Today, around 9 a.m., there was the ungodly wail of a fire engine siren making its way in front of my house. No, the neighbor’s house was not on fire, there was no cat in a tree, and nobody was in need of medical care, unless MENTAL health counts.

Following the fire engine was a bunch of marching kids and three old people in a car.

“What the hell is this?” I asked my neighbor.

“It’s the Primary Parade.”

“Well phew. I thought the Fire Department was handing out crack, and the neighborhood kids were standing in line.”

(Note to readers: I have no idea what a Primary Parade is, or why they would want to have them, except Primary is the organization for young Mormon children who have not yet entered an age where they will probably EXPERIMENT with crack.)

My friend, Sue, got an early morning phone call Friday. Really early. Like, 1 a.m. early. Now, if you have kids, relatives, or even just a few friends, middle of the night phone calls are heart-pounders. They are almost always harbingers of doom, death, or bad boyfriend break-ups.

So, Sue was understandbly nervous, as well as half asleep, when she said, “Hello.”

It wasn’t doom. It wasn’t death. It wasn’t “but he said me loooooved meeeee.”

See, Sue is an interesting person. She is one of the founding members of the Exmormon Foundation, and she is also the great-great-great granddaughter (I might be minus or plus a few greats there, so I’ll let Sue correct it) of Brigham Young, the second president of the Mormon Church. Even with all those direct ties to the Church, Sue still woke up one day and said “What the fuck? You want me to believe WHAT?” This happens to a lot of us. Others hear the strangeness and choose to ignore it, wearing blinders. Still others try to explain it away using circular logic and a lot of “maybes.” But Sue, like me and many others, just said, “No thanks,” and attempted to walk away. And like the others who tried to walk away, she learned it just ain’t that easy. It was even harder in Sue’s case, because she raised something like 42 children and taught them that it was “the only true Church.” (And she’s SO gonna kill me because I said she had something like 42 children. I think it was closer to seven.)

Many of those children are still Mormon, and since she’s the one that taught them it was true, she has a lot of issues to deal with now that she knows it isn’t, and they are wondering who the hell this strange woman is and what she did with their good Mormon mother.

With all these experiences, Sue is very empathetic to those who find themselves wondering, questioning, or on their way out. So empathetic she has given out her phone number to those who are questioning.

Thus, the late night phone call. But it wasn’t someone questioning. It was a 24-year-old returned missionary who saw the ads for the ExMormon Foundation in the University of Utah newspaper, and decided he needed to set the ExMormon Foundation STRAIGHT. AT ONE-FUCKING-O-CLOCK-IN-THE-MORNING. Not only that, but Sue lives on the West Coast, so it was ACTUALLY two a.m. here in Utah when he called her. Does his MOTHER know about this?

What the hell happened to common courtesy? Do Mormons think we no longer deserve it, because we have been bold enough to say we don’t believe? Sue said that while he was polite, he went on and on about how right he was, and how wrong she was, and how people leave because they are lazy and just can’t live up to the standards anymore (common rhetoric from the Mormon camp). In short, the conversation went nowhere and amounted to him trying to bring Sue back into line. Maybe he was relying on the late hour and her sleepiness to get her brainwashed back into the Mormon way of thinking.

One of the most interesting things about this encounter, at least to me, is that Mormons DENY this shit ever happens. I get so many emails from people telling me my Trapped by the Mormons story could not POSSIBLY be true. And “boo hoo, so what if someone loves you enough to try to get you back to living the Lord’s gospel?” It CAN’T be true, but if it IS, what is the big deal? Why should I be bothered?

Um, because you are crossing BOUNDARIES here, people? Are you so used to people telling you how to live your life, that you think you can do the same no matter the hour, the day, the occasion, or how well you know the person? After all, someone told YOU what was right and what was wrong. You are now obligated to go out and do the same for others!

And they do. Especially to those who once belonged (and in some cases even BELIEVED, unlike moi, who was only ever a cultural Mormon because my parents eat, sleep, breathe, drink and spout it on a regular basis).

Mormons do this stuff to former Mormons all the time.

I even got death threats there for a while. Richard Packham has had men try to curse them to die with their priesthood powers, or to be struck dumb. Didn’t work. He’s still talking. I have first hand knowledge of this. I’ve SEEN his mouth move, and heard the VOICE issue forth.

All this boundary crosses adds to the irritation level of ex-Mormons, which is one of the reasons why so many of them are so angry. For hell’s sake, people, can’t you stay on YOUR side of the fence?

Apparently not. And that’s today’s rant.

Because Simon Southerton was excommunicated from the LDS Church–ostensibly because, while separated from his wife, he had a relationship with another woman–national media attention has been once again focused in on the controversial tenets of Mormonism. Despite the fact the Mormons tried to come up with other reasons to oust Southerton, everybody and their dog knows why he was actually booted. See, Simon’s research showed he could not find one single link between the Lost Tribes of Jewish descent, and Native Americans.

If you’ve done your Book of Mormon research, you know that it claims that Lamanites were the descendants of these extremely directionally-challenged Israelites, and it claims they found themselves, oddly enough, in the Western Hemisphere. Okay, we could MAYBE accept that (can you hear a IT COULD HAPPEN?), even though there isn’t one shred of evidence supporting it, except recent DNA evidence, like the extensive research done by Southerton, shows that the Native Americans are actually descended from Asians.

So what do the Mormons do? Kill the messenger, of course!! That’s standard practice.

In all of this, one thing really stood out for me. Here’s the deal. Either you accept DNA, or you don’t. And I’m not alone.

A columnist for a Boise weekly paper, Bill Cope, wrote this:

But the most troubling questions to come out of this episode-at least, in the mind of this impartial scorner of all things faith-based-has to do with the judgment of those pious individuals and august bodies who appoint themselves (usually with little or no input from the groveling congregation) as the wellspring of all wisdom. Where, exactly, do they draw their line between what is useful information and what is heresy? If they are so adamant about denying any science that contradicts whatever bilge they’ve been preaching, how the heck can they use that same science in the day-to-day, nonsectarian applications of it?

First of all, how the hell did Bill Cope end up in Boise, Idaho? That’s like living just east of the Temple, for hell’s sake. My SISTER lives in Boise, and there is as many Mormons there as SLC, I swear. (Please do not go find statistics and prove me wrong. I’m probably wrong. I just know there’s a whole hell of a lot of Mormons up there.)

Now that I have that out, let’s move on.

Whether you like Bill or not (and based on his column, I suspect I like him a lot), he’s right.

You don’t get it both ways. Either you BELIEVE in DNA evidence and its validity, or you don’t. Since the LDS faithful and hierarchy are dismissing it, that means they don’t get to use it for ANYTHING ELSE, either.

No more murder trials, no more DNA evidence, nada. Want to prove the bishop’s son really DID impregnate your daughter? Sorry, no can do-ee.

So, which one is it going to be?

Blogger has not been kind to me today, but I really wanted to update you to a few things going on, so let’s hope for the best.

First, I have an interview posted on the POD-dy mouth blog, which documents my experiences first as a POD author, then as a New York-published author. Girl is an awesome hostess, and she did a great interview. You can read it here.

Secondly, I posted a comment on Lee Goldberg’s blog, in defense of New York Times Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen. After reading the comment, Lee, who had criticized Tess for admitting she was worried because her latest book debuted at #17 on the New York Times Bestselling List, offered a public apology to Tess. This is a brief summary, of course, and you can read the entire exchange on Lee’s site, but let me just say he proved himself an officer and a gentlemen, or at least a gentlemen, and as my friend Liz Burton says, he is “good people.”

Lastly, as I worked slavishly to finish up my revisions on BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, my next book with St. Martin’s Press, my children, slothful lazy little monkeys, watched television in the next room. “Mom, Mom,” the oldest one yelled. “Hurry.” I ran into the room to discover the oldest one holding the remote and clicking without effect.

“The remote won’t work! What will we do?” I have raised children who do not understand there are on/off, volume, and channel buttons located on each and every television made.

Good God. When does school start again?

Karin Gillespie is the best. She’s the founder and creator of the Girlfriend’s Cyber Circuit, and the author of the Bottom Dollar Series. Not only is she the best promotion expert I’ve met so far, she is also a great organizer, mother hen, caring person, etc. And her books are just as good!

Just listen to what others are saying about her newest book, A Dollar Short: The Bottom Dollar Girls Go Hollywood.

“As tart and delectable as lemon meringue pie… a pure delight!”
–Jennifer Weiner, author of Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and Little Earthquakes

“Never a dull moment…. this fast-paced screamer of a romance begs a giggle, if not a guffaw. —Booklist

Want to know more about the most recent book? I do!

It isn’t every day a movie star steals your husband. Former beauty queen Chiffon Butrell faces that dilemma when her husband Lonnie wins a trip to Hollywood. Lonnie meets mega movie star, Janie Lynn Lauren—known as Jay-Li to her elite circle- and leaves Chiffon behind in Cayboo Creek, S.C., with three kids and no money.

Chiffon’s manages to lose her temper and her job in quick succession—only to discover that Lonnie’s paycheck from the Nutra-Sweet plant has been forwarded to a California address. With three kids to feed, Chiffon comes up more than a dollar short.

Her good friends, the Bottom Dollar Girls, try their best to pitch in. But there are too few hands to lend, what with Elizabeth and her husband Timothy expecting their first baby any day, and the rest of the Bottom Dollar Girls knee-deep in their secret—and possibly scandalous–plan to raise money for the Cayboo Creek Senior Center.

When a slick of Wesson Oil at the Winn Dixie gets the better of Chiffon’s ankle, there’s just one thing to be done—call on estranged older sister Chenille, who hails from Bible Grove, S.C. A prissy, fussy spinster prone to dressing her dog Walter in matching plaid “mother-son” outfits, Chenille is everything Chiffon detests.

Chiffon’s little house is soon overrun with buzzing paparazzi, and the tabloids are having a field day with the starlet’s affair with a down-home country boy. Jay-Li declares war when she appears on national television to assassinate Chiffon’s character and to declare her intentions for Lonnie by wearing a t-shirt that says, “Chiffon, Be Gone!” Things get ugly in a hurry in the battle of wills between the mother of three and the world’s greatest movie star.

Through all their trials, the Grace girls find solace in the centerpiece of the series, the Bottom Dollar Emporium. Whether it’s the straightforward advice of eighty-five year old Attalee, or the helpful ministrations of Elizabeth, the women of the Bottom Dollar stick together.

Not to be missed, A DOLLAR SHORT (Simon and Schuster, August 2005) sparkles with energy and wit, as well as the compelling story of emotional loss and the strength to endure. It is a hilarious saga of loss, sisterhood, and the will to survive in small town Cayboo Creek, South Carolina.

More about Karin:

Before coming a novelist, Karin Gillespie was a special education teacher at an inner-city school and an editor of a regional parenting magazine. She’s also a bi-monthly columnist for the Augusta Chronicle.

Her first novel Bet Your Bottom Dollar is in the process of being optioned by James Woods for film.

She travels the Southeast with three other Southern authors, and they call themselves the Dixe Divas.

For the release of A Dollar Short: The Bottom Dollar Girls Go Hollywood, Karin will be embarking on the “Take Back the Tiara Tour” which will feature a red carpet, dime-store tiaras, and an essay contest for women.

A Dollar Short has been chosen as a featured alternative for Doubleday and Literary Guild book clubs.