Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Jamie and Kellan by Astro

Kellan: Hold fucking still -- you're messing up my angle!
Jamie: You keep fellating that bottle and I will do anything you say.
Kellan: Shit. Spilled.
Jamie: I can always lick it off.
Kellan: It's the right thing to do. People who waste whiskey go to the special hell.
Jamie: You're adorkable.
Kellan: ... You pronounced it wrong.
Jamie: No, baby. I really didn't.

Okay, okay, before you get up on me about stereotyping my own by having an Irish-American character who likes to (responsibly!) get wrecked sometimes, let me just link my rant from this post on my tumblr on this very subject. Better yet, check out what Cracked.com has to say, paying special attention to the awesome bit on drinking. Ha!

Happy St. Pat's, or very nearly! Those boys right there are the stars (believe it or not...) of Nobody's Hero. Kellan, the one with the whiskey dripping all over his tattoed self, happens to enjoy this holiday. So does his gigantic Irish-Catholic family.

And so does mine. A point which is best illustrated, perhaps, by a small snippet from Nobody's Hero. So I'll let Jamie do the talking:

Kellan watched the fire build, teeth clacking absently against the mouth of his beer bottle. Was he mad at Finn? Did he care that Ken wound them up like that? Or was he just so used to it all that he didn’t even notice anymore? Was he remembering this same party, years ago, when he was as young as the stooges and running around in bare feet screaming and wrestling? 

 Was he sorry he’d brought me? 

 Why was I even thinking that? What the fuck was wrong with me today? 

 “Okay.” Ken held up something like a smallish guitar -- no, wait, that was a banjo. When he had most people’s attention, he said, “Where are we starting?” 

 “‘Rocky Road to Dublin’!” Finn announced, disentangling himself from the girlfriend and making his way toward a guitar case. He pulled Tara away from her college boy and dragged her to the front with him. 

 I looked at Kellan. “You’re kidding.” 

 “Nope. And I apologize in advance for how much this will weird you out, but you might as well get the full experience.” 

 And so I did. Several tries at “The Rocky Road to Dublin” ended in chaos and laughter, but the rest of the impromptu program worked out a little better. The kids ran around and danced and babbled; the grownups stood and sat in clusters, sucking on their beers, intermittently singing along and talking amongst themselves.

So, confession: I pretty much lifted this whole scene from one of my own family gatherings. It's actually happening on the Fourth of July in the book, but the principle is the same. We get together, we drink, we argue, we hug, we sing, we laugh, we stay up all night arguing politics and end up waking at five a.m., head on a kitchen table otherwise covered with empty jugs of wine and broken guitar strings.

And this spirit of togetherness and good times is why I, personally, love St. Patrick's day. It reminds me of my family, who are loud, argumentative, and completely goddamn lovable. So happy St. Pat's, blog hop people!

So hey, cool things to do in celebration today:
1. Enter the big Nobody's Hero giveaway. Comics, paddy rock, and beer paraphernalia up for grabs. Oh yeah, and superpowered love, naturally.
2. Head over to Joyfully Jay, where there's not only a fabulous review of Nobody's Hero from yesterday, but there will also be an interview with me later today [ETA: interview! Yay!] where I'm giving away a copy of the book.
3. Comment right here, right now, on this post, and be entered to win a a superspecial St. Patrick's Day bonus giveaway. From now until 12 noon tomorrow, March 17, one person who comments here will win a $10 gift card to Amazon, ARe, B&N, or Loose Id -- winner's choice. Just remember to please leave some way to contact you if your email isn't in your profile, or I'll have to give it to the next person.
4. Visit all the other blog hop spots and hit up their giveaways! Every comment on every blog hop post is also an entry to win one of our two grand prizes:

Grand Prize 1: Winner's Choice of a Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
Grand Prize 2: Winner's Choice of a $90 Amazon or Barnes&Noble Gift Card.

And come back for St. Patrick's tomorrow if you can. Kellan's going to be DJing. Let's hope he's more lucid than I plan to be.

(I haven't figured out how that's going to work, yet. Ahem.)
[ETA: hop stuff removed, since the java was tweaking out my computer after a few weeks!]