“It”-girl

By Jennie Bentley


I’ve been tagged. By my buddy Kelli Stanley, author of “Nox Dormienda”, for one of those circulating blog-things. Bill Cameron tagged her; now she’s passed the favor on to me. Thanks, Kel. Love ya. Mean it.

And because of that, you, gentle readers, will be treated to six random facts about moi today, instead of the brilliant, well-crafted, well-researched, and well-written blog-post I had prepared. Lucky you.



Random fact #1: A Swedish stripper I once sat next to on an airplane to Europe offered to father my first child. Wilfred the Author claims that it was him. I haven’t met Wilfred yet – to my knowledge – so for all I know it could be true. He told me his name was Freddy, which makes a certain kind of sense, now I think about it.



Random fact #2: I’m horribly afraid of bugs. You might even call it a phobia. It’s the legs. And it’s severe enough that the picture you’re looking at freaks me out. Many are the times I’ve stood in a corner of the shower, clutching the shower curtain around my palpitating (and wet) body, shrieking myself hoarse because a cricket has made it into the bathroom. And no, I can’t bring myself to go close enough to kill them. Hence the shrieking for help.


Random fact #3: I mix up my rights and lefts. It’s left over – no pun intended – from a stint I did as a tour guide for one of our local tour companies awhile back. I spent a couple of years standing at the front of a tour bus with my back to traffic, gesturing with my right hand, saying, “On your left...” That kind of thing can’t help but leave scars.



Random fact #4: In my New York acting days, I had a buddy who was a regular on the Cosby Show. He invited me to visit the rehearsals and meet the cast, and I got to spend an afternoon speaking Norwegian with Earle Hyman, who played Russell Huxtable, Bill Cosby’s dad, on the show. He owns a vacation home on the western coast of Norway, and he has been performing in Norwegian – as well as Swedish and Danish – theatre longer than I’ve been alive. In Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, no less! (I also met the rest of them, of course, but Earle was by far the most fun.)


Random fact #5: In addition to English and Norwegian, and of course Swedish and Danish, I speak German and French. Once upon a time I was fluent in all of them; these days I remember just about enough to ask for directions and order food and just generally survive if dropped into the middle of Paris or Bavaria. But given that English is a second language for me, and I’ve somehow managed to dupe an agent and an editor into believing that I handle it well enough to deserve a multiple-book contract, I don’t think I’m doing too badly.


Random fact #6: I had something else here, but since I just found out this week that my essay/article “Confessions of a History B(L)uff” has made it into the latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal, History Mysteries II, I’ll make that my last random fact instead. I’m published. Yay, me!

And that rounds out my random facts. Brace yourselves. Here goes:

Wilfred Bereswill
Allie Hollister
Lisa Stiles
Andy Peterson
Grant McKenzie
Mary Kennedy

You’re IT!

Here are the rules:

Link to the person that tagged you – that’d be me.
Post the rules on your blog, like I’m doing.
Write six random things about yourself in a blog post somewhere.
Tag six people of your own.
Let the tagger – in this case me – know when your entry is posted.

Good luck, y’all!

PS - I won’t be here next time; I’ll be on a plane to Europe. This time Wilfred will not be in the next seat, calling himself Freddy or anything else; he’ll be here covering for me. That’s right, folks, Wilfred the Author himself will be coming to you live on Friday, June 6, right here on the Working Stiffs, to talk up the release of his first book, A REASON FOR DYING. Don’t miss it!