Home...

I'm finally home. And while I had loads of fun, I'm excited to be home too. My hubby and our poor little Buckley missed me bunches and I missed them too.

I do have some pictures from the trip. But not as many as I should since I'm terrible about forgetting to take pictures! But I should be getting some by email too. But for now, this is what I have:

I have a picture of Michelle Willingham and I not long after I arrived and just a few hours before she received some VERY exciting news from the editor who has her ms and just about 24 hours before she landed an agent! Woo Hoo, Michelle! But for some reason, maybe I mug, I can't get it uploaded properly... :-(

Here's a picture of Suzanne McMinn and me.


And here is the lovely Sasha White and Tess Harrison:

This is me and my roomies, left to right, Christina Sinisi, me, & Bonnie Joyner.


And here I am again with my good friends, Allison Carmody and Debbie Johnson.


I have more pics, but I'm having problems getting them all uploaded. So I'll post more soon.

My editor and agent appointments went well. I got requests from both. And the luncheon on Wednesday went great because I ended up sitting right next to Sheila Hodgson, the editor I was set to pitch to on Saturday! Woo Hoo! And she was a real sweetheart.

I went to a lot of really great workshops and learned loads of stuff. I also went to some of the spotlights. But there's so much, and I haven't been home long enough to process any of it mentally, so I'll have to dish on what I found out later this week when I can remember it :-).

Anything exciting happen in my absence?

April

A Bientot...

So, Wednesday --which is technically tommorrow since it's after midnight--morning I am departing bright and early for Hot-Lanta. And given the heat here recently, I'm sure it'll live up to its name. But that's ok, because I'll spend most of my time in an air-conditioned hotel. Thank God I was born after the invention of AC.

I'm too excited for words, so I won't tell you how excited I am. Except I just did. I've got everything packed away and ready to go. Well, nearly.

I'm taking my camera and I plan to snap a lot of pics. It'll be fun to see friends I've chatted with or emailed or blogged with in person. Hope I recognize them ;-).

I'm not taking the laptop with me, because I hear internet is tres expensive at the hotel and I don't want to drag it around anyway. So this will be my last post before I get back. To hold you all over, I've decided to post another picture of Rafael. If you don't see it below, blogger took it down :-)


Ok, so I couldn't pick just one. And then I thought... more than one might increase my chances they stay up. So here's another :-)


And one last one for the road...


Is the man hot or what? His story is screaming in my head!!

Happy Writing to those of you not traveling to the conference and happy travels to those who are.

April

New Digs...

Let's hope the third time is a charm. Because for the third time, I have revamped my website. Check it out by clicking here.

The picture in the corner is fuzzy because I had trouble with the image. But my hubby is getting that straightened out for me.

Preparations for nationals are winding down. I needed to do laundry today, but I didn't. Why do now what I can put off till later, right?

We ordered a new computer for my hubby tonight. The mac he wants has just gone out of production. The new ones are compatible with pcs. He doesn't care for anything pc. Even though he sure cares for mine when he needs to surf the net.

Anyway, to make a short story long, because of his bias against pc, we had to order a used one. Which was great, because it meant we didn't have to pay the $2700 they're charging for the new ones!

We found a reputable retailer on ebay who had one that was still under manufacturer warranty. And since there were a lot of bidders, I convinced hubby to sit on his hands and wait to bid. And then, at the last minute (literally) I did what numerous bidders have cruelly done to me in the past. I swept in and out bid the highest bidder, leaving them 5 seconds to counter. So we won! I feel bad for the tactic, but hey... the next cheapest one we found was $300 more.

Here's the picture of it:



So, if all goes as it should, his new computer will be here within the week. And hopefully, that blooming graphic will be crisp by the time I get back from nationals.

Only 3 days!

How'd your weekend go? Do anything fun like cruelly out bidding an ebayer at the very last second?

April

Word Flirts...

Today's post is at Word Flirts.

April

Am I Crazy?

I think it's a very real possibility that I am going insane. Like hearing voices, wrapped in a white jacket and eating Fruit Loops for 3 meals a day-insane.

I think I have clothes for everyday of the conference. Let's hope, cause I'm pretty sure nudity is not permitted. Well, not appreciated if nothing else.

I know I have shoes. Because Lord help me, I have a pair of shoes for every possible life event. So there's one item off the list.

I got my agent appointment moved. Is it bad that the scaredie cat part of me thought... Oh well... guess I won't get to pitch to an agent, aw shucks. At least I won't pee my pants... And when it got changed, it said, Oh crap... Even though the logical part of my mind was overjoyed by it? See, hearing voices.

So I'm printing out all of my little notes and schedules and trying to keep myself on track.

Oh yeah, an author friend whom I love to bits a pieces offered me a very exciting opportunity to have lunch with a small goup of her friends, including several other published authors and editors and... this may have been the catalyst for the voices. But it is way too good of an opportunity to pass up! I can't share more, because then she'd have to kill me. But woo hoo!

So am I certifiably insane or just a regular old nut case? :-) Either way I hope you all are doing fabulously!

April

The Final Countdown...

So we're now under two weeks until final blast off to nationals. And I would say my panic meter is registering a bout of mid-level turbulence.

I discovered today, that in my excitement over getting my editor and agent appointments, that I failed to notice they're scheduled for theexact same time. Which would be perfectly fine if I had the multiple personality disorder my talking to myself sometimes implies, but I don't, so there's a problem. I've emailed to find out what I can do.

In the meantime, I've been reading up on pitching. I found Diana Peterfund's lesson at Romance Diva's to be really helpful! Only now I need to work on a backup pitch. Argh...

So for those of you going to nationals... Am I the only one not ready? Or is you dashing around like a nut too?

April

Revising Like It's 1999...

Ok, so I'm not a poet. I never claimed to be. But the words rhymed. And it's sort of what I'm doing. Thanks to the bestest cp ever, my revisions are coming along rather well!

Somehow along the way I added about 3000 words, but I figure some will get erased, so it'll all work out. And 4000 is within my goal range. Better to be over than under!

The big question here is: What time is it when I've gotten a lot done? That's right gang, reward time... So here's the reward for today:



It's the character who hoped in the car with us as we left TN. You know the same guy who was having "shorts" trouble a few posts ago. He's stopped bickering with the other guys. I think he accepted I have to finish revisions and I have a sneaking suspicion he convinced the hero of my suspense that he should go first. He's got that sort of power about him. Of course, he also has two older brothers to help with the "conniving". Now if only I could teach my characters how to give a good shoulder massage!

Tomorrow I'm going to work on getting my pitch for nationals down. Yikes!

How's your writing coming?

April

The Black Whole...

That's what I'm calling my home office for now. It's a big black whole.

Hubby brought home a new bookcase from his office the other day. We have a sloping ceiling at one end of the room and I have these cute little 1/2 bookcases lined against the wall... Full of books, of course. They are BOOKcases after all.

Well hubby thinks I should be able to fit all the books onto the big case, so we can get rid of the 4 smaller ones. I wasn't a math major, but let's see... 4 - 1/2 size cases does not = 1 full size case. Nope, not gonna work. As a result, we have a new full size book case crammed full of books and two 1/2 size cases partially full and a whole bunch of crap strewed across the floor.

So hubby came up with a really bright idea... "Can't you get rid of some of these?" After I recovered from the apocalyptic shock, I shook my head at him and asked if he'd been taken over by an alien from outer space, because my hubby who has known me since I was 10 or so would NEVER ask me that. He rolled his eyes, hoping to say without speaking, that I was being a drama queen. And I was. But, hello! I do share with friends. We'll trade or give to each other. After all, if I want to read it again, they're only a mile away ;-) But to say goodbye permanently to a good book. That's hard.

In the end I promised to at least look through the books. And what do you know, I found some that can go! Of course, they're his... :-)

What do you do with the books you read? Do you keep them all? Do you give them away? Do you do a once a year clean out?

April

Yay For Me!

After making my poor little wip sit and wait in a mid-revised state of distress, I have returned to my revisions. Finally! So maybe it should be Yay for WIP!

With the illnesses in the family and then the holiday and my mom's birthday and my mother-in-law's birthday, the 3rd and 4th respectively, I just got too busy to work on it. And there was the little side project I took on... Go Word Flirts!

But now the family seems to be recovering. The birthday mammas are all caked out and the Flirts are properly set off. So finally I get to return to my wip.

In the mean time, the hero from my wip has forced the other dueling heroes to back
off until I'm done revising. Just in case you forgot, a reminder of what he looks like is to the right.

The break has been nice, but I have to admit, I found the dueling quite... inspiring. Big sigh... I guess all good things must come to an end. At least it's only temporary.

My husband gave me the strangest look when he commented yesterday, "You look a lot less stressed." And I replied, "Yeah, the dueling has stopped for now." And went on about my business.

So I figure everyone hears characters from a story in their head. And if you don't, don't tell me. It'll only make me worry that I'm weirder than normal ;-). My question is this... How often do you find characters from one story interacting with characters from another? Sort of like the duel I've been experiencing?

April

Today's Post...

is at Word Flirts. :-)

April

How I Ended Up Married...

A question on Olga's blog brought back to mind for me, how my hubby and I ended up together.

You see, I met my hubby at the impressionable age of 11. The summer between our 6th and 7th grade years, my family moved to a new neighborhood. A neighborhood in which I was one of only two girls with a group of eight boys. Great odds for a young girl!

The story starts out rocky. Hubby lived a block away with his parents and younger brother. So it took longer for me to get to know him. In the mean time, the blond haired, green eyed pretty boy next door was attempting to make fast time with me. And sucker that I was for his dimples, I fell for him. Alas, that adolescent love was doomed from the beginning. Two years later green eyes moved away with his family when his father was restationed.

Hubby came around a bit more once green eyes was gone. And when I got my driver's license in high school, he rode to school with me too. Stubborn person that I was, I developed a crush on yet another guy. He was an older classman. And as embarrassing as it is to admit it now, hubby even rode along when I did the typical teenage drive by of my crush's house. Yet again, my poor little heart was destined to be broken to pits and pieces.

The summer between 10th and 11th grade, hubby and I spent a lot of time together. he worked on a project for his portfolio to get into Art school and I helped. Read: he needed to use my camcorder and I didn't trust him not to break it, so I supervised :-)

I can actually recall the moment I realized I felt more than friendship for him. We were walking through the halls of our school on our way to take the ACT, in the first few weeks of our junior year. And I looked up at him as he talked to a buddy. And I thought... "It's him. He's the one."

But I'm a coward. I mean... Hello, I'd already been crushed... TWICE! And I knew he'd laugh at me if I said anything.

So, I told the little first grader who lived on our street and was best buddies with hubby's little brother. I knew he couldn't keep a secret... but I also knew he was known for exaggerating and telling fibs. So if hubby reacted poorly, I'd just say he was lying. Only hubby threw a wrench in my plans. He decided for himself that the kid was lying. Argh!

Apparently this really offended the kid. And the next thing I know, the kid, hubby's little brother and their other first grade friend are working on setting hubby and I up. Long story short, the only thing that would convince hubby that it wasn't a joke was the horses mouth. But I wasn't talking. So, instead I did yet another typical teenage thing... I wrote a note. Check here if you like me too... Well, not that teenage, but still. It said something about liking him and being afraid to ruin a friendship, so no need to feel awkward if you think I'm a total dork. Not the best self-esteem. But hey.

So after waiting TWO WEEKS, hubby responded in kind and a first date was set. And now the rest is history....

As it turned out, he'd had a crush on me since the 7th grade, but didn't think I'd ever feel the same. Especially after riding past crush #2's house with me. Which I get reminded of from time to time :-).

And I explained to him that I'm a stubborn woman and he would have to just deal with that. I don't make up my mind until I'm good and ready. That may explain part of why it took us eleven years to get married.

As for green eyes, we still keep in touch and he's happily married with a little blond haired, green-eyed boy of his own now.

And the older classman... The last time I saw him was at a friend's wedding. He'd been in some trouble due to his bad boy ways, but was getting them straightened out. I hope he has.

As for me, who else can say they were set up by a bunch of first grade boys bent on match making?

How about you all? Any funny match making stories? Whether they worked out of not...

April