(Well, actu­ally, that wouldn’t really be your name – since you’re female, your name would be some­thing like “Jódís Björnsdottir”. But this is the twenty-first cen­tury, and you want to be known for who you are, not for who your father was, right? Right.)

Your Viking Per­son­al­ity: The tougher Vikings might let you on the boat, but gen­er­ally only when they need bal­last. You have a thirst for bat­tle — unfor­tu­nately, you’re not ter­ri­bly good at it. You’re not a very fear­some fighter; in fact, you’d prob­a­bly bleed to death if a sword hit your shadow. (True, so true!)

You would have a very tough time mak­ing a long sea voy­age in a Viking long­boat. Vikings make fun of you all the time. Not always behind your back, either.

You have a fairly prag­matic atti­tude towards life, and tend not to expend effort in areas where it would be wasted. Other peo­ple tend to think of you as manip­u­la­tive and conniving.

Oh my. Want to know what your Viking name is? Take the quiz.

Mel­jean Brook has a cool blog post about He-Man up today. I loved this show and its com­pan­ion piece, She-Ra, when I was a kid. Mel­jean talks about why Teela can never fig­ure out that Prince Adam and He-Man are really one and the same. It’s funny stuff. Check it out.

Many of her points can be related to var­i­ous comic-book hero­ines and one in par­tic­u­lar — Lois Lane. Good ole Lois might be one of the world’s fore­most inves­tiga­tive reporters, but for some rea­son, she just can’t fig­ure out that Clark Kent is really Super­man. C’mon Lois, are you blind? Why are you let­ting that lit­tle pair of glasses throw you off? I know Super­man is sup­posed to have “super­hyp­no­tism” to keep peo­ple from guess­ing his real identity, but woman up and get to the bot­tom of things.

This is one thing that frus­trates me about comics, and partly why I wrote Karma Girl. I was tired of see­ing the hero’s secret iden­tity strung out for­ever. It just becomes ridicu­lous after a while. Like on Smal­l­ville. The only peo­ple who don’t know Clark’s secret are Lois, Lana, and Lex. Every­one else from Mama Kent to Chloe to freak­ing Lionel Luther knows. And, of course, the guest star of the week fig­ures it out too. But never Lois, Lana, or Lex. Argh! Get a clue people!

Okay, that’s my rant for the day. What about you? Do you like the whole secret-identity thing? It is believ­able? Overused? Inquir­ing minds want to know … 

All right, I have offi­cially set up some May book sign­ings and read­ings for Karma Girl. Yeah! Here’s what I have so far:

May 5: I’ll be at Barnes & Noble in John­son City, Tenn. Time to be deter­mined shortly.

May 8: I’ll be at Mada­gas­car Cof­fee Co. in Kingsport, Tenn. Time to be deter­mined shortly, but it will be after 5 p.m. I’ll be doing a short reading, answering ques­tions about writ­ing and pub­lish­ing, and sign­ing and sell­ing books. (I’ll actu­ally be answer­ing ques­tions at all the events).

May 12: I’ll be at B Dal­ton Book­seller in the Bris­tol Mall in Bris­tol, Va. from 12:30–2:30 p.m.

May 12: I’ll be at Books-A-Million on Roan Street in John­son City, Tenn. from 4–6 p.m.

I’m also going to be appear­ing at the Thomas Memo­r­ial Branch Pub­lic Library in Bluff City, Tenn., and hope­fully at the Bris­tol Pub­lic Library in Bris­tol, Va. and Walden­books in the Fort Henry Mall in Kingsport, Tenn. 

There will be more to details and events come over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

I spent my Sat­ur­day vis­it­ing every comic-book and book­store in my region. I got my busi­ness cards and book fliers ready, got in my car, and went around and accosted peo­ple. Here’s my spiel:

Hi, I’m a local author. I have a book com­ing out in May. (Hand flier to per­son. Smile). I was won­der­ing if you’d be inter­ested in car­ry­ing a few copies or per­haps host­ing a book sign­ing. (Smile some more).

Responses var­ied. Some folks were really inter­ested in what I had to say (yeah!). Oth­ers were not (meh). By the end of the day, I was exhausted — phys­i­cally and mentally.

I love talk­ing to peo­ple who read. What they like, what they don’t like. I enjoy talk­ing about writ­ing, cre­at­ing char­ac­ters, build­ing worlds, etc. I enjoy debat­ing the mer­its of var­i­ous TV shows and movies and music. I don’t like to talk so much about myself, mainly because my day job as a jour­nal­ist is to lis­ten to other peo­ple speak.

But what I really don’t like is cold-calling peo­ple, which is essen­tially what I did Sat­ur­day. I always feel like a used car sales­man, push­ing stuff on peo­ple that they don’t really want. But pro­mot­ing is part of being a writer, so I’ve just got to suck it up and do it any­way. Hope­fully, it will get a lit­tle eas­ier after the book comes out, and I get some name recog­ni­tion going.

On the bright side, I did set up some book sign­ings, so I’ll be post­ing those dates in a few weeks when I get my sched­ule final­ized.

What about you? Do you love pro­mot­ing? Dread book sign­ings? Inquir­ing minds want to know …

Every once in a while, I google myself just to see what peo­ple are say­ing about the books. Today, I came across a strange com­ment, posted by some­one who has evi­dently seen/read Karma Girl.

It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. It was just what my sig­nif­i­cant other and I call a meh comment. Roughly trans­lated, Meh means I don’t care one way or the other. Or It won’t kill me, but I’m not overly enthused about the prospect. Like when I ask my sig­nif­i­cant other if he wants to go to a par­tic­u­lar restau­rant. Some­times, he looks at me, shrugs, and says Meh.

What I read today was def­i­nitely a Meh. It wasn’t a scathing review, but it didn’t make my day be a bar­rel of sun­shine either. But, I’m going to let it go and hope that the good com­ments will out­weigh the Meh ones.

So what do you do about Meh com­ments? Scathing reviews? Do you fight back or let them slide? Inquir­ing minds want to know …