I had never heard of Judy Mays until Wednesday. That’s when, out of the blue, her name was all over Twitter. Every other tweet was about Mays, author of erotic romance novels featuring supernatural elements. It seems Judy Mays is really Judy Buranich, a high school English teacher. A few parents disovered this fact and rasied a ruckus that someone who wrote about sex on the side was teaching their children.

This, sadly, did not surprise me.

What shocked me, however, was when I clicked on a news story about the kerfuffle and saw it was taking place in my former back yard. Snyder County, Pennsylvania, to be exact. Just two counties away from where I grew up.

It was disheartening, to say the least. I wanted to believe that people in my home state were more open-minded than this. That they understood the concept of freedom of speech. That they realized someone who wrote fiction didn’t necessarily want their made-up stories to be real.

I was wrong. Here are some quotes from concerned parents and students:

“I was shocked. If you are a teacher you shouldn’t be doing that.” — Shanette Apple, former student

“I was sort of shocked. Sitting in her class I had no idea. She is a good teacher, but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.” — Drew Hollenbach, former student

“She is teaching children that are under the age of 18, and definitely the books that she is writing are adult books.” — Deanna Stepp, concerned parent

These quotes say a lot. They tell me that no one in Judy Buranich’s classroom knew about her side gig. She kept it separate, which of course is how it should be. It’s also clear that she’s good at her job. (Hence the “She is a good teacher” quote.)

But the quotes also make it clear these people think that because Judy Mays write about sex with werewolves, for example, it means she wants to have sex with a werewolf in real life. Maybe an underage werewolf. Maybe even (gasp!) a werewolf in her classroom!

Perhaps they’re right. Maybe Ms. Buranich/Mays does wants to be sexually ravaged by a 17-year-old half-man/half-beast in the silvery light of a full moon. Or maybe she’s just making things up for the fun of it. Writing is fun, after all. And those of us who are authors rarely want to do the things we write about. My book, DEATH NOTICE, features a serial killer who tries to embalm his victims. This does not mean I want to kill anyone or embalm anything. It simply means I made it up. (Oh, and werewoles don’t really exist.)

But Deanna Stepp, that concerned parent, goes even further, saying: “I think she needs to make a decision as to what she wants to do. Either be a school teacher or author.”

Well, Ms. Stepp, it’s not that easy. Many authors, myself included, need our jobs. We enjoy getting steady paychecks, to pay for things like food and shelter. We enjoy having health insurance, in case things go wrong. I know many writers who would love to be able to support themselves with their writing alone, but it’s just not in the cards. We must work and we must write.

(But since you’re so concerned about how we make a living, Ms. Stepp, I encourage you to buy several thousand copies of my book. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/43b2499  Thanks for your support!)

As for Judy, I hope she can continue to do both. Officials at her school aren’t commenting, but I pray they understand that writing and teaching have been and can continue to be separate. She isn’t hurting anyone. She isn’t reading her books aloud in class. She’s simply trying to be an English teacher during work hours and tell stories in her free time.

I applaud her. And I support her. Every writer should.

I’m kind of a big deal in Germany.

Not a huge deal, mind you. And certainly not a David Hasselhoff-type deal. (I think I need leather pants, a few cheesy albums and a drinking problem to reach those heights.) But I’m pretty sure more readers know my name in Germany than in the United States.

“Why is that?” I hear you asking.

The reason is that image to your right — the German version of DEATH NOTICE, only there it’s known as DAS SCHWEIGEN DER TOTEN. Cool cover, right? I’m not sure how it relates to my book at all (There is no one wrapped in plastic, a la Twin Peaks.) but it looks creepy and certainly has a few Germans buzzing about it. It’s sold more copies in the past two weeks in Germany than it has in the last four months in the United States.

I’ve come up with two reasons for this. The first is that Germans are twisted, morbid people with a taste for thrillers in which characters get embalmed by a wannabe mortician. (I’m not judging. I find that to be an admirable quality.) The second is that my name is rather Teutonic and that perhaps some Germans have mistaken me for one of their countrymen. Whatever the reason, I’ll take it.

Of course, I’m not the only writer this has happened to. If you take a look at Amazon.com’s German website, you’ll see a lot of American authors you’ve probably never heard of doing very, very well there. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that good sales in Germany have allowed a few authors to make the leap into writing full time. That is an awesome thing. I hope to be one of them someday.

Now, my point of this post is not to brag about my success in Germany. It’s more about how surreal the world of publishing can be, especially where foreign sales are concerned. It’s mind-blowing to know that, right this very moment, someone on the other side of the world is reading my book. Even stranger is that people in Germany are liking it quite a bit.

I think.

That’s another surreal thing about all of this. I have no idea what German readers are saying about DAS SCHWEIGEN DER TOTEN. I only see the starred reviews on the few sites I’ve been able to Google. For writers like me who thrive on positive feedback, it’s pretty frustrating not being able to read what those reviews are saying. (I tried using Google translator, but everything came out sounding like garbled lyrics to an Ace of Base song.)

The upside is that none of this has gone to my head. It’s hard to get a swollen ego when you’re not even sure what’s going on in a country you’ve never visited and whose language you don’t know. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. So I go about my day like normal — writing, driving to work, spending weekends on the couch dressed like a retiree from Boca.

At the same time, it’s good to have a back-up ego boost in times of stress. When I get cut off by an SUV on the highway, for example, or when the kid behind me on the airplane keeps kicking my seat. That’s when I close my eyes, take a deep breath and tell myself, “People in Germany really like my book.”

It works everytime.

So if anyone from Germany is reading this, I want you to know how grateful I am that you’ve taken a shine to this boy from Pennsylvania. It means a lot, and I hope to visit one day very soon. Until then, from the bottom of my heart, danke.

“You were my nineties!”

That’s what a younger character says to Gale Weathers, played by Courteney Cox, early on in Scream 4. The comment is highly appropriate, because the Scream movies were my nineties.

The first one came out when I was a film studies major in college, and my friends and I reveled in the way it deconstructed stupid horror movies while simultaneously being a kick-ass one. But most of all, it made us — a group of intelligent, cynical, savvy academics — feel smart for being in on the joke. Plus, it scared the pants off of us. Everyone I knew saw it and loved it. We went back to theaters to see it again and again, always bringing newbies into the fold. It just wasn’t Halloween unless Scream was playing on a TV somewhere in my vicinity.

When Scream 2 and Scream 3 came out, I was among the first people in line to see them. I owned the DVDs. I could quote whole swaths of dialogue. I’m not ashamed to admit that the Scream movies were my Star Wars trilogy — something I could geek out to and defend from all critics. (Even though I was secretly disappointed by Scream 3.)

Naturally, I was excited to hear that they were making a Scream 4. I was nervous, too. We all know what happened to Star Wars fans when they got a fourth movie. Would Scream 4 be any good? Or would it be another Phantom Menace?  More important, would anyone care?

Well, Scream 4 is good, although not nearly on the level of the first two movies. And, I’m happy to report, it’s not nearly as awful as The Phantom Menace. But, the biggest question, did I care?

Truth be told, not really.

There’s a lot to like about Scream 4, from the dizzying opening to the unabashedly over-the-top climax. (Anyone who has read DEATH NOTICE can tell that I love my endings to be over the top.) In between there’s some smart dialogue and a few interesting set pieces. As for the ending, the more I think about it, the more I love it. It’s a sly, poison-tipped critique of (deep breath) our reality-show culture, our obsession with fame, the media that encourages it, violence against women in movies and the constant barrage of remakes that studios push down our throats seemingly every week now.

Yet when I was watching the movie, I couldn’t help but feel disconnected from the whole thing. Something didn’t feel right. The jokes weren’t as funny. The murders were more brutal. Spine-chilling suspense seemed to be replaced with mere violence. I didn’t really care about the characters or whether they lived or died. (Except Sidney, of course. My Scream roots are still deep.) I didn’t even care who the killer (or killers) ended up being, nor was I particularly surprised by it. Had my beloved Scream franchise changed?

No, it’s still the same horror series it always was, and if you’re into that kind of thing, go see it.

The disconnect came from the fact that I had changed. Quite a bit. A lot happened to me between Scream 3 and Scream 4. I lost contact with many of my friends. Friends and family members passed away. New ones were born. I changed jobs, relationships, apartments. Several times. I wrote a book and, lo and behold, it somehow got published, creating a new wave of deadlines, responsibilities and obligations.

In other words, I grew up and became an adult. The Scream movies, however, will always be a young person’s game.

I’m still glad I saw Scream 4. I enjoyed it for what it was. But I hope the producers are smart enough to not make a fifth one. (Judging from the film’s weak box office, I doubt it.) However, if they do, I won’t be seeing it. The Scream films and I are no longer compatible. It’s time to move on. The nineties are over.