Naming a fictional emo band-- vote!

So it's no secret that the book I am working on toys with the myth of Persephone. I've been trying to use all Greek and Roman references. In an early draft the Persephone character has an emo/goth boyfriend who calls himself Wraith because his band is called Ghost of Christmas Past. I've decided I need to change the Dickens' reference into something that fits with Greek and Roman mythology to go with the rest of the book.

So far via Twitter and Facebook suggestions I've come up with:

"The World on His Shoulders" with the lead singer named Atlas.

"The Burden of Sisyphus" with the singer named Stone.

Then since I wanted to stick with the underworld theme of the rest of the book, I came up with:

"Saving Eurydice" with the lead singer named Orpheus.

I kinda like the last one best because it fits the underworld theme. But is Orpheus way too pretentious of a nickname even for a bratty emo/goth singer who is pretty full of himself? Would his girlfriend call him Orpheus? Is there a nickname that could work for Orpheus? 

My second favorite is The World on His Shoulders/Atlas.

Opinions? More suggestions?

So it's no secret that the book I am working on toys with the myth of Persephone. I've been trying to use all Greek and Roman references. In an early draft the Persephone character has an emo/goth boyfriend who calls himself Wraith because his band is called Ghost of Christmas Past. I've decided I need to change the Dickens' reference into something that fits with Greek and Roman mythology to go with the rest of the book.

So far via Twitter and Facebook suggestions I've come up with:

"The World on His Shoulders" with the lead singer named Atlas.

"The Burden of Sisyphus" with the singer named Stone.

Then since I wanted to stick with the underworld theme of the rest of the book, I came up with:

"Saving Eurydice" with the lead singer named Orpheus.

I kinda like the last one best because it fits the underworld theme. But is Orpheus way too pretentious of a nickname even for a bratty emo/goth singer who is pretty full of himself? Would his girlfriend call him Orpheus? Is there a nickname that could work for Orpheus? 

My second favorite is The World on His Shoulders/Atlas.

Opinions? More suggestions?

ETA: Maybe the guy could call himself "Lyre" since Orpheus is known for his Lyre?

Last Chance to Enter for a Ballads of Suburbia ARC

I know I haven't been blogging much lately and I apologize. The good thing is this means I am writing. A lot. And really focused. I will get back to the regular blogging later this week. Promise.

Right now I just wanted to remind you that my latest contest to win ARCs of Ballads of Suburbia ends Thursday, May 21 at 11:59 PM CST. I will announce the winners right here on Friday. The top three people who enter will get BALLADS ARCs and some other great prizes. Right now top three numbers of entries are 15, 12, and 11. It's still anybody's game so get entering! All the details are here.

I do ask that if you enter, you please send me your list of entries via email to stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com because tallying them up from the various other sites (myspace, etc) gets really tedious for me.

Okay, enter away! There are plenty of ways to win! 

(I feel kind of like an Illinois Lottery Commercial right now. Isn't plenty of ways to win their slogan?)

Women Who Rock Wednesday: Danielle Joseph!

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday! Thank you to everyone who left comments last week on my interview with my mom, which was one of the most fun interviews I've ever done. I hope all you moms out there had a great Mother's Day and you kids were all good to your moms. The winner of a copy of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone signed by me and my mom is... Michelle Kuo from blogger! Michelle conveniently left her email address so I'll be in touch for your address Michelle unless you contact me first at stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com.

Now on to today's Woman Who Rocks, Danielle Joseph!!! Danielle is a fellow MTV Books author and when I read about her book, Shrinking Violet, I went straight to my editor begging for an ARC. Shrinking Violet hit stores last week and I highly, highly, highly recommend that you buy it! Of course, you will also have the opportunity to win it right here by commenting at the end of this interview and either leaving an email address or (preferably cause there will be another great interview) checking back next week to see if you've won.

Anyway, let's meet Danielle!

Q: As you know, I adore Shrinking Violet and I'm summing it up as "A Cinderella story for anyone who felt shy or like they didn't fit in at high school," but I'm sure you can give us a better description. Tell us about the book and what inspired you to write it. 

Danielle: Well, I really like your description but I will add to it by saying the book is also about reaching for your dreams and not letting any obstacles stand in your way. It’s about finding your voice and using it. I was inspired to write this book because I love music and think it is such a powerful tool in helping people not matter what stage in life they are. I wanted to write about a girl who blossoms through music and does not let her own short comings stand in her way.

Q: One of the things I love most about Shrinking Violet is all the fake bands and musical artists you create. Somehow you manage to describe them in a way that makes them feel accessible to fans of any kind of music. I didn't necessarily think, oh this is this real life band.... But now I'm going to make you talk about some real bands. What are five real songs that you would put on a Shrinking Violet soundtrack and how do they relate to the book? 

Danielle: I do have a Shrinking Violet play list on my website and here are five of my song choices:

Stupid Girls by Pink because Tere is not going to be consumed by the media and how they portray girls.

Pictures of You by The Cure. I listened to The Cure a lot in high school and they remind me of my group of friends. I think they are a band that Tere could really relate too.

Dani California by The Red Hot Chili Peppers because their music is great and they are definitely a band that Tere would appreciate for their amazing talent. Also, this song helped me develop her voice as I was writing.

Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes. I imagine Tere listening to this song on a particularly bad day with her mom. I see Tere storming up to her room and blasting Kiss Off on her iPOD.

Love Like This by Natasha Bedingfield. Tere would listen to this when she is crushing on Gavin.

Q: I think Tere from Shrinking Violet can be a real role model for girls. She's someone they can relate to and she manages to find her own way despite her shyness. Helen Keller is one of her inspirations. Is Helen one of yours or did you just research her for the book? And who are some of the other women who have inspired you over the years? 

Danielle: I have always had a fondness for Helen Keller but I was even more amazed with her accomplishments when I researched her more in depth for this book. Some of my other inspirations are Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and so many other strong women.

Q: I'm a sucker for how did you become a writer stories. What's yours? We you always an aspiring novelist or how did your path toward writing unfold?

Danielle: I have wanted to be a writer since I wrote my first book in first grade. My teacher had us illustrate it. Then she typed up our words and laminated it. From there I was hooked, realizing I could write whatever I wanted! I wrote in some form or another over the years from angst poetry to humorous observations to books of notes back and forth with my close friends. I also studied creative writing in college but didn’t become really serious about getting published until after I had my first son seven years ago.

Q: I know SV just came out, but what is next for you? What are you working on now? 

Danielle: My next novel, Indigo Blues, will be released from Flux in Fall 2010. It is another music-centered novel but this one is told in two points of view. It’s about a song writer who breaks up with his girlfriend and writes a hit song about their breakup. It chronicles what happens when they are both instantly thrust into the limelight. I am also working on something new now that involves love, humor and spirits—something totally different for me!

Q: Now for my two standard questions for my rockin' ladies. The first is a two-parter: What was the first album you bought and the first concert you attended? 

Danielle: I believe the first album I bought was a Duran Duran cassette tape and my first concert was Paul Young in the eighth grade. My friend’s older brother asked if we wanted to go and I was so excited even though I had never heard of Paul Young before. The girls in the row behind us were screaming their heads off when he stepped on stage in super tight corduroys.

Q: Please dish about your biggest rock star moment. It could be a big moment of success in your career, a time where you met someone famous and had the Wayne's World "I'm not worthy" experience, or where you got the total rock star treatment? 

Danielle: My biggest rock star moment was this past weekend at my book launch. I got a new outfit (and two back-ups), then got my hair and nails done. The weather was perfect, the house was packed and we were at one of my favorite bookstores. When I looked up from my signing table and saw all those people in line waiting for me to sign my book for them, I felt like a superstar!

Well, hopefully that pumps you up to read Shrinking Violet because I really do love it and think Danielle is an amazing and very cool writer! Comment away on her interview or maybe tell us if you were shy in high school (I totally was though I tried to cover it up!) and you will be entered to win Shrinking Violet. The winner will be drawn next week when I interview Ciara Griffin, the kick ass heroine from Jeri Smith Ready's books Wicked Game and Bad to the Bone! That should be an interesting one....

My Celebration of Spring

Fall has always been my favorite season. The smells, the crunchy sounds and texture of the leaves. Halloween. It has always appealed to the part of me that wears a lot of black... But as I have gotten older I've come to be more optimistic. I like the sun and the outside more than I used to. Maybe it's a falling-in-love-with-the-right-person-finally thing (though I'm still getting married in my beloved Fall) and because I just feel better about life. Maybe it's because I've gotten more into gardening and I'm really into watching things grow. Maybe it's because I hate winter so fucking much. But anyway, Spring is now a close second to Fall, and I've been really, really enjoying it this year.

I write a newspaper column for my local paper, the Forest Park Review, which I will link to on the blog when I think it is of interest to a wider audience and this week I think it is because I'm talking about the coming of spring. So I hope you will check it out here. Please note that if I could have titled I probably would have called it "Fuck Winter, Bring on the Sunshine!" But um... it is a newspaper column.... Not swearing in my newspaper column and my school presentations are the hardest parts of my writing career sometimes....

Anyway, I also sadly couldn't provide photos to illustrate the newspaper column, but on my blog I can. So here is the photo companion to my article! You can click on the photos to make them bigger.

My sons enjoy the sun (L to R: Kaspar, Lars, and Sid at the bottom):  

Sid and Lars pose for their close up:

My goth tulips out front (note trash that has blown into them. Argh. My perpetual battle.):

My side garden, the big bushy plant in the top right corner is the mysterious thing that turned out to be celery:
Other side garden:
Close up on the goth tulip:
Baby geese in the North Riverside Mall Parking Lot:
So that's what spring looks like in my neighborhood. What about yours?

Women Who Rock Wednesday: My Mom!!!!

I have two prize winners to announce for Women Who Rock Wednesday today because the person who won Sarah Quigley's TMI never claimed their prize and my rule is if you don't claim your prize in two weeks, I draw a new winner. So please, please please, people, try to remember to check back every Wednesday after you enter to see if you won! I leave it up to you to contact me cause I just don't have time to be tracking people down.

Without further adieu, the winner of Melissa Walker's Lovestruck Summer (which came out yesterday, squee! Totally going out to buy that this weekend or maybe tomorrow!) is Steph Su from blogger! Steph, I know I have your addy somewhere but if you can send it to me again at stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com, I'd really appreciate it.

The new winner of Sarah Quigley's TMI is Erika Lynn from blogger. Erika, please email me at the addy above to claim your prize!

So today, since this Sunday is Mother's Day, I wanted to honor the woman who rocks my world more than any other.... MY MOM! 

Seriously, this is the woman who has influenced me more than any writer, musician, artist.... more than anyone. If I can just be half the woman she is, I know I'll have lived a pretty damn good life.

Like all mother/daughter pairs, we've had our ups and downs. In fifth grade, my mom felt like my worst enemy. It seemed like she was always holding me back. I was trying so hard to be "cool" and fit in with the popular crowd that year and my mom would not buy me the clothes I wanted or let me run as free as those kids did or let me get a perm or a thousand other things. I distinctly remember an argument in the stairwell of our house where I got so pissed at her that I threw my hairbrush at her and when she threw it back, not even hitting me, mind you, I screamed something along the lines of "I hate you and I'm calling child services on you because I don't want you to be my mother!" Of course, I didn't, but now I want to say, "Mom, I'm sooooooooo sorry and THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!" Because of her rules and her unwillingness to buy me overpriced outfits at the Gap, I stayed true to myself, the dork, the weirdo, and I became who I am today.

I'm sure that moment was tough and there were plenty more tough times. When I was dating the boy that was no good for me sophomore year of high school and she KNEW he was no good, and he got kicked out of his house, she convinced my dad to let him stay with us because as she told me later, "If you were in my house, I could protect you. I was scared to death you would run away with him."

Then there was the unhappy first year of college. Me drunkdialing my mom, crying about how unhappy I was, sharing my latest plan of action: "I'm gonna drop out and move to New Orleans and be a stripper." Yeah, I definitely put her through all seven levels of hell. But she stood by me patiently. When I determined that dropping out of college really was what was best for me at that moment (though no, I did not move to New Orleans and become a stripper), she went along with it and promised me that if I went back by the time I turned 21 that she would absolutely help me pay for it.

Another good mom trick, setting that deadline totally worked. By 21, I was sick of drinking and partying and did want to be serious about life. And she was there. Even though "serious" meant getting a creative writing degree, which might never amount to anything, she stood by me. She let me live in her house while I went to school. She told me over and over again not to give up on my dream of writing because she knew it was the one thing that had gotten me through all the rough patches over the year. She believed in me, was my number one cheerleader and I'm so happy I didn't let her down.  

That's us a the book release party for my first novel, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, the book I dedicated to her.

And since it is the book I dedicate to her, it is the book my mom requested that I give away this week if you leave a comment after reading my interview with her. Mom and I will both sign it :)

I think another reason why it's fitting that I interviewed her this week is because she is a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurse (talk about a rock star job, saving babies!) and it is National Nurses' Week. So Happy Nurses' Week, Happy Mother's Day and without further adieu, meet my mom, Nancy Napp, total f'ing rock star!

Q: Tell us about why you became a nurse. Obviously there are a lot of hard parts about your job, but what do you enjoy most and what keeps you motivated after all these years to keep nursing?

Mom (Nancy): I became a nurse because I always wanted to be a nurse! I don't know why I wanted to be-- I just did! I have been a nurse for 35 years. I love the babies. I think being a parent is the most important job in life, and I love helping the parents. And I have great friends at work!

Q: Who where the women who inspired you in your youth and who inspires you today?

Mom (Nancy):  When I was growing up, there were fewer women who were "career" or professional women. In real life, I admired the women who were my teachers, and also mother's, too. In the books I read, I wanted to be Cherry Ames. She was a nurse who could do anything and could go anywhere. That's where boundaries for women lifted for me.

Now I admire my sisters and friends who are good moms and good wives and good at their jobs, too. And I admire Dr. Heidelise Als who taught us a better way to care for NICU babies.

Q: As a NICU nurse and a mom, you probably have a wealth of knowledge about being a good mom. What's your best piece of advice for parents?

Mom (Nancy): My best advice is make time to enjoy your kids. They are the most interesting and exciting people that you know!

Q: I'm sure there are some slackers out there who haven't planned Mother's Day for their moms yet so what is the best way to honor your mom on Mother's Day?

Mom (Nancy): Call your mom! Visit her. Do something for her or with her that she would like. Don't forget Mother's Day!

Q: What's the first album you bought and concert you attended?

Mom (Nancy): My first album was either Beatles or Beach Boys. I loved seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and would have loved to see them at Comiskey Park. However, I didn't attend a concert until I could drive. The first one I remember is taking my sister to Cat Stevens at the Auditorium Theater, which is acoustically perfect. He sounded great!

Q: Please dish about your biggest rock star moment. It could be a highlight in your careeer, when you met someone famous, or just when you got the rock star treatment.

Mom (Nancy): In the 70s, there were many bars and small clubs on Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park. They were nice intimate settings. My friends and I saw Tom Scott and the LA Express at one of those bars. It was right after they played back up for Joni Mitchell on her album. To me, they were gods! And it was a small setting and we were up close! I loved it!

I totally did not know that was going to be my mom's rock star moment. I expected other stories that I'd heard before-- I wasn't familar with this story. But she told me she wanted to tell me something new and she wanted to show me who her rock gods were, not guys with guitars like mine, but guys with saxophones :)

I thought it was awesome of her to share and like I said, she is the biggest rock star in the world to me.

So together, we are giving out a signed copy of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment, maybe about how awesome your mom is or what you are doing for Mother's Day and remember to check back next week to see if you've won. My featured woman will be Danielle Joseph, author of Shrinking Violet!!!

GCC Presents: Lucienne Diver

Today Lucienne Diver is here on her Girlfriends Cyber Circuit tour to tell us a little bit about herself and her new book VAMPED.

About Lucienne:
Lucienne Diver is a long-time book addict who went to work for NYC’s Spectrum Literary Agency fifteen years ago to feed her habit. Recently, she traded in her high-rise for a lake view. She now lives in Florida and works for The Knight Agency. Through various play-dates and in various coffee bars, on the backs of envelopes, carry-out bags and anything else within reach, including, sometimes, her checkbook, she's penned the serio-comic tale of what happens when a young fashionista goes from chic to eek.

About VAMPED:

From “Valley Vamp Rules for Surviving Your Senior Prom” by VAMPED heroine Gina Covello:

Rule #1: Do not get so loaded at the after prom party that you accidentally-on- purpose end up in the broom closet with the surprise hottie of the evening, say the class chess champ who’s somewhere lost his bottle-cap lenses and undergone an extreme makeover, especially if that makeover has anything to do with becoming one of the undead.

Gina Covello has a problem. Waking up a dead is just the beginning. There's very little she can't put up with for the sake of eternal youth and beauty. Blood-sucking and pointy stick phobias seem a small price to pay. But she draws the line when local vampire vixen Mellisande gets designs on her hot new boyfriend with his prophecied powers and hatches a plot to turn all of Gina’s fellow students into an undead army to be used to overthrow the vampire council.

Hey, if anyone's going to create an undead entourage, it should be Gina! Now she must unselfishly save her classmates from fashion disaster and her own fanged fate.

What people are saying:

"VAMPED is a total delight! Diver delivers a delightful cast of undead characters and a fresh, fast take on the vampire mythos. Next installment, please!" — Rachel Caine, New York Times bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series

"I really sunk my teeth into Lucienne Diver's VAMPED. A fun, frothy, teenage romp with lots of action, a little shopping, and a cute vampire guy. Who could ask for more?" — Marley Gibson, author of GHOST HUNTRESS: The Awakening

“This book rollicked along, full of humor, romance, and action. Gina is a smart-aleck heroine worth reading about, a sort of teenage Besty Taylor (Undead and Unwed) with a lot of Cher Horowitz (Clueless) thrown in. Fans of Katie Maxwell will devour "Vamped." — Rosemary Clement-Moore, author of the Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil series

"Move over Buffy! Lucienne Diver transfuses some fresh blood into the vampire genre. Feisty, fashionable and fun--Vamped is a story readers will sink their teeth into and finish thirsty for more." —Mari Mancusi, author of The Blood Coven Vampires series

The Interview:

Q: Please list five songs that would be on the soundtrack to your book and explain how they relate to your story or characters.

Lucienne: Music is really important to me too. It’s funny - I don’t feel as though I know a character until I know what they listen to. That’s why VAMPED was so weird for me. I actually made up singers/groups that my main character, Gina, listened to. I think that because she was so unique to me, her music had to be as well. Her favorite singer is Su Surrus, who I think of as something like Pink, but maybe a little more punk. But Gina is so over the Baden Boys. She swears …she just keeps their poster on the wall because it picks up the purple in her comforter.

Q: Name some of your main character's favorite musicians or bands.

Lucienne: I'’ve just named two, but if I had to think of real-world bands or performers: Pink, Nickelback, Eve 6, Third Eye Blind, Green Day.

Q: Who are some of your favorite musicians or bands?

Lucienne: I like all of the above, but my favorites are probably The Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell, U2, Matchbox Twenty, and Jason Mraz.

Q: Even though music plays in so heavily into my storytelling, I rarely can actually listen to it while I'm writing. Can you? How does music fit into your writing process?

Lucienne: Nope, I need complete quiet when I write. I free hand everything and would love to be able to listen to music when I type in what I’ve written, but I don’t because I edit in the process of committing work to computer so that it becomes almost a second draft by the time I hit “Save.”

Q: While music is my muse, I know other writers find their muse in theater, sports, art, the great outdoors, etc. What is your main muse?

Lucienne: I did theatre for years, actually met my husband when we worked as actors at a haunted house, so that’s where I developed the skill of getting into someone else’s head. It'’s probably why my work always starts off with voice and characters. Plotting is the hard part for me. I generally know all about my characters, but not exactly how the storyline will develop, not the least of which because those characters have minds of their own and often send things spinning in unforeseen directions!

I definitely have that same issue, Lucienne. Plotting is the hardest part for me, too. VAMPED sounds like a really fun book and I love that the character was so unique she needed her own made up music. Comment away about VAMPED and the interview guys!

Musical Memories

Memories of the musical sort seem to be the theme of the morning (I know it's kind of afternoon already but I worked last night, it's my morning). I opened my email to find a message from my friend Polly with a link to this video of a punk show at the Fireside Bowl where you can see some of the backs of our friends' heads.



I totally remember seeing Zoinks at the Fireside. Do I remember this particular show? Um not really, all the shows blur together, but I know they were one of the many, many bands I saw there, along with Apocalypse Hoboken, Sleater Kinney, Bratmobile, The Third Sex, Sidekick Kato, Oblivion, Slapstick, Blue Meanies, Mr. T Experience. I could go on and on. Those are just my favorites off the top of my head. I went to the Fireside at least once a week for a year or so there. It was like home away from home. There were no ticket stubs though, so no physical memories for me to touch in a scrapbook like all my other concerts everywhere else. But that's okay. That's the way the Fireside experience should be. Volatile and everchanging the way punk rock is. Every show you went to there would be rumors that it was going to be the last because the city was shutting the place down.

I like the way my musical memories from end of sophomore year through end of senior year (note my senior year ended in January) feel like the music I listened to. I like that I stumble upon them in random ways. A YouTube video, a used vinyl at a record store in another city, a cassette tape with Mike's handwriting on it. NOFX on side A, Face to Face on side B. Made for the endless hours of driving in my car going everywhere, going nowhere.

I got pissed when I couldn't find my Tilt vinyls or my Screeching Weasel CDs because I wanted to listen to them and I bought those at Earwax Records, the punk rock record store that opened in Oak Park for all of about six months before they realized that the only people interested in a punk rock store in Oak Park was my group of about ten friends. We tried to keep them alive. We really did. I spent every dime I earned at Dominicks that I wasn't spending at Denny's or saving to get the hell out of Oak Park at Earwax.... But I'm getting off subject here. Musical memories tend to do that.

Anyway, I'm pissed when I can't find Tilt or Screeching Weasel or the Queers or Operation Ivy. Or worst of all that original pressing Minor Threat record which I'm sure was worth something. But I know those CDs and records are missing because I lent them to someone and didn't get them back or I got drunk at a party at Antioch and we put them on and they disappeared. And that's okay somehow, for punk cds and records to disappear in this way. What's not okay is the music I willing gave up.

Whenever I am asked the question, "Do you have any regrets?" I always say no because even the bad, horrible, ugly things that happened in my life had their purpose and led me to the place I am now. But I realized today, as the result of a silly Facebook quiz, that I do have one regret: my tendency to destroy/giveaway/get rid of my possessions when they become associated with bad things/people. I purge. And it's one thing to purge old letters and tacky gifts and clothes that are worn out or you will never wear again, but it's another thing to purge music and I am guilty of purging music.

This all started when I took the "What Goth Band Are You?" quiz. I ended up with Specimen, who I did not immediately recognize. Then Tai commented, "You've heard them. They were on the comps we listened to." Oh yes, the comps! I start to get up and then I realize, I gave my ex all the goth CDs when he moved out because I associated goth with him and I wanted to be rid of him and those memories. But there was goth in my life before him. There was me and Tai in black lipstick. There was that hole in the wall goth record store on Belmont just east of Halsted. Armageddon or something totally gloom and doom sounding where we hunted for those CDs, those comps. And the hunt, the sense of discovery was so much fun.... And I just handed it off because in that moment all I saw was a tall boy with Robert Smith hair and too much makeup who I'd fought with too many times and didn't want to remember. I took solace in my punk, my grunge, all the things I was before I knew him (even though I was goth too before I knew him) and I let him leave with my discoveries. And now here I am wanting those damn comps and they are gone.

And I'm cursing myself, regretting things for the first time ever because this happened to me just a few weeks ago. I wanted to listen to Pavement. I was never a big Pavement fan. All my friends were and I felt kind of left out, like Pavement was a joke I didn't get. I took solace in the fact that my best friend didn't really get it either and I clung to the other indie bands that I had in common with the other friends like Slint and Sonic Youth. But I did have a Pavement CD. Asshole gave it me. (Asshole being my sophomore year boyfriend; his name has slowly been abbrieviated over the years from "my psychotic abusive asshole ex boyfriend" to simply Asshole. Just like my aforementioned ex had a lot of adjectives before ex as well, but now he is just Ex. Anyway the explanation of the Asshole relationship is here.)

Everything that Asshole gave to me has been destroyed. Even my journal from the time I dated Asshole was thrown away (another regret). Even the Nirvana bootleg he gave me was given away even though Nirvana is my favorite band on earth. I stopped listening to them for about a year post-Asshole because he was a wannabe Kurt Cobain when we dated so even my favorite band totally associated with him. Such was the trauma of Asshole. The Pavement CD particularly upset me though because it reminded me of the people he was friends with before we started dating; people I wanted to be friends with. My relationship with those people was fucked for years because they associated me with him. We were all victims of his assholishness (did I just invent a new word?), but weren't really able to see that/mend things. Any way, the point is Pavement is gone. CDs that are gone because of Asshole are a particularly sore spot with me because I used to buy CDs and he would take them from me to listen to first and then he would decide they were not good enough and he would sell MY CDs. He sold my Jawbreaker CDs for example and I was pissed for days, but he thought Jawbreaker was lame and boring. Of course now he has a Jawbreaker tattoo so I hear....

Again, getting off topic. I sold the CD I lost my virginity to. It was Saturation by Urge Overkill. That's probably the one CD I really don't want back. The memory is still too ugly. Though sometimes I want to listen to "Erica Kane"; I suppose I could download that.

I'm sure a lot of people are thinking, just download the songs, who cares, but it's not the same. There is something about the particular CD or vinyl. Memories of the discovery and the hunt. Memories of the good and the bad moments associated. My life could be told in music and I suspect one day I will attempt to do so. I have a working title for a personal essay collection: "Geek. Goth. Grunge. Grrrl." which I think about covers it. I started out pretty eclectic. If you asked me who my favorite bands were when I was 10, I would have named The Beatles, Faith No More, Depeche Mode, REM, and Madonna. Somewhere in junior high, I started trying to put myself in a musical box. Like it wasn't okay to like Nirvana and Madonna, or later in the pretentious punk period when I was disavowing bands on major labels, I couldn't like both Smashing Pumpkins and Propagandhi. Then during the goth years, the punk went into a box and a lot of it went missing.

So my words of advice is don't sell (or I guess nowadays, delete) that song you associate with an ex or you think is dorky now. You'll miss it later. And besides it's still part of you. I still know all the words to Ice, Ice Baby...

What are your musical memories?