Funny Women by Barbara Quinn

I spent a few days at an Algonkian Pitch & Shop Conference in New York City. This is an intense four day workshop where participants learn to perfect a pitch for a novel, and then give it to a series of editors. One of the best parts of the experience was being in close contact with a group of very funny women. I love humor, and being around funny women is an uplifting experience. I was with a group of 16. 15 of us were women.

Women love to laugh, love to have a good time. There’s a long tradition of female comics. I always loved Lucy, Carol Burnett, Goldie Hawn, and shows like The Golden Girls, Mary Tyler Moore, and Designing Women. Now we have Tina Fey and 30 Rock, Sarah Silverman and Amy Pohler, and many, many more. I’ve been influenced by funny comediennes since I was a kid. And I strive for that type of humor in my own writing. I learned from these women who had great timing and instincts for getting people to laugh. And I learned at the conference too. The conference was a lot of work, but it was worth the struggle. I came away with a much improved (and funnier) pitch. And soon the manuscript will be on its way to the editors who requested it.

Thank you funny women! Keep on cracking those jokes. Lots of us are listening. And some of us are learning too!

To a Great and Strange Year by Deborah LeBlanc

At the end of 2007, I proclaimed that 2008 would be great! And so far, it has been….although in a strange sort of way.

For the last couple of weeks, I’d been fighting a bout of pneumonia. Those of you who’ve had this nasty piece of business, know it’s no fun. It seems to take forever before you start feeling human again, much less able to breathe properly. Well, last weekend, I started feeling a bit stranger than usual (yeah, I know, scary, huh?) and decided I should go to a small walk in clinic to get myself checked out. Dizziness, foggy brain, blurring vision, I’m thinking I’ve picked up an inner ear infection to go along with my handy-dandy pneumonia. Um…that self-diagnosis wasn’t quite right. Here’s the sequence of events that followed….

*Clinic closed and feeling worse in ten short minutes, decide to go to emergency room at local hospital.
*Local hospital runs blood work, urinalysis, yada, yada. Everything checks out fine.
*Local hospital decides to do a CAT Scan just to make sure
*Twenty minutes later, I’m being shipped off via ambulance to another hospital so I can be seen by a neurosurgeon. Deborah has a subdural hematoma. Frontal lobe no doubt.
*Get to second hospital, surgeon waiting. Another CAT Scan, another confirmation…yep, my brain is bleeding.
*Admit said Deborah into hospital and start running more tests than a Vanderbilt PreMed student.
*Blunt force trauma the surgeon explains. No, Deborah says, didn’t get bonked on the head.
*News of no trauma, traumatizes neurosurgeon. In come more specialists — hematologist, oncologist, internist….
*Two days of being stuck, prodded and poked, more CAT Scans, an EEG, MRI…
*Findings? Same subdural hematoma that has to be followed up with more CAT Scans until it dissipates or does something….oh, yeah, and they found a funky sinus disease that’s going to need surgery.

At the moment, my arms look like they belong to a heroin junky, but, hey, small price to pay to still have a half decently functioning brain, right? Fingers crossed it stays that way. Like I said, 2008 is gonna be great! I’m still alive, able to think, laugh, dream, write, and hope. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for me!


LeBlanc is the president of the Horror Writers Association, president of the Writers’ Guild of Acadiana, and an active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the National Association of Women Writers, and International Thriller Writers Inc. In 2004, she created the LeBlanc Literacy Challenge, an annual, national campaign designed to encourage more people to read. Her most recent novels are: FAMILY INHERITANCE, GRAVE INTENT, A HOUSE DIVIDED, and MORBID CURIOSITY. Deborah’s next release, WATER WITCH, is scheduled to be on bookstore shelves in August ’08. Visit her site here: http://deborahleblanc.com/splash/index.cfm

Read an interview with Deborah LeBlanc at Roses & Thorns.

Laughter from Choo-Choo Island by Angie Ledbetter

Trapped by a passing train today, I used the time to think about the things that make life good. What bubbled to the top of the list over and over again was laughter. Winning the lottery would be great, but that dream doesn’t sustain me on a daily basis like a good belly laugh. (And, boy, am I built for that!) Humor from unexpected sources and events are my favorite. You know – when someone says or does something hilarious from out of the blue, or when some slapstick craziness happens. Those hit my funny bone like a bolt of lightning. Apparently, my children love nothing better than observing these things too...especially if they involve their mother’s humiliation.

Over a year ago, walking back toward the car after an errand, all three of my kids were looking directly out of the front window when my heel caught in a sidewalk crack. Down I went, the most ungraceful hippo ever to walk on land...in a dress. They still howl to the point of tears whenever one remembers that horrible day. They recount and reenact the Great Fall, adding manufactured details of me flopping around on my back. The other story they relive (almost daily) is the time I couldn’t recall the name of an entertainment center, and finally sputtered, “...umm...Choo-Choo Island!” (The name of the stupid place is Celebration Station.)

Humor truly is the best medicine for whatever ails you, and nothing turns bad into good, or at least tolerable, than a good dose. Who knows? Maybe angels get their wings every time someone on Earth laughs, sort of like in “It’s a Good Life.” Today I’m thankful for the things and people who make me laugh, like these LOL-worthy videos: Oprah & Tom Cruise spoof - http://youtube.com/watch?v=UbEX4AM7fA8 and Mom Song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxT5NwQUtVM . And a new definition I’ve added to my lexicon: Electile Dysfunction: the inability to become aroused over any presidential candidate in the 2008 election year.