guy-code says that men can't talk to other men they don't already know in bathrooms. Don't know what that's about but apparently it's a rule. The ice-breaker these men choose to use on the women in the room is usually (and predictably), "What do you think of these unisex bathrooms?"

And my answer to that question is, "I'm not into it." I'm just not all that receptive to being picked up when I'm in desperate need of a toilet. And if I'm at a bar and I don't like the guy who's chatting me up I can move but if the guy is in line behind me as I wait for a stall to open up...well there's nowhere for me to go now is there? The truth is that when it comes to public bathrooms I like keeping the sexes segregated. If I wanted to fix my make-up in front of a room full of people I'd have done it at my table. Plus I like knowing that if I do want to adjust my bra in front of a mirror I can do it without a mixed audience. I don't want the guy who has been flirting with me to take note of how long I was in my stall and I certainly don't want to smell what's coming out of his stall when he swings the door open. Call me a traditionalist but if a guy wants to pick me up in a restaurant/club/lounge he should do it by pushing alcohol on me at the bar and I don't want to share a mirror with him before the third date.

But with unisex bathrooms popping up in all the best spots in LA it's clear that I am now forced to face a new world order.

I guess I'll have to start getting salt on the rim of my margaritas so I can increase my water retention. Going to the bathroom is just a little too stressful these days.

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What Would A World Without Borders Look Like?

2011-01-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm referring to the bookstore, not a world where sovereign nations are a thing of the past. And the bookstore looks so pretty in this picture...if only there were customers inside to appreciate it. If you're not in the industry you might not be aware that Borders is in a major state of crisis. In the third quarter of 2010 they posted a $74.4 million dollar loss. They have about $445 million in trade accounts payable and in December they showed up at the door of the major New York publishing houses with their hand out asking if the houses would be cool with waiting three years to be paid what they're owed. Theoretically if publishing houses agree to hold off on collecting the debt Borders would have time to refinance with the possible help of GE and avoid Chapter 11. The publishing industry has been less than enthusiastic. In fact some publishers have stopped shipping to Borders all together. And don't expect any A-list authors to be doing signings at Borders...particularly since the chain seems to be firing many of their special events coordinators along with a few regional managers and completely closing down a Tennessee distribution center thereby eliminating 310 jobs in that area alone.

Barnes and Noble and a few other booksellers are balking at Borders request for debt leniency demanding that if publishers are going to cut Borders a break they need to cut all booksellers the exact same break. Publishers can't afford to do that and for this reason among many others they may refuse Borders request which means the company will have to go into Chapter 11. But that's really the least of Borders concerns. If more publishers stop shipping to Borders it's difficult to see how the time afforded them by a Chapter 11 filing is going to help them stay alive.

You can read the details of this unfolding story in articles printed in various different periodicals: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times among others.

But not a lot of people are writing about how this will affect the publishing industry as a whole and no one seems to be writing about how or if this will affect authors. For instance, if Borders does go under who will absorb their sales? Some will inevitably go to Barnes and Noble and independent booksellers but BN is making most of its profits now from their online presence, e-books and e-readers. I don't know that they are going to sell that many more paperbacks/hardcovers if Borders falls. If anything my guess is that this will push a lot more readers to turn to e-books. I could be wrong but the fun of going to a bookstore is being able to walk around and browse and then maybe a novel (hopefully a novel with a bright pink cover) strikes your fancy and you buy that book. But this is dependent on there being a bookstore convenient for you to browse in. Barnes and Noble has been closing lots of stores over the last year, even in areas where there are no other bookstores. It's difficult to imagine they're going to open more if Borders disappears. So if there is not store to browse in and you want a book you're going to have to go online...but browsing online is a little different than browsing in a bookstore. You will see the books that Amazon and Barnes and Noble are pimping on their home page but you won't see the books that might have been faced out on their designated shelves by an individual employee. Midlisters will have even less visibility than they have now (and we really don't have a lot of visibility now).

And what about this debt that the publishing houses aren't going to be able to collect on? How exactly are they going to be making up for that loss? Publishing is not a high-profit game. My guess is that they're going to have to save by cutting back in areas of acquisitions, marketing and publicity. The A-listers will still get a decent marketing budget and I don't begrudge them that. After all, they're the only ones keeping publishing industry afloat. But I think midlisters and first time novelists are going to have to come to terms with the fact that we are now on the same level as indie rock bands. We have some followers, some diehard fans, but not enough of either to actually make us a decent living and the only way a "record label" is going to give us more than the time of day is if WE ARE the record label.

Yes, I'm talking about self-publishing again. For the record, things are looking good for the Sophie series right now but I'm still not 100% convinced that I should put her in the hands of a major publishing house at this point. Why share the profits with someone who is going to do nothing more than operate as a printing press? With fewer and fewer stores to distribute to and e-books sales up 165% does it really makes sense to partner with an industry struggling to adjust? When I asked Facebook followers what form they prefer their books in less than a fourth listed off paperbacks and/or hardcovers as their medium of choice. Ebooks and audiobooks were clearly a convenience that a lot of people were understandably eager to take advantage of.

I don't have any definitive answers (I really, really wish I did). But if you're a midlist author with an indie-rock band type following you should at the very least be considering these questions. Borders closing is a symptom of a much larger issue. It's an issue that requires the publishers to readjust their thinking. Authors would be wise to do the same.

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2010: A Wonderfully Horrible Year

2010-12-31T12:15:00.000-08:00

I ran a poll on Facebook and Twitter asking people to rank 2010 on a scale of 1--10. I got an enormous number of responses. The average score was 5....well actually, the average score was 4.9-something but I'm rounding up. Depending on how you look at it 2010's cup is half full or it just got a failing grade. Of course a few people did give it a 10 but there were a lot of 1, 2 and 3s.

Personally I'm not exactly sure how to rank 2010. If you had asked me in July I probably would have given it a 3 too. A lot of messed up things happened during the first part of the year.

But here's the unexpected part: All the events that I had been upset about turned out to be launching pads to get me to new and incredibly exciting opportunities. I don't mean that in an abstract way. I'm not suggesting that what didn't kill me made me stronger or some other stupid daily-affirmations-calendar-cliché. I mean that events that tore me apart at the time of their happening directly led me to the path that I had been seeking (and not finding) while things were going well. That's absolutely true in regards to my professional life but it's also true within my personal life. It's like I had a huge stack of books and someone just knocked them all over, making a huge mess. But the weight of their fall also knocked open the door to a secret passageway that seems to be leading to a really cool place. In fact I now actually feel grateful for those who screwed me over in the first half of the year because without them all the good stuff that happened during the latter part of the year wouldn't have taken place.

It's hard to see the big picture when you feel you're being pummeled by a bunch of seemingly overwhelming challenges and setbacks. When Spiderman was bit by a spider he didn't say, "Wow, this is awesome! I've been bit by a spider and that's going to make me a powerful superhero!" Instead he said, "Ow."

We're allowed to say, "Ow," when we're hurt. We're allowed to take a little time to nurse our wounds. But please keep in mind that sometimes the wound was a necessary component in the process of getting us to the place where we want to be. It's not always immediately obvious how that's going to happen. But sometimes the bad things aren't really so bad. You just have to give it time to figure out how it's all going to work out for you.

2010 was a difficult year for a lot of us. But, for many of us, I think all those challenges are going to lead to a really amazing 2011. Personally, I can't wait to see what it brings.

Happy New Year!

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A Psychological Disorder Is Not A Mark Of Shame

2010-12-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

There's a patron at the Starbucks I frequently write at who is schizophrenic. Judging purely from the state of his clothes I would guess that he's homeless (although it's certainly possible I'm wrong). Almost every day he comes in, buys himself a cup of coffee with his change and then sits at a table by himself and carries on an animated conversation (with himself). I don't know what the "voices in his head" are saying but apparently they are very entertaining. He never raises his voice but if you're at a nearby table it's easy to hear that his conversations always make him laugh and smile and at times I'm almost jealous of him. If I want to hang out with a friend I have to pick up the telephone and arrange a meeting. He on the other hand apparently carries his friends with him everywhere he goes. If he had access to Microsoft Word he could probably turn those voices into endearing characters who we could all enjoy.

I told this to a woman I met at a party who had just told me that she worked at a different Starbucks. She nodded and then said, "The Starbucks I work at has security so people like that never get in."

Note that I never said that this man harassed the other customers. I never said he hassled the staff. In fact what I did say was that he was a paying customer and that he was in good spirits. I also said he was schizophrenic and homeless and in this woman's mind as well as the minds of the vast majority of people all over the world (whether they admit it or not) that is enough of a reason to forbid him access to establishments where "civilized" people like to hang out.

The other day while I was at my standard Starbucks the man fell out of his chair. He just sort of tipped over and landed with a thud. He lay there stunned for a moment and then pulled himself together, righted his chair and sat down again. I was on the other side of the cafe but I noticed that no one near him asked if he was okay. No one said anything. They just stared at him and then returned to their coffee.

If I had fallen someone would have asked if I was okay.

It got me thinking of the time, several years ago now, that I took someone close to me to a psychiatric ward after he became suicidal. His suicidal impulses were brought on partially by extreme circumstances but mostly because of a psychiatric condition he had not fully gotten a handle on or been able to fully accept. When you take someone to the hospital so they can commit themselves (and he was going willingly) you don't go immediately to the psych ward. You go to registration. I went up to the woman at the desk and explained why we were there. The woman, who was extraordinarily solicitous and kind...to me, directed me to a seat and gave me some forms. She did not direct the man I had taken with me to a seat. She did not say hello to him. She offered me a glass of water and a huge comforting smile. But the guy who was to actually become a patient...well it was like she was willing him into invisibility.

The man I had brought to the hospital was suicidal but he wasn't stupid nor was he incoherent. In fact he's fairly brilliant and he was, at that moment, very calm. "She doesn't think I can fill the forms out for myself," he said under his breath as he took a seat next to me. "She's not even treating me with the respect you would show a five year old."

If this is how people with psychological conditions are treated at the hospital why would anyone reach out for help? Why would they accept a diagnosis that would ostracize them from the rest of the world? Those who clearly have a psychological disorder, like my buddy at Starbucks, are treated like lepers. Those who have psychological disorders that manifest themselves in more subtle ways are treated like high-maintenece freaks who always get what's coming to them. If someone comes out and admits to having heart disease or AIDS we don't roll our eyes and tell them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. When someone tells us they have cancer we don't get angry at them when the symptoms of their illness overwhelms them and affects their behavior. That's not to say that we should shrug our shoulders and smile when a loved one fighting diabetes binges on chocolate cake and tosses their medication out the window. In fact if we saw someone we cared about behaving that way we would probably get angry and demand that they put the fork down and get their butt to a pharmacy and/or doctor. But with the mentally ill we rarely demand that they get help. We're much more likely to tell them to just pull themselves together, get angry when they don't and eventually become ambivalent and...well, will them into invisibility.

I have seen both friends and family members self destruct. Once I've tried and failed several times to get them on the path of recovery I have walked away. It is, of course, important to know the difference between being tenacious and beating your head against a brick wall. Plus truly self-destructive people are like suicide bombers. They blow themselves up and everybody around them gets hit with the shrapnel. I'm compassionate but I'm no martyr and I won't be an enabler. Still, before I walk away I TRY. I try to help them get over the shame they feel for having demons or an illness. I try to get them to accept their situation so they can deal with it. But I am one voice trying to be heard over the collective screams of a society who would have these individuals believe that their demons are their own personal failings. That any admission of a psychiatric condition will be used by others to define them as human beings.

I think that more people WOULD get help if we all bothered to ask the homeless man if he's okay after he falls down. I think more people would choose an option other than self-destruction if the receptionist at the hospital didn't treat those with psychiatric conditions like lepers. I think if we didn't immediately back away and avert our eyes when someone confesses to having a psychological disorder more people would seek treatment and if they did more resources would be assigned to finding newer and better treatments. That's just supply and demand. But we live in a world that is trying to squash that demand to the peril of a huge portion of our population. I know there has been some improvements in our understanding and acceptance of psychological disorders, but we have such a long way to go.

We have to change our thinking about this. We can't withhold our compassion from those who need it most.

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Why All Jews Should Love Christmas

2010-12-24T12:02:00.000-08:00

As a Jew I really have come to love Christmas. I didn't love it so much when I was working retail but now that those days are behind me I'm back to loving it again. I suppose I love it for all the wrong reasons but again, I'm a Jew so I think I should be given some leeway on this one.

I love it because I like the lights and the makeshift eco-ice iceskating rings that pop up all over California (almost like skating on REAL ice...or so I'm told). I love the Christmas carols by Annie Lennox, Stevie Nicks or any other pop sensation with a haunting voice that I once listened to with my mom when I was a little kid.

But most of all I love that I don't have to stress over the whole thing. My son and I go all out for Hanukkah. I decorate the house in sparkling blue and white banners and whatnot with the word Hanukkah spelled in four or five different ways, I make sure that there's at least one perfectly wrapped gift to open for each of the eight nights, I make latkes and I scout out the entire city to find the best jelly donuts. It's fun, it's magical and it's exhausting. And when it's done it's done. I don't have to stress anymore. I am not out there with the last minute shoppers desperately trying to find the perfect last minute holiday gift. If there is someone who I feel needs a Christmas gift from me I usually just try to get it there by New Years. I figure they all know I'm a Jew and therefore will excuse my inability to remember that I must ship a week early in order to get the post office to deliver something to a residence by the 24th. Being Jewish at Christmas is like being Californian in New York. "Oh so she's always a little late and a little crazy," my New York friends will say during my visits, with a little chuckle. "It's part of her Californian charm." That's exactly how my Christian friends view my belated gifts and my Christmas-laissez-faire attitude. It's just me being my charmingly crazy Jewish self.

It's also true that while Hanukkah always sets me back a few bucks financially it doesn't have the financial impact Christmas seems to have on a lot of people. I used to try to get a little Christmas gift for each of my son's teachers but now that I'm in LA my son's teachers are all Jewish anyway so I just send him to school with a few extra jelly donuts to hand out during the Festival of Lights and boom, we're done. Not a lot of extra expense there.

And I don't have to lug a tree on top of my car or vacuum up a bunch of nettles, instead I can enjoy everybody else's trees without putting out any effort at all. I know the commercials say that the Christmas season is supposed to be about cherished family time and all that but as I said, I used to work retail and I know damned well that for a lot of people Christmas is about running around like a crazy person, maxing out your credit card, fighting your fellow shoppers for the last remaining animatronic toy and/or video games that was advertised during the Sponge Bob Holiday Special and screaming at your salesperson because she can't find a size eight holiday party dress that will fit your recently eggnog-enhanced figure. God forbid you should just buy a ten...but lets not waste time revisiting the Ghost of Christmas-Retail-Past. My point is that as someone who doesn't have to worry about any of that I can just sit back and watch The Christmas Story for the 8-millionth time while eating bagel chips and my much less caloric but equally indulgent pomegranate martini (although there's a chance that there's still some evidence of the jelly donuts on my figure by the time the 25th rolls around but most of it has inevitably been burned off while stumbling around on the eco-ice).

And perhaps most importantly, I love Christmas because no one makes any demands of me between the 24th of December and January 1st. Editors and whatnot are all out of the office, no one sets a deadline that lands during this week. If I'm working on a new book, no one from marketing will choose this week to call me out of the blue to ask if I could get them a new author's bio or a list of quotes from recent reviews by tomorrow. I usually send my son up to Santa Cruz to spend time with my parents and for once I get to work on whatever it is I want to work on without being pulled in fifty different directions.

It's hard to find that kind of calm when you're a working single mother and when you do find it, once a year during Christmas, it's worth cherishing.

For me that's the magic of Christmas.

So to all my readers, Merry Christmas. If you're celebrating it then I hope your holiday is filled with joy and laughter. If you're not really celebrating it because you're one of my fellow tribe members, or a member of another non-Christian religion, are a Jehovah Witness or are simply allergic to pine-trees then I hope your day is filled with the peace and calm that only Christmas can bring.

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Reinventing Yourself After 35

2010-12-14T11:58:00.000-08:00

These days a lot of people have to reinvent themselves between the ages of 35 and 45, occasionally even older. Sometimes they have to reinvent themselves professionally because of an unforeseen layoff or career setback. Sometimes it's on a personal level due to the end of a marriage that lasted well over a decade. Thanks to Sephora and the talented colorist in your local hair salon it's pretty easy to trade in the mom jeans for a pair of Rock & Republics and hit the hip lounges without seeming out of place. As for the professional changes, well, no one is able to retire before 70 these days anyway so if you start a new career at 40 you still have at least thirty working years ahead of you. The problem is not that reinvention is too challenging, the problem is that it feels too challenging.

People in their 20s often feel like the world is full of possibilities. They can do anything they set their minds to. They will find the right man or woman and they will not settle. They will "establish" themselves within their profession of choice before having their 2.5 completely healthy, adorable and obedient children. The children will make their marriage stronger and will be raised in the way this perfect couple wants to raise them (and both spouses will be on the same page in regards to child rearing, always). There will be no plastic toys, no TV before the age of five, these kids will attend the school the parents like best and excel, share all of their parents interests and they will willingly eat their organic vegetables.

In your 20s all of these expectations seem incredibly reasonable. Every college graduate has to reinvent themselves when they step into the career world and trade in their friends-with-benifts for life partners but those reinventions aren't hard to undergo because the people doing the reinventing are sure that if they simply do all the right things everything is going to work out the way they want it to.

While in your 20s you can jump into a new endeavor with both feet and with only an ounce of fear. In your 20s you know that relocating for this or that job is obviously a good decision because even if the company isn't perfect you can MAKE it perfect. You have the power to change the world!

By 35 you know that's a load of BS. You can relocate and it might be the right decision but then again it might not be and recovering from a WRONG decision could take years and possibly bankrupt you or even cost you a relationship. You know that you can give a project your all and still have it fail. You know you can bend over backward trying to be the best employee ever and that can still not be enough to save your job or get you a much needed promotion. You know that there really are forces beyond your control. Even success may not look the way you anticipated it would. And now that you know how quickly the price of health insurance goes up and you're paying your own rent/mortgage, taking a low paying job in a new field in the hopes of making an impression on an employer and getting ahead is a very high risk and scary proposition.

If you have children you've come to realize that children are a bit like plants in that they come in lots of different varieties and even if you have always thought you would be tending to a flowering cactus garden you, my friend, have been given a fern. If you want your beautiful fern to flourish and respond to you you're going to need to give it more water and less sunshine than you previously thought was appropriate. The cactus was given to the person who expected an apple tree. And you know that if your kid's an orchid it doesn't matter how established you are in your career, the time you're going to have to spend taking care of this child is going to amount to a career setback. A 35+-parent knows that children, particularly during the first few years and PARTICULARLY if the kid's an orchid, tend to add tension to a marriage rather than marital affection.

And you know that there is no such thing as the "perfect soulmate." You know that relationships take an enormous amount of work and sometimes end even though you were sure they were going to last forever.

So in this changing economy where industries that we all thought were recession proof are biting the dust and new career approaches (and sometimes entirely new careers) are needed in order to survive, the 35-45 set frequently find themselves in the exact same position they were in when they were in their 20s except this time they're scared. Really scared, not just nervous. And when you have to start dating again during these years it's daunting because you know how much work is involved and you know that when it comes to love, or anything else for that matter, there are no guarantees. You know that frequently your job must accommodate your family obligations, not the other way around.

Taking that big leap is a lot more intimidating when you already know what it feels like to fall.

But we have to take the leap anyway. We have to be stonger than we were in our 20s. We have to use our knowledge as strength rather than a burden. We have to use our failures to make us more successful than ever. JK Rowling, Bill Gates and Walt Disney all had an intimate knowledge of failure on both a professional and personal level. To say they bounced back is sort of the understatement of the century. We can't all be Bill Gates or JK Rowling but we can learn from their refusal to give up on their ambitions and dreams. JK Rowling personified the clinical depression she experienced after her divorce by creating Dementors. Bill Gates used the experience he gained developing software for his first business Traf-O-Data (which failed) to launch Mircosoft.

No one enjoys failure and it's silly to say one shouldn't fear failure, particularly if you've experienced it before, because failure is inherently scary. But you can't be brave if you don't have any fears to face. That's the advantage that you have when you reinvent yourself later in life. Now when you take major risks you're not being naive, you're being brave. You've made mistakes which means you've learned lessons that the fresh-out-of-college graduates haven't. That's doubly true when it comes to romantic relationships. You can use your understanding of failure to accomplish amazing things.

So yes, reinventions are more frightening after 35, but they are potentially more apt for success.

And that is something to cling to when you feel on the verge of a panic attack.

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Not Sweating The Small Stuff

2010-11-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

Don't sweat the small stuff. It's one of those clichés that's actually worth repeating. However, despite what the late author/motivational speaker, Richard Carlson has claimed, it's not all small stuff. Cancer for instance. That can't be lumped into the "Small Stuff" category. If your house is being foreclosed on and you have nowhere else to live, that's not small stuff either. Women whose lives are threatened in Afghanistan simply because they want an education...well that's really big stuff.

As I write this my car is in the shop. I am hundreds of miles from my LA home and I need to get back. I need to get back to get my son to school tomorrow and because I have doctor appointments scheduled and Hanukkah preparations to make (Hanukkah starts Wednesday night). I need to get home because my mail is only being held by the post office until tomorrow and I have a plant that will probably die if not cared for soon and a gecko who won't be very happy with me if I'm not there in the near future to clean out her cage, give her fresh water and more food. I also don't have a lot of money in the bank right now to shell out for a major repair.

None of this is good news. But in the grand scheme of things it's small stuff. It's incredibly inconvenient stuff but that's about it. Although I am away from home I'm familiar with the mechanic who I had to take my car to. I trust that he's not going to take advantage of me. Plus my mechanic in LA actually gave me his personal cell phone number so I could call him and consult with him before authorizing the mechanic here to do anything that might be pricey. As for the money issue, the fact is that I'll be getting a decent sized check in January and if I need to borrow some money from family to tide me over until then so be it. I won't like doing it but I'm fortunate enough to have the kind of family who will help me with things like that. Having family support isn't small stuff, swallowing my pride in order to borrow money from them for a month is. Plants can be replaced, kids sometimes miss school and doctor's appointments can be rescheduled. And even if I have to rush to get things ready for Hanukkah I'll still be able to do it.

So the temper tantrum I was tempted to throw when my car started growling at me is unwarranted and unjustified. It's hard to take a step back and acknowledge that your problems aren't all that significant in the grand scheme of things. Easy to forget that in a lot of countries a large majority of the population can't afford any car and those who can only have a few paved and safe roads on which they can travel. It's easy to forget that some people can't afford to buy groceries. There are lots and lots of people who have no one to borrow money from or if they do they have no way to repay the borrowed sums. It's really easy to get so wrapped up in Hanukkah and Christmas shopping that you forget that there are people all over this earth who aren't allowed to celebrate their religious and cultural holidays at all.

So I'm prepared to skip on the tantrum and sit around patiently until someone can tell me exactly how much money I need to come up with and how long it will take to fix the problem. I won't break out in a sweat over the small stuff.

Instead I'll be thankful. Thankful for all my blessings, thankful for my ability to have some perspective and incredibly thankful that this car problem has given me at least an hour to take a much desired nap.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

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A Lot Has Happened Between This Thanksgiving And Last

2010-11-23T10:35:00.000-08:00

The thing about holidays like Thanksgiving is that they remind you of what you were doing and thinking at the same time last year. For me it crystalizes exactly how crazy the twelve months between last Thanksgiving and now have been. There were friends that I had at that time who were a major part of my life who I now barely ever have any communication with at all. On the flip side there are people who I barely knew or didn't know at all who I've become very close to and some of them have literally changed my life. And there are of course the friendships that I've cherished for years and have continued to grow stronger with time. Last Thanksgiving I thought my career was trucking along at a slow but steady pace. A few months after last Thanksgiving my career screeched to a halt. A few months after that it seemed to be set in reverse. And now my career is not only moving in the right direction but it's possibly poised to get on the Autobahn.

Between last Thanksgiving and now I lost my faith in love, then I began to get it back, and then I found that I simply didn't care that much one way or another. I know how that sounds but I can honestly say that my romantic life just doesn't feel like a big priority to me right now. I'm so fulfilled by my friendships, my strong connections to family and my work that the men who are vying for my attention are having a very hard time getting it. I just don't really feel the need to fit that into my schedule at the moment. That said, I do now believe that all my previous failed romances were incredibly valuable experiences. I have strong friendships with those men who I wasn't able to make things work with but nonetheless never betrayed my trust. When I think of the time I spent with those guys and when I enjoy the conversations I have with them now I'm reminded that not all men are idiots (only a small majority of you). For those failed relationships where there were hard feelings, well those hard feelings are gone (at least on my side) and I am a stronger and better person for the challenges that they (for the most part, unintentionally) put me through. In an odd way, I owe that latter group as much as I owe the former and I'm incredibly grateful for all of them.

Last Thanksgiving I thought that I would never find a middle school that would work for my gifted and special-needs child and had resigned myself to homeschooling. A few months later I found the perfect school. A few weeks after finding it I realized that I couldn't afford this perfect school and a few months after that my family stepped up to the plate and found a way to help me make it work.

Really, it's all enough to make a girl dizzy. But because of the chaos of the last twelve months I now realize exactly how much I have to be grateful for. Roller coaster rides do that to you. They make you thankful for the highs and the lows and most importantly, for your ability to get back to solid ground.

I hope that all of you have as much to be grateful for. I hope that if you're in one of those roller coaster lows you are able to remember that these rides never last forever. Eventually you'll have the opportunity to get off and then you'll be rightfully proud of your ability to survive the experience.

In the meantime try to enjoy the holiday-imposed family time and drown your sorrows in turkey gravy.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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USA is #1! Or Is That Sweden?

2010-11-18T11:53:00.000-08:00

My son (now 11) has never accepted the idea that America is #1. He simply doesn't buy it. To be honest I think the statement is overly broad too. I think America is #1 for me and mine. For instance, I like knowing that if I'm out with friends at 2 in the morning I can still stop by one of our many 24 hour drugstores or grocery stores and buy toothpaste, eggs or even lipstick if I'm in the mood. I'm very American that way. But I would never presume that every person in the world would be happier in America than they are in their home country.

Still I felt the need to challenge my son's skepticism. "All right," I said, "if America isn't #1, who is?"

My son thought about this for a few minutes before bursting out with, "Sweden!"

"Sweden," I repeated. "You think Sweden is the #1 country in the world?"

"Well," he said cautiously, "maybe not historically. I don't know much about Swedish history. But I bet they're better than us in terms of their economic and environmental policies!"

"When have you ever heard or read anything reported about Sweden's economy or environmental polices?" I asked.

"I haven't but that's the point!" he said defiantly. "You told me that the news media doesn't give very much airtime or print space for reporting good news and they like to spend lots and lots of time reporting all the bad news. They almost never even bother to report on Sweden at all so it must be a pretty awesome place where lots of good things happen and bad things almost never do!"

"Ah," I said, thinking I had found the flaw in his logic. "The thing about America is that we can be kind of egocentric. If something is happening in another country, good or bad, and it doesn't effect us economically or militarily you probably won't hear about it in the American media."

My son narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "Chi-chi-chi, le-le-le. What do a bunch of Chilean miners have to do with our economy or our military?"

"Umm--"

"You never hear about Swedish miners being trapped in unsafe mines because it probably doesn't happen!" my son continued, not giving me time to regroup. "The only people who ever can find anything to report about Sweden are the people who work for the Travel Channel or guys who work for some family channel like Disney or PBS or something and even then all you see are a bunch of happy, Swedish people being super nice and polite. They say Canadians are nicer than Americans but I bet Canadians are a bunch of jerks compared to the Swedes!"

This gave me a moment's pause. I felt I was losing this argument...to an eleven-year old. I searched my brain for the last time I had read anything in the media about Sweden. It had been in an article about Alexander Skarsgård who plays Eric on True Blood. I have a huge crush on Alexander Skarsgård so that article had indeed made me very happy. I also have a Swedish friend, Janica, who I know from our days in New York during our college years. She's now designing jewelry back in Sweden and she recently sent me a necklace she had made. That had made me happy too. And it's certainly true that nothing that has happened in Sweden has ever made me unhappy. In my entire life I have never said, "Damn it, the Swedes are really messing everything up!" So maybe my son has a point. If nothing else I am clearly incapable of proving him wrong.

So perhaps, when I can, I'll take Janica up on her repeated invitation and make my next international trip to Sweden. If I do go I plan to find out if any Swedish miners have ever been trapped anywhere and if the majority of Swedes are truly nicer than our mild mannered neighbors to the North.

Still, I'm willing to bet that you can't go into a CVS -like store and buy lipstick at 2 in the morning in Sweden. But again, that's just a hunch.

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Happy National Pizza With Everything (Except Anchovies) Day

2010-11-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

Yes really. November 12th really is National Pizza With Everything (Except Anchovies) Day. It's also Chicken Soup For The Soul Day. Oh and I wouldn't want to forget to wish you a Happy Split Pea Soup Week and a Happy Georgia Pecan Month and a Happy Good Nutrition Month and a Happy Peanut Butter Lovers Month and a Happy National Pepper Month and a Happy Raisin Bread Month and last but not least, a Happy Vegan Month. November 12th is (or falls within) all of that.

It seems every month, week and day of the year is dedicated to the celebration of a certain kind of food or diet regiment. One of the things every President does when he gets to the oval office is sign his name on the approval for a bunch of food holidays (those would be the national holidays like the National Split Pea Soup Week and the National Pepper Month). If that's not enough certain mayors and governors are also in on the act and have signed into law several other food holidays which is why National Deep Fried Clams day ironically falls within Vegan Month.

But make no mistake, these are all official holidays. They may not all be official in your state or town and you aren't going to get a day off or vacation pay in their honor but they're real. It's not like some people on the internet are sitting around making them up.

And our elected public officials have approved some really weird holidays. Tomorrow's National Indian Pudding Day (I'm not even sure I know what that is). The 18th is National Vichyssoise Day. The day after that is National Carbonated Beverage With Caffeine Day (did Coke & Pepsi actually lobby for this?) and I cannot WAIT for March 28th which is Something On A Stick Day (although that's not a National holiday, some mayor or Governor must have approved that one).

The politicians don't invent these holidays. Someone has to petition them. The big question is who. Who took the time to petition the President of the United States to make April 4th National Cordon Bleu Day? And Why? Why would anyone feel that this is a worth while and valuable exercise? Why don't the presidents ever mention these requests in the memoirs they all seem to write once leaving office? How come none of them have started a chapter with, "Ah, I remember the day I made May National Gazpacho Aficionado Month. That was such a poignant moment in my presidency." Or even, "The day I saw the petition asking me to make June 10th National Black Cow Day I remember thinking WTF?"

But these are questions that we are likely never to have the answer to. We will forever ponder them just as we may always ponder what things were like before the birth of our universe.

In the meantime make yourself a cup of chicken soup and another cup of split pea soup, order a pizza with everything (except anchovies) for dinner, serve some nutritious, vegan Raisin Bread made with a dash of pepper and smeared with peanut butter for dessert and snack on some nutritious Georgia pecans. You have a lot of celebratory eating to do.

And in case you want to keep track of these important days click this link. I know how essential it is to stay informed about this stuff.

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