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It Must Feel Colder In Hell Today…

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…because I cleaned my office. It’s a miracle.

I tend to find that while I’m writing a book, my office is a nightmare of filth. I just finished writing book four and suddenly I was no longer blind to the seriously unsanitary conditions and precariously stacked empty diet coke cans teetering unsafely in the stagnant breeze.

Because I do not want to get Tetnus and also because I had nothing better to do, I cleaned up my office. It’s a banner day that comes about once a year, I think, so I’m going to celebrate with this post, which I will call:

Jenny’s Office: By The Numbers
(Distances are approximate. Void where prohibited.)

400 books of various genres and subjects
200 feet to Jenny’s doctor’s office from her office.
50 Disney trading pins
16 ugly unicorn statues, suncatchers, pictures and general bric-a-brac
14 decks of tarot cards
11 folios of sheet music
8 Bertrice Small novels
7 Earth, Wind and Fire albums
5 Musical instruments (trombone, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, Yamaha keyboard, bodhran)
4 quartz crystals
3 Little Apple Dolls
2 pictures of Herman Melville
1 crystal ball

Other assorted clutter includes various wigs and hats, a framed steak knife and a cross stitched sampler of my favorite phrase “Nevermind, I’ll do it myself” translated into Scots Gaelic.

How does this enviroment, when free from dirty dishes, empty cheetos bags and discarded black jelly beans, help me focus my scattered creative energy and funnel my ideas into one, cohesive fictional vision?

I have no idea.

In fact, I’m sure that if I was mauled by bears at a camp out and dragged off into the night, the family member assigned to sorting through my things and putting my affairs to order will probably give up half way through the job, shaking their head and saying, “It’s a good thing she died, because she was clearly insane.”

There was a point to this. Probably some Virgina Wolf-esque, room-of-one’s-own type thing.

My office is clean! Wheee!

How Can A Genius Like Me Be So Bad At Technology?

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I’m also bad at keeping up a blog. But that’s because I’m on a deadline, dangit.

I’m bad at technology. I cannot install Flash player on my computer for some reason. Oh, it says it is installed. It lies. Like a rug.

I also can’t navigate the murkey depths of amazon.com, either. I tried to make a comment on a review there (for my own book, which was probably not the best decision I’ve ever made, but I try to live with no regrets) and I ended up continually deleting the post, over and over again. I’d get nearly done and I’d hit the wrong thing and the delete the entire post.

I don’t understand it. How on earth can I function as an otherwise normal human, yet completely screw up something as simple as navigating a website?

In other news, I vow to be better at this whole “blog updating” thing. I don’t understand how people manage it, really.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who came out to my signings last week. I know some of you drove a long, long way. Don’t tax your engines, okay? I’m not that cool.

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Well, the good news is that book two is out. The bad news is that I must not avoid google for three to six months. Why? Because I read negative reviews and end up yelling curse words at the computer screen.

I think of all the books that I’ve read and wanted to post scathing amazon.com reviews of, and then I’m glad I didn’t. Because somewhere there would be an author screaming obscenities at me.

The winter weather has finally arrived in Michigan. So much so that I can’t see my garage from my house. And it’s not a big distance, believe me. There is simply so much snow blowing out there that it’s impossible.

Also, I have really bad eyes.

There wasn’t a lot of point to this post, so… I’ll leave it at that.

Lollerskates.

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Wow, check out this GLOWING effing mention I got from likesbooks.com:

“Blood Fires: The Turning, Jennifer Armintrout (2006) – This debut by a fairly young author (she’s 26) of the first in a violent vampire fiction series isn’t a major disappointment, and it isn’t boring. It’s downright awful. My conclusion is that this is post-9/11 fiction for nihilists. Though the author created a couple of interesting characters and a difficult and intriguing tentative relationship for them, any interest I had was destroyed by one intimate scene that is the stuff of a true sadist’s dream. I’ve no problem with gore in general; indeed, an oddly favorite moment in one of Anne Rice’s vampire books features a couple of vampires literally breaking people’s bones and devouring their bodies, yet a similar moment in this book nearly brought up my lunch. This was, for me, the worst book of the year. “

Okay, wow. It’s somehow doubly harsh when someone calls your book “post-9/11 fiction for nihilists,” “downright awful,” “a true sadists dream” and “the worst book of the year,” but can’t even hate it enough to get the title right.

Blood Ties Book Two: Possession

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Okay, the good news is, book two will be out and about sometime around February. I don’t quite understand when books come out. It’s a February release (February 6th, to be technical), but it could be on shelves as early as the 29th.

Something about all that seems weird to me. Books seem to be the only entertainment things that could release earlier/later than their intended date. When they say a DVD is coming out tuesday, it doesn’t go on the shelf until tuesday. When a new video game system comes out, it doesn’t go onsale until 12:00am the day it’s supposed to be released. But with books, you could be really super excited to read one that comes out in May, run down to the bookstore May 12th, and they might not have it yet.

I wonder why that is? Of course, maybe this seems like such a huge, fascinating mystery because I’m trying to avoid getting any real work done.

Dude, my house is effed up.

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Well, it’s New Year’s Eve, I’ve got a last resort party happening here at about 8pm, and my house is all effed up. Bad. I know I have to clean– unless I use my awesome brilliantness to think up a way to make washing the dishes a hip new party game– and I have to go the grocery store and make some munchies (nothin’ says lovin’ like store bought taquitos), but I can’t bring myself to get off the couch. I just want to be lazy and watch E! and VH1 because you KNOW they’re going to be rerunning those addictive countdown shows today, but alas, I must do SOMETHING so my house doesn’t smell like last night’s dinner when folk get here.

The good news is, 2006 is almost over. Yeah, it was a good year (first book dance, woot), but it’s no where near as good as next year will be, because next year I’ve TWO books coming out. That’s right, not one, but TWO. I’m excited, and I can’t wait.

I can only imagine how exciting it will be when I can afford to replace myself with a robotic version of myself and I can put out like, four books a year. You know, like what happened with Nora Roberts. Or should I say, “like what happened with Norabot 4000”?

Shake N’ Bake

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Welcome, lucky reader, to the inagural post of my new blog.

Let me break it down: at the urging of some friends who apparently have all the time in the freaking world to capture and tame and lovingly pet the beast know as MySpace.com, I made an account there. And because it is the world’s most time-wastingest, complicated blog/email/bulletin board/etc. monstrosity to ever be expelled from the very bowels of hell, I’ve yet to learn how to use it properly. I go, I add people to my friends list who are brighter than me and have figured out how to manuever around the site and I glare at Tom’s smiling face.

If you’ve never been to MySpace, “Tom” is the generic starter friend you get when you first sign up to the site. I don’t know what his function is, but the user pic is of a smug bastard who clearly knows how to use MySpace better than I do. I despise him.

After failing to be a hip young person and get in on all the MySpace fun, I just made a LiveJournal for myself. LiveJournal is simple. It’s friendly, easy to use and, unfortunately, sort of exclusive to LJ users. If you don’t have an LJ, you probably either won’t find it or won’t want to deal with getting an account so you can post a comment that isn’t labelled just “Anonymous.” Or however you spell it.

I should, at this point, warn potential readers that I am an abysmal speller, so if that sort of thing makes you crazy, well, it was lovely to meet you, because I don’t use spellcheck.

In any case, I’ve decided to make this, my third blog– because two weren’t enough and four is too many– which is more accessible and customizable and junk.

I might try to make the same posts to all three. I might not. Variety is the spice of life.

And this blog won’t always be about writing or when the next book is coming out or whatever. I’m very flakey and unfocused, and my entries will probably reflect that.

In the meantime, Peace Out.