I am so pleased to have Kat Nove and Jen Decker on my blog today. They co-authored the soon to be best seller, Waiting for Karl Rove. It has been awesome getting to know them.
I understand you two haven’t met in person. How did this collaboration come together?
K: We met on an online writers’ website and at some point, Jeni decided (without asking for my input) that we’re literary soul mates. One day when I was perfectly happy playing Bejeweled Blitz on my computer, she emailed me and suggested (demanded) we write a book about Karl Rove. After I finished throwing up in my mouth and having a flash-forward where Karl Rove had my tax return audited, I agreed.
J: Kat and I met on an online writer’s workshop. I instantly loved her writing and sense of humor. TRANSLATION: I was jealous of her every witty phrase and clever bon mot. And continue to be so. She’s probably the reason for my debilitating self-loathing.
At some point a fellow writer said we should write a book together, given our similar taste in tasteless humor, political incorrectness and our all-around literary prowess. (My words, not his.) Because Kat works retail and I have two autistic kids, he further suggested we write a book based on our off-color e-mail correspondence entitled, “My Day Sucked Worse Than Yours, Because…”
Despite Kat’s negative influence on my chi, I acquiesced. But once we realized our e-mails weren’t exactly ready for prime time (or the eyes of anyone other than ourselves and possibly psychotics) I suggested writing a story about the two of us on a road trip where the mission was to track down Karl Rove and administer some estrogen-induced justice. (By tasering him till he peed himself.) The rest, as they say, is history.
Who do you read? Any favorite book or authors?
K I love Jeni’s work. She’s an amazing author who can write in any genre, seemingly with ease. I have eclectic tastes, but I prefer humor and satire. Christopher Moore, Dan Jenkins, Patrick Dennis, David Sedaris, Stephen King, Robert McCammon, Leon Uris. I’d be embarrassed to tell you how many times I’ve read Mila 18 by Uris. Okay, 2o. That’s not obsessive is it?
J Anyone funny right off the top, but I enjoy everything from literary to commercial fiction and really appreciate writers who elevate writing to an art form. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no reading snob - I’ve read everything from Charlaine Harris (don’t judge me) to David Foster Wallace - but what really gets my engine purring is a writer who steps over that line and revels in breaking rules while breaking new ground.I’m also keen on a thick historical biography where I can immerse myself in another time and place.
Some of my favorite writers: David Sedaris, Oscar Wilde, Augusten Burroughs, John Rechy, Edward Albee, Chuck Palahniuk…
From your book, who are the characters most like each of you or who is your favorite? * I fixed the questions at some ungodly hour with Power Rangers battling music from India while the spectrum kid bounced off of me. This was supposed to be a different question, (In your opinion what was the best part of the road trip and will you do it again?). But because the answers were good, (I know Kat & Jeni must have wondered what is she thinking), I am leaving it as is.
K I’d have to say Kat Nove is most like me. There’s no way that idiot is my favorite character though. Black Elvis is most like Jeni for obvious reasons.
The Big Lebowski has to be my favorite character. I’m a sucker for a man that cool, which shows either a lack of judgment or a major character flaw on my part. I should stick with an accountant-type, especially if he embezzles all of Donald Trump’s money and takes me somewhere we can’t be extradited. After that, I’d use some of those liberated funds to find somebody the exact opposite of the accountant. What were we talking about?
J The characters Jeni and Kat aren’t loosely based on us, they ARE us. Anything that happened in the book could actually happen if we were in the general vicinity of one another while hopped up on soda and Slim-Jims and headed to Las Vegas. Aside from finding both our characters funny as hell, I truly enjoyed how the character of “Geraldo Rivera” managed to turn himself into a total buffoon at every turn.
When you enter a room, what theme song is playing?
K Highway to Hell even though I don’t like AC/DC. I’ve demanded my daughter, aka Mortified Daughter play it at my funeral, but she just rolls her eyes and says, “Mom!” That girl is no fun whatsoever. I think she’s adopted.
J Elton John’s “Honky Cat” and I’ll enter the room singing it, preferably with a gaggle of scantily-clad septuagenarian backup singers doing a jazzy dance number behind me.
People are strange, (Bless their hearts). So finish this sentence:
People think I am strange because
K I have four boobs. I call the two boobs located in my armpits Beck and O’Reilly. Oh, wait. That’s just extra fat. I think finishing the sentence in this manner qualifies as the real reason people think I’m strange.
J I discuss my hemorrhoids with glaring regularity. But I figure if I’ve got to deal with the little hitchhikers riding shotgun in my pooper and their resultant assy treason (READ: horrific pain) I should feel free to share.
What type of writing atmosphere do you prefer?
K I do my best writing late at night, with rock music playing. Bands like Bush and Seether. Coffee is required. I use the constant trips to the bathroom to pee as an excuse to miss every deadline.
J I prefer writing in a dimly lit, well air-conditioned room that is completely silent, except for the sounds of Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Rachel Maddow sucking Pop Rocks from between my toes.
Unfortunately I have two kids, no air-conditioning and there are usually three TV’s blaring at a sanity-splitting decibel (day and night) as the smell of a gamey nine-year-old in a poop filled Pull-Up® flies past me with a dripping popsicle in hand, his heady funk wafting ever so gently around the room. So… yeah, I’ve gotten used to rolling with my dysfunctional environment and tuning out the sensory arrows assaulting their unintended target (me).
What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
K I love ice cream more than I love my grandkids. What? Is that the wrong answer?
J I have a few, deserve every damn one of them and feel absolutely no guilt: Chocolate; Hoarders: Buried Alive; iced mochas from McDonalds; more chocolate and a varying array of hair color purchased and applied so that I can maintain some semblance of control over something in my life, much to the chagrin of my ever-thinning tresses.
What are you reading now?
K I’m reading a horror novel by Dan Simmons – Summer of Night. I love horror, although I shouldn’t since I work retail. Talk about your horror show!
J Now, meaning now as I’m writing this, or now meaning when this interview actually goes up? Because I read a lot. Here are a few titles I’ve read recently and a couple I’ve got on my desk (because I usually read more than one book at a time):
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk
My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar’s Unusual Niece by Joan Schenkar
The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (reading for the third time. Love this book!)
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
Tell us about your upcoming book.
K I have an upcoming book? Sorry, what was the question? Oh, yeah. The sequel to Waiting for Karl Rove is tentatively titled Waiting for Royalties. (Take a hint people!) It takes up where the first book left off. SPOILER ALERT: The first word in my first chapter is one of George Carlin’s seven words. At least I think it is. I’m too lazy to look it up.
J Waiting for Karl Rove is irreverent, politically incorrect satire masquerading as road trip memoir. Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.
The chapters are written alternately from each of our points of view. Most of the time we were writing, neither of us knew what the other would be writing in the chapter before or after our next one. We had a basic idea of where we were going and possible things we’d encounter, but the best part of writing together (for me) was the challenge of having to riff off what Kat would do next. The way we kept things under control was to say, “Okay, I’m gonna get us from the hotel to so-and-so, and you’ll take it from there.” We started our fictional ‘journey’ in Texas, drew out a road map, knew our route and then just let things happen organically. As a result, I think we came up with something pretty interesting because we let the “characters” run with it.
Where can people find you? (Blogs, websites, book signings not grocery stores or parks – while we like book stalkers we try not to encourage strange stalkers)
Kat
Aren’t most stalkers strange? I don’t include stalkers like me who get a free baseball cap handed to them by bestselling author Christopher Moore due to their carefully crafted stalking skills. They can find me at my website, Facebook, Waiting for Karl Rove website and Twitter.
Twitter @KatNove
Jeni
TWITTER: @Jeni_Decker
FACEBOOK: Jeni Decker
NOTE: I try to encourage all stalkers because even the creepy ones can be potential book buyers. At the very least, a semi-harmless stalker can prove to be the beginning of a series of unfortunate events which land us on Nancy Grace - or talking to Anderson Cooper about the restraining order filed after our brush with death. Publicity, baby!
SHAMELESS PLUG: My memoir “I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames” is available for pre-order on Amazon.com and will be released on November 1st.
Ten for the fast round
1. Dogs or Cats?
K Cats. I do like dogs as long as they weigh as much as my ass (we’re talking Great Dane territory here) but I prefer cats. Why? Because they do to me what I’d like to do to most of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis. (Remember I work retail.) Tell them to go f&*k themselves. I like that in a mammal.
J Cats. I opted for a dog after my oldest son suffered a collapsed lung due to a cat allergy. Damn kids, always squashing my joy.
2. Beach or mountains?
K Mountains. I love the ocean, but don’t like sand. My favorite temperature is twenty degrees and Texas beaches are hot. Of course, I’m terrified of heights, so I could be conflicted here. Let’s say I like the base of mountains better than the beach.
J Neither because both presumably involve sweat and I don’t do sweat. I’ll choose mountains if I can look at them from the comfort of my chateau in France while relaxing next to a toasty fire.
3. Coffee, tea or soda?
K Coffee with cream and sugar. Lots and lots of coffee. Lots and lots of peeing. Running to the bathroom is my exercise plan. Screw crunches.
J Coffee!!!!
4. Cake or pie?
K Pie. I eat both Frito pie and coconut cream pie in a bowl, but not at the same time. That would taste like shit.
J Whichever I can have now.
5. Movie or book?
K Book. I love movies, but with very few exceptions (The Green Mile, Terms of Endearment, Schindler’s List) books always seem to be better than the movie. If Waiting for Karl Rove is ever made into a movie, the book would still be better.
Now let’s casturbate!
Diane Lane will play me. Kate Winslett will play Jeni. I don’t care who Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Denzel Washington play, as long as they all beg to meet the author. Did I say author? I MEANT the authors.
J Book. No, wait. Movie… No, book. Depends on my mood.
6. Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt?
K Johnny Depp. I consider him the greatest actor of this generation, unless you count my ability to fake liking my customers.
J Neither. Morgan Freeman could teach them a thing or two about cool.
7. Museum or zoo?
K Museum. Zoos make me sad. I hate to see animals in cages. Funny zoo story. At the San Antonio Zoo I overheard a woman telling her daughter, “Mira at the tiger, mija.” She was looking at a snow leopard. I spent the rest of the day saying, “Look at the tiger.” Flamingo. “Look at the tiger.” Baboon. “Look at the tiger.” Hippo. I’m kind of a smartass.
J Really? Hmm, let’s see. A nice, cool inside environment where I can leisurely peruse art… or a hotbed of stress involving the stench of animal feces and whining kids. Let me think about it some more.
8. Phone call or text?
K Phone call. I don’t want to talk to anyone enough to even answer the phone, which means I certainly don’t want to waste valuable writing minutes on texting. (See answer to next question.)
J Neither. I don’t have time for that crap - unless you’re offering me money, in which case, phone, text, e-mail, homing pigeon, singing telegram…
9. Computer games or board games?
K Computer games. Hours and hours of computer games. I think up entire novels while playing them. The thinking up is the important part of being a writer, right?
J Scrabble; Best. Game. Ever. (Old-school board game, none of that fancy-schmancy computer crap. I wanna feel the tiles in my hands.)
10. E reader or real book?
K Real book. I love book covers and love even more discovering the idea behind the cover. I love to hold a book in my hands. I love to smell them and fall asleep with them on my breasts. Uhh…is this answer getting weird?
J Real book. I’ve got a Kindle but rarely use it for the same reason as I want to fondle the Scrabble tiles. The closest I get to the big “O” these days is when I walk into a library and take in the unmistakable aroma of years of weathered pages, limitless possibility and… quiet.
From Good Reads:
Waiting for Karl Rove is an irreverent, politically incorrect satirical fiction masquerading as road trip memoir.
Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.
There is a second post with the book trailer video. I could not get it all on the same post. Please check it out. It is awesomely funny!
Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.
There is a second post with the book trailer video. I could not get it all on the same post. Please check it out. It is awesomely funny!
I loved this book. Whenever I am asked if I have a favorite book I say no because there are so many I love. Now I have a book I can call a favorite. Reading Waiting for Karl Rove you will feel right there with Kat and Jeni. This book will make you call up your best friend and rope her into a road trip, (even if she did set your hair on fire – she apologized). You will laugh so hard you may tinkle, (if you are prone to this, wear Depends or put one of those puppy training mats under you). Carve out a block of time, and order food because once you start the trip you will not want to stop. This book will be the most fun you have had on the road, (with the bonus of not getting lost, sleeping in the Bates Motel, eating bad food or getting tasered and being hauled off to the pokey).
Look for it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Karl-Rove-utterly-improbable/dp/1461028590/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311213195&sr=8-2
Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waiting-for-karl-rove-jeni-decker/1030537299?ean=9781461028598&itm=1&usri=waiting%2bfor%2bkarl%2brove
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