Jeri Smith-Ready

The page 123 meme

When Jackie Kessler e-mailed me to announce she'd tagged me with a meme, I thought, she doesn't just write books about demons--she is a demon.

But then it turned out to be an easy one. So I'll spare Jackie the holy water Super Soaker.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to the person who tagged you once you’ve posted your three sentences.

So the nearest book is Jana Oliver's Virtual Evil, the second in her superb time travel/Jack the Ripper/shapeshifter mystery trilogy that started with Sojourn, which won approximately 10,435 awards last year. Here's the sample--which works most perfectly, as serendipity would have it:

"You did say that the perfect murder is one in which the blood is on someone else's hands," Satyr went on. "You have often stated that you felt he presented a threat to your future plans. This will remove the sergeant from our concerns."

Yikes! I haven't gotten to that part yet. Must go read...

But first...the tagging:

1. Ann Aguirre
2. Victoria Dahl
3. Stephanie Kuehnert
4. Jana Oliver
5. Cynthia Eden

Speaking of Cynthia, check out her interview yesterday, where you can win one of two free signed books, which both sound amazing. I'm jealous I can't win them.

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Now playing: Games Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel
via FoxyTunes

Labels: motley memes, reading

• posted by Jeri @ 10:13 AM
• 6 comments

16 random facts meme

Rachel Caine honored me with a tag on a fun new meme--actually, an extended version of the Eight Things You Don't Know About Me, which I posted last June.

The mission: list sixteen random personal facts or habits, and then pick twelve of my friends to tag. I'm going to cheat a little and start off with an edited version of my Eight Things:

1. Like last year's Miss Michigan, I have maimouphobia*. (Also coulrophobia, but everyone knows that.)

2. Favorite song: "Inside Out" by Eve 6. Singing along to this tune is a better aerobic workout than the Stairmaster, and much easier on the knees.

3. Sometimes when I'm in the self-checkout lane at the supermarket, I pretend I'm auditioning for a job.

4. Favorite classical composer: Franz Schubert. This is not interesting.

5. I once spent the night at Eugene O'Neill's boyhood home, the setting for his Pulitzer-winning play, Long Day's Journey Into Night. Alas, I neither saw nor heard the famed ghost of his mother, wandering the halls looking for her next morphine fix.

6. Secret Celebrity Crush: Ben Stiller

7. I'm obsessive but not compulsive, mainly because I'm too lazy to follow through on most thoughts. I might be having lunch with you, and 99% of my attention is focused on what you're saying (honestly!), while the remaining 1% is thinking, "The tablecloth is crooked, the salt shaker is at a hostile angle to the sugar bowl, and I'm dying to make an Olympic rings symbol with the condensation on the bottom of my water glass." But don't worry--I won't do anything about it.

8. In my head, the alphabet still looks like this.


9. I have passed out once in my life--in Bruges, Belgium. Yes, I'll be seeing the Colin Farrell movie.

10. I wait to buy a Tori Amos album until the following one is released. No reason, it just works out that way, and so far I've been happy with the results.

11. I never turn my back on a saguaro cactus.

12. I directed Sartre's No Exit as part of my senior thesis. Only two out of the four actors learned all their lines.

13. Speaking of college theatre, I played Crow in Sam Shepard's Tooth of Crime. This was the pinnacle of my acting "career." Can you find me in the photos?

14. I only need two more random facts after this one.

15. One of my friends in college went out with a guy who went on to marry Amy Carter. She went on to be a lesbian. My friend, not Amy Carter.

16. The coffee is ready.

*that's fear of monkeys, for those too lazy to skim the article

Labels: life, motley memes, movies, music

• posted by Jeri @ 9:50 AM
• 0 comments

Top Ten signs a book was written by me

Rachel Vincent brought a meme to my attention on the Fangs Fur & Fey LiveJournal community and invited us all to take part. I promised myself I wouldn't take more than half an hour away from Bad to the Bone to jot this down, so forgive the brevity.

Here we go, in order in which I thought of them. Call them Jeri Cliches or Smith-Ready Selling Points, it's the Top Ten Signs a Book Came Out of My Head:

1. Hero and heroine hit the sack fast. They don't always go all the way, but they usually break the sexual tension in a hot and hasty fashion. Exception: Voice of Crow. Oh, and The Reawakened, where self-denial reaches new heights of insanity. It's important to break out of ruts.*

2. Main character has hostile and/or distant relationship with father. Exception: Eyes of Crow.

3. Prominent gay or bisexual characters. Exception: Eyes of Crow.

4. Music is integral to the plot and characters. Once again, exception is Eyes of Crow (did I actually write that book?).

5. Moderate to heavy alcohol consumption. NO EXCEPTIONS

6. Natural dialogue and a fast pace. I guess these go together as stylistic factors, and the former certainly helps the latter.

7. Beta male hero. Exception: Requiem for the Devil. They don't get any more alpha than Lucifer. But he's the POV character, which probably increases my tolerance for the attitude.

8. Main character's friends and/or siblings get a lot of "screen time." This is self-explanatory, and yet I'm adding a note here because otherwise it looks funny, like I didn't want to talk about it.

9. Religion is prominent. Whether negatively or positively portrayed, it's always a psychological factor.

10. It's about more than what it's about. This probably sounds pompous, but I like my stories to be meaningful. My primary concern is to entertain, but if a reader comes away from the book looking at the world in a different way (or just looking at the world period), that's a bonus.

*Ruts. Hee. I just got that.

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Now playing: Round & Round (It Won't Be Long) - Neil Young
via FoxyTunes

Labels: Eyes of Crow, motley memes, Requiem for the Devil, vampire series, Voice of Crow

• posted by Jeri @ 4:21 PM
• 5 comments

Happy Meme of Happy Happiness

Rob at Laughing at the Pieces tagged me on a meme and said for me to do it when I'm out of hibernation. I'm not even close to poking my head out of the cave, but no one needs a happy like someone writing a war book.

Some number of things I'm happy about:

1) My husband's high school reunion (correlating to Rob's # 7). Best friends and eighties music, all in one night!

2) My cat Tiggy got good blood results yesterday. She has chronic renal failure, which is a terminal illness, but she's much improved from a month ago, so I'm setting back her Doomsday Clock to 12:01 a.m., as befitting an immortal creature.

3) Just got ARCs of Wicked Game in the mail. They're gorgeous, and the acknowledgments made my husband smile. I have a fun contest planned here next week to see who gets the very first one.

4) The soundtrack to HBO's Rome finally came out. When I bought it, Amazon told me that I should also buy the soundtrack to 300. So I did (though I accidentally paid 8 bucks extra for the stupid deluxe version). They are both outrageously wonderful and perfect accompaniment for writing a war novel.

5) Joe Torre will be managing the Dodgers next year.

6) Brett Favre is having the season of a lifetime, proving that 38-year-olds can still kick ass.

7) There's a comet in Perseus that is currently bigger than the sun. No, I'm serious.

I'm shy about tagging people, so consider it all-inclusive. Just link back here. Have a happy weekend!

Labels: motley memes

• posted by Jeri @ 5:18 PM
• 6 comments

8 Things Ya Dunno

Wow, this is sad. It's been so long since I blogged, I actually had to sign into Blogger just now. My own blog tool didn't recognize me. *sob!*

I finished my rewrite scenes early today, so I'll take a crack at this "Eight Things You Don't Know About Me" meme Rob and Robin have tagged me with. (Since I was twice-tagged, I reserve the right to add up to eight more at a time of my choosing.)

Here we go:


1. Like this year's Miss Michigan, I have maimouphobia*. (Also coulrophobia, but everyone knows that.)

2. Favorite song: "Inside Out" by Eve 6. Singing along to this tune is a better aerobic workout than the Stairmaster, and much easier on the knees.

3. Sometimes when I'm in the self-checkout lane at the supermarket, I pretend I'm auditioning for a job.

4. Favorite classical composer: Franz Schubert

5. I once spent the night at Eugene O'Neill's boyhood home, the setting for his Pulitzer-winning play, Long Day's Journey Into Night. Alas, I neither saw nor heard the famed ghost of his mother, wandering the halls looking for her next morphine fix.

6. Secret Celebrity Crush: Ben Stiller

7. I'm obsessive but not compulsive, mainly because I'm too lazy to follow through on most thoughts. I might be having lunch with you, and 99% of my attention is focused on what you're saying (honestly!), while the remaining 1% is thinking, "The tablecloth is crooked, the salt shaker is at a hostile angle to the sugar bowl, and I'm dying to make an Olympic rings symbol with the condensation on the bottom of my water glass." But don't worry--I won't do anything about it.

8. In my head, the alphabet still looks like this.

Now, Rob and Robin, aren't you sorry you asked?

Because the first good night's sleep in a week is beckoning, I'm going to be a Meme Buzz-kill and not officially tag eight new people. But Kathy, Catie, Cynthia, and Vivi, if you're reading this, you be tagged! Here are Robin's rules, which I'm just now reading for the first time:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I shall return Thursday once this draft is finished and set aside to ferment like a fine summer ale.

Mmmm....

*that's fear of monkeys, for those too lazy to skim the article

Labels: motley memes

• posted by Jeri @ 8:32 PM
• 5 comments