Wedding Shower pics and a plea for creative suggestions

Yay, a wedding blog, like I promised! Though I also wrote a blog for MTV Books over here about what I loved about my teen years (ummm, next to nothing, until I examined it in retrospect), so please visit it and show me some love there too.

We got all kinds of wonderful goodies at our bridal shower last Sunday. New stuff to replace mismatched/old ghetto stuff like sheets, glasses, and silverware. Fun new appliances and cooking tools like an Iced Tea Maker (which has already been put to use), crock pot (never used one, imagine it will be quite useful for chili), and just arrived today because they were out of stock at the store, a coffee press (for Scott) and special pot to brew loose tea (for both of us, but mostly me). A pirate doormat, which you know I love. BFF Katie got us our wedding champagne. (I adore the Veuve Demi-Sec and can never find it, but she did!) Oh and there is much much more currently covering the dining room. The cats are quite excited by the chaos. I'm working on thank you cards whenever I have a free moment. (THANK YOU to everyone who was there who happens to be reading this!)

Another think I'm pondering in my spare time is the gifts I need to get other people, ie our bridal party, which consists of my best friend and Scott's sister as bridesmaids and my brother and Scott's best friend on his side, plus I'm including my dear friend Tai who will be our officiant. Geez and we should probably get our mothers gifts for all they've done, huh? Hmmm anyway. We don't want to go the usual flask or inscribed whatever route. We want creative. And I've already used up creative on all the other wedding details so.... SUGGESTIONS????

Okay, now back to the bridal shower.

Some details: our moms, Scott's sister Kelly and Scott's aunt Lenora did the bulk of the work on the shower and we are super, super grateful. Lenora hosted it at her house. A few people brought some delicious food. My mom makes the best black bean dip on earth. Kelly makes awesome sangria and crazy good vegan coconut cupcakes. My bff Katie put together this amazing organic fruit salad which I wish she would supply me with on a daily basis. And Scott's mom makes the best vegan pasta salad on earth and she went out of her way to order special sandwiches for me.

I don't have all the pics yet and Scott's cousin Eileena probably captured a bunch of great moments, so I will do a part two to this blog when I get them from her. But for now here are some cute shots. The posed photos with the moms, Kelly took. The action shots with the presents, my friend Amber took.

Oh and my dress is vintage. I bought it when I was in Seattle and my excuse for buying it when I already have a closet full of vintage dresses I don't wear enough was the shower. Really it could have been my wedding dress...

Now pics (Click to make bigger):

With Scott's mom

With my mom

Sangria is good.

Yes, we are ready for presents!

Scott was assigned the presents with ribbons in hopes that if he broke them that old wives tale of it equaling children being born wouldn't apply. Fortunately neither of us broke ribbons.

The biggest present! (A special pet hair vacuum, you need that with three cats!)

Kelly offers wrapping paper assistance, Moms look on

Guests

Bff Katie, official gift recorder and more guests

Jenny, Katie C and Amber decide to play with my camera photobooth style

Scott models our shower favors, reusable shopping bags. (We forgot to give these out to the end so if you missed yours, I have it for you!) Green was the theme. The invites Kelly picked out were plantable paper with wildflower seeds in it!

Lars likes it when Mom and Dad get presents, it means wrapping to play with!

A tattoo for and with my best friend

Just a quickie photo blog to show off the new tattoo bc everyone wants to see it and um, in deadline chaos so no time to for long blog. Photos=good.

The backstory:

When I was seventeen, I got a tattoo in honor of my best friend Katie. I got a shooting star because she was my shooting star. It was a cheesy, simple design I came up with and drew out prolly in study hall or something. I put the letters spelling her name around the five points of the star. The person who tattooed me wasn't very good, my design was so simple it looked ghetto and no one could ever seem to figure out how to read the letters that went around the star. Sigh. So I love the tattoo for about a year or two and soon after that, I was like really, I should have done better for Katie. Also much as I love her, name tattoos just don't seem wise unless it's your kid. Katie is also a tattoo fiend and we've gone to get tattoos together on many an occasion, but we've been talking about getting matching tattoos for years. I told her that when we got one, I'd like to cover up the other tattoo for her and she was totally fine with it since it just looks crappy and I'd let it fade since I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

We'd been trying to figure out what best represented us as a friends, something that would make reference to the girls we were in high school, the tough times we had that sealed us for life. I believe it was Katie who came up with the idea of the boot print. That she thought of both of us in our combat boots. That's who we were, girls who tried to look tough as hell on the outside to hide our inner vulnerablities (sound familiar from my writing? Yeah, I definitely borrowed some of me and Katie's friendship/attitude for the friendship of Emily and Regan in IWBYJR).

So we had boot print, but we wanted more. We wanted words. Not names. Words. We started to think about songs that were significant to us. "Rebel Girl" by Bikini Kill was our theme song for each other back in school, but we felt it had been outgrown by both of us. The band that really bonded us back in high school, that we both adored most back in high school and still adore to this day was Rancid. Their album ...And Out Come The Wolves was our soundtrack for my junior/her sophomore year and the summers preceding and following it. The song we always related to the most was "Olympia, WA" because it had this sense of longing for some place better, for the getting the fuck out of where you currently were, a place you were both bored and hateful of. That whole album really had that feeling about it. So many songs about getting out: "I'm checking out, I'm never coming back again..." That sort of thing. And that's how we felt. That was the year we talked about running away almost daily. But we didn't. We stuck around. We helped each other survive.

Ultimately the song we both kept coming back to was "Journey to the End of the East Bay" which I know is about Tim Armstrong's experience in Operation Ivy, but to us it was about the way you watch your scene (or group of friends in high school) evolve and change and fall apart and get put back together again and there are certain people that stick it out and stick together through all the hard times. That was me and Katie. The lyric, "To the end, to the end, I'll journey to the end" embodied our friendship. And it was Rancid. It was us. It was big, black boots that walked a long hard way, that stumbled a lot. But we made the journey because we were always there to pick each other back up.

So here's the ink. I think if you click on the pictures they will enlarge, but um, if you do that, pls ignore my stubble. Can't really shave around or over the fresh ink ;)

The old tattoo

Old tat close up (super faded! It's 13 years old!)

New tat, full length and close-ups (you can barely see that it's a cover up unless you look close!)

So the lesson here, kids is choose your art and your artist wisely. I mull designs over for a really long time now (umm mostly, firefly was kinda a snap decision) and I've found an artist I love (Darryl at Meridian Line in Oak Park and the other guy at that shop Bob is awesome too. He does Katie's ink.)

Oh and Katie got hers on her forearm. She has flowers on one arm and boots on the other, which is just so Katie.

Umm and this was supposed to be wedding related blog week.... I will try to get to those posts later this week depending on finishing this book proposal... But this is sorta wedding related because I wanted this done before my wedding, so all my tats would look good in the pictures. And yes, the giant boots will be very visible in my knee-length wedding dress. That's me, deal with it :)

A Writer's Mindset

Progress is slow on the new book proposal. I was stuck on one scene that turned out to be a mere three pages long for a week, but after that I plowed through the rest of chapter one.

Frustrating as this, I am at least out of the questioning myself phase. I still indeed can write. Will this be the big breakthrough novel with the huge brilliant concept? Not so sure about that. I have two other concepts that I think are probably more likely to do that, but they aren't fully formed yet. This is. I believe this is the book I need to write right now. But I'm trying not to focus on that too much or I will trip myself up on thoughts of market and what will my agent think.

The important thing is that I'm in the writer's mindset again. I know this because I am seeing story absolutely everywhere. It started last night. I was listening to one of my regulars, a retired woman who I used to chat with quite a bit when I worked during the day, but usually she and her husband are leaving when I start my shift. Last night they stuck around a bit, long enough for her to relate to me this story about a tree that had been standing in front of their condo building. She felt like it was her tree because its branches hung over her balcony. It shielded her living room from the world to the degree that they didn't need drapes. The tree was half dead though. The half that faced her was living, the other half dead. But it had been like that for at least four years and it was fine. Apparently on Tuesday one of her busybody neighbors decided it was not fine. Even though this busybody woman always called to alert my regular whenever something was happening in the neighborhood like, "People put their trash in our dumpster. What should we do?" She did not call to consult about the tree. She saw village cutting down a tree down the street and went over to tell them about the half dead tree. When my regulars arrived home from lunch, their tree, their piece of nature, their shield was gone. "I'm just sick over it," my regular kept repeating.

I was sick over it for her too. But I also felt like, wow this is a story, wow this is a big metaphor for something, wow wow wow there are just so many moments like this in life and I'm glad I am here to observe them.

I also took note later when one of my other regulars invented a new elaborate system of ordering drinks that involved using the number that corresponded with the first letter of the words he was abbreviating. Round of Shots became "We need a 18 14 19 over here." I think it amused him because it sounded like police codes or something. It mystified me completely, but I was amazed that he could figure it all out after several 18-14-19s. It'll go in the bartender book...

Then this evening on my way to writer's group I noticed that someone had left a heart shaped refrigerator photo magnet out in the rain on a ledge near the steps to the parking lot. There was a picture of a woman in her 40s with bad sort of 80s spiky hair in the magnet. I didn't recognize her as one of my neighbors. I wondered who she was and who had left her out in the rain and whether it meant something or if it was an accident.

So yeah, I'm seeing stories everywhere so hopefully over the weekend, I can really nail mine.

And as long as I'm not in total deadline chaos next week (ideally proposal should be to agent on Tuesday, but it must be in by Friday because after that my life gets crazy), I'll stop boring you with all this writerly stuff and do a week of wedding blogging. Because umm it's a month away and I really should be focused on it more...

A few exciting things to check out...

Keeping my head down in order to try to get some writing done today, but there were a few things I wanted to share with you.

You may have heard about Kay Cassidy, Tera Lynn Child, Becca Fitzpatrick, and Alyson Noel's new site, Living Your Five that just launched this week, but if you haven't you should know about it. Here is the mission statement of sorts:

Living Your Five is an online community dedicated to changing our world one person at a time. You don't have to cure the world of cancer or banish world hunger in a single day. It's about working together, each of us taking one more step every day. It's about knowing what you care about--what you're passionate about!--and stepping away from the sidelines of your life to make your mark on the world..

You can find out more about it here. Since it is launch week, they have daily contests going on as well as a big huge MEGA contest. Don't miss out, join in and celebrate this fabulous new community!

Another cool site I wanted to tell you about is The Reading List, a new site that is posting audio clips of authors reading excerpts from their books. If you go to the featured writers page, you'll find me listed along with a recording of me reading the beginning of Ballads of Suburbia. I'm not doing as many readings outside of Chicago this time around, so hopefully this gives those of you who wanted to hear me read a taste.

Lastly, last week I wrote a column for my local newspaper, The Forest Park Review about being inspired by local setttings in my fiction, so check it out if you are interested.

Now, back to my manuscript.

Return to Civilization

So I have returned to civilization (from blurry middle of nowhere, blackberry is not a good camera). Um, I missed my boy and my cats, but other than that I really wish I was still away. I've never had the experience of going away to write at the beginning of the writing process and um, it didn't go as smoothly. The last time I just remember pounding away for hours upon hours, coming home with a completed draft (it was half written when I left). So this time I thought, sure I can throw together two, rough 50 page proposals. HA! *hums to self "we had the greatest expectations"*

I didn't even finish the one proposal. I hope to finish it this week, but we'll see. I forget that this whole figuring out the shape of the novel thing is the hardest part. Also I'm still filled with all these worries and doubts about if I've chosen the "right" story. I've chosen the one that is the most fleshed out in my mind (but it's still not fleshed out enough... well actually I think it's mainly a structure thing I'm struggling with. I've gotten to know the characters pretty well, but unfolding the story at the beginning is difficult, like incorporating the back story, god that is always so hard for me.) but I'm not sure it is good enough. And is it the right book to follow Ballads? I have all these quirky characters in it and my main character has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor to cope. I don't know I've been watching a lot of Veronica Mars and Weeds and thinking about movies like Juno and Garden State and using humor/quirkiness (not really sure how to describe it because it's not ha-ha funny, it's just interesting types of characters) and I think it's coming through. The book of course deals with darker issues, but in such a completely different way than Ballads. Which feels like what I need (nervous breakdowns triggered by the subject matter of every book is probably not a good idea), but will it still be powerful?

Anyway that book is currently called Anarchists, Soap Stars, and Regulars. It's the road trip and bartender book (you probably got the bartender thing from the regulars bit in the title). That's really all I'm comfortable saying about it for now because I feel like I cursed the Persephone book by talking about it so much in such early phases. Right now that one is on hold til I figure it out, though I have this other idea that may or may not connect...

The second to last day of the retreat we went for a walk. We chose our path using a game I liked to play in my car when I was in high school wherein I would ask my passengers which way to go and we would go that way. So I kept asking Jenny which direction she thought we should go in and we went the way she said and eventually we came upon a little lake. I'd just been saying that morning that I needed water for inspiration. I'm a water sign (Cancer) and seem to have quite the connection to water. I needed water terribly badly that day and then there it was! We couldn't tell if the water was part of someone's property because there was also corn and farm type buildings, but there were no fences, so off we went toward the water. And we followed it to a little waterfall! (Again, excuse blurry phone pic, it was all I had.) From there we found a stream we could dangle toes in and follow further and then it was clearly a park so we were definitely allowed there. But the waterfall, it sparked a memory.

Glen Helen, Antioch College where I went for a year when I was 18. There was a waterfall there. It was hard to find, but I always managed to find it even though I didn't know precisely where it was. (Okay maybe it wasn't really hard to find because I did find several pictures of it online like the one to the right. Maybe it just seemed hard to find because of me being drunk so often.) The Glen was on ley lines basically meaning it was a place that resonated a lot of interesting energy. I used to have these visions at the waterfall... like story visions, not the drugged out kind. I forgot about them until then. I need to write a ravine story. I have ideas, but they are not fully formulated yet.

Same with the story based on the crazy dream I had that I mentioned last week. Not fully formulated. I'm impatient for both ideas as I feel they will be big.

But for now I have what I have and I really hope it will be good enough.

So yeah, more churning of ideas than churning out of pages at my retreat. Also a lot of Veronica Mars was watching in the evenings and then I would read. I finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan which I adored, but I really, really don't recommend reading it in an unfamiliar, spooky feeling house out in the middle of nowhere late at night. This resulted in much lost sleep. I followed it up with Just Listen by Sarah Dessen, which I'm still reading and loving. It's my first Sarah Dessen experience. Any recommendations of which of her books to get next? (Not necessarily read next bc there is a huge stack that needs addressing, but I will get it and incorporate into the stack.)

Enjoyed the reading routine and hope I created a good writing routine for myself. I guess we shall see. I'm behind on absolutely everything; reintroduction into civilization is moving slowly for me and right now I just wanna write. Even though it is hard to do, I want to do it and that is definitely a good thing.

I'll close out with this link about first draft blues, that I think others of you who are stuck on first drafts like me might enjoy. It relieved me to see that so many others struggle the way I do at the beginning. Right now I'm so braindead from trying to figure out the first draft, I can't even come up with a fun metaphor for what a first draft is like...

But I'm off to get my feet wet:

Actually those are Jenny's feet and mine is just the one foot with the black toenails in the corner because the water was really cold and I was skittish about putting them in. Now it is time to take the plunge!

The Method to My Madness

I was going to call this blog entry "Grace Under Pressure" because it is the follow up to my blog entry on Tuesday called Under Pressure, but I don't know if I've achieved a state of grace yet or if I ever will.... I do however have a method to my madness.... sort of.

I've said it before and I'll say it again over and over, with every book I write, I learn to write over again. My process for writing I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone was completely different from my process for Ballads of Suburbia. IWBYJR took a lot longer, but I had the time to write it leisurely because it was my grad school thesis. I wrote it completely out of order, tackling the scenes as they took my attention. Then I put them together and filled in the blanks. It wasn't a very efficient process, but it worked. Ballads I wrote linearly for the most part and it went a lot faster. I don't know what will work for my next project(s), but here are a few things that are tried and true.

The Story Workshop Method

This is the method I learned while I was at Columbia College Chicago. You can read all about it here. In a nutshell, it uses word games to trigger seeing a story unfold in your mind's eye. You then tell that story aloud, exploring it further before you write it. I have a writer's group that meets once a week with fellow Columbia alum. We cook dinner, catch up a little bit and then we sit down seriously and go around for about 15 minutes, each saying a word. It sounds silly and you'd probably have to actually see it and participate to get how it works. But the point is that one of my CPs might say a word like "nightmare" and I might get a whole story idea or at least a snippet of image that I nurture as the word game continues. It's worked for me. A lot. Especially as I'm still discovering my story. One of my writing group mates is away on this retreat with me and no doubt we are playing these games a lot to get going.

Binge-writing

Yeah, not so good when it comes to eating, but this is just the method that works for me when it comes to writing. It's a habit that formed in college. I went to school for 6 years (undergrad and grad) and juggled school with at least one, usually two, and sometimes as many as three jobs. Usually I'd end up with one day a week off and that is when I would write. I'd just sit there and do it from 8 to 14 hours. I'd journal and jot stuff down throughout the rest of the week, but that was the majority of when I got my work done. It's just the way my brain works. I need an hour or two to warm up and then it starts to flow. When it's really flowing, I even forget to eat.

Retreats

Retreats were born out of my binge-writing tendencies. Post-college, I've been finding it hard to schedule in a weekly binge day (though I'm definitely trying it when I get back from this retreat!). This started when I was still in college though and I had a deadline to get a draft of IWBYJR into my agent by the end of one summer. So me and a few friends spent a few days here:

It was a cabin in Mineral Point, WI. Perfect for IWBYJR because it's kinda in the area where the book is set.

Two years later, when I was trying to finish a draft of Ballads and the opportunity for me a friend to go to a house in Canada for a week to write. I took it. It was winter on an ocean-front town. I'd wake up in the morning, take a shower, do some pilates, and walk down to look at the water:

Then I'd head back to the little house:

Pure peace. Pure bliss. No internet and limited phone usage. That's what all these places had in common and have in common with the place I'm currently retreating at. I need to be cut off from the outside world to really focus, especially now with all the promo stuff I feel responsible for doing. Hopefully I will be back to report next week how well this worked because it was sooooo good in the past. Especially in Canada, I was writing 10 to 14 hours a day.

Routine & Deadlines

This is the hardest thing for me to achieve, but I was so productive when I did it. I came up with a routine when I was finishing that first draft of IWBYJR for my agent. I had a schedule and little deadlines of when each chapter would be "due." And, before my book sold and I got all involved in the "other work" of writing, I had a pretty good routine of coming home from work, eating dinner and writing for 3 hours a night. I'm also pretty damn good with finding a routine when I'm on deadline. But I have totally *sucked* at this since I turned in Ballads revisions. I'm hoping however that I will come back from my retreat totally motivated and zen and ready to find a routine. I know said routine will consist of starting out my mornings with writing, no checking of email or anything until I've written for an hour and a half (unless its something totally urgent from my agent or editor). I also know I'm going to try to blog late at night and schedule my posts. And I'm hoping to find a binge day (likely Saturdays) at least twice a month if not every week.

I'll keep you posted on how all of this works out for me. And I'll be back early next week (Monday or Tuesday depending on how crazy my weekend is) to tell you all about my trip and any new stuff I learned.

Women Who Rock Wednesday: Megan Kelley Hall

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday! My day to shine the spotlight on amazing women in the world in the hopes that if you haven't already discovered them, you will check out what they do. Oh and I give out prizes too :)

This week my Girlfriends Cyber Circuit sister Megan Kelley Hall is making Women Who Rock Wednesday a stop on her GCC Tour for her brand new book, The Lost Sister, the second book in her Sisters of Misery series.

The Lost Sister takes a chilling look at what happens when hazing pushes someone too far...

Sisters are born, not chosen…

Maddie Crane is grappling with the disappearance of Cordelia LeClaire, and trying to escape the grasp of The Sisters of Misery—an insidious clique of the school’s most powerful girls, whose pranks have set off a chain of horrific events, and who have Maddie in their sights…

Beware the sister betrayed…

Now in a prestigious boarding school far away from her mysterious hometown of Hawthorne, Massachusetts , Maddie feels free from danger. But when an unmarked envelope arrives at her dorm containing a single ominous tarot card, Maddie realizes with terror that some secrets won’t stay buried. Knowing she must return to Hawthorne—a town still scarred by the evil of the Salem witch trials—Maddie prepares to face the fears of her past...and the wrath of the sister she wronged.

Megan Kelley Hall, 35, freelance writer and literary publicist living North of Boston, is the author of the SISTERS OF MISERY series. Her first novel, SISTERS OF MISERY, published by Kensington in August 2008 has received rave reviews by reviewers and readers alike. Hall also has an essay about her recent open heart surgery in former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan's anthology, What’s Possible! (Meredith Books, 2008). She is also a contributor to New York Times bestselling novelist Ellen Hopkins’ anthology, Flirtin’ with the Monster.
Hall has written articles for a variety of local and national magazines, including Elle, Glamour, Boston Magazine, Parenting, American Baby, Working Mother, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and several other publications.

She studied creative writing at Skidmore College under the Pulitzer-Prize winning author Steven Millhauser. Megan spends most of her time promoting her clients as a partner and founder of Kelley & Hall Book Publicity and Promotion, which she opened with her mother, Gloria Kelley, and sister, Jocelyn Maeve Kelley, over a few years ago. The company has run successful campaigns for authors, including New York Time's best-selling authors Jacquelyn Mitchard (Deep End of the Ocean), Michael Palmer (The First Patient and Extreme Measures), Brunonia Barry (The Lace Reader) and Lisa Genova (Still Alice).

You can find Megan online at a number of places: megankelleyhall.com, megankelleyhall.blogspot.com, sistersofmisery.com,and twitter.com/megankelleyhall.

But the best thing about Megan (besides her writing of course) is that we share the same true love... Johnny Depp. And we only fight over him a little bit :)

And now let's get to know Megan Women Who Rock Wednesday style with an 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.

Megan: I’m in love with a song that I heard on the mini-series Harper’s Island this summer. It’s called Letters to the Sky by Civil Twilight. Fear and Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan, My Skin by Natalie Merchant, The Mummer’s Dance (or anything that has that Irish pipe sound to it.)

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

Megan: Cordelia would be into Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Natalie Merchant. Maddie would most likely be a fan of teen angst music – basically all the music on Grey’s Anatomy (The Fray, John Mayor, Coldplay) Finn would love Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin.

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

Megan: I still am a huge fan of the Lemonheads, even though they broke up years ago. I’m still holding a candle for Evan Dando. I also am anxiously awaiting the album from Adam Lambert. I’m not typically a fan of American Idol, but I was so impressed by Adam’s musical talents. I’m convinced he’s going to be a music pioneer.

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?

Megan: I listen to it when I’m revising. I also listen to it when I’m stuck with writer’s block. Listening to music (not on my iPod or my own playlists) on the radio is great because it brings up different emotions and memories and mindsets.

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?

Megan: My daughter, Piper. She was born 12 weeks early and weighed only 2.5 pounds at birth. Today she’s the most active and healthy six and half year old I’ve ever known. She is unstoppable. She’s already been in a movie (she had a small cameo in Paul Blart: Mall Cop), she excels in every sport, she’s an amazing artist and storyteller, and she wants to be a rock star (which I have no doubt that she will be one day). She defied all odds and I am constantly amazed by her.

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!

Megan: My first record that I bought was a Shawn Cassidy 45. My first cassette purchases (I bought three at the same time and I still remember purchasing them at Caldor) were Squeeze, U2 and Depeche Mode. And my first actual CD was Madonna. I was never a big concert go-er, but my first concert was INXS. Another memorable concert was Stone Temple Pilots in London. I got thrown into the mosh pit by accident. I saw my life flash before my eyes as I was almost trampled by a swarm of Doc Martens. Luckily, I had a very large male friend who pulled me to safety--literally reached down and picked me up over his head and carried me from the pit (thanks, Josh!). Other bands I've seen live include Nirvana, Blind Melon and Steve Miller Band. The fact that three of the lead singers of concerts I've seen have killed themselves or OD'd is not lost on me. All I have to say is please be careful, Scott Weiland and Steve Miller.

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!

Megan: First of all, I will never be as much of a rock star as my daughter, who really is destined to be a rock star. She's so musically inclined, it's scary. She hears a song once and can sing it in perfect pitch, without missing a note or a word. I took piano lessons for almost 15 years and I'm still not as musically motivated as Piper. She was into kids songs for all of about two years and then as soon as she could talk, she wanted to BE Avril Lavigne. She's been obsessed with Avril since she was three and she is currently getting into Pink and Kelly Clarkson. She can't stand Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers, or anything geared toward kids (God forbid you ever put on The Wiggles when she's around). She's six, and yet she is already a rock star in her own mind. Since she was in the movie Paul Blart:Mall Cop as a featured extra, she is confused when people ask for my signature at book signings because she is technically "the movie star" and therefore should be giving autographs. (Duh!) When we went to see the movie at the theater, she wore a tiara (one of her many) and sunglasses and brought a pen just in case anyone wanted her autograph. Almost every t-shirt she owns has some form of a glittery guitar or a "Girls Rock" slogan on it. So, I personally have not had a "rock star" moment. I've had to live vicariously through Piper, which is fine with me, since I prefer to be behind the scenes...writing.

As for Wayne's World, I'm still waiting for that super cool meeting with your boyfriend and mine, Johnny Depp. That will be my ultimate "I'm not worthy" moment. No other celebrity could ever live up to that.

Thanks for touring me, Stephanie!

Well, thanks for coming, Megan! You rock and so does Piper! I love her sense of style!

Today's Contest:

Cool chick that she is, Megan is offering up a copy of her latest book, The Lost Sister to one lucky winner. All you need to do to enter is leave a comment about Megan's interview (or how cool her kid is!). But of course you can get extra entries too....

+1 for blogging and/or tweeting about this entry

+1 for blogging and/or tweeting about Megan's new book

Just note your extra entries in your comment as well as your email address.

I'll announce the winner nextWednesday the 26th, when our guest will be filmmaker April Mosqus who will tell you about her very cool project Before We Get To Seattle.