You had a great aunt named Eldagirt Wirt.  That is no lie, I did.  I also had a great aunt named Clyde.  Her real name was Jean, but but for reasons I will never know, everyone called her Clyde.    Clyde was really funny, tossing out one liners like a true stand-up comic before there were such people.   She had jet black hair and chain-smoked, and she was married four times.  I have these very vague memories of her standing at the head of my grandmother’s dining room table (we had a formal meal every Sunday after church) and all the adults just bent over laughing.  To me, she looked like the crones in the fairy tale books.  But you know what?  I would give anything to have one of those Sunday dinners back so I could know how funny she was.  I would ask her why everyone called her Clyde.  I would get her to talk about her four husbands and why none of them worked, and why she moved to California and never came back.

My grandmother on the other side was a natural red head–bright red hair–and used to tell the story of how a boy asked her, and another ginger-headed boy,  to sit on the front of his car and be his headlights.  It had made her so mad.  And I can’t tell you how many times through the years I heard that story, and she’d get just as mad telling it again.  Mam-maw also ate onions like apples, and she told me Oil of Olay would burn my skin.  I would love to have her back and ask her what happened to her with Oil of Olay, and why did that  boy asking her to be his headlight make her so mad?  I think Clyde would have thought it was funny.

I thought a lot about these characters in writing  ONE SEASON OF SUNSHINE, which came out yesterday.  The book is about a woman who was adopted at birth who goes in search of her past.  She a fundamental need to know who came before her and why they gave her away.  She has a large adopted family with some colorful characters whom she loves very much, but as I wrote the book, I wondered how much of Clyde and Mee-maw I had in me, and if Jane Aaron was was going to find an Eldagirt or a Clyde in her family tree to explain her sense of humor or her curly hair.  If you want to know more about the book, and less about my nutty ancestors, I just happen to have a video for you.

Do you think about your ancestors?  Did you have any colorful characters in your family tree?  If you could bring one ancestor back to ask a question, who and what would it be?  Bonus!  Simon and Schuster is having a sweepstakes for One Season of Sunshine.  Enter for your chance to win right here.

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As noses go, mine is on the small side – barely large enough to hold up the enormous eyeglasses I wore in the early 80’s.  However, even though it is small, my nose is very sensitive.  I can smell things minutes and miles before Mr. R.  Sometimes he is amazed by this.  Mostly, though, he is just annoyed because I smell EVERYTHING.

It makes me very choosy about perfumes, shampoos, and moisturizers.  If it’s going to be on my face or head, I have to be able to tolerate not only the whole scent, but each individual component of the scent, because I can smell a lot of those too.  It’s kind of a pain in the butt.  I wish I could just wear what is popular, but I cannot.

So I sometimes look for the obscure.  I was reading article a few days ago that listed odd commercially available perfumes.  One was FLAME – as in a Burger King flame-broiled burger.  I know men who’d really like that on a woman. Then there were other, weirder scents.  Play-Doh was one.  Who would want to smell like Play-Doh? Seriously.  Then there were REALLY weird scents and we don’t want to go there.

Mr. R isn’t one for perfume, male or female – he has allergies and most perfumes give him terrible headaches.  I have one scent I can wear sparingly.   I was trying to find a new one recently – one we can both tolerate.  I gave up.

Mr. R says he would like me to wear either lemon or eau du cinnamon roll.   He says that all men love the smell of cinnamon rolls.  Vanilla flavoring would be his next choice.  As long as it’s not banana – that is the scent I hate the very most.  I’d wear blue cheese scent before banana (and I’m not planning on wearing blue cheese anytime soon).  Yes, there is a blue cheese perfume made by the Stilton Cheese people.  Just… ew.

I like to have my characters smell good.  (Not like blue cheese.)  Usually the heroes just smell “clean and manly.”  Occasionally they’ll have a cologne scent, usually something “woodsy.”  I’ve had heroines smell like coconuts/beaches and most recently honeysuckle.  I try to pick scents that everyone will like, not like banana.

Which scents would you wear?  Do you like your characters to have a scent?  Do any scents turn you off?  Would you wear Eau du Play-Doh?

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This summer, my adult autistic son has not one, but TWO summer jobs (in alternate months). The first job was serving as an intern in a commercial laundry with an organization that hires only developmentally disabled people. He seemed to really enjoy it, although it’s always hard to tell with him since he doesn’t communicate much. Tomorrow he starts his other job, doing janitorial work in a job training program. This is his fifth year with the program, and he really loves that job. He always grins on his way to work.

As he sets off for his new one, I’m reminded of my many summer jobs:

1. Staffer at a religious camp (working in a cafeteria and washing dishes, ugh)
2. Regular staff at a day care center (always did love kids)
3. Temp secretary (twice–and if I ever have to be one again, just kill me–SOOOO boring)
4. Temp technical writer (twice–I learned to make a living out of that one for a while)
5. Teacher of English as a Second Language to Vietnamese three-year-olds at a day care center (fun! They paid me to play with puppets and read Dr. Seuss books aloud–what’s not to like?)
6. Manager of the same day care center when the real manager went on maternity leave (never take an entire day care center to see “Return of the Jedi” unless you want to spend the movie ferrying 3-year-olds to the potty.)

I learned a few skills and made some money, although the only job that stuck for a while was the technical writer one.

What about you? Did you have any summer jobs? Were they good? Bad? Horrible? Did you learn any skills that you carried on into your professional life?

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Last week we visited some hot soccer players, and some of you were kind enough to suggest a few more, so — in honor of the US’s excellent showing in the World Cup (we might have lost yesterday, but hey, the team played phenomenally!) — here is FROS World Cup II.

Let’s start with KaKa:

And slip right on over to Iker Casillas:

A quick look at Harry Kewell:

And finally, a special soccer hero, Landon Donovan:

Happy FROS World Cup II!

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Summer lovin’ had me a blast…  Summer is officially here and so are all those fantastic beach reads we’ve been waiting for all year! What would summer fun be without a few great reads from our Goddesses? This month we’ve got something for both the contemporary and historical lovers. AND we’ve got some fantabulous prizes!

On June 29, Julia London brings us her latest contemporary, One Season of Sunshine. It follows last year’s Summer of Two Wishes. While it’s not a sequel, it does take us back to the lovable town of Cedar Springs, TX. Here’s a little about it:

Adopted as an infant, Jane Aaron longs to know the identity of her birth mother and why she gave her up. Her only clue is the name of the small Texas town where she was born, so she’s come to Cedar Springs for answers.

Handsome ad executive Asher Price lost his wife, the beautiful, mysterious Susanna, in a terrible car crash eighteen months ago. When he hires Jane as the nanny for his two children, sparks fly. Jane finds herself falling in love with both Asher and his children, but begins to suspect that Susanna was not the perfect mother and wife the family portrays her to have been.

As Jane gets closer and closer to finding out the truth about both her own and Susanna’s past, devastating secrets begin to emerge that may be more than anyone can bear. Will the truth bring Jane and Asher closer together or tear them apart forever?

Up next to satisfy your historical reading tooth, on July 6th Claudia brings us Daring a Duke, the fifth installment in the Courtesan Chronicles. It follows up The Courtesan’s Daughter, The Courtesan’s Secret, The Courtesan’s Wager and How to Dazzle a Duke. Read a bit about it:

Jane Elliot of New York is in London for an adventure. Unfortunately, her two brothers are also in London and quite determined that Jane have no such thing, which creates a few problems, and really is so typical of brothers.

What Jane did not expect was the Duke of Edenham to be quite so dashing and quite definitely the most handsome man she’d ever seen. She also did not expect to capture his attention upon the first look.

It was flattering, to be sure, but did Edenham have to be quite so bold with her two brothers looking on? Most inconvenient. How was a girl to have any sort of adventure at all with brothers snarling at her and a duke commanding her attention?

How? Why with Sophia Dalby’s help, that’s how. If there’s one thing Sophia believes it’s that every proper woman should have at least one very improper adventure.

We’ve got awesome prizes this month, too! One winner will receive the very last ARC (Advanced Readers Copy) of Daring a Duke and another will receive a copy of One Season of Sunshine just as soon as Julia receives her author copies. Talk about hot off the presses!

How do you enter, you ask! Just comment share what’s on your summer reading list this year by posting on this blog! We want to know which books are you most anxiously looking forward to read while you’re lounging poolside.

PS. Don’t forget–if you’re going to be at the RWA Annual Conference or will be in the Orlando, FL area on Wednesday, July 28, the Goddesses would love to see you at the Goddess Blogs Party! The shindig is from 8pm-10pm, directly after the Literacy Signing. Just RSVP to kimscastillo @msn.com.

Contest ends at midnight, Sunday, June 27. Winners will be chosen at random.

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I confess–I don’t really know how quickly Shakespeare wrote his plays. No one does. It was 400 years ago, for heaven’s sake! But I do know that he had 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and some other poems PUBLISHED in his short lifetime of 52 years (that doesn’t count anything he wrote that wasn’t published). That’s a substantial body of work. I’m around his age, and I’ve had only 29 novels, six novellas, and two short stories published. And I’m considered relatively prolific. Plus, none of my works approaches his genius.

As you can tell, despite all my picking on Will, I am a HUGE Shakespeare fan. I’ve read nearly all of the plays (some multiple times), and seen several productions, plus just about all of the movie adaptations. I think he was brilliant.

That said, I know that he’s an acquired taste. I personally think everyone should read him … but not in high school. And they shouldn’t start with the tragedies; they should start with a good rollicking comedy and work up to the hard stuff. I also think that seeing a production will endear you to him, since the 400-year-old language is harder to comprehend when you just read it.

So how do you feel about Shakespeare (it’s okay to hate him–I understand, really I do). If you hate him, why? If you love him, what is your favorite play? Favorite sonnet? What is your favorite production? Do you think that his status as one of the greatest authors ever is justified?

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I have a new phone. It’s an Motorola Droid. Yesterday, I realized I haven’t used the internet on my computer for two weeks because I’ve been doing everything — email, banking, phone calls, games, facebook, tweeting, youtubing — all of it on my Droid.

Note, however, that I didn’t mention listening to music or reading, which are both a big part of my daily ritual. Some things are better done the old way.

Which made me think about a comment from Steve Jobs of Apple fame who said that the future of the personal computer is a more universal concept. That one day we’ll make calls, read, listen to music, browse the net, get directions, shop, make and send and post videos, etc, etc, etc, all on ONE device.

I’m not there yet, but I’m getting close.

Do you have an ebook? Have you ever read a book on your computer? Would you? What do you use your phone for, other than making and getting phone calls? How do you listen to music? Watch videos? Catch up on missed GLEE episodes?

Do you think that one day we’ll have one device to do all of these things? And if so, how soon?

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