The Candy Thief

Candy made me a thief.

Seriously.

I must have been seven or eight. I was in a Ben Franklin Five and Dime ... Why, I don't know, I didn't have any money.

And then my eyes spied it.

A York Peppermint Pattie.

Dark chocolately goodness melted around a gooey peppermint center.

Nirvana!

But my pockets were empty.

Well, not empty. I had my lucky rock ... not worth money... not that I would have bartered it anyway. I had my pet pillbug (tied to a string) and probably some other small trinkets I picked up off the ground, but valued like rare jewels.

The York Peppermint Pattie whispered my name.

"Norm. Noorrrmmmmm.... Eat me!"

"But, Pattie," I replied. "I don't have any money."

"No one's looking. Just take me!"

"I couldn't do that. That's stealing!"

"But I'm yours. I belong to you. You would just be taking what is yours."

The sugary voice was just so compelling. So I did it. With Pattie keeping watch for me, I reached out, put my trembling sugar-anticipatory hands on her sweet roundness.

And in a flash, she was in my pocket.

With nerves atrembly, I stole out of the store with my beloved, hopped on my bike, and pedaled furiously away to find a secluded spot to rendezvous with my secret dark lover.

I found a woody area, devoid of people, and settled onto a leafy spot behind a big tree. Pattie came from my pocket, her allure almost too tempting. But anticipation is part of the joy of this relationship, so with nervous restraint, I gently unfolded her tinfoily wrapper, and allowed myself the first swaying of desire at the flash of her tasty skin.

My mouth watered as I ...

... gobbled down the sweet confection.

Nope, I just couldn't savor this over time. Like the owl in the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial, I just can't let saliva do the work. My love of candy is a frenzied, drool-and-chomp-it-down affair - not a take your time and let it melt in your mouth insanity.

Anyway, it's good to get this dark secret out in the open.

I feel better.

And, now that I'm older, I usually have enough money for candy.

That's a good thing.

(No,Norm, don't do it)

Shut up, cavities!

Norm

www.normcowie.com

(where you can read The Guy'd Book for free! And three short stories! And excerpts of my other three books! Do you hear me! Free stuff!)

Total Toilet Freedom

This week's theme ... you knew there was a theme on this blog, right? ... anyway, this week's theme is ...

(drum roll)

Here goes ...

It's "What Freaks Us Out."

When I read the theme, one thing came immediately to mind, followed by a number of other things, then some ESPN leakage and other stuff. But I decided to stick with my first impulse.

So what freaks me out?

In a word ... Women.

Yep, the so-called 'weaker sex.'

Yeah, right, weaker.

I have two daughters and my wife of almost a quarter century, and I'm bigger than them. I'm stronger. I out stink them. Heck, I'm a black belt. I shouldn't be afraid of them.

Okay, so explain to me why on a recent trip, when I stayed in a hotel by myself ... five hundred miles away from my wife and kids ... why ...

... I still couldn't leave the toilet seat up.

I mean,here's my taste of freedom. My chance to boldly leave the toilet bowl exposed and uncovered. Heck, there was no reason I'd even feel required to flush the thing.

Total Toilet Freedom!

But I couldn't do it.

Yeah, women, they freak me out.

Norm

http://www.normcowie.com

(author of the young adult humor vampire book, Fang Face - now available for just three bucks on ebook)

Crazy Me

My kids think I’m crazy. And, well, maybe they’re right. Of course, they had a hand in it.

A time ago, I was just a normal guy … listening to eight tracks, wearing terry cloth shorts, watching antenna television … yeah, quite awhile ago. But I was normal. A regular guy, just hanging and stuff.

But then I met and married a beautiful woman, and we decided to bring new humans into the world.

Before we could consider all of the ramifications, there were two, both girls.

Flash to fifteen later, and I’m having a patient conversation with one of them, complete with bulging eyeballs, veins standing out from my neck.

She’s warding me off by rolling her eyes like ‘Dad, you’re so stupid, and I’m just pretending to listen while I’m really humming that new song by Twobuckrapalot, and I’m not learning anything here and I’m telling you this by rolling my eyes at you.”

I could yell at her for what she’s thinking, but we’ve had circular arguments about my mind-reading ability in the past that have all ended in a draw, with her winning because it ended in a draw.

So I vented and spewed, and noticed she was just looking at me, a ‘my dad’s a crazy person’ look in her eyes.

WHAT! WHAT’S SHE TALKING ABOUT! I’M NOT CRAZY! I’M NORMAL !!! JUST A REGULAR GUY!!! ALL I WANT IS FOR THEM TO ACT AND SAY ONLY THE THINGS THAT I WANT THEM TO, BECAUSE I’M THE PARENT AND I KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR THEM. SO HOW’S THIS MAKE ME THE BAD GUY. HUH?! HUH? TELL ME! SO I’M OKAY. I’M NORMAL. THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!!

(pant, pant)

Whew.

Um …


… well, okay maybe she has a point.

Norm

author of Fang Face (vampire young adult funness)

www.normcowie.com

Leading the Ladies

I’m a guy.

(last I checked)

So as a guy, how can I write leading ladies in my stories?

Recently, I received a cool email from a teacher who teaches English as a Second Language in an inner city Chicago school. She had purchased Fang Face at one of my recent events for one of her seventh grade students. We’ll call her student, Emily.

Emily had moved to the States from Puerto Rico a year ago, knowing no English at the time. She is an exceptional student, and already has grasped a lot of our sometimes-confusing language. (I mean, seriously, “to, two, too”? Jeesh!).

The teacher wrote that (we) “…spend a tremendous amount of time, money and effort on struggling students, but sometimes forget those that are on the other side of the spectrum.”

This committed teacher reached into her own wallet for her special student.

Emily ripped through Fang Face in a couple of days and was inspired to want to write me. She didn’t have email, so the teacher enclosed Emily’s email in her own.

Here’s a snippet (remember, she is new to our language):

“I love your book! Its funny and scary. I love it fangs and all. I picture myself as Erin because I love vamps and so I would love to be a vampire.”

This was cool on several levels. First, any author is thrilled when something they write touches a reader, more so when the reader is an easily influenced young person still facing the choices that will help shape her life.

It’s also cool because Emily is a teenaged girl.

And I’m not.

When you write fiction, you hope and pray you are creating a world that draws the reader in, captures them in the story and makes them give a hoot about your characters. I didn’t have trouble writing the boy characters in my book …because I’ve been there … (shaddup, I know it was a while ago)

But I’ve never been a girl, teenaged or otherwise. So when I wrote the parts of Erin and her sister, I was going into uncharted territory. I mean, seriously, though I have a wife and two daughters, I know less about women than I do blood suckers (I do know some attorneys).

Writing leading lady characters meant I had to reach deep into my imagination, past all of the guy-stuff (like ESPN, tools and Victoria Secret catalogues) to connect with that inner women that some men (not me) have.

So I did my best and hoped it was enough.

Emily says it was.

Norm

http://www.normcowie.com
http://fangface.homestead.com

The King is Dead … Long Live the King

When Michael Jackson died, it only marked the temporary death of a culture that thrived longer than most. The Pop Culture was always trivialized as being trivial, bubblegum, if you will. But it resonated with people because well, we’re trivial too. Just call us bubblegum people.

And when I say pop, I’m not talking about Dad … or soda-pop … or soap bubbles. Pop was about popular, in that the masses identified with it. Fun, not too intellectual, pop culture was people, so its music, its ideals, its essence was that of the people. Pop was us, and we won’t go away.

Sure, we couldn’t all dance like Michael Jackson … we couldn’t all sing like Michael Jackson, but he was all of us. He was black, he was white, he was male, he was … uh, maybe something else … who knows really. But he typified the times with fun, catchy songs that stayed in your mind until your brain was ready to bleed.

And we couldn’t get enough. When the tributes to his live started pouring in, sales of Michael Jackson stuff soared, as we remembered, or in some cases, discovered his ground-breaking songs, videos and trends. We all threw away a glove, and pulled out sequins so we could emulate our fallen idol.

Well, maybe you did – I didn’t. But I would have if … well, no, I wouldn’t have worn a sequined glove on a bet. Or maybe I would, if the bet was high enough, but I wouldn’t have let anyone witness it.

As writers, we have to take culture into account. When I wrote my first young adult book …

… what young adult book, you ask? Thanks for asking, Fang Face – get your humor vampire goodness now!

(sorry, commercial break over).

… anyway, when I was writing Fang Face, I had concerns about the culture of teenaged kids, which overlaps almost seamlessly with popular culture. Was I writing a book they would identify with? Was it a slice of their lives? Kids aren’t stupid. If the book didn’t resonate with them, they’d know it and would respond as kids will - by ignoring it and letting it die.

So I asked a teen to read the manuscript, and this turned into an entire school studying Fang Face as a class project. I was invited to come in and talk to them about the story, characters, plotting and other stuff.

Can you imagine a better think-tank for a teenaged book?

You can’t ignore culture when you’re creating for the masses, be it bubblegum pop music, books or that green stuff growing in your tub. More specifically, you can’t ignore teenaged culture, which epitomizes what’s popular in society as much as anything. Teens drive the commercials you see on television, placement of merchandise in stores, art and music more than any other demographic of society.

So when you say Long Live the King, I say long live the Teen.

Norm

Norm Cowie

http://fangface.homestead.com

Presenting Fang Face by Norm Cowie

Fresh from Echelon Press for September is Fang Face by Norm Cowie:

"Hilarious, lightning-paced, and as sharp about high school as a bite to the throat. I loved this book, fangs and all." - James Rollins, New York Times bestseller of Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow.

From the back cover:
Erin has bigger worries than how she’ll do on her Trig Final.
A vampire bit her and she’s turning into an Undead.
Things could be worse, though. It cleared her complexion, she can fly and now her parents have to let her go out at night. And being a vampire is great for freaking out her little sister. The downside? … besides being dead, of course … and having to drink blood smoothies … was having to give up tanning and pizza.
And with her new edgy Goth look, jet-black hair and porcelain skin, everyone tells Erin that she’s become beautiful. So much so that the other girls in school have started calling her names…like ‘Fang Face.’
Erin wouldn’t mind checking her new look for herself. But as everyone knows…
Vampires can't see their reflections!

And here's an excerpt from between the book covers:

Alex bolted upright from a sound sleep, her heartbeat beating out a manic drum solo.

What was that? Was it real? Was it part of her dream?

There was thumping on the stairs and running footsteps in the hallway.
"Alex? Erin?" her mom called, her voice filled with anxiety.

Well okay, then. It was real.

"Girls!"

"Mom!" Alex squeaked.

The door burst open and a bright light slashed into her room followed closely by her mother. Her mom looked pumped full of the surge of adrenaline mothers use to lift cars off their offspring. Her face relaxed when she saw there wasn't a Toyota on her daughter.

"I'll check Erin," her father said as he tore past the door, a huge gleaming sword in his hand, chain armor rattling in his haste.

Not really, it was a Louisville Slugger and he was wearing pajamas.

He disappeared and a moment later they heard his squeak of horror.

Yeah, yeah, if you asked him, he would deny it was a squeak. He would say it was a grunt or some other manly noise. Uh, huh.

Her mother looked back at the doorway in alarm. Seeing Alex was safe, Beth commanded, "Stay here," and then bolted down the hallway.

Three seconds later there was a woman's scream. Her mother this time. Either that or Dad was trying to get in touch with his feminine side.

Alex froze, her mind spinning. She had been told to stay put, so like any teenager, she did what she was told without question.

Um...right.

What really happened was she jumped up and crept toward her sister's room. The door was wide open and light streamed into the hallway.

She sneaked a peek around the corner and gasped.

Erin was sprawled on her bed, eyes open and staring. Twin streams of blood pumped from puncture wounds near her jugular.

Want to read more? Like your own copy of the whole book right now?!?!!

The reviewers have spoken:
"This book sucks ... in a most delightful way! Norm Cowie's latest is boy-meets-girl-meets-vampire-meets-wow. Don't miss this gem." - Shane Gericke, National Bestselling thriller author

"FANG FACE made me laugh, and I'm not a Teen. Or perhaps I am, but I'm trapped in a grown-up's body.”- Raymond Benson, author of James Bond, The Union Trilogy

Mr. Cowie, I mean, Norm speaks to being an author...

The best part of writing is it feeds my freak. A writer is a bit of a control freak. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I decide who farts, who bites whom, and it’s up to me what a vampire is like. Does he sparkle in the sunlight? Does he need a straw to suck blood? Does he need SPF eight billion?

The worst part of writing is what I like to call, ‘the other writing.’ Extra curricular writing, like blogs. Anything that takes me away from writing fun stories. I even begrudge ‘Twitter.’ I’d much rather write a story than write about writing stories.

The craziest part of being a writer is signing stuff. I love graffiti’ing all over a book. I was always taught that we should respect and take care of a book. But now, people want me to write on a book … even better … they want me to write something weird or crazy. And I want to sign other stuff, like body parts. I know of a case where one of best-selling author Christopher Moore’s fans had one of his books tattooed onto her leg. Then she came to one of his signings and he autographed her leg. Then she had his autograph tattooed onto her leg. I want that!

What's next for Norm and his readers?

What else? A sequel. Fang Face ends a bit on a cliff hanger, though most issues are resolved in the first. I’m busy working on its sequel, WereWoof. Yep, werewolves, kinda, sorta. Count on more biters and more fun.

Thanks, Norm!

Find Norm here on Teen-Seen or at his website or the fang place blog!