MaryJanice Davidson on car doors and concerts

HEA welcomes Paste BN and New York Times bestselling author MaryJanice Davidson to its roster of contributors. MaryJanice is going to regale us regularly (every first and third Wednesday of each month) with her humorous trials and tribulations as both a romance author and fellow human being. Her next paranormal romance, Undead and Unforgiven, book 14 in her Betsy the Vampire Queen series, comes out in October.

MaryJanice: A lot of people assume the life of an international bestselling author is glamorous and exciting. And it is! (This isn't going to be one of those columns where the writer whines about their disillusionment, about how they thought writing was art but really it's just another grind, and how awful it is to spin stories for a living and how people don't understand how we suffer for our art. Not because I'm taking any sort of stand, but because I've got plenty of other things to complain about. Also when someone burps the phrase "suffer for our art" I get an instant migraine.)

Look: The gig is great. You get to work anywhere; I've written in parks, poolside, the bathroom. People wait in line to meet you, often to say nice things about you. They bring you pastry (one reader made me a wedding cake complete with a sugar cake-top vampire king and queen, which I devoured on the spot). They want their picture taken with you, and almost never give you bunny ears. They call friends and hand you their phones and beg you to say hi ("Hi, we've never met, but I have your friend's phone now, and I'm keeping it. It's really nice!"). If you're on tour, the hotel is always lovely and the publisher pays, sometimes even for the tiny bottles of booze I use as mouthwash. They arrange drivers who open car doors for you. You're a bit of a celebrity. They love you.

"Your books always make me laugh."

"I couldn't wait to tell you in person how much I love your books."

"You got me hooked on vampire chick lit!"

And then you come home. And they love you. But not the same way.

"Thank God, no one has any clean underwear left."

"We might be out of laundry detergent."

"And also milk."

"Sorry about the sink full, and the living room full, and the bathroom full of dirty dishes, but the whole system broke down while you were gone."

"Also, there are dirty dishes in the garage."

And that's fine. It's better than fine; I wouldn't have it any other way. Because we've all seen what happens to people who don't have people in their lives who keep them grounded. (Lindsey Lohan and Comcast, I'm looking right at you.) When I first hit the best-seller list, I asked several friends to throttle me if my ego started getting bigger than my butt (a terrifying prospect). "Well, we'd already made a pact to kill you. But we can do it if you get full of yourself, too." Whew! (Friends like that are invaluable.)

I once came back from a book tour where sleek black cars driven by nice men in black suits waited for me at every hotel, took me to every signing, brought me back, opened car doors for me. They were great. I was great. It was a wonderful tour.

But the plane got in late to Minneapolis, so I dashed home, threw my suitcase (bulging with dirty clothes and every complimentary toiletry the hotel offered, plus the shower curtain) into the mud room, looked at the schedule to figure out where I was supposed to be, then sprinted back to my car. After a week of never opening my own car door, I'd forgotten how, which is how I ended up hitting myself in the face with the edge of the door when I yanked it open. OK, minor nose bleed, no biggie. I was wearing black. Not to be chic, but because I'm a slob, and black renders chocolate almost invisible. Blood, too!

Drove to my daughter's school with a Kleenex shoved up my left nostril, a great plan until I sneezed. Now my windshield looked like someone (possibly drunk) had been finger-painting and my Kleenex was nowhere to be found. But I could still see, which was the important part. Even better, my nosebleed had (mostly) stopped.

I parked, hopped out of my car. Checked my face: I had looked better, but also worse; the middle ground was fine with me. Remembered too late I was wearing a nice blouse with a knee-length black skirt ... with beat-up scuffed red tennis shoes and my Van Gogh Starry Night knee socks. Enh, it's not like anyone was there to see me. And hey! I was even five minutes early!

I jogged in triumph toward the auditorium doors, wondering why so few cars were there. Hey, if I could get there — literally sweat blood to get there — anyone could. It's about commitment, it's about being organized and having a plan, it's about putting family first and oh crap this was the wrong school! It was my daughter's concert, not my son's, and the high school was across town.

But hey! Only five minutes late! And my nosebleed had definitely stopped by the time I got to the right school, as the alarmed usher verified before letting me in. ("No, no, I'm fine. I just forgot how to open car doors. What? Of course I'm not drunk. Haven't been for hours, what's wrong with you?")

My husband had been saving a seat for me, and managed to look delighted, relieved and horrified at the same time. "Oh, no, your—"

"Don't say my butt, I'm at my winter weight," I hissed as I sank into the seat beside him with a grateful sigh.

"First off, it's September. Second, nice socks, Van Gogh. Third, are you OK?"

Establishing my well-being was third? Jerk. I scraped off some dried blood the usher had missed. "Yep."

"You had really good drivers, didn't you?"

"The best."

"You've got to stop doing that thing with your car door."

"It's on my list."

"As long as you didn't steal another shower curtain."

"Shut up," I suggested sweetly, "and listen to the concert."

So we did. And it was lovely. The kids were delighted to see me, and vice versa. I suggested we go for ice cream, which everyone was fine with. Until ...

"What's that all over your windshield? It looks like ... reddish mud? On the inside?"

"Let's take Dad's car," I suggested. "We'll come back for mine later."

"But we can't just—"

"Ice cream!" And maybe some Windex. Just to get the inside sparkling clean, you know. I might occasionally forget how to open a car door and have too many shower curtains, but I've got some standards.

MaryJanice Davidson is the international bestselling author of several books, including the Betsy the Vampire Queen series. She has published books, novellas, articles, short stories, recipes and rants. Readers can contact her at contactmjd@comcast.net and find her on Facebook. She lives in St. Paul, Minn., and has been sentenced to a husband, two teenagers and two dogs.