Vixen Chronicles

I reposted an article that a friend of mine shared yesterday--about a woman trying to wax herself, and it reminded me a of a blog I wrote back in 2007--an account of me doing the very same thing! I have a ton of friends who can tell stories about the time they tried to save themselves 75 bucks by trying to remove their own hair. Most times, the outcome wasn't so good. After doing it myself for quite awhile, I decided to try various waxing salons. A few times, I might have been better off doing it myself. Back when I was at FDU, I read this piece (much revised) at a student workshop session, and watched as the men in the room cringed. This was something they could not imagine. One of my professors lived in Copenhagen, and after my session, we talked about how American women were obsessed with hair removal in a way that the women in Copenhagen were not. We preferred smoothness to hair everywhere, but that is all good. (He read a piece that same day that told of the inability to mictu...

I had a reunion with my literary life this weekend. I haven't promoted a book In awhile, mainly because I haven't written one in a minute. I went back to San Antonio to kick off the promotions for my new book, Southern Comfort. When I lived there, I wasn't sure I liked the city. As my plane flew over the town, I took in its brownness and for a minute, I missed the sandy beaches of southern california that I've come to love. In 24 short hours I discovered that I could love the grime and romance of the RiverWalk, too. My boo Surprised me and met me there for no other reason than he could; he flew from the other side of the country to give me support, to laugh at my goofiness, to take pictures and to share a glass or two of good wine with some of our friends. He has been so much a part of my literary life from the beginning; as an early reader of all my work, one that always told the real deal about what he thought, then as a fellow book club member and now as some...

Last weekend, the Femme Fantastik met in Seattle for the wind up of our two year tour. It took me a week to recover. No, seriously, we had a great reception everywhere we went. At Ft Lewis, we were the happy recipients of tote bags by Burberry as Thank you gifts. The military knows how to do it up, for sure. At Borders in Tacoma, we found a whole new audience. For whatever reason, Lori seemed to really attract a much older, male, caucasian demographic this go 'round. One of them shared his special talent with us. He could write that we were beautiful and intelligent upside down and backwards. How does one figure out that they can do that? We had to think long and hard about the invitation to dancing we received. In the long run, we turned it down. He didn't really want US to go, just her. Oh well. The book club that evening was fantastic, too. They were patient while we joked with each other and told some of each others secrets. All of these were great, none of th...