Friday, April 30, 2021

Confessions of Failure

 RHYS: It’s been a tough week with copy edits and tax coming at the same time so I thought I’d end with one of our silly quizzes.

It’s called Confessions of Failure!

Name the biggest blooper in one of your books.

What was your worst fashion faux pas?

The worst meal you ever cooked?

Your most embarrassing moment in high school?

Or as an adult?  (only embarrassments you can tell us about)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:

Name the biggest blooper in one of your books.

In IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, I have a sentence where Clare is feeling bad and “curls up under her grandmother’s guilt.” No, it’s not metaphorical, it’s supposed to be Quilt. I sent an email about correcting it to my publishers, but despite that, the book is STILL in print and the blooper is STILL there. 

What was your worst fashion faux pas?

Honestly, all I can think of is everything I wore in middle school in the 1970s. Mustard-colored platform sneakers? Yep. Scarlet and purple bell bottoms (with each leg a different color, front and back, harlequin style?) Yep. Shirts with enormous collars and weird, art deco prints made from a completely unnatural material never seen before or since? Yep.

The worst meal you ever cooked?

When I was first learning to cook, I was making Irish Boiled Dinner for St. Pat’s Day. I read the instructions “keep at a low boil for X hours” and interpreted that to mean keep it BELOW boiling. So all the ingredients floated in a pot of very hot water for several hours. I leave the unspeakable results to your imaginations. 

Your most embarrassing moment in high school?

I had just discovered swearing as a sophomore (it was a kinder, gentler age, kids) and was displaying my new-found sophistication backstage during a set build out (I was a total theater kid in high school and college) by f-bombing this, that and the other thing. An older boy I had SUCH a crush on looked at me with a frown and said, “Wow, you swear like a truck driver.” It was at least 30 years before I ever said that word again in public.

Or as an adult?  (only embarrassments you can tell us about)

There are oh, so many, most revolving around my inability to remember people’s names, and stuff I’m genuinely ashamed about, like the many, many times I’ve neglected to bring hostess gifts for a house stay. But one that lingers is the time I was about ¾ through a lengthy book tour - one of those ones where you get up at 5am, fly to a city, do signings, a library appearance and a bookstore gig, go back to the hotel and do it all over again the next day. It was around 10pm, I was tired, and all I wanted to do was get into my room and order my chicken Caesar salad. So I’m standing outside my door, trying the key card over and over, because it won’t let me in. I’m twisting the door handle to see it that helps, and swearing (mildly)... you see where this is going, right?

A man opened the door and said, “Can I help you?” in the most repressive voice ever. Probably thought I was drunk. I looked at the little sleeve my key card came in. Yes, dear readers, you guessed it. I was trying to get into LAST night’s hotel room, which unfortunately was in Denver, not in Santa Barbara.

JENN McKINLAY:

 Oh,Julia, I think there was another you, trying to get into my hotel room at Bouchercon in Dallas. Scared the begeezes out of me since it was two in the morning.

1.Name the biggest blooper in one of your books.

I changed the middle name of a character between books. Angie Maria DeLaura became Angie Lucia DeLaura in a later book and I got called out hard, so in the next book I put her name in as Angie Maria Lucia DeLaura. Take that!

2. What was your worst fashion faux pas?

High school: In my defense, it was the eighties! Blonde mohawk, combat boots, and a peacoat. I’m six feet tall like I really needed the extra attention. Oy.

3. The worst meal you ever cooked?

First Thanksgiving on my own. My then boyfriend and I roasted a turkey, without taking out the bag of innards. So gross!

4. Your most embarrassing moment in high school?

See above! Kidding, I actually thought I was pretty rad. Most embarrassing was probably when I was convinced the boy I was crushing on was crushing on me, too, because he kept turning around from the front row to look at me. Yeah, turned out he was infatuated with the girl sitting in front of me. Can’t blame him, she was adorable. But when he mentioned how much he loved her to me, I about died (inside).

5. Or as an adult?  (only embarrassments you can tell us about).

At a book signing, I greeted one of the regular readers who was so lovely and showed up at every signing. I’d been inscribing her books to “Jane” for YEARS. Then she came with a friend who called her “June”. Argh! She was so shy she never corrected me. I felt terrible and offered to buy her new copies and sign them all correctly. She politely declined. Whenever I see her now, I say, “Hi, June.” She probably thinks I’m mental.

(Rhys: I've done the same thing, Jenn! )

LUCY BURDETTE: 

Name the biggest blooper in one of your books. I believe I changed an entire character name between AN APPETITE FOR MURDER and DEATH IN FOUR COURSES. I’m on the road so don’t have the books with me, but I think Adrienne became Danielle. No one ever complained and the publisher wasn’t about to reprint! So Danielle she has been ever since.

What was your worst fashion faux pas? I think this has to be all those shoulder pads and pussy bows I wore to work in the eighties. Or could it have been the overalls I wore the first two years of graduate school? Or maybe even the completely color-coordinated Villager skirts, sweaters, and flats I wheedled out of my mother in high school?

The worst meal you ever cooked? For some reason that I cannot recall, I was cooking dinner for my father and a business colleague of his. I proudly announced at the table that the fish had been marked down to half price. I don’t think anyone ate a bite.

Your most embarrassing moment in high school? I was so very shy with boys in high school. I remember being asked on a date by the president of my older sister’s class. I was agonizingly tongue-tied and  could not think of a single word to say the entire evening. I thought I would die...and he certainly didn’t repeat the invitation!

DEBORAH CROMBIE:

Name the biggest blooper in one of your books. There is a lot of name changing going on here, and I'm guilty, too. Melody's mother is Attie when she first appears in the series. By A BITTER FEAST she'd become Addie. I've been called out on it, too, but by that time she had become Addie in my head and I wasn't changing it!

What was your worst fashion faux pas? Oh, my gosh, the perm. That would have been around 1989. A short perm! Never ever ever again.

The worst meal you ever cooked? Can we narrow that down to lately? The corned beef I made on St. Patrick's Day was literally inedible. The seasoning was on it rather than in a packet, so I didn't rinse it. Gah!

Your most embarrassing moment in high school? That has to have been going to visit my ex-boyfriend's sister and finding my ex and my (former) best friend holding court naked in bed, a la John and Yoko. Never mind the humiliation, where on earth do you look?

Or as an adult?  (only embarrassments you can tell us about) Too many to name. I am one big blooper. I get people's names wrong, trip over things, and just generally make an idiot of myself on a regular basis.


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: 

Name the biggest blooper in one of your books.

      Oh, SO funny. In one book, which will remain forever nameless, a character goes to the police station in a cab. But when she leaves, she gets into her car and drives away. NO ONE ever noticed this, not me, not my editors, copy editors, proofreaders, NO ONE, not for YEARS, until a reader mentioned it.

What was your worst fashion faux pas?

    In 1972, I wore a lavender hot pants suit to a wedding. With lace stockings and low heels. I LOOKED GREAT. I fear I was the only one who thought so.

(Rhys: pix please?)

The worst meal you ever cooked?

   Yup. The old “left the giblets in the turkey” error. Also, spaghetti squash. We talk about it to this day. It does NOT taste like spaghetti, and I say to hell with it.

Your most embarrassing moment in high school?

     Hmm. I got sent home the day before graduation because they said my skirt was too short. IT WAS NOT. And I mean, too short for what? See hot pants, above. 

Or as an adult?  (only embarrassments you can tell us about)

    Oh, I will tell the short version. I saw a person in a store. She came up to me and said, “You’re Hank, right? The TV reporter?” I said yes. (So far so good.) She said: “Do you know (fill in man’s name)?”   “Yes,” I said. “Are you his mother?”

      She paused. “No,” she said. “I’m his wife.”

RHYS BOWEN: I suppose, after putting my sisters through this I should add my own confession:

Biggest writing blooper: I put Claridges hotel on the wrong street in London. This was not only unforgivable because I know where Claridges is, but because my parents lived next door to the night manager of the hotel and we went to dinner at his house!

Worst fashion faux pas: Oh dear. There were many. Like wearing green tights with a mini-kilt in the 1960s. And in the 80s I bought a jump suit with big shoulders. Very fashionable. Wore it on the flight to England. Went to the loo AND… could not take it down. Small toilet space and big shoulders. Never again!

Worst meal? Again several contenders but when we were first married I tried to impress new husband with a Chinese meal. The ketchup, soy sauce and vinegar over noodles did not impress in fact he stated candidly that it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted.

Most Embarrassing moment in high school? An all girls school so no boys to embarrass me. But I remember my mortification when I went to ask my favorite teacher something and stood outside the teacher’s lounge only to hear her say “Oh God. Not again. What does she want now?”

As an adult?  Several that can’t be printed here, but my favorite was when we lived in Texas. My friend went jogging every morning. I was driving back from school run and saw her ahead of me. I drove around her, screeched to a halt, jumped out and did my best crazed monster impression.  Only it wasn’t my friend. It was a strange man with the same curly hair. He took one look at me, backed away then turned and started to run in the other direction!

So now it’s your turn, friends. Anyone want to confess?

45 comments:

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  2. There are far too many fashion faux pas stories in my life [ditto embarrassing moments] . . . . ::sigh::

    I don’t have a worst meal story, but I do have a “worst thing I ever cooked” story . . . Shortly after we were married, I, in search of a recipe that used yogurt, happened upon Onion-Yogurt Bread. By then, I’d been cooking for years, and it was an easy recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, so the only problem was that the onion-yogurt bread was simply horrible. John, bless his heart, insisted it wasn’t that bad, but I’m here to say it really was that bad . . . the dog even turned up his nose and refused to eat it. To this day, we cringe/chuckle over thoughts of the onion-yogurt bread . . . .

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    1. It SOUNDS like it should be delicioius. Your husband sounds like a sweetheart.

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    2. That's what I thought, Hallie, but . . . no.
      Yes, John is a sweetheart :)

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  3. Thanks for the morning laughs!

    Name the biggest blooper in one of your books. I know I have errors in my novels (which my editor always fixes after some keen-eyed reader - usually my sister - reports them). Before that, right before we went to print I caught the instruction, "Lick the Edit button" in one of the technical manuals I wrote.

    What was your worst fashion faux pas? Late seventies, early eighties, trying to look professional in grad school and not really making it, especially not with the pale blue corduroy wide-collared blazer I bought at a thrift store that never fit right. Oh, and thinking clogs were appropriate footwear for an academic conference...

    The worst meal you ever cooked? Not a meal, but the sourdough bricks I baked last spring after I lost my sourdough mojo were pretty bad and ended up in the compost heap.

    Your most embarrassing moment in high school? I still cringe when I see the picture in my high school yearbook of me and Homer Hernandez as Most Spirited Seniors. I'm in my ugly gold cheerleader outfit - think short pleated skirt and sweater - sitting on the crossbar atop the goal post. But I did not have slender thighs and the picture is taken from below and it's entirely unflattering. For posterity.

    Or as an adult? (only embarrassments you can tell us about) Being so starstruck when I met Sue Grafton I could barely mumble how much I loved her books. Being Sue Grafton, she was gracious to me.

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    1. Edith, I hope that Edit button tasted good at least. :D

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  4. I'm laughing so hard that I'm crying! I needed this! You've all made me feel less alone in my multitude of embarrassing moments!

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  5. Here's my answers:

    Name the biggest blooper in one of your books - No book but the biggest blooper I have had in a review was a long time ago. The press release that came with a CD I was reviewing included a translation of some Native American language (I can't remember which tribe) that was used in a song on the disc. After the article was posted, someone contacted me saying that the translation was wrong.

    What was your worst fashion faux pas? - Come on now! Everyone who has met me knows that I'm generally a walking fashion faux pas. Fashion of any kind does not impress me.

    The worst meal you ever cooked - No one has ever gotten sick from anything I've cooked so I consider that a win. But I don't spend much time cooking anymore. And when I do, my default cooking setting is to just cook it to DEATH. So if I was cooking for someone else to eat, they'd probably say everything was overdone. Let's just go to a restaurant, okay?

    Your most embarrassing moment in high school? - Too many to think of.

    Or as an adult? I don't have anything that I can't say but I'm at a loss for what might be considered the most embarrassing moment as an adult. Let's just say that pretty much any time I was dumb enough to ask out a woman ends up being embarrassing for how completely uninterested they were.

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    1. Jay, that incorrect-translation blooper sounds like the music publisher's mistake, not yours!

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  6. Oh my gosh--I love these! I'm glad I'm not alone in such bloopers!
    Book blooper: Name changes, again. One name of a secondary character in the novel itself.. . and a different name on the cover copy. Only one reader noticed. (That I know of.)
    Worst fashion faux pas: the bright lime green two piece outfit--a jacket and capri pants. The fabric was also a shiny sateen. I am short, and long waisted with shorter legs, so capri pants (I've learned) aren't great on me anyway. But somehow, in the 1990s, I thought this outfit was chic. (Oh, did I mention that I found matching SHOES?) Annnnddd.... I wore this outfit proudly to a formal Easter brunch. And a few other events. I felt so fashionable! Until I saw photos of the events. (Pre-instant-cell-phone photo days.) I looked like a human stuck inside a giant, somehow rectangular, shiny lime. I wailed at my husband and daughters (who were, admittedly, quite young at the time), why didn't you tell me I look ridiculous? Because, they said, you really liked the outfit. To this day, if I'm unsure of an outfit, I'll say, "is this the lime green suit again?" (Note: I still wear lime green and other bright colors. Just not as one giant bright block from neck to knees.)

    Worst meal--actually a few weeks ago. I tried a new recipe, involving black-eyed peas, spinach, and peanut butter. My husband bravely tried to eat it. I told him--don't eat that! And ordered take out to replace it.

    Most embarrassing moment in high school. Hmmm. I was pretty quiet and shy. But I did have the guts to write a, yes, literal high school musical. And a drama teacher had the guts to let me produce it. I was super proud of it, and in retrospect, what an accomplishment. But I overheard a few fellow students mocking it, and I was devastated. It didn't keep me from keeping on with writing!

    As an adult. I can't think of any off the bat. Which sounds just cocky enough that it's kind of embarrassing...

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    1. Jess, your shiny lime suit has me laughing out loud. I learned the hard way that husbands aren't usually the best judges of our outfits. Ross liked everything form-fitting that showed my cleavage, and disliked anything too like a caftan (to be fair, caftans make me look like Divine.) Thank heavens for daughters, who can grow up to give you brutally honest fashion critiques.

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    2. Jess, sorry but that recipe would not have enticed me in the first place!

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  7. Worst fashion faux pas: Those spectator pumps I bought in the 80s. When I looked down I saw Minnie Mouse feet.

    Worst meal: I can't remember not knowing how to cook, but the most disastrous was the time I turned the pumpkin pie upside down when taking it out of the oven. And it wasn't even my oven! The hostess was my daughter, and she was good about it tho.

    High school embarrassments: Too many to count, many having to do with surprise menstruation episodes.

    Adult embarrassments? Not really an embarrassment but it took some explaining. I was the hospice nurse on call one night. I got a page that a patient had died, so I needed to go to the home and take care of details. I got there, wasn't a patient with whom I was familiar, but he was certainly dead. I called the M.E., pronounced the patient indeed dead, did the post mortem care, bathing, dressing in clean pajamas, consoled the family, called the funeral home to come collect him, and three house later I was back in bed. When I went into work the next day, I found he was not our patient at all, had been referred to us but not yet admitted. I really should have checked on that, checked for the chart, but this was in the days before the electronic medical record.

    The family were quite pleased with the service though!

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    1. In eighth grade I was wearing a white skirt. On the way to the bus after school, a girl told me I had a spot on the back of the skirt. Mortified, I rushed back in and to the restroom, trying to hold a folder behind me. That damn Sue Roundtree had lied! I missed the first bus. And have hated that bully ever since.

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    2. Mean girls, Edith. Wow, she deserves your emnity!

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    3. Ann, that family will never have anything but praise for your hospice!

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    4. Edith, I hope you killed off that girl in a book!

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  10. I don't want to think about any mistakes that exist in my books. LOL

    Fashion? I never dressed fashionably. But the perm I had in middle school (not my choice) that gave me tighter curls than Little Orphan Annie has to rank right up there.

    The worst meal you ever cooked? I can't think of one right now, but I'm sure some of the ones from when I was first married were awful.

    Your most embarrassing moment in high school? I was the Editor in Chief of the yearbook my senior year. Traditionally, this person leads the assembly where they roll out the yearbook, introduce all the staff, and present the editors for next year. I was so unpopular and the very idea standing up in front of 1,000 fellow students appalled me. I begged the advisor to let the Photography Editor lead the assembly. He refused. Naturally, the entire assembly devolved into whispers, and catcalls, and general snickering, as teachers strode about attempting vainly to stop the racket. The advisor, standing behind me, said, "Just wait it out." I did. Minutes stretched on. And then (ack, it still makes me cringe) I said, "I can wait as long as you can." Cue the laughter. People brought it up at our 10-year reunion. Ack.

    Or as an adult? (only embarrassments you can tell us about) Meeting Mary Higgins Clark. Here was this lovely, gracious woman whose writing I'd loved for years and who inspired me to become a writer, and all I could do was fumble the words, "I love your books." I'm sure she thought I was a weirdo.

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    1. I did the same with my idol Tony Hillerman! Sat next to him at a signing and thought of witty things to say then mumbled “ I love your books!” Rhys

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  11. Thanks for a morning chuckle, in some cases a gaffaw, too. No books but plenty of typos to go around. They are still embarrassing, especially on a platform, like this one, where you cannot return and make a correction. I am a very slow reader and I'm the gal catching all of the typos and inconsistencies in books. Except for Edith, no one has requested that they be notified of those errors so I just let them slide.

    Fashion faux pas are in the eyes of the beholder. I remember getting sick to my stomach in junior high school when a girl told me my skirt and sweater didn't go together. Then there was my first day of school in my new town. I wore a turquoise and white peasant skirt and white peasant blouse. I am sure it was lovely, but all the girls were dressed as preppy as could be with Weejans (expensive loafers), straight skirts and round collared blouses. OMG. I was so out of place. Eventually, you find your own sense of style and comfort.

    I think this was before we were married, Irwin and I still laugh about the trout that I poached in milk from a recipe in my mother's 1940's Better Homes and Garden Cookbook. He went out and got us grinders from the local sandwich shop instead.

    High school embarrassing moments? Any time I wasn't prepared and it was my own fault. Getting an assignment wrong. Telling someone a secret and realizing they've used it. Oy, on and on.

    Embarrassing moment (too many): one of the worst was seeing a former client in a different setting and completely not recognizing him and calling him by someone else's name. Realizing it and apologizing but you can't take that back.

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    1. Judy, I've come to think the name thing is so common, people aren't as upset as we think they are. At this point, I preemtively reintroduce myself to everyone and explaining I'm terrible at remembering names. (I'm good with faces, though, so if we've met, I'll recall that - just not what you're called!)

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    2. Good, Julia. Sometimes I do not even recognize faces and that is just humbling.

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  12. This is so much fun - thanks for being so revealing!! I'm sorry to be chiming in late. There's the time I asked a (soon to be former) friend when her baby was due. She wasn't pregnant. Or I managed to structure a narrative in which the (person I thought was the) villain couldn't possibly have done it. High school was one unending embarrassment of wrong shoes, wrong sweater, wrong haircut, and pimples. I once wrote a character who goes looking in her kitchen cabinet for her favorite *bowels*...

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  13. Oh yeah, when a book I wrote got translated into dutch, I discovered that the protagonist's first name was Dutch for a man's private part. So was his last name. (And it wasn't Dick.)

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    1. Hank, why on earth didn't the publisher contact you about changing the name? Although now I think about it, there are a LOT of words that are also slang for twig and berries. :-)

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    2. Talk about embarrassing bloopers! I mean HALLIE, not Hank. My only defense is that I haven't had any caffeine yet, and Blogger doesn't give me a wiggly red line when I mess up someone's name. Sigh.

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    3. OMG, still just howling with laughter, Hallie! I LOVE THIS BLOG!

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    4. Julia, one of Jenn's romances has lots of such names in a little contest between the characters. Hilarious.

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    5. Hallie, that is hysterical!! Now I want a Dutch lesson!

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    6. Hallie, the Japanese translation of one of my books said I was born in a bath. They meant the City of Bath

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    7. Hallie, the Japanese translation of one of my books said I was born in a bath. They meant the City of Bath

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    8. "Born in a bath!" Could be - wasn't there a fad (perhaps it's ongoing) of water births taking place in the equivalent of a hot tub? Rhys, WERE you born in Bath??

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  14. I overhead the kindergarten mommies discussing the parent/child art assignments posted on a hallway bulletin board. "Look at that snowman. It looks like the mother let her child do it all by herself." The snow girl had earrings, eye makeup, and striped leggings.

    I approached the group and said, "I did."

    As I left the group: "I knew she was weird."

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  15. I was laughing at so many of these! I also have the name-switching character (Russ's sister started as Janet, became Janice, and then went back to Janet.) I had the terrible perm - why did we all think that was going to be a flattering look?

    I also want to see a picture of Hank in the lavender hot pants outfit! Hank, I bet you looked smashing. My mother, who was very fashion forward, had a hot pants suit (it had a long vest rather than a jacket) she bought at Carnaby Street when we lived in Europe. We have pictures of her wearing it with a trendy chain-link belt and a turtleneck (Mom's rule was always, "Bare on bottom, covered on top, and vice versa." She looked great. Let's face it, you're never going to look better than you will in your twenties, so why not take advantage of it?

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  16. Wiping tears of laughter here. We are all human and fallible. And the Reds are brave enough to admit it!

    I can't recall anything embarrassing in any of my books or articles. If there were cringe-worthy errors, I've suppressed them!

    Fashion faux pas-wise, when Steve and I were dating we were invited to an engagement party for his best friend. Steve told me it would be casual, so I dressed in khaki pants and a button-down shirt and casual shoes, very preppy (coincidentally, he was dressed nearly identically). We go to the party venue and I could see through the door a rack of fur coats just inside. Luckily, no one ever expects wildlife photographers to get dressed up, I found.

    The worst meal I ever cooked was possibly in the mid-70s when I invited my mom and stepdad for dinner made in my new microwave. Dinner was okay, but the cake I tried to make was half raw and half rock-hard. My stepdad NEVER let me forget that.

    My most embarrassing moment in high school had to be in freshman year, when I announced, loudly, to my seatmate on the bus that I would never even consider dating a football player. And of course I never did, at least not the ones at our high school. (Married for 39 years to the captain of his high school team, though.)

    Oh, gosh, as an adult, so many. Like the time I proudly told another kid's mom that my daughter was going to be playing junior varsity, like it was a step up from anything. I never did speak sports.

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  17. Ugh. Too many embarrassing moments. Several involved language, as in I'd heard people say that word but didn't know what it meant. And dang it, my friends would just giggle and not explain. One of the perils of being the youngest in a group. Junior high and high school were brutal! Fashion faux pas? Pretty much just whatever passed for fashion in the 70s. I do remember wearing some corduroy hot pants I'd sewn, with a coordinating pullover sweater and tall boots to college in New Orleans. It was winter time and I also had on a short trench coat which I did not take off the whole day. I'd never really cooked before I went off to college. The first apartment I shared inspired me to try to make an apple pie for my big brother. It was comical. The crust was like cardboard. The filling was from a can, but the wrong can. Apples instead of apple pie filling. It did not magically correct itself either. My first turkey after marriage took forever. It was still partially frozen when it went into the oven. My in-laws were so starved by the time it was done I think they would have eaten anything. My father-in-law complimented me though on cooking it all the way, because raw poultry was not good.

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  18. I've enjoyed reading through everyone's embarrassing moments and bloopers. As usual when replying to a set of questions, I stray outside of them. My worst fashion faux pas was more a mortification for my mother. When I was but a wee little girl, I was in some sort of fashion show in our small town for kids, and we walked down a runway of sorts, raised above the spectators. I must have been around 3 or 4, saying this to excuse myself. Too late my mother realized that I had failed to put on my underpants to my beautiful frilly dress. There are so many fashion embarrassments as an adult, that I will stick with the one when I can't be held responsible for knowing better. And, to my dying day I will stand by my leather skirt and vest as the coolest of outfits. Also, it's rather impressive to me that I was ever thin enough to pull off weather leather.

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  19. Oh my gosh- so funny! My high school embarrassment was going out of step during a marching band performance on the field. I wore a school uniform so I could not really mess that up,but I will never dress correctly.
    I read one author who changed the sex of the character's child between books. He has a disclaimer in his books😊

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  20. In high school I had orange shoes and pocketbook. Since my pocketbook is always with me, up to the stage it went when I got an award. My brother was very embarrassed.

    I know I made some bad meals but I can't really recall them. Stay safe and well.

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