Recipes and Reviews

The Punching Bag Fights Back was created to talk about writing and the little injustices in the world of being a former teen geek turned glamour geek (if that makes any sense at all).  As things progressed I started doing more things like interviews and then eventually book reviews.  This got me thinking about how all of the little things I do on the blog are connected and I’ve finally figured out what it is!

Creativity = Happiness

Make sense?  Okay, for example, when you finish writing a book you feel great afterwards.  You let all your creative energy flow and you feel even better when someone reads it and loves it.  The same thing goes for writing a blog.  I know when I take a peek over at my latest posts and see that there are comments on it, I get all giddy and excited.  You like me, you really like me!

And now as I’ve become a mom, this weird domestic side of me has really kicked in and I’ve started to really enjoy baking.  Nothing gives me more pleasure than to create something and then have other people enjoy it.  Last week I made Gooey butter cookies and my husband gobbled them down talking about how great they were.  I brought those same cookies to my aunt’s house for father’s day and everyone kept telling me how amazing they were.  This gave me that same sense of fulfillment that I get when someone likes my writing or even when I read a really awesome book, recommend it to someone else and then they really love it.

So, that’s where this new idea came in.  Starting with my next review, all of the following reviews will  include recipes that tie in with the story.  I will bake some sort of delicious treat, take pictures with book and said treat, and post the review, picture of the treats, and recipe on the blog.  Just something a little different to go along with reviews and who doesn’t like to read and eat good food?

How do you spread your creativity?  Have any recipe suggestions to go along with books?

Fight Back Friday

So it’s been kind of a crazy/grumpy week for the Punching Bag, so to express my frustration I thought I would write a few open letters…

Dear mother nature,

March is the start of spring.  Please be advised that you have NOT been following through with this.  It’s time for everyone to put away their winter coats and quit with this snow and freezing rain stuff.

Desperate-for-sunshiningly-yours,

Magan

Dear pregnancy,

Why didn’t anyone tell me in my sex education classes that there is NOTHING fun about being 8 months pregnant?  Everyone says that you can eat what you want, wear big clothes, and how exciting it is to see your child move.  But what they don’t tell you is that you don’t sleep the last month, almost everything will give you heart burn, and eventually you stretch out your maternity leggings.  If you could be over soon, that would be awesome.

Uncomfortably yours,

Mama Magan

Dear person-that-asks-too-many-questions-or-comments-on-everything-class-or-meetings,

Yes, we all know that you are intelligent and are sure that you are great at what you do, but PLEASE just put your hand down for two seconds so that we can all get out of this class or meeting and go home.  I’m sure you can talk to the instructor after class if it’s that important.

Really-wanting-to-get-the-heck-out-on-timely yours,

M

Dear retail businesses,

Please stop going out of business and only giving me a short notice.  What if I have gift cards that I want to use?  What the heck am I supposed to do with my free movie coupons?  If you would have just let me know a month ago that I would need to use them soon I would have rented THE SOCIAL NETWORK sooner.

Giftcard-hoardingly yours,

Mrs Vee.

Dear Mean girls,

High school is over.  Making fun of people for your own gain just makes you look petty and silly.  Do you really need to sit and gossip about things that aren’t that important like what someone is wearing or how their hair looks?  I’m sure that all the problems in the world can be solved by you sitting on your butt and complaining, so maybe you should put that to use and call up some foreign leaders.

Geekingly yours,

The punching bag

Yeah they may be snarky, yeah they may be random, but someone has to tell these people and things!  Do you have any open letters that you would like to post?  What do you want to fight back?

Roll With The Punches

A punch usually is referred to as a delicious fruity drink or being hit in the face with someone else's fist.  When the punching bag talks about "punches"  It's usually not the same thing.

When I refer to a "punch" it's those little obstacles that get in the way, those things that bring you down and make you feel icky.  When someone makes fun of you - that's a punch, when your work gets criticized- that's a punch.  So the question is, how do we fight back all of these punches?

I entered my Women's Fiction manuscript in a contest a few months ago and just got the results...needless to say they weren't pretty.  (And a couple of them said that I have a better YA voice than Women's Fiction..snort)  Yeah, it hurt, these judges were saying the opposite things that my critique partners and friends had told me  So did I cry?  Did I give up on writing completely?

HECK NO!

So what did I do?  Well I told my husband and one of my critique partners that this was my last hurrah for MY PAPER HEART.  I stopped querying over the summer and I said if this contest doesn't do anything for me then I'm shelving it.  It's kind of sad since I really did love this story and these characters, but it was also a hard market to sell with a college aged protagonist and a story that's been told before, but just with my take on it.

HOW TO DATE AN ALIEN has NOT been shelved, that manuscript is just being revised.  I sent my manuscript to a friend just to "read in her spare time" and she actually got it back to me with revision notes and said that she loved the concept.  (An agented writer friend, don't know if she wants her name posted, so it's not).  I was actually surprised to get notes back and am SO excited to have writer friends that believe in me as a writer!

Even if HOW TO DATE AN ALIEN doesn't get me an agent or a publishing contract, I'm not going to stop.  I love writing and I think I'm pretty good at it (who cares what a few judges in a contest say?).  The road to publication is paved in rejection letters and I'm ready to do some walking!

How do you deal with rejections and your "punches"?  Do you need a punching bag of your own?

Fangirl FAQ

So some of you are new followers (because of blogfest) or some of you may have found my savvy one liners entertaining. (I’m like the gimmick girl they put on sitcoms.) But that still leaves a lot of you with questions about this blog and who is this “Punching bag” or “Fangirl” so instead of Fangirl Friday I’m going to answer some of those frequently asked questions.


Q 1.) So why the punching bag?

A.) Throughout my young life I was picked on, A LOT. I was the chubby girl with braces and bad hair who would rather sit at home reading VC Andrews novels on a Friday night instead of going out. I spent a lot of time getting harassed and dealing with a lot of self-esteem and other issues that scarred me badly as a teen.

Then something changed, I left my small town to go off to college, lost about 50 pounds and joined a sorority. Suddenly all of these guys who never looked at me in high school were asking for my number and girls who I knew from my teen years were acting like we were best friends. Too bad I ended up getting a job at a fortune 500 company after college and they are all still stuck in that same small town.

So this blog was born. It was kind of my “fight back,” to say that things do get better after those sucky teen years and we all survive and hey if I can just do a little ranting about unfair injustice in the media (backlash at gay characters, stereotyping, ect) then I’m going to do it!

Q2.) You talk a lot about writing, are you published?

A.) Yes and no. No I don’t have a fiction book that you can pick up at your local book store, (though yes I’ve been in talks with an agent for awhile in a women’s fiction project, am a member of RWA, and am currently working on a YA Sci-fi novel).

Yes, I am published for non-fiction, but most of that you will probably never see. I wrote for awhile for a local Indy newspaper, (riveting stuff about local apartment companies and vampires), and I’ve had a number of documents published at work, but again you won’t see that unless you are an employee of the same company as me. I also had some random little papers and other things published and presented while I was at college, but sorry nothing cool for you to pick up at the book store (yet!)

Q3.) What’s with the Fangirl thing?

A.) Who doesn’t love a Fangirl? Remember how I said that I was kind of a geek in high school? Oh yeah the Fan boys had their Star Wars and Star Trek, but that didn’t stop me from freaking out about Buffy or any other thing that would just make me squeal. The Fangirl was resurrected when I started using Twitter and would just go crazy anytime a published author would talk to me. Thus I developed “Fangirl Friday,” so that I could interview all those authors that make me squeal.

Q4.) What is with your obsession with American Idol cast members?

A.) It’s not an obsession, it’s a very healthy infatuation with TWO former cast members, thank you. I wrote a contemporary YA novel using a snowboarding dreadlocked wonder boy as the main character. In my head he happened to look like Jason Castro so I started to listen to his music a lot to inspire the writing. Okay and let’s face it, I’ve had a thing for dreadlocks since I read the Jessica Darling series and wanted to pet Marcus Flutie’s hair.

Adam Lambert has always had a soft spot in my heart. As a member of PRIDE I was really upset by the backlash he got when he came out of the closet and wondered how people watching the show didn’t know that this guy who proclaimed, “When I was younger I’d rather play dress up than soccer,” was swimming on the other side of the river. When I started writing my alien novel my friend put the idea in my head that Adam Lambert would be the perfect alien lead because he is “intriguing yet frightening,” and thus the Glambert Fangirlness started again.Q5.) How does one go from writing Lesbian Fairy Erotica to Women’s Fiction to Young Adult Sci-Fi?

A.) Pregnancy hormones? No seriously… Okay so I started dabbling in the Fairy stuff in college, but I realized that I didn’t want to be known for someone that writes that sort of material so I scraped it. Then I started wanting to write YA and my idea for MY PAPER HEART CAME in, too bad the age of my character and sexual undertones made it Women’s Fiction. I’ve been dabbling back and forth with one agent for awhile, but wasn’t getting the responses that I wanted from the novel and actually think I write YA pretty well. So then I had this idea for an alien novel because I was sick of vampires and thought that there hadn’t been a good alien novel around for awhile (this was pre- I AM NUMBER FOUR). So I wrote a rough draft of my first chapter and it was terrible. Then I went back, did some research, got some help from some AMAZING authors (this is why I LOVE Stacey Kade) and haven’t stopped writing since. I’ve already had a few people very interested in this novel (oh yeah including agents, weird that they know about it?) So we shall see what happens when it’s all finished.Q6.) What is this “girlmance”?

A.) Girlmance is a phrase coined by Amanda and myself for the female version of a “bromance.” Feel free to use it with your own girlmances.

Q7.) What company do you work for?

A.) Sorry that’s something I cannot reveal. I’d like to keep my position and what I do between me, the people who know me personally, and the people who I’ve e-mailed at worry. Sorry not to be mean, it’s just not something I want to put out in cyber space.

Q8.) What agent are you talking to?

A.) His or her name will not be revealed till there is a contract signed JQ9.) Will you ever do a Fangirl Friday interview for yourself?

A.) I think it’s a little weird to interview myself, but other people have asked to interview me for the Fangirl Friday and my response is that I will when I have an agent and then I will let whoever wants to interview me do so.

Q10.) Famous last words?



A.) Fighting is essentially a masculine idea; a women’s weapon is her tongue- Hermoine Gringold.

Who is the punching bag?

The big question is, who is the punching bag?

Well, even though I lost a follower, I still feel like someone reads this and obviously you all need some explaining.

I grew up in a very small town. We actually didn’t get our first stop light until I was in high school! So growing up in a small town, with a graduating class of only 112, it was easy to see how I was outcasted so early.

I was born in 1987 to a loud, Italian hairdresser and a quiet, southern realtor. As an only child I grew up with a very active imagination and a constant need for friends and acceptance, no matter where I got it from. The only problem with trying to gain acceptance was the fact that I was short, overweight, and had really bad teeth till I got braces in middle school. You know how your mom always says that kids make fun of you because they’re jealous? It’s not true. They make fun of you because sometimes people really don’t have anything better to do than point out the bad things in others. I admit, I’ve been guilty of it myself.

Throughout my middle school years it didn’t get any better. I dealt a lot with depression and my weight issues. I know everyone now acts like you know depression is some sort of an emo fad with kids talking about slitting their wrist and their teenage angst, but back in the early 2000’s y ou were just a freak if you had any sort of a mental illness. Back then I had no idea how to cope with the tormenting and teasing and it just kind of lead me into a pretty dark place in my life.

Eventually I did spring out of it. I’m going to fully admit that right here and now it was solely because of a boy. I had surgery (deviated septum and tonsillectomy) well that dropped my weight down about forty pounds and then I met someone from another school and we started dating. Girls laid off me as bad when I had a boyfriend and kind of kept to myself and stopped hanging out with people from my own school. It made things a lot easier to be invisible and escape to writing and books.

Of course like every high school relationship that one ended then I gained back a lot more weight. Though once I got to college it was like a whole new chapter in my life. I didn’t worry about being accepted by everyone and eventually did find my place. By my senior year I became the person I am today (well physically) I dropped A TON of weight, started doing my hair and makeup, and all of sudden boys and people wanting to be my friend came out of nowhere! It was weird that once I was comfortable with myself then other people seemed draw towards me.

After college I started working for a major corporation, got engaged, and bought a new car. When I went home to see all those people that used me as their ‘punching bag’ in high school. Well let’s just say they were nowhere near where I had gotten in life. So that’s where the inspiration for this blog came. Fighting back to all those people that made fun of me just by accepting myself for who I am and being proud of what I’ve done so far. I also tend to rant or talk about my writing because let’s face it I have to pimp myself out somehow!