After so many boyfriend lists and reading announcements, it's time for some nice, old-fashioned time-wasting. This amused me highly. The Amazing Meganame Generator

Gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson (who is on the GCC with me) is about going back to face the demons of your high school life. Something I no doubt need to be doing myself, or I wouldn't be writing so many darn books about high school. Her main character, Arlene, thinks she's escaped her small, lily-white Alabama hometown; she's living in Chicago with her African American boyfriend. But her arch-enemy from high school appears on her door, digging up a secret Arlene had hoped would remain hidden forever -- and her boyfriend's insisting she introduce him to the folks. Fate is pointing her south.

This book is getting so much hype I hardly need hump it on this blog. It's the # 1 Booksense pick for April, and Adriana Trigiani, who wrote the wonderful Lucia Lucia, says of it:
"Joshilyn Jackson's stellar debut has all the elements of great southern fiction, a plucky heroine with a sense of humor,a gripping tale and a mysterious dead body that needs explanation. Arlene Fleet, with a crystal clear voice and purpose takes the reader on a wild ride of despair, hope and redemption that no reader is likely to ever forget. What a storyteller! What a new, original voice!"

And here, exclusively at The Boyfriend List for your entertainment, Jackson's Gradeschool Impossible Crush Boyfriend List, which is so dang funny I almost fell of my chair.

The Gradeschool Impossible Crush Boyfriend List.
by Joshilyn Jackson

My first crush was on Mr. Spock. I SO wanted Mr. Spock to be my boyfriend. Yeah, okay, so he is the tiniest bit EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE... But he is my type: tall and dark, quirky sense of understated humor, and a science geek. I remember I got ALL in a froth during an episode where some FLOWER shot darts into Mr. Spock and released his inner-love-junkie. I used to act out scenes from that episode in my bedroom, ending with me saying "Oh! Mr. Spock!" and having a make-out session with my bedpost. I was NOT right in the head when it came to Mr. Spock. I also used to pretend the Enterprise was trapped in DEEP SPACE when the next 7 year mating cycle rolled around and Mr. Spock had to marry or die. Yeoman Me to the rescue...

My next crush was on Lurch. Yes. Lurch. From the Addams Family. It makes sense, I guess. Tall? Check. Dark? Check. Quirky understated humor? Well, sure, he doesn't actually speak. He just groans in an irritated fashion. But the comic timing of those groans...perfection! And as I recall a NASTY little girl who sat behind me was making my life a season in hell. I used to imagine LURCH rising up behind my left shoulder and groaning threateningly at her.

Then my brother glued all the pages of my favorite book together (Charlotte's Web) and told me he wouldn't get me a new one unless I read the replacement book he gave me. Which was CONAN THE DESTROYER. I developed a HUGE crush on Conan, who was tall and dark and unstoppabble. And smelly! And manly! And GRUNTY!

Then I got weird.

I next developed a serious and actual crush on...
THE CONSTELATION ORION. No, really. I used to stare up at his belt (the only reconizable part of him) and imagine his dots all connecting and fleshing themselves out until he floated above me, a man with Spock's brain and elegant speech, Lurch's height and stoicism, and Conan's battle prowess. Orion would lay his weapons aside and reach down and give me a hand up into the sky with him. People would look up and see all these new stars twinkling beside him, and that would be me.

Then I went to middle school and started having crushes on actual boys, but I don't remember that list of mere mortals half so vividly. Some I barely remember at all. The real boys fade and pale next to the fictional men that left the screen and the page and the sky to inhabit my head and my heart and my much-kissed bedpost.

Note from E.: Jackson's blog is full of this kind of juicy stuff. Get thee there, pronto.

Debra Garfinkle,
whose blog I read,
and who's also the author of
Storky: How I Lost My Nickname and Won the Girl
(cute cover, eh?)
sent in her "serial dater's" boyfriend list.
As all too often happens, the nice guy comes in last. (I doubt that happens in Storky, though!)

--E

A SERIAL DATER'S LIST: THE EARLY YEARS
by D.L Garfinkle

SHAWN-- Oh, Shawn, Shawn, Shawn. We went out for a few months in tenth grade and then I pined for him for the next two and a half years of high school. Why didn't he like me anymore? What could I do to get him back? Turns out, nothing short of changing my gender. Shawn went off to Yale and immediately came out of the closet. Sigh. At least it wasn't me.

KEVIN-- My eleventh grade boyfriend. Those were the days (nights, actually)-- peppermint schnapps, a new truck, and many drive-in movies I don't remember seeing. Last I heard, Kevin was working at a fish store.

COREY-- I wish I knew at the time he was one of the nicest guys I'd ever date (and I dated until I was 29). He drove me to school, sent me flowers, and took me to the prom. He was a real gentleman. Maybe too much of a gentleman. I dumped him for a juvenile delinquent.

RICH-- Said juvenile delinquent. He was my guy the summer before I shipped off to college, and livin' was easy. So what if he dropped out of high school to work at Carl's Jr.? So what if he preferred car magazines over novels? So what if he used the word "ain't" with no shame? So what if his part-time job was stealing radios? He was cute. And that's about all that mattered back then.

I haven't got time to really do proper write-ups these days! The Boy Book is due in June (probably June 1, but I'm not looking at my contract because I can't face that soon a date). I am way behind!

But --
I am not behind on my reading. I have been procrastinating and reading up a storm!
Stuff like this:

The Wessex Papers, parts 1-3 by Daniel Parker, AKA Daniel Ehrenhaft. Great plot. Prep school run by nefarious creepola headmaster who is running a kind of extortion ring/gambling racket.

Rhymes With Witches, by Lauren Myracle. What if the most popular girls at school became that way through witchcraft? And what if you were invited to join them? Spooky spooky. I really liked it.

Ten Things to Do Before I Die, by Daniel Ehrenhaft. (See above). This is a more stylized and freaky book than The Wessex Papers. It's about a guy who's eaten something poisonous by accident -- and feels madly driven to try an live, really live, in the 24 hours he's got left.

The Serious Kiss, by Mary Hogan. This is a sensitive and surprisingly emotional story about a girl looking for romance and struggling with her family problems.

The Dating Game, by Natalie Standiford. Three girls create an online quiz to chart their fellow students' ideas about sex -- and to play yente at the same time. The first in a four-part series. If you like quizzes (what is your love aura? etc.) and blogs, this is the one for you. Funny.

Shrimp, by Rachel Cohn. Loved it. Even better than Gingerbread, I think, maybe because it's got a real San Francisco feel. Cyd Charisse is dealing with more complicated love situations this time than the last -- plus she's got an interesting set of new female friends. Cohn said the other night at the panel that there will be a third book -- to be called Cupcake.

The second night of the teen book panel was equally fun. My main teenager was there, and won a free book in the raffle; plus she got signatures from Lauren Myracle and Natalie Standiford, so I was very happy for her.

My bio was less embarassing read aloud than previously. Afterwards I got to hang out with Libba Bray (author of A Great and Terrible Beauty), Rachel Cohn (Gingerbread, Shrimp) and YA lit agent extraordinaire Barry Goldblatt, all of whom were really charming and interesting -- plus beforehand I got to talk with Daniel Ehrenhaft, whose The Wessex Papers (written as Daniel Parker) has me currently on the edge of my seat and neglecting my writing to find out what happens.

Okay, now this has been a very name-droppy post, which is highly annoying, but the whole thing was really exciting!

--E

Drat. I just wrote a long and high-tech post, full of juicy links to all the authors from last night's panel -- and lost it. I have too much to write today to re-do it with all the bells and whistles.
So here it is, woefully short of linkage:

The panel last night was really fun -- and packed. The woman who was introducing us read each author's bio aloud; everyone else's said things like "Rachel Cohn is the bestselling author of Gingerbread and Pop Princess. She's here tonight to tell us about her new book, Shrimp."
But when she got to me, she said, "E. Lockhart has had nine official boyfriends, if you count the one who asked her to go with him in 7th grade and then basically never talked to her again."

Serves me right. I'll make sure the person doing the announcing tonight has at least a list of my forthcoming books.

A few highlights:

J. Minter, who was sitting next to me, whispered that teen author Blake Nelson was in the audience. Soon-to-be-published YA writer Robyn Schneider came by and said Hello, too.

Natalie Standiford read from The Dating Game sounding SO much like a teenage girl it was incredible. Very funny. Minter and Daniel Ehrenhaft both read sections (from The Insiders and Tell it to Naomi, respectively) that were about boys' friendships, which were really interesting to listen to next to one another. Mary Hogan read a really funny bit from The Serious Kiss. Rachel Cohn told stories about how she was obsessed with Reds (the movie) and Helen Keller. Lauren Myracle, despite being carsick from the horrorshow New York City traffic, read brilliantly and did great voices. There was a raffle and lots of people went home with free books, plus there were giveaway postcards, boyfriend list notepads, and some giant Dating Game folder that I don't even know what it was.

We're doing it all again tonight (Friday) in the Park Slope B&N at 6:30. Hopefully with the addition of Sarah Mlynowski, who couldn't attend last night, and sadly without the darling Mr. Minter.

The big teen panels are this week, on Thursday & Friday in NYC and Brooklyn, respectively. The link below has all the scoop, but can I just say: Rachel Cohn! Lauren Myracle! J. Minter! Sarah Mlynowski! Daniel Ehrenhaft! Mary Hogan! Natalie Standiford! And me! Babbling together and reading from our new books.

Here is the full invitation.

As I've said before, we are love-whomever-you-love, it's-all-good, equal opportunity types here at The Boyfriend List. As it says in the sidebar -- don't matter if you're not straight, send in those lists!

I put up my first gay boyfriend list, by teen novelist Brent Hartinger, last month. And here, now, the first girlfriend list! From a girl. Or rather, from a woman. So thanks to YA lit blogger "Connorgal," whose website makes extremely interesting reading for people interested in young adult literature.

By the way -- she had WAY more fun in grad school than I did. It was entirely romance-free, and almost entirely flirtation-free, in my experience.
Also, note excellent break-up advice in #8.

-E

Connorgal's Girlfriend List

1. Sentence Diagramming Queen, aka RD. My seventh-grade English teacher. I was so in love with her that I kept track of what she woreevery day, doodled her initials all over my textbooks, and babysat forher for free. As she was a devoted Catholic with two boys and a
fairly conservative life, I feel sure she was undeserving of my love and would never return it. I will always, however, remember the time she put her hand on my head as I knelt by my desk to pick up a book and, at the same time, ask her a question about a newspaper article. The things I learned at that moment about feeling tingly and wrigglyand happy surely came in handy later. RD, where are you now?

2. TB, also not a girlfriend, but the love of my life freshman and sophomore year in college. Let's call her Forestry Girl. We even roomed together sophomore year. This is a mistake. Never, ever, ever
room with someone you're desperately in love with and can't actually be with because that person has a different sexual orientation. She was (and still is) a kind and generous person who said, "That must
have been a really hard year for you!" when she found out. I was comforted when she married someone with the same color hair as I have (that is to say, red). She now lives in a small town and works at Wal-Mart. I definitely prefer MY life.

3. MRdelosC. As my friend T-lo used to say, "Your first girlfriend was a Lesbianese woman from U-are-gay?" Yes indeed. My Uruguayan girlfriend (whose family was originally from Lebanon) finally captured
me at a Greens Party party. We first kissed in a Ramada Inn the night of Bill Clinton's election just after I drank about four diet Dr. Peppers and she drank about four bottle of beer and, using the payphones, she called her mother in Montevideo to shout, "Gano Clinton! Mama! GANO CLINTON!" Oh, those heady days of kissing an alcoholic woman behind the Coca-Cola machine! Needless to say, this relationship, though "real," did not last very long. It DID involve my coming out to my parents, however, so beyond MR's inherent drama, I had my own Christmas-morning revelation scene with my mother. It wasn't pretty.

I went to London for four months on a semester-abroad trip, and wasted
it all pining for MR. BIG MISTAKE! But then I came back...

4. EC, aka Nag Champa Woman. Never date a woman who's involved with more than one or two forms of twelve-stepping. Or one who's also involved with the evil that is known as "re-evaluation counseling." Though this did have the benefit of a bearskin rug, a fireplace, and an outdoor hot tub. Note: this girlfriend regarded caffeine-free diet Pepsi as something that would give her a total rush. We haven't spoken since I refused to regard the Y2K "crisis" as a real threat.

5. Susie Bright. Oh, just kidding. She's my fantasy girlfriend. Plus, she introduced the concept of Herotica into my life. Ah, those sex-positive feminists!

Then I moved to go to graduate school. Graduate school is a good place for finding boy or girlfriends. Lots of people with a lot of free time, little money, and need for companionship.

6. DF. Another "exotic" girlfriend! From Israel, this time. We hadsort of a wild relationship at first, then she had her first manic episode, and so I ended it--you know, like, get right with lithium before we embark on this. She was Not Happy with me. Her sister practically spat upon me whenever she saw me on campus. Yowzah.

7. Math woman. Lived hours away. We met through a mutual friend. This was a light connection which began when we were on the phone and I was making soup with Great Northern beans and she said, "Hey, you want to hook up?"
Not surprisingly, this relationship was somewhat short term.

8. DF#2. This time (her bipolar disorder firmly in hand), we had an actual relationship. But things went sour about five months in. I was a Total Coward and acted like a complete, er, jerk until she broke up with me. Never do this--it is Evil. If you want to break up, do it; the pain is a lot better than the pain of knowing you were a coward and a schmuck. Ergh.

9. DG, aka "Truck girl." I gave up my New Yorker subscription. Curtailed my volunteer activities. Tried to help at all times when her serious clinical depression kicked in. D'oh. Another hint: If
someone has a lot of experience leaving people by hooking up with new people and abandoning the previous girlfriend, DO NOT hook up with her/him. Karma later kicked in for her and the skankdog she left me for (try to follow this movie script) left her for another woman. Me, I was glad to reclaim my New Yorker subscription (snotty elitist that I am).

10. and 11. Not really girlfriends. One had two other partners at the time, one is a traveling singer-songwriter. Nice for occasional closeness and staying in the game during the rebound time.

I moved to another state. And met...

12. Current girlfriend. This one's practically perfect, so what's to say? I lucked into this relationship when I moved into her house sight unseen. Gradually, I Fell in Love With My Landlady. Luckily,
she feels the same. She likes classical music, literary fiction, slow cooking, leftie politics; understands the Midwest as she's also from there. She's super-smart, supportive about my writing, and quite a bit older than I; she's established in her profession, owns a house, and introduced me to the joys of wine. I wish she liked YA fiction and mysteries a bit more, but then she probably wishes I liked incredibly bleak fiction a bit more. A total winner.

Well, no big surprise. After all, I DO recycle!
This was a fun quiz -- I got to decide what kind of fabric I am (fishnet, natch) and describe my ideal date (beach) and the thing that puts me in the mood (a man doing dishes -- no joke). The quiz comes from Ann Marie Michaels, whose blog is here. Ann Marie is on the GCC with me. Her book is Cooking to Hook Up, which is like a bachelor's guide to romancing women in the kitchen. So naturally, her BOYFRIEND LIST is fun city.
(and have any close readers noticed how often Hugh Grant seems to show up on these lists? Hugh! We love you, you naughty man, you!)

My Fantasy Boyfriend List
by Ann Marie Michaels
(hey, this is kinda like fantasy football--for girls)

1. Wes Anderson, director (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic).

Wes will always be my # 1 fantasy boyfriend. I fell in love with him when I heard him being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. I love his mind. I also love the way he dresses, his sexy f***d-up British teeth -- oh and the music he chooses for his soundtracks. The Ramones and The Velvet Underground and David Bowie ... plus he's a Texan. I'm a Texan! We both went to the same film school! Sigh ... I wanna marry him.

2. Malcolm Gladwell, author (The Tipping Point, Blink).

Yes, Malcolm Gladwell. I know he may not be "empirically attractive" (that's a quote from WHMS -- When Harry Met Sally), but he is hot stuff in person. Plus, I like those nerdy, intellectual types (see #
1). When he autographed my copy of Blink I was so star-struck, I could hardly make any words come out of my mouth.

3. Conor Oberst, musician (Bright Eyes).

A little too "Jordan Catalano" in the looks deptartment for my taste (Wes Anderson is my ideal -- think tall/skinny/glasses). That said, Colin Oberst is so smart and creative and so emo -- mmm.

4. Jimmy Stewart, actor (It's A Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, etc.).

My favorite Hollywood actor -- EVER. What a fox!

5. William Powell, actor (The Thin Man, My Man Godfrey, etc.).

I can watch The Thin Man series thousands of times. I fantasize about drinking martinis with Nick Charles.

6. Rhett Miller, musician (Old 97's).

I shouldn't say that because I actually know him -- but I had a crush in him in college. But then again, so did everybody.

7. Cary Grant, actor (His Girl Friday, Notorious, etc.)

What's not to love? He was the original metrosexual.

8. Hugh Grant, actor (Four Weddings & a Funeral, About a Boy, etc.).

Yeah, I can't help it.

9. Ashton Kutcher, actor, Demi's main squeeze.

He's just so adorable. (But I still like Wes better.)

10. Wes Anderson.

Did I mention Wes Anderson? I did? Oops. Anybody know him or know someone who knows him? Or know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows him? Hook a girl up! (Can't hurt to ask.)

Are you in NEW YORK or BROOKLYN? Come see me!

I am on a hottie roster of teen writers that's showing up at two different Barnes & Nobles on two different nights -- April 21 and 22.

The same crew, both nights:
Rachel Cohn, who wrote Gingerbread, Shrimp and Pop Princess
Lauren Myracle, who wrote TTYL and Rhymes with Witches
Daniel Ehrenhaft, who wrote Ten Things to Do Before I Die and Tell it To Naomi
Sarah Mlynowski, who wrote Bras & Broomsticks, plus Milk Run and a lot of other fun adult novels
Mary Hogan, who wrote The Serious Kiss
J. Minter, who wrote The Insiders series
Natalie Standiford, who wrote The Dating Game

and me.

Please come by. I'd love to see you all. And I KNOW you'd love to see the writers listed above.

Thursday, April 21, 2005, 7-8pm
Barnes & Noble/Upper East Side, NYC 240 E. 86 St.

Friday, April 22, 2005, 6:30-7:30pm
Barnes & Noble/Park Slope, Brooklyn 267 7th Ave

Oh, and if you're in New Jersey, you should DEFINITELY check out this panel on May 14th. I'm not on it, but look at this list:

Saturday, May 14, 2005, 2-3pm
Barnes & Noble/Menlo Park Mall/Edison, NJ

Rachel Cohn (Shrimp, Gingerbread)
Holly Black (Tithe, Valiant)
Jesse Elliott (Girls' Dinner Club)
Natasha Friend (Perfect)
Lisi Harrison (The Clique))
David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility)
David Lubar (Dunk)
Megan McCafferty (Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings)
J. Minter (The Insiders)
Sarah Mlynowski (Bras & Broomsticks)
Rachel Vail (If We Kiss)