Crystal Jordan :: Blog

I’m guest blogging over on Shelley Munro’s blog later today about shape shifter romance and erotic romance.

Come check it out!

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.

Today I’m in two places at once.

I’m over at The Novelty Girls doing my usual schtick.

AND I’m over on Jen Leeland’s blog continuing to take advantage of her absence by posting obscenely bad videos from YouTube.

Soundwave’s Surrender

Soundwave is a Super who can bring down any man with her voice alone. Too bad she hasn’t been able to bring down General Pane. But now he’s on the run and she has a score to settle. And she’s going to make sure he pays up.

General Pane has a score of his own to settle. After all, it’s Soundwave’s fault he’s being hunted. He’s lost his job, his identity, and if he’s not careful his life could be next. With Soundwave firmly in his grasp, he’ll stop at nothing to make her pay. Even if he has to tie her up and gag her.

Click here to read an excerpt!

While Jennifer Leeland is on vacation, I hijakced her blog and did evil things with it. Come enjoy her pain and suffering!

Schadenfreude lives!

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.

On top of the nifty updates Croco Designs made for my site, we’re relaunching The Novelty Girls with a whole new look that just screams “there be paranormal writers” and I’ll be talking about funny places I’ve been with weird ass names. You know every state has them. Come share yours!