I'm one of those people who likes to dream up cute, creative things to do, and then never take the time to execute the idea. Eastertime is no different. Just last week, I saw a fabulous way to dye Easter eggs using shaving cream, creating a tie-dye effect. It looked adorable. My inner Deadhead, long dormant, perked up. I could do that!

Except my adult, sensible, non-Deadhead self has gotten a lot more vocal these days. And adult me was thinking, that's a lot of shaving cream to waste. Plus, where would I find the time?

Deadhead Stacey would not give up. You can put off finishing editing the manuscript that client is paying you good money to clean up! And maybe don't write a blog this week. I want tie-dyed eggs!

Adult Stacey was having none of it. I want to keep a roof over our heads, Adult Stacey said. That won't happen if we procrastinate on editing and waste shaving cream all willy-nilly. (Adult Stacey sometimes uses old-fashioned words like will- nilly.)

Deadhead Stacey gave it one last shot. Maybe we can convince Jason to use the food-coloring-smeared shaving cream?

We could not. And I'm sorry to report Deadhead Stacey might be gone for good.

​For Easter, I'd promised to bring chocolate-covered Peeps to my sister-in-law's house. I'm sorry, did I say I promised? Actually I blame Creative Ideas Stacey for this one.

It seemed simple enough. Buy some Peeps, melt some chocolate, and dip away. Except by Friday night, Adult Stacey was tired from fighting with the flighty Deadhead all week. She didn't have any sticks to impale the Peeps upon. Her back hurt. 

In short, she wasn't going to waste her time melting chocolate and burning her fingertips trying to dip sugar-coated marshmallows into it. (Quite frankly, I don't blame her. My back hurt too.)

But a promise is a promise. Which is why I'd like to thank the Just Born company for reading my mind and creating prepackaged ChocoPeeps just for me. (Turns out Adult Stacey doesn't care about wasting money when it means she doesn't have to do any manual labor.

But I'd also promised my sister I'd make deviled eggs for Sunday. Turns out Creative Ideas Stacey is a blabbermouth. My mother was no help, instead showing me the cutest creative deviled eggs idea ever: chicks in an egg. 

Keep in mind Adult Stacey balked at the idea of dipping Peeps in chocolate because it was too much work. There was no way I was going to take the time to cut the edges of the deviled eggs to look like shells, much less stick tiny bits on the egg filling to make it look like a baby chicken. 

At this point, Creative Ideas Stacey decided to get on board with Adult Stacey's rather cranky and low maintenance attitude. Creative started whispering in Adult's ear, and I have to admit, what she was saying made sense. It was creative. It was low maintenance, requiring only eggs and a fork. I might actually be able to pull it off.

Behold: a cute little Do it Yourself Deviled Eggs Kit, which I will be bringing to my sister's exactly as it appears below.

Life is short. And eggs don't need to be cute.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate! And a very happy birthday to my nephew Nathan!

In case you haven’t heard, I have a new book out. My Sister the Zombie is a YA mystery with a little horror thrown in, and it was a lot of fun to write. It’s also set in my hometown of Glastonbury, Connecticut.
 
Glastonbury has a reputation of being a lovely (dare I say pristine?), white collar, upper middle-class town. But growing up there wasn’t all ice cream cakes and money growing on trees. See, I lived on the outskirts, barely within town limits, and on a dairy farm to boot. While my friends’ parents were buying them shiny new clothes and cars, mine were advising me on the best way to get the lingering manure smell out of my hair. We didn’t have a lot of money, but what we did have was cows. And heart, I suppose. But mostly cows.
 
I spent the first eighteen years of my life in this town, enduring field trips in elementary school to my backyard, and farmer’s daughter jokes in my teen years. I got my driver’s license and my high school diploma in Glastonbury. And then I moved away as soon as I could, because I was a snotty teenager, and that’s what snotty teens tend to do as a rule.
 
A funny thing happened when I moved away, though. While I can’t say I loved growing up there, I found I was awfully proud to be from there. See, outsiders don’t care about the mortification you felt when a pack of rogue Holsteins escaped and planted themselves in front of your school bus (true story). Or those times you were teased because your clothes came from K-Mart instead of some boutique. All they know is that Glastonbury is a really, really nice town. And when I saw they were impressed, I’ll admit, I gained a new respect for my hometown.
 
When it came time to pick a setting for My Sister the Zombie, I considered my options carefully. I needed a place that would fit all of these requirements:

• It had to be in New England, because I needed somewhere humid in the summer that was also full of cautious and hard-to-crack residents.
• Both parents had really good jobs, so it should be an upper-middle-class community.
• The layout of the town had to be pretty straightforward and make sense, because I get lost easily, even in my own fiction.
• The townspeople had to be the type who would be politely horrified when a zombie moved into town.

 
Sure, I could’ve made up a place, but I already knew of a location that fit the bill to a T. And yeah, I could’ve fictionalized it, but I did that in my novel Ordinary Boy, and I continually find myself having to confirm to readers from Connecticut that their suspicions are correct, it is Glastonbury I’m describing there.
 
I thought it over. I wasn’t saying bad things about the town: it is nice. The people who live there are polite. And, for someone as geographically challenged as I am, using the town where I learned how to drive would be a relief, because I wouldn’t have to try and make a map. There are events that happen there every year—the Art Show on the Green, the Apple Fest—that would provide the perfect backdrop for some of the main scenes. So call Glastonbury Glastonbury, I decided. And I did.
 
I’ll be in Glastonbury this weekend for their “Read Local” Author Fair (Saturday, March 24, 2018, at the Riverfront Community Center, 300 Welles Street) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., signing copies of My Sister the Zombie. I’m really looking forward to it, because as we get older, our memories tend to be more selective. Now when I drive through town, I think about the hours I spent at the truly fabulous Welles-Turner Memorial Library, or getting Chinese food at House of Tong with my sister (incidentally, not a zombie). I can drive by what is now open space, but what used to be the farm, and smile at the memory of rogue Holsteins making a break for Hebron Avenue. Because you know what? It is a nice town.
 
Here’s hoping they don’t chase me out of it with pitchforks on Saturday.

If you’re wondering just what kind of tramp I am, being a married woman with a blog title like that, then this is exactly why you need to understand my boyfriend rules.
 
Much like an immature teen shouting “That’s your boyfriend!” to her sister when she sees an octogenarian in a Speedo on the street, I’ve never really grown up. (I would still shout this to my sister should said eightysomething wearing a banana hammock cross our paths.) I’ve sort of reversed this as I’ve grown up, though: I’m more likely to shout “That’s my boyfriend!” when someone hunky passes by. Yes, I’m married, and yes, my husband’s pretty patient. Because I do have a list of men I refer to as my boyfriends, including:
 

• Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran
• Actor Jon Bernthal
• Author Clive Barker
• Walter White on Breaking Bad (but not, incidentally, actor Bryan Cranston)
• Actor Jonathan Banks (whether as Breaking Bad’s Mike Ehrmantraut or giving an interview as himself)
• Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson
• Actor Richard Grieco
• Survivor winner Richard Hatch
   

I'm pretty sure none of these men know they're my boyfriends, but no matter. Here’s rule number one: I don’t need your permission to refer to you as my boyfriend. I get to decide.
 
Essentially, my boyfriend choices come down to this: I have precious little free time on any given day. So if I’m going to give up, say, an hour to a man, he has to be really worth it.
 
Here are the rest of the rules:

• To earn boyfriend status, a man must be talented, entertaining, and most importantly, be engaging enough to keep me from looking at my phone for at least thirty minutes.
  
• Potential boyfriends must have either played a role in which he was a dark, brooding, bad-boy-with-noble-intentions, been a person like this, written about characters like this, or played keyboards for Duran Duran.
  
• My boyfriends must be men I’m highly unlikely to run into in person on a daily basis, because seriously, that would be mortifying.
• If I do get the chance to meet one of my boyfriends, he has to at least have the decency to not question my mortification and make me explain how he's my boyfriend.
  
• There must never be an unfavorable news article about my boyfriend acting like a jerk, specifically if he’s acting like a jerk toward one of my other boyfriends like Dwayne Johnson, or he’ll be immediately removed of his status (see: Diesel, Vin).
• Age is unimportant, though said boyfriend should be old enough to not make me feel like a creepy perv when I spend quality time with him.
• My boyfriend's sexual preference is also unimportant. Ours is a higher love.
  

 
Jason is remarkably tolerant of the men in my life. In fact, while watching an episode of Breaking Bad, he actually said, “Look out! I think your boyfriend is about to shoot your boyfriend!” It is not unusual for him to ask how my day was only to get the response, “Not bad. I spent some quality time with my boyfriend on my lunch break.” (I’m currently reading Clive Barker’s Everville.) I thought Jason had my whole system straight in his head, until this conversation last week:
 
Jason: Hey, I think your boyfriend is in this movie.
 
Me: No, he’s not. (I didn’t know if he meant Johnson, Banks, Bernthal, Grieco, or even a cameo from my very first boyfriend, Nick Rhodes, but I did know none of the above was in the movie in question.)
 
Jason: Sure he is. I just saw Michael Fitchman’s name in the credits.
 
I suppose I should explain. The first time I ever saw this actor was in The Perfect Storm, in which he played a character named Sully. I have a horrible time remembering his name (so much so that when I just Googled “Who played Sully in The Perfect Storm,” I found out his name is actually William Fichtner, and I’d just messed it up again when typing up Jason’s dialogue for this blog post). He has an easily recognizable face, but an easily forgettable name. So whenever I see him onscreen, I shout, “Sully!”
 
I don’t know why Jason thinks this makes him my boyfriend. Yes, he’s a good actor, and yes, he’s fairly attractive. I don’t know if he’s got any bad boy in him, though as I’m typing this, Sully was a bit of a bad boy in Perfect Storm. He’s age appropriate, it’s doubtful I’d ever meet him for coffee, and I see nothing online in which he says mean things about Dwayne Johnson. In all honesty, the only thing that disqualifies Michael William Fitchburgh from boyfriend status is that I can’t for the life of me remember his name from one moment to the next.
 
But Sully . . . I can remember Sully.
 
You know what? Maybe Jason does get the whole boyfriend thing. Because clearly, Sully’s my boyfriend.

If you haven’t heard yet, I have a book coming out next week. My Sister the Zombie hits bookshelves on March 11, and I couldn’t be more excited. Though sometimes this doesn’t always come through in interviews, I suspect.
 
One of the most common traits among writers is introversion. (It’s a real word; I looked it up.) We tend to be those folks who find talking to others to be draining, and need a solitary environment to recharge our batteries. But when you have a book coming out, you pretty much have to suck it up and get over it if you want to promote your new release.
 
In an ideal world, the book would sell itself and I wouldn’t have to do interviews, but I’m pretty sure this has never happened in the history of modern publishing (even Stephen King does interviews when he has a new release, and—hard truth—I’m no Stephen King). My publisher has been pretty awesome about sending out press releases and media kits, but sadly, they can’t tell the nice reporter at the local paper how my sister feels about being turned into one of the shambling undead. (Note to self: but my sister can . . . [scribbling] have Kim do all interviews going forward.) If anyone’s going to answer questions about how this book came to be, it pretty much has to be me. Or Kim . . . I’m really liking the idea of making it Kim.
 
But because of my painful introversion, the interviews tend to go something like this:
 
Reporter: How did this book come to be?
Me: Um, I sat down and wrote it.
Reporter: No, but where’d you get the idea from?
Me: I wanted to write a mystery. About my sister. And zombies.
Reporter: (sensing an opening) About your sister? Why?
Me: Because we’re close. Can I flee now, please?
 
I do feel bad for the poor reporter that has to somehow shape a story out of that. I really do. But it is so hard to have to meet with someone and talk about me.
 
So help both reporters and readers get an idea of what’s going on with this new book, here it is:
My Sister the Zombie is the tale of two sisters, Blossom and Jasmine Hamilton. Blossom is a zombie. The family moves from Arizona, where everyone has a zombie in the family and it’s no big deal, to Glastonbury, CT, where Blossom is the only undead person shambling around, and the residents are politely horrified. People start turning up murdered, with their brains removed. Blossom’s the prime suspect. She and Jasmine work together to solve the mystery.
It’s a study of the close bond between siblings. It’s a scathing commentary on how people who are perceived as different are treated in our society. And yeah, it’s funny and silly and I like to think it’s a good book.
 
There you go. Best I can do. I’ll be retreating to hide in my fort made of blankets now. If you have any follow-up questions, by all means, don’t be afraid to contact my sister.
 
My Sister the Zombie is available for preorder now, and available to purchase March 11.

Ah, March. I’m glad it’s here. There’s a storm raging outside and I had to dodge a falling tree on my way to work, but I’m just happy it’s rain pelting the windows and causing the power outages right now and not snow.

March is a busy month for me normally. We have three birthdays on my side of the family this month, so that always livens things up. (Incidentally, I asked my sister, father, and nephew what they wanted for their birthdays, and got the same answer from each: “I don’t know.” So this year’s shopping will be easy: they’re all getting socks.) This March is a bit more hectic than usual, however: I’m currently juggling editing two manuscripts during the hours I’m not at my day job, plus I have a book coming out on the 11th. Add to that the discovery that one of my former coworkers regularly appears in a Rocky Horror Picture Show performance the first weekend of the month, and well, you can see where my priorities are. (Make no mistake, I’ll be at Rocky Horror this weekend. The editing clients can wait.)

The book debuting on March 11 is the long-awaited My Sister the Zombie, which, I’m happy to report, my sister has finally—not her fault, there were production snags—read. (I’ll be doing a guest post for another blogger this month titled “Turning Your Real-Life Sister into a Fictional Zombie: Will She Ever Speak to You Again?”) I’ve also been scheduling interviews and appearances surrounding the release, which has been a bit nerve-wracking, because I’m an introvert by nature and lately I’ve evolved into full-time hermit. I have to give my publisher credit, though, because he’s the one setting up these interviews, and has made it quite clear he will be very disappointed in me if I didn’t follow through with actually doing them. (Incidentally, with the disappointed dad look he’s perfected, I have no doubt he is an excellent father, too.)

The whole point of this long-winded description of what my March is going to be like was meant to be my explanation as to why I don’t have a blog post this week. But seeing as I’m coming up on 400 words, according to my handy word count function at the bottom of my screen, I believe what we have here is a bona fide post. Hooray!

Also, don’t forget the best thing about March: Shamrock Shakes! Which, I’ve just learned, are gluten free. Best month of the year!