Kerry Allen

Trish (clicking through a million digital photos in search of one appropriate to submit to the GH committee): There is not a single picture of you, dating back to infancy, in which you are not doing something goofy.

Me: I’m goofy looking. It’s okay to be goofy looking when you’re being goofy. Otherwise, it’s just sad.

Trish: Perfect Jr. has one on his desk. Your face is relaxed and pretty and normal in that one.

Me: Great. Scan it. Send it. Problem solved.

Trish: There’s a small problem. Your face is good, but you’re wearing an Organization XIII cloak and a purple-and-black wig.

Me: (snicker) Cosplay. Halloween anytime.

Trish: Pretend to be normal for a minute. (grabs digital camera and snaps several pictures; repeatedly looks from in-the-flesh subject to camera’s display screen) What the hell? You don’t look like this!

Me: Told you I was goofy looking.

Trish: I’m looking right at you, and you are not this pale, this shiny, or this shapeless.

Me: Ah, you have discovered my supervillainess power: image distortion. Even if I’m caught in the villainous act by security cameras, the evidence won’t hold up in court because clearly that’s not me. (points to computer screen) What about that one?

Trish: That’s from 2000, and it’s goofy.

Me: It’s by far the least goofy of the bunch, and who cares how old it is? Not like I’m going to be at the conference to show off my advanced age. You were looking back to baby pictures, for crying out loud.

Trish: It was better than your brilliant idea of sending a picture of Kate Beckinsale.

Me: But not as brilliant as the distant, grainy, out-of-focus Bigfoot sighting-esque picture idea…

“Step off, punks! I shall never divulge my haircare secrets to scruffs such as you!”

From Crisis Core © Square Enix

You can never have too much Sephiroth.

Although… that 12-foot sword has to be compensating for something.

In the latest issue of RWR, not one, not two, not three, but FOUR letters to the editor deliver a smackdown in response to the letters in the previous two issues which, among other things, declared today’s romance novel heroines “sluts” and stated writers were “prostituting” themselves by writing smut.

I attempted to compose my own letter but was unable to produce anything remotely as tactful and adult. As much as I wanted the opposing view to have a voice, I thought it best to keep my belligerent, name-calling pottymouth shut.

Happily, Kalen Hughes, Alice Brilmayer, Natalie J. Damschroder, and Toni Blake took up the gauntlet on behalf of everyone who supports the existence of all types of romance, from sweet inspirational to polyamorous fetish erotica, regardless of whether it suits our personal taste.

Well done, ladies.

The answering machine took the call at 6 p.m., which was fortunate, as I made a complete dork of myself as soon as I heard “Romance Writers of America®.” There was jumping involved, and also squealing and bawling.

I am so not a jumper and squealer and bawler. After nearly six months of fatalism (see my epic poem of doom for details), I guess I just snapped.

Here is the official RWA GH Finalist page to confirm I’m not hallucinating.

Also, the partial in my judging packet that I fiercely wanted to finish reading also finaled (wish I could give it a better rah-rah, but I’m askeert of violating the “thou shalt not speaketh of it” part of the judge’s creed), so it’s been a sweet day all around.

Kerry’s Golden Heart Montage:

Angelic Daughter and I watched the first four episodes of Witchblade, the animated version (I didn’t even know until I went looking for the picture that there was a live-action TV show). We made a lot of noise in the process. Here are some of our observations:

Adorable kid.

Adorable photographer, and funny.

No, I would never sign my kid over to a child welfare agency and try to shove the car taking her away off a bridge when I decided it was a mistake to let her go.

The corporate lackey looks exactly like the bow-and-arrow dude from Bleach. (We are great with names…)

Early on, the adorable photographer refers to the heroine’s transformed getup as “body armor.” What do you think?

Looks like an awful lot of exposed flesh for “armor” to me. We’re not even sure she was wearing a thong. It really looked like it was all just hangin’ out. So basically, she’s got armored pasties. (The live-action version gets a little more coverage.)

But fear not: We watched a missile bounce off her enormous breasts and assume her ample butt would be equally resilient.

As enormous as her breasts are (and I really think they were downsized for the above picture—they probably couldn’t get the sculpture to remain upright if they did them to scale), there’s another chick with things the size of watermelons occupying her chest and abdomen area, and this is where we lost all patience with men who disregard physics to get their cheap thrills.

Duct tape a pair of watermelons to your chest and try swinging a sword or running or leaping from building to building. Range of motion is impaired, as is balance. Other than distracting the enemy, those bodacious tatas are a useless impediment.

Angelic Daughter and I therefore spent much of this hour and a half discussing breasts, but not quite the way guys would go about it. Our comments were more along the lines of “jeez, she’d need a wheelbarrow to carry those” and “that one’s paying for her chiropractor’s yacht” and “hey, I like her just because her boobs are almost normal sized.”

Needless to say, between that distraction (we really couldn’t tell you what happened in Episode 4 because there were just too many new implausible endowments introduced to concentrate on the plot) and the I’m-having-an-orgasm-right-now sound effects the heroine makes when she’s on a killing spree, we’re not compelled to continue with the series. It’s a shame the creators felt it necessary to indulge in the peurile mammary fixation, because I was kind of interested in finding out if Child Welfare was The Big Evil and if adorable photographer got it on with heroine and if heroine had “an episode” around her kid and a variety of other things more worthy of focus than the flesh parade.

This is why anime/manga/comics continue to have largely a male fanbase. They’d pick up a huge chunk of female fans if the female characters were more than huge bewbs with thigh-high boots and swords.

Good stories get lost behind the watermelons, ya feel me?

I’m in kind of an alarming funk (birthday blues? extraneous kidlets going home and resultant taste of empty nest syndrome? PMS? who knows), so I’m not doing much other than working and reading.

Saturday, I read a “funny” vampire book. Funny like the Three Stooges are funny. Slapstick, comedy of errors, stupid funny. Not funny at all, in other words. In addition to the unfunny, every few paragraphs, the heroine would either roll her eyes or do something “with disgust.” I kept rolling my eyes and muttering with disgust, “This is really awful,” but I couldn’t put it down. It was hypnotically bad. Like news footage of a natural disaster. Or Britney. The mind screams “DO NOT WANT!” but the eyes refuse to look away. It takes a special talent to produce something so fascinatingly horrible.

Sunday, I inhaled Demon Night. Meljean, you made me cry. Not gut-wrenching sobs like Colin and Savi provoked, but those streaming tears that an hour later you catch a glimpse of your reflection and say with a disgusted eyeroll, ”WTF, I’m still crying?” The whole “I may be needy, but hell if I’m gonna be fucking dependent” thing struck a chord. I always notice your gals, which is far from my norm.

Write, crazy bunny, write.

“I want to be a game designer.”

“Cool. I have requests. Starting with kickass female characters without impossibly huge breasts. They’d so get in the way during a boss fight.”

“I want to make something now. Nothing huge like an RPG, but I want to get a grip on the basics.”

The Next Day…

“Have a seat. This is the Torque design engine. This is Torque for Teens.”

“Aw, mom, you are the coolest!”

“Here’s a sketch of the game I want and a description of how it’s supposed to work.”

“Wait… what?”

“Here are my stock art accounts, but feel free to make the graphics yourself. Actually, this one you’re going to have to, since you’re not going to find an alligator-cat thing anywhere.”

“You’re putting me to work?”

“Damn straight.”

UPDATE: I wanted a simple little click-and-grab puzzle type of game, but apparently I wasn’t thinking big enough. We’re aiming more toward a dodge-obstacles, jump-and-grab, blast-the-ebil-necromancer platformer now…