I Am Not a Muppet

First and foremost, the winner Stockings and Suspenders

from the blog hop is Judith Hulley! Congrats, Judith!

Now, onto the rest of today's post. On Sunday, I made my husband a very happy camper when I said we could go see The Muppets. He's been waiting patiently for me to decide it had been out long enough that it wouldn't be filled with screaming kids (and we still ended up with a lot of talkers in our theater...). We took our kids and went, and... he loved it. The Boy loved it. Mini-Me liked it a lot. And I... didn't hate it. The continual singing and muppetry that followed the movie, however, had me ready to run the car into a tree.

When Mini-Me asked, "If you could be a Muppet, which one would you be?" I couldn't answer. I don't want to be a Muppet, at all. They're just too freaking happy for me. Don't get me wrong, happy is good, but that level of happiness doesn't fit in my reality (or any of my alternate realities).

The people who read my work regularly know that most of what I write doesn't fall easily into romance. There's always romance in what I write, but a large chunk of my work is "strong romantic elements" instead (this is especially true of YA me). One of the reasons for that (or for steampunk romance, sci-fi romance, paranormal romance) is that I like action and suspense. Always have, always will.

I'm a written-word danger junkie.

And I cuss like a sailor if I don't keep close tabs on myself.

Those things and the Muppets just don't gel together. I mean, I'm the girl whose favorite holiday movie is Die Hard. But getting back to romance...

The project I wrote for NaNo (and am still writing) is a contemporary romance. Not a romantic suspense, mind you, straight contemporary. I have a love-hate relationship with this manuscript. I love the characters and I think their story is one that needs to be told, but... I want to blow something up. I had to take a break from the manuscript and write a piece of flash fiction just so I could kill someone.

Which means I am neither a manly Muppet nor a Muppet of a man.

And while it may make my little family sad, at the end of the day, I'm okay with it. After all, I never much wanted to have strings someone could pull anyway.