I slept until 9:54 this morning. Musta been tired, I'm thinking, since it was lights out at 10:00 pm last night. Then in the shower I remembered I had an appt to get my hair beautified and, as I was lathering up my hair, I could not recall if the appointment was at 10:00 am or at 2:00 pm. Obviously, if it was 10:00 trouble was looming. But it was at 11:00 am. Whew! Except I could have taken a more leisurely shower.

At 10:30 My brother called to say he was coming over at 11:15 to take my son to lunch and buy him a chair for his room as the promised birthday present. You can see the logistical problem, no doubt. So anyway, I duly told the mostly sleeping son he needed to be up and dressed by eleven, ciao, I'm going to go get my hair cut. I think he grunted in response. At eleven, I called him from the salon to make sure he was up. He was. Cranky as heck, though.

Aside: When I lived in San Francisco, a certified genius cut my hair. I could fall asleep (and as my son was an infant to toddler at this time, this actually happened. Always.) Tony would wake me up after a while and my hair would look different from the last time and completely fantastic. I got spoiled. Then I moved north.

After having too many bad and cheap haircuts, I decided to let my hair grow because no one can tell you have a bad hair cut if your hair is in a ponytail all the time. But this is boring, let me tell you. And very limiting as to style. Plus, my hair is naturally curly with the curl moving from wavy to just about ringlets depending on the level of humidity. And let me just say that it's risky, with hair like that, to go out without the ponytail...

So, a while back I took a deep breath and ponied up to get my hair cut at Joe Hamer Salon by the talented Justine because I hyperventilate at the cost of having Joe Hamer cut my hair. Joe Hamer, despite being a hair-cutting celebrity, has a salon in Petaluma because he lives here. And now, once again, I can go back to falling asleep while my hair gets beautified and cut and whatever. I don't really know what she does because, as mentioned, I am dozing, if not actually asleep. Plus, today Joe had his chihuahua at the salon and said cute little dog slept on my lap while I slept, too. I looove getting my hair done.

Then I came home, all rested and with sparkly fun hair to watch my brother and my son putting together the chair. This was entertaining. Also, my Flip Ultra video camera came. I took it out of the box, put in the battery and did a test video of my son about 1 minute later. Seriously. I'd post the video, but I promised I wouldn't. So, then I checked email and was sucked into the internet void which is really kind of a blur right now, but clicking was involved, I remember that, and in between waiting for pages to render (satellite is better than dial up but it's still not fast) I was reading Patti O'Shea's Twilight's Shadow and pretty soon I got tired of interrupting the reading to click.... Then I made dinner and ran into a dumpling problem that took FOREVER to resolve, and then since I was almost done with the book and I needed to know what happened, I went ahead and finished. And then it was 9:40 pm and too late to work, right?

Yeah. I blame Patti.

Here's a picture I took of some pale purple/pink daisies:



Tomorrow I will be strict with myself. I promise.

Labels: procrastination, writing or not

Alas poor plot, I knew you well.

But now I've kicked you to the curb in favor of a brighter, shinier plot. A better plot. Sorry. But them's the breaks when you're at the mercy of a professional writer and panster. It's not for the faint of heart, but there you have it.

Today, the machete came out. Maybe not the machete, but for sure it was the weed whacker. First, two or three days ago, I had this big but not enormous refinement which was great and good for more words. But right after I was almost done with that, I had a dream about a marriage under dire circumstances and it is just so way awesome a better plot I could hardly stand it.

Oh, new plot! I still get all shivery and excited just thinking about you.

I love you, brighter shinier plot!

But you are a High Maintenance kind of plot.

My New Plot is making me pay

Hence, the hacking and replacing. The new plot required that I change the names of some secondary but main characters, and first I changed it to Cartier because, well, it was half the solution to a crossword puzzle I've been working on and so it was on my mind. Only today I realized Ack! that left me with three names that start with C: Camilla, Crosshaven and Cartier.

Sigh.

So I changed that to Brooks becuase, well, confession time here. Meljean Brook's Demon Night was sitting on the top of a pile of stuff I need to do something with (like just about everything in my room) because I want to keep it since it's an awesome story, so I thought, hey, I'll just stick an S on the end of Brook and no one will ever know I stole Meljean's last name for my heroine's cousins. Mwahahahah!

But then the fun part was over and I had to pretty much redo chapter 1 and then I ran out of time. I should be in bed already. Only I'm not.

But I'm about to. Thinking about my shiny new High Maintenance Plot that I still love.

Labels: Names, plotting, writing freaking writing, writing process

• Got the RT review for My Wicked Enemy (see previous post)


• Didn't make it to the gym this AM because 4:30 was too early for someone who stayed up too late the night before. Came out of a dream at 5:15am--


• The dream was one of those dreams where I am observing as a commentator in case my dreaming self is too stupid to get the significance of dreaming about the characters in my book --


• Dream-observer Carolyn said something to the effect of: You DO realize that this is exactly the backstory that's missing from your book, right? Your h/h get married in Anatolia.


• Dream-observer appears to be right.


• Celebrated my son's 13th birthday. He acted just like a pre-teen, too. He was supremely uninterested in hanging with the family. He and his cousin disappeared into his room and performed Satanic almost-a-teenager rituals, I'm sure.


• Talked with siblings and in-laws.

And now I'm going to bed airquotesearlyairquotes. The sad thing is, that's exciting for me.

Labels: Dreams, plotting, reviews, writing

Romantic Times Review of My Wicked Enemy

Unless you're a Romantic Times subscriber, you won't be able to access the complete review with summary until you get your hands on the August issue. But here's the bit that counts:

Magic and its sensual pull lie at the heart of this super-sizzling paranormal adventure. The transformation of this heroine from victim to powerful witch is exciting and sexy. As heroes go, Nikodemus is tough to beat, and the secondary characters are dangerously fascinating. If you like your paranormal steamy, this is the book for you!
- - Jill M. Smith

And, I'm in very good company as a spotlighted author. If you're a subscriber, you can check this out. That's me!! Yippee!

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, reviews

And not from allergies. There's so much smoke from fires in the area that the sky has been nothing but gray haze with a hint of smoke scent. Yuck. We had a pretty dry winter so the grass got dry(er) even faster than usual. Doesn't take but a spark to get things burning. Hopefully they'll get the fires under control soon.

The writing is going well enough. I had my first big (in effect) adjustment and today I went over chapters 1 and 2 to get that laid in. I've got 21K words so far.

My plot is emerging along with some unexpected, but cool, backstory. No List yet. I'm going to have to come up with another title.

Off to bed.

Updated to add: @marsphoenix is the most amazing Twitter feed EVER. It's all about the Mars Phoenix project, and really, this would be a great way to find out about Twitter. Really.

Labels: backstory, plotting sort of, The List, writing

All righty. My 'speriment worked. Some of you may know that I loooove to take photos, especially of flowers. I have a Flickr account and I post my photos there pretty often. They have a nifty feature where I can post a photo from Flickr to my blog, and hey! It worked! This rose is called Honey Dijon, and it's the most amazing color ever.




It's been so hot here lately that the roses are getting scorched. Sad, sad, sad. I'll have to go out tomorrow with the clippers and prune the dead or fried ones.

In other news, I have been E.X.H.A.U.S.T.E.D. lately. Seriously exhausted. I missed the gym everyday except Monday because I needed that extra hour of sleep. Therefore, this morning I did Driveway Torture because I hate feeling like I'm turning into a slug. A big fat slug. I did OK and feel much better for having gotten some exercise. Even though it was too hot at 8:00am.

The writing is going pretty well, I think. Things are moving along and complexifying. I'm seeing my hero and heroine a little better every time.

In other, other news, today is my son's birthday party with his buddies. He'll be 13 on the 24th. He wanted me to make cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins and cookies. I made the cinnamon rolls and the boys pretty much gorged. They're filling and rich and sooo sugary buttery good. Better than birthday cake, if you ask me. When they're this age, you hardly have to supervise at all. My job was mostly to pass out food and drinks and point them to the bathroom. Not like when he was five. Then it's a whirlwind of never stopping action intervention hey don't do that! Come have cake until it's over and you're glad this only happens once a year. Back then it was send them outside with squirt guns and water balloons which was pretty fun. But this is good, too.

OK, back to work.

Labels: baking, birthday parties, roses, The List

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

That would be me. Because I can call myself a kitten if I want to. And I am.

The Fact Kitten

Because I got one of the free Encyclopedia Britannica accounts. (Sometimes it pays to be a geek!) and today when I needed to know some stuff about Turkey in 1800 or so, I remembered I had the account and so I went. Heaven. Really. I was a kitten on her first dose of catnip ever. I learned a lot of stuff. Not necessarily about Turkey, though I did get the answers I needed.

I will now go there more often.

And, I met my minimum tonight, too. Exceeded it a bit.

I have to get to bed so I won't be a wreck tomorrow.

Labels: butt in chair, research, writing

This story about a 1543 copy of Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) selling for $2.2 mil. Yes, amazing. I think I would have been shaking just to be in the same room with the book. But check out the other books this guy collected: Einstein, Darwin, Karl Marx, Sir Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler.

::swoon::

Labels: books, great books

Just a quickee post before I fall into bed. I hit my minimum plus a bit. Yes! And my Berkley editor sent me the initial cover for Scandal and boy is it gorgeous. There's one little tweak to do and then hopefully I'll have a cover to show off. It's hot. It's better than a clinch. It's totally my hero and heroine.

All done! Good night all.

What? What did you think I meant by that post title?

Labels: Book Covers, Scandal, The List

Here it is, folks. What do you think?

Labels: Book Trailer, My Wicked Enemy, promotion

I'm working on The List, which I'm thinking of calling The Bride. Or maybe the Philosopher's Daughter. The List, I've decided is a terrible title. For this story.

Speaking of which, I changed my heroine's last name to Godard because Harris starting bugging me. A lot. Don't know why. I also changed my hero's name from Lysander something, Lord Starts-With-F to John Marrack, Lord Foye (Marquess of) Because, as it turns out, Lysander is not the right name for him. I'm not sure about Foye. Sometimes it seems cool and neato and other times it seems lame. Also, I thought he was another pure alpha-dude, but he's not. Don't mistake me, he's Alpha, but in a different way than other heroes I've written. I tried to fight it for a while but he kept acting all difficult and pissy so I finally gave up and let him be who he is. Group Hug everybody! and then things settled down and now I have some good ideas about what's up with him.

And Camilla, the heroine, well, I have some issues with her name because I have a Crosshaven, previously mentioned here as Lord Something which makes two C's, but I like them both so much! I'll let that set a bit. Once I let Foye be himself, Camilla defined herself further with an end result of I'm really excited about this story and how I'm starting to see it play out. Big sigh of relief. I'm learning not to be so stubborn with my writing. When it's bad, don't let the badness sit around waiting to be rescued by Erato or something like that. She doesn't care, and there's actually no god of Historical Romance waiting around to rescue bad writing. Bummer that.

It's late so I have to get to bed.

Labels: Book Titles, Names, The List, writing

I'm on a roll! 1067 words tonight. Hence the title of this post seeing as the Norman invasion was in 1066. That's 3 days in a row that I've hit my minimum. Yay for me.

Off to bed. Sorry to be so dull. I've missed too many days at the gym on account of staying up too late.

Labels: Stupid Jokes, writing

Today I blogged over at the Grand Central Cafe blog. Here's a direct link to my post. Cookies and Twitter. Yeah, I probably made a fool of myself. Not the first time!

Labels: Blogging, Grand Central Cafe

Today was Discovery Day. I was very happy to discover that I met my minimum word count two days in a row. Doing so got less painful once I discovered that I'd started the book in the wrong place -- too far in, as a matter of fact. Today I wrote a new chapter 1 and discovered that the story starts with a party and the hero arriving with his good friend. I have 6,183 words so far.

We went to my nephew's birthday party today where I discovered that my sister-in-law has a long-time family friend who is writing a romance! I'm taking her to my local chapter meeting next Saturday and seeing if she can't get signed up for Nationals, too. What a nice discovery!


As for sweetpeas, I went down and cut sweetpeas today, which has the happy effect of bringing on even more sweetpeas and now the kitchen has a vase full of sweetpeas and when you walk in, there's just an incredible scent. I love sweetpeas, and here's two pictures of some I took this afternoon.

Labels: Chapter 1, Sweetpeas, writing

Oh, Sir Thomas! I <3 you, indeed.

I am on my knees prostrating myself to a new god (to Americans) For this Brilliant Post

I read the original Forbes article and couldn't make my way through the ahem balderdash of the article or the comments in order to even think of posting my own comment or even a rebuttal over here. And even if I had it wouldn't have been as good as Sir Thomas's.

So, Amazon, where's my $8.7 Million?

Really. My day is complete.

Labels: Heroes, publishing, writing

I figured I better blog now before things get away from me. It's been hectic over here at Jewel central. First off in a tour-de-force example of the Clumping Effect (which effect name I just now made up) I ended up with 3 count them 3 things all due today.

Thing 1: A summary of His Wicked Witch for my editor. And yes, a summary is so close to a synopsis, you might as well call it a very very short synopsis, AKA Hell on a Flaming Hot Ball of Wax.

Thing 2: A 3 part writing project for an author spotlight for Romantic Times. A 50 word description of my novel (AKA Torture on a stale bun) an excerpt (HINT: it's not from chapter 1) and a letter thingee from me. But Please! Look for me on their website in August. I'm pretty excited about it.

Thing 3: Vetting the draft of the book trailer for My Wicked Enemy

But I got them done and they came out pretty awesome I think.

Now I'm going to go make dinner, maybe snap some pics and then write. Gotta do the writing thing.

Labels: His Wicked Witch, My Wicked Enemy, promotion

OK, so I'm a bit giddy. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I've been judging a contest. The entries were long and I had to also judge the synopsis. Oh noes. They were pretty uniformly wretched or just WTF?? Until the last one which was fantastic wonderful sparkling -- publishable right now this minute. And boy, did the synopsis suck. If all I had to go on was the synopsis, I'd have pitched it so fast it would light on fire it was that bad. Which is why nobody ever buys on the basis of a synopsis. Because it's the writing that matters. One other one showed signs of brilliance, but the heroine was certifiably insane. Not charming insane, but lock her up with Norman Bates insane and never ever ever let her near anything sharp insane. There's a problem when your heroine reads like a lunatic. But now the judging is done and I got to read an entry that will be published!

In other news, I got my first review for My Wicked Enemy. It's so early yet that I wasn't expecting an actual review so I opened the email before I realized what it was. Normally, I delete these emails without reading them. I don't care to read reviews. It's a choice I've made. I get too depressed by criticism and not elated enough by praise.

But I was ambushed, as it were. I'm as sick and morbid as the next author, so of course I read it. How could I not once it was there in plain text? Here is is. I'll highlight the phrase that made me laugh and fix a minor error that will be corrected when this posts to the review site.

MY WICKED ENEMY -- Carolyn Jewel
Grand Central Forever
ISBN: 0-446-17823-3
August 2008
Paranormal Romance

San Francisco, California -- Present Day

When she learns how evil her guardian, Alvaro Magellan, is, Carson Phillips runs from him, taking a priceless talisman with her. After fleeing, Carson ends up in San Francisco and runs smack into the one man on earth who would like nothing better than to see her dead, Nikodemus, a man and demon determined to destroy all mages and witches before the fiends are completely taken over and destroyed.

When Magellan's witch literally falls into his hands, Nikodemus can't believe his luck. However, his plan to kill the witch quickly changes when he realizes Carson has no idea what she is or what Magellan has done to her. Magellan has blocked Carson's powers so that he can use them, but eventually this magical block will kill Carson. The pull of Carson's magic draws Nikodemus to her even though he knows he should resist. Witches and fiends are mortal enemies, but something about the helpless Carson makes Nikodemus want to protect her. However, Magellan is powerful and will stop at nothing to retrieve what is his.

MY WICKED ENEMY is a mile-a-minute thrill from the first. I found myself rapidly turning the pages to find out what happens next. Carson is a woman who has lived a lie her entire life, and once she realizes how she has been used and manipulated, trust doesn't come easily. Nikodemus is a Warlord, and his mission in life is to destroy as many witches and mages as he can. But Carson touches something inside him, and he will risk much to save her from Magellan and his evil plans. But can mortal enemies ever become more than just partners against a common enemy?

Author Carolyn Jewel has created a unique paranormal romance with characters who are bigger than life. The writing is smooth, and the plot is exciting. However, while I was engrossed in the novel and couldn't put it down, in the end I was left with some questions unanswered. I'm hoping that this is the first in a series about the fiends so that we can learn more about them. MY WICKED ENEMY is action packed, and the romance is outside the ordinary; actually, some of the sex scenes probably need a warning label. However, even with the somewhat different aspects of the sex scenes, they don't overshadow the story or take over the novel, though they are more prevalent in the latter half of the book. Secondary characters are many, each having an impact on the story, but not overshadowing the focus of the book, the conflicted relationship between Carson and Nikodemus.

MY WICKED ENEMY is sure to appeal to fans of the paranormal, and I don't hesitate to recommend the novel for an entertaining and unique read.

Terrie Figueroa
Romance Reviews Today

So, yes, I'm elated. But if I happen to fail to protect myself against a bad one, I will be more depressed then than I am elated now. Warning lable or not.

Labels: Book Reviews, contest judging, insane heroines, My Wicked Enemy