P IS FOR PLUM

That would be Stephanie Plum. 

I love all things in the Stephanie Plum Universe.  It could be possible that I have a crush on Ranger.  His full name is Ricardo Carlos Manoso .  He's second generation Cuban-American.  Was Special Forces.  He has abilities that make me think that he might be Batman.  Just kidding.  Sort of.

Stephanie's partner in crime is a former hoe by the name of Lula.  She has a fondness for Spandex and poison green outfits that really should be outlawed, given that she is full-figured and all, and she always buys her outfits about four sizes too small.  Yikes.  However, since Stephanie is a bond enforcement agent (and horribly inept), having Lula ride shotgun only adds hilarity to the mix when they botch the capture.  Since they are hunting FTAs in Trenton, NJ, and everyone carries (but Stephanie), it is shocking that they haven't been shot... yet.  However, that isn't to say that numerous attempts haven't been made on Stephanie's life.  She once had her car blown up four times in just one book.  (This is a series.)  Make that four different cars.  Obviously.  And Lula carries a weapon at all times, but can't hit the broad side of anything, so that always gets interesting.

Then there is Stephanie's family: her mother side is Hungarian.  Grandma Mazur is my favorite.  She is probably in her 80s, acts like she's 40, but looks like she's 110.  She also carries regular, and can't hit anything, though she did once shoot up the turkey set out for dinner.  Her favorite pastime is getting her hair done (and catching up on the gossip), and going to the viewings at the funeral homes.  However, she is working on getting banned for constantly opening the lids on closed viewings.  Local funeral homes have taken to nailing the lids down to prevent her from getting a sneak peek.

I can't forget to tell you about Joe Morelli.  That is Stephanie's on-again, off-again boyfriend.  Janet Evanovich starts off the first book of the series just like this: "There are some men who enter a woman's life  and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me - not forever, but periodically."  I think that pretty well sums up Morelli and Stephanie Plum...

And this series.  It is a rollicking fun ride.  If you want to laugh, read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series.  It is Hilarious.

Rating: Passion


Have your read any of the books in the Stephanie Plum series?  Do you have a favorite book series that makes you laugh so hard that your sides hurt?  Do you have a favorite character in a book that always makes you laugh whenever you read the book?  

Let's Talk About Hookers

Well, I was just doing some innocent blog reading when I came across Gossip Girl's most recent post. She is participating in this hop thing wherein you post hooks from the beginning chapters of one or more books you are reading/have read. I suppose the idea is to make you think about what makes a good hook for the budding writer or even a writer withering on the vine.



I learned a couple of things in trying to do this exercise. First, this is not as easy to do on your Kindle as it is with a real, live book. Second, be careful of paper cuts with a real, live book when you are flipping around like a crazy person just trying to find the next chapter. Lastly, I inwardly bemoaned the loss of so many of my real, life books. Space has become a SERIOUS ISSUE, and almost all of them have been donated to the library. Hence the luxury of spending the money on a Kindle. I love my Kindle because I can make the print as large as I like, but rebuilding my book collection would essentially take forever. Of course, I tell myself I can always check out any book I really want to read again at... the library. *sigh* And that works most days. Most importantly, after I came up with ten hooks by other authors I finally understood that they wanted ten hooks that I had written from my own writing. Ugghh. That left me with quite the conundrum. The only serious writing I have done is my book I started and put down because I just got LOST in it.

However, I knew where it was.

And I only had to find three decent hooks at the beginning of three chapters. And I had done a LOT of writing. Of course, you want excellent, outstanding, fabulous hooks. But you get what you get. And, once again, I find that one sentence often doesn't tell the tale. Sometimes you really need two to SINK IT. Better yet, that first paragraph. If it is SHORT.

So, here are my hooks from the novel I thought I might never pick up again...

"Two years," Jake said.

It was all I could do not to hold out my hand and make him pinkie promise. I smiled at the thought of Jake's reaction to that. He would think I was certifiable. I wondered if he even remembered the pinkie promise made so long ago.


The knot in my stomach had settled in at 9:00 and was becoming increasingly painful by the minute.


Jake grabbed my arm as I turned into the empty room. "Explain that. What do you mean by ALL OF IT?" he thundered. His words echoed around the room.

Yep. Those are the hooks from the long-forgotten novel. Or so it would seem. Now I am thinking about it again. Buggers. I know my brain. It will work this until I can find a way to bridge the gap from the middle to the End. Egads.

I didn't see any specific rules about how many hooks you needed for this post. It appeared to me that ten or so was sufficient. So, I set that as my goal. I picked out three books. Two I have read before. One several times. One only once because it just broke my heart. And the last I picked up at the library today. Some books are just too darn expensive for my Kindle! And I so enjoy actually turning the page. *bigger sigh*

It has occurred to me that I need a fourth book because I only have nine hooks, so I am adding one from my all-time favorite series by Janet Evanovich. Yep. Stephanie Plum. That series cracks me up. So we will start with that one.


Favorite Series Ever:
One For The Money by Janet Evanovich

There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me- not forever, but periodically.



And the one that I have read numerous times:
Running From Safety by Richard Bach

My truth has been a long time refining. I've explored and drilled for it with hope and intuition, filtered and condensed it the best I could with reflection, then run it through my engines, wary at first, to see what would happen.


It must happen to us all, I thought. We pack up what we've learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within we must dimly know that saying good-bye to safety brings the only security we'll ever know.


"Leslie, why don't I forget the whole thing? I have a lot better things to do with my life than to play with my own imagination."


Every word in my mind shattered, I was silent for an answer. He's right, I thought at last, this is his country. Those few times I reached for an old memory, here is where I came: dry, dead, lost, everything that used to be, turned to dust. After a while I had shrugged, happy childhood but a terrible memory, and learned to live without my youth, most of it. Here it lay.

I know that some of them offer more than one sentence hooks, but I think that they are short enough to qualify for a hook. So.... moving on.



Haven't read yet, but next up:
City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare Book Four in The Mortal Instruments series

"You know what's awesome?" said Eric, setting down his drumsticks. "Having a vampire in our band. This is the one thing that's really going to take us over the top."


"Your girlfriend?" Alec looked astonished. So did Maryse. Simon couldn't say he was unastonished himself. "You dated a vampire? A girl vampire?"

"It was a hundred and thirty years ago," said Magnus. "I haven't seen her since."



This is the book that broke my heart:
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

CLARE: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he is okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.


HENRY: Matt and I are playing Hide and Seek in the stacks in Special Collections. He's looking for me because we are supposed to be giving a calligraphy Show and Tell to a Newberry Trustee and her Ladies' Lettering Club. I'm hiding from him because I'm trying to get all of my clothes on my body before he finds me.


HENRY: I wake up in the middle of the night with a thousand razor-toothed insects gnawing on my legs and before I can even shake a Vicodin out of the bottle I am falling.


And there they are... 10 hooks. Some took a few sentences, rather than just one, to really make the hook great. And, of course, some are only really funny if you are familiar with the characters. Anyone who has read the Mortal Instruments series will appreciate those hooks. The rest of you probably not so much. Ah well. I like how she mixes the humor into the seriousness of her subject matter, but that is just me. Anyway, the exercise made me appreciate the art of a well written hook. If you would like to participate, go to Cassie Mae's page or Falling for Fiction and jump on the hop. Granted, you don't have much time... so hurry. Of, course there is still Hangers in a few days (whatever the heck that will be!), and I have no doubt it will be interesting.

Are You Packing Heat?

My original line of thought was to post about Morelli and Ranger today, but I don't think you people are ready for that. Seriously. So, we are going to take a look at Stephanie (aka me) through other eyes today. Let's turn that around. We are going to look at the world of Plum without all of that testosterone making our eardrums melt and our brains do screwy things.

Let's do a quick tour through Stephanie's immediate family. This will be fun. Grandma Mazur. She is my favorite character in Stephanie's family. She has taken up permanent residence with Stephanie's parents "now that Grandpa Mazur was scarfing down his normal two-eggs-and-a-half-pound-of-bacon breakfast in the hereafter." Grandma Mazur's favorite pastime is funeral viewings. This is pretty much a daily ritual. The deceased is judged on which funeral parlor is chosen, the quality of the casket, and it better be an open casket or Grandma Mazur is likely to get caught sneaking a peek. This is a no-no even in Trenton. Stephanie often gets dragged along to these outings to prevent this sort of thing, because family members get irate when their closed casket viewings become open casket thanks to Grandma Mazur.

"Grandma Mazur was seventy two and didn't look a day over ninety. I loved her dearly, but when you got her down to her skivvies, she resembled a soup chicken. Tonight's dress was a fire-engine-red shirtwaist with shiny gold buttons." This is one of grandma's tamer outfits. She often wears things like spandex biker shorts, or whatever she thinks might be trendy. And, like everyone else in Jersey she packs heat. Yeah, that sweet little old lady carries concealed and doesn't have a license to do so, but no one has a license in Jersey and everybody does it. Grandma is a lethal weapon because she thinks she is a crack shot, and she can't hit the broad side of a barn. So, when she pulls out her gun, everybody duck! She did manage to kill the turkey after it was cooked and on the dinner table. Of course, she wasn't aiming for it. At least, it couldn't get more dead.

Stephanie's mother thought that life really couldn't get any harder than it did when her mother, Grandma Mazur, moved in. She was wrong. She started dipping into the cooking sherry. She became a compulsive cleaner. When Stephanie started catching criminals, she moved on to the hard stuff. But just a nip now and then. And she irons a lot. It is safe to say that she has the cleanest house in Trenton. Stephanie's father is pretty much retired, but drives a cab for fun. His time in the cab picked up when Grandma moved in. He spends most of his time in front of the TV and is monosyllabic. So, long as he gets three squares a day, he seems to be mostly okay. I think that he pretends his real life is happening somewhere else. But this is purely conjecture on my part.

Remember when I told you that we would get back to Vinnie? Well, we're back. Vinnie is Stephanie's cousin. "Vinnie was forty-five, 5'7' without his lifts, and had the slim boneless body of a ferret. He wore pointy-toed shoes, liked pointy-breasted women and dark-skinned young men, and he drove a Cadillac Seville." Do you remember when I told you that Vinnie just gave Stephanie the job. It didn't exactly go down like that. She blackmailed him into giving her the job. Vinnie likes kinky sex and everyone knows about it except his wife. Well, that was going to change unless Stephanie got that job. It went a little bit like this:

"So give me one week, Vinnie," I said. "If I don't get him in a week, you can turn it over to someone else."

"I wouldn't give you a half hour."

I took a deep breath and leaned in closer to Vinnie, whispering in his ear. "I know about Madam Zareski and her whips and chains. I know about the boys. And I know about the duck."

He didn't say anything. He just pressed his lips together until they turned white, and I knew I had him. Lucille would throw up if she knew what he did to the duck. Then she'd tell her father, Harry the Hammer, and Harry would cut off Vinnie's dick."

Yeah, she went for the hard sell on the job. Sorry to have mislead you on that yesterday. Actually, it wasn't so much misleading, it just wasn't telling. I was saving it for today.

Getting back to Grandma and the things you need to know about her:
1) She is always up for anything. The more dangerous the better.
2) Favorite expression: "Isn't that a pip?"
3) Grandma was willed a 1953 Powder Blue Buick with a shiny white top, whitewall tires big enough to fit a backhoe, and gleaming chrome portholes. Stephanie likens it to a beluga whale and says that it turns corners like a refrigerator on wheels. Grandma can't drive, and this is ALWAYS Stephanie's last resort vehicle. She hates it. However, her cars are constantly being blown up, so Stephanie drives it a lot.
4) Some funeral parlors nail their caskets shut because of Grandma Mazur and her penchant for peeking when she shouldn't.

I still don't think you're ready for Morelli and Ranger, so tomorrow we are going to dish on my all-time favorite Plum character, aside from Stephanie, and her men. And Grandma. I really like Grandma. That would be Lula. She was a ho (in book one), but that life really is hard on a woman. So, she reformed and is now the file clerk at Vinnie's office. Turns out she really doesn't like to file, but she loves riding shotgun with Stephanie. She isn't any better at catching FTAs than Stephanie, but it makes the story twice as entertaining. Imagine an oversized black woman in poison green spandex whose response that a situation might be "delicate" is this: "Hell, I can delicate your ass off." And that is why I love Lula. I feel the need to go watch BABY GOT BACK on Youtube. Ya'll have a nice night. Catch you tomorrow because I am going to delicate your ass off!


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