Women Who Rock Wednesday: Pink!

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday! Last week we had the fabulous Lauren Baratz-Logsted and she offered up a copy of her new book CRAZY BEAUTIFUL to one lucky winner. I'm happy to announce that the lucky winner of that contest is...Shooting Stars Magazine from MySpace. I'll send you a message unless you message me first with your address!

Well, I mentioned that I'd be changing WWRW around a little bit and talking about women who influenced me and why instead of doing interviews every other week. And after I saw Pink's performance on the VMAs this Sunday, I felt I simply had to feature her. In case you missed her high wire singing act, check it out:

P!nk - New Music - More Music Videos

Yes, I love Pink and I'm not at all ashamed to admit it... now. Sure I'm mainly a punk girl, but if I connect with an artist, I connect with them and there's just something about Pink. It's not very often I get into pop music. Sure, like a lot of girls in my generation I grew up on Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. I openly admit that Janet Jackson was my first concert. I still appreciate all three of them for their talent. I stopped listening to Janet Jackson after Rhythm Nation and Madonna after Like a Prayer. Cyndi is probably my favorite out of the three because I love her voice and her unique sense of style and personality. And maybe that in a way, is how I came to love Pink.

She was definitely a guilty pleasure at first. Her "Get the Party Started" song was catchy and I was a bit of a party girl when it came out. I didn't run out to get the album then, though. It wasn't til I heard "Family Portrait" and "Dear Diary" that I thought okay, I can relate to her lyrics on a deeper level. I was going through some major issues with my dad at the time and something about the honest, simplicity that she used to talk about family problems, it was exactly what I needed. I honestly wished I'd had her when I was 16... though I might have had to pretend not to like her because I was too punk back then.

So I broke down and bought Missundaztood even though I hadn't bought a pop album in years. I swear sometimes it feels like she's lived my life. She knew my daddy problems, but she also apparently dated my abusive ex-boyfriend. The song "Numb" summed up an emotionally abusive relationship in perfect simplicity:

I laid there quiet, watched you have your way with me
I might have cried, the tears were silent inside you see
You called me names, made me feel like I was dumb
I didn't feel a thing and now I'm gone, gone, gone

I'd listen to it over and over, the same way I did a Heavens to Betsy or Bikini Kill song.

But the song that made me get over my guilt for liking Pink was "Don't Let Me Get Me." Sure it sung about some bad girl antics that made me feel like we were of the same tribe, but I'd seen that kind of thing manufactured far too often. Nope it was the lines:

L.A. told me
You'll be a pop star
All you have to change
Is everything you are
Tired of being compared
To damn Britney Spears
She's so pretty
That just aint me

Yep, I was sold. And when she went on to do songs like "Stupid Girls" and especially "Dear Mr. President" which still gives me chills and makes me well up every time I listen to it, I really felt proud to be a fan of hers. Pink is no poptart. She's outspoken and we believe in the same things

The range of her stuff amazes me. There are just fun songs about dancing and going out with your friends to the perfect breakup songs ("There You Go" was one of my theme songs for getting over my most recent ex and if I was getting over someone now, "So What" would be a great anthem)to the the really, really deep stuff. Like "Sober" in the video above. That would have been on the Ballads of Suburbia playlist if it had come out when I was writing it. It's another one of those songs where I wondered if Pink and I had lived the same life.

So yeah, Pink rocks because she can break my heart, fix it, and make me dance over and over all on one album.

Plus she has cool tattoos, worked with Tim Armstrong from Rancid on one album, and does PETA campaigns. What can I say, she's my kinda pop star and I think the music world is a much better place with her in it!

What about you? Do you like Pink? Or is there another musician who is not normally your cup of tea, but something about her songs or who is really touched you?

No prizes to give out this week, but I hope you'll comment anyway (it's the big test!). Next week, I'll be back with a really BIG interview with the ladies of Living Your Five!

Jim Carroll and Thoughts on Dead Celebrities

Today the interwebs are buzzing about Patrick Swayze losing his battle with cancer. I enjoyed Dirty Dancing. Patrick Swayze was a talented guy and it's always sad to hear about cancer claiming someone. But I really don't have anything more to say about it than that.

Unlike most people, I haven't had a ton to say about the celebrities that died this year. Haven't felt the need to tweet about any deaths except for John Hughes or blog except about Jim Carroll, who I talked about today over at the MTV Books blog today because he truly was an inspiration. It would mean a lot to me if you checked out that blog and learned about Jim Carroll if you don't already know about him.

One thing I only touched on in that blog because I wanted it to be more of tribute than a reflection about the state of our culture was that I found out that Jim Carroll died two days after his death. That was somewhat strange given how instant celebrity death news has become, but honestly I thought it was a lot more tasteful. I'm pretty grossed out by the way we get the details of celeb's deaths live as they spill in via the gossip bloggers. With everyone who died this year, I heard the news via text message or twitter usually before it was even officially confirmed. It seems so impersonal and empty and the impact is lost on me. Even though I heard about Jim Carroll via twitter at least it was delayed a couple days. That seemed more appropriate. Jim Carroll is not my personal friend. I don't feel like I have the right to know about his death faster than I would get the news about a friend dying.

And now that I've had dear friends (and pets) die, I find I react to celebrity death news a lot differently. I'm not gonna jump to post a RIP or a video montage or even say anything at all unless the person really had an influence on me like Jim Carroll did.

When I heard Michael Jackson was dead, via text message of course, I was at Summerfest in Milwaukee. I was at Summerfest because a friend of mine, who'd lost her father when she was younger so she knew what it was like to feel the absence of a real person, had offered to take me because it was the one year anniversary of my friend Marcel's death and I needed good distraction. Literally my first thought when I heard about Michael Jackson was NO, this is Marcel's day. Marcel's loss should not be eclipsed by this huge public thing. This was supposed to be my day to be sad about Marcel, not the world's day to be sad about Michael Jackson. I'm still annoyed by this. Maybe it's odd, but grief, real grief for a living breathing person you personally knew and were close to, is a strange beast.

So, to me, June 25 will always be about Marcel, not Michael Jackson. And 2009 will be the year my dog died, not the year Michael, Farrah, Patrick, DJ AM, Ted Kennedy or even John Hughes or Jim Carroll died. (However I do find it oddly comforting that Domino and Jim Carroll died on the same day. It was disconcerting though that Domino died on a day that was already so sad, September 11.) Honestly, even Kurt Cobain's death which had such a huge impact on me when I was fourteen-- I mean I was devastated--doesn't feel the same anymore now that I've lost people in real life. If I was given the choice of bringing Kurt Cobain back to life or bringing one of my friends back to life or even my dog, I'd choose the friends and dog, hands down.

I hope this doesn't come across as callous in any way. I guess our celeb obsessed culture is just kind of getting to me especially when combined with my own grief. And I just wanted to see if anyone else thought it was weird, instant celebrity death news and the way we act like in losing them we've lost members of our families....

But we did lose a major talent in Jim Carroll and I hope you'll check out my memories of him and share your own.

Thursday Night Reading and a Work In Progress Tease

Between writing and grieving for our dog, I've been behind on... well everything. So umm, this is short notice, but hopefully if you are in the Chicago area on Thursday night you can make it to this:

Please Join Literary Writers Network for a Special Literary Engagement, featuring critically acclaimed Chicago Author Stephanie Kuehnert, on Thursday, September 17, 2009, at 7 p.m. at the Book Cellar, 4736-38 North Lincoln, Chicago.

I'll be reading from Ballads as well as doing a Q&A and signing of course.

The some writers from the Literary Writers Network will be reading before me: April Galarza, Stephen Markley, and Nancy Werking Poling. You can find more out about their work and the event in general (with all kinds of talking up of my book that I felt weird copying and putting here) on the Literary Writers Network blog. They are a very cool group, so check them out.

Okay, so as you probably know, especially if you follow me on twitter, I've been struggling with a new novel proposal since I went away on my writing retreat. I sent that proposal into my agent last Tuesday, but um, the synopsis part is still all scattered because I'm terrible at figuring out where my books are going until I'm in the middle of it. So I'm still trying to figure out that and in the meantime I'm crossing my fingers and toes that she likes it enough to allow me to figure out exactly what it's deal is because I really, really like it.

I swore off talking about work in progress because I talked about that Persephone idea quite a bit and then that didn't work out the way I wanted and now it's on the backburner as I try to figure it out and I just feel silly. But I completely dropped out of the writing zone last week when everything happened with Domino, so I thought maybe if I talked about it just a little it would inspire me again. And it would give you a little bit of an answer to that dreaded "What are you working on?" question.

Right now the working title is: Anarchists, Soap Stars, and Regulars. It is called this because the main character Zoë is a very political teenager with an anarchist boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) who keeps breaking her heart, an estranged father who she refers to only as the Soap Star "because that’s what he was—although the “star” part was only in his head", and a bartender mother, Ivy, whose regulars teach both Ivy and Zoë a lot about life. The other major characters include Bender, a homeless punk kid who was Zoë's best friend until he kissed her, and Jake, who is like Zoë's brother and is struggling with a recent bipolar disorder diagnosis.

I love all my quirky characters already and am finding it fun to incorporate my love of soap operas and my bartending experiences into a book. (Last night's near bar fight between one of my regulars and a Packers fan who dared grace the bar, totally going in. Especially the part where another regular--a very annoying one--started blowing a whistle in the middle of it all. In the fictional version I think I'll introduce a squirt gun per my friend Alison's Facebook comment about the incident...) Also I think each of my main characters embodies some sliver of my teenage self: Emily had my passion for music (though she was more talented), Kara shared some of my inner demons (though she was more troubled), and Zoë will have my desire to change the world (though she'll have more to fight against in 2005 than 1995).

Okay, that's all I'm going to say because I feel like I've said too much already. The last thing I'll leave you with is the first paragraph, which could totally change, but will give you an idea of the direction and tone of the book:

On Sunday, August 28, 2005, Mayor Ray Nagin declared a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile in Seattle, my mother, Ivy Petersen, came into my bedroom, removed her engagement ring, and told me she didn’t think she could marry Clay, her fiancé of two-and-a-half years.

In Loving Memory of our dear family dog Domino

It's been a hard week. Our family dog Domino, who lives with my mom, is about to pass on. She is seventeen years old and has had a wonderful life, but as any of you who have pets or love animals know, they are part of your family and to lose them is serious heartbreak.

I'm struggling not to cry as I write this. I've been fighting tears since Wednesday when my mom told me that she thought Domino, whose health had been deteriorating for much of this summer, was nearing the end. I immediately went to see her and how frail she'd become in just a couple weeks time... it was so sad. She really hung on this long I truly believe because she was waiting for her boy, my brother Dan to come home, which he did for a week to spend time with her and care for her. Then she saw me and yesterday Mom and I took her out in the grass for a couple hours to enjoy a beautiful summer day once more. We hoped she would just go in her sleep last night, naturally, but as my friend Eryn said, she is a warrior and she is so loyal, she does not want to let go. As we don't want her to be in pain, we are going to have to take her to the vet to let her go later this afternoon.

But the end is really not what I want to talk about right now. I want to remember her and share pictures. She truly was such a good dog.

Domino came into our lives in the summer of 1992, the year I turned 13 and my brother 11. My brother had wanted a dog for ages. We'd had one briefly, but he was a dog who belonged out on a big farm and he kept escaping and running into busy city streets, so we had to give him up for adoption. I have always been more of a cat person, but I was thrilled when we got squirmy little puppy, Domino. Our neighbors came across her when they were on vacation in Michigan. She was born on a farm and had two sisters. Our neighbor adopted one sister, Augie (for August, when we got our puppies), their cousins adopted another, Michigan (for where they came from), and then we adopted Domino (for her markings, though I think my brother really wanted to name her Ozzie for Ozzie Smith, his favorite Cardinals baseball player, but he felt or maybe I objected that he couldn't do that because she was a girl. However people always thought Domino was a boy name anyway for some reason). On the farm, she'd been called Cow Puppy because she both looked like a cow and she liked to try to chase the cows. She's a total mutt, definitely some Beagle in her. No Dalmatian, though every little kid that ever saw her always asked if she was.

She came to live with us right before eighth grade, ie. right before my life started to get ugly and I began to wear all black. That summer I was still somewhat happy hence the bright colors you are about to see me in and I was also in a hippie phase, hence the tie-dye. And I spent the summer at the pool. It was probably the last summer I did that and I would never be so tan again.

Throughout the darkness of high school, Domino was a bright spot. She amused me and my friends. She also was my confidante and partner in crime... She was the only one in existence who knew about all of my secret crushes. Why? Because I used to take her for walks past their houses of course. And they were quite long walks sometimes, but she was always game.

Picture time. You can click on any of these to make them bigger.

A boy finally gets his beloved dog

Our neighbor Emily with Domino's sister Augie (the blonde with the blonde) and me with Domino

This gives you an idea of how small she was as a puppy. I showed this to Scott and he thought she was my cat, Sid. I am playing with her with a cat toy, one of our cat Snuggle's catnip mice, which puppy Domino loved almost as much as giving kisses.

Growing up, loving her bone.

If you look carefully in this shot, which I believe my best friend Katie took, you'll see my Doc Martens, evidence I've gone from bright tie-dye to angry punk girl, but Domino loved me and the attention of my friends just the same. (Plus stoned people tend to drop food or happily share food with dogs.)

When we got Domino, we already had an older cat, Snuggle. Snuggle did not like Domino. She had no interest in hanging out with her or playing, much to Domino's disappointment. So Domino was thrilled three years later when my cat Sid came to live with us. They were partners in crime. Sid (and sometimes Snuggle got in on this too if memory serves), would knock things such as pies or loaves of bread off the top of the refrigerator or counter and Domino would eat them, with Sid claiming his share too.

My mom introduces kitten and dog, she seems to be explaining the rules of playing together.

Kitten and dog learn to play nice. This may be my new favorite picture ever.

Domino let Sid share her water dish, bed, and toys without objection (food, however, she would object over). In fact, Sid took over one of Domino's beds so completely that we tried to buy him his own, but he didn't want it. He just liked Domino's.

Much like rock stars, Domino and Sid's overindulgence began to show as they grew older. Here they are circa 2003 in what I like to call their bloated Elvis phase. Sid is now a normal weight. Domino lost a lot of weight this year.

My mom used to joke that Domino got fat instead of her during the divorce. Domino really was a good one to share your troubles with. And yes, she would be happy to split that muffin with you, too. Oh, you're making macaroni and cheese? Even better. Chicken? Now, you're really talking. Carrot?!?! Puhtuey! Spitting that out. That was a really evil trick, trying to feed me that crap. I'd rather you give me peanut butter and laugh at me when I try to lick it off the roof of my mouth because I may look stupid, but that stuff tastes good!

The biggest benefit of the divorce for Domino besides People Food, was that the restriction that my dad had placed about her being on the couch got lifted when he moved out. (But ever loyal, she always greeted him with tail wagging, even when my brother and I were shunning him and wishing she would too). Not that you could really keep her off the couch anyway.

The only football fan in our house

I used to love to tuck her in on the couch before I went to bed.

I wish I had pictures of our walks, our games and many of my other memories. More than anything, I wish she could have lived forever, especially for my mom and brother's sakes. But she had a long good life. Her sisters both passed on a few years ago. And even though my religious beliefs are convoluted and I don't really believe in an afterlife for people (though I do believe in energy), I have to believe in some kind of pet afterlife. Domino is on her way there. Her fur will be dark black again like when she was young, not graying like it has been over the years. She will tramp through lots of green grass with her sisters. She will probably track down Snuggle and torment her a little bit. She will meet the dearly departed dogs of my friends and family. And hopefully she will think of me and our long walks and she will still keep the crushes from my early teenage years secret.

I love you, my sweet girl. We all do.

Women Who Rock Wednesday: Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday, the day that is all about celebrating women who are rocking the world with their creativity in some manner and learning about new books, music, film, and art to check out! Oh and there are usually prizes too!

This week I have two winners to announce. The winner of April Mosqus contest (for a Before We Get to Seattle tote bag and a copy of the film when it comes out on DVD) is.... lovelessangel93 from Live Journal. The winner of the contest for my zine is... Steph Bowe from blogger. If you ladies could send your mailing addresses to stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com I'll make sure your stuff gets out to you!

Now, onward to today's guest, an author I love whose new book, CRAZY BEAUTIFUL, I'm very excited about. Let's meet Lauren Baratz-Logsted!!!!

Q: Please tell us about the crazy-good sounding premise of your new book CRAZY BEAUTIFUL. Also can you tell us a bit about what inspired you to write it? I love new takes on classic tales. I have a myth of my own I'm really connected to that I want to do a version of (Persephone). What was your connection to the Beauty and the Beast story? What did you set about to do differently or was there a certain part of the classic tale you really wanted to focus on or add to?

Lauren: Thanks for having me, Stephanie! Crazy Beautiful is a contemporary re-visioning of Beauty & the Beast, told in he-said/she-said fashion, about a boy with hooks for hands and a gorgeous girl who meet on their first day at a new school. I've always liked Beauty & the Beast best of all the Disney-fied fairy tales and, after seeing it on Broadway, concluded the reason it's so successful is that it's the only one where the male lead is more than just mere window dressing to make the female look good; if anything, he's by far the more compelling character. So I decided I wanted to do my own version, focusing on how surface values - Aurora's beauty, distinctive physical features like Lucius's hooks, even rumors - affect how others perceive and treat us, thereby affecting how we perceive and treat the world in return. Oh, and I hope you do write your Persephone story!

Q: Can you share some of the songs that would be on a CRAZY BEAUTIFUL soundtrack and how they relate to the story?

Lauren: Ack! Now you're expecting me to be musically smarter than I am! Let's see...definitely Rob Thomas's "Lonely No More" - I love the moody sound of it - and "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol. I'd also add Howie Day's "Collide" and "Listen to Your Heart" by Dht. How am I doing? Do I sound musically smart yet or do I just sound like an idiot?

Q: You have written a TON of books. What I think is super cool is that you also write a series with your husband and daughter. Can you tell us a bit about what that collaborative process is like?

Lauren: Well, it's just a little bit crazy, at least for me. Greg (www.greglogsted.com), Jackie (who's nine now) and I originally came up with the idea for The Sisters 8 series for young readers when we were stranded in Colorado by a blizzard back in 2006. Basically the way it works is we all brainstorm a book together, then I sit down to write. After each chapter, I read it aloud to them and they tell me what's good, what's bad and what they think should happen next. I'd never written by committee before doing this series. The one good part of being the person who does the actual grunt work of writing out the ideas is that I get final veto power. Really, they let me have it because I'm the only one willing to keep straight what will eventually be over 1000 pages worth of story, but I'll greedily seize power wherever I can find it. I'm pathetic that way.

Q: Where did your journey to being a writer begin? Did it start when you were young or later in life? And who were some of your inspirations (other authors, characters in books, other artists, parents or teachers)? We especially like to hear about other women on Women Who Rock Wednesday, but men are cool too!

Lauren: Well, I'm afraid it was a man who started it all. In eighth grade I was twelve years old. My English teacher, a man, gave an assignment where we had to connect three seemingly disparate items - a priest, a nurse and a camel - into a short story. He liked mine so much he made the class listen to it three days running, at the end of which time I realized maybe I had a little of something called talent, for want of a more modest word. From then on it just seemed like whenever I had a class that required some sort of creative writing, teachers would get that glassy-eyed look in their eyes like they were suddenly reminded why they'd got into teaching in the first place. Of course it's entirely possible that I had no talent, probably still don't, and that I'd merely happened to run across a string of sentimental English teachers who'd had the bad fortune to always have even worse students than me. I suppose we can also blame Little Women's Jo March for me becoming a writer. Really, we could probably go ahead and blame every book I've ever read, since as a lifelong reader I've pretty much lived my life in books, making me want to create them as well.

Q: Of course all the readers who have or are about to gobble up CRAZY BEAUTIFUL are gonna want to know... what's next?

Lauren: I've got four new books coming out in 2010. Two more YA: The Education of Bet, due out in April, is set in the Victorian era and is about a 16-year-old girl who impersonates a boy in order to get a proper education; and The Twin's Daughter, due out in the fall and also set in the Victorian era, about a girl whose life is changed forever when she discovers that her gorgeous and wealthy mother has an identical twin who was raised in the poorhouse. The other two books are Books 5 and 6 from The Sisters 8 series for young readers, which we discussed earier and which I created with my novelist husband Greg Logsted and our nine-year-old daughter Jackie. Phew!

Q: I have two questions that I always ask my Women Who Rock, the first is a two-parter. What was the first album you bought and the first concert you attended? Be honest, we don't judge, we like to see the roots of our women who rock!

Lauren: I believe the first recording I used my own money for was a cassette of The Hollies' Distant Light when I was ten, and I know my first concert was Jethro Tull at the New Haven Coliseum, also when I was ten.

Q: Tell us about your biggest rock star moment, perhaps it's a moment of real success in your career, a time when you met someone super cool and had that Wayne's World "I'm not worthy" moment, or just a time where you felt like you got the rock star treatment. I get a huge variety of answers for the questions, so it's pretty much whatever "rock star moment" means to you!

Lauren: Bummer. At first I thought you meant meeting actual rock stars, to which I'd have replied with something about the time after a Muddy Waters concert we chased all over the little motels in Storrs and Willimantic CT hoping to meet Muddy. Let's see...I guess maybe the time one of my editors told me she was going to lunch with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who was thinking of doing a book for her, and how the editor was bringing the duchess a copy of my debut novel The Thin Pink Line as a present. That felt pretty rock-starrish all around. But really, in some ways I feel like a rock star every day because I get to do what I love: write.

Today's Contest:

Lauren has been nice enough to offer up a copy of CRAZY BEAUTIFUL to one lucky winner of this week's contest. As usual to enter all you have to do is leave a comment about anything Lauren's interview or her book inspires you to comment on.

You can earn additional entries the following ways:

+1 for tweeting/blogging about today's Women Who Rock Wednesday feature & contest

+1 for tweeting/blogging about Lauren and her new book, Crazy Beautiful

Just note your additional entries in your comment and it is easier if you leave me an email address so I can track you down if necessary if you win.

I will announce the winner next Wednesday when I talk about another woman who inspired me in some way!

What's in a name? or why I'm changing mine...

When I get married next month, I'll be changing my name. Most of you won't notice because publicly I'll remain Stephanie Kuehnert. But y'know on my driver's license it will say something else and to the people in my private life I'll be named something else.

And I have terrible feminist guilt about this. My mother, the initial person responsible for my feminist beliefs long before I discovered riot grrrl or any of the other things that shaped me politically, kept her maiden name. She did so despite the confusion that it caused when signing permission slips and whatnot for school. (My parents didn't hypenate our names. Thankfully. I mean, seriously, do you really want to make Kuehnert more complicated!) She always had to put (mom) at the end, to the point that I sometimes wonder if she accidentally signed receipts with (mom) tacked onto her signature. It was that important to her to hold on to her identity, her name. Maybe because she was of a family of all daughters and no one would carry it on. Maybe because, seriously, who wants to take on Kuehnert? But mostly because that was her belief.

It makes sense to me. Women have lost their identities through marriage in so, so many ways for so many years. There was a long time that I never thought I'd get married because I had so many issues with women's role in the institution of marriage. I mean the pledge to "obey"? The symbolism of the dad giving the daughter over to the husband? Yeah. Yuck.

But then I fell in love. Hard. And it's that kind of love that just feels so sacred, like it deserves a ritual or a ceremony. I am a ritual/ceremony person. I like to declare permanence when something is really important (hence the huge tattoo with best friend). I want to celebrate and shout outloud how much I love this wonderful guy. So that's why I'm getting married.

But it's not why I'm changing my name.

Okay so it plays a role but just a small one. I do want to share a name with him. Share a bed, share a house, share a name. I like that, it feels right. But we could share either of our names or combine our names. So that brings us back slightly more specifically to the reason why I am changing my name to his name.

1. I fucking hate my name. Yes, a hate so strong I had to invoke the f-word. Ugh. I've spent 30 years saddled with this name that no one can spell, no one can pronounce. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I've wanted to get rid of it for as long as I can remember. I've asked my mom on many occasions, why she couldn't have take the feminist thing a bit farther and gifted me with much simpler last name of Napp. It gets missppelled at times (Knapp), but other than that, it's very nice and I like the sound of it. At one point in my late teens when I was ermm highly displeased with my father, I talked about changing my name to Napp, but I just never got around to it and eventually I reconciled with my dad and that seemed sort of mean.

Strangely, with the exception of the evil abusive one, every guy I've dated has had an incredibly easy last name. So I'd always thought, well if I end up with him, it would sure be convenient. Now, I've ended up with someone who has a name that you'd have to completely illiterate to misread, misspell or mispronounce. It's even easier than Napp. So I'm going with it.

2. This is about identity. Now Stephanie Kuehnert will become my professional name/pen name/public name. But my new name, that will just be me, privately. I put a lot of myself out there in public. It's just in my nature, like part of coming from writing zines I guess, but it will be nice to have that boundary because I'm sure at some point I'll need it. I'm also sure it will cause some headache... like with finances and paperwork and that sort of thing. But like it was worth it for my mom to sign everything (mom) so that she could stay true to herself, it's worth it to me to create a private side for myself, where I can just be who I am when I'm out with friends or at home with my kitties and especially my boy. There are really few people in this world (um like basically my mom and bff Katie) who know me as well as he does. So there it is. I guess it all comes back to love after all.

So I'm going to try to ditch the feminist guilt. I don't need to keep a name I've never liked just to make a statement. I can choose one that I like, one that has meaning to me because choosing your own identity is very feminist.

Anyway, names are very important to me, that's why I wanted to blog about this. I think out the names for my characters intently, searching for the right meaning, etc, but usually what it comes down to is what feels right for the character. This new name just feels right.

And I have to say now that I write this, part of me wishes I published under Stephanie Napp. But maybe having this strange, awkward, hard to pronounce name speaks to the kind of stuff I write somehow.

Well, now I'm off to write about a character I named Bender after graffiti I saw in a bathroom. Seriously. It was just right.

Women Who Rock Wednesday- New Format?

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday. The guest I had scheduled, Kathy Charles had to postpone, so we'll hear from her sometime in the future and if you are in Australia, I highly advise you to look for her brand new book, Hollywood Ending.

This means that I'm continuing the contest for last week's guest, filmmaker April Mosqus until next Wednesday. So if you haven't read the interview about her film, Before We Get To Seattle and entered the contest, do so here.

This little lapse also gives me a chance to propose a new format of sorts for Women Who Rock Wednesdays. As much as I like bringing you new interviews every week, umm, it gets really crazy time consuming, tracking people down, interviewing, formatting. So I'm thinking of going to every other week with the interviews. There will be exceptions of course like when I get a bunch of cool people or certain dates that work for certain people.

On the off weeks, I want to take the time to talk about the women who have inspired me who I may not be able to interview for some reason or other, like maybe they are way too famous or dead (if I hadn't experienced some utterly terrifying Ouija Board incidents when younger, maybe I'd try interviewing that way, but...) or they are fictional characters. Or I'll talk about stuff in the news related to women. That kind of thing.

I hope that will still be interesting. And I hope you'll still come and visit me even if there aren't always contests. If the contests are a big reason you come, please do say so and I'll try to figure something out, but yeah.... That's what I'm thinking right now.

So I guess now it is time to give an example of what I'll be doing on non-interview Wednesdays.

Today I thought it would be fun to talk about a fictional character that influenced me, and I thought I'd actually share what I wrote about this particular fictional character when I was 16. So here is an excerpt from an article called "Growing Up Feminist: Influences in the Pre-Bikini Kill Days" which I published in one of my 'zines back in the day. I'll even leave the crazy spelling and punctuation intact.

Time to flashback to me in 1996 flashing back to the late eighties... ready?

My generation has been called the TV babies, so I have to admit that the idiot box has influenced me also. I remember liking She-Ra and Jem. I guess She-Ra was rather scantily glad, but you have to admit, that girl was powerful. And Jem, she was the eighties' girl rocker, and "truly outrageous". Actually I watched a lot of PBS as a kid, the one show the influenced me most in my entire life was on PBS, Degrassi High/Jr High. It taught me about all the issues: AIDS, teen pregnancy, abortion; pretty controversial for the eighties. It shaped my views on animal rights and many other subjects. My main role model on the show was Christine, known mostly by her nickname, Spike, after her hair. I've wanted my hair to be like her's since I was 8, I just plain wanted to be her. Spike wasn't the perfect role model though, she had a kid at 14. I guess that should rule her out as a role model, right? Wrong. Spike portrayed real life, she dealth with a lot of problems and never gave up. The school made her take special classes away from the other kids because she was a "bad influence" and then she had to do with raising her baby, Emma. She didn't drop out of school, but she made sacrifices like missing school dances and concerts. She dealt with getting child support and trying to find a job which was difficult because she was jurdged by her appearance. I was pretty disappointed when I found out high skool wasn't like Degrassi, maybe it's only like that in Canada. I still tape Degrassi from Showtime and I still relate to it. Before I grew up and found out who I wanted to be, I had these influences, who knows what I'd be without them.

Okay, back to the present day...

I've since learned to use a semi-colon correctly, that periods go inside the quotation marks and I have stopped intentionally misspelling things like skool, but to quote one of my favorite bands from back then, Skankin' Pickle, "I'm still in love with a girl named Spike."

I still stand by all that I said about her and as I was retyping this, I thought, wow, back then Spike influenced me as a person, now she has also influenced me as a writer. I think I've gone on to write about girls like Emily and Kara, who are flawed and in tough situations because I loved watching characters like Spike be a survivor.

So yeah, that is the tribute of the day. And I do actually have a prize (can you tell I just feel guilty about not giving you guys the opportunity to win prizes!)... I have a copy of the last issue of Kill Supermodels, the zine that I did with my friends in high school (please note it was about killing the idea that we all had to look like supermodels, we did not condone violence against actual supermodels or any women!). It was our best issue, IMHO, but I will throw in some additional articles that were pretty good including the one I excerpted from today.

As usual to enter the contest, just leave a comment. Let me know if you are cool with the new WWRW format idea (I hope you are cuz man I just can't keep up with the interview pace!). Or tell me about the ladies from TV who influenced you. And as usual, you get an extra entry for tweeting or blogging about this post. Go ahead and note that extra entry in your comment along with your email address so I can easily find you if you win.

I will announce this winner and April's winner next week when I do have a guest, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, who will talk about her book Crazy Beautiful which I am really really looking foward to, I don't know about you....

Oh and if you want another contest to enter, YA Book Central is giving away 5 copies of Ballads of Suburbia this month, go here to enter!