Fun Facts About April

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  • I buy nearly all my clothes on e-Bay.
  • I can't parallel park.
  • I know how to get out of handcuffs, zip ties, rope, and duct tape. 
  • Beechers Cheese paid to use one of my tweets in their advertising. They offered to pay me in money or cheese. Guess which I took?
  • I have held a variety of odd jobs, including German translator, cleaning lady, and a brief stint as the girl who jumps out of a cake. 
  • In 1656, one of my ancestors was charged with "pig bewitchment."  Luckily, he was found not guilty.  
  • My maternal great-grandfather was in an arson gang.
  • My paternal great-grandfather gunned down my grandmother's boyfriend for kissing her. (A long-hidden family secret I uncovered a few years back and that will probably make its way into a book. It explains a lot about why my grandmother - pictured in graduation cap on the left - was such a crabby person.)
  • My third great-grandfather was murdered. Family rumor says his own stepsons were among the killers, and that his biological sons took revenge on the killers. Another family rumor that turned out to be true is one of his sons fled Missouri carrying the head of one his father's killers in a sack.
  • I hold a purple belt in kung fu, an orange belt in kajukenbo, and a blue belt in Brazilian jiujitsu. 
  • I speak German (slowly and with mistakes). And I know some sign language.
  • I'm pretty sure no one noticed me in high school.
  • I can make a cloverleaf shape with my tongue. It's supposed to be some rare genetic trait. When my kid showed me she could do it, I tried and tried until I could too.
  • I wrote an episode for the app Zombies, Run!
  • When Kettle Chips discontinued their Loaded Baked Potato flavor I bought every bag in the store.
  • I have more than 46 chromosomes. 
  • I have taken a course on close quarters fighting with SWAT team members.
  • When I was 22, a man broke into my apartment when I was in the shower. I managed to escape unharmed. 
  • I’ve never learned to ski. 
  • I went to the same high school as Lisa Rinna. 
  • My dad was a TV newsman and us kids often ended up as B-roll. 
  • Charlaine Harris (the author of the books that became the HBO show True Blood) and I used to be in a group called Almost Famous Authors.  
  • I have fired an M-5 machine gun on an FBI gun range. In fact, it was the first gun I ever shot. 
  • I still have a postcard Roald Dahl sent me in 1972 complimenting me on a story I had written.  
  • In third grade, I was the only girl cast as a reindeer in the school play. 
  • I found out I was pregnant in New York City. 
  • I was a life-drawing model in college. 
  • One of the scariest days of my life was February 1, 2008, when I quit my day job to write full time.