Suffragette: An LDS Perspective

Tweet

by LJ:

This is me and Holly Washburn at a Suffragette screening. I'm holding up two Vs for Victory in a nod to Winston Churchill. It's not two peace signs, though peace is a good thing too.

I went with my friend Holly to see a screening of "Suffragette" about the women's rights movement in Britain in the late 19th century, and cried myself dehydrated.

Frankly, I was confused why this movie affected me so deeply. My life is embarrassingly good, compared to a washerwoman in 19th century London. My parents were middle-class, loving people with good education. My mother was (and still is) a powerhouse who taught me I could accomplish anything with enough hard work and elbow grease. I graduated from college. I married a man who brings home the bacon, then comes home to wrangle three kids, cook dinner (sometimes) and mop the floor (always) so I have time to write fiction.

But those tears, people. The tears. I am usually good at muscling them down when Hollywood throws an emotional potshot. But there's one scene where Carey Mulligan's character [SPOILER ALERT] finds out her estranged husband is adopting out their son to another family, and she has no say in the matter. I broke down into quiet sobs and Holly kindly slipped me the stack of napkins, originally intended for popcorn grease. I used all but two of them.

Nine Months With a Dumb Phone

Tweet

by LJ:

So there was this one time I went from an iPhone 4 to a Nokia brick phone for nine months.

I downgraded because I was too tight-fisted to pay retail prices for a smart phone and because my inner hipster was reveling in the return to simplicity. (Or maybe it's my inner Luddite. Hard to tell.) I would eschew the time-suck of constant Internet access. I would curb the narcissist that lurks behind every Instagrammer. I would be better than all of you.

Let me spoil the ending for you: I am back in a smart phone. I took this photo with my Droid, which has a far better camera than the fancy point-and-shoot I bought in 2007. I texted it to several people, put it on Instagram, and then reveled in the validation that came rolling in.

So much for a return to simplicity.

However, this has been a return to convenience. This phone obeys some simple voice commands and frankly that makes me a little giddy. I can tell the robot inside to call my husband and it dials him for me. It makes a friendly pinging sound whenever someone validates me on social media or--even better!--tells me where the nearest QT is so I can get a giant cup of crushed ice. (Yes, I don't get out very much.)

All that being said, I don't regret the regression to Dumb Phone. It acted as a kind of reset for me, a chance to clear my head and realize I was becoming a total screen monkey. With my little umbilical charger cord severed, I spent 300% less time on the Internet. I called people instead of texting. I rediscovered how much I hated texting with T9. I paid more attention to my kids. I read more books.

Now that I find myself back among Smart Phone users, I have to find a balance. I can appreciate voice commands, the fancy camera, picture texting, mobile Skype and Voxer. (Seriously guys, it's an app that turns your phone into a walkie-talkie, which should appeal to the 5th grader in all of us.) I can also turn it off, put it down, and remember that my time is too precious to spend constantly losing on Candy Crush.

How do you find a balance?


Laurie Jayne (LJ) Stradling began her writing career with horrible grade-school poetry (the kind with illustrations in the margins). She has since moved onto blogging and the occasional piece of fiction, which has improved slightly since she gave up the illustrations. LJ is a quiet feminist, a loud mom, a well-kept wife and a fervent believer in prayer. She also believes that most dogs came to the earth after the Fall of Adam. Twitter: @lauriestradling.

MMM Library: The Swearing Stand-Off

Tweet

by LJ:

I come from a swearing Mormon family. Grandmother (Mom's mom) could cuss with the best of them and Grandpa (Dad's dad) dropped cowboy swears so casually that even talks in church were tinted a light shade of blue. We all appreciated Grandpa's swears because you could repeat them in context without getting your mouth washed out.

I picked up a mean swearing streak in middle school that carried over past my college career. At BYU, swearing was like a litmus test for friendship: If I could swear occasionally around you, we could be friends. If I couldn't, I occasionally daydreamed about how mad I had to make you to get you to swear back at me.

Now, I definitely had swearing standards. "Hell" and "damn" were Tier 1 swears, or "Bible swears," and weren't actually offensive. Same with "jackass" and "bastard" (or, as my little brother called it around sensitive ears, "turd of bass.") The words having to do with excrement or the gender of a dog were heftier and thus saved for more weighty situations. I never dropped The Granddaddy in my entire life. Still haven't. I have to stop somewhere.

A Primer on Craigslist Housing Scams

Tweet

by LJ:

Between late January and mid-February, our landlord passed away unexpectedly and my husband was let go from his job. One heaven-sent job offer and a month later, we found ourselves back in Arizona with a working car and a (mostly) happy family, but nowhere permanent to live.

We jumped headfirst into the gaping maw of Craigslist and this is where I started to see some patterns in its sad, scammy world, especially the rental listings. I share this hard-earned knowledge with you in the hopes it saves you a few hours of empty searches. Let's start with my favorite rental scam, the Sloppy Listing. 

The Sloppy Listing has three trademarks: (1) a single, grainy photo of the house exterior, (2) wobbly English, and (3) the zip code awkwardly written anywhere in the description.

Example:

Home Sweet Home For You !

Description: You don't want to get pass by this beautiful home in the charming 85254 zip code area neighborhood of Phoenix. This house is fine 3/4 acre parcel with 4 bedroom 2 and half bath with granite counters in the bathroom and kitchen area's. It is beautiful home and come by and see today before its going to someone else!

A bonus giveaway to a Sloppy Listing is that the monthly rent is way too low, or any additional photos are obviously pieced together from two different houses. My favorite was a home in "central Phoenix" with all deciduous trees in the front yard and a snow-capped mountain range in the background.

If you pass the Sloppy Listing, you might get lured in by the Sorta Legit Listing. It has (mostly) correct English and pertinent property information, but the photographer has carefully cropped out the cat skeletons in the rafters or the bombed-out meth shack next door. This is where I turn to Google Maps to show me street views of the neighborhood and then SHABAMMO. I can see for myself the scrap lumber pile off the carport that houses a giant scorpion colony.

Smart Phone, Dumb Phone

Tweet

by LJ:

Back in October, I purchased this phone for $30 off eBay in a fit of zealous rage against technology. I never actually succeeded in switching my plan, since my Giant Unnamed Provider told me they'd start charging me more money for less phone, so I stuck with my iPhone 4. I had wanted to break ties with my phone a year after I realized I was being charged an extra $100 a month for the honor of owning an iPhone, but by that time it was too late. I had grown a little charger-shaped umbilical cord to my phone.

I took it everywhere, like a precious object. Whenever I left it in one room, my toddler son would run and get it, proudly proclaiming, "'S Mommy's phone!" and hand it back to me. And I was always, always grateful to have it safely back in my hand.

I drove with it balanced on one leg in case of sudden Internetty emergencies, like refreshing my phone email over and over again at a stoplight. I took it in the bathroom with me. Late at night, my husband and I would lie in bed next to each other and surf the Internet without speaking. It was all very Fahrenheit 451.

I tried to wean myself off my phone by deleting all social media and Candy Crush, but that still left the relentless call of the Internet. Plus, I was doing weird things like checking my financial accounts several times a day just to keep my thumb on that screen.

Fast forward to January. We got stuck coming home from Christmas thanks to a creative scheduling error by United Airlines that had us leaving on our connecting flight two hours before we left our original destination. This combined with the POLAR VORTEX meant we spent two days entertaining our toddler son and infant daughter in two different airports and clinging to sanity by our fingernails.

So now you can understand why in a moment of desperation I gave my crying daughter my iPhone to chew on. It held on bravely for about two hours and then gave up the ghost.

Why You Should Care About "Austenland"

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that most Mormon girls swooned over the wet-shirt version of Pride and Prejudice, and it changed the concept of romance for us all. This is why we keep going back to other, lesser period romances and Jane Austen fan fiction, but luckily Shannon Hale stepped in with Austenland. Which is going to be released as a movie. Like, now.

Excuse me while I go geek out about this for a few minutes. There is so much history behind this for me.

I got my first dose of the BBC Pride and Prejudice at a sleepover in 1998. It took me three VHS tapes to get Darcy's name right and after his first horrible botched proposal to Lizzie Bennet I remember thumping my pillow and bawling, "Oh come ON Darby, just say you love her!" at the screen. My mom surprised me with my own set of bulky pink VHS tapes that Christmas and I spent the next six years hosting numerous P&P parties at my house. (My brother Steve even invited his buddies over for a showing because he loved Mr. Collins that much.)

Fast-forward to 2008, where I bought a book by someone named Shannon Hale who delivered a premise I couldn't ignore: a heroine basically goes to a Jane Austen theme park and lives out the Colin-Firth-in-a-wet-shirt fantasy she had probably nurtured with her own set of bulky pink VHS tapes. At a sleepover. In 1998.

The Puppy Song, or The Inexplicability of Internet Funnies

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

One Friday night a friend watched our kids for a few hours so we could go out and eat ourselves into a meat coma for our date. When we came back she was calmly rocking our squalling won't-take-a-bottle infant and letting The Boy play on her iPhone, which is to say she was being the greatest babysitter ever.

In the course of our post-date debriefing she said The Boy had kept asking for "puppy song." Since she  didn't understand that "puppy song" means "old Muppet Babies reruns on YouTube," she patiently searched the internet and found a video of a puppy dog singing an off-key and lightly creepy version of Happy Birthday. Which The Boy watched four dozen times in a row.

I don't know what it was about this video ... the Chipmunk voice? My state of constant sleep deprivation? Whatever it was, I laughed until I was palming tears of mirth off my face. Last time that happened was reading a Tumblr post of all the creative butcherings of Benedict Cumberbatch's name, and before that was listening to goats yell like humans.

So here's your chance, gentle readers. Pitch me the last Internetty thing that made you laugh until you cried, and I hardly need add I won't judge you. I couldn't, not after the Puppy Song incident. Plus I figure we could all use a good laugh.

Top Ten (Clean) Twitter Picks

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

I first joined Twitter in 2008 to prove to a company they should hire me as their social media coordinator. When I didn't get the job, I abandoned my account for a few years because a) I didn't see the point of Twitter and b) I didn't know how to use it anyway. Hence why I wasn't hired.

Now that I've joined the scads of smartphone-addicted-robots in America, I turn to my phone for entertainment should my brain ever fall to rest. Twitter is my favorite--I can streamline my social media to only include people who spit out pithy punch lines that are (mostly) free of smut.

Without further ado, I present my Top Ten (Clean) Twitter Picks:

Inspirational
C.S. Lewis Quotes (@CSLewisDaily). The best place to turn for a daily dose of my favorite honorary emeritus apostle.

Brits
Rowan Atkinson (@OfficialMrBean). His feed is funny, but also purely self-depricating and never mean.

Science
Science Porn (@SciencePorn). Tasteless name, awesome facts and photos.

Factoids
Google Facts (@GoogleFacts). Several mind-blowing little facts a week. Note: there is the occasional sex-related fact, but nothing crazy.

Novelty Feeds
Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday). These tweets are plots of would-be Seinfeld episodes, and they're dead on. My personal favorite so far: "George dates the model who is 'the face of Duane Reade.' Kramer is furious to learn that she's not actually a pharmacist." Runners up include Sixth Form Poet (@sixthformpoet) and Very Short Story (@VeryShortStory) for pure quality content.

Brother Jake Explains the "Simple" Gospel

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

This video is brought to you by my extremely clever little brother, Jake Frost. It's a tongue-in-cheek--yet surprisingly astute--overview of our "simple" gospel.

The Caleb Miracle: Redux

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

In late August 2012, I began what would be my first hurdle toward my own Caleb miracle and wrote about it here on MMM.

On December 13th, 2012, I dropped off my application for a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Then I went home to eat half a tube of Toll House cookie dough.

Turns out applying for grad school is a huge boogery process, including mysterious "processing" fees, blood sacrifice and references to prove that you yourself can be connected to Kevin Bacon in six degrees or less. For someone who consistently pulled C+ grades at the BYU, this also meant two months of intensive cramming for the GRE (I still scored in the dumb-kid range in math), a personal statement and an original 23-page short story.

To top it all off, I decided to do this one month after moving 2300 miles cross-country with our extremely active toddler to settle here for my husband's new job. And I was like four months pregnant with our second kid.

All the circumstances melded into one perfect storm of SWEET FANCY MOSES ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GOURD from sources both without and within. Many of my beloveds cheered me on or fielded incoherent phone calls when I was too tired and pale and weepy to edit my own work, much less melt a dang quesadilla for dinner.

The Turkey Bowl Potshot

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

We still talk about our family Turkey Bowl in 1998 because it spurred The Most Blatant Potshot Ever. (If you're unfamiliar with Turkey Bowl games, this article from the Wall Street Journal is an excellent primer.)

The stage for The Potshot was set the year before when my mom bought my little brother Jake a set of mini football pads, helmet and jersey from the Sears Catalog. Jake had been drooling over this same set for at least two previous Christmases, and Mom even got iron-on letters and put FROST on the back of the jersey. When it showed up under the tree, Jake was over the moon.

Jake insisted on packing the entire set from Arizona to Utah the following Thanksgiving for our annual Turkey Bowl game. We drove to the high school soccer field with a slew of Litster cousins and when we emptied out of our vans, we had at least two dozen players decked out in mismatching cold weather gear, plus one full-fledged running back for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Our Turkey Bowl had few rules and we followed them religiously:

1. The ending score was always a tie.
2. It was a touch game.
3. If a little kid got the ball, they made a score. No exceptions.

Jake and I benefitted from Rule #3 for years. One of my brothers would catch the ball and hand it off to one of us, then two other brothers would pick us up by the armpits and run us into the end zone. When we got a little older, we'd run the ball ourselves while the defensive line made an elaborate show of trying to tackle us. By '98, Jake and I were 9 and 13 and too old for such privileges, so we joined the ranks as regular players.

We played for an hour before my brothers and cousins got the idea to hike the ball to our 5-year-old cousin Adam. Off he ran, the big kids blockading the defensive line from the front and all other cousins diving out of his way to give him a clear shot to the end zone.

All Jake saw through his little plastic face mask was that they had finally given the ball to someone smaller than he was.

He didn't hesitate. He didn't even think, "I can get away with this." He just ran out of pure instinct and tackled Adam from the side, smashing his little body into the grass.

There was a collective gasp, punctuated by Adam's wails. Then the big kids pulled Jake off and started yelling variants of "What were you thinking?!" As the condemnations floated through the ear holes in his little blue helmet, Jake said it was the first time he questioned his decision to crush a small child.

Needless to say, he got benched for the rest of the game. But you better believe the story of the Turkey Bowl Tackle still lives today.

Giveaway 21: Winner & Movie Review

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

The winner of the The Odd Life of Timothy Green DVD/Blu-ray Combo Pack is Kristi O'Dair Clews (link to comment). Please email us your address by this Friday to claim your DVD. If you didn't win, buy this wonderful movie for your family starting December 4th.

First and foremost, The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a squeaky-clean movie with a good message about putting family first. It's almost totally free of fart jokes, double-entendres, or even kids being super rude to their parents. This was a breath of fresh air because I feel like some kid movies are incredibly and intentionally crass. (Anyone closely connected with the late Jim Henson or Pixar Studios, you are of course excused from this sweeping generalization.)

My husband and I had seen the trailer for this film earlier in the year and frankly, I didn't know what to expect. It looked like a couple without children who somehow mysteriously grow a son in their garden overnight. (I found this to be a fun little detail, considering how many of us Mormon kids probably went through some of our childhoods believing that sex was for degenerates and that we were picked from the garden ourselves.)

From a technical standpoint, I thought it was a really pretty movie with a gorgeous setting and great costuming. The look and the score contribute to a homey, small-town feel that made me oddly nostalgic. CJ Adams as Timothy Green, gave the best performance of the film as a slim little dreamer, a trusting and gentle soul who goes around making people's lives better.

This being said, this is a movie that would be difficult for the 8-and-under crowd mostly because the pace is a little slow and the ending is a little sad. Parents, be ye warned that it also verges into corny territory in a couple of spots. However, The Odd Life of Timothy Green is worth the watch because it encourages you to do your best by your family and put your pride aside. Most importantly, it gives you license to believe in little miracles when they do come along.

Giveaway 21: The Odd Life of Timothy Green Blu-ray/DVD

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

Once again, our kind connections with Disney are providing us a new pre-Christmas giveaway, this time a shiny Blu-ray/DVD of The Odd Life of Timothy Green, which hits shelves everywhere on December 4th. Like with Brave, I will be writing my own review of Timothy Green sometime next week.

Giveaway Guidelines:
You have THREE chances to enter. Each entry requires a separate comment.
1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Like MMM on Facebook or share this post on Facebook. Leave a comment letting us know you did.
3. Follow MMM on Twitter or share this post on Twitter. Leave a comment letting us know you did.

• 5 days to enter (closes Sunday, November 25th at midnight).
• Winner announced the week of Monday, November 26th.
• Winner must respond via email with their address by Friday, November 30th to claim the DVD.

Brave Revisited, or Why Blu-ray is Actually Super Awesome

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

Congrats to the winners of the Brave DVD/Blu-ray giveaway! If you weren't one of the lucky two (don't cry, I never win anything either), Brave is now in stores and available online for purchase. Or, you know, for your kids.

I know I already talked about how Brave basically blows every previous Disney princess film out of the water. This viewing marked another first for me: the first time I've ever seen a film on Blu-ray.

To say I was flabbergasted would be a slight understatement. My husband and I are not technophiles and have never owned a TV in our marriage that exceeded 15" of screen (or had a working remote to our DVD player, come to think of it). This is not for ideological reasons. It's because we're cheap.

Enter our good friends Sam and Sara, who graciously hosted our viewing party at their house because they've got at least a 40" screen, a sound system and a Blu-ray player. I figured that purchasing films on Blu-ray, like eating organic or using premium gasoline, was yet another marketing scheme to eke more money out of you. (Did I mention that we're cheap?)

Well, turns out I was wrong. Seeing Brave on Blu-ray made it sharper, brighter and even more detailed than I'd seen it on the big-screen. This was a boon unto itself, since I feel like it takes a good half-dozen views of any Pixar film to be able to catch all the little details or even all the jokes.

Giveaway 18: Brave Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

Hello, dear readers. I was recently contacted by the marketing team for the Blu-ray/DVD release of Disney-Pixar's Brave because of my review of the film for MMM. Why am I telling you this? Shameless self-promotion, of course, but most importantly because there is a SWEET, SWEET GIVEAWAY in your immediate future.

Enter this MMM giveaway to win the the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack of Brave, which hits shelves on Tuesday, November 13th. This home version of the newest Pixar beauty is jam-packed with goodies and extras: all-new bonus material, behind-the-scenes features, extended and deleted scenes, and a new Pixar short called The Legend of Mordu.

You want this, dear readers. Especially those of you who toted little Meridas around trick-or-treating this Halloween.

Giveaway Guidelines:
You have THREE chances to enter. Each entry requires a separate comment.
1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Like MMM on Facebook or share this post on Facebook. Leave a comment letting us know you did.
3. Follow MMM on Twitter or share this post on Twitter. Leave a comment letting us know you did.

• 7 days to enter (closes Friday, November 9th at midnight).
• Winner announced Monday, November 12th.
• Winner must respond via email with their address by Friday, November 16th to claim the DVD.

More Worst LDS Hymns (With Some Bests)

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

A-Dub wrote this exceptional post about the worst hymns in the LDS Hymnbook. A-Dub, I add a respectful chunk of Worsts to your already excellent list (with one duplicate) and then throw in a few of what are, in my opinion, the Bests.

#307: In Our Lovely Deseret is a hymn my little brother ruined for me when we were in high school. One Sunday we were singing it in church and when it got to the first chorus, he looked over at me and started clapping his hands and barking like a seal in time with the "Hark! Hark! Hark!". I had tears running down my face by the time the song ended.

#285: God Moves in a Mysterious Way is one of the sad little hymns with some pretty good text and the most boring melody in the book. Click through for yourself and see.

#216: We Are Sowing stands out in my memory just because ... well, let me explain. My mom has an astounding memory in general, but I'm convinced she has the hymnbook memorized and has for the last 30 years. She sang the hymns around the house, working in the yard, on car trips and while rocking us when we were sick for hours. She loves them.

The first time I heard We Are Sowing was in one of my first Relief Society meetings as an 18-year-old, and when we got to the line "Seeds that sink in rich, brown furrows / Soft with heaven's gracious rain / Seeds that rest upon the surface / Of the dry, unyielding plain" I looked over at her with a massive eye roll and she returned it.

#232: Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words There was one time that we were having a family-wide shouting match and my brother Allen started singing this hymn, only to have my mom tell him to shut up. Well, the fight dissolved pretty quickly when we started dropping to the floor in laughter. I love this hymn for that memory, but put it in the worst camp just for the phrase "Like the warblings of birds on the heather." Warblings. Seriously.

Okay, on to the Best hymns. Best hymns have to fall within certain parameters for me: they have to be slightly unknown, mostly awesome, and someday worthy of a re-arrangement by Mack Wilberg of the MoTab. (Mack, if you're out there reading, Nathan Frost's little sister says hi.)

#80: God of Our Fathers, Known of Old is one that said brother Nathan made us all sit down and learn at a family reunion in 2005. None of us besides him had ever heard of it, and I have yet to meet someone who has. Text by Rudyard Kipling and I'm telling you, folks, it's a gem.

The Caleb Miracle

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

Miracles always make me think about this section in the novel Peace like a River by Leif Enger:

For too long [the word "miracle"] has been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week -- a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards. I'm sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word.

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave -- now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

There's a middle class of miracles, somewhere between greeting cards and Lazarus that is spelled out beautifully in this post by LDS author Louise Plummer, where she tells the story of teaching a class of Primary kids about how sometimes miracles just happen when we ask. One kid named Caleb said his miracle of choice would be a DS, and Louise made plans to send him one anonymously a few months later, reasoning his family couldn't afford one. 

By the next Sunday, Caleb had already gotten a DS from his grandmother, who brought it home from the school lost-and-found. ("The universe works without my manipulation?" Louise asks, aghast.)  

Let's call these middle-class miracles "the Caleb miracles." Caleb receiving a DS wasn't dramatic like a manna-shakedown, nor was it a normal and expected gift, like socks. 

I believe in Caleb miracles. I believe that when you speak your righteous goals and desires out loud, write them down, and work toward them every day, you can have them. Too many opportunities for greatness or even small successes are squandered by our own fear and self-loathing. Many of us don't even start one foot down the path because we think we can see so clearly the end from the beginning.

Brave: The Disney Princess Paradigm Shift

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

I'll tell it to you straight: Brave not only had me crying like a little girl on multiple occasions, it also turned my Disney Princess paradigm on its sweet little head.

The tears shouldn't have come as a surprise. I first cried in a Pixar watching Jessie's tragic donation-box montage in Toy Story 2, and then went home and arranged all my stuffed animals on my bed. (I was 15 at the time.) Then there was Sully's expression when Boo says, "Kitty!" at the end of Monsters, Inc. The airplane bombing scene in The Incredibles where Elastigirl is yelling "Abort! Abort! There are children aboard!" sent me into tears of pure stress as a sophomore in college (this still happens to me, by the way) and when my husband and I bought Up around our first anniversary, we were crying so hard after the first 10 minutes we had to turn off the TV and recuperate. 

Evertaster, On Sale Now

Tweet

Adam Sidwell's debut novel, Evertaster, is on sale now.

Evertaster is the story of 11 year-old Guster Johsonville who rejects his mother's casserole for the umpteenth time and so she takes him to the city of New Orleans to find him something to eat. There they meet a dying pastry maker who tells them of a legendary recipe called the Gastronomy of Peace -- a recipe created hundreds of years ago, shrouded in secrecy, and sought after by connoisseurs everywhere. It's a recipe that people will kill for. The Johnsonvilles have to leave their home because they're in danger when a maniacal chef attacks them. So they set out on this quest because it might be the only thing that will save Guster's life. They meet sinister enemies along the way, as well as a duplicitous celebrity homemaker who is bent on discovering the One Recipe at all costs.

If you missed LJ's recent interview of Adam, go read it now. Otherwise, click the link below to purchase your copy today!

BUY EVERTASTER NOW!

Evertaster: The Debut Novel of a Modern Mormon Man

Tweet

by LJ (bio)

It was my great pleasure to interview Adam Sidwell on the upcoming release of his debut novel Evertaster, a story about a picky kid and his family racing a cult of overzealous and sinister chefs to find the legendary Gastronomy of Peace ... the one greatest recipe in the world. Adam's day job is (I'm not making this up) working on computer graphics for movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and TRON Legacy. He and his family live in L.A. and his claim to fame is once showing a famous movie star where the bathroom was. Evertaster will be released by Trident Media Group on June 14th.

LJ: Adam, how are you? Also, who are you?

Adam: LJ, I’m having the time of my life. The story for Evertaster has been pent up inside me for four years now, and it's like I finally get to tell my big secret to the world and to all my friends. Who am I? I'm a guy who likes to live stories and then tell them. I love adventure, whether it's to a far off place or just in the mountains out back. I never want a good adventure to be lost, so I always feel obligated to write it down. That's one of the reasons I just had to write Evertaster.

LJ: Do you seriously work for Disney? Doing computer-y things? (If you do, that's seriously badapple.)

Adam: Sort of. I work in Visual Effects and Animation for film. It's all the same industry. I've had some opportunities with Disney and Pixar, but just wasn't ready to move cities at the time. I've worked for Industrial Light + Magic, which is really fun because every day Boba Fett is there to greet you when you walk in the door. I also worked in New Zealand at Weta Digital where they made Lord of the Rings. That place IS Middle Earth. There were elven swords and orc shields from the films hanging on the walls, but employees were not allowed to use them to settle workplace disputes. I did have a great opportunity to build the digital characters for TRON while working at Digital Domain. Digital Domain worked with Disney to get the film off the ground in the first place. All of the lightwalls in the film and most of the characters riding the lightcycles were my work. We build digital versions of all the human characters because actors don't feel comfortable getting de-rezzed into millions of tiny cubes. It's against union contracts.

LJ: I just have to ask ... who was that famous movie star you directed to the bathroom?

Adam: It was Jeff Bridges. Disney put on a big show at work for some of the executives prior to the release of Tron. I was in the office -- it was a Saturday -- and this bearded, weathered fella who looks like a cowboy comes trotting down the hall.

"You lookin' for the bathroom?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"Down there to your right," I pointed it out to him.

Then I said, "Hey Jeff, you want to see the digital version of yourself?" since I was working on it only five minutes before. But I could tell he had to go.

LJ: HILARIOUS. Okay, so give me the scoop on your book Evertaster.

Adam: Here’s the scoop: Evertaster is the story of 11 year-old Guster Johsonville who rejects his mother's casserole for the umpteenth time and so she takes him to the city of New Orleans to find him something to eat. There they meet a dying pastry maker who tells them of a legendary recipe called the Gastronomy of Peace -- a recipe created hundreds of years ago, shrouded in secrecy, and sought after by connoisseurs everywhere. It's a recipe that people will kill for. The Johnsonvilles have to leave their home because they're in danger when a maniacal chef attacks them. So they set out on this quest because it might be the only thing that will save Guster's life. They meet sinister enemies along the way, as well as a duplicitous celebrity homemaker who is bent on discovering the One Recipe at all costs.