A Good Stiff One

I'm somewhat of a contranarian. Rarely do I get caught up on the current "IT" thing. Matter of fact whenever something becomes wildly popular I tend to shun it altogether.

I have not read the Da Vinci Code, seen Avatar, or attempted to adopt a baby from a foreign land.

I even avoided the Harry Potter books until some crazy preacher from a neighboring town was on the news one night urging people to burn the books. To my contranarian mine his telling me not to read them opened the door for me to actually sit down and crack open The Sorcerer's Stone.

So having said that I've never watched a single episode of Dangerous Housewives, Lost, or those crazy reality shows about people with more kids than a Haitian orphanage. (Maybe we need a reality show where Hollywood starlets can win one of the Dugger's or Jon and Kate's offspring.) And before you cry out, "Travis how the hell do you know so much about these shows if you've never seen one?" let me pint out I do still read lots of blogs.

I've rambled on about all of this to point out that for the first time ever I've been watching American Idol this season.

All because of this girl.


No I haven't suddenly developed a fetish for red-headed pixies though Lacey Brown is pretty in an exotic fairy kind of way. I began watching the show and rooting for her simply because she is a hometown girl from right here in Amarillo and it is not often that one of us gains national attention. Sadly the Texas Panhandle is not a hot bed for talent agents so I tuned in hopeful that Lacey would shine.

Truthfully her performances were hit and miss. She wowed me int he auditions with her rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow but then nerves appeared to get the better of her once she made the Top 24. Somehow she survived her shaky performances and made the Top 12 but her ride ended this last week when she failed to garner the vote necessary to stay in the competition. And I can't help but wonder if she didn't alienate some of her fan base when she described Amarillo as a place where not much exciting happens.

To be fair to Lacey I read an interview where she said the Idol producers edited the clip to make it sound that way. Lacey said they deleted all of the positive comments she made about the city.

Either way I'm glad to see a hometown girl make a few waves nationally anyway and I wish her the best. Here is a clip of her on David Letterman if like me, you tend to avoid such popular phenomenons as American Idol. She seemed to perform much better without the pressure of the competition around her.




And Lacey is not the only Amarilloan hopeful of beating the odds and winning a large competition chocked full of talented competitors. Yours truly had once again entered the annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. Last year I made the Top 500 out of something in the neighborhood of 10,000 entries with my comedic novel Plundered Booty. This year I entered my women's fiction novel A River Without Water. the 10k entries this year were split between YA and general fiction but I am proud to announce that today I made the announced Top 250 in the general category. that means very soon you will be able to read and comment on an excerpt of my novel at Amazon. I'll post a link when it becomes available. making the Top 250 also means I'll get a complete read and review by Publishers Weekly. The Top 50 in each category will be announced in late April so I'll keep y'all posted as the competition advances.

Update. You can now read and comment on the excerpt here.

Good thing authors are not judged on their looks as well as their talent because I'm in no way as cute as Lacey.