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Correct A Wrong

May 22nd, 2013

Jen Calonita (THE BELLES SERIES)

I RSVP’D “NO” TO MY ROOMMATE FROM COLLEGE’S WEDDING

When I transferred to Boston College my junior year, I was already freaked out. I was finally going away, but I was jumping into the BC scene two years behind everyone else. Would anyone even speak to me? Thankfully, I was placed with two fellow transfer girls, E and J, for my roommates. Even better: the three of us not only got along, we liked each other! So much so that even after we all met other friends and got used to the BC scene, we still chose to room together senior year. For those of you who have lived with other girls, you know how hard it can be to maintain a friendship when arguments about hair in the shower drain and whose turn it was to wash the dishes can destroy everything, but E, J, and I, despite our ups and downs, stayed closed senior year. E, who got engaged soon after college ended, even had J and I in her wedding.

We stayed in touch by email and phone, but as I was the only one leaving Massachusetts to head back down to New York, I wasn’t as close to them as they were to each other. We slowly started to drift apart, especially J and I. I couldn’t even tell you why, but I think once the world took us by storm, we just had different interests and problems to face and we didn’t go to each other for advice like we once had when we were hanging out on our bean bag chairs in the dorm. By the time I got married, J was an invited guest, but I guiltily did not ask her to be a bridesmaid. I did ask E to be one, and I always felt a little awkward about that–not that either J or I ever brought it up. To be fair, she did the same for her wedding–asking E to be a bridesmaid and just sending me an invite. For each of us, we had travelled back and forth for bridal showers, visits and weddings, but by the time J’s wedding rolled around, I had just started my first job at a magazine, had moved out and was paying rent for an apartment I could barely afford, and was in the middle of a huge family drama (which could be a book in length if I started explaining it all). When J’s invite came, I knew I could not afford another dime to get up to Massachusetts for a wedding, give a gift and stay in a hotel. I had to say no–but even I knew it wouldn’t go over well. And it didn’t. Both E and J were disappointed with me. My other college friends were too–couldn’t I crash in one of their hotel rooms? Not give a gift till after the fact (etiquette says I have a year to send a gift, right?)? Or just go for the day (four hour drive each way, folks). I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I wouldn’t change my mind.

That decision changed everything between E, J, and I. We still sent holiday cards and exchanged the occasional email, but things were not the same and I knew it. E was mad at me about what I’d done, but wouldn’t say it to me. When J had her first baby, and I was finally able to afford more than Ramen Noodles for dinner, I sent a very cute baby gift as a peace offering. I even tried calling a few times to personally congratulate her. At first she didn’t pick up. When she finally did a few calls later, she bit my head off that the baby was crying and she didn’t have time to listen to what I had to say. I never called again.

Over the years, we completely lost touch. I’d look for their names in the BC magazine that had updates about our class, but never saw anything. I lost track of J completely. I finally found E on Facebook and sent a very apologetic email about my behavior and she actually responded. She explained she was hurt that I did that to J, but she appreciated my email. We’re back up to Christmas card exchanging now so it’s a start.

Do I regret saying no to J’s wedding? Yes. I think about it a lot. I should have sucked it up and crashed on a friend’s floor and sent a gift late, but I didn’t. If I could do anything differently, I think I would have tried the one thing I could afford: a phone call. Maybe if I had explained everything going on in my life (including the family drama) she could have seen where I was coming from and have understood. I can’t change what I did, but I still wish I could say sorry.

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What Would YOU Really Do?

May 15th, 2013

To continue the conversation about the themes in CRIMINAL this month, I asked a special round of authors this question: “What do you think you’d do if someone you knew confessed (to you) that they’d committed a murder, and what do you think you’d actually do?”

Even before I asked this question, I expected some interesting responses: all of them thoughtful and intelligent, though perhaps varied. But my expectations were hugely exceeded, as you’ll see from the deep, honest responses from Eileen Cook, Jessica Martinez, Robin Wasserman, Thomas Mullen, Kim Sabatini and Denise Jaden below. This is a long entry –I thought about breaking it into two posts– but the juxtaposition of each answer (the commonalities, the differences) is necessary and great. I encourage you to read on, and that doing so might make you carefully consider your own response!

EILEEN COOK (The Almost Truth, Unraveling Isobel, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood, et al):

What would I hope I would do? It’s my experience if a friend tells you something difficult, then asks you to keep a secret, they’re asking for help that they’re too afraid to reach for by themselves. It reminds me of when a friend told me that a boyfriend was hitting her and then begged me not to tell her family. I believed she told me because deep down she wanted me to do something. Something that she was afraid to do on her own. I would hope if a loved one confessed that they committed a murder, I would work with them to make sure they had the support they needed to come forward and do the right thing. Of course the whole time I was handling the situation I would be calm and well dressed.

What would I actually do? Freak out. The first thing I would think is that the person I loved was messing with me. I’ve been known to do some pranks in my time (Including once moving everything in a friend’s apartment and setting up exactly the same outside.) so I would assume they were making a bad joke. I’d make a lame comment like: “Sure you did. I’ve committed all sorts of murders myself. In fact I’m keeping bodies in the freezer so later I can skin them and make a people suit.” When it became clear that they weren’t joking, I know I’d be shocked and really wish I hadn’t made the skin suit crack. I like to think at that point I’d then help them come forward, but I’d do it without being calm and likely doing this snorty laugh thing I do when I’m nervous.

Jessica Martinez (The Space Between Us, Virtuosity)

I’ve got the right answer! Pick me, pick me!

That’s a lie. I’ve been mulling over this question for weeks now and my answer still feels wrong, but I can’t seem to make myself change it.

I’m going to assume I’m not worried about the loved one killing someone else. Nobody else is in danger. I’m also going to assume I’m not worried about getting caught for not ratting, since that kind of self-interest muddies the real issue here. The real issue is which is more important: honesty or love. Right?

(By the way, if you’re thinking about this question, you aren’t really thinking about it until you insert the people in your life into the equation. Your mom. Your brother. Your best friend. Your boyfriend. Go there. It changes everything.)

I think I want to be the person who could turn a loved one in. No matter how high the stakes are, honesty is supposed to be the right answer—I’ve had that drilled into me since I was a little girl. But do I actually want to be that moral? I think so. I really do. Living with the guilt of having turned in someone I loved would be terrible, but I’d have my integrity.

Ten years ago, I think I could’ve done it.

Here’s the problem. That answer means choosing ideals over reality, principals over people, and it’s possible that age has tarnished my youthful idealism enough to pull me to the other side. In just the last few years I’ve learned something about myself: When a loved one is threatened, I go a little crazy. Maybe more than a little. When it comes to my kids or my husband or my brothers and sisters, I have a very primal, physical response. It would take superhuman strength for my brain to put lofty ideals of justice and integrity over this instinct to protect my loved ones. I can quiet all sorts of impulses, but I don’t want to quiet this one. Honestly, I don’t think I would even try, or that there would even be much of a question in my mind as to whether or not to turn one of them in. I just wouldn’t. So, I guess that’s my right answer. I wouldn’t. Too bad it still feels like the wrong one.

Robin Wasserman (The Waking Dark, The Book of Blood and Shadow, et al)

I got this question the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, and by the time the police released a photo of a suspect who looked like a random college student, the question had burrowed into my mind. When we found out it was some random college student, some ostensibly well-liked and well-adjusted Cambridge kid with friends who are still scratching their heads in disbelief…well, suffice it to say that I can’t bring myself to give you the kind of jokey answer I usually reserve for interview questions demanding deep thoughts.

I went to college in Boston; I had friends that went t Cambridge Rindge and Latin—come to think of it, I used to udge high school debate tournaments at Rindge and Latin. These are tenuous and meaningless connections, the kind of thing it makes you feel a little guilty to dwell on—except that dwelling on them is sometimes the only thing that makes the inconceivable conceivable, less a shocking reality TV show and more a tragedy, hundreds of tragedies, to mourn.

So I watch these kids—and, appallingly, I’m now old enough that a shaken and confused 20 year old getting interviewed on CNN reads as “kid”—try to parse the mystery, that evil had taken the form of someone they knew, someone they liked. I read about the kids who maybe, probably, knew what their friend did and, unfathomably, decided to help him. I imagine going online and discovering in the fuzzy photo of a crazed mass murderer the face of someone you love.

Do you call the police? Would I call the police? Yes. Obviously, yes. I can say that, easily, and I believe it. But maybe that’s because there’s a superior voice in the back of my head saying: Not me. I would never be so deeply fooled. I could never love someone who had it in him to do something like that. Some acts are so evil, they must be transformative, I think; some acts can only be committed by a monster. Who could love that? I imagine things for a living, but here my imagination hits a wall.

But: Maybe this is too easy. You asked about murder, and—as I know from watching every episode of every crime procedural on TV—murder comes in an infinity of shapes and sizes. It doesn’t come small enough to be justified…but to be understood? To be overlooked? To be written off as an accident or a pitiable moment of insanity, a wound to be healed rather than a crime to be punished?

A panicked hit-and-run, a bar fight gone out of control, an act of vengeance, an act of desperation… if you loved someone enough, wouldn’t you desperately grab for an excuse, something, anything, that could banish evil and explain the unthinkable away?

I knew someone once, I loved someone once, someone good, whom I could have imagined doing something terrible. It never happened, but I used to think about it sometimes, wondering what I would do, if. Whether I would do the right and legal thing, or whether—as seemed possible at the time—there would be a nobility in fulfilling the obligations of love, in being strong enough to understand and forgive.

Now, I don’t believe there is. Not anymore, while I’m safe in my cozy belief that no one I know and love will ever doing anything deeply wrong. Now, I believe crime deserves punishment and that everyone, even and especially the people close to me, should bear responsibility for their decisions. I am, in general, a disgustingly rule-abiding person: I tell the cashier when he gives me too much
change, I stop my bike for red lights even when the street is deserted, and as my best friends from high school will attest, I have never allowed a single piece of homework to be copied.

I follow the rules partly because in a lot of ways, it makes things easier— and because I’ve only ever had easy rules to follow. But if it hurt? If it meant sacrificing someone I thought I loved, something I thought I needed? If the alternative was telling myself a story, you and me against the cold unfeeling world, you the victim of circumstance, me the one to protect you from yourself and all those people who wouldn’t understand, what would I do?

I hope I’m old enough and wise enough now to know better. I hope I’m strong enough not to fall for anyone’s crap, including my own. I hope I’m the kind of person who will always do the right thing, no matter how hard it gets. But more than anything I hope I’ll never have to find out.

Thomas Mullen (The Revisionists, The Last Town On Earth, et al)
What would I do if someone I knew told me they’d committed a murder?

Funny, I wrote a book about that. Actually, it’s come up in two of my books, so I should have a good answer to this. Sort of. Well, I do, but those answers are each about 400 pages long.

You’re probably hoping for a shorter answer.

OK, all kidding aside (since this is serious business), you actually don’t have many options here. Any options. You can pretend you have options, but you don’t. If you think that one of your options is to help them get away with it, then you have now committed a major crime yourself (it’s called “accessory after the fact” if you’re into legal lingo). Which means that your friend or relative’s crime has now become your crime.

Sure, you love this person. It’s your brother or your father or one of your best friends, or maybe your boyfriend. But let’s be realistic here – there’s pretty much no conceivable way that they’re going to get away with it. Set-up’s like these do not end well. They try to get away with it, but they can’t. They get busted. Eventually. Maybe it takes a whole year or three, but there comes a day when they let something slip or get photographed at a sporting event and some random witness to the crime sees it, and, you know.

The cops then come for them, and get ‘em. If you helped them get away with it, then the cops are coming for you too.

This sounds more heartless than I mean it to. I don’t mean to be coming off as numb to the feelings you have for this person, whom you apparently love, even though he or she murdered someone. (And we’re assuming for sake of argument here that it was a big accident, or that the murdered person somehow deserved it, or something.)

My point is that this is your life. You only have one. (As that dead person knows very well.) You have not killed anyone. You probably have never done anything that’s even as remotely bad as that. But if you vouch for your pal here and try to help them get away with it, then you have let their crime become your crime. You’ve pretty much traded away your own freedom, just because someone you love did something really, really stupid.

You’re better than that. Your life, to be blunt, is worth more.

Which means you have to talk them into turning themselves in. And if they don’t, then you need to do it for them. Which will be hell. Which might mess you up for a really long time, because you’ll feel guilty. (Which is crazy, because they are the one who is guilty. But that’s life. Life, as in, the sentence they might get.)

And then they’ll go to jail, which will also suck. Having a friend or relative in jail is not fun. I know this quite well, actually (long story). Good people do bad things sometimes, and they pay a price.

Don’t pay it for them.

Kim Sabatini (Touching the Surface):

This is one of those rare occasions where my hope and actual MUST collide. I have read too many books and watched too many movies to think anyone could possibly get away with anything in today’s day and age LOL! Sheesh, I couldn’t even get away with going to a party I wasn’t supposed to in high school. My loved one absolutely has to come clean. Between electronic trails and forensic science, I believe it’s becoming increasingly more of a miracle when someone isn’t caught. And lying comes back to bite you in the butt like an angry dog. Although…there are plenty of books and movies about the wrongly imprisoned and the crooked side of the law and they are making me rethink my honesty. Life isn’t fair. Good does’t ALWAYS trump evil and the truth doesn’t always come out! And then in those movies, there’s the creepy background music that makes my heart race and my mind a jumble of indecision. *slaps self upside head* This is exactly how the people in the other books and movies get into trouble!!!! So, I’m advocating telling the truth BUT…you have to be choosy in who you tell. You have to research it very, very carefully. You can’t trust just anyone. Or can you? *head thunk*

DENISE JADEN (Writing with a Heavy Heart, Losing Faith, et al)

Every time I sat down to answer this question, I was reminded of something that happened in my own life many years ago. When I was twenty, I was driving and hit a couple of pedestrians. One of them died, and to be honest, it was only because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the road. While it wasn’t “pre-meditated,” I was still at fault.

During the time following the accident, I was an emotional mess. I had to face up to what I had done in some pretty big ways, including police dealings and meeting with the adult son of the woman I had killed. It was one of the hardest times of my life, and I remember thinking at the time that if I ever had to go through something like that again, I’d sooner kill myself.

But eventually there was another side to the tragedy. I learned a lot about forgiveness and grace, and I think there is a certain amount of freedom that comes with owning up to your mistakes, enduring the consequences of those mistakes, and eventually forgiving yourself. In my case, I didn’t have much choice but to own up to them, but in hindsight, I’m thankful for that. I would never have wanted to be the person who killed a person, took off from the accident, and lived with that secret for the rest of my life.

If I had a friend who confessed committing a murder, I would want them to own up to what they had done, both for their own sake and for the family of those whose life they took, and I believe I would keep trying to convince them to that end. Living in guilt or shame won’t do anybody any good, nor will harboring such a devastating secret. If my friend wouldn’t admit to what he/she had done and accept the consequences, I don’t know what I’d do. Pray, for sure. Keep talking and hugging and loving him/her. But would I send an anonymous tip to the police? Honestly, probably not.

Posted in Criminal, Talking with Other Authors | 2 Comments »

Love Is Blindness

May 8th, 2013

Folks are already taking notice of one of the biggest themes in Criminal: that sometimes love can blind you from all other reason. It can make you do things you ordinarily wouldn’t do, can make you like things you wouldn’t ordinarily like, and in general can cause you to become a completely different version of yourself–one you can’t even explain to your family or friends. To help celebrate Criminal‘s release this week, I asked some of my author friends to talk about a time when a love (of anything) had maybe skewed their normal perception of things. From Ayn Rand, to TV show characters, to the Twilight Zone magazine, here were their obsessions:

Lucas Klauss (Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse):
My freshman year of college, I became infatuated with a woman. I didn’t know her and she was never even aware of my existence. But I’m pretty sure that if I, like one of her heroes, had singlehandedly invented a time machine and used it exclusively for the selfish purpose of meeting her, Ayn Rand would have thought I was pretty amazing too.

I understand now how common it is fall head-over-heels for Rand and her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, especially as a young person. But back then I felt that my devotion to her fiction and philosophy meant I was in some way special—at least in comparison to the barbarians living on my dorm hall. And at a time when I often felt insecure, lonely, and directionless, I needed that ego boost. To this day, I credit her bootstraps philosophy and odes to individual audacity with helping me find the courage to pursue a career in writing.

But what I didn’t see then is that, by falling for Rand, I was really becoming enamored of myself. The dominant mood of her novels and political writing, even stronger than her sense of awe at human achievement, is one of defiant alienation. Rand and her characters revel in being misunderstood outsiders—and, far too often, so did I.

At a university where football games were school-wide celebrations, I skipped the pre-game parties and sold my tickets to other students at hugely inflated prices—and then used the money to buy DVDs to watch by myself. In a town with tens of thousands of people from all over the South, the country, and the world, I pretty much stuck with the people I knew from my high school an hour down the road. And as a guy who entered college with basically no romantic experience, I left college as a guy with basically no romantic experience.

Looking back on my time with Ayn Rand, like looking back on any failed relationship, it’s tempting to place most of the blame on her. But that would be ridiculous, particularly since she was dead at the time. Rand’s worldview was a justification for my insularity, not the cause of it. And if I invented a time machine now, I wouldn’t go back and stop myself from reading The Fountainhead or Rand from writing it. What a sad waste, when there are so many incredible things in spacetime beyond my precious self.

I’d probably go check out the dinosaurs instead. And ultimately, strangely, I’d have Ayn Rand to thank for it.

Rebecca Serle (When You Were Mine):

When I was fifteen I fell passionately, obsessively in love with a boy. His name was Max Evans, he was from another planet (figuratively and literally), and he was fictional. He was the lead on a little-known show called “Roswell,” and I thought we were soul mates. I was so convinced of this, in fact, that I remember thinking, with my already make-believe inclined brain, that maybe aliens existed. Maybe Max Evans was just one of many sweet, caring, brooding, devastatingly handsome high school extraterrestrials. Graham Becker never got ache. That had to mean something.

I loved Max, but I was not loyal. No, I had a wandering eye. I starting seeing Pacey Witter on the side, and soon our love was in full bloom. Max didn’t know. He didn’t have to. After all, what Pacey and I shared took place far from Roswell…and only on Thursday nights. And then there was Angel. But we don’t have time to get into that.

These boys all shared something in common, and no, sadly, it was not me. They were fearless in the face of love. They would do anything for these girls—the ones with the perfect hair who would disappear into their arms like the light at sunset. I wanted that. But at fifteen, living vicariously through Liz, Joey and Buffy would have to do.

I could tell you how I grew up and got over this. How now, a real adult, I am far on the other side from these adolescent fantasies. But the truth is, it didn’t end in high school. The fictional romances of my life have always messed with the real ones. There was the time an ex neglected to buy me a wall (not cool). Or when it turned out the college guy didn’t really know how to fly (that was just a metaphor). They have tripped me up. They have set my expectations disastrously high. And yet—

Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe true love has a little bit of magic in it, a little bit of scripted dialogue, some music swells, a perfect rain kiss. I mean, Stefan Salvatore is currently single.

Elizabeth Eulberg (Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality, Take a Bow, Lonely Hearts Club, et al):

Trust your gut.

I tell myself that all the time, and generally, my gut is spot on. The only problem is that if you’re not truthful to yourself, your instincts can only take you so far.

I was in a relationship a few years ago, I wouldn’t call it “love” but it would be fair to say it was a relationship that I was very excited about and thought could be something big. Then he cheated on me. He confessed the next day. He was drunk, he didn’t know her, blah, blah, blah. At first I was upset, and walked away. But then I did something stupid. I took him back.

Don’t do it; you know it’ll happen again.

The entire time we were together my conscience kept nagging me and nagging me, but I ignored it. I thought I could reason with my gut.

How can you really trust him again?

He told me. He didn’t have to tell me, he wanted to be honest. I should respect him for coming clean.

Oh really? How do you know he’s not doing it right now? Where is he anyways? Why is he not returning your calls?

He’s busy. We’re both busy and traveling for our jobs. I don’t understand how he has time for a relationship with me. There’s no way there’s somebody else. Plus, I don’t want to be one of those needy girls.

You’re an idiot. I’m out.

I kept lying to myself. Something was bothering me, but I told myself whatever I thought I should hear instead of the truth. My stomach was in constant knots, and I felt sick. Not the I’m-so-in-love-and-happy-my-stomach-is-doing-flips, but the you’re-an-idiot-and-you-know-it-you-don’t-deserve-to-be-treated-like-this kind.

So I finally decided to confront him. I knew something was wrong, and it was time that I stopped lying to myself and found out the truth. So I asked him, “How many people are you dating?” His response, “One.” Oh, okay…

Hey, remember me? I’m baaack. Are you really going to fall for that?

So then, I kid you not, I said, “Including me or in addition to me?” He paused and then replied, “In addition to you.” Yep, what was I thinking? What a d-bag! So I ended things that minute and vowed to never ignore my intuition again. Not even for a cute boy.

Ahem.

Okay, honestly, he wasn’t that cute. I have no idea what I was thinking. But he did loosely inspire an idiot ex-boyfriend in one of my books so I at least got something out of it!

Yep, a successful writing career and he’s still a loser.

Why did I ever stop listening to you?

Don’t ever do it again.

Oh, I won’t. Believe me, I won’t.

Jeff Hirsch (The Eleventh Plague, The Darkest Path):
I couldn’t even tell you the name of my first love. All I can say is where I found it: in the pages of the short-lived Twilight Zone Magazine.

TZ came in the mail each month and it was crammed full of horror stories, sci-fi stories, fantasy stories, magical realist stores–all by some of the biggest speculative fiction writers of the day. Reading those stories was like having my mind blown apart and reassembled. I was just starting to write at the time and, as is often the case with teen infatuations, I ended up bending my entire life around this thing I loved. I wrote Twilight Zone stories and I wrote a lot of them.

Of course, like all teen loves, a long term thing wasn’t in the cards. Over the years I dove into a succession of equally intense relationships. I fell for Tom Waits hard and began writing rhythmic be-bop poetry about small time low-lives and carnival barkers. (Which, as a middle class teen from Virginia are things I knew oh so much about) Tennessee Williams got me attempting grand, lyrical plays about faded glory and dark family secrets. When I encountered Erik Ehn and Jose Rivera and Caryl Churhill and Naomi Iizuka in grad school all I wanted to do was write reality-bending, language-based freakouts.

Now I’m older my head isn’t quite so easily turned. The boundaries between who I am and the things I love are stronger, allowing me to be influenced without being overwhelmed. I guess the expected–and easy–moral to the story would be that I finally stopped trying to write like other
people and became my own true self. That sounds good, but I don’t think it’s an accurate way to look at how a writer, or any artist, matures.

You don’t leave your influences behind. Just like with romantic relationships, each one bends the trajectory of your life. I think most writers and artists are the culmination of their influences. We take things in, discard some and keep others. What’s originality anyway? Or creativity? I don’t think it’s a divine spark, something wholly new and individual. I think it’s more in the way we combine and process our influences.

In the end, maybe who we are is the combination of everything we’ve ever loved.

So, as you can see, the love of pretty much anything can obsess you, whether it’s a real person or not. So I’d love to hear, in comments, about how perhaps you’ve been blinded by love, either seriously or in a silly way.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your stories, and here’s to all of us ultimately finding love that allows us to see things clearly.

Posted in Criminal, Talking with Other Authors | No Comments »

The Sad Jackal Logo, Revealed!

May 1st, 2013

Thanks to everyone who voted in the Being Friends With Boys Sad Jackal band logo contest! It was fun to watch the votes come in, and I’m happy to announce that my good friend (and, in my opinion, great artist) Stewart Haddock created the winning design!

I asked Stewart a little bit about his art, and this design, plus being friends with girls, and here’s what he had to say:

All my art is just little stuff. Cards and gifts to people or maybe something I just give away. I just think of something and do it. Being asked to do something was different and made it harder. It wasn’t that it was a band logo specifically, just that it seemed there were expectations. I guess you learn how to deal with that in art school. I should have gone to art school, huh? I almost begged out, since nothing I was coming up with was any good. Then I just figured I would make something simple and since it would be on a t-shirt and every color adds to the price of the shirt, I thought a linocut would make a nice mono-color image. (trying to think like a band might think) I like it enough. Text is very hard with linocut, for me at least, and I wish that looked better.

I am a terrible artist. Looking at the other designs really drives the point home.

Being friends with girls’s cool. What do you want me to do, write a book on it!? Just messing with ya. I’m not really offering to write a book.

Stewart is also the Community Organizer and Conceptual Artist for the Inman Park Squirrel Census, which is, in my opinion, just one of the many, many reasons why he is so awesome, and why I’m glad his art is representing Being Friends With Boys!

Posted in Being Friends with Boys | No Comments »

Happy Paperback, Sad Jackal!!

April 23rd, 2013

Voting for the Sad Jackal band logo contest is now closed. The winner will be announced tomorrow morning! Thanks for those who voted, and I’ll contact sticker winners directly!

I have been waiting a long, long time for the paperback release of Being Friends With Boys, for two reasons: 1) because paperback means it’s is easier to carry and cheaper to purchase, so even more of you can get your own; 2) because it means it’s time for a contest I’ve been planning for months!!

Participate in the Sad Jackal Band Logo

Contest Now!!

And happy paperback!!