Big Brother (by Lionel Shriver) is watching your weight

My primal scream reply to Lionel Shriver's use of the word "fat." She attacks fat activists by suggesting that fat phobia is a natural and unavoidable cultural idea. She's promoting her novel, Big Brother, in NY Mag and I'm ardently disagreeing on Body Impolitic. The headline was an inspired addition by Debbie Notkin who edited my post with her usual elegance (thanks!) I like that title way better than my original idea: "A Convex author replies to a (presumably) concave author"--though I remain outraged that Shriver talks about "the convex" as a euphemism for "fat people".

A letter I didn't know I needed to read

Sometimes you run across a statement that makes you take a deep breath and feel like you found something you needed to hear, even though you didn’t know you needed to hear it. That’s the way I feel about Iris Higgins’ “An Open Apology to All of My Weight Loss Clients” posted in her blog on 07/27/2013

Higgins comes from a different perspective than I do. She’s “New-Agey” enough to invite readers to call her “your fairy angel.” She now works helping clients build self-esteem and empowerment without dieting, but for 3 years she worked at Jenny Craig. The rest of my post is at Body Impolitic

Celebrate Independence Day with Free Trouble...hmm, that sounds wrong...

From July 4th for a week, Pearlsong Press is offering free Kindle editions of Josephine Fuller's 4th Adventure, A Ton of Trouble, and Lonie McMichael's excellent examination of Acceptable Prejudice.

Here's what Pearlsong Press founder, Peggy Elam says:

FYI, in response to the American Medical Association's recent decision to declare "obesity" a disease -- against the recommendations of its scientific advisory committee -- we have decided to release the Kindle ebook of Acceptable Prejudice? Fat, Rhetoric & Social Justice by Lonie McMichael, Ph.D. a month early -- and give it away for free for five days starting July 4.

We had already scheduled a free giveaway during that period for A Ton of Trouble, Book 4 in Lynne Murray's Josephine Fuller mystery series, so we're combining the promotions. I've scheduled a blog post for tomorrow/Sunday morning announcing them, and just sent out a press release to the ASDAH, Show Me the Data and Fat Studies egroups, asking that word be spread. (A separate blog post just announcing the ATOT giveaway will be published Wednesday morning.)

Links to the blog post(s) will go out over Facebook & Twitter, so please like/share/retweet as you can. And spread the word whatever other ways you think of. The Acceptable Prejudice? ebook has been called "Fat Acceptance 101" and could be a great opportunity for someone unfamiliar with the issues to learn about them for free.

Read more about Acceptable Prejudice? at http://www.pearlsong.com/acceptableprejudice.htm . More about A Ton of Trouble at http://www.pearlsong.com/atonoftrouble.htm .

Book Tasting Menu - Josephine Fuller in A Ton of Trouble in the California wine country

Click on the link to try a little taste of murder in A Ton of Trouble featuring sleuth of size, Josephine Fuller.

An extra, added obstacle to getting medical care

I posted today on Body Impolitic, how prejudice derails doctor-patient communication Doctors Agree: No Fat Patients Need Apply

Murder in the California Wine Country -- A Ton of Trouble, now it's an ebook!

Sleuth of size, Josephine Fuller's fourth adventure A Ton of Trouble has just been released in paperback and ebook form for the first time by Pearlsong Press. The earlier edition only came out in hardcover.

We decided to take the Amazon Select option, so the ebook version will be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, but the trade paperback is available from many Pearlsong, Barnes & Noble, Powells and the Book Depository.

The book was partly inspired by what was probably the most fun job I ever had.

For several years I worked in the word processing department of a law firm whose founding partner owned a winery in Sonoma County. Each 4th of July, he invited the staff to a picnic where we could spend a day rambling through the vineyards and admiring his winery, stables, small lake, politically important guests, etc. in between competitive, picnic-style events. Alas, the job and the picnics ended with major staff cuts.

Knowing that I was writing mysteries, some of my fellow laid-off co-workers asked me to murder a particular manager who enjoyed getting rid of workers. He wasn't shy about what pleasure he took in replacing even the most loyal long-term employees. He did it with some glee.

Oddly, A Ton of Trouble is not the book wherein a character similar to the manager met his fate. But my former co-worker enjoyed that book so much she asked me to kill him again. This I could not do, one murder request per customer. She did suggest an interesting place to conceal the body though, and a wonderful line to accompany the discovery. These are in A Ton of Trouble. ,p. The winery in the book may be similar but its owner could not be more different from the lawyer who hosted us so long ago. No actual humans are ever harmed or even accurately portrayed in any of my books. I enjoy my fictional characters much more. In A Ton of Trouble, Wolf Lambert is a legendary horror movie director who has retired to indulge in his hobby--making porn films with plus-sized leading ladies. The research for that aspect of the book was interest too--but I'll talk about it another time!

Brenda Oelbaum Goes National with the Goddess at Her Back

Feminist artist Brenda Oelbaum’s use of the Venus of Willendorf as the sculpture made from diet books strikes at the very heart of fear and prejudice toward larger bodies. Now she is bringing her work turning diet books into Venus of Willendorf sculptures onto the larger stage with “a national ad campaign to take down $66 BILLION Diet Industry.” I just posted about it on Body Impolitic. She calls her project “DUMP THE DIETS! a Fight for Freedom from self-loathing.” Brenda’s work shows bravery worthy of a goddess–I adore the picture of her, resolute, nude, surrounded by towering walls of diet books.