If you haven’t noticed by now, America, and California especially, are in a steep decline. The systematic decimation of public education, rampant unemployment, and the continued government fatwa on the middle class have changed our lives. Most of us are scared. Many of us have lost our homes and savings. Luckily, however, we are still alive. And despite the hell, we want to have a good time. And as I have discovered, you don’t need a lot of money to have fun. Below find some helpful suggestions on how to make the most out of the end times.

Number One: Go off-roading—right outside your door. You don’t need to find open spaces in the country anymore. Most of our highways and city streets provide enough rough terrain to satisfy the most avid daredevil. Those bus-sized potholes provide perfect jumps for dirt bikers. Hit them fast enough and you can leap cars instead of splitting lanes. Not into motorcycles? Take your Jeep out onto the highway and go crazy. Hint: don’t forget your neck brace.

Number Two: Create collages and artwork with your collection notices and mortgage default papers. Express your outrage and enrich the world at the same time. Make a Statue of Liberty out of your old property tax bills. For those in warmer climes, build a paper snowman at Christmas from your court documents. Or if you want to earn some money, fashion a Virgin Mary out of your unemployment check stubs, then call up The Enquirer and report that the stubs assembled themselves overnight after you prayed for a job that actually paid enough to feed your family. Then set up a viewing in your living room. Ka-ching!

Number Three: Watch your neighbor’s TV. With the advent of the new giant flatscreen TVs, this is easier than it used to be. All you need to do is walk around at night and find a neighbor who watches the programs you enjoy. And one who likes to keep their drapes open. Best choice is an older neighbor or one who is in a rock band—preferably both—people who are hearing impaired and must turn up the volume of the TV to deafening levels. Bring a folding chair, a cooler of cheap beer and a big bag of popcorn, then stake out a nice place on their lawn and you’re set. The neighbor pays for the electricity, the cable, and the pay-per-views. Hint: buy a universal remote control. When your neighbor leaves to retrieve more snacks, surf away. Important: remember the station they were watching or you might blow your cover.

Number Four: Hang out in comfy air-conditioned bank waiting areas. Banking institutions were the ones who took your house away from you. They owe you. Normally, they have TVs and water coolers. Many serve coffee. One bank I know serves espresso and cookies on the last Friday of the month. Bring your book, let the kids make forts out of the chairs and have a nice day. When they ask why you’re there, tell them you’re waiting for someone. Which is the truth. You’ve been waiting for someone in the banking industry to wake up and stop foreclosing on hardworking people’s homes. Hint: make sure to rotate banks so the bank employees don’t become too suspicious. Unless you want to make a statement. Then bring your tent and put up a sign that says: Camp Foreclosure. They may throw you in jail, but at least you’d have a solid roof over your head and guaranteed food.

Number Five: Use public spaces as your new parkland. Since many of the state and city parks have closed, we must be creative. We can all learn a lot from the homeless. Landscaped medians on thoroughfares, courthouse employee picnic areas, lawns in front of city hall, there are many areas open to the public that can serve as a great place to get outside and enjoy the sunshine. Hint: if you dress nicely, you can hang out anywhere.

Number Six: Get advice from your kids on creating new family games. After all, this is the generation that plays games at school like: Throw The Deflated Ball From The 70s Through The Broken Window, Name That Mold Strain, and Dodge The Falling Ceiling Tiles.

Number Seven: Go to a place with lots of employees and pretend you work there. This shouldn’t be too hard because everyone at large businesses is pretending to work. The trick is getting inside the buildings. Attach your picture to a white plastic card, add some generic text above it, laminate the whole thing, and secure it to your coat. When you approach the door, simply follow people inside. Then hang out in the break room or around the water cooler and strike up conversations. Drink the coffee, eat the doughnuts and surf the net in empty cubicles. Watch movies in conference rooms. Scavenge for lunch meeting leftovers. Lounge on the nicely manicured lawns in the outside picnic areas. Warning: at some point, people may notice you never do anything and you may be mistaken for a manager. Be prepared to say things like: “Just gotta push through the end of the quarter.” “Put that on the agenda for the afternoon meeting.” “I’ll take that to the higher ups.” You could do this for months and no one would catch on. Hint: to be invisible, men should wear khakis and a light blue button-down shirt. For women, a dark skirt or pants and a white top.

Number Eight: Discover creative new ways to work out. Just because you can’t afford your gym membership, and all the recreation areas are closed, doesn’t mean you can’t get some great exercise. Try the 5K Run From The Debt Collector. Or play Hide and Seek with the Process Server. How about Chase the American Dream? That game will ensure you a long run with no end in sight.

©2011, Janet Periat

Magine Watches Dad Steve Ride Her Hovercraft

“I want to build a hovercraft,” my neighbor Ginger’s eleven-year-old daughter Magine announced to her mother recently. “For the science fair.”

Ginger, an artist/Girl Scout mother/soccer mom/mega-school-volunteer, thought of the myriad other tasks on her over-filled plate and deployed the most common deflect used by mothers today. “Go ask your father.”

Not a week later, Ginger called, very excited, and invited my husband and I to ride Magine’s new hovercraft. We raced up the block. I’ve never been more impressed. Magine’s father Steve reported that all he did was cut the wood, Magine and her classmate did all the rest of the work: planning, measuring and building the plastic air cushion along with securing it to the base. The damn thing actually held the weight of my 280-pound husband. And the contraption was hella fun to ride.

Not only was I impressed that an eleven-year-old had made a working hovercraft, I was struck by the parental support that enabled her to build it. Since I moved to San Mateo, I’ve spent a lot of time in the company of Magine and her parents. And I am continually amazed by the differences between how they raise their children and the way I was raised.

I can see my Mother’s weary face now if I had announced at eleven that I wanted to build a hovercraft. First, a withering stare. But no words. If her icy reception didn’t diminish my eagerness, then she would have said something to the effect, “Are you insane?” If that didn’t work, she’d use the ultimate, “No, and don’t bring it up again.” While we were properly cared for—read to, bathed, clothed, fed, given braces and piano lessons—parents in those days lived separate lives from their children.

When I grew up in the sixties, there was the Kid World and the Adult World and they didn’t mix. Most parties hosted by adults in the sixties did not include their children. When Mom and Dad had their cocktail parties, we were not seen nor heard. We were banished to the den to eat our TV dinners, which were manufactured back then using aluminum trays that made the meal taste like metal. Nowadays, parties mainly include both children and parents. The parents drink around the barbecue and the kids jump in the rented bouncy house.

Most of my friends today spend lots of time with their kids, doing activities. During my childhood, the relationship between parents and children was much more formal. When Dad came home, he and Mom had cocktails and we were not allowed to bother them. Dinner was a serious affair. You sat in your chair, you didn’t put your elbows on the table and you couldn’t talk out of turn. You didn’t reach across the table for the salt, you politely asked for it to be passed to you. And you had to ask to be excused from the table.

After school and during summer vacation, Mom would say, “Go play outside and don’t come back until dinner.” I spent most of my time as a child in the company of other children with little to no adult supervision. Our parents didn’t know what we did and didn’t want to know as long as it didn’t involve the police. Or blood.

While I would have liked a bit more attention, the benign neglect I experienced as a kid enabled me to explore the world of my imagination. We didn’t have video games or computers or cell phones. TV was limited to five channels. Besides, parents in those days didn’t let you laze around the house. Your life was spent outdoors with other children, creating your own entertainment.

My favorite game from childhood? Crawling Hands and Tarantulas. The lawn was infested with the horrid creatures. If you walked down the front stairs and stupidly hung around on the bottom step, the severed, bloody crawling hands would grab you and drag you screaming onto the lawn where the tarantulas would try to eat you. The cement walkway next to the lawn was unfortunately made of quicksand. So if you managed to escape the crawling hands, you could die in the quicksand if your friend didn’t save you. Kool-aid served as “super sauce” that enabled us to recover our strength and fight the evil monsters.

I credit my days of free play for giving me the ability to write novels. I was able to immerse myself entirely in another reality for hours on end, a vital skill for a successful writer. Most helpful was the make-believe world I created for my troll dolls. My trolls endured many tragedies. They lived through floods (the backyard hose) and savage tiger attacks (courtesy of Cabbage, our cat). Dad Troll fell off the roof (read: was thrown in the air as far as I could) and had to be rushed to the hospital for an operation (this is when I learned if you chop off parts of a troll, they don’t grow back.) When people ask me today how I write my stories, I tell them I’ve been doing it since I was a child. I just don’t use the trolls anymore.

When I think about the differences between now and then, I see positives with each. Magine’s parents are amazing, supportive, interactive and inspiring. Magine will grow up to be an incredible person with no limits on what she can accomplish. Yet without any guidance from my parents—living an almost feral life as a child—I have managed to perform in over fifty plays, achieved two college degrees and have written over thirty novels.

Was it the hours of free play that helped shape who I am? Are novelists born of benign neglect? Or did I need to retreat to a world of make-believe to soothe myself because I was left alone so much?

I don’t have the answers. All I know is that I’m fine. But deep in my heart, I can’t help wishing that Magine’s parents had been mine.

©2011, Janet Periat

Here’s the haul from two rescue missions. Thankfully, I’m not around the evil stuffed animal prisons much. Or I’d be broke. This group is now on its way to Toys For Tots. And we can all breathe a sigh of relief that these precious stuffed animals’ lives have been saved.

This poor tiger was so difficult to rescue. They’d locked him in a giant claw machine that cost two bucks a game to play. And his shape made him nearly impossible to get all the way to the door. Thankfully, I cleverly used the 3-games-for-5-bucks option and was finally able to save this poor fellow. Picked him up nine times, finally managed to extricate him on the final try. He is now on his way to live with my niece.

This was pure self-indulgence on my part. Well, actually, I needed the watch. But kept picking up the “gold and silver” (strange toxic metal from China) necklaces. The sunglasses came up with a necklace. Two for one!

And I wore the watch for the entire vacation. Sweet!

I am noticeable. I am “different.” I am “weird.” I always have been, even when I didn’t express my inner eccentricities through my hairstyle and dress. Someone affixed a sign on my head when I was 8 or 9 that said, “Hey! Over here!” And I started to attract attention, both good and bad. While the sign mostly works for me, it’s been a hell of a journey coming to terms with it. And I’m still not there. While our society touts the “individual” and encourages people to “be themselves,” this is mere lip service. When you’re different, you take lots of crap. Period.

It all started in fourth grade. The same year I encountered my first abusive teacher. I made the mistake of yawning in her class. “I hate seeing a lot of holes in the classroom,” she pronounced, and sent me to the nurse’s office to take a nap. Thank God for the expression of absolute shock on the nurse’s face. She echoed my inner voice, which said, “Your teacher is a psycho bitch from hell.” Fourth grade was also the first time I experienced an attack from a group. Boys from my class began chasing me home from school and spitting on me. When I retaliated, I got blamed. Crazy Teacher sided with the bullies.

From then on, the pattern seemed set. Freshman year in high school, another group of young men followed me around and spat on me. Update: I have since received heartfelt apologies from all the participants. I asked them why they chose me and none had answers. I credit the sign.

Junior year, I found theater and a sense of belonging, but continued to be singled out. Three girls harassed me until I lost my cool and attacked them. My only fistfight. Thankfully, the school sided with me.

In college, I experienced extreme persecution when I accidentally cut off my hair and went punk to save face. I ended up on the cover of the lifestyle section of the paper as “The First Punk Rocker of Gilroy.” Friends and family abandoned me in droves. Going out meant stopping traffic and having people point and stare.

The event freaked me out so much, I grew out my hair and bought normal clothes. But that didn’t stop the abuse — in fact, it got worse. After college, I worked as a bookkeeper and was blackballed at every job. The woman who replaced me at one job told me the actual word “blackballed” had been used. Discouraged, I returned to college and theater. I did well, but also experienced more persecution. I had to quit a project and inadvertently screwed over a friend. I apologized profusely, but my apology wasn’t accepted. Many classmates boycotted my play. Thankfully, mutual friends neutralized the torches-and-pitchforks crowd.

After graduation, I started bookkeeping for the local water company. The treasurer gave me a raise and signed me onto the bank account to make bill paying easier since two signatures were required on checks. But when questioned about her actions by an auditor, she must have thought she’d be in trouble for making the decisions because she lied and said I’d given myself the raise and snuck myself onto the bank account. I was fired and no one believed me because I had pink hair.

By this time, I was thoroughly sick of being persecuted and started cleaning houses. The only job where people were nice to me. And this is when I discovered writing. Perfect job. I could look the way I wanted and hide in my office. And while I receive hate mail occasionally for what I write, it’s much better than having people abuse me in person.

My life is a perfect example of the dichotomy of the messages we receive from society. In America, we tout freedom of expression. We tout the “individual.” “Being true to yourself” is a mantra for our age. Yet we don’t practice what we preach. We live in a super-narrow culture with little tolerance for differences in physical appearance. Or differences of opinion. We fear the “Other.” Which brings me to the unwritten and unspoken rule of our society: If you’re different or noticeable, expect abuse.

Take my recent vacation. After a six-hour-long car ride through sleet and snow, I checked into my hotel and stumbled into the elevator. I found myself surrounded by a bowling team. Background: I am now sporting a pink Faux-Hawk — a Mohawk on top, but with short hair on the sides. One of the yahoos — a guy named Clark — stared at me, then asked, “Were you ever in Billings, Montana?” Confused, I replied, “Once.” Clark responded, “I think I’m your father. Because I f**ked a peacock there once!” And then he burst into loud raucous laughter at his own joke. Because Clark was large and mean, I did not say, “So let me get this straight, my mother’s a peacock and my father’s a rude drunk.” I “laughed it off.” Thankfully, his friends were offended and said so. Unfortunately, everywhere I went for the next few hours, there was Clark. Or one of his friends. “Hey, Peacock Lady!” Heavy sigh.

Later, as I reflected on the incident — and the many previous ones like it — I finally realized that there’s nothing I can do about the Clarks of the world. I will more than likely always attract attention, from nice people and from the Clarks. But all in all, my gift/curse has helped way more than it’s hurt. Instead of running away to protect myself, I decided to accept the phenomenon. I’m going to be proud of myself, embrace who I am, and put myself out there. Take in the good and let the insults roll off.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work on my latest mystery novel. It’s about an abusive drunk bowler who’s found dead. Murdered by having a fist full of peacock feathers stuffed down his throat.

© 2011 Janet Periat

Buy Me NOW!

Yes, now you can buy my latest thriller on Barnes and Noble!

Click HERE to buy it!!!

Yay!!!!

Happy reading!!!!

You’ve seen it in the news. Everyone’s talking about it. All the big publishing houses are dinosaurs about to be turned into fossil fuel. Does this mean you won’t be able to read great works? No. Does this mean the end of reading? Hardly. Will we miss the Big Guys? Hell no. And as far as I’m concerned, they deserve to die.

Big Publishing is scared these days, and it should be. Years of author abuse is finally coming back on the publishing houses. Years of exploitation, special “reserves” they withhold out of royalties that mysteriously vanish, taking finished works hostage, prohibiting authors from writing in their chosen genre — the list of abuses is endless. What’s happening now is karma. And it’s long overdue.

I read an article in the March 20 issue of Newsweek called “Please Stop Writing,” by Susan Cheever, theorizing about why popular authors’ later books aren’t good. Cheever supposed that the author ran out of ideas. That maybe authors only had one or two good books in them. That their imagination “… waxed and waned …” after the first two.

I used to wonder the same thing. I’ve had the same discussions with friends. We all liked a particular author’s first few books. Then the books got derivative and stale and we lost interest. Now that I’ve been exposed to the Dark Side of Publishing, I know the reason why. And it’s not the author’s fault.

Authors don’t choose what they write. They write what the publishers buy. And publishers want a product they can count on. If you write a blockbuster, they’ll want more just like that first one. And you’d better not deviate from your formula or they won’t print it. Publishing houses consider you a product brand. Your product must contain certain plot elements and certain types of characters. Period. If you’ve been writing thrillers, they won’t want your new mystery series. Only if you’re a proven best-selling author do you get the opportunity to write another series under a pen name.

But if your last book didn’t sell well, watch out. Even if you have a five-book contract, they may decide not to publish the rest of the series. And you may not be able to sell the books anywhere else. I have many friends who’ve written books they’re not allowed to sell. Ever. Anywhere. To anyone.

I have a friend who wrote a series of eight books about a vampire battling a werewolf. In the ninth book, she killed off the werewolf. Which at the time was exactly what the publisher wanted. She finished the book — which takes most of us upwards of eight months — and sent it to her editor. This was when she was informed that the publishing house had changed its mind about the series and decided it wanted to feature the werewolf in a new line of books. What about the book she’d just finished? It got shelved. When she wanted to publish it as an ebook to promote her series, her request was denied. No one may read that book. She has no rights to sell it anywhere else. It will forever remain in Story Limbo. Eight months of work flushed down the publishing toilet.

One friend sold her first book for cheap and signed such a terrible contract, she had to sell all future books for the same price to the publisher. And she was not allowed to write in that same genre unless it was for them. Screwed for life.

The latest rip-off by publishers? All new contracts have a standard clause that requires you to sign away the electronic rights to your work FOR LIFE. Since it’s pretty clear that most future book sales will be in electronic form, this means, in effect, the authors will lose the copyright to their work. Sounds illegal, doesn’t it? Not if the publishers have the right lawyers. Giant multinational corporations can do anything they want.

Frank and I personally lost $7,500 of royalties “held in reserve” from one of his For Dummies books. When the publishing house sold the line to another publisher, Frank’s money mysteriously vanished with no explanation. Hiring a lawyer would have cost more than we’d have recovered.

The good news in all this hell? Authors don’t need publishers any longer. A romance writer friend of mine who was rejected by all the big houses decided to publish her work in ebook form on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. In six months, she sold 100,000 copies and made six figures. Granted, not everyone will have that kind of success, but still. Who needs the big guys? Not me.

My latest thriller, Caught, was recently rejected by all the large publishers. Not because the book wasn’t good. An editor at Penguin said, “This book is a real page-turner!” They all seemed to like it. But here’s the quote that summed it all up for me. St. Martin’s Press said: “I enjoyed the voice and Emma’s character, but the storyline just didn’t grab me in a big commercial way. Ultimately I just didn’t have a big vision for this one.” Because my book didn’t throttle her with multimillion dollar possibilities, she rejected me.

And thank God. My agent Laurie McLean said: “I think you’re lucky. I would have hated to see what they’d have done to your characters and voice. You need to get your work out there. Your readers are going to love it.” So, on the advice of my agent and fueled by a fear of being ripped off by a corporation, that’s exactly what I have done.

Caught is now available as an ebook on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. Caught will also be available in print soon. In early 2012, the next two books in the series, Marked and Payback, will be released. My four-time award-winning fairy tale, Cinderolda, should be out next month. Check back here for updates!

Let the Time of the Author begin. Happy reading!

©2011 Janet Periat

Thanks To Randy Cleveland For His Boffo Cover

My book Caught is available on Amazon on the Kindle. Whoo-hoo!

Click here to buy the ebook!

More information to come!

I’m so excited!!!!

Hugs to all,

Janet