Super Sock Man takes Metropolis, Metrocity, and Gotham

Okay– Two Things. The first is that Super Sock Man is out tomorrow!

Yay!  The expanded take on the adventures of Donnie, the super-precocious young adult and Alejandro, his sister’s roommate will be hitting the e-book shelves tomorrow There is a contest at Chris’s that I should have posted earlier! Sorry, Chris! For a copy of it, (you’ve got like, hours, to enter the contest, and I want to smack my head on the wall for forgetting!  I guess the last blog post says it all– last week literally removed my head.)

So, the fun thing about this one is that yes, I designed the socks.  For those of you with a particularly discerning eye, check out the sock on the left–see the fish features in it?  Uhm, yeah… for those of you who write patterns?  WASN’T EASY!  Anyway, the socks are a little slouchy around the ankle, but they tighten up at the tail-cable to hopefully keep the socks from sliding irritatingly down your feet.  Here’s hoping.  Oh– and the STORY!  Well, in short story form it was sort of sweet and hot.  The novella is, well, just as sweet and a whole lot hotter.  I don’t often just sort of sensually indulge when I’m writing, but Donnie and Alejandro’s story was really very simple.  It almost felt like I didn’t have a choice–the good stuff was the best stuff!  This is also a prequel of sorts to Chase in Shadow– you will meet Chase and see Chase’s first encounter, and yes, for those of you love Chase, he’s a real douche-fucker in this one, but, if you love Chase, you also know he’ll redeem himself AND break your heart by the end.  (For those of you wondering how that happened, I wrote the novella first and it inspired the novel–it was sort of a fluke that the novella ended up coming out after the novel.)  

So, well, there’s that.

Anyway, the other thing is that I have today is the whole, yanno, “I’m leaving tomorrow!” thing.  6:10 a.m.–DUDES!  I’m still packing.  We weighed my suitcase last night and consigned 5 lbs of shit to my carry on, and I’m thinking, “I’m gonna want the frickin’ carry on on wheels and not the one that’s going over my shoulder, because THAT would frickin’ SUCK!”  Besides.  My yarn is going into my carry on.  And no amount of long, hard talks with myself about how all I’ll need is my sock bag have managed to convince me to go with anything less than three bags of yarn.  I don’t understand it, but it’s the truth.  *headdesk*  Well, I’m going with a fully charged iPod and a Kindle and some paper books, too, because I have a low tolerance for boredom, and the two plane trips are already freaking me out with their potential for length and sublime discomfort.  And then imma be in New York!  My mind boggles.  BOGGLES. Okay–have to admit, I know less about New York than I probably should to be this boggled.  I’m seriously jonesing for a bus tour.  I wanna be a tourist.  You remember, Men in Black?  Will Smith drops down onto the open air double decker bus and goes, “Yeah, I know, it just be rainin’ black people in New York!”  I WANNA BE ONE OF THOSE TOURISTS!  I mean, we have plenty of people of all colors in California, and I wouldn’t mind if Will Smith dropped in my lap in ANY state (naked, intoxicated, Wisconsin…)  but mostly, I want to be in a bus, having someone telling me, “This, this is where my cousin Vinnie got busted, and here, this is where the mob hit went down, and right here?  This is Greenwich village, we can’t go any faster here, we might hit an artist!”

I mean yesterday?  At aqua?  (Dude… not nearly as fun as band camp!)  I was sitting in the jacuzzi because it was too frickin’ cold to run to my towel from the pool without a stop to warm myself up first, and telling this nice woman where I was going.  I’ve gotten really good at not apologizing or simpering back when I tell people what I write anymore.  “Oh, you’re an author.  What do you write?”  “Gay romance.  Yes, yes, you heard that right!”   Anyway, I was fully expecting the usual swallow and double take with this woman, but no.  What I got instead was, “And you’re going to the Rainbow Book Fair in New York?  You might meet my son!  He just finished an interview with Dan Savage.  He’s one of the people who lobbies for worldwide health education at the UN.”

I was totally impressed–and this guy sounds WAY above my social circle, but still.  If I do meet him, it would be awfully fun to start a conversation with, “Hi, Mr. Ramirez, you know, I was hot-tubbing with your mom…”

But as excited as I get, I’m also getting sort of weepy.  The kids are giving me trinkets to take with me so I don’t forget them.  Really?  Because after some solid years of motherhood, I’m going to forget these faces in a little more than a week?  Seriously doubt it.  But that doesn’t mean I won’t miss them either, as I venture into the bowls (*snicker*) of Metrocity– Mate has set up a FaceTime  interaction, so I can chat with them, which is nice.  I’ll probably do a lot of singing over the computer, and some irritated chatting with Chicken and some clueless chatting with T and some wistful chatting with Mate, because no place is as good if he’s not there.

But still– I’m going to Gotham and I’m going to have fun and I’m going to come back with stories and I will, of course, come back and tell you!  I’m going to Gotham–may Batman save us all!