Thank you everyone for the sweet words, congrats and encouragement (Yesterday’s post.)
So they extensive partying for Emma’s upcoming birthday has begun. Last night we had a joint family birthday party dinner with Emma and her older cousin who’s birthday is today. We all had pizza and then the kids ran around getting really riled–Emma hadn’t taken a nap.
By the time present opening came around we were bordering on melt down. We sat Emma and her cousin on the floor to open some presents, and Emma was recovering from a crying episode (after being told not to open a present early.) So I had the camera posed, ready to start clicking when they rip open their presents. Emma’s starts to cough, and then bam. Pukes all over the rug in front of everyone. Yeah, so that was fun. About 15 minutes of more vomiting and clean up happened. Anyway, that was last night.
Today, we went out to Red Robin with the grandparents and my aunt and the lady I grammasit. No drama today, just more fantastic presents, macaroni and cheese, and ice cream and singing. Fun stuff!
So I’ve been busy. Deciding what to do with Sha Shana’s advice about my book, writing my NaNo, doing birthday stuff, and then I got first edits on Love for Sale (first edits are always the most brutal.)
Okay, I have killer lower back pain. Just had to take a Rx pain med, I hope it works!So I’m trying to lay down and write.
Three romantic tales that take place in Salacity, a city where the paranormal is normal and the thing that goes bump in the night might be your lover; the city of darkness.
Deltinica was fascinated by the strange man who came out of the woods without a stitch on, but would her magic and compassion prove strong enough to help him defeat an undeserved curse and allow him to finally find peace at her side?
Or would the vengeance of the gods tear Vali away after the three nights of the full moon, leaving him once more trapped and alone?
When Jamilah inherits an Egyptian artifact, she didn’t expect it to propel her into a reality so displaced from her own.
Set, the God of Chaos runs his kingdom with an iron fist. But when a shift in the air signals the arrival of something powerful, he’s determined to possess it.
When Dane saves Jamilah from peril he knew her importance. With the emergence of something within that demands his attention and a budding love for a woman he can’t have, so begins the battle between a man who’ll fight for what’s right and Set who’ll do anything possess her.
So I think I hit a new point in my writing career today. Something’s been brewing the past few days that I was hesitant to talk about until I knew for sure. But I got an email from Sha Shana Crichton (agent), who I’d subbed to. The email said she wanted to call me. So the call didn’t actually happen until today, and I was on pins and needles the entire time. I had no clue which direction the conversation could go. But usually when an agent calls, these are what I was told the options are…
A. I’d like to show this to ___ (publisher) and I’d like to be your agent. B. I’m interested in representing you for this project and all future projects C. I love your voice, but there’s a few thing I feel you need to change to make this book work.
Guess which one it was for me? That’s right: C. I pretty much expected it. You see this book I wrote two years ago and was ready to shelve it once I got a rejection back. Only, she didn’t reject me, she called me. Ooooh the dilemma. So now I’m debating what to do. Rework a book that was written before I knew all the secrets on how to write a really good book? Or focus on the book I’m doing for NaNo, that I think is some of the best stuff I’ve written yet.
Regardless, Sha Shana said she’d like to look at any other completed books I have or that I may complete in the future. She’s a very sweet lady and had some great advice.
But until the end of the month my focus is Nano (hey I made a commitment!) and the book that’s stolen my heart :) Then I may make the changes in my vintage book. Or maybe finish up the Nano book, edit it, and then send that one.
It’s very thrilling though. To think I’ve sparked interest with a book that was written two years ago. What would happen if I subbed something fresh? That I wrote recently? Now that I know what deep POV is and other tricks.
So that’s where I’ve been the past few days! What have you been up to?
Picture of the day, I thought it was pretty appropriate with the democrats kicking booty in the elections! Can I get a heck yeah?! (Toning it down for the blog)
Yeah so I was watching the CMA awards the other night. And then they got down to this one category (best female artist?) and Faith Hill was up against some really stiff competition. And Carrie Underwood (who I think is pretty amazing) won, but Faith seemed to think she was gonna? Huh? I had to laugh.
On more Hollywood news, Britney and K-Fed broke up!
I guess this is a brief Hollywood post today. I didn’t write Monday night for NaNo, I was too distracted. But I made myself today, and I just love my book! I love that I’m letting myself be funny :)
1. My best friend and I went and got matching butterfly tattoos on our upper back/shoulder area. We got them to celebrate being best friends for 9 years. We’re now going on 16 years of friendship! This is Loribelle, Lacy and I dancing at Nationals.
2. My dad’s cousin wrote/sold regency romances and then opened an epub www.belgravehouse.com before they were fashionable. She’s the one who encouraged me to join RWA and helped me figure out the writing/subbing process.
3. My freshman year of highschool I had a big crush on a guy in my English class. Big. And we saw each other at the Homecoming game and talked, and I kept hoping he’d go to the dance and ask me to dance. He did. And I freaked out. All of a sudden ‘dating’ or ‘interacting w/the opposite sex’ scared me to death. Everytime he came to ask me to dance I’d turn away. Then finally I had to call my mom to pick me up because I was so terrified. Yet the boy still persisted, calling me and asking me out. And I was still terrified and finally lied and told him I had a boyfriend (YEAH RIGHT!) I always felt like a complete wench about that one. Especially cause he left our highschool shortly after. I wish I could find him and explain that ‘it wasn’t you, it was me’ thing.
4. Before I had Emma I was famous for taking trips with my friends. Spontaneous road trips or what not. One friend and I had four days off, so we decided to drive down to Disneyland (from Seattle) we left at midnight and got to L.A. by 8pm the next day. I won’t say how fast we were going. Then on another trip we flew to the East coast, rented a car and just drove all over NY and the states around it. We missed 9/11 by six days.
5. I befriended all three ex-wives, and the one child, of my ex-boyfriend (Emma’s dad.) I was the only one who didn’t marry him (fortunately.) Jammie (wife #2 who has the child) and I are really good friends and get the girls together as often as possible.
I was tagged by Lillian Feisty and Aurrora St. James, and now I’m tagging (man I have no idea who’s done this) Emma/Shawn, Lacy, Jen M. and Jodie. If you’ve already done it, ignore me. :)
So this morning I took Emma out to Starbucks, where they seriously managed to p*ss me off. Let me ask you something? Do I live in the south? When I order an iced tea, should it be sweetened? NO! And it never has been before today. But as my dehydrated body went to gulp up that first drink of plain, thirst quenching tea…I promptly spit it back through my straw. I mean GROSS! As much as I wanted to go back and protest, I have a toddler in the backseat and the drive-through line is 10 cars deep. So I dumped it out, $2.00 I just wasted.
There, you now have been ranted on. The rest of the morning we ran errands, including buying prizes for her birthday party next week! Yup, Emma’s going to turn 3. And we’re having a Little Mermaid theme. We were going to do Thomas the Train, but grandma would have had a stroke (She’s heavily into the ‘girls must play with girls toys’)
And on a super exciting note, while I was putting some of Emma’s clothes up for bid on Ebay, I stumbled across what would become Emma’s Christmas outfit for this year. Yes it’s not green or red, or fluffy (well the collar is somewhat) but it’s just so cute and shiny looking. It’s a skirt and sweater. And I just wanted different. It’s from a Gymboree line (Prim and Proper) a couple years ago I think. Only I bought it online today and paid about 1/3 or the price.
On that toddler note, I was talking to a friend (I’ll say friend in case she’d rather not be indentified) about children and the school hype. Okay, I figured that was just on tv, that whole ‘Timmy is turning 6months, we need to get him on the waiting list for the ‘I crapped my diaper Genius academy’ I mean… people really think like this!? I was just thinking how great that little preschool down the street is and that it’ll do just fine. They finger paint, do crafts. I don’t need to do an interview, or pay a high price tag, it’s in no way exclusive. If anything I’m delaying enrolling her, because I’m waiting for her to be fully potty trained. And that’s fine with me. It doesn’t mean my child is stupid or will be missing that head start in life. It means she’s normal and middle class! Grrrr. I just can’t get over that people think that way. What’s happening to us?
Okay, rant two done. A bit unexpected that one. Yesterday writing was a little more hard. I didn’t want to, it didn’t feel right, but I forced myself to do it, and it took 2 hours, but I got out the minimum NaNo requirement done for the day (a little under 1,700). So I’m off to do that now. Ciao!
Okay! So everyone’s asking about how the meeting went today. It went fabulous. Eden Bradley did a great job with her first time presenting. She’s a charming, fantastic speaker. She read excerpts from novels that were great examples of using the senses and poetic words. She had a hands on, senses portion where we touched things and listened to music and smelled things. I heard great reactions from the chapter, and we had a pretty good turn out today! I got to see Aurora, Heather H., Jen, and lots of friends I don’t see to often.
After we dragged Eden to a board meeting at the Hilton (the future location of the ECWC conference!) and bought her lunch. Then after that, Lacy and Eden dragged me to a shop I probably shouldn’t talk about :)
So last night was my first night of writing fresh stuff (versus rewriting) with NaNo. Blank pages and just a word count I had to meet. And I stalled and stalled and soon it was 9pm. So I turned off my tv, logged off my email and messenger, and put on my playlist and wrote 2k in an hour! I was pretty impressed. I know I can write fast when I remove all distractions, but I so rarely do it *wince*.
Which, sorry to say, is what I need to do now. I’m going to pass out early tonight, Emma woke me up at six am cause she wanted to pee. So I’m a little tired. But I have the perfect writing environment right now. It’s raining and we’re getting a wind storm, so I have my window cracked so I can listen to it. Love these!
I promise I’ll try and blog hop sometime soon. But I notice nobody’s coming here anymore either, lol. It’s NaNo time, baby!
Okay, we’re two days into NaNo and the easy part is done. Up until today I was just rewriting some stuff and adding bits to what I’d already wrote. Well I’ve hit the end of what I’d had before, and now it’s just white open spaces (hee hee, yes that was a play on the Dixie Chicks song–who I love, so leave them alone!)
So my daily word count will slow down some now. In two days I got like 9k or something, which I know is a lot, but trust me, those days are gone. Now it’ll be probably 2k a day if I’m lucky! I’m so excited though, I feel my creativity coming back with no pages already written that I’m just fixing. There’s no rules, and just a lot of opportunity. So yay! How’s everyone else doing with NaNo?
I’m a little peeved. Apparently my daughter grew quite a bit somewhere in the last month or so. And I went a little nutty with clothes for her for the year. I assumed since she was turning 3, she’d be a size 3. Especially since she’s on the small side. But noooo. Her shirts are becoming belly-button flaunting shirts. I think she’s officially a 4 now, and I just have to scream WHY GOD, WHY!!! All though she is still a 3 pants wise, though sometimes those are big on her. She’s a hard fit. Ah well, Lacy will get some more clothes for her daughter :)
We have a great meeting tomorrow for the Seattle chapter (All you Seattle members, or those thinking of joining, should come) we have Eden Bradley (Diva Lisa) there who flew out from California. She’s doing a workshop called ‘An Excercise in Sensuality’ which will be a lot of fun and will turn up the heat in our local chapter!
All right, back to the grind. Have a great weekend everyone!
Picture of the day, I thought was cute, seeing as my heroine right now is a choir teacher!
Boyd Graham spent ten years in prison for defending the woman he didn’t dare love. Lynn Jameson spent the years atoning for sin as a police officer. Can these two find a way to come together or will they be forever at odds?
Xavier, an attorney, lost a bet and now has to pose nude for an art class. Kellye’s dream job is to work for the most prestigious law firm in Dallas. How can she practice law when all she wants to do is practice learning all the angles of his body?
Dr. Elena Málaga is excited to be selected for a Peruvian expedition to find the rare Paradiso flower. Ian Lucas, her team leader, believes women shouldn’t do field-work. She can’t fall for a man who would make her chose between him and her career, so she’s determined to convince him that she belongs by his side, in the jungle and in his bed.
I hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween! I sure did. Emma and I went up to see her half-sister Jada. And it was just too much fun! There was also Jada’s new stepsister there, so the three kids were just having a blast! Emma switched to a kitty witch costume, but I should’ve kept her a pirate because her sister went as a pirate!
Here’s some pics. I promise it will be the last Emma pics for awhile, I know my blog has become saturated with them!
We went trick or treating first in the downtown of a small town. All the little shops handed out candy and it was just too much fun!
Then we went trick or treating later that night, and apparently it was the coldest Halloween on record here in Seattle. Thirty degrees! We had to throw the coats on the girls. Emma got a decent stash of candy. Did anyone go to any fun parties? Or have any fun trick or treating/Halloween stories?
So I started NaNo today. This morning. I have to admit I’m rewriting some of this story (well it’s not a story, it’s 30 pages I wrote along time ago) So basically this first few days will be rewriting chopping, and keeping some things. So today I ended up with (so far, more writing/rewriting planned tonight) 2′860 words. Not a bad start to NaNo!
I have to warn you though, with NaNo I may not be blogging or blog hopping as much. I need to dedicate a lot more time to writing! So I’ll miss you if I’m more of a ghost this month!
Now let me leave you with my Name My Hero contest. Easy to do, fun prize if you win! And of course, back to my picture (non-Halloween theme) of the day!
