For the Sake of Mind and Musical Expansion

Found this in an iTunes review of an Alice in Chains compilation today:

"To most, sadly, the 90s alternative movement has faded. To those who grew up during those years, it represents our youth and what we consider one of the last true musical revolutions. It will never die! When breaking music boundaries actually meant something. Alice in Chains is one of those great bands, along with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Phish, and so many others who created their own sound for the sake of mind and musical expansion, unlike today's bands who lack and do not appreciate identity and originality."

You know, I always said I was going to move with the times and not get irretrievably stuck in a certain decade (PARTICULARLY not the 80s. Dear God, my hair...). But when it comes to music, lately I've been digging in my heels and staying in the 90s. Weird melodrama aside ("It will never die!"), I found myself nodding in agreement when I read the AiC review cited above. I hear you, my brother in grunge, mi amigo con queso.

Let me warn you, I hardly have the musical vocabulary or savvy of, say, a Rolling Stone magazine reviewer. Ergo, I'm not going to come out in this blog with an uber-hip, musically intelligent sentence like: "But where the music of those classic Bach-rockers had moments of pastoral clarity, the band favors unrelenting density, often through free-jazz clatter and Afro-Cuban percussion onslaughts." I just know what I like and what I don't, and I'm compelled to blog today about how I've developed this odd musical ennui lately that has me responding to just about every new band and artist I hear with a resounding MEH.

My poor brothers have heard me natter on about this ad nauseum in the last couple of years. (Jose isn't into music much at all--the last song he made me buy off of iTunes for him was :::shudder::: Five for Fighting's "100 Years." There you go, honey. Make me spend 99 cents on a sugar-shock-fest like that, and you will be blogged about.) But I think rock music needs to find that "new sound" again, the one that caricatured, over-the-top record producers on television were always waving their hands and ranting about on shows like Joanie Loves Chachi or The Monkees reruns on MTV back when I was a kid.

Seriously, have you ever heard a piece of music for the first time that just made you drop everything and move closer to the speakers? The one that's so different, yet so amazing, you're floored by what you're hearing? The artists who create that sound are the ones that have moved into legend territory: Elvis, Smokey Robinson, Donny Hathaway, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Beatles. According to Wikipedia, in 1966, former Animals' bassist and record producer Chas Chandler had this idea in his head that the folk tune "Hey Joe" would make a wicked rock song. Keith Richards' then-girlfriend introduced as-yet-undiscovered Jimi Hendrix to Chandler, who somehow must've heard about the producer's love for the song. Left-handed Hendrix got out his upside-down, restrung, right-handed Stratocaster and launched into his own version of "Hey Joe" at their first meeting. Chandler promptly spilled a drink on himself.

It's hard to describe the elusive "new sound," but everyone knows it when s/he hears it.

Despite not having soiled my clothing in any manner at the time, I still remember when I first heard Nirvana. After the New Wave movement had died, local radio stations in my college town could only blast treacly ballads by the likes of Richard Marx and Michael Bolton, mixed in with the last of the dying breed of hair metal bands (Skid Row, anyone?). A friend of mine and I had a Sunday morning radio show on campus, "Up for Church with Tracy and Rose" (Catholic university--what can I say?), on which we mainly played 60s and 70s music due mainly to my hatred of just about everything on Rick Dees' weekly top 40. (She'd sneak George Michael in the middle whenever I stepped outside the studio, which was always good for prompting a slew of angry, drunken phone calls. "Whasshh thisssss shhhhhhhhhhhh%$@?")

Anyway, someone--most likely from out of town where the radio stations weren't spinning all Guns N Roses, all the time--called in and asked us to play "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. Once the caller assured me that no, she wasn't asking for a deodorant commercial, I promised we'd look for it, but told her I highly doubted that an "alternative rock album" was sandwiched anywhere among the likes of Wilson Phillips and Color Me Badd in our meager library. But lo and behold, some forward-thinking soul had either bought the album for the station, or Geffen Records had sent it to KSMR mistakenly thinking we were a hip, alternative college radio station instead of the jumbled, motley assortment of deejays with our own odd musical agendas, determined to rebel against the station manager's top-40 mandate. Ever dutiful to our eight listeners, we put it on ... and I remember dropping the Crosby, Stills, and Nash record I was holding and spinning around in my chair to stare at the turntable in shock (yes, they were actual vinyl records. Do I look old now?). Instead of being the last of a dying hair band era or a bubblegum pop "sensation," Nirvana was shockingly different. Edgy. The very essence of cool. I felt hip and deep and misunderstood just listening to the song.

I can imagine people having a similar experience at Woodstock when Jimi Hendrix played "the Star-Spangled Banner," or when Janis Joplin broke into "Ball and Chain" at the Monterey Pop Festival. Or even when the Talking Heads and Patti Smith moved the music world away from seventies rock into the New Wave era. (Apologies for not mentioning any hiphop artists, the evolution of which has seemed really gradual to me--I can't imagine someone spilling a drink on themselves after hearing Run DMC, but maybe it happened.)

All I know is I'm feeling the same way about today's music as I did back in early 1991, before three boys from Seattle caused such a sensation. (For my brother Tom, rabid member of the Jamily (Heh. He hates that term.), I must also acknowledge Pearl Jam as fellow progenitors of the Seattle grunge rock movement. And I can honestly say that I was just as blown away when Tommy played "Even Flow" for me from his dark basement hovel of a room at our parents' house as I was when I heard Nirvana.)

Of course, there are still musicians I admire today. I love Evanescence's I'm-nearly-suicidal, goth-rock sound. I think Mary J. Blige has the talent to be one of the most astonishing singers of our time--thank God she's off drugs. I admire the continued growth and timelessness of Sting's music (had to slip him in there). Kanye West is amazingly creative, creepy porn addiction aside. Justin Timberlake's first album was amazing, especially considering his musical roots as part of the Mickey Mouse Club and N'Sync. The talented but little-heard-of Alana Davis is shamefully underrated.

But on the whole? ZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzz. I'm waiting for the next big musical thing to come and expunge the pretend-hip-hop and Pussycat Doll detritus from the charts with his or her bold sound and sweeping innovation. I'm waiting for everyone to jump on board and start imitating this NEW next big thing, instead of recycling the same old guitar rhythms and bass runs and tired lyrical sentiments. I'm waiting for the Pussycat Dolls to DIE DIE DIE! (Musicially, not for real.) And I'm waiting for 50 Cent and his ilk to realize that gross misogyny utterly negates true artistic talent. (I'll take you to the candy shop and hack it off, you nasty man. Go talk to your mama that way and see if she doesn't smack you upside the head.)

Elvis, if you're really not dead, it's time to create a shockingly good new musical sound and come back to us. Because we really, really need it.

What do you think of today's music? Anything good out there that I'm missing? Has the new sound come and I've just missed the boat? Am I turning into my father, who would always stare at the car radio whenever I was changing the station from his beloved NPR in the eighties and pitifully note, "It all sounds the same to me?"

If you want to read a really interesting (and hilarious) discussion of innovative Canadian musicians, Her Royal Highness the Queen-a Athena has been knocking out some wicked fun blogs lately on the subject over at the Scribbling Goddesses.

Reports of Our Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Just wanted to surface from Deadline Purgatory to clear up an email rumor some of you may have heard. The RUMOR: Harlequin's Intrigue line is not doing well and is being shut down. FACT: The Intrigue line is one of Harlequin's bestselling lines, and it is not going anywhere. This is straight from Denise Zaza, Intrigue's lead editor. (Actually, it's from Julie Miller, who e-mailed Denise and received a phone call from her in response aimed at quashing this horrible rumor immediately. But I didn't want to sound all: "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night.")

We suspect that the person who started the rumors of Intrigue's demise was confused by the imminent changes to Bombshell and Intimate Moments. Long story short, Bombshell is being phased out. The Silhouette Intimate Moments line is shifting slightly, so ALL of the books in this line will be romances with a suspense element. The suspense element cannot overshadow the romance in this line, unlike in Intrigue, where the suspense is emphasized to the point where the books are quite mainstream in tone.

In a move I confess I find a little baffling, HQ/Silh. marketing is changing the Intimate Moments name to Silhouette Romantic Suspense. I find this a little confusing, because it seems to place more of an emphasis on the suspense than the "Intrigue" title does, so I think it will confuse readers. Perhaps they should call the new line "Silhouette Romance With Some Suspense" or "Silhouette Romance With a Little Suspense But Not Enough To Give You A Bad Case of The Heebies."

I wonder why marketing doesn't ever check with me about these things? Clearly I am a marketing genius.

Anyway, long story short, Intrigue=selling well; sticking around. Bombshell=sadly going away. Intimate Moments=Changing to Romantic Suspense (though not as much suspense as in Intrigue).

So I've done my part to straighten out this mess. My work here is done.

Remembering ...

It's hard to believe that September 11th happened five years ago already. It still seems so immediate, even though so much has happened in that time for Jose and I--we moved to Korea and back to the US, had our two girls, he went to war and came back....

Five years ago, I was in my office in DC when the towers were hit. My boss, whose office was across the hall, had a news website up on his computer and called me in to see a replay of the first tower getting hit--a strange and horrible accident, we thought. Then he called me in again when tower #2 was hit, and we watched together as the Pentagon was hit and the first tower fell. Dennis mentioned his friend who managed the restaurant at the top of one of the towers. I got a call from a friend who lived near the WTC, which was abruptly disconnected when the second tower fell. Several coworkers came in to worry out loud about a former staff member who now worked inside one of the towers.

My coworkers cleared out of the office, one of them telling me that there was a plane still in the air that was unaccounted for and a rumor spreading up and down K Street that the Mall was on fire. Another soon surfaced that the Capitol had been hit.

During the next few hours, determined to stay in one spot until I heard from Jose (who did not work at the Pentagon, thank God) I watched streams of people walk past my window toward the Metro, until the streets emptied completely and a truly eerie silence descended on the city.

I looked at the news one last time on my computer, saw that the missing flight had crashed in Pennsylvania. I still remember hearing Katie Couric speak for the first time of hints that "there had been heroism on Flight 93." I wondered whether those heroes had saved the lives of my coworkers and I, too, since we were a mere four blocks north of the White House.

Jose called, blessedly safe--no freak trips to the Pentagon that day. I packed up and headed for home. The streets were deserted, and I met no one until I actually went into the Metro station. A CNN reporter sat near me on the train, and the few people there clustered around her, hoping to hear something from her that would make sense of the day's events. She mentioned terrorists. We all talked in whispers.

The rest you know--the somber reports delivered by disbelieving newscasters; the endless streams of terrified people clutching posters of their loved ones and begging someone to please tell them they'd seen this person alive and well and in some hospital far, far away from the devastation; the replaying footage of firefighters going up, up, up the WTC stairways.

I know I promised when I set up this blog not to get political, but I have to say, I find it mind-boggling that we're still sending young men and women--many of whom signed up to defend their country in the wake of 9/11--to their deaths in the name of the victims of 9/11, even though we now know that ties between Iraq and the 9/11 perpetrators are fiction. I honor the victims by speaking out where my husband can't (court martials, you know).

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

9/11 matters. Everyone going off to fight this ridiculous war matters. Those who are speaking out against it matter. Our right to disagree with each other matters.

Project Runway Snarkfest #1

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Yeah, we missed a few episodes, but my little brother Troy and I decided we needed to start blogging Project Runway, which is currently having its Best! Season! EVAH!

Everybody give it up for Troy, who will be guest-blogging with me every Friday, except for the Fridays that he doesn't. (We can't blog the day after Project Runway airs, because that would be Thursday, Troy's "hell day" of nonstop classroom fun at the University of Minnesota.)

So here goes our uneducated-yet-hopefully-amusing take on the winner, the loser, and the rest of the designers from this week's "Couture du Jour" episode.

TRACY: So JEFFREY won. Unbelievable. I loved when he said of his toxic-waste-in-a-plaid fabric, "It just jumped out at me." YEAH, it jumped out at you. Like the Mothman jumps out at unsuspecting West Virginians.

That's exactly the fabric I'd use if I wanted to sew a sign warning people that a major bio-chemical spill of nastiness was sludging their way. That dress was a complete horror show, and I don't know what Heidi Klum and her merry band of idiots were smoking to declare that ugly, flailing, plaid bathmat-in-its-death-throes of a dress the winner.

TROY: I seriously expected to see his model whip out some multi-colored bagpipes on the runway. WTF? I'd thought it would be near the bottom, let alone the WINNER. Am I missing something?

TRACY: If you are, so am I. If hating that dress is wrong, I don't EVER want to be right.

TROY: Is that a dress you'd see in Vogue? Now, I don't read Vogue, but this dress seems more likely for Hoe-down Weekly.

TRACY: Heh. As annoyed as I am that Sparky McNeckTattoo won two in a row, I am glad that MICHAEL, despite putting some ruching on his gown that made his model's breasts look like the Hooter's logo, still managed to stay safe.

TROY: That dress looked like it was eating his poor model ("from beneath you it devours"). And he cannot blame the egg incident for the WHOLE dress. The egg hit the bottom, which the judges didn't complain about.

I knew his wasn't bad enough to get him the "auf," but hopefully it inspired him to get it together and make it work next week. He can't be perfect every week, but if he's not in the top two this year, there is no justice.

TRACY: Totally. He had me at the coffee filter dress, and this week was his only slip-up all season so far, IMHO. But you know, he still managed to impress me this week--not with a killer outfit, as usual, but by uttering the night's best line: "I'm sweating like a whore in church." Ha!

How about LAURA's dress?

TROY: ZZZzzzZZZZZzzzZzzZ. Boring. Boring. Boring. And ugly. It would, however, have been perfect for French Maid Elvira.

TRACY: Or something you'd put on a dowager empress for her wake. I keep wanting her to pull off something outrageous, but I think she's going to end up designing for Ann Taylor. Nothing against Ann Taylor, but the company is pure Laura--flattering and sophisticated, but very, very safe.

TROY: I think Laura will be right at home working at a safe, well-tailored mall store. If only her clothes were as sharp as her snark, then she'd have something.

TRACY: I love her snark. Her snark is excellent. And I read somewhere that she's just as snarky at herself, so that makes it all OK.

TROY: ULI?

TRACY: Loved Uli's dress, but did the bodice remind you a little of Santino's gray party dress that he made for Nicky Hilton last season? Didn't that have braided straps, too?

TROY: Santino's Nicky Hilton dress was also exactly what I was thinking. I love Uli and hope she continues to improve, pulling out a win before the finale. She's been robbed a few times (the mother challenge!), and her deviation from the crazy colors and patterns was a step in a good direction.

TRACY: Agreed. Even if Uli's dress was inspired by a Santino creation, it was beautiful and a nice departure from her usual patterned creations with the Y necklines.

And then there's poor KAYNE. He breaks my heart with that sad little pout every time the judges rag on him. Is it just me, or was Kayne's dress really, secretly quite nice? I think if he'd picked a solid chiffon for the skirt, it would have gone over better with the judges.

TROY: Much better than the gay bat wing shirt from last week. I honestly thought Kayne would have been a contender for the winning position this week. I was confused at all of the discussion of the corset being "tacky."

TRACY: I loved the updated 18th-century feel of the corset top! Maybe it crossed over into the Land of Liberace in person, but on camera, it sparkled.

TROY: Yes, it may have been a "Monet" (where from far away it looks nice, but in person it's a "big ole mess" - Clueless), but on TV it was looked very nice.

TRACY: Heidi Klum, you troll, I shake my fist at you! I mean, honestly, if that was over the top, then how did Jeffrey's demented banana on a golf outing win the challenge?

But thank you, Jesus, VINCENT finally got kicked off.

TROY: Vincent makes the baby Jesus cry. Allison should have outlasted him (bitter. bitter. bitter.). I do think he was trying to honor Angela with the rosette-looking flower on the bum, but we saw how well that did for her.

TRACY: Everybody say "fleurchons!"

TROY AND TRACY: FLEURCHONS!

TRACY: Dear God, what WAS that horrible, sycophantic blather-fest coming out of Vincent when he was talking to Catherine Malandrino on the boat in Paris? I actually COVERED my eyes and was CRINGING away from the TV while he was nattering away about her fashion and her shoes and her style and, oh, wow, that was awful.

Maybe he was trying to bamboozle her away from criticizing that bridesmaid horror of a dress? I think I wore that mess in a wedding back in the eighties, butt-flower and all. At least we don't have to hear him talking about what gets him off anymore. Bleeecccch.

TROY: In CONCLUSION, I say good riddance to Vincent's auf. Hope Jeffrey follows him next.

TRACY: I think the judges and producers are grooming Jeffrey for a spot in the final three, to my everlasting chagrin.

TROY: I totally agree that Jeffrey is now going to the final 3. The producers must seem him as a Santino-esque character, but at least Santino had his spectacular Tim Gunn impression. What does Jeffrey have (besides a stupid neck tattoo and overinflated ego)?

TRACY: A serious problem with rage. And an overly doting mother who needs to open up a serious can of whoopass on certain spoiled, creepy sons of hers.

Alone. Alone alone alone. Alone.

So, my husband just packed the kids up in the car and left for Pensacola without me.

You know, that sounds a little dire. Let me rephrase.

My husband just packed the kids up in the car and left to visit his parents in Pensacola without me. (He is coming back.) I suspect it's because I've been being such a pill about getting my work done and meeting my Oct. 1st Intrigue deadline (SHRIEK!), he wanted to give me some alone time to get some stuff done without having to worry that I'm the Worst. Mother. Evah. while I neglect my kids for the computer. Actually, he probably just wanted to get away from the stellar and prolonged impression I've been doing lately of a fishwife. (In my defense, I do not buy that men suddenly forget how to vacuum once they get married, nor that I should always do it because I'm "better at it." How hard is it to shove a vacuum about the carpet for a few minutes? Really? Did the priest eat your brain during the wedding ceremony when I wasn't looking? Because if not, it's time you and Mr. Kenmore got better acquainted, dude. That is, if you ever want to see your non-fishwife wife again.)

So I should be loving life right now. I've got a clean house (not a plastic Dora doll or Peek-a-Block in sight!), a refrigerator full of Diet Coke, the Schwan's man came yesterday to replenish my supply of Chocolate Peanut Butter Passion ice cream, and I have the entire weekend to write. I have complete and utter silence. I can sleep in. I have copies of Match Point and Take the Lead waiting for me to meet my daily goals so I can relax in front of the DVD player in the evening as a goal reward. And I just revamped the first chapter of the Book Formerly Known as Renegade Ridge (that's a whole other blog entry), and it's not bad.

Am I loving life? Yes and no.

This is the first time since Marin was born nine months ago that I've had not just one full day, but two and a half full days all my own. I'm not at a conference. I'm not in DC visiting my workplace. I can decide what to do with every single minute of the next two and a half days until they come back Monday afternoon. Bliss.

But I miss them. At the risk of sounding sappy, my arms feel empty. I want to take Maggie to the pool, and I want to see Marin walk some more (she's been tooling around like a pro for about two days now). I want to put in that baby sign language DVD and see if we can learn something. I want to go to the bookstore and replace Maggie's Disney Princess Sticker Book (because even though the book says the stickers are reusable, they're LIES, all LIES).

This is idiotic. I need to enjoy these two days (and a half), because who knows when I'll be able to have time to myself like this again? So here I go. I'm enjoying myself. Yes, I am. Relaxing, having a glass of wine, and writing up a storm. Yep, that's me.

I miss my kids. (And Jose, even if he doesn't vacuum.)

The Joy of Cooking (Not.)

(Yeah, I'm back. Where I've been will have to wait for another day, because I actually have a topic in mind....)

So I have an unfortunate addiction to cookbooks. Which is sad, because I hate to cook, and they inevitably just end up sitting on my shelf representing the needlessly chopped up trees of the world, while I resort to butchering my mother's spaghetti sauce recipe or overcooking some chicken.

The reason I hate cooking is that I'm terrible at it, and no amount of will or effort mitigates that. I can't taste something and recreate it just by using the Force. I can't embellish a recipe by adding a dash of this and a pinch of that, without making everything taste like a mixture of sawdust and too much salt and look like the brown and red sprinkles my elementary school janitors used to clean up the mess when a student vomited. I can't listen to a list of ingredients and intuitively combine them in ingenioiusly tasty ways (see vomit sprinkles comment above).

Actually, I can barely follow a recipe that spells every step out for me, and when I do, I have about a 50-50 chance of over- or undercooking said recipe, even with an idiot-proof listing of cooking times. All I can say is, God bless the Schwan's man and his dinners in a box.

Despite my complete and utter failures as a cook, every time I see a really nice cookbook--one with yummy recipe titles, beautiful pictures, and pretty, pretty fonts--I'm always, and I mean always, taken in by the promise between those covers. Maybe this is the one that will finally make me love cooking. (I had a roommate once claim cooking was "relaxing." Yeah, about as relaxing as downing a vat of Jolt cola and jumping into the tarantula tank on Fear Factor. )

(OK, maybe not that bad, but still....)

Maybe this is the one that will help me inject some variety and, oh, flavor (other than too much salt) into my dishes. Maybe this is the one that will be completely and totally idiotproof, so I can't screw things up.

Unfortunately, after many years of assembling what is now an entire pantry shelf full of cookbooks, I haven't found The One. But I still hold onto the dream.

This time, I bought Gordon Ramsey Makes it Easy. Did I mention that I'm about 87.5% more likely to be suckered into buying a cookbook if it contains the phrase "makes it easy" or "made simple" or "fast and delicious" in the title? Cooking for Kitchen Idiots? That's me! Bring it on! Anyway, you may know good old Gordo as the f-bomb dropping Scot from the hit summer reality show, Hell's Kitchen, where he's head chef over a bunch of dubiously talented wannabes competing for their own restaurant. It's a fun show, and I have to admit, despite his abusive behavior toward the contestants, I've been rather taken in by both Ramsey's passion for cooking and his tacit promise that even the most slackjawed yokel can make amazing food,if they just follow his directions. If Ramsey could help sweaty, puffy Tom the unemployed misogynist from Brooklyn churn out a tasty fish entree, why couldn't this book help me? I'm not sweaty, and I'm fairly intelligent (and not misogynist), so it could happen, right?

So here's the cookbook. On my kitchen counter. Mocking me. I spent money on it, so now I guess I need to try a recipe. But unless it's a dessert (which, for some unfathomable reason, I always get right), I'm doomed to rubberize it, turn it into charcoal, or accidentally drown it in salt. Or, I'll just crunk everything up altogether by forgetting to buy fresh rosemary and trying to avoid another trip to the hated grocery store by substituting a bottle of dried rosemary and some green onions. See? I suck.

Even though I know I'm doomed to failure, there's a part of me right now that's still made happy by this cookbook. I haven't crunked up anything yet, so deep inside, I can still believe that Ramsey is going to turn me into a cooking genius. I love the idea of making Maggie his spiced breakfast bread, or the fresh macaroni and cheese with crimini mushrooms. I'd like to try the wild mushroom risotto that's gotten so much airplay on the Hell's Kitchen show. ("Polly, your *BLEEP*ing risotto is a *BLEEP*ing *BLEEP* of *BLEEP*!") And maybe, if I just follow the directions, the broccoli soup would turn out to be tasty enough that I could cram a vegetable into Maggie's stomach without her realizing I'm cramming a vegetable in there. Marin might like it, too.

There's also a charming section on cooking for kids. (Fish cakes with eyes! Pasta with bacon and peas! Cut-out cookies!) And all of his talk about buying organic vegetables and fresh, bakery bread makes me believe, just for a moment. I BELIEVE I can cook. I can!

(I so can't.)

Speaking of ingredients, there are some weird ones in there, which helps to narrow down which recipe I'll choose to butcher. Baby octopi? Fresh eels? Blood sausage? BLECH. I'm also wondering what the crunk creme fraiche is. Some weird UK thing? Some secret ingredient that only cake-eaters know about because it's only available in expensive cake-eater grocery stores to which I am not privy? I think I may need it for the breakfast bread.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted. Once I get up the courage to watch my dream die, once again.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Agent Kristen over on Pub Rants recently posted about being suddenly and unceremoniously fired by one of her clients via certified letter. Apparently, she'd worked hard for this client and rightfully felt she'd at least deserved some warning that things were going awry.

The majority of comments on that blog entry concurred that it is the height of rudeness and incivility for an author to drop an agent via certified letter without first having a "Let's fix this" conversation. And many opined that authors who go this route are "extreme introverts" with "confrontation issues" that are obviously so pronounced, all they can do when it comes to the Big Breakup is completely forget their manners and toss certified letters at their unsuspecting agents ("Duck and cover! Fire in the hole!") as they scurry on their cowardly ways.

Agent Kristen does note that if your agent "isn't returning calls and e-mails, has embezzled your money, or is a drunk," then by all means, one should go the certified letter route and forget about firing a warning shot.

You know, if I were an agent--or if I were about to be fired by an agent--I'd want a letter and ONLY a letter. Letter, e-mail, Post-It, whatever. Because to me, the distance words on a page offer is infinitely preferable to a "civilized," in-your-face phone call delivering a painstaking blow-by-blow of all my transgressions since I thought wearing an oversized turtleneck and leggings was hot (What can I say? It was the eighties). Sure, I would want to know what led to my untimely demise, but seriously, does anyone need to listen to someone pontificate endlessly on the subject? By the end of any such conversation, I'd be hard-pressed to pretend to be sweet and understanding. At the very least, I'd be giving the phone the finger many times over and then angrily crunching the receiver back into its cradle in a final, passive-aggressive goodbye. (I'm not normally passive-aggressive, but in a business situation, you mostly have to be. If you want more business, that is.) Whereas a letter I can scan, shred into little pieces, and try to forget about is less ego-crushing.

To me, it's like ripping off a BandAid (a cliche', but a useful one in this case). Look the other way, do it fast, and eat some chocolate afterward--job well done. (If you're my daughters, there's a goofy little Spanish song about healing that goes somewhere in there, too.) In the case of dumping an agent or client (or even a clingy boyfriend/girlfriend for that matter): Don't draw it out, don't leave the door open to the possibility of getting back together, and don't give the agent or client (or clingy significant other) the opportunity to talk about what a weirdo you are because you took three days to deliver your "How much do I want out of this relationship? Let me count the ways" speech. But that's just me.

Another blog I read on the subject awhile back suggested TAKING YOUR AGENT OUT TO DINNER to do the dumping. Then, the author pretty much pointed out the flaw in his own advice (though he still stuck by it) by noting that the last time he did that, his agent talked him back into staying in the relationship.

Dude. Agents are persuasive individuals. That's why they are agents--they persuade others to buy their clients' work for large (or not so large) sums of money. If they don't want you to leave and you give them an opportunity to talk you out of it, you may end up NOT LEAVING. (And if you do end up leaving anyway, wouldn't that be the Most Uncomfortable Dinner EVER? For both of you? Something to replay in your mind over and over again while you crawl out of your skin with embarrassment on an hourly basis?)

Amusing, semi-related digression: When I met my current agent for the first time, before we officially launched our partnership, I was impressed by his credentials, his client list, his warm emails and seeming interest in my work. But I knew from talking to other clients of his that he was going to strongly suggest I write THE WHOLE BOOK for any single titles I was thinking about doing before he submitted them. That, my friends, was something I considered a deal breaker--I've always sold on partials, I know other people who broke out on a partial, and there was no way I was sweating over a full--possibly for nothing--with two kids under three underfoot when a partial could sell just as well, thankyouverymuch.

Well, I met him face-to-face before we both made a final decision about each other, and a few minutes into our conversation, he broke into his "A full manuscript is a gift to an editor" spiel. I can imagine him giving this one often and well, like the sports psychologist in the film The Natural doing his "losing is a disease" schtick, except the "full manscript=gift" talk was much more effective. By the time he got to the wrap-up, I was nodding my head, thinking, "Yeah! I'm going to write the whole manuscript! It's a gift! Why didn't I think of that? Can't wait!" And I'm hardly a pushover--overcoming my stubborn streak is somewhat like getting a large grizzly bear to go vegan. Consequently, once I realized what had happened, I knew we were a great match. (I'm imagining editors all over NYC responding to his powers of persuasion like I did: "I love your client's work. It's better than Cats. I want to read it again and again." What's not to love about that?)

Anyway, all that said, I do see Agent Kristen's point of view--if your agent has been responsive, working hard for you, and is generally a decent person, then giving her some sort of warning is the civilized way to go. But it can't be said enough that if your reason is troubling behavior--"My agent doesn't return my calls or emails/doesn't seem enthusiastic about my writing/won't tell me where she's sending my stuff/is mean to me/etc." (I haven't heard anyone say her agent is embezzling money or is a drunk, but I would include those excuses as well.)--I think avoiding an in-person or telephone cataloguing of said agent's transgressions is the best course of action. Write that letter, toss it with all your might, and scurry away to your happy place as a writer.