People always ask me, “Jesse James, is it true that you live solely on a diet of Shiner Bock, Fruity Pebbles, and mushrooms that grow in your backyard?” I must admit, that while that diet sounds not only delicious + nutritious that you have to factor in a little more than that to your day to day routine if you’re gonna keep writing books. Writing books ain’t like dusting crops, boy – it takes all your electrolytes firing like it’s Gun Club Day at the Bunny Ranch.
I never expected to go into a career that involved so much mental stamina – I figured that I’d be dry-walling or working mall-security to earn my daily bread. Let’s face it, I look damn good tooling around a mall parking lot in a golf-cart.
I own that shit.
But since being a writer-type was thrust upon me, I had to start shake-and-bakin’ more than my money-maker. I realized that I had to get some serious props happening in the kitchen if I was gonna survive my excruciating routine of:
1) Research (ie watching Fox News on mute while drinking coffee. I’m talking to you, Jenna Lee)
2) Writing (texting Jennifer Gracen and asking her where commas go and what the hell a semi-colon is – and why you can’t just use un-semi-colons all the time? Especially now that I learned how to Tetris those two periods on top of one another)
3) Book Marketing (Tweeting with Steven Luna all day about how vampires are too damned proud to take jobs at Hot Topic, even though they were un-born for a job like that. The mall stays open late and all and seriously – who would you trust more to turn up their nose at you and give a snarly, “I know you are not thinking you’ve got the earlobes to pull off those dangling Ankh hoops, girl.”)
Christi Price and I talk about all the stuff you can slice up with a Ginsu knife too. We might quit book-marketing all together and bring that shit back like a boss!
So yeah, keeping it real means knowing your way around the kitchen!
In honor of this very patriotic holiday we’ve had mid-week this year, I made the executive decision to not spend the day building stuff with LEGOs and then blowing it up with Black Cats.
And instead, Bake a Legit-Damn Ham!
You might be asking yourself, “I wanna bake a Legit-Damn Ham too, why didn’t I think of that?” Well, because there are leaders in the ham game, and there are followers. I’m not gonna point out which of us is which because I don’t want you getting all pissed off and unfollowing my blog or starting some campaign on Twitter like I just said that Bieber doesn’t secretly wanna have your kittens.
Still, gaze upon my wonders and despair!
“What’s the recipe?” See, I’m reading your mind like I’m one of those spoon-bending psychic som’bitches (which I just might be, I haven’t finished listening to all the 18 cassette Unlock Your Mind Power And Go Giza On The World’s Ass series yet).
You will need:
A Ham, or some vegan substitute, which I guess would look a lot like a ham but it’d be made of soybeans and sprouts or something awful.
You will need a means to cook said ham. I like to use a really hot fire – and although I don’t necessarily use the full potential of my equipment (my baking equipment!), you might consider using a blow-torch or maybe a laser in case you need to get the temp up to like 10,000 degrees.
A pineapple. This is pretty self-explanatory. If they don’t have pineapples in the grocery store where you live steal one from a koala bear or some other animal that eats pineapples because we are the top of the food chain and we deserve it more than they do. Snatch it quick though, ’cause they bite and it’s really hard to type this blog post when my fingers are still bleeding.
A can of those fancy cherries. I like to hit one of those ritzy-hotel bars a day or two in advance and keep asking for extra cherries. You can smuggle them out in a cocktail napkin with all the numbers you got because you look sensitive when you’re drinking stuff with cherries in it and you tell women that you’re Bill Gates’ son Larry Balderdash Gates the III’rd. (add the III’rd part on there or the women aren’t gonna buy your story – and don’t tell them you left the jet out in the parking lot because women are way too smart to fall for that).
Put the fire to it and BOOM! #legitDamnHam
You do it right and you’ll have food for a week, can survive whatever plague is gonna kill us now that that Large Hard-On Collider found that piece of glitter or whatever it is they were looking for, and you might get your own TV show and get to hang out with…
Class dismissed!
Billy Purgatory is Jesse James Freeman’s first novel. He’s also studied psychology and film and scripted comics. When he’s not writing books, Jesse James trains falcons to kill Leprechaun Robots, and will continue to do so until the world is relatively safe.
Jesse James recently contributed 4 essays to the book Write for the Fight: A Collection of Seasonal Essays, co-authored by Tess Hardwick (Riversong) and Tracey Hansen. All author proceeds will be donated to charities engaged in the fight against breast cancer.
Jesse James is currently working on Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five, MythCop, Vehemently Jones, Blood-Love, R. Cane, and Witches vs Robots.
Time Zombie says CLICK the picture!
