Anyway, I’ve touched a tiny bit on here, and delved in a bit deeper on my own blog, about PayPal (and in reaction to PayPal certain retailers such as Bookstrand as well) and their recent determination that selling erotica and erotic romance is the same financial risk as selling Pornography, Prostitution and Online Gambling. As a result indie authors and publishers were all lumped into one big category and declared obscene. (This is an extremely simplified in-a-nutshell explanation culled from various official statements, as well as emails and letters written and posted on various places around the web. If you are interested I suggest you Google the topic to make your own determinations.)

Anyway, thanks to industry pressure–mainly irate readers and authors as well as Mark Coker of Smashwords–as well as a denial from Visa (whose policies PayPal cited for their decision), PayPal is reevaluating their position and backing off… slightly… but at least things are moving back in the right direction.

So, now it seems that the food industry is experiencing the same kind of issues, mainly misclassification and an attempt at censorship, and of all things, WALNUTS are the target.

In a recent article I read that many recent studies have determined that omega-3 fats may lower cholesterol, inhibit tumor growth, lower the risk of breast cancer and treat major depression. Walnuts naturally contain omega-3 fats. However, when Diamond Walnuts dared to state that on their label, the FDA cracked down on them with the following statement…

“Because of these intended uses, your walnut products are drugs… Your walnut products are also new drugs … because they are not generally recognized as safe and effective for the above referenced conditions. Therefore … they may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application.”

Now, I’m not talking about Diamond Walnuts making false, unsubstantiated claims. They have the omega-3 studies to cite, and the omega-3 fats are actually in the nuts naturally, but in a twisted sense of oversight the FDA has now grouped walnuts with drugs. Again, this is an extremely simplified explanation of what is a complicated situation so READ it yourself.

So, to recap, in the U.S. today, ROMANCE NOVELS = PORN and WALNUTS = DRUGS and both need to be regulated for our own protection.

What all this does, however, is make me want both more.

I’ve got a bag of walnuts here somewhere that I keep around for if I’m making chocolate chip cookies. Or if I take the time to make slow-cooking oatmeal, I’ll throw some walnuts on top to up my protein for the meal. Now, because I like to be contrary, I’m going to eat more walnuts. I’m going to put them in my salad. I’m going to leave them laying around in bowls in the house for a snack. I may make that my gift of the year this Christmas–nuts and nut crackers for everyone!! In fact, my go-to contribution for all the parties I attended last season was nuts–mixed pecans, peanuts and walnuts tossed with rosemary-infused olive oil, spiced with cumin, sugar, salt, pepper and just a touch of cayenne pepper and toasted for 20 minutes in the oven. That dish was a hit at all the parties pre-censorship, it should be huge now it’s an illegal “new” drug!

The first was 25 Reasons That Writers are Bug-F*&$ Nuts. It spoke to my soul. Points 4 through 8 were me to a T. As were points 10, 11, 14, 16, and 17. It basically said writers are liars, and loners, messy, insane and misunderstood. And sometimes addicted to caffeine, alcohol or both.

Then there was the second post I read. It was an author writing all about her writing space. She likes to sit in the garden, or on the balcony, and let the birds’ songs make her think of what her characters might be feeling. There’s talk of feng shui and of the importance of an ergonomic chair for proper support in her fixed writing space, I guess for when she wasn’t visiting with the birds in the garden… No judgement here. That’s her and that’s fine.

Here’s me…

I can hear the washing machine running, the closest thing to birdsong is the sound of something metal scratching inside the washer drum–I think there’s a screw rolling around in there with the clothes from the husband’s workpants pocket.

I’m in bed leaning against a pillow with a cat on my legs probably giving me blood clots, and two more cats snoring next to me on the husband’s pillow, and a dog at the end of the bed. No ergonomics here.

It’s a good day. I not only got around to showering (which happens less often than I’m willing to admit), I even remembered to brush my teeth and eat something.

My bedside table, my bedroom being my office 99% of the time when I’m not working standing up at the kitchen counter while something is cooking, contains all the things a working writer needs. Right now mine contains 2 TV clickers, a pad of paper with my To Do list scratched on it and a pen, a napkin from the last meal I ate while on the laptop here in bed, a box of tissues and a box of wine (don’t judge me! It’s a lovely Malbec from Argentina with aromas of chocolate and black cherries and it’s organic!), the house phone, my cell phone, a bottle of water, lip balm, and last but not least a bottle of nighttime cold medicine I’ve been using to put me to sleep at night (I know, that’s bad. I’ve heard it already). The only reason both a coffee mug and a tea cup isn’t there is because I was exhibiting my typical stress behavior and decided to carry them downstairs rather than keep my butt here and keep writing. I also scrubbed the bathtub this morning rather than finish the book I promised an editor would be done last December.

How’s that for feng shui?

I’d say my life is a little closer to the author of blog A than the author of blog B, but hey, if past sales and upcoming book contracts are any indication, it’s working for me so far, so what can I say. To each his own and wouldn’t this be a boring place if we were all exactly the same? Sometimes you need a little crazy.

Cat

Anyway, here’s the thing…my life is weird. It is a dichotomy which might give a lesser person whiplash. It certainly hasn’t done much for my sanity–or perhaps it has. Maybe it’s saved me, because when one part gets too annoying, or stressful, or [insert adjective here], I can swing to the other parts of my life and breath a sigh of relief at the serenity of it all, embracing the pure oppositeness.

What am I talking about? Let’s take a look at today and I’ll show you.

This morning I had an internet browser window open to the Inn and Spa at Norwich with another window open to my 5 friends’ many, many emails in my inbox with another friend on the phone trying to figure out our girl’s trip away.

Swing to the other browser I had open and you’ll find the site for the American Quarter Horse where I was downloading their PDF about Cowboy Manners and procedures throughout history. (Hey, it might make for good blog or research materials or at least an interesting read).

Guess which browser window made me feel serenely calm and happy when I looked at it and which one had me ready to tear my hair out?  Am I weird that I’d rather stay home in my little farmhouse on my little farm and read about cowboys from days gone by? That the planning of this relaxing spa trip may put me on Prozac before we’re done? Probably. I guess I don’t do anything normally. My Netflix queue looks like it belongs to a schizophrenic. I’ve completed the entire season of Animal Planet’s The Last American Cowboy (a reality show about 3 Montana cattle ranches trying to survive), and I’ve also watched the entire season of the PBS Masterpiece Theater historical British show Downton Abbey. And I found both equally fascinating.

Anyway, I guess balance is necessary. After all a girl can’t live in PJs and survive on cowboys alone. Once in a while I have to leave my house and see actual live people and do things, if only to build fodder for more books to write. But sometimes, it would be really nice to hide out for a while. After all, that cowboy manners PDF is still waiting to be read…

Cat

Last night US military forces rescued two civilian aid workers who were being held by Somalian ruffians who like to fancy themselves pirates. Of course, the superior military forces saved the one American woman and one Danish man, to the demise of the majority of the captors, and I’m happy for it.

Here’s what’s pissing me off–this was not a one man, or even a 6 man, show. Reports indicate it was a SEAL team who led the rescue, some reports say SEAL Team 6, which means Twitter and every news broadcast is chock full of SEAL Team 6. What I’m saying is, first off there are many highly trained special forces, so why must we single out Team 6 to the exclusion of all else? And even more important, though I don’t know for a fact, I think it’s logical to assume that helicopter that dropped those SEALs was not piloted by a SEAL. More likely a Navy or a USMC pilot. What about that pilot–that ‘normal’ non-SEAL hero? What about the guys (meaning guys as well as girls) that made sure that helo was in working order? Or the guys that cooked those SEALs and that pilot and those helo mechanics their dinner before they went out? Or the guy who cleans the damn toilets and showers that make conditions livable for them all on that base in hotter-than-hell Djibouti on the Horn of Africa?

Why, oh why must we make this a one man show? It is not a one man, or one team, or one branch of the military, show, and though I appreciate the need for good military public relations for the citizens of this country, what about the esprit de corps of our troops? Why aren’t they all heroes for what they do, no matter how ‘media-worthy’ it is?

Soapbox Kitty, out.

1- Things change. What was true yesterday is no longer true today, and if history has shown us anything, it won’t be true tomorrow. Which brings me to the next point…

2- Never stop learning and never ever assume you know it all. Because, as I mentioned above, things change, but…

3- As much as things change, there will also be things that remain the same. I’m thinking particularly of legacy publishing as I type this, holding on to the way things used to be by the skin of its teeth. Yes, it may be making small concessions here and there, but basically, still the same. But as I said…for the sake of repetition, please refer to point #1.

4- You have to put your best foot forward at all times. You never know who’s watching. Honestly, you really never know, and what you are doing when you think no one is looking could be the defining moment in your life. It could make or break your career. Did you write a free short story just for fun? Did you put in out there for the public to read? Then that piece of writing better be the best damn thing you can put out there. It had better be as good as what you would send to your editor. It better be as good and as clean as it would be if it went through edits and proofing because, as I said, you really never know who’s out there reading it, now do you? The same goes for web presence. What’s out there on the web, be it your own domain, or blog, or Facebook or Twitter (especially FB & Twitter) it better represent you the way you want to be represented to the world, because, you just never know.

5-Luck is nothing without hard work, persistence and talent. Luck may drop an opportunity into your lap but if you let it sit there and don’t act on that opportunity, it will shrivel up and die as surely as that houseplant you forgot to water. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if there is such a thing as luck at all, because it is more likely the hard work, persistence and talent brought that opportunity to you in the first place.

6-When others talk, listen. You can decide whether to accept their opinions/suggestions later, but at least hear them out, because you never know from where the next gems of wisdom will come and because (see #2) you can never stop learning because (see #1) things never stop changing.

7- Always check your email spam folder. Sounds silly. Sounds strange. But believe me, Microsoft’s “junk” may be the thing that could change your life. And I’ll leave you with that and the promise of an explanation…soon.

Cat

Necessity is the mother of invention as they say. I wanted that tasty-looking peppermint coffee and I wanted it NOW! So I made one. I’d bought a box of candy canes a week or two ago to spruce up my kitchen Christmas decor and I happened to have a can of ready whip in the fridge. I had coffee, and the fixings I enjoy daily (Splenda and Cremora–I know, don’t judge, that’s how I like it). So I stuck a candy cane in my morning coffee, I shot it with a squirt of whipped cream (just for the visual of course…) and VIOLA! I was a happy girl sipping my peppermint coffee for no more money, and not many more calories than my usually morning brew cost me, and, this is key, I didn’t have to even go out in the cold to get it! My pajama-covered ass went no farther than my own kitchen with the heated tile floor so toasty on my happy feet.

Since I have a new book release I’m promoting, another novel for my series I’m writing, and two other stories I’m plotting, coffee and not having to leave the house are both key components of my writer’s day, but I figure everyone can use this recipe. I’m picturing a holiday party, New Year’s Eve in particular, where the hostess can set up a large coffee urn, cups, sugar and cream, all as normal BUT add a bunch of candy canes, and a bunch of cinnamon sticks as stirrers, with some whipped cream guests can make their own special gourmet coffees.

Enjoy!

Cat

And I do sit around sipping, but it’s not the bubbly. It’s coffee at the crack of dawn to wake me up, and then tea later on to warm me up (because I’m cheap and keep the heat so low). Which brings me to today’s favorite thing (see…I got around to the point of this post eventually).

BENGAL SPICE TEA from Celestial Seasonings. I drank this all the time back in the day and then forgot about it. Well I picked up a box recently and now I remember why I love it so. Spicy. Rich. Tasty. Warming. Full of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and vanilla.  Soooo good with a spoon of Agave and a dash of half and half or milk. It’s my new favorite fall/winter beverage. Try it yourself –put on PJs, throw a blanket, at least one cat and a laptop onto your lap, grab a cup of this tea and pretend you’re a romance writer too.

Cat

]]> http://eatsomethingsexy.com/blogs/catjohnson/2011/10/28/my-favorite-things-tasty-tea/feed/ 0 http://eatsomethingsexy.com/blogs/catjohnson/2011/09/19/unplugged/ http://eatsomethingsexy.com/blogs/catjohnson/2011/09/19/unplugged/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:23:50 +0000 Cat Johnson http://eatsomethingsexy.com/blogs/catjohnson/?p=551 Are we too wired?

It’s a question I find I can no longer avoid asking.  A week with friends in a house at Lake George with zero cell phone service (thank you T-Mobile) and WiFi that moved at glacially slow speeds taught me I could survive (in spite of the technology withdrawal) without being connected to the outside world. Of course the recent hurricane was moving in to the area that week and my mother was freaking out she couldn’t get me. Then another friend forgot I’d be away and when I finally got signal I had about a dozen texts and voicemails ranging from puzzled, to annoyed, to “are you ignoring me?”. But anyway, yes, we have become very dependent on technology, and after that week of forced disconnect I ordered the iPad 2 with WiFi AND 3G… “As God as my witness, I’ll never go internet-less again!”

So when my friend called last Thursday and said our friend with a beach house wanted us to visit before they shut the house down for the winter, and asked if I was free to go this weekend, I said hell yeah I was available, then I began to pack. We were at the beach for exactly 24 hours. We were driving through the Hamptons Saturday morning on our way out to Amagansett at the exact same time we were driving through them coming home on Sunday morning. Yet in spite of the short trip, I went with a bag of electronics nearly as large as my suitcase for the weekend.

Laptop. Charger. Cell phone. Charger. eReader. Charger. iPad. Charger. iPod Touch. Charger. Digital Camera. Charger. EarBuds. I weighed my laptop case. It was not quite 13 pounds but it sure as hell felt heavier. Perhaps it was mental weight I was feeling. Who knows? Now I can’t complain too much because it’s technology that allows us to keep in touch with each other… We can text or Facebook to keep in touch with our friend who lives way out on Long Island. I could snap a picture of Gosman’s Dock on the iPad and post it right to Twitter or Facebook for all to see. I could take dictation and type up the recipes and a new blog post for my friends new food blog, right there on the laptop as she was cooking in that gorgeous kitchen overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Then I could snap a picture of the meal she made us and use the Wordpress App to upload it directly from the iPad to her food blog post, no wires necessary. Then later, out at the Cross Eyed Clam, I was able to add the new friends we met right to my Facebook from my iTouch. Who needs a phone number scrawled on a cocktail napkin when there’s free WiFi and the Facebook App? (Okay, admittedly I did witness an exchange of a phone number the old fashioned way that night, but it’s nice to know there are options now!)

Are we too plugged in? And if so, isn’t it really just another way for us to communicate and remain closer to each other no matter how far removed? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.

Cat

One day a romance writer who was making a decent living, a better living than she ever dreamed she could by working from home in pajamas each day, read an article. There were vast riches to be made in that land called Self-published Erotica eBooks. Huge riches to be made in the provinces of Nook and Kindle and it was no tall tale. Alas there was proof. Authors who this romance writer actually knew were panning the gold from the erotica waters and coming up with mind-boggling profits. (Seriously folks, I’m talking a million dollars a year or more in their pockets not accounting for Uncle Sam and his evil tax collectors, of course.)

So this author read the million dollar author’s book and declared–I can do that! I will do that! I’ll do it right now! And she came up with a brilliant idea. Why not be who she was now, writing romance, AND be that other writer too, the one who was making a million dollars a year by selling what some critics have called “porn on the page”.

So she took this story she had already written, a story that had been rejected by 3 or was it 4 publishers. A nice little story she really liked about 2 cowboys and a rich girl from Connecticut, and she decided to sex it up. There’d be boys doing boys. Girls doing girls. Boys and girls doing each other, in public, in private, in the barn, in the pool, day and night. Hell, it was already written, and rewritten, and rewritten again, according to the suggestions by the very nice rejection letters she’d gotten so many of. After all, how hard could it be to sex it up? Then she too would have the millions in gold. THEN after that, she’d write more stories. Filthy, dirty stories that would bring even more gold.

And it worked, kind of, for a little bit. Not exactly, and not at all as she’d planned. In fact, not so much according to the plan at all.

Yes, the nice little story sold like mad, crazy sales, but it never really reached the level of filth the author intended, nor the million dollars said filth would have yielded. There was still safe sex. There was still character motivation and reasons for the sex. The characters, once they met each other, still wanted to be monogamous, even though there were 3 of them. There was still a happily ever after ending.

And then the second story wasn’t the filthy dirty one it was meant to be at all. That too ended up being kind of tame to be called erotica. And the happy ending, and the monogamous relationship and the safe sex tried to sneak in again, and the author had to beat them down as best she could, but alas they were stronger than she was.

She had tried…that is I had tried. I really did, but it comes down to this–we are who we are, and no amount of determination or inspiration to change will change who and what we are.

My vow to be the raunchiest writer I could be for my RED line of “erotica” books did not end up exactly as I planned. I put “erotica” in quotation marks because I hesitate to even call it that. As much as I tried to write erotica, it’s still more erotic romance, which is what I have always written, and probably always will write.

I’d made up this long warning label for my RED books, to make sure the readers of my erotic romance wouldn’t be horribly shocked by my new erotica line. It turns out, I needn’t have, because no matter what, I still am who I am as a writer.

Oh don’t get me wrong, the RED stories are hot. Very hot. But there’s still a happy ending, no matter how convinced I was I’d be writing pure erotica without one. There’s plenty of sex, even experimenting with other partners, and same sex, but the characters always seem to end up in a happy committed relationship in the end.

So what am I going to do? Hell if I know. I still have plenty of ideas for some raunchy adulterous erotica stories about a bored cheating housewife who does everyone from the carpenters, to the waiter, to the UPS man while her husband is at work. It was these story ideas that I created the RED line for–and then chickened out miserably. Will these ever see the light of day? I have no clue. If they do I suppose I’ll have to make a sub-line–the REALLY RED line for stories that really are erotica this time, I swear…

Maybe having written for publishers and editors who drilled the HEA (Happy Ever After) into my head, along with the concepts of safe sex and monogamous relationships has influenced me irreparably. Kind of like the lessons beaten into students with a wooden ruler by nuns in Catholic school–you can be sure you’ll never forget them and if you ever do bring yourself to break those rules, you’re going to be twitching while doing it.

So there you go, my tale. I’m happy I wrote Educating Ansley. I’m thrilled with the sales. I’m happy I wrote The EX-Files. Compared to Ansley I’m not as happy with those sales but that’s what I get for hitting it out of the park on the first at bat–it’s a hard record to live up to. I’m iffy on the creation of the RED line. I could probably just as easily have published those stories just as Cat Johnson titles and no one would have been offended or disappointed. And if I ever have a lobotomy or start taking hard core drugs to overcome my romance indoctrination and actually get myself to write the pure erotica I’d planned–well then we’ll have to figure out how to market those alongside the others in the RED line. We’ll see.

And so the author’s coffers are far from empty, but the biggest heaps of gold still belong to the others who dare to stretch beyond, and for now, that’s okay.

Cat

My, how times have changed. Now most of my day (from sunrise to well after sundown) is spent updating web pages, responding to emails, promoting online, social networking, building name recognition, blogging, and traveling to book signings, book club meetings and reader conventions.

Little did I know all those years ago I’d be spending hours online searching for the perfect Mardi Gras costume to wear to the masquerade ball at Authors After Dark 2012 being held in New Orleans. Or that I’d have a pile of odd objects (faery ears and wings, a steampunk gun and holster, a belly dancing skirt) in my bedroom waiting for me to figure out where and how to store them from the last convention. Or that my clothes closet would be overflowing with Cat Johnson promotional items and giveaways. But alas, this is now my career and so I embrace it wholeheartedly and in the meantime try to find some time to write in between all the rest so I have something to actually promote.

So since I’ve bored you with my life, such that it is, let me amuse you with a little something I stumbled upon on Etsy last night while searching for masks. It proves, I think, that no matter how strange I think my life is, there is always something else out there that is a little bit stranger. On another note, I fear Etsy is addictive and I think I need to avoid it!

I give you the strangely beautiful, custom made, Swarovski crystal covered gas mask for the bargain price of $850 with free shipping. How many do you want?