Earlier in the year when I lamenting about my ongoing trouble with getting into the habit of flossing to WENCH author Dolen Perkins-Valdez (b/c that’s what awkward writers like me choose to talk about with brilliant writers like her), she gave me the following advice: “Just floss in the morning.” Just floss in the morning. Those of you who have been following my blogging exploits, since I first started know that I have been attempting a flossing habit since 2005. 2005!!!! And those five words changed my life. I’ve been flossing every day for months now, and when it comes time to review my 2010 New Year’s Resolutions, that one will definitely get ticked off for the first time in my life. How cool is that? Anywho this all got me to wondering about the best non-writing advice you’ve received from authors. Sound off in the comments. Oh, and if you see Monique Daviau, give her a pat on the back. She’s today’s 32 CANDLES T-shirt...

. a life-in-books by Amy Brown I’m homeless, at least temporarily. Despite my adoration of the west coast and general desperation to remain here, an exhaustive eight month job search convinced me that my sole option for employment is located in Washington, D.C. As graduation approached, I arranged to release my apartment in Santa Monica a few weeks before my lease in northern Virginia began. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d pack up early, send off my car, hop on a plane and head out to a new life. The boyfriend and his roommates would simply have to put up with a squatter for a few nights. Unfortunately, being unmoored to a lease has rendered me rather petulant. Without an apartment to call my own, with my favorite vintage plates, my books and my Dad’s original oil paintings packed away, it feels a little like I’ve lost a part of myself. In particular, that part of me that I present to other people seems as boxed away as the rest of my belongings. This feeling made me eager to read the Memoirs of an Invisible Man, by H.F. Saint, a novel about a man, “right in the middle of [his] rather ordinary…life” who experiences an “extraordinary scientific mishap [that] rendered a small spherical chunk of New Jersey utterly invisible.” Unluckily for our narrator, he formed part of that chunk. An investment banker, Nick Halloway is visiting MicroMagnetics to determine its potential profits; instead, after a fierce altercation between a group of students protesting nuclear power and scientists more wrapped up in their experiments than reality, an explosion devastates the plant. Our narrator wakes from this explosion invisible. “I shut my eyes to gather my wits,” Nick reports. “This produced no change whatever....

a yearlong diary in three-line poems by Jeff Rogers, day 295 Almost Indecent Writing is something you do When you’re alone, And then you share it.

I was going to post the new Harry Potter trailer, but Viacom is being pissy about letting folks embed, so instead I’m pointing you to this item about how scientists have taken the first step toward creating invisibility cloaks. Click on the pic for the deets! [BBC] Photo Credit:...

. a blogumn by Monique King-Viehland If you have not missed Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, I’d suggest catching the episodes as they are rerun or picking up the DVD when it is released.  And then pick up a copy of Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals. Jamie Oliver is a celebrity chef and health campaigner in the United Kingdom.  During the series, which first aired in March on ABC, Oliver pushed a grassroots approach to curbing obesity in the United States by focusing on a small town in West Virginia called Huntington.  In 2008, the Associated Press named Huntington “America’s Fattest City,” “citing unmatched rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.”  Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released a morbidity and mortality report released in February 2010 that found that “32.9% of the populace surveyed in an area that included Huntington and nearby Ashland, Kentucky, is obese.” In one scene from the show, Oliver takes a Huntington family to the doctors and the doctor notes that their 12-year-old son is showing signs of a potential onset of diabetes due to his weight.  I was in tears…the boy is twelve years old!  Thank God, the boy ended up not having diabetes but the scare motivated his parents to commit to making some significant changes to improve their son’s health.  And in another scene, Oliver challenges a group of 1st graders to identify fruits and vegetables, and they are unable to.  What!?! It was eye opening and extremely sad all at the same time. Now critics of the show, particularly the citizens of Huntington, West Virginia, argue that the show “exaggerated” the problems in Huntington.  But even if you take Huntington out of the equation, the problem of obesity...

Well, I haven’t done a non-fiction book in a while. And sorry guys, this is yet another marketing book. But I promise to talk about some non-marketing non-fiction before this challenge over. That all apologized, let’s open up FASCINATE by Sally Hogshead. Why I Decided To Read It: Trish from “Creative Beasts” suggested it in a post that I read right around the time that I received my iPad. Serendipity. What It’s About: It’s about fascinating products and people, which have a lot in common with each other even though one is inanimate and the other organic. What Makes It Different: Most marketing books I’ve read talk about how to sell yourself or your product. This one talks about how to fascinate people. Basically instead of getting people to like you or your product, manipulating how they think about you and your product. What I Loved: As promised the book was fascinating, longer than any other marketing book I’ve read thus far, but also more readable and hard to put down. I loved how Hoghead dissects the popularity of certain items and people. These anecdotes inspired me to really think about how to better market 32 CANDLES in the future. I also loved the book cover. What great colors. If I had to pick a marketing book based on its cover alone, I would choose this one. What I Didn’t Like: Hogshead spends a ton of time on anecdotes. I enjoyed each and everyone of these, but I would have preferred that she use less of these and expand the last section which actually talked about applying fascination triggers to your product. I didn’t feel equipped to utilize many of the fascination triggers she discusses throughout the book. It’s kind of like reading Shakespeare...

Hey Darlings! First of all, congrats to today’s 32 CANDLES T-shirt winner, Mary Schrader! Second of all, we’re only giving away six more T-shirts, so I wanted to let you know a few ways to get a 32 CANDLES T-shirt of your own. 1. Pre-Order 32 Candles, let me know that you did, and we’ll put you in the pre-order pool to win. 2. Review 32 Candles on your blog before JULY 4, 2010. 3. Come to one of the 32 CANDLES book events. We’ll be giving away FIVE T-shirts at every book event. 4. Submit a THEN and NOW. Not only do we give a donation to FFAWN for every person that submits, but we’re also giving away 20 T-shirts to the first 20 people who submit their THEN and NOW story HERE! How easy is that? And friendly reminder to all 32 CANDLES T-shirt winners to please send me pics of you in the 32 Candles T-shirt before JUNE 22 (that’s next Tuesday!). Meanwhile check out Amy from “Tall Drink of Nerd” rocking hers in Tongva Sacred Springs. Love the braids,...

. a blogumn by Amy Robinson When Ernessa announced BOOK WEEK on Fierce and Nerdy, I pondered for days over which book I should write about.  I love so many books and suffer from a genetically inherited inability to make a decision, so I went zen and accepted my limitations.  I’ll simply write about my top 8 absolute, must-read favorite books for all time.  These are the books I get so excited about that I often give away my own copy just to share great writing.  My list might match yours or give you some new ideas for your summer reads. As not to play favorites among my favorites, I’ll list these in the order I read them. (If you’d like to order one of them, just click on the title.) 1.  Go Dog Go:  Even though there aren’t kids in my house, I recently purchased this book just because it’s awesome.  Go Dog Go is simple enough for young readers, but so cleverly written it still cracks me up 30 years after my Mom first read it to me.  Written by P.D. Eastman (He also wrote the genius Are You My Mother), it was published under the Dr. Seuss “I Can Read All By Myself” label.  As a cool-meter, I still ask people if they like my hat.  On occasion somebody will understand I’m not crazy and respond “No, I do not like your hat.” 2.  Serendipity by Stephen Cosgrove:  My first real memory is of the day my Mom took me to get  my first library card.  The librarian was chuckling because, at all of 5 yrs old, I was so excited but I could barely see over the counter.  Serendipity was one of the books that I checked out over and...

Entertainment Weekly columnist and Friend of FaN, the simply delightful Karen Valby from “Bright Beating Hearts” released her debut novel, WELCOME TO UTOPIA, a couple of weeks ago. It’s looking at me like a pile of GEICO money on my to-be-read bookshelf right now, and I can’t wait to dive in. Check out the fascinating book trailer below. [Bright Beating...

I’m so excited to kick off BOOK WEEK with the very first book I read on my iPad (best Mothers Day Gift ever), the graphic novel; THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY: APOCALYPSE SUITE by Gerard Way (yes, written by that Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance fame) and Gabriel Ba (art). Why I Decided To Read It: I actually found this through my old job as the writer for American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest. My Chemical Romance kept on charting, so I had to keep on finding things to say about them, and the story popped up that the lead singer had struck a deal to write a comic book series. I simply adore MCR — they’re my favorite of all the emo bands. I declared The Black Parade brilliant on first listen, and if they do go through with their threat to make the next album a stripped down rock album (seriously why do so many electronic rock bands do this? I’m looking a you, MGMT!), I will just pretend that they stopped at The Black Parade. Anyway, I kept on forgetting to give this series a read, then lo and behold, I found the entire graphic novel on the Dark Horse Comics app for iPad. What It’s About: In either our future or some kind of alternative future or some kind of parallel world, 43 mostly single women around the world with no signs of pregnancy spontaneously give birth. These babies all have powers, and an eccentric, swashbuckling alien adopts seven of them. These two girls and five boys are our main characters and according to their adoptive father, meant to save the world. After a few glimpses of their pretty effed-up childhood (the alien while swashbuckling is also emotionally distant and withholding), the...