I was fortunate enough to meet comedy-rock legend  "Weird Al" Yankovic in 1984 during a brief stay in Texas (I won a radio contest to "Eat It with Weird Al!", although Al was wise enough and vegan enough not to touch the skanky hamburgers they tried to feed us.) I had two copies of his "Eat It" picture-sleeve 45, so I left the vinyl at home and brought the sleeves.

Al signed one for me, then I told him about my brother Arthur, who also liked to make song parodies. Al wrote "Dear 'Weird Arthur'  Keep up the good work!" and signed it. I was so moved that he wrote something so nice when he could've gotten away with just scribbling an illegible autograph. I wish I could say I had the guts to hug him, but I just thanked him and went to find a place to watch the show.

I sat on the side of the stage - I figured maybe since I had a backstage pass on they wouldn't tell me to move...and they didn't! I got to see the whole show from stage left! When he started a song called "Yoda," I nearly fainted! I'd never heard it - it wasn't out yet - and when I was little, the original song, "Lola," was my favorite song, plus I was a big Star Wars freak. Having my beloved Al combine those two things was like a dream come true!

When the show was over, I ran backstage to see if I could congratulate Al on his amazing show, but he and most of the band had disappeared. But I saw Al's lead guitarist, Jim West, so I ran up to him and asked breathlessly, "Why isn't 'Yoda' on either of your albums!?!" He gave me a sad look. "Aw, man, the Kinks won't let us do it," he answered, obviously disappointed. I was disappointed too, but when Al's third album, Dare To Be Stupid, came out, we got our "Yoda!" (Apparently, the Kinks had relented.)

From that point on, Al has been a god to me. (If you're one of those touchy people who find that sort of statement offensive, sorry 'bout that.) Two years after I met Al, I met a guy with brown curly hair and brown eyes and the same kind of glasses Al wore, and I guess my brain thought, "Close enough!" because I married the guy. John, aka 'Al's evil twin,' was my hubby for 7 years, at which point he got the dreaded seven-year-itch (and scratched it with a girl I thought was my friend), so I took our 5-year-old daughter Angelina and moved to my parents' house and began divorce proceedings.

My dad had just gotten online (this was 1995), so he showed me how to surf, and I searched for Al, which led me to The Bermuda Files (the old website of Al's drummer, Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz). I'd check it every day, and I listened to Al every day, trying to use humor to offset the pain of the divorce. I told my friend Michael that only Al was keeping me alive, so when he noticed a bootleg live "Weird Al" concert video at a record convention, he bought it for me. I watched it every day.

One day, I went to the Bermuda Files, and the news page hadn't changed in, like, two weeks, so I decided to be brave and click the link to "newsgroup." I didn't even know what that was, but anything Al is good, right? I read a bunch of "Al rocks!"-type posts, but then one post caught my eye (and you know how painful that can be! as Al says) It said, "I live in Australia, and I'll probably never get to see Al live. Does anyone know if any live video exists?" (This was before his live DVD.) I took pity on my fellow Al-worshiper and e-mailed him to offer to copy my live bootleg. He wrote back, "Dear generous American girl" and said he'd love to have a copy. I had a copy made of the bootleg, and I sent it to him in Australia. He sent me a very funny CD of an Aussie comedy band. We got to be pen pals, and his e-mails were so hilarious, I wrote every day so I'd hear from him often.

I noticed that my pen pal, Ian Taylor, was brilliant, hilarious, and kind. He seemed to have good ethics, unlike my ex. I realized he had all the qualities that had made me love Al so much, so imagine my excitement when I got an email from Ian that said, "I've just finished my first book. It's a comedy science fiction novel." I begged him to send me the novel, Spindle, and he did. It was without a doubt the funniest thing I'd ever read. I immediately had three reactions: 1) this is my favorite book ever!, 2) hmm, Ian doesn't think like normal people, and 3) I want to marry him! I didn't think anyone could displace Al as my ultimate fantasy, but Ian had the advantage of knowing I existed! I started hinting about my feelings in my e-mails to Ian, but being a guy, he had no clue. I invited him to visit me in America and see Al's Bad Hair Day Tour?he couldn't resist. I booked a hotel room in Boston for three days so he wouldn't have to spend his whole American vacation in my crappy little hometown, and by the time we left Boston to go back to my apartment, we were madly in love. I knew I was right about him!

We married in 1998, had a second daughter, Elise, in 1999, and in 2003, I was pregnant with our son and we were living in our own first home.  I thought I must be the luckiest woman in the world, even though we hadn't yet been able to get a publisher interested in Spindle. But luck that good is always punished...

One day, seven months along, I awoke to find myself sitting up on the edge of my bed with two EMTs giving me an IV. Ian said I'd screamed at 5 am, and he'd turned on the light and found me having a massive seizure, so he'd called 911. I had no memory of the seizure and didn't want to believe him, but I knew he wouldn't lie about such a thing, so I told my doctor, and she sent me to a neurologist, who agreed to give me an EEG. The EEG was abnormal, so they scheduled an MRI. By the time I got the MRI, I was eight months pregnant. They did the MRI on a Thursday evening and put me into an ambulance right after and admitted me to the hospital. I had a panicky hour or so before a doctor finally told me what was happening: they'd found an enormous brain tumor that had to come out ASAP?"but first," he said, "we'll have to get that baby out of you." They did a C-section the next morning, waited a week for that to heal, then did the brain surgery. When I awoke, I couldn't move my left arm or hand at all. After two weeks, they moved me into a rehab hospital to help me learn to use the arm, but by the time I got home, my son, Bennett, was a month old and had been living with my parents for three weeks. I couldn't hold him well enough to nurse him, but he thrived on formula and is now a healthy four-year-old.

In 2005 I finally made the leap and published Spindle myself. The POD publisher we used, BookSurge, is owned by Amazon, so at least now everyone around the world can read the funniest book ever! I'm doing lots of marketing so we can spread the humor all over, just like our mentor, AL!! To read an excerpt, check out: www.spindlebook.com

It took several years before I finally started to feel mostly recovered from the brain surgery, and boom! The universe had another nasty surprise for me.  In late 2005 I was diagnosed with cancer. I finished a horrific chemo and radiation regimen in early 2006. I hoped that would be the last bad news my doctor would ever give me, but in early 2007, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, and then at the end of 2007, an MRI revealed that my brain tumor has begun to grow back (it's too small to be operable, so they're doing radiationtreatment (they had also started chemo, but it made me too ill to take care of my kids, so I opted to stop it.  But when I start to feel that the bad luck is too much, I look at our three children...all beautiful, all brilliant (even Elise, who's autistic, has an IQ of 147), and I know that I'm still the luckiest girl in the world...I'm just uncomfortably familiar with the 'down' parts of the rollercoaster. ;^(  After Elise was diagnosed with Asperger's, we found out that Ian has Asperger's, too, which explains why I didn't think he "thought like normal people"...he doesn't!  But he has a talent for comedy unlike anyone else, which is why Midwest Book Review called Spindle "a wonderfully entertaining scifi novel that is a genuine pleasure from beginning to end."

If it weren't for Al, I'd never have married either of my husbands, my three children would never have been born, and four years ago, I'd have likely died of a brain tumor because no one would have witnessed the seizure that was the only symptom. I'd say I owe "Weird Al" everything.

Every month or two I e-mail Bermuda to thank him for giving Al a web presence (and me a soulmate!)  I wish I could find a way to properly thank Al for saving my life and generally making all the good stuff in my life happen. What a guy.

I'm trying to spread the word about Spindle so others can enjoy Ian's unique and hilarious humor. (Spindle recently won the 2007 Indie Excellence Award for science fiction.) 

But I do remind people that if they love Spindle so much they want to marry the author...too bad! He's all mine! 8^D

Praise AL!!