Tag Archives: writing

Preempting Our Bite Lecture for a Re-Run of a Previous Post

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You have twitter, Katydidinoz, the lovelies at Fangbooks (www.fangtasticfiction.com/), and VaVeros from the Shallow Reader (shallowreader.wordpress.com/ ) to thank for this 2007 re-run on Romantic Comedies. Since then we’ve had a few rom coms–Thanks Hollywood for It’s Complicated and Easy A, however, my rant to Tinseltown remains much the same as I stated below, in green.

Do you think so too?

There’s a trend to have the hero in be a loser in film romantic comedies. For example, in Failure to Launch the guy lives with his parents. In Knocked Up the dude is an unemployed pothead. Sure, that’s funny, but it’s a gag that wears out quickly, and it makes me wonder why there are so few good romantic comedy feature films. Emphasis has been on the comedy, not the romance.

Have production companies forgotten how to make a romantic comedy?

If so, here’s a suggestion: Look back through the film vaults for examples. Remember Sabrina? How about Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night or The Princess Bride? Use those as blueprints. And remember, a rom com is about two people and their road to finding love. It should be witty, clever, sexy, and the circumstances of the humour should not revolve around how stupid the hero (or heroine) is. They can make stupid choices, or get into strife due to someone else’s stupidity, but for God’s sake give the man a brain. Make him appeal to the heroine and filmgoers. While slap-stick funny, a pothead is not an appealing romantic hero–is it? 

Well, is it?

How many of you girls out there really want a doobie smoker to sweep you off your feet? Do you actually dream of hooking up with a guy who lives in mom and dad’s basement or attic and think, hmm, here’s a great potential life partner. 

Are any of you are bouncing up and down shouting, meee mee?

Not getting any good screenplays, Hollywood? IS that the problem? Well here’s another heads up: There are many romantic comedy novels out there that aren’t being optioned as films.  My top picks for books with a wide audience appeal? Well, for a start,

Jenny Crusie’s Fast Women
Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ It Had To Be You and Natural Born Charmer
Rachel Gibson’s Sex Lies & Online Dating


Why those? Simple. The heroes are normal. They have jobs that will appeal to men (Private investigator, Football player, cop) while appealing to women on the hero front. These heroes aren’t stupid, they’re vicitms of circumstance and they’re grown ups. They come from various socio-economic backgrounds, just like Linus Laribee, David Huxley, Peter Warne, and Westley.

Am I projecting? Is this what I hope for my own Rom Com writing? 

Well, duuuh.

Know your Stereotypes: The Romance Hero Part 24 ½. A Hero Would Never Drive a Toyota Yaris

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Since there always seem to be discussions about Alpha-Heroes (and y’all know how much—insert sarcasm here—I love them) on a number of other blogs related to romance fiction, I thought it only fair I visit the manly-man-osity again and offer an observation beyond heroes and facial hair.

            There are several so-called ‘sexy’ things in this world I simply do not understand: Pole dancing, male strippers, and hatchbacks. Shrinky and I see eye-to-eye on two items, but then we part ways. “Well, my sweet little Oldbiteywifey,” Shrinky might say, “since you’re not a dude, I totally understand how you don’t you get the appeal of a chick dancing around a fixed metal pole that is clearly a phallic representation and/or compensation for a male member (like those 80s ‘Member’s Only’ jackets were too), and yeah, strippers like The Thunder From Down Under are completely desperate in the same way chick strippers are, but come ON! A hatchback is friggin’ HAWTT!"

 Yeah, honey, that Gremlin is sex on wheels. No, I can’t lie.  Darling, You are wrong. This is HAWTT:
It’s an Aston Martin Vanquish V-12 and IT is sex on wheels.
Maybe North dives a hatch in Jennifer Crusie’s Maybe This Time, but let’s get this straight. While there is such a thing as a hot hero, Alpha or Beta, there is no such thing as a “Hot Hatch.”

Just look at that Pacer to your left. A hatchback is one step below the supreme sexiness of…a Station Wagon—but at least you can have good boink in the back of one of those. Forget car sex if you own a hatchback—and I mean real sex, not handiwork. A hatchback is for groceries, not nookie. Sorry, y’all. No matter what Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear buds say, no matter what sort of engine you shove inside, no matter how aerodynamic you try to make it with the hideous spoiler, no matter if you bolt on a big-assed noisy exhaust system with a big fat hole of a pipe (which makes it even less sexy), a hatchback is nothing more than an ugly shopping buggy on big fat rubber tyres (or tires if you other English speakers prefer) instead of clattering wheels that never let you steer straight. And you out there with filthy minds, stop reading dick imagery into the words shove, hideous spoiler, hole, and rubber. A hatchback is not even vaguely phallic.

And maybe that’s the problem.

The hatchback is NOT a chick magnet. A Peugeot 206 or a Fiat 500 are not made of HAWTT—I should know because I drive a 500 and dudes always tell me how cute it is. I think one guy even said it was ‘darling’.  @font-face {
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A romance hero CAN drive a hatchback, but he does not own it by choice, and if he does have a hatchback it has to be one that he’s kept because:

a)    It’s a sentimental memento of his dead best friend/twin brother/father whose murder he is trying to solve;

b)    it’s stolen to execute a Jason Bourne-esque escape from hit men;

c)    it’s cover for police/FBI/spy/bounty hunter work;

d)    he’s been wrongly accused, imprisoned, and released and it’s the car his sister lent him until he’s cleared his name, is back on his feet, and can afford an Audi A5;

e)    it’s a loaner from the dealer while his Bondian Aston-Martin DB4 is in for routine maintenance;

f)     It’s the only rental car left in the lot.

 

Of course, if you care to argue about this, feel free. I’m stickin’ to my six-guns-a-blazin’ on this one.

We’re Talking Romance!

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If you’re not doing anything this Friday night, and you’re down Sydney way, (that’s Sydney, Australia) why not drop by the Ultimo Library for a night of:

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SEX, LOVE AND PASSION- THE APPEAL OF ROMANCE NOVELS

Kick off your Friday night talking about Sex, Passion and Love with our romance panel discussion. Join Mills & Boon author Annie West, book blogger, Kat Mayo (from BookThingo) and me, along with Ultimo’s romance reading librarians, such as the extraordinary VaVeros (from the Shallow Reader), in discussing romance fiction in the 21st century.

Love, passion and romance have inspired authors throughout the ages from Homer to Shakespeare, Jane Austen to Nora Roberts. Whether you go for Mr Darcy, Vampire Love, or cougars on the prowl, join our readers for a night of Happily Ever After. A free romance book will be provided on the night!

It’s a FREE event, but bookings are essential

Friday 11 February from 18.15PM to 19.00PM

Arrive at 6.00pm for a 6.15pm start.

Ultimo Community Centre, 40 William Henry Street, Corner Harris Street, Ultimo 2007

For further details check out the link: whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/events/9488-sex-love-and-passion-the-appeal-of-romance-novels

Razors, Wolverine, and Eye Pencil

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Perhaps it has something to do with Shrinky, but beards, I dig ’em. I like a good goatee like Shrinky’s got and I have much appreciation for a tidy beard like Ken’s perfectly- groomed facial enhancement over there. A beard like that beard says, "I’m a man, I wash, and I smell good. Come and nibble on my ears."

Oh, all right. That’s what Ken’s beard says TO ME. You may hear something completely different.

You may be a fan of waxing, lasering it all off, or shaving. Or you could be the kind of person who finds that no beard looks good unless it’s got that certain biker quality to it. I’ll be the first to admit that Aaron Eckhart’s full biker beard in Erin Brockovich was uber sexy. But that could have been due to the fact he didn’t have a big biker beer gut. Or that he was Aaron Eckhart. For you, it may be all about the hair on his head. Daniel Day Lewis’s locks in Last of the Mohicans or Jack Black’s shaggy ‘do might float your boat, but for me it comes down to how well you wear a beard.

While facial hair fascinates me, I do not much care for a man with a Snidley whiplash ‘mo or walrus-like food brush ‘neath his nose. Mutton chops are plain wrong unless they’re grown by Toby Stephens or Wolverine, and Elvis sideburns are a joke. Like I said, I dig a nice, tidy beard on a man. I like chest hair too, for it’s oh-so-manly-man-ness, but what I don’t like, what I hate, what makes me think, dude, go wash your face, is stubble. You know the kind I mean? It’s that beyond five o’clock shadow thing that looks like coal dust or misapplied eyeshadow. To me, nothing looks more unkempt than stubble. A man in a tuxedo should NOT have stubble unless he is James Bond after a hard day killing bad guys at Casino Royale. Three-day growth is not sexy. It’s lazy and it’s scratchy. You looked like you rolled out of bed. You look like you might….stink.

What I hate worse than the stinky aspect that could come with the look of stubble, is Stylised Stubble. I know you’ve seen him, he’s the man who used an appliance to grind his whiskers down to make it looks as if he used his mother’s or girlfriend’s eyeshadow on his jawline. Then there’s the uber-sculpted look, to your right, the I-drew-this-on-with-eye-pencil facial hair, which, if you ask me, besides being something a romance hero should never have, is the comb-over of beards.

You know, I am sort of impressed by your ability to grow facial hair and do interesting things with it in the same way I know you‘re impressed by the fact I can grow a baby and wax a bikini line. You pee standing up You look at boobs. You have whiskers on your face. You’re a man, it’s part of your charm. But can you do me a favour? Shave or grow the damn beard, and keep your chest hair, but leave the waxing to us. It’s getting hard to tell who’s supposed to be the girl lately, since we’re sharing the hair sculpting routines.

Round Two: The Other Side of the Fence or When Elvie Met Budman

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To begin, lemme clear this up. His Royal Schwanschtucker, AKA the new backyard neighbour’s Staffordshire Bull Terrier, AKA the Muscle-bound terror-re-er, AKA Elvin, is actually called ELVIE. I got the hunk o’ canine’s handle wrong because Angela, the new neighbour’s adorable three year old with a pretty mop of golden curls, told me the chained-up, brindle, snorting monster’s name.

You may recall that Elvie has a deathly fear of crying babies. You may also recall that, two days ago, when Angela’s baby brother was crying, Elvie’s fight or flight response kicked in and Elvie took off like a rocket to escape the noise. Escaping for Elvie means pulling at the chain that keeps him in yard and launching himself, repeatedly, at the fence between my yard and his. Elvie throws himself at the fence until he gets his paws over hooked on the top of the cyclone fencing and then pulls himself over. Then, busted chain trailing behind him, he’s in my backyard and still desperate to get out, to run free, to flee from sound of shrieking baby.

Friday morning, while my li’l Rat Terrier, Budman, was inside going bonkers, Elvie was outside going bonkers, snorting, panicking, leaping like a clumsy weightlifter doing ballet. When Elvie did an impressive Houdini and snapped his chain, vaulted over the fence into my yard, and then managed to get over my side gate, Budman went into hackles-up mode. His territory was being invaded and, dammit, he was going to protect it. Unfortunately, his fear makes him aggressive. And my fear makes me stupid. Without thinking of my own safety, and ignoring the fact Elvie might bite the shit out of me, I decided to be protective AND save the day. Budman may have been safely inside, but images of my dog being torn apart by Mr Dog Muscle meant I went out to grab Elvie. Before I could, he took off over the gate and ran to freedom.

This morning was a little different. My fear was nearly realised. Budman was in the yard takin’ care of some naturely business when the baby started crying. Within a few seconds, Elvie went nutso. Budman went nutso. Elvie was over the fence. Shrinky was down the back stairs and I…was in the shower. Once I made it outside, in a towel, the new neighbour was yelling, Shrinky was shouting, and Budman was barking like a good little faker who’s all noise and no action, just before shooting up the back stairs between my dripping wet legs. Elvie had his rump balanced on top of the gate when Shrinky grabbed him. In my saturated state, and full o’ blood-soaked fear fantasies, I expected snarling dog, snapping jaw, teeth clamping down on my husband’s arms, but Elvie didn’t struggle. In fact, he sort of, well, snuggled up in Shrinky’s arms.

And what a good place to be. I know what snuggled up with Shrinky is like. While’s he not a facial-hair sculpted Hispanic Dog Whisperer, and Budman pays very little attention to him when I’m around, Shrinky’s arms can have a calming effect. That’s Shrinky, that’s the nature of his cuddle power. But you know I’m biased when it comes to my Shrinky.

Anyhow, things did not go as I had feared. Elvie was not interested in Budman. At all. The Staffy was completely focused on escaping. He had tuned out everything but his freedom and getting over that gate. I think we were lucky this time. Despite a decidedly non-bloody outcome, the next Elvie in the backyard dog match might not turn out that way. My writer’s mind will continue to churn out vivid scenes of vicious dog fights and painful bites.

Even though Elvie’s quite the Steve McQueen of backyard escapes, and my new neighbour continues to chain him up in The Cooler, instead of the theme from the Great Escape playing in my ears, I keep hearing the word mauled.

When Dogfish Go Bad

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Thanks to new motherhood, my dear Canadian friend was up late-ish waiting for her sprogette to waken for a feed. During that pre-feed time Katie-Sue kept busy by reading the wikipedia page on Unprovoked Shark Attacks. 

As if one would WANT to provoke a shark attack?

In case you were wondering, instead of the word squalo, some Italians use the expression pesci di cane, or pesci cane for shark. Pesci cane translastes to dog fish. Now, you may ask, "Yo, Oldbitey, where are you goin’ wit dis?"  Bear with me and you’ll see because I was curious enough to have a look at what was keeping Katie-Sue occupied. You might be too.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal,_unprovoked_shark_attacks_in_the_United_States 

If you’re not game to check out the link, what you’re missing are documented reports of people who met their fate thanks to a really big fish with really big teeth.  Really. Big. Teeth.

Some reports are more gruesome than others. There were words and phrases like, pieces, and washed up on the shore, and eaten feet first.

I could not stop reading.

After a few minutes of morbid, can’t-look-away-from-the-train-wreck-osity of it all, the fish-eating-man stories led me back to my earlier fear of the day; the Bull Terrier eating Rat Terrier terror (See yesterday’s blog post for details, Kids!).  As I brushed my teeth and washed my face, I vacillated between picturing Jaws and Bull Terriers, Sharks that turned into Bull Terriers, and Elvin Elvie, my neighbour’s muscled-up Bull Terrier, as a Bull shark zipping after a scrawny snack in the form of my widdle dawg, Budman. I went to bed convinced of nightmares to come. I prepared myself for a dream onslaught of Great Whites, Tigers, Bulls, Oceanic White Tips, and Budman-eating Elvies.


What I dreamed of instead, were Zombies.
 

All The Bull With No Horns

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Last week we bid farewell to our backyard neighbours and their skittish German Shepard, Lucy. The funny thing about Lucy was how she was afraid of Budman. Lean Lucy was three times Budman’s size and, despite her girlish figure, had, I’m guessing, 60 pounds to his measly 11. Image is everything. Faking it is a key factor in life. My dog seems to understand this. Fear-aggression is all about being a fake. The l’il rat terrier thinks he’s 7 feet tall and 200 pounds of rippling muscle. It’s all in how you fake it. I know I’m to blame for that because, as the adage goes, it’s like person like doggie. I pretend to be a five-foot-six blonde goddess with a shapely ass that puts Sting’s tight little Yoga naked butt to shame.

Thanks for that pic Annie Leibovitz!

Mmmm Sting…Sigh….

Um…what was I about to say?

Oh, yes. Faking it. Budman’s all front. All noise. All darting quick movement and flashing teeth. This is especially so now since my new backyard neighbour’s have a dog. His name is Elvin Elvie.  A new dog, one who is not timid Lucy, means Budman has now become the size of Optimus Prime in his own mind.

The thing is, where Lucy was lean, Elvin Elvie is a muscled mass of dog bodybuilder and he has, I’m sorry, I have to say this because it’s just so OUT THERE, an enormous schwanzschtucker. I’m talking the biggest I’ve ever seen on a dog his size. Of course there was Walter the Basset hound who possessed a set of the most impressive dogie nuts I’ve ever seen, but this is about Elvie.  I estimate this Bull Terrier weighs more that I do. Like Lucy, he’s also skittish and afraid, but not of Budman the Not-so-Big Fat Faker.

Elvie is terrified of crying babies. Our new neighbours have two children, one 15 months, the other 3. When the wee one cries. Elvie runs.

Well, Elvie barrels really.

Barreling Elvie whimpers and leaps at the cyclone fence that divides our properties. Elvie, snorting like a asthmatic pig, keeps whimpering and leaping at the fence until he’s made it over the metal structure. Then, in the next moment, while Budman is doing his best impersonation of a 11 pound, tri colour, Raging Rhino–from the safety of inside the house–Elvie is snorting and whimpering and leaping at my side gate. Before I can make it down the back steps to grab his harness, the one I see has a length of broken chain hanging from it, he’s hauled his muscled frame over the gate and run off down the street.

You may wonder what all of this has to do with writing. Really. It’s not hard to make this connection. As a writer I have quite a vivid imagination, or as Shirky puts it, "a rich inner world." To be honest, for the past 10 years the two things I have worried about when it comes to my dinky 11 pound dog are carpet pythons and cane toads because both creatures could kill Budman in just a couple of minutes. I’ve had those awful imaginings that my Little Wind-up dog would wind up…do ya really need me to go into detail? Now, thanks to Shrinky and Elvie, I get to add Budman’s biting it by Bull Terrier (Staffordshire Bull Terrier that is) to my occasional flights into my rich inner world. My writer’s mind goes into overdrive on this one. I was home today when Elvie launched himself over the fence, but what if I hadn’t been? Crying baby = fear for Elvie. Foreign dog in his backyard = fear-aggression for Budman. Oh, the scenes my writerly brain has come up with are just too horrible–and that’s not including the scenes where I step in to save Napoleon Budman and wind up with my throat torn out by Elvie.

You see, not only does Elvie out-weigh me, he out-muscles me too. I’m no match for him anymore than Budman is. It’d be chomp, chomp, chomp for Oldbitey. Still, if something happened, if babies cried and Elvie vaulted the fence again when Budman was in the backyard, I know my inner Napoleon would rise up. I’d move my bony anti-ass to come to the rescue. I’d dive right into the frightened dogfight…

And then, as my new neighbours put up a higher, Elvie vaulting-proof fence, Sting would visit me in the hospital as I recuperate.

P. S. Thanks, Swellanor, for letting me Gloom & Doom all over you today about Budman.

What’s My Movie Line?

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We’ve got a new catch phrase over at the Shrinky & Bitey homestead. Catch phrases are very important for us, very important to mankind and home life. Think about it. Honestly, where would we be without a good Homeric D’oh!?

I’m not the only one who thinks catch phrases are essential to living and there’s a real art to finding a good one. Michael Cieply over at The New York Times had a sweet little article about ’em www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/movies/20lines.html a few weeks ago. Some of the babies he mentions like Go Ahead. Make my day, have gone global, others he doesn’t discuss, such as "Gene Hackmankickyourass" are obsure, minor lines in a film that may only mean something to a few viewers in a particular household, like mine

Over the weekend I finally watched, in its entirety without any interruptions (as with my previous three attempts), the Coen Brothers’ 2009 offering A Serious Man, and I quite enjoyed it. I love how the Coens use oddball bits of humour in dark tales of woe, you know, like Javier Bardem’s Toni Tennille hair in No Country For Old Men. I love how eloquent hick-sounding H.I. McDonnough is in Raising Arizona. Mostly I love the Coens because they come up with lines that I can, and do, use in my daily life. Raising Arizona’s "OK then," and "Awful Good cereal flakes, Ms McDonnough," are staple lines at Biteycrest as much as a Noo Yawk-ish "Look in your heart!" from Miller’s Crossing. After viewing A Serious Man, and laughing at the subtle horror of a man’s life gone to dreck, "working on The Mentaculus" is now the new home  phrase for dicking around when you should be concentrating on something else, like taking out the trash, writing further chapters of And She Was or doing a lit review for a PhD. For example,
Shrinky: "Did you iron my shirts?"
Oldbitey:  "No, I’ve been working on the Mentaculus."

The phrase also comes in handy for those times when you don’t want to do something rather unsavoury.
Shrinky:" How about we go and see Avril Lavigne in concert this weekend?"
Oldbitey: "Oh, sorry, I can’t. I’ll still be working on the Mentaculus."

I’d be curious to know what you Bitye-ites out there use as your movie catch phrases of choice. Are you a Nobody puts baby in the corner kind of gal? Do you Yoda up your life with "do or do not, there is no try?" Does your naughty kid spend time in "The Cooler?"
Oh, and if you’re curious about the "Genehackmankickyourass," it’s from Fletch Lives, with Chevy Chase. And we use it the same nonsensical way he does.

 

Offending Crap and Acceptable Cock

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About a week ago, my seventy-something MIL (Mother-in-law) leaned across the table to point out the middle-aged man standing in the bank across from Starbucks. "Look at him. He’s a nice dressed man, but he can’t stop scratching his cock."  It was hard not to laugh. I had expected her to say ‘doodle‘ or ‘penis‘ or even ‘dick.’  However, I recalled several family dinner table conversations with MIL, Shrinky, and his brothers. Those dinners have made it plain that my adorable MIL finds the word dick to be rather coarse. MIL has asked her sons to refrain from using the D-word  in front of her. Weirdly, she never seems to notice when one of the boys says fuck–and let me tell you they say say fuck a lot. Yes, I find it amusing that my darling mother-in-law prefers cock to dick (Hey now! Before you start making jokes or decide to get the wrong idea, remember I’m talking words not boy bits), but I know language is a big thing for some people.

As a result of my MIL’s most recent utterance of cock, I got to thinking about George Carlin, dirty words, what’s offensive language, and what’s offensive to me. I once had a judge for a romance novel contest entry tell me she was so offended by my novel’s hero using the words crap and crappy, that she was unable to read my entry and marked me down with a low score because of obscene language. That experience, combined with MIL’s pointing out Mr Bankballscratcher, dragged me back to the the romance convention centre. The world of romance fiction is one filled with unwritten rules and conventions for all sorts of things and I’ve ranted about a few of them. There have been previous Oldbitey bites about the conventions of ‘nice.’ I’ve snarled about ageism, growled over things a heroine (read that as woman) can and can’t be, things she can and can’t say. This stuff isn’t new for me. I’ve gone on a barkfest about bad, naughty, obscene words before. Subjectivity is an amazing thing. A perfectly tame word like crap can, for some individuals, have the same offending property as (look away if you can’t deal with R and X-rated words) fuck or cunt. I’m the opposite of my MIL. I find cock a more coarse-sounding word than dick, but mostly I just find cock…hilarous and not at all sexy. Don’t know about you, but it makes me think of roosters and feather dusters and Chicken Run.

So I took my curious thoughts to a twitter discussion with katydidinoz and BookThingo. They both agreed that cock is not offensive when it is used in the context of a sex scene. Context is everything. I would have liked to have investigated the context of other words a little further, but we stopped at that point because, well, it’s twitter, discussions beyond 140 are a little difficult, and things move on to other topics in a flash. I have to admit that while we were discussing crap, cock, and suffixes ending with sucker, for a few moments anyway, I thought I might change the focus of my PhD research from Cougars, Evil Stepmothers, and Menopausal Hot Flashers: Roles Representations of Age and the Non-traditional Romance Heroine to Dirty Dicks and Contextual Cocks; Sexy-vs- Offensive Language in Romance Fiction. Then I decided I need to refocus my attention on the matter of the impending peanut butter shortage at home.

Peanut Butter, Fiction, and ReaI Life?

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Is this your classic chicken or egg moment? Did a plot device occur because of my obsessive love of peanut butter or did an obsessive love of peanut butter occur because of a plot device?

The one thing for certain is that I’m down to one 1lb 12 oz jar of Jif Creamy. This house has eaten, and it shocks me to realise this, 3 and 1/2 lbs of peanut butter since June.

You’d think I’d be the size of a shed by now. Or at least jar-shaped. Jif jar-shaped, that is, minus the red cap and label. Fortunately, I have a good trainer (I heart you,Tracey) and Shrinky’s responsible for some of the eating, which you know chaps my hide because it was supposed to be my present, and since the peanut butter was bestowed upon me, by him nonetheless, I shouldn’t have to share it.

But I digress.

Writing is a curious thing. Like other writers, I make music soundtracks to fit the novel I’m writing. The soundtrack goes with the mood of scenes, characters, and the overall tone of the novel itself. I’ve got a cracking Powerpop soundtrack to And She Was (the current WIP for you newbiteys), but this is the first time one major food group (and peanut butter is a MAJOR FOOD GROUP) has gone with the mood, characters, and overall tone of the novel. It’s like product placement in movies. Peanut butter appears everywhere in And She Was. Peanut butter is the thread that weaves through relationships. Peanut butter makes a mess. Peanut butter is eaten for dinner. Peanut butter is a vital clue to a mystery. Peanut butter appears in a love scene. And while all that peanut butter madness goes on in fiction, I slather some on a cracker, my banana is smeared with a coating, the dog’s Kong gets stuffed full of it.

Is one thing feeding off the other? When I finish writing And She Was, will I also finish with peanut butter? Or will I simply run out? My supplier is sold out and I just opened that last jar from the pantry…