Huzzah!

I have joined the technological revolution.

My book is now available for Kindle: In Real Life, and Other Fictions

And also Nook!: In Real Life, and Other Fictions

So now you have no excuse not to have it with you everywhere.

I Have No Time For Consumption!

Sicksicksicksicksick. Faithful readers, I am currently in Cali, dying of the black lung. Or actually green lung, judging by the appealing pond-scum shade of the slime I am coughing up. Ew. I just grossed myself out. Apologies. I have been living with boys.
So yeah.
In all honesty, I picked up a wicked case of Pneumonia. Gross. But I went to urgent care and got myself some penicillin, so in a few days I should be Aces, and no worries.
Consumption aside, I have been having some awesome good times.
Thursday I flew down to NC for Writers'Forum. Ktbear picked me up at the airport and bought me a sammich. That was spectacular. Then I went to her house to play with Journey Dog and get styled up by Andrea. I looked, if I do say it myself, smokin' hot, which is totally Andrea's doing, even if she did spit on my eyelid. Apparently, that is the price of fashion. Eventually, Martha Mae and Lil Jeffie showed up, and we high-tailed it down to the LBG for the pre-show dinner. At first, we were really excited, because we were confronted by fancy salads, with chicken and strawberries and other weird stuff. We thought, "Man, if our salads are this fancy, dinner should be sweeeeet!" Turns out, the fancy salad WAS dinner. People, I don't even like lettuce. That's OK though, cause I was waaaaaaaaay too nervous to eat much.
I was reading with Carlos Reyes, who is absolutely my favorite living poet, and probably the only man I would marry without significant monetary compensation.

Me and Carlos

Much to my dismay, in the three years since I saw him last, he married someone else. Can you even believe that? This he tells me at dinner right before I am to read. My heart was bruised in a way that only whiskey could cure. I told Martha and she told Jeremy and he arrived 10 minutes before my debut with a hip flask of Jack, and thus, a beautiful friendship was born. I'm still not over Carlos, but I'm considering marrying Jeremy.
So I drank half the whiskey while the introducer was introducing me, and I took the podium glowing with liquid confidence.

Liquid Courage!

I read "Big Smile, Scabby Heart," then "Each Midnight," cause they were short and sweet and "Big Smile's" kinda funny and nervous and I was feeling pretty funny and nervous. And then, (this was another Andrea idea) when I was settling and the whiskey was working its edge-brightening magic, and everybody was easing into the nighttime and the story telling, I hit them with the first 3 pages of "Doll," and just when everybody was leaning in and feeling cold and concerned and hooked, WHA-BAM! Sucker-punched! I left them hangin' and sold like, 7 books right then. Andrea's such a smarty-pants.
So as not to be mean and to brighten things up again and lead into Carlos, I read this wicked-funny poem Peppers and I wrote the week before, called The Passion of the Produce," which is every bit as sexy as you think it might be. Everyone smiled big, I sat down, and finished my whiskey while Ian Pratt made eyes at me from across the room. Well played!

Readin'

Carlos read beautifully, as he always does, and I was so glad I had to go first, so I could sit back and close my eyes and ease into his voice and the soft alcohol and Andrea's warm hands on my shoulders. Reading Carlos, I like his English poems, their sharp-edged, soft hearted images. But I mostly love when he reads in Spanish. The sounds I don't understand make amazing pictures on the backs of my eyelids, dusty, dark, spicy pictures somewhere between deserts and oceans, between dawn and midnight.
If you get the chance to hear Carlos read, you should go, and not just cause I want to marry him.
After all that, my entourage was tuckered out. Even though I was buzzing with mischief, they coaxed me back to the Mabry Manor for some chilled out R&R. It's a good thing too, cause 1)People were getting arrested on campus that night and, with my luck I woulda been amongst them, and 2)I got Pneumonia the next morning.
(Props to Andrea AGAIN for not being among the arrested! Man, that girl was ON IT all weekend.)
The next day we went back to Raleigh and after some relax-o time, threw Lil Jeffie a rather nice birthday party. At his request I cooked up some fish n chips (and it even turned out good, who knew?) And a bunch of peeps came up, and I think there were beers and some kind of ridiculously complicated game for smart people that the majority of us were too drunk to play.

Party People: Martha's Arm, Jeremy, The Girl with Matt, Matt, Andrea, Lil Jeffie's Very Skinny Leg

This is where my memory gets fuzzy. Not from drinking, but from lack of sleep and sickishness. Because at this time I thought the Pneumonia was just a wicked bad cold, and I was trying to solider through. Solidering through turned into talking with Jeremy and Andrea till 3 or 4ish in the am, at which point my voice gave out for good, and I put myself to bed on Martha's floor. After that I seem to recall a lot of transferring from floor to bed to floor to bed again. I have no idea what that was all about.
And then it was time for breakfast. Martha found us a for-real diner, who knew they had those in Raleigh? Breakfast was great. Ktbear joined us up again, and we all went to some lake to walk around. I wanted to walk around the lake real bad, because we had a puppy with us and all. But then we were walking and I thought maybe I was going to die.
But I didn't die, and then there was diner at Lil Jeffie's Mom's house. It was delicious I'm pretty sure. Spaghetti. I dunno. I was concentrating on not dying, and also not telling people I thought I was dying, cause I was pretty sure I wasn't really that sick and only just being a baby. Then Ktbear took me back to her house to take care of me, cause she kinda guessed that maybe I had one foot in the grave. Yay for Kt, and Journey Dog who is seriously the world's best cuddler. Andrea kept Martha and Lil Jeffie occupied, and everybody was happy.
Sunday morning I was on a plane to Cali and that was fairly excruciating. I was just trying to keep my eardrums in my ears.
Bean and Papabear scooped me up and brought me home to chicken soup and a basket full of of drugs.
And that's been pretty much it. I'm recovering slowly but surely. We had a teeny party for Papabear's 50th yesterday, and then I went to bed. I didn't even eat cake or drink any vodka, which should impress upon you how crap-tastik I feel. Who gets Pneumonia anyways? Ugh, I feel so lame.
Still, for most of the weekend, I think I partied like a champ. And it was fun. Way too short a visit, but superfun. Who doesn't love Lil Jeffie? I can't think of a single person. That kid is the bees knees.

More Awesome Than Sad

Stephen J. is mowing the lawn. That and the window fan are the pleasantest of white noises combined, and I am getting sleepy. Which could also be the cold medicine, cause I have the sniffles, and I accidentally overdosed myself on Robitussin, cause I didn't read the label correctly. Didn't they used to make After School Specials about that sort of thing? Man, whatever happened to After School Specials?
What have I been up to? Being crabby/sleepy mostly. I've been up to some other things too I guess, but all of them only half-assed. These include: landscaping, drinking, Meeting New and Interesting people, working on my next book, working on publicity for the the current book, cutting paper snowflakes, looking for for-real jobs, learning to box, making mad mixes, wishing people belated happy birthday, and drinking more water.
One time I went hiking, and one time I helped Barry Kriebel edit a script for a play. And one time I made Stephen J. kill a baby squirrel, which was horrible. But it was only because the baby squirrel was already dying, and I didn't want it to suffer all day on the hot tin roof. It was an act of mercy. Except that I made Steve do it, which makes me sort of a jerk. In my defense, had I been home alone, I would have done it myself, but squirrel killing is boy business, and, since there was a boy home, yeah.
On the opposite side of sad, dead, baby squirrels though, we have that my book is finished!! Finished for real finished. You can go to amazon.com right now, and search Molli Rocket, and click the thing and by it, and it will come in the mail, right to your house! If that is not awesome, I don't know what is.
In fact, it is so awesome, I'm gonna end this post right now, so you can go do that, and bask in the awesomeness. Do it.

Invalids, Drunks, Hobos, Dogs and Beans

Wellity, wellity, wellity.

What's been going on?

Thuglife is making a slow but steady recovery. We had some difficult days together, but things get slowly better. My sister informs me that after this weekend, my services will no longer be necessary, and I am free to go. This is fairly excellent for everyone involved.

Everybody is beginning to piece their old live back together, which leaves me free to get started on my new life.

I have some ideas about that, but most of them are half-baked at best. I'm waiting on some input from some key players, before I finalize any decisions.

However, I DO know for sure that I will be spending a few weeks in the vicinity of the couch of Robbie and Steve, before bouncing up to the Boston area to spend some time on the couches of Andrea and then Miss Melody: http://littlehomeblessings.blogspot.com/ (yeah, I'm not so savvy at the link making). Who has a little boy I have yet to meet.

Also also also! Guess who is giving a reading of her new book at St. Andrews on Thursday, September the 27th? Yeah man, I think it's me!! Anybody got a couch?

The book production is going very well. Thanks to the mad editing skillz of Noelle H., I get to skip the editing phase of production and jump right to format and cover design, which speeds up the release date by another few weeks and also allows me to keep all my made-up words and creative grammar. How much do I love Publish America this afternoon?

Still no definite release date, but I will keep you posted.

In adventuring news, I've managed to have a few, for all that I don't get out much.

A few Saturdays ago I was looking gorgeous and eating delicious gazpacho at a swanky party for Peter, Philly photographer and all around super-awesome guy, and Sunday last I was looking even more fabulous at Sam and Em's house-warming, which was the fliest party I've been to since the Mojo Conference. I don't remember it too well, but I know there was a heck of a lot of gin and tonics, pina coladas, chocolate martinis (Sam makes the BEST chocolate martinis) and a bottle of Maison Louis Jadot Beaujolais; singing of hymns as if they were drinking songs while passing around said bottle of Beaujolais (I'm serious. 6 drunkards singing Amazing Grace in a Mt. Airy apartment kitchen at 11:30 on a Sunday night. That's my kind of spirituality!); and a lot of making out with my best friend's roommate, brother, and girlfriend. Yeah, I was that girl. But don't worry, the vibe on that score was much more I Love Lucy than, you know, 90210 or whatever the popular nighttime drama is these days. (90210. Could I be more behind the times?) (But in my defense, who has time for T.V. what with all the drinking and kissing that goes on?) So yeah, you want to hit up Sam and Em's next party.

In more sober adventuring, the day after the night of drunken debauchery, Mojo and I found a Hobo camp in Jappy's back yard. I am so not even kidding. Next to Jappy's house is this crazy scary abandoned house. It's pretty much the scariest thing since Muffin's Murder House in NC.

And behind that is this thicket of briers and trees and whatnot.

And I dunno if you can see it, I couldn't see it, but Mojo found this path through there. And he did that dog thing where he went a little ways, and came back, and then went a little ways, saying, "Follow me!" So I did. And look what we found:

So cool!! Now, some nay-sayers, when spoken to on the phone (Stephen J.) tried to convince me that I had not found a Hobo camp at all, but rather a "Q-town teen aged delinquent make-out sight." But I beg the differ.

Note the single solitary chair, flimsily constructed to hold, at maximum, one average-sized Hobo. Note also the relics of bean and tuna-fish cans amid the discarded beer cans. What making-out teenagers eat tuna-fish and beans? And if that's Steve's idea of a good make-out time, I caution you ladies! Lastly, stacks of tires and a broken down truck. I rest my case.

After leaving the hobo camp, Mojo and I discovered a beautiful bean field, where Mojo frolicked and, undoubtedly, the luckless hobo found a days work, and perhaps a glimpse of the purdy bean-farmers daughter, hanging out the laundry, her breasts swelling above her calico dress, her beautiful neck glistening with July sweat.

As a final thought, I will leave you with a picture of my toes, from last weeks relaxo-time, and my favorite picture of the worlds best dog in a field of beans.

Summer is good, and getting better. God bless!

Pin in the Map

The couch I am currently residing on is my sisters, in the Q-town, PA.

It's a black leather affair, very stylish.

So once again my life is a tad bit... dishevelled.
I'm bouncing around a lot again and probably will be hard to pin down for the next 6 or so months.
I reckon on being here for at lease a little while. Jappy's man was in a pretty bad wreck and needs some looking after for a bit. I have the great fortune to be jobless at the current moment, so I'm the perfect person for that position. 2 days after the crash I was on a plane with a one-way ticket, a lap-top, and a week's worth of clothes.
The cool thing about being a shiftless gypsy is the flexibility.
I will be here for a bit, until Thuglife's back on his feet. My job description mainly consists of making eggs, blending milkshakes, sweeping up after Mojo, and playing video games. Not to shabby. And I get Sundays to play with Blondie, Lauren and my boys, so that's alright too.
Can I work in some hot hot adventures on the east coast? If I can, you'll hear about it. If I can't, I'll make something up, and you'll hear about that. Either way, you win.

And once my buddy has made a full recovery, oh man! The fun times will not stop! Where will I go next? There is no way to predict this. I could be in Chicago in 2 months. I could be in Oxford. You don't know. I could join the crazy kids in Vermont trying to secede from the union. My whims change on a daily basis. I could go to Las Vegas and get married tomorrow.

Except that I make better eggs than Jappy, and that's all Thuglife can eat right now.
So I'll kick it around here for a bit longer, and I'll be posting to keep you posted on major developments.

Speaking of major developments, my publisher says my book will be available in 6-8 weeks.
6-8 weeks son! God damn that's quick.
So excited.

That's all for now. Kisses!