Guilty Pleasures

DEBS: We all have them. (At least I think we all have them--maybe you will prove me wrong!) Our Friday chats have been trending a bit towards the confessional, so I just thought I'd ask. . .

Are you tempted by very expensive shoes?

A little flutter at the neighborhood poker game?

Eating Fritos in bed while reading very bad romance novels?

Sneaking off to a matinee when you're supposed to be working?

Chocolate sundaes?

Fess up, girls! And while we're at it, I suppose I have to admit mine--or at least the latest--slightly weird and embarrassing guilty pleasure.

I've never been much for ice cream (and that's slightly weird, too, I know, but I've been a foodie nut since I was a teenager, and don't have much of a sweet tooth.) There is, however, a Dairy Queen right down the street from my house. I used to take my daughter there for after-school treats when she was in middle school, but for years I'd driven by without a thought. Then, a few months ago, I had a vision of a small chocolate-dipped cone. I'd missed lunch, I was tired and cranky and worried about something, and that cone suddenly seemed like the antidote to all the world's ills.

So I drove up to the DQ window, payed my $1.98, then found a shady place to park, turned off my phone, rolled down the car windows, and ate the whole damned thing. Nothing left but the wrapper. It was twenty minutes of solitary bliss, and I did feel a whole lot better.

And I have to admit I've given into temptation a couple of times since, but I think it better not become a regular habit. I've just watched the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution episode where he talks about the ingredients in commercial ice creams-- things like shellac (made from bugs) and beaver anal glands. God knows what's in DQ soft serve!

So my guilty pleasure may be a bit lame (and certainly G-rated) but I'll bet none of you can top that for CHEAP!

HALLIE: Oh, Debs, we are so on the same page. For me it's a root beer float. We buy a liter bottle of A&W Root beer and a quart of good vanilla ice cream. The perfect amount for me is about a tablespoon of ice cream and 2" of root beer in a glass. That's all I need -- it's so perfectly sweet and tangy and creamy.

RHYS: I am waiting for the county fair to arrive because I adore cotton candy. What could be worse for you? But once a year I love pulling it apart and stuffing it into my mouth while I watch the fireworks. And a different kind of guilty pleasure (no, not that kind) is watching reruns of all the old British comedies on TV. I know them by heart and still laugh at the jokes.

HANK: Twizzlers. The red ones. What can I say. Also, certain movies: Bring It On, Working Girl, Desk Set--I guess they're sort of Ugly Duckling stories that always get to me. (And my very first job was at DQ, Debs, so if you need a curl on the top of a dip cone, I can totally make that for you. Also a dilly bar. No problem.)

Please don't ask about the shoes. But you should see the red ones I just got. Not feeling guilty, though. Nope nope nope.

Beaver anal glands? Honestly?

DEBS: Really, Hank. According to Jamie (I saw it on Letterman, too, so it must be true) beaver anal glands are used to make an additive called castoreum that's used in ice cream and other vanilla flavored products. Yuck.

HALLIE: Such interesting choices, Hank: Working Girl & Desk Set. Smart girl triumphs. Add to that His Girl Friday. I confess my favorite junkie movie is The Fifth Element. With flaming DJ Ruby Rhod, studly Korbin Dallas (Bruce Willis as a cab driver from the future... being funny!), Mila Jovovich in a brilliant performance as a redheaded alien who had to be inspired by Pippi Longstocking. Just say the word "Multi-pass" and I crack up.

JAN: My guilty pleasure this time of year is baseball. When my husband leaves on a business trip, this is how I misbehave. I watch the entire Red Sox Yankee game AND (and this is the indulgent part) the entire NESN Extra Innings and FINAL post-game chit chat. It's clips of the same game I JUST WATCHED, interspersed with a little analysis and player interviews where they say THE SAME THING after every game. Also about a gazillion commercials -- which leads me to my next guilty pleasure -- I'm starting to develop a thing for the pirate in the Captain Morgan rum ads that play nonstop during the game. Have you guys seen him?? He's got a great body and he's so very 18th century.......

HANK: Yes! Baseball! Go sox.

DEBS: Jan, I can see I'm going to have to start watching baseball. Or drinking rum. . . Hallie, I love The Fifth Element, too. My favorite Bruce Willis movie. Although my guiltiest movie pleasure is probably Love Actually. I can recite the dialogue . . . How sad is that? And if I'm feeling really self-indulgent, The Holiday. And Hot Fuzz . . .

Rhys, State Fair, yes, cotton candy, no. Corn dogs for me. Fletcher's, famous at the Texas State Fair.

And Hank, I may take you up on that curl:-)

ROBERTA: Oh Hallie, I love root beer floats too. That's what I get when we go to the ice cream store. Also home made cookies--one or two at a time from the freezer each night. And light fiction--don't give me Jonathan Franzen or Michael Chabon, give me Barbara O'Neal and Kristin Higgins...any combination of food and romance. As for movies, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, YOU'VE GOT MAIL, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING. John refuses to watch these one more time...

JULIA: My food guilty pleasure? Those boxes of Junior Mints, eaten in the well air-conditioned movie theater (because being indoors in the dark on a beautiful summer day is a guilty pleasure in and of itself) while watching some junky action-adventure flick (preferably with hunky guys ripping their shirts off.)

My lazing around guilty pleasure is following various miniseries/cult TV shows with my oldest daughter. We recently polished off the first season of THE WALKING DEAD, staying up until waaay too late to see which of our heroes was going to get bitten by zombies in this episode. Next up? GAME OF THRONES. I'm hoping Sean Bean will rip his mail shirt off.

DEBS: Julia, my daughter and I watched every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer together. More than once. And then (she must at least have been in college . . .) every episode of Sex and the City. Girl bonding, even if not G-rated.

Jungle Reds, we must be the root beer girls. It's the only soda that ever tempts me, usually reserved for things like road trips, so it's a really special treat. And root beer floats? Oh, my. Haven't had one in years. But now I may have to rethink that giving-up-vanilla-ice cream thing . . .

What about you, readers? Share your guilty pleasure.

(Oh, and by the way, I want those red shoes . . .)

Guilty Pleasures

It's my first week to take the wheel here at Jungle Red Writers! I'm hoping it'll turn out better than my first week driving back in the day (I hit a Buick in Carl's Drug's parking lot.) So without further ado, let's take 'er out for a spin.

I have a confession to make. I like February 15th better than February 14th. You can keep your flowers and your I (Heart) You teddy bears and your spring-loaded cards that play "Love Will Keep Us Together." I want chocolate half off. Seventy-five per cent off. Eighty, if you're willing to wait until a week after and risk getting nothing but Red Hots and Necco wafers. I load up on red and pink M&Ms and Hershey's Kisses. I promise myself I'll just have a few, for dessert, but at the end of the day, I'm sitting in my comfy chair with my feet up and a litter of pink and silver foil on the rug.

It struck me that reading is often the same way. How many times do you hear people referring to mysteries as fluff? Mind candy? A palate-cleanser? I see this all the time when I volunteer at my local library. The patron comes up the desk. She rather proudly lays down a book we shall call Extremely Sensitive and Incredibly Plotless. This book has been on the NYT Bestseller list for 46 weeks and has been reviewed in the New York Times, The Sunday NYTimes, The NYT Review of Books, The NYT Book Review Monday--and the author's apartment has been featured in the style section.

Then, sheepishly, she adds four mysteries to her pile. "I know it's just mindless entertainment," she apologizes. "But sometimes I just need something light."
What I want to say to her is, "Ma'am, it's not just mindless entertainment. I and my fellow mystery writers work incredibly hard, sometimes for years, to master the language and characterization and plotting that will have you sitting in your comfy chair until 2 am, devouring our books. It's okay to enjoy reading. It's a good thing to be swept away by a story and to laugh and weep along with the characters."

What I do say is, "I'm sure you'll enjoy these."

How about you, ladies? What do you say--or not say--when someone dismisses our genre as a guilty pleasure? (And does anyone else besides me buy out the candy section after St. Valentine's Day?)

JAN: If we're talking pure status, Julia, I'd WAY rather be seen on a plane reading books with titles like -- One was a Soldier -- or Come and Find Me -- Dead Head - or Murder, Murder and more Murder - than The Nannie Diaries (which was actually a really good book.) Mysteries have a hard edge, tough chick aura that Jersey girls like me aspire to. Whereas love stories - even literary, NYT bestselling, award winning, love stories always make me feel like a such a featherhead girl - even though I really do like them. But I think the bottom line is this: there's high end, well done mysteries, love stories, memoirs and literary books, and there's complete crap or total fluff mysteries, love stories, memoirs and yes, literary books, with the no plot, no-point prose that makes you wonder how on earth they got published.

And while I think I might give you a good run for your money in the bargain-hunting frugality contest, I confess that the day after Valentine's Day, I can't even look at chocolate! However, the day after Christmas, I have been known to restock my lights and wrapping paper.

HANK: Who was it that said to some mystery writer--are you ever going to write a REAL book? Listen, I'm sitting here tearing my hair out because I'm on page 385 (uh-oh) and I've got to get person A and person B to arrive in the same place at the same time and have a perfectly natural and logical reason for it to happen.
So although I am generally a pretty nice person, if someone were unwise enough, right about now, to make one crack about "mindless"--well let's just say they'd be the ones having a "%#*&%$% conflict in every sentence.

(I buy white tissue paper. Fabulous. Day after Christmas? They almost pay you to buy it...Happy First Blog day, dear Julia!)

DEB: I hate categories--cozy, fluffy, hard-boiled, literary. People having the idea there is only one kind of book they SHOULD read is like thinking you should choose between granola and Cheerios for every meal. I don't mean we shouldn't be discerning, but how can we be discerning if we don't sample things? And there are different types of books for different moods and situations. I bought two at the supermarket here in London the other day: the new Val McDermid paperback, Trick of the Dark, and a Katie Fforde. You all know Val McDermid's books, I'm sure, but for those US readers who aren't familiar with Fforde, she writes "fluff" romances. (Yes, the girl always gets the guy, but what's wrong with that? And they can be wickedly satirical--the heroine's horrid family in this book could have been right out of Austen.) The Fforde was the perfect book for a day feeling under-the-weather, the McDermid will be the perfect book for another occasion. I can't see that snobbery, literary or otherwise, is ever to anyone's benefit, and it deprives people of a lot of pleasure.

Happy First Blog Day, Julia, and here's to books of all sorts.

ROBERTA: My good friend Deborah Donnelly, who wrote the wedding planner mysteries, used to talk about how much pleasure it gave her to hear from a reader telling her that one of her books got her through the aftermath of surgery or a relative's illness or anything hard, really. I can admire beautiful writing but most of all I want characters and a story that pull me in--I don't care whether it's mystery or romance or bestseller...

Hank, 384 pages and still haven't reached the denouement--that's a whopper! can't wait for that one. Also can't wait for Julia's new book! And Hallie's! and Rhys's! And Rosemary's! I'm salivating...

RHYS: More than one person has said to me, "So will you ever try to write a real book?" And it's something I can't understand because to me the mystery is the ultimate study in human nature on the brink. Nothing else shatters the wholeness of the universe of a community or family like a murder. Mysteries are perfect opportunities for in depth character studies. And what's more our stories have a beginning,a middle and an end, which is more than one can say about many so called "literary novels."

Have you noticed that Barnes and Noble has shelves marked Fiction and Literature and others marked Mystery. But you know what, I don't care. I love my fans. I love my friends in the mystery world and I'm quite happy!

I think that went rather well! I got the blog back without breaking anything. To celebrate, I'm giving away 4 Advance Reader Editions of my upcoming book, One Was A Soldier. Tell us about your guilty pleasures--reading or otherwise--in the comments for a chance to win.