What is it with Men and Bacon?

I came downstairs last Sunday morning, and Rich was watching United States of Bacon on Discovery Channel. People were eating 5-ounce chunks of thick, hickory-smoked bacon-on-a-stick, and my husband was drooling.

“Honey,” he said. “I swear this is just like watching porn.”

Not that he watches porn.

I laughed, shook my head, and asked him what was the deal with men and bacon? Women like bacon, but they don’t turn into idiots when it’s on television, or when they’re cooking it, or even when they see it in the grocery store. Bacon awakens something deep inside of men.

He recently did some computer work for a friend. It took a couple of trips and several hours to complete the work. HE TOOK PAYMENT FOR HIS SERVICES IN BACON. Seven pounds to be exact.

We’ve joked about bacon here before, and some of you may remember his bacon poem. He wrote it for me to enter into another blogger’s poetry contest, but I refused:

Slice it, smoke it, fry it up quick.
Make sure it’s done, or it might make you sick.
Splattering grease burn, it looks like a freckle.
An apron protects you, especially your schmekel.

(Yes, we’re really twelve years old, and the poem still makes me laugh.)

When I make potato soup, he wants bacon in it. Fried cabbage? Only with bacon. Bacon on pizza. Bacon-wrapped steaks. Bacon on baked chicken. Bacon on burgers. Bacon in baked beans. Bacon and eggs, of course. It never ends, and just the smell of it as it cooks reduces him to the grinning village idiot.

A 2009 study in Britain showed men to prefer the smell of bacon over babies. Why am I not surprised? When I told this to Rich, he replied, “Well, that makes sense.”

Bacon is addictive. Per wikipedia: bacon possesses six ingredient types of umami, which elicits an addictive neurochemical response.  … “the chain lards on bacon” create a one-of-a-kind product that has no taste substitute.

You can’t help it if you love bacon: “Bacon makes you feel happy, satisfied, blissful, which greatly reduces stress in our lives and effectively relieves the negative effects of frustration, self deprivation and sense of lack in ones existence.” Bacon is nature’s candy.

I’ll close with some final thoughts from my husband:

– Bacon is like fine wine, except you fry it.

– There is nothing better than bacon and eggs – minus the eggs.

– There is no proper way to prepare bacon.  Whether it’s almost burnt, or fried just enough, it’s perfect every time.

– Kevin is one of the luckiest guys on earth!

– Just because there are no bacon paintings by van Gogh doesn’t mean he didn’t paint one.

– Did you know that no matter what you type into Google Images after the word bacon, you will get legitimate results?  From bacon automobiles to bacon zombies, you’ll get real bacon results.  Try it.  Do you love bacon? When was the last time you ate bacon? What’s your favorite way to eat bacon?

Leave Them Kids Alone

Pink Floyd. I’ve always been a Pink Floyd fan. Hubby is a mega-fan, and it’s not unusual to hear Floyd blaring from the den. I’ve had a Pink Floyd lyric running through my head this past week: “Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!” Leave them kids alone. The words shift; the tune remains, “Hey! Maddie! Leave them covers alone!” I’m not making this up. It’s in my head, and it’s annoying.

This evening, I approved the final artwork for the rework of my first cover. I’ve read plenty of articles about covers, and thought I had everything under control. A little more research tonight turned up some interesting tidbits, as there is a plethora of articles related to the mistakes of indie authors.  Ha! Here we go again. I compared my covers to the tips. All of these helpful hints appeared in more than one article:

1. Do not use a family member or relative to do your artwork.  – FAIL

2. Sexy covers are hot right now.  – FAIL

3. Do not put your name in small type in the lower right or left corner.  – FAIL

4. Do not clutter your cover. Design around one element.  – FAIL

5. Quit messing with your cover. Pick a design and stick with it.  – FAIL

6. Changing the cover art can attract new buyers.  – PASS  – Yeah! I passed one! Oh, wait. Basically the change was from one of a boring cover to one of the steamy sex god and goddess covers. – FAIL

I’m happy with my covers. They certainly portray the pink, fluffy, fun, not-too-serious, theme of the books. I think I’ll keep them.

Ack! D’oh! Yikes!

I’ve always believed my books were entertaining, and I’m grateful to the few people who read and enjoyed them before I signed up for Robin Coyle’s blog class – Strong Words vs Weak Words. Robin has a wonderful way of taking mundane, lackluster, weak words and rewriting them into expressive, action-oriented sentences. Her examples are usually tongue-in-cheek and entertaining. Here’s an example of her elimination of the weak word “put.”

I put my fingers in my ears to drown out Robin’s yammering. 

Have you tried earplugs? Better yet, try noise-canceling headphones.

Even with my fingers shoved in my ears, I could hear Robin’s incessant screeching.

She threw a curveball at me recently. She wanted me to look at exclamation points. What?! I love exclamation points! To be fair, so does she, and she uses them liberally in her blog, but not in her book. Sigh. I’ve been on board for the entire ride, but I got off at the exclamation point station to see what I could find out about this.

When did people start hating the exclamation point? So many questions are asked in my books, and they all end in question marks. Why aren’t question marks hated when their rounded little shapes are peppered all over the page? Because we have to use them, you say? Well, I have to use exclamation points.

I started searching and reading articles and blog posts that were written entirely about author and editor hatred of the exclamation point. A children’s book editor said any picture book showing up with exclamation points all over the place is immediately dismissed. I’ll concede that point. A picture book has both words and pictures to show excitement. But let’s take a look at what else I found.

“It pains me when I see them.”
“They take away from the message.”
“An exclamation point is the cheap whore of punctuation.”
“I can barely stand reading sentences that have this mark at their end.”
“Exclamation points, you see, are evil.”

Wow! That’s some pretty strong emotion against a proper piece of punctuation.

Here are the standard uses of an exclamation point:
– an exclamation (“Wow!”)
– an imperative (“Stop!”)
– to indicate astonishment (“They were the footprints of a bigfoot!”).
– The exclamation point is sometimes used in conjunction with the question mark. This can be in protest or astonishment (“The bigfoot did what?!”)

I used the “?!” combination four times in book number two, and seven times in book number three. I didn’t even know it was an acceptable use. The double punctuation simply conveyed the emotion of the sentence, so I used it.

I haven’t read The Bonfire of the Vanities, but I do believe the book is still a hit with its 2,343 exclamation points. The book debuted in 1987. Maybe people didn’t hate the exclamation point so much back then.

I will not give up my exclamation points. Well, in my soon-to-be released book, I did throw out 29% of them – thanks to Robin – but I’m keeping the rest. Here is just one example of a keeper exclamation point:

“What’s this I hear about a secret passageway?” asked Larry before calling, “Trump!” and slamming his last card onto the table.

Without the exclamation point, Larry remains fairly calm and seated while slamming the card onto the table. With the exclamation point, he goes from talking calmly, to half-standing from his chair as he suddenly yells and is overly excited about winning the points.

Should I have written all of that in the book? Should I have shown Larry getting all worked up in his seat over a card game? The exclamation point did the work for me, and the scene isn’t Larry’s anyway. I don’t want a lot of descriptive writing in my books. I want just enough to show the scene and allow my reader to take it from there. Exclamation points alleviate a lot of explaining and describing.

But I will also be the first to say I’m not giving advice to anyone. I’m just showing my stubbornness. Maybe when I’m a veteran writer, I’ll write a blog post laughing at my folly as a novice, and I’ll write about my naiveté and how much I now despise exclamation points. (But I doubt it.)

Big Easy Hunter is probably my favorite of the four books. It not only starts with dialogue (another perceived no-no), but the first sentence has an exclamation point:

“Stop it!” I whispered.

So there.