storytelling

I have now had two emails asking me what in the heck I mean by pajama jones. It turns out that jones isn't in everybody's vocabulary. Is this a sign of my inner-city upbringing? To clarify, from the OED:

jones.
2. slang. A drug addict's habit.  

  1968 Sun Mag. (Baltimore) 13 Oct. 19/4 Soon you're out to keep from getting the Jones. 1970 C. MAJOR Dict. Afro-Amer. Slang 71 Jones, a fixation; drug habit; compulsive attachment. [emphasis added]

Actually you're more likely to hear the verb jonesin (to have a yearning or craving). She been jonesin after that car for just about ever is a sentence I pulled out of my field research data. It's not hard to find examples of this usage on the web or in slang dictionaries. Also, there was a movie released in 1997 called Love Jones, which speaks for itself, I think. So a pajama jones would be an excessive love of, or attachment to, pajamas.

Thus endeth the informative sidebar.

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I've had a partially-baked novel idea in my head for a good while. Every once in a while I prod it, but there hasn't been lots of movement there. Then yesterday while Michelle was forcing me to do yet another set of hamstring exercises and I was trying to distract her from the real count with comedy, the subject of pajamas came up. This is going somewhere, I promise. Just hold on for a second.

I admit, I'm always buying my daughter pajamas, because they are so much nicer now than when I was a teenager. Soft, warm fabrics, comfortably cut. My daughter rolls her eyes and laughs when I bring her more, but she wears them.

So we were talking about this compulsion of mine, and I realized that sadly, I'm addicted; I've got a pajama jones. I said this, and as the words came out of my mouth, the whole novel-in-waiting came into focus in my head.

That's the click, when one key piece of information pulls together a lot of disjointed ideas and images. Yesterday evening I filled three sheets of paper with notes and names and character foibles and a diagram of a fictional river front with fictional shops, and now this novel is really cooking. All because of those two words one after the other: pajama jones. I'm not going to write more about the novel idea just now, because it's too new. But that's the way it works sometimes, a click, and everything comes together.

On other fronts: The ARC giveaway closes June 20 (eight days from today); 150 people have entered thus far. Information about how to get hold of an Advance Reading Copy of Fire Along the Sky is here, and the actual contest is to be found in the right hand column under PICK A DOOR, ANY DOOR. Hint: it's the middle door. Please note if you're getting an error message about empty fields, you actually have to put something in the 'comments' section. Also, if you've tried repeatedly and without success, email me the answers to all the questions and I'll do the paperwork for you. So to speak.

Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)