Crystal Jordan :: Blog

Mad Madam M here commandeering Crys’s blog today with this very important office etiquette reminder!! (WARNING: )

I soooooooo wish I could do that!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating office violence, but a admin assistant can dream!! Perhaps I should hide the staplers today…

So, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect upon the weirdness that is my current home state. Not that my original home state of California is not the capital of Weirdlandia, but Utah has some of its own weird quirks that I’m not sure I’d experience anywhere else.

Such as:

• “Are you Mormon?” used as a pick-up line.
• Going into a university library bathroom and hearing the woman in the next stall belting out “Jesus Loves The Little Children.”
• Dealing with a whole city laid out on a grid system which has it’s epicenter at the Mormon Temple. Everything is north, south, east, or west of the Temple.
• Having addresses given to you as coordinates. “295 S 1500 E” is a legit address here.
• Realizing that 1500 E is going to actually be said “15th East.”
• Realizing that there really is a 15th that is not 1500, though they’re said the same way.
• Having people assure you over and over again that once you got used to the grid system, you’d love it. And then having them look at you like you’re insane when you never do love it.
• Finding out that every single way of not saying the word “God” has been invented and used in this state: golly, jeez, gosh, gorsh, geesh, etc.
• Driving by a billboard that advertised “modest swimwear for mother and daughter.”
• Driving by a billboard five minutes later that said homes had been built and equipped with laundry facilities to easily handle eight children. Is it really that normal here? What happened to 2.5? It seemed like a lot to me, let alone enough to start your own football team
• Walking by a janitor at the library every day who feels free to announce loudly to anyone who will listen that I have a beautiful smile that lights up the whole world and makes his day. It was sweet and kind of funny for the first few months. I’m two years into the land of weird now. It’s lost it’s novelty.

Needless to say, this is a week where I’m really feeling the “You’re not from around here, are you?” vibe.

So, I’m on a redecorating binge lately. I have all this hand me down furniture from when I first left home and I think it’s time to upgrade to a better and newer kind of particleboard. This means I’m gutting my house of all the stuff I don’t want, going through old papers and crap and tossing everything. Including my furniture.

To replace the old stuff, I had to survive my first trip to Ikea in Utah…and it was worse than I imagined. I know how insane Ikea can be in California on a Saturday, but nothing prepared me for the enthusiasm Utahians (is that even a word?) have for the great Scandinavian discount furniture-landia. The biggest issue wasn’t that it was packed with people–and, oh, it was packed with people–but that I’ve never seen so many screaming unattended children in my life. What’s up with that? I thought Ikeas had a babysitter thingie you could drop the munchkins off at. In-frickin-sane, I’m telling ya!

But I am now the proud owner of a new bed frame, attached side table, two living room side tables, a cute lamp, and two new succulent plants. The plants were the only unexpected buy and at $4 total for both, I think that’s pretty good at sticking to budget and not grabbing all the cool things they have there.

Someone asked me what my name was today and I swear I almost said Crystal Jordan. Then when I was typing in my username to my personal email account, I typed in crystal.jordan

Um, yeah.

Sorry to burst your bubble if you thought it was, but Crystal Jordan is not my real name. I’m protecting my family’s innocence (or at least their rep at the local holy roller’s convention) by taking on a pseudonym.

So, I wanted to talk about the weirdness of it all being a person pretending to be a writer pretending to be a person (if you don’t know where that rhythm of words comes from, you must go watch Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria)

We have a delicate balance to strike as writers. Especially when we get to the point where we’re doing book signings. Since my first print book comes out in August, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. It’ll be something of a public “outting” of my little secret. It only takes one person who knows me in real life to walk into a bookstore I’m signing in to see my pen name and poof, there goes that secret. Librarians are all about information sharing (i.e. total gossip-whores), so that would be one wildfire of a rumor around the library the next day.

Does that make me paranoid? A little, yeah.

Plus, Crystal Jordan is a bit more wicked and gregarious than the “real” Crystal–it’s still me, but with all the politeness filters blown off. So if any of my colleagues saw me in that situation it might shock the crap out of them. Of course, part of me thinks that might be fun, but the other part is a little horrified the people who know me as a nice, staid librarian might get to see me walking on my wild side. Not exactly the mental image I want them to have when we’re talking about me getting tenure at the university…or while I’m being the leader/enforcer during a meeting. I have a feeling it might lower their respect for me some, and on a lot of levels that upsets me. It’s a bad, bad thing.

So, how do I find that balance? I have to do book signings, I have to promo my work, but the thought of people giving me the “I know what you do on the weekends, you dirty wench” look is rather daunting.

You know, these are the things they never tell you you’ll have to deal with when you finally sell to New York and have that shining-awesome print book in your hot little hands.

So, as promised, I bring reports back from my trip out west.

1. Calamity Jane was properly shocked when M and I showed up. She squealed. She jumped. She bounced. She tackled us with hugs and happy-happy-joy-joys that we’d come. Awww.

2. M and I had some road trip fun. Here’s some of the spectacular views of Mount Shasta.

3. And did you know that when you get far enough north in California, they’d tried to break off into their own state called Jefferson? Some haven’t given up the struggle.

4. When we got to Calamity Jane’s house–what I like to call Little House on the Prairie–and enjoyed the home on the range time.

5. Calamity Jane getting all diploma’d up. And a weird graveyard thing they had set up at her high school. I have no idea why.

6. Me and Calamity Jane. Don’t look at me, look at her. She’s cuter and thinner.

7. Me, M, and Calamity Jane.

8. The kittens that were hogging most of the bathroom. Try stepping over them and not on them when you reeeeeally have to pee, and they get less cute and more annoying really fast.

9. Me and my aunt, Calamity Jane’s mom.

10. Calamity Jane in a dress. I had to take a picture because it doesn’t happen that often. She’s sporty. Also, the cake in the background is her mom’s creation. She’s a bad ass baker. Yum. If you haven’t tried Bavarian Cream as cake filling, it’s orgasmic.

11. Me and M. And, oh yeah, my family thought we were gonna make out any second. They all camped out at the cabin and we eschewed the delights of kittens and campfires to stay in a hotel. Which of course meant we were sleeping together. That we had separate beds was beside the point and a trivial detail.

12. Calamity Jane’s younger brother. He’s the baby of the family and now he’s taller than me and has a girlfriend. I feel old.

13. Calamity Jane’s older brothers.

14. More road trip fun on the way back down to Sacramento and the airplane ride back to Utah.

I’m headed to California for Calamity Jane’s graduation, but will be back Sunday. Don’t bother behaving with out me, just clean up the party mess before I get back!

Things that should be fun to see:

1. M and I are going to see the Sex and the City movie. Hope it’s good as we both liked the series!

2. Calamity Jane and her three brothers (we have trends for the one girl to three guy ratio of kids in my family) may force M and me to play a rousing game of flashlight tag in which you run around at night playing hide and go seek and if you get hit with the flashlight before you make it back tot he safety of the house, you’ve been “tagged.” Can be fun and exhausting, but also terrifying as some people are willing to be tagged if it means they can scare the pants off of you first.

3. My family in a celebratory drunken stupor. The last graduation in the family was my college graduation and we had someone drunk and passed out on the front lawn to greet the last-arriving guests. Drink early and drink often, I suppose.

4. M and I are avoiding the fun of camping at my aunt’s house with all the drunken family members by getting our own hotel room. Even though there will be two best, this will no doubt confirm my family’s assumption that M is my “special friend” and we’re have wild monkey lesbian sex. For shame!

5. Happy Graduation, Calamity Jane!

We’ll see if any of this actually happens. I’ll report in when I get back!

Hey, everyone! The RWA National Conference is just around the corner and it’s time for the PI party! This year is going to be a bit different. Instead of a luncheon, we’re having a cocktail party to give people an opportunity to network in a less formal environment. The focus of the gathering is erotic romance, but it’s a great chance to mingle with lots of industry professionals from all genres! Everyone is welcome!

Our two featured speakers are Susan Swinwood from Harlequin Spice as well as Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Some of our other registered guests include Roberta Brown, Sarah from Smart Bitches, several editors from Grand Central Publishing, Janet from Dear Author, and loads more editors and agents! (And, hey, I’ll be there with the Mad Madam M…you know that’s what’s really important, right? Come play!)

The cost is $25 for PI members and $35 for non-members. It includes a cocktail, appetizers and a nice little favor! The party will take place on Thursday, July 31, from 5-6 pm. We’ll start registration at 4:45.

For more information, or to register, click here!

Some of you know, I’m OCD about having checklists. Unless I have a list, I am not a happy girl. It reminds me of all the things I need to do, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I can check stuff off the list and see it dwindle. Yeah, I’m weird. I’m okay with that–I drank the Kool-Aid a loooong time ago. I guess we all deal with our balancing act of writing, life, volunteer activities, promotion, work, in different ways. We find the way that works for us. For me, that means being an OCD list maker. If it’s not on one of my lists, I guarantee it will not get done because I’ll totally forget about it.

So, here’s the current to-do list for June.

1. Finish rewrite on current hateful project

2. Go to cousin’s graduation in California

3. Conduct a workshop for Passionate Ink

4. Guest blog over at Shelley Munro’s blog

5. Harass my Stroke of Midnight final judges (as part of the PI VP job) to make sure they get their entries back to me on time

6. Complete proposals on next two projects I’d like my agent to shop

It looks like a pretty manageable list to me…what’s on everyone else’s list? What strategies do you have for keeping it all straight and making sure nothing falls between the cracks?

I was in the car this morning and I’m Still A Guy by Brad Paisley came on. By the end of the lyrics I was cracking up.

But it got me thinking.

First, I’ve dated one of those gets-his-eyebrows-waxed-and-is-more-fem-than-me guys (not that it’s hard to be more fem than me, despite the fact I write and read romance), but I learned really fast that I’m not interested in a girlie-man. Maybe some men can pull it off, but I don’t know that many of them can, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want one taking up permanent residence in my home and bed.

But, after hearing this song, I also thought about my heroes and the kind of guys I write. We tend to write men that walk the fruity dog and hold purses and write us love songs, but I think it’s important to remember that he is still a guy at the end of the day. We don’t want girlie-man heroes and we don’t want caveman heroes. Somewhere in between is good. A hot caveman we’re not going to kick out of bed, but a girlie-man annoys us after a while. However, I suppose it is a fantasy we’re writing…so maybe the caveman is reformable (the the rake in ye olde Regency romance), but I like to kick the caveman heroes I have in the head until they behave in a way that means if I met him on the street, I’d say yes if he asked me out. My heroines shouldn’t have lower standards than me, ya know? But…when all’s said and done, he’s still a guy. :)

Lyrics and a YouTube video with the song below. I don’t think there’s an official music video yet, but let me know if there is and I’ll switch out the videos!

Brad Paisley-I’m Still A Guy
When you see a deer you see Bambi
And I see antlers up on the wall
When you see a lake you think picnics
And I see a large mouth up under that log
You’re probably thinking that you’re gonna change me
In some ways well maybe you might
Scrub me down, dress me up aww but no matter what
Remember, I’m still a guy

When you see a priceless French painting
I see a drunk, naked girl
You think that ridin’ a wild bull sounds crazy
And I’d like to give it a whirl
Well love makes a man do some things he ain’t proud of
And in a weak moment I might walk your sissy dog, hold your purse at the mall
But remember, I’m still a guy

And I’ll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
‘Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

I can hear you now talkin’ to your friends
Saying, “Yeah girls he’s come a long way”
From draggin’ his knuckles and carryin’ a club

And buildin’ a fire in a cave
But when you say a backrub means only a backrub
Then you swat my hand when I try
Well now, what can I say at the end of the day
Honey, I’m still a guy

And I’ll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
‘Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

These days there’s dudes gettin’ facials
Manicured, waxed and botoxed
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can’t grip a tacklebox

Yeah with all of these men linin’ up to get neutered
It’s hip now to be feminized
I don’t highlight my hair
I’ve still got a pair
Yeah honey, I’m still a guy

Oh my eyebrows ain’t plucked
There’s a gun in my truck
Oh thank God, I’m still a guy

To get over the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, (and to celebrate my sales spree last week) I went and let someone stab me with needles!

I’ve been wanting a second hole in my ears. I have one hole in the lobe and the left tragus pierced, but that’s it. Nothing else. Not even a nose, bellybutton, or eyebrow. Or anything, ya know, else.

Anywho…on to the documentation of pain!

My fun piercer from Iris Piercing named Dustin. If you’re in Salt Lake City, they’re a great place even for wimps like me! He was very patient with the fact that I had to photograph the experience. And I think when I told him I was an erotica author, I freaked him out. I kind of doubt he’s had a lot of us in Utah–I was his first! (Not the first guy I’ve ever said that about, but that’s another story!) I told him he’d be featured on my blog, so if you see this, HI, DUSTIN!

A slightly blurry before picture. Note only two piercings.

And the after shot: tragus, first ring, second ring. I don’t know if you can see it, but the titanium varies around the ring from purple to teal. They colored the ring to my specifications while I stood and watched. It was pretty cool.

I have to say the first side hurt A LOT less than the second one. Dustin said it’s because the body hadn’t had time to fully register the pain, but when you get to the second one it’s ready to scream, “Oh, hell no, bitch! Are you crazy? Stabbing is bad!”