When did they start? 2002? 2003? I am fairly certain that it was after I left The Sun, but that’s about as precise as I can be. Hives, little red bumps, barely noticeable to anyone else.
At first, I blamed the sticky Baltimore summers for the mild rashes I would get on my arms and, sometimes, legs. Then they started appearing in late spring. Now, it’s January, and I have a few red spots near my elbow. Time to restock the Benadryl.
How to solve the case of the (time) traveling hives? It’s more a case for Alex Delaware than Encylopedia Brown. Sad to say, the hives appear about two months before pub date. And in the past four years, my pub date has migrated from fall to early summer to, this year, mid-March. Yet the hives always know when I have a new book coming.
Which is why, as I’m scratching my elbow and checking my e-mail, it’s nice to find out that WHAT THE DEAD KNOW got a starred Kirkus.
Yes, I’ve just used my blog for BSP. Sorry. Now I feel itchy AND dirty.
Anyone else here have psychosomatic reactions to anything?
I agree that BSP doesn’t apply here Laura, that’s when you get into the selling phase. This is pure celebration and congratulations to you! S.J. Rozan was saying in her blog the other day how every new book feels like the first one at this stage and I think that applies here. So be happy, dance until you drop, celebrate away and shout it from the chimney tops. I’m totally with JD about using your blog for BSP or any other thing you feel like using it for, it’s yours right!
The manifestations of my nerves is that I can’t sleep before just after or during really important stuff. It isn’t a great way to react as being rested would make it easier to get through the dang things, whatever they happen to be.
I hope someone throws a party for you so you can celebrate your starred Kirkus review with a lot of people at once. I can hardly wait to get the book for myself.
Congratulations, Laura!
I have a weird stress reaction that throws me into anxiety attacks. Mornings are the worst, as the day goes on it mitigates. The only good thing is that I lose some weight when it happens. It’s weird, sometimes a big thing will set me off, other times I can survive a major crisis and not have a problem then some piddly little thing will send me haywire.
Try a warm bath with oatmeal in it to calm the itching.
Well, I just learned that I start twitching when I find out that other people get to read books that I desperately want to read before I do. *stares pointedly at Kirkus review mention*. But congratulations, that’s awesome.
I’m not surprised, but I am happy.
I don’t get hives because I don;t have problems, or stress, or worry. I keep my head in the happy clouds and everything is a-ok.
In my early 50s, I suddenly reacted to sulfa meds. This came out of nowhere. After I stopped the meds, I continued to have mild breakouts because one of my BP meds had a derivative form of sulfa. The sulfites in red wine also sparked mild episodes. Eventually, my body acclimated. Thank God. Ya know, the red wine�
I feel cold and breathless right before I have to speak publicly. I used to feel this way for days — well, weeks — okay, MONTHS — ahead of time, but now I’ve trained myself to not even *think* about it until right before it happens. So I have a few cold-and-breathless moments, then I start talking and I’m okay again.
Can’t wait to read the new book, Laura. Of course it got a starred review.
I get seizures. Not fun, but the unconsciousness that follows lets me forget everything for a little while.
But speaking of Hives, my infant daughter just got them. I’m actually fooling around here waiting for the pediatrician to call back.
I have too many to even go into; what’s interesting is how they’ve changed over the years (or days or whatever).
Congratulations on the review… I’m with Kelly.
“I don’t get hives because I don’t have problems, or stress, or worry. I keep my head in the happy clouds and everything is a-ok.”
I’ll have whatever Bryon’s having. Make it a double.
Dusty, the thing about imbibing Bryon’s happy juice is that it will make you a major musical comedy freak.
I’m a puker. Have only gotten hives from Amoxicillin to date, knock wood.
YAY KIRKUS!!! YAY LAURA!!!
I have the one problem NO ONE wants to talk or hear about, so I will continue not to. Actually I have it now. I have no idea what’s making me nervous, but luckily I work at home.
See? No one wants to hear about it.
Laura: I can live with that.
Which is less likely, flipping tails fifty times in a row, or three straight men who love musicals on one blog?
P.S. Cornelia has chronicled her vomiting at Naked Authors.
I’ve also started developing hives in the last few years as the result of stress. Not sure if its that my body is finding new ways to deal with stress or if I just have more stress. Probably both.
I’m psychosomatically compelled to go WOOHOO! when friends get starred Kirkus reviews.
I tend to have Lizzie’s problem. In junior high I broke out in hives during PE (reason enough!) and have had hives off and on. I also have an uncontrollable eye tic plus other things that are NOT flaring right now to remind me. The reason for all: stress/nerves/whatever you want to call it.
And congrats, Laura!
And what is BSP?
You can’t use your blog for BSP?* Sez who?
And this is less BSP than celebration, as far as I’m concerned, celebration in which I am happy to join.
Can I get a A-MEN for Sister Laura?
*Blatant Self Promotion, Peg.
Weepy eyes. They always show up at mystery cons. I keep hoping it’s psychosomatic and not Legionnaire’s Disease.
Honest guys, I’m not crying every time you see me!
I’m more of an unconscious habit rather than psychosomatic ailment kinda guy, myself.
Which I suppose separates us into “hives” and “hives-nots”.
It seems appropriate to quote the lyrics of one of my favorite Broadway songs, ADELAIDE’S LAMENT:
It says here:
The average unmarried female
Basically insecure
Due to some long frustration may react
With psychosomatic symptoms
Difficult to endure
Affecting the upper respiratory tract.
In other words, just from waiting around for that plain little band of gold
A person can develop a cold.
You can spray her wherever you figure there’s streptococci lurk
You can give her a shot for whatever’s she’s got, but it just won’t work
If she’s tired of getting the fish eye from the hotel clerk
A person can develop a cold.
It says here:
The female remaining single
Just in the legal sense
Shows a neurotic tendancy, see note: (looks at note
Chronic organic symptoms
Toxic or hypertense
Involving the eye, the ear, the nose, and throat.
In other words, just from worrying if the wedding is on or off
A person can develop a cough.
You can feed her all day with the vitamin A and the bromofizz
But the medicine never gets anywhere near where the trouble is.
If she’s getting a kind of name for herself, and the name ain’t his
A person can develop a cough.
And furthur more, just from stalling, and stalling,
And stalling the wedding trip
A person can develop la grippe.
When they get on that train to Niagara
And she can hear church bells chime
The compartment is air conditioned
And the mood sublime
Then they get off at Saratoga for the fourteenth time!
A person can develop la grippe,
La grippe.
La post nasal drip.
With the wheezes
And the sneezes
And a sinus that’s really a pip!
From a lack of community property
And a feeling she’s getting to old
A person can develop a bad, bad cold!
(ADELAIDE sneezes)
Congratulations on the starred review, Laura!
When I was very young (early grade school), I used to get hives and no one could figure out what the cause was. They tried to blame it on milk, my cat, etc. My hives were of the one big, cover most of the body variety — and my feet were so swollen I had to get around by crawling on my hands and knees. When I was a sophomore in high school, the doctor prescribed some wonderful chocolate-milkshake flavored Rx, I took one teaspoonful and broke out in hives again. It turned out to be sulfa. So much for good tasting medicine.
As an adult, I sometimes get eye/face tics from stress or whatever. I have also wondered if the occasional sneezing bouts I get (that are not a part of becoming ill) are also a stress reaction. It usually happens when I’m driving somewhere or sitting at my desk — but not while eating.
Ohmigod — Sarah, you’re the first to tell me. This is very, very, very cool.
WHAT THE DEAD KNOW got a starred Kirkus? Awesome … as those far younger than I am might say.
His nibs used to get hives. Wicked. Ugly. Itching hives. After he met and married me, NO MORE HIVES! for going on multiple decades now. How cool is that? Must be my oh-so-soothing personality.
Har.
WOOHOO!
You mean the line about my happy juice isn’t pull quote worthy?
What wonderful news, Laura!!!!
Can’t wait to read it!
Bryon,
Here and now, in front of our Internet witnesses, I give you permission to use the “happy juice” quote as a blurb on anything you write. Or, should the day come, on bottles of happy juice.
(tapping fingers ominously) Excellent.
Migraines. Full-blown visual auras, splitting headaches, the whole works.
The first time I ever got one, when I was fifteen, I was in bed for a day. I ventured out the next day, but I felt as fragile as porcelain, as if even the sunlight could shatter me.
I went over to friend’s house to play chess (about all the physical activity I was capable of), and even though we were usually well matched, I slaughtered him five games in a row. For the first and only time in my life, I could see five, even ten moves ahead. The board was alive with possibilities to me, and it was the easiest thing on earth to foresee all his strategies and dismantle them.
The next day I felt much better. And more normal. And duller. I never came close to playing chess that well again.
HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cornelia Read’s novel A FIELD OF DARKNESS just got nominated for the Edgar Award for best first novel!!!!
Congratulations, Cornelia!!
(Sorry, news like this deserves nineteen exclamation points. At least nineteen!)
I never thought I’d see the day when someone used the phrase “imbibing Bryon’s happy juice” without even a hint of irony. Or horror.
John, as soon as I let that phrase go, I had some regrets.
But also some glee.
And Joe beat me to it. Congratulations to Cornelia who, I hope, is vomiting uproariously somewhere in California.
Oh and speakin’ of further good news of the BSP variety – starred PW! “Edgar-winner Lippman…shows she’s as good as…other A-list thriller writers with this outstanding stand-alone” if you want to get all pullquote-like.
Mini-anxiety attacks and trouble breathing at the mention of returning to New Jersey for visits, etc. I don’t know why — I really don’t have any particular issues with NJ anything or anybody.
Jeanne