One of the funnest parts of being a writer is getting to hang out with other authors, so I was especially looking forward to having my good friends Julie Wright and Josi Kilpack come down to Arizona to do book signings. Having them stay at my house—total slumber party.

There was only one little problem. Before they came I managed to give myself a head wound and a black eye. I won’t go into the details of how this happened as it is a long boring story except for the part that makes me look really foolish, but the moral of the story is: No, I don’t have night vision.

Really, it is easier to give yourself a black eye than you’d think.

So I warned Julie and Josi that I looked like a homeless person (It’s hard to wash your hair when you’ve smeared antibiotic ointment on your hairline) and planned on skipping out on their signings. But they were also speaking to a book club and invited me to come—in fact, they invited me to speak at it with them. How could I turn it down?

I hoped people would think I was going for the slightly greasy hair look, then caked on the foundation. It did a pretty good job hiding the bruise.

Josi spoke, I spoke, and then Julie spoke. But Julie gave one of those really moving talks about the books that turned her life around when she was young. It wasn’t long before I was crying. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing at all except that I knew crying would wash away my foundation and suddenly reveal to everybody there that I was hiding a black eye.

How do you explain that to a roomful of strangers? “Oh, and by the way folks, in case you were wondering–my husband doesn’t really doesn’t beat me!”

This is why you shouldn’t go listen to Julie Wright if you need to keep your makeup in place.