Like my accent if you talk to me long enough, my reading tastes are over all the place. One minute I’m sounding like someone straight of an BBC costume drama and clutching my E.M. Delafield Provincial Lady omnibus to my sensible cardigan clad bosom and the next I’m sprawled on Mr Couch in one of Blacklight’s getting slightly seedy Skinny Puppy concert t-shirts reading Lovecraft and sometimes I’ve popped a cardigan over that concert t-shirt (cheaper than cranking up the heat), sipping hot tea and wishing Celia Rivenbark would materialize in my living room, jangling her car keys and so down with stopping at the Wallingford Sonic before hitting the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlets and cleaning the Lindt store out of every single Almond truffle in the place. Because Miss Celia? So my favorite Southern writer.

Now before you Sweet Potato Queens rise up as one saying “bless her ignorant lil Yankee heart” and trying to pour margaritas the size of an ocean liner down my throat to convert me, sit the bleep down your Majesties. I’ve read every single Sweet Potato Queens book, even The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn’t Actually Do, but Could Have, and May Yet more than once. You’re a fun bunch, but dang, I find the whole Sweet Potato Queen thing a bit exhausting. All that bending and kneeling and kowtowing to your redheaded Amazon overlord…Celia Rivenbark  seems more approachable. And I think I could encounter Celia Rivenbark and not have my liver trying to make a break for it. In my head? I like to think Celia would be all “oh you don’t drink? The more for me!” and be glad someone could drive her home safely after a girls lunch out. My liver would be half way to Canada if I hung out with Jill Conner Browne for more than five minutes.

So I don’t need to go on and on about how quick I snapped up Celia Rivenbark’s latest book Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas? But can I show you the cut from the book itself? I swear the library used razor sharp diamond edges in cutting the hard plastic cover they heat sealed on the blasted book. And of course I devoured the Rude Bitches Made Me Tired as fast as possible, like a pig at a Old Country Buffet, once I staunched my wound. I am this close to making a custom “Rude Bitches Make Me Tired” sign in PowerPoint on break tomorrow and putting it right next to Blacklight’s Clan motto at my desk. Because there are things we all could do to be nice//better people and Celia Rivenbark points out that way in the funniest way possible. Instead of going all Miss Manners and clutching the pearls and using an epic story about the Trashys to explain why certain forms of PDA are just beyond gross, Our Lady Celia gives it to us straight. And if Blacklight and I had been parents, you so believe we would be the ones cranking the music and car dancing to get our teen to behave just like Celia.

And for you Sweet Potato Queens who are still convinced, blessed my savage lil Yankee heart, Gwen is a demon? Turn to the bottom of page 16 and read to page 17. I swear Celia Rivenbark is referring to the obituary your Supreme Sweet Potato Queen Jill Conner Browne placed when her Very Own Momma died. You know? The one her sister Judy Conner (author of Southern Fried Divorce which I have read thankyouverymuch) approved of? How would I have picked up that reference I hadn’t read the Sweet Potato Queens books? Still not forgiven, am I? <sighs>

Hopefully Celia Rivenbark is hard at work on her next book. If not, maybe she’d like to come up to New England and check out our outlet malls? I promised to drive and not be a rude road hog bitch on the way.